The pond hasn't been lonely during gold standard Gladys's lockdown.
Monsieur le Rat moved in a week or so ago. While Monsieur le Rat is shy, the pond has lavished food on him, and he has eaten mightily, but the pond fears that the last after dinner mint might have an adverse affect, and Monsieur le Rat might pass away under the pond's study floorboards. If that happens, the pond might be taking an early spring break away from its reptile studies ...
... a bit like the break the pond will take today, because, callooh, callay, the pond chortled in its joy, today is petulant Peta day, and so the pond can take a pass ...
Of course there's an irony in petulant Peta's remarks, as the Texas Taliban follow the Afghan Taliban and paint women out of the picture, but what else is happening in reptile la la land?
Well there's extraordinary delight at having played gold standard Gladys's game and won ...
All the pond could think of was its theme in recent weeks ...
Still the pond felt free, free of petulant Peta and free to wander, and wonder what else the 'roaches were cooking up for the country ... and sure enough ...
The pond immediately broke into a cold sweat. Not clean, dinkum, innocent, virginal Oz coal and its plants under threat ...
The pond, in its silliness, had fears for the planet, and failed to understand that the real fear should be for coal ...
Yes, there's NSW's great environmentalist greatly concerned about the early exit of coal ... oh and remember to play the Covid Risk game NSW style while you're at it ... so many winners ...
Now back to the raising of fears ...
Indeed, indeed, how could the pond have an anxiety attack about the planet when we should be fearing for dear, sweet innocent coal ...
Meanwhile, Bernard Keane has been having a whale of a time whaling away in Crikey ...
A kavalcade of koal! KoalKeeper keeps Koal thriving!
But that's another rag, and the pond must finish off the reptiles, deep in fear ...
Ah good old SloMo and his target ...
And so Monsieur le Rat, to the feast for the day, the bromancer in top form ...
Indeed, indeed. Should the pond ever err, please remind the pond not to boast about the amazing success of Dunkirk and the triumph of Churchill, and should the pond ever be tempted to make yet another really bad movie about it, kindly feed the pond a goodly dose of what Monsieur le Rat has been devouring, so that in the next life, the pond might return as a rat ...
And as for the evacuation of Gallipoli, and celebrating defeat, what the fuck, what sort of country would indulge in such stupid nonsense?
And so to the shocking discovery that the bromancer fancies himself as a liberal and as a meaningful supporter of liberalism ...
Ah, the pond gets it now. The bromancer doesn't really care that much about Afghan human rights.
After all, the orange one sold them down the river with his "negotiations", what the bromancer is concerned about is what happens if the reptile war on China happens to go pear shaped ... talk about bad karma ... or talk about a sudden weird concern for liberalism being defeated ...
And so to boasting about sharing a very small lunch with Henry Kissinger.
Henry Kissinger! The original human rights bomb everything in sight rat fucker and war criminal himself ...
Yet more blather about liberalism, and the reptiles clearly felt that the bromancer needed some help, with a picture at regular intervals, including that snap of booty ...
Okay, the pond could take all that blather only for so long before snapping.
You see the Texas Taliban has already shown to the world that the notion of liberalism is now stone cold dead in certain parts of the United States ...
Well you can google those stories about the Texas Taliban - sorry, it's only a screen cap, but there are many more, including stories of the quisling Supreme Court, now dominated by fundamentalist Catholics acting like legalistic Taliban ...
The pond was reminded of a weird phenomenon thrown up by its YouTube logarithms in recent times ... the sight of all those bizarre first amendment rights "auditors" and "sovereign" citizens, going about filming things, challenging cops and authorities, and making a total nuisance of themselves, not to mention proving that amateur dickheads purporting a knowledge of the law should be shot on sight.
The pond will bet a biscuit for a loaf of bread that they're all Fox viewers, stout-hearted Murdochians, though perhaps the likes of OAN should take a share of the credit.
