Don't send children to college

Better yet, don't raise kids so that they're still infants at 18.

“Well, we had to get Kyle moved into to his dorm, register for classes, pick his schedule, tour the campus, find out where his classes are, get him linens and a dorm fridge, meet his roommate, and go to parent orientation.” Post after post making moving into a dorm and registering for classes sound like a Homeric poem. “Well first we had to get Kyle on a ship that would not be crushed on the rocks by the songs of the sirens and then we had to get him a sword and a shield so he could kill a cyclops. I read where this one guy used his shield as a mirror to cut off Medusa’s head, so we’re going to Costco later to see if they carry that one...”

My folks didn't do this kind of thing, to put it mildly. Even so, I was a child and a mess when I went off to college, putting myself in needless peril. It would have been a lot worse if I'd never earned any money or learned how to spend it.

Not that it was a time to act like a conservative 50-year-old:  I'm glad I got the chance to experiment before I was calcified. I was lucky that college was still a protected space where I could concentrate on learning and didn't have to worry much about room and board, let alone about supporting a family. The summers were a time to get a job and pay for an apartment, learn how to shop for groceries and cook, how to stretch a dollar.

By the time I graduated, I was still a child and a mess, but at least I could keep body and soul together using my own paycheck. There was no serious danger of my going back to live in my parents' basement until I was 35, nor did I know anyone caught in that trap. While we sorted ourselves out, we'd rent hovels together and share the expenses. The economy was rotten, but we never had that much trouble making it work.

Solomon on BIden

John Solomon at The Hill continues to publish some of the best investigative reporting out there. Suing for documents under the Freedom of Information Act has become an indispensable tool.

Is the Social Contract Dead?

Came across a pretty interesting argument on Twitter that I thought would make for rather interesting discussion in these parts.  I present it with no further commentary:

The social contract is dead.

Impeachment over a non-impeachable offense would have sealed that deal. But even worse a fake "inquiry" in name only that skirts the law. This isn't two-tiers. This is making it up as you go.

You have no obligation to this system. None at all.

— Jared A. Chambers 🇺🇸 (@C4CEO) September 24, 2019

(more below the fold)

Read It For Yourselves

If you somehow missed the transcript that is apparently going to lead to an impeachment inquiry, read it here.

For my money, the important thing is that every single reference to any sort of investigation he asks to be run through the Attorney General. Initial reports that he tried to have 'his private lawyer' handling the investigation from the US side were wrong; actually, a lot of the early reports were wrong as usual. Rudy is mentioned because he's brought up by the Ukrainian side. Trump says some nice things about him, but then brings it back around to the need to work also with the Attorney General. He's not asking for assistance with his campaign, but for law enforcement cooperation on some scandals involving highly placed American public officials. He's not going to run it out of the White House, but is passing it off to the appropriate authorities.

Other people clearly read it differently.

Reblogging Satire is the Only Thing that Makes Sense Now

The Bee.

Bee Stings

Tex inspired me to check out the Bee again today, so, here y'all are:

L, G, T, Q and + Publicly Execute B for Implying There Are Only Two Genders

Man Outed As Dark Lord Of The Sith After Revealing He Believes In Absolute Truth

Swarm Of Locusts In Book Of Revelation Revealed To Be Twitter

Tragically, the following might qualify as "real news" instead of satire:

Republicans Excited To Have Supreme Court Majority Like They Had When 'Roe V. Wade' Decided

Media slowly heal themselves

The Babylon Bee is inspiring similar sites. Some good headlines from The Derringer:

NYT Accused of Whipping Out New Kavanaugh Allegation, Thrusting It in Nation’s Face

Experts Agree Restructuring World Economy Best Way to Treat Child’s Anxiety

Whether or Not Trump Committed a Crime, Can’t We All Agree That He is Guilty of It?

To Be At All Times Armed

An essay on the right of revolution at Human Events, which begins happily with a story from the Heimskringla's account of Sweden's abortive war against Norway's St. Olav.

Ukraine Shuffle

So, the latest thing that is definitely going to lead to impeachment according to Twitter is this story that Trump asked Ukraine to investigate Biden’s son. I am pretty sure the real corruption is the way Biden used his position and US money to derail the investigation in the first place. Am I missing something? It’s wrong to try to undo a corrupt act of a prior administration if it might benefit you politically?

Stripping Words

The Oxford English Dictionary, compiled in part by Tolkien, is asked to strip out offensive words. Offensive to whom? Guess.

Probably Wasn't Going to Vote for Her Anyway

Elizabeth Warren doesn't like men?

Elizabeth Warren made the political calculation this week that she doesn’t need men to win the presidency.

“We’re not here today because of famous arches or famous men,” she told a rally in Washington Square Park Monday night.

“In fact, we’re not here because of men at all,” she said, emphasizing the “m” word like an expletive....

