Archive for the ‘Political Correctness’ Category

Traction

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

Billy Beck, talking about tractors:

Ladies and gentlemen, this is about managing the immutable reality of mechanical systems. People can bullshit each other — and even themselves — over concepts in all sorts of ways. When concepts are forged in steel, that becomes impossible. You don’t get to bullshit your way around a 5/8″ bolt. You just don’t. When you’re dealing with a flywheel pilot bearing, no mental substitutions — whether from sloppiness or outright psychosis — will suffice: that bearing is only what it is, and your mind had better be right about everything about it.

Robert Pirsig once wrote a very ridiculous book, but he wrote it about a very serious subject.

There is great philosophy in machines.

Accompanied by some heart-warming shop photos.

[Hey, Billy! I've done a couple of head rebuilds, and my question is, where are you getting the gasket sets for this beast?]

This prompted Mike Soja:

I was standing in front of a green hooded idling number of about half the age of Beck’s specimen, while the man I was there to do business with slowly hand pumped diesel into the fuel neck from a large tank out behind his corn crib. Over the rumble, he pointed to the name plate at the prominent place on the nose and asked, “Ever see one of those before?” The plate said, “Deutz”, and I allowed that I hadn’t. He said it was a three cylinder, air cooled.

[He] remarked, “I’d like to buy a new one of these, but they don’t make them anymore.”

I asked, “Did they go out of business?”

“No. They just can’t make them. The government says they have to be water cooled, now.”

And that opened up whole new areas of conversation.

I’ve whacked out about half of that; see the whole thing for the flavor.

I’ve done volunteer teaching of fifth grade science labs. They stopped doing that;it was too damn much trouble, too messy, too loud.

I don’t know how much science got through, but if I managed to get across the faintest glimmer that the universe does what it does, and not what you think it ought to do, I succeeded.

Anybody who thinks economics doesn’t follow that same principle is advocating ruin, death, and chaos.

It’s Science: Facts Don’t Matter

Saturday, July 24th, 2010

In fact, facts may actually reinforce opposing assumptions.

It’s one of the great assumptions underlying modern democracy that an informed citizenry is preferable to an uninformed one. “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1789. This notion, carried down through the years, underlies everything from humble political pamphlets to presidential debates to the very notion of a free press. Mankind may be crooked timber, as Kant put it, uniquely susceptible to ignorance and misinformation, but it’s an article of faith that knowledge is the best remedy. If people are furnished with the facts, they will be clearer thinkers and better citizens. If they are ignorant, facts will enlighten them. If they are mistaken, facts will set them straight.

In the end, truth will out. Won’t it?

Maybe not. Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

More evidence that putting the educated elite in charge of our lives is a bad idea.

My sense is that academics and bureaucrats must be as susceptible to this as anyone else, perhaps even moreso, because they are, effectively, trained to think that they are right, and they are totally isolated from real world consequences if they are wrong. Instead, their assumption that the stupid ignorant mundanes just didn’t take their advice strongly enough, and so they must be forced.

Individuals may well fall victim to the problem, but if they act on false assumptions, they will fail, and they will not be able to force their failure on those around them.

I now propose Moore’s Arrow:

All sources of bias arising from education are arguments for reducing government power.

The only bulwark against this seems to be Popper’s discipline of falsifiability. This demonstrably works, however slowly and unreliably.

Three Fifths

Saturday, July 24th, 2010

Did the 3/5ths Compromise mean the Founders were racist?

Many in the progressive world, believe that our founding fathers were racist. As their evidence they point to Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the United States Constitution:

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

To the liberals, the 3/5th figure is an indication that our founding fathers were a bunch of racists who thought that the African Slaves were less than human.

The truth is that the founders from the northern colonies who opposed Slavery, insisted on counting the slaves as less than “full persons.” The reason for the insistence, is to prevent the slave states from getting too many congressman and electoral votes as to dominate the government and prevent Slavery from ever being abolished.

Fascinating article, read the whole thing.

There’s another version of the argument, which I first heard from my brother in California; apparently put forward by Howard Zinn. As I understand it, the three fifths compromise was not based on opposition to slavery, but purely to increase Northern power at the expense of Southern power.

