Do we really need them? I don’t know, but if so, spending money on NASA isn’t the way to do it, at least not intrinsically.
Category Archives: Education
Constrained Versus Unconstrained
The latest Firewall, from Bill Whittle.
The Ongoing Educational Disaster
Next up: math textbooks.
Really, this shouldn’t be that hard. Pre-calculus math hasn’t changed much over the past several decades. But it all comes down to the perverse incentives in the public-school monopoly, in which having a worthless degree in “education” is more important than having actual useful knowledge to impart to your charges.
James Q. Wilson’s Insight
…improved America. As opposed to the insight of (say) Barack Obama.
[UPdate a while later]
More (and lengthy) thoughts from Roger Kimball:
The Moral Sense is far from being anti-intellectual. But it is, in part, a cautionary tale about the dangers of taking intellectuals, especially academic intellectuals, too seriously. Given the presumption that education will broaden one’s perspective, it is curious that the chief danger is a narrowing of horizons. The peculiar combination of arrogance and despair that seems characteristic of homo academicus today breeds a remarkable obtuseness about many important questions. Wilson puts it thus: “Someone once remarked that the two great errors in moral philosophy are the belief that we know the truth and the belief that there is no truth to be known. Only people who have had the benefit of higher education seem inclined to fall into so false a choice.” It is a sobering thought that last year in the United States, some thirteen million students partook of that benefit.
Sobering indeed.
Insanity Up North
These people should be sued for false arrest. Though tar and feathers would be fine, too.
Obama And Santorum
…and the snobbery of the Left.
Teaching The Controversy
Some useful thoughts on science education and climate from Judith Curry.
The Green Movement Jumps The Shark
Between Rajenda Pachauri and Peter Gleick, the international green movement has displayed a penchant for colorful personalities. But the root cause of the green meltdown is not the flawed personalities and eccentric ethical standards some greens display. The problem has been that the greens tried to stick the world with a monstrous and unworkable climate control system through the flawed medium of a global treaty. This project is so expensive, so poorly conceived and, in fact, so naive and unthinking, that greens increasingly felt their only hope to get their agenda adopted involved scare tactics.
Like Dean Acheson addressing the communist menace, they were “clearer than truth.” They stretched evidence, invented catastrophes — vanishing glaciers, disappearing polar bears, waves of force five hurricanes sweeping up the coast, the end of snow — to sell their unsalable dream. Not all greens were this irresponsible, but many prominent spokespersons and journalists working with the movement were; ultimately the mix of an unworkable policy agenda and a climate of hype and hysteria holed the green ship below the waterline.
Of contemporary mass movements, the green movement has been consistently the most alarmist, the least constructive, the most emotional, the least rational, the most intolerant and the most self righteous. What makes it all sad rather than funny is that underneath the hype, the misstatements, the vicious character attacks on anyone who dissented from the orthodoxy of the day, and the dumbest policy ideas since the Kellogg-Briand Pact that aimed to outlaw war, there really are some issues here that require thoughtful study and response.
Unfortunately, we’re not going to get it from people who are reflexively anti-human socialists, such as John Holdren.
The Climate Fraud
Ross Kaminsky called it:
If those climate alarmists who went after me (for what I said explicitly in my note was “my speculation”) had any honor, they would not just apologize, but feel some guilt for being associated with the religion of climate change whose high priests could sink to identity theft because they feel “frustration” at not being able to get the rest of the country to join their rent-seeking, anti-human cult.
In the meantime, I take some satisfaction in believing, though I’ll never know for sure, that my article gave Mr. Gleick some incentive to confess, before the FBI agent came to his door. Or perhaps he just didn’t want to spend the money on a new (non-Epson) scanner.
Note also the comments from Judith Curry, who has been one of the few people in the climate community actually acting like a scientist.
[Update a few minutes later]
The Johann Hari of climate “science.”
Kind of funny the sort of people they’ll hand out “Genius Awards” to.
[Update a couple minutes later]
But it was only a first offense: Gleick has apparently been removed from the AGU Task Force on Scientific Ethics. Gee, I’d have thought he’d be a poster boy.
[Update a few minutes later]
Related: Don’t know much about science books.
[Update a while later]
In apologizing, Gleick blames his victims:
Once you begin to believe that the success of the Cause justifies deceit and theft, how long until you begin making excuses for other crimes committed on behalf of the Cause? I do not accuse Peter Gleick and his fellow fanatics of any Stalinist ambitions, but when we see them engaged in Stalinist methods — publishing forged documents to smear their critics – aren’t we justified in suspecting that they are not otherwise honest?
Actually, I suspect that some of them harbor Stalinist ambitions (e.g., Holdren). What a piece of work this guy is.
The Dumbest Generation
This chart is cruel, but true. It’s what happens when you think that The Daily Show is a news show.