Category Archives: Education

Business, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Trump And The Crisis Of Meritocracy

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Thoughts from Glenn Reynolds:

“The warning lights have been flashing, and the klaxons sounding, for more than a decade and a half. But our pundits and prognosticators and professors and policymakers, ensconced as they generally are deep within the bubble, were for the most part too distant from the distress of the general population to see or hear it.”

Well, now they’ve heard it, and they’ve also heard that a lot of Americans resent the meritocrats’ insulation from what’s happening elsewhere, especially as America’s unfortunate record over the past couple of decades, whether in economics, in politics, or in foreign policy, doesn’t suggest that the “meritocracy” is overflowing with, you know, actual merit.

In the United States, the result has been Trump. In Britain, the result was Brexit. In both cases, the allegedly elite — who are supposed to be cool, considered, and above the vulgar passions of the masses — went more or less crazy. From conspiracy theories (it was the Russians!) to bizarre escape fantasies (A Brexit vote redo! A military coup to oust Trump!) the cognitive elite suddenly didn’t seem especially elite, or for that matter particularly cognitive.

In fact, while America was losing wars abroad and jobs at home, elites seemed focused on things that were, well, faintly ridiculous. As Richard Fernandez tweeted: “The elites lost their mojo by becoming absurd. It happened on the road between cultural appropriation and transgender bathrooms.” It was fatal: “People believe from instinct. The Roman gods became ridiculous when the Roman emperors did. PC is the equivalent of Caligula’s horse.”

There’s nothing “elite” or even educated about them. They’re just credentialed.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

We Have A New POTUS

27 Comments

I’m glad Obama’s gone. I’m less thrilled that we have Trump. As others have noted, it was a pretty protectionist inaugural address.

But I’m happy with his picks, and I think that Gelernter would be a good pick for science adviser. And here’s one more reason Trump won.

[Update a couple minutes later]

And yes, Trump should defund the National Endowment for the Arts.

Business, Culinary, Education, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Medical Incompetence And Junk Science

10 Comments

This is a frightening story. It’s why I try to avoid hospitals at all costs.

I asked Dr. G, who is now his personal cardiologist, if we needed to do anything to prevent his potassium from going so low again. He said, “If he stays off that drug, he will be fine.” To think that he went through all this because his GP gave him a drug to prevent heart attacks!! What a crazy world we live in.

…The blood pressure medication Dean had taken for 20 years was hydrochlorothiazide. It is the most commonly prescribed medication for blood pressure, not because it is safe or effective, but because it is the one insurance companies choose to pay for!

The dietary and general medical ignorance on display, and the rules, are almost criminal. And I’m sure this is the kind of treatment that my father got when he died of his second heart attack, in 1979. And I consider my high blood pressure (with which I’ve been living otherwise healthily for many decades) to be less risk than most of the prescribed “treatments.”

Education, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Judith Curry

19 Comments

…has resigned her tenured faculty position:

A deciding factor was that I no longer know what to say to students and postdocs regarding how to navigate the CRAZINESS in the field of climate science. Research and other professional activities are professionally rewarded only if they are channeled in certain directions approved by a politicized academic establishment — funding, ease of getting your papers published, getting hired in prestigious positions, appointments to prestigious committees and boards, professional recognition, etc.

How young scientists are to navigate all this is beyond me, and it often becomes a battle of scientific integrity versus career suicide (I have worked through these issues with a number of skeptical young scientists).

Despite the fact that she was protected by tenure, I suspect that she will be able to speak out even more effectively now.

[Update Thursday morning (London]

Thoughts from Mark Steyn.

Saturday-morning update]

Tucker Carlson interviews her.

[Bumped]

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

McDowell County, WV

7 Comments

Why don’t they leave?

That question is actually surprisingly easy to answer: They did. After all, 80 percent of McDowell’s population, including my grandparents, cleared out of the county to seek opportunities elsewhere during the last half-century.

But as the mines mechanized and closed down, why didn’t the rest go, too? Reed, Whitt, and Slagle all more or less agree that many folks in McDowell are being bribed by government handouts to stay put and to stay poor. Drug use is the result of the demoralization that follows.

In a Fall 2014 National Affairs article called “Moving to Work,” R Street Institute analysts Eli Lehrer and Lori Sanders asked, “What is keeping the poor from moving their families to new places to take advantage of better opportunities?” They argue that “the answer lies primarily in the structure of poverty-relief programs.” In other words, the government is paying people to be poor.

Yes.