Category Archives: Mail

Mail 688 Monday, August 15, 2011

· Regulations

· Letter From England

· No Child Left Behind and the testing quandry

In View I asked if anyone in Washington took the situation seriously. I have some mail.

Job-Killing Regulations

Jerry,

What are these “Job-Killing Regulations” you and the “Party of No” keep harping about? Why can’t you or someone enumerate and expound on these “Job-Killing Regulations” instead of just spitting out the words?

Consumers create jobs. We need more consumers.

Who (in his right mind) is going to hire more workers if they can’t sell all the products they are producing with the workers they already have on the payroll? It isn’t a lack of regulations that creates jobs, it is an empty warehouse at the factory that creates jobs. If the product is selling so fast that the warehouse is staying empty and there are back-orders on the books, the powers-that-be at the factory are going to put on more workers, regulations or no. Profit is king.

And read the Warren Buffett Op Ed piece in the August 14 NYT. Lo and behold! Taxing the rich doesn’t kill jobs, either! He even uses numbers.

Bruce

So clearly we don’t have a problem. The environmental regulations don’t have an effect or if they do it is not much; national minimum wages applying everywhere and under every condition are a good way to manage things; naming alcoholism a disability and requiring employers to keep drunks on the job are not an undue burden; none of this needs examining. All’s well, and Warren Buffet thinks taxes aren’t too high. And no one can enumerate just what regulations are harmful. It’s all just spewing out words.

Well, a day. Perhaps I have been mistaken, and am just spewing out words, and there are no problems.

Taxing the Rich

Jerry,

You’ll forgive me if I put just a tad more credence to Warren Buffett’s opinion of taxing the rich than to yours.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_WARREN_BUFFETT_TAXES?SITE=ORAST&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Bruce

I have no great objection to decreasing the large gap between rich and poor, but I do have an objection to raising government revenue by soaking the rich. If you want to make a case for distributism, in which enormous fortunes are confiscated and distributed evenly among the population, I will listen, and even find you some favorable arguments for having a smaller gap between rich and poor: but I will continue to object to having a larger percentage of the GNP go to government. It is the size and power of government that concerns me as much as anything else. I do not want to feed the beast.

More, I do not want to encourage entitlements; I do not think a Republic can survive when those who pay little or no tax determine the size of government and the entitlements to the citizens. I do not want to encourage a society in which all men are paid for existing, and no man must pay for his sins – or for his dinner, for that matter.

I don’t even object to the dole and the creation of a social class that does not work and does not intend to work, which is entirely subsidized by those who do produce – so long as that class forfeits its political control. You will argue that if that happens, those who control the government will not give enough to the non-producers; that only the entitled can determine how much they are entitled to. The counter argument is that only those paying the taxes should be represented when it comes to fixing the taxes; that there needs to be a minimum tax paid before you get to vote on just what the taxpayers will give you.

Buffett may well know better than me what taxes he can pay and what taxes his peers can pay and still sustain a large economy; I do not think he is better acquainted with political philosophy and history than I am (and certainly not more so than the Framers of the Constitution of 1787).

The exponential growth of government, financed by exponential growth of debt, is pretty well unprecedented in American history. The exponential growth of rewards for the nomenclatura – the new ruling classes – is not unprecedented in history although it is unprecedented in American history. None of this will much affect Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, nor indeed will it have great effects on those who earn tens of millions of dollars a year. Neither Gates nor Buffett (nor Rush Limbaugh for that matter) would experience all that much change in their lives if they were despoiled of half of their wealth, or 90% of it for that matter. Would the nation be better off if there were no billionaires? The case can be argued; but simply taking their money (a one time bonanza for government) would not solve our debt problems, and using it to increase those entitled to even more, to grow the number of government employees, raise their pay, raise their benefits, raise their pensions is not really likely to make this a better country.

“I am Covetousness, begotten of an old churl in a leather bag.” What is beyond the dreams of avarice? Nothing, actually. The habit of ameliorating your crises by despoiling the wealthy – begin with the idle rich – is indeed a habit. And next it leads to despoiling the productive to benefit the non-productive. Raising taxes feeds a beast that never relents.

We already have about as many who pay no income tax as those who do. We have not yet reached the point where a majority actually receive money through the so-called earned income adjustments, but we are headed there. At some point the spending has to stop. The “balanced” approach in which the spending continues to rise (perhaps just not so fast as before) while taxes rise and size of government increases has been tried and fails. Raising taxes, whether on rich or poor, will only result in more exponential growth of government.

Taxing the Rich

I like this one even better:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super-rich.html?_r=1&hpw

Bruce

Perhaps the remedy would be a house of lords: a group of the super rich who would have sole charge of spending the money taken from them by Congress. It would seem the goal is to eliminate some of their advantages. I don’t mind that so much – I am familiar with Chesterton and Belloc – but I very much mind simply handing the money to be spent by the political machines. I would rather see Bill Gates spend money on education than the Federal Department of Education.

In the Athenian Republic the wealthy were encouraged to donate ships to the Navy (you could even command one if you gave enough money to outfit it and hire the crew), donate cavalry units to the Army, build public buildings — If you can show how to despoil the rich and see that the money taken from them does not simply end up as loot to strengthen the temptations to the covetousness of the looters, I am sure many will listen. But simply throwing more money into the maw of government does not seem a productive way to proceed. I’d rather see Buffett invest the money than simply hand it over to the SEIU.

Incidentally, do not take this as my acquiescence in the Belloc-Chesterton Catholic distributism. They have a case, and on purely political grounds the case for having some limits on the power and wealth of the super rich can be made strongly. But there is a strong economic case against it, and an even stronger one against encouraging covetousness. Taking the money from the rich has one set of consequences; what one does with it is even more critical. Simply voting to send an armed tax collector to grab someone else’s money to distribute it to the voters has been the ruin of many societies. Adams said there never was a democracy that didn’t commit suicide. Despoiling the idle rich, then the rich, then the productive, all to the benefit of the voters, is a common path to self destruction.

I can recommend to your attention the case against distributism, http://mises.org/daily/1062.

On economic policy

Jerry, My understanding is that our tax revenues as a fraction of GDP are relatively low at present, at least in terms of post-FDR days: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/are-taxes-in-the-u-s-high-or-low/

I understand that this is in part due to the recession and the significant and expiring reduction in tax rates that were enacted as part of the 2009 stimulus, but it is not unreasonable to say that the low tax rates at present have quite a bit to do with the deficits the nation’s running. The President apparently offered to put some real entitlement cuts on the table during the debt ceiling negotiations, much to the fury of liberals: http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2011/07/19/obama-wants-to-cut-medicare-and-social-security-benefits/ but was rebuffed due to the Tea Party caucus’ unwillingness to countenance any tax revenue increases.

I’m with you on putting the bunny inspectors (and the TSA!) out of work, but that’s a very small part of the budget. Entitlements are where the real action is, and Obama apparently was serious enough about them to put some money on the table, as it were. It was apparently the Tea Party which decided the crisis was indeed worth wasting, which is a pity.

