Read it.

Liberals use the argument of need to support regulations and bans ranging from soda to guns. Who needs a 32 ounce soda at dinner? Who needs a so-called assault weapon? But what do people really need? A hovel and some gruel. Everything else is part of life’s rich accoutrement, our desire (need) for more knowledge, more material goods, more experiences, more emotions. The pursuit of happiness includes guns, soda, sex,  transfats, tobacco, narcotics, all depending on the eye of the beholder.

Read it.

Hey, if Danica Patrick can do it, why not Nancy Pelosi? Granted, the effect is not the same….

I like it; it has texture, and scope.

Read it.

A cri de coeur.

Read it.

It’s clear why chefs want to make this kind of food. They get to put their highest-level skills and most carefully selected products into every dish—and they earn the satisfaction of seeing the meal they create each night consumed before their eyes. What’s much less obvious is why restaurant owners and investors want to get involved in this kind of business.

Read it.

Dr Teresa Belton told the BBC cultural expectations that children should be constantly active could hamper the development of their imagination.

Ronald Bailey thinks we’re at that point.

“Humanity now stands at Peak Farmland, and the 21st century will see release of vast areas of land, hundreds of millions of hectares, more than twice the area of France for nature,” declared Jesse Ausubel, the director of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University, in a December lecture. Ausubel was outlining the findings in a new study he and his collaborators had done in the Population and Development Review. Unlike other alleged resource “peaks,” peak farmland reflects not the exhaustion of resources but the fruits of human intelligence and growing affluence.

The amount of people and resources devoted to growing food has been trending downward for decades, as automation has been substituted for expensive labor. This is why politician-talk about ‘family farms’ is so retrograde; substitute ‘family factories’ and think about where we would be if that had been a political priority during the industrialization of the 20th century.

In 1960 India’s population was 450 million, and the average Indian subsisted on a near-starvation diet of just more than 2,000 calories per day. Indian farmers wrested those meager calories from 161 million hectares (400 million acres) of farmland, an area a bit more than twice the size of Texas. By 2010, Indian population rose by more than two and half times, national income rose 15-fold, and the average Indian ate a sixth more calories. The amount of land devoted to crops rose about 5 percent to 170 million hectares. Had wheat productivity remained the same that it was in 1960, Ausubel and his colleagues calculate that Indian farmers would have had to plow up an additional 65 million hectares of land. Instead, as people left the land for cities, Indian forests expanded by 15 million hectares—bigger than the area of Iowa.

I would quibble about 2000 calories a day being a ‘near-starvation diet’ — I’m doing that right now to lose weight, and I can tell you that it’s actually a pretty comfortable amount of food. But the rest of it is right on.

In the United States, corn production grew 17-fold between 1860 and 2010, yet more land was planted in corn in 1925 than in 2010. (The area planted in corn has started increasing again, thanks to the federal government’s biofuels mandates and subsidies.) Today U.S. forests cover about 72 percent of the area that was forested in 1630. Forest area stabilized in the early 20th century, and the extent of U.S. forests began increasing in the second half of the 20th century.

This is the dirty little secret that the eco-nazis don’t want you to know — and their fellow-travellers in the Lamestream Media take care not to report. Just as with ‘clean air’ and ‘clean water’, advancing science and improving technology are doing more to give us a healthy environment than all of the heavy-handed political mandates ever imposed on a victimized public.

One concern is that farmers may be approaching the biological limits of photosynthesis, which would constrain crop yields. But the authors note that the winners of the annual National Corn Yield Contest currently produce non-irrigated yields of around 300 bushels per acre, nearly double average U.S. yields. Ausubel suggests that the difference between the global average of 82 bushels and contest-winning 300 bushels per acre yields means that “much headroom remains for farmers to lift yields.”

Jim Goad points out some inconvenient truth.

As a blinkered young leftist back in the late 1980s, I subscribed to The Nation magazine for a year or two. Since I was a plumber’s son who put myself through journalism school by driving a cab on weekends, I naively identified with any media outlet that claimed to speak on behalf of the working class.

