My eyes on twitter, yesterday, pinged me with an interesting retweet from one of the usual suspects. You know, those people in science fiction who have been so oppressed and downtrodden and kept at arms length because we don’t like their ancestors or their color or their orientation or yes, that they’ve been living hand-to-mouth existences, oppressed by white male privilege and barely able to scrape up a few crumbs of stale bread for their dinner.
This was retweeted in fact by one of those people who continuously try to stop discussion with “Check your privilege.”
I’m just going to quote this magnificent retweet and let you stand back, take a deep breath and admire it splendid madness.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the point of education wasn’t to make a more useful workforce, but to make happy, imaginative and empathetic humans?
Stop – drop and roll – and take a deep breath.
Does anyone here remember why education was instituted among humans? I mean, I know some of you are that ancient, old enough to have fallen from the trees back in the glory days when we went from shrew to ape.
No?
Me neither, but I’ve observed training and education among all mammal species for most of my life. I was raised on what could not be considered a farm except by fiat, but we did grow most of our own food, and what we didn’t grow the neighbors did. And at least some mammals (and birds) I paid attention to because they were cute. I’ve seen mother cats train kittens to hunt, I’ve seen mother rabbits teach bunnies what is best to eat. I’ve seen chickens keep watch on their broods.
“Education” at that level has two basic functions: how to survive as an adult animal and how not to get killed (which is also survival, of course, but less proactive.)
If you go back as far as we can go on first hand accounts, human education had the same purpose, be it learning to hunt, or keep animals, or even pull your forelock to the lord, depending on where you were in the time and place.
For humans it was a little more complex, of course. One of the funniest things is to hear modern people deplore the fact that even most medieval noblemen were illiterate. But the fact is in their own complex world they had much to learn: How to manage places with almost no extra income so you could have enough to support you and not inspire assassination, for instance. Also hunting. Also a complex set of social cues that would make modern heads explode. Writing was no part of their métier. They didn’t need it to survive.
It wasn’t, in fact, until noblemen became a little richer and there was a little more disposable capital in their domains that they felt a need to read and write so they could keep an eye on the churchmen doing the accounting for them.
Nowadays reading is considered an important skill for everyone, not because we’re more enlightened or brighter or better, but simply because navigating the modern world is often a function of being able to quickly read and absorb information.
Note this might be easily superseded in the future by virtual targeted spoken messages, something that in fact already happens at some levels and probably why people at that level in society (mostly supported) have very little interest in learning to read.
The learning to read might have brought with it the ability to read for fun and happiness and to improve your morals, but that (unless you were studying to be a churchmen the later) was not the purpose.
So mostly the purpose of education in humans is to make useful and well adjusted adult humans.
It is, of course, failing at both across a vast spectrum. In the later especially, the part of the quote that goes on about:
to make happy, imaginative and empathetic humans?
The progressive comrades of the lady retweeting this piece of cluelessness have stopped us doing that. Because we can’t teach any type of morals, not even “do onto others” which is what creates empathetic humans. And we certainly can’t teach humans to be happy. “Happy” by definition is “fits well within the structures of society and follows accepted modes and morals.” Or at least that’s as close as a public institution can come to making anyone happy. (To make you INTERNALLY happy would involve a lot of soma, if you’re not disposed that way. We’re trying to do that too, of course, but apparently the chemical happy is not the same as happy-happy.) As for making humans more imaginative, we have no idea if that can be done at all, but if it could it would probably counter the “happy” and it would certainly counter most politically correct strictures on our schools. Imaginative humans can think of anything. Even the unthinkable. They might not do it, but they can think it.
The person who originated this quote (who I presume was not our SJW) seems to think of imaginative in the childish sense of “imagination is a wonderful and sunny place” but an imaginative person can think of anything. When it’s Kate’s turn maybe she’ll grace us with a post on how sometimes your imagination definitely goes where you don’t want it, and how to cope with it.
But let’s leave aside for a moment the internal contradictions in that quote. It’s difficult to do, because there are rifts between its well-meaning prescriptions that are broad enough to let entire civilizations slip through unnoticed.
Let’s instead concentrate on the beginning:
Wouldn’t it be nice if the point of education wasn’t to make a more useful workforce
Oh, yes, of course. Other things that would be nice: if ice cream grew on trees. If designer dresses grew on wild bushes. If we all had a perfect body. If there were no disease and suffering and we studied war no more.
I mean, what exactly is the point of wishing for something like that?
People, in this work-a-day (eh) world still have to make a living, right? Last I checked, just looking around, this desk I’m sitting at did not sprout fully formed from a particularly blessed acorn. The computer I’m typing at was not only designed, not only ideated but built by human beings who devoted considerable time to bringing it into existence and were paid for it, enough money to live in turn.
My fridge is full of food I did not grow, but I’m not under the impression it is created by blessed pixies. I know there’s a lot of unrelenting, unpleasant, often uninteresting work behind that food. Trust me, I know this: I grew up in a rural village.
The world and all it contains is not a sort of fairy bauble where the things we want and need just appear and where even making us pay for them is an injustice, much less making us work for them.
The world is REAL – an unforgiving place that doesn’t care anymore about your imagination and empathy and happiness than it cares about whether that storm just destroyed your crops; that hurricane just leveled your house; or that sparrow just fell.
Those of us who are religious believe there is someone behind the scenes who does care, but even He does not violate the rules of the reality He created just to be mawkish at you, much less to spoil you. (At least the He I believe in doesn’t. I realize some religious people believe in a sort of rub-the-lamp G-d which is a survival from primitive religious mentality (if you sacrifice to the tree spirit, she’ll give you oranges) and which is epitomized in an episode of my childhood which my son describes as “the miracle of the socks.” A friend I was vacationing with, who was a ah vending machine religious person was trying to go to church of a Sunday and couldn’t find her socks. She immediately became convinced the devil had hidden them. So she said the requisite prayer and the socks showed up. Perhaps, for all I know, the world really works like that. I doubt it though. And it would distract me from thinking about real cause and effect trying to figure out which lamp to rub.)
It is a characteristic of reality that it tends to smack you in the face like a three-day-old dead fish whether you want it to or not, and whether you’ve told yourself some just-so story about how it would be so much better if it didn’t.
This is why the left’s just-so story that once you stop capitalism or patriarchy or whatever their bugaboo is, humans will be perfect and loving and innocent never comes about. And also why they thereby deduce we’re still steeped in unfettered capitalism (I wish!) and patriarchy and racism and sexism and the heartbreak of psoriasis. (Okay, okay, I made up the last one. It’s actually psoriasitism.) They do this because their black and white view of the world requires they believe in a pseudo-secular version of the miracle of the socks.
Reality doesn’t care any more for their delusions than it did for my friend’s (who, should the miracle of the socks have failed to materialize would then have come up with some reason, like that she’d forgotten to say the requisite prayer before sleep or for all I knew had forgotten to bless her shoes.)
So for an adult human being (my friend, in her defense wasn’t) to believe that it would not just be lovely, but that it’s somehow possible and DESIRABLE if the point of education wasn’t to make a more useful workforce betrays where this human being stands.
This person is so unimaginably comfortable and cossetted that she believes that work is an icky necessity and that learning the skills of workaday laboring is not just unnecessary but somehow undesirable. She believes it would be best instead if schools tried to fix all sorts of metaphysical things that as far as I can tell have always been wrong with humans.
She believes, in fact, that paradise has arrived – whatever she says – and that we no longer need to spin nor sow.
She’s so far removed from every day necessities, that she thinks that learning a profession is a strange twisting of the purpose of education.
The mind boggles. There are legends of mandarins in towers, long ago, who were as insulated as this. I always assumed they were just legends, but perhaps I was wrong.
No wonder this person goes around worrying obsessively about what happened to ancestors with whom she has almost no genetic and certainly no cultural connection. (Sorry, the idea that you understand your ancestors even a century ago, even without conquest by an alien culture, is … well, an indication you haven’t read many autobiographies more than fifty years old. The idea you understand cultures that were rightly or wrongly subsumed is… a fairy dream.) No wonder she sees all sorts of micro-aggressions due to her skin tone and the fact she possesses a vagina.
Humans must, after all, worry about something. It’s an evolutionary necessity built into us. And in her mandarin-tower there is nothing else to worry about.
Downtrodden? Oppressed? Mistreated?
Is this the statement of a person who is any of those?
Wouldn’t it be nice if the point of education wasn’t to make a more useful workforce, but to make happy, imaginative and empathetic humans?
Oh, honey, check your privilege.
UPDATE: WELCOME INSTAPUNDIT READERS! And thank you to Glenn Reynolds for the link!
According To Hoyt 
“It is a characteristic of reality that it tends to smack you in the face like a three-day-old dead fish whether you want it to or not”
Stealing this, with attribution of course.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the purpose of the Democrat Party wasn’t to accrue political power, but to generate a list of people I could light on fire without feeling guilt over killing something intelligent?
These things are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
The problem with Democrats trying to accrue political power is that occasionally they’re successful, which results in idiots like Obama freaking out about CO2 while downplaying the risks of Ebola reaching the US (it’s called the law of large numbers, you worthless %^&*£%, look it up. While you’re at it, look up chaotic system.)
You write as if you think he could understand either.
But, but, but, he’s the smartist man EVAH! He’s a better speech writer than his speech writers, a better political strategist than his political strategists, and a better general than his generals! (but maybe because he’s spent the last six years rooting out all the generals who are any good…) If he doesn’t know it then it’s not worth knowing!
/spit
Don’t you know? the IS NO challenge great enough for our dear leader:
http://thepeoplescube.com/peoples-blog/no-challenge-is-intellectually-great-enough-for-dear-leader-t15005.html
Valerie Jarrett said so.
And the first time he ever played golf he got a score of 18!
Oh, wait, that was Dear Leader. Understandable mistake!
You kiss your mother with that mouth?
I belive it’s called the Dunning – Kruger effect: competent people realize how much they don’t know and so underestimate their competence while idiots are aware of only their small island of knowledge in the sea of ignorance so they think they’re smarter than they really are.
Which is why so many of them were sniggering at Rumsfeld’s “Known Unknowns” and “Unknown Unknowns” comment. They thought they knew everything.
Say what you will about Rums feed, but you could pour a handle of everclear down his throat, give him a lobotomy with a melon-baller and he’d still be smarter than the Democrat Party. Combined.
There are things we know we don’t know, and then there are things that we don’t know we don’t know. This I know.
I didn’t know that…
I had Rumsfeld’s quote on the wall for several years. I considered it brilliant. There is a fourth category he omitted, unknown knowns, but they will never get you into trouble.
I didn’t know I knew that!
“Never”? I’ve suspect that husbands who forget their anniversaries might disagree on that point:-).
I ws not a fan of Rumsfeld, because me badly messed up the iraq insurgency, which did not start reversing until Gates and Petreus took over. But I will admit that Rumsfeld quote was actually fairly perceptive. One other thing Rumsfeld needed though, the reagan quote about “they know things, they just aren’t true”. Some of rumsfelds “known knowns” were not actually correct.
Mmmm toasted democrat
Not really very good. Skinny, tough, dry and chewy and with a vague aftertaste redolent of brimstone, rat and sewer. Crow or bubble gum off the bottom of your shoe is considered far superior.
Just because toasting a vileprog makes a stink and a mess doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing!
“Wouldn’t it be nice if the point of education wasn’t to make a more useful workforce, but to make happy, imaginative and empathetic humans?”
Happiness is a result of the choices you make during your lifetime. You can be taught how to make the choices that lead to happiness, but any education system cannot instill happiness. Empathy can be taught, but I’ve always considered it to be more appropriately the responsibility of religion to teach it (as with the moral choices that lead to happiness).
Imagination is taught in school… or at least in the better ones, although with different titles, such as ‘problem solving’. STEM type degrees prize a good imagination, because one cannot come up with solutions and improvements without a good, disciplined imagination.
…I’ll finish the rest of the article in a moment, but this aphorism from Plato sprang to mind:
Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.
Great quote. I’ll add it to my list of quotes.
Huh.
Kind of goes with “A pipe gives a wise man time to think, and a fool something to occupy his mouth”.
….Never heard that one before.
I’m tempted to use it, but the folks who I’d wish would understand it* wouldn’t get it. Still, gotta file that one away.
*oddly, not so much at the folks who just have to say something; rather, the ones who assume that everyone is just talking to talk.
Great quote, I’m not so sure about the sourcing. Where did Plato say it?
In his dining room. After lunch.
Sorry, yes, I’m being a prat. It’s been that sort of month.
Plato. In the Dining Room. With a Candlestick.
Just for that, I’m going to give you a shiny distraction, a book distribution method I’ve never seen before.
http://www.yourturn.link/
I’ll confess I’m not sure since I spotted it in a feed for inspirational quotes.
“The problem with quotes on the Internet is that you can never be sure they’re authentic.” – Abraham Lincoln.
“Oh, honey, check your privilege.”
Good one Sarah! [Very Big Grin]
When I saw the title of your post “ie Privilege”, I was thinking about posting my usual “rant” when it comes to “White Privilege”, but that “person” has gone even further into the “deep end of idiocy”.
So far into the deep end that the fish have lights on their heads.
Further, I think. To the point that those depths cannot be observed any longer, because we have yet to invent something that can reach the bottom of the Marianas Trench.
