Arday in the Mist

On this day:

1609
Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.
1835
The New York Sun perpetrates the Great Moon Hoax.
1894
Kitasato Shibasaburō discovers the infectious agent of the bubonic plague and publishes his findings in The Lancet.
1898
700 Greek civilians, 17 British guards and the British Consul of Crete are killed by a Turkish mob in Heraklion, Greece.
1914
World War I: The library of the Catholic University of Leuven is deliberately destroyed by the German Army. Hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable volumes and Gothic and Renaissance manuscripts are lost.
1944
World War II: Paris is liberated by the Allies.
1945
Ten days after World War II ends with Japan announcing its surrender, armed supporters of the Communist Party of China kill Baptist missionary John Birch, regarded by some of the American right as the first victim of the Cold War.
1948
The House Un-American Activities Committee holds first-ever televised congressional hearing: “Confrontation Day” between Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss.

***

Since 1776, there has been a 3,000% explosion in the average real income per person in the world.
Nothing earlier came remotely close.
It was caused not by the usual suspects of investment or exploitation, but by liberty inspiring a flowering of human creativity—in the arts and sciences, and in the economy.--mccloskey

***

On August 25, 1835, the first in a series of six articles announcing the supposed discovery of life on the moon appears in the New York Sun newspaper.
Known collectively as “The Great Moon Hoax,” the articles were supposedly reprinted from the Edinburgh Journal of Science. The byline was Dr. Andrew Grant, described as a colleague of Sir John Herschel, a famous astronomer of the day. Herschel had in fact traveled to Cape Town, South Africa, in January 1834 to set up an observatory with a powerful new telescope. As Grant described it, Herschel had found evidence of life forms on the moon, including such fantastic animals as unicorns, two-legged beavers and furry, winged humanoids resembling bats. It was purported to be a reprint from the Edinburgh Journal of Science.
The articles were most likely written by Richard Adams Locke, a Sun reporter educated at Cambridge University. Intended as satire, they were designed to poke fun at earlier, serious speculations about extraterrestrial life, particularly those of Reverend Thomas Dick, a popular science writer who claimed in his bestselling books that the moon alone had 4.2 billion inhabitants.
Readers were completely taken in by the story, however, and failed to recognize it as satire. Edger Allen Poe was deeply involved.

*** 

A surprising graph, ineptly reproduced:

American wages have fallen to roughly 43% of national income, the lowest share since 1970. For every dollar the U.S. economy produces, workers are receiving less of it than at any point in more than five decades.

The remainder has flowed increasingly toward corporate profits.

Interesting, especially when compared to McCloskey's quote.

***

South Carolina Republicans will decide Tuesday who will replace Sen. Lindsey Graham on the ballot in November's midterm election, after a rushed campaign in the wake of his sudden death in July. Graham's sister, Sen. Darline Graham, faces Rep. Ralph Norman in Tuesday's runoff vote.

The position is hereditary, right?

***

Combined spending related to old age and illness accounted for around 70% of total social spending in Germany last year, pushing the social budget to a new record high, according to an analysis by the Ifo Institute published on Monday.

***

2026 appears to be the first year in human history where the global population falls below replacement fertility. This includes times of war and epidemics. While many worry about climate change, Musk repeatedly argues that a collapsing birth rate is actually the biggest danger human civilization faces today.

***

Quebec's desire to preserve the declining French language has been a big factor in the trade dispute with Canada. For example, Bill 96 requires products sold in Quebec to have a French description and for trademarks using generic terms to be translated into French, while Bill 109 compels media services such as Netflix, Spotify and Apple to promote and prioritize French content for Quebec users.

***

Arday in the Mist

A note on Arday, abused and abuser:

Arday’s academic focus was not on learning new things and fashioning new ways of processing existence but on criticizing others’ morals. This is not intellection but advocacy, and that is frankly much easier than thinking. The term “scholar-activist” tries to finesse this by making the two appear to be alternate forms of the same endeavor. But the scholar-activist is often more activist than scholar, and Arday was an extreme example of the type.