If Rick Perry wins office next year and the Republicans manage to hold onto the House while taking the Senate, they will have every opportunity to explain to the public just what they are going to cut. I expect the Democrats will be more than happy to follow the Tea Party caucus’ example and let the Republicans hang for it.

That certainly would not be adult leadership, but I haven’t seen much as I’d like from the Republicans presently in Congress either.

Ours is a two party system, it would be nice if our representatives acted like it.

Best, Jon Jonathan Abbey

Your view of what the President offered is not the one given me by some of the participants, but perhaps they were mistaken. No cuts have been offered; not actual cuts. What was offered was a slower growth rate. Real cuts, and elimination of programs, was not offered.

But in any event, to my thinking, increasing government revenue is itself the wrong course of action. Is there any indication that if they had more money to spend they would spend it wisely? That taking money from those who make more than $250,000 a year (which does not include me) would cause that money to be spent in more productive ways? That hiring another GS 9 would do us more good than leaving an inhabitant of Indian Hills the money to hire a housekeeper and another under-gardener, or take his wife on a trip to – well, I was going to say Acapulco, but given the unrest there I suppose they would choose somewhere else. Perhaps we ought to restrict the rich to vacations in the US so they’ll spend their money here?

Indeed, I would rather see more “frivolous” things made deductible, particularly if those frivolities took place in the US and involved US made products, than see government income rise. Encourage the rich to spend the money: make them spend it or else; I can see some sense in that. I do not think we are better off if we despoil Mr. Buffett to pay more cubicle workers and lower the age at which government workers can collect pensions.

As to the Bunny Inspectors, when I see a serious proposal to cut that program I will pay more attention to the “cuts”; but the fact is that a society that can’t even eliminate spending on the absurd will not eliminate much else.

Stop feeding the beast.

Letter from England

Although the stock market is currently signalling its concern over the likelihood of a double-dip recession, the private sectors in America and the UK seem to be recovering from 2008. The massive unemployment is in the public sector, which is about half the economy in the UK. That pain has led to rioting in England, initially triggered by resentment about police tactics. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Tottenham_riots>

What caused the riots and what should be done about them? A debate: UK police opinion: <http://tinyurl.com/3hlnlxo> <http://tinyurl.com/4x4obhh> <http://tinyurl.com/448yea4> US police opinion: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/13/bill-bratton-advice-uk-police> Tory opinion: <http://tinyurl.com/3np2jar> <http://tinyurl.com/3upngok> Other opinion: <http://tinyurl.com/3lkedjj> <http://tinyurl.com/3ox7ntn> <http://tinyurl.com/438sqjl> <http://tinyurl.com/3hr69js> <http://tinyurl.com/3kxevkl> <http://tinyurl.com/4ypjvzb> <http://tinyurl.com/44anhg3>

A shortage of engineers in the UK <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14521890>.

Problems with disability assessment in the UK: <http://tinyurl.com/3zmtuu9>

NHS cutbacks hit: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/aug/12/nhs-accident-emergency-waiting-times>

Competition for university places: <http://tinyurl.com/4xuk3h3> Student debt to double: <http://tinyurl.com/3ea6usz> <http://tinyurl.com/3eh4c4n>

You may enjoy this: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/aug/13/monty-python-life-brian-bbc>

My take on English politics is similar to the driver’s comment in Ustinov’s Gran Prix of Gibraltar: "I think none of us has much of a chance". The Tories are a bunch of amateurs; the Lib-Dems have committed suicide; and Labour is committed to making things worse.

—

"We do not understand how a country,… can produce people who seem to be acting without thinking, let alone making serious efforts to investigate the consequences of their actions." (Mary Evans in the Times Higher Education)

Harry Erwin

And actually all is well in this best of all possible worlds where the regulations all work, and we have no real problems. It’s all illusion. It certainly seems so to those with tenure and pension.

No Child Left Behind

NCLB musinbgs

Dear Dr. Pournelle:

The recent comments by Mike Schmidt concerning Soviet math education are identical to those found in China as recounted in the book “Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics: Teachers’ Understanding of Fundamental Mathematics in China and the United States (Studies in Mathematical Thinking and Learning Series)” by Liping Ma.

I have enjoyed your many columns on education, NCLB, etc. and I have a few comments to add. Your readers may not be familiar with the test, its scoring and its application. I have experience with both Texas and New Mexico NCLB testing.

To begin, the tests are trivially easy. For example, the formulas for calculating areas, volumes, etc. is printed in the test booklet! No need to remember that the area of a circle is the pi * the radius squared. As another example, it is possible to pass (and in fact, to excel) on the Social Studies test by consistently answering the question in the most "politically-correct" manner.

If this was not bad enough, the "cut score" which determines the proficient/not-proficient breakpoint is determined by the state AFTER the test is graded. Thus, the state can arbitrarily set the value at anything it desires.

Lest you think the "cut-score" is set too high you should know that a few years ago in Texas the cut-scores were in the low- to mid- 50% range.

To make matters worse, the Spanish language test has "cut-scores" set independently of the English-language tests. In Texas, the cut-score for Spanish-language exams averages 5 to 10 percentage points less than their English counterpart. Supposedly for the same test. I suspect most parents would assume that the "passing" score on the NCLB exams is perhaps 70%. They would be wrong.

States can take advantage of this by setting their cut-scores very low and having most of their students then meet annual yearly progress (AYP) goals. Mississippi is notorious for this. If you compare Missisippi NCLB-scored proficiencies with the proficiency scores for the nationwide National Assessment for Educational Progress you find a massive discrepancy in proficiency. States that do not practice this cut-score legerdemain show comparable NCLB and NAEP proficiencies (Massachusetts, for example).

From the school’s perspective AYP is virtually unobtainable because of one little testing requirement. All subgroups in the school (containing at least 15 or so students) must meet AYP for the school to meet AYP. For most groups, this is not a problem. Asians, Whites, Hispanics, Blacks, Low-income are all potentially capable of making AYP. One group however will never make such progress and that is the developmentally disabled.

It is not uncommon to have a dozen or so mainstreamed developmentally disabled students in a school. I am not talking about high-performing autistic students or mildly mentally deficient. No, I am talking about sixth-grade students who require a constant caretaker companion and who read (if at all) at the first grade level. Many have been mainstreamed from institutional care. The dirty little secret of school principals is that to make AYP, you must make sure that your school has fewer than the minimum number of students in any AYP-problematic category. Principals routinely use their power in the district to transfer such students to other schools prior to testing.

I am familiar with perhaps several hundred schools; I know of none that achieved AYP on scores alone with a full demographic of developmentally disabled students.

It is possible to make AYP through various exemptions,loopholes, etc. without actually having your scores improve. This fact is never mentioned in the district press releases.

Here in the borderlands, an additional problem arises with illegal immigrant children. A not uncommon scene in my hometown is to see a car with Mexican license plates dropping off a student at a local elementary school. The car will often feature bumper stickers for the local Mexican political arty and a "My Child is an Honor Student at …" where the school is an American elementary school.

At one Texas border school, I was asked to estimate the number of immigrant students. Using telephone numbers provided by the students, I found that 40% were invalid. Now some of these numbers might have been legitimately unavailable but I estimated that roughly 1/3 of their student population was cross-border. Remember, the Supreme Court has ruled that schools cannot enquire of the immigration status of their students.

