Forgot to post this yesterday.
Not a labor-related question, but I noticed that the “why is the campaign so long” columns are already beginning. Got me thinking: what is the single most annoying topic for pundit columns? Getting rid of the penny? Stuff a taxi driver told me? The Stanford marshmallow experiment? Anything by or having to do with Chris Hitchens? Feel free to suggest your own.
Hunter Gathers
The Kids Today, and Why They Should Stay Off Of My Lawn.
SiubhanDuinne
Most annoying for the columnist, or most annoying for the reader? There’s probably some overlap, but not a lot, I daresay.
mm
We got rid of the penny in Canada, and nothing in my life has changed because of it.
schrodinger's cat
If only Obama had Ryan and McConnell over for drinks more often there would be no gridlock.
Peale
Whatever happened to playing outside in the dirt? We had dirt and I was never happier.
JDM
@mm: We have a fun game at our local market’s self-checkout: want a bag or no? The object is to see how many times we save a nickel due to the absent penny (3 cents off for not getting a bag, which means an 80 cent item becomes a 75 cent item).
Some years back we went to New Zealand after they’d gotten rid of the penny. Thought it’d be a big annoyance seeing whether you saved or lost a couple of cents. Turned out that after the first morning – if that – we didn’t even think about it. Last time we were back they’d gotten rid of the nickel too, and we didn’t miss that either.
Really, the USA needs to at least get rid of the penny, and get a decent dollar and two dollar coin like Canada has. (I could do without the latest bills revision, which don’t fold well, but probably are a lot longer lasting; my girlfriend always commented on how dirty and crappy looking US money was.) But considering how long it took just to get slightly larger portraits past our reactionary public, it’s going to be a long time before we go the coin route.
laura
Anything that requires any effort or interest, or affects the lives of actual people. So bloody boring.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@JDM:
Decent coins would be nice.
The old Eisenhowers were too large, and the Susan B’s are too close in size and shape to a quarter.
Octagonal coins?
Roger Moore
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman):
The bi-metalic ones with a gold ring and a silver center. Or maybe dollars could be gold ring and silver center and two dollars could be silver ring and gold center. ETA: In any case, they should be smaller than existing dollar coins. I have found a perfect container for change (a 50ml conical centrifuge tube) but the dollar coins are just a tiny bit too big.
Felonius Monk
BULLSHIT — IOW, just about anything these horses’-asses (aka pundits) write about or talk about.
ruemara
Why is Hillary unlikeable and/or white thoughts on blackness. There has got to be a recipe you could go hipster up or something.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
My vote: “Stupid government spending money on stupid things that everybody knows because the White Male Gut is never wrong, and besides my great grandpa lived to be 38 years old so it was good enough for him.”
Methane comes from cow burps, not cow farts.
Public high school graduation rates are at an all-time high.
Raw milk can kill people.
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
(“Don’t get me started!!1″)
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
My vote: “Stupid government spending money on stupid things that everybody knows because the White Male Gut is never wrong, and besides my great grandpa lived to be 38 years old so it was good enough for him.”
Methane comes from cow burps, not cow farts.
Public high school graduation rates are at an all-time high.
Raw milk can kill people.
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
(“Don’t get me started!!1″)
Schlemazel
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman): @Roger Moore:
The coinage was screwed by the vending machine folks. They want certain size so they don’t have to retrofit equipment. Thats is why the dollar coin was quarter sized. It is also why they won’t do octagonal, it does not roll correctly which is necessary for coin identification. While the bi-metal idea is good it does not help the visually impaired who really need something like an octagonal.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
My vote: “Stupid government spending money on stupid things that everybody knows because the White Male Gut is never wrong, and besides my great grandpa lived to be 38 years old so it was good enough for him.”
Methane comes from cow burps, not cow farts.
Public high school graduation rates are at an all-time high.
Raw milk can kill people.
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
(“Don’t get me started!!1″)
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
I tried 4 times to post something, without success, so my vote would have to be “FYWP: History’s Greatest Monster, or Greatest Monster of All Space and Time?”
