Thursday, September 16. 2010
In the run-up to the 2006 elections, I posted a widely followed debate among some prominent bloggers about – in light of discouragement or disagreement with President Bush’s second term immigration, Supreme Court choice, profligate budget policies -- whether to sit out the 2006 election, or start a third-party, or – in my opinion – to bite the bullet and get active against current and coming Democrat excesses. I called the first two positions "conservative battle fatigue." At other forums, like National Review, others joined in.
I’m not from Delaware, moreso from Missouri (“show me”), so looking back over the past four years I’d say we were all correct and all wrong.
Divisiveness and dispiritness among Republicans, coupled with energy and major media hawking among Democrats, led to the 2006 Congressional majority and 2008 Presidency for Democrats. We’ve all paid the prices. The establishment Republicans for the most part continued in their path of feebleness, until the Tea Parties released the energy and eagerness for reform among rank-and-file Republicans and Independents. Then, the Republican establishment was bestirred, kicked in the butt, to jump on board.
The 2010 elections and primaries demonstrated the synthesis of the three views from 2006: Don’t sit out an election but, instead, change their course by active participation, including overthrowing the more feckless members of the Republican establishment when able.
Now, we have a new debate which essentially pits those either clinging to the Republican establishment, or at best arguing for possibly greater electability in some left-leaning states of a weaker principled Party, against those who are more determined to stem and reverse the Democrat excesses of the past four years and launch a political party rebirth.
Some among the Republican Party establishment, however, go beyond the debate to defection. Florida’s Crist is the prime example, to his rue after being given a hearty attaboy by liberals and his liberal reposturing being rejected in the polls.
Continue reading "Politics: Don’t Get Fatigued, Get Even"
The oyster farmers get out onto the mudflats at low tide, with their trucks and boats, to tend their oyster cages or to harvest the humble but tasty Wellfleet Oyster:
One of many vast Wellfleet salt marshes. These are happy homes for Diamondback Terrapins, on the northern edge of their range. I think they hunker down in the mud at low tide, then come out to feed on worms, crabs, and snails when the water comes back in. They never leave the water except to lay their eggs, and are rarely seen. Some Mallards and Black Ducks breed there, but you never see many ducks up there until winter, when the sea ducks come down from the north in large numbers - Eider, Old Squaw, and all of the Scoters.
Miles of "empty" beach. This is on Cape Cod Bay, roughly across from Plymouth. Endangered Piping Plovers breed along this stretch of beach. Montana is not the only place with big skies (but we do love Montana - been there many times).
Wednesday, September 15. 2010
I suppose it does, in a way. J.K. Rowling is one example.
It never makes sense to me for people to be concerned about income inequality - or inequality of wealth. As Dylan was quoted as saying in our link this morning, "The world owes you nothing. Not one single thing."
One reason I feel inequality is a bogus issue has to do with the Ezra Klein quote above:
The top 1 percent, for instance, has gone from capturing about 8 percent of the national income to 18 percent.
"Captured"? Like piracy? That's a childish and fallacious zero-sum view of income. It's not like there is a set number of dollar bills out there to be distributed. J.K. Rowling did not "capture" income - she created wealth out of nothing, which is what wealth-creators do. In the process, she created income for book stores, Amazon, printers, her employees, etc. - along with vast tax income for the UK. Furthermore, she got herself off the dole.
Due to my needs for personal wealth creation, I don't have time today to do a full essay on what is problematic about the concern about income inequality. I will say, however, that I think it's about politics, not economics.
Maybe I will complete my thoughts later, but you have probably had the same thoughts already.
Tuesday, September 14. 2010
From Wind in the Willows (a book without which no child should be)
"Is it so nice as all that?" asked the mole, shyly...
"Nice? It's the only thing," said the Water Rat Solemnly, as he leaned forward for his stroke. "Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."
"Simply messing...about in boats -- or with boats... In or out of 'em it doesn't matter. Nothing seems to matter, that's the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not."
"Look here! If you've really nothing else on hand this morning, supposing we drop down the river together and have a long day of it?"
