Learning to Code

 About a decade or so ago, the mantra "Learn to Code" was quite big, and a number of organizations launched to teach us all how to do just that. At the end of the decade, we even had a presidential hopeful--and eventually, a president--who coldly told a number of Americans who were losing their jobs to environmental regulations that they should "learn to code."

Here we are now less than a decade later*, and AI has started to cause mass-layoffs in these coding positions. What has AI not yet replaced? Skilled labor positions (electricians, plumbers, welders, etc). This is not to say that all of the time spent learning to code was wasted: there is still a need for some people to be able to check AI's output, for example, and there are always new avenues open to skilled programmers, to say nothing of programming as a hobby.

But, it is worth noting that there remains a high demand for blue-collar jobs, and that besides this there will generally always be three things which will be compensated: specialized skills, accountability, and willingness to to "undesirable" jobs.

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*Less, in fact, that twice the four years needed to earn a B.S. degree in computer science, for those counting.

I Don't Often Swear in Writing

When I do, it is generally justified. Thus: WTF is wrong with these people?

Irony is using Batman to question a person's maturity.

Cads, Cads Everywhere!

In the senate, and running for president... but so few real men. No decorum, nor virtue: we have no leaders, only would-be rulers and demagogues. And the person in the White House now is the worst of the lot, a poltroon who at times rises almost to the level of being a cad.

What a stupid time to be alive. Or, perhaps the real moral is, "Trust not in princes..."

Gene Wolfe Reviews Tolkien

The review is nearly a decade and a half old, but it was recently re-posted on John C. Wright's site, thus giving me (and you) the occasion to read it.

Some excerpts:

It is said with some truth that there is no progress without loss; and it is always said, by those who wish to destroy good things, that progress requires it. No great insight or experience of the world is necessary to see that such people really care nothing for progress. They wish to destroy for their profit, and they, being clever, try to persuade us that progress and change are synonymous.

They are not; and it is not just my own belief but a well-established scientific fact that most change is for the worse: any change increases entropy (unavailable energy). Therefore, any change that produces no net positive good is invariably harmful. Progress, then, does not consist of destroying good things in the mere hope that the things that will replace them will be better (they will not be) but in retaining good things while adding more.

And also:

Sam Rayburn, a politician of vast experience, once said that all legislation is special-interest legislation. Of our nation, and of the 20th century, that is unquestionably true; but it need not be. We have — but do not need — a pestilent swarm of exceedingly clever persons who call themselves public servants when everything about them and us proclaims that they are in fact our masters. They make laws (and regulations and judicial decisions that have the force of laws) faster and more assiduously than any factory in the world makes chains; and they lay them on us.

It need not be so. We might have a society in which the laws were few and just, simple, permanent, and familiar to everyone — a society in which everyone stood shoulder-to-shoulder because everyone lived by the same changeless rules, and everyone knew what those rules were. When we had it, we would also have a society in which the lack of wealth was not reason for resentment but a spur to ambition, and in which wealth was not a cause for self-indulgence but a call to service. We had it once, and some time in this third millennium we shall have it again; and if we forget to thank John Ronald Reuel Tolkien for it when we get it, we will already have begun the slow and not always unpleasant return to Mordor. Freedom, love of neighbour, and personal responsibility are steep slopes; he could not climb them for us — we must do that ourselves. But he has shown us the road and the reward. 

Go read the whole thing.

Big Government

There are, we are told, certain projects which are so big that only a large government can undertake them. Going to outer space, for example, is often cited as something that the government (e.g. NASA) can do but private individuals can not.

The odds-makers in Las Vegas now beg to differ.:

NASA may believe that it'll be the first to land humans on Mars, but don't tell that to Las Vegas betting houses. Popular Mechanics has asked Docsports' Raphael Esparza to set odds for the first organization to put people on Mars, and he believes that SpaceX stands a much better chance of reaching the Red Planet (5 to 1) than anyone else, including NASA (80 to 1). To put it bluntly, SpaceX has the money and the motivation that others don't -- NASA would be the favorite, but its budget cuts are holding it back.

