Terror Alert High
Fox News channel is showing the terror alert as high, but the Fox News web site is totally silent on the issue. Nothing on the home page, nothing on top stories. There is a story on hightened security for New Year's celebrations: "As cities and states across the country prepare to ring in the New Year while the country is on high alert, some homeland security actions are more visible than others." This story mentions the high alert incidentally. The story goes on to explain various security measures in place at various celebrations, but there is no explanation of why the alert level has climbed.
Wednesday, December 31, 2003
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
School Graduation Rates Fudged
The Daily Southerner in Tarboro, N.C. tell us that graduation rates in N.C. are fudged. The national graduation rate, estimated at 74% in 1998 was revised down to 71% when re-examined by Jay P. Greene at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. Earlier today, the Daily Southerner reported that estimates are grossly off base in N.C. "North Carolina's high school graduation rate of more than 90 percent is misleading because the state doesn't include dropouts in its tally." This is an old trick and one that boosted N.C. numbers from 63% to 90%. It works like this. 90% of high school students who stayed in school passed enough classes to graduate. But the real question is how many entering Freshman graduate. That number is 63% for North Carolina. Given that the national numbers are in the low 70%'s, this isn't all that bad. What shocks me is that so many people opt out of an education at all. Some places will tend to provide alternatives to a liberal education in a small town world view and local, rural employment. Some families just don't support education because they don't see any value to it. But a 71% graduation rate?
Someone needs to tell students (apparently as freshman, and maybe earlier) that there are three forces that make the abandonment of education a dangerous path. They include mechanization, globalization, and customer self service. When I shop at a local grocery store I can ring up my own groceries. I have been paying at the pump for years now. This is customer self-service enabled by new technology. Sometimes new technology occurs right at the workplace and reduces the number of workers required to produce a desired quantity of goods. Sometimes the work is done by foreign workers who get the opportunity to work in factories or offices doing work that used to be done by Americans rather than collecting bits of garbage for cash. I think its cruel and foolish to deny people around the world the opportunity to move out of subsistence economies because we are too shortsighted to educate ourselves and prepare our children for a modern work environment.
Since students who drop out often did not get productive use of the years of school prior to their abandonment of the school, we are talking about people who usually squeak past basic literacy. The purpose of school is not primarily to produce good workers, its to produce a free people capable of governing themselves and pursuing the good life. [ed. for those who didn't catch it, I mean this in an Aristotelian sense] The virtue of such an education is that everything else takes care of itself. When any kind of education isn't completed the problems that result are serious.
Fudging the data to make everthing look peachy is an attempt to pretend the problem isn't there.
The Daily Southerner in Tarboro, N.C. tell us that graduation rates in N.C. are fudged. The national graduation rate, estimated at 74% in 1998 was revised down to 71% when re-examined by Jay P. Greene at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. Earlier today, the Daily Southerner reported that estimates are grossly off base in N.C. "North Carolina's high school graduation rate of more than 90 percent is misleading because the state doesn't include dropouts in its tally." This is an old trick and one that boosted N.C. numbers from 63% to 90%. It works like this. 90% of high school students who stayed in school passed enough classes to graduate. But the real question is how many entering Freshman graduate. That number is 63% for North Carolina. Given that the national numbers are in the low 70%'s, this isn't all that bad. What shocks me is that so many people opt out of an education at all. Some places will tend to provide alternatives to a liberal education in a small town world view and local, rural employment. Some families just don't support education because they don't see any value to it. But a 71% graduation rate?
Someone needs to tell students (apparently as freshman, and maybe earlier) that there are three forces that make the abandonment of education a dangerous path. They include mechanization, globalization, and customer self service. When I shop at a local grocery store I can ring up my own groceries. I have been paying at the pump for years now. This is customer self-service enabled by new technology. Sometimes new technology occurs right at the workplace and reduces the number of workers required to produce a desired quantity of goods. Sometimes the work is done by foreign workers who get the opportunity to work in factories or offices doing work that used to be done by Americans rather than collecting bits of garbage for cash. I think its cruel and foolish to deny people around the world the opportunity to move out of subsistence economies because we are too shortsighted to educate ourselves and prepare our children for a modern work environment.
Since students who drop out often did not get productive use of the years of school prior to their abandonment of the school, we are talking about people who usually squeak past basic literacy. The purpose of school is not primarily to produce good workers, its to produce a free people capable of governing themselves and pursuing the good life. [ed. for those who didn't catch it, I mean this in an Aristotelian sense] The virtue of such an education is that everything else takes care of itself. When any kind of education isn't completed the problems that result are serious.
Fudging the data to make everthing look peachy is an attempt to pretend the problem isn't there.
Sunday, December 21, 2003
New-Liberalism moves Britain toward Entrepreneurialism
Neo-Liberalism, the rejection of the state as problem solver in favor of free markets and free chocies is on the move in Britain. Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer , gives us a hint of his upcomming report in the Telegraph. It looks good. Take a look.
Neo-Liberalism, the rejection of the state as problem solver in favor of free markets and free chocies is on the move in Britain. Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer , gives us a hint of his upcomming report in the Telegraph. It looks good. Take a look.
Dollars vs. Testing
The NYT magazine has a good article on the No Child Left Behind act by James Traub. He contends that debates over the act, abbreviated NCLB, have broken down into a question of which panacea is the more authentic: more money, or testing. He describes this as a false dichotomy. Ultimately, the schools need both. More money is the only way to induce highly qualified teachers (meaning academically qualified, not pedagogcally qualified) into the schools that need them most. Tests are neccesary to shine a light on those willing to accept academic failure either because their theory of education is mostly custodial, or because their theory is anti-academic.
The NYT magazine has a good article on the No Child Left Behind act by James Traub. He contends that debates over the act, abbreviated NCLB, have broken down into a question of which panacea is the more authentic: more money, or testing. He describes this as a false dichotomy. Ultimately, the schools need both. More money is the only way to induce highly qualified teachers (meaning academically qualified, not pedagogcally qualified) into the schools that need them most. Tests are neccesary to shine a light on those willing to accept academic failure either because their theory of education is mostly custodial, or because their theory is anti-academic.
Intellectual history update
Two posts down I say a few words on how success begets success, what Austin Bay is calling the Cascade Effect. It dawns on me that this is the Domino Theory, or rather the Domino Theory is a specific manifestation of the Cascade Effect, refering to communist success begeting communist success. Its nice to see we are using it to our advantage rather than just trying to contain its use by rivals.
Two posts down I say a few words on how success begets success, what Austin Bay is calling the Cascade Effect. It dawns on me that this is the Domino Theory, or rather the Domino Theory is a specific manifestation of the Cascade Effect, refering to communist success begeting communist success. Its nice to see we are using it to our advantage rather than just trying to contain its use by rivals.
Friday, December 19, 2003
Military Wit
The military has its own style of wit. It is a cultural cocoon, so this makes sense. Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers recently said, "When you take this leader ...and find him in a hole in the ground, that is a powerful signal that you maybe on the wrong team and maybe should be thinking about some other line of work." This kind of wit is behind the success of R. Lee Ermey's show Mail Call which is full of military attitude, slang, and wit. It doesn't hurt that Ermey is a bit of a showman, willing to laugh at himself while remaining respectful of the military and the people he covers on the show. During the fighting last March, Fox News had some ananlysts who where full of this kind of wit, and it made it much more fun to watch the coverage.
The military has its own style of wit. It is a cultural cocoon, so this makes sense. Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers recently said, "When you take this leader ...and find him in a hole in the ground, that is a powerful signal that you maybe on the wrong team and maybe should be thinking about some other line of work." This kind of wit is behind the success of R. Lee Ermey's show Mail Call which is full of military attitude, slang, and wit. It doesn't hurt that Ermey is a bit of a showman, willing to laugh at himself while remaining respectful of the military and the people he covers on the show. During the fighting last March, Fox News had some ananlysts who where full of this kind of wit, and it made it much more fun to watch the coverage.
How Success begets Success
On Thursday on Hugh Hewitt, TNR editor Peter Beinart (whose work I respect greatly) made a point of arguing that Libya remained the kind of rogue state with an interest in W'sMD that Iraq appeared not to have been. Oops. The very next day we discover Libya is giving up the whole deal. Hewitt argued that Libya's dictator had been humbled by Reagan during a series of encounters a decade and a half ago, and was now much less of a threat than Iraq. Ultimately, I think this kind of thing suggests that the Neocons were on to something when they spoke of changing the dynamic of the region by changing the regime in Iraq (something that Afghanistan wasn't going to do - too peripheral). Austin Bay of Strategy Page wrote about this change in terms of "cascading effects". He also had a few things to say on NPR on the subject.
On Thursday on Hugh Hewitt, TNR editor Peter Beinart (whose work I respect greatly) made a point of arguing that Libya remained the kind of rogue state with an interest in W'sMD that Iraq appeared not to have been. Oops. The very next day we discover Libya is giving up the whole deal. Hewitt argued that Libya's dictator had been humbled by Reagan during a series of encounters a decade and a half ago, and was now much less of a threat than Iraq. Ultimately, I think this kind of thing suggests that the Neocons were on to something when they spoke of changing the dynamic of the region by changing the regime in Iraq (something that Afghanistan wasn't going to do - too peripheral). Austin Bay of Strategy Page wrote about this change in terms of "cascading effects". He also had a few things to say on NPR on the subject.
Thursday, December 18, 2003
Four days ago, I suggested that Dean's suggestion that we internationalize the Iraqi deployment was based on a phantom military capacity in the rest of the world.
Andrew Sullivan has written a piece for the New Republic covering Dean as well as the idea of internationalization. The point that strikes me most in his article is that Russia blocked the kinds of internationalization (mostly through the UN) that we seek in Iraq today. They supported their "little brother" Serbia (a policy that worked really well for them in 1914) and so America fought a war in Yugoslavia (now a geographical term) with the support of some of its NATO allies. Germany, it can be argued adopted an irresponsible policy of early recognition of Slovenia and Croatia, which I think precipitated the early (Croatian) phase of the war of Yugoslav disintegration. Sullivan doesn't mention German in this regard, but does note that she is refusing to cooperate in Iraq, as well as pointing out that any contribution she could make to the force structure is small.
Bringing back the UN requires safety, and no one can provide that except the United States and the forces that are there now. Any additional forces in the world are either A) not capable of operations in a hostile enviroment B) not able to leave hostiles who are nearby (say, India who can't leave Pakistan), or C) we don't wan't them (no Chinese paratroops, thanks). The same is true for internationalizing the military there. Units that may know how to fire their weapons aren't neccesarily capable of offensive action against a determined foe. They can offer some deterance, but only some. US forces, with their battle proven capability, offensive action training, and laser guided bombs offer substantially more deterance and ability to back it up. Once things get quieter in Iraq, the number of troops that could be brought in grows substantially.
Andrew Sullivan states this observation as follows: "But in their vague and convenient allusions to an "internationalization" option that simply doesn't exist, they are mistaking fantasy for reality." He then follows it up with this conclusion:
"Worse, they may be coming up with an option that they themselves know is unfeasible--merely in order to keep a distance between themselves and the coalition's fate in Iraq. That's putting short-term partisan gain over serious grappling with national security. Which is what many of us suspected of the Democrats in the first place. "
Its worth a read.
Andrew Sullivan has written a piece for the New Republic covering Dean as well as the idea of internationalization. The point that strikes me most in his article is that Russia blocked the kinds of internationalization (mostly through the UN) that we seek in Iraq today. They supported their "little brother" Serbia (a policy that worked really well for them in 1914) and so America fought a war in Yugoslavia (now a geographical term) with the support of some of its NATO allies. Germany, it can be argued adopted an irresponsible policy of early recognition of Slovenia and Croatia, which I think precipitated the early (Croatian) phase of the war of Yugoslav disintegration. Sullivan doesn't mention German in this regard, but does note that she is refusing to cooperate in Iraq, as well as pointing out that any contribution she could make to the force structure is small.
Bringing back the UN requires safety, and no one can provide that except the United States and the forces that are there now. Any additional forces in the world are either A) not capable of operations in a hostile enviroment B) not able to leave hostiles who are nearby (say, India who can't leave Pakistan), or C) we don't wan't them (no Chinese paratroops, thanks). The same is true for internationalizing the military there. Units that may know how to fire their weapons aren't neccesarily capable of offensive action against a determined foe. They can offer some deterance, but only some. US forces, with their battle proven capability, offensive action training, and laser guided bombs offer substantially more deterance and ability to back it up. Once things get quieter in Iraq, the number of troops that could be brought in grows substantially.
Andrew Sullivan states this observation as follows: "But in their vague and convenient allusions to an "internationalization" option that simply doesn't exist, they are mistaking fantasy for reality." He then follows it up with this conclusion:
"Worse, they may be coming up with an option that they themselves know is unfeasible--merely in order to keep a distance between themselves and the coalition's fate in Iraq. That's putting short-term partisan gain over serious grappling with national security. Which is what many of us suspected of the Democrats in the first place. "
Its worth a read.
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Ethics Quiz advances
In mid October I saw the ethical philosophy selector quiz on National Review and took the quiz. Here are my results. It now appears that the Elder at Fraters Libertas has posted his results. Note the familiar results: 100% Aquinas. Another Classical Realist. I think its interesting that he scores so high in Aquinas and a 70% Epicureans, but no reference to Aristotle. I think the Elder owes it to other Classical Realists to come clean on his Aristotle score.
The Frozen Monkey posted his results as did R.B. post his at Infinite Monkeys.
Evangelical Outpost took the quiz, results here.
The word is that all of this started is second round with Professor Baimbridge. He posts results to this and other fun quizes. Again, no description of Aristotle results.
And as noted previously, now we just need to get Hugh Hewitt to take the quiz.
In mid October I saw the ethical philosophy selector quiz on National Review and took the quiz. Here are my results. It now appears that the Elder at Fraters Libertas has posted his results. Note the familiar results: 100% Aquinas. Another Classical Realist. I think its interesting that he scores so high in Aquinas and a 70% Epicureans, but no reference to Aristotle. I think the Elder owes it to other Classical Realists to come clean on his Aristotle score.
The Frozen Monkey posted his results as did R.B. post his at Infinite Monkeys.
Evangelical Outpost took the quiz, results here.
The word is that all of this started is second round with Professor Baimbridge. He posts results to this and other fun quizes. Again, no description of Aristotle results.
And as noted previously, now we just need to get Hugh Hewitt to take the quiz.
Monday, December 15, 2003
Again, three choices
Dean, Lieberman, Gephardt. Dean claims the world is no safer with Hussein captured. Lieberman balks, Dean is climbing into his own spider hole. Gephardt asserts his own moral courage in supporting the war. Dean is a viable candidate who has the progressive wing of his party (the suburban socialists who read Utne Reader) behind him. Lieberman is the centerist with a program similar to a good number of party leaders, but no solid base (the problem with all centrists is that too many potential voters are cross-over, not the mainstay of primary voters), and Gephardt is probabaly the toughest Dem in the national election, because its easiest to see all the Dems uniting behind him, but he represents the past, union labor, hawkish dems, a Missouri democrat who might claim the mantle of Harry Truman, if given the chance. But alas for Dick Gephardt, no one is looking for Harry Truman just now. As rural and industrial Iowa, Missouri, and other Gephardt strongholds give way to suburbs, they are becoming Dean-friendly. While Gephardt might be the strongest in the national election, he is clearly not the frontrunner in the primary.
Dean, Lieberman, Gephardt. Dean claims the world is no safer with Hussein captured. Lieberman balks, Dean is climbing into his own spider hole. Gephardt asserts his own moral courage in supporting the war. Dean is a viable candidate who has the progressive wing of his party (the suburban socialists who read Utne Reader) behind him. Lieberman is the centerist with a program similar to a good number of party leaders, but no solid base (the problem with all centrists is that too many potential voters are cross-over, not the mainstay of primary voters), and Gephardt is probabaly the toughest Dem in the national election, because its easiest to see all the Dems uniting behind him, but he represents the past, union labor, hawkish dems, a Missouri democrat who might claim the mantle of Harry Truman, if given the chance. But alas for Dick Gephardt, no one is looking for Harry Truman just now. As rural and industrial Iowa, Missouri, and other Gephardt strongholds give way to suburbs, they are becoming Dean-friendly. While Gephardt might be the strongest in the national election, he is clearly not the frontrunner in the primary.
Sunday, December 14, 2003
Comments on the BBC site
The BBC puts this comment in its own box:
"What a phony staged event between the US and our ex-CIA stooge Hussein trotted out 10 days before Christmas to garner support for a phony pointless war and a worthless president" Barbara Bowie, Redlands, USA
Ms. Bowie's wag the dog sentiment is a self-fulfiling analysis of events, as well as an example of the alternate worlds that Mark Steyn was refering to in his article mentioned in my previous post.
Another: "I have a message for the Iraqi people: You will now have to fear the rule of George W Bush and his kind forever more. Your dictator was just replaced by another. Sorry. " Mathew Goad, Ojai, CA , USA
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss? Hmm, we have 400,000 to kill, and only 4 years to do it, we'd better get a move on. Maybe if we can't kill enough Iraqis we can count American dissidents? I would hate for Mr Goad's analysis to appear to contradict the evidence or appear cynical in any way.
