Leverage this....

This post does a pretty good job, and in acceptable English, in explaining the origin of the shitrain that has fallen on the economy in the last two years. Interestingly enough, the terminology used here can be directly substituted for text like "buying on margin," "margin calls," etc., which were employed 80 years ago, when the stock market collapsed in October 1929 following years of speculation.

The object of our current malaise is real estate, of course, rather than stock certificates. Lots of people assumed it couldn't happen with real estate, because the collapse that resulted in the Great Depression of the 1930's was based on "paper profits" that resulted in worthless stock certificates, and the current imbroglio has tangible material assets behind it. Yep, but there was supposedly "real" assets behind RCA stock in 1929, too, but those assets were impossibly overvalued. Rather like some termite-riddled shack in Southern California being valued at an absurdly inflation million bucks before the bottom fell out this time. Some animated corpse in a suit once said that "An item is worth exactly what someone is willing to pay," or something to that effect.

Up to a certain time, the willingness of people who are ignorant of history, or the context of their own times, or just plain ignorant will persuade them to pay hugely inflated prices for something. Suddenly one morning it all looks like fantasy. Consult the great Dutch tulip bubble of the 17th century; it's only different because the subject was tulips, instead of stocks, real estate, gold, or baseball cards, or the armshells of the Trobriand Islands.

But this will simply recur as long as the human race exists, because it is based on what people want to believe.

This Just In- all people MAY not need to attend college

.....and that is all. (But you'd sure never know it to read the current bleatings about "underrepresented minorities" -whatever that means- in the graduation statistics.)

Waking Nightmares #6739: Lenses in Space

The "Green Hallucination" that is beginning to pervade society is for the most part harmless rhetoric. The dangerous part is that we can take some bright idea concocted by a scientist hungry for grants and parlay it into a world-saving measure.
An illustration of this was recently telecast on the Discovery Channel in a show entitled "Space Sunshield." The description states "Scientists consider shading the planet with mirrors to deflect sunlight and protect against global warming." In matter of fact, most of the individuals shown in the Discovery Channel feature might be charitably described as "fringe players," and I was actually somewhat relieved after watching it, realizing that few viewers -save the most credulous- will be buying this.
At our present state of knowledge, trying to block the sun's rays has an equal probability of precipitating us into the next phase of the million-year Ice Age (Pleistocene), where we live in balmy interglacial period. Scientists are in agreement that it's only a matter of time before the next glaciation occurs. The last time, an ice sheet a mile thick covered a good bit of the Northern Hemisphere, which is where most land animals (including us) live.....because that's where most of the land is.
Any consideration given to implementing such a project absent far, far more research is worse than criminal, and could literally be genocidal. On the other hand, those who advocate voluntary human extinction may support this.....

Smugglers of Spokane

In the magic land of carbon offsets that no one can explain, and putting wind generators where there's insufficient wind, soon we'll see solar panels in the shade. But until then, we'll have to make do with "green" products that......don't work. Dishwashing detergent seems trivial enough, but, believe me, this is only a beginning.

Wishful Thinking......

I read this and felt a surge of hope......yeah, right.

.......and thank you, xkcd.

If it's taught, it must be true....

This is a pretty good followup to my last post, and definitely deserves the 'wish-bringing' label. It seems a few decades ago, certain professors (most notably, one Leonard Jefferies) at several putatively reputable universities began taking Afrocentrism (a theory based on, to put it charitably, the most dubious antecedents) out a whole new door.

Nowadays, it is taught in certain quarters that the roots of all that is profound, and good, and noble in Western Civilization actually rests with persons who were masquerading as Caucasians such as Plato, Aristotle, and Isaac Newton, but were, in reality- black.

This book, by Professor Mary Lefkowitz of Wellesley College, gives the details of this particular disease. But you can avoid spending $17 by imagining a world where there are no facts, merely intention, commitment in a certain direction and toward certain goals. The "facts" will then reveal themselves, as in a glass, darkly. These then become the received history of an individual, or group, or perhaps an entire society where conformity to that which never was can bring ease and peace of mind.

We live in a country where some universities shovel the truly great into the great hopper of their political mind-machine. It then remains to deliberately sift out the most obscure and marginal thinkers, who are then lionized as some cultural undiscovered country.

It's not inconceivable that our society could move full circle, from what may have been a lie, but truly one of those rare "good lies" as outlined by Plato in The Republic, to nothing but a set of murky supersitions well suited to a new dark age.

If Only Wishing.....

I have a bad feeling that when the national campaign gets into full swing, we will proceed from generalities and pontifications relating to "change" to this sort of thing:

Here we sit in a branchy row,
Thinking of beautiful things we know;
Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do,
All complete, in a minute or two--
Something noble and wise and good,
Done by merely wishing we could.
We've forgotten, but--never mind,
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!