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
psycholinguist
Ah, the Stanford Marshmallow experiment, where within two weeks the “guards” went from having their “inmates” wait 5 minutes for the marshmallow delivery, to forcing the inmates to perform perverted acts of marshmallow masochism. And in the 30 years of follow up, it turns out their performance predicts IQ, vocational and social success. I believe I’m going to teach it like this in PSY101 from now on, with maybe a little of Milgram’s shiny shock machine thrown in for good measure.
Adam L Silverman
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I found and freed it. They all went right to trash for some reason.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
currently on the top of the front page of HuffPo
Shake it off, HuffPo.
Helen
Cleaning out the apt in anticipation of the move. Just threw out my sister’s, “Thank you” card from her first wedding in 1983. The marriage lasted 8 months. Also threw out a huge paper file titled “Taxes 1988 – 2009”. Polly getting rid of them was good. Certainly not taking them with me.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@JDM: Canada really does change right. Beautiful collectors coins, $1M coin, etc. But with the real in-circulation coins, you could actually use them in vending machines, etc., so they were actually useful.
People don’t get upset when they don’t get their 0.1 cents back if they buy a gallon of gas. We wouldn’t miss the penny much either.
Cheers,
Scott.
hovercraft
Columns lamenting the tone of our dialog, in politics and in our nation. It’s all bullshit though, politicians have been doing dirty tricks, trading insults and dueling since our founding, so for our delicate villagers to reach for the smelling salts and fainting couch every time someone goes negative is bull. As for society becoming coarser, we tried to kill off an entire race, the Native Americans, we’ve had men openly sleeping with their female slaves and fathering more slaves with them and then selling off their own children, and yet morons like David Brooks lament the level of our discourse and our falling morals. Color me contrary, but as a black woman, I think that society has improved a great deal. No one owns me, both as a woman who is not her husbands property to do with as he pleases, and as a black person who is also not property. Privileged white men may lament the passing of the days they were large and in charge, but for the rest of us these are glorious times where we get to be in charge.
eemom
Actually, I linked to his classic diss of Mother Teresa on Sunday….cuz he may have been an asshole but he sure got that one right.
As an amusing aside, I have a dumb as dirt cousin-friend on FB who supports Gary Johnson….even though she purports to care about shit like safe medicines and poisoned bees. It annoys me to be related to someone that stupid, and I’ve tried to straighten her out….but until just last week, whatever I said, I’d get this smug shit response about “peace” and “love you, cousin.” Then on Sunday, she posted some simpering shit about Mother Teresa and how great she was, and I responded with Hitch’s piece. THEN, she unfriended me. ? #jobwelldone
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks muchly! I’m sure there’s a forbidden word in there somewhere, but I couldn’t find it.
Cheers,
Scott.
Corner Stone
@psycholinguist:
I was not sure but I had considered that this experiment involved subjects who had fully melted Smores and those who refused to join in and ate regular puffy marshmallows between crackers.
The horror.
Adam L Silverman
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Who knows? I don’t. I’m pretty sure The Shadow doesn’t either.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: Those would, essentially, be Tajfel’s small group experiments into the power and salience of even weak identity associations (conceptually related to the Stanford Prison Experiment). Done with students at boarding schools. Randomly subdivided into three groups. Group A got two desserts, Group B the standard one dessert, Group C no dessert. After a couple of days they started adjusting which group got what. Remember this is all based on random assignment to a random group association. By the fourth or fifth days the members of the groups were attacking each others to get the desserts they believed they were supposed to get based on what they were receiving for the first few days of the experiment. These were all done in European boarding schools too. Very interesting set of experiments into identity and how strong even weak/artificial associations can be.
BruceFromOhio
Pundit columns about the most annoying pundit column topics.