"It sounds more fantastic than one may think for a person of Saddam Hussein's military strength to be arrested in a simple way like that expressed by Paul Bremer. It is not my intention to negate the news but one has to approach it with caution."
Angelo J, Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania
That might have made sense for explaining why it was neccesary to send in three divisions in the first place, but since we have, the military strength that remained available to Saddam Hussein appears to have been a pistol, which he chose not to employ.
The BBC puts this comment in its own box:
"What a phony staged event between the US and our ex-CIA stooge Hussein trotted out 10 days before Christmas to garner support for a phony pointless war and a worthless president" Barbara Bowie, Redlands, USA
Ms. Bowie's wag the dog sentiment is a self-fulfiling analysis of events, as well as an example of the alternate worlds that Mark Steyn was refering to in his article mentioned in my previous post.
Another: "I have a message for the Iraqi people: You will now have to fear the rule of George W Bush and his kind forever more. Your dictator was just replaced by another. Sorry. " Mathew Goad, Ojai, CA , USA
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss? Hmm, we have 400,000 to kill, and only 4 years to do it, we'd better get a move on. Maybe if we can't kill enough Iraqis we can count American dissidents? I would hate for Mr Goad's analysis to appear to contradict the evidence or appear cynical in any way.
"It sounds more fantastic than one may think for a person of Saddam Hussein's military strength to be arrested in a simple way like that expressed by Paul Bremer. It is not my intention to negate the news but one has to approach it with caution."
Angelo J, Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania
That might have made sense for explaining why it was neccesary to send in three divisions in the first place, but since we have, the military strength that remained available to Saddam Hussein appears to have been a pistol, which he chose not to employ.
Mark Steyn posses the question well
In a recent commentary, Mark Steyn asks the following:
"The extreme Left has made a terrible strategic mistake shacking up with the Islamists. In one sense, they’re not as incompatible as they might appear: Islamism may be religious in origin but in its political form it is simply this decade’s brand of oppressive statism, as communism was before it. But the only question now is how deeply this strategic error infects the less insane Left."
He goes on to mention the Dean refence to the "Saudi's let Bush know about 9-11 in advance" theory which Dean found so "interesting". Hugh Hewitt wrote about this specific problem a few days ago, but I am drawn to Steyn's formulation. The extream left will join arms with who ever is most obviously at odds with the capitalist west, especially America, especially when lead by a Republican. The following question then, how much of this is conducted through to the less insane left by the Nation, Noam Chomsky, and the rest of the usual suspects? The Dean reference suggests the medium of the left becomes more conductive when energy is added in the form of Bush-hatred.
The fact that Lieberman would charge, "If Howard Dean had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power today, not in prison, and the world would be a more dangerous place," seems to confirm this theory.
In a recent commentary, Mark Steyn asks the following:
"The extreme Left has made a terrible strategic mistake shacking up with the Islamists. In one sense, they’re not as incompatible as they might appear: Islamism may be religious in origin but in its political form it is simply this decade’s brand of oppressive statism, as communism was before it. But the only question now is how deeply this strategic error infects the less insane Left."
He goes on to mention the Dean refence to the "Saudi's let Bush know about 9-11 in advance" theory which Dean found so "interesting". Hugh Hewitt wrote about this specific problem a few days ago, but I am drawn to Steyn's formulation. The extream left will join arms with who ever is most obviously at odds with the capitalist west, especially America, especially when lead by a Republican. The following question then, how much of this is conducted through to the less insane left by the Nation, Noam Chomsky, and the rest of the usual suspects? The Dean reference suggests the medium of the left becomes more conductive when energy is added in the form of Bush-hatred.
The fact that Lieberman would charge, "If Howard Dean had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power today, not in prison, and the world would be a more dangerous place," seems to confirm this theory.
Dean still clueless
Dean still suggests that other troops be brought in to allow US troops to be sent home. Whose troops is he thinking of? Of all the countries capable of power projection, all but France already have troops in Iraq. Most contries don't maintain proper militaries. Those who do are largely either engaged in hostilities or potential hostilities (eg. India) or are rivals of the United States and have no business in Iraq. Its a fact of the democratic world that the large number of friends of democracy either maintain little or no real military power (Germany and Japan are obvious exampes, but Brazil and Mexico also fit into the catagory) or are already present (Britain, Australia &c).
Either Dean thinks there are viable combat forces in other countries, in which case someone needs to pull him aside and enlighten him, or he thinks things in Iraq are ready for the kinds of troops who can't shoot back, don't expect to get shot at, and would be worthless in a real fight, in which case should needs to pull him aside and enlighten him. Either way, he's clueless.
Dean still suggests that other troops be brought in to allow US troops to be sent home. Whose troops is he thinking of? Of all the countries capable of power projection, all but France already have troops in Iraq. Most contries don't maintain proper militaries. Those who do are largely either engaged in hostilities or potential hostilities (eg. India) or are rivals of the United States and have no business in Iraq. Its a fact of the democratic world that the large number of friends of democracy either maintain little or no real military power (Germany and Japan are obvious exampes, but Brazil and Mexico also fit into the catagory) or are already present (Britain, Australia &c).
Either Dean thinks there are viable combat forces in other countries, in which case someone needs to pull him aside and enlighten him, or he thinks things in Iraq are ready for the kinds of troops who can't shoot back, don't expect to get shot at, and would be worthless in a real fight, in which case should needs to pull him aside and enlighten him. Either way, he's clueless.
More on the Democratic coallition
Rachel Swarns writes in the NYT of the Dean/Gephardt contest in Iowa, focusing on the unions. What is interesting here is the fact that the complaints mentioned in the article are Dean's old neo-liberal policies, that is his openness to free-trade and willingness to slow the growth of the kinds of middle class entitlements that union members typically rely upon. There is no mention of the hostility that rank and file union membership are likely to have with Dean's more recent progressive policy approach. Consider, Gephardt backed the war in Iraq as well as the $87 billion for Iraqi reconstruction. Traditionally unions, or at least labor unions (Dean's support is far more from government employee unions than labor) have been more hawkish than other members of the democratic party. One of the sources of Reagan democrats were union members who were socially conservative, pro-gun, and rejected the dovishness of Dems on the Cold War, including Vietnam. The NYT article quotes Steve Rosenthal, the longtime political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O, as saying, "It's not like the day after there's a presumptive nominee everyone's going to kiss and make up. There's going to need to be some time for healing."
My reading of this is that if given a choice between Bush and Dean, the unions are going to have to figure out where to go from there. And its gonna take some time. Dare I say, soul searching?
Rachel Swarns writes in the NYT of the Dean/Gephardt contest in Iowa, focusing on the unions. What is interesting here is the fact that the complaints mentioned in the article are Dean's old neo-liberal policies, that is his openness to free-trade and willingness to slow the growth of the kinds of middle class entitlements that union members typically rely upon. There is no mention of the hostility that rank and file union membership are likely to have with Dean's more recent progressive policy approach. Consider, Gephardt backed the war in Iraq as well as the $87 billion for Iraqi reconstruction. Traditionally unions, or at least labor unions (Dean's support is far more from government employee unions than labor) have been more hawkish than other members of the democratic party. One of the sources of Reagan democrats were union members who were socially conservative, pro-gun, and rejected the dovishness of Dems on the Cold War, including Vietnam. The NYT article quotes Steve Rosenthal, the longtime political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O, as saying, "It's not like the day after there's a presumptive nominee everyone's going to kiss and make up. There's going to need to be some time for healing."
My reading of this is that if given a choice between Bush and Dean, the unions are going to have to figure out where to go from there. And its gonna take some time. Dare I say, soul searching?
Friday, December 12, 2003
Are the Democrats Goldwater in '64, Eugene McCarthy in '68, or McGovern in '72?
Hugh Hewitt has a good article on Dean's embrace of the nutty Left's worldview. Realignment is in the works. Clinton masked it by being a neo-liberal, being a Southerner, and having an enormous charisma. Hence its hard to assess where in the process we are. Dean's own quirkiness cloud's assessment. The anti-Bush hatred suggests '72. Part of the question (the '64 part) revolves around where we will go in the struggle between neo-liberals (Clinton) and progressives (Dean). Note that old style Dems (Gephardt) are reduced to the role of spoilers.
William Saletan makes some useful observations from the NH debates in Slate. Scroll down to point 3. My take home from all of this is that Lieberman wants to carry the neo-liberal/new democrat mantle so clearly abandon by Gore in 2000.
I saw Gore speak at the University of Missouri in '92 and '96. He was a democrat I could live with, especially on economic and domestic issues. Likewise Clinton. I prefered Gore to Clinton on foriegn policy. When Gore ran in 2000, I was disheartened by his lurch to the left. He ceased to be the kind of democrat I could live with. Though I was not enamored by W (I voted for McCain in the primary), when confronted by an indifferent Republican and any Democrat I don't actively like, I vote Republican, because I'd rather have republicans appointed to Treasury, Commerce, State, Defence, and the rest, to democrats. In this case, I was abandonded by a dem I could have liked, and had no problem voting for W. I was right. Even before 9-11 proved thet W had come to office with a huge unexpected capacity, I liked his foriegn/defense team. Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, its all good. Its a line up like that which makes me a Republican. Presidents have limited power and spend a great deal of time being national exemplars, and so on. A good spate of appointments can make some real headway. For the record I was a Paul O'Neal fan as well. Its too bad he was shuffled out.
What the hell happened to Al Gore? In 1988 one of the memorable moments of the campaign (the seven dwarves, God I love Al Haig) was when Dick Gephardt charged Gore as follows: "So you decided that you'd better move to the right on defense and a lot of other issues. And lately you've been sounding more like Al Haig than Al Gore." Read about the whole incident here. That was an a democrat I could live with. Sure I supported Haig in '88 (and have the bumper stickers and campaign materials to prove it), and voted for Bush in '88 and '92, but Al Gore was the kind of Democrat you could work with. Not in 2000, he wasn't. He never had my vote in 2000, he lurched to the left. Now we see he's just kept going left, driven no doubt by resentment and animus over Florida (the dummy should have just won Tennessee) and vered from the land of the Vital Center to the land of MoveOn.org.
I'm a neo-liberal of the right. I like market solutions to social problems, and I am anti-statist (unless we're talking national security). I often find I have more in common with neo-liberals of the left than I do with other kinds of conservatives. I get along well with old anti-communists, and I like the WSJ crowd. If the Republican party is the party of business, I'm a happy camper. If it stands for capitalism, free markets, and a strong national defence, they reflexivly have my vote. Its the social conservatives I worry about. I tend to sympathize with social conservatives, but given a choice between, as Dennis Prager puts it, being pure or being free, I pick freedom every time.
So, as a neo-liberal of the right, I take a great deal of concern with what is going on with neo-liberals of the left. Who will win this power struggle in the democratic party? Will it be Lieberman and the Clintons, or the new Dean/Gore alliance?
Hugh Hewitt has a good article on Dean's embrace of the nutty Left's worldview. Realignment is in the works. Clinton masked it by being a neo-liberal, being a Southerner, and having an enormous charisma. Hence its hard to assess where in the process we are. Dean's own quirkiness cloud's assessment. The anti-Bush hatred suggests '72. Part of the question (the '64 part) revolves around where we will go in the struggle between neo-liberals (Clinton) and progressives (Dean). Note that old style Dems (Gephardt) are reduced to the role of spoilers.
William Saletan makes some useful observations from the NH debates in Slate. Scroll down to point 3. My take home from all of this is that Lieberman wants to carry the neo-liberal/new democrat mantle so clearly abandon by Gore in 2000.
I saw Gore speak at the University of Missouri in '92 and '96. He was a democrat I could live with, especially on economic and domestic issues. Likewise Clinton. I prefered Gore to Clinton on foriegn policy. When Gore ran in 2000, I was disheartened by his lurch to the left. He ceased to be the kind of democrat I could live with. Though I was not enamored by W (I voted for McCain in the primary), when confronted by an indifferent Republican and any Democrat I don't actively like, I vote Republican, because I'd rather have republicans appointed to Treasury, Commerce, State, Defence, and the rest, to democrats. In this case, I was abandonded by a dem I could have liked, and had no problem voting for W. I was right. Even before 9-11 proved thet W had come to office with a huge unexpected capacity, I liked his foriegn/defense team. Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, its all good. Its a line up like that which makes me a Republican. Presidents have limited power and spend a great deal of time being national exemplars, and so on. A good spate of appointments can make some real headway. For the record I was a Paul O'Neal fan as well. Its too bad he was shuffled out.
What the hell happened to Al Gore? In 1988 one of the memorable moments of the campaign (the seven dwarves, God I love Al Haig) was when Dick Gephardt charged Gore as follows: "So you decided that you'd better move to the right on defense and a lot of other issues. And lately you've been sounding more like Al Haig than Al Gore." Read about the whole incident here. That was an a democrat I could live with. Sure I supported Haig in '88 (and have the bumper stickers and campaign materials to prove it), and voted for Bush in '88 and '92, but Al Gore was the kind of Democrat you could work with. Not in 2000, he wasn't. He never had my vote in 2000, he lurched to the left. Now we see he's just kept going left, driven no doubt by resentment and animus over Florida (the dummy should have just won Tennessee) and vered from the land of the Vital Center to the land of MoveOn.org.
I'm a neo-liberal of the right. I like market solutions to social problems, and I am anti-statist (unless we're talking national security). I often find I have more in common with neo-liberals of the left than I do with other kinds of conservatives. I get along well with old anti-communists, and I like the WSJ crowd. If the Republican party is the party of business, I'm a happy camper. If it stands for capitalism, free markets, and a strong national defence, they reflexivly have my vote. Its the social conservatives I worry about. I tend to sympathize with social conservatives, but given a choice between, as Dennis Prager puts it, being pure or being free, I pick freedom every time.
So, as a neo-liberal of the right, I take a great deal of concern with what is going on with neo-liberals of the left. Who will win this power struggle in the democratic party? Will it be Lieberman and the Clintons, or the new Dean/Gore alliance?
This may be over the top
I get the sense that this latest Supreme Court ruling may turn out to be one of those constitutional moments historians later shake their head at. Others include the time Niceas and Alcebiades colluded to break the Ostracism, and when Sulla refused to lay down the Roman dictatorship. The power of super wealthy interests, whether a George Soros or a well funded PAC, seem to have grown considerably. The power of regular people to influence politics seems to have diminished. As I say, this might be over-reacting, but its certainly not the right step. I'd much rather see changes which increase the power of political parties and diminished those of special interest organizations.
I get the sense that this latest Supreme Court ruling may turn out to be one of those constitutional moments historians later shake their head at. Others include the time Niceas and Alcebiades colluded to break the Ostracism, and when Sulla refused to lay down the Roman dictatorship. The power of super wealthy interests, whether a George Soros or a well funded PAC, seem to have grown considerably. The power of regular people to influence politics seems to have diminished. As I say, this might be over-reacting, but its certainly not the right step. I'd much rather see changes which increase the power of political parties and diminished those of special interest organizations.
Thursday, December 11, 2003
Rand Simberg doesn't understand history
His explanation at Fox News totally fails to understand the benefit of understanding history. History is not mathematics. History doesn't tell us what will happen in the future, searching for these kinds of lessons is futile. History tells us what has happened in the past.
Having walked to the nearby sandwich shop, I have a pretty good idea of what will probably occur next time I walk there. I have a good understanding of the likely kinds of things that might happen. However, all kinds of things may happen that have never happened on the way to the sandwhich shop. History, or indeed any kind of experience, gives us a range of likely outcomes, unlikley outcomes, and the highly unlikely outcomes. It doesn't tell us what will happen.
It so happens that there are patterns in human and social experience, and so things are not totally and completly new all of the time. By the same token, these patterns are not governed by mathematical certainties, even complex ones.
His explanation at Fox News totally fails to understand the benefit of understanding history. History is not mathematics. History doesn't tell us what will happen in the future, searching for these kinds of lessons is futile. History tells us what has happened in the past.
Having walked to the nearby sandwich shop, I have a pretty good idea of what will probably occur next time I walk there. I have a good understanding of the likely kinds of things that might happen. However, all kinds of things may happen that have never happened on the way to the sandwhich shop. History, or indeed any kind of experience, gives us a range of likely outcomes, unlikley outcomes, and the highly unlikely outcomes. It doesn't tell us what will happen.
It so happens that there are patterns in human and social experience, and so things are not totally and completly new all of the time. By the same token, these patterns are not governed by mathematical certainties, even complex ones.
Monday, December 01, 2003
Holiday a Success
Made the turkey this year. 12 and a half pounds for 5 people. No leftovers to speak of, which is pretty much the way I wanted it. First time I've gotten to host the Thanksgiving meal, and it went quite well.
Made the turkey this year. 12 and a half pounds for 5 people. No leftovers to speak of, which is pretty much the way I wanted it. First time I've gotten to host the Thanksgiving meal, and it went quite well.
