I think the first debate should be before their respective conventions. That way America can see both these geezers in action and if either one or the other or both is appalling enough, their respective parties can have time to discuss amongst themselves whether they'll revolt and pick someone else. I think Nikki Haley was right about something: If only one party boots their candidate and picks anyone else, they're gonna win. And if both boot them, it's a tossup. She thinks the next Prez will be a woman; either her or Kamala Harris. She said this before she dropped out so I don't know if she still believes that, nor am I at all certain that Harris could beat Trump (but I think almost anyone else could). But I do agree with her that whoever boots their guy wins. Rightly wrongly. It makes sense, given how unpopular they both are except with their far-right and far-left bases.
[Time 40:00]; McWhorter discusses experience of Jewish vs. Black students at Harvard. Prior to DEI, the generic HR rules banning discrimination based on race, ethnicity and religion were simple universal rules that were relatively easy to enforce and follow. In order for DEI to work properly, directors would need information from God. Even intelligent and ethical humans could not properly administer DEI so as to achieve true fairness.
[Time 17:00]; Complaint for McWhorter - I am not a Kindle user. I pre-ordered “Pronouns”. Maybe I can find a Kindle App for iPhone and take photos and print those. I look forward to book release.
Thanks for reviewing films. Since Covid shut down so many SF theaters, I fell out of movie-groove and have seen none of films discussed. I too have grown tired of the 300-hour long movie award ceremonies. These programs need to be cut in half. And no fist-fighting at the ceremonies, please.
The quibbling with color blindness is interesting. It becomes clear then that we just don't want to be like Amy Wax. Therefore we need to hold on to something, however undefined, that shows we're not suggesting there's no racism problem at all. It's always interesting when people can't follow through on their own insights. The real problem is that Coleman Hughes and John Roberts are simply right, not just because of the way the Constitution was written, and what the fourteen amendment implies for everyone, but mainly because we have de facto had half a century of reverse systemic racism now and it needs to stop. This is just difficult for people to realize because the delusion of institutional racism persists indefinitely, against all quotidian experience and empirical evidence. Only idiots accept the presence of outcome disparities as direct evidence for discrimination, but this is what the entire nation has been hiding behind. John would do well to just be done with it entirely. It doesn't mean he'd turn into a compassionless dirtbag on every human concern, like Clarence Thomas. It would just be an internally consistent position. It would say: Yes, we are judging you by the content of your character when we lock you up at multiple times the rate of other racial groups (Black on Asian versus Asian on Black crime is 50:1), and we're doing it while more black women get a college degree than white men do, thanks to either the reverse discrimination or because black women are smarter and more industrious than white men, which is something we could try to study. It shouldn't be that difficult for an independent mind to grasp, I feel.
Really interesting argument by John ("Trump can't debate") about why not to debate. I agree with his premise; I'm not sure about the conclusion. If I trust "our democracy", shouldn't voters be exposed to that?
OTOH, I suspect James Madison would want the Electoral College do it's Constitutional job and to vote for neither of these two clowns.
I think a debate would be good if they gave both candidates x amount of time to respond or state their case or whatever; both would be furnished with a device like at at TED talk where you see how much time you have left; and your mic is cut off at 0:00. No matter what you're saying, no matter what thought you're in the middle of. "Write it down and save it for your next turn," will keep most candidates in check that way, except for Trump, who will throw some highly amusing (albeit hard to hear from the non-present audience) tantrums :) Especially when he wastes most of his time complaining about how unfair the rules are ;)
Well, that would certainly help. Debate moderators who actually control the debates. Cutting off mics would go a long ways towards restoring some decorum.
John’s defense of Biden’s coming “I won’t debate the orange man” smacked of partisanship, subconscious or otherwise. As a master of language, John and other liberals know that a cognitively impaired Biden will show very poorly against Trump. I despise the orange man but it is clear that his ability to speak and communicate is vastly better than Biden. Trump gives 2 hour rallies where he speaks extemporaneously speak to thousands. Biden can barely speak a sentence without misspeaking, mumbling, speaking nonsense ect. The Democratic Party has taken a massive risk running him again and now they will try to hide a very debilitated candidate from the public but it won’t work.
I think that a debate is even more necessary for this election than in previous presidential elections because of constant dishonesty by both parties and hysterical assertions about the end of democracy. We deserve to see the candidates in a live public forum responding to questions. However, I am expecting Biden’s handlers to make an excuse for him to skip the debates. They already came up with a weak excuse to not do the softball Super Bowl interview.
