Burlesqued

For whatever reason, the pundits think that “English majors lose, engineering wins” in the age of Google. But, if all of my useless liberal arts education has thought me anything, it’s that wealth and power come from distinguishing yourself from the rabble, not joining them. The engineers are not going to be the new power elite (technocrats never have, even when they were just called bureaucrats), instead the engineers are going to form a new working class. Truthfully, this isn’t a shocking claim, even today an engineer can live merely a comfortable life, that’s it. Being a Luddite is surely not the path to riches, but soft skills combined with all those usual markers of the rich (pre-existing capital, etc), is going to play an increasing role in separating the elite from the rest.

If the pundits are speaking any truth—-the death of the long form book, careful analytical thinking—-then we should expect a new priestly class of people who went to elite liberal arts schools and possess the rarest of rare skills: the ability to think.

via arstechnica.com

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Undeniably soulful and rich. Some of my favourite music.

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I’m no political scientist, but I do know a few things about media literacy. When I hear breathless exhortations my idiot detectors spring into action. Reading the description for the recently popular Facebook group “Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament” I got that tingly feeling again—-worse still, why is this gro…up so popular, especially among my friends? Could I be missing out? Alana tells me that the parliament gets prorogued regularly, but I’ll be damned if I’ll listen to a Canadian political science PhD student without looking deeper (this proroguing of late made me initially suspicious too, I even commented publicly about it, but I held my opinion). Of course, deeper is one Google search query away when you are brilliantly lazy like me. What did this Google search query tell me? Indeed, we all need to stop slavishly supposing that every action Harper does is out to ruin Canada and kill children. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like Harper any more than the next lower-middle-class, educated, white 18-34 year old, but some things just ARE. Not evil, just regular ‘ol institutional inertia, going on with frequency for quite some time. Don’t believe me? Well, here’s a nice graph:

Sure, proroguing can be used as a political weapon (it might have been the first time), but let’s not jump to the conclusion that this is anything that peculiar.

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I’m no political scientist, but I do know a few things about media literacy. When I hear breathless exhortations my idiot detectors spring into action. Reading the description for the recently popular Facebook group “Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament” I got that tingly feeling again—-worse still, why is this gro…up so popular, especially among my friends? Could I be missing out? Alana tells me that the parliament gets prorogued regularly, but I’ll be damned if I’ll listen to a Canadian political science PhD student without looking deeper (this proroguing of late made me initially suspicious too, I even commented publicly about it, but I held my opinion). Of course, deeper is one Google search query away when you are brilliantly lazy like me. What did this Google search query tell me? Indeed, we all need to stop slavishly supposing that every action Harper does is out to ruin Canada and kill children. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like Harper any more than the next lower-middle-class, educated, white 18-34 year old, but some things just ARE. Not evil, just regular ‘ol institutional inertia, going on with frequency for quite some time. Don’t believe me? Well, here’s a nice graph:

Sure, proroguing can be used as a political weapon (it might have been the first time), but let’s not jump to the conclusion that this is anything that peculiar.

Posted via web from T H I N K | Comment »

I’m no political scientist, but I do know a few things about media literacy. When I hear breathless exhortations my idiot detectors spring into action. Reading the description for the recently popular Facebook group “Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament” I got that tingly feeling again—-worse still, why is this gro…up so popular, especially among my friends? Could I be missing out? Alana tells me that the parliament gets prorogued regularly, but I’ll be damned if I’ll listen to a Canadian political science PhD student without looking deeper (this proroguing of late made me initially suspicious too, I even commented publicly about it, but I held my opinion). Of course, deeper is one Google search query away when you are brilliantly lazy like me. What did this Google search query tell me? Indeed, we all need to stop slavishly supposing that every action Harper does is out to ruin Canada and kill children. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like Harper any more than the next lower-middle-class, educated, white 18-34 year old, but some things just ARE. Not evil, just regular ‘ol institutional inertia, going on with frequency for quite some time. Don’t believe me? Well, here’s a nice graph:

Sure, proroguing can be used as a political weapon (it might have been the first time), but let’s not jump to the conclusion that this is anything that peculiar.

Posted via web from T H I N K | Comment »