Sunday, November 30, 2003
Mark Steyn does it again
Another fantastic opinion piece by one of the greatest wits of the war on terror.
"Profound changes in the above countries would not necessarily mean the end of the war on terror, but it would be pretty close. It would remove terrorism’s most brazen patron (Syria), its ideological inspiration (the prototype Islamic Republic of Iran), its principal paymaster (Saudi Arabia), a critical source of manpower (Sudan) and its most potentially dangerous weapons supplier (North Korea). They’re the fronts on which the battle has to be fought: it’s not just terror groups, it’s the state actors who provide them with infrastructure and extend their global reach."
BTW, I just want to snicker at Wesley Clark whose complaint is that we should be fighting a war on terror, not states. I don't think Gen Clark has much of a clue. Put right up there with McClellen.
Another fantastic opinion piece by one of the greatest wits of the war on terror.
"Profound changes in the above countries would not necessarily mean the end of the war on terror, but it would be pretty close. It would remove terrorism’s most brazen patron (Syria), its ideological inspiration (the prototype Islamic Republic of Iran), its principal paymaster (Saudi Arabia), a critical source of manpower (Sudan) and its most potentially dangerous weapons supplier (North Korea). They’re the fronts on which the battle has to be fought: it’s not just terror groups, it’s the state actors who provide them with infrastructure and extend their global reach."
BTW, I just want to snicker at Wesley Clark whose complaint is that we should be fighting a war on terror, not states. I don't think Gen Clark has much of a clue. Put right up there with McClellen.
Jesse Jackson protested
Recently, Megan McArdle wrote about the Principal-Agent Problem in regard unions and membership. Many observers believe this problem exists as well between Black leaders and the Black community. WLS TV in Chicago has a report on a protest against Jackson and his effort to draw attention to the need for jobs.
"We are tired of coming here to voice our opinion when we got African-American people sitting at the table and saying they represent our interests and playing this puppet game," said one protester.
Another said, "What has he sacrificed for his beliefs? Us. We've been sacrificed. On the altar of his political ambition our people have been destroyed."
What is interesting is Jackson's responce: "They lashed out at Dr. King, they lashed out at Nelson Mandela, they lashed out at Jesus, so all of those who fight for change become the object of frustration."
This statement only reflects how out of touch Jackson is from the people he claims to represent. Principal-Agent Problem indeed.
Recently, Megan McArdle wrote about the Principal-Agent Problem in regard unions and membership. Many observers believe this problem exists as well between Black leaders and the Black community. WLS TV in Chicago has a report on a protest against Jackson and his effort to draw attention to the need for jobs.
"We are tired of coming here to voice our opinion when we got African-American people sitting at the table and saying they represent our interests and playing this puppet game," said one protester.
Another said, "What has he sacrificed for his beliefs? Us. We've been sacrificed. On the altar of his political ambition our people have been destroyed."
What is interesting is Jackson's responce: "They lashed out at Dr. King, they lashed out at Nelson Mandela, they lashed out at Jesus, so all of those who fight for change become the object of frustration."
This statement only reflects how out of touch Jackson is from the people he claims to represent. Principal-Agent Problem indeed.
Thursday, November 27, 2003
More on Movies
This article by James Pinkerton at Tech Central Station provides an interesting, allied view to what Matthew was talking about in the previous link. Pinkerton writes about the SW series and the Matrix movies as well.
This article by James Pinkerton at Tech Central Station provides an interesting, allied view to what Matthew was talking about in the previous link. Pinkerton writes about the SW series and the Matrix movies as well.
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
Movie essay Arrived
My brother says "... going through Two Towers goodness.... will be writing a blog explaing with LOTR examples how George Lucas Screwed up Star Wars."
He pauses and continues, "Well not screwed up.... more like could have told differently"
Here is the link.
My brother says "... going through Two Towers goodness.... will be writing a blog explaing with LOTR examples how George Lucas Screwed up Star Wars."
He pauses and continues, "Well not screwed up.... more like could have told differently"
Here is the link.
Monday, November 24, 2003
Velvet Revolution in Georgia
EUobserver reports that Eduard Shevardnadze has resigned as president. A useful run up to today/yesterday's events can be found at rantburg. A brief bio of Shevardnadze can be found here.
EUobserver reports that Eduard Shevardnadze has resigned as president. A useful run up to today/yesterday's events can be found at rantburg. A brief bio of Shevardnadze can be found here.
Sunday, November 23, 2003
Prager rebroadcasts show on Social Reconstructionism
My last post, or post attempt, failed when this show was originally broadcast. Dennis exaggerates the influence of social reconstruction in the schools. Its a significant philosophy of teaching to be sure, but its not dominant. The dominant philosophy of education is progressivism. Progressives and social reconstructionists get along well, as I detail in the above link, the later emerges from the former in the same way that essentialists emerged from perennialists. The real problem, however, is not the schools. Especially after 9-11 the number of teachers displaying and encouraging patriotism clearly outnumbers the social reconstructionists. The problem is textbooks, education departments in colleges, and professional teacher organizations, especially the NEA. The professional organizations and the text books promote a social reconstructionist perspective (the professional orgs as advocates of the glorious future that awaits and the textbooks in order to avoid offending anyone). This reinforces the progressivism and social reconstruction that is promulgated by teacher education. All of this insidiously created ontological commitment from teachers who otherwise would have little interest in social justice and all the rest. It is also organizations outside the school who impose political correctness on the school. Social reconstructionists are their allies in the school, but no one imposes punitive penalties for free thought on themselves, and since teachers normally operate without observation of the work, political correctness can be said to be an externality. This is especially a problem because most teachers lack a formal intellectual training and so lack disciplinary integrity, that is to say a commitment to the teachings of their subject as revealed by a method.
So why am I not affected? First I was an Aristotelian prior to ed school. I know how to reason, I understand the primacy of metaphysics, I have a theory of society and human conduct. Second, I had formal academic training, getting a masters in history before starting teacher training, so I had further developed my reasoning ability, but specifically I studied intellectual history and my undergraduate advisor was a specialist in the conflict between the humanists and the scholastics. Hence, tracing the movement of and analyzing ideas was well developed. As a result, when I was given an idea in teacher ed, I was able to put it in an intellectual framework and make sense of its place in the history of education. Once you know what progressivism and social reconstructionism are, you can elect to embrace, reject, or dabble in their philosophies. Those who lack such a capacity are far more apt to accept the world as its described by a teacher ed program, and is then reinforced by professional organizations.
For example, teacher education wrings its hands about poorly performing students. It speaks about them at great length and with great concern. It has almost nothing to say and no concern about students who are doing well. The teacher college does not recognize the gifted, talented, or exceptional student as a problem to be addressed as though they presented no special challenge to a teacher. Certainly poorly performing students is a problem. But, its not the only problem, its just only problem teacher ed has anything to say anything about. All of its totems and fetishes concern the poorly performing student, motivationally, culturally, cognitively, and so on.
As a final note, Prager comes away looking an awful lot like a Rousseau, and Jean-Jacques is the father of all this wackiness Prager finds so offensive. I propose Prager bush up on his Aristotle and Locke.
My last post, or post attempt, failed when this show was originally broadcast. Dennis exaggerates the influence of social reconstruction in the schools. Its a significant philosophy of teaching to be sure, but its not dominant. The dominant philosophy of education is progressivism. Progressives and social reconstructionists get along well, as I detail in the above link, the later emerges from the former in the same way that essentialists emerged from perennialists. The real problem, however, is not the schools. Especially after 9-11 the number of teachers displaying and encouraging patriotism clearly outnumbers the social reconstructionists. The problem is textbooks, education departments in colleges, and professional teacher organizations, especially the NEA. The professional organizations and the text books promote a social reconstructionist perspective (the professional orgs as advocates of the glorious future that awaits and the textbooks in order to avoid offending anyone). This reinforces the progressivism and social reconstruction that is promulgated by teacher education. All of this insidiously created ontological commitment from teachers who otherwise would have little interest in social justice and all the rest. It is also organizations outside the school who impose political correctness on the school. Social reconstructionists are their allies in the school, but no one imposes punitive penalties for free thought on themselves, and since teachers normally operate without observation of the work, political correctness can be said to be an externality. This is especially a problem because most teachers lack a formal intellectual training and so lack disciplinary integrity, that is to say a commitment to the teachings of their subject as revealed by a method.
So why am I not affected? First I was an Aristotelian prior to ed school. I know how to reason, I understand the primacy of metaphysics, I have a theory of society and human conduct. Second, I had formal academic training, getting a masters in history before starting teacher training, so I had further developed my reasoning ability, but specifically I studied intellectual history and my undergraduate advisor was a specialist in the conflict between the humanists and the scholastics. Hence, tracing the movement of and analyzing ideas was well developed. As a result, when I was given an idea in teacher ed, I was able to put it in an intellectual framework and make sense of its place in the history of education. Once you know what progressivism and social reconstructionism are, you can elect to embrace, reject, or dabble in their philosophies. Those who lack such a capacity are far more apt to accept the world as its described by a teacher ed program, and is then reinforced by professional organizations.
For example, teacher education wrings its hands about poorly performing students. It speaks about them at great length and with great concern. It has almost nothing to say and no concern about students who are doing well. The teacher college does not recognize the gifted, talented, or exceptional student as a problem to be addressed as though they presented no special challenge to a teacher. Certainly poorly performing students is a problem. But, its not the only problem, its just only problem teacher ed has anything to say anything about. All of its totems and fetishes concern the poorly performing student, motivationally, culturally, cognitively, and so on.
As a final note, Prager comes away looking an awful lot like a Rousseau, and Jean-Jacques is the father of all this wackiness Prager finds so offensive. I propose Prager bush up on his Aristotle and Locke.
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
College Readiness
The St Louis Dispatch had a story yesterday on readiness for college. The story refers to this report by the Manhattan Institute. The demand in our society is not for plumbers, but for the college educated. There are not enough of them.
The St Louis Dispatch had a story yesterday on readiness for college. The story refers to this report by the Manhattan Institute. The demand in our society is not for plumbers, but for the college educated. There are not enough of them.
Universal Education
There are those who imagine that the traditional liberal education is fine for the wealthy (if they want it) but that the common man and woman benefits from a different kind of education, which despite its theoretical claims amounts to vocational education. This offends me on grounds both egalitarian and meritocratic. As an egalitarian I am offended by the notion that some students cannot profit from knowledge about the natural world and the social world as reflected in math, science, history, and literature. That they should be content with the life of a tradesman. This is especially curious in a world in which mechanization has eliminated so many jobs. Mechanization, as well as self-service and globalization constantly threaten the simple tradesman. Less so the engineer. Indeed the engineer may profit from all of these trends. As a meritocrat I am offended by the notion that the children of tradesmen are themselves best suited for trades and that the professionals of tomorrow will inevitably spring from the children of professionals. This denies the very real possibility that some of tomorrow's professionals will spring from the children of tradesmen if only they are given educational opportunities, rather than guided into vocational instruction. My own parents, professionals with four masters degrees between them, were the children of a janitor and an envelope cutter. This I think is the American experience.
There are those who imagine that the traditional liberal education is fine for the wealthy (if they want it) but that the common man and woman benefits from a different kind of education, which despite its theoretical claims amounts to vocational education. This offends me on grounds both egalitarian and meritocratic. As an egalitarian I am offended by the notion that some students cannot profit from knowledge about the natural world and the social world as reflected in math, science, history, and literature. That they should be content with the life of a tradesman. This is especially curious in a world in which mechanization has eliminated so many jobs. Mechanization, as well as self-service and globalization constantly threaten the simple tradesman. Less so the engineer. Indeed the engineer may profit from all of these trends. As a meritocrat I am offended by the notion that the children of tradesmen are themselves best suited for trades and that the professionals of tomorrow will inevitably spring from the children of professionals. This denies the very real possibility that some of tomorrow's professionals will spring from the children of tradesmen if only they are given educational opportunities, rather than guided into vocational instruction. My own parents, professionals with four masters degrees between them, were the children of a janitor and an envelope cutter. This I think is the American experience.
Monday, November 17, 2003
Updated your bejo lately?
If proscriptivists ever replace "blog" with "web journal" they must understand that "web journal" will be contracted into something like "bejo" or something else as irrational as "blog". Like it or lump it sayeth the rabbit.
If proscriptivists ever replace "blog" with "web journal" they must understand that "web journal" will be contracted into something like "bejo" or something else as irrational as "blog". Like it or lump it sayeth the rabbit.
Sunday, November 16, 2003
Monday, November 10, 2003
Lileks asks "This Riyadh bombing story would be cause for a brief dank gust of saudenfreude if the damage hadn’t been so horrible. Will the Saudi newsmagazines run covers that say “Why Do They Hate Us” – or, more accurately, “Why Do We Hate Us”? It’s a blue-pill / red-pill moment for the Saudis; it reminds you – if you needed just a jab – that history is moving swiftly around us. And it would seem to be an act of audacious stupidity by Al Qaeda – this isn’t just biting the hand that feeds them. This is biting it, tearing it off, chewing it up, and blowing smoke rings with the bone powder.
"And it makes me wonder: They stick the shiv in the ribs of their richest and most enthusiastic backers.
"What makes them this confident?"
The answer to Lilek's final question is a key one. Al Quaeda doesn't just attack the West, they attack states which are insufficiently Islamic. One thing you can see is that from the POV of Al Quaeda, the Saudis are insufficiently Islamic. Do they think they will shame the Saudis into rejecting the West?
"And it makes me wonder: They stick the shiv in the ribs of their richest and most enthusiastic backers.
"What makes them this confident?"
The answer to Lilek's final question is a key one. Al Quaeda doesn't just attack the West, they attack states which are insufficiently Islamic. One thing you can see is that from the POV of Al Quaeda, the Saudis are insufficiently Islamic. Do they think they will shame the Saudis into rejecting the West?
Sunday, November 09, 2003
Observation
Those who would criticize privatization in schools totally ignore the fact that public schools are also slaves to the dollars they need to keep operating, and so seek to send parents and legislatures away happy (with or without satisfaction). Focus on test scores, dropout rates, or class size are intended to please the constituents of the public schools to keep tax dollars rolling in and the critics at bay. Government serves customers just as private companies do, they just do it differently. The willingness of schools to sell junk food and candy to students in huge quantities leaves me in no confidence that the public schools are immune from the same kinds of pressures as private schools would be.
Those who would criticize privatization in schools totally ignore the fact that public schools are also slaves to the dollars they need to keep operating, and so seek to send parents and legislatures away happy (with or without satisfaction). Focus on test scores, dropout rates, or class size are intended to please the constituents of the public schools to keep tax dollars rolling in and the critics at bay. Government serves customers just as private companies do, they just do it differently. The willingness of schools to sell junk food and candy to students in huge quantities leaves me in no confidence that the public schools are immune from the same kinds of pressures as private schools would be.
Saturday, November 08, 2003
Books Arrive
Diane Ravitch's book Left Back: A Century of Battles over school reform has arrived. It looks very good. I'll comment on it as I get more reading done.
Diane Ravitch's book Left Back: A Century of Battles over school reform has arrived. It looks very good. I'll comment on it as I get more reading done.
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
Odd Occurance
Going through matchbooks at Lileks.com. Matchbooks with phone numbers for their businesses like MAin 3297 (sic), TEmpleton 8-7987, and ELdorado 5-9858. It put me of a mind for Pennsylvania 6-5000, by the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Suddenly it appeared on MoonTaxi, the internet radio I was playing. Coincidence, or master plan of the Martians?
Going through matchbooks at Lileks.com. Matchbooks with phone numbers for their businesses like MAin 3297 (sic), TEmpleton 8-7987, and ELdorado 5-9858. It put me of a mind for Pennsylvania 6-5000, by the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Suddenly it appeared on MoonTaxi, the internet radio I was playing. Coincidence, or master plan of the Martians?
Sunday, November 02, 2003
Dumbing Down Our Kids
Been reading Charles J. Sykes book Dumbing Down Our Kids. Its a stark indictment of our schools. Its specific examples of what is goofy about our schools strike me as the most egregious examples rather than representative ones, but I can attest from within the beast that the differences are only of degree, not of kind. I have since gone ahead and ordered Diane Ravitch's book Left Back. Typical teaching methods are so riddled with utopian fantasy, that I'll have to seriously examine contemporary practice and the long history of educational practice to devise a more reliable classroom practice.
Been reading Charles J. Sykes book Dumbing Down Our Kids. Its a stark indictment of our schools. Its specific examples of what is goofy about our schools strike me as the most egregious examples rather than representative ones, but I can attest from within the beast that the differences are only of degree, not of kind. I have since gone ahead and ordered Diane Ravitch's book Left Back. Typical teaching methods are so riddled with utopian fantasy, that I'll have to seriously examine contemporary practice and the long history of educational practice to devise a more reliable classroom practice.