This ain’t the GOOD kind of ‘hidden depths’ either. It’s the ‘treacherous, watch where you step, quicksand and thin ice abound’ sort of ‘hidden.’
When you go trying to hit bottom, all you’ll find is another bottom.
Ringo? Is that you?
Just what kind of bottom do you think he’s talking about?
Yeah? What do you THINK I meant? 😉
Following your logic, striking for the bottom only gets you to discover new lows that you haven’t found yet;
However, on reflection, some of the bottoms I’ve followed have merely gotten me hit when all I was trying for was a, “hi!”
It brought me low, I can tell you.
Yer all a bunch of dirty-minded so-and-sos!
Love you guys. 🙂
What? It’s bottoms all the way down? Um…
Actually, we have been to the bottom of the trench. (I wanna say Branson did it, but I think someone else was first.)
James Cameron.
Thanks.
Actually the first time was the Trieste in 1960:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathyscaphe_Trieste
Not to be a pedantic jerk (although its probably too late 🙂 ) but the Trieste (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathyscaphe_Trieste ) went the bottom of the challenger deeps in January 1960 over a year before this sad old carcass that hauls me around was created. Always an issue with analogies…
Any belief system that promises 1) instant response to petitions and/or 2) a sudden-onset free ride through life probably requires a lot more than I’m willing to give up, be it some types of traditional religion, Communism, eco-feminism, or what have you. Like the proverb attributed to Russian, Spanish, French, and other peasants “if G-d answered all our shepherds’ prayers, all our sheep would be dead.”
Downtrodden? Oppressed? Mistreated?
Is this the statement of a person who is any of those?
Wouldn’t it be nice if the point of education wasn’t to make a more useful workforce, but to make happy, imaginative and empathetic humans?
Oh, honey, check your privilege.
I don’t need to know or learn how to take care of myself, because that what governments and the State are for. I just need to vote for the right thinking individuals, so that they will make those evil 1%’ers pay their fair share.
Life treats everyone the same and that’s just not fair.
😉
Uh oh, somebody’d better go to yesterday’s thread and see if Josh fell into the trans-dimensional portal. ‘Cuz I think we’ve got an Evil Josh running loose.
No, no… There wasn’t a transporter accessident and ignore the facial scar and goatee. Nothing new here. Move along! Move along!
*accident
I don’t know. I’ve noticed evil Josh is almost typo free…
You know, sooner or later we’re going to meet you at some con or hun gathering and fall on you with glad cries of “Statist Josh!” shocking your SO or friend you brought along nearly to death.
🙂
No, he just forgot to set up the part he was talking as an SJW as distinct.
I thinking Statist Josh needs a show on Commiedy Central after the Colbert Report… Hmmm… what do you think?
👿
It would keel!
Ah, there so many layers to this…
😀
Like the onion?
Like a parfait. Parfaits have layers.
I deliberately failed to capitalize for the joke, The Onion, as opposed to an onion….
Mmmm. Baklava. Layers and layers of sweet, gooey layers.
And when you get to the bottom, you get coffee!
I like this plan…..
Ain’t nobody that don’t like them some parfait!
The nut of the fooshkoot is bitter
I guess my privilege must have evaporated when I wasn’t looking.
I know, right?
Yeah. Where’s my magic privilege powers of miraculous wonders and vast pits of money? *frowns at skin and visible signs of femininity* They’re not working the way they should! I should have the power to make all my problems go away with a twirl of my pinky!
/sarcasm :eyeroll:
There’s your problem, lovey: it ain’t your pinky you should be twirling.
*looks sadly southward* I don’t have a dangly bit to twirl, I’m straight, and what I do have doesn’t glitter, because the thought of anything shiny and small and potentially sharp anywhere near that region is likely very, very bad and scares the heck out of me.
A comment about vajazzling seems suitable here, but for the life of me I never grasped that particular fad and don’t want to talk about it. Of all the places one could glue crystals to, that seems the least tempting.
I figure it’s kind of like putting a tatoo down there. Just a lot flashier.
So what happens when the glue starts letting go?
Assuming they bathe and wash daily, I suspect that it won’t be much of a problem. That’s not to say that there aren’t other physical stresses going on down there *cough*, but I’m confident that daily running water would do a lot more to strip them off.
Mind you, I still think that putting anything down there is rather silly.
I just have this image of a young lady walking down the street with rhinestones dribbling out of her pants.
Actually, wasn’t there some creation myth where the heavens were created by a goddess’ jewelry breaking or shedding while she was dancing or fleeing? Now that’s a wardrobe malfunction to talk about.
They used, IIRC (and I do) Swarovski Crystals. Visit http://www.swarovski.com/Web_US/en/index and tell us if that’s the sort of thing you want rubbing between your thighs (gals) or bumping up against your figs (guys.)
The promo link — “Win sparkly prizes (get caught with us)” — engenders thoughts so rude I had to slap myself. Sparkly is fine, in its place, but some places should only glisten.
Additional image at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I_T3XvzPaM
It is sad to ponder how pathetic it sounds to say I lliked Ladysmith Black Mombazo before Paul Simon discovered them.
A Daily Mail article from a couple of years back notes that hospital admissions for injuries “down there” have increased in the UK in the last 5 (now 7) years due to – among other things – vajazzling.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2245339/Hospitals-hit-huge-rise-women-suffering-injuries-caused-vajazzles.html
On the other hand, the article also states that the majority of vajazzling-related hospital admissions are due to women attempting a DIY decoration, and injuring themselves in the process.
There is no fashion trend so noble that some idiot cannot hurt themselves trying to follow it on the cheap.
That’s it. We obviously need to expand the MSDS on hot glue sticks and hot glue guns.
Any plan that involves hot glue in close proximity to one’s neither regions needs to go back for a rethink.
“Assuming they bathe and wash daily”
Anyone ever warned you about making wildly optimistic assumptions?
Personal hygiene is after all just one more silly rule the 1% use to keep the people oppressed, don’t you know.
Well…
Personal hygiene also has the teensy tiny advantage that you don’t need to apply as much perfume to avoid stinking a place up…
Say what you will about the health benefits of personal cleanliness, but most people still recognize that using BO to kill any prospective one-night stands probably isn’t a good idea…
😛
Glue? Oh, that’s not so bad, then. I always assumed it required piercing.
“Suitable” ? I don’t think that word means what you think it means …
You can’t make suits out of glittering stones?
Wasn’t that Smaug’s armor?
and where’d it get him? You stocked up on Black arrows?
He missed a spot and since he made a bad neighbor a little bird “ratted” on him. [Dragon Grin]
I keep a few of mine with St George tips (~_^) I think Rage makes those … or is it Zilwicki?
It’s less a privilege and more a way of declaring everything wrong to be your fault. O_o;;
Privilege is an odorless, colorless, tasteless, silent substance with no texture. Only those who lack it are privileged to be able to detect it.
🙂
The problem is that these people are so removed from the world in its natural state that they simply don’t understand that if somebody doesn’t work, everybody dies.
They have always had clean water that comes out of a tap on demand, electricity, climate control, clothing, and processed foods. They think that these things just happen and all we have to do is pick them up of the ground and share them equally. No one they know has ever had to do the work needed to make the world a livable place for humans.
In reality, there is no such thing as “natural resources” and the technical term for a human being who is in harmony with the natural world is “fertilizer”. Simply living from day to day on this planet is a constant struggle. We have gotten smart enough that huge numbers can be supported by the work of a small percentage and never see that struggle, which is a mixed blessing.
Also, I have come up with a working definition of the modern usage of the word “privilege”–it is a punctuation mark used to indicate the end of a dialogue.
That. Right there.
The problem is that these people are so removed from the world in its natural state that they simply don’t understand that if somebody doesn’t work, everybody dies.
The ones who frustrate me more are the ones who FORGET about this simple reality. Willfully forget, or ignore it.
They also think that wealth comes from the government, which could print infinite amounts of money without affecting value (in fairness, the government has already printed so much scrip that increasing the supply by even 1% is very difficult — but they will not shrink from that challenge!)
Not to mention the “Let’s be backseat drivers to the engineers, seemingly assuming that the whole set of them are morons who can’t tie their shoes” thing, despite rarely even having the creativity, background and analytical ability to do good engineering.
I’m not saying engineers need no oversight, or that they are magically trustworthy and competent. Humans make mistakes, the techniques of engineering and science inherently have imperfections, and I doubt I’ve ever met a serious engineer who didn’t worry. A piece of paper doesn’t fundamentally change a person, which makes engineering education partially based on measurement and sorting, well understood to have an innate degree of error.
I just get a little annoyed if, say, someone with a background in pure activism, no technical, fabrication, industrial or even hobby craft background, insists that there are vast swaths of untapped inefficiencies to fix, and that if engineers et al. would just listen to them, things would be solved competently.
That said, why do we need education for everyone if not everyone needs to work for everyone to be fed?
I think communication is a part. Math, the scientific method, the classics, the founding fathers, history, these are things we probably need a common exposure to in order to communicate. Peoples who cannot easily communicate naturally have an easier time falling into quite bitter enmities.
Oh, yes. Because, like, “solar freakin’ roadways” will solve all of our problems because they’re all, like, green and stuff. And since math is just a patriarchal tool of oppression we can just add a whole bunch of zeros to the output!
No need to add zeros to the output, but we certainly don’t need to take into account how much energy they take to make, do we?
I did have someone tell me–in absolute seriousness–that the only reason that the US still used fossil fuels was that government was controlled by Big Oil Corporations. When asked how it was possible to make do without burning fuel, she explained that everything could run from batteries. She seemed to have no understanding that batteries need to be charged somehow.
Sigh — remember the student who demonstrated that the mining and processing of materials to make its batteries made a Prius more environmentally harmful than a hummer?
Why can’t the schools produce more like that?
Reminds me of the person who declared that electricity was a source of energy. (mega-facepalm)
And people wonder why I go through life in a state of barely-constrained homicidal rage.
‘Energy efficiency is the fastest, cheapest, cleanest power source’.
Have you been listening to Amory Lovins?
Don’t know him.
Obama published a platform on energy and the environment at the white house website after taking office.
The godfather of the anti-nuke/fossil alternate energy crowd. I went to a speech he gave on the UT Austin campus in 1977 where he outlined his perfect society. A feudal aristocrat/serf setup where at least 80% of the world’s population had to die first.
There are people who give the impression of not even being that numerate and honest.
(Presses hands to temples, HARD) OW!, Ow, ow, ow, ow.
I find it amusing how the electric car cultist believe that the instant an electric car is made viable, every internal combustion engine on Earth will suddenly disappear. Even if it happens tomorrow, it will be decades before they’ve replaced older cars, and there will still be petroleum products. Oil companies have nothing to fear.
I’ve always wondered if they realize that their plastic fantastic electric car is, in fact, made of plastic a petroleum product?
Shhhh . . . Don’t burst their bubble.
They don’t… and they tend to glaze over when you point out what plastic actually IS.
Yes, but it’s an organic plastic.
HIlarious
Almost as funny as asking a lib what organic chemistry refers to
OF COURSE it is. It has carbon in it.
one of our chemists at work has a “Organic Chemists do it Naturally” bumper sticker magneted on her fume hood
Not to mention all that electricity has to get generated somehow. If not nukes, then what?
Giant amber rod and cat wheel. Green renewable electricity!
yeah, but the cats get a bit miffed
Annoyed yes but they don’t vote.
Let’s face it, electrical generation of any kind is going to piss somebody off. So lets just pick one with the least amount of downsides and go for it.
I pick Nukes then as any downsides are offset by leftoid heads exploding.
OK, I like what I’ve been hearing about pebble bed reactors. H3 is also an option plus its an excuse to send normal people to the moon. By normal I mean non test pilots or physicists, people like sandhogs and miners.
The nuclear tech currently in use was outdated when the last US reactor was built.
indeed, and our record of safety with that is rather good, (3mile was blown way the heck out of proportion) but too many folks think what they see on the Simpsons is how all nuke sites are run, and all our running plants are a Chernobyl waiting to happen (and their eyes glaze right over when you point out we were never stupid enough to build a power plant in that design)
Do you know your stuff nuclear wise? I’m curious if a pebble bed would work in a mobile application. We desperately need a SSTO. A reasonably priced reusable SSTO will get us off this rock. We need that. Without a frontier we cannot drain off the disaffected and dangerous. Can you imagine the land rush that would follow cheap space travel?
not extra well, I used to keep an eye on things out of curiosity, but have not paid close attention to it lately.
Agree we need to get off this rock, and not just for a release to the wanderers and disaffected, but for a back-up in case of a “Dino-killer” strike.
You mean having all our eggs in one basket, even if it is the size of a planet, isn’t a good thing?
You mad fool!!! Don’t you follow the news? The planetary ecology is in danger of imminent collapse, any
Dayyeardecadecenturymillennium now!No I don’t follow the news. I got tired of being mushroomed.
There are designs for nuclear rockets, but all research into that was shut down and are no longer allowed. I believe this is by treaty, but am not certain.
One that I particularly liked was one that used a gaseous compound (at least, it’s gaseous at reactor temp), which was pumped into a chamber at pressure. The higher the pressure, the higher the reaction rate. I can’t seem to remember how the gas was stored, but there was a method of preventing the reaction from occurring in the storage. The advantage being that in the event of a breech, the pressure went below the requirement for significant reaction rate, so it automatically cooled off.
