Tag: Tenure
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Easy to see, hard to see
Random thought that seems pretty good at the moment. Our main problem now is not monopolies on selling, it’s monopolies on buying. (Yes, I know it’s called a monopsony, but that’s an Economist Word and I won’t use it.) A monopoly on buying is unfamiliar because most people don’t experience it. It only affects the…
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This is what happens
Headline: Columbia funding cuts set dangerous precedent This is what happens when you let politicians sponsor your research. The truly dangerous precedent was set in 1946, not 2025. Dependence on federal money started in 1946, and the danger was already obvious by 1958. My dad saw it, and a much more famous dude named Eisenhower…
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No sympathy
I note that the “mayor” in Spokane has joined other “mayors” in a court brief opposing Trump’s cuts to research funding. No sympathy. The corruption of federal funding has been blatantly obvious and perfectly well known inside academia. Everybody knows it and everybody keeps taking it. For christ’s fucking sake, EISENHOWER warned about it in…
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Surprisingly good!
Headline: The end of science’s peacetime. The headline of this article sounds like just another standard defense of the vicious science-deepstate axis. Fortunately I took time to read the article. Like Canada’s response to Trump’s tariffs, the author is pointing out WHY science is vulnerable to threats like Trump. He hits all the points correctly!…
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What does it mean?
This recent upload at Periscope Films is pushing college education, mostly aimed at law school and police careers. It was meant to be shown in high school classes. Key statement: “25 years ago, only 1 out of 12 high school students went on to college. Today, 1 out of 3 go on to college. What…
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Did science as entertainment continue?
Yesterday’s mention of symphonies that wear out the bass drum and the eardrum with endlessly hammered final movements reminded me of Peter Schickele’s classical parodies. Schickele mainly focused on the finicky excesses of Baroque Purists. I was a finicky Baroque Purist, so I appreciated his work. This led to a broader thought about science as…
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What we lost
In previous item I focused on our loss of innovation and flexibility after we switched to all finance and all monopoly. China and Russia didn’t make the switch, so they continued working with LIMITED RESOURCES. Now they’ve beaten our stupid MAX-FINANCE and MAX-THEFT approach to AI, with a technique that can run on normal computers…
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Two possibilities?
Big Science, especially the public-facing side in magazines or TV, has been totally corrupt for at least 40 years. Journalism’s public side is permanently corrupt. No history of objectivity at all, except for the years when the Fairness Doctrine ruthlessly censored broadcasters into objectivity. BUT: Out of the public eye, and away from the magazines…
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Trinity House again
Somebody has proposed eliminating NIH after its tyrannical genocide during the “virus”. The agency needs to be punished by elimination for goddamn sure. There’s no real solution for the Public “Health” torturers except elimination. We’ll never get a Nuremberg for the torturers, but we can stop paying them. BUT: NIH also funds quite a bit…
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Same fakery in two areas
I’m tired of people who believe (or pretend to believe) that the media used to be fair and objective. They want it to return to its pre-Eden purity when it published the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. Both of those revelations are PROOF of unfairness. The Papers, which were written in the ’60s, were “revealed” in…
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New thought on universities
An article on men losing interest in universities pulled my attention back to one of my basic themes. Universities were NEVER meant for everyone. They arose from two parallel institutions, the monastery or seminary for priests, and the finishing school for aristocrats. Both have the same function. Both refine and certify elites, religious or secular.…
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Should learn
The current mess should be a learning experience for people who still believe that the president is an active participant in government. We’ve seen forcefully that the current occupant is not capable of participating. The same thing happened with Reagan, who was senile in the last two or three years of his term (at least).…
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One big mistake
Michael Kochin makes an excellent proposal but misses the history entirely and treats all the standard consensus positions as real. Kochin is mostly echoing an earlier book by Paul Feyerabend. He says that in the 1700s western culture decided to separate church from state, but didn’t anticipate the later replacement of church by Science. He…
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Another stepback
Another example of stepping back to the higher-level question. One of the Things I Learned From Others was this clarifier by Dick Morris in the ’90s. Political messages are NOT aimed at voters. They’re aimed at donors or other politicians. When we see absurd crap floating around the media and ask Do they really think…
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Missing part of the picture(s)
Nina Power of Compact writes about the triviality of Big Art. There are two sources of money for Big Art. (1) Serving as tradable securities for rich fuckheads. (2) Licking the butts of bureaucrats who provide Arts Grants. I’d argue that the first source is ancient. Big Artists always worked for aristocrats, and always painted…
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