America and Europe
Thomas Friedman has a columnn today on the breech between Old Euope and America (he doesn't use that term). He postulates that we have different goals and that this is the source of our problem. Indeed, but I don't think things are as technocratic as some of the lines in his column suggest. He quotes Carl Bildt, the former Swedish PM, "Every European prime minister wakes up in the morning thinking about how to share sovereignty" and "the U.S. president wakes up thinking about where the next terror attack might come from and how to respond." [the quotes are of TF paraphrasing CB]
Yes, and no. Another line gets closer to the heart of the matter. "Pretending to ease the suffering of the Iraqi people — by calling for the removal of sanctions but keeping Saddam in power so he can buy lots of stuff from Germany and France — is priceless to them. But easing the suffering of the Iraqi people by removing Saddam's whole sick regime is worthless to them." France has shown a certain unwillingness to embrace the globalization the US granted the world in 1944 at Bretton Wood. They resent US interfearance in what was effectively a satalite state, Iraq. Hence the notions of a counterweight to the US.
Thomas Friedman has a columnn today on the breech between Old Euope and America (he doesn't use that term). He postulates that we have different goals and that this is the source of our problem. Indeed, but I don't think things are as technocratic as some of the lines in his column suggest. He quotes Carl Bildt, the former Swedish PM, "Every European prime minister wakes up in the morning thinking about how to share sovereignty" and "the U.S. president wakes up thinking about where the next terror attack might come from and how to respond." [the quotes are of TF paraphrasing CB]
Yes, and no. Another line gets closer to the heart of the matter. "Pretending to ease the suffering of the Iraqi people — by calling for the removal of sanctions but keeping Saddam in power so he can buy lots of stuff from Germany and France — is priceless to them. But easing the suffering of the Iraqi people by removing Saddam's whole sick regime is worthless to them." France has shown a certain unwillingness to embrace the globalization the US granted the world in 1944 at Bretton Wood. They resent US interfearance in what was effectively a satalite state, Iraq. Hence the notions of a counterweight to the US.
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
California Fires
The descriptions of the California fires remind me of the 1993 flooding on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. (see here too) Each kind of disaster is different (just as each incidents of disaster is different from one another), but cross disaster commonalities do exist. Tornadoes, the more common Missouri disaster, are instantaenous, more like earthquakes. One takes cover and then cleans up. Fires and floods involve armies of defenders going out to meet the disaster, have much longer durations than most other disasters, and produce the long period of displacement that delays clean-up until after the disaster. Tornado and earthquake clean-up generally takes place within 24 hours. According to the National Weather Service, The Missouri River was above flood stage for 62 days in Jefferson City, Mo., where I was living at the time. Grafton, Ill., recorded flooding for 195 days. That's a long time to wait to get back to your home and see what is left. The flood did tend to rise and fall, even while remaining above flood stage, so some cleanup was possible, only to be halted again by rising water.
The descriptions of the California fires remind me of the 1993 flooding on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. (see here too) Each kind of disaster is different (just as each incidents of disaster is different from one another), but cross disaster commonalities do exist. Tornadoes, the more common Missouri disaster, are instantaenous, more like earthquakes. One takes cover and then cleans up. Fires and floods involve armies of defenders going out to meet the disaster, have much longer durations than most other disasters, and produce the long period of displacement that delays clean-up until after the disaster. Tornado and earthquake clean-up generally takes place within 24 hours. According to the National Weather Service, The Missouri River was above flood stage for 62 days in Jefferson City, Mo., where I was living at the time. Grafton, Ill., recorded flooding for 195 days. That's a long time to wait to get back to your home and see what is left. The flood did tend to rise and fall, even while remaining above flood stage, so some cleanup was possible, only to be halted again by rising water.
Monday, October 20, 2003
Swiss Elections indicatates polarization
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung has a story on the elections. The Swiss People’s Party (SVP) is now the leading party, jumping ahead of the Social Democrats. The main losers seem to have been the center right parties, the Christian Democrats and the Radicals. Another big winner was the Green Party. Does this result indicate a more bitter factionalization in Swiss politics, or strategic blundering by the cenetr-right. The Christian Democrats tries to possition itself as less Catholic. The Radicals, a pro-business party, advocated raising the retirement age all the while its party leadership had to re-shuffle because of a business scandal. Utimatly this question will only be answered by the next elections to see whether the center can recapture its possition against the poles.
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung has a story on the elections. The Swiss People’s Party (SVP) is now the leading party, jumping ahead of the Social Democrats. The main losers seem to have been the center right parties, the Christian Democrats and the Radicals. Another big winner was the Green Party. Does this result indicate a more bitter factionalization in Swiss politics, or strategic blundering by the cenetr-right. The Christian Democrats tries to possition itself as less Catholic. The Radicals, a pro-business party, advocated raising the retirement age all the while its party leadership had to re-shuffle because of a business scandal. Utimatly this question will only be answered by the next elections to see whether the center can recapture its possition against the poles.
Saturday, October 18, 2003
Matt has the failure analysis
See my brother's blog for keen insight in very few words for the Cubs getting no farther than Central Division.
See my brother's blog for keen insight in very few words for the Cubs getting no farther than Central Division.
The Primacy of foreign Policy
I know that I am a distinct minority prioritize foreign policy above economic and social issues, but I am not alone. A really good article from 1996 by Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol makes a strong case not only for the importance of foreign policy, but a neo-conservative one at that. Its certainly an interesting read in this post-9/11, post Gulf War II world. I find that it's advice not only remains sound, but would have made the past several years much easier to navigate had it been better heeded.
I know that I am a distinct minority prioritize foreign policy above economic and social issues, but I am not alone. A really good article from 1996 by Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol makes a strong case not only for the importance of foreign policy, but a neo-conservative one at that. Its certainly an interesting read in this post-9/11, post Gulf War II world. I find that it's advice not only remains sound, but would have made the past several years much easier to navigate had it been better heeded.
Self Esteem: too often misunderstood
I am a strong proponent of Douglas McGregor and Abraham Maslow. Reading McGregor is like reading a revelation dropped down from heaven. He is famous for his Theory Y of management, but he has quite a lot more to offer as well. He takes Maslow very seriously, and so do I, and independently of McGregor. As someone who takes Maslow seriously I find myself in that condition so familiar to intellectual historians: finding error in a practice because its practitioners have substituted a misreading of the master for right practice. Schools today are committed to high self-esteem, often in priority to other things, like performance. While its true that Maslow argued that many Americans were beyond physiological and safety needs and were working through belonging, esteem, and actualization needs, hence the primacy of esteem, it is not true that students (as opposed to Americans as a group) have resolved safety or belonging needs and are actually dealing with esteem needs. If students feel intimidated by bullies, crime, or other dangers they are working on their safety needs and will not benefit from working on esteem. For students in poverty, this is especially likely. Many students will still be wrestling with belonging needs, indeed the teen years are famous for this struggle, regardless of class. Further, in order to mistakenly aid the esteem of the worst performing students, esteem opportunities are withdrawn from the students most liable to benefit from them, those most likely to be class leaders in performance.
Indeed, the old style linking of performance and esteem was more appropriate and beneficial than any of the approaches which have replaced it. Those who perform well deserve esteem and the achievement of success and esteem in tandem is healthy. It encourages further success while satisfying fundamental needs. This is something that someone like Alfie Kohn doesn't get. Withdrawing esteem from those who perform is withholding esteem from those most liable to be working at or near that level of Maslow's hierarchy. Giving esteem to those who lack performance has several ill effects.
When students are given esteem without performance, they are given satisfaction for a need they are not necessarily working on, especially when their performance is undermined by safety, belonging, or even physiological needs (inadequate sleep, hunger, more profound needs) giving them esteem doesn't satisfy them because what they need lays elsewhere. When students can tell that they esteem is not tied to performance they detect its patronizing nature, its falsity, and since undeserved attention is better than no attention they will absorb it, it is not helping them meet their esteem needs. Its like eating non-nutritive foods. It fills the stomach without feeding the body. Since teachers are already selling candy and pop to students, this may not bother them. Students, because of brain development better explained by Piaget, are going to be egocentric. Whether this egocentrism is an obstacle to transcend or develops into the personality flaw known as narcissism depends on how they achieve esteem. If they achieve esteem without merit, they will demand esteem in the future without the expectation of performance. They believe they deserve esteem because they are good not because they have done good. This becomes especially challenging when they do ill and expect esteem from teachers, parents, and other adults because its their expectation regarding esteem. Why act right or avoid wrong action if esteem is forthcoming in any event?
Avoiding these errors would be less pernicious if teachers where not so poorly educated themselves.
I am a strong proponent of Douglas McGregor and Abraham Maslow. Reading McGregor is like reading a revelation dropped down from heaven. He is famous for his Theory Y of management, but he has quite a lot more to offer as well. He takes Maslow very seriously, and so do I, and independently of McGregor. As someone who takes Maslow seriously I find myself in that condition so familiar to intellectual historians: finding error in a practice because its practitioners have substituted a misreading of the master for right practice. Schools today are committed to high self-esteem, often in priority to other things, like performance. While its true that Maslow argued that many Americans were beyond physiological and safety needs and were working through belonging, esteem, and actualization needs, hence the primacy of esteem, it is not true that students (as opposed to Americans as a group) have resolved safety or belonging needs and are actually dealing with esteem needs. If students feel intimidated by bullies, crime, or other dangers they are working on their safety needs and will not benefit from working on esteem. For students in poverty, this is especially likely. Many students will still be wrestling with belonging needs, indeed the teen years are famous for this struggle, regardless of class. Further, in order to mistakenly aid the esteem of the worst performing students, esteem opportunities are withdrawn from the students most liable to benefit from them, those most likely to be class leaders in performance.
Indeed, the old style linking of performance and esteem was more appropriate and beneficial than any of the approaches which have replaced it. Those who perform well deserve esteem and the achievement of success and esteem in tandem is healthy. It encourages further success while satisfying fundamental needs. This is something that someone like Alfie Kohn doesn't get. Withdrawing esteem from those who perform is withholding esteem from those most liable to be working at or near that level of Maslow's hierarchy. Giving esteem to those who lack performance has several ill effects.
When students are given esteem without performance, they are given satisfaction for a need they are not necessarily working on, especially when their performance is undermined by safety, belonging, or even physiological needs (inadequate sleep, hunger, more profound needs) giving them esteem doesn't satisfy them because what they need lays elsewhere. When students can tell that they esteem is not tied to performance they detect its patronizing nature, its falsity, and since undeserved attention is better than no attention they will absorb it, it is not helping them meet their esteem needs. Its like eating non-nutritive foods. It fills the stomach without feeding the body. Since teachers are already selling candy and pop to students, this may not bother them. Students, because of brain development better explained by Piaget, are going to be egocentric. Whether this egocentrism is an obstacle to transcend or develops into the personality flaw known as narcissism depends on how they achieve esteem. If they achieve esteem without merit, they will demand esteem in the future without the expectation of performance. They believe they deserve esteem because they are good not because they have done good. This becomes especially challenging when they do ill and expect esteem from teachers, parents, and other adults because its their expectation regarding esteem. Why act right or avoid wrong action if esteem is forthcoming in any event?
Avoiding these errors would be less pernicious if teachers where not so poorly educated themselves.
Friday, October 17, 2003
Bureaucrats once again defy common sense
German student Ralf Bader graduated at the top of his class at a private high school in England. Education bureaucrats in Baden-Württemberg checked his file and found no exam demonstrating a proficency in English (or any other second language). The fact that he graduated from a British high school at the top of his class with straight A's was not enough to prove his English language proficiency, the officials claimed. Bader took them to court and won. So to simplify this for the bureaucrats, boy goes to school in foriegn country where they use a different language, he gets top marks, hence he probabaly speaks the language pretty well. Go ahead next time and recognize the graduation certificate. This story was in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
German student Ralf Bader graduated at the top of his class at a private high school in England. Education bureaucrats in Baden-Württemberg checked his file and found no exam demonstrating a proficency in English (or any other second language). The fact that he graduated from a British high school at the top of his class with straight A's was not enough to prove his English language proficiency, the officials claimed. Bader took them to court and won. So to simplify this for the bureaucrats, boy goes to school in foriegn country where they use a different language, he gets top marks, hence he probabaly speaks the language pretty well. Go ahead next time and recognize the graduation certificate. This story was in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Thursday, October 16, 2003
Luther the liberator
Saw Luther tonight, and was struck by how modern, progressive teachers are in the role of the Catholic Church denying students direct access to knowledge because it will bore them, or some other variation of "they can't handle it", while Luther represents the faith that they can.
My own hostility to progressivism is rooted to the simple fact that I don't worry about the students who are unprepared for school and so find academics difficult. Everyone else is worried about them. As a contrarian, I see the bright and talented students whose school has been dumbed down, and so are performing much worse than they should. Too few teachers are concerned with excellence and the place of our bright and talented students, and the fact that given high standards, the students who lie in between these extremes are capable of the high standards. That, and it will prepare them for college.
One of the things that so disturbs me about progressivism is the sense that students who aren't prepared for school are incapable of making use of the liberal arts. Like the Cardinals from the movie they had no faith in, or feared, the liberating power of knowledge. Rather than making the effort to sell the artes liberales and then teach it, they feed their students pablum. At one point one of the cardinals argues that the scripture was too difficult for most priests, and my own view of teachers is that they are very probabaly not prepared to handle the liberal arts either. So what that leaves us with is high stakes testing to compel a liberal arts curriculum by an obstructionist teaching profession who would rather not teach much of anything.
Saw Luther tonight, and was struck by how modern, progressive teachers are in the role of the Catholic Church denying students direct access to knowledge because it will bore them, or some other variation of "they can't handle it", while Luther represents the faith that they can.
My own hostility to progressivism is rooted to the simple fact that I don't worry about the students who are unprepared for school and so find academics difficult. Everyone else is worried about them. As a contrarian, I see the bright and talented students whose school has been dumbed down, and so are performing much worse than they should. Too few teachers are concerned with excellence and the place of our bright and talented students, and the fact that given high standards, the students who lie in between these extremes are capable of the high standards. That, and it will prepare them for college.
One of the things that so disturbs me about progressivism is the sense that students who aren't prepared for school are incapable of making use of the liberal arts. Like the Cardinals from the movie they had no faith in, or feared, the liberating power of knowledge. Rather than making the effort to sell the artes liberales and then teach it, they feed their students pablum. At one point one of the cardinals argues that the scripture was too difficult for most priests, and my own view of teachers is that they are very probabaly not prepared to handle the liberal arts either. So what that leaves us with is high stakes testing to compel a liberal arts curriculum by an obstructionist teaching profession who would rather not teach much of anything.
Democratic Divide
Peter Beinart, whose work in the New Republic I generally like, has an excellent article (subscription required) on how the real divide in the Democratic party isn't ideological, its class. He argues the middle class reformers reject machine politics, favor campaign finance reform, are fiscally conservative, and particularly dovish (though dovishness also correlates well to geography). The working class democrats see machines as their defenders, regard reform with suspicion, receive a disproportionate share of entitlements, and are hawkish (again geography needs to be consulted). Dean is the darling of the middle class reformers and Gephardt is the champion of the working class traditionalists. Kerry has displeased both, and no one else is poised to grab either of these key constituencies.
Looked at this way, Gephardt is the stronger candidate in the national election, since its much more likely that Dean would lose culturally conservative, gun-loving, hawkish labor to Bush than it is than Gephardt would lose the middle class reformers, who would certainly defect to a Republican like McCain, but not Bush.
The thing is, I just don't see Gephardt getting the nomination. Its Dean's to lose, and such a loss might resurrect Kerry. However, nationally, Dean will hemorage culturally conservative, gun-loving, hawkish labor to Bush. How badly will depend upon how well Dean can woo labor. Dean is already shifting his candidacy towards frontrunner geniallity towards fellow dems and moderating certain views. Our system of primary-national election always forces candidates to run away from the center and then back toward it. Both to unify their wing of the electorate as well as appealing to independents. As I say, its Deans to lose.
Peter Beinart, whose work in the New Republic I generally like, has an excellent article (subscription required) on how the real divide in the Democratic party isn't ideological, its class. He argues the middle class reformers reject machine politics, favor campaign finance reform, are fiscally conservative, and particularly dovish (though dovishness also correlates well to geography). The working class democrats see machines as their defenders, regard reform with suspicion, receive a disproportionate share of entitlements, and are hawkish (again geography needs to be consulted). Dean is the darling of the middle class reformers and Gephardt is the champion of the working class traditionalists. Kerry has displeased both, and no one else is poised to grab either of these key constituencies.
Looked at this way, Gephardt is the stronger candidate in the national election, since its much more likely that Dean would lose culturally conservative, gun-loving, hawkish labor to Bush than it is than Gephardt would lose the middle class reformers, who would certainly defect to a Republican like McCain, but not Bush.
The thing is, I just don't see Gephardt getting the nomination. Its Dean's to lose, and such a loss might resurrect Kerry. However, nationally, Dean will hemorage culturally conservative, gun-loving, hawkish labor to Bush. How badly will depend upon how well Dean can woo labor. Dean is already shifting his candidacy towards frontrunner geniallity towards fellow dems and moderating certain views. Our system of primary-national election always forces candidates to run away from the center and then back toward it. Both to unify their wing of the electorate as well as appealing to independents. As I say, its Deans to lose.
