I'm making my best effort not to pay attention to any of the polling at this point. Early in person voting opens here next week. I''ve set aside time to go cast my ballot. After that I will have done all I personally can do and the outcome will be what it will be.
Eh this is where the Israelis have a point. Poor Muslims from war zones don't assimilate. They knife people who draw cartoons that hurt their feelings. All the more reason for Israel to secure territory with as few of them in it as possible. If the Europeans are smart they'll lock that door and throw away the key as well.
There's no comparison to what's going on here, where the chaos creates a lot of disorder and social backlash but there's no reason to believe our immigrants from Central America or wherever can't assimilate, provided the flow is kept reasonably under control.
We can certainly argue with our own abstractions and straw men all we like. Or we can consider that something like 40k dead Gazans and 100k injured, many grievously and in permanent, life altering ways, renders it a virtual certainty that the entirety of the population has very personal reasons to hate Israel forever.
Whether it was Tolkien's intent or not Tom Bombadil is a lot like those frustratingly small maps of the western edge of Middle Earth in the books. There's obviously more, but what?
Yet if you think about it a bit there's no answer that would ever be interesting enough or satisfying. Similarly Bombadil makes the world feel big. He implies there's stuff going on out there that we don't know about, and for whom all of the high drama between elves and men and Sauron could well be tiny and meaningless.
Not to go too far on a tangent but I think one of the worst things about fandom of fantastical media and nerd culture is the constant demands for an answer to everything, as if knowing is better than allowing for some mystery. The lack of knowing everything helps the world feel real, especially when you compare it to our current sprawling science fictions and fantasies where everyone and everything always turns out to be somehow intimately related. We all know the real world doesn't work that way.
I don't think these things are as mutually exclusive as all that. On the one hand, it is clear to me that the best thing you can do for your kids is pass down good genes. The second best thing you can do is raise them in a two parent, in tact family where the parents are married to each other. The third best thing you can do is reinforce values like hard work and deferred gratification. The fourth best thing you can do is immerse them in an environment where the norm is doing 2 and 3.
But it's also in our interest as a society to have a lot of long ladders, and to have lots of different ways to become successful. Sometimes that requires a little broad mindedness, and understanding that the ROI won't always be immediate or obvious. We want to live in a civilization, not an every man for himself hellscape where any talk of a helping hand is dismissed as pointless or worse.
This goes back to my other question though, of what it is we're trying to do here. If the answer is ensure that the top echelons of society resemble at least fuzzily, and cosmetically (i.e. on a power point), the racial demographics of the country, it can succeed in that, particularly if everyone agrees that's what we're doing and is willing to play along.
But it's never going to do anything about broader inequality.
I don't think that's fair. There are diamonds in the rough and there's nothing wrong with universities expending some resources trying to find them. It also makes sense to me that a state university would be required to do just that as part of its mission to serve the public.
I do wonder how much it scales. It would not shock me that even the worst of the worst high schools have a small number of students who if identified could be coached into an acceptable level of performance. But can you turn a 1 or 2% admission rate into a 10% admission rate that way? I have my doubts.
Maybe I'm wrong about this but I seem to recall reading somewhere that by TX law the top 10% of graduates of any TX public high school were guaranteed a spot at a TX public college or university. The idea has always struck me as a reasonable one.
But I also have to ask- does student ability matter? It doesn't do anyone of any race any good to spend time and money at one of these places if there is reason to believe they won't get the credential. We're presuming the correctness of backwards reasoning, that it's good colleges producing succesful people as opposed to succesful people going to good colleges. To use Jaybird's favorite jurisdiction, I'm confident we could put students from the worst school districts in Maryland into the best colleges in the state and I don't think it would magically turn them into something they weren't. The damage is done well before anyone is thinking about higher ed.
I don't think it's at all clear in 2024 what specific issue or issues we're dealing with. I thought the piece did a decent job of putting into layman's terms the core holdings of Bakke, and how all of this evolved from SCOTUS holding that the state's interest in maintaining 'diversity' allowed for some consideration of race, but that quotas were held unconstitutional.
The context was of course a demographic situation where for all practical purposes the country was white and black, and most of the then living black people had actually experienced segregation and Jim Crow. Wherever one stands on the public policy question it was at least clear what we were talking about when we said 'diversity', namely what, if any, extra consideration could or should be given to the black people who had lived under segregation and in the immediate aftermath. But as some may have noticed, a lot has changed since then. The students in college now are at least 3 generations removed from de jure segregation, there is a successful black professional class, and the demographics of the country are way more complicated.
What does diversity mean now? And what issue are we trying to solve?
Audience one is the broader media. No one can say any longer that she is too afraid or unpolished to go into an unfriendly environment.