That gas reactor sounds cool. I know the NERVA program was shut down but we are coming to the end of what can be gotten out of a chemical engine.
I think we have to get them to change the law before anything like it happens.
There are some more things we can do with chemical engines. The ramjet to high atmospheric speed is more effective at increasing payload than most people would believe, and then there is the option of running a rail up a mountainside for a boost up to a starting velocity.
But yes, we need a real jump in cost effectiveness to do the job properly.
I gather the Japanese are looking at a space elevator. How seriously is another question, but I think they have the social stability to limit the terrorist attack risks.
I have seen good reports on thorium reactors and on molten salt reactors.
Keep in mind that what they see on The Simpsons likely reflect the work environments in which most Leftoids are employed.
sadly, working in a now major corporate environment, I can see that being the case. Everything defaults to the lowest common denominator of ignorance.
Didn’t 3 Mile do exactly what it was supposed to? I mean obviously it wasn’t supposed to fail, but wasn’t it designed to do what it did IF it failed? You know as a least dangerous failsafe.
yes, and even that is now not needed in some of the newer designs, so a second event like that would be either even less likely, or impossible depending on the design.
Regarding Three Mile Island –
I did a report on it in high school. And yes, you’re correct. The automated systems all functioned properly during the incident. The real problem was that one of the sensors malfunctioned, and the human operators chose to trust that one sensor over the automated systems. So when the automated systems started to correctly deal with the issue that the reactor was experiencing, the human operators interfered.
Pebble Bed reacrors would be too big and ehavy for anything less than a cargo ship. There has been some work done on scaling up the 15 MW one the Germans built back in the 1970’s, but this has proven difficult and very expensive. South Africa was attempting to do it with several foreign investors (Westinghouse, Exelon, US/French/German govt’s, Areva), but everyone has dropped out. Rumor has it the Chinese are trying to design one, but those are rumors.
Thorium molten salt reactors are in the same boat. A small demondtrator was built at Oak Ridge back in the 1960’s and ran well for several years, but the deveil is in the details of scaling it up.
Also, for both types, there is absolutely NO infrastructure to support commercial operations. The US military went in on developing the infrastructure for Light Water reactors, but will not for pebble bed /thorium reactors. That will be a really hefty bill to built one up and will take several years. Something I do not see happening with the “don’t look beyond next quarter” outlook of most corporations on this planet.
I’d think Polywell or Focus Fusion (if either works out) would be better for spacecraft applications than any fission reactor. More compact. Whether they’ll produce enough to serve as launch systems I couldn’t say.
A pure fission drive would probably have to be a pulse system, and I don’t see anything like that being allowed to launch from Earth. Alas:-(.
Nuclear engines don’t use the fuel as the propulsion mechanism. They typically would carry Hydrogen and pump it through the reactor to both cool the reactor and produce the thrust. it’s actually completely safe, except for the danger of a reactor accident.
I do believe they had some trouble producing enough thrust to launch, and plans mostly revolved around using the nuclear rocket as propulsion after reaching orbit, though I believe there were some that were intended to launch from the ground.
I wasn’t thinking of things like NERVA or Timberwind, but rather Orion. I’m still bitter about Orion, and I wasn’t even born yet when they cancelled it:-(.
As for fusion engines, I’m not convinced that they will be light enough to launch from the ground for a while.
A fission space drive would be launched into (and probably assembled) in LEO. Then fueled up and the H2 (water is better no cryonics) tanks filled and then light it up and thrust away. No way can a fission drive (orion excepted) can lift off rfom the surface. Piss-poor mas fraction.
Yeah, water is a good storage for both the lack of necessity for cryo, plus you have nice Oxygen left over. And I think water actually has a higher storage density than liquid H2.
I think they need to stop the really big attempts at enlargement and go with many small ones, myself. Not just with Nukes, but all our power is better off as a distributed network. Less likelihood of a regional outage and it would be easy to shunt off into the affected areas when they have an issue.
The other big reason the Corps don’t pursue it is the ignorance of those who will fight to block any and all attempts to build one. If it looks to cost you as much to fight to build it as it would to build it in the first place, there isn’t a whole lot of incentive to even start looking at it. Just watch them protest a satellite or probe launch when it include those reactors. One gets the impression the power comes from something strong enough to blow up the planet while being contained by an egg shell if one listens to the bleating of the protesters.
“I think they need to stop the really big attempts at enlargement and go with many small ones, myself. ”
I was just deleting spam. It took me a moment to figure out what you were talking about.
oops, avoid “en large ment” (~_^) Got it
HAH! *snort-choke-hack*
Unexpected.
I think I read a story with an alien like that once…
I’d love to see regional power grids with small reactors, each semi autonomous. Those who want ’em can have ’em, and those who prefer bio-gas produced by fermented unicorn droppings can have whatever they want. They just can’t show up at my doorstep with an extension cord when reality turns off their lights and they can’t charge their Prius and iThing.
Eyup. I think if you check the “Green Option” on your power bill (one of the excuses for AlGore’s huge use is he pays for green energy) your supply should reflect the source. Wind and solar drop below the supply threshold? You get a brown out or outage depending on the situation, while the rest of us keep going with our nukes, gas, and coal.
Now, that said, I should build a solar and wind system for here as a supplement … a small wind generator that doesn’t chop birds and solar do make a nice addition here in North Texas and operate quite often.
Bigger reactors are much more cost effective.
A balance needs to be found: cost effective also can leave society more at risk. Consider the 1965 black out when the cascading overload of the massive delivery system shut down a major proportion of the east coast.
You think your power is expensive now, just wait until you do have it generated by thousands of small power plants in a distributed network. And I don’t care if they are little modular nukes, small gas combined cycel, fuel cells, or windmills. The end result will be the same. Very expensive power.
I shudder at the maintenance nightmare alone.
That’s the trade-off: price vs. redundancy. One, super-massive power plant would give immense economies of scale, but would also be a single-point failure that would take down whatever country was dependent on it (see Aswan).
Agreed. The smaller ones I’ve read about can be packaged as a modular, over-the-road haulable unit. A network of power sources (one per medium-sized town) that can share power as needed would be a LOT more robust than what we have now.
Where is D.D. Harriman when we need him
He’s changed his name to Elon Musk.
Par for the course.
I checked out the nut case who thinks women who can talk to plants recently. (Yeah, morbid habit.)
“Building houses in ways that don’t require heating in winter or cooling in the summer. ”
“We will learn to be autonomous again and make our own clothes, food, furniture, houses, soaps, detergent products – or maybe someone else will make them but most things can be handmade and it’s so much more rewarding.”
“In a biophilic world, nothing is garbage, nothing is pollution. Everything is conceived so as to be part of a life cycle. This doesn’t mean we should keep the same toothbrush for 50 years or never improve on our machines, technology and infrastructure, but there’s no such thing as a dump, or toxic spilling. All materials should be harmless, recyclable or biodegradable, given back the earth if we no longer need them.”
This, after a mass murdering fantasy where women wipe out most men for vague charges, and then force the survivors into lives of virtually total isolation where they might have contact with a woman if she decides to. And — “Men would have to care for themselves on their own: food, laundry, etc. No male above his age of puberty would be allowed to receive any kind of service from a female.” She thinks that men will live to about 40 under this regime — not 40 days, mind you, but 40 years.
I have found footage of her demonstrating how such a lifestyle can be lived:
The problems likely to be experienced by non-singing women are as yet unaddressed.
She’s a flower of privilege who has never had to make most of what she uses. In the village we didn’t make all, but we made much of it, simply because everyone was poor. TRUST me there aren’t enough hours in the day to support a civilized existence. This precious flower would die in ten days, taking her regime with her.
Oh, that’s because of MEN. The first thing you do is reduce the population by “euthanizing” enough men for vaguely defined crimes. Once we get rid of them, everything will be easy.
You mean without men breaking a field with a plow and a team of horses will be transformed into light work? Wow!
It’s the magical power of estrogen that will make it so. Really. I read it in Jezabel or Salon so it must be true.
She thinks women can talk to plants. What did you expect?
The full glory here, but be warned, she can infuriate.
http://witchwind.wordpress.com/2014/10/07/utopia-what-would-a-womens-society-look-like/
And she thinks that being read is some kind of persecutation. (She can write, without shame, of “verbal and written battery” — that is, criticism.)
I now have a new vision of Hell.
No, no! Don’t you understand? That’s Paradise!
(Hack, spit! Whew! Almost choked on that one.)
Even she herself admits that it isn’t realistic:
I dream for concrete, down-to-earth, simple and easily applicable measures of stepping out of patriarchy into a female-loving, biophilic world. This isn’t by any means a realistic plan of how to achieve it, but just reading it makes me feel happy. It makes it feel more real, more possible.
Along with everything else no plowing and no keeping or killing of animals. No sense.
But she feels. And she’s happy.
Food comes from the Supermarket, donchewknow….
While she is at it: no plowing the earth. Also the end of all those terrible men’s industries.
Because you can live on picking berries all year round….
I knew it! Even the PLANET gets uppity when men are around! 🙂
I made the mistake of reading her blog. Yes, the even the planet gets uppity because of men. (She says no more plowing. She doesn’t say it in this particular blog post but I will bet that she views plowing as men raping the earth…)
Our colleges create this.
“I now have a new vision of Hell.”
If you put this woman in a work of fiction, people would shriek that she’s a cardboard cut-out and real people aren’t like that.
Don’t know. Some argue that Ayn Rand used cardboard figures and structures and she managed. Log it with post apocalyptic fantasy and it might just find a market.
I mean the woman blogging, not the chessmen she moves about in her little fantasy.
I read that it is quite hard for adults who try to enter an Amish life simply because of the daily work entailed. This, when Amish are quite willing to enter into commerce and do not insist on producing everything for themselves.
Full self-sufficiency? The idea of production of clothing alone! Of course she shall start with building the necessary tools for doing the processing from raising the animals and crops for fiber, sheering and harvesting, carding, spinning, weaving and sewing to produce the final garment! It might be easier to start with learning to hunt, skin and tan hides.
Followed Mary’s link (see above) to the woman’s fantasy. Oh, my.
She doesn’t seem to think…
she can talk to plants because she’s one?
she’s dumber than plants. She might be on a good day as smart as a rock.
I had am ficus once that seemed to have it more together.
I look down as I press the button to post and see: AM. Dang. A…
I am sorry, but I think you meant you saw a ficus that seemed to have it more together.
“Protected feelings are false feelings.”
That’s an insult to plants. [Evil Grin]
Especially not about the fact that most of us women will relinquish our sons, mates, fathers, brothers, and male friends over our dead bodies, and a number of us are good shots. (even if she some how neutralized the possibility of the men themselves going ‘oh hell no!’)
YES!
If you read her blog, you have a morbid fascination, but you will discover the truth of Chesterton’s observation that a madman has often lost not his reason but everything else but his reason. She has thought things through and come up with a system that is hermetically sealed from reality, but consistent.
Projecting her own violent fantasies on men so that they, not she, are “necrophiliac” takes a lot of thinking. And like non-Euclidean geometry, it only works on her own premises.
OK, now I am going to have to post the Cat story about Rada and Zabet vs. the anti-males.
So, to maintain the population (I assume aside from reducing men, she probably wants overall human population reduced as well), and accounting for the male children culled, I’m sure under her new regime women will be required to do their part and give birth to at least 4-5 children, right?
And since we’re all living under Craft conditions, I’m sure she can barter some chickens for Hand Crafted birth control pills….
What would she need contraception for? No sexual intercourse allowed.
‘Fathers’ rights will cease to exist. There is no such thing as fatherhood — as we all know, it’s a myth. Men will necessarily lose all and any power to dominate and control women’s reproductive capacities.
It’s the inalienable right of each woman to control every phase of her reproduction and life creation. ”
“The number of children and human population will naturally decrease to sustainable levels, so will the number of males born. Women will be free to experiment parthenogenesis or procreation with two female eggs.”
Oh, I’m sure there would be sexual intercourse allowed, but women could all take care of each other’s needs in that respect, except for the few times that they need a man to actually get them pregnant. And, of course, they might just go with the turkey baster method for that, handled by male-handling specialists, to keep the majority from having to deal with icky men.
But most of us LIKE men!
You obviously need to be re-educated.
Lesbians aren’t crazy like she is, they don’t hate men, they’re just not sexually attracted to them.
Forget about being able to live an Amish life, I she could live the life of a 1930’s woman. She couldn’t handle the life everyone lived before convenience foods and modern appliances including refrigerators.
As I said, these people are the ultimate pampered flowers.
Nope. “PIV [sexual intercourse] would be illegal too of course, as well as the initiation of any verbal or physical contact to women and girls or boy children, unless solicited by a woman for specific matters.”
She’s so weak and terrified of men and women who disagree with her that she wilts faster than a corsage. I’ve seen souffles that were more resistant than she is.I think that she needs some medication for her GAD.
“You obviously need to be re-educated.”
To be precise, she’s been colonized by men and needs to be freed.
That is not as evident in this post, but it sprawls all over the rest of the blog.
One of her early points is that PIV will be made illegal.
IIRC this woman is the one who believes that women can have children without male sperm. IE no need to keep men around except maybe for heavy labor.
