- Undue Purversity in Madison.
- Spiritual but not Religious?
- Educating for competitiveness or civic virtue?
- Entitlementationism.
- Schadenfreude.
- Google does it again.
- Nonsense.
1
University of Wisconsin -Madison has learned that if you want to pander to every conceivable kind of student group by funding them, you can’t exclude religious student groups. The lesson is costing them $496,000 in the students’ legal fees in addition to whatever they paid their own loser lawyers.
This principle is not rocket science. The Supreme Court has been pretty consistent, especially at the post-secondary level. But I’ve dealt with outside counsel for a major Big 10 university, which shall remain nameless (but not hintless), and let’s just say they “give no quarter” even when their client does something indefensible.
2
Spirituality is the last refuge of those unwilling or unable to seriously interrogate their own beliefs.
(Spiritual but not Religious?, David Barash)
An exasperated challenge to a common dodge by a guy who, for all I know, wouldn’t have much use for “Religious,” either. But the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
3
[T]o my mind at least, the current discussion about education is a limited one, because we are talking about it in almost solely market-based terms: i.e., will the next generation remain globally competitive?
I think that there’s a strong case to be made for considering the educational crisis from a political, not just an economic, perspective. American education was started, after all, to produce citizens who could fulfill the task of perpetuating a republic. So it seems reasonable to ask, are students learning values of citizenship, such as engagement, empathy for others, and critical thinking about pressing issues of the day?
(Pomona College student Matthew Brandon Wolfson at Front Porch Republic)
4
“Entitlementationism” is a concept that first surfaced in the mid-twentieth century—the period framed by the second term of Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Society years of Lyndon Johnson. It is the view that private goods such as health care, education, old-age consumption, and sometimes food, housing, and transportation can be effectively provided publicly. As a technical matter, economists distinguish between pure private goods, which provide benefits solely to the individual who consumes them, and pure public goods, such as national defense, which provide benefits to everyone.
The pairing of public and private provision of public and private goods results in four possibilities. Private provision of private goods through competitive markets is economically and scientifically supported as efficient. Public provision of public goods such as national defense (protection to everyone from enemies without) and law and order (protection to everyone from enemies within) is both a historically and theoretically valid government function. Private provision of public goods through market means can range from impractical to impossible and few polities have attempted it. The last pairing, public provision of private goods, particularly through entitlement programs, is primarily a twentieth-century phenomenon that seems to be running into trouble.
Is there a better way to accomplish entitlement objectives than through public provision of private goods? …
5
No, it’s not me for a change. It’s philosopher Michael Ruse, rejoicing that the trader who blew $2.3 Billion for UBS was a graduate (and not just any graduate) of a different Quaker Prep School in the north of England, not his own alma mater.
He rejoices so well, too.
6
It would appear that Google Flights is pretty awesome.
7
aware, then, that his nonsense was
Built on the backs of a lot of other people’s no-nonsense
This fragment, and its entire poetic context, puts me in mind of modern Krustianity.
* * * * *
Bon appetit!
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 