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We’ve got a packed, super-sized show for you this week, so let’s get right to it: first up (right at the top of the show), tech columnist Benedict Evans who takes us through the Facebook v. Apple privacy controversy and explains why Apple may not have the moral high ground they think they do. Then, Grace Church High School math teacher Paul Rossi (you must read the article he wrote for our friend Bari Weiss’ site explaining what happened to him) on the insane (that’s really the only word for it) dynamics that are playing out in some of our schools right now. It’s an eye opening and very worrying conversation. Also, was Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins really “the loneliest man in the universe” during his moon mission? We ponder that one and who might go to Mars with Elon Musk and who definitely won’t be going.
Music from this week’s show: I Was in the House When the House Burned Down by Warren Zevon
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Really? It’s called “The Future Is Unwritten” and you didn’t go with this?
I doubt Elon Musk will be going to Mars himself, since it’s just about certain to be a one-way trip.
No. The Blue Yeti’s taste in music is impeccable, his catalog is infinite, and his technical mastery of this medium is unparalleled, I know that sounds over the top, but I am sincere. Despite his many other faults, in music, he is above reproach.
This woman you tout is hyperventilating in every phrase. I don’t know how she remains standing upright. Horrible.
Well, he’s agreed with my choices in the past, and wished he had used my choice instead.
Benedict Evans is more correct about Kindle books, but it happens a lot more often with TV shows and movies. Streaming companies, including Amazon, are licensed to carry a TV series etc, or maybe a few seasons at a time, for a certain period of time. After that, you can’t watch it any more even if you paid for it.
Sorry, @kedavis. My criticism was unkind. But, I think the Blue Yeti made the right call. Warren Zevon, may he RIP, has met the test of time.
He’s very good, although not what I’ve felt like purchasing. But I don’t see a point to just tacking a Warren Zevon song onto any given podcast, “because he’s great,” especially when the podcast has “Unwritten” in the title and Natasha is waiting right there.
It isn’t “tacking on,” it is a commentary on Paul Rossi’s predicament. Don’t think so literally about it.
The podcast title is taken from a phrase Rossi said on the show. It has nothing to do with the song selection.
I don’t know much about Bedingfield, but based on that song, I’d say she has listened to too much Alanis Morissette.
Do the guys need their spirits embiggened?
Embiggened?
But her performance was nominated for “Best Song to Listen to While Getting Ready for School” at the Radio Disney Music Awards in 2006. So don’t be surprised that she has a significant fan base among a younger demographic.
So you’d be up for colonizing Mars. :-)
And yes, it is a perfectly cromulent word. :-)
(Michael_Scott_thankyou!.gif>
But on the serious side, I’m not very optimistic about a long-term colony on Mars until there’s something set up in place to deal with the less-than-40% gravity. Without that, even if there were a way to return to Earth, it’s likely that anyone who had lived on Mars for very long would not be able to come back anyway. And any children born on Mars might never be able to even visit Earth.
Rossi was great, but I wish our humble hosts had seen fit to drill down a bit more on the subject of how many kids are embracing Wokeness.
Rossi said that girls are more likely to climb aboard the Woke train than guys are — but that was it. He didn’t elaborate, and Peter, James, and Rob didn’t follow-up.
What’s more, you could tell how eager Rob was to protect his belief that young people are not internalizing the Woke worldview.
”They‘ll say whatever they have to in order to get the A,” Rob is fond of telling people. Rob’s been saying variations of this line for years.
Now, Rob is no dummy (obviously), but he’s clearly in denial here. He clings stubbornly to the belief that young people have the same outlook today that they did in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ’90s. Rob prefers to think that the outlook that prevailed in Tom Wolfe’s college-based novel “I Am Charlotte Simmons” still obtains in 2021.
If only. The truth is, we now have two generations of young people (Millennials and Gen Z) that regard things like Equity & Inclusion, Modern “Gender Science,” and Critical Race Theory — as received wisdom. Polling indicates that these kids unquestioningly accept these ideas — and why not? They’ve been getting them from an IV drip since the age of four.