Not just the heavy labor but the dirty work:
“In order to keep all men and post-pubescent boys busy, we’d send them to clean up the vast amounts of detritus, pollution and toxic wastes men have littered and almost killed the world with. Much of the damage to the earth is irreversible, however with a great deal of effort and genius, women will find sustainable, natural and simple ways of healing a lot of the damage men have caused, and send men off to do the dirty work. No man will be allowed to take any decision without female guidance. We know what happens when men decide on their own! DISASTER.”
“Almost killed the Earth” — ah, the hubris.
It’s a fricking huge planet. our influence on it is MINIMAL even now.
“… with a great deal of effort and genius …”
Somehow I doubt the writer’s estimation of the necessary amount of the former ingredient accurately measures the actual quantity required.
Fortunately there is always an abundance of that latter ingredient.
RES,
The amount of BS she’s putting out she could keeps shoveling shit for it a while.
Women will be free to experiment with parthenogenesis and procreation with two female eggs, because nature changes when guys disappear.
Mental help is needed for this chick.
Oh, yeah.
The meglomania is more in evidence here, but she’s a paranoiac as well, she thinks getting a lot of hit is evidence someone’s going to harm her.
Then, they are closely related. When doctors successfully treat a paranoiac, they’ve learned they have to keep a close watch on the patient to see if they then need to treat him for depression at the realization that no, people aren’t that preoccupied with him.
Because the technology will still exist, laying around in lab somewhere for the women to use, because a subsistence-level society certainly won’t have the resources available to maintain them.
They’d still want the pill because they fought so hard for it, you know….
‘Fathers’ rights will cease to exist. There is no such thing as fatherhood — as we all know, it’s a myth.
1. My father will be surprised to hear that, as will my brother.
2. I’m always amused at the prog tendency to use “as we all know” thinking it will make their lies true.
“Let me be clear…”
“…I’m about to snow you all.”
No need for Birth Control pills. PIV is to be banned and men are to be kept isolated from society and each other.
Hey, add all the leading zeroes you want.
(Leading Zero. Adds nothing but padding to any variable. Hmm, who could that apply to…
And obviously, what you are thinking is racist.)
TOTALLY racist. The SCOAMF has a new nickname in THIS house.
I just get a little annoyed if, say, someone with a background in pure activism, no technical, fabrication, industrial or even hobby craft background, insists that there are vast swaths of untapped inefficiencies to fix, and that if engineers et al. would just listen to them, things would be solved competently.
As they say, “put up or shut up.”
Or, more politely:
“Oh, dear person, if you are so sure you can do better– go DO so, and drive me out of business.”
Ah, but you see in their minds any success you have is due to white male privilege, and thus unearned by your hard work and sensible business practices. In other words you cheated to get where you are, so they need the government to put you out of business. Once your unfair methods have been banned theirs will naturally come into prominence as the right and just way to do things. And we will all live happily together existing on the milk of human kindness and unicorn farts.
All together now: if you on the right have any success it’s because you cheated. If those on the left fail, it’s because you cheated. So any nasty evil unlawful tricks they may have to pull to swing things in their favor are automatically justified because they had to you cheaters you.
Or, as the Developers I work for put it:
“Patches Welcome”.
On the other hand, a substantial part of my job is telling college educated engineers “No, you can’t do it this way.”
When I wrote what I wrote, I did so remembering something I’d recently heard. This guy was talking about incidents, some fatal, some maiming, some very near things. This included a warning, directed at engineers, not to overestimate what utility the degree necessarily had.
A piece of paper doesn’t make one immune to workplace hazards any more than it makes one bullet proof.
Yes, often followed with, “I know you’ve never operated X*, but have you ever SEEN X operated?”
*values of X range from a framing hammer to an excavator.
We have computer-aided engineering screw-ups, where two fasteners go through each side of a corner, and are lined up with each other. On the computer, they clear each other just fine, but there’s no room to actually get the nut on between the two of them, or a wrench for that matter. But hey, “Align to grid” is a great function for making things line up neatly….
Now if the computer model for the nut included tool clearances for assembly verification, that would be a godsend.
You are using the same modeling software Ford uses?
At least when working on a Toyota I can claim they were designed by Japanese with little hands.
It gets a bit weirder than that. We use Fasteners called Hilocks, and the “Nuts” (we call them collars) are designed to break in half at a particular torque. The top half has the hex, the bottom half has the threads. The computer models don’t include the top half, which is what is often in the way of those should-have-been orthogonal fasteners.
(Not to mention the wrench and the allen key that holds the bolt in position, They have no recesses in the heads.)
Wealth is a mixed blessing for a nation.
On the one hand; it helps shelter us from the snarling, biting reality.
On the other hand; that insulation removes awareness of that same reality, giving us successive (and increasing) generations of reality-impaired marching morons.
Until – “The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!”
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
You know, I want to see a collection of ACTUAL Copybook Headings.
Behold: http://www.memoriapress.com/curriculum/penmanship That came up first. I’ll have to dig a little for less religious versions, but I recall them being out there.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Universal-Penman-George-Bickham/dp/1607964082/
http://www.amazon.com/Spencerian-Penmanship-Copybook-Rogers-Spencer/dp/0880620838
Both are copies of rather old ones. 😀
The introduction is interesting to this one. In a way, copybooks were the “Font Files” of the day.
That went wrong, it was supposed to be on the first one.
There is also John Smith’s, “You don’t work, you dont eat.”
Smith was cribbing from a much, much earlier source.
Said earlier by Saint Paul.
Paul,
Yes, but Jamestown was the real world application of the principle.
Where the rubber met the pavement.
Theory vs. Reality.
P.S. This is one of the basic principles that an AC society must understand, accept and be based on. Moochers and Looters can not be tolerated. *Stepping off my soapbox.* (I get accused of having based my phylisophy in a fantisy and not in reality.)
Josh,
For your attention:
How Adam Smith can change your life for the better
Adam Smith theorized that cultural morals moved just like free markets.
By Kyle Smith
[SNIP]
That’s how you make the world a better place: by recognizing that you are part of a system and simply being a better person.
And yet the villain of “Moral Sentiments” is the “man of system” — the one who seeks to redesign everything according to some master plan, as if society were pieces on a chess board. Such men don’t understand that each individual chess piece has a mind and goal and aspirations of his own, perhaps “altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it,” Smith wrote.
Moreover, thanks to self-deceit, men of system might even be reluctant to admit when their plans fail. “Those leaders themselves,” warned Smith, “become many of them in time the dupes of their own sophistry.”
A master visionary who can never confess to being wrong? Nah. Surely one of those will never come along.
RES,
I like Kyle Smith review and will be reading Russ Roberts book.
I like this part here:
RES,
I like Kyle Smith review and will be reading Russ Roberts book.
I like this part here:
…which just happens to come before the snippet you posted. And, if not as elegantly put, is a position I advocate Being a Free-market Anarchist. Which leads to a book a recommend if we are going to talk about systems to, “The 5th Discipline” by Peter M. Senge, layered on top of it “Antifragile” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
The snippet you posted has the recognition of the two types of people, that I’ve noticed, that deal in systems. Those that want to understand them, so as to be better able to function in them, and those that want to manipulate them & create them for specific ends. The latter being the ones that tended to muck sh*t up, if there isn’t a great deal of understanding how the system actually works or will work.
Thanks for the book recommendation it’s on the list.
[Sorry forgot a / in front of the closing blockquote.]
😦
Have to wait till Oct. 9 for the book.
Patients is not my strong suit.
This conversation always has the best lines! I’m stealing “The technical term for a human being who is in harmony with the natural world is “fertilizer”. Perfect.
You are welcome to it. They myth of the noble savage living in peace with all the happy animals and trees is a very prevalent one, but has no basis in reality. Pre-industrial peoples spend most of their time and energy fighting against the wilderness, not “communing” with it.
Sierra Club types who “get back to nature” have the benefit of thousands of years of technological progress, in terms of manufactured clothing, shelter, medicines, and the fact that other people have risked their lives removing most of the large predators.
I would love to drop a handful of these wealthy nature worshipers into some real wilderness naked, with no tools or weapons, and see how the survivors feel about nature after a few weeks.
First set of questions for those wanting to live “in harmony” with nature:
When you poop in the woods …
… how far from your campsite do you go?
… with what do you wipe your bum?
… how deeply do you bury the waste?
… how do you wash your hands afterward (what about fecal contamination of the water?)
Oh, go easy on them. Give them a supply of flint, and some pre-sharpened sticks. Those should give them the chance to start making things to survive with before they simply die.
then they can hunt the dangerous morel and asparagus. Though they likely would have to eat everything raw. Fires got too much carbon release!
I like morels and asparagus; fried in butter they go great with venison.
I had a cousin who decided she was going to be a vegetarian in high school. After taking some college she went to Africa with the Peace Corps. When she came back she was as much of a carnivore as I am, and would eat about anything (she goes on about how good water buffalo is, and compares giraffe to antelope, etc.). She said if you didn’t eat meat there; you didn’t eat.
She is a very nice lady now, with a hard working husband, two beautiful kids, a nice garden, a coop full of laying hens, and a pantry full of tuna and salmon that they caught and canned themselves. Some people do wake up when reality knocks, just all to few of them.
Empathetic and imaginative is assumed to describe the left. Happy is understood to mean something like untroubled by the existence of those on the right.
In other words, those with no emotional discipline, and so little intellectual depth and ability as to be essentially identical, and a goal that the school could not carry out even by killing people.
And this is why we can’t have nice things. You types of people always take what someone says and twist it and spindle it and mutilate it until you make lovely sentiments sound STUPID. And that is why all RightThinkingPeople (TM) hate you and people like you.
Subtlety can be hazardous.
Right Thinking People hate me?
>shrug<
Got a coke?
And popcorn.
Actually, I think “Right thinking people” is what lefties ironically call themselves. Their Irony is wasted on themselves.
As I recall, “Right Thinking People” was a term of derision for the “Love it or Leave it” crowd, as illustrated by Dan O’Neill in his satiric Odd Bodkins comic strip (running in the San Francisco Chronicle from 1964-70), especially in the person of Sam, the 100% American Dog.
That contemporary Lefties self-identify with the term, even mockingly, reveals much about the staleness of their poses.
Yes. I know.
People will say they like you for all sorts of reasons, but they’ll only hate you for who you are. Want to really know a person? Look at his enemies.
Sadly, not true– to paraphrase Sheen, there’s not one in a hundred who hate what the Church actually is, rather than what they MISTAKENLY BELIEVE it to be, and that carries over to any group that frustrates a desire.
I’ve been hated for being a whore, a liar and a lazy thief, sometimes by good people. Bad information covers a lot of land.
Often they will hate you for not being what they think you are, for not fulfilling their stereotype. One sign of that is accusations of hypocrisy.
Studies have demonstrated that much of Blue America has no understanding of Red America … and hates them all the more for that lack of understanding.
http://neoneocon.com/2014/10/04/red-tribe-blue-tribe/
Yeah, check out the hate-fest the ill-advised #IAmARepublican hashtag turned into.
I’ve actually read a fundamentalist coming to a Catholic blog and chiding us for quoting the Bible when we shouldn’t be, as we’re Catholics.
And then there are the fundamentalists who come to enlighten us Catholics. Who often can be scared off by quoting Scripture at them.
“Why do you have to tell the truth?”
I do not take seriously claims or citicisms of our school systems that their purpose is “to create a more useful workforce”. If this is the purpose of our school system, it is in much worse shape than commonly attributed.
“To create a more useful workforce” was once the purpose (in the broadest meaning), but the Left has gotten away from that. Which is why that person’s comment is so stupid. She’s complaining about something that doesn’t exist anymore. [Frown]
ah yup.
School is for sequestering children so that parents can do or not do whatever they want. Oh and government indoctrination. What else could it be for?
I am trying to resist the temptation to quote myself, but I have other temptations to resist and only so much willpower to go round, so the heck with it:
See, if the allowed their dreams to Progress beyond 1945 they would have to face that Stalin was a monster bigger than any in Germany, that socialism produces nothing but misery, and that they have allowed their brains to degenerate into moldy oatmeal.
Yep.
Not only does the “more useful workers” education system no longer exist (try expressing a desire to become a precision welder in high school these days…I suppose the last example of actual “more useful workers” edumacation was the STEM grads immediately post-Sputnik), what any last vestige of that is the complete and utter domination of the field of education by people who already think like her.
She’s pretty much complaining about the victory conditions from the perspective of the occupying power.
Ah: Missing word. Should read:
“…what replaced any last vestige of that is…”
Teaching Useful Workers went out with the last High School Shop class. I can almost see the demarcation of that date among my co-workers.
The tech schools are doing some good work, hopefully they will stay off SJW radar.
When I started at the Big Airplane company, they put everyone through classes for the first 10 weeks or so. A lot of it was stuff on reading the specs and company policies and such, but then there was a lot of work in the “High bay” where we learned how to use the tools. Some people were pretty hopeless.
Nope. The tech schools are firmly on their radar. Engineering schools in ALL colleges get daily assaults on being too male, too white/Asian, and too damn picky about maintaining standards.
I meant the two schools turning out functional techs. Engineering schools have been going downhill since before I went.
two year schools, dang stupid fingers
“Wouldn’t it be nice if the point of education wasn’t to make a more useful workforce, but to make happy, imaginative and empathetic humans?”