The one virtuous institution in American society
Dennis Prager had an embeded journalist, Karl Zinsmeister, who has written the book Boots on the Ground on the show today. Once again it reinforced my old solider's notion that the only truly viruous institution in America is the Army. I suppose the other services are also virtuous, but my own affection is for the infantry. Compared to other institutions, the press, the university, the congress, even the church, the Army is most virtuous.
Dennis Prager had an embeded journalist, Karl Zinsmeister, who has written the book Boots on the Ground on the show today. Once again it reinforced my old solider's notion that the only truly viruous institution in America is the Army. I suppose the other services are also virtuous, but my own affection is for the infantry. Compared to other institutions, the press, the university, the congress, even the church, the Army is most virtuous.
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Lies, lies, and more lies
I am sick of the lies comming out of my Geography prof. Tomorrow I act to get some alternative grading. Its bad enough that he lies about population distribution in England. There, he's just wrong, and I don't see any harm beyond the fact that its simply not true. That is bad enough, because error is sufficient to warrent condemnation. But some of his lies are insidious in their subversive intent. This is error in the service of harm. He claims that Soviet indoctrination was very much like American indocrtrination. I suppose that's true, except for the secret police, the gulags, the state control of speech, and the other forms of repression. Then again a dog is very like a fish, except for the fins, scales, gills, and other characteristics of underwater habitation. He argues that cars in 1970 cost $2500 and that similar cars cost $15,000 today and that this is largely the product of our economic disfunction. Never mind that the value of the dollar has changed by a factor of four, so that in real terms that 1970 car costs more like $10,000 today and that the items he did list as differences (mostly safety and convienience features) account for the remaining $5k. Why send students out into the world suspicious of corporations, believeing that their system was corrupted and broken by greed, and that is fundamentally disfunctioinal? Could it be any of a variety of left-wing ideologies? The fact that this professor is a leftie is not the problem. He can embrace anarchy, communism, fasicism, or idiotarianism for all I care. Further, if he can get a faculty to hire him, he should be able to teach from his perspective. But to lie to people to get them to embrace this doctrine is a cancer on the professoriate. I mentioned 3 lies, and this one clearly slides over into incompitance rather than the other. He argued that when we refer to devolution (such as the formation of a Scottish Parliament) that it connects to some evolutionary concept of greater complexity, rather than the more literal sense of falling down.
By the way, this caltalogue of lies are all taken from an hour of class today. He has a previous catalogue of lies, but today was the straw that broke the camel's back.
I am sick of the lies comming out of my Geography prof. Tomorrow I act to get some alternative grading. Its bad enough that he lies about population distribution in England. There, he's just wrong, and I don't see any harm beyond the fact that its simply not true. That is bad enough, because error is sufficient to warrent condemnation. But some of his lies are insidious in their subversive intent. This is error in the service of harm. He claims that Soviet indoctrination was very much like American indocrtrination. I suppose that's true, except for the secret police, the gulags, the state control of speech, and the other forms of repression. Then again a dog is very like a fish, except for the fins, scales, gills, and other characteristics of underwater habitation. He argues that cars in 1970 cost $2500 and that similar cars cost $15,000 today and that this is largely the product of our economic disfunction. Never mind that the value of the dollar has changed by a factor of four, so that in real terms that 1970 car costs more like $10,000 today and that the items he did list as differences (mostly safety and convienience features) account for the remaining $5k. Why send students out into the world suspicious of corporations, believeing that their system was corrupted and broken by greed, and that is fundamentally disfunctioinal? Could it be any of a variety of left-wing ideologies? The fact that this professor is a leftie is not the problem. He can embrace anarchy, communism, fasicism, or idiotarianism for all I care. Further, if he can get a faculty to hire him, he should be able to teach from his perspective. But to lie to people to get them to embrace this doctrine is a cancer on the professoriate. I mentioned 3 lies, and this one clearly slides over into incompitance rather than the other. He argued that when we refer to devolution (such as the formation of a Scottish Parliament) that it connects to some evolutionary concept of greater complexity, rather than the more literal sense of falling down.
By the way, this caltalogue of lies are all taken from an hour of class today. He has a previous catalogue of lies, but today was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
Talk Radio having a hard time talking about Rush
Hugh Hewitt confined himself to taking callers from people with some experience with addiction, either as addicts or care-givers. Micheal Medved has waded a little more deeply into the stormy waters of Rush's problems, but has balanced the collegial respect with a frank acknowledgement that its not something to just sweep under the rug. Some other hosts, Mike Gallagher for instance, have attacked callers for being disappointed with Rush for failing to live up to his own standards. Its Gallagher's possition that Rush has had a possitive influence and therefore shouldn't be criticized. Presumably there is a balance test here in which Rush's positive influence outweighs the disappointment. That's all well and good for an assesment of Rush the person. But whatever standard we apply has to make sence when we look at other celebrities and non-celebrities. Matthew Perry had a very similar problem, in which a medical condition produced a pain-killer addiction. There is the well publicised problems of Robert Downey Jr and Charlie Sheen. (Sheen's story is second, scroll down.)
Martin Sheen turned his son, Charlie, into the judge overseeing his probation from previous run-ins. The elder Sheen praised the effect of the legal system on putting leverage on people with a problem. Too often, especially where well-liked celebs are concerned, we greet such news with a wink, and that's no sign that anyone needs to get their life in order. The fact that there is going to be some criticism and that Rush's repuation will in part depend on how he deals with this, can play the role of valuable leverage in helping Rush to commit himself to resolving his addiction once and for good. If we are harder or easier on Rush because of politics than we would be on Perry, Downey, Sheen, Darryl Strawberry, or anyone else who becomes addicted (and the difference between becoming addicted because of recreational or pain-management is only a part of the issue, I don't think it makes all the difference) then we're just using our politics as a shield to avoid discussing the actual case at hand.
Personally I have always regarded addiction itself as the real evil, and don't think Rush did anything worse getting addicted and not taking the steps neccesary to fix it before now. Before we assume that Rush is a hypocrite, I'd like to see what he had to say about 1) cases like Matthew Perry in which someone else got addicted to pain meds, and 2) addiction itself, not the recreational use that can be one road to addiction. I think one can support Rush's position and still condemn recreational drug use that leads to addiction and other negative consequences.
As a side note, the comments on John Kerry's web site have been pretty sympathetic. I think that's a good sign that Dems (or at least Kerry supporters) are able to look past the politics to a degree.
Hugh Hewitt confined himself to taking callers from people with some experience with addiction, either as addicts or care-givers. Micheal Medved has waded a little more deeply into the stormy waters of Rush's problems, but has balanced the collegial respect with a frank acknowledgement that its not something to just sweep under the rug. Some other hosts, Mike Gallagher for instance, have attacked callers for being disappointed with Rush for failing to live up to his own standards. Its Gallagher's possition that Rush has had a possitive influence and therefore shouldn't be criticized. Presumably there is a balance test here in which Rush's positive influence outweighs the disappointment. That's all well and good for an assesment of Rush the person. But whatever standard we apply has to make sence when we look at other celebrities and non-celebrities. Matthew Perry had a very similar problem, in which a medical condition produced a pain-killer addiction. There is the well publicised problems of Robert Downey Jr and Charlie Sheen. (Sheen's story is second, scroll down.)
Martin Sheen turned his son, Charlie, into the judge overseeing his probation from previous run-ins. The elder Sheen praised the effect of the legal system on putting leverage on people with a problem. Too often, especially where well-liked celebs are concerned, we greet such news with a wink, and that's no sign that anyone needs to get their life in order. The fact that there is going to be some criticism and that Rush's repuation will in part depend on how he deals with this, can play the role of valuable leverage in helping Rush to commit himself to resolving his addiction once and for good. If we are harder or easier on Rush because of politics than we would be on Perry, Downey, Sheen, Darryl Strawberry, or anyone else who becomes addicted (and the difference between becoming addicted because of recreational or pain-management is only a part of the issue, I don't think it makes all the difference) then we're just using our politics as a shield to avoid discussing the actual case at hand.
Personally I have always regarded addiction itself as the real evil, and don't think Rush did anything worse getting addicted and not taking the steps neccesary to fix it before now. Before we assume that Rush is a hypocrite, I'd like to see what he had to say about 1) cases like Matthew Perry in which someone else got addicted to pain meds, and 2) addiction itself, not the recreational use that can be one road to addiction. I think one can support Rush's position and still condemn recreational drug use that leads to addiction and other negative consequences.
As a side note, the comments on John Kerry's web site have been pretty sympathetic. I think that's a good sign that Dems (or at least Kerry supporters) are able to look past the politics to a degree.
Sunday, October 12, 2003
I know the future
In a fit of prescience, yesterday I posted about how America borrows the knowledge creation of other countries to deploy for itself, rather than creating nearly as much as it might otherwise appear. Today I look upon the NYTimes and Tom Wolfe re-tells the story of Gropius and Mies van der Rohe arriving in America (also as refuges just like the others) in the 30's and transfering the creative knowledge of their European home here for us to deploy. This story, for those looking for more than the 3 pages on-line at the NYTimes, should look to Wolfe's book From Bauhaus to Your House, in which he related the whole tale, including the fate of actual American knowledge creator, Frank Lloyd Wright . By the way, it is the dominance of the Bauhaus aesthetic which Virgina Postrel attacks in her new book. Its well worth a read, as Wolfe always is.
In a fit of prescience, yesterday I posted about how America borrows the knowledge creation of other countries to deploy for itself, rather than creating nearly as much as it might otherwise appear. Today I look upon the NYTimes and Tom Wolfe re-tells the story of Gropius and Mies van der Rohe arriving in America (also as refuges just like the others) in the 30's and transfering the creative knowledge of their European home here for us to deploy. This story, for those looking for more than the 3 pages on-line at the NYTimes, should look to Wolfe's book From Bauhaus to Your House, in which he related the whole tale, including the fate of actual American knowledge creator, Frank Lloyd Wright . By the way, it is the dominance of the Bauhaus aesthetic which Virgina Postrel attacks in her new book. Its well worth a read, as Wolfe always is.
Saturday, October 11, 2003
Quiz was a breeze
By the way, the quiz I took this 9AM was a breeze, despite the presence of plenty of Excel questions I had to reason through. I actually learned some neat tricks for Excel. I am entirely self-taught in Excel, and use it for the most rudamentary functions. The number of advanced OS questions was troublingly small. There was one question that touched on routine maintenence and one on computer security, though one other question did mention a firewall incidentally. Personally I would reduce the number of sophisticated Excel questions and put a bit more emphisis on maintaining and protecting your computer. Obviously this applies to the class I waivered as well as the test. The number of computers brought down by the latest round of viruses because so many had failed to install Microsoft updates was a clear wake up call as well as a slap across the face of a sleeping American computer user.
By the way, the quiz I took this 9AM was a breeze, despite the presence of plenty of Excel questions I had to reason through. I actually learned some neat tricks for Excel. I am entirely self-taught in Excel, and use it for the most rudamentary functions. The number of advanced OS questions was troublingly small. There was one question that touched on routine maintenence and one on computer security, though one other question did mention a firewall incidentally. Personally I would reduce the number of sophisticated Excel questions and put a bit more emphisis on maintaining and protecting your computer. Obviously this applies to the class I waivered as well as the test. The number of computers brought down by the latest round of viruses because so many had failed to install Microsoft updates was a clear wake up call as well as a slap across the face of a sleeping American computer user.
Does the U.S. create knowledge?
I recently read chapter 7 "Skills" of Lester Thurow's book Building Wealth. (See the Prologue to the book) Thurow talks about knowledge deployment (making good use of knowledge economically by workers in the form of skills) and knowledge creation (inventing new products, proceedures, and ideas) and observes that relative to the size of the country, the US is much better at knowledge deployment than it is at knowledge creation. He observes that German in the first half the the 20th century was the leader in knowledge creation. I point you to the Nobel site. Note how many of the prizes go to Germany. Also note the large number England got. Two of the great discoveries of the 20th century, nuclear and space science, America owes a huge debt to Germany. On the one hand, Jewish scientists fled the Nazi's and brought their nuclear physics to the US, and in the second case, we made off with Germany's rocket scientists after the war. When you figure how many discoveries are derivative of the nuclear and space programs, all of which ultimatly are founded on German educative capital, not American. That we could have the Sputnik crisis in American education when we did, points to the reliance on German, not American know how. Looking at the recent decade of nobel laureates, we have gained a recent boon from the Russian brain drain. Our science relies on the desirability of immigrating to the U.S. The search in Asia for computer science types is well known. Our university system attracts students who didn't come up through the American public school system.
I recently read chapter 7 "Skills" of Lester Thurow's book Building Wealth. (See the Prologue to the book) Thurow talks about knowledge deployment (making good use of knowledge economically by workers in the form of skills) and knowledge creation (inventing new products, proceedures, and ideas) and observes that relative to the size of the country, the US is much better at knowledge deployment than it is at knowledge creation. He observes that German in the first half the the 20th century was the leader in knowledge creation. I point you to the Nobel site. Note how many of the prizes go to Germany. Also note the large number England got. Two of the great discoveries of the 20th century, nuclear and space science, America owes a huge debt to Germany. On the one hand, Jewish scientists fled the Nazi's and brought their nuclear physics to the US, and in the second case, we made off with Germany's rocket scientists after the war. When you figure how many discoveries are derivative of the nuclear and space programs, all of which ultimatly are founded on German educative capital, not American. That we could have the Sputnik crisis in American education when we did, points to the reliance on German, not American know how. Looking at the recent decade of nobel laureates, we have gained a recent boon from the Russian brain drain. Our science relies on the desirability of immigrating to the U.S. The search in Asia for computer science types is well known. Our university system attracts students who didn't come up through the American public school system.
Matt has Wrigley pics
Check out Matt's blog for Wrigley pics from some time in early October. This must the very last games of the regular season. Sister just got back from Chi yesterday (then ran off to KC for a Rennaisance Fair). I might get Matt to put up her pics at his blog and link to them.
Check out Matt's blog for Wrigley pics from some time in early October. This must the very last games of the regular season. Sister just got back from Chi yesterday (then ran off to KC for a Rennaisance Fair). I might get Matt to put up her pics at his blog and link to them.
Religion Quiz
NRO also included a Religion Quiz. (See down two entries). I took the quiz and scored 100% Mainline to Liberal Protestant, 97% non-theist, 82% Secular Humanist, 77% Mainline to Conservative Protestant, and so on down the list and I bottom out at 33% Orthodox Quaker. I only score 51% with Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. So either I am an non-theist/Secular Humanist who can pass for a Mainline Protestant or I am a Mainline Protestant who can pass for a non-theist/Secular Humanist. An interesting proposition.
NRO also included a Religion Quiz. (See down two entries). I took the quiz and scored 100% Mainline to Liberal Protestant, 97% non-theist, 82% Secular Humanist, 77% Mainline to Conservative Protestant, and so on down the list and I bottom out at 33% Orthodox Quaker. I only score 51% with Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. So either I am an non-theist/Secular Humanist who can pass for a Mainline Protestant or I am a Mainline Protestant who can pass for a non-theist/Secular Humanist. An interesting proposition.
Computer Exam
My mother often said that getting through school is just jumping through hoops. There is much to recomend that theory (it helps that she was smart enough that the academics were not an obstacle to her). Today I take a test that illustrates this principle. Despite the fact that I have two PC's networked together running a host of software, not to mention this blog, my computer sales in Oakbrook Il, my data entry in Chicago, and well over 15 years of PC ownership, I have to take a test to get out of Computer Science 101. Also, I should mention that I already took a higher level class that required this as a prerequisite. We grad students can do that, I took Psych 603 last year having never taken a psych class ever before - got an A, see grad students know how to do school. Its also a testament to a good liberal education. Nevertheless in 90 minutes I take a test to demonstrate I know how to open a file, cut and paste, and presumably avoid formatting my hard-drive inadvertetly. I was just unable to sleep last night so at 4:30 I finally got out of bed put some coffee on and I'll be going in 19 hours without sleep. Like I don't have plenty of experience operating a computer past 16 hours. Frankly I don't know anyone who has significant computer experience who doesn't have plenty of post-16 hours logged. A real test would require we stay up all night and would involve installing a new game that requires exotic drivers to run. Then we write a reveiw in a Unix based word prcocessor. That would seperate the A's from the B's, let me tell you. Seperating the A+'s would require installing some hardware, I suppose. I asked if I could submit a request for a waiver for both the course and the exam which waives the course on Powerpoint, but they want me to take the test. I suppose I need to get over to campus today anyway and print some things out on their fine laser printers.
