A religious person who says the world is coming to an end is a crank. A secular person who says the world is coming to an end is an eco-warrior. A religious organization that says the end times are nigh is an apocalyptic cult for suicidal weirdos like the Branch Davidians of Waco, Texas. A secular body counting down to the apocalypse is an environmental organization worthy of millions of dollars of government funding.--Gomes
Went to the writing course. It's been a long time since I've been in an environment like this. Mostly older amateurs; some professional technical writers. It was fun being off on a working day. Long and productive taught by an emotional guy who would periodically weep during readings. The people I talked to said the whole weekend was really worth the time and money. (I'm way too early for that.)
22 people in the class, 6 were males.
The criteria for quality is vague, but most critics have a template for it.
The teacher said he thought that Frodo and Sam in LOTR were the best protagonists in English fiction.
Raymond Chandler is the most imitated writer in English.
The WSJ just gave John Wick 3 a good review.
Intelligence collected by the U.S. government shows Iran’s leaders believe the U.S. planned to attack them, prompting preparation by Tehran for possible counterstrikes, according to one interpretation of the information. Gee, that's never happened before.
Much of the high-growth 19th century the U.S. had high tariffs. But back then the U.S. also had either no or low taxes on other economic activities, little regulation by government, secure private property and contract rights, a culture of entrepreneurship, and open immigration.
So, pick your correlation.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unveiled sweeping new legislation on Thursday that would impose a federal cap of 15% on credit-card interest rates. And ceilings create shortages. But their motives are good.
Americans lose five times more money gambling each year than they spend on Amazon Prime and Netflix combined.
In reviewing the poor performance of black kids on the selective school entrance exams, the New York Times summed up that either “1) the test is flawed and not accurately capturing the best and brightest students, or 2) the test is fair, and the schools that are preparing these children are bad.”
This is simplistic thinking. It is reminiscent of the old joke where a man is searching in the dark for his lost car keys under the light of a street lamp. His friend asks, "Did you drop the keys here?" and he answers, "I don't think so but the light is better."
From a WSJ op-ed: The U.S. imposes higher anti-dumping duties on China than on any other country, and these duties have increased over time, particularly as they have been imposed together with duties countering Chinese subsidies. Relief from the burden of this recent surge of trade remedies is at the top of China’s agenda. Some of these U.S. trade remedies are legitimate under the rules of the World Trade Organization. Others, however, reflect the considerable influence on American administrative outcomes of trade-challenged U.S. industries—an egregious example of American crony capitalism.
On the foreign side of the U.S. Export-Import Bank, Ex-Im’s beneficiaries were similarly well-funded. A vast majority of these companies had ready access to capital, and were as large as the domestic beneficiaries. These clients belonged to the Who’s Who of the airline industry, with names like Emirates Airline, Lion Air, and Ryan Air. Also among the foreign beneficiaries was Pemex, the Mexican state-owned oil and gas company.
Equity vs. Equality
Peterson has a nice evaluation of the gender/equality lever that has been recently inserted into social and political discussion. Buried in the equity/equality confusion is, I think, the denial of diversity. A part:
Went to the writing course. It's been a long time since I've been in an environment like this. Mostly older amateurs; some professional technical writers. It was fun being off on a working day. Long and productive taught by an emotional guy who would periodically weep during readings. The people I talked to said the whole weekend was really worth the time and money. (I'm way too early for that.)
22 people in the class, 6 were males.
The criteria for quality is vague, but most critics have a template for it.
The teacher said he thought that Frodo and Sam in LOTR were the best protagonists in English fiction.
Raymond Chandler is the most imitated writer in English.
The WSJ just gave John Wick 3 a good review.
Intelligence collected by the U.S. government shows Iran’s leaders believe the U.S. planned to attack them, prompting preparation by Tehran for possible counterstrikes, according to one interpretation of the information. Gee, that's never happened before.
Much of the high-growth 19th century the U.S. had high tariffs. But back then the U.S. also had either no or low taxes on other economic activities, little regulation by government, secure private property and contract rights, a culture of entrepreneurship, and open immigration.
So, pick your correlation.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unveiled sweeping new legislation on Thursday that would impose a federal cap of 15% on credit-card interest rates. And ceilings create shortages. But their motives are good.
Americans lose five times more money gambling each year than they spend on Amazon Prime and Netflix combined.
In reviewing the poor performance of black kids on the selective school entrance exams, the New York Times summed up that either “1) the test is flawed and not accurately capturing the best and brightest students, or 2) the test is fair, and the schools that are preparing these children are bad.”
