July 03, 2009
Objectivist Round Up # 103
Objectivist Round Up #103 is up at Rational Jenn. On this Independence Day, it might be particularly relevant to read and ponder Adama Reed's piece, "Sunk With the Tea." Food for thought there. I do wish the Tea Partiers well -- or most of them, anyway. But I think the whole movement, such as it is, is going to be easily co-opted by kooks and cranks and the various types of Republicans who have already helped trash this country's heritage -- and Adam's right, there's no need to participate in that, and every reason to avoid it.
Wow, somebody sounded really negative there, didn't he? Hmm, well I didn't really mean to. Today's a good day and will remain so, likely as not. And good reading at the Round Up!
How to Celebrate Independence Day
Just for something to post on Independence Day: Ten Things to Love About America:
(I'll try to ignore the obvious (Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, Raquel Welch, Bill of Rights, jazz, Macs, universal franchise, Carl's Jr., rock and roll), and I'll try not to repeat anything I've written before)
1. Baseball -- in particular the Red Sox and the Dodgers, sure, but baseball in general. Hitting a ball with a stick is very, very hard -- so is it so surprising that baseball (and cricket) account for squillions of sports fans all over the world?
2. Bacon-wrapped hot dogs -- and Cajun cuisine and barbecue and all of American cuisine in general, whether anyone accepts the idea of "American cuisine" or not. So good they're illegal, the bacon-wrapped hot dog -- an L.A. specialty -- is http://www.laweekly.com/2008-02-07/eat-drink/the-hot-dog-so-good-it-sillegal/ illegal in L.A. But you can make them at home, as I do.
3. Bourbon -- start with Maker's Mark or
4. Pit bulls -- Than which. I am a German shepherd chauvinist of many decades' standing, but pit bulls are awesome dogs, and I look forward to many happy years with my little girl Scottie.
5. MITOpenCourseWare -- please, people, this is just awesome. Calculus? Linear algebra? You could, literally, get lost here, and never care. Berkeley and Stanford have great stuff online, too.
6. Bogart in Casablanca and The Big Sleep
7. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot, e. e. cummings, Ayn Rand, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Robert Frost.
8. Berlitz, Pimsleur, Michel Thomas -- All three language-learning methods began here -- coincidentally, all three began with French, I believe. Good stuff.
9. Diet Dr. Pepper. Need I say more?
10. Firefly.
It is in fact entirely appropriate in America to name a pit bull puppy after F. Scott Fitzgerald.
June 29, 2009
The "Asian Century:" Don't Bet on it Yet
An interestingly put set of observations contra the "Asian Century" meme to which we're all too often subjected: "Think Again: Asia's Rise."
Asia is pouring money into higher education. But Asian universities will not become the world's leading centers of learning and research anytime soon. None of the world's top 10 universities is located in Asia, and only the University of Tokyo ranks among the world's top 20. In the last 30 years, only eight Asians, seven of them Japanese, have won a Nobel Prize in the sciences. The region's hierarchical culture, centralized bureaucracy, weak private universities, and emphasis on rote learning and test-taking will continue to hobble its efforts to clone the United States' finest research institutions.Even Asia's much-touted numerical advantage is less than it seems. China supposedly graduates 600,000 engineering majors each year, India another 350,000. The United States trails with only 70,000 engineering graduates annually. Although these numbers suggest an Asian edge in generating brainpower, they are thoroughly misleading. Half of China's engineering graduates and two thirds of India's have associate degrees. Once quality is factored in, Asia's lead disappears altogether. A much-cited 2005 McKinsey Global Institute study reports that human resource managers in multinational companies consider only 10 percent of Chinese engineers and 25 percent of Indian engineers as even "employable," compared with 81 percent of American engineers.
See also the comments on autocracy and the "benefits" it has brought to the Asian nations.
Lord of the Flies -- The Keynesian Version
The rejected Keynesian first draft of Lord of the Flies.
See also this one and this one.
And fans of Baby Rudin might like this one.
(Hat tip: Peter Cresswell
Brook and Schiff On Our Economic Woes
I've recently bloggged videos of Peter Schiff and of Yaron Brook, but now:
Peter Schiff and Yaron Brook on the same segment of the same program.