Nothing in his work suggests intense engagement with a body of data (Arday himself has claimed that because of his dyslexia, he can engage only one page of academic prose in a sitting) or with a challenging way of analyzing that data. In academia, what is interesting is the counterintuitive, the discovery. Arday merely reinforced long-established and simplistic pieties. He became the equivalent of a full professor at Cambridge based on doing interviews with acquaintances about the racism they experienced, and then largely just presenting what they said. At its highest level, this could be good (but not great) journalism; it could not be academic work. On the level Arday worked, my 14-year-old could best him after some quick training in Latinate, Judith Butler-esque prose.

Arday was defrocked after the revelation that most of even this incurious nattering in the guise of research was plagiarized from others’ work. Claiming that his supposed autism made him think that learning was mimicry, he composed most of his work from generous tranches of cut-and-paste from other sources, often (but certainly not always) lightly reworded. But even if this performance art disguised as thought were all his own work, his elevation to such heights by Cambridge was an abomination.-- John McWhorter

"Claiming that his supposed autism made him think that learning was mimicry..."

Now the academic who exposed all the fraud has been suspended, and crowds of Arday sympathizers have gathered to mourn him. This is sadder than the twisted Mangioni support. This is empathy in defiance of effort and quality, the same open-mindedness that tolerates goofy but harmless positions like Flat Earth groups and abolish-the-Constitution politics.

But a lack of intellectual and moral standards has erosive consequences at the bottom of the slippery slope.

Nonsense in Education

SpaceX's newest version of its massive Starship, the world's largest and most powerful rocket, is scheduled to launch its critical test flight today, Friday, May 22, at 6:30 p.m. EDT from Starbase, Texas.

***

Health officials are furious at the U.S. for leaving WHO. They hold that act definitive in the emergence of the new Ebola episode--almost as if there were no other responsible nations in the world.

***

Colbert's exit is being framed as if Trump caused it.

***

"The Nakba" is the phrase Palestinians use to describe their displacement during the war of 1948. "Nakba” itself literally means “disaster,” and was coined by a Syrian professor who used it to describe not the Jews’ attempt at self-defense, but the sheer and gross stupidity of virtually all Arab states in waging war against Israel — and then losing badly, despite overwhelming numeric advantages.

***

Nonsense in Education

The DOE in NY is responsible for just 844,400 students, a huge drop from the 1.1 million as recently as 2012.

More surprising. NYC pays over $44,000 per student per year to "educate" them. Yet with staggering costs for fewer students, performance scores remain unchanged, at an estimated 30% to 40% of the expected achievement level.

Increased costs without increased benefits has become a virtual slogan of modern American government.

How can a democracy, which depends upon at least a passing knowledge of the world and its risks, survive when only 30% of its young people can read normally? 

Who benefits from this mess? 

One guess.

In this clearly disastrous system, the system itself is trying to decrease teacher work requirements.

NY education Chancellor Kamar Samuels warned that it’ll be “very difficult” for the city to meet the mandate of no more than 20-25 students per class, depending on grade level.

Compliance now stands at 64%, he says, but the city won’t even hit the 80% mark by September.

(In fairness, the chancellor surprisingly questioned the “hold harmless” policy, which requires giving every school at least as much funding as the year before, even when its enrollment keeps plummeting. Questioned, but did not change.)

A full 29% of the city’s budget, an astounding $39 billion, goes to a school system where enrollment is down, truancy is up, and achievement is inferior, but stagnant, while its major preoccupation seems to be decreasing teacher workload.

Those are not pigeons circling, waiting to roost; they are vultures.

 

Anti-Intellectualism in the University

On this day:

312
Battle of Milvian Bridge: Constantine I defeats Maxentius, becoming the sole Roman Emperor.
1628
The Siege of La Rochelle, which had lasted for 14 months, ends with the surrender of the Huguenots
1919
The U.S. Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto, paving the way for Prohibition to begin the following January.
1922
March on Rome: Italian fascists led by Benito Mussolini march on Rome and take over the Italian government.
1929
Black Monday, a day in the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which also saw major stock market upheaval.
2006
The funeral service takes place for those executed at Bykivnia forest, outside Kiev, Ukraine. 817 Ukrainian civilians (out of some 100,000) executed by Bolsheviks at Bykivnia in 1930s – early 1940s are reburied.