- Rudyard Kipling, "The Road Song of the Bandar-Log" from The Jungle Book

Trolling for Tragedy

The fires have died down in California, the rains are done in the Southeast....where can The Weather Channel find the Disaster o' the Day? More and more, as with some other cable channels, there is an obsession with ongoing or putative disaster, and when there's not one one in the offing, their sense of direction is lost.

Wait! All is not lost! There's a large tropical depression building, so there's at least some hope of a hurricane.....

From luxury to appendage.....

And the latest from the front in a guerilla war that was becoming another major nuisance in my last years of teaching:

"But parents and students have a legitimate point when they argue that kids need cell phones to help coordinate after-school activities, and for safety along the way."

Ah, yes, there's no way anyone even HAD a life before cell phones, that's for sure. And as for safety? The problem at the local university is that no fewer than three students have been killed in recent years by vehicles (in two cases, city buses), two while talking on cell phones, and one with a headset on, all three perfectly oblivious to their doom. There's safety for you.

The recurrent notion that a cell phone is going to provide some salvation if a latter-day Columbine or Virginia Tech is under way is the other mantra one hears. These massacres have transpired with such speed that it's unclear what use a cell phone would be. If even a few of the thirty-some dead at Virginia Tech had been armed and willing to defend themselves, it's very probable that the shooting would have stopped at that point. I wonder what an interview with the survivors who had cell phone would yield? Not much, I suspect.

The only way I'll concede that a cell phone is going to bring the cavalry to the rescue in time to do any good is if the local SWAT team happens purely by chance to be driving by the scene. Unfortunately, real life just doesn't work that way, and I'll eschew my cell phone for a .40 Glock under those circumstances.

In conclusion: There is no cogent rationale for allowing students into the classroom with cell phones, pagers, music-listening devices, etc. They are distractions from the learning process, pure and simple, and anyone of average sense and sensibility should be able to see that. Of course, I've heard that Diogenes finally gave up on the "honest man" thing, and is poking around corners with his lantern held high, attempting to illuminate "a grain of common sense."

A Small Symptom

I finally ran across the exact quote I referred to yesterday, and who it's attributed to: Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-MN, referring to the collapse of the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River at Minneapolis.

"A bridge in America just shouldn't fall down," Klobuchar said at a news conference with Coleman.

Whatever its intent, or the context, it pretty much sums up the "why" part of my complete disaffection with government. If I am wrong, Klobuchar, Coleman and others will take immediate steps to pass legislation that will see to it that our crumbling infrastructure -bridges, highways, railroads, electrical grid, etc.- is rehabilitated, brought up to date, and maintained properly. But I'm not holding my breath, because it's not going to happen.

Oh, it's not the worst or most pernicious form of this particular syndrome. An example of what is can be found in William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Chapter 12, "The Road to Munich" -which I am re-reading for reasons both complex and peripheral to this post. Chamberlain allows himself to be duped by Hitler (oh, he knew....) in the topic "Surrender at Munich: September 29-30, 1938," and comes back to Britain and utters the immortal lines: "My good friends," he said, "this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace in our time."
This was no belief at all, but a desperate wish that what Chamberlain knew was certain to occur, what it would take a miracle to prevent from occurring, would -somehow- not happen. He was the Prime Minister of a great nation, and many cheered his words -and yet, in less than a year, World War II was underway.

This is just another version of what happens when politicians pretend bridges shouldn't fall; it will ensure the familiar, odd human trait that consists of a combination of willful blindness, and ignoring, and forgetting continues, and is perpetuated by such people as Sen. Klobuchar, and, I fear, all too many of those in government.

Just When You Think It's Safe....

....to turn on the TV, somebody comes on and quotes an unnamed U.S. Senator:

"No bridge in the United States should ever collapse."

Looking for that repeal of the laws of physics.....

The Discount on Legends These Days

"Legendary Talk-Show Host Tom Snyder Dies"

No- you talked to people on TV, Tom. Beowulf is legendary, you're (now) a re-run.

At Least Once More

I have written precious little about the "progress" in public schools since my retirement from that particular arena five years ago. This should not be inferred as insouciance, rather that I've seen little point in writing about the same ills -again- when it's obvious that the forces in our society that are transforming the schools must run their course.

Nevertheless.