Then, as life’s cruel realities slowly peeled the scales from my bleeding eyes, I began realizing that many such propaganda machines, despite their eternal claims of uplifting “the people” in a noble fight against “the elite,” were themselves the organs of a certain class of astronomically well-heeled elites. They didn’t represent all of the elite, mind you—only a weird segment that seemed to exist in a perpetual state of denial about their own elite status.

Almost all of those who claim to speak for the ‘working class’ (or, in the American euphemism, ‘working families) are not, themselves, working class, just as those who claim to speak for the poor are not, themselves, poor.

My disappointment mutated into a lingering resentment as it became clear that such elites’ showboating “populist” efforts never really seemed to help the poor and the working class. Years of observing the mystifying spectacle of people who were quantifiably and undeniably members of the “1%” blabber nonstop about how they represented the “99%”—all while lecturing me about my imaginary “privilege”—led me to believe that such types cared far more about sculpting a compassionate public persona for themselves than they did about actually helping anyone beneath them on the economic ladder. Their relentlessly ghastly hypocrisy suggested they were interested mainly in soothing their own wealth guilt.

I very much like the term ‘wealth guilt’, which applies especially to people (Gore, Kennedy, Rockefeller, what have you) who inherited their money rather than earned it. Those who actually earned their own money tend not to feel guilty about it — and why should they?

In a previous article about limousine liberals, I mentioned Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and part owner of The Nation. Although she never shuts the frick up about sticking it to “the wealthy” via higher taxes, this didn’t prevent the sanctimonious multimillionaire from reputedly engaging in a protracted legal battle with the IRS to skirt paying her own inheritance taxes. This icy and passive-aggressive child of stratospheric privilege, who’s never had to work a day in her life yet somehow has deluded herself into thinking she’s qualified to speak on behalf of the working class, is perhaps the most egregious example of a limousine liberal alive today.

She also comes out with some of the most seriously WTF statements on politics that you can find in print today. She’s a favorite punching bag for Rush Limbaugh, the gift that never stops giving.

Every year The Nation sponsors a cruise which liberal activist Jim Hightower once referred to, with apparently not a whit of irony, as “a floating palace of populism.” Never mind that 99% of “the people” would never be able to afford a cabin on this cruise. Nor that The Nation advertised that the cruise offered “a world of comfort and easy elegance” and “all manner of sophisticated amenities” such as “fine chocolates on your pillow at night,” “extra-fluffy Egyptian cotton towels,” and such resolutely bourgeois perks as “all-weather pools, fully-equipped gym, aerobics classes, personal trainers, court sports, jogging tracks, full-service salon, hydrotherapy pool, [and] yoga classes.”

Yup, that’s the 99%, alright.

So for all their grandstanding about fighting “the wealthy” and “the powerful,” the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the owners and writers of The Nation are inextricably entangled with power and wealth. In the relentless Texas Death Cage Match between corporate power and governmental power, they take the government’s side. So they’re not fighting power at all. They’re merely picking a team. Not that this is necessarily bad; I merely wish they’d have the honesty to admit it. Their behavior suggests that they know absolutely nothing about the poor and the working class and only use such people as chess pieces in a cynical game of moral status-jockeying against other elites.

Read it.

There is no question that half of the students in that grade 11 class could pass the Google interview process.

No doubt growing up in a totalitarian state offers some advantages in dealing with the tedious irrelevance that most celebrity tech firms (like Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook) so dearly love.

I’ve always thought that Google was run by foreigners of high-school age, and this just proves it.

Read it.

There’s no doubt that we’re moving into a new age of media, and the days where a writer could just write his books and have them published and never interact with the public are gone. We do have all these new social media and all these ways of reaching out, and I think that trend is likely to continue. Where it’s gonna lead, I really have no idea. You know, I’m partly still the kind of guy that would like to tie messages to legs of ravens to get the word out. But I do use a computer. I have since 1982, so I’m adapting as best as I can to this new world. [In the Q&A session later that evening, Martin revealed what he writes on: a DOS machine running WordStar 4.0.]

Read it.