***

“There is no such thing as a Lost Cause, because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause.” --T.S. Eliot

***

Ray Dalio argues that the economy can no longer be treated as a single, coherent entity. Big Tech and high finance, dominated by a narrow slice of elites, drive virtually all growth, with the top 1% reaping the greatest economic rewards and the rest of the top 5-10% at least in a position to participate meaningfully.

The bottom 60% of American workers are increasingly unable to participate meaningfully, becoming more “unproductive” in the AI age, not less, and creating “very, very big differences” between the top and bottom. This structural imbalance, in turn, increases fragility and risk.

Dalio's argument assumes that, at least in the U.S., such a knowledge economy is accelerating away from most people, not flattening out or becoming more accessible through AI.

***

Are Mayor Bass, Mayor Lightfoot, and Letitia James Democrat thought leaders?

***

 

Anti-Intellectualism in the University

A remarkable story from Bryan Caplan's blog that is excerpted here.

'Two weeks ago, Scott Beaulier, my co-author and former student, seemed likely to become the next president of Northern Michigan University. In 2016, he became the youngest business school dean in U.S. history at North Dakota State University. In 2022, he became the dean at the University of Wyoming. An NMU alum, he was on the short list for the presidency of his alma mater.

Until activist Andrew Plocher reviewed Beaulier’s C.V. — and discovered that he co-wrote “Behavioral Economics and Perverse Effects of the Welfare State” (Kyklos, 2007) with me. Beaulier’s candidacy was cancelled in a heartbeat.

If Plocher had accused us of plagiarism, falsification of evidence, or other violation of research ethics, the relevance would be clear. University presidents don’t have to be great researchers, but they are supposed to have basic academic integrity. But Plocher made no such accusations. Indeed, he didn’t even try to argue against our paper. Instead, he hysterically summarized our paper’s thesis.

Here are his remarks, interspersed with my commentary:

“I write to express deep concern about the candidacy of Scott Beaulier, who co-authored an academic article titled ‘Behavioral Economics and Perverse Effects of the Welfare State’ (Kyklos, 2007),” Plocher wrote. “In it, Beaulier and his co-author argue that recipients of government assistance are not just economically disadvantaged—they are behaviorally and cognitively deficient.”

Correct. If you read the paper, we offer plenty of evidence in favor of these claims.

Beaulier and his co-author wrote, “The average recipient of government assistance does not even come close” to rational expectations, and go on to claim that “the poor are much more prone to engage in such activities [as drug use, crime, and unprotected sex] than the rest of the population.”

Another correct description of our position, without any effort to refute our evidence.

“They frame these issues not as consequences of structural injustice but as “pathologies” rooted in poor decision-making,” said Plocher.

The subpar decision-making of the poor is fact; see our cites. The “consequences of structural injustice” is dogma. Plocher presents no evidence that the poor are being treated more unjustly than the non-poor. And if society demonstrably did so treat the poor, the rational response for the poor would be extra caution, not imprudence.

Suppose, for example, that society treated you very unjustly. The sensible reaction is, “The deck is stacked against me, so I should be extra careful,” not “Maybe I should have a non-marital birth?” or “Maybe I should heavily use alcohol?”

“Their conclusion is not merely theoretical: it advances a policy framework that explicitly favors restricting the agency and autonomy of low–income people.

On the contrary, Beaulier-Caplan takes the agency and autonomy of low-income people seriously. Rather than attributing their imprudent decisions to “structural injustice,” we treat them like normal humans who are capable of revising their personal decisions without transforming society first.

To date, Beaulier has not publicly recanted, clarified, or rejected these views. That silence is not neutral. It is consent.”

Yes, it is consent. Consent and integrity. Beaulier could have said, “I was only a grad student when I co-authored the paper. Blame Bryan!” But he didn’t. Thank you for that, Scott. Though I would have forgiven you if you’d shifted the blame to me, I’m proud that you didn’t.

Beaulier’s paper went on to state that “by giving the poor material support, we discourage them from getting jobs, acquiring experience, and eventually pulling themselves up by their bootstraps” (Kyklos, 2007).

This correctly states our position, without any effort to refute it.

