https://twitter.com/notbenmarshall/status/1394322948299886599
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Is that guy wearing a Jerry Rice Seahawks jersey?
Would assume Largent, but I can’t make out the name on the back.
This seems very harsh to me, but perhaps fairly common among lower or middle-income immigrants (especially educated ones) to industrial countries. It’s very different than my own experience, where my parents were quite lax. You did end up receiving a strong education, but the causality is hardly clear, particularly as you went into a “pure” field (physics I believe), not something like law or medicine where evaluation and competence aren’t as tied to intellect. I do know, however, that for society in general it’d be much better if we as a culture put a lot more focus on the importance of education. There’s obviously a need for balance, but any culture where you end up with Trump and a near 50/50 GOP in House and Senate is not even really viable, and a lot of that seems to trace to low educational expectations. (Which one can perhaps be traced to evangelicalism, but cf Mormons, who tend to be fairly educated but are obviously not, as a whole, particularly smart).
I mean we can’t, and shouldn’t and don’t need to teach every carpenter or salesperson calculus. Every business student doesn’t need to learn Kantian ethics, but I do think it’s important for every business student to study some serious ethics and know that plenty of people much smarter than them are focused on it. This is the kind of education that Trump seems to be wholly devoid of–awareness that there are smarter people working hard on whatever random issue he has an idea about. I’ve said this to friends who teach philosophy–sure most of the students forced to take intro ethics don’t get a deep sense of the field, but at least they probably learn some humility about their own judgments (or, from a right wing perspective, are “brainwashed” out of their prior beliefs).
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There’s no reason for this. Still not even sure how a judge signed off on this
high school grades are the best predictor of academic success in college.
sat barely correlates.
There is kind of a breakdown between, “work within and potentially have a role within the rational system” vs “the powerful/rational elites are just trying to fool you (and don’t really know anything)”, which is closely related to populism and alternative forms of evidence/justification, particularly “religion and truth from God/your pastor/your gut feeling is the only truth that matters”. The populist strain is more common on the right (though definitely not absent on the left) but not really self-sustaining–denigrating “meritocracy” doesn’t really produce goods much beyond fancy pillows and oil refineries.
The strongest threat to any type of “conservative” system (aristocracy/theocracy/apartheid) is the formal, bureaucratic assessment of skills and rewards based on “objective” measures, because the existing hierarchy is not recapitulated in the next generation. However, any pure form of “meritocracy” is a disaster of alienation and misery for the unelect, so society must offer a number of legitimate paths that are all valued and compensated, but the current arrangement of US economy puts far too much emphasis on “winner take all” and then on “meritocracy”, to the extent that it creates widespread alienation, which can lead to things like Trumpian revolts. From what I know, Germany does a better job, but it’s a less fractious and fragmented society (even given reunification) and is not tied down by a 230-year-old constitution (neither is the US absent an “originalist” legal ideology).
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As time goes on I’ve been struggling with some mixed feelings about DFW, and generally with the “tortured artist who’s also a massive jerk and/or sexual harasser” type.
I’m not calling for the cancellation of them generally, or DFW specifically, but the naive fandom I used to have is pretty far away now.
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Scalia wishes he could have written this paragraph. An interesting things about legal opinions is they they are often (though certainly not always) readable for nonlawyers if they put a little time into reading them.
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I’m so excited for all the STRAIGHT FIRE dissents coming from Sotomayor and Kagan for the next two decades!
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On the Sorkin SCOTUS show that’s the climax
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Looking at predictit markets, got a kick out of
Who will win the 2022 Texas Republican gubernatorial nomination?
- Greg Abbott
- Matthew McConaughey
Who will win the 2022 Texas Democratic gubernatorial nomination?
- Beto O’Rourke
- Matthew McConaughey
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Are we talking about Catcher Of The Ryes here or in general? Ol’ Holden had a psychotic break and was institutionalized.
I have no idea why we teach algebra other than some math nerd just wanted some idiots to suffer.
So much shit needs to be overhauled and the only thing being overhauled is history where it’s now but really slavery wasn’t the problem here the northern states were way way out of line.
https://twitter.com/nicolegelinas/status/1393974039627112451
https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/1394496062501658625
And we wonder why people don’t believe the MSM.
Seems like it’s easier to break into the NFL than becoming a law professor.
https://twitter.com/sarahlawsky/status/1394315053382438913?s=19
https://twitter.com/sarahlawsky/status/1394315061108281344?s=19
Note that Harvard has like 3x more law students than Yale.
This is something I’ve learned by reading a lot (for someone who isn’t an attorney) of SCOTUS opinions. However, my impression from this Kagan excerpt is that it was even more casual than most of hers or anyone’s for that matter. Am I way off on that?
Is law professor a super sweet gig or something? I remember over ten years ago I talked to a lawbro about this. He mentioned that at the fairly unremarkable law school that was in the city he lived in, about half the faculty went to Harvard or Yale. I think he offered some explanations for why that was the case, but they didn’t seem to make that much sense.