Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

“Liberal” Academia

Kurt Schlichter has a modest proposal:

Understand that the purpose of modern American “education” is not to educate students. It is primarily to provide cushy, subsidized sinecures for liberal administrators and faculty while, secondarily, providing a forum to indoctrinate soft young minds in the liberal fetishes du jour. Actually educating students is hard, and a meaningful education is anathema to liberalism. In the liberals’ ideal world, the universities would simply fester with leftist nonsense and not even bother with trying to teach their charges anything at all. And today, it’s pretty close to being the liberals’ ideal world.

…As I discuss in my book Conservative Insurgency, and as others like Glenn Reynolds have observed, with modern academia we normal Americans are paying to support a suppurating abscess in our culture that, left untreated, will kill its host. We need to lance this boil and drain the leftist pus.

Except there’s nothing liberal about them.

[Update a few minutes later]

This is the kind of thing he’s talking about: Leftists outraged that a university won’t police the attire of students off campus.

As I said, there is nothing liberal about this. It’s totalitarian.

Administrative, Technology and Society

Site Redesign

22 Comments

You probably noticed a new look here. I just did a WordPress upgrade, and switched to the new standard theme Twenty Fifteen. Not sure I’ll stick with it (for one thing, it’s not clear how to get the column structure I want) but I’ll play with it for a while.

[Update a while later]

Well, it looks like you can have as many columns as you like, as long as it’s not more than two. Only one sidebar. Not sure whether to stick with this.

[Update a few more minutes later]

OK, looks like the only way to get multiple sidebars is to create a child theme with them. Not sure how much time I want to invest in writing PHP.

[Update a few minutes later]

Last time I tried TwentyFourteen, it was kind of a disaster, but I just got the latest version, and am trying that now. I’ll have to tinker with it, but it at least gives me two customizable sidebars. Definitely have to resize sidebars, and play with style sheet. Feedback appreciated.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Value Of College Degrees

High risk, high reward.

Anyone who talks about the ROI of a degree without talking about the type of degree, or the relative value of one school over another, is either profoundly ignorant, or fraudulent. The fact is that there are a lot of degrees for which one would have to be a fool to put themselves deep into undischargeable debt to obtain. Unfortunately a lot of people don’t understand that, and are the most likely to get those worthless degrees.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Willie Soon

Strikes back against the inquisition.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s the full statement:

I have never been motivated by financial gain to write any scientific paper, nor have I ever hidden grants or any other alleged conflict of interest. I have been a solar and stellar physicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics for a quarter of a century, during which time I have published numerous peer-reviewed, scholarly articles. The fact that my research has been supported in part by donations to the Smithsonian Institution from many sources, including some energy producers, has long been a matter of public record. In submitting my academic writings I have always complied with what I understood to be disclosure practices in my field generally, consistent with the level of disclosure made by many of my Smithsonian colleagues.

“If the standards for disclosure are to change, then let them change evenly. If a journal that has peer-reviewed and published my work concludes that additional disclosures are appropriate, I am happy to comply. I would ask only that other authors-on all sides of the debate-are also required to make similar disclosures. And I call on the media outlets that have so quickly repeated my attackers’ accusations to similarly look into the motivations of and disclosures that may or may not have been made by their preferred, IPCC-linked scientists.

A double standard in the media. What a shock.

Political Commentary, Space

Barbara Mikulski

2 Comments

She’s retiring, after four decades.

Among other things, this is significant for space policy. She’s been a strong supporter of NASA over that period (particularly, of course, Goddard Space Flight Center in her home state), and of Wallops. Whoever replaces her as the next Senator from Maryland will probably be as supportive, but will have much less clout, at least initially.

Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

The Soon Et Al Paper

3 Comments

What is right, and wrong with it.

It’s always worth noting that the notion that CO2 is a greenhouse gas has never been in serious dispute, or even that the planet has been warming, in fits and starts, since the end of the LIA. The issue is feedbacks, and the limits of our ability to model them. We will probably get better at that in the future, but we currently suck at it, and it would be insane to base public policy on the models.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!