There are 63 comments.

1. Member
   LibertyDefender

   @LibertyDefender

   11:44 AM EDT ⋅ Mar 19, 2019

   Brent Chambers (View Comment):

   FredGoodhue (View Comment):

   I majored in a STEM field and went to an only slightly competitive college. I would never have gotten into MIT, even if I had applied. But I learned a lot in my old school and was very well prepared for my career. Since it was a state school, it cost a lot less than MIT. I don’t think in my case, or in most people’s cases, going to a high end school makes a big difference in the quality of the education.

   I did go to MIT in the 80’s and my experience is that the state schools have a very good education available, however, the student has to pursue it diligently. MIT sets the bar so high that you had to get a good education to barely clear it.

   It was the same high bar, that-which-does-not-kill-me-makes-me-a-good-engineer experience at “the ‘Tute,” Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (the nation’s oldest pure engineering school) in the early 80s when I attended.  I graduated in the 55th percentile with a 2.7 GPA.  Since that time, I’ve seen plenty of evidence that the academic rigor has been largely traded for cushy on-campus housing.  At the same time, the administration has waged war on fraternities, which in my day housed 40% of upperclassmen – that made real men out of us.

2. Member
   LibertyDefender

   @LibertyDefender

   12:16 PM EDT ⋅ Mar 19, 2019

   A suggestion for countering the left’s false narrative:

   James Lileks, you correctly decry the false narrative – pushed by the left – of a seamless connection between American conservatives and the insane killer in New Zealand, who had no actual friends but instead was “connected” to a virtual world via the internet.  You further correctly describe those to whom the whacko was connected as “leaderless.”

   You then referred to that leaderless virtual world as a “community.”  I think it makes more sense to call it – oh, I don’t know, … an “environment” perhaps, rather than a community.  Referring to it as a community might inadvertently endorse the left’s false narrative of a connection between whacko New Zealand mass killer and MAGA hat-wearing deplorables.

3. Member
   Freesmith

   @

   12:41 PM EDT ⋅ Mar 19, 2019

   Joe D. (View Comment):

   I would like to petition all conservatives to please start referring to ‘Beto’ O’Roarke as Bobby O’Roarke.

   What’s your problem with Blotto O’Rourke?