Assorted

1. A spot-on summation.

I should have added Stacy McCain to the blogroll long ago:

Feminism does not cause women to hate and fear men; feminism is the political rationalization of these women’s anti-male feelings, permitting them to believe that their own unhappiness is not merely personal.

It cannot be put better nor more succinctly, Gentle Reader. Please read the whole article; it’s a stunner. Note also that the statement above is generalizable: it provides a framework into which the psychologies behind other group hatreds fit without distortion. Food for thought.

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2. Seeking knowledge...or a credential?

My colleague Dystopic is on fire:

There’s a great lie in American discourse today. They say education is too expensive. We need to subsidize this or that, pay for some years of college, etc…

It’s all bullshit. Education is FREE. Yes. Right now. You can download all of MIT’s coursework, today, right now, for free. One professor I really respect, a Dr. Kelley Ross from California, runs a website http://www.friesian.com/ that has the most comprehensive writings on philosophy, economics and history that I have ever seen. The man is a machine. And, as I have conversed with Francis over at Liberty’s Torch, I realized there are resources for learning the art of storytelling, too.

Now, I don’t trust Wikipedia anymore, but Britannica is online, and you can buy a DVD version for like $20. Project Gutenberg gives us access to classic literature. There are Youtube channels dedicated to teaching you foreign languages. Your local library is even a resource. If you’re in my industries (I am both a DJ and a Web Developer), there are so many resources to teach you these fields it is ridiculous. I am entirely self-taught in both careers.

Now, I get it. People still go to college because they need the certifications, they need the sheepskin, so to speak, in order to get by the GateKeepers in HR departments around the world. But now we’re talking something entirely different. We’re not talking about getting an education, we’re talking about proving that you’re educated.

I submit that, for many fields, there are better ways to prove your education than a college degree that often costs over $100,000.

The fact of the matter is, College is obsolete.

If there’s even one possible objection to this, it would be that to access the resources Dystopic links requires a computer and Internet access, but given the proliferation of no-fee facilities of that sort at public libraries, that’s arguable at the very least.

Despite the widespread insistence that only a college degree will “get you in the door” at a respectable employer, the value of that credential is falling swiftly as employers come to realize how deceptive it can be. Possession of knowledge and expertise are not guaranteed by the possession of a degree.

Indeed, the original purpose of a college education had nothing to do with subsequent employment. It was to acquaint the scions of wealth with one another while exposing them to the Western Canon in literature, philosophy, and the arts. In those times, technical colleges were spurned as low class by the “real” universities, for a simple reason: the technical colleges were trade-oriented, whereas the “real” universities catered to students already destined to be statesmen or captains of industry. It would steep such a student in his culture, and complete the formation of his character as a Western man. The purpose of the university today -- to turn out tightly-knit politically-correct social-fascists who will resist all counter-evidence to their creed and reliably vote for more free stuff and further cultural degradation -- resembles that earlier purpose in a perverted fashion.

My friend Travis Corcoran, who’s had some setbacks and changes of direction in recent years, at one time ran an unusual and inspiring small business that rented “how-to” DVDs to persons who sought to acquire various forms of expertise. Travis, whether or not he intended to, had obsoleted the trade school, at least in theory. In similar fashion, on-line purveyors of knowledge such as the ones Dystopic cites are steadily obsoleting the lecture / recitation model for higher learning. A good thing, too considering not only the cost of college attendance but the extent to which they’ve been converted into indoctrination centers for socialism, group hatreds, and general anti-Americanism.

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3. As goes Britain...?

Keith at Crusader Rabbit cites a disturbing trend:

A survey from The Sunday Times of 30 November, 2008, published under the heading, “Britain on top in casual sex league” claimed: “British men and women are now the most promiscuous of any big western industrial nation, researchers have found … The researchers behind the study say high scores such as Britain’s may be linked to the way society is increasingly willing to accept sexual promiscuity among women as well as men … Britain’s ranking was ascribed to factors such as the decline of religious scruples about extramarital sex, the growth of equal pay and equal rights for women and a highly sexualised popular culture.”...

Meanwhile, under progressive and politically-correct influences and the widespread seizure of institutional power by the Gramscian left, government taxation and welfare policies as well as officially-created or officially-condoned cultural pressures seem deliberately structured to destroy marriage and families. This appears directly related to a huge increase in violent youth crime.

Previous Home Secretary Jack Straw assured England that: “we shouldn’t get into a paddy about the decline of formal marriage.” Other kinds of families, he said, “can do just as well for their children.” (Despite the overwhelming evidence that they don’t)....

What conclusion can be drawn except that the destruction of the traditional family and the creation of a welfare-dependent underclass has been, at some level, deliberate?

There’s a strong correlation between the decline of traditional marriage and the decline of a nation’s birth rate to below-replacement level. Mark Steyn’s book America Alone is eloquent on the dangers this entails. The great surprise in the above is that it’s taken Britain, whose social services bureaucracy is even larger, per capita, than America’s, so long to notice.

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4. Some of you assured me that you’d review one or more of my novels...

...But haven’t delivered.

Please do what you’ve said you’d do. I can’t sell books otherwise, and if I can’t sell them, I’ll stop writing them. I’ll say no more on the subject...for now, anyway.

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5. Statesman.

Yes, it’s coming along. Projected completion at the end of this year. Hang in there. But do please read segment #4 above.

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6. I need a title.

I lack a title for the fourth Spooner Federation novel. It will revolve around Althea’s transformation of the Relic into a permanent settlement as States proliferate and grow strong on the surface of Hope. Suggestions would be welcome.

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That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. Enjoy your Valentine’s Day.