What the silly individual who originally wrote this fails to realize is that this was already part of the purpose of the basic K-12 education. It was covered in all of the stuff by those dead white males that the writer and his/her cohorts keep trying to cut from the curriculum. Now admittedly, not everyone who goes through a K-12 education picks up on all of that. But that has more to do with the educatee than it does with the educator. To twist an old saying, you can lead a student to material. But you can’t force the student to learn.
LOL I’m reminded of a discussion I had with some kids back when I were a student at one of these institutions of so-called “higher learning”, and they started to wail about the evils of slavery.
My take: “Slavery wasn’t that bad.”
Gasps.
[continuing] “It all depends on which end of the whip you’re standing. If you’re on the handle side, it’s fantastic.”
That was my lesson for them about the evils of moral relativism.
Beautifully done. *applauds*
I get the same treatment for making the observation that the end of colonialism made things WORSE for several nations; the best examples of which include the Middle East and Africa, or in the case of some places, being colonized brought about improvements.
Doesn’t fit with the ‘colonialism, evil bad nogoodthink denounce as history’ brainwashing that goes on.
In America slave-holding was an expensive and challenging hobby*. The care and upkeep were demanded by society, and the supervisory requirements more onerous than any other type of chattel. For example, the owner was legally responsible for a slave’s thefts.
Renting Irish laborers, as was practiced by Yankees, was much more practical. No requirement to pay living (or even adequate) wages, no need to provide medical, vacation or pensions benefits and when broken down they could be
discardeddismissed.*Hobby, as in an avocation whose practice does not cover its cost
That’s a charming hypothesis, but not borne out by the facts. One of the most profitable industries in the older parts of the South (where intensive tobacco farming had impoverished the soil, and King Cotton did not reign), after the importation of slaves was stopped, was the breeding plantation. It was extremely profitable to breed slaves, and to train them for various sorts of labour; and that would not have been the case if slave labour itself had not been profitable to the buyers of those slaves.
Yep, there may have been *more* profitable way to do things, but slavery was profitable. IMO it’s only when a slave economy has to compete with a free economy that slavery becomes “unprofitable”.
Slave holders rented Irish whenever the jobs were too dangerous for the slaves.
RES, do you have some documentation for this or are you just repeating “what everybody knows?” I’ve spent a fair amount of time researching industry in the antebellum and post civil war and as far as I’ve been able to tell, underpayment didn’t happen by and large. Admittedly there were exceptions, but they tended to be crooked contractors and such taking advantage of people right off the boat. The biggest problem in that period was labor shortages and underpaying people was a good way to lose your workforce.
It was in the nature of a facetious comment. I make those occasionally.
My own (philosophical) analysis of the matter suggests that being a slaveholder imposed a tremendous psychological cost which few at that time had the perspective to notice. Holding that power over another person would be tremendously corrupting.
It’s got a psychological cost for society, too. The South is still working on dealing with all the weirdness produced by having a slave-based economy. For that matter, it’s been theorized that one of the reasons Southern Italy is, and has been, such a basket case is ripple effects from the latifundia.
Alentejo, in Portugal. Same system.
“It’s got a psychological cost for society, too. The South is still working on dealing with all the weirdness produced by having a slave-based economy.”
Considering the fact that basically the WHOLE WORLD had a slave-based economy not all that long ago, I don’t feel like that is the cause of the South’s ‘weirdness.’
Yeah but they had to do the mental gymnastics / squaring the circle of putting a slave society and the declaration of independence.
I have a family connection to those days when noblemen didn’t know how to read or do arithmetic. In Ireland, nobleman didn’t have to write or figure, he probably had a Quinn. The name is like Baker or Tanner, it originated with people who worked the profession. Quinn originated in several different places in Ireland, it was the guy who got a gig as an alterboy just so he could learn how to read from the priest, and taught his sons, perhaps daughters.
Wouldn’t it be nice if twits stopped tweeting jejune banalities under the impression they were profound?
Now you are just talking crazy talk.
Twitter, with its 140 character limit, was DESIGNED for banalities.
Ah, but for those blessed few who can deliver wisdom and wit with an economy of words, it’s wonderful.
Iowahawk comes to mind
Same here.
Aw rats, I thought you were referring to MY comment… 🙂
Dude, it’s in the word. TWITter.
As my Scot friends would say “it does what it says on the tin.”
“That’s not fair!”
Every parent has heard it. And we all know the correct response. No, it’s not fair,, and you’d better get used to it because (to steal the most important clause from the post) reality doesn’t care. Reality is bloody indifferent to fairness. Reality does not care about your sense of entitlement or fairness. Reality does not care about what you believe you deserve.
As William Munny said, “deserve’s got nothing to do with it.”
Hot-house flowers believe the hothouse is the natural state of affairs, that they are entitled to the hothouse and all its benefits. They cannot exist other than briefly without the ongoing intervention and labor of those who build and maintain the hothouse.
“Life is pain! Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.”
— The Man in Black
To be just, when a child complains that something’s not fair, it’s often not reality that’s imposing it.
Something for which the child should be supremely grateful.
Not always. Sometimes parents break their promises for no good reason and jeer at the kid for minding.
“Life’s not fair!”
“You’re right, son. When you were an infant and came down with pneumonia, you were in America and we could get you antibiotics and you lived. You get to have an education instead of having to labor in the fields all day just to grow enough food to eat. Life’s unfair in YOUR favor.”
*Pout* *Stomp*
Specifically, what he thought was unfair was that he has slacked off on his school work and has to make it up of a Saturday while his brother is having his birthday party.
I think the problem with a lot of these SJW comes from those who raised them.
I’m going to write this little anecdote down for future use.
Go for it. I did abbreviate my lecture somewhat from what my son actually got.
It might be worth noting that the “more productive” part was largely for the benefit of the workforce, not the employer.
I wonder what the degree held by this twit might be? Anything with “Studies” or even “of Arts” in the title likely was not intended to create a more productive workforce … rather the opposite, in fact.
Not so long ago the costs, both in cash and in opportunity, of a college degree was such that any family able to afford it was already amongst the fiscally secure. The purpose of advanced degrees was to enable the recipients to better enjoy their wealth through appreciation of the finer and subtler of life’s pleasures. It also provided access to networking opportunities (called fraternities and sororities) that served to enhance your post-graduate prospects.
Which is why, as a tool of the rich, the left wants instead for EVERYONE to get a college degree (the first year of make-up classes to teach what the High Schools failed to teach alone are worth it!). Saddling them all with bankruptcy-proof debt is what forces them to be productive workers.
“Studies” and “Arts” classes are also counterproductive for “happy”- since they seem to be designed to create unhappy, complaining neurotics; and for “imagination” – since they seem to generally be taught from a authoritarian, we (re-)define the language, no argument allowed stance.
To quote something I’m working on – which at this point I’m certain will never get put out there – “The land of ‘What-If’ is quite beautiful, but you often can’t get there from here’.”
They should pray to what ever God they don’t believe in that things never become fair. If they did, they’d find their standard of living and freedoms greatly reduced. Fair is someone who’s stronger than you taking whatever he wants at the point of a weapon while you and yours get by on what’s left behind.
These nimrod’s definition of fair isn’t going to come close to being real unless and until replicators and other singularity type technologies are invented. The irony is that it’s the type of capitolism they loath so much that is most likely to bring those things about.
“That’s when I said, ‘Fair is where you go to show cows and pigs and eat deep-fried thing-on-a-stick.’ ” Ag teacher at Ruralville High talking to a co-worker in line at the Ruralville bakery one morning.
Yes.
…until replicators…
Ah, but think upon this point: As we move into the home manufacturing revolution, whats one of the first things, besides replicating the replicator, that people are making? Guns.
That’s the main thing ST (mostly ST:TNG) got wrong: In a post scarcity society, people are still going to be people, grievances are still going to be grievances, and there would no doubt be some who replicate themselves a phaser, hoist the black flag, and settle some scores. Heck, Roddenberry only put ST a couple hundred years in the future. People are being beheaded today as revenge for the frigging Crusades, so it would be completely plausible if there were Federation citizens extracting revenge for the Cold War, or the abandonment of Georgia to the Tsar’ bez rubashki, or the Azores Tsunami response (wait, that hasn’t happened yet, nevermind).
All we can say for sure is that a post scarcity society will be different.
Well, Star Trek’s post-scarcity world followed a rough couple of centuries. Presumably those who couldn’t get over a grudge didn’t make it through.
That’s why so much is not allowed.
They’re not allowed religion. They’re not allowed politics. Their food has to be productive (the Chocolate Sundae talk from Troi). They’re not supposed to be loud. They’re not supposed to put themselves forward much, and improvising is a sure fire way to STAY a fairly low-level enlisted (O’brien’s backstory. He was freaking Audie Murphy with improvised tech, even if the Cardassians were more Japanese than German.) Having family that is not With The Program is embarrassing (Worf’s human brother.)
You follow the Expectations, or you’re gone– and they’re not too keen on punishing their own people who harm non-Feddies, too. (The clones that Riker killed for being unauthorized, various Next Generation groups.)
It’s happy face fascism.
Contrast that with Babylon 5, which happily acknowledged the importance of religion in societies. And it wasn’t just those weird alien cultures, either. The main human characters aren’t religiously inclined like Delenn or G’Kar (iirc, Ivanova’s the only character that ever has her religion come up, and she’s keeping it at arm’s length), but JMS also didn’t pretend that the current human religions suddenly vanished when mankind reached the stars. They show up from time to time, and some of the best moments in some of the episodes feature religion prominently (and those aren’t moments with Vorlons).
“No Hiding Place” in particular.
Eh, if it were possible to have a post-scarcity society, we would be in one. Homeless shelters require — to make them fit for human habitation — amenities that kings and queens and emperors of two centuries ago would gape at in envy, since they could not get them at any price, and the homeless can get them for free.
America IS one for people who are able to follow basic rules.
We still export more wealth than any other country.
Isn’t it odd, we’re so evil (ask prezzy o he’ll tell you) but we do so much for the rest of the world. Proof there is no God? Or proof the libtards have their sensory apparatus wedged firmly in their cloacal vents?
Nyah — all that “good” we do the rest of the world is just our way of making them indebted to and dependent on us. And we don’t do near as much good as we might if only we weren’t threatening so many with our military. Besides, we are making (ewwww) profits on a lot of what we do for the world, so that doesn’t count.
I hope to God that was sarcasm.
Every once and a while I wish to have 48hrs to be everything the libs claim I am. Two days without moral consequence. Am I weird to desire this?
I have noticed or years that one of the identifying characteristics of the Liberal Establishment is the puerile nature of their dreams and wishes.
I have a half an idea floating around (please, somebody steal this and run with it) that involves Peter Pan and Captain Hook being psychic vampires, working in collusion, who live by draining the imagination from humans. The lost boys are victims; until they get away their dreams will never take on the adult power that marks the fantasy about fighting pirates as less than the aspiration to explore uncharted seas and establish new trade routes.
And this person’s tweet reminds me of that idea. They have clearly been intellectually stunted by overexposure to Leftist Idiocy.
Once Upon a Time has a take something like that on Pan (but Hook, though he’s in the story, isn’t part of the scheme). It’s amazing how little has to be altered from Barrie’s portrayal to get a really dark villain.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if the point of education wasn’t to make a more useful workforce, but to make happy, imaginative and empathetic humans?”
There is a far greater overlap between these two positive things than is generally appreciated.
Bing!
I think that observation even fits in the Twitter length limit mentioned earlier.
Shows what a troglodyte I am.. I thought the mechanism for training up happy, imaginative and empathetic humans was the family. Least it was in my case. School was for other stuff.
Further, those cupcake-brained Eloi who spouted that nonsense better hope I never become Evil Overlord because I will take statements like that as admission they don’t know how to raise their kids, and will punish … appropriately.
To be fair, there are more than a few happy, imaginative and empathetic kids who go to school having learned those things from their families and then get them squashed out of them there. However, I suspect at least as much of that squashing comes from other kids indulging their bucket-of-crabs bullying impulses as it does from inflexible teachers or curricula.
Either way, though, you’d think someone more interested in preventing that would be more interested in finding supporting other methodologies, rather than wasting time being incensed that a mechanistic system is oriented towards mechanistic results.
Isn’t ” happy, imaginative and empathetic humans” a pretty good description of the Eloi? Or, one of the blob people from Wal-E, if you want to use a more modern example.
The Eloi never particularly struck me as imaginative.
You want a perfect, inarguable example of an “happy, imaginative, and empathic humans”, then good examples are the Christian missionaries that are working so hard to help those with Ebola right now in West Africa.
And that some idiot at Slate criticized the other day.
Do you remember the movie about revolutionaries persecuting Christians in Mexico? I think it was in Slate that the reviewer took the (true) story of the boy killed for not blaspheming and blamed the boy. On the grounds that he was asked to make a trivial speech.
About the blob people from Wal-E, something that grated on me pretty hard when watching the movie: Why *exactly* given this civilization’s automation technology and environment, was being phycally fit relevant? They’re generation-ship colonists, not nomadic hunters. (head-desk). At least, until their captain takes them back to Earth to presumably return to the caves. (head-desk).
I know. I shouldn’t get sucked into the stupid of trying to employ logic in a Hollywood setting.
Why is it that every cultural parable I’ve encountered seems to be aimed pointedly at people like me anyway?
I am a technophile, hard-science loving, speculative science-loving, exploration loving industrialist nerd.
