Why did you say six months?
He's coming.
This matters. This is important. Why did you say six months?
Why did you say five minutes?

Tuesday, October 07

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Howdy, Stranger!

As many of you guessed, the new Munuvian is none other than H of Everyday Stranger. Say hello, H!

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Don't Mess With Mister In-Between

There's another reason why I haven't been writing essays like my non-exsistent The State of the World: It's not what this blog is about.

Not that I'm saying that I know what this blog is about. It's just a filtered stream-of-consciousness, really. Whatever survives from the time it pops into my head to the time I sit down at the keyboard - and won't get me arrested - in it goes. Except - there's this filter thingy involved. It slaps little markers on my thoughts like whiny or pompous* and another post goes *pooft* into orange smoke before I can hit the Save button.

One of the guidelines I set myself when I started trying to work out what I was blogging about was accentuate the positive. Or it would have been, except that I hate the word accentuate and refuse to use it. In fact, I never use a five-syllable (counts) four-syllable word where a one or two syllable word will do. In writing, I strive for utmost clarity and precision, so if anyone needs a copy of my Nuclear Engineering for Grade Schoolers, just give me a yell.

And I don't set myself guidelines like that anyway; smarmy little bits of so-called wisdom set my teeth on edge.

He's got hiiiigh hopes,
He's got hiiiigh hopes,
He's got high apple pie in the
Sky hopes
If I wanted to write about all the bad and stupid things happening in the world, at least I'd have no shortage of material. But, I note, there already are people writing about the bad and the stupid, and doing a fine job at it too, and my efforts would disappear like the ripples from a pebble dropped in the ocean during a hurricane.**

So I'll write about the good, whenever I can, and wherever I find it. And when I do find that I simply must rant about something, I will endeavour to make it at least amusing if not instructive.

So any time your gettin' low,
'Stead of lettin' go,
Just remember that ant -
Oops there goes another rubber tree plant
You little bastard, that's the third one this week! Do you have any idea how much those things cost?

Um... Y'know, I think it might just be time for bed.

See you.

* Or, all too often, stupid.
** I've tried this and know whereof I speak.

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How'd That Happen?

I seem to have ended up writing half of my State of the World essay that I said I wasn't going to write. Now I might as well finish it, I guess. It's not all about idiots, either. Wolves and pooping also make an appearance.

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Academentia II: The Return Of Porphyrogenitus

Much of the value of the Blogosphere comes from its ability to absorb both facts and opinions and respond to them rapidly. For example, Porphyrogenitus has already responded to my earlier post.

A couple of points that I might have made clearer:

I do indeed see the value of liberal arts studies. History in particular I find fascinating, and it is obviously useful in putting today's world events in perspective and understanding them, and so an essential field of study for anyone going into politics. Literature - while I prefer to read for the pleasure of reading, I have no problem with those who seek to understand what makes a great book great. And so on.

As Por' notes, the problem is not with the subject matter so much as the way it is taught, which goes back, of course, to the teachers.

As I understand it, the idea behind having a liberal arts degree in the modern world is not so much the knowledge involved - what does a history degree prepare you for, apart from studying more history or teaching the same? Writing bad fantasy novels, perhaps... Not so much the knowledge gained, but being taught to think. Logic and reasoning and suchlike.

As someone recently said on this subject (possibly it was Victor David Hanson), the problem is that the teachers are no longer satisfied with teaching their students to think, but now feel it is their duty to teach them how and what to think.

My purpose in exposing arts students to mathematics and science and engineering was not intended as a slight on the arts studies themselves (though the character of this blog is to toss off all but the most serious of topics with a clever remark), but that the difference in thinking in the schools of science and engineering would expose those students to a new world of thought. Two new worlds in fact.

First, in science and engineering and mathematics and accounting, you can be wrong. It's not a matter of opinion or politics, it's just wrong. No, that bridge will not stay up. No, you can't have a double-bond with hydrogen. No, the square root of two is not a rational number. No amount of debate will change these things. The facts of science, the rigorous logic of mathematics, the application of these in engineering - this is a different world.

Second, because of this, the destructive theories of Postmodernism cannot find a foothold in any sane science or engineering faculty. Postmodernism, to an engineer, is simply and obviously wrong. So the particular leftist structure that we find built around PoMo thought today likewise finds no place. Not that there are no leftists in science or engineering - hardly that! - but there is equally a place for centrists and conservatives. As long as the equations are right, as long as the facts check out, as long as the plane flies, as the building stands, that is what matters and your politics not at all.

And that is as strong an antidote to the Idiots of Academia as I know.

Also, Porphyrogenitus wishes us all to know that he is not in fact bound for Mexico.

It's Bermuda.

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Where's the Bleat?

No Thursday Bleat. No Friday Bleat. Where's the Bleat?

The Bleat is in New York:

That's right! LIVE from New York!