Granted, SpaceX and other private pioneers of the space age get some of their funding from the government via grants--but if NASA can't do it on account of lacking money, whereas SpaceX can, it seems to me that there is more than merely government money at work here.

I support NASA's mission to explore space, and think that this is one of the more worthy things that our government is doing (especially our current government), but I also welcome the fact that individuals in the US may be able to do this--with or without NASA's help.

Hugos

Well, that was entertaining, if nothing else. I've seen a variety of reactions to this year's Hugos (no award in 5 categories! A new record. Also, well played Mr. Beale, and separately, Mr. Corriea). Even Hitler has a (NSFW) reaction.

So, in honor of the Hugos this year:


This seems about right.

TMM: Puppies and Fandom

The line from the social-justice brownshirts is that the "Sad Puppies" and "Rabid Puppies" have ruined science fiction. From my perspective, they have broadened its appeal somewhat. According to the Hugos official site, a record number of people took part in the voting this year. The number of nominations turned in were also up (and the "Puppy" slates did very well). That should be a very good thing, since this is supposed to be the highest honor awarded by science fiction fans.

I should add my own perspective here. I bought a membership for the first time, because I learned (from puppy-affiliates) that this is how one gets to vote, and also because of the benefits of receiving so many fun science fiction works for free. And while I have always been a fan on some level of science fiction--I read Timothy Zahn's Star Wars novels when they first came out (I was in elementary school at the time), and later expanded from Star Wars and Star Trek to other science fiction. I have, however, been loathe to subscribe to much in the way of SF magazines (I've contemplated If, or Analog, or Azimov's), and the only one I've read much of is the Sci-Phi Journal (a new publication, which I have largely enjoyed, and which I found thanks to John C. Wright). I tend to read mostly anthologies and a few novels, older stuff, and new materials from a small group of authors whom I've come to enjoy.

It is thanks in large part to the puppies campaigns that I have expanded considerably form this (I tend to not take Amazon's recommendations seriously, as their system is often well off the mark in trying to guess what I may want). And while this may help larger sci-phi publishers like Baen or Tor, a number of the people whom I have started reading are at smaller publishing houses (not just Vox Day/Theodore Beale's Castalia House) and, more importantly, some independent/self published writers.

It is this last group that I think the Puppies can (and have) helped the most, by helping to make fans of good sci-fi aware of these independent writers. Baen or Tor have marketing departments, and they can get the word out easily for new products; independent writers cannot do this so easily. And, I've noticed, the puppies have held a few "book bomb" days in which they encouraged a large number of people to purchase selected works from specific authors from amazon. Perhaps they could consider some re-branding of their own, e.g. by forming a "Independently-published book of the fortnight club" to do bookbombs every other week, and maybe a second one to focus on small publishers every week, year-round? Then poll their members to draft a recommended Hugo nominations list. I don't entertain any notions that this will reduce the criticisms against their group from the social justice brownshirts, but it would be still more evidence that such criticisms are unfounded.


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*Once a month seems a bit sparse, but then once a week seems a bit frequent. I figure that the puppies consist of only a handful of dedicated writers, however large their fan-base and list of friends, and asking a small group to select one book per week might become a bit taxing....

A Few Good Links (vol. 19)

So many links, so little time:

1. My favorite living sci-fi author is profiled by the New Yorker. They fail to mention my favorite of his works, however, which is the fantasy duo The Wizard Knight.
2. Why don't religious liberty arguments work better, particularly in regards to the question of Christians and "gay marriage?" For one thing, it's because there are a number of people who aren't religious, and therefore don't really understand or care about the religious rights of others; they therefore don't see the importance of defending religious liberties when these conflict with something else which is desired. Others are openly hostile to religion, and so will support any cause simply because it will conflict with (and thus could destroy or hamper) the recognition of and preservation or protection of religious liberties. Further, there is a divorce between religious doctrines concerning "theology" or "beliefs" (the "creed" part of religion) and the morals which are sometimes not so obvious from those beliefs (the "code" part of religion). Finally, because religious liberty arguments are perceived as whining; nevermind that most feminist or homosexualist arguments also sound like whining--the people who present (and thus, largely narrate and at times frame) the debate are friendly towards gays and feminists, but not towards people of faith. Bottom line: we need to do a better job of evangelizing and then catechizing the culture.
3. The world needs more everyday heroes, but it also needs for everyday men to be heroic when called upon. Sometimes they are.
4. We need more moral and religious heroes, too. Unfortunately, being a morally, religiously, or virtuously heroic man is often a harder road to toe, in particular because the world hates this kind of hero more than any other. Thus, for example, a bishop who is on the whole doing his job in a meaningful manner looks like moral hero, for the simple reason that he faces much backlash for it, and for the reason that there are no other men of valor to march with him in the field. There are a few, however, who lend there pens (or keyboards) to the cause.
5. Actually, heroism isn't all we need. A simple return to virtues, basic morality, and even simple human kindness and decency (soft virtue, those) would work wonders for society. Unfortunately one side in the culture wars is increasingly (though not surprisingly) warring against private morality or public virtue.
6. Speaking of good witnessing to the culture, have I mentioned that I love the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist?
7. There is a certain romance to rituals, religious or otherwise.
8. Churches have been vandalized in the name of homosexualism. These vandalisms are under-reported in the name of "tolerance." 
9. Elsewhere, we see that holding beliefs against the homosexualist agenda must be punished on a personal level. Meanwhile, those who are being fined--and whose businesses are being shuttered and thus whose livelihoods are being ruined--are now being denied aide via such sources as crowdfunding. And of course, the real reason behind the push for "gay marriage" should be obvious to any with eyes to see or ears to hear. Happily, there's still Samaritan's Purse, which won't be so easily shut down.
10. A nice flowchart to answer the important question: "Did I buy a good whiskey?" However, the chart should flow through "taste it" more often.
11. Fear of the Lord means hating our sins--and we should pray that we are given a holy fear of the lord, and thus that we hate our sins enough to overcome them.

With great tragedy and great calamity often comes the opportunity for the harder virtues to be practiced. Let us hope that we see more fortitude, and indeed even some heroism, emerge from these increasingly hot culture wars.

Iconoclastic Performance Art

Sometimes I laugh to avoid crying. From the Pan Arabic Enquirer (a humor site): "The Islamic State wins prestigious Turner Prize for modern art."

The Islamic State has sensationally won the prestigious 2015 Turner Prize for its conceptual art piece ‘Smashing Mosul Museum To Pieces: Death To The Infidels.’ 

“By demolishing priceless 3,000 year old statues with sledge hammers, ISIS is asking: ‘What is art?’, while retextualising normative art as transgressive, daring and counter cultural,” said the chairman of the Turner Prize jury, Sir Nicholas Serota. “I was very moved by their performance.” 

The pulvarised pieces of rock left by the Islamic State were later purchased by modern art collector Charles Saatchi for $5 million for an installation entitled: ‘Lumps Of Rock In A Wheelbarrow, 2015′. 

The Turner Prize, considered the greatest prize in modern art, has previously been won by artists using elephant dung, a dead shark and a garden shed reimagined as art.

A civilization (if IS can be called that, which I do not think it can) which destroys its own cultural heritage cannot long last. And I may add that the saddest thing is not that IS will destroy middle eastern culture, since I could take or leave that. It's not even that, if they are victorious over the decadent west, that they will do the same to our culture (which would be very sad). No, the saddest part is that this commentary works as a comparison of our culture's modern arts to the terrorist group bent on destroying civilization. It's as much a commentary against the West's cultural fixation on suicide (or euthanasia) as anything else. In this case, it's cultural suicide.

Leisure and Life

I've started reading Josef Pieper's Leisure: The Basis of Culture, and already one passage has stood out to me:

"The original meaning of the concept of 'leisure' has practically been forgotten in today's leisure-less culture of 'total work': in order to win our way to a real understanding of leisure, we must confront the contradiction that rises from our overemphasis on the world of work. 'One does not only work to live, but one lives for the sake of one's work,' this statement, quoted by Max Weber, makes immediate sense to us, and appeals to our current opinion. It is difficult to us to see how in fact it turns the order of things upside down."