Navel! Upon thee, I gaze.
danielx
Whatever is the deplorable-thing-of-the-day covered by David Brooks or Thomas Friedman, depending on what day of the week it is.
dmsilev
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Also, Canadian gold coins use real high purity gold, which is nice for certain niche applications. When I was in grad school, we needed a thin disc of high purity gold for a vacuum deposition system, and the cheapest source actually ended up being a coin shop that stocked Canadian collectors coins. The proprietor made the mistake of noticing that we were paying with a university credit card and asking what the coins were for. “We’re going to reshape it in a hydraulic press, put it in a vacuum chamber, and blast it with an argon plasma plume”. “Oh.”
US gold coins, at least at the time, were 22 karat. Not nearly good enough.
gwangung
@Corner Stone: Dude, the Smores experiments were restricted to the dorms (and mostly along the shore of Lake Lagunita).
schrodinger's cat
In no particular order
David Brooks pontificating about humility
MoU waxing eloquent about free trade and sharing economy
Nick Kristoff going on about how Obama is falling short in the Middle East
Roger Cohen about Obama’s failure in Syria
MoDo bitching about Hillary
James E Powell
Any column that portrays bigots, ignoramuses, morons and half wits, dolts, dunces, dullards and dumbbells as the Real Americans who are paragons of Real American Virtues that made this country great and are totally misunderstood by coastal liberal elites blah blah blah Appleby’s Salad Bar blah blah blah. And nearly every such column is written by a well educated wealthy person who wouldn’t be caught dead hanging around with any people like that.
lamh36
Kinda last minute, but tv show recommendation.
If you have OWN Network, check out Queen Sugar executive produced by Ava Duvernay and Oprah Winfrey. It’s on tonight. 9pm CST.
Queen Sugar Extended Trailer
Renie
not just with pundits but for all of the media —- anything to do with Kardashians, they symbolize so much that is screwed up with this country
Splitting Image
Canada ditched the penny a few years back, and I thought I would be more bothered by this than I eventually was. I have come to regard this as one of Stephen Harper’s three most important accomplishments. The other two are: promising to ban gay marriage during the 2004 election campaign, losing badly, and making the issue toxic in subsequent elections; and promising to ban the niqab during the 2015 election campaign, losing badly, and hopefully making that issue toxic for subsequent elections.
You can find good in anybody if you look hard enough.
Anoniminous
In the ‘Astound Your Friends With a Mind-Numbing Useless Fact’ portion of the blog.
Villago Delenda Est
Two words:
David Brooks.
Major Major Major Major
Isaac Newton invented the mill edged coin to stop clippers. True penny-related fact.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@eemom: “The Missionary Position” was a devastating little book. Hitchens certainly could let loose a mountain of bile when the mood struck him.
Even if he was right about the evidence and reasoning he presented (e.g. raising mountains of money off the backs of the poor to send to Rome rather than helping the people), I found it hard to accept the case. He was an amazing writer and I found him very persuasive in lots of his pre-Iraq-war screeds, but we know how that turned out…
Beware of beautiful writing, especially in politics and political questions. It has a history of turning out very badly…
Cheers,
Scott.
schrodinger's cat
Econ columnists who can’t calculate percentages.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/social/minimal_group_paradigm_study.html
psycholinguist
Uhm, wasn’t the point that the penny discussion thing is a strong candidate for most annoying topic ever?
ETA: and those fucking TED talks
Gelfling 545
I detest columns on what Hilary Clinton ( and previously, President Obama) must do or say right now, preferably in the columnist’s exact words.
Schlemazel
@schrodinger’s cat:
Do the name Mcardle ring a bell?
Helen
Do we know what the Commander in chief forum is going to look like tomorrow? Are they going to be on stage together? Or is it one at a time.
Also, too Matt Lauer? Really? Kelly Ripa was not available?
schrodinger's cat
@Schlemazel: She is not the only one by far.
Renie
@efgoldman: Now I know why I like you — I LOVE mint choc chip ice cream!!!
rikyrah
@hovercraft:
So true.
The delusional world of Mad Men is exactly that.
