…an ongoing series:
Most people who haven’t taken the time to learn about the issue (which is to say, most people) believe that conservatism is either a largely Christian fundamentalist movement or principally informed by Ayn Rand or, if you listen to the geniuses at places like Salon or MSNBC, both.
I’m always amused by morons who think that, because I’m skeptical about climate models that are not only failing to predict the future but can’t even predict the past, that I must be a creationist.
Fired for associating with a Republican. Well, what did he expect?
[Update a while later]
This seems somewhat related–the anti-Catholic bigotry at US News:
I stopped being a Democrat when it became clear that I was expected to vacate any of my own thoughts and opinions in order to fall in line with the party, or be called moronic or hateful or bigoted or even evil. There was no way the party could be wrong on anything, therefore dissent indicated a problem originating with me. “I” had the problem; not the party.
Don’t snigger, conservatives, you have your narrow-minded purists, too. Perhaps you’ve never marched in lockstep with quite the same precision as the Democrats, but you’ve run your own purges, and handily. Because whom the godlings of ideologies would destroy, they first make mad.
Currently Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is being sized up for a suit of tar and feathers or, more precisely, she is being warned that one awaits her, if she does not quickly fall back in line and do what she was supposed to do, was expected to do when President Obama nominated her to the bench: rubber-stamp his dubious policies once they landed before her, as expected.
What the hell does Sotomayor think she’s doing, putting conscience and Constitution over Party?
Conservatives need to get ahead on it.
One of the reasons that I’ve never been a conservative is their blind spot on the War on (Some) Drugs.
…of the elite.
So, it wasn’t just me:
I found the stuff revolting, because it was like drinking cold tomato soup.
…It had great brand awareness when I was growing up, thanks to the constant barrage of ads featuring people who had, for some reason, forgotten to avail themselves of a V8, and remonstrated themselves by slamming their palms into their foreheads.
Not even this made me want some.
Me, neither.
An interview with Instapundit on his new book
[Update a few minutes later]
Yes, Academia, winter is still coming for you:
…a lot of people would like to be research professors: no boring students, job security, lots of conferences, prestige, research! (This is what the profession looks like to 22 year olds who have spent all their lives in school environments and have been trained to see professors as authority figures and mentors.) Sprinkle in student loan programs, the natural ambition of colleges to become universities and small universities to become big ones, and there are a lot of forces pushing academia to expand. The result is one of the more cruel and exploitative workplaces in the United States today. While the lot of day laborers and poultry plant employees is worse still, they at least haven’t spent a decade of their lives preparing for jobs that they are then denied.
This system is now coming undone. There aren’t many jobs for entry level doctoral grads, and even fewer for tenure track. Oversupply pushes wages down and keeps desperate hangers-on thronging around looking for adjunct positions. Older professors who were once obliged to retire at 65 now keep teaching. The result is a huge jobs crush.
To resolve the oversupply, we’re going to have to close down many PhD-generating graduate programs and shrink most others. The result will be that demand for professors in the affected field will shrink even more. With fewer grad students to teach, most schools will not need the large tenured faculties they have today, and tenure positions will shrink more still. That in turn should lead to another round of grad school shrinking—even fewer openings as more universities cut department size to adjust to the shrinkage of grad school programs—until at some point the process reaches an equilibrium.
And that point could come sooner than later.
I’d also like to see more lawsuits like this. As that report on the nation’s educational system said almost a third of a century ago, if a foreign power had imposed it on us, we’d consider it an act of war, but we did it to ourselves. Finally, it’s starting to come undone.
A good overview of the companies going after lunar and asteroidal resources. Expect to hear a lot more nonsense like this as the industry evolves, though:
Space exploration researcher Alice Gorman is based at Flinders University, Australia, and is an internationally recognised leader in the emerging field of space archaeology. Passionate about space, she believes both industry and academia underestimate the emotional investment people have in the night sky.
‘There is the view that it’s just unethical to destroy another celestial body… but then [people] also question if it is right for a profit-making company to make massive profits from this,’ she says. ‘Nobody doubts the investment will be monumental and some argue that those willing to take these risks deserve all the rewards as this isn’t for the faint-hearted.’
But, as Gorman also highlights, the world already has unequal distributions of wealth and some wonder if space-based industries could drive these disparities further apart. As she asks, could Earth one day comprise a terrestrial-based underclass looking up at the off-world wealthy.
We wasted six bucks Saturday night to watch Elysium on pay per view. It’s based on the same stupid socialistic fantasy premise.
He’s got (rave) a review of the book, over at his web site.
Sorry, yes, but for those unfamiliar with history, this is what it looks like. It’s also what “progress” looks like. Sadly, for “progressives.”
Why it’s hard to have much hope:
Rabid anti-Semitism coupled with an addiction to implausible conspiracy theories is a very strong predictor of national doom; Nazi Germany isn’t the only country to have followed these dark stars to the graveyard of history. Many liberal minded Americans (though loathing both anti-Semitism and chowderheaded conspiracy thinking themselves) don’t like to look this truth in the eye. It leads to some very uncomfortable reflections about the potential for democracy in many countries beyond Egypt, and casts a dark shadow over the prospects for the development of a stable and prosperous Palestinian state. It suggests that there are narrow limits on what we can expect from diplomacy with Iran.
There’s a lot of delusional thinking in the White House along these lines.