Things Heard: e85v3

Let me know if you like the remarks or not or prefer the brief version.

1. Ob-Wings is a liberal blog and I haven’t thought about it enough to figure out if I agree or disagrees with the main thrust of this piece. “Second, if colleges ultimately shift to an on-demand model, students will be missing what I consider to be the best parts of “college.”  The aggregation of years of dining hall conversations, tavern debates, and dorm room bull sessions are my most valuable memories.” This makes no sense to me. I mean, I enjoyed bull sessions. But they weren’t in any sense better or ultimately more valuable than my classes. This must be the clearest demonstration that a comparing a non-science/non-technical higher education to a science/math/engineering education is like comparing apples and rocks.
2. ACORN should in any reasonable universe, taking a fatal blow. My guess is that business as usual will continue unabated.
3. Water we are told is the resource more threatened than petroleum, which itself might have passed the point of no return. I would like to note (brag?) that about a month ago we installed a dual/low flush toilet in our house (this one: Kohler K-3654-0).
4. Three simple rules for Afghanistan. Mr Easterly has some questions. I’d add, another. Wasn’t David Petraeus sent to Afghanistan. He seemed to grok COIN. Where is he now?
5. I don’t get it. This notion that the tea party is the “last gasp/stand” of the demographically waning rural/small town Christian white demographic seems to have
6. So it’s over. If you didn’t lose your job you’ve figured that out … and are likely working a lot harder than you were a year ago. I’m not convinced that’s a bad thing (that is the working harder part). The unemployment will likely ease on its own over the next year. Too bad we wasted 800 billions on an unnecessary stimulus package that had to be passed in the dark of the night as an emergency measure.
7. Mostly foreign policy links. I can’t figure Mr Obama’s foreign policy ideas out. He’s nasty to our allies, mushy to those who don’t like us, who still don’t like us, but now they don’t respect us either. And then there’s Honduras.
8. Mr Boudreaux asks how Mr Obama can call the financial sector “reckless”. Well, many a drunk can recognize another man to be drunk. I don’t see how that’s a problem. Ms McArdle, however, has repeatedly pointed out regarding the prior crisis for any indication that this was a regulatory failure, for it seems pretty clear the regulators were egging the whole mortgage bubble on.
9. A mother’s choice celebrated.
10. I read that book some years ago (before I began blogging). It should be in the scholastic canon, by which I mean everybody should have read that book. Recalling the linked notes on the Dostoevsky/Tolstoy (false?) choice … I’d offer that this one (The Death of Ivan Ilyich) is superlative and short.
11. Saving the whales … at what expense. Mr Kuznicki once offered that issues on the front burner don’t necessarily push others out of the limelight. That, in his case, even if SSM is on the front burner, we’ll all be attentive and paying attention to the myriad other issues. That there is no bandwidth problem for activism. This is, I think, clearly false as Mr Carter’s example demonstrates. Sudan/Darfur and the Congo is another example. Attention to the one, where the other is worse but not in the limelight … is a common problem. And yes, I realize that was not the main thrust of Mr Carter’s essay, but I’d offer it as a side matter.

Filed under: Links • Mark O.

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