Category Archives: Human Accomplishment

UPDATED (6/24): He’d Never Hire ’50-Year-Old White Guys,’ Said Stockton Rush, RIP, Titan’s Submersible’s CEO. Oops.

Critique, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Race, Racism, Technology

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TITAN’S SUBMERSIBLE’S CEO STOCKTON RUSH, RIP, once declared that he,

“[D]idn’t hire ’50-year-old white guys’ with military experience to captain his vessels because they weren’t ‘inspirational.’ Stockton Rush, 61, added that … ‘anybody can drive the sub’ with a $30 video game controller.

OOPS. A bum’s rush.

“Speaking to CBS News in November,” Reports RT, “Rush explained that the vessel was entirely controlled with a generic bluetooth video game controller, which online sleuths discovered had a dismal reputation for reliability.”

From Matt Walsh—who else?—comes turgid psychoanalysis in the service of mindless WORSHIP. WORSHIP without distinction.

In a burst of Randian emotionalism, Mr. Walsh, an unsupple mind, rushed to praise adventure tourism in general, and the OceanGate submersible’s Titanic-bound endeavor, in particular.

Walsh scolded any who dared to be cynical—as I am of the masses who flock to, say, Mount Everest, turning Base Camp into a vast latrine, and making waste removal a major source of employment for local Nepalese and neighboring Chinese. Yes, how ennobling an industry is that for The Other.

Noble spirit? “Bold and daring” on the Everest? No. Crass, despoiling tourism.

First to summit were a white guy (not yet 50) named Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay. They embodied “different, bold, and daring.”

Nevertheless, scold Matt Walsh pules on tediously about critics:

These are people whose envy and dissatisfaction with their own mediocre, unimpressive lives have driven them to despise anyone who does anything different, bold, or daring. They take pleasure in failure because they will never have any successes of their own to celebrate.

The lives of Lilliputians like you and me dwarf compared to the grand life of CEO and pilot Stockton Rush, RIP, says Walsh.

The latest, via AP News

A submersible carrying five people to the Titanic imploded near the site of the shipwreck and killed everyone on board, authorities said Thursday, bringing a tragic end to a saga that included an urgent around-the-clock search and a worldwide vigil for the missing vessel.

Coast Guard officials said during a news conference that they’ve notified the families of the crew of the Titan, which had been missing since Sunday.

The sliver of hope that remained for finding the five men alive was wiped away early Thursday, when the submersible’s 96-hour supply of oxygen was expected to run out and the Coast Guard announced that debris had been found roughly 1,600 feet (488 meters) from the Titanic in North Atlantic waters.

“This was a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” said Rear Adm. John Mauger, of the First Coast Guard District.

* Image as screen pic courtesy Fox News

UPDATE II: For their abysmal endeavor, the anti-white ageist brainiacs of the OceanGate submersible used Carbon Fiber, rather than a metal that withstands compression. NASA engineers helped them. Systemic, institutional rot. Ridding the system of the best engineers is a bummer.

RELATED:

“Systemic, Institutional Rot: From Big Freeze In Texas To Fires In Cali,” Ilana Mercer, February 25, 2021

“When Merit-Based Hiring Is Deemed Racist, Bridges Fall Down,” Ilana Mercer, March 29, 2018

“Manliness (Not A Miracle) On The Hudson,” Ilana Mercer, February 13, 2009

As our reader points out in Comments, you would not see a brother, rich or poor, board such a “Hold My Beer” piece of engineered crap, assembled with parts as good as you get from Home Depot, in a basement—OceanGate workshop pics indeed do depict steps descending into what looks like a garage.

However, absent those old, musty, white men, the atmosphere was of giddy exuberance. So, there’s that.

UPDATED (10/21/022): NEW COLUMN IS “Race And Sex Hegemons To Control The Skies

Affirmative Action, Argument, Feminism, Gender, Human Accomplishment, Pseudoscience, Reason, Regulation

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NEW COLUMN IS “Race And Sex Hegemons To Control The Skies.” It is currently featured on WND.COM , The Unz Review, The New American, American Renaissance, and on Saturday, at Townhall.com.

Excerpt:

The topic was “the end of the all-male, all-white cockpit.”

The context: A June 3, 2022 TV episode, in which Fox News personality Tucker Carlson beseeched viewers to look beyond the race and gender of pilots, to his or her competence. “What’s color to do with competence?” he demanded to know.

Mr. Carlson was appealing to the wrong audience.

In America, where woke is ruthlessly propelled by the private-sector, the commercial aviation industry has been itching to replace humble men like Captain Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger, III, with black women (the looks of whom indicate that a good weave, tattooed eyebrows and eyelash extension are baseline requirements).

Using their employees’ opposition to forced vaccination as a proxy for backbone, moxie and rational thinking—the commercial aviation industry is increasingly shedding very many magnificent, military-trained pilots.

Just so there’s no confusion: Pilots with the right stuff are being selected out of their profession.

Granted, correlation is not causation, but if there is a statistically significant correlation between gender or race and the likelihood one survives a plane flight—well then, one might just want to consider these variables as proxies for safety and survival, however politically impolite it is.