What struck the pond was the forbearance of the cops, perhaps knowing that they were being filmed, and there was no point losing a job while dealing with loons who would go to water, and whine and yelp when they felt the cold steel of the cuffs going on ...
The pond immediately adjusted its logarithms, by clicking on clips about playful, cute cats, and so could return to the bromancer for a final gobbet about liberalism ... and what do you know, what should come into the picture but that liberalism is conditional, and should only have a transcendent purpose ... and suddenly the pond knew that the Taliban and Taliban tykes were, not so far under the surface, at one in their purpose when it came to minorities, the different and the other ...
Indeed, indeed. The bromancer has delivered an historic column about liberalism. It's not clear he understands all the ways in which it is really historic.
But that's to be expected from a Taliban tyke blathering about transcendence, while happy to join with the Taliban in putting the boot into the different and the other ....
Perhaps a little time with the Texas Taliban would help the bromancer understand a little more ... how else might he come to understand that fundamentalist Catholics have nothing to offer liberalism or a liberal way of life, where women might control their bodies, and the denial of the right to vote and gerrymandering and so on and so forth isn't a bug but is built into the Faux Noise GOP Taliban version 1.0 ....
And so to the bonus ... and what a dismal offering yet again ...
There's simplistic Simon blaming the states again, and Fergo celebrating the imminent arrival of the killing fields, and the bouffant one talking of the path to freedumb, as the dumb are inclined to do, but the pond is aware that Dame Groan has her supporters and devotees, so it was time for some Groaning ...
With Dame Groan preferring her handouts to come from the Chairman - oh they were generous handouts in their day, and all for scribbling a few columns - the pond knows where this is heading, what with the Groaning about school funding in the headlines ...
Yes, dammit, Hardly Normal needs to be kept in the style that Gerry's accustomed to ... but the pond didn't mean to pre-empt the entire Groanian point with a cartoon ... please, do go on, and go on at the usual Groaning length ...
Now here the pond should note some ancient history. The pond luckily transferred to a state school, thereby escaping the nuns, because this was back in the days when state schools were in better shape than rural Catholic schools, and scoring a gig at a private school was left to the children of squatters ... and then the pond scored a scholarship, established way back by the Labor party, though Ming the Merciless took the credit for the idea ...
So the pond doesn't mind a little government funding, even if the food in the "dining hall" was a little hard to swallow - so much rhubarb pie, so little time - and even if there's some other waste in the system, because what the hell, it's not as if private and Catholic schools don't also have their snouts deep in the government trough ...
Uh huh. Socialism in the United States. Furrin ideas from cheese eating surrender monkeys?
Well that's sure to set up a groaning of the first water ...
Indeed, indeed, but would you rather live in Denmark or with the Taliban in Texas? (Or come to think of it, the Taliban elsewhere?)
For the pond it's an easy call ... the pond would prefer decadent Europe to almost any part of the States, with the exception of the big cities, and only then provided it was filthy rich, or at least independently wealthy, and could afford medical insurance...have you ever seen a hospital bill in the US?
Otherwise forget it, give the pond a country where the government understands its duty is to help and to care for its citizens ...
Trust the pond. When you're living in a dirt poor family, there are limits to what the family can achieve, even with the best of intentions and the best will in the world ...
But never mind, all that Groaning was just a way of allowing the pond to end in its preferred way, with an infallible Pope ...
It took a little time to get to what Dame Groan seemed to be on about this day.
ReplyDeleteI have considerable regard for James Heckman’s overall contributions to economic research. His Nobel Memorial Prize was essentially for refining statistical techniques to correct for sampling bias in social sciences.
He credits the Australian, Kelvin Lancaster, with nurturing his interest in these problems of methodology. Lancaster was an outstanding economist, largely ignored or forgotten by those who write articles in alleged ‘economics’ in this country.
I was going to say ‘to the present paper’, but the main content of Heckman and Rasmus Landersø dates back to 2014. So it has not troubled our Dame up until now, and I am not sure why it has troubled her recently.
Its conclusion includes two significant statements.
