"How fortunate for governments
that the people they administer don't think."
-Hitler-
"Only two things are
infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the
former."
-Albert Einstein-Old
Updates....
3/05/19 (20:05)
a good use of government
time and resources would be in developing more stringent driving tests.
it's a nearly universal theme that no one thinks anyone in their city knows
how to drive. let's all get on the same page about pulling all the way
over to the right when making a right turn, for example.
i notice a lot lately the
disconnect between responsibility and freedom. people want cool stuff and
freedom and benefits. they don't want blame for anything that doesn't go
their way. they don't want to have to do anything for the things they ask
for. they consider many of these things "rights" because we live in a rich
society so that society should just provide these things for them. unfortunately
in these discussion i never hear about the cost of freedom, benefits, or
rights. it's a trite bumper sticker saying that "freedom isn't free," but
there's truth there. and i don't mean that we need to send young people
to iraq to secure our freedom. but there is a cost to these things and
sometimes that cost is that you, as an individual, need to take on some
responsibility to hold up your end of the bargain.
i like the ezra klein podcast
a lot, but he's been out lately and had some guest hosts in his place.
there was a global warming episode recently and amongst the doom and gloom
was the projection that global warming will cost the world economy $600
trillion. that's not a typo. according to the guest that's twice the current
global wealth. this is really scary and really fake. i mean, how does one
honestly contend that we're going to lose more than twice what we have
combined? these people are religious fundamentalists who are in love with
negativity.
in that same podcast the
guest and host talked about how we shouldn't make it harder for people
to join the fight against global warming by insisting that they change
their individual behavior. according to them, no individual change in behavior
is going to affect global warming - it's a systemic issue. this is how
they both rationalized flying as much as they want, for example. we should
ask individuals to be politically involved instead of involved through
their habits.
so, that's their hair-brained
argument. i wonder sometimes what happened to the "be the change you wish
to see in the world" method of living. i rather like that since it move
things in the right direction and gives one some semblance of moral authority
- unlike the global warming nut who thinks the world is going to fall apart,
but refuses to change his behavior. change should be for those people,
but not me. sure, we have a domestic violence epidemic, but me not beating
my wife anymore isn't going to put a dent in the problem. again, no personal
responsibility. no culpability. just complaints about big oil. "gosh, i
really do hate the duopoly in the american political system, but i'm going
to keep voting Democrat."
ever heard of Tulpas?
i hadn't until recently. basically it's just another in the long line of
nonsense along the lines of transgender, transracial, furries, etc. - people
inventing stories about what they are, and insisting you affirm them. tulpamancers
are people who have "Tulpas" that live in their head and are essentially
like multiple personalities. a
good podcast about it. people will literally hear the voices of their
Tulpas talking to them and telling them to do things. but, hey, it doesn't
affect me and they think it's real so it's all good, amirite?
i'm going to need a lobotomy
soon.
speaking of lobotomies...i
think it's important to remember how wrong the medical community has been
in the very recent past, and to assume that they are currently just as
wrong about something else. lobotomies are still performed today and hopefully
they've worked out the kinks and don't do it disproportionately to the
poor and disenfranchised. eugenics is another relatively recent field that
academics missed the mark on quite badly. the list of people who were eugenicists
is astonishing. feminist margaret sanger, liberal supreme court heroes
louis brandeis and oliver wendall holmes jr.. churchill, teddy roosevelt,
hg wells, helen keller...people truly believed that we should systematically
sterilize people for their supposed idiocy. as much as i dislike stupidity,
i think almost everyone today would see this as a universally bad idea.
look into the supreme court case Buck
v. Bell for more on how bad this was and how deeply the ideas ran in
polite upper crust society.
in Buck v Bell there was
only one dissenter on the court - Pierce Butler. according to his wikipedia
page he was opposed by both liberal magazines (the nation and the new republic)
and the KKK. i can think of no higher accolade than to be opposed by such
extremes. so, he was opposed by the extremes, he was right on Buck v. Bell
and he also took a liberal reading of the 4th amendment in Olmstead v.