Wonder why that is? Well, perhaps the more intelligent citizens of Newtown made use of the simple thought process ‘Strict Gun Laws + Lunatic With Stolen Gun = Many Dead Kids’ and decided that when the balloon goes up they’d rather that the bad guy isn’t the only one holding a weapon. Just maybe.

Read it.

(Yeah, you have to wade through some non-political stuff; suck it up.)

The notion of a “fair” wage is central to many socialist views of proper government. They are usually coupled with schemes to rationalize the economy: why should there be twenty brands of tooth paste? It is a wasteful practice. A rationally planned economy would prevent a great deal of effort wasted in competitive practices, thus leaving more to be paid to the workers. After all, the workers produce the goods: they have a right to a fair share, which should at least include a living wage.

The problem is that often a job cannot possibly produce enough return to warrant a “fair” wage. When the production doesn’t at least equal the cost, there isn’t a job to be had. Many ‘jobs’ are discretionary. You will pay someone to do something so that you don’t have to do it yourself, but if the cost is too high, you will just do it yourself, or go without that service entirely. Clearly there are things I would like to have done for me that I don’t think I can afford. Raising the minimum wage simply moves more jobs from the “I can afford that” to the “Can’t afford it” column. That is, it does in the real world. In Senator Warren’s world, her intentions are what matter: she means well. If her proposal ends up costing a number of people their jobs, that wasn’t her intent, so it doesn’t matter: we’ll just give them more benefits to make up for their loss.

I wish that were a parody, but it is not.

Read it.

Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

Read it.

The future isn’t what it used to be.

Steve Sailer doesn’t have much use for Rand Paul.

Like I’ve said a million times before, once the GOP decides it wants to talk about “amnesty,” it winds up talking about a suicidal “path to citizenship.” White people are suckers for high-mindedness, and “a path to citizenship” just sounds more idealistic than plain old amnesty.

The essential duty of American statesmanship is to preserve for Americans the advantages of being American. But does anyone in politics even know what I’m talking about anymore?

Doesn’t seem so.

Read it.

Fehr also noticed a difference between children who’s grown up as siblings and those who were only children.  Contrary to the presumption that only children are more selfish than children raised in larger families, Fehr found the onlies to be the more cooperative and selfless.  They were completely untroubled by handing over toys to another child, whereas the siblings flatly refused.  Fehr came to the conclusion that the onlies didn’t know to be competitive because they’d never had to compete…They weren’t afraid of sharing toys, because they didn’t understand if you gave Barbie to another child, she might come back missing her leg or head.

That would explain a lot about Democrats, many of whom are only children due to the ‘progressive’ aversion to reproduction.

Read it.

In 1987, William Blake, at the age of 23, killed a police officer and injured another while trying to escape a county courthouse he was held in on a drug charge. He was given a 77-year minimum sentence and has spent the last 26 years in solitary confinement at the maximum-security Elmira Correctional Facility in New York state. Blake wrote an essay on his experience in jail where he calls solitary confinement a fate worse than death.

I’m okay with that.

Read it.

Well, for one thing, most CEOs are functional adults.

The luxury is not Mr. Allen’s lifestyle, it’s a byproduct of his job. For he is working as a close protection operator, or, in the old parlance, a bodyguard – a term he despises because of its thuggish connotations. Not for him a bomber jacket, bulking his frame. Instead, he prefers to dress like a businessman, so he can pass for a member of the entourage travelling with the chief executive or politician he is protecting. He declines to be photographed in case he becomes recognizable to a would-be assailant.

Freeberg invents a useful new word.

Maneuvering of the focus of the discussion away, consciously or otherwise, from inspection or disclosure of some matter whose opacity is strategically desirable to the speaker, by means of bullying. The forceful imposition of one person’s attention-deficit problems upon another, at an opportune time.

I see it outside of politics just as much as I see it within politics. It is now about as widespread as a text-messaging acronym among high-school age kids, and it seems to have reached a popularity crescendo at about the same time. “I don’t care about that, and neither should you” is the sentiment. It is the opposite of inquisitiveness. Over a longer period of time, it is bound to make us stupid. There is no other outcome possible.