Photo is of Lightnings. Info and some links about that class here. Watched one flying past in Wellfleet Harbor, despite being loaded with 5 guys. I grew up racing that class, still love them because they double as comfortable little day-sailers. My late lamented uncle used to take his half-waterlogged wood Lightning out on a Saturday afternoon alone with his pipe and some beers, placidly contemplating life and enjoying toying with the fickle breezes. I am far from being an old guy, but I even sailed wooden Lightnings as a youth. Played lots of tennis with wooden racquets too. Jack Kramer Pro Staff was my favorite in that department.
As understood by the USMC:
- BEARING - Creating a favorable impression in carriage, appearance, and personal conduct at all times.
- COURAGE - A mental quality that recognizes fear of danger or criticism, but enables a Marine to proceed in the face of it with calmness and firmness.
- DECISIVENESS - Ability to make decisions promptly and to announce them in a clear, forceful manner.
- DEPENDABILITY - The certainty of proper performance of duty.
- ENDURANCE - The mental and physical stamina measured by the ability to withstand pain, fatigue, stress, and hardship.
- ENTHUSIASM - The display of sincere interest and exuberance in the performance of duty.
- INITIATIVE - Taking action in the absence of orders.
- INTEGRITY - Uprightness of character and soundness of moral principles.
- JUDGMENT - The ability to weigh facts and possible courses of action in order to make sound decisions.
- JUSTICE - Giving reward and punishment according to the merits of the case in question. The ability to administer a system of rewards and punishments impartially and consistently.
- KNOWLEDGE - Understanding of a science or an art. The range of one's information, including professional knowledge and an understanding of your Marines.
- LOYALTY - The quality of faithfulness to country, the Corps, and unit, and to one's seniors, subordinates, and peers.
- TACT - The ability to deal with others without creating hostility.
- UNSELFISHNESS - Avoidance of providing for one's own comfort and personal advancement at the expense of others.
MARXISM A BUST… Cuba Lays Off Half a Million – Allows Private Enterprise.
If the government would just leave the people alone, they could be like the Dominican Republic in 10-20 years. Maybe they will even begin to make cigars as good as today's Dominicans, too.
The fatal flaw of the Left is the assumption - or wish - that some power-hungry elite could be possessed of more virtue or wisdom or omniscience than ordinary people. All of history shows that not to be true. There are no "betters" to rule or to run us.
We regular folks just have to grow up and run our own lives. If they let us.
Sunday, September 12. 2010
 Regular readers know that we love turtles here at Maggie's Farm. All sorts of 'em - turtles, tortoises, sea turtles. We think that turtles are cute, cuddly, witty critters, created by a humorous, inventive God to feed, amuse, charm, and fascinate us.
I do not know whether Arnaud's exists post-Katrina (which Bush and Rove caused, don't forget), but they made a fine Green Turtle soup. I had a clear Turtle Soup once, and I would not boycott it (what good would that dumb, self-congratulatory, pointless thing do?), and it was good - but not so good that I would kill a turtle for it. Mock Turtle Soup is at least as good, if not better. Turtle Soup can be clear, like consomme, or full of stuff.
In addition, turtles can teach us a lesson about the economics of conservation, especially sea turtles.
One of our favorite blogs, Brussels Journal, took the time to post this piece on turtle conservation, about how some conservation methods can endanger species, which begins thus:
If people were not allowed to own chickens and if chicken eggs and meat could not be legally sold, how many chickens would there be? The reason chickens, cattle, catfish, and goldfish are not endangered is because they are owned by private parties, bred and raised in captivity, and sold for commercial profit – hence there are billions of these animals. The poor sea turtle is endangered precisely because the global environmental lobby refuses to let sea turtles be commercially farmed and marketed.
Four decades ago, you might well have bet that Cayman would eventually be known best for its turtle farms, rather than as a tourist destination and one of the world’s largest financial centers, but economically ignorant environmentalists, who tell us they love sea turtles, have ensured there will be fewer of them.
Image: A Green Sea Turtle - a species we would far rather see than eat. But we would eat them, without hesitation, if presented to us at table. We like a nice light red with turtle.
 In 1802 Beethoven retreated to the then-countryside outside Vienna in an effort to deal with his despair over his increasing deafness and other family issues. There he wrote this letter (found after his death), to his brothers.