The essential point, however, is that the Founders had no good in them; their failure to create a perfect Socialist state ab initio with equal outcomes for all is proof that they were merely replacing the English nobles with a new class structure based on economic power.

Whip of the Year, So Far: Anthro Majors

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

Cue letters from anthropology majors complaining that this view of numerolinguistic development perpetuates a widespread myth. They get to write letters like that because when you're not getting a real science degree you have a lot of free time.

The whip is in the roll over text:

Cue letters from anthropology majors complaining that this view of numerolinguistic development perpetuates a widespread myth. They get to write letters like that because when you’re not getting a real science degree you have a lot of free time.

Of course, it’s not just anthropology; see my comment a few posts down about Truth.

Independence Day in a Time of War

Sunday, July 4th, 2010

Uncle admonishes us to “Be Safe”.

Gah! I think, and then I ran into this:

… and as I say in his comments,

and I realized, this year, no, be safe, because the time may come when safety is not possible, and we will need all the fingers and eyes we can get, because there will barely be enough to start with.

So, yeah, while the crisis lasts:

Be safe. Enjoy. Celebrate our freedom, but remember what the fireworks symbolize, and treat them accordingly.

Practice hurting your enemies, not yourself.

No Means No! No, Really!

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

“The Outrage of a Belgian Woman, 1854″ by Antoine Wiertz
Painting of  a Naked Woman shooting a soldier
via Sipsey Street.

I doubt Wiertz was making an argument here for the right to keep and bear, probably something do with Belgian history, but there it is: A naked woman, far from being in fighting trim, successfully avoids rape by a well-conditioned, experienced soldier.

“Gun control is the theory that a woman lying raped and strangled with her own panty hose is morally superiour to a woman standing over a dead rapist with a smoking gun in her hand.”

QotD: Civil Discourse

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

MIke at Cold Fury, takes aim at socialists whining about people calling Byrd out as a racist tax monger:

Civil discourse? Here’s all the civil discourse these Red-toothed, America-hating douchebags deserve: fuck every last one of them. In the heart, railroad spike, cayenne pepper in the Vaseline; you know the drill.

This in support of the American Power post decrying the racist hypocrisy over at Firedog Lake and other statist venues, where spewing venom at ill, dying, and dead Republicans is acceptable, even encouraged.

Obama, Do Your Damn Job

Monday, June 28th, 2010

Hey, you think that “Declaration 2.0″ thingie a post or two down is a joke?

Here’s a bill of particulars with references to the Constitution.

Mexican gangs with lookout posts IN ARIZONA??? Mexican snipers?? What in Hell is the matter with you? Are you so intent on “fundamentally transforming” this country that you will allow this? An ARMED incursion across our southern border and death threats to law enforcement and YOU ALLOW THIS???

If so, then you are a traitor in the purest sense of the word and should be treated as such. You are in direct violation of the Constitution by denying the citizens of Arizona the right to “be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects” as outlined in the Fourth Amendment, in addition to your failure to respect Article IV Sec.4 of the Constitution regarding the “guarantee to EVERY (individual) state a republican form of government and shall protect each of them (including Arizona) against INVASION”.

AND your failure “To provide for the calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and REPEL INVASIONS” (Article 1 Sec. 8 of the Constitution)

You are also in violation of Article III Sec. 3 of the Constitution in that, by allowing these outposts to exist you are indirectly giving “Aid and Comfort” to an invading force, the enemy. You have, at the very least, allowed a potential state of war to exist on our own sovereign soil and have done nothing to defend or support those in the line of fire. Abandonment and persecution of the people you were sworn to protect makes “Traitor” seems appropriate.

I must add, you are not only a traitor but a seditionist as well. That you are IN FACT, guilty of “overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority as tending toward insurrection against the established order” We The People being the legal authority and states rights being the “established order”.

“Subversion of a constitution” and “incitement of discontent (or resistance) to lawful authority” which you have done by demonizing the people of and filing suit against, the state of Arizona. You have, in fact, created a “commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws” (of the state of Arizona) all of which are part of the very definition of sedition. You have, in essence, declared war on one of our own states by these actions and you WILL be held accountable.