Such cross-border populations wreak havoc with NCLB testing. Above a certain grade, all NCLB tests are given in English only. A large number of English language limited students will destroy any chance of meeting AYP.

At the classroom level, the teacher is caught between the rock of meeting NCLB standards and the hard place of inadequate teaching methods.

The current pedagogical methods in elementary school, in the vernacular, suck!

The math curriculum is seriously deficient and fails in almost all ways imaginable (see http://www.kathematicallycorrect.com) for a damning critique of current math curricula. Most parents assume that math is math and their children are being taught the same,things they learned — the multiplication table, the rules of arithmetic, etc. As you can see from the web critique nothing could be further from the truth.

Language and literature fares no better. Whole language instruction does not teach phonics, encourages guessing at words, down not teach spelling, do not roots and parts of words, etc.

If the methods were not bad enough (and they are truly atrocious), teachers are reminded that they will be judged and graded on the "fidelity to the method" (exact quote. To me, the word fidelity implies a cultish rather than a pedagogical imperative.

Experienced teachers get around these restrictions in the manner of Jack Black in School of Rock. They are,able to reposition the classroom and students to bamboozle the principal when she visits. Not surprisingly, their students routinely do better on the NCLB exams.

Less experienced teachers slavishly teach the poor methods and are surprised when their students fail to meet the meager NCLB cut-scores.

Students are further short changed by the NCLB emphasis. My wife is a music teacher (30+ years experience K – college level) and she occasionally has her students work on a writing assignment. Perhaps a report on a performance they have seen, or a thank you letter to a visiting music group.

Invariably, she is asked two questions. How many sentences? and How many words is a sentence?

The students have been so brainwashed that they view composition as solely filling out the minimum for the exam booklet.,They seem genuinely surprised that a paragraph is designed to hold one topic and can vary from a single word to a multiple-page Joycean exposition. Likewise, sentences.

Finally, the scoring and criteria for AYP can lead to perverse outcomes. Let’s imagine two teachers, Mrs. Bad Teacher and Ms. Good Teacher. Both teach the same grade and both have 30 students in their classes. Let’s further assume that this year the cut-score is 54% and the AYP goal for the school is 70% proficient. For these teachers that means to meet AYP goals they need to have 21 students (70% of 30) achieve a test score of 55.

Mrs. Bad Teacher’s results

9 students scored a zero

21 students scored a 55%

MEETS AYP

Ms. Good Teacher results

10 students scored a 53%

20 students scored a 100%

DOES NOT MEET AYP

Any evaluation tool that can lead to such perverse outcomes is seriously deficient.

One consequence of this scoring dilemma is that teachers and schools rationally focus only on the muddled middle. Students with low scores cannot likely be improved enough to pass the cut-score point. Students above the cut-score gain nothing for the school by improving their scores (in the example above a 54% and a 100% score are equally "proficient").

Thus, teachers devote all of their effort in an attempt to raise scores from the mid-40s to the mid-50s. Needless to say, this lowered expectations approach is not training many future scientists or engineers!

Terry A. Ward

I do not believe that we can devise a national test that makes sense. In a sense we already have them for those entering universities; for the rest, I do not think anything can be done. I have no idea what is the best education system: I can say that allowing local control allows real diversities. Some will be abysmal, but some might be excellent; I do not think that our system before federalization was everywhere worse than it is now, nor that the worst now were more horrid than the worst then or vice versa. The search for a national system with the consequent loss of local control does not seem to me a way out of the problem.

Late at night while you’re sleeping

There’s a drill sergeant creeping

all around…

<.>

The Kaibiles, the ruthless U.S.-trained Guatemalan state militia infamous for their role in killing civilians during Guatemala’s civil war, are being recruited in large numbers to violent Mexican drug gangs. Mexico’s Zetas drug cartel is paying large sums to a multitude of Kaibiles forces to pass on the training they received from the United States military.

</>

http://news.antiwar.com/2011/08/15/us-trained-guatemalan-forces-tied-with-drug-gangs/

Men at War cadence:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM22zUmithg

A classic (Blood on the Risers):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWgsdexkv18&feature=related

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Competent Empire creates auxiliaries and puppet kings, and keeps control of them with the Legions. The United States has never been very good at that game.

Mail 687 Sunday, August 14, 2011

Imperial Stars: The Stars at War, Republic and Empire, The Crash of Empire (Anthologies by Jerry Pournelle)

Comments on my Program for Republicans

Business Exemptions

"Double the exemption numbers for small businesses: that is, whatever regulations you are exempt from by dint of having 10 or fewer employees, you will now be exempt if you have 20 or fewer; similarly for larger numbers. The regulations will still apply, but the exemption numbers are doubled."

I’d add one more thing; any business will be grandfathered in to these limits going forward. In other words, the Feds can’t (easily) drop the exemption numbers back down in a year or so. This would encourage people to create new businesses now.

Fred Nixon

A Program for Republicans

Jerry,

I really like the program, and would add one other thing, a sunset law.

In Texas, every agency is subject to a sunset, a date on which the agency will cease to exist unless re-authorized by the legislature and governor.

http://www.sunset.state.tx.us/faq.htm

I would sunset every agency and all their regulations, so that every so often, the agencies and regulations had to be reviewed and re-authorized. I’d like to sunset pretty much the entire CFR and all federal (and state) laws. As part of the sunset procedure, we should be reviewing every single regulation for its effectiveness, costs, etc.

Thanks,

Anthony

Anthony Holder

Agreed

On the Riots in Britain

Here’s an interesting interview. It might even contain a little hope.

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/aug/14/david-lammy-tottenham-mark-duggan>

—

Harry Erwin

So there was a history in the region. It still does not explain the rise of the brutish activities motivated almost entirely by the desire for a new TV or sneakers. As happened in Los Angeles a few years ago, and in Philadelphia recently, as well as England. There is always a criminal element, but in general even the criminals are criminals, not rebels. But when the whole notion of standards is rejected it’s a different matter. Free Societies fall when there are not enough citizens ready to defend them. Tyrannies can hold on much longer that a free society of disillusioned citizens. Battista’s Cuba fell because no one was willing to defend it; Castro appeared to be a savior, and convinced enough followers to throw out Battista, but then there was no one to rescue the country from Castro.

And yet. As you say, there is perhaps a little hope in there. Perhaps.

==

Danegeld and Copybook Wisdom

Dear Dr. Pournelle:

I saw your recent column in which you compare British hooligans to Danes. I write to remind you that every human culture must, every generation, absorb an invasion by barbarians – a.k.a. the young. Civilizing them is an expensive process, but cutting corners there has consequences. You can call the cost of acculturation Danegeld if you wish; and yes, you’ll never get rid of the young; but remember that you too were once a little Dane. The alternative is to drop the torch, and lose the relay race.

You made a classic error of moral philosophy; confusing ‘is’ with ‘ought’. In particular, to foresee is not to condone. To say that austerity causes civil disorder does not praise civil disorder; it condemns austerity! But I admit that it’s easier to blame the messenger.