Tucker might want to check the aggregate accident statistics to determine who are the best, safest pilots. By ScienceDirect’s telling, “… females employed by major airlines had significantly higher accident rates than their male counterparts overall.” [Emphasis added.]

To be expected, ScienceDirect then launches a fusillade of excuse-making weasel words to conceal with bafflegab that if you fly with a female, you’re a little less likely to reach your destination. It’s a ghost of a chance, but hey, life matters. Do you want to lose it?

Yes, female pilots have a higher error/accident rate, but never mind that say the Fake Science purveyors; this is only so because they are younger and less experienced. Airlines should make every effort to recruit and retain “experienced” females and manage diversity, they exhort.

Essentially—and while plummeting to his death—the passenger should search his bigoted soul. In addition to letting go of your life; you must release all bigotry. Those thoughts about how race and sex could well correlate with flight safety, and how you wish you had checked the pilot before you took the fatal flight: Let them go. Oh, and by the way, RIP, you sexist, you racist.

The desired outcome is that you fly with a less able pilot, ceteris paribus. …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN, “Race And Sex Hegemons To Control The Skies,” is currently featured on WND.COM ,The Unz Review, The New American, American Renaissance, and on Saturday, at Townhall.com.

UPDATED (10/21/022): “Virginia plane crash kills flight instructor, injures student pilot.” Yes, and in addition to all else that was wrong with this fated flight—the flight instructor is a bubbly 23-year-old child/girl. Was.

*Screen pic credit

To Sir Sidney With Love: Lessons For The Educational Idiocracy

Art, Britain, Celebrity, Education, Film, Human Accomplishment, Kids, Relationships

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British, and so subtle,  To Sir, With Love (1967) was my favorite role played by Sidney Poitier, RIP. And what an object lesson it is for America’s disgraceful unionized teachers in the age of COVID.

Mr. Mark Thackeray, “an out-of-work engineer who turns to teaching in London’s tough East End,” loved his students, yet he disciplined them; taught them self-respect, a love of learning, a work ethic and a proportional sense of fun, not the degenerate sense of abandon that now infuses our progressive schools.

“Sir’s” lesson: Never give up on The Kids, but knock ’em into shape.

Teacher was to be addressed as “Sir” because the use of honorifics and proper names, not invented pronouns, is important in an ordered society. It denotes not only a healthy hierarchy and a respect for a figure of authority, but for each other. Thus Pegg is not “Babs” (we have to wonder what such a traditional educator would say of naming  a child North, or Londyn, a black name).

After transforming one class into responsible, self-respecting adults ready to face life; Thackeray is offered an engineering job—something better than working with London’s tough, truant East End kids. But following their poignant farewell to him; he is overwhelmed with love for the kids and a sense of his real vocation. He shreds the promotion, realizing the next intake needs him just as much as the first. He has found his calling.

Once there were teachers.

Lulu at her best:

Math Ability: Is It The Kids Or The Method Of Teaching Them?

America, Conservatism, Education, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Kids, Race, Science

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To continue the math-related conversation begun in “U.S. Kids Can’t Read, Write Or Do Math, But Are No. 1 In Critical Race Theory,” here are more warnings from The Economist:

The writer says that, “Conservatives typically campaign for classical math: a focus on algorithms (a set of rules to be followed), memorizing (of times tables and algorithmic processes) and teacher-led instruction. Pupils in these classrooms focus on the basics, exploring concepts after obtaining traditional skills …”

“…Progressives,” he argues, “typically favor a conceptual approach to math based on problem-solving and gaining number-sense, with less emphasis on algorithms and memorizing.”

Irrespective, the achievement situation on the ground is as follows:

In 2018, American 15-year-olds ranked 25th in the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries. American adults ranked fourth-from-last in numeracy when compared with other rich countries. As many as 30% of American adults are comfortable only with simple maths: basic arithmetic, counting, sorting and similar tasks. American employers are desperate for science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills: nuclear engineers, software developers and machinists are in short supply. And while pupils’ maths scores are bad enough now, they could be getting worse. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a national exam, 13-year-old pupils’ scores dropped five points in 2020 compared with their peers’ in 2012. The status quo does not add up. But teachers and academics cannot agree on where to go next.

This is not purely about “the conceptual approach to math,” versus an emphasis on “algorithms and memorizing,” as the writer frames it.

However important, more than the methods of teaching math, American failures are about the kind of kids America has and the philosophy undergirding their education—a highly variegated population educated under the philosophy of egalitarianism. Not everyone can learn math, yet this is the premise of American education.

Yes, “highly ranked mathematical nations” such as Singapore, China and Japan have the  best math in the world and are NOT teaching by progressive methodology.

But the East Asian nations are relatively homogeneous and have kids with the good potential (IQ). Although important, the statistically significant variance is to be found, I would wager, in the kind of population, more than in the method of teaching, however important.

I hate to say it, but as far as raw human capital goes, America is fast becoming a bit of a shithole.

MORE: “America’s maths wars:How teaching multiplication tables became another victim of the political divide.”

RELATED READING:
“The Wussification Of The West: Will We Ban Shakespeare For Othello And Shylock?”
“U.S. Kids Can’t Read, Write Or Do Math, But Are No. 1 In Critical Race Theory“

*Image credit