Okay, back to the subject at hand. This is what Rossi told Megyn Kelly on her podcast two weeks ago. He said that as far as he could tell, about 50% of boys and 80% of girls are Woke “true believers.” The rest are skeptics.
Now consider those numbers for a moment (numbers, by the way, that comport with recent national polling): In a high school cafeteria of, say, 200 people – – equal parts boys and girls – – only 70 of the students can rightly be called skeptical.
The other 130 are fully on board the Woke train.
So, roughly 2/3 of kids are on board the Woke train.
And, not surprisingly, that number is only growing.
It may be a cruel trick, since it was “done to them” rather than something they did to themselves of their own volition, but at this point the only “correction” might be to wait for it to crash and burn on its own.
Amazon streams HD digital that is higher resolution than compact disc $13 a month or something. The new class D amps are really cheap and sound really good. I would think that would have an effect on things. Speakers are the only thing that didn’t improve. I would say that is going to push things around quite a bit.
I have to get something out of my head before I forget it. The two sharpest people on racial issues are a writer named Libby Emmons and a guy that is more known as a lawyer on Twitter named Ron Coleman. I think Libby got on Tucker Carlson. I was really hoping she would take off as an expert in this stuff. People need to try to be friends and acquaintances with as many people as they can without being phony about it. I would say that’s the philosophy in a nutshell.
I like how the boss denied what was said in prior conversations. That is actual gaslighting, and you know it’s going on all over the place now.
He used the two words that aren’t used enough in education: accreditation and cartel. There is no way in hell any of the current education accreditation systems net out for society anymore. It’s just a scam to rip off whoever they can rip off. It gives them money and the power to indoctrinate.
The context of Neil Armstrong’s heart rate when they landed was, the designated landing zone was littered with boulders. They almost ran out of propellant dodging it. They were seconds from having no choice but to blast back into orbit.
I once read a long article about Army Ranger training. There is no way in hell I could do that. I would rather kill myself than read a map under pressure, among other challenges they face.
“Punctuality!”
The hosts wondered if the list of characteristics being identified as “white” culture at Paul Rossi’s school included “punctuality”, but Rossi didn’t seem to immediately recall seeing that item in the list.
Either way, the question is interesting.
Although such a list might not use the exact word “punctuality”, some “antiracist” documents do include “Follow rigid time schedules” under the category of Time.
Maybe Rossi just couldn’t locate that in the moment, but consider what it would mean if the school — which probably wants students to “follow rigid time schedules” — had chosen to selectively leave that particular item out of the list that was presented.
Perhaps the school is not quite willing to renounce that part of “white” culture?
OR if the school had the integrity to not selectively remove that item, perhaps someone should inquire if the school will be letting the students know anytime soon that the school is repenting of their former dedication to promoting that aspect of “white” culture. The students (especially any penalized for tardiness) have a natural vested interest in knowing.
One might also nudge it along by shining a bright and revealing light on the internal inconsistencies. It would be an important part of a beneficial education for people, young and old, to realize that the movement is at odds with reality and cannot live effectively within its own dogmas.
p.s. Here are some other listed items about which the school (if consistent) might need to apologize to the students and repent of its own past promotional role.
Protestant Work Ethic
-Hard work is the key to success
Status, Power & Authority:
-Respect authority
The Wikipedia article about the Apollo program says that US intelligence was worried that the Soviets were still going to get to the moon as of 1968. I did not know that.
I recently learned that the moon mission was a big deal in demonstrating to the rest of the planet that communism was a bad idea.
I read a long article about the way utilities work. They are corrupt and they are a control tool of the left. That is why you don’t see compact nukes on decentralized grids. They never talk about it even though that is the solution. There is no reason for centralized utilities, anymore. Electric cars would crop up everywhere organically given compact nukes. It drives me crazy when they try to shove electric cars down our throats at gunpoint. It makes no sense. They have no plan except it has to improve things. It’s not going to improve anything unless you switch to nuke. The government could have built multiple models of compact nukes two decades ago.