Beaulier and his co-author also used sources from the studies of Herrnstein and Murray to make their claims. They directly quote their statement on page 497 of ‘Behavioral Economics and Perverse Effects of the Welfare State’ (Kyklos, 2007), saying, “How intelligent a woman is may interact with her impulsiveness, and hence her ability to exert self-discipline and restraint on her partner in order to avoid pregnancy (1994, p. 179).”

Correct.

This quote can be interpreted as allowing the responsibility of conception to fall solely on the woman.

Someone with poor reading comprehension might so interpret the quote. But the sensible interpretation is each woman has a strong influence on whether she gets pregnant, and that more intelligent women do, on average, use their influence more prudently.

NMU community members are concerned about Beaulier’s respect for women, minorities and those in poverty.

“This matters because NMU is a public institution,” Plocher said. “Our student body includes first-generation students, working-class students, rural students, Indigenous students and others from communities often misrepresented in the very ways Beaulier’s paper describes.”

Plocher never even tries to show that we “misrepresent” anyone. He also misses the truism that you can simultaneously believe that (a) the average member of a group is below-average in some way, yet (b) still judge members of that group based on individual performance. Which, if you know Beaulier, is exactly what he would do.

Indeed, you could say that it is attributing subpar performance of “women, minorities, and those in poverty” to “structural injustice” that shows a deep lack of respect for these groups. If members of your group do worse because of bad decisions, you have a straightforward solution: Make better decisions. If members of your group do worse because of structural injustice, in contrast, your situation is basically hopeless. Revolutionary daydreams aside, what can any one individual do about structural injustice?

If you take the time to actually read “Behavioral Economics and Perverse Effects of the Welfare State,” many readers will find some of our arguments less than convincing. But you should still be repelled by Plocher’s — and NMU’s — utterly anti-intellectual response. This really is akin to responding to arguments for atheism with, “They insult the eternal glory of God.” If human beings can dismiss academic arguments merely because they lead to politically unwelcome conclusions, what’s the point of having academic arguments about politically-charged subjects? To quote the self-contained title of one of my favorite essays, “I can’t help but feel like you’re trying to intimidate me into pretending to agree with you.”'

                                                             *

The scientific accuracy and value of the paper's arguments are, and should be, debatable, but that is not the focus of the objection here. The focus is the assumption of 'structural injustice,' a fascinating, growing faith-based nihilism that questions the accuracy of thought and its very process of analysis. Our own imperfections are so deep and ingrained that we can not escape our failures.

Perhaps the only thing that can help us is a counter faith-based philosophy. Or leader.

Grading

On this day:

1514
Marriage of Louis XII of France and Mary Tudor.
1604
Supernova 1604, the most recent supernova to be observed in the Milky Way.
1635
Founder of Rhode Island Roger Williams is banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a religious dissident after he speaks out against punishments for religious offenses and giving away Native American land.
1740
Dutch colonists and various slave groups begin massacring ethnic Chinese in Batavia, eventually killing 10,000 and leading to a two-year-long war throughout Java.
1845
The eminent and controversial Anglican, John Henry Newman, is received into the Roman Catholic Church.
1854
Crimean War: The siege of Sebastopol begins.
1919
Black Sox scandal: The Cincinnati Reds win the World Series

1936
Generators at Boulder Dam (later renamed to Hoover Dam) begin to generate electricity from the Colorado River and transmit it 266 miles to Los Angeles, California.
1940
World War II: Battle of Britain – During a night-time air raid by the German Luftwaffe, St. Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London, England is hit by a bomb.
1967
A day after being captured, Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara is executed for attempting to incite a revolution in Bolivia.
1969
In Chicago, the United States National Guard is called in for crowd control as demonstrations continue in connection with the trial of the “Chicago Eight” that began on September 24.
2006
North Korea allegedly tests its first nuclear device.
2009
First lunar impact of the Centaur and LCROSS spacecrafts as part of NASA’s Lunar Precursor Robotic Program.


***

"It's said that 'power corrupts', but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The same are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable." -David Brin, scientist and science fiction author (b. 6 Oct 1950)

***

About 6.2 million years ago, the Red Sea dried up completely. Some millennia later, the dried seabed filled back up in a cataclysmic flood.