‘The Danish welfare state clearly boosts the cognitive test scores of disadvantaged children compared to their U.S. counterparts.’
and - THE conclusion -
The U.S. excels in incentivizing educational attainment. The Danish welfare state promotes cognitive skills for the disadvantaged children. Policies that combine the best features of each system would appear to have the greatest benefit for promoting intergenerational mobility in terms of both income and educational attainment.’
When you go back through the paper - the US ‘incentivizing’ comes down to - the much wider range of income in the USA tends to encourage students - particularly those with supportive family background - to seek higher formal qualifications because that will get some of them into the fat cat class.
(long income ‘tails’ pop into the discussion - but as a problem in the analysis!)
Those unimaginative, unambitious Danes seem happy just to do a good job for a happier lifestyle.
Chad: "Policies that combine the best features of each system ..." Now just what species did you have in mind to produce this, Chad ? As an informed, rational person (or should I say per-sibling ?) you couldn't possibly be nominating that "kill or die for my god-like opinion" species Homo Saps Saps could you ?
DeleteNow maybe exceptional folk like Heckman and Lancaster can keep more than one idea in mind at a time, and maybe even exercise the perception to see where perhaps a dual approach - or even, invisible friends save us - an integrated single framework with multiple concurrent solutions (you know, like the solutions of a polynomial) might actually produce a desirable result.
And maybe even some of us who enjoy the Pond would basically comprehend and support such an approach - you certainly would, wouldn't you. But unfortunately, no present inhabitant of the loonpond herpetarium can keep even a single idea in mind for any longer than it takes them to just pronounce to the 'sound-to-words' software available these days.
PS: the Danes think they have Delta beaten and they can now genuinely start "living with it". Would 'gold standard' Gladys agree, do you think ?
Ah, GB - I was focussed more on the sub-header for the Dame - ‘there are limits to what the state can achieve to offset disadvantage in children’s backgrounds’. That is true in isolation, but has nothing to do with the Heckman Landersø analysis - as those authors confirm in the paper. I guess the Dames’ eyes got tired round about p. 40, so she inserted her own understanding. To borrow from Wolfgang Pauli - that is not even wrong. And, yes, I do hold that in memory in German, where it sounds better, but on these pages it is just toooo Henrified to consider.
ReplyDeleteYou then ask us to consider the quote from Heckman Landersø, for ‘policies that combine the best features of each system. There is an odd irony here. While Kelvin Lancaster has been dead since 1999, so unlikely to have had any influence on Heckman’s thinking here, the statement about ‘best features of each system’ probably breaches Lancaster’s main contribution to economic methodology - with Richard Lipsey - on the ‘Theory of the Second Best’. Oh - and I just checked, and Richard Lipsey is still with us, into his 90s, contributing to serious economics.
In my terms, I just see it as less likely that a student who has come through what we might call the Scandinavian system of education, within a larger system of social welfare (Heckman Landersø note that they did not consider the effects of Scandinavian health care on their ‘conclusions’) producing people who are prepared to insert themselves into a highish stratum of a corporation, from which to graft and grift their way to the CEO suite, pretty much setting their own remuneration, doing fundraisers for the Republicans, but otherwise contributing little to their own personal existence, or to other people, unless you can rationalise delivering more junk at cheaper prices as a social benefit.
Perhaps the Henry will bring light relief tomorrow.
Hmmm. I think, maybe, I might prefer to ask what "the state" can do to diminish undeserved, and unmerited, advantage. It all depends on where we think "the line' should lie. After all, it really is difficult, and expensive, to try to duplicate the "advantages" of the super rich in the much more numerous 'average to poor'. Homogeneity never survives, though, whether it comes from lifting the lowly or lowering the high.
DeleteMaybe what we should be doing is more of just that: lowering the high so that we don't get sundry billionaires spewing their shit about and poisoning society for their own supposed advantage. I see that China is beginning a program of just that.
And, as for anyone who has studied physics in their education, I am familiar with Pauli's astute observation and we see many instances every day in the writings of the reptiles.