Category Archives: English

A Professor Who Doesn’t Pander

Economy, Education, English, Internet, Journalism, Media, Pseudoscience

Still a tad mild for my liking, but far better than any “critique” provided in mainstream media is Tyler Cowen’s assessment of Nate Silver’s “data-driven journalism.” In “Nate Silver’s 538 is up and running,” Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University, writes wryly:

… to me these are “tweener” pieces, too superficial for smart and informed readers, yet on topics which are too abstruse for the more casual readers. … Here is Silver’s introductory essay as to what they are about. It is too sprawling and evinces a greater affiliation to rigor with data analysis than to rigor with philosophy of science or for that matter rigor with rhetoric.

In Cowen we may have a rare professor who doesn’t pander to annoying Millennials.

One State: Is It The Solution Or The Final Solution To The Jewish State?

English, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Neoconservatism, Palestinian Authority

For at least a decade now, Ambassador Yoram Ettinger has been sending me his newsletter. The Ettinger Report is devoted to debunking the myth of Palestinian demographic superiority. Thus the idea that the fertility rates of Israeli Jews are gaining on and even greater than those of the Palestinians is hardly new.

Cut to the Mark Levin Show. The other day I heard a whiny woman talking Israel with the host. It tuns out the woman was the neoconservative writer Caroline Glick, whom I had never heard before. She was promoting her Levin-endorsed book, The Israeli Solution, in which the fertility and immigration rates on which Ettinger had been reporting for years serve as the basis for Glick’s support for a “One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East,” namely a one-state solution.

The Jewish fertility rate has increased as the Palestinian rates have collapsed along with those of the Muslim world as a whole. Israeli Jews now have higher fertility rates than the Arabs of Judea and Samaria, (3.04 vs. 2.91 children per woman). Israel’s immigration rate is high and rising. Palestinian emigration rates have skyrocketed over the past decade.

Why does the one-state solution follow from “the demographic good news,” as the writer puts it? (Doesn’t “the good demographic news” make for a better-ordered sentence?)

I read Glick’s FrontPage article hoping to find a decisive argument as to why the author has concluded that, in the absence of the threat of death by demographics–a one-state solution would be in Israel’s best interests.

I found nothing of the sort in Glick’s rather weak (and not terribly well written) article.

Confused About The Subjective Theory Of Value Vs. Objective Standards (+ Some Laughs)

English, libertarianism, Literature, Music, Objectivism, Political Economy, Pop-Culture

At last. Someone with a funny bone (and a healthy IQ). “Best laughs of the month,” writes Jim Ostrowski about “Hollywood: The No-Good, The Bad And The Beastly.” It was also nice to hear from Jim that “CPUKE” made him pack-up laughing—this long time activist, lawyer and author for liberty deserves a good laugh.

On the other hand, on EPJ, “Hollywood: The No-Good, The Bad And The Beastly” has stimulated an interesting, if distressing, thread. Increasingly, I get why my pal Vox Day quit (and he was way more sombre than I; my writing is consistently funny.)

No cause for laughter is this to-and-fro:

Anonymous March 7, 2014 at 12:51 PM:

Sometimes a person can be too critical when giving a negative opinion it comes off as just an irritating screed. A screed that longs for the past that’s not coming back – it’s over, gone, no more – so get over it. Today’s art may not be what it should be, but I bet if and once deflation kicks in art will return to what it ought to be.

The reason why kids now days don’t read certain books but the Hunger Games is because those books (ie. Chekhov) are boring and don’t really line up with today’s issues. Well, they are. And, the author of Hunger Games is a she.