Read it all, every word.

And you leg-tingling “Journo-lists” who acted as this thug’s mouthpiece during and after the election?

Right up against the wall with him. You’re not the independent, free press protected by the Constitution; you’re his shills, and if he starts bailing out your worthless puppy trainers, you’ll be his paid shills, his co-conspirators.

Anybody out there willing to admit they voted for him? Still proud of it? Here’s your rough-hewn rail, have a nice ride out of town.

Feeling a bit duped?

Too. Fucking. Bad. You deserve everything that’s about to come down around your poor little ignorant innocent socialist peacenik ears. We’ll do our best to keep it from killing you, but remember: we don’t feel sorry for you, we blame you. We’ll let you in if you promise to work, but expect a lot of rough words and angry glares while you dig the latrines.

Via Sondra K. Again.

All Over The Place: Who Are You?

Monday, June 14th, 2010

Damn, xkcd was upstaged by this shit-sucking Socialist-Democrat prick:

Representative Bob Etheridge, D. NC.

Remember, boys and girls, he’s a Congressman, so he has a right to know who you are, and you have no business asking him questions.

You do, however, have a right to know your place, peasant.

I have seen the video posted on several blogs. I deeply and profoundly regret my reaction and I apologize to all involved. Throughout my many years of service to the people of North Carolina, I have always tried to treat people from all viewpoints with respect. No matter how intrusive and partisan our politics can become, this does not justify a poor response. I have and I will always work to promote a civil public discourse.

Asking him if he fully supports Obama’s agenda is intrusive? Ether, we have a Second Amendment. You obviously have no idea what intrusive is.

I have always believed that public office is a public trust.

It is, Etherbreather. It surely is.

And you just burned it. Along with any expectation you might have of courteous, civil discourse.

Incidentally, that little business about free speech? It comes with freedom of the press as well. That means, Etherbreather, that we the people have the right to ask you questions. It’s not just for licensed, professional journalists at well-regulated press conferences.

It also comes with the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

We gots us a grievance. You’re it.

Here’s more of the Congresscrapper’s civil discourse.

QotD: “If You Have to Tread on the Freedoms of Innocent People To Catch the Lawless You’re Doing It Wrong.”

Sunday, June 13th, 2010

From Jaded Libertarian at Samizdata, repeated in full because people need to be rousted out of bed by armed guards, herded into stadiums, and forced to listen to it being blared over and over through PA horns turned up to eleventy…oh, wait. No they don’t. But it does need to be spread far and wide, because our whole modern way of life is being perverted by the idea this article rejects.

I read in the paper today that after subjecting 500,000 people to mandatory face to face interviews, the government denied passports to eight for fraud.

This is the thing that most do not get. The small good does not justify, never justifies, the big evil. Causing inconvenience, misery and transgressing the privacy of half a million people in order to catch eight fraudsters is absurd.

And our society is full of such absurdities. Millions of adults are denied the “gift of giving” into their children’s lives by “child protection” policies. There is this assumption that any adult watching children swim is potentially sexually aroused, for example.

I would contend that the people who make such laws have dirty minds. I find it nobler and better to live life as though perverted degenerates do not even exist, for they are thankfully rare. And on the rare occasions where monsters abuse society’s trust, why, we should quickly and simply hang them in the town square and then return to life as before.

This is the model for transgressing only the liberties of the lawless, and not those of society at large. If you have to tread on the freedoms of innocent people to catch the lawless you’re doing it wrong.

“If it stops one fraudster, if it saves one life and if it protects one child it will all be worth it” the statists cry. These thoughts are supposed to make us feel warm inside as we queue to be inspected by the passports office, as security cameras follow us down the street and as police demand to know what we are doing for no particular reason. We are to lay our personal freedom on the alter of society in the name of the common good, and feel heartened by our sacrifice. As bizarre as it may sound, there are “true believers” in this cult – I see them all the time.

Down that road lies 24 hour policing of the entire population, and lives that are not worth living for all but the party elite. Basically 1984 made real.

And it all began when we passed that first law that mildly inconvenienced many in order to wheedle out the wicked few…

[Bold mine; Corrected as noted by the author in Samizdata comments.]