UVA, scandal, etc.
more excuses to repeat myself.
From the past.

More recently.

The rise of the administrators began a long time ago. And long before 1990. The rise of the technocrats. My father (PhD Berkeley 62 and by then former undergraduate chairman) was one of the strikers, and noted with disgust that the teachers at the business school were among the most committed.

Atrios

I'm not going to argue with this, but I will suggest that it's more "rich asshole failed to get the respect he is entitled to" than any grand vision about the world. Because, really, killing the German department isn't a vision.

It's a vision for some, and for others like Atrios himself, its just drift.

Atrios' thinking is always almost pathologically unsophisticated (and as un-self-aware, also self-serving) but sometimes when facts and personal experience intersect simplicity is enough. He yells "print the fucking money!" with righteous indignation. I share it, but simplicity isn't enough.

repeats

The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change

Our study results belie the conventional view that controversy over policy-relevant science is rooted in the public’s lack of scientific knowledge and its inability to engage in technical reasoning. As ordinary people learn more science and become more proficient in modes of reasoning characteristic of scientific inquiry, they do not reliably converge on assessments of climate change risks supported by scientific evidence. Instead they more form beliefs that are even more reliably characteristic of persons who hold their particular cultural worldviews. Indeed, far from a symptom of how poorly equipped ordinary individuals are to reach rational conclusions on the basis of complex scientific data, disputes over issues like climate change, we’ve argued, are evidence of how remarkably well equipped they are to discern what stances toward such information satisfy their expressive interests. The high degree of rationality individuals display in forming risk perceptions that express their cultural values can itself inhibit collective welfare rationality by blocking citizens from converging on the best available scientific evidence on how to secure their common interests in health, safety, and prosperity.

As I said last year when I read the above [as I say every fucking day] all cognition is cultural. Who watches the watchmen when we're the only watchmen of ourselves?