Audience two is any of those Haley voters looking for permission not to vote for Trump. I have no idea how she came off to them, but at minimum I saw no obvious gaffes and while she didn't hit any grand slams or anything she operated at the level of a normal politician in these formats.
Who knows if it means anything for the election but I'd say it went successfully, as far as its aims were concerned.
I think there's two parts to that. Part one is that the broader political right, as best as I can tell, has chosen to no longer participate as a solutions oriented movement. That's the case with virtually everything, from healthcare to housing to how the economy functions. In fairness higher ed is maybe the one place where conservatives can credibly claim to have been purged, but I'm not sure it matters when they don't propose solutions in any arena anyway.
Part 2 though is that the broader left needs to make sure it retains its ability to scrutinize whether the solutions it's proposing are actually solving the problems they are intended to, or if they have even identified the problem in an accurate way. In terms of the piece, it seems easily predictable that priming everyone to look at every interpersonal tension or friction as an identity based offense that is a subset of an even larger identity based conflict would not produce a more open, tolerant place. Quite the opposite.
This is why I think it is a positive sign that an institution like the NYT did and felt like they could run this. It isn't Chris Rufo, or even somewhere like Reason. It's a normal liberal newspaper providing the evidence that this stuff doesn't get the results it's proponents at the University say it does.
Even limiting deliveries to missile defense would be something. I think the truth is that no one can articulate a rational reason for what we are doing, which at this point is pouring gasoline onto Israel's recklessness.
Didn't say he'd definitely win. If the Republicans wanted to definitely win they'd have nominated Haley.
From my perspective it's important to remember that Trump has just massive, massive unfavorables. His cultists aren't free of charge and their influence seems to be putting GA, AZ, and in particular NC in play in a way that they probably wouldn't otherwise be. Vance himself has said some pretty out there stuff but only us political junkies know about that. From the clips I've seen of the VP debate he plays normal well enough on TV and in a way Trump will never be able to.
As I said below it's too late for a move now but it isn't like we didn't just experience a pretty significant bump from getting rid of our original candidate, who fairly or not was seen as old baggage.
I'd be very surprised if Australia didn't have at least some difficulties with this, same as you hear about in the US, same as in Canada and other parts of the new world. Personally I think a lot of the discomfort is a sign of a weird combination of ethnocentricity and historical ignorance. My thoughts are as follows:
-There's no existing or historical country that did not come into being by conquest and displacement. All societies were founded this way including that of the conquered themselves.
-The archeological record is such that calling anyone 'indigenous' to anywhere is not well supported. Humanity came out of Africa in the deep past, spread all over the place, and has been conquering and displacing each other ever since.
-It sucks being conquered and colonized. It leaves hard cultural memories and scars that can take many generations to resolve.
-The western democracies that were founded, as they have evolved into their modern forms, are superior in virtually every objective measurable way to those they replaced on the territory they now hold. There are a whole lot of weird, noble savage myths that say they aren't but these don't stand up well to scrutiny either.
-As long as the descendants of the conquered are fully enfranchised today no one needs to feel particularly guilty about any of it. The crimes were committed by the long dead against the long dead. It's worth learning about it to better understand ourselves but there's no reason to obsess over it in particular anymore than any other historical episode.
My understanding is that the distinction between operation warp speed and the drive in the EU was that the government spent the money (via CARES Act) on multiple vaccine development initiatives simultaneously, with the understanding some would inevitably fail. Sort of a lowering of normal standards of proof required for funding in the hope it would increase speed. You can of course find people that dispute how successful that was but that is the concept and we did end up with widespread vaccine availability more quickly.
It's not that surprising to me that working age adults could dodge it indefinitely. It's gone through my house 3 times, with each instance coming from the children.
Before I had kids I never got sick. Thought I must have this great immune system. Now my wife and I are constantly fighting off something or another. Turns out the real reason for the lack of colds and viruses was that adults are not in your face and physical space the way children are. I don't care how many times I see one of those charts that shows just how far stuff travels in a cubicle farm from a cough or a sneeze. It isnt the same.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Campaign Scratchpad: Known Unknowns”
I'm making my best effort not to pay attention to any of the polling at this point. Early in person voting opens here next week. I''ve set aside time to go cast my ballot. After that I will have done all I personally can do and the outcome will be what it will be.
On “Hamas, Anyar Sinwar, and The Grand Delusion”
Eh this is where the Israelis have a point. Poor Muslims from war zones don't assimilate. They knife people who draw cartoons that hurt their feelings. All the more reason for Israel to secure territory with as few of them in it as possible. If the Europeans are smart they'll lock that door and throw away the key as well.
There's no comparison to what's going on here, where the chaos creates a lot of disorder and social backlash but there's no reason to believe our immigrants from Central America or wherever can't assimilate, provided the flow is kept reasonably under control.