Pieper goes on to say that Aristotle would counter this by saying (as he does in the Nicomachean Ethics) that rather, "We work in order to be at leisure." Further, the actual word for "work" used by Aristotle translates as "not-at-leisure." This is a thing worth remembering, even for those of us who have gone into what is supposedly the most leisurely of all professions, academia*. This is not to praise mere "laziness" or "shiftlessness." The shiftless man is not at leisure either, but rather is at the business of staying on the move, and unemployed.

Putting that aside, the ending statement that this worldview of "total work" ultimately "turns the order of things upside down" really stands out because we are seeing it in the world today. The US, for example, has no legal provisions for maternity leave; and you can forget all about paternity leave, even at most places of employment where women get 3-6 months off. Nevermind that the father is often "up" alongside the mother at all hours of the night with a newborn: after getting 2-3 hours of sleep per night for 2 weeks running, I was still expected to be at work, teaching classes (and contributing to my group's research efforts).

That is not, however, the worst of the points at which we have gone wrong. Abortion claims 90% of those children diagnosed with Downs Syndrome in the US; they are murdered before they can be born, because they are seen as a burden to the parents and as "useless" to society. At the other end of life though by far less common in the US, the elderly retired increasingly opt (or are coerced into) suicide under the banner "death with dignity." Having attained an age at which "serious work" is no longer possible, they are disposed of as quietly as can be, if not by suicide then by abandonment to the nursing homes.

I say this not to condemn society's members for doing that--we deserve, and we will get plenty of that if we do not collectively repent--but rather to warn. If we do not recover the concept of leisure as being a high and noble purpose in life, then we are lost as a culture.

I wonder, too, if I can't perhaps find leisure among the retired elderly. Too many have become convinced that since they are no longer able to engage in the business of living, then they must commence the business of dying, whether quickly by suicide (or euthanasia) or more slowly by "boredom and booze," or self-induced depression and general withdrawal. I wonder at times if all of this isn't so many masks for despair, and if perhaps only the actually hopeful can find time for leisure in this life--might it not prepare us for leisure in the next?




*For what it is worth, I probably work close to 55 hours per week right now (possibly more if you count what I bring home), and I haven't yet started to do any research. That may be a rant for another day, though I have to guard myself against any envy of my myriad friends (and some relatives) who go to work at 9 and return at 5, and then have weekends and evenings entirely off. Life is better since finishing grad school, but sometimes not by much. On the other hand, some would say that mine is "leisurely work"--I don't exactly have to toil at my labors.

Nordic Utopias

There is a persistent claim on the Left that places like Denmark, Sweden, and Norway are utopias, and that the US should be more like them (Canada or the UK are more like "immediate" and "intermediate" futures). They like to trot out the odd survey which finds that the people living there are "happy", and that we should therefore be more like them so that we will be "happy" (what else makes you "happy"? Soma, or barring that, getting high. go figure).

That's why the recent article in the New York Post which destroys the myth of Danish happiness is so timely. A passage:

In the American liberal compass, the needle is always pointing to places like Denmark. Everything they most fervently hope for here has already happened there.

So: Why does no one seem particularly interested in visiting Denmark? (“Honey, on our European trip, I want to see Tuscany, Paris, Berlin and . . . Jutland!”) Visitors say Danes are joyless to be around. Denmark suffers from high rates of alcoholism. In its use of antidepressants it ranks fourth in the world. (Its fellow Nordics the Icelanders are in front by a wide margin.) Some 5 percent of Danish men have had sex with an animal. Denmark’s productivity is in decline, its workers put in only 28 hours a week, and everybody you meet seems to have a government job. Oh, and as The Telegraph put it, it’s “the cancer capital of the world.”

So how happy can these drunk, depressed, lazy, tumor-ridden, pig-bonking bureaucrats really be?

