Category Archives: Social Commentary

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

The Value Of Argument

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Kids, would you please start fighting?

The Wright brothers weren’t alone. The Beatles fought over instruments and lyrics and melodies. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony clashed over the right way to win the right to vote. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak argued incessantly while designing the first Apple computer. None of these people succeeded in spite of the drama — they flourished because of it. Brainstorming groups generate 16 percent more ideas when the members are encouraged to criticize one another. The most creative ideas in Chinese technology companies and the best decisions in American hospitals come from teams that have real disagreements early on. Breakthrough labs in microbiology aren’t full of enthusiastic collaborators cheering one another on but of skeptical scientists challenging one another’s interpretations.

If no one ever argues, you’re not likely to give up on old ways of doing things, let alone try new ones. Disagreement is the antidote to groupthink. We’re at our most imaginative when we’re out of sync. There’s no better time than childhood to learn how to dish it out — and to take it.

Beyond the danger to free expression, this is a large part of the danger of political correctness and groupthink on campus.

Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Bright Star

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We did take a break from plumbing last night to go see the musical at the Ahmanson. It had some of the same cast as the Broadway production, including the lead, who was fantastic. Here’s the original review (spoiler free, with which I largely agree).

I saw Steve Martin live when I was young, during the Carter administration, and he was doing his SNL schtick, with the arrow through the head. But even then his banjo playing impressed. We also saw his band with Edie Brickell (co-author of the musical) at the Hollywood Bowl a couple years ago. I really think that Steve Martin is one of the most talented men of our age.

[Tuesday-afternoon update]

Jon Gabriel defends Steve Martin from James Lileks. I don’t often disagree with James, but Jon is right.

[Bumped]

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society, War Commentary

Jihad

17 Comments

…on the bike path:

But they are changing us. I’ve written before about what I’ve called the Bollardization of the Western World: the open, public areas of free cities are being fenced in by bollards, as, for example, German downtowns were after the Berlin Christmas attack, and London Bridge and Westminster Bridge were after two recent outbreaks of vehicular jihad. This is a huge windfall for bollard manufacturers – Big Bollard – and doubtless it’s a huge boost for the economy, if your town’s nimble enough to approve the new bollard plant on the edge of town, or if your broker is savvy enough to divest your tech stocks and go big on the bollard sector. As I write, Geraldo is on Fox demanding to know why this bike path wasn’t blocked off with concrete barriers.

Why? Why does every public place have to get uglified up just because Geraldo doesn’t want to address the insanity of western immigration policies that day by day advance the interests of an ideology explicitly hostile to our civilization? Instead Geraldo wants to tighten up vehicle rental. Why? Why should you have to lose an extra 15 minutes at an already sclerotic check-in counter because Hertz and Avis and UHaul have to run your name through the No-Rent list? Why should open, free societies become closed, monitored, ugly, cramped and cowering?

And Bollardization doesn’t even solve the problem, does it? Last week I was tootling through Williston, Vermont, which has just reconfigured its highway system to run green-painted bike paths down the center of the streets. And the thought occurred to me that, once you’ve bollarded off every sidewalk, what’s to stop jihadists mowing down cyclists? After all, if the eco-crowd are installing them in the middle of the roadway, they’re kind of hard to bollard off. And then a second thought occurred: As inviting a target as bike paths are in enviro-poseur communities, they’re even more inviting in genuine bicycling cultures such as the Netherlands or Scandinavia.

And now eight people are dead and dozens more injured – at the hands of a guy who came here in 2010 because he won a Green Card in the so-called “diversity lottery”. Why was that stupid program not suspended on September 12th 2001?

So Uber and truck-rental places are expected to do background checks on people to whom we give “diversity visas.” Wonderful.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

The Trump Takeover

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In another thread, I learned that, apparently, I am not to criticize the God-King. Jonah is getting tired of it, too:

What I find so shocking is not so much the capitulation but the terms of the surrender. Or, rather, I should say the term — singular — of surrender, because there seems to be only one requirement expected of Republicans: Lavish praise on Donald Trump no matter what he does or says. Or at the very least, never, ever criticize him. Policy is an afterthought.

Yup. This is a cult (just as it was with Obama). Of course, I feel even more free to dispense such heresies, given that I’ve never even been a Republican. And then, this:

I’m more interested in the psychological factors animating commentators and the rank-and-file Trumpublicans of the GOP.

They also talk about wanting to get things done and the importance of fulfilling the Trump “agenda.” But they reserve their purest passion and most sustained vitriol not for people who don’t vote with Trump, but for people who do vote with Trump but who also refuse to remain silent. The same holds for Trump himself.

Why? Well, in the president’s case, the answer is obvious: his own Brobdingnagian yet astoundingly fragile ego. Because Trump cares so little about policy, he can forgive policy differences quite easily. What he can’t forgive is anyone even hinting that the emperor’s new clothes are, at best, invisible to the naked eye.

He’s a child. I’m glad she lost, I’m glad he’s stealthily rolling back regs, and I’m glad that he’s fixing the judiciary, but I weep at what someone in the same position, not so flawed, could be accomplishing.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

The Art Of The Deal Writer

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Trump is the same man-child he was at seven as he was at seventy:

“Along the way, he failed to develop the qualities of character that most of us do in the natural course of growing up to a greater or lesser extent – honesty, empathy, generosity, reflectiveness, the capacity to delay gratification and appreciate or subtlety and nuance, and above all a conscience, an inner sense of right and wrong,” the writer said.

This rings very true to me, based on my own external observations.

But Obama is a man-child in his own way, as well. Another similarity between the two.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Elon’s Plans

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Doug Messier has a critique, with which I largely agree. He does seem to be laser focused on solving the transportation problem (which was the first one he encountered when he tried to implement his initial Mars plans). I emailed him years ago about the fact that we have no idea whether or not we can conceive/gestate in 0.4g. His response was basically, “that’s not my problem right now.”

But this blinkered mindset may not ultimately serve him well in terms of his long-term goal. It would be tragic for him if he solved the transportation problem, but not the biological one, and his dreams of Mars colonies ended up being still born, despite the cost reduction of transportation there.