Notre ignorance de l’histoire nous fait calomnier notre temps. Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.
—Gustave Flaubert
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Category Archives: Education
I’m So Old …
… I remember when they taught this sort of stuff in ECON 101.
What happens when people are out of work and lots of stores are closed? Income tax and sales tax revenue drops. Bloomberg is reporting that New York’s tax collections have dropped by over two-thirds. Meanwhile, over on the left coast KPIX reports that Governor Hairgel is proposing pay cuts for California state workers because state revenues are down over 20 percent.
As the old Russian proverb says, “Го́лой овцы́ не стригу́т. (One doesn’t shear naked sheep.)” I suspect that we’re about to see a large portion of the bureaucracy begin to favor an expeditious reopening of the economy.
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How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of a great mind is agreeing in the opinions of small minds?
—John Stuart Mill
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Right action is better than knowledge; but in order to do what is right, we must know what is right.
—Charlemagne
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Geðenc hwelc witu us ða becomon for ðisse worulde, ða ða we hit nohwæðer ne selfe ne lufodon ne eac oðrum monnum ne lefdon! Remember what punishments befell us in this world when we ourselves did not cherish learning nor transmit it to other men.
—Alfred the Great
There Ought To Be A Law
Parkinson’s Law states that “”work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. Gresham’s Law states that “”bad money drives out good”.” The news coverage of the Wuhan virus pandemic I’ve been seeing over the past couple of appears to be the result of some sort of intersection of those two laws. Something on the order of “bad journalism expands so as to drive out good journalism.”
Of course, in any situation as serious as the current pandemic there will be a mix of good news and bad news, successes and failures. I get the distinct impression that the too much of the Main Stream Media is more invested in reporting bad news about Donald Trump than truthful news about what’s happening.
In the near term, the American public needs to be given a clear picture of the what’s happening nationally and locally so that we can act responsibly.
In the long term, we need to know what worked and what didn’t so that we properly evaluate people and policies—and take appropriate action on election day.
Over at Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds has remarked, “One of the problems with our ruling class is that it’s not just frequently wrong, it’s that it’s always self-assuredly arrogant in its wrongness.” Arrogance is fairly common trait of people who wind up in leadership positions for which they lack training, experience, and/or talent, and too many of the current crop of the best and the brightest weren’t trained in the disciplines of leadership. They are credentialed but uneducated.
Murphy was an optimist.
Quote of the Day
Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.
—G. K. Chesterton