It begins:
Oh you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn, or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me? You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you. From childhood on, me heart and soul have been full of the tender feeling of goodwill, and I was ever inclined to accomplish great things. But, think that for six years now I have been hopelessly afflicted, made worse by senseless physicians, from year to year deceived with hopes of improvement, finally compelled to face the prospect of a lasting malady (whose cure will take years or, perhaps, be impossible). Though born with a fiery, active temperament, even susceptible to the diversions of society, I was soon compelled to withdraw myself, to live life alone. If at times I tried to forget all this, oh how harshly I was I flung back by the doubly sad experience of my bad hearing. Yet it was impossible for me to say to people, "Speak louder, shout, for I am deaf." Ah, how could I possibly admit an infirmity in the one sense which ought to be more perfect in me than others, a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection, a perfection such as few in my profession enjoy or ever have enjoyed.--Oh I cannot do it; therefore forgive me when you see me draw back when I would have gladly mingled with you.
Whole thing here.
Readers may recall that Beethoven moved from Bonn to Vienna to study with Mozart. He never did that, and probably never met Mozart, but he did study with Papa Haydn - and with Salieri too.
This was done to glorify God. Gilding the lily, in my Protestant view, but it's a heck of a sight. They have the bony corpse of a saint in an altar on the side, under glass. Memento mori.
That must be some American kid in the Nantucket Red.
Saturday, September 11. 2010
A fantasy trip, that is. NetJets to Vienna. Five days at the Hotel Sacher with opera tix etc. Then onward maybe to Bucharest and Budapest. And why not Trieste, then down to Venice? Or tack on five days of skiing at Innsbruck or Zermatt? Those nice NetJets pilots will be there whenever needed, and the copilot will load and unload your skis and luggage and mix your drinks for you, and a car and driver will be waiting for you on the tarmac.
It's like I said about boats...
I don't need to go back to Venice, but the rest seems fine to me. That's why I buy Powerball tickets. Foolish not to.
A re-post. This is an important essay about individual freedom. From Peter Saunders
The problem for those of us who believe that capitalism offers the best chance we have for leading meaningful and worthwhile lives is that in this debate, the devil has always had the best tunes to play. Capitalism lacks romantic appeal. It does not set the pulse racing in the way that opposing ideologies like socialism, fascism, or environmentalism can. It does not stir the blood, for it identifies no dragons to slay. It offers no grand vision for the future, for in an open market system the future is shaped not by the imposition of utopian blueprints, but by billions of individuals pursuing their own preferences. Capitalism can justifiably boast that it is excellent at delivering the goods, but this fails to impress in countries like Australia that have come to take affluence for granted.
It is quite the opposite with socialism. Where capitalism delivers but cannot inspire, socialism inspires despite never having delivered. Socialism’s history is littered with repeated failures and with human misery on a massive scale, yet it still attracts smiles rather than curses from people who never had to live under it. Affluent young Australians who would never dream of patronising an Adolf Hitler bierkeller decked out in swastikas are nevertheless happy to hang out in the Lenin Bar at Sydney’s Circular Quay, sipping chilled vodka cocktails under hammer and sickle flags, indifferent to the twenty million victims of the Soviet regime. Chic westerners are still sporting Che Guevara t-shirts, forty years after the man’s death, and flocking to the cinema to see him on a motor bike, apparently oblivious to their handsome hero’s legacy of firing squads and labour camps.
Environmentalism, too, has the happy knack of inspiring the young and firing the imagination of idealists. This is because the radical green movement shares many features with old-style revolutionary socialism. Both are oppositional, defining themselves as alternatives to the existing capitalist system. Both are moralistic, seeking to purify humanity of its tawdry materialism and selfishness, and appealing to our ‘higher instincts.’ Both are apocalyptic, claiming to be able to read the future and warning, like Old Testament prophets, of looming catastrophe if we do not change our ways. And both are utopian, holding out the promise of redemption through a new social order based on a more enlightened humanity. All of this is irresistibly appealing to romantics.
Family Security Matters collected essays today about 9/11 nine years later. I was asked to contribute one.
On 9/11, I awoke, turned on the computer, saw something bad had happened in New York, turned on the TV in the living room, and sat there from 6AM to 9PM Pacific. My then 1 ½ year old son was toddling around. Several times I hugged him and cried, for America, for New Yorkers, for the battles that I was sure lay ahead, and for my son’s future in that world.