One of the local green lobbyists tried to tell me that forcing electric cars at gunpoint was the same thing as rural electrification. I bet 80% of all Democrat politicians actually believe that.
Green energy requires 68 people to create the same energy as one person in the fossil fuel sector.
There are 1 billion desperately poor people on the planet. The math is inelectable.
Personally, I’m going to upgrade my anti-collision system because of this crap. All it’s doing is making places like Minneapolis more dangerous:
You are dead on,
The woke curriculum consumes so much class time, which is fine, since all that racist reading, writing, arithmetic, and history requires real thought and effort, and are beyond the capabilities of all tribal groups except whites and asians.
Listening to the latter part of the podcast where they discussed Michael Collins passing and the astronauts who first landed on the moon, I found the discussion to be disjointed, starting with the assertion by Peter that you don’t see that kind of a combination of military competence, training and courage anymore. First, they’re a dying breed, but there are still pilots landing on aircraft carriers. But if you were to look for that kind of military based courage and competence, look towards the various elite fighters such as the Navy SEALs and the Army Special Forces (Green Berets).
The seat of your pants pilot is functionally extinct. And depending on a pilot like Neil Armstrong to land on Mars is very unlikely. The landings will be automated. I don’t see the need, by the way, to designate a pilot to be the mission commander. The emphasis will be on scientific and engineering survival skills and leadership will come from that still to be formed community.
The astronauts were a generation or two from the pilots as exemplified by Charles Lindbergh, and their generation was exemplified by Chuck Yeager. By the way, to show how informal things were becoming, no one called Lindbergh, Chuck.
On the optimism, or lack thereof, that Peter Robinson was decrying, I’d remind him that while the moon program started on a wave of optimism, when the people running the country were the people who had fought in World War II as young men and boys, by the time of the first moon landing occurred the country was in a funk that had only just started and was to last for another 10-15 years. The first moon landing was the last vestiges of that optimism of the 1950’s and early nineteen-sixties.
And the moon landing wasn’t an example of capitalism and innovation, but government and innovation. Yes, there was some capitalism mixed in with civilian contractors, but the moon landings were an example of a newly created bureaucracy, NASA. Often newly created government agencies show a lot of energy and innovation before they become ossified. Another example is the Manhattan Project, which turned into the Atomic Energy Commission and then the Department of Energy. Since Peter brought up nuclear power, I thought I’d mention that too.
But let’s talk about the optimism of the early 1960’s, and what it mostly brought us. It’s an example of pride going before the fall. There was a war in Vietnam and a war on poverty, brought about by that same optimism which turned into arrogance. The Great Society programs were an example of new government agencies imbued with energy and that same optimism as NASA, until they became ossified and ineffective. In the end, they weakened private charitable groups and state and local governments. And that centralization is a big reason why this country is so divided, since it attempts to impose a uniformity that this country is too large to absorb.
And compare the astronauts that Peter admires so much to an explorer like Christopher Columbus. Columbus raised the money for this venture, arranged for his ships to be built, and then led the expedition.
The astronauts were the tip of a very big spear, and their contribution was very small compared to Columbus. They actually were very competent and brave specialists who were very focused on what they had to do but they, exemplified by Neil Armstrong, weren’t people with a lot of imagination or vision. Let’s face it. They were expendable.
Elon Musk, if he’s successful with his venture to land people on Mars, will likely be remembered more than the first crew that sets foot on Mars. And rightfully so. And it’s a truer example of capitalism and innovation, though like Columbus, he’s getting a lot of his funding from a government.
Another vision is starting to form, that of rotating space stations where colonists would spend most of their time, and where the gravity of earth could be emulated.
Another problem to solve is to protect humans from the radiation of space long term.