I am the modern world’s antichrist, it seems.
I believe it was a symbolic — because visible — representation of how their lives were devoid of actual work and so of meaning.
I think the (new) traditional answer is, “OK, I checked my privilege, and it thinks you are an idiot too.”
I’m waiting for a chance to use:
*unzips pants* “Yup, it’s still there.”
Need to send that to my husband, and inform him that when he uses it on anyone, I can pipe up something like “And it gets plenty of exercise, thank you very much for asking.”
On a slightly coarser (can this get any coarser? Of course it can!) note, next time somebody starts grousing about insurance paying for Viagra (and similar drugs) but not paying for birth control pills and devices, consider pointing out that Viagra (etc.) is primarily for the benefit of women.
After all, a man can orgasm without achieving or maintaining a rigid erection. That is for the partner’s use.
Viagra fixes something that’s not working correctly. The Pill breaks something that’s working fine. If medical insurance is going to pay for either of those, paying for Viagra makes more sense. One cannot make Mr. Manly operate properly just by an act of will (alas), but one can easily keep one’s legs closed.
That is an argument that is obvious and has been used (unsuccessfully – they are immunized against logic) against the femmebots since they first started complaining about the disparate treatment. My proposed rebuttal is for the amusement of their sputtering indignation in response.
most insurance DOESN’T cover viagra. And most insurance DOES cover pills for medical condition purposes. Given the mess known as my hormones, I was on the pill for three years (because bleeding uncontrollably all the time puts a damper on your life. Also gives you anemia.) And it was the pill that costs $50 a pop because it has highly specialized levels of hormones. They paid. No problem.
Sorry, Dona Hoyt, that (and my wife’s similar experience) does not align with the Approved Narrative, so it’s obviously Not Possible. And Racist.
Funny, my wife’s birth control was covered for many years, if only under the prescription discount plan. It would have cost about the same as Viagra.
Please note that I specifically referred to Leftoid grousing, not actual facts. If facts* mattered to Leftoids they wouldn’t be Leftish. See comment by FlyingMike, above.
*Please note that cherry-picked facts taken out of context are not the same thing as actual facts used in reasoned discussion.
Well, the other purposes of education are:
“A sound mind in a sound body” – so you can be a more effective Greek member of the landowning and voting class.
“To create gentlemen who carry themselves with grace, speak correctly, and demonstrate integrity in all things” – so you can be a more effective member of the Chinese administrative class. (That’d be Confucius.) And “speak correctly” is the rhetorical skills you’d need to give good oral reports or compose the written ones.
“….proclaiming the way of salvation to all men, revealing the life of Christ to those who believe, and assisting them with unremitting care so that they may be able to attain to the fullness of that life… to contribute effectively to the welfare of the world of men and to work for the extension of the kingdom of God, so that by living an exemplary and apostolic life, [students] may be, as it were, a saving leaven in the community.” – (That’s from a Vatican II document on Christian education.) That’s about the closest to what they’re asking for, but it still expects students to be given life skills for work as well as for worship.
Somebody who doesn’t know how to do anything for himself isn’t in control of his life, and therefore he will not be happy. It is certainly important to learn solid philosophical and/or religious principles, so that you can have a greater purpose behind your work and your life. But first you have to be able to survive long enough to follow your greater purpose.
Ye olde classical education, when it was the province of Greeks and Romans, was indeed partly to make happy and imaginative humans–in their terms of ‘happy,’ by which they meant ‘virtuous and fitting into society,’ by which they meant a lot of things that we would not consider one bit virtuous, but also some things we would like. A classical education, aka liberal education, was an education for a free man–that is, one who was wealthy enough that he didn’t have to work and had time for lots of other pleasant things, because he had slaves to do all that other boring stuff for him. And so we actually have one ideal of education that involves teaching a child to love the good, the true, and the beautiful and to exercise virtue in public and private life.
Even until pretty recently, a liberal/classical education was for somebody who could count on having enough money and resources that he could have a nice intellectual job. The rest of us got apprenticeships or vo-tech educations or whatever, so as to eat and pay rent. But now we all have to eat and pay rent, and we all think college is necessary, and almost none of us have trust funds or anything handy like that.
As a result, we now have colleges with two clashing missions in one institution. We’ve got liberal education ideals, which is all about broadening the mind and cultivating the life of the mind and whatnot (OK, and more recently, silly Marxist theory), which is where we get art history majors and comparative literature majors (like me!). And then we also have this idea that education should have a paying job at the end of it, which colleges are maybe not always quite so good at, so we get business and engineering majors.
It so happens that I got hooked on classical education and have homeschooled with that philosophy. To my mind, the way we should fuse those two missions in our current society is to have the classical part first, and get it over with by 16-18. *Everybody* needs to be able to read, analyze, develop and express their opinions, and vote competently. That’s true whether you’re a plumber or a New York artist. Everybody also needs a job, which a classical education is a great foundation for, because once you’ve been through that you can learn anything you want, that’s what it’s for–so *then* you go and get the training for the job you’re aiming at.
So that’s my philosophy of education.
(And yes, I was a comparative literature major. Then I went to library school, so now I’m a librarian and homeschool mom both at once.)
For what it’s worth, I think you’ve got that backwards. It’s substantially easier to filter out poor ideas when one has a firm grasp of reading and writing (the gateways to further knowledge), mathematics through at least elementary calculus, physics through electromagnetism, chemistry up to organic chemistry, and biology through microbiology, and an outline of history beginning with what we now call the Middle East and ending sometime within the last 20 years, coupled with elementary philosophy (Aristotle through Kant, at least), civics (for multiple nations) and economics (both practical accounting and micro/macro theories). Upon mastering these elementary topics, one may then confidently proceed through several others, like modern chemistry, various branches of engineering, recent philosophies, economic theory since about 1900, and other sundry topics. How is it, for instance, that people can speak (much less vote) on issues related to the new water treatment plant’s introduction of fluoride into water supplies if they don’t understand the underlying chemistry or microbiology? It is pointless to discuss issues regarding the morality of imposing risks associated with fluoride in water among people who can’t calculate the correct dosage rate for the fluoride into solution – even given instructions – or explain how water moves under pressure through a pipe or comprehend the mechanism for how fluoride ingested improves and protects teeth.
No, the original observed flaw in the tweet is correctly identified by the blog post: first we make a person useful, then we teach advanced morality to those proved worthy to receive it by demonstrated mastery of the universe.
Not sure I’d go that far with the basics you list – not everyone can, to the level of detail implied – but certainly enough exposure to all those subjects to be able to at least suspect when some activist is ‘shining you on’.
I see where Jean’s coming from though: the medieval Trivium (grammar, logic, & rhetoric) were after all considered the basis for being able to think critically, to consider and discuss physical knowledge, before being educated in the more STEM-like subjects of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy – all as applications of numeracy.)
CH outlines some of my further thoughts at his blog today, so I’ll let him do the talking for me.
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2014/10/07/the-flaw-in-assortative-mating-theory/
You’ll observe he’s generally discussing why assertive mating isn’t assertive, while we’re discussing why virtue can’t be taught to people who don’t first learn to be useful from people teaching useful wisdom, knowledge, and skills, but the underlying argument is shared: our means of preparing citizens in the West has been compromised by lowered standards for excellence and spurious courses of study.
In my case, I’d covered most of the above topics before attending college.
Aside from the horrendous way everything is taught in public schools, a reasonable, and I think necessary toolbox includes:
– Foundational language, rhetoric and reasoning abilities.
– Familiarity with the vocabulary of the domains in which “we” know something.
– Familiarity with the *content* of these domains.
– Familiarity with the tools of empiricism. First order logic. Developing knowledge through refutation by experiment. Etc.
– Ability to use, perhaps barely, an inventory of analytical tools that allow “us” to pursue these domains. I’ve been noodling around with a potential book, working title: “Engineering Thinking.” There’s a dozen or so *thinking tools* in the engineering mindset that illuminate the world, if you know them. Divorced from the math and crappy presentation, they’re not terribly hard.
Not that I have an opinion…
Bierce,
Mind Tools does something similar, but don’t let that stop you. A fresh perspective or take is always welcome in my book.
My take us that we focus to much on what to teach and not enough on teaching kids the skill of how to learn.
?Mind Tools? What’s a Mind Tools?
Closest I’ve seen to what I imagine in the institutions is a (selective) college-prep STEM track at a Jesuit High School.
On a side note, I am getting way too much amusement watching the chattering classes try to cope with a Pope who’s devout, humble, and both better informed than and rhetorically superior to anything they’ve ever seen. Every time they go into a spasm, I say “He did that because Of Course He Did. He’s a Jesuit. Pope. Schmucks. What did you expect.”
Let me see…
http://www.google.com/search?q=Mind+Tools
This says…
Yeah, I did that, then got lazy – long day – and said something stupid.
Trying again… You mean these guys? w/ link. That reads to me more like work skills training. They are a thing, or they have that sophisticated a learning model? Huh.
http://www.mindtools.com/AboutMindTools.htm
I’ll let them speak for themselves.
But they promote themselves as teaching skills to help you excel at your job/career, but most of it is applicable to life in general.
😉
Acknowledging that would require them to treat any religion that doesn’t fall under ‘their *handwave* culture’ as something other than delusion or quaint outdated mythology. He threatens to make them think. And we all know how dangerous that is.
For whatever reason this came to mind:
Although the lyric I recalled was “… do what they oughta says Texas John Slaughter, and them that don’t do it, they die.”
It took awhile to dredge up Texas John Slaughter; my first thought was it was a sentiment out of Kipling.
Somewhat off topic:
As for making humans more imaginative, we have no idea if that can be done at all, but if it could it would probably counter the “happy” and it would certainly counter most politically correct strictures on our schools. Imaginative humans can think of anything. Even the unthinkable. They might not do it, but they can think it.
You know, I’ve been somewhat interested in “nootropics” (more the idea of them than their current reality. Right now, I realize most things falling under that heading are just various sorts of stimulants. Yes they work, in limited ways, but the side effects are too dangerous. And they’re all illegal as hell.)
There must be something chemically and developmentally different going on in the brain of, say, a child prodigy, vs. the rest of us. Suppose, as a science fiction prompt, that we get a good handle on what that is and can induce it (potentially along with all the other baggage that various modes of extreme high intelligence are sometimes accompanied by). Suppose you actually can “fix stupid” (or at least put your brain in a different state where learning and creativity are rapid and all consuming), in principle for as little as $10 at CVS, if it were to be legal or allowed.
What happens then?
Define Smart?
Having the ability to process large amours of data, perfect memory, knowing a lot or any other metric doesn’t mean they are not going to make mistakes, be emotional basket cases or know what to do any better than the rest of us.
Information overload and information paralyze.
PS, IMO the only good reason for education is that you want to know something. There can be many reasons why you want to know something. A lot of the things I know are entirely useless to my carreer, but I wanted to understand, so I learned it. (And even those keep popping up in all sorts of unexpected contexts as useful to some degree.)
And then there is wanting to be good at something that interests you, because no one is going to pay you to do it in preference to a guy who can actually do it well, unless you are also good at it. That’s the “arms race” aspect of education, but there is probably no escape from that any more than there is an escape from any other arms race. And who wants to suck at what they do?
—-
On the other hand, there are all sorts of reasons why various groups in society want to “educate” you. If they aren’t your parents (and in some unhappy families (not mine, thankfully) even then), and hence don’t have a direct interest in your success and wellbeing, then their reasons are seldom pure and benevolent.
Well, okay, prior to education, you might not have any idea of the things you will eventually want to know, so there is that.
And in many cases, teachers genuinely do want to teach. And Professors are delighted that there are people interested in the same things they are at the graduate level.
But there are a lot of people out there that just want to take their intransigent neighbors and “educate” them hard until they change their heathen ways. That sort of impulse makes me uneasy.
When I was stationed at Loring AFB in northern Maine, lo those many years ago, while dining at a local establishment, a buddy and I overheard a lady at the next table say in a wistful voice, “We have such a housing shortage, it would be nice if Loring closed.” She got her wish, Loring closed. The local housing market collapsed completely. But, there was no longer a housing shortage! No word on whether she was pleased on getting her wish.
I have two related comments. One, the more you actually know, the more you understand what can go wrong. (You _do not_ want my thoughts on how to do lots of things.) Two, most Liberal Progressive (SJW/GHH types) don’t really know very much. Of the Forty Four years in Indiana (since I moved back), Thirty plus, have been in “less than genteel neighborhoods.” (At one time I opened a car door with a clothes hanger, faster than the owner could have with a key. He was locked out, with keys in the ignition.)
As to “imagination going where you don’t want it to go.” Trust me, *no one* wants to go where mine can take you. I’ve worked with, drug dealers, low level mafia types (when they were young), and some truly “bad” people. I know how to do some things that I sometimes wish that I didn’t. I’ve been learning how to be the “power behind the throne,” since I was (relatively) young. D–n being King/Emperor that gets you killed in messy ways; However, being the “advisor” means no one knows (or cares) who you are.
From the Liberal/English Dictionary:
Happy: not very demanding.
Imaginative: Ungrounded in reality.
Empathic: Will support any and all social programs.
It’s fun asking people where their electricity comes from. Had someone tell me they paid extra to get all their power from a wind energy 100% green supplier. So I asked, “So, they cut your power off when the wind’s not blowing, right?” And got funny looks. Followed by, “Well, where’s the power coming from when the wind isn’t blowing?” Pretty much end of discussion.