My son has a Hebrew name, shield of Joshua, and an English name, non-labeling, as he, his younger brother and my wife visit my mother-in-law in Dusseldorf, Germany for a month each summer. We don’t want the boys targeted by the increased number of open anti-Semites in Europe, especially the radical Arab youth who prowl the streets. Some of the wonderful counselors at the summer camp my sons go to in Dusseldorf are Muslim. My sons are warned to keep their religion to themselves, not knowing who might be infected with hate. The synagogue in Dusseldorf is well-secured and under constant police protection.
Back home, in suburban San Diego, my sons don’t have that fear. But, since 9/11 there is a locked gate and a guard at the Jewish preschool my sons attended, and guards around our synagogue. The fear is spreading in the US, as is the Leftist-Muslim alliance to delegitimize Israel and to stir hate. We have Muslim friends, who are not radical, and appreciate being in the US. And, 64% of Arabs in the US are Christian, who know persecution for not being Muslim. Unfortunately, their voices, though subdued, are drowned out by those with bigger mouths and designs.
Last Memorial Day, we went to Petco for a Padres game. At the end was a stirring salute to the US military. On the way home, my now 10-year old son, knowing I served in the Marine Corps in Vietnam, quietly asked me what I felt. I told him, simply, that sometimes we have to fight, not because we want to, only after trying not to, to do good and to survive.
To my surprise, a few weeks ago, my son came into my office and told me he was watching a four-part, two-hour, documentary about 9/11 on Youtube. Since 9/11, I’ve not watched such films, trying to avoid the pain and fear I felt in 2001. Neither had my son watched any, or been taught about it in school.
I watched the documentary, very factual and matter-of-fact, with my son. After, I asked my son what he was feeling.
He said, “I’m glad the US has people who will fight so another 9/11 or worse doesn’t happen again.”
Religion is about doing good, not feeling good.
Friday, September 10. 2010
Just returned from the second day of Rosh Hashanah services. We search within ourselves for error, correct it, and develop ways to be better. As the Jewish new year begins, the Torah reading for today is Bereshit Bara Elohim: “In the beginning G-d created…”
A millenia ago, Biblical and Talmudic scholar Rashi wrote a homily in which bereshit could be rendered bishvil reyshit, “For the sake of beginning did G-d create the world.” The point is that we’ve been given our start, and then what we do with ourselves is in our power. Another famous Jewish Rabbi, Joseph Soloveitchik, wrote, “The most fundamental principle of all is that man must create himself.”
My Rabbi, then, passed out this quote from Harry Potter author JK Rowling’s Harvard Commencement Speech: “We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
NYT: Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits.
That might be good advice. I am not sure. What always worked best for me in college and in law school was a ration of 2hrs/studying in the library to 1/hr discussing and mutual quizzing with somebody in the course.
From the latter, I learned to interrogate my own understanding after I read anything. It's become a habit for me. If I can't explain back what I've read after I have read it, I've gotten nothing from it.
Thursday, September 9. 2010
In The Economist, In America and Britain governments hope that a partnership with “social entrepreneurs” can solve some of society’s most intractable problems.
 Dream on, rainbow-pony dreamers:
POLICYMAKERS on both sides of the Atlantic are keen on a new approach to alleviating society’s troubles. On July 22nd Barack Obama’s administration listed the first 11 investments by its new Social Innovation Fund (SIF). About $50m of public money, more than matched by $74m from philanthropic foundations, will be given to some of America’s most successful non-profit organisations, in order to expand their work in health care, in creating jobs and in supporting young people.
Let's face it: this is all about jobs for people who work for non-profits. They vote too - for whoever gives them the bucks which they feed on. I don't know what Europe needs (besides a spine or two), but I know what America needs more than more non-profits: more lower-skill but decent-paying work from successful businesses, and better parental examples of adult responsibility.
Fairfield was established as a town in 1635. Pleasant, unpretentious place. Wiki says:
In July 2006, Money Magazine ranked Fairfield the ninth "best place to live" in the United States, and the best place to live in the Northeast.[1] This is primarily due to its affluence, low crime rate with only three homicides in the last five years [2] , excellent public school system, suburban character, scenic location on the Long Island Sound, and proximity to New York City. The town was also listed among the "preppiest" places in the United States in the tongue-in-cheek 1980s best-seller The Official Preppy Handbook.
It considers itself the "dogwood capital of the world," and each spring a Dogwood Festival takes place in the Greenfield Hill neighborhood.