And as for the consequences of austerity, consider these copybook sayings: "Penny-wise, pound-foolish." and "What goes around, comes around."

Sincerely,

Nathaniel Hellerstein

I am not sure how to answer that. I can assert that I am well aware that each generation must learn to be civilized, and indeed I would have thought that was the essence of conservatism, and the very essence of Kipling’s poem. We have made war on the American culture for most of my life. When I was young we were surrounded by the symbols of the nation and its culture. They included mangers and menorahs, deliberate respect to the clergy, overt patriotic rituals in classrooms, pledges of allegiance, and a great deal more. I have been warning people that when we throw all that out we sow the wind; and I am not astonished that having done it we reap the whirlwind.

We can now try to bribe people into obedience with more stuff. Open the stash. Hand out the stuff. That won’t last long. The usual remedy to this kind of disorder is far more violent. In Mexico things have gone to the point where something has to give: everyone now wishes for almost anything that will bring back a land in which ten murders in Acapulco in a weekend is a very rare event.

There are many ways to reap the whirlwind. I suppose it will be interesting to see which version Britain gets, and which we get. We have worked hard at ending the Old Republic. We have not given so much thought to what replaces it. For some reason, nothing like the old patriotism seems to have won the hearts of the next generation.

But we have not yet destroyed the Legions. Not yet.

==

SF cell shutdown: Safety issue, or hint of Orwell?

Jerry;

Niven never imagined that his flash mobs would be so criminal and violent.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9P3FGQG0&show_article=1

It is an interesting civil rights question. Is it permissible for government to jam communications that coordinate civil unrest? How about monitoring the communications feed to identify which messages were used to coordinate unrest and who received them and are therefore suspected of participating?

Mubarak took too long to pull the plug on cell phones.

Jim Crawford

When you sow the wind you reap the whirlwind. I think you underestimate what people will embrace when the choice is disorder. Note what happened to Germany under Weimar when they sought to destroy the old culture. National Socialists were perfectly happy to help destroy the old. But as Chesterton said, when a man ceases to believe in God, he does not cease to believe – he will now believe in anything. When a people lose faith in their culture, they do not lose faith entirely – they will seize on something else. I can easily see a time when the “freedom” of free speech and easy communication is hated, not defended.

Mubarak did not really control the Mamelukes. He wanted to install his son as Pharaoh. That was not acceptable to the colonels, many of whom now wish they had acted differently. We have not yet seen what will replace him. Or Qaddaffi. Or the Taliban. Or Saddam.

And lest we find too much hope, note Mark Steyn on the riots:

Lessons for us from London in flames:

http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/london-311857-want-book.html

“If you were born into such a household, you’ve been comprehensively "stimulated" into the dead-eyed zombies staggering about the streets this past week: pathetic inarticulate subhumans unable even to grunt the minimal monosyllables to BBC interviewers desperate to appease their pathologies. C’mon, we’re not asking much: just a word or two about how it’s all the fault of government "cuts" like the leftie columnists argue. And yet even that is beyond these baying beasts. The great-grandparents of these brutes stood alone against a Fascist Europe in that dark year after the fall of France in 1940. Their grandparents were raised in one of the most peaceful and crime-free nations on the planet. Were those Englishmen of the mid-20th century to be magically transplanted to London today, they’d assume they were in some fantastical remote galaxy. If Charlton Heston was horrified to discover the Planet of the Apes was his own, Britons are beginning to realize that the remote desert island of "Lord Of The Flies" is, in fact, located just off the coast of Europe in the northeast Atlantic. Within two generations of the Blitz and the Battle of Britain, a significant proportion of the once-free British people entrusted themselves to social rewiring by liberal compassionate Big Government and thereby rendered themselves paralytic and unemployable save for nonspeaking parts in "Rise of The Planet Of The Apes." And even that would likely be too much like hard work.”

"In Britain, everything is policed except crime.

“Her Majesty’s cowed and craven politically correct constabulary stand around with their riot shields and Robocop gear as young rioters lob concrete through store windows to steal the electronic toys which provide their only non-narcotic or alcoholic amusement. . . . Yet a police force all but entirely useless when it comes to preventing crime or maintaining public order has time to police everything else. When Sam Brown observed en passant to a mounted policeman on Cornmarket Street in Oxford, "Do you know your horse is gay?", he was surrounded within minutes by six officers and a fleet of patrol cars, handcuffed, tossed in the slammer overnight, and fined 80 pounds. Mr. Brown’s "homophobic comments," explained a spokesmoron for Thames Valley Police, were "not only offensive to the policeman and his horse, but any members of the general public in the area." The zealous crackdown on Sam Brown’s hippohomophobia has not been replicated in the present disturbances. Anyone who has so much as glanced at British policing policy over the past two decades would be hard pressed to argue which party on the streets of London, the thugs or the cops, is more irredeemably stupid. . . . This is the logical dead end of the Nanny State.”

"For Americans, the quickest way to understand modern Britain is to look at what LBJ’s Great Society did to the black family and imagine it applied to the general population. . . . The evil of such a system is not the waste of money but the waste of people. Big Government means small citizens . . ."

Just thought I’d brighten your day.

Ed

We have sown the wind.

"It’s J. G. Ballard’s World, We Just Live in It"

"After the events of this week, who can deny that J. G. Ballard is enjoying a wry chuckle from the grave? "

http://www.fantasticalandrewfox.com/2011/08/12/j-g-ballards-world-we-just-live-in-it/

Billenium is the Ballard story that has stuck with me for over 40 years, with all its flaws. Anyway, is Fox right?

=

Imperial Stars

Review of Imperial Stars 2

Dr Pournelle

I reviewed Imperial Stars 2: Republic and Empire on my blog today. http://thelogoftheantares.blogspot.com/2011/08/sunday-ebook-review-imperial-stars-2.html

It is one of the best sf short-story collections I’ve ever read.

Unhappily, it is very, very hard to find the Imperial Stars collections on Baen’s Books. They are not listed under your catalog name or by title. The easiest way to find IS2 is to go to my blog and chase the link I give. The alternative is to go to Baen’s Books webscription sitemap http://www.webscription.net/sitemap.aspx and scroll down to your name; the Imperial Stars titles are listed there.

Indeed, chasing the link attached to your name gives http://www.webscription.net/s-83-jerry-pournelle.aspx . This link yields titles not found in your Baen’s author catalog http://baen.com/author_catalog.asp?author=jpournelle .

One thing’s for sure, anyone who finds Imperial Stars on Baen’s site is a committed fan. Getting to these collections is like performing a tonsillectomy through the rectum.

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

Well, I can hope there are readers who will try. Volumes I and III were pretty good too. I was quite proud of Imperial Stars.

EBook versions of all three Imperial Stars volumes can be found at http://www.webscription.net/p-923-imperial-stars-1-the-stars-at-war.aspx. Volumes Two and Three are also available from that page. Alas, they are not available as Kindle instant downloads. I wish they were. But they do work on the Kindle format, and it’s not all that hard to get them there. Clearly it’s simpler to be able to go to the Kindle Store, particularly if you are on an airplane and only have the Kindle.

The three Imperial Stars volumes have some of the best essays I ever wrote and all were edited by Jim Baen himself; the results were pretty good, if I do say so.

