printIn which MYRON PAULI, PH.D, Barely a Blog’s resident nuclear physicist, sometime poet and opinionator, muses about the whiny, two-legged primates (white and black) running wild on campuses:
Fifty years ago, Tom Lehrer composed “The Wernher von Braun song”. The song ends with the prophetic lines “‘In German, oder Englisch, I know how to count down Und I’m learning Chinese now!’ says Wernher von Braun”.
100 years ago, the German-speaking nations constituted the leading centers of academia from music to psychology to physics. Americans like Albert Michelson and Robert Oppenheimer went to study in Germany. They dominated the Nobel Prize winners. In 1930, “Zeitschrift fur Physik” was THE journal for all to have and took up about 4 feet of shelf space. In 1937, Zeitshrift was down to 1 foot of shelf space. In 2015, the Center for World University Rankings lists Heidelberg University as the top University in Germany and #76 in the world (other rankings have German Universities as high as # 37!).
The source of this debacle, of course, was political perversion in the form of Nazism. I”recommend a wonderful movie for all to watch, “The Mortal Storm.” The movie’s actions start with the birthday of a respected biology professor on January 30, 1933 (the day Hilter took power) applauded by his students and faculty. As the movie progresses, the professor is boycotted by his students, witnesses a book burning, and is shunned and eventually fired by his academic colleagues and administrators. The movie, by the way, was based on a 1938 book long before the death camps (which, arguably, can be seen as the ideological culmination of political intolerance).
Nowadays, it is American academia which is heading down the intellectual toilet. This should not be that surprising after nearly 50 years of neo-Marxist professors, “affirmative action” which takes mostly inferior students and admits them where they do not fit in, segregated dorms and segregated narcissistic sexual-racial-ethnic-religious “studies”, and the massive enlargement of colleges to the point that over 50% of young people attend college regardless of any talent or discipline. Federal largess has caused tuition to skyrocket to over $60,000 a year for these babysitting palaces. Nor are there many jobs for people who take such useful studies as “Network Evolution and the Beauty Advantage” and other courses I mentioned in my Barely A Blog essay, “Academic Disintegration From Homer to Homo”. Naturally, the “college graduates” COULD compete with illegal aliens for landscaping, restaurant, and painting jobs but I expect that to happen when pigs fly.
Another factor affecting American students is how intense competition from Asia has basically pushed native Americans out of the highly competitive science/health/engineering disciplines (not to mention the “all-nighters”, brains, and studying required to get through). I doubt that there are many “all-nighters” and lab work required to get a degree the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies.
Hence, what else is there for these modern American “students” to do but whine, march, protest, and be insulted by the “hostile work environment” of microagressions, Zionism, sexism, racism, and even Halloween costumes. Cao, Chang, Chen, Chen, Chen, Chuang, Duan, Gao, …, Li, Li, Li, Liang, Liao, Lin, Lin, 3 Lius! , Lu, Lu, Luan, … ,7 Wangs!, Wong, Xu, Xu, Yang, Yang, Ye, Yue, Zhang, Zhang, Zhao, Zhen, Zhen, Zheng, Zhong, Zhou are busy studying Material Science and Engineering at Columbia University while the rest of American academia burns. The sobbing, whiny two-legged primates (white and black) may take selfies at the protest rallies but haven’t the slightest idea how a cell phone or a biological cell or a transistor function. Nor do 99% of them care.
Worst of all are the American academic “administrators” who care only about the bottom line of football team revenues, scientific grant money, and happy students. Unlike Franklin (America’s leading, first scientist) or Jefferson or Adams, modern American politicians of both parties are generally ignorant of science, technology, history, classical literature, or anything other than getting votes. Taxpayer money flows to the Greek-columned Romper Rooms and intellectual capital slowly flows to Asia.
One hundred years from now, American Universities will probably be highly rated in the fields of basketball and football but little else. Decades of University indulgence has passed the point of no return.
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Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.