...Those sky-high happiness surveys, it turns out, are mostly bunk. Asking people “Are you happy?” means different things in different cultures. In Japan, for instance, answering “Yes” seems like boasting, Booth points out. Whereas in Denmark, it’s considered “shameful to be unhappy,” newspaper editor Anne Knudsen says in the book.

Moreover, there is a group of people that believes the Danes are lying when they say they’re the happiest people on the planet. This group is known as “Danes.”

This is universally considered a feature — a glorious source of national pride in the land of humblebrag. Any rebels will be made to conform; tall poppies will be chopped down to average....An American woman told Booth how, when she excitedly mentioned at a dinner party that her kid was first in his class at school, she was met with icy silence....

So Danes operate on caveman principles — if you find it, share it, or be shunned. Once your date with Daisy the Sheep is over, you’d better make sure your friends get a turn. (Bestiality has traditionally been legal in Denmark, though a move to ban it is under way. Until recently, several “bestiality brothels” advertised their services in newspapers, generally charging clients $85 to $170 for what can only be termed a roll in the hay.)

...The flip side of the famous “social cohesion” is that outsiders are unwelcome. Xenophobic remarks are common. At gatherings, the spirit of “hygge” — loosely translated as cozy — prevails. It’s considered uncouth to try to steer the conversation toward anything anyone might conceivably disagree about. This is why even the Danes describe Danes as boring.

I've probably copied more than is allowed by propriety, and there's more to come. Go read the whole thing. And then work to make sure that we don't end up the same.

Bowtie Conversion

When I switched to wearing bowties, I was left with a few regular neck-ties which were either nice (wool!) or had sentimental value but which I would rarely wear again. There have been times when I've wondered if I could easily convert the neckties to bowties.

The answer is yes, you can send a neck-tie here and for a fee they'll make it into a bowtie. But is it worth the fee? The good news is, somebody has figured out a less drastic way of turning a necktie into a bowtie:

My assessment, by the way, is that this makes a fairly thick bowtie (depending on the material of the original tie), but overall is seems to work and looks pretty good. It was also reasonably secure around my neck, though I only tested it for about 10 minutes. I may try it out some time soon for my actual day tie.

My pic (quick low-res shot from a webcam):

Like I said, a bit thick, but now bad. Also, here is a link to a diagram, and a second video which is arguably more helpful (though it's via facebook) for doing this.

Catcalling and Bad Methodology

I've had occasion to post something about the infamous "catcalling" video set in New York (and some of its spin-offs and derivatives). I never really thought of it as a particularly well-done experiment (if it can be called that). The experiences of a single fairly attractive white woman wearing slightly provocative (but not overtly so) clothing strolling through a few streets in a single city and then sifting the footage and pairing it down to 2 minutes sounds more like selective anecdotes than actual data, even for sociology.

And so here is a sociologist explaining why that is. Some choice samples of the piece:

In effect, this was a research project, and it had an implicit research question (“Do conventionally attractive white women get verbally harassed in New York?”) and produced an answer: the video. However, in doing so without any reflection on its own method, it amply demonstrates the crucial substantive and political importance of research methods.... 

The Hollaback video also shows why “data” without theory can be so misleading—and how the same data can fit multiple theories. Since all data collection involves some form of data selection (even the biggest dataset has selection going into what gets included, from what source), and since data selection is always a research method, there is always a need for understanding methods.... 

Removing the means of implicit biases can be eye-opening. For example, after decades of lack of women in major orchestras, some big symphonies started doing their interviews blind — musicians played their instruments behind a curtain. Lo and behold, women, previously greatly lagging in professional employment in symphonies, started being evaluated as performing much better.

Data without theory is without context--but beware the biases in the theory!

Catcalling in a Galaxy Far, Far Away

You have surely by now heard of--if not actually watched--the video of the woman who walked around New York silently for 10 hours and was subjected to a bit of verbal harassment (along with a few unsolicited compliments and salutations). Perhaps you have also seen the response video of the man who walked around the same areas for three hours and was subjected to a roughly equal amount of verbal harassment?

These videos seem to demonstrate that some people in New York are jerks (but we already knew that!), though that is not of course the narrative being drawn from them. Actually, from the first of the two videos, the narrative varies depending on which professionally aggrieved or perpetually offended group is the one doing the narrating.

