Higher Education?

Since the purpose of higher education is-yes-education, all other activities should be made to justify why they exist on campuses at all. Examples of extraneous activities that impede teaching and learning include new administrative officers (like a "director of collaborative engagement"); varsity athletics (the University of Vermont sends its softball team 2,533 miles to play against Stanford); and undergraduate amenities (five-story climbing walls). Top-heavy faculties should also be scrutinized (75 percent at Stanford have lifetime appointments, as do 73 percent at San Jose State) since senior professors are less involved with teaching.
-Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus. Higher Education? pp. 237-238. (2010)

Prescient?

The American people seem to be doing less and less thinking for themselves and they seem to have less and less knowledge of the history and basic principles of the American Republic....It seems to me that the people have come to form their opinions, not from facts and their own thinking, but the thinking and opinions of others. Perhaps it is due to the development of motion pictures and radio. To listen to either requires only the slightest mental effort. They are a kind of education or recreation which gives knowledge without thought....The truth is that there is hardly one [commentator or columnist] who has not a strong bias for one philosophy or another, for one party or another, for one man or another. This they attempt to conceal, and the unthinking are likely to take them at their own estimate of impartiality....The radio is a peculiarly plausible instrument, more so than the written word....But even the news today in many newspapers is given a strong slant in the direction of the paper's policy....Public opinion is formed without any real knowledge or analysis of the facts of the issues.
-Robert A. Taft (1947)

Hurricanes

No, not the University of Miami.




Hurricane Irene has made landfall in North Carolina as a category 1. The cable news channels are covering this like its Katrina revisited. I realize the damage may be great, but we will not have an idea of how much until the storm passes. I know this is one of the really slow news seasons but there is Libya to cover. It is as if they had never been through a hurricane. I have been through five, one full-blown (Agnes), four that were remnants (Camille, Doria, David, and Frederic). It is not worthy of 24/7 coverage.

Sports Violence

So there was a small riot in the stands during a preseason (fake) football game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Oakland Raiders. Why am I not surprised? The behavior of American football fans has been deteriorating to the level of the English in recent years. There are numerous reasons not the least of which is overall moral decay. But what has aggravated this? Unfortunately, the dear old tailgate party is a culprit. These have become little more than excuses for massive drinking binges. But there are other perpetrators: the National Football League and the media. During any football game, there is the standard shot of some "fan" who has obviously made the supreme effort to be seen. This glorification of attention-getter is counterproductive. As for the NFL, their glorification of violence and the hype surrounding it, is just fuel for the fire.

Heartbreak

The East Coast earthquake yesterday was quite a surprise. While I am thankful it appears no one was seriously hurt, the damage done to the Washington Monument and the National Cathedral are painful. The Cathedral lost the top of its spires and some angels. The irritating thing is there was no insurance. Way to go Diocese of Washington!

Baseball

G. Edward White. Creating the National Pastime. (1996)

Baseball did not spring from the brow of Zeus as America's pastime. As Ed White details, it was created through the trials and errors of the men who had the most impact on the game in the period 1903-1953, the Owners.
Mostly it appears to be the errors. Slow to recognize the value of newspapers and radio, reluctant to end the color barrier, owners stumbled into a great moneymaker. This is a history of the business side of baseball and is very entertaining.

Election 2012

The candidates should heed the advice of the Clinton campaign of twenty years ago: "It's the economy stupid!" Anything else is merely a distraction.

College Football

First, I must preface this by stating that I received my graduate education at the University of Alabama. Granted this was in the mourning period for Bear Bryant but being at Alabama was a football education in itself. I am not, however, going to write of the glories of the Crimson Tide. Instead, I will focus on the general stink that is College Football circa 2011.
A week does not go by where there is not news of some football program under investigation for some sort of rules violation by some major program. USC has had to forfeit a national title, Ohio State fired its head coach and so on. Now we have revelations and accusations about the University of Miami, the "U". Miami has one of those programs that has long tiptoed around the border of compliance. The most recent accusations do not look like tiptoeing, but, rather, obliteration. Payoffs to large numbers of players, prostitutes, abortions, and so on. If the accusations are validated, it would make SMU's violations of the mid-1980s look juvenile.
What is the solution? The usual suspects call for stipends to be paid to players and end the folly of amateurism. This does not solve the problem. There will still be boosters willing to give bonuses.
There is one alternative that no one dares mention.
BLOW IT UP!
End big-time athletics. It all goes back to the basic question: what is the mission of the university? Is it to be a farm system for the National Football League? Let the NFL spend some of its billions on a farm system and let universities get back to their priority.

Religion and Culture

Having finished Philip Lee's Against the Protestant Gnostics, I decided to read Harold Bloom's The American Religion for a different take on the same subject. I will leave my critique of Bloom's work to another time. But the two books have prodded me into thinking of the relationship between Religion and Culture. More specifically, is a particular style or form of worship part and parcel of an appreciation of certain art forms? For example, if your church has a choir that sings works by Bach and Mozart, are you more likely to listen to their secular works?