Redshift
Any column explaining how the treatment of the Clintons is totally justified and not unfair at all. Bonus points for insisting that it’s because they’re always doing stuff that “right up to the line” and they won’t admit they’ve done anything wrong, implying that this is different from other politicians, and never acknowledging that in almost every case it’s because that haven’t done anything wrong.
Adam L Silverman
@Helen: One at a time. They will not be on stage at the same time.
Splitting Image
@psycholinguist:
I actually have a soft spot for it because of a really old article in MAD magazine (c. 1960) about coins talking to each other. One of them had all of the US coins lined up in a row according to value. Lincoln is on the far left and says “OK fellows. Times are changing and one of us simply has to go! Uh… what are you all looking at me for?”
Can’t think about the debate without getting a giggle from that one.
Redshift
@Helen: Only one at a time. The debate agreement doesn’t allow them to appear together at other events, I don’t think.
Anoniminous
@psycholinguist:
Thought Leader’ gives talk that will inspire your thoughts
eemom
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
If you mean that you found it hard to accept what he said about MT because he was in favor of the Iraq war, I really don’t get the connection — if, as you say, he proved his case about MT with solid evidence and reasoning. You seem to be saying that all “beautiful writing” is inherently suspect, which makes no sense to me.
Helen
@Adam L Silverman: @Redshift:
Thanks. I thought so. Good. Hillary can talk without him interrupting.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman:
http://moosetracks.com/products/moose-tracks-ice-cream/
Mint Moose Tracks, Peppermint Bark Moose Tracks, and Glacier Mint Moose Tracks!
Major Major Major Major
@efgoldman: *steals the cookies and cream while you’re distracted*
psycholinguist
@Anoniminous: That was close to the most awesome thing ever.
A more paranoid take on Doug!’s observation of the inanity of our pundit class:
“Boredom is an instrument of social control. Power is the power to impose boredom, to command stasis, to combine this stasis with anguish. The real tedium, deep tedium, is seasoned with terror and with death.”
― Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift
Helen
@Adam L Silverman: Adam will you live blog? I find myself depending on you for the scoop on these issues.
Also, too, thanks.
tulip
not about the most annoying pundit/column but since this is an open thread found this tweet interesting… and I realize it’s probably something all of you already knew.
https://twitter.com/crtosh1/status/773227795996676096
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: Someone read TL’s book.
laura
@Schlemazel: mountains of pink Himalayan salt plus the worst pseudo-economics. She’s THE reason I quit my Atlantic subscription.
However, until my dying day, I’ll recommend Simon Johnson’s The Quiet Coup which should be required reading. (Yes, Simon Johnson is my secret pretend boyfriend)
Villago Delenda Est
@efgoldman: This year’s reason #1 for my nym.
Misterpuff
Pink Himalayan Salt.
Helen
Breyers Mint Chocolate Chip.
Lizzy L
Anything by Maureen Dowd is singularly annoying.
Anything by Maureen Dowd about the Clintons, either or both, is outright painful.
Any punditry on the topic of “trigger warnings” or “safe spaces” written by a white straight able-bodied man over 50 makes me want to throw knives.
OT: The “Commander in Chief” forum tomorrow night should be very interesting.
Elmo
I am a ball of crippling anxiety. My wife and I are taking a trip tomorrow across the country. We are leaving at 0530. The dog sitter is already here, set up in the guest room.
I travel routinely for work, but we haven’t taken a trip together since 2003. Until recently, there was no way to accommodate the critters. We just have too many – dogs, cats, chickens, fish, turtles… and the dogs have not always been friendly.
So I’m paying $100 a day for this kid, plus an extra day on either end. And I’m just nervous as hell. What’s going to happen the first time she tries to come in when we aren’t here? The big guy loves her, thank FSM, but again that’s while we are here.
I’ll be over here in a fetal ball.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom:
Most of my briefs are pretty suspect. Just saying.
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: no, just Douglas Adams and Neal Stephenson. But his are on the list!
Elmo
@efgoldman: Gross. Might as well eat toothpaste.
