MSgt. B. needs our help

He's asked me to share a link to this post on his blog.  Briefly, the son of one of his dearest friends was murdered early this month, but no suspects have yet been identified.  Police and the family are appealing for anyone with any information to come forward.

The family has donated their son's insurance money to the college he was attending, and have appealed for donations to support the same cause.  More details at MSgt. B.'s place.  Please click over there, read his article, and consider whether you'd like to help a worthy cause.

Thanks, y'all.

Peter

Ever heard of "Newton's Beads"?

Thanks to a link at Dark Roasted Blend, I came across this fascinating experiment with a bead chain.  The BBC gets together with Steve Mould to discuss the science behind "self siphoning beads", also called "Newton's beads".  The discussion begins at about 1m. 34s. into the video.

I'd never heard of this before.  Fascinating!

Peter

Mike Rowe on alternatives to college

Mike Rowe, of 'Dirty Jobs' fame, has conducted a video interview with Reason magazine that takes an insightful look at our current higher education mess.

Rowe ... worries that traditional K-12 education demonizes blue-collar fields that pay well and are begging for workers while insisting that everyone get a college degree. He stresses that he's "got nothing against college" but believes it's a huge mistake to push everyone in the same direction regardless of interest or ability. Between Mike Rowe Foundation and Profoundly Disconnected, a venture between Rowe and the heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar, Rowe is hoping both to help people find new careers and publicize what he calls "the diploma dilemma."

Rowe recently sat down with Reason's Nick Gillespie to discuss his bad experience with a high school guidance counselor (3:20), why he provides scholarships based on work ethic (6:57), the problem with taxpayer-supported college loans (8:40), why America demonizes dirty jobs (11:32), the happiest day of his life (13:14), why following your passion is terrible advice (17:05), why it's so hard to hire good people (21:04), the hidden cost of regulatory compliance (23:16), the problem with Obama's promise to create shovel ready jobs (33:05), efficiency versus effectiveness (34:17), and life after Dirty Jobs (38:24).

There's more at the link.

Karl Denninger backed up Mike Rowe's perspective in an article over the weekend.  He cites a report by the St. Louis Fed, and points out:

If you elect to go to college there is only a one in four chance that (1) you will finish and (2) you will work in a job that actually renumerates you for having done so.

In other words there is a three in four chance that you'd be better off not having gone to college at all, because (1) your earnings power is not enhanced by having attended and (2) you wouldn't have the debt -- or spent the funds -- to go.

Again, more at the link.

Here's the interview with Mike Rowe.  Highly recommended viewing.

There's some very useful information there.  I found its emphasis on education for a trade or technical career very interesting, because in South Africa, where I was raised, the system was heavily oriented in that direction.  University study was encouraged mainly for those who really needed a degree in their chosen career field.  There were institutes of technology at various levels, ranging from school to tertiary education, where one could qualify in a trade or a practical, hands-on career field.  It was similar to the German system of technical colleges and universities, and modeled on it to a certain extent.  Many young men and women who were not academically suited to a university environment learned useful career qualifications through this alternate technical education system, and were highly prized by employers.  Others completed apprenticeships in heavy industry, frequently offered in conjunction with institutes of technology.

If you have kids or relatives approaching college age who haven't thought much about career prospects or earning a living, may I suggest you could do a lot worse than sit down with them to watch that interview, and talk about it afterwards?

Peter

Fred on feminism, schools, education and socialization

The iconoclastic Fred Reed has penned two articles on education, feminist teachers, and what they do to boys who just want to be boys.  I don't agree with all his points, but he does make some very valid arguments, IMHO.  (Lest any of my lady readers take offense, I hasten to add that he's addressing the problems caused by radical feminism.  He's not blaming 'normal women' for them.)

Here's an excerpt from the second article.

All of my teachers in grade school, and perhaps half in high school, were women. They were fine. The reason was that they accepted the masculine view that schools existed to teach content. They did: first arithmetic and then math, and history, English grammar and composition, literature, Latin, and so on. Bless them.

What I dislike is the feminized, therapeutic view of schools as places not to teach anything but to engage in Pavlovian conditioning of kids to female norms of syrupy goodness, non-violence (tag, dodge ball, and wrestling) docility, conformity, and warm interpersonal glop. Learning anything gets short shrift.

. . .

Maybe fifteen years ago I went into a middle school in mostly white, moderately upscale Arlington, Virginia, and found on the wall a student´s project celebrating the contributions of Italians to science—specifically those of of Enrico Fermi to, so help me, “nucler physicts.” On the wall. Without correction. I have seen other examples.

These malfeasances spring from favoring self-esteem (when I am dictator I will have anyone who uses that word hanged) over knowledge. It is not a masculine approach. Nor will it produce the thoughtful, intellectually competent citizenry the country desperately needs.

In a Marine Corps day rooms I once saw a coffee mug inscribed, “To err is human, to forgive divine. Neither of which is Marine Corps policy.” (Why did that come to mind, I wonder?)

Something strange is happening in the United States. A Canadian friend recently said, “I can remember when Americans weren’t afraid of everything.” Just so. Don´t run on the playground because you might fall. Don´t roughhouse because you might get a bruise. Don’t go outside at high noon because you might get skin cancer. Don’t swim after eating, because you might get a cramp. If a child draws a soldier, call a SWAT team because he is a murderous psychopath. Don’t ride a bicycle without a helmet. Fill in the deep end of the pool because someone might drown. Supervise everything. Control everything. Fear everything.