The average American has no clue about infrastructure. Plug something in- it works. Turn a tap, water comes out. Press numbers on a cellphone, a call or text goes through. Plug in a jack or cable, and the magic box plays movies and shows. Go to the grocery store, and there’s milk, bread, and fresh fruit and veggies from all over the world, even in the middle of winter. Go the gas station, and there’s gas to fill up your car. And almost nobody concerns themselves with how this all happens, it just does.
And there are a very small minority of us who realize just how fragile the whole system is. And almost none of those people are politicians.
Reading comments, when the mental picture of sitting on the edge of an outhouse seat suddenly appeared.
Privy ledge.
Bet the results are more useful than the Privy Ledge Checkers.
I dunnow. Most of the privies/dunnies/ houses out back that I’ve been into, I check that ledge and under the rim of the seat (if it has one) pretty closely. In case of wildlife (spiders, snakes, wasps, what have you).
“Wouldn’t it be nice if the point of education wasn’t to make a more useful workforce, but to make happy, imaginative and empathetic humans?”
Ladies and Gents, I present to you the mentality that gave you the OWS movement with whatever they decided were leaders having some schmuck with a Masters degree complaining about not being able to get a job and pay for all his student loans. Why? He went for something that made him feel happy, imaginative, and possibly empathetic. Puppetry.
Hey, I got a silly idea … wanna follow in Jim Hensons footyprints? Get the degree he got while creating the Muppets …. Home Economics. It might have taught you why you suck at getting that useless bit of velum paid for.
It has only been two weeks after THE EVENT, and the whole world seems to be in a handbasket with me along for the ride.
Hugs, sweetie. Here in THIS handbasket, we have ribbons and Kate says this handbasket is so fast we’ll glance off heck and back again. Hang in there. You have us.
The devil will take one look at this handbasket and stamp it “return to sender” faster than you can spit.
I was thinking that he’d take one look and surrender to us.
😀
for fear we’ll take over fully and kick him and his out?
Thanks… I’ll just hang onto the ribbons since the ground is so unsteady.
I’m wondering if she is not just trying to prove her “upwardly mobile” chops. I can’t remember who said it, but someone stated that to most people knowing the recipe to possum stew is an example of being dirt poor and classless. (and if you said that, I So not knowing how to make possum stew, or in her case, not knowing useful productive things, is her way of demonstrating that she is actually a high-status individual since she is focused on higher things like being happy and imaginative and empathetic instead of things like, I dunno, baking bread or fixing toilets or building skyscrapers for the vapid people to spend their lives in
to finish that parentheses: (and If you said this, I am really in awe of your ability to make things understandable, whoever you are)
Funny, of there is a major system collapse it will be the possum stew people that’ll thrive.
reality doesn’t care, so those who try to ignore it, the leftoids especially are always the ones who are the least ready for when TSHTF, TEOTWAWKI, TGTHIAHB etc. Funny thing is, many of them think if those do happen, things will turn out into their version of paradise.
Okay, I understood TSHTF and TEOTWAWKI but Google failed me on TGTHIAHB. What is that?
Why is it getting warmer and why am I riding in a wicker basket???
Things Go To Hell In A Hand Basket
It’s so OBVIOUS now… sheesh.
Ahh. Thanks.
I think the problem with most SHTF planning is they expect a) EVERYTHING to collapse, and b) the wreckage to get out of the way. I don’t think anyone can handle when things fall down, but not all the way.
BTW, I get the first two acronyms, but what’s TGTHIAHB?
Well, if you can’t seem to plan for reality, I tend to doubt your plans for possibilities is not going to be very good either.
for TGTHIAHB see the post above, but it’s about things being hell bound and the conveyance
Hey I could have put TFMSTRAI.
The Fecal Matter Strikes The Rotary Air Impeller
Ha, I understood SHTF and TGTHIAHB, but it took me a minute to figure out what TEOTWAWKI meant.
Hell, I can’t think of that particular acronym without hearing it sung. It’s kinda like reading the alphabet without reciting it to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
The thing that threw me off was the beginning T, mostly.
Also, TEOTWAWKI and SHTF were both used around here recently, but TGTHIAHB made it’s debut in this thread.
I knew I had seen it before, but I think this morning is the first I figured out what it meant.
But, but, will it be worth existing to have ‘possum stew without a decent Gruyere? *clutches pearls*
More importantly, what wine do you serve with possum? A dry white or perhaps a light sherry?
I believe the beverage of choice would be white lightning, produced without revenooers knowledge.
Ah, but when TGTHIAHB (et al), will there BE any revenooers to worry about? (or will they be stopping by for a bucket of possum stew…?)
Something sweet. A muscat for muskrat, a port for possum, I think the saying goes.
Muskratel?
Not after you cook ’em, they don’t.
No, I think that is the telecommunication company for Northern Michigan.
their coverage is horrible now days
Uncut corn liquor
Just this week I noted to a friend that the survivors in our area are the one who are willing to take on deer and Canadian geese. I did not include the possum, as around here, at least, the population is rather low.
Anyway anyone worth their salt knows that Dandelion Wine or Muscadine Wine would be appropriate at table.
But one last note as I head out the door — the likely the likely one to turn up at table: ‘Awwww, not Mom’s soup y’ll again!’
And if there isn’t, then 100 years from now “possum stew” will be considered high quality stuff somewhere. There’s a lot of “ethnic” foods that got their start from desperately poor people who had to figure out how to make a palatable dinner from trash ingredients.
Oh, come now. Are you trying to tell me that pig’s feet have not always been a delicacy?
Brunswick stew.
Squirrel optional.
Do a search at Google books for
Manual for army cooks, 1910
Page 87 has a recipe for preparing possum for 60 men
In fairness to the presumed idiot, she’s not entirely wrong. (Wait! Let me finish the paragraph!) Educating kids to be cogs in a bureaucratic machine is not good for society, which I suspect is what she means by “more useful workforce.” That she probably means this is evidence of a massive amount of other blindness on her part, but no matter.
That having been said, as mentioned elsewhere in the comments section, the same traits that make one a useful worker also make one a better human being–and more likely to be “happy, empathetic, and imaginative.” Self-control, a good work ethic, a willingness to put other’s desires before your own–all of these are crucial to moral development.
In other words, like most leftists, she wants the fairy tale castle without the bedrock necessary to support it.
(On a side note, a sign of hope: When I typed “gods of” into Google Search, “Gods of the Copybook Headings” was the fourth suggested query).
A friend I was vacationing with, who was a ah vending machine religious person was trying to go to church of a Sunday and couldn’t find her socks. She immediately became convinced the devil had hidden them. So she said the requisite prayer and the socks showed up. Perhaps, for all I know, the world really works like that. I doubt it though.
Only when He’s screwing with you.
Seriously, sometimes I think he answers prayers in a deliberately nose-tweaking manner. Like when the stuff I’m looking for is in the middle of an empty table we’ve checked a dozen times….
That said, there is a major difference between the vending machine (and omni present, omni-active devil… I usually figure I screwed up, it’s a safe bet) and the “Oh, God, please… could I please have this favor? Please?”
If you’re a pagan, you get to blame the mysterious disappearing reappearing shiny things in the Fae
shiny socks? Her friend was Micheal Jackson?
I was referring to the keys in an earlier post. Everybody knows the it is the Super Sock Sucker of legend that is responsible for all domestic sock losses.
the Triple S … haunting clothes driers everywhere since its invention …. say, where did it haunt before then?
The only way to stymie the sock sucker is to only buy the same sort and color of sock always. They get bored of the same fare always and go otherwhere.
The Triple S is also the reason why only one of a pair of socks wears out, leaving you with one perfectly good, unmatched, sock.
Puppets in training.
This is why I jumped on the fad of odd socks. I now have a bag of random socks and when one of a pair of socks disappears, I can put the leftover sock in the bag. I actually had a lost sock return and was able to reunite the pair after a few months!
This is why you always buy matching socks, then when one wears out you just set its mate aside, and when the next sock wears out you unite the two widowed socks into a new pair.
I’m going into a phase kinda like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly. Not the transformation, but I have about two or three dozen pairs of identical white sox, a similar quantity of underwear, three dozen plain black t-shirts and half a dozen pair of jeans. Each of these constitutes about one load of laundry (I have a big washer) so I have three laundry baskets, one for each category.
This weekend was a triple witching hour when all three were full at the same time.
Oh, sure — but what do you do with two left socks, eh?
Raspberries!
Works for me. My wife always says I have two left feet.
You can tell sock mates?
I just buy six-packs of the same size, style, and color. When I finally notice the one in my hand, supposed to go on my feet, is worn, I toss it and every sock out of the drawer after that until I have two that in decent shape.
If I’ve tossed more than four socks, I buy a new pack of socks.
Irish, too.
reminds me of Joe Haldeman’s quote in Forever War “There might be a god, but he isn’t anyone I’d invite to dinner.”
yes, of course you can pray for what you want. But this woman went through life praying for her coffee to cool and not to trip crossing the road, and…
I actually heard from her last time I was over and was surprised she wasn’t in a madhouse. Yet.
However, the miracle of the socks has become in our household shorthand for “Stuff I wouldn’t bug Himself with, but I really wish would come out right.”
“Are we out of eggs? I don’t want to go to the store. What I really need is the miracle of the socks with eggs.”
“Miracle of the Socks”. I’m trying to imagine what that would look like in stained glass.
It’s so… disrespectful of the Almighty.
I can see ways it’d be OK–intention matters a lot– but if I did it? Oh, gad, I’d need to be slapped for presumption!
Yes, exactly. So instead of doing it, we go “I really need a miracle of the socks” and then we laugh at ourselves.
To be fair, it is not one third so disrespectful as so much of what is done in His name. I am not sure it even constitutes taking His name in vain.
Perhaps all that is going on is that He is granting a prayer for clarity of vision and the ability to see the mundane … even if that is not exactly what the prayer is asking.
There are several very different styles of spirituality of petition, and one of them is the childlike ask for whatever you need, which can morph into vending machine or into a conviction that prayers are never granted. Bu I have seen people who never pray for anything for themselves, and that usually ends up in wackyland spirituality or atheism. A person’s relationship with parents has a lot of effect on prayer style and attitude.
Anyway, the great miracleworkers of the Church were not ashamed to pray for teleportation so the novices would not be late to dinner or for multiplying wine for the poor neighbors and ice cream cones for celebrations of good news, while the great ascetics are happy to suck up sad stuff for themselves. There are some weird verified miracles. I bet ther is a sock one somewhere!
God is not only the God of the big picture, He is the God of the details.
I proceed from the assumption that an omniscient God knows what is bothering me, and that to pretend it was otherwise would be a lie. So, if it is socks that is taking up my mind, I’ll tell it to Him. Then, with that no longer being a distraction, I can move on to hearing what He has to say.
It’s not the praying about the socks, it’s the magic thinking presumption of it.
I’m Catholic. “Tony, Tony, come around, something’s lost that must be found…..” 😉
Ah, yes. You mean the like of the ‘I keep my God on a leash syndrome.’
Reminds me of the punchline of a joke where a guy prayed to God regularly to let him with the lottery. And the end, God’s voice booms down, “Saul, meet me halfway. Buy a ticket.”
It’s slightly different, CACS. My then friend … how do I put this? My kids will come to me and go “I’m sorry, this is bothering me” and I know it without their telling me of course.
What she did is more like the cats. “I’m old and I don’t like it, and it’s your job to fix it.” Only with her it was socks, and drinks and…
She was generally a very anxious person, though, and I suppose He takes that into account.
I sadly suspect that God is painfully aware. Just as He is of all my own varied shortcomings. I rely on His mercy and grace to take it in account, otherwise I have no hope.
Meanwhile, on a lighter note: I postulate that somewhere at the end of the universal dryer worm hole is a mountain of socks, of all sorts and sizes.
Sigh, I thought I had closed the italics after the word Painfully.
CACS, we’re friends, but if you infect me with the quest for socks story, I will be very put out.
Here and I thought it t’was the owners of the missing socks that were put out.
with a paranoid android stumping in a circle around a locked leg?
Back in the 1990’s, one department store used Joe Montana for it’s ads for a while. One commercial has him going to a dryer to get a pair of socks to wear and finding nothing but mismatches. After he complains about where did those missing socks went, the scene cuts to a bunch of one legged aliens hopping around in the missing socks, with one asking how much longer could they keep on doing this without raising suspicion…..
I thought that the cooling of coffee was handled by a demon … name of Maxwell, IIRC.
The demon didn’t have a name. “Maxwell” was the Warlock’s clerk.
Maxwell, whose symbol is the silver hammer?
ah… Thor?
It’s Captain Hammer’s silver hammer.
His throwdown with Goldmember was epic. At least that’s how C. H. remembers it.
Very, but mothtly becauthe I am old and have much accumulated thcar tithue. Thankth for athking.
Bang Bang
Maxwell’s Demon would be used to keep your coffee hot. The intention was that he would cause entropy to be suspended, or even to work in reverse, by only allowing particles of higher energy into the region of higher energy, and allowing the particles of lower energy to escape, rather than allowing it to come to equilibrium.
Ah – so an exorcism would help cool the coffee? Prayer seems appropriate.
Why would anyone want cool coffee?
frapacino.