Adam L Silverman
@Helen: I’m not sure I’ll be home. If I’m home, yes. If not I’ll write something about it. As of now I’ve set the DVR. Based on what I’ve seen of the (not a) town hall from Virginia today where Trump didn’t answer, in the sense of actually answering the questions being asked by LTG (ret) Flynn, I’m not expecting much. I expect, especially what we’ll see is that Clinton is very focused and provides substantive answer, regardless of whether you agree with them. Trump will do what he always does: stream of consciousness throwing everything he can against the wall and see if something sticks.
Chris
“How the Wholesome Small Town Folksy People became alienated from the Smug Coastal Elitists, and why those Smug Coastal Elitists have a lot of penance to do, as explained by a Smug Coastal Elitist.”
We’ll call it the Applebee’s Salad Bar conversation for short.
ETA: fuck. Sorry, @James E Powell: should’ve known someone would’ve beaten me to it. Right down to the Applebee’s reference.
danielx
A Girl Scout cookie to anyone who can identify the source of this (possibly apocryphal) quote, which popped out of a seldom-used memory bank:
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman:
Wasn’t it gastritis?
Renie
Adam L Silverman: Yea new ice cream to try. Never heard of it but will look for this brand!
ETA: Only in Walmart by me and I NEVER shop in Walmart
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@eemom: Yeah, it’s not a strong argument on my part.
I’ve got several of his books and he really was a great writer, IMO.
But he was wrong on a whole bunch of things that he wrote passionately and persuasively about. And he was right about a bunch of things too (like waterboarding.
There’s no doubt that some of the stories he presents in TMP are horrifying. It’s just that I learned not to completely trust his take on things no matter how much I loved his prose. He was wrong about Iraq. I did not trust him to present an accurate picture about MT even though I was emotionally (and in some respects intellectually) pre-disposed to find him to be an accurate narrator. Was he? Maybe!
YMMV.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: I had some of the Ben and Jerry’s mint chocolate chip something or other a few weeks ago and thought it was quite good. The Moose Tracks, however, is excellent. I’ve only had the regular mint – haven’t seen the other two down here. We also have the regular moose tracks, the chocolate moose tracks, the brownie moose tracks. Also regular and chocolate bear paws, regular and chocolate otter paws, and Monkey Madhouse (banana ice cream with chocolate swirls). Its a zoo in the frozen dairy case! I really want to find the Peppermint Bark Moose Tracks!
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: @efgoldman: she’s not an economist. She’s strictly b-school.
JR in WV
@schrodinger’s cat:
President Obama invited them to the White House for numerous events, they didn’t come. They are the sort of person who wouldn’t be caught dead at a social event hosted by black people, esp. McConnell of KY.
You know, they are all Treasonous Racist Bigots working to bring back the Confederacy. No secret, it’s obvious from what McConnell said around the time of President Obama’s inauguration.
We have to work to make this a one term president. Note, he said make this a one term president, not even make HIM a one term president. They have a very complex code in which they discuss black people, insults that are hidden from many, but obvious to the bigots.
I just recently learned about this and am still trying to decode some of the more obvious coded insults from our Confederate politicians. Like Sessions, McConnell, Cotton, the fellas from TX, MS, AL, SC, OK, etc.
Adam L Silverman
@Elmo: I’ve had to routinely use dog sitters – and I have them overnight at my house – when I’ve been on temporary duty. Everyone will be fine.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Because she has a masters in fine arts or something, no formal or even informal training in economics, mathematics, statistics, finance, etc.
Chris
@Lizzy L:
Oh good God, yes, although for me that’s more of a “single most annoying topic for Facebook rants that show up in my minifeed,” and I only wish fifty year olds were the only white people doing it.
Adam L Silverman
@danielx: Duke of York.
Major Major Major Major
Isaac Newton also had the first known cat-flap made so his cat could go in and out without disturbing his work.
Adam L Silverman
@Renie: Sorry. Down here its under Publix’s brand, subbranded as Denali Moose Tracks.