Immediately before saying “we’re not here because of men,” she dissed George Washington and the beautiful Tuckahoe marble arch that bears his name.

“I wanted to give this speech right here and not because of the arch behind me or the president that this square is named for — nope.”

I mean, I can half get why she thinks it's fine to run down Washington, him having been a slave-owner and all. It's dumb, running for the office he dignified and for which he set the terms. Still, in the current moment, it makes a kind of perverse sense.

Why expand the complaint from 'slave-owner' to 'man,' though? That's alienating to a lot of your potential voters.

Perfect

Three faces of fracking

Per Glenn Reynolds:  Because of fracking, (1) the U.S. is suffering only a moderate fuel price shock from the Saudi oil-field strike, (2) China is losing $97 million a day from the same, and (3) while "the U.S. Navy used to have to keep the straits of Hormuz open. Now it only has to be able to close them."

A Few Small Matters Have My Attention

I’m a little behind this week. Tex is doing a great job running the place, with an assist from Tom. I’ll get back with you soon.

Jim Webb: Soldiers without a Country

Sen. Webb tells the story of the burial of 81 ARVN paratroopers in California:

On Friday, a U.S. Air Force aircraft will carry the commingled remains of 81 airborne soldiers of the former South Vietnamese Army from Hawaii, where they have been stored in a military facility for more than 33 years, to California. On Oct. 26, there will be a full military ceremony honoring their service in Westminster, often known as Little Saigon, where tens of thousands of Vietnamese Americans now live. 

This will be a unique occurrence because their names might never be known and because they were soldiers of an allied army. Following the ceremony, these forgotten soldiers will be laid to rest under a commemorative marker in the largest Vietnamese-American cemetery in our country. 

Hanoi declined to take them.

One of the best speeches I ever heard in person was from a former ARVN infantry colonel when the Traveling Vietnam Memorial Wall came to OKC. That city has a large Vietnamese American community established by refugees from the war.

By the end of that speech, I think half the men in the crowd were ready to go back over and try again.

I'm glad these paratroopers will finally be laid to rest on free soil, even if it isn't in their own country.

What's this "we" jazz, paleface?

Related:

Counter drone world

This isn't going to get any prettier.

Mate selection

No one knows how long DNA has been around, but a confident guess would be some billions of years.  In all that time, it's been trying, in the anthropomorphic sense that leads us to inject purpose into the process of natural selection, to perfect ways of projecting itself from one cell or organism to another, the definition of evolutionary "success."  In the case of sexually reproducing species that go to some trouble finding suitable mates, that has led to a bewildering variety of mating displays and strategies for selecting genetically suitable partners.  In humans, that sometimes includes what we call courtship and marriage.

So what could go wrong with a social trend toward pairs of infertile parents choosing to reproduce with sperm donated by strangers?  Maybe a gay couple, fertile individually but obviously not with each other--with apologies for my ableist bias.  Maybe a gay couple who prefer to buy anonymous sperm from a respectable laboratory with the latest in foolproof genetic screening protocols.  Who says you should get to know anything about the father of your child that can't be read off a medical chart that included the results of a scientific personal interview?

And if the resulting babies have financially crippling special needs, and your union isn't strong enough to hold up under the pressure, who says stuffy old principles about lifelong marital fidelity and loyalty to children are any more workable when couples have a reproductive sexual bond and a genetic relationship to their own children?  Just sue the sperm bank for not giving your reproductive choices the attention they deserved.

Range

David Epstein is out with a book countering Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000," arguing that starting early and practicing endlessly in a narrow range is not the path to all excellence:

David Epstein examined the world's most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters and scientists. He discovered that in most fields--especially those that are complex and unpredictable--generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They're also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can't see.

Robert Heinlein famously said that specialization was for insects, but we also know that dabbling is for dilettantes.  Epstein and Gladwell are lining up on either side of the long-running dispute over the purpose of education:  should our children be drilled in facts and techniques, or should be we planting 1,000 seeds in virgin soil and confidently awaiting decades of creative flowering?

"Complex and unpredictable fields" are just what most people aren't going to master. The students who will master them may need a completely different kind of education from what an aggressively leveling public school is equipped to provide, particularly if it's staffed by administrators and teachers who have never mastered a complex or unpredictable field themselves, relying instead on legislated job security and a monopolist's command of the public funding teat.

Schools need to provide a fair shot for all young comers, but the good they can do for some students won't be much like what they can do for others.  Epstein's generalists are probably soaking up basic facts and techniques so easily that teachers barely had a role in the process.  The teachers won't do their average students any favors by skipping the ABCs and hoping for a brilliant synthesist to emerge after years of impoverished job-hopping.

This means war for someone

Best tank up. Iranian-backed Yemeni Houthi rebels claim credit for taking out half of Saudi Arabia's oil production (5% of world production) in a drone strike this weekend. Good thing U.S. energy production has soared in the last couple of years.