Read it.

Poor people don’t have clutter because they’re too dumb to see the virtue of living simply; they have it to reduce risk.

When rich people present the idea that they’ve learned to live lightly as a paradoxical insight, they have the idea of wealth backwards. You can only have that kind of lightness through wealth.

If you buy food in bulk, you need a big fridge. If you can’t afford to replace all the appliances in your house, you need several junk drawers. If you can’t afford car repairs, you might need a half-gutted second car of a similar model up on blocks, where certain people will make fun of it and call you trailer trash.

Please, if you are rich, stop explaining the idea of freedom from stuff as if it’s a trick that even you have somehow mastered.

The only way to own very little and be safe is to be rich.

Read it.

You will have noticed — I certainly have — of the spate of vaporing by Voices of the Crust concerning whether the college degree that we’ve all been carefully conditioned (even in government schools) to consider a necessity if one is to avoid spending the rest of one’s life in a homeless shelter grasping a bottle of Two Buck Chuck is really all that vital after all. [wring hands] There aren’t any jobs for all these poor college graaduates! [wring hands] The Youth of America is crushed under debt! [wring hands] Most of these people don’t belong in college anyway! [wring hands] Where will we get our plumbers/electricians/policemen/firemen/truck drivers if everybody goes to college? (After all, not even the most delusional high school guidance counselor believes that college is necessary for such jobs.)

Bleeding-heart liberals awash with love for the oppressed masses? Perhaps.

Perhaps not. Let me spin you a different scenario. The Upper Crust, appalled at the notion of the offspring of the Lower Orders competing with their sterling scions for the few jobs that actually require a college education, want to put a stop to it — same as they want to put a stop to petit bourgeois crypto-proles competing with them for seats in restaurants, spaces in business class, and slips at the marina. After all, If Everybody’s Somebody, Then No One’s Anybody.

Just a thought.

Lileks is not afraid to ask the hard questions.

He’s the latest in a long line of scolds and fussbudgets who want to slap Bad Thing X out of your hand for your own good. Never trust anyone whose frustration with the limits of persuasion lasts less than three seconds. If you can’t be persuaded you must be required. It’s almost insulting to have to try to persuade someone of something so self-evident; you have to pretend there’s mental equality between you and the idiot who insists on drinking soda with POISON in it.

And that’s my reaction to Democrats and their fellow fascists everywhere. These are people to whom the thought ‘Eh, it’s none of my business’ has never occurred.

Read it.

The U.S. government has pumped $5.5 billion in federal grants and loans into manufacturing and promoting electric cars and batteries. But research by Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus Center finds that a typical electric car driven 50,000 miles over its lifetime emits more carbon-dioxide than a similar-size gas-powered car driven the same distance.

Read it.

If you want to be serious today, here’s something to get you started.

Read it.

The basic problem with the issue is that we literally don’t know what we’re talking about. Obama and other supporters of mandated wage hikes spin a Dickensian landscape of millions of workers struggling to raise families on a minimum wage job. This is so separated from reality that it necessitates a look at who these workers actually are.

Freeberg lays it out.

Now, I think everyone who understands the concept of the rule of law, would agree we’re doing a poor job coming up with the rules if certain things are happening: 1) The people coming up with the rules don’t understand what in the hell they’re doing; 2) the people who support the rules, themselves, are not following them. I’m sure we can come up with some other red flags as well, and I’m sure the applicability of these red flags would be agreeable to everybody who’s asked about it, regardless of their position on gun control…

Therefore, we see the world is divided into two groups of people. I recall what my Uncle Wally was telling me, “Morgan, the world is divided into two groups of people, those who go around dividing the whole world into groups, and everybody else.” Pro- and anti-gun-control is not the important divide here. The divide is: What if a rule is handed down, depriving you of some of the options you had before, and it’s supposed to make the world a better place but it fails some of these tests? So, before the rule is even codified, you see the people supporting it refusing to live by it. And, the people who oppose the rule are found to really, really know what they’re talking about, and their arguments make complete sense, and the people who support the rule are just dishing out a bunch of noise and demagoguery?

