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Archive for January, 2011
January 29, 2011
“LIFE SUCKS” FOR COLLEGE FRESHMEN, but Dr. Helen is unmoved. “Maybe if the rewards for being a grown-up were greater and the rewards for acting like a self-indulgent teen well into your 30’s were less, we would see fewer miserable college freshman.”
COULDN’T HAPPEN TO A NICER GUY: Is Qaddafi Next?
CLIMATEGATE: British Met Office Keeping Two Sets of Books.
WHAT OBAMA DIDN’T MENTION, when he praised a school in the SOTU address.
DATECHGUY’S RADIO SHOW is on tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern. You can listen live here.
PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE ON the beauty of the corporation. “We should be eternally grateful that slave owning, miscegenating, Jacobin-leaning Jefferson failed to squelch the corporation.”
Hey, don’t be dissing miscegenation. Otherwise, yeah.
BARRY RUBIN: Egypt: Three Possible Outcomes.
CLOSING DOWN THE COMPETITION: TSA shuts door on private airport screening program. “A program that allows airports to replace government screeners with private screeners is being brought to a standstill, just a month after the Transportation Security Administration said it was ‘neutral’ on the program. TSA chief John Pistole said Friday he has decided not to expand the program beyond the current 16 airports, saying he does not see any advantage to it.”
No advantage for him, as it was making TSA look bad. Er, I mean, worse.
ARE WE ALL NEOCONS NOW? “So having already endorsed the essentials of the Bush war on terror, Obama is now belatedly embracing the freedom agenda too. Does that mean we’re all neocons now?” Of course not. Obama’s implementation of Bush’s policies is completely different. I do wish that Bush had continued Bush’s policies after 2005, instead of dropping the ball.
COLD TRUTHS ABOUT electric cars’ cold-weather shortcomings.
NOT HOW I ENVISIONED THE 21ST CENTURY: Six Cases Of Cholera Suspected In Massachusetts.
CHRIS CHRISTIE TO ILLINOIS BUSINESSES: Come to New Jersey!
REVERSE ANGLE. Heh. Cheap, but they were asking for this. . . .
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why ARE women’s breasts getting bigger?
UPDATE: Reader Arthur Lueck writes: “While I am not the most religious sort, I think the reason is clear: God loves us and wants us to be happy.”
“THE LAW PROFESSORS HAD A FAILURE OF IMAGINATION.”
And to politicians who dismiss the constitutional allocation of power as a “technicality,” be reminded that on tax day people pay taxes, instead of treating you like robbers, because of the constitutional allocation of powers. Without that, you’re just another bandit to be treated accordingly. Do you really want to dismiss the rule of law that way? The answer, of course, is that to politicians, the rule of law — like the taxes — is for the little people. I would recommend against pushing too hard on that front right now, though.
MORE EGYPT LIVEBLOGGING AT THE ATLANTIC. Note the formation of armed citizen patrols against looters.
GREG BEATO: The More We Spend On Higher Education, The More We Spend On Higher Education. Things that can’t go on forever, won’t. More: “In the face of the Internet and other technologies that have made information and instruction cheaper and more accessible than ever, you might have predicted that the ever-expanding multiversities of the 1980s and 1990s would suffer the same fate as the music industry and the newspaper business. Instead, scope creep has functioned as an ingenious survival mechanism. . . . It’s true that for-profit institutions are raking in huge profits in large part because of federal subsidies. (The CEO of the holding company behind Strayer University made $41 million in 2009.) But it’s also true that few if any for-profits are using federal money to finance lengthy sabbaticals for high-paid professors who teach a handful of classes a year, or the athletic pursuits of undersized linebackers who should have hung up their cleats after graduating high school. Non-profit institutions of higher learning have been using federal money to make sure American college kids are the tannest, best-fed, most vigorously administrated students in the world for decades now. For a little extra credit, our elected officials should start holding them more accountable too.”
MARKDOWNS ON fitness videos.
WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): IMF to US: Better Start Taking Care Of Business. Plus this: “Offering the discretionary-spending freeze as an answer to the IMF’s legitimate concern is akin to telling your mortgage holder that you’ve started an austerity program by deciding not to buy more pay-per-view porn each month than in the previous few years.”
GUANTANAMO AND “detention policy fatigue.”
THE OTHER DAY, READER JASON WHITWORTH ASKED: “For those of us that were in school in the late 80’s/early 90’s and never had a Western Civ course, can you or your readers recommend one?”