"
Heh yea I mean, that, or Ted Kennedy could have just agreed to Nixon's proposal in '74. Of course who could've predicted the paradigm shift?
"
We can certainly argue with our own abstractions and straw men all we like. Or we can consider that something like 40k dead Gazans and 100k injured, many grievously and in permanent, life altering ways, renders it a virtual certainty that the entirety of the population has very personal reasons to hate Israel forever.
On “POETS Day! Why Is Tom Bombadil?”
Whether it was Tolkien's intent or not Tom Bombadil is a lot like those frustratingly small maps of the western edge of Middle Earth in the books. There's obviously more, but what?
Yet if you think about it a bit there's no answer that would ever be interesting enough or satisfying. Similarly Bombadil makes the world feel big. He implies there's stuff going on out there that we don't know about, and for whom all of the high drama between elves and men and Sauron could well be tiny and meaningless.
Not to go too far on a tangent but I think one of the worst things about fandom of fantastical media and nerd culture is the constant demands for an answer to everything, as if knowing is better than allowing for some mystery. The lack of knowing everything helps the world feel real, especially when you compare it to our current sprawling science fictions and fantasies where everyone and everything always turns out to be somehow intimately related. We all know the real world doesn't work that way.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/14/2024”
I don't think these things are as mutually exclusive as all that. On the one hand, it is clear to me that the best thing you can do for your kids is pass down good genes. The second best thing you can do is raise them in a two parent, in tact family where the parents are married to each other. The third best thing you can do is reinforce values like hard work and deferred gratification. The fourth best thing you can do is immerse them in an environment where the norm is doing 2 and 3.
But it's also in our interest as a society to have a lot of long ladders, and to have lots of different ways to become successful. Sometimes that requires a little broad mindedness, and understanding that the ROI won't always be immediate or obvious. We want to live in a civilization, not an every man for himself hellscape where any talk of a helping hand is dismissed as pointless or worse.
"
This goes back to my other question though, of what it is we're trying to do here. If the answer is ensure that the top echelons of society resemble at least fuzzily, and cosmetically (i.e. on a power point), the racial demographics of the country, it can succeed in that, particularly if everyone agrees that's what we're doing and is willing to play along.
But it's never going to do anything about broader inequality.
"
I don't think that's fair. There are diamonds in the rough and there's nothing wrong with universities expending some resources trying to find them. It also makes sense to me that a state university would be required to do just that as part of its mission to serve the public.
I do wonder how much it scales. It would not shock me that even the worst of the worst high schools have a small number of students who if identified could be coached into an acceptable level of performance. But can you turn a 1 or 2% admission rate into a 10% admission rate that way? I have my doubts.
"
What is it that the program does exactly? How do they find the beneficiaries and what do they do with them?
"
Maybe I'm wrong about this but I seem to recall reading somewhere that by TX law the top 10% of graduates of any TX public high school were guaranteed a spot at a TX public college or university. The idea has always struck me as a reasonable one.
But I also have to ask- does student ability matter? It doesn't do anyone of any race any good to spend time and money at one of these places if there is reason to believe they won't get the credential. We're presuming the correctness of backwards reasoning, that it's good colleges producing succesful people as opposed to succesful people going to good colleges. To use Jaybird's favorite jurisdiction, I'm confident we could put students from the worst school districts in Maryland into the best colleges in the state and I don't think it would magically turn them into something they weren't. The damage is done well before anyone is thinking about higher ed.
"
I don't think it's at all clear in 2024 what specific issue or issues we're dealing with. I thought the piece did a decent job of putting into layman's terms the core holdings of Bakke, and how all of this evolved from SCOTUS holding that the state's interest in maintaining 'diversity' allowed for some consideration of race, but that quotas were held unconstitutional.
The context was of course a demographic situation where for all practical purposes the country was white and black, and most of the then living black people had actually experienced segregation and Jim Crow. Wherever one stands on the public policy question it was at least clear what we were talking about when we said 'diversity', namely what, if any, extra consideration could or should be given to the black people who had lived under segregation and in the immediate aftermath. But as some may have noticed, a lot has changed since then. The students in college now are at least 3 generations removed from de jure segregation, there is a successful black professional class, and the demographics of the country are way more complicated.
What does diversity mean now? And what issue are we trying to solve?
On “Group Activity: VP Kamala Harris Fox News Interview”
I think her audience was twofold.
Audience one is the broader media. No one can say any longer that she is too afraid or unpolished to go into an unfriendly environment.
Audience two is any of those Haley voters looking for permission not to vote for Trump. I have no idea how she came off to them, but at minimum I saw no obvious gaffes and while she didn't hit any grand slams or anything she operated at the level of a normal politician in these formats.
