Category Archives: Political Commentary

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Grievance Studies Departments

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Just how bad is the “scholarship” there?

Because searches are perhaps the most opaque aspect of the academic process, the only way that the public will learn the identities of the other semi-finalists and finalists for the Illinois job is if the applicants themselves reveal it publicly. (The chances of that occurring are about zero: who would want to admit they were beaten out for a job by someone like Salaita?) But defenders of academic freedom should be as critical of the Indian Studies program as they are of the Illinois chancellor.

As Glenn notes, the primary function of such departments is as sinecures for otherwise talentless leftists. It’s all part and parcel of the huge publicly financed scam that much of academia has become.

General Science, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

The “97%” Nonsensus

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As I noted on Twitter:

Judith Curry explains:

I think we need to declare the idea of a 97% consensus among climate scientists on the issue of climate change attribution to be dead. Verheggen’s 82-90% number is more defensible, but I’ve argued that this analysis needs to be refined.

Climate science needs to be evaluated by people outside the climate community, and this is one reason why I found Kahan’s analysis to be interesting of people who scored high on the science intelligence test. And why the perspectives of scientists and engineers from other fields are important.

As I’ve argued in my paper No consensus on consensus, a manufactured consensus serves no scientific purpose and can in fact torque the science in unfortunate ways.

And José Duarte is appropriately brutal:

Continue reading The “97%” Nonsensus →

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

The Problem With “Fierce Minimalism”

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Thoughts on crises, and urgency:

One of the implicit assumptions of “fierce minimalism” is that action fuels the flames. Obama argued as much at an American Legion speech. He said, ”the answer is not to send in large scale military deployments that over stretch our military, and lead for us occupying countries for a long period of time and end up feeding extremism.” An alternative point of view using almost an identical metaphor was articulated by Franklin Roosevelt. “Suppose my neighbor’s home catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose four or five hundred feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him to put out his fire.”

The difference in the two presidential fire examples is the element of urgency. Roosevelt was aware that the fireman’s enemy is time and one of the points of the hose story, which everyone in that era understood, was the importance of dousing the fire while it was still small. Obama, by contrast, lacks the dimension of time. His approach implicitly assumes he has the leisure to add an ounce here and an ounce there to achieve a nuanced outcome. Roosevelt understood that a crisis was urgent. In the current case, Obama is busy calibrating, thinking and golfing like he had all the time in the world.

What happens when a fierce minimalist meets a fierce fire?

Things can get out of control very quickly.

And then there’s this additional comment:

Any return to the Middle East will be as a salvage party re-entering the smoking hulk of a ship looking for survivors. And whoever reboards that derelict in the future had better be alert. In the glare of their flashlights they’ll glimpse strange, furtive forms.

“Was that a man I saw Captain?”, one boarder will ask. “It looked funny but I only saw it for an instant.”

“That’s because he was carrying a head.”

“Oh. What’s through this door Captain?”

“It used to be Lebanon. Ok men, form a stack. On my count …”

There is no way back to the status quo ante. The Iraq legacy, for good or ill, is gone. The Cold War victory of 1989 is gone. What Kissinger called “a brief moment in human history when one could speak of an incipient global world order” is gone. Maybe for the best.

Obama will be remembered as an extremely consequential president. He did “fundamentally change” the world but not in the way he can understand. I almost wish he did by design. But I have a feeling the verdict of history will be that he pushed the wrong buttons by accident, simply because they had bright colors and made beeping sounds.

Frighteningly true.