Reply
ILANA MERCER March 7, 2014 at 3:40 PM:

I should have guessed “Hungers Games” was “written” by a girl (although, don’t discriminate, carriers of the Y Chromosome can too be girls if they want to). Could Anon’s impoverished imagination (Chekhov is not for kids and was referenced as “heavy,” not necessarily enjoyable) be a consequence of utter lack of familiarity with the greatest, most exciting books ever? Classics for kids and young adults? Are you kidding me? “Hunger Games” or “Harry Potter” will never match gripping, culturally and historically richly textured, well-written stuff (so good for real boys) like: Ivanhoe, The Count of Monte Cristo, Treasure Island, Arabian Nights, A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom’s Midnight Garden, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Last of the Mohicans, Les Misérables, Around the World in Eighty Days, Black Stallion, Wuthering Heights, Kiss Kiss, and even The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole. Problem is Anon has been brought up to revel in ignorance. You are perfect just they way you are. Kids nowadays don’t read b/c they’ve been told, like Anon, that they don’t need to—nothing much to learn from the great masters.

Reply
Tony March 7, 2014 at 4:56 PM:

What i liked as a child was considered mostly crap by the elderly. And what the youths of today like i consider to be mostly crap. 30 years from now the youths will wonder how anyone other than geriatrics could possibly like Beyonce, Pharrell Williams or Rihanna.
Tastes generally remain stagnant on what we’re used to. Because of this subjective opinion and feelings of nostalgia i don’t really think it is possible to judge which is “better”.

Having said that, i am getting borderline depressed about what goes for “great movies” or “good music” these days. I don’t bother watching the Academy Awards anymore, since it has turned into a liberal self-congratulatory smugfest (with matching “best movie” nominees) so thick it raises ocean levels a yard ever year.

Reply
ILANA MERCER March 7, 2014:

Actually, Tony, the value each consumer places on consumer goods in the marketplace is subjective. But the Subjective Theory of Value should not be confused with objective standards that determine the quality of cultural products. It’s pretty distressing to realize that libertarians confuse the two concepts and that cultural, intellectual and moral equivalence pervades our thinking as much as it does that of mainstream. To wit, applying objective, universal criteria (complexity, skill, mastery, intricacy, etc.), as the column states, it is objectively and immutably true that “B.B. King is no match for Johann Sebastian Bach.” I’m sure you can think of hundreds of similar examples: You might prefer to purchase one of Toni Morrison’s God-awful tomes, but the objective fact is that she’s no match for Shakespeare.

Analyze This: On ‘The Factor,’ Psychologizing Passes As Analysis

Conservatism, Democrats, English, Foreign Policy, Reason, Republicans, Russia

Bill O’Reilly, star of Fox New, has this Pavlovian response to any suggested comparison between Russian and American military bellicosity: he foams at the mouth. Why is it absolutely verboten, on The Factor, to compare Russia’s “excursion” into Ukraine to America’s naturally illicit and illegal occupations of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, on and on?

You’re in for a treat. In defense of their reflexive rejection of the reasonable, if inaccurate, comparison—for decades the US has been far more aggressive than Russia in its foreign policy—don’t expect argument from Bill, Juan Williams and the gang. What you get is a form of ad hominem, or psychologizing.

President Vladimir Putin, said (today, Monday, March 3) Bill, is a thug. That’s why he can’t be compared to “a good country” like the US. (Childish doesn’t begin to cover this stuff.) Apparently Bush and Obama are never to be called thugs.

Why, Billy? Because they’re American?

The other “argument” for the lack of validity of said comparison was that Putin seeks the recrudescence of the Russian empire (my usage; Bill and the gang did not use that word. Read about Bill’s valiant but botched attempts to promote English). Bill has read Putin’s mind, and knows he wants Russia to be an empire again. Hence we cannot compare the actions on the ground of the two countries.

If ever you doubted that liberals and conservatives are situated on the same foreign-policy continuum, listen to the prescriptions for Ukraine of leftist Juan Williams. On the same silly segment, the Fox News “analyst” recommended that the US freeze the assets of individual Russians, stateside and abroad, expel visiting Russians and stop Russians from traveling to the US, all in retaliation for the presence of Russian forces in Crimea (which is dominated by a Russian-speaking population). Williams, naturally, also wants to see economic sanctions placed on Russia.

Williams is an “analyst” in the same way Bill O’Reilly is a thinker.