==

Niven & Pournelle books in the NPR Top 100 SF/F poll. (priority one)

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/139085843/your-picks-top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-books

_Ringworld_, _The Mote in God’s Eye_, _Lucifer’s Hammer_.

Roland Dobbins

I have several messages on this. Two out of the top one hundred isn’t all that bad…

More ice, so naturally ‘unrelated’ to so-called ‘global warming’.

<http://blog.seattlepi.com/robertbrown/2011/08/12/be-prepared-for-more-arctic-sea-ice-in-the-next-decade/>

Roland Dobbins

Surprise.

Constitutional rights, of course, are actually privileges, and sovereign immunity is what is actually inviolate.

………….Karl

Sent to you by Karl via Google Reader:

Denver Media Outlets Fail to Cover Multitude of Juicy Stories Behind Recent Rabbit Farm Raid <http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BigGovernment/~3/szszKytUGnY/>

via Big Government <http://biggovernment.com> by Bob McCarty on 8/12/11

Since breaking news <http://bobmccarty.com/2011/08/10/anonymous-call-to-new-animal-abuse-hotline-leads-to-raid-on-colorado-womans-rabbit-farm/> about a July 21 raid on a farm 12 miles north of Denver that resulted in local law enforcement officials seizing 193 rabbits from a nationally-recognized rabbit expert, I’ve learned more disturbing details about the case. Perhaps least shocking was my discovery that members of the Denver-area news media appear to have swallowed everything thrown at them by the Jefferson County (Colo.) Sheriff’s Office <http://www.co.jefferson.co.us/sheriff/index.htm> .

<http://bobmccarty.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Six_Bell_Farms_Raid_1.jpg>

Before pressing on, I’ll recap the lowlights of what transpired after someone placed an anonymous call — the first ever, according to officials with the Sheriff’s Office — to a new statewide Crime Stoppers hotline that had been set up in June, specifically to take reports from citizens of suspected animal abuse:

1. Without a warrant, officials with the Sheriff’s Office descended upon Debe Bell’s Six Bells Farm Candle Factory and Rabbitry <http://sixbellsfarm.com> at approximately 10:30 a.m., accompanied by three veterinarians and several volunteers from the local branch of the House Rabbit Society <http://www.rabbit.org/> — a nationwide group comprised of people who, according to Bell, think rabbits need to be raised like small children.

2. During the next three hours, according to Bell, the throng of law enforcement officers, veterinarians and volunteers opened the doors of her 600-square-foot barn, turned off the water to the swamp cooler (an air conditioning system for the barn) and caused the temperature in the barn to rise to 84 degrees.

3. Some six hours after they arrived, Sheriff’s Office officials produced a warrant which spokesperson Mark Techmeyer said was obtained after they convinced a judge that they had seen “what they believed to be some issues” at Six Bells Farm.

4. During the next four hours, according to Bell, the same throng loaded her rabbits in cardboard boxes, put them in a horse trailer and hauled them off to the county fairgrounds. There, the rabbits were placed in dog and cat crates with solid-bottom floors, meaning, “The minute they urinate, they’re standing in their own urine.”

5. For several days after their arrival at the fairgrounds, Bell said, the crated rabbits were kept in a non-air conditioned concrete-stalls horse barn until officials with the Foothills Animal Shelter — a group tasked by the Sheriff’s Office with caring for the animals — decided that wasn’t working out and obtained a swamp cooler.

<http://bobmccarty.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Six_Bell_Farms_Raid_2.jpg>

As of today, neither the Denver Post <http://www.denverpost.com/> nor CBS Denver <http://CBSDenver.com> has seen fit to report on the raid more than one time despite the fact that it contains a plethora of “low-hanging fruit” story angles any investigative reporter worth his salt would die for. For instance:

A. Bell is known statewide and nationally as a top rabbit expert, and she’s relied upon by families involved in at the county, state and national level as the go-to person for children and families in need of help with and knowledge of rabbits. Surely, it would be newsworthy if a woman like her all of the sudden “went bad” like the star of the AMC television series, “Breaking Bad.” <http://www.amctv.com/shows/breaking-bad>

B. According to Berthoud, Colo., attorney Elizabeth Kearney, there was only one dead rabbit in her client’s barn, and all of the other dead rabbits were in her freezer. Why? Because Bell provides rabbit meat to the local zoo and to several raptor rescue groups. That has to be newsworthy, right?

C. Twelve of the seized rabbits belong to 4-H <http://www.national4-hheadquarters.gov/> kids who were planning to show them at upcoming fairs — two at the Jefferson County Fair <http://www.co.jefferson.co.us/fair/> that started Thursday and the remaining 10 at the Colorado State Fair <http://www.coloradostatefair.com/> which runs from Aug. 26 to Sept. 5 in Pueblo. I guarantee Barbara Walters could get those kids to cry and send the ratings through the roof!

D. On the Constitutional rights front, one has to wonder why no one in the Denver news media has explored the subjects of whether it’s lawful for law enforcement agents to (1) step foot on someone’s property without a warrant and (2) seize someone’s private property (livestock) based solely upon an anonymous phone call to a hotline that pays up to $2,000 for tips. Lawyers, please form a line.

E. With animal rights activism forever on the increase, one has to wonder why no one in the Denver news media has explored the possibility that animal rights activists — who would love to see people like Bell put out of business — made the anonymous hotline call. Perhaps the media outlets are afraid of blowback from the animal rights wackos?

F. The shortage of participants at this year’s Small Animals Show <http://www.coloradostatefair.com/index.php?page=small_animal> at the Colorado State Fair is so severe that officials extended the deadline for entry and, in order to prevent animal rights activists from collecting the names of rabbit owners, officials are planning to not display the names of rabbit owners alongside their rabbits. Why? Because rabbit raisers in Colorado are scared they might suffer the same fate as Six Bells Farm and are not going to show their animals at the Colorado State Fair, Bell said. That has to be news, doesn’t it?

G. Finally, one has to wonder why no one in the Denver news media has reported on Jefferson County District Attorney Scott Storey <http://www.co.jefferson.co.us/da/index.htm> ’s role in this case. One year ago last month, Storey charged an 82-year-old man with attempted first-degree murder <http://www.kwgn.com/news/kdvr-elderly-man-shoots-thieves-txt,0,2612691.story> after that man fired two shots at thieves who he said had tried to run him over with their truck while stealing his flatbed trailer. In short, as reported by Denver’s CW2 channel <http://www.kwgn.com/news/kdvr-elderly-man-shoots-thieves-txt,0,2612691.story> , the district attorney seems to have a propensity toward overcharging people. Is he too powerful to expose?

Yes, instead of pursuing this story with so many rich story angles available, two of Colorado’s largest media outlets took passes.

Instead of investigating the news, Shaun Boyd of CBS Denver <http://denver.cbslocal.com/2011/07/22/200-rabbits-seized-in-animal-abuse-investigation/> and Liz Navratil of the Denver Post <http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_18598053> merely passed along to their audiences what they were fed by Sheriff’s Office spokespersons Jacki Kelley and Mark Techmeyer.

