Latest Posts

Irrelevant Institution

Business, Seen On Campus

Over at the awful Forbes magazine, writer Stephen McBride opines thus:

Here’s some great news: one of America’s most broken industries is finally being exposed as a sham.  And make no mistake, the end of college as we know it is a great thing.
It’s great for families, who’ll save money and take on less debt putting kids through school.  It’s great for kids, who’ll no longer be lured into the socialist indoctrination centers that many American campuses have become.

He goes on to talk about the savings to be made and the investment opportunities (in companies which will rush to fill the void), but that’s not central to the theme of this post, other than to note that as college costs have ballooned, the return on investment has decreased while its concomitant debt has increased.  Simply put:  for a huge number of kids, college tuition is not only a gamble, but a bad one.

While I don’t quibble at all with the writer’s perspective on universities as propaganda outfits rather than places of learning, I have a somewhat different take on the whole thing.

I’ve written before on the wisdom of young people learning a trade prior to (or even instead of) going off to college, so I’m not going to repeat that thought.  Rather (and this is my difference with the above Forbes article), I think that colleges and universities have become less relevant to people’s education.  Other than careers which require intensive knowledge (engineering, medicine, bio-mechanics etc.), there’s very little a college degree can teach you that could not be equally imparted through a lengthy apprenticeship in that field.

And if any good has come of the Chinkvirus pandemic and its related effect on our lives, it’s that realization of how little a truly motivated person needs classroom instruction.  (As an aside, if the would-be student isn’t motivated to learn, college is absolutely the worst place for them to be, not only for the cost but also for the array of distractions extant.)

I can hear it now:  “Oh,” stupid parents will moan, “my little Jimmy / Susie / Jamaal / Shaniqua won’t learn anything from an online course because they’ll just play their online games instead.”

I’ve got news for you, O Stupid Parents:  your undisciplined and ineducable kids are already doing that, only they’re doing it in the lecture room.

The late, great and much-missed columnist Mike Royko once said (and I paraphrase because I’m speaking from memory) something like:  most people shouldn’t go to college;  they should become butchers or janitors.  Worse yet, he added, the problem with giving butchers and janitors college degrees is that they then go into business with the same intelligence level, only now they’ll be woefully under-qualified to be managers, because they should have been butchers or janitors.

Or, as Daughter so eloquently put it after her first semester at college:  “Most of these idiots belong in the grease pit at Jiffylube.”   After two years, she expanded that thought to include the professors.  (Lest we forget, this was a girl who taught herself Japanese at home while being homeschooled.)

And this is the problem with most college graduates these days:  they had no business going to college in the first place because they were either stupid or ineducable.  Now they can be found in the outside world suitably “qualified” by their degrees:  at best, they’re busy screwing up some enterprise in a middle-management position;  at worst, they can be found among the ranks of the rioters in Portland and Seattle.

So yes, I agree with McBride that most colleges will disappear, and good riddance.  The ones that survive should get a wake-up call, and realize that in business, nothing is truly irreplaceable — and yes, their beloved ivory towers are indeed just a business.

All I can hope for is that parents will point their kids at careers and activities that will not only be valuable as income streams, but that the kids will actually enjoy doing because they’ve discovered the psychological value of a job well done.

For the rest, there’s the grease pit at Jiffylube.  Good luck to them as they compete with hungry Third-World immigrants.

Change Of Pace

Beauty, Good Stuff

It occurs to me that of late this here back porch of mine has been too preoccupied with political shit such as rioters in Portland / Seattle, asshole politicians [redundancy alert] , the Chinkvirus and in general, the looming end of the world that is 2020.

So today I’m going to ignore all that, and put up some posts that are so trivial, so inconsequential and of so little lasting value that you, O my Readers, may be excused if you leave immediately for Breitbart, Insty or whatever, shaking your heads in sorrow while saying, “The old fart’s gone Biden on us.”

Enjoy…

Crying Shame

Drive Time

We’re all familiar with my overriding (and much-mocked) criterion that a car shouldn’t just perform;  it should be beautiful as well.  And yes, I know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder:  while some may drool over some 1960s-era muscle car, I feel vaguely nauseated every time I see one because there’s a great deal of difference between muscular and muscle-bound.  It’s the reason I’d prefer a 1964 Mercedes 230SL

…over an AC Cobra of similar vintage:

However, there is one other car that I would take over just about any other open-topped sports car.  But of course, nothing in my life is ever easy when it comes to affairs of the heart, and this no exception.