Read it.

Because we’d like to stop and discuss something serious ever now and then.

Read it.

Which do you think is more likely?:

(a) We make preschool universal and that starts a cascade of awesomeness into the general public school system, or

(b) we graft a universal preschool entitlement onto the existing universal K-12 entitlement, and preschool starts to suck just as much as the rest of the system?

Call me a cynic, but I’m going with (b).

Me, too.

Read it.

Anodyne, nonsensical phrases seem to be the exclusive province of the left, which is no revelation given that leftist/statist philosophies are the triumph of wishful thinking over mathematical reality and physics.

Read it.

We’re on day two now of my son’s stay at home with a creeping respiratory crud that’s been tearing through our piece of the world. I only shook it loose from my own lungs after a course of steroids. While he’s been home, aside from the fact that seven-year-olds bounce back a hell of a lot faster than forty-somethings, I’ve noticed that my kid sops up knowledge more quickly from a stack of books by his bed than he does from a lesson plan at his school.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it.

You can’t just show up and expect to get better. You can’t even just show up, work hard and expect to get better. You have to show up, work hard and deliberately focus on the specific things that will make you get better. Sometimes they will be the same as the cool things that you instinctively want to work on, but there’s no guarantee of this. Working through problems you’ve already solved won’t help much. Working on easy problems won’t help much. Working without feedback won’t help much. Working with only a superficial understanding of the technologies and frameworks you are using won’t help much. You’ll be OK for a while, but before long you might just be spinning your wheels in the mud, and if you’re unlucky you might not even notice.

To which my native indolence replies, I knew it all along – so let’s have a nap instead.

George Will looks at how reactionary ‘progressives’ actually are.

Progressives are remarkably uninterested in progress. Social Security is 78 years old, and myriad social improvements have added 17?years to life expectancy since 1935, yet progressives insist the program remain frozen, like a fly in amber. Medicare is 48 years old, and the competence and role of medicine have been transformed since 1965, yet progressives cling to Medicare “as we know it.” And they say that the Voting Rights Act, another 48-year-old, must remain unchanged, despite dramatic improvements in race relations.

Read it.

Now, it’s my belief that if you’re someone who knows that you don’t want children, then you probably shouldn’t have them. People are encumbered by parenthood enough such that it’s something that should be undertaken only by people who have the desire. Whatever floats your boat and sinks your chromosomes.

But the key problem with advocating this is that this will dissuade procreation among those the most easily dissuaded: high-IQ, driven types; that is, the type of people we need to reproduce the most if we want to sustain our advanced civilization.

In my comment there, I decided to clue Dr. Walker in on a few things. One, while she may not be missing out on much, her DNA sure will be. I wonder, do voluntarily child-free people think that their genes will magically propagate themselves? Or course, I’d imagine that for most such people, heredity is not even being factored into the equation.

Not having kids is the surest way to guarantee that the future world will not look like you.

If that prospect bothers you, well, the solution is in your pants.

Many people who curb their fertility (typically high-IQ, capable types, often on the Left of the political spectrum) actually believe by so doing, they personally are doing the planet a favor (well, some of them are). Of course, in reality, the inescapable consequence of this thinking is that this leaves the future with more people less concerned about overburdening the world and fewer people with the ability to provide for these individuals.

On the other hand, I am perfectly comfortable with high-IQ people often on the Left of the political spectrum not passing their defective genes down to future generations. In this respect, the system works. If I could somehow persuade the Kennedys, Clintons, Gores, and Carters (and Obamas) of this world not to reproduce, I would certainly do so.

Bryan Caplan explains some inconvenient truth.

In any normal labor market, massive female entry would have led to a large increase in total workers.  But the market for new doctors is anything but normal.  The rise in new female doctors has been almost perfectly offset by a matching fall in new male doctors.

My point, of course, is not that women have “stolen” men’s places in medical school.  My point, rather, is that that draconian government entry barriers are the only credible explanation of the facts.  Why else would the number of male doctors have fallen so far relative to demand?  Infinitely inelastic demand for medical services?  A massive decline in the talent of male applicants to medical school?!