Who knows if it means anything for the election but I'd say it went successfully, as far as its aims were concerned.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/14/2024”
I think there's two parts to that. Part one is that the broader political right, as best as I can tell, has chosen to no longer participate as a solutions oriented movement. That's the case with virtually everything, from healthcare to housing to how the economy functions. In fairness higher ed is maybe the one place where conservatives can credibly claim to have been purged, but I'm not sure it matters when they don't propose solutions in any arena anyway.
Part 2 though is that the broader left needs to make sure it retains its ability to scrutinize whether the solutions it's proposing are actually solving the problems they are intended to, or if they have even identified the problem in an accurate way. In terms of the piece, it seems easily predictable that priming everyone to look at every interpersonal tension or friction as an identity based offense that is a subset of an even larger identity based conflict would not produce a more open, tolerant place. Quite the opposite.
This is why I think it is a positive sign that an institution like the NYT did and felt like they could run this. It isn't Chris Rufo, or even somewhere like Reason. It's a normal liberal newspaper providing the evidence that this stuff doesn't get the results it's proponents at the University say it does.
"
Paywalled unfortunately but NYT has a very long must read on the crumbling DEI apparatus at University of Michigan.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/16/magazine/dei-university-michigan.html
This is really great, and even better that the NYT will publish something like this. I doubt they'd have felt they could as recently as 2 years ago.
"
So did anyone watch the Fox interview? I wasn't able to but from the initial reactions I am seeing it sounds like she did ok in a hostile environment.
"
She seems like she's doing exactly what she should be.
That's particularly the case if Trump starts melting down or behaving noticeably strange (stranger than usual?) in his appearances.
"
Even limiting deliveries to missile defense would be something. I think the truth is that no one can articulate a rational reason for what we are doing, which at this point is pouring gasoline onto Israel's recklessness.
"
I think it's an open question as to whether an American or Canadian audience would expect it.
Certainly the people reviewing the film would, as most likely would the people producing it.
"
At minimum, there is a significant premium solely for running someone who is not ancient.
"
Didn't say he'd definitely win. If the Republicans wanted to definitely win they'd have nominated Haley.
From my perspective it's important to remember that Trump has just massive, massive unfavorables. His cultists aren't free of charge and their influence seems to be putting GA, AZ, and in particular NC in play in a way that they probably wouldn't otherwise be. Vance himself has said some pretty out there stuff but only us political junkies know about that. From the clips I've seen of the VP debate he plays normal well enough on TV and in a way Trump will never be able to.
As I said below it's too late for a move now but it isn't like we didn't just experience a pretty significant bump from getting rid of our original candidate, who fairly or not was seen as old baggage.
"
It's way too late to change ballots.
"
I'd be very surprised if Australia didn't have at least some difficulties with this, same as you hear about in the US, same as in Canada and other parts of the new world. Personally I think a lot of the discomfort is a sign of a weird combination of ethnocentricity and historical ignorance. My thoughts are as follows:
-There's no existing or historical country that did not come into being by conquest and displacement. All societies were founded this way including that of the conquered themselves.
-The archeological record is such that calling anyone 'indigenous' to anywhere is not well supported. Humanity came out of Africa in the deep past, spread all over the place, and has been conquering and displacing each other ever since.
-It sucks being conquered and colonized. It leaves hard cultural memories and scars that can take many generations to resolve.
-The western democracies that were founded, as they have evolved into their modern forms, are superior in virtually every objective measurable way to those they replaced on the territory they now hold. There are a whole lot of weird, noble savage myths that say they aren't but these don't stand up well to scrutiny either.
-As long as the descendants of the conquered are fully enfranchised today no one needs to feel particularly guilty about any of it. The crimes were committed by the long dead against the long dead. It's worth learning about it to better understand ourselves but there's no reason to obsess over it in particular anymore than any other historical episode.
"
It would probably greatly improve the GOPs chances if they did.
On “The COVID-Flu Cocktail: A New Fall Tradition”
My understanding is that the distinction between operation warp speed and the drive in the EU was that the government spent the money (via CARES Act) on multiple vaccine development initiatives simultaneously, with the understanding some would inevitably fail. Sort of a lowering of normal standards of proof required for funding in the hope it would increase speed. You can of course find people that dispute how successful that was but that is the concept and we did end up with widespread vaccine availability more quickly.
"
It's not that surprising to me that working age adults could dodge it indefinitely. It's gone through my house 3 times, with each instance coming from the children.
Before I had kids I never got sick. Thought I must have this great immune system. Now my wife and I are constantly fighting off something or another. Turns out the real reason for the lack of colds and viruses was that adults are not in your face and physical space the way children are. I don't care how many times I see one of those charts that shows just how far stuff travels in a cubicle farm from a cough or a sneeze. It isnt the same.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.