PPCLI
@Splitting Image: And one more: it was on his watch that Ted Cruz gave up his Canadian Citizenship. True, Harper had nothing to do with that, but still… A great day for notre pays.
schrodinger's cat
@JR in WV: I know that, you know that, our Punditubbies pretend not to know that.
Helen
@efgoldman: Empty carton? I am confused. Makes me think of the Martha Stewart cooking show where Martha said to guest Patty Labelle “take left over wine” and Patty said “left over wine?”
JR in WV
@srv:
Yeah, right. We had a new stove and dishwasher installed some 6 or 8 weeks ago. The younger guy who did the heavy lifting was a school teacher, history, from 6th to 12th grade, working in summer break because they were flooded out in June.
His kids didn’t pass by showing up, and you don’t get a diploma without history.
I don’t know why I an compelled to point out idiocy – but I can hardly hold back. At least srv isn’t as bad as NR/Right to Rise/etc. who is content free. srv has content, it’s just wrong.
Matt McIrvin
@psycholinguist: The marshmallow was unstoppable until they took Milgram’s shock machine and crossed the streams.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: BA in English from Penn and an MBA from Chicago.
nutella
Was that the same Duke of York who had 10,000 men, and first he marched them up the hill then he marched them down again?
That Duke of York?
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus: MBA from Chicago.
All you need to know about how fucked up she is.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Confused her with whats her name who wrote the anti-New Deal book. Thanks.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: Efficient market this!
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@JR in WV: I’m reminded that, supposedly the McConnell “one term president’ comment was in 2010 before the fall election, was not from day 1, and thus “not that big a deal” according to Glenn Kessler at WaPo – citing a public interview.
But if you read Grunwald’s piece in Time, it’s a distinction without a difference:
The GOP leadership intention was obstruction from day 1 with the explicit purpose being to win back power in the next election(s) – to make Obama a one term President. McConnell’s defenders protestations notwithstanding….
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: I’ll just note that Richard Cordray’s JD is from Chicago.
Felonius Monk
@efgoldman:
First of all, dems my boyz and they are too busy making my New York Super Fudge Chunk to be bothered with your mintiness.
Matt McIrvin
I feel more strongly about the perennial physics news stories that I can tell are bullshit the moment they appear. Usually, it’s someone either using some loophole in electromagnetism to transmit information faster than light, or a “warp drive starship” that is totally a real thing that could be for real, or a “space drive” that violates conservation of momentum.
(This one team has been consistently generating headlines with that last one for the past few years mostly because they got a little NASA grant and used some NASA facilities, so the headlines describe it as a “NASA space drive”. Putting the imprimatur of NASA on something makes a lot of people believe it, except for the other people who believe everything NASA really does is a fraud, possibly because the earth is flat.)
SFAW
Mint-flavored ice cream? 27 varieties? You guys [sic] are like the people who put ketchup on everything — hot dogs, tuna salad sandwiches, corn bread, Wheaties. FSM spare me!
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Betsey McCaughey? BA in History from Vassar. MA and PhD in Constitutional History from Columbia. No Econ background.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
South Side or West Side? Wrigley or Comiskey?
Lizzy L
@Omnes Omnibus: Full disclosure: I have a graduate degree from the University of Chicago. Mine is in English Literature, and I received it some years before Megan McArdle was born.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
Where’d she get her advanced degree in Lying to the Public About Anything/Everything?
SFAW
@Felonius Monk:
Preach it, brother.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: No, this is the woman at the Koch funded Mercatus center at George Mason University. Amity Shlaes.
Adam L Silverman
@SFAW: That Koch funded program for creating news commenters. She’s one of the graduates of it. Worked for it for a while too if I’m recalling correctly. I think its called the Leadership Institute or something. The idiot Chuck C. Johnson and a whole bunch of other dubious folks have gone through it.
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: Hyde Park area.
@Lizzy L: The two coolest people in my class during undergrad were the identical twin daughters of a Bio-Chem Prof at Chicago. They were ahead of just about anyone on everything – even the hip New Yorkers. Earlier this year, after Ali died, I found out, on FB of all places, that he was their next door neighbor in the ’70s and his house was the hang out for neighborhood kids. Odd that they turned out cool, huh?