Inasmuch as I’m not dead when I’m writing it. This of course is not being posted on the days written, because I don’t feel like telling everyone that I’ve left the house for a while. Unlike Dave Barry, who is content to tell everyone he's on a book tour because no one knows where he lives, and because he has a gator-invested moat and a security staff and a panic room with pnuematic access to a subterranean monorail, I don't broadcast my absences from Jaspewood. This alsso means I will have nothing to say about current events this week - like this Limbaugh thing which is breaking; my gut says guilty. I am also sure that upon hearing the news, Al Franken spronged sufficient wood to knock the table over. In terms of his credibility with his followers, I think Rush just had his Aimee Semple McPherson moment. The faithful will be divided. Short term? His 4Q ratings book is going to rock.

Don't touch that dial!

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Academentia

The problem with idiots* in Academia has caught the attention of a number of bloggers recently.

One of Steven Den Beste's readers comments on how Nazi Germany was all America's fault - according to the idiots.

Sparkey of Sgt. Stryker's Daily Briefing remembers how Russia saved the American bacon in WWII - according to the idiots.

Critical Mass has a series of posts about how idiots stick together to defend themselves against the competent. (I'll note at this point that my two-thirds of a degree was in Computer Science at an engineering university. Even then, we knew what liberal arts degrees were good for.)

Porphyrogenitus has an excellent post on the issue, noting that turning on the light may make cockroaches scurry for cover, but it doesn't actually deal with the problem. Por' is so dismayed with the ongoing Rise of Incompetence that he is considering closing up shop and moving to Mexico.

Flit, meanwhile, points us to Accuracy in Academia, a group devoted to exposing the idiot wherever** and however he may manifest himself.

Victor Davis Hanson leads a review of the blight of idiocy in American universities at NRO; unfortunately, not only is the web version of this a scanned copy of the print version, but the web designer has set the wrong dimensions for the scanned image, rendering it almost illegible.

What is to be done about this? I have one suggestion. There seems to be far less of a problem in those areas of study that are actually useful for something, science and engineering, mathematics, accounting, and so on. It's the worthwhile-but-not-immediately-applicable fields that have suffered the worst of the infection.

When I was studying at Kenso Kindy*** science and engineering students - the majority of the student body - were required to pass a certain number of liberal arts subjects in order to graduate. The aim, it seems, was to produce a more well rounded engineer, one who could make polite conversation at the dinner table. There was much grumbling among the students over this, because the opposite was not true; that is, liberal arts students (we in Australia simply refer to these as "arts" students) were not required to pass any practical subjects.

I think it would make a huge difference to the value of a liberal arts education if this were to become a requirement. Every history or English major, every student of political science or "women's studies", should be required to take and pass a certain minimum number of courses in mathematics, science and engineering.

Of course, we know now - as we knew then - why this isn't done: They'd all fail. But I don't see this as a bad thing.

* Said bloggers mostly refer to these individuals as Leftists, but what they really are is idiots. The problem is not so much one of political leaning - though that is often how it expressed - but of incompetence.

** Within academia, anyway.

*** That is, Kensington Kindergarten, a.k.a. the University of New South Wales, located in Kensington, Sydney.

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Monday, October 06

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Get Ready To Yay

Another first-rate blogger is mu.nu bound!

No, I won't tell you who.

Yes, I'm a big meanie.

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Saturday, October 04

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Snooze Button Dreams

Another fine blogger has made the break from the evil Blogspot Empire and fled to the peace-loving (but well defended!) and prosperous lands of mu.nu. A big welcome please for Jim of Snooze Button Dreams!

Alas, my snooze button only gives me five minutes. I really should do something about that.

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Friday, October 03

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Not Even Breathing Hard

Front Line Voices had a pretty good first day: around 14,000 visitors and 35,000 page views. Which produced no signs of strain on the server, even though it's only a little Celeron box.

Which is as it should be, given the architecture of Movable Type. MT is strongly biased in favour of fast, low overhead reading, whereas the writing - adding new posts, and, unfortunately, leaving comments - can be very CPU intensive.

If you've noticed that leaving comments on MT-based blogs is rather slow, this is why: when you leave a comment, MT is forced to rebuild any pages containing the post that you are commenting on, which may include the main index, an individual archive entry, a category archive (which can get quite large), and one or more date-based archives (daily, weekly, monthly). Even if the only change to those pages is to say "3 comments" instead of "2 comments", MT needs to pull all the appropriate entries from its database, and reprocess those entries according to their respective templates (which amount to a complete programming language). It doesn't help that MT is written in Perl (not the fastest language in which to do this sort of thing) and is a CGI application (so none of this can happen in the background).

On the other hand, it handles 35,000 page views in a day with perfect aplomb.

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Wednesday, October 01

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Blogging by Proxy

Due to pressures of work - as I've mentioned before, I somehow managed to land myself with what amounts to two full-time jobs - I don't have as much time to blog, or to read other blogs, as I would like.

So it gives me great pleasure to introduce to you the newest bloggers here at mu.nu: Stevie of caughtintheXfire, Heather of Angelweave, and Don of Anger Management. Please give them a warm Munuvian welcome.

And lots of links.

And if anyone sees our stray kitten, John Collins, give us a yell.

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