My mother often said that getting through school is just jumping through hoops. There is much to recomend that theory (it helps that she was smart enough that the academics were not an obstacle to her). Today I take a test that illustrates this principle. Despite the fact that I have two PC's networked together running a host of software, not to mention this blog, my computer sales in Oakbrook Il, my data entry in Chicago, and well over 15 years of PC ownership, I have to take a test to get out of Computer Science 101. Also, I should mention that I already took a higher level class that required this as a prerequisite. We grad students can do that, I took Psych 603 last year having never taken a psych class ever before - got an A, see grad students know how to do school. Its also a testament to a good liberal education. Nevertheless in 90 minutes I take a test to demonstrate I know how to open a file, cut and paste, and presumably avoid formatting my hard-drive inadvertetly. I was just unable to sleep last night so at 4:30 I finally got out of bed put some coffee on and I'll be going in 19 hours without sleep. Like I don't have plenty of experience operating a computer past 16 hours. Frankly I don't know anyone who has significant computer experience who doesn't have plenty of post-16 hours logged. A real test would require we stay up all night and would involve installing a new game that requires exotic drivers to run. Then we write a reveiw in a Unix based word prcocessor. That would seperate the A's from the B's, let me tell you. Seperating the A+'s would require installing some hardware, I suppose. I asked if I could submit a request for a waiver for both the course and the exam which waives the course on Powerpoint, but they want me to take the test. I suppose I need to get over to campus today anyway and print some things out on their fine laser printers.
Philosophy Quiz
I was digging up dirt on Nel Noddings (education author) and her named popped on an a National Review page, so I clicked right to it. Why, it turns out Jonah Goldberg and Rod Dreher took a philosophy quiz, so I did too. Interesting results. Aristotle 100%, Hume 91%, Aquinas 86%, Rand, Nietzsche, Sartre in the 80%'s, Plato 71%, Hobbes 62%, Stoics 57%, Cynics 51%, Noddings 31%, Kant 24%, Prescriptivism 8%. Jonah Goldberg scored high in Aristotle and Aquinas, and low in Sartre, Prescriptivism, and Noddings. Rod Dreher scored high in Augustine and Aquinas, mid-range for Plato and Aristotle, and low for Nietzsche, Noddings, Epicurians, and Hobbes.
Apparently neo-cons are all over Aquinas, and either back him up with Augustine or Aristotle; apparently the Thomist synthesis of Aristotle and Catholicism can still be teased apart. All of us rejected Noddings- surprise. Her book The Challenge to Care in Schools is a prescription for a drift towards totalitarianism, IMO. Social Reconstructionist, indeed. I was surprised how low I scored as a Stoic, but apparently when they conflict with Aristotle, Zeno takes a back seat. Fair enough. The questions which would have boosted my Cynic score I answered to the contrary because of the way they were worded. Personally I am an ascetic, but I don't think its neccesary for ethical living. I recject the accumulation of stuff, but regard it as a choice that's right for me, not an imperative. I subscribe to the Postral thesis on such matters, despite my own personal lack of a designer toilet bowl brush.
Now we just need to get Hugh Hewitt to take the quiz.
I was digging up dirt on Nel Noddings (education author) and her named popped on an a National Review page, so I clicked right to it. Why, it turns out Jonah Goldberg and Rod Dreher took a philosophy quiz, so I did too. Interesting results. Aristotle 100%, Hume 91%, Aquinas 86%, Rand, Nietzsche, Sartre in the 80%'s, Plato 71%, Hobbes 62%, Stoics 57%, Cynics 51%, Noddings 31%, Kant 24%, Prescriptivism 8%. Jonah Goldberg scored high in Aristotle and Aquinas, and low in Sartre, Prescriptivism, and Noddings. Rod Dreher scored high in Augustine and Aquinas, mid-range for Plato and Aristotle, and low for Nietzsche, Noddings, Epicurians, and Hobbes.
Apparently neo-cons are all over Aquinas, and either back him up with Augustine or Aristotle; apparently the Thomist synthesis of Aristotle and Catholicism can still be teased apart. All of us rejected Noddings- surprise. Her book The Challenge to Care in Schools is a prescription for a drift towards totalitarianism, IMO. Social Reconstructionist, indeed. I was surprised how low I scored as a Stoic, but apparently when they conflict with Aristotle, Zeno takes a back seat. Fair enough. The questions which would have boosted my Cynic score I answered to the contrary because of the way they were worded. Personally I am an ascetic, but I don't think its neccesary for ethical living. I recject the accumulation of stuff, but regard it as a choice that's right for me, not an imperative. I subscribe to the Postral thesis on such matters, despite my own personal lack of a designer toilet bowl brush.
Now we just need to get Hugh Hewitt to take the quiz.
Thursday, October 09, 2003
Social Conservatives don't appear to get it
Looking at the responce before and after the California recall, and seeing the numbers that Tom McClintok polled, Social Conservatives don't understand that they can't win elections by themselves. I guess (with some evidence) that Social Conservatives number about 1 in 6 Americans, and a Pepperdine prof recently put their numbers at closer to 1 in 8 Californians. You can't win elections with those numbers. You have to attract someone else. The current alignment of party politics makes it much easier for you to attract Republicans who are Fiscally Conservative and Republicans who are foriegn policy Hawks than most other kinds of voters. In some states, like Missouri, its still possible to run as a Socially Conservative Democrat, but this works better in the South and West than it does anywhere else.
Tom McClintok was both a Social and a Fiscal Conservative, and this expands the base of support he can draw from. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a Social Liberal and a Fiscal Conservative. Since Schwarzenegger took moderatly liberal views (yes on abortion, but also yes on parental notification and no on late term abortions; yes on civil unions but no to gay marriage) he put himself in a possition to attract all the voters who were no committed to one of the polar possitions on social issues. Conservatives could see him as better than Davis, and knew that there were lines he wouldn't cross, and liberals could see him as someone who might not advance their agenda, but wouldn't threaten it either.
As a Republican who is socially liberal (in terms of policy), fiscally conservative, and most importantly as far as I am concerned, commited to a strong foriegn policy, I don't like social conservatives. I was poised to vote for Mel Carnahan over John Ashcroft in 2000 for the Missouri Senate seat because of Ashcroft's conservatism. I turned out to be the reverse of many voters, because far from casting a sympathy vote for the deceased Carnahan, I could not vote for someone who could not serve, and certainly didn't want to give the Democratic governor a blank check to name anyone. So I voted for Ashcroft and held my breath. His appointment as AG, and the fact that his tenure has been dominated by security issues rather than social issues has made him perfectly palatable to me, where things could have been far less happy.
I prefer to vote for a candidate who will support strength in the world, because the surest route to peace is strength. Weakness invites attack. If the candiates are equally good, bad, or the office isn't one with any foriegn policy role, I look to the more pro-business candiate. Since social issues come third, I generally only consider them if they are either radically left or right. Personally, I probabaly am fairly socially conservative, but the last thing I want is the government imposing a social policy agenda. I especially recoil from one that has the absolutist authority of revealed religion. Wars have been fought over consubstantiation vs transubstantiation. The Founders wisely sought to remove the state from these debates.
Hence, Social Conservaties must realize they must form a coallition with other voters, and that means comprimise. In traditional races, its easier, because you just need to avoid nominating a candiate who frightens the rest of the coalition. In open multi-candidate elections like the CA recall, its harder because if you are voting for a candiate less likely to form a coaliton than another candidate is, you will lose. Victory goes to the candidate with the biggest tent.
Looking at the responce before and after the California recall, and seeing the numbers that Tom McClintok polled, Social Conservatives don't understand that they can't win elections by themselves. I guess (with some evidence) that Social Conservatives number about 1 in 6 Americans, and a Pepperdine prof recently put their numbers at closer to 1 in 8 Californians. You can't win elections with those numbers. You have to attract someone else. The current alignment of party politics makes it much easier for you to attract Republicans who are Fiscally Conservative and Republicans who are foriegn policy Hawks than most other kinds of voters. In some states, like Missouri, its still possible to run as a Socially Conservative Democrat, but this works better in the South and West than it does anywhere else.
Tom McClintok was both a Social and a Fiscal Conservative, and this expands the base of support he can draw from. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a Social Liberal and a Fiscal Conservative. Since Schwarzenegger took moderatly liberal views (yes on abortion, but also yes on parental notification and no on late term abortions; yes on civil unions but no to gay marriage) he put himself in a possition to attract all the voters who were no committed to one of the polar possitions on social issues. Conservatives could see him as better than Davis, and knew that there were lines he wouldn't cross, and liberals could see him as someone who might not advance their agenda, but wouldn't threaten it either.
As a Republican who is socially liberal (in terms of policy), fiscally conservative, and most importantly as far as I am concerned, commited to a strong foriegn policy, I don't like social conservatives. I was poised to vote for Mel Carnahan over John Ashcroft in 2000 for the Missouri Senate seat because of Ashcroft's conservatism. I turned out to be the reverse of many voters, because far from casting a sympathy vote for the deceased Carnahan, I could not vote for someone who could not serve, and certainly didn't want to give the Democratic governor a blank check to name anyone. So I voted for Ashcroft and held my breath. His appointment as AG, and the fact that his tenure has been dominated by security issues rather than social issues has made him perfectly palatable to me, where things could have been far less happy.
I prefer to vote for a candidate who will support strength in the world, because the surest route to peace is strength. Weakness invites attack. If the candiates are equally good, bad, or the office isn't one with any foriegn policy role, I look to the more pro-business candiate. Since social issues come third, I generally only consider them if they are either radically left or right. Personally, I probabaly am fairly socially conservative, but the last thing I want is the government imposing a social policy agenda. I especially recoil from one that has the absolutist authority of revealed religion. Wars have been fought over consubstantiation vs transubstantiation. The Founders wisely sought to remove the state from these debates.
Hence, Social Conservaties must realize they must form a coallition with other voters, and that means comprimise. In traditional races, its easier, because you just need to avoid nominating a candiate who frightens the rest of the coalition. In open multi-candidate elections like the CA recall, its harder because if you are voting for a candiate less likely to form a coaliton than another candidate is, you will lose. Victory goes to the candidate with the biggest tent.
Sunday, October 05, 2003
Arnold and harrasment
Susan Estrich has this LA Times commentary on the pre-election stories in the LA Times about Schwarzenegger's alleged behavior. I also saw her on Fox on Saterday. Fox also had an NOW representative in California on. Both agreed in general that Arnold's behavior was bad, acknowledged that people make mistakes, and approved of a quick appology. The NOW rep mentioned she would be voting for Arnold and Estrich lamented that a strong Demacrat like Dianne Feinstein wasn't an option.
I have been displeased with the number of outlets that have reported that Schwarzenegger appologized for what the LA Times reported he had done. Arnold contends that some of the stories are exagerations and at least one is totally false (and a woman from his camp who witnessed the occasion has told her story) and the way he structured his statements about the stories, he said that while these stories are not accurate, he could not claim to be innocent of the general charge of friskiness. I am especially unimpressed by the charges that date to the 70's. A sexual revolution had occured, boundaries were being broken, and a sense of promiscuity was all over. To think that a young man in California should have been playing by the old rules or should have known what the rules would later turn out to be is asking a bit much. Given what is sometimes said about politicians, Arnold's real mistake was that he he was "playful" out in the open with random people, rather than people whose lives he could ruin.
Susan Estrich has this LA Times commentary on the pre-election stories in the LA Times about Schwarzenegger's alleged behavior. I also saw her on Fox on Saterday. Fox also had an NOW representative in California on. Both agreed in general that Arnold's behavior was bad, acknowledged that people make mistakes, and approved of a quick appology. The NOW rep mentioned she would be voting for Arnold and Estrich lamented that a strong Demacrat like Dianne Feinstein wasn't an option.
I have been displeased with the number of outlets that have reported that Schwarzenegger appologized for what the LA Times reported he had done. Arnold contends that some of the stories are exagerations and at least one is totally false (and a woman from his camp who witnessed the occasion has told her story) and the way he structured his statements about the stories, he said that while these stories are not accurate, he could not claim to be innocent of the general charge of friskiness. I am especially unimpressed by the charges that date to the 70's. A sexual revolution had occured, boundaries were being broken, and a sense of promiscuity was all over. To think that a young man in California should have been playing by the old rules or should have known what the rules would later turn out to be is asking a bit much. Given what is sometimes said about politicians, Arnold's real mistake was that he he was "playful" out in the open with random people, rather than people whose lives he could ruin.
Changing Menu Configurations
I am irked by the way drive through menus move their items around so you can never rely that a given item will remain in the same place over a period of time. I drove out of a resturant today because I could not find what I was looking for in a quick second. I knew where it used to be, wasn't there, must have moved, they lost my business. I just have zero tolerance for playing location games when ordering food. I don't want to figure out where the french fries are.
I am irked by the way drive through menus move their items around so you can never rely that a given item will remain in the same place over a period of time. I drove out of a resturant today because I could not find what I was looking for in a quick second. I knew where it used to be, wasn't there, must have moved, they lost my business. I just have zero tolerance for playing location games when ordering food. I don't want to figure out where the french fries are.
Saturday, October 04, 2003
Substitute Teaching back to normal
The last two weeks in September were really busy, but the pace has fallen back to normal. Normally the sub racket is not very busy during the begining and end of semesters, since teachers have more desire to be there and less cause to be away (both push and pull factors at work). Now that its October, I expect the pace to be pretty quick and increasing slightly as we get on to November. After the first week of December it will basically fall off the table unless there is flu going around.
The last two weeks in September were really busy, but the pace has fallen back to normal. Normally the sub racket is not very busy during the begining and end of semesters, since teachers have more desire to be there and less cause to be away (both push and pull factors at work). Now that its October, I expect the pace to be pretty quick and increasing slightly as we get on to November. After the first week of December it will basically fall off the table unless there is flu going around.
Friday, October 03, 2003
Matt's Journal has moved
As Matt wrote in his last entry at the old address, its like breaking up moving to a new address and format, but he has done so. The new address, as listed over to the side in "preffered" is also here. Keen followers of this site (as if there were any, ROFL) will notice that I have also added Lilek's Bleat (easy enough to navigate back to the less frequently updated goodies) and Hugh Hewitt's home page.
As Matt wrote in his last entry at the old address, its like breaking up moving to a new address and format, but he has done so. The new address, as listed over to the side in "preffered" is also here. Keen followers of this site (as if there were any, ROFL) will notice that I have also added Lilek's Bleat (easy enough to navigate back to the less frequently updated goodies) and Hugh Hewitt's home page.
Clark is a Media phenomenon, nothing else
A Fearful Symmetry puts Gen. Clark in the first rank of Dem candidates. I must disagree. Clark is a media phenomena with no grass roots support. Its an entirely top down candidacy. Kerry and Gephardt attract core constituancies of the Dems, but you have to draw more than a few core groups. Dean is the only one with broad appeal among the Dem base, and because of that and the fact that he's the only one (other than Edwards, I guess) with charisma, Dean will be the nominee. Barring of course a bolt from the blue. Clark's candidacy is to possition him to be a Cheney-like VP/key foriegn policy advisor. There's nothing else to it.
A Fearful Symmetry puts Gen. Clark in the first rank of Dem candidates. I must disagree. Clark is a media phenomena with no grass roots support. Its an entirely top down candidacy. Kerry and Gephardt attract core constituancies of the Dems, but you have to draw more than a few core groups. Dean is the only one with broad appeal among the Dem base, and because of that and the fact that he's the only one (other than Edwards, I guess) with charisma, Dean will be the nominee. Barring of course a bolt from the blue. Clark's candidacy is to possition him to be a Cheney-like VP/key foriegn policy advisor. There's nothing else to it.
Reflections on The Case Against Standardized Testing
Alfie Kohn's book, The Case Against Standardized Testing opposes choice and judgment in education with the special concern that judgment will promote choosing, and choosing will lead to markets. Kohn also opposes judgment because he believes that differences are false. Kohn is a Marxist who masquerades as someone concerned about standardized testing, but his real concern is that testing will promote market forces in the schools.
Kohn erects a straw man for privatization, attacking the profit motive, even though private schools are longer lived in America than public education. John's hostility to profit is not just that he fears it will crowd out other values in private education, he is hostile to all forms if incentive. His 1993 book, Punished by Rewards, has the subtitle: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes. Indeed, in 2000 and again in 2001 he got an article published advising parents to stop telling thier children "good job". Praise, we find, creates praise seeking behavior. Isn't that the point? Just two weeks ago Education Week published The Folly of Merit Pay. Evidence of the Marxist fetish of labor unmotivated by incentive is well documented. Productivity falls. Lenin's own response to this problem was to reintroduce incentive, Stalin, Mao, and a host of imitators preferred repression. The resurgence of the Liu party in China, and relaxing of the prohibition of private ownership and profit has produced tremendous growth in China, growth long delayed. Kohn hopes to introduce this failed practice into the American schools.
The great danger of the market is not just profit and incentives, since many privatized schools might well remain publicly funded and chartered, funded through public vouchers, or endowed. The great danger is the market itself. The freedom to choose to abandon a school that is failing or one where the school's philosophy was not appreciated by parents. Such an event would make education free in the sense of Austrian economics. (see here and here) School rankings and teacher rankings, something natural in our Consumer Reports society, would promote consumer choice in student placement. If such were the case, the social reconstructionist program Kohn would favor would lose its captive audience. So his opposition to school testing is his Berlin Wall.