United States. good job.
i don't watch hockey enough.
it's a lot like life, though. i really admire the guys who get into the
glass and fight for the puck. seems like it's sport where hustle matters
more than raw athletic talent.
this american life had
an episode where they talked about the fact that immigration pushes down
wages for those without a high school degree. there was little change for
those with a high school diploma or greater. this of course affects blacks
the most since they are lowest on the totem pole. Democrats are currently
pretty well unified against trump and the republicans, but if the republicans
ever discover common sense, they that coalition will start to fray. latinos
and asians have some obvious alignments with republicans and blacks suffer
greatest from immigration, so this is something i see being a problem for
the dems in 20 years if they insist on playing the identity politics games.
they also found that wages
have been flat for the last 30-40 years. the wage issue is one that gets
a lot of play, but part of the problem with it is that it doesn't taken
into account total compensation. wages are one thing, but when employers
still provide so many benefits, and benefits continue to cost more and
more, you have to consider those as well. when you look at total compensation,
that hasn't been flat like wages have. i don't have the data, but my understanding
is that total compensation has kept up with inflation. it would be really
great if we could divorce health insurance from employment. it just doesn't
make any sense. parenthetically, i'll note that the reason this ever happened
is because the government capped wages during world war 2. in order to
compete for the best available people, employers introduced non-wage compensation
like health benefits and the practice stuck. so, the government made bad
law, the practice stuck, and now it's a major reason for our healthcare
crisis.
on a podcast there was
a woman from brooklyn who was talking about gentrification and she said
"i'm seeing a a lot of white faces that i've never seen here before." gentrification
is a big deal in cities the last several years during the recovery. every
couple weeks there will be a discussion about it in local forums and it
always seems to come down to long time black residents seeing white people
in the neighborhood and not liking it. marshawn lynch said the same thing
on bill maher recently. this is the state of affairs. i think it's basically
ridiculous, but whatever, i'm not allowed an opinion on the matter. what's
most funny to me is comparing what anti-gentrification people will say
to what white trump supporters say about their brand of undesirable immigration.
it's basically the same argument from both sides - new faces are moving
into my neighborhood. i don't like them because they look different, don't
fit into the existing culture, and are changing the neighborhood. there
are some peripheral justifications for their feelings, but it always comes
down to those core issues. in our society, though, one version is legitimate,
the other is racist.
i think the best case scenario
for trump's presidency at this point is that he gets an almost accidental
win on something that turns out to be big in the long run. for Nixon it
was the EPA, clean water act, and opening up China. for Trump maybe it'll
be North Korea or establishing fair trade with China. otherwise he's been
a total failure. i had two hopes for Trump going in. 1. he would move to
the center since he's not actually an ideologue and shift positions so
much. 2. he would get 1-3 big things done to change the system because
he doesn't give a fuck and thinks like an outsider.
so far none of that has
really happened. there's the bump stock legislation that no one really
talked about. the criminal justice reform that people didn't care about,
but would have earned obama another nobel peace prize. there's some progress
on North Korea, but everyone just says it was thanks to Moon. but nothing
really big that Trump can legitimately hang his hat on. he's a loser, but
at least his poor decisions haven't killed 100,000+ like GW Bush.
heard a podcast (99% invisible)
where they were talking about fashion design. they talked about "pocket
privilege" and a gay woman referred to plaid as cultural appropriation
since it's supposedly a gay fabric. this is the kind of shit that just
goes too far. this is not a crazy podcast. it's a very mainstream podcast
about design of all sorts of things...this one just happened to be about
fashion. but this is the kind of shit that just makes me go nuts. when
grunge rockers wear plaid it isn't appropriation of gay culture anymore
than wearing plaid is cultural appropriation of Scottish people. and yet,
this is where this woman's head went first - cultural appropriation! for
fuck's sake. then there's the pocket privilege issue. i've heard this one
before. women complain that their clothing doesn't have pockets. i guess
it's a patriarchal conspiracy to make women buy purses or something. i
don't know. i missed that memo. i don't know about the availability of
such pants, but i'll take the word of women who say there aren't many pants
with pockets. my guess is that it has to do with fit (tighter fit isn't
conducive to pockets) and cost (pockets cost more and women's clothing
is probably already more costly because of different fabric, prints, cut,
design when compared to the simplicity and lack of choices with men's pants).
but i have to plead ignorance since fashion is something i care very little
about. i basically wear the same thing every day and it makes my life very
easy.
