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The subtext is quickly becoming the text

"This blog sits at the intersection of anthropology and economics" examines the subtext of that viral four guys on treadmills music video in the post "OK Go Again". Another post "The Problem of Smugness" comments those stupid Apple ads where PC and Apple have been antropomorphised into a bumbling square business guy and a cool hipster guy. I am sure that as soon as Udolpho sees these ads, he will realize the error of his ways as a Windows drone and become an Apple genius.

For the moral philosophers and professional ethicists out there, Blackfive offers a provocative treatise "On the Virtues of Killing Children". Is it morally wrong to engage in a war that potentially kills children in other nations, if those nations would potentially attack and kill our children?

One thing that I have personally found puzzling in the American universities is their selection of students, since you'd think that just like in Finland, at least the top outfits would have many times more applicants coming in than they can possibly take. In Finland, universities select the incoming class based solely on the high school grades and the entrance exam, scored and weighted in some uniform manner that is same for every applicant. However, at least for some American places, I hear that the applicants send the selection committee an essay that they wrote, and this essay somehow significantly affects the selection process. Now, I may have once again misunderstood something or perhaps I don't see the whole picture, but this just sounds like about the stupidest idea that I have ever heard, since the possibility and ease of gaming this system is so blatantly obvious. Professor Greg Mankiw has doubts about the same issue in his post "Improving College Admissions".

"Coming Anarchy" brings us "Truth Air", an airplane takeoff announcement for the passengers from which all the doublespeak has been removed. Another post, "The Base vs The Alliance Base", applies some graph theory to the war against terror. Or for the terror, depending on where you are reading, I guess. Network for success, as they say!

A while ago one local channel played the scare documentary "The Corporation" in two parts. I watched the first part and I can't help to say that as leftist propaganda goes, this was even more inane than the usual fare. So I didn't even bother to watch the second part. An incoherent jumble of topics that the filmmakers thought were shocking. As an interesting thought experiment, imagine if the same people ever created a movie "Humans". But perhaps not all is lost, since Julian Sanchez notes that the film features a choir singing the writings of Milton Friedman: "Let Friedman ring". Commies sure seem to have making music to arouse workers down to the pat, and using a choir is perhaps appropriate since these people are "preaching to the choir". I am sure that the viewers who already hate capitalism found this movie very intelligent and devastating, but us boring happily-married normos with steady jobs with good salary to pay off our mortgages and pay taxes to support and feed you need quite a bit more convincing.

By the way, if anybody ever wants to set my writings to song, so that you have a full choir at your disposal, make this choir instead sing "Bengt Hilgursson", which is, repeating this Swedish name of a well-known Go player to the tune of Blade Runner theme by Vangelis. Some members of the choir can accompany the song with repeated "bebe bebe" at suitable points, or simulate vocally some other synthesizer effects in the song especially if the choir sings a cappella. It's just that I have always wanted to hear some real choir actually do this, instead of just me and my chums years ago at the Go boardgame club.

3 comments

"... at least for some American places, I hear that the applicants send the selection committee an essay that they wrote, and this essay somehow significantly affects the selection process."

My view is that college administrators are always caught between wanting to let in more non-Asian and non-white students, but they run into obstacles because the other students do less well (on the average) on SATs than the Asians and whites. In principle they are not supposed to resort to discrimination to improve the percentages of non-Asians and non-whites. So what works is to blur the admissions criteria. Then they can claim to have a fair system yet they are quietly inserting their beliefs in affirmative action into the admission process.

Some colleges are even doing away with the SAT. Then only high school grades, essays, and other less academic activities will count. So lousy high schools where good grades are easy to obtain suddenly are on an equal footing with excellent high schools that demand much of students and good grades require much work. Here again the college admission standards are getting blurred to give the college administrators more flexibility. And you can bet that flexibility will mean that many Asian and white kids with better SAT scores are not getting in.

And what the s**t is the deal with letting morons into colleges based on the fact that they can play some ball game which has nothing to do whatsoever with a college degree or some day with getting a real job.

Do these people graduate, I wonder? Do they actually study something? Are there "moron courses" for sports jocks so that they can get a degree while not being able to read and write properly?

I see American obsession with college sports as a cosmicly stupid and absurd phenomenon. Sure, it makes good teen movies where a sport jock has a girl who doesn't actually really love him and in the end the chess club geek gets girl. Just like in real life. Not.

American college sports are a way for the colleges to finance themselves, I suppose.

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