I agree and I'll add that debate should be a non-negotiable aspect of American political life at least for presidents. It would be a loss of dignity for us to say, "Our candidates are so bad they can't even debate one another". In the case of this election, my cynical-optimist take is that the American people need to see on full display just how awful both candidates are, Trump barking at everything, Biden mumbling incoherent sentences. Just like alcoholics need to hit rock bottom to gain the insight to change, the American people need to find their way to recognizing we are at an electoral rock bottom. Both parties are failing the people by advancing these candidates, as any poll shows. And my people on the left need to see that the current president isn't capable of a coherent conversation, betraying that he's not the one running the country. The best outcome would be a disastrous debate where Trump and Biden are exactly who they are so that Americans finally stop voting for a major party with their fear of the "other guy" and start voting with their hearts. Seeing such a debate would increase motivation for voting for a viable third party candidate that isn't an embarrassment to humanity. In my mind the only question is how bad the candidates will have to get before individuals finally take their civic responsibility seriously and vote their conscience.
Why Biden? He's not the one with a well-less-than 100% debate attendance record. Nor does he exactly have the record for least apparently able to form coherent sentences/thoughts.
True, trump should have done the primary debates. He says he wants to debate Biden so hopefully he will stick to that. It would also be good if rfk and Jill Stein could be at a debate. That is probably wishful thinking.
Agreed, though I have to admit I didn't realize Jill Stein was running - again... The American Green Party has really bad habit of propping-up failed candidates over and over again (I'm thinking of Nader and Stein, I don't know about before Nader) and seemingly being utterly flummoxed (/finger-pointy) about why they don't win even a substantial minority of a single state.
Good conversation. And I do agree that Stanley Crouch would have been awesome during these woke times of discourse.
The "colorblind" word is subjective because of how it is perceived and spoken about from all sides. The race industry is a form of capitalism that cannot be completely controlled because of the corruption involved. So the war continues, and people profit from selling certain narratives.
The 2024 election is probably going to be a lot more polarizing than 2016. I cannot wait to see John's reaction after the results. I still remember his reaction after Trump won the first time. It was priceless.
Below is the Bloggingheads episode of Glenn and John speaking about Trump's victory in 2016.
Was it this way in the 80s? Yes, in the other direction. Reagan, Madonna’s Material World, movie stars like Stallone, and Schwarzenegger in pro state, pro military action movies. That was the 80s version of DEI woke at least in terms of general pop culture. No idea how that would manifest in academia.
The SAT is back. But I understand that since it is electronic, and can be scored in real time the test will change depending on how well or poorly a student is doing. In other words, easier questions will pop up in the test if the student is doing poorly and vice-versa.
In essence, each student can end up taking a different test. It is also being "dumbed-down" with certain sections left out for everybody.
"easier questions will pop up in the test if the student is doing poorly and vice-versa"
This isn't necessarily indicative of dumbing down. What may be happening here is a "staircase" algorithm that allows an online test to zero in on the score of a test taker by giving a range of questions of varying difficulties, taking the answers into account, and giving more questions around that level. It allows the test to zero in on the test taker's true level faster than if every test taker has to answer every question. If this is what the SAT does, then not every test taker will get the same number of questions, or the same set of questions, and two people who both got, say, 80% correct would end up with different scores based on the level of difficulty of the questions they were given. It sounds unfair but it is a valid scientific approoach used on some types of tests.
Thank you Michael. So, the level of difficulty would be factored into the final score? So, 2 people can get 80% correct on SAT and one would end up with 600, let's say, and the other with 700?
The dumbing down wasn't referring to the question but either the leaving out of a section, or shortening the reading.....but I can't remember.
Think of it like an eye exam. An eye doctor doesn't make everyone start at the hugest letters and work their way all the way down the chart until the letters are too small for them to read. Instead, he starts on a row somewhere in the middle of the chart, and if the person can read those letters easily, he moves to a lower row, while if the person cannot read the letters at all, he moves to a higher row. Everyone he tests in a day may attempt to read a different number of letters, and different sizes of letters, but at the end of the day the doctor will have fitted everyone with the right prescription.
Something like that. And it is the test taker's own right or wrong answers that lead to the level of difficultly of their exam as a whole. No need to give all of the easy questions to a person who is acing the hard ones, or all of the hard questions to a person who is struggling with the easier ones. But the person struggling with the eaiser ones is getting a lower score.