CLOSING THOUGHT: Since publishing my first report <http://bobmccarty.com/2011/08/10/anonymous-call-to-new-animal-abuse-hotline-leads-to-raid-on-colorado-womans-rabbit-farm/> , the story has appeared at Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com <http://biggovernment.com/bmccarty/2011/08/11/anonymous-call-to-new-animal-abuse-hotline-leads-to-raid-on-colorado-womans-rabbit-farm/> and garnered quite a bit of attention throughout cyberspace. I’ve even seen suggestions that all loyal, freedom-loving Americans should begin raising rabbits. That in mind, shall we form a “B Party”?

More to come.

<http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BigGovernment/~4/szszKytUGnY>

Mail 687 Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Means, medians, modes; discipline; and education in general. Includes a long ramble about education when I was in school. See Below.

A deaf man wants sign language interpreter at nudist camp in Cayuga County:

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2011/08/deaf_mans_complaint_nudist_cam.html

Ya just can’t make this stuff up. The ADA has visited such mischief.

Of course, I’m showing my traditionalist roots here, I suppose.

Ed

Perhaps it is important and just; but is it something we can afford now? There are perfections that we can’t afford to pay for just yet…

Fallen Angels

Got contacted by Amazon yesterday, regarding the updated content. (They had earlier said I could get a refund for it. I never did, figuring the new content would show up eventually.)

It was interesting, hearing a bit of the behind the scenes info, especially Michael Flynn’s first meeting with Sherrine!

Thanks!

Vik-Thor Rose

If you go to the "Manage Your Kindle" page, you can re-download a title that you already purchased and downloaded before. You lose any bookmarks or highlighting, but you do get the latest version of the book.

Education System

The point being that Boeing could in those days count on the Seattle public school system to deliver workers capable of learning to do useful work. There would be failures, but in general, high school graduates could be taken into the work force and taught skills. They didn’t have to learn to read or to do elementary math, they understood the concept of measurement, and they could generally be relied on to have something approaching satisfactory work habits.

I believe this is simply an over correction by my parents’ generation (also yours) to the changing economics of the US at the time.

I was born in 1969 in Flint, Michigan and got to see this first hand in a hyper-intense environment. In the beginning of my educational career it was all about options: I could go on to become a welder or an electrician if I wanted to. GM/Flint collapsed in 1980. By the time I had graduated high school (1987) the guidance counselors preached endlessly about the fact that manufacturing jobs were gone, and vocational schools were closing quickly to suit. Everything was about retraining factory workers to become computer programmers, because no-one should be flipping burgers in their 30’s, right? Completely missing the fact that we still need electricians and welders.

The educational system hasn’t fixed that attitude yet.

My son — now 18 — will not be a college graduate. He will take some community-college level courses to fill out his vocational training but that’s it. He’s a bright boy, but doesn’t have the work ethic or studious nature to learn for learning’s sake. He doesn’t want to. College-prep high school was awful for him (B- averages, and he hated it), but there were few alternatives in a district where 97% of the HS graduates were expected to go on to college. My son would have been the brightest electrician or best mechanic you could hire, but alas, it’ll take him years to get the experiences he should have gotten in school while learning Advanced English Composition.

Injustice consists of treating equals unequally and treating unequals equally. Our school system is designed to be unjust.

School discipline

I was checking out rules and regulations for substitute teachers at a school district in Texas. If a fight breaks out between students you are not to interfere. You must call security to handle it. Lordy when I was a child you’d have one of those male WW II vets on your ass so quickly your head would spin, nobody would dare start a fight in class. Frankly the female teachers who’d been kids through the depression and the war years weren’t someone to mess with either. Quite a few of them had done manual labor in factories, and I suspect could throw a mean bunch. Of course these day if you are male you put your freedom at risk if you become a teacher. If you get accused of sexual molestation you are guilty until proven innocent and the legal costs will break you. Some school districts have safeguards against that crap but all in all the male teacher in a public school is thing of the past.

The administrative overhead in today’s schools is unreal. All those reports for the state and the feds to fill out to get the money. No wonder so many teacher pencil whip the the reports just to get them done and out of the way. The public schools are getting as bad as the universities when it comes to having to meet payroll for people who aren’t actually teaching but doing mandated paper work. I was talking to a Pakistani about testing. He said that in Pakistan they had to set up an elaborate blind system for grading tests. The test were given numbers and graded by people who didn’t know the students. He said otherwise the graders would be bought off or intimidated into giving good grades. Sure glad something like that couldn’t happen here….oh wait it has.

Douglas R. Chandler

There are no universal remedies, but we do know that the American education system worked pretty well with small school districts, schools controlled by the local taxpayers who paid for them, and total decentralization, all this in the days before Federal Aid to Education. I can recall when it was seriously believed that the Federal Government had no authority to grant money for education; that was a matter for the states. One breakthrough was “impacted areas” grants in which the local schools had to educate a lot of children of military personnel based locally (and whose parents didn’t pay local property taxes) so the Feds threw in money – and shortly after began to “help” those school districts, which meant control. You could see it happen. Now the military would prefer, if it could, to run its own schools for dependents – who wants to condemn his children to the American public school system?

My wife was for some years a teacher in a county detention school: she became the teacher of last resort and taught thousands of children to read who had been given up on – labeled dyslexic – by the Los Angeles school system. They were lucky enough to be sentenced to reform school which rescued them from the public schools. Kids unlucky enough to be sentenced to the public schools were worse off.

Average vs median

Dr. Pournelle,

I keep reading "half the children are below average", but that’s not the definition of "average", but of "median". In large numbers and with a normal distribution, the two measures could be the same (or close), but do we have a normal distribution?

***********

and another point about the "bunny inspectors":

We need the bunny inspectors, because we have the rules that must be followed. If we don’t have enforcement behind the rules, people will not do "the right thing" that the rules define. We believe that we can create the perfect life, remove all injustice, create equality and fairness by crafting the proper set of rules. And that, of course, requires enforcement and enforcers, hence the "bunny inspectors".

The deeper these rules root into our lives, attempting to define and regulate activities that should be part of our shared culture, the more enforcers we will require, until everyone is an enforcer, and neighbor turns against neighbor as in 1930’s Germany.

I remember in the 60’s going out to dinner with another computer guy and learning his wife was going to law school and thinking, "I don’t believe we need another lawyer". Little did I know.

I am quite aware that the word “average” has a number of meanings, but in general parlance it is not intended to be specific. In any given classroom the distribution of scores will vary a lot, and probably won’t be a normal bell curve. In some places all the children in a given class will be “below average”, while in others they may all be “above average.” Lake Wogegon doesn’t exist, but there may be approximations to it.

To explain: there are three measures of central tendency in any given population: the mean, the median, and the mode. The mean is the average score: that is, take all the scores, add them up, and divide by the number. That’s the mean, and is the usual meaning of “average”. The other two measures of central tendency are the median and the mode. The median is the middlemost score, the 50^th percentile. Finally, there is the mode, which is the most frequent score.