To b fair, there were a few jerks in the 10 hours' worth of the woman walking. There were a few more jerks in the three hours' worth of the man's walking*. All of which goes into a personal theory of mine: men and women receive about the same amount of verbal abuse and harassment on average, but we deal with it differently. I do not here intend to go into details, but might I suggest that this is a large part of what's behind the typical woman's complaints about harassment from colleagues.

Indeed, I suspect this is also a large part of the harassment women face in the STEM fields, where such things are alleged to happen frequently. In truth, guys pretty much do this to each other too, though admittedly they may focus a bit more on the one obviously different person in the group (e.g. the one female present). It should be remembered that this is sometimes how we bond, including how we at times bond with coworkers (light hazing).

I can't explain it either, but it does seem to me that the disruption of this particular bonding behavior is one consequence (intended or otherwise) of an integrated workforce. Certainly it is a consequence of the disappearance of mens' space (e.g. the increasing forbidden-ness of any men-only clubs or establishments).

And for a palette cleanser, here is a video of what it's like to be Princess Leia in New York:

<<<OVER>>>

*The woman got 100+ instances of harassment in 10 hours--basically an average of once every 6 minutes. The man got 30+ instances of harassment in 3 hours--basically, an average of once every 6 minutes.

The Playoff SEleCtion Committee Released their First Ranking

Middle finger firmly extended to footballs fans everywhere, the college football playoff SEleCtion released their first rankings. Three of the top 4 and 4 of the top 6 teams are from a single conference. Any guesses which one?

There are three consolations for this:

1. A lot of these SEC teams still have to play each other. A lot of the others do not. Thus, I expect to see some of these teams eliminated (e.g. if unbeaten Mississippi State beats Ole Miss)
2. Notre Dame still plays ASU and USC. Win out, and they should be "in." FSU will be in if they win out. And if one foTCU/Baylor/KSU wins out, they will have a strong case for being "in," especially KSU or TCU. Ditto for Oregon or Arizona or Utah, especially if Oregon wins out and then beats Arizona in the conference championships (unlikely, but possible). Arizona State has a weaker but still viable case (lost to a better team that Utah, but by a much wider margin).
3. If the final rankings pick three from the SEC, or two consistently, maybe we'll finally get a real playoff.

Here's hoping that we can put into place something a little better, e.g. only conference champs with 4 or only 2 from any given conference with 8 (I like 12, but that's a very long shot).

When Children Belong to the State

There is a rather alarmist column at National Review--but its alarmist tone does not mean we should dismiss it as entirely unfounded. The proposition is to target homeschooling children, because, of course, homeschooling and guns are the things to blame for Adam Lanza's shooting spree. It couldn't be, for example, the fault of the various state-run public schools (half prison, half re-education camp) where all of these shootings occur.

But children belong to the state, after all, or so the progressive line goes.

Annulment and Material Adultery

The news surrounding the upcoming "Synod on the Family" has generated a lot of discussion, and not only in the Catholic blogosphere. I will not even remotely attempt to link to all of it--from the seeming feud between Cardinals Burke and Kasper (and their respective supporters and detractors) over permitting divorced Catholics to remarry to questions about (and confusion concerning) the annulment process (and the various proposed changes to it), this synod does seem to be generating more than the usual amount of buzz.

Because they do more than just rehash the argument over what is and isn't in Canon Law (and what can or should be changed about it), the posts by the Zippy Catholic on the matter caught my attention. In particular, he mentions (and not for the first time) one of the inadvertant side-effects of annulment: that when an annulment is improperly determined, it then makes accidental adulterers of the spouses when they remarry:

Modern annulment practice is unique in the history of the Church, inasmuch as it treats a possible sacramental irregularity – based on purely subjective considerations – as a two way street. It doesn’t provide a way forward, it provides a way backward, in the name of a false ‘mercy’. This is terribly unfair in a way in which carrying out the death penalty without objective third-party evidence would be terribly unfair. Errors in death penalty cases result in killing the innocent; errors in ‘internal forum’ annulment cases turn various people (including innocent ‘spouses’, past and future) into material adulterers. This is just the very modern phenomenon of turning doubt or ignorance into an eighth sacrament: it pretends that mercy means letting people stew in objective evil with no real way out. 

