Federal Aid

Chaos Manor View, Thursday, May 28, 2015

Story conference with Barnes and Niven yesterday. Satisfactory but mentally exhausted so the rest of the day after lunch was consumed by locusts.

Back in the 50’s when there was no federal Department of Education, and there was spirited debate over the wisdom of Federal Aid to Education, it was generally thought that education was best left to the States; Federal Aid would come at the creeping but inevitable cost of Federal Control, and would be a disaster. It was argued that for the cost of a few B-52’s we could have a fine education for all. Our schools were generally good, but some were backward, rural, or inner city; Federal Aid would fix that and improve the other schools as well. And then came Sputnik and the idea that Russian schools were much better than US schools, and Russians learned Science and Engineering, and look at this backward school in the Ozarks, and we must have education to win the Cold War, and…

The alarmists won the argument of course. We got Federal Aid and we got it good and hard. With it came credentialism and strong teachers unions. Reagan tried to abolish the Department of Education and much of Federal Aid, but he couldn’t; since Reagan no one has tried very hard.

And then came various national education policies. No child left behind – better described as no child gets ahead – may have been the worst. There was also the idiocy of “every American kid should get a world class university prep education” which doesn’t even make sense. Most industrial workers couldn’t make use of a university education, and vast numbers couldn’t pass the final exams. But if you have a right to get one, the universities will, at great cost (and profit) see that it happens. You can major in some field or another, and if you can’t do maths we’ll find you a major that doesn’t need them.

So down went higher education while turning out more graduates; but meanwhile the high schools, and then the grade schools, were suffering.

I don’t suppose I need say a lot more on the quality of education. Look at the California Sixth Grade Reader of 1915 http://www.amazon.com/California-Sixth-Grade-Reader-Pournelle-ebook/dp/B00LZ7PB7E or see Bill whittle http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/bill-whittle-struggle-stupidity for more. Somehow what we expected 6^th Graders to study before WW II is now too difficult for high school.

But the real argument against Federal Aid To Education was the warning about indoctrination: at the time it was mostly Liberals who feared indoctrination by right wingers. Bit different now, but the arguments still hold: it’s a direct violation of the intentions of the Framers and a complete intrusion on state’s sovereignty.

Schoolroom Climate Change Indoctrination

In one assignment, students measure the size of their family’s carbon footprint and suggest ways to shrink it.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/schoolroom-climate-change-indoctrination-1432767611

By

Paul H. Tice

May 27, 2015 7:00 p.m. ET

1165 COMMENTS

While many American parents are angry about the Common Core educational standards and related student assessments in math and English, less attention is being paid to the federally driven green Common Core that is now being rolled out across the country. Under the guise of the first new K-12 science curriculum to be introduced in 15 years, the real goal seems to be to expose students to politically correct climate-change orthodoxy during their formative learning years.

The Next Generation of Science Standards were released in April 2013. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia have adopted them, including my state of New Jersey, which signed on in July 2014 and plans to phase in the new curriculum beginning with the 2016-2017 school year. The standards were designed to provide students with an internationally benchmarked science education.

While publicly billed as the result of a state-led process, the new science standards rely on a framework developed by the Washington, D.C.-based National Research Council. That is the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences that works closely with the federal government on most scientific matters.

There is more but you get the idea. Indoctrination with Al Gore.

And you get to pay for it, and your children will come home ashamed of their Denier parents: even as the evidence pours in showing that we don’t know much about climate even with our multi-million dollar models, and until they can account for clouds, they will never be accurate: no model can take the 1960 initial conditions and “predict” the conditions in 2000.

And without cloud data they can’t, because Nighttime Radiative Cooling http://misfitsarchitecture.com/2013/03/01/its-not-rocket-science-5-night-sky-radiant-cooling/ is governed by clouds.

But that isn’t going to be taught to your kids.

Our school system is so bad that perhaps it won’t be effective in indoctrination; but the next step will be to have the kids report their Denier parents, and then send Child Protective Services to help the kids resist the evil parents who are teaching The Wrong Stuff to their kids.

I know.

It Can’t Happen Here.

How to generate a science scam

Dear Dr. Pournelle, 

This article is by a journalist who did his levelheaded best to scam the scientific community with a bogus study. The ease with which it is done is quite sad and speaks to gatekeeping, at least in scientific journalism.
http://io9.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-helps-weight-1707251800

Respectfully,

Brian P.

It is worth reading. And it isn’t just journalism that lets nonsense past. Modern education in actual science in universities is not universally – or even usually – very good. That’s true of many of the “best” universities. But my god how the money rolls in.

Did Market Leninism Win the Cold War?

<http://www.unz.com/article/the-worst-of-all-possible-worlds/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

“The Worst of All Possible Worlds

Did Market Leninism Win the Cold War?