In a large population assuming a random distribution the three scores will be the same, or nearly so. In statistical models from which we generally draw inferences they will be exactly the same, but of course very few things in life exactly fit models. Take height of adults for example: a “normal” curve, the familiar bell-shaped curve, extends to infinity at the top and zero at the bottom, but no population of adults will have any examples of people four inches tall, nor of any twenty feet tall. The model doesn’t actually fit the population, but for most purposes we don’t care and inferences made from study of the model will be valid. The median and mean will be pretty close to equal. The mode, however, will be a problem because there will be two modes, one close to the median height of women, and one fairly close to the median height of men. We have to take account of that: there are two populations, and clothing designed to fit the “average” may not fit as many people as we thought.

And of course samples may not fit the model at all. If we take a class drawn from people living on the shores of Lake Washington in the Seattle region and compute their family wealth, the averages will be considerably higher than the national average, but the means and medians probably won’t be enormously different – until we add the children of Bill Gates to any of those classes, in which case the “average” or mean will be out of sight high and only the Gates children will be “above average.” All the others will be below average, even if the lowest income in the class is still higher than the national average.

The point here is that one needs to be careful in making inferences about samples, but then that is the whole point of the science of statistics and statistical inference. The whole point is to infer probabilities. It is not exactly true that “half of the children are below average” but the statement remains useful as a reminder of what we are facing. There are classes in which all the children are above average – I would guess that to have a distinct probability if we are measuring IQ among classes of children whose parents have lake front property on Lake Washington and comparing it to the national IQ (average both mean and median about 100). More interestingly, though, if we take samples from less fortunate districts and measure IQ, we are likely to find that while all the measures of central tendency in the class will be below the national average, we may confidently predict that at least one of the students will be above average and we can’t exclude the possibility that one will be outstandingly high.

And that presents us with a dilemma. Do we subject the above average kids to an education designed for those below average? Or would it be more effective to try to combine the above average with some others of similar ability, and remove them? Can we afford that? Is it just to deprive the dull normal of the advantage of having some bright normal and bright in their classroom? Is it just to make the bright endure classes geared largely for normal and dull normal? Just what the hell are we trying to accomplish here, and just what is fair to whom?

In my case I went to first grade in a Catholic school in a lower middle class district. There were two grades, first and second, in the room, with perhaps 15 in each grade. The Sisters were dedicated teachers and had no interference of families in their educational duties: they spent as much time with each student as they thought would be useful. Since I could already read when I got to first grade I mostly got second grade instruction, and in second grade (same classroom) I was encouraged to read books well beyond my grade level – but I was not exempted from having to learn the addition and multiplication tables by pure rote, Deo gratia, for which I am grateful to this day.

Then we moved to Capleville, where the teachers were 2 year Normal school graduates, there were two grades to the room, and 20 to 25 to the grade. My companions in school were farm children, none of whom expected to go to college. Some did intend to enlist in the armed forces, particularly after World War II broke out. None of the teachers including the principal (who also taught 7-8 grade) were four year college graduates, all of them had home lives, and no one lived near the school. In my case our place on Holmes Road was about 2 miles from the school if we cut across country, more on the roads. I was on the very nearly last stop of the school bus, which was good in the mornings, but meant it took forever to get home in the evening, so I often walked home with a buddy who was my nearest neighbor (about a mile from our place, down by the railroad). My life changed. Fortunately my parents bought the Encyclopedia Britannica so I had something to read. There wasn’t any television, and the radio used batteries because we didn’t yet have electricity where I lived. Fortunately the school curriculum included textbooks geared for a bit higher level than the teachers expected the students to achieve. The history lessons had details that one got credit for knowing but weren’t required. So did the math books. That worked out well for me.

I don’t know the point of this ramble, actually, but I’ll leave it here since it took a while to write.

My point is that I know that there are different meanings of “average” but that doesn’t change the nature of the education problem. As a general statement, in any normal public schoolroom in which the students haven’t been selected, a fair number of them will be below average. I shorten that to say this isn’t Lake Wobegon and the school system must be designed around the general principle that half the pupils will be below average. That half will not benefit from a world class university prep education.

Half the pupils will be above average. Of that half, only about half will benefit greatly from a world class university prep education, but a fair number will, and more will benefit from a college prep education. School systems have to be designed with this in mind.

I don’t assume that I have the competence to make that design for everyone in the nation. I don’t think anyone does. Leaving things to local school boards isn’t going to produce a perfect system of education, but it almost certainly produced a better system than what we have, back when we tried it. And it did that without Federal Aid to Education, which wasn’t even considered constitutional. And of course we used to argue that Federal Aid would mean Federal Control, and that would over time produce bureaucratic nightmares rather than greatly improved public schools.

Education, Anti-Matter, and Black Monday View 687 20110808

Dr. Thomas Sowell occasionally produces columns entitled ‘Random Thoughts’. They are usually interesting. Here is one of his ‘random thoughts’ today:

"I have never believed for a moment that Barack Obama has the best interests of the United States at heart."

Neither have I.

The rest of his ‘random thoughts’ for today can be viewed here:

http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2011/08/09/random_thoughts 

 

Bob Ludwick

One should not lightly ignore Tom Sowell.

Mail 686 Saturday, August 06, 2011

You said…

"…condemning the below average children to a world class university prep education condemns them to years of pure hell."

You didn’t say – but I’m certain you recognize – that putting those who could benefit from a world class university prep education in the classrooms with below average children condemns THEM to years of pure hell as well.

Charles Brumbelow

Public schools

"condemning the below average children to a world class university prep education condemns them to years of pure hell."

You couldn’t be more right on that. I have one child in that category. She’s sweet and energetic and a key employee at a nursery school; she’s amazingly good with babies, the parents adore her, and her school years were indeed pure hell whenever I couldn’t find an "alternative" school for her and had to send her to a public school.

But you and John Derbyshire (yes, I clicked not totally right. My other child is very bright and her public school experiences were also hellish – beginning with the lily white neighborhood elementary school that claimed to be totally aimed at high achievers. Hah! They wasted hours of her life making her mess around with construction paper and shoeboxes making dioramas to illustrate scenes in a book instead of just letting her write a book report. Of course the latter option would have required a literate adult to read and evaluate the report, and I’m not sure they had one of those among the (highly lauded) staff. And I won’t even start on the "math" classes.

A modest proposal: take everyone who has an Education decree out back and shoot them.

But as you quite rightly said, that is another column.

Margaret Ball

Aristotle tells us that injustice results from treating equal persons unequally, or unequal persons equally; which is to say that our public school system is designed to be unjust. Bill Gates’ notion (never formally abandoned, but I haven’t heard him say it for a while) that every American child is entitled to a world class university prep education condemns all those below average to sitting through years in which much of what they are taught will be of no use to their future; a great deal of it will be incomprehensible; and most will be painfully boring. The other consequence of this will be that the bright kids will not get a university prep education either, and particularly so if there is any attempt to enforce “No Child Left Behind.” No Child Left Behind generally translates into no child gets ahead, and certainly that no child gets very far ahead (and thus raises the class ‘average’ so that someone falls behind). The brightest 10%, who really could profit from a world class university prep education, will not learn anything like what they could be taught. The next 10%, who are properly the objects of college level education, won’t get what they need either. This ripple effect continues down the spectrum from very bright (IQ 140 up) to bright (120 — 140) to bright normal, to “normal” (roughly IQ 90 to 110); all will be short changed. And actually it’s worse, depending on how seriously “no child left behind” is taken.

