Islam

Po nan Jwèt la: Asymétri Kache nan Lavi Chak Jou

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Taleb, Nassim N., Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life. New York City: Random House, 2018.

NB: precisely because I regard Taleb as a national treasure and have considerable respect for his work, I am not going to pull punches here. I get to do this because I have … skin in the game, and not only in Haiti[1] (where I wrote this post over the past ten days, thus the Kreyòl Ayisyen title), but in a couple-three moderately hair-raising situations back in KC, which I will relate when appropriate. Which might be never; see Matthew 6:1-4 (cited by Taleb on page 186).

Getting this out of the way—buy this book, read it, and recommend it to others. I say this very much irrespective of what might be called the Manifold-Taleb delta, which is not altogether trivial, as I will explain in some detail—again, as a sign of respect—below. Immediately below, in fact.

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Worthwhile Reading

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A law professor writes about undoing the dis-education of Millenials.

Small liberal arts colleges:  self-destruction via runaway administration.

Ammo Grrrll doesn’t share the obsession about ‘people who look like me’.

Are we living in the dystopia that Young Adult fiction warns us about?

The Assistant Village Idiot has some thoughts about local aristocracy and the nationalization of culture.

Bolshevism and Militant Islam.  Some thoughts about historical parallels from Niall Ferguson, with comments by Stuart Schneiderman.

The current Senate tax bill draft contains some very bad ideas about taxation of employee stock options and restricted stock grants.

Worthwhile Reading & Viewing

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A photo essay about an old mill, by Gerard Van der Leun

From welder to welding robot programmer

Showing love through food

The University Empire

Privilege hoarding: Harvard and granite countertops

A 2006 post by Dr Sanity on the Western Left and radical Islam

Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, 30 years later.

Cold Spring Shops writes about education, mating, fertility, and work.

Summer Rerun: Freedom and Fear

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(Working on a fresh new history trivia post, delayed in completing by … whatever. Real life, completing the next book. This reprise post is from 2011.)

I started following what I called “The Affair of the Danish Mo-Toons” way back at the very beginning of that particular imbroglio, followed by the ruckus last year over “Everybody Draw Mohammad” and now we seem to have moved on to the Charlie Hebdo fiasco – a French satirical magazine dared to poke fun at the founder of Islam … by putting a cartoon version on the cover of their latest issue, with the result that their offices were firebombed. I think at this point it would have been fair to assume that representatives of the Religion of Peace would respond in a not-quite-so peaceful manner, so all props for the Charlie Hebdo management for even going ahead with it – for even thinking of standing up for freedom of thought, freedom of a press, even freedom to take the piss out of a target.   (The following is what I wrote last year – still relevant to this latest case)

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Craziness, Conformity, Cowardice, and Cruelty

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Some stories about behavior of “progressives” and their institutions which represent the above characteristics in particularly egregious fashion.

John Wright’s sons were expelled from their Boy Scout troop…apparently based largely on accusations of ‘Islamophobia.’

Aisha O’Connor writes about her experiences at Bryn Mawr.  This was back in the early 1990s.  I doubt that things have gotten any saner since.

Rick Poach reports on a conversation (if you can call one-way communication a conversation) overheard in a diner last November 10.

Roger Simon writes about witch hunts and unhinged leftist rage.