As our population ages, we have naturally seen a large increase in the demand for doctors.  If the market for M.D.s worked normally, however, we would have fortuitously experienced a large offsetting supply shock: the rise of the female doctor.  Regulation has deprived us of this godsend – and deprived vast numbers of qualified men and women of the right to work in their preferred occupation.  Thanks to government entry barriers, demand has gone up and supply is frozen in place.  Consumers and taxpayers are paying a fortune for medical care.  And the problem is only going to get worse.

Read it.

Although conclusive evidence for life on Mars (or on any other foreign planet) has yet to turn up, humans are an impatient species. And so we have invented extraterrestrials of every conceivable kind. There are fictional aliens that resemble little green men, mollusks, insects, plants, and minerals. Sometimes they have no bodies at all.

Read it.

“Livability” has been a buzz word in city development for some time, and for good reason, as who doesn’t want livability, outside the zombie cohort? Things get hairy, though, when “livability”—as an economic development strategy—gets unpacked, because questions arise: “Livability” for whom? “Livability” at what cost?

Livable for the Crust, of course, as ‘affordable’ means ‘suitable for our Underclass clients’.

You could argue, then, that the original sin of “livability”-driven economic development begins right there. Namely, the emphasis will not be on the people of a city, but on potential consumers, particularly high-valued consumers with means, subsequently referred to as the “creative class”. As for creative class wants? They are, according to Richard Florida, “[an] indigenous street-level culture – a teeming blend of cafes, sidewalk musicians, and small galleries and bistros…” In this sense, the idea of “livability” gets precariously slimmed out.

In other words, trust-fund hipsters and the parasites that fatten upon them.

Perhaps the city most famous for livability-driven economic development is Portland. It is America’s amenity apex, and a recent study showed it attracts the young by the boatload due to a certain leisure-lifestyle it affords.

And it’s about 80% white. Perhaps there’s a connection.

Economist Bryan Caplan applies some common sense to an age-old question.

The deserving poor are those who can’t take – and couldn’t have taken – reasonable steps to avoid poverty. The undeserving poor are those who can take – or could have taken – reasonable steps to avoid poverty.  Reasonable steps like: Work full-time, even if the best job you can get isn’t fun; spend your money on food and shelter before you get cigarettes or cable t.v.; use contraception if you can’t afford a child.  A simple test of “reasonableness”: If you wouldn’t accept an excuse from a friend, you shouldn’t accept it from anyone.

If I sound harsh, notice: by my standards, many of the poor are clearly deserving: low-skilled workers in the Third World, children of poor or irresponsible parents, the severely handicapped.  Still, on reflection, many people we think of as “poor” turn out to be undeserving.

This is in marked contrast to the politically fashionable position that no ‘poor’ person is ever undeserving, and that includes some people that you might not think are actually, you know, poor.

Steve Sailer pulls something back out of the Memory Hole.

Bill Clinton appointed black lesbian Democrat Barbara Jordan, a former Congresswoman who gave a famous keynote address at the 1976 Democratic convention, to head the in-depth study of immigration policy.

Barbara Jordan was one of the most sensible politicians in the Democrat party during her day. Of course, even being a black female lesbian couldn’t save her from obscurity with that sort of a disability.

Read it.

Described by some as “the Rosa Parks of the constitutional currency movement,” Mr. von NotHaus managed over the last decade to get more than 60 million real dollars’ worth of his precious metal-backed currency into circulation across the country — so much, and with such deep penetration, that the prosecutor overseeing his case accused him of “domestic terrorism” for using them to undermine the government.

Read it.

 Most readers of The New York Times probably subscribe to what Paul Tough calls “the cognitive hypothesis”: the belief “that success today depends primarily on cognitive skills — the kind of intelligence that gets measured on I.Q. tests, including the abilities to recognize letters and words, to calculate, to detect patterns — and that the best way to develop these skills is to practice them as much as possible, beginning as early as possible.” In his new book, “How Children Succeed,” Tough sets out to replace this assumption with what might be called the character hypothesis: the notion that noncognitive skills, like persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit and self-confidence, are more crucial than sheer brainpower to achieving success.