I published that, the recommendations poured in, and of course I got too busy to properly digest them. But now here are some.
An anonymous reader emails: “Try The Rise of The West – W H McNeill…”
Rev. Todd Hester emails: “Glenn, Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation is forty years old now, but peerless in my estimation. Clark was an avowed humanist and anti-Marxist, and it showed. I was an English major in the early nineties; it was the basis for my humanities coursework, and was still deeply relevant. I suspect it is more so now.”
Prof. Stephen Clark writes: “In response to Mr. Whitworth, let me bang the drum for Jacques Barzun’s, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present. A life’s worth of scholarship has been distilled in this work. Beautifully written, Barzun takes you on a grand 500 year tour of the Western world that will leave you in awe of all that has preceded you, but also in awe of a model of classical scholarship that Barzun represents.” I read that, and it’s excellent.
Linda Seebach emails: “Columbia’s course was called Contemporary Civilization, and Amazon has a number of used copies at reasonable prices (new are ~ $85). I took a version at Gettysburg in the late ’50s, but I don’t think that was ever commercially published. Also links to reading list, study guides online, for instance at http://www.wikicu.com/Contemporary_Civilization.”
Reader Dwight Green writes: “I saw the request one emailer made for Western Civ classes. There are many online courses available now at sites like Academic Earth (http://academicearth.org/) or Open culture (http://www.openculture.com/). There really is a burgeoning online industry for courses that I’m happy to see. For those that feel overwhelmed at taking courses, their best bet may be exploring the flourishing world of book blogging. Anyone interested, even casually, in reading is sure to find several that fits their tastes and style. For example, I’m currently working my way through Thucydides and posting my thoughts on it…it’s a challenging read but so well worth it.”
Josh Mandir sends: “I think a good start on Western Civilization is the book Carnage and Culture by Victor Davis Hanson. It covers 9 battles in world history from the Battle of Salamis to the Vietnam War, describing the unique properties of Western Civilization. I learned more about Western Civilization (and, really, history overall) than I did in college.”
Reader William Berry emails: “In response to reader Jason Whitworth’s query about a course in Western Civ for one who missed out on it the first time around, I would suggest the seminar reading list at St. John’s College, available at this link . There is Western civilization, laid out in all its glory. St. John’s is the best college most people have never heard of, where the humanities still flourish. Our eldest son is a student there now, and loves it. But if you can’t go there, the next best thing is to work through the readings on your own.”
Claudia Brown writes: “Your reader who’s looking for a Western Civilization course might consider purchasing the textbooks to the Providence College (Rhode Island) two-year Civ core. Two of my kids went to Providence, and we were really impressed with the course. During various campus visits we met other parents who had themselves attended Providence, and looked back on the Civ course as one of the best they ever took, regardless of what they ended up majoring in or what profession they pursued. (You don’t declare a major at Providence until late in Sophomore year — that’s a good sign.) Even without a course, I’m sure the readings textbook would be valuable.”
Andrew Morriss writes: “The Teaching Company has many, many marvelous courses on the essentials of western civilization. Prof. Rufus Fears’ courses on Rome are spectacular – he’s got a great voice! The best ‘why we got rich’ book is Deidre McCloskey’s Bourgeois Dignity – fabulous, well written, erudite, etc. Basically: don’t kill entrepreneurs and be nice to them and your society will prosper. It is the only explanation that fits the data. Her web page is here, and her website has the book for downloading, reviews (including mine), etc.”
Speaking of how-we-got-rich, the classic is Nathan Rosenberg’s How The West Grew Rich. Many readers recommended this.
Reader Will Danford recommends Roots Of Freedom: A Primer On Modern Liberty. “It was written (by my dad – sorry) for college students, but it was adapted from lectures delivered via Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty before the wall fell. It’s a concise summary of the Western political tradition.” Nothing wrong with plugging your dad’s work.
Reader Jonathan Good recommends this video series on the Western Tradition.
And, of course, if you’re in a big hurry, there’s always Andrew Klavan’s video history of Western culture in 2 1/2 minutes.
PETER SUDERMAN: Egypt’s Internet Kill Switch. “Here’s what happens when a dictator has access to an off-switch for an entire country’s Internet: Via the Committee to Protect Journalists, a visual representation of Egypt’s Internet traffic on January 27th.”