Alan Jacobs

“What’s missing from the discussion is a recognition that the choices of feminist sex workers could, in fact, be immoral. By insisting that we respect and value all female choices, choice feminism creates a double-standard which trivializes women’s moral capacities and denies our agency the same kind of significance that we attach to that of men. Male choice remains subject to critique, and men are still expected to take responsibility for the social and political consequences of their actions; only women are exempt.

This attitude is profoundly demeaning to women. Generally we will only praise a person for doing something badly if we are impressed that they can do it at all. When a toddler draws his first recognizably humanoid squiggle, the adults present applaud as though it were the Mona Lisa. Choice feminism makes sense only if we honestly think that women, as a group, have such infantile decision-making skills that every time one of us makes a choice the rest have to gather round and pat her on the back.”

A majority of the school’s astronomy faculty, which Dr. Marcy has been a member of since 1999, said in a letter posted online Monday that he should go. “We believe that Geoff Marcy cannot perform the functions of a faculty member,” said the letter, which carried 23 signatures.

But the university administration, which placed him on probation over the summer after an investigation without announcing the decision, defended its approach, saying it left Dr. Marcy on a very tight leash and vulnerable to immediate dismissal if he violates his probation. “The university has imposed real consequences on Professor Geoff Marcy by establishing a zero-tolerance policy regarding future behavior,” said the statement, issued Tuesday by the office of Janet Broughton, Berkeley’s vice provost for the faculty.

If someone tells you “coding is the new literacy” because “computers are everywhere today,” ask them how fuel injection works. By teaching low-level coding, I worry that we are effectively teaching our children the art of automobile repair. A valuable skill — but if automobile manufacturers and engineers are doing their jobs correctly, one that shouldn’t be much concern for average people, who happily use their cars as tools to get things done without ever needing to worry about rebuilding the transmission or even change the oil.

There’s nothing wrong with basic exposure to computer science. But it should not come at the expense of fundamental skills such as reading, writing and mathematics — and unfortunately today our schools, with limited time, have tons of pressure on them to convey those basics better.

I’ve known so many programmers who would have been much more successful in their careers if they had only been better writers, better critical thinkers, better back-of-the-envelope estimators, better communicators. And aside from success in careers, we have to ask the broader question: What kinds of people do we want children to grow up to be?

[gallery] Burial in Bradford of the “Jesus Man”:

A local man, Michael Kerrigan, penned a poem for the funeral, A Touch of Jesus, which he read from the pulpit. The Rev Sandra Benham, the vicar of Baildon, the Bradford community where Brindley was known to spend time in a shared house, said: “What can we learn from him? He was a constant witness, always there come rain, shine, snow or hail. He had time for people, he was never in a rush, not caught up in our frenzied world. He simply walked, waved and smiled.”

There was an outbreak of spontaneous applause as Brindley’s coffin was borne out of the cathedral bound for a private cremation. Earlier, the congregation sang Jerusalem, which seemed hugely apt for a man whose feet had walked, if not quite since ancient time but certainly an impressive number of decades, not only on England’s mountains green but among Bradford’s dark satanic mills, exuding smiles, kindness and an air of agreeable mystery.

Why I Unfollowed You on Instagram

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yusefalahmad:

nemfrog:

Relative visibility of colors at a distance _Graphic presentation_ 1939

This is important.

It is illustrated in the experience of almost all ethical doctrines and religious creeds. They are all full of meaning and vitality to those who originate them, and to the direct disciples of the originators. Their meaning continues to be felt in undiminished strength, and is perhaps brought out into even fuller consciousness, so long as the struggle lasts to give the doctrine or creed an ascendency over other creeds. At last it either prevails, and becomes the general opinion, or its progress stops; it keeps possession of the ground it has gained, but ceases to spread further. When either of these results has become apparent, controversy on the subject flags, and gradually dies away. The doctrine has taken its place, if not as a received opinion, as one of the admitted sects or divisions of opinion: those who hold it have generally inherited, not adopted it; and conversion from one of these doctrines to another, being now an exceptional fact, occupies little place in the thoughts of their professors. Instead of being, as at first, constantly on the alert either to defend themselves against the world, or to bring the world over to them, they have subsided into acquiescence, and neither listen, when they can help it, to arguments against their creed, nor trouble dissentients (if there be such) with arguments in its favour. From this time may usually be dated the decline in the living power of the doctrine.

[gallery] Typewriter Revolution

Over at The American Conservative, I’ve been posting, in installments, a dialogue on democracy — more specifically, on whether democracy is a failed experiment:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

For better or worse, this will be going on for a while. And I think it’ll follow a pretty interesting path.

Since the 1980s I’ve been reading predictions that soon, very soon, intelligent and responsive machines will converse with us in our own language. I think not. I predict that future devices will be programmed by the same sort of people who now write scripts for elevators and self-checkout machines. It won’t be the Dilberts who program our robots; it will be the Wallys.

The Dilberts are busy writing sophisticated code to make Volkswagen diesel-emission controls operate only in laboratory tests. The programming of devices that interact with ordinary users like us will be left to the Wallys.