View 535 September 8 - 14, 2008 (original) (raw)

Sunday, September 14, 2008

REMEMBER! Friday September 19 is International Talk Like a Pirate Day! Arrrr!

It's Sunday afternoon. We went to the opera last night. Got home at a reasonable hour, and I went to bed fairly early, and took my sleeping potion, but I didn't get much sleep. I've been half out of it all day. I am sure I'll be back in form tomorrow.

For those who have any interest in history, while I was looking for other stuff, I found an essay and discussion ofthe First Dark Age that is worth your time. There are a lot of little tidbits hidden in this place.... A Dark Age is not merely a time in which various techniques and technologies have been lost. It is a time when the very ideas have been lost; when no one remembers that we could once do such things. Example: in the Dark Ages, a peasant outside Paris might reap three bushels of wheat for each bushel sowed. In Roman times peasants on that same land reaped ten bushels for each sowed, but that very idea was lost in the Dark Ages; which is what made them Dark. Another example is in modern education: we have lost the very idea that at one time in these United States it was extremely rare for any child to leave second grade unable to read.

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At lunch yesterday I had a thought that needs expansion. I'll have more on this another time.

Who Controls Education?

I was discussing education and politics with two friends, both of the liberal persuasion. I said that we weren't doing much for the brighter kids, and we all agreed. I then pointed out that although we are expending much of our education funding and talent on helping the left side of the Bell Curve, but it isn't doing a lot of good even for them, because we are trying to give them a "world class university prep education" and they aren't going to university. We ought to be teaching them how to do things they are likely to be doing. Again there was agreement that we seem to have lost what we once had, shop classes and vocational education in high school.

And it suddenly occurred to me. Here we were discussing what ought to be done for people we have never met, do not hang out with, and generally don't really understand. Here were three high IQ people talking about what ought to be done for low IQ people. And: the ONLY people discussing what ought to be done with/about/for the low IQ people are high IQ types who do NOT KNOW ANY LOW IQ PEOPLE, do not hang out with them, and probably cannot remember when they last met a person of, say, IQ 85, much less had any extended conversation with them.

Go further: JUST ABOUT ALL THE TEACHERS who will have to work with the left side of the Bell Curve are being taught how to teach by people who have never spent much time with anyone on the left side of the Bell Curve. None of our lawmakers spends much time with low IQ people. Few politicians actually talk with low IQ people. When they make speeches they are not really speaking to the left side of the Bell Curve.

So the people who decide what will be taught to the left side of the Bell Curve know not much more about them than you and I (and I will wager that almost none of my readers hang out with low IQ people). The people who teach the teachers who must go out and work with the left side of the Bell Curve don't know many -- any? -- people of IQ 90 and lower.

When Tocqueville wrote about America he observed that many of the services provided by government in Europe were left to "the associations" in America: to volunteers. Those of us who remember those days (actually remember a remnant of them) will recall that most of "the associations" were formed by and run by the people of the community the association served. The school janitor might get a couple of his neighbors to go help clean up and maintain the home of an elderly lady coming down with dementia. None of those involved were likely to be high IQ people. They did the work, they were proud of having done it --

Today, of course, we don't do that. Instead the government will hire someone at minimum wage to go do that.

I will continue this another time. Meanwhile, contemplate our current Dark Age in which we have forgotten all that.

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If you are concerned about CERN, this ought to relieve your mind:

http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

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I have probably indicated this review of my book Exile -- and Glory! at least once before and probably more, but if you have not seen it http://www.fourmilab.ch/fourmilog/archives/2008-08/001040.html

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On my radio I just heard some guy shout why did they build the space program HQ in the middle of a hurricane zone?

Well, Houston because it was where LBJ wanted it. Florida because you need eastward launch. Tropic because the nearer to the equator you are the more eastward velocity you have before you launch. And no Internet in those days. Canaveral because it was cheap at the time.

Needed a place where barges could land equipment; and Michoud where you can load barges. Rockets tend to be big. Of course the Shuttle solids had to be built in Utah for political reasons, and the RR system has a maximum length for cargo, so the Shuttle solid engine had to be chopped into two pieces. Now no one in his right mind wants a segmented solid rocket, but we got one, because we needed the Senator From Utah or we would not have a space program at all, thus the Challenger disaster which would never have happened had the SRB been built at Michoud so it could be shipped by barge.

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Lehman is gone. Gold is up. Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner and Bean has been sold to Bank of America. There will be a fire sale on non-liquid assets depressing the prices yet more. The relentless collapse of bubbles continues. Be afraid. The Dow is near 11,000 and will go lower. Be afraid.

On the good side there is progress in batteries. Now if we build nuclear plants so that we have the kilowatts...

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