George Rebane
Mizzou is tracking student class attendance in hopes of increasing academic standards. This to me is mind boggling. What kind of majors are today’s students pursuing that allows them to pass and graduate with spotty or no class attendance?? Don’t answer that. This report on FN is no doubt unique; can’t see any lamestream outlet admitting to this kind of woke academics for whatever generation is now going through the progressive halls of ivy. Another confirming factor as to why they come out dumb and compliant. In my course of study, and I’m a lifetime student, I could not conceive of cutting class without getting detailed notes of the lecture and still expect to do well in the course. None of the stuff that any of us studied in the bygone era could you skate to a decent grade by just cramming for the mid-term and final from some course text. Every course had something unique (usually new research results) contributed by the professor that went beyond the text, and you could bet the ranch that one or more exam questions would require mastery of that special approach or technique. The University of Missouri is now desperately tracking the whereabouts of students during their class hours in order to encourage regular class attendance. What kind of majors are these pinheads pursuing?!
[29jan20 update] Trump’s Israeli/Palestine peace plan calls for a two-state solution. The Palestinians are rejecting it on the basis of their not getting an authentic sovereign nation-state out of the deal. Israel will not permit the new Palestine to have a military and the plan calls for the disarming of Hamas and Hezbollah. Also Israel will have oversight of Palestine’s foreign policy and maintain control of a narrow band of territory immediately contiguous to its borders. Given past history, the plan looks reasonable including its provision for a transportation tunnel connecting Gaza to the West Bank. To me the sticking point in all these attempts has been the lack of an economic incentive for Palestinian Arabs to trade complete autonomy for riches. For years I have argued that any proposed solution include making Gaza into a freeport. Freeports come in various legal and operational configurations, but their main function is to cut red tape and taxes/fees so as to enable facile and free movement of goods between nations. Gaza is conveniently located near the Mediterranean end of the Suez Canal, at one of the world’s trade crossroads. Rebane Doctrine for world peace and prosperity calls for building a large harbor at Gaza (there are gazillions of tons of dirt, rocks, and sand nearby), and making that strip of land a cash cow for the Palestinian people.
Wanna see the turd in the pipe to progress in California? The California Environmental Quality Act is one of the most egregious pieces of legislation that has proscribed property rights, free enterprise, liberty and progress in general in California. All of it brought to you by the progressive socialists already successful in reducing California as one of the least desirable states in which working people, entrepreneurs, and job creators would want to put down roots. Each successive study shows more self-reliant people leaving the state while the gimmes are pouring in. Here’s one of the more significant hurtles you have to clear if you want to build anything in California.
[30jan20 update] ‘Civilization is History at Yale’ convincingly argues art critic and commentator Roger Kimball. The university is drastically and dramatically changing its decades-long curriculum on western civilization that now has focused on the arts. The claim of the progressive professors is that “great art is too white, straight, European and male”, so it’ll have to give way to the latest socialist cum communist agitprop. Instead, as reported in the Yale Daily News, art history will now be taught from a wider perspective that emphasizes “Globalism, gender, class, race, capitalism, (and art’s) relationship with climate change will be a key theme.” Given the mind-bending Orwellian tack already firmly ensconced in our public school curricula, it’s not a big leap to consider that our universities are now graduating people who embrace values and purposes that we used to connect with the Manchurian Candidate of yore. And they are emerging by the thousands to begin careers in public institutions, politics, news media, education, and the entertainment industry. ‘Lux et veritas’ indeed.
[2feb20 update] ‘The Democrats May Have Lost – But They’re Still Smarter than You’ is a report on some analyses on the matter by Clarice Feldman in 2feb20 American Thinker. Longtime readers know that our liberal commenters have touted their intellectual acumen viz us knuckle-dragging conservetarians et al. Well, this article presents the opposite view, which “should not be too surprising. On the 22 General Surveys using the verbal ability scale since 1974, for every single one, conservative Republicans score significantly higher than the rest of the public combined. As for Republicans overall, they score significantly higher in verbal ability than democrats in all five decades, including the 2010’s combined. … In 1996, the GSS employed another module lifted from a standard 1Q test, one testing analogical reasoning. Again Republicans and conservative Republicans in 1996 performed significantly better on analogical reasoning than the rest of the public and significantly better than Democrats.”
rebanesruminations.com 
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