Heat Wave

So the streak ended at 40 days, 40 days of unrelenting, mind-numbing 100 degree heat. I am certain this was a serious disappointment to at least one of our weather boys. As for me, it was time to pop the champagne, toast 1980 and move on.

Protestant Gnostics

The foes of genuine Protestantism have been, to use Matthew Arnold's term, the philistines, middle-class Christians who have refused to take authentic knowledge seriously because they are certain they already know or else already feel whatever must be known or felt to accomplish their goal. What they, in fact, know or feel is very akin to what Irenaeus called pseudo-gnosis, a knowledge that appears to be what it is not at all. It is a kind of knowledge that involves escape from reality. - Philip J. Lee. Against the Protestant Gnostics. (114)

Question

When did the media start calling special interest groups "advocacy groups?"

Economics, History and the Economy

The Great Depression started with the Stock Market Crash of 1929. It worsened until 1933 when many banks failed. Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933 and promised the American people a New Deal. By putting a lot of money into the economy there were signs of recovery but total recovery did not come until the United States became involved in World War II.

This is the conventional wisdom. In fact this would be a decent test answer. Unfortunately there are a number of gaps in it as I will point out when appropriate. But that is not the reason for this excursion. There are two questions that have been on my mind of late and I am seeking the answers. First, are we in a similar situation to the U.S. economy of 1937-1938? Second, and more profoundly: Did we ever totally recover from the Great Depression or are the props still in place?

First, a more detailed and accurate account of the events of the Great Depression. A financial bubble came to the surface in 1929. This bubble was caused primarily by the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve. Interest rates were too low which led to too much money in circulation, money that went into items of speculation such as the stock market and increased production. Now, here is an instance where I have gone against the received wisdom. I see increased production as a form of speculation. Somebody (or some committee) makes a conscious decision as to production. They estimate what will be needed in the coming months or years. That is speculation. Anyway, with this speculation the Stock Market reached unheard of heights: I call it Fantasyland. When the market broke (or began a correction if you will) money disappeared from circulation. What did the Federal Reserve do? Instead of compensating for the dwindling supply by dropping rates, they aggravated the problem by raising interest rates. Lack of money means lack of purchasing power. People (consumers) are focusing on the basics. Goods go unsold. What do we do when we have too much of something? We sell it overseas. But Congress decides to get involved by passing one of the most restrictive tariffs in history. Our trading partners respond accordingly and the problem at home only gets worse. By 1932 the situation is so bad that banks are dropping like flies. A program is created to give money to banks that are in trouble but in the interest of openness the names of the banks asking for this help will be made public which makes the program worthless. Roosevelt is elected and pushes through reforms of the banking system and programs meant to stimulate the economy. By 1936 this becomes nothing more than targeted vote-getting. When Roosevelt is re-elected comfortably, he begins to show concern for the deficit and cuts back on spending to try to balance the budget. Neither is Congress interested i n throwing more money at the problem. The result is the Great Recession of 1937-1938, from which the nation only emerges with the onset of World War II and increased government spending. This is the standard interpretation. Some say that the Depression did not end until 1947-1948 with the end of the war adjustment.

Here is where I disagree. If one posits the idea that artificial government stimuli boosted the economy but did not technically end the Depression until 1947, how can you say that it ended even then. What was happening in 1947? The Cold War with increased defense spending. The Marshall Plan and massive foreign aid for rebuilding. The GI Bill with college tuition and loan payments. In the 1950s you have the beginnings of the Interstate Highway System, a massive infrastructure project, and then in the 1960s there is an enormous increase in entitlement benefits such as Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security. If one looks at the number of people who work directly or indirectly for the government, it is a high percentage of the employment figure. The percentage of GDP related to government spending is also still high. Is that recovery?

What Is the Key to Capitalism?

This is the mystery of capital. Solving it requires an understanding of why Westerners, by representing assets with titles, [my emphasis] are able to see and draw out capital from them. One of the greatest challenges to the human mind is to comprehend and to gain access to those things we know exist but cannot see. Not everything that is real and useful is tangible and visible....Throughout history, human beings have invented representational systems- writing, musical notation, double-entry bookkeeping- to grasp with the mind what human hands could never touch. In the same way, the great practitioners of capitalism, from the creation of integrated title systems and corporate stock to Michael Milken, were able to reveal and extract capital where others saw only junk by devising new ways to represent the invisible potential that is locked up in the assets we accumulate. -Hernando de Soto. The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. Basic Books. (2000). p. 7

It's Too Darn Hot...

when you get gas at 9:30 at night and the temperature is 101 degrees.

Have Things Changed?

The diploma madness has infected students and schools with a constant concern for getting the correct number of credits in the required areas of schooling. Diplomas turn schooling into working for grades in required courses to achieve a piece of paper for entrance into the job market. - Joel H. Spring. "Sociological and Political Ruminations", in The Twelve-Year Sentence. (1974) pp. 152-153.