This is further clarified in an earlier post of his (linked in the original text of the quote):

One of the reasons that the annulment process should be very rigorous, and should err very strongly on the side of declining to invalidate a marriage, is that if the tribunal makes a mistake – and as a juridical institution it is certainly liable to do so – the resulting annulment and ‘remarriage’ turns the parties into material adulterers. This is a gross injustice against everyone involved, and most especially against any “new” spouse not previously married.

Actually, it has long since occurred to me that there is a second effect of annulments, albeit one which cannot be avoided via reform. An annulment confirms that a particular given marriage was not sacramentally valid from its beginning. But this means that the couple which attempted to consummate their non-marriage would, in fact, be material fornicators in a sacramental (though not a civil) sense. This may not be so grievous as the material adulterors created under Zippy's scenario, fornication being less materially grave than adultery in any event, but it is nevertheless a side-effect of a null marriage.

Western Civilization and the University

So my boss sent me the proposed changes to the general requirements curriculum. This is largely because eh wants me to go to the hearing/planning meeting tomorrow and fight for keeping the 8 hours of science as being 4 hours each in two separate categories, to prevent students from just taking 8 hours of biology and skipping chemistry, physics, earth science, and physical sciences (all of which are in our department) altogether. FWIW, I think we should require 12 hours, with a sequence of 8 and then one more out of that sequence, but that's just me (and many other universities), but the next best option is to have two separate 4 hour sequences.

The biology department seems to have a desire to outright require a two-hour sequence.  This would virtually eliminate the chemistry/physics cashcows of physical science (and to a lesser extent, earth sciences) since neither class currently exists as a two-semester sequence, and most students would prefer the relatively easy intro biology courses to the relatively more difficult chemistry, physics, or even physical science counterparts. Such is inter-departmental politics.

Moving on, I noticed that among proposed changes was this gem: "3. Removal of Western Civilization as a history option in the required slot for General Studies Program; move Western Civilization to the elective area." As I understand it, this makes Western Civ an optional history class as opposed to a required one, albeit one which does still fill a requirement There is, after all, the requirement of "Any 1000-2000 level courses from the following Social Science disciplines: Anthropology, Economics, Geography, History, Leadership, Interdisciplinary Studies, Political Science, Psychology, Religion, Sociology or other Social Science areas: 9 hours" with  6 of those 9 hours being either a six-hour sequence in literature or a 6-hour sequence in history. US or World history is its own 3 hour category.

Under different circumstances, I would consider protesting this change. I think that the single most important course in history for a student to take is that of Western Civ, which is not generally covered in much depth once one enters post-secondary school. American History, or the History of the US, and World History are probably next, but the former at least has been covered (in theory) by the high schools. To banish Western Civ. to the lost realm of "electives,' even "elective which fulfill a requirement," is to deprive a great many students of their cultural heritage.

With that said, I know a number of the newer history profs and lecturers: one specialized in race relations in the south, and another in Middle Eastern History*. The former currently teaches Western Civ and frequently remarks that she is having to learn it all over again, having not really studied it much in the course of gaining a doctorate in history focusing on the history of the United States. Such is not an uncommon occurrence in history or really any field. Based on her conversations with me, she is doing a reasonably good job of trying to teach the material objectively, but then again she has mostly covered Egypt, Greece, and (pre-Constantine) Rome to this point. I can only hope that the attempts at a fair presentation continue through the medieval period. The Middle Eastern History specialist remarked to me that he did not even bother to apply to any school whose mascot was "the crusaders" or "the knights" or "the templars" or (gasp) "the saints," because they would obviously have a wrongheaded approach to teaching history in general and Middle Eastern, Islamic history in particular. This latter man is actually Jewish, but decidedly un-Western, perhaps even anti-Western** (though I suppose that any course he teaches about world history outside of the west is probably a thing of beauty, as he does put lots of effort into the preparation).

