MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Zero-Tolerance Stupidity At Schools.
Archive for 2013
December 31, 2013
PLEASE BUY A COPY: My new book, The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, is now shipping from Amazon.
P.C. EDUCATION LED TO LIBYA DEBACLE:
Finally on this point, why does the American MSM almost never mention tribes, except occasionally as an afterthought, and never speak about how countries like Libya are organized socially, and how that affects their politics? There are so many examples of this that it cannot simply be a coincidence. This is not the place to go into detail, but it comes down, I think, to a form of political correctness that tacitly prohibits any mention of what might be taken even to imply that Libyans (or Yemenis or Syrians or Egyptians, or Pashtuns, or…) might in some way be pre-modern, as we understand the term. (Actually, they’re less aptly described as pre-modern than simply as different, but lowest-common-denominator Enlightenment universalism is very bad at acknowledging the dignity of difference.) That kind of appellation is considered just this side of racist in the higher etiquette of American Enlightenment liberalism, deeply dented, as it has been, by the nonsense of anti-“Orientalism” regnant now for more than a generation in academe. Yes, it was at university where our elite press reporters and their august editors learned this stuff.
As long as our elite press censors itself in this manner, an objective socio-political description of these (and other) countries will remain impossible, and a distorted understanding will inevitably feed misbegotten policy adventures like the Libya war. I would like to be able to assure you that what ails the academy and the press does not afflict the clear-eyed professionals at the CIA and the State Department and USAID and the NSC and the officer corps of the uniformed military. Yes, I would like to… but a lot of these guys went to those same universities.
America has been ill-served by its higher education establishment in a number of ways.
ERIC POSNER now has his own blog.
ACTUALLY, AS WE LEARNED WITH SARAH PALIN’S FAMILY, IT’S ONLY THE CHILDREN OF DEMOCRATS WHOM DECENCY PLACES OFF-LIMITS: “Quite aside from racial politics, I thought children were off limits. Here you have an MSNBC panel segment planned around laughing at a baby. We scrupulously avoid using Obama’s daughters as raw material for jokes. Why didn’t anyone at MSNBC nix this?” Because those are Obama’s daughters.
THIS IS THE BEST “SUCCESS STORY” THEY CAN COME UP WITH? The face of ObamaCare – a 50 year old triathlete / financial services professional.
Compare this case.
CONN CARROLL: Why ObamaCare Will Only Get Less Popular. “Remember: President Obama delayed the employer mandate till 2015. So most Americans who have employer-sponsored health insurance really have not felt the Obamacare pain yet. That will change as more and more businesses make the same types of decisions Extreme Dodge did above. And when they do, Obamacare’s approval ratings can only go down.”
JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Why Obama frets about income inequality, not family breakdown.
How many times in such an important speech did Obama mention anything about American family breakdown perhaps impeding economic mobility? Just a couple of passing references.
Yet the issue of family breakdown deserves at least as much attention, if not more, from Obama than income inequality. Using data on local jobs markets from the Equality of Opportunity Project, e21 economist Scott Winship can’t find much of a statistical relationship between inequality – particularly of the 1% vs. 99% sort — and economic mobility. The EOP authors also find “a high concentration of income in the top 1% was not highly correlated with mobility patterns.”
What does seem to be highly correlated with mobility is family structure. In these communities, the share of families with single moms predicts mobility levels “quite well all by itself,” according to Winship’s analysis. Again, this result is not real surprising. Researchers on the left and right have found that kids raised by both biological parents fare better financially, educationally, and emotionally. And as the EOP scholars conclude: “Some of the strongest predictors of upward mobility are correlates of social capital and family structure.”
A cynic might suggest emphasizing family dysfunction, particularly among those without a college or high school diploma, doesn’t fit into the Democrats narrative as neatly as blaming Republicans for slashing taxes and weakening labor unions – both of which Obama mentioned in that speech.
Where Obama’s concerned, the cynics are usually the ones to listen to. They have a pretty good track record by this point. . . .
KIT LANGE: Becoming We The People again.
IT’S POTEMKIN VILLAGES ALL THE WAY DOWN: NPR: Colleges Use Photoshop to Paint Faux Diversity. “Pippert and his researchers looked at more than 10,000 images from college brochures, comparing the racial breakdown of students in the pictures to the colleges’ actual demographics. They found that, overall, the whiter the school, the more diversity depicted in the brochures, especially for certain groups.” My Nigerian sister-in-law appeared a couple of dozen times in her college’s bulletin, though to be fair, she’s uncommonly attractive.
