JEFF GOLDSTEIN: Education, the state, the teachers’ unions, and you.
Archive for 2012
February 1, 2012
NOW THEY TELL US: Associated Press: Experts say Gingrich moon base dreams not lunacy.
ANY READER RECOMMENDATIONS for a must-visit restaurant in Lexington, Kentucky?
UPDATE: Okay, that’s plenty. Thanks!
THE OCCUPYDC TASING INCIDENT AND TWO VIEWS OF POLICE/CITIZEN INTERACTION:
Why is opinion so divided? My pet hypothesis is that most people recognize two competing narratives when it comes to police-citizen interaction. The first narrative is what you might call the equality narrative. The equality narrative posits that the police are just citizens who happen to wear uniforms, and they have no more right to get their way than anyone else. If an officer asks a person questions, for example, he doesn’t have to respond. Unless the officer orders him to stay put, he can walk away.
The second narrative is what I’ll call the inequality narrative. The inequality narrative posits that the police have special authority by virtue of being police officers, and that people interacting with the police have to recognize that special authority and should expect trouble if they don’t. If an officer decides to make an arrest, for example, the subject of the arrest can’t just decide he would rather not be arrested and try to resist the officer’s efforts.
Read the whole thing.
DON’T BE EVIL — UNLESS THERE’S MONEY IN IT OR SOMETHING: Google to Censor Blogger Blogs on a ‘Per Country Basis.’ “Google has quietly announced changes to its Blogger free-blogging platform that will enable the blocking of content only in countries where censorship is required. Twitter announced technology last week addressing the same topic. It said it had acquired the ability to censor tweets in the countries only where it was ordered removed, instead of on an internet-wide basis.”
NO SEX PLEASE, WE’RE JAPANESE: Japan Population Decline: Third Of Nation’s Youth Have ‘No Interest’ In Sex.
A startling number of Japanese youths have turned their backs on sex and relationships, a new survey has found.
The survey, conducted by the Japan Family Planning Association, found that 36% of males aged 16 to 19 said that they had “no interest” in or even “despised” sex. That’s almost a 19% increase since the survey was last conducted in 2008.
If that’s not bad enough, The Wall Street Journal reports that a whopping 59% of female respondents aged 16 to 19 said they were uninterested in or averse to sex, a near 12% increase since 2008.
There’s no future in this.
UPDATE: Reader Jeff Johnson writes: “That statistic is shocking – but what causes people to go against their basic instincts, procreation in this situation? One thing that the article didn’t mention is that the Japanese economy and been stagnant for a long time. When there is no bright future, who wants take the time and expense to woo a mate let alone to start a family? Virtual girlfriends and worlds don’t have the problems or complexities that the real world has, but it also doesn’t have the rewards either. Maybe Japan will turn into Solaria as in Asimov’s novels, Robots and Earth and Foundation and Earth?” Well, that didn’t work out so well.
ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails:
You likely don’t remember me, but about a decade ago I had a popular English language blog in Asia — “The Gweilo Diaries”. Your links were a big part of whatever success I had in the early days of the blogosphere.
Although I’m retired from blogging and the general debauchery that provided a significant part of my blog fodder, I wanted to share my reaction to your post about the purported emasculation of Japan.
As a preface: my wife — yes, I’m now married, monogamous and very content — is Japanese. Many of my friends and clients are Japanese. I speak passable Japanese and I am still intrigued (and sometimes repelled) by Japanese culture.
The statistics you link to miss the point. Young Japanese guys are as horny and desperate to get laid as any guys in the world. Probably more so, since only young Arabs get less actual sex. Japanese girls are as eager to find an alpha male boyfriend as any other nationality. Japan still produces the most prolific and extraordinary porn in the world. Someone is watching it.
Unfortunately, three lost economic decades has resulted in a plethora of un- or under-employed young beta men, without real jobs or prospects of success, and young women who look at these prospective suitors and despair.