***

I am very excited about Momdani's impending election. Surely he will level the playing field and order the Yankees to give the Pirates one of their excess power hitters.

***

Grading

Keeping score has intimations of hierarchy.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress NAEP, which provides data for the Nation's Report Card, is mandated by Congress and is the largest nationally representative test of student learning. NAEP tests were first administered in 1969.

Today, the assessments in math and reading are given every two years to a broad sample of students in fourth and eighth grades; 12th-graders receive them every four years. NAEP also administers voluntary assessments in other subjects outside the congressional mandate.

It has been tracking students’ progress since 1969. The latest results show a decade-long decline in high school students' reading and math scores. (It should be remembered that school dropouts cannot be assessed and are not included in the results, so the results are probably misleadingly high. The national average dropout rate in the U.S. is approximately 5.1%, with some states reporting rates as low as 2% and others as high as 10%.)

The NEAP has released its latest findings. From January to March 2024, it assessed about 23,000 eighth graders in science, 19,300 12th graders in math, and 24,300 12th graders in reading.

The NEAP found that just 31% of the eighth graders performed at or above proficient.

For 12th-grade math, only 22% performed at or above proficient.

There was a slightly better result for 12th-grade reading, with 35% performing at or above proficient.

So what’s happening? The NEAP states that while the COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on student achievement, some experts argue that scores had been declining before that. Some of the other factors include heightened absenteeism, increased screen time, and shorter attention spans.

Compared with NAEP's first 12th-grade reading assessment in 1992, this average score is 10 points lower.

"Scores for our lowest-performing students are at historic lows — continued declines that began more than a decade ago," Matthew Soldner, acting director of IES, told reporters. "My predecessor warned of this trend, and her predecessor warned of this trend as well. And now I am warning you of this trend."

"And I alone am escaped to tell thee?"

If spending is any indicator of effort, we are working hard to fix this problem. The national average public school spending/student is approximately $17,074 (2025-26). The state with the highest average student spending is New York, with $32,199 spent per student. The state with the lowest average student spending is Idaho, with $9,364 per student.

But, of course, the spending is a placebo. The truth is, we don't care. Quality has been leaking out of education for more than a generation, drip, drip, dripping every year. We have other priorities like the teacher's union, bizarre teaching methods, and sociological goals. To some, quality is a defect in the culture. It lifts and separates. They are happier if there is no curve in the bell curve at all.

The stagnant pool of algae has advantages over the dangerous savannah.

Question: Education

 

Question: Education

If we should reward success and punish failure, should we increase educational spending in schools that demonstrate success and decrease funding for those schools that do poorly?

Education and the Lack of It

So far this year, Fetterman has missed more votes than any other senator. According to GovTrack.us, he’s missed 174 of 920 roll call votes, or about 19 percent of them.

***

On May 5 of last season, Aaron Judge was mired in one of the worst slumps of his career, sparking panic in the Bronx. So when he stepped to the plate for the first time, he decided to try something different.
Up to that point, Judge had always used an open batting stance, which angled his left foot toward the third baseman. Against Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal that afternoon, Judge moved the placement of his front leg ever so slightly back toward the pitcher. He promptly blasted a home run into the right-center field bleachers, followed by a booming double a few innings later.
The change to Judge’s setup was almost imperceptible at first, but it had an unimaginable impact: In the year since, he has put together one of the greatest stretches of hitting that baseball has ever seen.--WSJ

***

Rack or Wrack?

A “rack” is a torture device, from its origin "to stretch." So, as a verb, it usually means “torture” or “cause distress.” However, as a noun, a rack can also be a frame used for storage (e.g., a “spice rack,” restraining the spice but causing it no pain).
“Wrack” is an old word meaning “wreck.” It was used to describe a shipwreck and is associated with destruction.

Most of the time, “rack” will be correct. However, “wrack” is now widely accepted as a variant spelling when used as a verb.
Generally, “wrack” is used in phrases like “wrack and ruin” and “storm-wracked.” The word “rack,” meanwhile, appears in terms like “nerve-racking” or "racked with pain."

***

Education and the Lack of It

Universities screen teachers through ideological matrices, censor opinions within and outside the classroom, and permit violent and destructive acts on campus aimed at university students, without discipline or consequence.