Imagine an alternative universe in which the two major Cold War superpowers evolved into the United Soviet Socialist States. The conjoined entity, linked perhaps by a new Bering Straits land bridge, combines the optimal features of capitalism and collectivism. From Siberia to Sioux City, we’d all be living in one giant Sweden.

It sounds like either the paranoid nightmare of a John Bircher or the wildly optimistic dream of Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, however, this was a rather conventional view, at least among influential thinkers like economist John Kenneth Galbraith who predicted that the United States and the Soviet Union would converge at some point in the future with the market tempered by planning and planning invigorated by the market. Like many an academic notion, it didn’t come to pass. The United States veered off in the direction of Reaganomics. And the Soviet Union eventually collapsed. So much for “convergence theory,” which like EST or cold fusion went the way of most crackpot ideas.

Or did it? Take another look at our world in 2015 and tell me if, somehow we haven’t backed our way through the looking glass into that very alternative universe — with a twist. The planet currently seems to be on the cusp of a decidedly unharmonic convergence.

Consider what’s happening in Russia, where an elected autocrat presides over a free market shaped by a powerful state apparatus. Similarly, China’s mash-up of market Leninism offers a one-from-column-A-and-one-from-Column-B combination platter. Both countries are also rife with crime, corruption, growing inequality, and militarism. Think of them as the un-Swedens.”

CoDominium?

Query for the seminar: are you REAL sure you want to raise the minimum wage?

“I chose crab bisque as a dish because it’s a real challenge for human chef to make well, never mind a machine,” Anderson said.

“If it can cook a bisque, it can do stir-fries and we’re looking forward to teaching it many more recipes in the months to come.”

http://www.scmp.com/tech/innovation/article/1808963/worlds-first-robot-kitchen-cooks-visitors-ces-asia-shanghai

Rod

K wrote:

“ I am not advocating the armed conflict that was the first step toward positive change two hundred years ago; we have tools of communication at our disposal now that did not exist then.”

—–

Those very same tools of communications are an important component of the instrumentality of tyranny. Had the War of Independence been delayed until the advent of the telegraph and the Gatling gun, it would in all likelihood not been successful; the example of the Second American Revolution (also known as the War of Northern Aggression, the War Between the States, or the American Civil War) is pertinent.

Those tools are even more important during long spans of notional ‘peace’.

—————————————

Roland Dobbins <roland.dobbins@mac.com>

“The Kurds at the moment have ambitions that are not in conflict with our interests except at the margins; that is also true of Saudi Arabia, and Israel for that matter.”

Only true of the Kurds.

Greg Cochran

In absolute terms, yes; but the conflicts are resolvable in the case of Saudi Arabia and Israel. What is needed from Arabia is protection of the Sunni minority from the Shia of Baghdad. Baathist Iraq certainly had goals in conflict with the US but the situation in Iraq was much better under Baath than it is under our liberated democracy.

How so?

http://listverse.com/2015/05/25/10-major-natural-disasters-predicted-in-the-near-future/

In one of the potential disasters described, a statement is made that “…a US Geological Survey study done by scientists in Florida that states that the sea level of the East Coast is rising three or four times faster than anywhere else in the world.”

How can that be, since all oceans actually are a single body of water?

Charles Brumbelow

“A 2012 study by emeritus professor John Boon of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science claimed that significant changes in sea level along the East Coast from Key West, Florida, to Newfoundland, Canada, started around 1987. His study shows that the sea level is increasing 0.3 millimeters per year. This study dovetails with a US Geological Survey study done by scientists in Florida that states that the sea level of the East Coast is rising three or four times faster than anywhere else in the world.”

I would presume he finds the Floridian Coastland sinking? Or being lower? It is purportedly explained in http://www.nature.com/news/us-northeast-coast-is-hotspot-for-rising-sea-levels-1.10880

About that small minority of terrorists

Al Jazeera is one of the Islamic world’s largest TV outlets. They performed a survey.

81% of respondents to Al Jazeera poll support the Islamic State http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/05/81-of-respondents-to-al-jazeera-poll-support-the-islamic-state

When I went to school 81% is not a small minority. I guess the new math has kicked in or something.

As support let’s travel to a typical Egyptian Mosque.

Typical Egyptian mosque sermons identical to “non-Islamic” Islamic State http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/05/typical-egyptian-mosque-sermons-identical-to-non-islamic-islamic-state

Oops, that didn’t work either. Maybe we just have to live with it. After all they are nice people, aren’t they? Surely they treat us as equals as we treat them, right?

Muslim Judge: ‘Unacceptable for Christian to Testify Against Muslims’

http://pamelageller.com/2015/05/muslim-judge-unacceptable-for-christian-to-testify-against-muslims.html

Oops, that didn’t turn out so well. But gee, they’re still basically nice people, aren’t they? Erm, unless, maybe, you are gay.