I haven't heard of removing sections (/topics?) from the SAT. I really hope that if that is true, it is due to validity-data, not capitalistic desires to improve its "public image" at the expense of testing integrity. Is it along the lines of reacting to the worsening of children's reading and writing abilities?
To the electronic-enabled questions. That was already standard in for example the GRE - though when I took it, you still had to come into a testing location. The psychometric idea tends to be, among other reasons, that rather than rewarding random guesses on all the visible items, if there is evidence of struggling with a certain difficulty of items, the test taker is taken down a lower difficulty avenue (which should have mechanisms for returning to higher difficulties based on performance) which also carries less score-value and potentially less items. I'm not certain that this is how the SAT is now working, but that is what the testing-precedent would be.
Glenn and John, you both make good points about why there should or should not be debates. Which simply highlights the fact that neither candidate running for the office of the American presidency CAN debate. High school debate teams across the country continue to actively participate in rigorous debates. Is there even any way to talk about how profoundly bizarre this situation is? Maybe the candidates could pick student proxies to stand in for them.
It seems clear that Biden's campaign will refuse a debate. Biden's response to Robert Hur's report suggests that Biden is having trouble distinguishing between reality and his imagination. Biden had a quick press conference after Hur's report was released, and Biden said that he was very angry at Hur for asking Biden when Biden's son had died. The transcript showed that Hur had not asked Biden about when his son had died, but that Biden had been the person who brought up the topic in response to another question. Biden imagined that Hur had asked about when his son died even though he had not done so. If Biden is unable to distinguish reality from his imagination, then he might make decisions based on what he imagines has happened instead of making decisions based on reality.
Disagree. I think the Biden admin will basically accept the recommendations of the Council on Presidential Debates (which has managed all of the debates going back decades), and either Trump will accept that and we will have debates or he will reject it and we won't.
Ads ? ... on a paid subscription ??
I think the first debate should be before their respective conventions. That way America can see both these geezers in action and if either one or the other or both is appalling enough, their respective parties can have time to discuss amongst themselves whether they'll revolt and pick someone else. I think Nikki Haley was right about something: If only one party boots their candidate and picks anyone else, they're gonna win. And if both boot them, it's a tossup. She thinks the next Prez will be a woman; either her or Kamala Harris. She said this before she dropped out so I don't know if she still believes that, nor am I at all certain that Harris could beat Trump (but I think almost anyone else could). But I do agree with her that whoever boots their guy wins. Rightly wrongly. It makes sense, given how unpopular they both are except with their far-right and far-left bases.
I get John’s fear about a debate but his argument is so specious as to be in bad faith. Glen’s collapse is embarrassing. A bad moment.
[Time 40:00]; McWhorter discusses experience of Jewish vs. Black students at Harvard. Prior to DEI, the generic HR rules banning discrimination based on race, ethnicity and religion were simple universal rules that were relatively easy to enforce and follow. In order for DEI to work properly, directors would need information from God. Even intelligent and ethical humans could not properly administer DEI so as to achieve true fairness.
[Time 24:00]; Here is a “Ending sentence in preposition joke” - from a birthday card:
Girl 1: Where is the birthday party at?
Girl 2: Don’t end a sentence in a preposition.
Girl 1: Where is the party at, bitch?
Man, that joke's so old the dinosaurs peed on it ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92NpzXXpQtg
Discuss
[Time 17:00]; Complaint for McWhorter - I am not a Kindle user. I pre-ordered “Pronouns”. Maybe I can find a Kindle App for iPhone and take photos and print those. I look forward to book release.
Thanks for reviewing films. Since Covid shut down so many SF theaters, I fell out of movie-groove and have seen none of films discussed. I too have grown tired of the 300-hour long movie award ceremonies. These programs need to be cut in half. And no fist-fighting at the ceremonies, please.
