“Here’s my main problem with the debate around “should people study liberal arts or STEM in college?” is that it portrays a false dichotomy. Until recently, there was little separation between engineering and the liberal arts. We really ought to go back to that. We need people with a familiarity with both science and humanities. In a perfect world, this is what high school should provide. In the current world, just as Oxford came up with PPE in the 20th century as a replacement for Greats (ie Classics—isn’t that an amazing name for a major?) some college needs to come up with a 21st century version that might be, like, Math, Econ & Literature. Or something. (France has a post-secondary curriculum, “Humanities and Social Sciences”, whose quadruple focus is philosophy, math, literature and economics/sociology. Not a bad education, I’d venture.)”
— Pacal-Emmanuel Gobry.
(Reblogged from pegobry)
12:00 am • November 5, 2011 • View comments
“Now, since I’m going to talk for a moment about culture, full disclosure is probably in order, to protect myself against allegations of conflict of interest and ethical turpitude: (1) Geographically I am a Seattleite, of a Saturnine temperament, and inclined to take a sour view of the Dionysian Bay Area, just as they tend to be annoyed and appalled by us. (2) Chronologically I am a post-Baby Boomer. I feel that way, at least, because I never experienced the fun and exciting parts of the whole Boomer scene—just spent a lot of time dutifully chuckling at Boomers’ maddeningly pointless anecdotes about just how stoned they got on various occasions, and politely fielding their assertions about how great their music was. But even from this remove it was possible to glean certain patterns, and one that recurred as regularly as an urban legend was the one about how someone would move into a commune populated by sandal-wearing, peace-sign flashing flower children, and eventually discover that, underneath this facade, the guys who ran it were actually control freaks; and that, as living in a commune, where much lip service was paid to ideals of peace, love and harmony, had deprived them of normal, socially approved outlets for their control-freakdom, it tended to come out in other, invariably more sinister, ways. Applying this to the case of Apple Computer will be left as an exercise for the reader, and not a very difficult exercise.”
— With excerpts from Walter Isaacson’s new biography of the late Steve Jobs showing him trash-talking everyone from President Obama to John Mayer, I couldn’t help but remember this famous passage from Neal Stephenson’s essay, “In the Beginning was the Command Line.”
10:00 am • October 26, 2011 • 2 notes • View comments
interfluidity » The lump of unfairness fallacy
mwfrost:
Fairness should never be a policy afterthought. Widely adhered norms of fair play are among the most valuable public goods a society can hold. A large part of why the financial crisis has been so corrosive is that people understand that major financial institutions violated these norms and got away with it, which leaves all of us uncertain about what our own standards of behavior should be and what we can reasonably expect from others. When policy wonks, however well meaning, treat fairness as a public relations matter, they are corroding social infrastructure that is more important than the particular problems they mean to fix.
(Reblogged from mwfrost)
7:29 pm • October 9, 2011 • 3 notes • View comments
“While I will readily confess I find it odd as something of a Burkean that I am sympathetic to these protestors, they are not looking to trot out the guillotines, in the main (though I did spot a “Behead the Fed” sign!), but rather, they have smelled the radicalism of body blows dealt to a representative democratic system presented by almost unfettered oligarch-like behavior among too many elites wholly disconnected from, yes, the 99% they speak of. They are acting to secure conservative aims of re-balancing a society that is becoming dangerously unmoored and increasingly bent asunder. They want accountability and dignity and prospects. Their leaders have failed them. So they have taken to the street to lead themselves.”
— Greg Djerejian, the Halley’s Comet of blogging, has a (mostly) positive assessment of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Well worth your time.
(Source: belgraviadispatch.com)
3:44 pm • October 9, 2011 • View comments
A "Debt Jubilee"?
The idea seems to be gaining steam, though the usual caveats — i.e., total political paralysis — apply. As I’ve said, though, a higher inflation target would likely be a fairer and more efficient way to achieve the goal of debt relief than targeted measures for homeowners or whomever.
9:37 am • October 4, 2011 • 3 notes • View comments