Young Japanese guys who can’t attract women turn to magna, gaming, and juvinalia Young Japanese women, in a society without f*ckworthy guys, turn to fashion, girl friends and the passive/aggressive “cute culture” prevalent among Japanese girls. It turns out that economic stagnation if the enemy of hot sex.
The US is not Japan, but if present trends of debt, unemployment, lack of mobility and stagnation continue, the end result will be similar.
If they want to win the youth vote, I propose the slogan: “Get laid, vote Republican”. Unfortunately, Romney is an unlikely advocate and Newt had better not go there. How about “Obama is saltpeter.” as an alternative?
I remember the Gweilo Diaries. That was a good blog.
THE QUESTION IS, HARSH COMPARED TO WHAT? Thousands Aim to Land Job at Foxconn Despite Harsh Conditions. Being a Chinese peasant farmer is no picnic.
SCIENCE: Mobile Phone Data Reveals Human Reproductive Strategies. “The pattern of calls and texts between humans reveals how women invest more heavily in their main relationship than men; and how this changes as they age. . . . What’s striking about this is how strongly female relationships are determined by their reproductive cycle.”
SCIENCE: Translating Brain Waves to Reconstruct Sounds and Conversations You’ve Heard. “By decoding patterns of activity in the brain, doctors may one day be able to play back the imagined conversations in our heads, or to communicate with a person who can think and hear but cannot speak.”
AT AMAZON, coupons galore.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Inflated SAT Scores Reveal ‘Elasticity of Admissions Data’. “In the Wild West of college admissions, there is no Data Sheriff.”
STATISTICS: Deadbeat Moms More Common Than Deadbeat Dads.
Single dads are sick and tired of being labeled “deadbeats” when it comes to paying child support. And data suggest they have good reason to be upset.
The percentage of “deadbeat” moms is actually higher than that of dads who won’t pay, even though mothers are more consistently awarded custody of children by the courts.
Census figures show only 57 percent of moms required to pay child support — 385,000 women out of a total of 674,000 — give up some or all of the money they owe. That leaves some 289,000 “deadbeat” mothers out there, a fact that has barely been reported in the media.
That compares with 68 percent of dads who pay up, according to the figures.
Read the whole thing. And note this: “Not only are the dads paying up more when they don’t have custody, but when the court does hand the kids over to dads, they work more than moms who have custody. While 7 percent of custodial moms work more than 44 hours a week, 24.5 percent of single custodial dads work more than 44 hours. And only about half as many custodial dads get government help than moms.”
TED OLSON CALLS OUT OBAMA’S ENEMIES LIST. I was talking to a CEO last year — an Obama supporter no less — who told me he was amazed at how openly Administration officials threatened to use media demonization if he didn’t play ball. It’s like they’ve got the press in their pocket or something.
But now some of those officials have to be thinking that the people they threaten will be around after Obama’s gone, and they’ll remember.
FASTER, PLEASE: Brown Fat Revelations May Lead To New Weight-Loss Drugs. “Scientists have found a new way to rev the body’s metabolism: Activate its fat cells. Ultimately, what they envision is a ‘brown fat pill’—a drug that boosts brown fat activity through molecular means. Here’s the science behind what may be the weight-loss breakthrough of the next decade.”
A COMMEMORATIVE STAMP for space science.
MEGAN MCARDLE: Should the Church Have to Dispense Birth Control? “I’ve seen several versions of Kevin’s complaint on the interwebs, and everyone makes it seems to assume that we’re doing the Catholic Church a big old favor by allowing them to provide health care and other social services to a needy public. Why, we’re really coddling them, and it’s about time they started acting a little grateful for everything we’ve done for them!”
It’s not about birth control. It’s about control.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Don’t Get Audited! The IRS’s Dirty Dozen Red Flags.
ALLEN WEST switching districts.
BRANNON DENNING AND MICHAEL KENT: Anti-Evasion Doctrines In Constitutional Law. Worth your time, if this stuff interests you. What about Second Amendment anti-evasion doctrines?