VIDEO: Muslim Brutally Beats Gay Couple in NY Restaurant http://pamelageller.com/2015/05/video-muslim-attacks-gay-couple-in-ny-restaurant.html

Hm, this doesn’t look too good. But they’re just gays.

Islamic State forces Yezidi boys to convert to Islam, sends them into battle http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/05/islamic-state-forces-yezidi-boys-to-convert-to-islam-sends-them-into-battle

Waitaminit that’s not nice of them. Does it get worse? Yes, especially if you are woman.

Pamela Geller, WND: “U.K. Rape Jihadis: ‘This Is OK In Our Culture’”

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/05/pamela-geller-wnd-u-k-rape-jihadis-this-is-ok-in-our-culture

Pamela Geller, Breitbart: “The UK’s Rape Jihad: A Survivor’s Tale”

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/05/pamela-geller-breitbart-the-uks-rape-jihad-a-survivors-tale

It’s even not very nice for Christian men in moderate secular Egypt.

Grandson of medical pioneer cannot follow same profession for being Christian http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/05/grandson-of-medical-pioneer-cannot-follow-same-profession-for-being-christian

Oh, nevermind! I overreacted. Obama tells me it’s all due to climate change!

Robert Spencer, PJM: Obama: Climate Change Causes Jihad http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/05/robert-spencer-pjm-obama-climate-change-causes-jihad

Ya know, just off the top of my head, it’s time we do something about this “stuff” before that “stuff” really hits the fan. And it’s preciously close to the big stuff hitting fan episode.

{o.o}

ISIS is vulnerable now but becoming exponentially less so. Time is not on our side.

: Dogs and human evolution
They say that we domesticated dogs. What if they domesticated us?
Imagine our primitive ancestors. Some were assholes, and were mean to animals. Others were more open-minded, and could bond with other species such as dogs. The latter then would get the advantage of another species with superior olfaction, hearing, night vision, and alertness. Perhaps natural selection could favor the latter? Perhaps it could assist in domesticating other species such as horses (utterly vital for civilization for several thousand years). Perhaps these adaptations could even spill over into our relations with each other?
Perhaps our dogs shaped us? Perhaps we need more of that?

TG

Well we had all that forebrain we had been using to smell with, and now it could evolve other functions.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/Sixthgradesample.html

“This article mentions the “idiotic claims” made by the “national news media” on a “daily basis”. One case in point is the so-called “unprecedented” flooding that put Houston “under water”. And the chant is “climate change, fear, climate change, fear!” But, the article reveals this flooding is not unprecedented and mentions more than eight instances of worse flooding and demonstrates the Houston is not under water. And then we have this:

<.>

On the other issue, the entire climate change situation has become politicized, which I hate. Those on the right, and those on the left hang out in “echo chambers”, listening to those with similar world views refusing to believe anything else could be true.

Everyone knows the climate is changing; it always has, and always will. I do not know of a single “climate denier”. I am still waiting to meet one.

The debate involves the anthropogenic impact, and this is not why I am writing this piece. Let’s just say the Houston flood this week is weather, and not climate, and leave it at that.

</>

https://medium.com/@spann/the-age-of-disinformation-98d55837d7d”“

How sensible.. But, how many “normal” people understand that difference between climate and weather? Maybe about as many that understand the difference between strategy and tactics, RAM and ROM, and so on? Is that why these “idiotic claims” pass for facts?

Perhaps a lack of historical perspective to provide some context is a contributing factor?

The effect of whatever you want to call these cultural tendencies to ignorance of words and their meanings, lack of context, lack of perspective and so on reminds me of Orwell’s 1984, the Newspeak Dictionary, and the work Winston Smith undertook at the Ministry of Truth. Only this takes matters a step further. You don’t need to destroy old newspaper articles and write new articles when no one bothers to read the facts in the first place. You don’t need a newspeak dictionary when few understand the definitions of most words or how the language works.

A timely example: I was in an online chat today and some cantankerous person spewed off some word salad that made no sense, much to the irritation of the other participants. I commented that he might consider using proper English so we could understand what he wanted to say. My sentence used a semi-colon and one of the other participants remarked, “That’s amusing, can you use a semi-colon in proper English?  haha Can you even do that?”

I, politely, explained a semicolon can be used in place of a conjunction to link two independent clauses and he said, “Dude, I don’t know what the **** you’re talking about.”

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Percussa Resurgo

As Freeman Dyson frequently says, we just don’t know how to model climate. 

The way to bet is that it’s getting warmer, but then things happen.  Tambora caused the year without a summer – worldwide.  Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death.  But that was not man-made.  Yet don’t forget Carl Sagan’s Nuclear Winter fears. We don’t know enough about clouds to model climate.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.