This handsome place is just off the Boston Post Road (which is the Main St. for most CT shoreline towns). It was build in 1791, now in the historic district.
The listing is here, with the details. I see the asking price is creeping downwards, now asking 1.3
Wednesday, September 8. 2010
Our Editor posted that he had just visited the Nazi stadium, the Zeppelinfeld, in Nuremberg, and that he had felt creeped out by standing there. It isn't "history," - it's recent past.
Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Osama, etc. are just icons of evildoing. Scapegoats, in a way. The evil is not so importantly in them as it is in the effective unleashing of the evil in the hearts of their supporters. We eagerly forget that Hilter was elected. Some charisma helps, but does charisma come from popularity and power, or does it inspire popularity?
I will not reflect on my own potential for evil, or the dark side of my heart, on a website, but I know it exists and I know a bit about it. I am not making moral equivalences here, a la Pogo. There's a big difference between containing some darkness and acting on it. One thing I pray for is for God to always lighten my darkness.
Readers know that I accept the notion of evil, and refuse to medicalize or sociologize it. Readers also know my thoughts about utopianisms of all sorts, and especially what I term Psycho-utopianism. Anybody who has been analysed knows about the dark side of the Force, and does not need Hannah Arendt to inform us about it.
The "problem of evil" is a manufactured, trumped-up "problem" for and of the Enlightenment. Rousseau and all that noble savage stuff. Reason has its limits, and people are not "good." Most of us strive to be good, however, which is interesting and remarkable in itself, and evidence for many of the spark of the divine in humankind. Judaism and Christianity have no "problem of evil" because they accept the reality of man's fallen condition.
Our friend, the retired prison shrink Dr. Ted Dalrymple, who ought to know as much about the topic as anybody, takes on the subject.
Ed: I guess that is something of a Christian Rosh Hashanah post. Why not? Same roots. Reminds me of this (gotta love the fish fry):
A freebie for Conservatives:
"Do you want a representative from (here), or do you want a representative from San Francisco? ... because my opponent has voted with Nancy Pelosi (x %) of the time. I want to represent you, not the people of San Francisco."
Rosh Hashanah starts tonight. My ever-active boys sat still, watched, listened, learned, and had fun with this Lady Gaga inspired Rosh Hashanah performance. Who am I to argue with Lady Gaga anymore!
A few translations:
Days of Awe = The ten days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, for especially intense introspection, self-correction and launching on better behaviors toward others.
Mahzor = Special holiday prayer book
Shofar = Rams horn, usually, blown from Biblical times to announce holidays, and at Rosh Hashanah to trumpet the Rebirth of the World and of us. In the Bible the day is called Yom Teruah, the day of the sounding of the shofar.
Shanah Tovah = Our greeting to others for a good year, a shortened version of "May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year."
Shanah Tovah to all from Maggie's Farm.
Tuesday, September 7. 2010
The New York Daily News editorial today is titled "Academically incorrect: Brooklyn College book choice makes a mockery of education."
This comes in reaction to my blog posts (here, here and here), which the New York Post, New York Times, and many other blogs have also featured.
Today's New York Daily News editorial:
The faculty at Brooklyn College chooses one book each year that will be required reading for nearly all incoming freshmen. This year's choice, "How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America," has generated controversy.
Up front and for the record: President Karen Gould and her professorial force are free to assign whatever works they choose - even if academic excellence takes second place to offering students an unchallenging, feel-good bonding experience.
But that freedom comes with the responsibility to provide inquiring minds with the straight goods about the literature they've been ordered to read. Here, by all the evidence, Brooklyn College has failed.
"How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?" was written by Moustafa Bayoumi, an English professor at the school. The book is a collection of seven profiles of Arab-American youths living in Brooklyn after 9/11. Each is a victim in one way or another.
Akram works in his family's East Flatbush bodega, which one resident boycotts because "they support Bin Laden"; Rasha and her family are roused from bed and held in detention as suspected terrorists, then released; Sami, a Marine, deploys to Iraq, where fellow soldiers call him a terrorist because of his background.
College officials say the book is in line with previous selections, such as Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes." In their telling, the reading is meant to mirror the diversity of the student body, particularly its immigrant experience.
But to treat Bayoumi's book as nothing more than an anthology of coming-to-America stories is supremely false advertising. This is not a memoir, but a polemic.