If these are not the neurotic fears of women and capons, please tell me what they are. Such run the schools. They make policy.

There's more at the link, and the first article in the series is also worth reading.  Food for thought.

Peter

It had to happen . . .

It seems a professor in North Carolina has had enough of feminist political correctness.  The College Fix reports:

Professor Mike Adams of the University of North Carolina-Wilmington has announced his plans to organize the first annual Penis Monologues on his campus, saying it will be a welcome addition to the academic discourse on private parts.

He billed his event as a counter-protest to the popular Vagina Monologues, performed annually at universities across America . . .

Adams, author of the 2008 book “Feminists Say the Darndest Things: A Politically Incorrect Professor Confronts ‘Womyn’ on Campus,” states:

“On June 6, 2014, at my university, UNC-Wilmington, I’m proud to be sponsoring our first annual penis monologues,” Adams declared in his original column for ClashDaily.com. “It will be complete with numerous monologues such as ‘The Little Hoo Hoo Dilly That Could’ and ‘My Angry White Hoo Hoo Dilly.’ We’ll even hang signs on the wall saying ‘Hoo hoo dillies unite!’ and ‘No cha chas allowed!’.”

There's more at the link.

Prof. Adams' entire column may be read here.  It's not exactly safe for work, because he excoriates the Vagina Monologues in pretty blunt language, but it's highly entertaining.





Peter

The Epic of Gilgamesh and class discrimination

I was very interested (but also saddened) to read how the discoverer of the Epic of Gilgamesh was denied at least some of the respect and recognition that was his due - almost certainly because he was from the lower class, in a society that was class-conscious to a fault.  The Telegraph reports:

[George] Smith, an unlikely scholar, was the man for the task. Born of modest parents in Chelsea (his father was a carpenter), he left school at 14. He married young, moved to Crogsland Road in Camden, and had six children. Unsatisfied, he spent what spare time and money he had pursuing his interests of Assyriology and biblical archaeology. He was so often seen at the British Museum that Sir Henry Rawlinson (the discoverer of the Behistun monument, a “Rosetta Stone of cuneiform languages”) eventually employed him as a classifier. But even for such highly skilled and specialist work, he was paid little more than the cleaning staff.

On the evening he came across Layard’s fragment, Smith is said to have become so animated that, mute with excitement, he began to tear his clothes off. (Though much repeated, there is only a single source for this story, E A  W Budge’s Rise and Progress of Assyriology – published 50 years after Smith’s death.) Smith quickly prepared a paper to present to the Society of Biblical Archaeology.

. . .

... it was not until January 1873 that the Telegraph stepped in to offer the British Museum £1,000 for Smith to conduct further excavations. Taking travel advice from Arnold, Smith departed for Ottoman Iraq later that month.

His journey was not an easy one. Smith had never travelled before, and his letters home (illustrated for his children) demonstrate that he suffered chronic seasickness. On his arrival, Smith found himself beset by officialdom. His permissions were not valid, the papers had not been signed by the right people. He was delayed for months.

Digging began on May 7, and within three days he believed he had discovered more broken fragments of the “Deluge”. In fact, he had discovered another long-lost poem: The Epic of Atrahasis. In Smith’s own words, “The proprietors of The Daily Telegraph, however, considered that the discovery of the missing fragment of the deluge text accomplished the object they had in view, and they declined to prosecute the excavations further… desiring to see it carried on by the nation.” The brief excavation was over. The question of future funding would depend on Gladstone.

Permission was granted and on a second dig (in 1874) Smith discovered Babylonian accounts of the creation, the fall of man, the pestilence, the Tower of Babel, and fragments of many other legends. But it was on the third excavation in 1876 that Smith ran into difficulties.

He left England in 1875, and was so delayed by Ottoman officials that he did not arrive at Nineveh until July 1876. By then, with temperatures already in the mid-40s, it was too late to dig. He fell ill.

Smith’s notebooks in the British Library recount his descent into delirium, and the final pages make for heartbreaking reading. He set off for England, but died before he got as far as Aleppo. He was 36, only four years into his career as an Assyriologist. The newspapers mourned Smith’s early passing. They explained that he had died exercising a heroic commitment to the science. The dedications and obituaries, though, masked a slightly darker story; one where Smith may have been subject to coercion in his decision to delay.

Smith had previously written to request curtailment of the dig because “plague” was sweeping the lowlands of Syria and Iraq. Permission was refused. He was told by the museum secretary that the trustees would consider it to be “very objectionable” if he were to terminate the excavation early. It is impossible to imagine the same being said to Rawlinson or Layard.

There's more at the link.

How sad that a mind of such quality could be judged, not by its intellectual capabilities or accomplishments, but by the social class into which its owner had been born.  As the article notes, if Smith had been a member of the upper classes, he'd never have been pushed around as he was - and he'd probably have been allowed to leave the area of his excavations sooner, thereby avoiding contracting the disease that killed him.

If you're interested, you can download an e-book version of Smith's translation of 'The Chaldean Account of Genesis' in several formats, or read it online in HTML format (click each chapter title to read it).  Recommended.

Peter