ESPECIALLY IF YOU’RE TALKING PAID ENROLLMENTS AND NOT JUST “SHOPPING CART” ENROLLMENTS: The Hill: 7M ObamaCare enrollment target a tall order despite recent surge. Since we have no idea how many of the “surge” enrollments are actually paid.
OOPS: A Setback For The Democrats In Montana. “Walsh may lose, not gain, thanks to new reports that he used his position in the National Guard for personal gain. On Sunday, a Montana TV station reported that Walsh was cited in a 2010 inspector general report for pressuring other Montana National Guard leaders to join a separate group — the privately run National Guard Association of the United States (NGAUS). At the time, Walsh was running for the NGAUS vice-chairmanship and was attempting to drum up support for his candidacy, according to the inspector general.”
December 30, 2013
WELL, THERE’S A SHOT IN THE ARM FOR ANDROID: The NSA has nearly complete backdoor access to Apple’s iPhone. “Either [the NSA] have a huge collection of exploits that work against Apple products, meaning they are hoarding information about critical systems that American companies produce, and sabotaging them, or Apple sabotaged it themselves.”
BUT OF COURSE: John Jay College prof blames ‘southern white radicals’ for Obamacare failure. Everything is their fault. Everything!
IMAGINE THAT: The NY Times Looks In the Wrong Place for Corrupt Academics. “All in a day’s work at the New York Times, America’s least reliable news outlet.”
Plus: “But the main point I want to make is somewhat different. The Times and other left-wing commentators are quick to assume that any connections between academics and private enterprise are somehow suspect. But how about the government? Every sentient being knows that the federal government, in today’s world, is just another interest group–the biggest, most powerful, and often most sinister interest group of them all. How about academics who take grant money from the government? Are they not tainted and corrupt?”
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Also, deals on bestselling Glassware & Drinkware. I notice that you can get two of the Glencairn Whiskey Glasses I mentioned a while back for just $15.24.
THE SADNESS OF BEING TOO FAT TO FLY. Well, in coach, anyway.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: “I have been living with my boyfriend for approximately four years; we are both in our 50s. I don’t understand why he hasn’t asked me to marry him.”
I can suggest some remedial reading that might help.
PROF. JACOBSON: What is right about this picture, and wrong with MSNBC? They told me if I voted for Mitt Romney, society would be enforcing color lines and frowning at race-mixing. And they were right!
DYLAN MATTHEWS: Abolish The TSA.
Many of the problems with air travel can be directly attributed to the TSA. The whole time-wasting, privacy-invading aspect of all of it is bad on its face, but there are indirect harms, as well. The whole reason you have to get to the airport 90 minutes to two hours before boarding is that you don’t know how long it’s going to take to get through security. If you knew it would take 10 minutes — or, better yet, zero minutes — you could get there 15 to 20 minutes before boarding and be fine.
The just-in-time arrival point is really key. On Friday, I had the pleasure of flying on Cape Air from Lebanon, N.H., to White Plains, N.Y. Cape Air is a commuter airline, and as this flight was on a plane with a total of eight passengers (plus the pilot), and disembarked outside the secure or “sterile” zone of the White Plains airport, it was exempt from TSA passenger screening requirements as laid out in §1544.101 of title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations. The flight was at 11 a.m., and boarded at 10:50, so I got to the airport around 10:30. I could have gotten there at 10:45, and it would’ve been totally fine. I just walked up to the airline counter, gave my name, got my ticket and walked into the aircraft. Because the plane was so small, you have less control over your carry-ons than you might usually, as the crew has to carefully place luggage so as to not put the plane off balance. But you also are spared baggage claim upon arrival, as the plane is unloaded for you right on the tarmac. It felt basically like riding Amtrak, or Bolt Bus. You just show up, show a ticket, and get on. No muss, no fuss.
That’s how flying used to be. Meanwhile, here’s my call to abolish the TSA.
UPDATE: Reader Ed Clark writes:
If the description is true, maybe there is a market for “micro” airlines. Small flights, nationwide, outside the TSA.
Motto: “Pay little more but be treated with respect”.
It could work. I wrote about something similar here.
INFOGRAPHIC: State Knife Laws.
UPDATE: In the comments, criticism of this chart. Don’t rely on it, I guess.