The quibbling with color blindness is interesting. It becomes clear then that we just don't want to be like Amy Wax. Therefore we need to hold on to something, however undefined, that shows we're not suggesting there's no racism problem at all. It's always interesting when people can't follow through on their own insights. The real problem is that Coleman Hughes and John Roberts are simply right, not just because of the way the Constitution was written, and what the fourteen amendment implies for everyone, but mainly because we have de facto had half a century of reverse systemic racism now and it needs to stop. This is just difficult for people to realize because the delusion of institutional racism persists indefinitely, against all quotidian experience and empirical evidence. Only idiots accept the presence of outcome disparities as direct evidence for discrimination, but this is what the entire nation has been hiding behind. John would do well to just be done with it entirely. It doesn't mean he'd turn into a compassionless dirtbag on every human concern, like Clarence Thomas. It would just be an internally consistent position. It would say: Yes, we are judging you by the content of your character when we lock you up at multiple times the rate of other racial groups (Black on Asian versus Asian on Black crime is 50:1), and we're doing it while more black women get a college degree than white men do, thanks to either the reverse discrimination or because black women are smarter and more industrious than white men, which is something we could try to study. It shouldn't be that difficult for an independent mind to grasp, I feel.
Really interesting argument by John ("Trump can't debate") about why not to debate. I agree with his premise; I'm not sure about the conclusion. If I trust "our democracy", shouldn't voters be exposed to that?
OTOH, I suspect James Madison would want the Electoral College do it's Constitutional job and to vote for neither of these two clowns.
I think a debate would be good if they gave both candidates x amount of time to respond or state their case or whatever; both would be furnished with a device like at at TED talk where you see how much time you have left; and your mic is cut off at 0:00. No matter what you're saying, no matter what thought you're in the middle of. "Write it down and save it for your next turn," will keep most candidates in check that way, except for Trump, who will throw some highly amusing (albeit hard to hear from the non-present audience) tantrums :) Especially when he wastes most of his time complaining about how unfair the rules are ;)
Well, that would certainly help. Debate moderators who actually control the debates. Cutting off mics would go a long ways towards restoring some decorum.
John’s defense of Biden’s coming “I won’t debate the orange man” smacked of partisanship, subconscious or otherwise. As a master of language, John and other liberals know that a cognitively impaired Biden will show very poorly against Trump. I despise the orange man but it is clear that his ability to speak and communicate is vastly better than Biden. Trump gives 2 hour rallies where he speaks extemporaneously speak to thousands. Biden can barely speak a sentence without misspeaking, mumbling, speaking nonsense ect. The Democratic Party has taken a massive risk running him again and now they will try to hide a very debilitated candidate from the public but it won’t work.
I think that a debate is even more necessary for this election than in previous presidential elections because of constant dishonesty by both parties and hysterical assertions about the end of democracy. We deserve to see the candidates in a live public forum responding to questions. However, I am expecting Biden’s handlers to make an excuse for him to skip the debates. They already came up with a weak excuse to not do the softball Super Bowl interview.
I agree and I'll add that debate should be a non-negotiable aspect of American political life at least for presidents. It would be a loss of dignity for us to say, "Our candidates are so bad they can't even debate one another". In the case of this election, my cynical-optimist take is that the American people need to see on full display just how awful both candidates are, Trump barking at everything, Biden mumbling incoherent sentences. Just like alcoholics need to hit rock bottom to gain the insight to change, the American people need to find their way to recognizing we are at an electoral rock bottom. Both parties are failing the people by advancing these candidates, as any poll shows. And my people on the left need to see that the current president isn't capable of a coherent conversation, betraying that he's not the one running the country. The best outcome would be a disastrous debate where Trump and Biden are exactly who they are so that Americans finally stop voting for a major party with their fear of the "other guy" and start voting with their hearts. Seeing such a debate would increase motivation for voting for a viable third party candidate that isn't an embarrassment to humanity. In my mind the only question is how bad the candidates will have to get before individuals finally take their civic responsibility seriously and vote their conscience.
Why Biden? He's not the one with a well-less-than 100% debate attendance record. Nor does he exactly have the record for least apparently able to form coherent sentences/thoughts.
True, trump should have done the primary debates. He says he wants to debate Biden so hopefully he will stick to that. It would also be good if rfk and Jill Stein could be at a debate. That is probably wishful thinking.
Agreed, though I have to admit I didn't realize Jill Stein was running - again... The American Green Party has really bad habit of propping-up failed candidates over and over again (I'm thinking of Nader and Stein, I don't know about before Nader) and seemingly being utterly flummoxed (/finger-pointy) about why they don't win even a substantial minority of a single state.
"Balance of Power"
Good conversation. And I do agree that Stanley Crouch would have been awesome during these woke times of discourse.
The "colorblind" word is subjective because of how it is perceived and spoken about from all sides. The race industry is a form of capitalism that cannot be completely controlled because of the corruption involved. So the war continues, and people profit from selling certain narratives.