After reading a rather well-crafted column in the local paper on the subject, I am moved to blog about it again, and so ask, and perhaps for the last time, why?
The schools have always been where a great many Americans, perhaps a large majority, take their hopes for the future, when children enter the classroom to acquire some of the tools needed to deal with the world. Perhaps, after acquiring some schooling, some students will apply that learning to addressing society's problems. This is certainly reasonable; historically, a number of such students have done this, and will continue to do.
But through what side door crept in the wholly irrational expectation that schools themselves can be mandated to solve a multitude, if not all of society's ills? It is irrational -looked at in the broadest sense it is impossible- since schools are not structured to do it and should not be restructured to attempt it.
And yet this litany goes on, gets longer, and is pursued with increasing pressure. Racial, medical, dietary and a myriad behavioral problems (not to mention some that we've not thought of yet- this is covered by the catch-all phrase in the DSM-IV-TR) are all deemed to have an educational solution, and those who attempt to manage the schools are far past the point where they can fold their hands and admit their incompetence to deal with these issues. Instead, they nod, and smile broadly, and assure the public that they can solve the problem (just fill in your own blank), if only they "-have the resources."
Those with adequate mental acuity who work in the schools know perfectly well they can't correct these issues. The children bear these problems to the schoolhouse door, and they are a matter of congentical defect, deficiency, or a home life that makes fantasies like the Jukes and the Kallikaks look like the Brady Bunch. The more time the teacher must devote to being a therapist or warden, the less they can teach.
The single biggest force in our present culture that militates against success in school is the prevalent belief that everything ought to be pleasant and not upsetting or rigorous. Oh, there's plenty of talk of "challenging" kids in school, but the teacher who attempts it is just as apt to find him or herself in hot water for doing so. Nothing of the sort is generally permissible in an educational atmosphere that insists that teachers embrace detailed curriculum guides and not deviate. And the curricula themselves are increasingly aimed at the lowest common denominator, as relentlessly "dumbing down" is the only practical way to ensure that "no child is left behind."
As far as any support from the home, that most perceptive of contemporary social philosophers said:

Parents can no longer control the atmosphere at
home and have even lost the will to do so. With
great subtlety and energy, television enters not only
the room, but also the tastes of old and young alike,
appealing to the immediately pleasant and subverting
whatever does not conform to it.

-- Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind; 1985

........and there is nothing immediately pleasant or gratifying about learning the parts of speech, Julius Cæsar, the Constitution, or fractions- they're all just necessary hills to be climbed on the road to becoming educated. This is the increasingly impossible task our teachers must attempt, and one of the reasons I'm frankly glad to be retired.

But none of this addresses the why of it all- what's behind it? Have we lost so much confidence in our society, are we that suspicious and fearful of our neighbors that we insist that all the things we see that incite our fears be rectified by some magical, impossible diktat? I suppose if I knew, I'd be rich & famous....the main and hopelessly banal goal that -apparently- is the presumptive end of contemporary education.
I suppose that none of this will be rectified unless and until we finally allow schools to pursue a true education: educat = to draw out, to bring forth those things in each individual and develop them as much as teaching can. And, as important as it is, teaching is always a limited activity, always ending where the free will of the individual begins. And free will is an uneasy concept as the 21st Century opens, as is anything that is not subject to statute, regulation, or some other form of social control. The more our society attempts to reduce education to a formula, the more it becomes obvious that it is a glorious variable, helping to produce individuals in all their unpredictability and diversity.

Upheld....

Ill. ex-Gov. Ryan loses pension appeal

© 2007 The Associated Press

CHICAGO — A judge upheld a state board's decision to strip former Gov. George Ryan of his entire $197,000-a-year pension because of his conviction last year on federal racketeering charges.

I'd like to think this'll stick, but I liked the idea of Paris Hilton going to jail when it was first announced....and you saw what happened there. It's easy to be cynical about these things, but is the progression: Perception of differential justice -> acceptance of such treatment -> social classes?

It's true, because.....

.....we so desperately wish it to be.

Thus: the recent e-mail about the 11-year old girl dispatching two armed assailants with a shotgun. I'll not reproduce it here, because it's easy to find. Internet wishful thinking at its finest, not only because the names used are highly questionable, but because we wish all 11-year-old girls could eliminate armed assailants. When it comes to these kinds of stories, I'm a real sucker for "Paris Hilton to go to jail for 45 days" .....even when I know that's not going to happen.

The real world is more complicated, even when it has a good outcome, as with the local case of a putative predator who got nailed by a good old classic Joe Friday police stakeout of a middle school, after a 12-year-old reported being accosted earlier in the week. I was somewhat frosted to learn in the newspaper account that the school authorities confirmed the girl's account, stating there had been "-similar occurrences." However, the story did not state if anyone in the previous cases, be it child, parent, or school officials, had called the cops. The police, whatever their supposed faults otherwise, can hardly be held to account if they don't know!