| Wednesday,
October 27, 2010 Lions, and Tigers, and
Bears, Oh MY!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405
2702304915104575572642896563902.html?
mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
How did we ever survive childhood?
Phil
Indeed. Of course there are
weird people out there, and parents do have responsibilities; but the danger
to trick or treaters is automobiles, not perverts, so far as I can tell.
Kids are far more likely to get run over on Halloween than any other
evening. Fortunately that's still a very small number. That's no consolation
to the parent whose child is harmed of course, but nothing is. There are
dangers in this world. Learning to live in the world is part of growing up.
============
Thomas Sowell on Minority
Education
Jerry,
I was looking for Thomas Sowell's experience in his
education. I bumped into this essay.
Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE
<http://www.tsowell.com/speducat.html>
The Education of Minority Children by Thomas Sowell
"The quest for esoteric methods of trying to educate
these children proceeds as if such children had never been successfully
educated before, when in fact there are concrete examples, both from history
and from our own times, of schools that have been successful in educating
children from low-income families and from minority families.
....
For those who are interested in schools that produce
academic success for minority students, there is no lack of examples, past
and present. Tragically, there is a lack of interest by the public school
establishment in such examples. Again, I think this goes back to the
politics of education.
Put bluntly, failure attracts more money than success.
Politically, failure becomes a reason to demand more money, smaller classes,
and more trendy courses and programs, ranging from "black English" to
bilingualism and "self-esteem."
....
We cannot recapture the past and there is much in the
past that we should not want to recapture. But neither is it irrelevant. If
nothing else, history shows what can be achieved, even in the face of
adversity. We have no excuse for achieving less in an era of greater
material abundance and greater social opportunities."
The purpose of the public
school system is to provide employment for bad teachers and inflict those
teachers on the students whose parents are least able to defend their right
to someone better. If that is not the purpose of the system, I don't know
how it could be organized better to accomplish that purpose. Unions defend
bad teachers and inflict them on pupils of lower social classes who don't
organize protests against the truly awful.
Ten percent of the teachers
are responsible for about 50% of the dropouts. Schools would double in
efficiency and results if they fired the 10% worse teachers. Fat chance the
Teacher's Associations will ever allow that.
=============
Sci Am poll: Dr. Judith Curry &
climate change
Dr Pournelle,
Sci Am has an article on Dr. Judith Curry, the climate
scientist I mentioned to you a few weeks ago. She is hardly a climate
skeptic but she does have reservations about the IPCC and believes that the
skeptics should be heard.
The article aroused such controversy that Sci Am
decided to run a poll asking "Is Curry a heroic whistle-blower, speaking the
truth when others can't or won't? Or has she gone off the scientific deep
end, hurling baseless charges at a group of scientists who are doing their
best to understand the complexities of Earth's climate?" plus other
questions about climate change.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?
id=taking-the-temperature-climate-chan-2010-10-25
I must say that it was simply the worst, the most
biased poll I have ever seen. The choices essentially boiled down to “Yes, I
am a sensible person who is convinced of climate change” or “No, I am a
mindless climate change denier.” There was never a “None of the above”
option for this complex subject.
The question about Dr. Curry became "Judith Curry is:
A) a peacemaker B) a dupe C) both D) I've never heard
of her"
That Sci Am would allow such a terrible poll to
represent Sci Am and climate science to the public is as vivid a testament
as one could need for how the climate change agenda has debased science in
our time. What has happened to Scientific American alone is tragic.
I held my nose and checked all the “Mindless denier”
options. When I looked at the survey results, I realized that Sci Am has a
nasty surprise coming — the mindless deniers are winning by a large margin.
Serves Sci Am right.
Best, Jack T.
<http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?
id=taking-the-temperature-climate-chan-2010-10-25>
Unlike you I am not
astonished. Scientific American is notoriously unreliable on any
controversial matter. It shamelessly took sides in the Nuclear Winter
and Strategic Defense debates, and it has no objectivity in most policy
matters. It is realiable on very pure science, and can sometimes be
informative, but it is a pale shadow of the Scientific American I read
eagerly in high school.
===========
Scalia takes Kagan to gun range, sources say
http://news.yahoo.com/s/dailycaller/
20101025/pl_dailycaller/scaliatakeska
gantogunrangesourcessay
Hands on education
=============
Russia steps in to help Nato,
Jerry
Can the Co-Dominium be far behind?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/
politics/exclusive-afghanistan-russia-
steps-in-to-help-nato-2117468.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/
2010/oct/26/nato-afghanistan-russia-military
Ed
==============
Signs of Destroyed Dark
Matter Found in Milky Way's Core,
Jerry
"Cosmologists say they've found the most compelling
evidence of dark matter particles to date, deep inside the Milky Way's core.
