The Life Slant - Page 3

Mechanization, Melancholia, and Material Insuetude

One of the best ways of shoving something nasty down another person’s throat is to explain “things have changed.” Well, of course they have changed. If you look closely out your window, the vegetation will grow, change color, even wilt and die, sometimes to re-emerge all over again. Then, of course, we have the people who are unhappy with the way things are, so they deliberately change things. Please understand, I am not suggesting that all changes are bad. It is just that from my personal experiences, change has, often as not, meant that something I liked was going away, and something I disliked was coming about. I won’t go over the nasty and bitter exchanges, because they’re in the past.

Young people like change; they are captivated and enchanted with all of the new technology that has deliberately sought to obtain and keep their attention for as long as possible. The result is at least one generation that isn’t as happy as past generations. Three things making young people unhappy, from Psychology Today, October 6, 2022: 

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College, Commissars, and Conspiracy

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Conspiracy theorists wake up, it is all here. While watching Bill Maher a few days ago, he showed some statistics about colleges, one being that tenured professors have fallen drastically, and that the administrative personnel have greatly expanded. In the 1970s, 70% of professors were tenured, whereas while now, 70% are untenured.  Adding to the lack of experienced professors, we have the unbelievable inflation that has made higher-education costs astronomical.  Academic fees have expanded far beyond almost any other aspect of the U.S. economy, with the exception of health care.  

Forbes magazine, in 2017, noticed the changes: “Put another way, administrative spending comprised just 26% of total educational spending by American colleges in 1980-1981, while instructional spending comprised 41%. Three decades later, the two categories were almost even: administrative spending made up 24% of schools’ total expenditures, while instructional spending made up 29%.” Not only that, but in the present day the probability of your college instructor being a full-time tenured professor is quite low; you are more likely to have a part-time untenured graduate student who is paid a fraction of what a full professor is paid (and they aren’t getting health insurance.) 

The price of a college education has soared. From Intelligent.com: “According to the National Center for Education Statistics, for the 1970-71 academic year, the average in-state tuition and fees for one year at a public non-profit university was $394. By the 2020-21 academic year, that amount jumped to $10,560, an increase of 2,580%.

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The Trouble with Trans

I don’t get the whole ‘trans’ thing.  But then, I don’t need to.  My attitude toward it is the same as for a lot of other things:  Do what you want and live as you choose and leave me out of it, and I’ll do the same.  What I do get – más o menos – is the English language and how this group of selfish, imagination-less people have disrespected it and the rest of us.

It is apparent that trans and androgynous people don’t want to be referred to as either ‘he’ or ‘she’.  Fine.  But the pronouns they have gravitated to, ‘they’ ‘them’ and ‘theirs’, are PLURAL pronouns.  Do they consider themselves so very special as to require to be referred to as more than one person?  Or are they just being lazy?

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Race Against Time: Captain Paul Watson on the Last Vaquitas and Mexico Sanctions

Vaquitas - Mexico Sanctions

The vaquita is the world’s most endangered marine mammal.  Studies estimate there may be as few as eight vaquitas remaining in the Gulf of California, the only place they exist and where they often become entangled in illegal gill nets and drown.

Mexico faces sanctions from the international wildlife body known as CITES for not doing enough to protect the vaquita. The sanctions are designed to compel Mexico to to save the vaquita where all other efforts have failed.

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Sellers Beware! Avoid the “Tech Only” Realtor

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As the housing market begins to melt a bit, you may find yourself in the market to hire a real estate agent.  Beware!  There is a new predator slithering along the real estate industry’s jungle floor:  the tech realtor.

A growing pack of techie millennials have apparently decided that selling and buying real estate can and should be done almost entirely from their laptops!  Most have full time jobs as IT administrators and imagine that selling real estate should be just another side hustle, a part time gig, an easy way to make a few extra bucks.  

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Getting it Right

Another weekend of NFL football, another weekend filled with questionable officiating.  Another weekend of one team being convinced that they got screwed and another team accepting a win that they may know isn’t really theirs.  Another weekend of complete bullshit being spouted by Dean Blandino, the game’s Referee and the league office.  There is no need, nor is there enough time, to create a list of terrible calls and decisions recently made by those wearing the stripes.  We see and endure them almost every game and spend most of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday fixating on them.

Respected analysts like Mike Greenberg declare emphatically that “what is important is to get it right”.  That getting it right should be achieved at all costs, using whatever technology we have at our disposal to ensure that we do.  This widely accepted notion seems incontestable; a ‘conventional wisdom’ if you will.

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