SOME of us can’t drink (or even sip) the molten lava that people like my father preferred to drink.
When it’s rfeally warm out? Lilke Iced Tea, have an iced coffee.
Iced coffee is a crime against humanity, much like Iced Tea. Coffee and Tea should both be served hot, when the bubbles quit rising it is ready to drink.
And yes I drink hot coffee when it is a hundred degrees out.
That reminds me, I need to make more ice tea. [Very Big Evil Grin]
You can have my ice tea (unsweet, thanks) when you pry if from my cold dead fingers. Don’t worry about that thing in the other hand, if I’m dead it’s empty.
I grew up in the north east. Iced coffee can be very refreshing on a hot day. I certainly find it more so than the ubiquitous (over) sweet tea of the south east.
socks with eggs? are the eggs in the socks? in the toes or in the pile? Help, my visualizer is going rampant!
We used to have a wooden egg for mending socks…
Sorry, the idea that you understand your ancestors even a century ago, even without conquest by an alien culture, is … well, an indication you haven’t read many autobiographies more than fifty years old. The idea you understand cultures that were rightly or wrongly subsumed is… a fairy dream.
Recently had reason to look into what kind of cultures my probably relatives were being forcibly removed from and forced to assimilate into… I’m pretty dang sure my only link to them was a lady who ran away as fast as she could to survive (as best I can tell), and I was still surprised how really, really horrific the cultures were.
(Like, being raped as a favor to you. And being forcibly married for the same reason– because “belonging” to him made you safer. In that case, it was after watching most of the men and a portion of the women you knew killed by the people they were risking their lives to doctor, because people were still dying so it must’ve actually been poison.)
And there are fluff-heads that go “but it destroyed their culture!”
For love of little green apples, people talk about how horrible stopping Aztec sacrifices was.
I choose to believe they’re emoting, because if they reached that conclusion after serious thought and truly held it, they’re shining examples of being evil enough to need to die. They’re supporting killing innocent people for an obviously false ideal, that all cultures are equally good.
“And there are fluff-heads that go “but it destroyed their culture!”
For love of little green apples, people talk about how horrible stopping Aztec sacrifices was.”
Microsoft used to publish a game series called “Age of Empires”. The third game in that series included a scenario in its story that had the protagonist (a generally decent fellow) defending a bunch of Aztec temples from Spanish Conquistadors.
…
The optimistic side of me hopes that the developers who put the scenario together were merely completely ignorant of what went on in those temples.
The cynical side of me suspects that the developers might have known just what went on in those temples, but figured that the players wouldn’t care.
“Like, being raped as a favor to you.”
It’s my understanding that there are parts of the world (and I’m not referring to certain Islamic idiots) where the locals still consider kidnapping and raping a (single) woman to be a legitimate way to get married.
A lot of things that various X (islamofascist, pirate, terrorist, etc) idiots do is do something unusual and draw attention to what is already local norms.
This may be a “bit” off topic but I got thinking (dangerous).
MamaBear attended Mom’s (named Martha) funeral and had a momentary shock when the Pastor commented on Martha & her brother Lazarus (Mom didn’t have a brother named Lazarus) but soon recovered.
I told MamaBear that Mom admitted to being a “Martha” (ie always busy making things right).
This train of thought brought me to the Kipling poem “The Sons Of Martha”.
http://www.online-literature.com/kipling/920/
I got to thinking that we’re all Sons/Daughters of Martha with the Lefties being would-be “Sons/Daughters of Mary” (in the sense of Kipling’s poem. [Sad Smile]
I was thinking something similar but couldn’t remember the poem. Thanks for fixing my Kippleblock
Just to bring this back to the power problem, a few years ago I read where a Japanese company(who else) had designed and BUILT a small(~1-2MW IIRC), self-contained, nuclear power plant. The thing was designed to be installed in a neighborhood and run unattended for several(7-10, again IIRC) years. When it reached its designed life-cycle, it was simply removed and a replacement install. The removed plant was taken back to the factory, refueled, and used again. This was in a serious engineering mag, not Popular Science or whatever.
That is awesome. That is the kind of thing that would lead to nuclear craft under control of prospectors in the belt.
Toshiba had one that was 10MWe. Designed for a small central Alaska town, but they could not get NRC permission to run it with one city worker per shift to watch it.
It ran into leakage problems after just a few months in test operation in Japan. Pesky thing that corrosion…….
The Toshiba 4S. The NRC permit process was too expensive for them too. No one has been able to make a sodium cooled reactor not develop leaks after a short while in operation.
I had thought some of our submarine reactors were liquid sodium but no only one (Seawolf NOT the current one but one contemporary with Nautilus). It was, you guessed it, leaky. All the modern ones are PWR. The Soviet Alfa class and the November K-27 were liquid metal cooled (lead-bismuth, why not just toss some Mercury in to make any leaks really healthy). Not anything you’d want to emulate. (thank you wikipedia)
There is one crazy alternative, a nuclear ramjet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto). It would probably be safer to be near an Orion (pulsed nuclear) than a Pluto…
Those with good memories of the Clinton Administration may recall Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who now is International Business Editor of The Daily Telegraph. He has covered world politics and economics for 30 years, based in Europe, the US, and Latin America. Two recent articles [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/] of his address advances in energy tech:
Solar could beat coal as world’s top power source by 2050, says IEA
The IEA says world to add 200 gigawatts of solar power every year from 2025 onwards under the right policies, more than the entire stock in the world today
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
29 Sep 2014
Solar power will reach commercial “take-off” within a decade and could displace fossil fuels to become the world’s biggest source of electricity by 2050, according to a stunning report from the International Energy Agency.
The IEA said the cost of photovoltaic panels would continue to plummet, falling by a further 60pc for household rooftops and 70pc for power companies even after the dramatic gains of the recent years.
[SNIP]
The IEA expects carbon prices to climb as high as $150 by mid-century as world leaders reach deals aimed at capping global warming at 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. The key powers agreed last week in New York to draft a new treaty to cut greenhouse gases, to be competed in 2015. China is already drawing up its own carbon pricing scheme in a drive to clean up toxic smog in its largest cities, the latest sign that the bitter conflict between rich countries and the developing world over CO2 emissions may be abating.
[MORE]
Technology revolution in nuclear power could slash costs below coal
A report by UBS said the latest reactors will be obsolete by within 10 to 20 years, yet Britain is locking in prices until 2060
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
24 Sep 2014
The cost of conventional nuclear power has spiralled to levels that can no longer be justified. All the reactors being built across the world are variants of mid-20th century technology, inherently dirty and dangerous, requiring exorbitant safety controls.
This is a failure of wit and will. Scientists in Britain, France, Canada, the US, China and Japan have already designed better reactors based on molten salt technology that promise to slash costs by half or more, and may even undercut coal. They are much safer, and consume nuclear waste rather than creating more. What stands in the way is a fortress of vested interests.
The World Nuclear Industry Status Report for 2014 found that 49 of the 66 reactors under construction – mostly in Asia – are plagued with delays, and are blowing through their budgets.
[SNIP]
The reactor can be built in factories at low cost. It uses tubes that rest in molten salt, working through a convection process rather than by pumping the material around the reactor. This cuts corrosion. There is minimal risk of leaking deadly cesium or iodine for hundreds of miles around.
Transatomic Power, in Boston, says it can build a “waste-burning reactor” using molten salts in three years, after regulatory approval. The design is based on models built by US physicist Alvin Weinberg at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the 1960s, but never pursued – some say because the Pentagon wanted the plutonium residue for nuclear warheads.
[MORE]
RES, I’ll believe solar is competitive the minute it can compete without government subsidies for both construction and operations. Right now it cannot. PV prices are falling because the Chinese government way overbuilt PV manufacturing capacity and are now subsidizing the factories to keep them running. Chinese PV panels are cheaply built and do not last very long.
The military is not standing in the way of new reactor technologies, especially for the reason cited. There is a HUGE supply of plutonium pits stored at PANTEX taken from the over 20000 Cold War era warheads that have been disassembled since the early 1990’s. We have so many in fact that several nuke plants have been selected to burn plutonium fuel assemblies just to save on storage costs.
There ain’t no such animal as a molten salt reactor with minimal corrosion risk. Everything that has worked on small scale has presented major problems when it was scaled up to prototype commercial applications.
Joe, sounds like you’re keeping up with solar better than I am (wouldn’t take much). A few years ago I remember reading about amorphous silicon PV (much cheaper to make than crystalline PV) getting double-digit efficiencies in the lab. And more recently (still a few years ago), something about a pilot or near-pilot project to put amorphous silicon PV coating on a cheap flexible substrate (plastic film, I think). Do you know anything about these? Is the product developmental research making progress?
I didn’t read that as being an endorsement of the notion that Solar will replace Coal, but rather a pointing-out of the predictions made by this Ambrose Evans-Pritchard guy, for the purposes of pointing and laughing.
Even if the costs to consumers are being forced up artificially, the prices are being forced up. If the government keeps piling on the taxes and other charges as it is deliberately trying to get in the way of coal … and a number of other kinds of traditional energy sources … it would only be sensible to be looking at other means, particularly private ones.
But if they can’t get the energy production up to the point where they can produce more over the service life of the unit than it requires to produce them (from mining to installation), then such ventures are doomed to fail, no matter what they do to prices.
Yes, well. Then the lights go out because the greens just don’t get it that wanting an absolutely clean efficient energy source doesn’t make an absolutely clean efficient energy source happen. Right now it looks like our leaders are listening to those who are trying to force conversion to green energy, whatever the cost, by assuring that all other forms become too expensive or non-existent.
Yeah, Seawolf’s first reactor did not last very long. Every few years some idiot thinks about sodium cooled reactors (usually fast breeders) and convinces some government to build one. They never run very long before the leakages start. The sodium has to be cooled by something, and that something is water. Water and pure sodium do not mix very nicely.
Another article on Pluto…..
http://www.merkle.com/pluto/pluto.html
I’m not of the age or social strata that is likely to be hit with ‘Check your privilege’ but if I was I’d say ‘After you check your arrogance”.
Uh. It’s not age. Or social strata. It’s gender (male) and skin color (white, Hispanic, probably black if you have the wrong opinions!)
Oh, I’m the wrong sex and race. I’m just old enough to not hang out with tools. 😛
Marxists care about “People” in a similar fashion to child molesters taking an interest in the quality of 8th grader’s math textbooks.
Wow. Lotta comments! 🙂
Just wanted to say I work in an institution where being nice,empathetic,and considerate is valued over competency.
Except, of course, in departments where the money is actually made or tracked. Then competency matters quite a bit.
Sadly, I work in a support department. I’m saddled with a progressive co-worker who thinks *exactly* like the commenter that provoked this entire post.
It damn near killed me before I (very recently) became Dr. Strangelibrarian and learned to stop worrying and love the progressive.
Well, okay, not love. But tolerate. Ignore, mostly. Work around.
We pay for student loans in so many more ways than just interest. *sigh*
Thanks for the opportunity to vent. 🙂 Although this is a very, very scary cultural phenomenon. I’m afraid these cud-chewers will ultimately take the rest of us down with them, simple because they seem to have critical mass.
Re: Reading as Survival Tool,
See John D. MacDonald’s “Reading for Survival” a commissioned essay by The Center for the Book(*), which he ended up writing as one of those musings between Myer and McGee. He argues that in a complex world, reading, real reading is the, perhaps the dominant survival tool, leading to comprehension through shared experience. Available used, in a paperback binding. Good stuff.
That’s not how the thing they call “reading” is taught these days.
(*) Not that book. Book as artifact.
Description of “Reading for Survival here:
http://www.jdmhomepage.org/jdmhomepage.org/Reading_For_Survival.html
Also, “Meyer” not “Myer”. I was trying to get to bed, so didn’t check the correct spelling. /Shame
One thing to remember about ancient leaders: They knew the ravenges of time. We call it presbyopia, that change in the eyes of people who are 40ish that prevents them from reading without lenses. Since lenses were 12th Century technology, all before then either lost the ability to read after about 25 years, or were crippled and half blind for anything except reading. Accordingly, it made sense to have someone around who could read and write, but not necessarly for the son of a great family to be the person who could. Then we can consider the greater diffiulty of learning to read in Egyptian demotic, and you know how the crippled and half blind would spend 10 years learning to read, knowing that they would never be good for anything else, further, that noone outside their club would ever be able to check their work. How corruption must have flourished! Which is why the eatern potentates used Eunuchs. One rat was acceptable, so long as the one rat kept the other rats out.
Way, way up there in the comments someone posted about needing an SSTO to be able to get to space.
Right on, brother/sister, right on.
An SSTO that is reusable, of course, and that can fly often (say, at least once a week) and relatively cheaply (say, about a million bucks a flight). Any such vehicle would Change Everything.
And I tell you three times (from having been in the SSTO fight for 30 years now) it would only take about $2 billion to develop such a vehicle — if the money were spent right. If NASA were to do it (ha!) you’re talking $10 billion.
It is only a matter of money and personalities, and that has been the case for decades. SSTO became technically feasible in the mid-1980s. And its steadily become easier and easier.
OK, I’m checking my privilege right now, just so I’m on thread here…
— Tim Kyger
Check out this video on YouTube:
Galactic Inquiry ep012 . Richard Garriott Talks Space!
2 Billion (Maybe?) if you just started to day.
😉