There, the thinking goes, the mysterious stuff is colliding to create gamma
rays more frequently than anywhere else in the celestial neighborhood."
<snip> "We've considered every astronomical source and nothing we know of,
except dark matter, can account for the observations," Hooper said. "No
other explanation comes anywhere close."
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/
2010/10/dark-matter-milky-way/
"This is the first study I know of that pulls together
a few threads of evidence for dark matter together with one simple particle
model," said Craig Hogan, an astrophysicist at Fermilab who wasn't involved
in the research. "It's not proven, but it's very exciting and deserves
follow-up."
Stayed tuned.
Ed
Wow. First real evidence of
this postulated Dark Matter, so far as I know. Well, evidence is a bit
strong: data in direct support of hypothesis may be more appropriate. Still,
wow.
============
Schriever wept.
<http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive
/2010/10/power-failure-shuts-down-
sqaudron-of-icbms/65207/>
--- Roland Dobbins
We don't need nuclear missiles
do we?
============
Thought You Might Enjoy
http://www.examiner.com/seminole-county
-environmental-news-in-orlando/arctic-
ocean-warming-icebergs-growing-scarce-
washington-post-reports
“Is our climate changing? The succession of temperate
summers and open winters through several years, culminating last winter in
the almost total failure of the ice crop throughout the valley of the
Hudson, makes the question pertinent. The older inhabitants tell us that the
winters are not as cold now as when they were young, and we have all
observed a marked diminution of the average cold even in this last decade.”
– New York Times, June 23, 1890
“The question is again being discussed whether recent
and long-continued observations do not point to the advent of a second
glacial period, when the countries now basking in the fostering warmth of a
tropical sun will ultimately give way to the perennial frost and snow of the
polar regions.” – New York Times, Feb. 24, 1895
It's instructive to note the ups and downs in the list
in light of a 30-year MDO. I especially enjoyed:
“In the next 50 years [i.e., by 2021], fine dust that
humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will screen out
so much of the sun's rays that the Earth's average temperature could fall by
six degrees. Sustained emissions over five to 10 years [i.e., 1976-81],
could be sufficient to trigger an ice age."
– Washington Post, July 9, 1971
Whew, we dodged the ice age twenty years ago, but we
still have 11 years two await the six degree plummet in temps.
Ocean City, Md., will lose 39 feet of shoreline by
2000 and a total of 85 feet within the next 25 years.” – San Jose Mercury
News, June 11, 1986
So, did it?
“Using computer models, researchers concluded that
global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide two
degrees by 2010, – Associated Press, May 15, 1989
So from 1989 t0 2010 how much of an increase?
“New York will probably be like Florida 15 years from
now.” -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 17, 1989
1989 + 15 years = 2004. So was New York like Florida
six years ago?
"[By] 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating
the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing
crop failures and food riots . . . [By 1996] The Platte River of Nebraska
would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will
stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers
. . . The Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging
into Mexico seeking work as field hands.” – "Dead Heat: The Race Against the
Greenhouse Effect," Michael Oppenheimer and Robert H. Boyle, 1990.
"in a few years, or a decade or so, we'll go into a
permanent El Nino, according to Dr. Russ Schnell, a scientist doing
atmospheric research at Mauna Loa Observatory. – BBC, Nov. 7, 1997
A decade "or so" puts us around 2007 or so, the year
of the permanent El Nino??
Don't you love it when the time limits expire on
prophesies?
MikeF
==============
: America's ruling class
Jerry:
In your View for Monday, October 25, 2010, you
included a link to Charles Murray's Washington Post article about the new
elites as found at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2010/10/22/AR2010102202873.html
You may be interested in a much longer discussion of
America's ruling class by Angelo M. Codevilla titled "America's Ruling Class
-- And the Perils of Revolution" published at
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/
americas-ruling-class-and-the
Mr. Codevilla claims that the most striking feature of
America's ruling class is that it "recruits and renews itself not through
meritocracy but by taking into itself people whose most prominent feature is
their commitment to fit in." He says the ruling class stunts itself through
negative selection, though while dumbing itself down it has adopted an air
of intellectual superiority.
Codevilla describes how the ruling class's appetite
for deference, power, and perks is growing while the "country class"
disrespects its rulers. A clash is sure to happen and the outcome is
unpredictable.
Those unfamiliar with Mr. Codevilla can learn more
about him at
http://spectator.org/people/
angelo-m-codevilla/all
Best regards, --Harry M.
I have previously recommended
Codevilla's article, but it does no harm to say it again. It goes well with
Murray's in promoting understanding of the world.
===================
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