i will say that women can
wear men's clothes without any social problems, but not vice versa. it's
kinda like when i tell zoe that she can have everything on the kid's menu
at a restaurant - as well as everything on the adult menu, but i'm only
allowed to have things on the adult menu since the kids' menu says 10 or
under only. i think most people think kids have fewer choices, but they
actually have more.
say what you will about
Trump, but can we all agree that Kasich is a joke and is only hanging around
so he can get attention and free food? at first i was somewhat intrigued
by him because he seemed relatively moderate amongst the sea of idiots
that the republicans trotted out, but i grew tired of his bullshit early
on. it's so obvious what he's about and what his shtick is. he has zero
chance of winning any national office.
speaking of insufferable...the
fucking patriots won another super bowl. god, please end this. i also saw
that Robert Kraft, patriots owner, was picked up for solicitation. i shed
no tears for the guy, but how is this still illegal and how did he get
caught? seems like the cops should be doing something better with their
time. i wouldn't doubt it if they targeted him because of who he is. and
even if you're a billionaire prick of the worst franchise in sports...you
shouldn't be targeted. this is how principles go. you either apply them
to your enemies or the principles are worthless.
how is it even possible
to get busted for solicitation anymore? just say you're making a movie
and make it legit. i don't get it. you can do it for free. you can do it
if you film it. but you can't pay for it without filming it. how long is
it going to take before we figure this one out? it's just one of the dumbest
things ever.
one more reason i don't
follow the news on a daily basis is the kid in the MAGA hat at the Lincoln
memorial debacle. on
the media (liberal NPR show) covered it well and nearly everyone else
lost their shit because "the kid is a piece of shit racist who needs to
be beaten...oh wait, there's more to the story, sorry about that." i think
it's important to revisit these stories after the news cycle has died down
so we can look at them reasonable.
education could really
be so much better. i mean, teachers need to learn about marketing and sales.
you go to some museums and they understand this. they're there to sell
you knowledge and it's not compulsory like high school, or college as the
case may be. since museums need to attract visitors, instead of lecture
to a captive audience, they do some salesmanship in the form of interactive
exhibits, engaging and entertaining talks, multimedia displays, etc. in
high school, though, it's rote memorization. if you take a linguistics
class it's all talk about diphthongs. if you take chemistry you're learning
about calculating moles. this is not entirely useful or interesting. it's
awful. imagine if public schools had it in their head that they had to
actually compete for students and parents. if they had to make their product
enticing or at all interesting. i know first hand that they don't care
about this on an administrative level at all. in K-12 i had ONE teacher
i can remember who made a strong effort to teach interesting things in
an interesting way. pretty much everyone else was just going through the
motions trying to get through the curriculum. not entirely their fault,
and i don't want to throw them under the bus because i had some good teachers
by that standard, but most teachers are just trying to get through a bad
curriculum and don't have a lot of energy or thought put into the delivery
of the product. administrators are actually the worst.
if i put all my carpenters
on broom and cleanup duty all day every day how many carpenters do you
think i'll have at the end of the year? cleaning up the jobsite is as necessary
as knowing what a diphthong is in linguistics, but it's far from the most
interesting stuff you do while building a house. let's get some salesmanship
into the field. if you're a teacher you're not merely passing information
from your head to yours, you're making them interested enough to want to
learn everything they can. especially now that information is so easy to
come by, the job of the educators should be to make learning fun.
in one year as many people
immigrated into the UK as immigrated between 1066 and 1950 combined. andrew
sullivan gave that amazing stat. i'm not sure if it says more about how
few people the UK took in between those ~900 years or about how many people
it took in in one year after the refugee crisis. probably a bit of both.
"Before you get rid of
a fence, know why it's there." i think that's great advice and just about
the best argument i could make on behalf of taking the conservative position
in life. Conservatism is about conserving the ways of the past. sometimes
that's really bad because it's just about tradition (which always makes
me think of Shirley Jackson's The Lottery). but other times it's the really
good instinct to not throw the baby out with the bath water. maybe there's
a good reason we do things the way we do. maybe we should know very well
why our society structures things as it does before we decide to reinvent
the wheel. this is something i've come to appreciate more the last 10 years
or so.