How To Coddle College Freshmen

 Whoever thought of "experience courses"?

Has anyone taught a freshman first year experience course before? Would you be willing to share your syllabi? What sort of things should one expect to teach in that course?

— John R. Legg (@thejohnlegg) May 31, 2022

From the responses I gather it is an orientation to college extending for some time, perhaps the full term?

It's another example of how today's students have it too damn easy.

Damn, wish I'd had such a course 63 years ago 

Gun Safes and Safety

 On a beautiful Sunday afternoon some speculation.  Read an article about "smart guns"--the idea being that the gun and the owner would be tied together by some means--biometric perhaps, i.e., fingerprint.  People are working on it, but it's difficult to make it relatively foolproof, particularly when the concept faces hurdles gaining acceptance in the market.

There are also some laws/proposals for requiring gun safes. It seems as if the people who would follow such a law are among the people least likely to need it, though keeping guns away from youngsters tempted to play with them while the parents are away is worthwhile.  Reduce gun deaths by preventing accidents, if not homicides.

How about using bluetooth and the internet?  Sell guns with an associated gun safe which can sense the presence or absence of the gun.  That should be easy enough. Then have the gun safe wifi-enabled with an app on the smartphone.  So one or more people could be sent alerts when the gun is removed from the safe. Such a notice would help in cases where a child/teen/burglar removes the gun.  

The idea wouldn't prevent many cases, but some.  Not sure if 2nd Amendment types would go along, but some might.

Blast from the Past

 Time for something completely different, Silky Sullivan. You have to be old, or a horse racing nut (I'm the former) to know the name, but the two racing performances I remember well are Secretariat in the Belmont and Silky Sullivan in his trademark races.

Uvalde Perspectives

 Megan McArdle tweeted this:

I can't say exactly what happened in Uvalde, but having written a book on failure, I'd bet investigation will not reveal one bad decision, but a string of overlapping failures, most of which occurred individually before with no real incident, but collectively became disastrous

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) May 27, 2022

Graham Factor had this.

I think both are good perspectives.  I remember Kitty Genovese from the 1960's, where the original story turned out wrong.  It's possible that multiple police forces on the scene and poor communication from the 911 system to the police were factors.  We don't know, and it's too early to say.

Fallows on Guns

This Fallows post expresses my thoughts on Buffalo and Uvalde. 

WEIRD

 

Not the best photo, but this is Joseph Henrich's flowchart summarizing his 450 pp book, starting with Christianity competing with other religions (the cutoff part at the top) leading to Western civilization, which is educated, individualistic, rich, and democratic.

More to come, maybe.

Guns--May 25

 Reading "Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight" which is good, better for anyone who didn't live through the Johnson administration and read her memoir.

Just reached June 4, 1968, when RFK was assassinated, following the killing of MLK in Memphis. The author quotes an excerpt from a speech by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the next day (who had campaigned for RFK) in which he said: "America is a land of violent people, with a violent history..."  Seems to fit today. 

I tweeted this today: "Is it strange that the NRA's good man with a gun guarding a school or church never requires an AR-15, but John Doe defending his home has an absolute right to an AR-15?"

Not sure that expresses my intent--in other words: shouldn't the good guys have weapons at least as good as possible assailants?  It's obvious to me that an AR-15 or similar weapon is not for self-defense. 

Did the End of the Draft Spur the Big Sort?

 The "big sort" is the label applied to the increasing polarization between Democrats and Republicans, where the differences within the party have diminished over the last 50 years and the differences between the parties have increased.

I've read theories about the sort, most of which I've forgotten by now.  I've likely posted before on it before. A couple speculations:

1. one of the integrating forces in American history has been war. The necessity of mobilizing armed forces to fight Native Americans, the French, the British, the Spanish, the Germans,the Koreans, the Chinese, the Soviets, the Vietnamese, etc. consistently brings together men and now women from different places and different social groups and strata and gives them a common experience with a common foe.  When civilian society supports their sons and daughters in a war it brings people together.  I think this has been especially true in the 20th century when the draft was in effect.  With the ending of the draft that integrating force has weakened.
2. While real estate development is perhaps the most characteristic American occupation, and doing subdivisions which cater to a relatively uniform clientele (in terms of race, salary, life style) has been going on since early days in New England, it seems to be massive developments, the Levittown type projects, really got going in the 1950's.  That geographic separation must have contributed to polarization.

Am I Addicted to Porn, War Porn?

 I'm not addicted to porn, not sexual porn.  I'm trying to avoid being addicted to what I call "war porn", which I consider some of the reporting from war fronts to be.  In some ways it's similar to sportscasters/writers who are "homers". It's seductive to go all in on supporting one party in a conflict, but too often when you look back on them they turn out to be mistakes. 

Watering the Milk and Vegan Milk

Stumbled on a factoid in the footnotes to a book I'm reading: "The Weirdest People in the World"--about which more later.  The footnote ties to a mention of what economists call "credence goods".  Thoreau originated a famous quote, now used by lawyers: "a trout in the milk" which the piece at the link explains. 

The context is that buffalo milk in markets in an Indian city was tested and found to be adulterated by the addition of varying amounts of water, from 3 percent to more than 40 percent. But consumers couldn't distinguish the adulteration by taste (hence a credence good). 

In the US milk, at least cows milk, is tested for quality, such as fat content. Thoreau's observation--that finding a trout in the milk would be sure proof the milk had been watered--shows this wasn't always the case in the U.S.

As far as I can tell, based on an extensive 10 minutes of research, there are no standards for plant-based milk--all the attention seems to be devoted to the issue of whether calling it "milk" is misleading.  

I'd guess that milk testing evolved well before the idea of requiring nutritional labels on food, and as long as plant-based milks have such labels it removes any impetus for a testing regime comparable to that for milk.