Bayoumi chose the profiles to support his argument that social attitudes have combined with the effects of U.S. foreign policy to deprive Muslims and Arab-Americans of civil rights, with the effects felt most severely by the young.
Had he chosen to tell stories of seven other Arab-Americans, people who immigrated from, say, Lebanon or Syria and followed well-trodden paths to success, he could have just as easily titled his book, "How Does it Feel to Live in the Land of Opportunity?"
Bayoumi sees America more darkly. In the book's afterword, he writes that "Muslims and Arabs are scrutinized for sedition at every turn," that Arab-American life includes "substantial government surveillance and repression," that "today, everyone - immigrant and citizen, activist and spectator - has become vulnerable," that "spies and government informants have penetrated Muslim-American communities" and that "torture has been normalized into American culture."
In sum, he asserts, "What we are currently living through is the slow creep of imperial high-handedness into the rest of American society, performed in the name of national security and facilitated through the growth of racist policies."
Bayoumi can hold these views if he likes. And Brooklyn College students would be well-served by rigorous debate over their merits. But that's not about to take place. College officials say that the contents of Bayoumi's afterward are not part of the conversation.
Continue reading "NY Daily News Editorial: Brooklyn College Academically Incorrect Mockery"
The Austrian Adolf Hitler spent a few years just over the border in Passau in youth before his parents moved back to Linz, but there are no signs there bragging about it. He spoke the Southern Bavarian dialect which is used in north Austria and southern Bavaria (there are apparently many German dialects).
I got onto that topic because, having recently returned from that part of the world, I was checking out the Anschluss, the 1938 "joining" of the short-lived Republic of Austria (short-lived since the Hapsburg's Austria-Hungary fell apart after WW1) with Germany. From what I have read, this event was welcomed by many Austrians - but what do I know? It was certainly not welcomed by the Jews of Vienna.
The Anschluss is part of the story of European - and American - appeasement of aggressive expansion and control. Not a shot was fired and a vote, of sorts, provided some legitimacy. Today, the EU is trying to do it, but with paper not armies.
The history of Europe, since Roman times, is one of things being pulled together, then coming apart. It will be the same with the EU. Anschluss.
 Our friend Roger asks:
Is four years at Yale (or Harvard, Princeton, or any other “competitive” college) worth $53,000 x 4 plus annual tuition increases for a grand total (assuming you are entering right now) of roughly a quarter of a million dollars?
This is a question that, to the consternation of academic administrators, more and more parents — not to mention responsible teenagers — are asking themselves.
Yes, it is a bubble, a scam, and a rip-off. And the government subsidizes it too, adding to the problem. As it always does.
Related: Retired Prof VDH has an amusing yet penetrating rant about academics: We Are Ruled by Professors. He concludes:
So why again the above rant about academics?
We are presently governed by academics. In an era in which university people proliferate in this administration and seem to make things far worse for the rest of us, we need to be reminded why we should not look to the university for answers. What I hear coming out of Washington reminds me a lot of what I once heard coming out of the philosophy or English department. And that is a scary thing indeed.
You see, that tribe is more likely to embody the illness rather than the cure, and this time 300 million are paying the price.
Related, from Barone: The Higher Education Bubble: Ready to Burst? Quote:
Government-subsidized loans have injected money into higher education, as they did into housing, causing prices to balloon. But at some point people figure out they're not getting their money's worth, and the bubble bursts.Some think this would be a good thing. My American Enterprise Institute colleague Charles Murray has called for the abolition of college for almost all students. Save it for genuine scholars, he says, and let others qualify for jobs by standardized national tests, as accountants already do.
"Is our students learning?" George W. Bush once asked, and the evidence for colleges points to no. The National Center for Education Statistics found that most college graduates are below proficiency in verbal and quantitative literacy. University of California scholars Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks report that students these days study an average of 14 hours a week, down from 24 hours in 1961.
The American Council of Alumni and Trustees concluded, after a survey of 714 colleges and universities, "by and large, higher education has abandoned a coherent content-rich general education curriculum."
They aren't taught the basics of literature, history or science. ACTA reports that most schools don't require a foreign language, hardly any require economics, American history and government "are badly neglected," and schools "have much to do" on math and science.