The 2024 election is probably going to be a lot more polarizing than 2016. I cannot wait to see John's reaction after the results. I still remember his reaction after Trump won the first time. It was priceless.
Below is the Bloggingheads episode of Glenn and John speaking about Trump's victory in 2016.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjUnA1WUPqU
Thank you for the video! Quite quintessential.
Was it this way in the 80s? Yes, in the other direction. Reagan, Madonna’s Material World, movie stars like Stallone, and Schwarzenegger in pro state, pro military action movies. That was the 80s version of DEI woke at least in terms of general pop culture. No idea how that would manifest in academia.
The SAT is back. But I understand that since it is electronic, and can be scored in real time the test will change depending on how well or poorly a student is doing. In other words, easier questions will pop up in the test if the student is doing poorly and vice-versa.
In essence, each student can end up taking a different test. It is also being "dumbed-down" with certain sections left out for everybody.
What have you all heard about these things?
"easier questions will pop up in the test if the student is doing poorly and vice-versa"
This isn't necessarily indicative of dumbing down. What may be happening here is a "staircase" algorithm that allows an online test to zero in on the score of a test taker by giving a range of questions of varying difficulties, taking the answers into account, and giving more questions around that level. It allows the test to zero in on the test taker's true level faster than if every test taker has to answer every question. If this is what the SAT does, then not every test taker will get the same number of questions, or the same set of questions, and two people who both got, say, 80% correct would end up with different scores based on the level of difficulty of the questions they were given. It sounds unfair but it is a valid scientific approoach used on some types of tests.
Thank you Michael. So, the level of difficulty would be factored into the final score? So, 2 people can get 80% correct on SAT and one would end up with 600, let's say, and the other with 700?
The dumbing down wasn't referring to the question but either the leaving out of a section, or shortening the reading.....but I can't remember.
Think of it like an eye exam. An eye doctor doesn't make everyone start at the hugest letters and work their way all the way down the chart until the letters are too small for them to read. Instead, he starts on a row somewhere in the middle of the chart, and if the person can read those letters easily, he moves to a lower row, while if the person cannot read the letters at all, he moves to a higher row. Everyone he tests in a day may attempt to read a different number of letters, and different sizes of letters, but at the end of the day the doctor will have fitted everyone with the right prescription.
Something like that. And it is the test taker's own right or wrong answers that lead to the level of difficultly of their exam as a whole. No need to give all of the easy questions to a person who is acing the hard ones, or all of the hard questions to a person who is struggling with the easier ones. But the person struggling with the eaiser ones is getting a lower score.
I haven't heard of removing sections (/topics?) from the SAT. I really hope that if that is true, it is due to validity-data, not capitalistic desires to improve its "public image" at the expense of testing integrity. Is it along the lines of reacting to the worsening of children's reading and writing abilities?
To the electronic-enabled questions. That was already standard in for example the GRE - though when I took it, you still had to come into a testing location. The psychometric idea tends to be, among other reasons, that rather than rewarding random guesses on all the visible items, if there is evidence of struggling with a certain difficulty of items, the test taker is taken down a lower difficulty avenue (which should have mechanisms for returning to higher difficulties based on performance) which also carries less score-value and potentially less items. I'm not certain that this is how the SAT is now working, but that is what the testing-precedent would be.
Hi BennyBobDixson, look at the thread with my original comment because others have responded with good helpful responses.
Glenn and John, you both make good points about why there should or should not be debates. Which simply highlights the fact that neither candidate running for the office of the American presidency CAN debate. High school debate teams across the country continue to actively participate in rigorous debates. Is there even any way to talk about how profoundly bizarre this situation is? Maybe the candidates could pick student proxies to stand in for them.
It seems clear that Biden's campaign will refuse a debate. Biden's response to Robert Hur's report suggests that Biden is having trouble distinguishing between reality and his imagination. Biden had a quick press conference after Hur's report was released, and Biden said that he was very angry at Hur for asking Biden when Biden's son had died. The transcript showed that Hur had not asked Biden about when his son had died, but that Biden had been the person who brought up the topic in response to another question. Biden imagined that Hur had asked about when his son died even though he had not done so. If Biden is unable to distinguish reality from his imagination, then he might make decisions based on what he imagines has happened instead of making decisions based on reality.
Disagree. I think the Biden admin will basically accept the recommendations of the Council on Presidential Debates (which has managed all of the debates going back decades), and either Trump will accept that and we will have debates or he will reject it and we won't.