Preventing choice requires that Kohn dismiss the possible of judgment. If we have no basis upon which to judge, how can we make an informed decision as consumers? How can we tell whether to cast aside the statist public school system for a market based public system? Kohn argues that judgment is impossible because its technically impossible, that is we can't get accurate enough, and that there really is nothing to judge because we are all the same in quality, though we may possess different strengths and weaknesses. Part of this can be seen as the traditional struggle in America between the meritocracy and the egalitarians. Kohn, however is a radical egalitarian and rejects any concessions to the meritocratic position. He argues that differences between schools, teachers,and students are imagined (or one might presume are the result of capitalist externalities like inequalities in wealth) and therefore judgment which purports to rank, grade, evaluate, or otherwise privledge students is false.
Not content to make the egalitarian case, Kohn also attacks the meritocratic case, by far the bulk of the text, by attacking the mechanism of judgment new to education: standardized testing. Elsewhere he has attacked grades, but John's publishing suggests he would build momentum in attacking testing which could then be applied to grades and all forms of evaluation and incentive.
This then is John's program. He is a radical egalitarian with a hostility to markets and incentives like profit, hence a Marxist, who seeks to preserve the bastion of social reconstructionist and progressive education against essentialists and perennialists by preventing parents and other observers from seeing outcomes of the different approaches to education side by side. No doubt he knows that like residents of East Germany before the Berlin Wall, parents would vote with their feet for a kind of education he rejects.
Alfie Kohn's book, The Case Against Standardized Testing opposes choice and judgment in education with the special concern that judgment will promote choosing, and choosing will lead to markets. Kohn also opposes judgment because he believes that differences are false. Kohn is a Marxist who masquerades as someone concerned about standardized testing, but his real concern is that testing will promote market forces in the schools.
Kohn erects a straw man for privatization, attacking the profit motive, even though private schools are longer lived in America than public education. John's hostility to profit is not just that he fears it will crowd out other values in private education, he is hostile to all forms if incentive. His 1993 book, Punished by Rewards, has the subtitle: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes. Indeed, in 2000 and again in 2001 he got an article published advising parents to stop telling thier children "good job". Praise, we find, creates praise seeking behavior. Isn't that the point? Just two weeks ago Education Week published The Folly of Merit Pay. Evidence of the Marxist fetish of labor unmotivated by incentive is well documented. Productivity falls. Lenin's own response to this problem was to reintroduce incentive, Stalin, Mao, and a host of imitators preferred repression. The resurgence of the Liu party in China, and relaxing of the prohibition of private ownership and profit has produced tremendous growth in China, growth long delayed. Kohn hopes to introduce this failed practice into the American schools.
The great danger of the market is not just profit and incentives, since many privatized schools might well remain publicly funded and chartered, funded through public vouchers, or endowed. The great danger is the market itself. The freedom to choose to abandon a school that is failing or one where the school's philosophy was not appreciated by parents. Such an event would make education free in the sense of Austrian economics. (see here and here) School rankings and teacher rankings, something natural in our Consumer Reports society, would promote consumer choice in student placement. If such were the case, the social reconstructionist program Kohn would favor would lose its captive audience. So his opposition to school testing is his Berlin Wall.
Preventing choice requires that Kohn dismiss the possible of judgment. If we have no basis upon which to judge, how can we make an informed decision as consumers? How can we tell whether to cast aside the statist public school system for a market based public system? Kohn argues that judgment is impossible because its technically impossible, that is we can't get accurate enough, and that there really is nothing to judge because we are all the same in quality, though we may possess different strengths and weaknesses. Part of this can be seen as the traditional struggle in America between the meritocracy and the egalitarians. Kohn, however is a radical egalitarian and rejects any concessions to the meritocratic position. He argues that differences between schools, teachers,and students are imagined (or one might presume are the result of capitalist externalities like inequalities in wealth) and therefore judgment which purports to rank, grade, evaluate, or otherwise privledge students is false.
Not content to make the egalitarian case, Kohn also attacks the meritocratic case, by far the bulk of the text, by attacking the mechanism of judgment new to education: standardized testing. Elsewhere he has attacked grades, but John's publishing suggests he would build momentum in attacking testing which could then be applied to grades and all forms of evaluation and incentive.
This then is John's program. He is a radical egalitarian with a hostility to markets and incentives like profit, hence a Marxist, who seeks to preserve the bastion of social reconstructionist and progressive education against essentialists and perennialists by preventing parents and other observers from seeing outcomes of the different approaches to education side by side. No doubt he knows that like residents of East Germany before the Berlin Wall, parents would vote with their feet for a kind of education he rejects.
Thursday, October 02, 2003
The New Republic laments the fall of the old elites and the rise of democractic politics
Franklin Foer writes about C. Boyden Gray in the latest issue of the New Republic. He laments the decline of the old country club republican for a republican politics driven by participatory politics, itself driven by the reforms the weakened the role of the party in favor of more voter participation (you know, democracy) and the politicians who capitalized on voter dissatisfaction with what the elites were producing. I'll write this off to a nostaligia for a kinder, gentler Republican party on the part of democrats in general and the writers of TNR in particular. After all, last week's cover story discussed the current Bush hatred of Jonathan Chait. As a center right Republican I share some identifican with Nelson Rockafeller, and I too can pine for the days of Dems like John Kennedy and Harry S Truman. But, I know that those days were the days of elite party control on the one hand, and a strong consensus nationally produced by the Great Depression and the Second World War. When a generation came of age that had experienced neither of those, the consensus began to collapse. Its collapse was aided by a more participatory politics that gave voice to factions of the parties (and other places) that were not in control of the parties and so had little influence until the reforms that weakened the parties in the 50's and 60's. So, this nostalgia, while pleasing to the center left and the center right, is based on form of elitism we probabaly don't want back, and could never get back if we did want it, and by a consensus produced by 12 years of crisis and war. I don't think we want to pay for a new consensus, either.
Franklin Foer writes about C. Boyden Gray in the latest issue of the New Republic. He laments the decline of the old country club republican for a republican politics driven by participatory politics, itself driven by the reforms the weakened the role of the party in favor of more voter participation (you know, democracy) and the politicians who capitalized on voter dissatisfaction with what the elites were producing. I'll write this off to a nostaligia for a kinder, gentler Republican party on the part of democrats in general and the writers of TNR in particular. After all, last week's cover story discussed the current Bush hatred of Jonathan Chait. As a center right Republican I share some identifican with Nelson Rockafeller, and I too can pine for the days of Dems like John Kennedy and Harry S Truman. But, I know that those days were the days of elite party control on the one hand, and a strong consensus nationally produced by the Great Depression and the Second World War. When a generation came of age that had experienced neither of those, the consensus began to collapse. Its collapse was aided by a more participatory politics that gave voice to factions of the parties (and other places) that were not in control of the parties and so had little influence until the reforms that weakened the parties in the 50's and 60's. So, this nostalgia, while pleasing to the center left and the center right, is based on form of elitism we probabaly don't want back, and could never get back if we did want it, and by a consensus produced by 12 years of crisis and war. I don't think we want to pay for a new consensus, either.
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Curious Coincidence?
After writing this morning on watered down curriculum because of games and films, I spent this afternoon showing videos of Kim Possible and Spounge Bob Squarepants. Granted I was the sub for the recess attendent, and it was raining.
After writing this morning on watered down curriculum because of games and films, I spent this afternoon showing videos of Kim Possible and Spounge Bob Squarepants. Granted I was the sub for the recess attendent, and it was raining.
Schools abandon the Block system
While there are still schools happy with the block system, I suspect the pendulum is swinging back towards the 7 period day. The reason can be found in the link I just provided, namely, "Those teachers who haven't changed teaching styles and still rely heavily on lecturing were least happy with the block, as were students in their classes." The 90 minute block system works best when you take a topic and cover it from three directions, using a combination of lecture, activity, and multi-media. That might be 30 minutes of lecture, 30 minutes of video, and group colaboration, or it might mean Adler style socratic method involving 10-15 minutes of lecture followed by 30 minutes of discussion and debate, either covering two topics, or followed by video, computer research, or some other activity.
Instead, Springfield students and administrators are telling me that too many teachers are still teaching as if they had a 50 minute period. Some just stretch the teaching they would do for 50 minutes longer, others just leave the rest of the time for homework. Students with experience in both systems prefer the block system because their is less homework, because teachers routinely don't fill the classroom time with teaching. Administrators argue that they did not go to a block system to create mini-study halls. They point to a lack of change in the test scores of the district indicating no change taking place between block and period. And block systems require a handful more teachers. In periods of financial stress, keeping the block system with no percieved benefit seems like bad judgement.
Opponants of the block point to these issiues:
Longer classes are incompatible with the attention spans of most students (20-50 minute attention spans are commonly cited)
Instead of trying to cover twice as much material in a longer class period, the natural tendency is to water down the material to maintain interest, resorting to movies, games, doing homework in class.
Students may experience a gap of 8 to 13 months before taking the next course in that series
Transfering from a district using block to one using periods or vise versa can be tough.
There are more comlaints at the site linked to but I don't take most of them seriously or regard them as technical issues. Lets look at the four charges above.
Attention span of 20-50 minutes: while this may seem to favor the 50 minute period, it should be remembered that the block is supposed to be 3 units of 30 minutes of different teaching style activites on one to three topics. For example. One day in my own Vietnam unit I lectured for about 20 minutes on problems of mobilization, identifying the draft, the use of reserves, and the expansion of the army. Then I presented a list of all the strategies urged by the services, political leaders, and other influential groups in the conduct of the war. Students were grouped and ask to play the role of presidential advisors choosing a policy for winning the war and being able to defend it. (I always like teaching strategic thinking because it benefits so many areas - financial planning, career planning, business planning, &c.) The last 20 minutes we watched a video segment of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident taped from the History Channel's episode of presidential scandals. In practice, this lesson had 20 minutes of lecture, 40 minutes of group work and presentation, and 20 minutes of video, as well as about 5 minutes of administration before class and 5 minutes of down time afterward during which I took questions on the unit test. The needs of attention for novelty were satisfied by the variation of teaching styles, despite the fact that our topic remained the early phase of the Vietnam War.
This brings up the second charge. Watering down material by adding games and movies. Is that what I described? No, but I am an advocate of block, and hopefully do a good job with the block. So some of this criticism may just be a mischaracterization of what I did as games and movies, when I think its pretty clear that genuine learning took place. I also have the summary reports students handed in advocating their strategy and know that there was higher level thinking applied to strategic consideration of a real historical problem. As a side note, the students favored various combinations of the marine corps approach to winning the war often combined with the Army's special operations counter insurgency doctrine.
However, I give real credibility to the complaint that much material is watered down with games, videos, and by allowing homework to be done in class. I see it and hear about it all the time. While good teachers know how to use the block system and how to keep learning progressing during 80-90 minutes, to many just teach the way they did in the 50 minute period and fill out the other 40 minutes with fluff. In the humanities classes this often means superfluous videos, or videos that could be valuable not used to challenge students to think. Math class is the worst offender in putting homework into the classroom, though all are guilty of it. One of the comlaints not mentioned so far is that some students and some subjects require routine learning. Languages and math (itself a language) are the obvious candidates. Homework should be the opportunity for students to look at their material between classes to get that practice. Part of the purpose of homework is to get students to crack the book at home. The more self-teaching students are the more self-teaching they will do. Abandoning homework for classroom filler turns students into empty vessals which need a teacher to do the filling. There is also the idea that school should be entertaining. If learning can be so, great. But when it cannot, we should not provide empty entertainments because the kids expect it, because we want them to like us, or because we don't know what else to do. Games and videos (as well as the combination of them - the video game) must always be educational first, or they don't belong in the school. Ultimatly this criticism is what is undoing the block schedule in many districts.
Another criticism is that students may have long breaks in which they don't see a subject. One of the ideas behind the block is that it would facilitate inter-disciplinary lerning by encouraging coordination between teachers. I know that a lot of science gets worked into my world history plans and a lot of math into my US history plans. In a block, its easier to spend the time doing a 30 minute section on voting analysis (a new use for percentages!), the business cycle, or demographics. If that math comes after a video of the same topic and is followed by a discussion of the evidence from text, video, and the numbers, its much easier to do it than if you have a 50 minute block. Unfortunatly, the block has done little to foster interdisciplinarity or other kinds of extra-curricular goodies (I like to use art history, for instance).
Transfering is a problem, but its more a problem of variation between districts than it is of the block system. I would actually increase variation in a market based approach to schools which would tend to increase consumer (that is parent) control of the school, which would tend to increase this problem. The solution is for a teacher to spend a little time and devise a program of integration for the new student, so the student can quickly get to a place where the classroom is afterward profitable.
While there are still schools happy with the block system, I suspect the pendulum is swinging back towards the 7 period day. The reason can be found in the link I just provided, namely, "Those teachers who haven't changed teaching styles and still rely heavily on lecturing were least happy with the block, as were students in their classes." The 90 minute block system works best when you take a topic and cover it from three directions, using a combination of lecture, activity, and multi-media. That might be 30 minutes of lecture, 30 minutes of video, and group colaboration, or it might mean Adler style socratic method involving 10-15 minutes of lecture followed by 30 minutes of discussion and debate, either covering two topics, or followed by video, computer research, or some other activity.
Instead, Springfield students and administrators are telling me that too many teachers are still teaching as if they had a 50 minute period. Some just stretch the teaching they would do for 50 minutes longer, others just leave the rest of the time for homework. Students with experience in both systems prefer the block system because their is less homework, because teachers routinely don't fill the classroom time with teaching. Administrators argue that they did not go to a block system to create mini-study halls. They point to a lack of change in the test scores of the district indicating no change taking place between block and period. And block systems require a handful more teachers. In periods of financial stress, keeping the block system with no percieved benefit seems like bad judgement.
Opponants of the block point to these issiues:
Longer classes are incompatible with the attention spans of most students (20-50 minute attention spans are commonly cited)
Instead of trying to cover twice as much material in a longer class period, the natural tendency is to water down the material to maintain interest, resorting to movies, games, doing homework in class.
Students may experience a gap of 8 to 13 months before taking the next course in that series
Transfering from a district using block to one using periods or vise versa can be tough.
There are more comlaints at the site linked to but I don't take most of them seriously or regard them as technical issues. Lets look at the four charges above.
Attention span of 20-50 minutes: while this may seem to favor the 50 minute period, it should be remembered that the block is supposed to be 3 units of 30 minutes of different teaching style activites on one to three topics. For example. One day in my own Vietnam unit I lectured for about 20 minutes on problems of mobilization, identifying the draft, the use of reserves, and the expansion of the army. Then I presented a list of all the strategies urged by the services, political leaders, and other influential groups in the conduct of the war. Students were grouped and ask to play the role of presidential advisors choosing a policy for winning the war and being able to defend it. (I always like teaching strategic thinking because it benefits so many areas - financial planning, career planning, business planning, &c.) The last 20 minutes we watched a video segment of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident taped from the History Channel's episode of presidential scandals. In practice, this lesson had 20 minutes of lecture, 40 minutes of group work and presentation, and 20 minutes of video, as well as about 5 minutes of administration before class and 5 minutes of down time afterward during which I took questions on the unit test. The needs of attention for novelty were satisfied by the variation of teaching styles, despite the fact that our topic remained the early phase of the Vietnam War.
This brings up the second charge. Watering down material by adding games and movies. Is that what I described? No, but I am an advocate of block, and hopefully do a good job with the block. So some of this criticism may just be a mischaracterization of what I did as games and movies, when I think its pretty clear that genuine learning took place. I also have the summary reports students handed in advocating their strategy and know that there was higher level thinking applied to strategic consideration of a real historical problem. As a side note, the students favored various combinations of the marine corps approach to winning the war often combined with the Army's special operations counter insurgency doctrine.
However, I give real credibility to the complaint that much material is watered down with games, videos, and by allowing homework to be done in class. I see it and hear about it all the time. While good teachers know how to use the block system and how to keep learning progressing during 80-90 minutes, to many just teach the way they did in the 50 minute period and fill out the other 40 minutes with fluff. In the humanities classes this often means superfluous videos, or videos that could be valuable not used to challenge students to think. Math class is the worst offender in putting homework into the classroom, though all are guilty of it. One of the comlaints not mentioned so far is that some students and some subjects require routine learning. Languages and math (itself a language) are the obvious candidates. Homework should be the opportunity for students to look at their material between classes to get that practice. Part of the purpose of homework is to get students to crack the book at home. The more self-teaching students are the more self-teaching they will do. Abandoning homework for classroom filler turns students into empty vessals which need a teacher to do the filling. There is also the idea that school should be entertaining. If learning can be so, great. But when it cannot, we should not provide empty entertainments because the kids expect it, because we want them to like us, or because we don't know what else to do. Games and videos (as well as the combination of them - the video game) must always be educational first, or they don't belong in the school. Ultimatly this criticism is what is undoing the block schedule in many districts.