This is simplistic thinking. It is reminiscent of the old joke where a man is searching in the dark for his lost car keys under the light of a street lamp. His friend asks, "Did you drop the keys here?" and he answers, "I don't think so but the light is better."
From a WSJ op-ed: The U.S. imposes higher anti-dumping duties on China than on any other country, and these duties have increased over time, particularly as they have been imposed together with duties countering Chinese subsidies. Relief from the burden of this recent surge of trade remedies is at the top of China’s agenda. Some of these U.S. trade remedies are legitimate under the rules of the World Trade Organization. Others, however, reflect the considerable influence on American administrative outcomes of trade-challenged U.S. industries—an egregious example of American crony capitalism.
On the foreign side of the U.S. Export-Import Bank, Ex-Im’s beneficiaries were similarly well-funded. A vast majority of these companies had ready access to capital, and were as large as the domestic beneficiaries. These clients belonged to the Who’s Who of the airline industry, with names like Emirates Airline, Lion Air, and Ryan Air. Also among the foreign beneficiaries was Pemex, the Mexican state-owned oil and gas company.
Equity vs. Equality
Peterson has a nice evaluation of the gender/equality lever that has been recently inserted into social and political discussion. Buried in the equity/equality confusion is, I think, the denial of diversity. A part:
The mantra of Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity (DIE) perhaps constitutes the primary identifying factor of the tiny minority of radical collectivist ideologues that nonetheless have come to dominate the humanities and social sciences in Western universities (and, increasingly, the HR departments of corporations). Of these three, equity is the most egregious, self-righteous, historically-ignorant and dangerous. “Equity” is a term designed to signal “equality,” in some manner, and is a term designed to appeal to the natural human tendency toward fairness, but it does not mean the classic equality of the West, which is equality before the law and equality of opportunity.
Equality before the law means that each citizen will be treated fairly by the criminal justice and judicial systems regardless of their status — and that the state recognizes that each individual has an intrinsic value which serves as a limit to state power, and which the polity must respect. There is likely no more fundamental presumption grounding our culture.
Equity is a whole different ballgame. It is based on the idea that the only certain measure of “equality” is outcome—educational, social, and occupational. The equity-pushers axiomatically assume that if all positions at every level of hierarchy in every organization are not occupied by a proportion of the population that is precisely equivalent to that proportion in the general population that systematic prejudice (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.) must be at play. This assumption has as its corollary the idea that there are perpetrators (the “privileged,” for current or historical reasons) who are unfair beneficiaries of the system or outright perpetrators of prejudice and who must be identified, limited and punished.
…..
The truth of the matter is that there is no excuse for the equity doctrine. Its proponents virtually never attend to or discuss the occupational areas where the largest sex differences exist). They don’t care at all that there are multiple well-documented reasons for unequal outcomes in occupational choice and pay in addition to whatever role counterproductive and genuine prejudice still plays. They don’t think through the policy implications or, if they do, are still apparently willing to grant to themselves the bureaucratic power to implement by force the changes theoretically necessary to balance the scales, despite being aware of the magnitude of such actions. They haven’t contended at all (to note this vitally important point once again) with the data indicating that free women make different occupational choices than free men, and that there are economic consequences to those choices that may be regarded as perfectly acceptable by the women, who could well be choosing time over money (a far-from-unreasonable trade-off).
....
Instead they use the doctrine of equity as a moral weapon, in service of their fundamental claim: men—particularly Western men—unjustly and cruelly dominate, historically and currently (ignoring all the biological reasons for sexual differences in outcome; ignoring the reality of fundamental cooperation that most truly characterizes healthy male-female relations now and in the past). In consequence, all inequalities of outcome must be regarded as unjust, and used as proof of the central contention — that is, the idea of patriarchal Western oppression that is the central dogma of the radical left.
We know the left can go too far. The Soviets taught us that. The Maoists and the Khmer Rouge taught us that. The North Koreans, and the Cubans, and the Venezuelans continue to teach us in the same manner. We don’t know when and where the “going too far” begins. But I’m willing to stake my claim on the equity doctrine. In a word, it’s inexcusable, both morally and practically. It should be roundly rejected (at whatever reasonable personal cost that might be incurred) by anyone who takes the idea of the excessive left seriously, who is concerned in any genuine sense with the increasingly destructive polarization of our political discourse, and who wants to stand up and be counted when the radicals come knocking—or pounding—at the door.
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