In the face of such dangerous irresponsibility, should the university's freedom be compromised by the government's duty to protect its citizens and encourage the university's neutral and academic environment?

It may be the hallmark question of our time. The educational system creates the nation's future thinking and is frequently biased and often simply stupid. In the early years, it fails to develop a proper understanding of the nation's creation and its distinctive break with history. It also accepts fads as gospel--see transgender classes and modern reading teaching techniques--and promulgates provably untrue concepts that are anathema to the nation's philosophy and destructive to its nature--see the laughable 1619 Project.

The university has become the barricade of this propaganda and error. And, shortsightedly, the society sees this as a problem for the university and not the larger social problem it is. This country is not bound together by race or genes or history; it is a society maintained by an agreement among men, that all men hold certain rights in common that predate and preempt law. All of these strange educational deviations are guerrilla raids upon that belief.

What should we do? A real problem because, while the educational system is neither accurate nor socially responsible, both the correcting mechanisms--the press, and the government--are worse. The government has already demonstrated its failure in the lower school system. And the press won the Pulitzer Prize for The 1619 Project. And many problems are imported by foreign students with foreign ideologies who simply don't know--or believe--the lay of the new land. 

I shudder at the notion of police on campus. But if the schools will not prosecute crimes like vandalism and assault on campus, maybe the government doing it would be a reasonable compromise. And perhaps an aggressive Civics program, grade school, high school, and university--mandatory and thoughtful--could offer a second opinion if not an antidote to the youthful confusion of the nature of this New Land.

You can be a good citizen without knowing how to read or write. 

U.S. Education

Lydia Mugambe, a UN & Ugandan judge, has been convicted of bringing a woman into England illegally and then forcing her to work as a slave. Mugambe tried to evade justice by claiming she had diplomatic immunity, which has now been removed
Mugambe was an African U.N. Criminal Tribunal judge, was a fellow at Columbia University, and has written extensively about human rights. 

She has been convicted of slavery. Slavery.

***

In 1940 Gen. Henry Arnold, head of the U.S. Army Air Corps, said using incendiary bombs against cities was “contrary to our national policy of attacking only military objectives.” As the war with Japan went on, American military planners came to believe such tactics would be needed for victory. In March 1945, a fleet of B-29 bombers lit Tokyo on fire, killing more civilians in a night than died during the entire eight-month Blitz on Britain. The use of atomic weapons would follow.--Jonathan W. Jordan in wsj on “Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima, and the Surrender of Japan” by Richard Overy.

***

The first human object launched into space wasn’t Sputnik 1. It was actually a manhole cover accidentally blown off the test shaft during a nuclear test in Nevada 38 days earlier. It reached speeds equal to six times Earth’s escape velocity and was never found. (Wikipedia). Operation Plumbbob! I find I believe every AI sent to me but if you can't believe Wiki, what can you believe?

***

U.S. Education

The educators have set "truancy" as the absence of more than 10% of school days. 10%.

New York City's truancy rate was 25%; it is now 34%.

So over one-third of students are truants.

In 2024, thirty-nine percent of fourth-grade students performed at or above the NAEP Proficient level on the mathematics assessment. Proficient.

Twenty-four percent tested below basic. Basic

Sixty-one percent tested below proficient. Proficient.

72% of eighth graders tested below proficient, 39% below basic.

Why is no one screaming?

These alarming numbers will weigh heavily upon those students who have decided not to attend school. Those students who did not learn math and/or read poorly will also suffer. But the nation will suffer the most. This nation can not tolerate the number of unachieving kids becoming unachieving adults. No nation can. It's as if 40% of the nation had become addicts. These are pre-industrial age levels of staring, shuffling, and nonproductive outsiders living below subsistence levels in a vibrant, demanding productive world.

This large group will not develop to offer their individual skills and talents to the culture.

Then what? They will need to be supported by those participating members of the culture. Money will be leeched from investment, maintenance, defense, education, and lifestyle.

And, of course, the sequela of personal failure--drug use, depression, criminality, family irresponsibility, and violence--will rise with their concomitant financial and social demands.

This is a country whose fire bells are becoming background music.