Another criticism is that students may have long breaks in which they don't see a subject. One of the ideas behind the block is that it would facilitate inter-disciplinary lerning by encouraging coordination between teachers. I know that a lot of science gets worked into my world history plans and a lot of math into my US history plans. In a block, its easier to spend the time doing a 30 minute section on voting analysis (a new use for percentages!), the business cycle, or demographics. If that math comes after a video of the same topic and is followed by a discussion of the evidence from text, video, and the numbers, its much easier to do it than if you have a 50 minute block. Unfortunatly, the block has done little to foster interdisciplinarity or other kinds of extra-curricular goodies (I like to use art history, for instance).
Transfering is a problem, but its more a problem of variation between districts than it is of the block system. I would actually increase variation in a market based approach to schools which would tend to increase consumer (that is parent) control of the school, which would tend to increase this problem. The solution is for a teacher to spend a little time and devise a program of integration for the new student, so the student can quickly get to a place where the classroom is afterward profitable.
Sunday, September 28, 2003
Blackout in Italy
When Goldfinger left Bond after their golf course he said , once is happenstance (refering to Bond's interference with his card game), twice is coincidence (refering to the golf game), but the third time is enemy action.
When the power went out first in the American NE, then in London, I thought little of it, other than the power grid needs to be maintained. But now Italy. Three leading countries that argued for the removal of Saddam. Coincidence or enemy action? It would not be unwarrented to keep this counterintelligence file open and see what leads develope.
When Goldfinger left Bond after their golf course he said , once is happenstance (refering to Bond's interference with his card game), twice is coincidence (refering to the golf game), but the third time is enemy action.
When the power went out first in the American NE, then in London, I thought little of it, other than the power grid needs to be maintained. But now Italy. Three leading countries that argued for the removal of Saddam. Coincidence or enemy action? It would not be unwarrented to keep this counterintelligence file open and see what leads develope.
Saturday, September 27, 2003
Friday, September 26, 2003
Andrew Sullivan on Dennis Prager
Andrew Sullivan, whom I have read since he write the TRB column at the New Republic, is on the Prager show (1-2 am, presumably 10-11am yesterday on KRLA) and its one of the most intelligent and interesting discussions of the question of the proper extent of marriage as I have encountered thus far. For those who have just fallen off the turnip truck, Sullivan is pro, Prager is con.
Andrew Sullivan, whom I have read since he write the TRB column at the New Republic, is on the Prager show (1-2 am, presumably 10-11am yesterday on KRLA) and its one of the most intelligent and interesting discussions of the question of the proper extent of marriage as I have encountered thus far. For those who have just fallen off the turnip truck, Sullivan is pro, Prager is con.
KIDS crowding out KRLA
My listening to local KIDS has been overtaking So-Cal KRLA. The cause? Summer's over, daytime listening has dropped way off, and KIDS has a familiar line up (Hewitt 5-8, Prager 11-2, Gallagher is on during the day, Medved is replayed on the weekend, and may well be on other times). So, regardless of where I start out after I get back from teaching, I get to KIDS by 7pm (since I get the 3rd hour on the radio right away rather than waiting until 10pm) and when KRLA is playing health and self-help, KIDS is doing a computer show, and then on to Prager. As a side note, I don't see much radio discussion on blogs (though much "what I am reading"). Locality of radio can be an issue here, but not entirely as my listening to KRLA reveals.
My listening to local KIDS has been overtaking So-Cal KRLA. The cause? Summer's over, daytime listening has dropped way off, and KIDS has a familiar line up (Hewitt 5-8, Prager 11-2, Gallagher is on during the day, Medved is replayed on the weekend, and may well be on other times). So, regardless of where I start out after I get back from teaching, I get to KIDS by 7pm (since I get the 3rd hour on the radio right away rather than waiting until 10pm) and when KRLA is playing health and self-help, KIDS is doing a computer show, and then on to Prager. As a side note, I don't see much radio discussion on blogs (though much "what I am reading"). Locality of radio can be an issue here, but not entirely as my listening to KRLA reveals.
Too busy to blog?
Its not that I don't have things to write about, but work plus school has been crowding out the blogging of late. Those ideas will hit the bloggosphere this weekend.
Its not that I don't have things to write about, but work plus school has been crowding out the blogging of late. Those ideas will hit the bloggosphere this weekend.
Monday, September 15, 2003
Illegal Operations opens its doors
Matthew Stinson of A Fearful Symmetry has started a new blog on gaming issues. That looks like fun. Check it out here.
Matthew Stinson of A Fearful Symmetry has started a new blog on gaming issues. That looks like fun. Check it out here.
Instapundit Predicts the Recall will go ahead
Instapundit writes, "Unless there's some awfully compelling legal principle that's not making it into the press accounts, I predict a reversal on this one. It's just too explosive."
I certainly hope so, or I have suddenly shifted to a much more radical position on whether or not our system is broken. In any event its time to start some serious activity to end legislation from the bench. Legislating is for legislators. Those elected representatives facing recall every couple of years, you know, not the appointed lifers on the bench.
Instapundit writes, "Unless there's some awfully compelling legal principle that's not making it into the press accounts, I predict a reversal on this one. It's just too explosive."
I certainly hope so, or I have suddenly shifted to a much more radical position on whether or not our system is broken. In any event its time to start some serious activity to end legislation from the bench. Legislating is for legislators. Those elected representatives facing recall every couple of years, you know, not the appointed lifers on the bench.
How Conservative do you have to be to react with hostility to school lunches?
Lileks has linked twice to A Small Victory in a previous week (catching up). So I have been reading the whole thing. In this post, a review of another blog appears. John Hawkins complains about school lunches, and Michele Catalano at A Small Victory defends them. A comment on the boards at A Small Victory by Matthew Stinson summarizes his post here.
As mind readers and very close readers of this weblog will have sensed, I am a Hamiltonian. As Hamilton and his successors knew, there are times when it is wiser to pry a few tax dollars from the reluctant grip of Americans. Investing in the human and material capital (and by investing I mean we reasonably expect a return on investment at some point) generally meets the approval of Hamiltonians. That may mean a tarriff to stimulate industry (Hamilton was a tarriff man for these reasons), internal improvements, like canals, to encourage transport and commerce, and school lunches. I have little doubt that I live in a better society because of school lunches, not in some soft compassionate way, but because 1) its a waste of the education funds spent on a student who gains little or no benefit because he is too hungry to learn. I'd rather toss an extra $2 a day on the pile of ed money rather than see the $40 a day already spent go to waste. 2) What social benefits (say in terms of productive labor and future tax paying) can be expected from a well educated youth who was raised in poverty compared to a poorly eduacted youth? What additional costs are incurred by the poorly educated youth in terms of police, court, prison, or even just social services costs that do not accrue to his well educated fellow? Every good Hamiltonian will support any expenditure which saves him money or produces additional money beyond the investment. Hamiltonians will begin to demure as the expected return on the investment falls, though we are not above some consideration of non-fiscal benefits. And we have a phrase to decribe those conservatives who so jealously guard their earnings that they will not: penny wise and pound foolish.
By the way, Hawkins responds to A Small Victory and the comments there and digs a whole for himself even farther down. His mocking sign off, the same as A Small Victory is almost malicious.
As a final note, I am impressed with A Fearful Symmetry and will be making repeat visits.
Lileks has linked twice to A Small Victory in a previous week (catching up). So I have been reading the whole thing. In this post, a review of another blog appears. John Hawkins complains about school lunches, and Michele Catalano at A Small Victory defends them. A comment on the boards at A Small Victory by Matthew Stinson summarizes his post here.
As mind readers and very close readers of this weblog will have sensed, I am a Hamiltonian. As Hamilton and his successors knew, there are times when it is wiser to pry a few tax dollars from the reluctant grip of Americans. Investing in the human and material capital (and by investing I mean we reasonably expect a return on investment at some point) generally meets the approval of Hamiltonians. That may mean a tarriff to stimulate industry (Hamilton was a tarriff man for these reasons), internal improvements, like canals, to encourage transport and commerce, and school lunches. I have little doubt that I live in a better society because of school lunches, not in some soft compassionate way, but because 1) its a waste of the education funds spent on a student who gains little or no benefit because he is too hungry to learn. I'd rather toss an extra $2 a day on the pile of ed money rather than see the $40 a day already spent go to waste. 2) What social benefits (say in terms of productive labor and future tax paying) can be expected from a well educated youth who was raised in poverty compared to a poorly eduacted youth? What additional costs are incurred by the poorly educated youth in terms of police, court, prison, or even just social services costs that do not accrue to his well educated fellow? Every good Hamiltonian will support any expenditure which saves him money or produces additional money beyond the investment. Hamiltonians will begin to demure as the expected return on the investment falls, though we are not above some consideration of non-fiscal benefits. And we have a phrase to decribe those conservatives who so jealously guard their earnings that they will not: penny wise and pound foolish.
By the way, Hawkins responds to A Small Victory and the comments there and digs a whole for himself even farther down. His mocking sign off, the same as A Small Victory is almost malicious.
As a final note, I am impressed with A Fearful Symmetry and will be making repeat visits.
Sunday, September 14, 2003
Metaphysics before everything
I have been having a problem running into people who are putting their aestheics before their metaphysics, and its bothering me. People do this all the time, but I often don't have to see it, so the problem at hand its the running into. I would prefer that people put their metaphysics first all of the time, but I would prefer a lot of things in the way people reason and act.
What am I talking about, you ask? Metaphysics is the part of philosophy where we ask "what is the nature of things" or as Wittgenstien like to put it, "what is the case." I would argue that if what know what is, we develop a critical apparaus with which to examine our world, and when we encounter people with different values and aesthetics, we appreciate the difference, expand our understanding of the world, and happily go on our way. When you encounter someone who has a an explicit cosmology (their world view) and a well articulated ontology (their definitions of the concepts they use) its easy for you to see the world they see. When further, they start with a cosmology, so that its not yet determined by what they want it to be like, its open to new data. So for example, you might encounter someone who has not yet read a book, describe the book, and they would be interested in taking this new information (which may or may not agree with their ideas about things) and examining it, integrating it both by attacking and accepting various parts of it.
On the other hand, consider someone who begins with epistomology (they ask the question how do we know what we know) and then forms a metaphysics. Because they are aware of a lack of certainty of some kinds of knowledge, they will not include this knowledge in their metaphsyics. For example, say a person decides they cannot know the minds of others, they can only know themselves, and then forms a world view based only on themselves. This is narcisism. We may not have the same kind of knowledge about the various parts of the world, but the whole world, even the parts we cannot really understand must be included in our world. Once we have as good a notion of the world as we can get, we can form a philosophy and begin to refine our cosmology with a method. So I can begin not knowing about distant planets or the world beneath the oceans, but I can construct a way of knowing that I regard as reliable and begin to examine these little known places with that method. The same is true if we are talking about the nature of good and evil, as much as a place.
Most vexing of late has been the primacy of axiology (values) especially aesthetics (judgements about beauty and pleasure). Putting any axiology first and then to construct a metaphysics afterword is to decide how you would like the world to be, and then to pretend it really is that way. When we think this way, people who disagree with us are idiots because they disagree with the way the world is. This is the kind of thinking that totally shuts down thought. One decided what is true and then assumes they are right.
So I find myself in the public schools, hallowed halls of learning. I am interested in Virginia Postrel's new book The Substance of Style. I am teaching art. After school I wander across the hall to another art teacher and strike up a conversation about Postrel's book. I am myself still wrestling with the ideas within, and so have no firm judgement about the book, except that it is interesting. It is the aestheic argument, that people are capable of creating a valid aesthic for themselves and that their consumer choices are not decadent or vulgar that makes me think that an art teacher would be interested in this. Instead, I am confused by the responce I get: "Why would anyone make such an argument?" I reply, "Why would anyone make any kind of argument at all?" I see the posing of an argument as an attempt to refine my cosmology by use of a reliable rational and/or emperical method. So I take information, compare it to my experience as a test for validity. If the information differs from my experience, I attempt to either falsify one of them or synthasize them, depending on which seems to best explain the observable world. This teacher did not operate this way, and I was initially confused by it. This teacher had an aesthetics and Postrel's book disagreed with it, so the book was silly. As I mentioned this conversation to other people, they either humored me (because I am interested in the most esoteric things like how we philosophize) or they defended the ascetic aesthetic which Postrel attacks. I found myself replaying the conversation in different forms with different evidence. But what I kept encountering was the idea that we are destroying the planet, that technology is moving too fast, and that America is the worst offender. I think these analyses are wrong, but I am open to evidence to the contrary. The reverse was not true. People have decided that they don't like the way America consumes so it must be harmful. I don't like the way America consumes, so I don't consume that way. I recognize that my preference is a matter of taste. As for harm, I look for evidence in the outside world, not in my sense of what I perfer. I think people are making rational choices based on values different from mine. The evidence suggests that there are benefits and costs to the action of various people, and so I assume that their weight of the costs and benefits is rational unless I have some evidence to suggest otherwise. Overall I see a prosperous, healthy society that constantly improves itself. This only happens because it is acting consistently with reality. Pretending that things are they way they are not produces failure. Looking at the way things work closely, looking for cases that reveal the way things are, suggests to me that Americans are living reasonable and rational lives, and that they make reasonable choices.
I have been having a problem running into people who are putting their aestheics before their metaphysics, and its bothering me. People do this all the time, but I often don't have to see it, so the problem at hand its the running into. I would prefer that people put their metaphysics first all of the time, but I would prefer a lot of things in the way people reason and act.
What am I talking about, you ask? Metaphysics is the part of philosophy where we ask "what is the nature of things" or as Wittgenstien like to put it, "what is the case." I would argue that if what know what is, we develop a critical apparaus with which to examine our world, and when we encounter people with different values and aesthetics, we appreciate the difference, expand our understanding of the world, and happily go on our way. When you encounter someone who has a an explicit cosmology (their world view) and a well articulated ontology (their definitions of the concepts they use) its easy for you to see the world they see. When further, they start with a cosmology, so that its not yet determined by what they want it to be like, its open to new data. So for example, you might encounter someone who has not yet read a book, describe the book, and they would be interested in taking this new information (which may or may not agree with their ideas about things) and examining it, integrating it both by attacking and accepting various parts of it.
On the other hand, consider someone who begins with epistomology (they ask the question how do we know what we know) and then forms a metaphysics. Because they are aware of a lack of certainty of some kinds of knowledge, they will not include this knowledge in their metaphsyics. For example, say a person decides they cannot know the minds of others, they can only know themselves, and then forms a world view based only on themselves. This is narcisism. We may not have the same kind of knowledge about the various parts of the world, but the whole world, even the parts we cannot really understand must be included in our world. Once we have as good a notion of the world as we can get, we can form a philosophy and begin to refine our cosmology with a method. So I can begin not knowing about distant planets or the world beneath the oceans, but I can construct a way of knowing that I regard as reliable and begin to examine these little known places with that method. The same is true if we are talking about the nature of good and evil, as much as a place.
Most vexing of late has been the primacy of axiology (values) especially aesthetics (judgements about beauty and pleasure). Putting any axiology first and then to construct a metaphysics afterword is to decide how you would like the world to be, and then to pretend it really is that way. When we think this way, people who disagree with us are idiots because they disagree with the way the world is. This is the kind of thinking that totally shuts down thought. One decided what is true and then assumes they are right.
So I find myself in the public schools, hallowed halls of learning. I am interested in Virginia Postrel's new book The Substance of Style. I am teaching art. After school I wander across the hall to another art teacher and strike up a conversation about Postrel's book. I am myself still wrestling with the ideas within, and so have no firm judgement about the book, except that it is interesting. It is the aestheic argument, that people are capable of creating a valid aesthic for themselves and that their consumer choices are not decadent or vulgar that makes me think that an art teacher would be interested in this. Instead, I am confused by the responce I get: "Why would anyone make such an argument?" I reply, "Why would anyone make any kind of argument at all?" I see the posing of an argument as an attempt to refine my cosmology by use of a reliable rational and/or emperical method. So I take information, compare it to my experience as a test for validity. If the information differs from my experience, I attempt to either falsify one of them or synthasize them, depending on which seems to best explain the observable world. This teacher did not operate this way, and I was initially confused by it. This teacher had an aesthetics and Postrel's book disagreed with it, so the book was silly. As I mentioned this conversation to other people, they either humored me (because I am interested in the most esoteric things like how we philosophize) or they defended the ascetic aesthetic which Postrel attacks. I found myself replaying the conversation in different forms with different evidence. But what I kept encountering was the idea that we are destroying the planet, that technology is moving too fast, and that America is the worst offender. I think these analyses are wrong, but I am open to evidence to the contrary. The reverse was not true. People have decided that they don't like the way America consumes so it must be harmful. I don't like the way America consumes, so I don't consume that way. I recognize that my preference is a matter of taste. As for harm, I look for evidence in the outside world, not in my sense of what I perfer. I think people are making rational choices based on values different from mine. The evidence suggests that there are benefits and costs to the action of various people, and so I assume that their weight of the costs and benefits is rational unless I have some evidence to suggest otherwise. Overall I see a prosperous, healthy society that constantly improves itself. This only happens because it is acting consistently with reality. Pretending that things are they way they are not produces failure. Looking at the way things work closely, looking for cases that reveal the way things are, suggests to me that Americans are living reasonable and rational lives, and that they make reasonable choices.
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