Read it.

Traditional education focuses on teaching, not learning. It incorrectly assumes that for every ounce of teaching there is an ounce of learning by those who are taught. However, most of what we learn before, during, and after attending schools is learned without its being taught to us. A child learns such fundamental things as how to walk, talk, eat, dress, and so on without being taught these things. Adults learn most of what they use at work or at leisure while at work or leisure. Most of what is taught in classroom settings is forgotten, and much or what is remembered is irrelevant.

Read it.

Read it.

I always assumed it was for visibility.

Read it.

Mostly because not every author is the best expressor of a particular thought, even though the originator thereof. Look at the third line of Spenser’s THE FAERIE QUEEN and tell me that it doesn’t read better as ‘Wherein deep dints of old wounds did remain’ than the original ‘Wherein old dints of deepe wounds did remaine’. Or Pope: ‘Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.’ is just not as good as ‘Be not the first by whom the new is tried, Nor yet the last to cast the old aside.’

Have you noticed how incorrect quotes often just sound right—sometimes, more right than actual quotations? There’s a reason for that. Our brains really like fluency, or the experience of cognitive ease (as opposed to cognitive strain) in taking in and retrieving information. The more fluent the experience of reading a quote—or the easier it is to grasp, the smoother it sounds, the more readily it comes to mind—the less likely we are to question the actual quotation. Those right-sounding misquotes are just taking that tendency to the next step: cleaning up, so to speak, quotations so that they are more mellifluous, more all-around quotable, easier to store and recall at a later point. We might not even be misquoting on purpose, but once we do, the result tends to be catchier than the original.

Read it.

The spread of a seemingly playful alternative to traditional diplomas, inspired by Boy Scout achievement patches and video-game power-ups, suggests that the standard certification system no longer works in today’s fast-changing job market.

Educational upstarts across the Web are adopting systems of “badges” to certify skills and abilities. If scouting focuses on outdoorsy skills like tying knots, these badges denote areas employers might look for, like mentorship or digital video editing. Many of the new digital badges are easy to attain—intentionally so—to keep students motivated, while others signal mastery of fine-grained skills that are not formally recognized in a traditional classroom.

I think this is a great idea. Establish ‘merit badges’ for specific skills, and establish various educational ‘ranks’ — perhaps even ‘degrees’ — based on specified numbers and types of badges. We could do a lot worse than emulate the Boy Scouts.

Read it.

Strong future-time reference languages (strong FTR) require their speakers to use a different tense when speaking of the future. Weak future-time reference (weak FTR) languages do not.

…

Speakers of languages which only use the present tense when dealing with the future are likely to save more money than those who speak languages which require the use a future tense, he argues.

Jim Goad undertakes to be politically incorrect, with a modicum of success.

When is a ridiculous black name too ridiculous for the proper functioning of a sane society? Personally, I think we’ve reached Peak Black Name and it’s time to start dialing it back a tad.

…

Can we all get along? No, not when you have silly-ass, fundamentally divisive names like that.

Freeberg speaks truth to glower.

Young girls, their heads crammed full of feminist claptrap, no longer want to grow up to look like real women. They’d rather be walking skeletons. And then this is supposed to be mens’ fault.

Don Boudreaux, a Real Economist, applies the logic of the Minimum Wage to academia.

In a bold effort to improve the educational fortunes of students who perform at academic levels significantly below the average of their peers, Congress has mandated a minimum grade to be assigned to each student in each course taught at any school in the country.  Starting in September, it shall be unlawful for any teacher, professor, or instructor charged with assigning course grades to assign to any student a grade lower than C-.

Sponsors of the Fair Academic Standards Act decry the injustice that occurs each time a student earns a low grade, such as a D or an F.  ”It’s impossible for students with ‘D’s and ‘F’s on their transcripts to succeed as they deserve in life,” remarked Sen. Bernie Franken, an Independent from Elitia.  ”This law ensures that no American will ever again suffer that hardship.”