@SFAW: I am assuming she was born with it and academic training just gave it polish.
schrodinger's cat
@Matt McIrvin: Also too, how x is like quantum mechanics. Where
x is anything you like.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
You’re probably correct.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@SFAW: Chunky Monkey used to be nearly perfect. The last few pints I’ve bought have not been the same – too fluffy, too little banana flavor, too few chunks of chocolate and walnuts. I fear their corporate overloads are messing with the recipe.
Haagen Dazs Butter Pecan is still the way I remember it (extremely yummy!), but I wouldn’t be surprised if that gets changed in the not too distant future.
:-(
Of course, all of that stuff is deadly for my cholesterol levels, so it’s kinda academic in my case.
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Right. She’s a BA in English from Yale. Not a historian, an economist, etc.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Yep, but she’s a Senior Fellow at the Mercatus Center (which is tethered to George Mason’s Econ Department). The Koch’s control the hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions in both the center and the department because they are the largest single funders for both.
eemom
Look, fuck the “Education” cred shit, cuz it doesn’t mean shit. I graduated from Yale. So did the Bushes, pere et fils. So did fucking Dana Milbank, Ruth Marcus, David Frum and Naomi Wolf.
So did a guy in my class who, freshman year, took a popular Art History course taught by famous art historian Vincent Scully, and wrote a paper about the great artist “Circa,” who worked in an astounding variety of different media over a very, very long life. True story. (grade: F “Are you a moron?”)
So, yeah, fuck wherever anybody went to school.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Look, I am pointing out that known idiots have conventionally prestigious academic credentials. Bill Kristol with a Harvard BA and PhD may well lead the list. OTOH there is a case to be made that people without academic training in a particular discipline often not very good at talking about that discipline; we both made that argument during the ACA court battles.
ETA: On the gripping hand, Anthony Lewis was a wonderful legal commentator and he never went to law school. Not many people are Anthony Lewis.
Lizzy L
@eemom: How do you feel about mint ice cream?
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I’ll just leave this here:
http://www.bradford-delong.com/2009/09/republicans-to-the-manor-born.html
The Lodger
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I don’t know if “corporate overloads” is a typo or not, but it’s a perfect description of those who would make such a heinous decision.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
I don’t disagree with any of that, but it’s an apples and oranges comparison. The fact that idiots can get degrees from fancy schools is just an entirely different subject from people who lack academic training in a particular discipline purporting to opine on that discipline. Not the same ballpark, not even the same motherfucking sport. On this thread, it appeared to me that the focus was on the former.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Exactly.
eemom
@Lizzy L:
I dislike mint in any context where it intrudes upon the sweet and delicious. Mint is a discipline, not an indulgence. It’s for toothpaste and/or gum/candy-suck things that you endure because you’re worried about what your breath smells like.
eta: imvho
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: It came out of us trying to remember who Amity Schlaes was. Some idiot names were mentioned who had credentials that provided vague academic credential s for claiming expertise. Ms. Schlaes lacks any thing approaching that, nor does she have any real credibility as an autodidact on the topic. IOW she was and is a hack.
Lizzy L
@Omnes Omnibus: To be more specific, she is a nutjob libertarian hack who wishes to return to the gold standard.
Omnes Omnibus
@Lizzy L: Well, yeah, that too.
Adam L Silverman
@Lizzy L: @Omnes Omnibus: And those are her good qualities.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Well-played.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Thank you.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Je vous en prie.
eemom
I’m sure I’ve heard that stupid name before, but it seems I’ve somehow managed to repress all explanatory associations therewith. The subconscious is a wondrous thing.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: My last comment disappeared. I will just leave this here about Ms. Schlaes.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@The Lodger: Ha! This laptop keyboard needs to be cleaned out. There’s too much stuff under the “R” and “H” keys at the moment. :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Doug!
@eemom:
Good story