Being as I am at a state (read: secular) university, and being as these are the kinds of professors who largely work here, we may be doing the poor students a favor by sparing them a cynically taught version of Western Civ. Utter ignorance of one's cultural heritage is probably preferable to complete disdain of that heritage, especially if it is manufactured disdain.


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*A third one is actually a convert to Catholicism, and wrote his dissertation on anti-Catholicism in the US, particularly during the mid 19th century ("Know Nothings" featured prominently). He would probably do a nice job of teaching Western Civ.

**But still a colleague and perhaps a friend no less.

Tolerance and Judgment

I've already linked Prof. J. Budziszewski once this week, but he also participated in the Intercollegiate Review's featured interview, IR Office Hours, the first question of which was about tolerance and diversity. Here is the Question and the answer, to get us started:

Tolerance and diversity are words usually used by the Left in academia to squash freedom of speech, especially among conservatives. How would you define the true role of tolerance?—Luciana E. Milano, Harvard University 

J. Budziszewski: The liberal rationale for toleration grounds it on an incoherency: supposedly we put up with some bad and false things because we suspend moral judgment about the good and true. But if we really suspended judgment, it would be hard to see why anything should be tolerated—or why anything shouldn’t be tolerated, or, if we are going to be tolerant, which things should be tolerated and which things shouldn’t be. Actually, the nonjudgmentalist wants only his opponents to suspend judgment. He rams through his own moral judgments by pretending that they aren’t moral judgments. 

By contrast, the classical rationale for toleration grounds it on a paradox: we put up with some bad and false things because the nature of the good and true demands it. For example, we don’t coerce faith, because as St. Hilary of Poitiers said, God does not desire unwilling obedience; we don’t repress the expression of false opinions, because debate helps us find our way to the truth. Notice, then, what true toleration requires: not suspending judgment but judging more adequately.

Meanwhile, Marcel LeJeune has a good post up for the Aggie Catholics blog about judging--that was the subject of the readings this last Sunday, after all.

A Few Good Links (vol. 15)

I have a few tabs to clear.

1. An old point which bears repeating: there never was nor will be on this side of heaven a true "golden age," that is, an age in which men are all virtuous and wise and happy.
2. Michael Flynn writes a fanciful tale about the separation of Church and State, and about the supposed improvement of men's intellectual condition since the medieval times. "Ho Ho. We have learned our history at the hands of Monty Python. They are confusing the Spanish Inquisition with the secret police and SWAT teams of the modern scientific state."
3. Speaking of anti-intellectualism, I've mostly been following the whole Neil DeGrasse Tyson quote manufacturing thing with mild at most interest, but the longer it drags on the worse he and his followers are beginning to look. He is not nearly as vitriolic as, say, Richard Dawkins, though he seems to have embraced the same philosophical philistinism as Dawkins--or Lawrence Krauss, for that matter. My respect for him tanked considerably after he did the whole Cosmos reboot, which at times felt like it was more about bashing religion (by which is always meant Christianity and especially Catholicism). That said, the part where he manufactured a quote might have been forgivable, but the fact that he repeats and has been utterly unapologetic for repeating not one but many quotes and anecdotes which he fabricated is getting a bit ridiculous, as is his frankly philistine scientism.
4. Speaking of scientism, Matt Briggs has done a nice job of debunking a scientistic argument against the existence of a Creator God. This one starts with the philosophical equivalent of the Drake equation, then attempts to use statistics and probabilities to justify it.
5. "Sex positive" is a phrase which I have seen popping up here and there around the internet. It's usually meant as a way of denigrating Christians in particular. And, so long as we make only secular arguments for the Traditional Christian sexual morality, we will sound a bit "negative" in our approach. The thing is, the "sex positive" view of the world--secularism bolstering hedonism--is wrong, because it ignores evidence which if admitted is crucial.

As Prof. J. Budziszewski notes, "We don’t often stop believing in God, then start looking for new sins to commit. We become attached to sins we don’t want to give up, then start looking for reasons not to believe in God."