When I started this blogging effort, I was much more serious than I have been recently. When I started I did a bunch of stuff on education. I also dabbled in financial regulation. I soon gave up on anything related to kitchen design as that stuff moves at a snail’s pace and you could be current with one blog post a year. Lately I’ve been putting up stuff that, for the most part is kind of silly. There’s 10’s of millions of guys like me with a blog. There are hundreds of millions more using the Hello Kitty blogging tool. I’m not really carving out a niche here.
Anyway, here is what I’ve been reading ’round the web
There has been a bunch of stuff going ’round the web about Kashawn Campbell. I do recommend reading the original LA Times story before going on to the other posts. Education Realist is very good. Steve Sailer is his usual provocative self: Forrest Gump goes to Berkeley. As usual, many of the comments at both places are good too.
Also on the education front, there is this ridiculous piece at Slate: If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person. It is so bad that I think it might be satire:
I went K–12 to a terrible public school. My high school didn’t offer AP classes, and in four years, I only had to read one book. There wasn’t even soccer. This is not a humblebrag! I left home woefully unprepared for college, and without that preparation, I left college without having learned much there either. You know all those important novels that everyone’s read? I haven’t. I know nothing about poetry, very little about art, and please don’t quiz me on the dates of the Civil War. I’m not proud of my ignorance. But guess what the horrible result is? I’m doing fine. I’m not saying it’s a good thing that I got a lame education. I’m saying that I survived it, and so will your child, who must endure having no AP calculus so that in 25 years there will be AP calculus for all.
That paragraph right there is what makes me think the piece is satire. She, the author, is obviously aware that without AP calculus and other topics, there would be no internet that would allow such wide circulation of such nonsense. If it is not satire, it is the most vile piece of statist crap I’ve read in a while. Sending my kids to the Dallas schools would be child abuse. The author, naturally, does not acknowledge where our president sends his kids to school. Anyway, Sailer and his commenters have some thoughts. (Update: Just as an example: check out this interesting comment on dog whistles.)James Taranto, as usual, criticizes the logic behind the author’s argument. Angus does a down and dirty look at the numbers, to show how bad the argument is practically. But the guy who really lets the Slate author have it is Ken at Popehat. (Cute kids Ken!)
It’s Friday, so everyone should stop by and look at Friday Ephemera at David Thompson’s site. A sample:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZGNk8pUj4Y[/youtube]
You should watch that video, it’s short and funny. Those Japanese are pretty whacky!
I’m off now to find a job. I’m still looking after five months. Pretty soon I’m going to have something to say about the job market and the skills matching problem.
Tags: Statists, Steve Sailer