ACTA's whatwilltheylearn.com Website provides the grisly details for each school, together with the amount of tuition. Students and parents can see if they will get their money's worth.
The daughter of a friend, who I spoke with in August, will be a college Freshman about now. She complained to me about being required to take Algebra in college. "I don't do math," she said.
"I don't do windows." Guess what? I do windows whenever She Who Must Be Obeyed asks me to.
Monday, September 6. 2010
It was wonderful to have the entire BD family with us, including Mrs. BD's parents and the precious new daughter in law. Special times. Got to grab them. Ars longa, vita brevis, and all that. A fine trip for us history buffs, beer-tasters, and relentless walkers. As usual, we walked our butts off and I was glad to have my ugly old man walkin' shoes to alternate with my elegant New Balance sneakers.
Today's first snap is for our down-under reader, who ate here recently. The Weissbrauhaus in Regensburg. Superb fresh Weissbrau and famous for its sausages. You can see my hearty lunch below the fold, along with my entire final fun photo dump with ignorant comments from this year's Big Trip.
Continue reading "Final giant Danube trip photo dump. Some good stuff in here plus a creepy pic of Nuremberg"
This is a Labor Day reprint of a portion of a post I wrote in 2005, when a transit workers strike was pending in New York City.
The New York Sun’s editorial yesterday said should the Metropolitan Transit Authority “reward the union’s illegal behavior” it would send a “message of appeasement” elsewhere. The Sun continues, that’s “how they used to work in the New York of the 1960’s and 1970’s.” But, the Sun said, “it is not a way to run a successful city in the competitive global economy.”
I laugh, at just 58, at another of my Forrest Gump moments. The Sun’s editorialist missed that this began, actually, back in the 1950’s, and I’m a witness to how.
It was 1958 or ‘59, and my social studies assignment from P.S. 246, Walt Whitman Junior High School in Flatbush, Brooklyn, was a term paper about how local government works.
Not having much of a clue, I went to New York City Hall to find out and wandered about asking people in the halls. They all rushed by, with puzzled and frustrated looks on their faces how to quickly respond. In a big conference room, the famous, feisty, Irish orator who built and led the Transport Workers Union, Mike Quill, a genuine New York-style colorful character, was in one of his fascinating harangues of the press threatening a strike if he didn’t get what he wanted, and he’d bring the city and mayor to their knees as he beat them with his union shillelagh.
As the crowd cleared, I asked Mike Quill my broad question. He flashed his broad smile and said I looked familiar, probably thinking me Irish due to my red hair and freckles. I told him I’d seen him speak years before at the Jewish Workmen’s Circle, while my grandparents’ cousin, David Dubinsky, founder of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, was bouncing me on his knee. I guess that vouched for my membership in the socialist workers movement that Quill had been active in since his youth, so Mike Quill invited me to join him and his crew at lunch, at a neighborhood restaurant on 14th Street that served heaping portions of the best corned beef and cabbage I’ve ever had.
At the table, Mike Quill explained to me how government works: It’s all just politics among friends, all out to make their constituents happy, and to hell with the beancounters, and tories, and other allusions to old enemies and battles.
When I turned in my termpaper, all I got was an incredulous look from my teacher, a shake of the head, and note that I’d missed the assignment’s requirement to discuss the structures and laws. I received a C.
After I told this story to a younger New Yorker last night, I checked my memory online, finding this entry at Wikipedia:
"Quill and the TWU became even more important figures in New York City politics in the 1950s. He was a key supporter of Robert F. Wagner, Jr.’s campaign for mayor of New York and became a lightning rod, based on his radical past, for Wagner’s Republican opponent and unfavorable press attention. While the union repeatedly threatened to take the subway workers out on strike, it managed to settle with the Wagner administration short of a strike on each occasion."
The ground was laid in the 1950’s, as the New York Times reports, that New York City’s current pension outlays for the transit workers have soared to $453 million this year [2005], triple the amount in 2002. The Metropolitan Transit Authority’s director of labor relations summed its negotiation objective: “If you know a tidal wave is coming and you can still play around in the surf because it’s not here yet, anyone would think that’s foolishness.” A two-tier pension plan is offered, trimming costs of pensions for future workers. The current union president says that would “sell out the ‘unborn.’ ” A former NYC labor commissioner reflects the city “might have picked a union that was more willing to consider the subject.”
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