Category Archives: Political Commentary

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Cargo Cult

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…of credentials.

[Update a few minutes later]

More thoughts from (uncredentialed) Mark Steyn:

The justification for this absurd prolongation of adolescence is that it opens up opportunities for the disadvantaged. But credential-fetishization has the opposite effect. Remember Ronald Reagan, alumnus of Eureka College, Illinois? Since then, for the first time in its history, America has lived under continuous rule by Ivy League – Yale (Bush I), Yale Law (Clinton), Harvard Business (Bush II), Harvard Law (Obama). In 2009, over a quarter of Obama’s political appointees had ties to Harvard; over 90 per cent had “advanced degrees”. How’s that working out for you? In my soon to be imminently forthcomingly imminent book, I point out that once upon a time America was the land where guys without degrees (Truman) or only 18 months of formal education (Lincoln) or no schooling at all (Zachary Taylor) could become president. Credentialization is shrinking what was America’s advantage – a far greater social mobility than Europe. We’re decaying into a society where 40 per cent of the population do minimal-skill service jobs and the rest run up a trillion dollars of debt in order to avoid that fate, and ne’er the twain shall meet, except for perfunctory social pleasantries in the drive-thru lane.

We’re looking at education upside down: We should be telescoping it, not extending it.

But think of all the academic bureaucrats! Won’t someone think of the academic bureaucrats?

Humor, Political Commentary

So Many Questions

7 Comments

Iowahawk has the ones that didn’t make it past the Town Hall Twitter filter:

Subtract Malia’s age from the number of states. Multiply the result by the number of jobs saved or created.

Math wasn’t your strong suit, was it?

I let my Mexican drug lord license expire. Am I still eligible for the free machine gun program?

When you’re visiting his volcano lair, does George Soros let you feed the laser sharks?

The staffer who suggested this Twitter Town Hall is fired, isn’t he?

Are you smart enough to create a problem so big that even you could not solve it?

Why isn’t your cabinet unionized?

If Joe Biden has a massive stroke, (a) do you have a replacement in mind, and (b) how would you tell?

There are a lot more.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Heinlein, Fascist

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The LA Times interviews some young idiots in fandom:

As the literary and academic worlds open to science-fiction and genre writing, Heinlein lacks the cachet of J.G. Ballard, Ursula LeGuin, Octavia Butler, Neal Stephenson, cyberpunk pioneer William Gibson and others. Films based on Dick’s books, good and bad, keep coming. But Heinlein’s film adaptations, in the last half century, since 1950’s “Destination Moon,” culminated in 1997’s “Starship Troopers,” widely disliked by his fan base.

Non-SF writer William Burroughs probably has more influence inside the genre’s literary wing than Heinlein, who won four Hugos (the award voted by the fans), sold millions of copies, and was termed the field’s most significant writer since H.G. Wells.

“His rabid fan base is graying,” said Annalee Newitz, who writes about science fiction for Wired and Gawker. “To literary readers, the books look cheesy, sexist in a hairy-chest, gold-chain kind of way. His stuff hasn’t stood the test of time,” because of characters’ windy speechifying and their frontier optimism.

“Here at the store I actively resist promoting him, because he was a fascist,” said Charles Hauther, the science fiction buyer at Skylight Books. “People don’t seem to talk about him anymore. I haven’t had a conversation about Heinlein in a long time.

And you’ve obviously never had an intelligent one.