(Incidentally, the state of IQ testing is that we can be fairly confident that the error of measurement is such that we are quite unlikely to undervalue people by more than 20 points, and generally unlikely to undervalue them by 10. But treating all kids as intellectually equal for fear of undervaluing anyone is extremely unfair to just about all of them, not just to those undervalued.)

Clearly better would be a system that takes account of the elementary fact that the most important task of the public school is to let the bright ones develop and go on to learn more, and not a lot less important is to teach the others stuff that will be useful to them in their actual future lives. When I first went into the aerospace industry it was a common discussion among engineers: at what age would be income crossover take place? At what point would it make economic sense to have gone to university as opposed to joining the Boeing work force immediately on leaving high school? Do note that there were plenty of jobs in those days, and nearly all of them involved what amounted to apprenticeship: there wasn’t much any of us could do for the company in our first year. Those without college educations could be riveters and general mechanics, learning to build jigs and make welds and that sort of thing. Others might go into clerical work (which often led to management positions given enough time). All were paid pretty well from their first day. They all joined the unions.

Engineers had to pay the costs of education and support themselves for at least four years. From the data accumulated by the Seattle Professional Engineering Employees Association (a sort of union for the non-unionized engineers and engineering techs) the crossover point was after about ten years after high school. Somewhere around in there the integrated earnings of the average engineering employee finally equaled the integrated earnings of the chap who went to work at Boeing right after high school. (We excluded janitorial employees from this study.) Now of course Boeing was Lake Wobegon – that is, with some exceptions, all the employees were above average – but that makes this even more to the point.

The point being that Boeing could in those days count on the Seattle public school system to deliver workers capable of learning to do useful work. There would be failures, but in general, high school graduates could be taken into the work force and taught skills. They didn’t have to learn to read or to do elementary math, they understood the concept of measurement, and they could generally be relied on to have something approaching satisfactory work habits.

Of course I am idealizing this a bit, but actually not all that much: Seattle in the 1950’s had pretty good schools, and there was almost always work for the anyone normal and above in intelligence, and some jobs for the lower half of the IQ scale provided they were reliable. I am told that it was much like that in Los Angeles.

But no school system that insists on treating all children equally can possibly succeed; indeed it is almost by definition unjust, and this has been known for more than two thousand years.

Bill Gross (CEO of Pimco) had some pretty interesting comments about education, and the problems with the American economy, in his July 2011 Investment Outlook newsletter:

> http://www.pimco.com/EN/Insights/Pages/School-Daze-School-Daze-Good-Old-Golden-Rule-Days.aspx

For reference, his firm now has $1.2 Trillion (!) under management, so he should know just a little bit about economics and capitalism.

CP

I have no universal remedy: I want to decentralize control and financing of education to local districts and get out of the way. Let them compete. And let the intellectuals try to persuade those who are paying for the schools that their methods are worth the money. Given the wretched state of the schools, cutting spending on education will do no harm (except to the pay of the education establishment starting with the professors).

Education update

Dr. Pournelle,

"The district recently announced its intention to hire Ushma Shah, a consultant for the Chicago Public Schools, to fill the newly created role of chief of equity and social justice."

So now the education bureaucracy is not only taking over law enforcement, it is making itself responsible for enforcing equity and social justice. No wonder it doesn’t have the resources to educate kids.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iMIqD01TrvuhFCMJ9nmqlDIL4SOQ?docId=CNG.77aa126212617d9ced2cf91c823202b0.541

Steve Chu

Subj: The Looming Financial Crisis

Seen on Boortz Friday at Nealz Nuze, posted even before the Standard and Poor’s downgrade of US debt after markets closed yesterday.

We are probably marginally better off than without any debt deal at all — but significantly worse off than we would have been if the Democratic majority in the Senate hadn’t declared both sane House plans "dead on arrival."

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/obama
_and_the_looming_financial_crisis.html

Jim

America Joins Third World

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts said 10-15 years until we are — economically — a third world country on Friday.  Well, we also lost our AAA rating on Friday.  It happened and look who was there to rub it in:

<.>

China bluntly criticised the United States on Saturday one day after the superpower’s credit rating was downgraded, saying the "good old days" of borrowing were over.

Standard & Poor’s cut the U.S. long-term credit rating from top-tier AAA by a notch to AA-plus on Friday over concerns about the nation’s budget deficits and climbing debt burden.

China — the United States’ biggest creditor — said Washington only had itself to blame for its plight and called for a new stable global reserve currency.

</>

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/06/crisis-idUSLDE77504R20110806

I wonder when the American people will take their collective heads from the sand? 

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

The Great Hedge Fund De-Levering Event,

Jerry

Spengler’s report on the current state of the markets:

http://blog.atimes.net/?p=1889

It’s interesting. Wish I had some spare bucks.

Ed

Subj: A review of markets under Carter and Obama

http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/johnransom/2011/08/05/liberals_come_home_to_roost_obama_vs_carter/page/full/

An important set of charts which show that there is a way out. But it will not be Keynesian.

Bunny Inspectors…

Jerry,

I suspect your bringing up the "bunny inspectors" really is less a matter of the cost (although it certainly is worthy of attention), and more of a case of the Federal government just being worried about something that it really shouldn’t be.

It kind of falls under one of the complaints specified in the Declaration of Independence:

"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance."

Karl

Well, yes: if there is no mechanism for eliminating the patently ridiculous there will almost certainly be no way to rid ourselves of the New Offices which harass our people and eat out their substance. Starting with the schools and many of the regulatory agencies. Turn them all out and start over, or devise a way to get rid of the useless; or go on paying for our own ruin.

Your reader wrote — in today’s view — "I do understand the concept of symbolism. I understand it as an inferior substitute for reasoning."

I suspect your reader is not familiar with Alfred Korzybski in particular or the functions of language in general.  To put it symbolically, the name of God is ineffable because the word is not what it describes.  As Korzybski put it, "the map is not the territory" and as Alan Watts said, "the menu is not the mean".  Language is a symbol, so we all use a cumbersome form of reasoning and communication.  When your reader can communicate through a telepathic modality to a greater degree than I’ve seen until 2011 then the reader might have a relevant quip — though I hope the reader would share the wisdom. 

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

I took General Semantics from Wendell Johnson at the University of Iowa and I learned a lot in that class; and while I do not make a religion of it, I do recommend that everyone somewhere in their lifetime read Korkybski’s Science and Sanity. It is not an easy book and it is not especially well written, but it has the property of making you see the world in a somewhat different way, and that is important.

One function of public schools is to provide some common intellectual experiences for the future citizens, thus making communications easier. Jacques Barzun has written about this in his Teacher in America, another of the books I recommend to everyone interested in intellectual discourse.

Baboons kidnap and keep feral dogs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2lSZPTa3ho&feature=player_embedded

Reminds me of the Pact — search down for "Dogs and Humans" from http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail162.html#Saturday

— and of the old Gordon Dickson story, "By New Hearth Fires".

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com