It’s the 1957 Maserati 150 GT Spyder, and Maserati only made one of them.  (Needless to say, the last time it sold, it brought a price of $3 million.)  But, but, but:

Here’s its story, and some more pics for those who are interested.

For my money, the only car which ever came close was the 1957 (what was it about that year?) BMW 507 Cabrio:

If someone put a gun to my head and said, “Pick a sports car from the 1950s…” I’d grab the Mazza with both hands, and if denied that, then the little Beemer.

No, I wouldn’t take a Mercedes 300SL Roadster over either.

Too muscle-bound by comparison.

Go ahead, mock me.  You know you want to.

Gratuitous Gun Pic: Argentine 1909 Mauser (7.65x53mm)

Gratuitous Gun Pics

As any fule kno, I have a love of All Rifles (Mauser), and the 1909 Argie is no exception.  Yeah, it’s chambered in the offbeat (and wonderfully-powerful) 7.65mm Argentine — how offbeat? the “53mm” cartridge casing is actually 53.6mm in length — but like all Mausers of the Gew. 98 or K98 family, the action is almost indestructible and I would have absolutely no hesitation in picking up one of these to go into battle, hunt at medium ranges, or blow away a goblin.  In terms of power, it’s roughly equivalent to the British .303 Enfield of the same era;  in terms of recoil, it’s worse.  I once did a side-by-side shoot-off with two rifles thus chambered, starting with a mag load (10 rounds) from my old SMLE .303.  Then, after three rounds of the 7.65mm, I put the 1909 down gently and had to have a soothing shoulder massage from a maiden of the Orient  a Swedish girl named Hanna  my girlfriend of the time.  The .303 was a pleasure, by comparison.

Another reason not to plink with the Argy rifle is the ammo.  While it’s not especially uncommon (from vendors who specialize in such cartridges), you’re not going to find it at Bubba’s Bait ‘n Ammo Shack.  But thank goodness for those erstwhile Commies at Prvi Partizan, where the cost per squeeze is about a dollar (actually quite reasonable, given the obscurity of the cartridge).  Shooting a serious hunting load from Norma will treble that, but hunting doesn’t require thousands of rounds to be touched off — if you know what you’re doing, of course.  Hornady also makes cheap-ish 7.65mm ammo, but the bullet is much lighter (150gr vs. the “normal” 174gr), which means you’ll have to adjust from your practice ammo to your hunting cartridge — always a little problematic with iron-sighted rifles.

Also, the 1909’s straight bolt handle makes mounting a scope problematic, and if I were to advise against anything to do with the Argie, it would be attempting this yourself.  If you just have to have a scope-mounted old 98-type Mauser, start with one of the later (e.g. M48 Yugo) models.  Even that can require very tall mounts:

As for the 1909 rifle itself:  it never saw combat with the Argentine armed forces but even so, most of them are pretty battered by now, and all-number-matching rifles are a rare find.  There’s also a lot of stuff said about the Argentina-made 1909s vs. the German-made (DWM) ones, but I’ve fired more than a couple of the Argy Argies, and they’re fine.  In any event, DWM made nearly three times the number of the others, so mostly you’ll find it’s a DWM.

The Argentinians (not DWM, as I recall) also made a carbine model (like this one), but that is even less pleasant to shoot.  When it comes to recoil, heavier is better.

Current prices seem to run anywhere from $300 (gun shows) – $750+ (FFL), but those at the lower end need to be very carefully checked over by a gunsmith — I wouldn’t risk getting a cheap one, myself.  One inherent problem is that damn rifles are most often the target of amateur gunsmithing — usually converted into a more common chambering.  These should be avoided like the plague.

All that said, however:  the 1909 Argentine Mauser is a sound, effective rifle, and I do regret selling mine.  [exit, kicking self]

Still Laughing

BaconLettuceMayo, Business, Heroism

I know that this is an old story, but I just can’t stop laughing about it.

The maker of Red Bull energy drinks has replaced its top U.S. executives amid internal tensions over the closely held company’s response to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Red Bull GmbH, the Austrian company that makes the drink, said Stefan Kozak, its North America chief executive, and Amy Taylor, its North America president and chief marketing officer, have left the company. It named other executives to temporarily fill the roles.
Red Bull didn’t give a reason for the changes, which were announced in an internal memo Monday.

Here’s my favorite part:

Ms. Taylor had been working on diversity and inclusion efforts within the company with Mr. Kozak’s support for several years but was met with opposition when she began advocating for Red Bull to be more overt in its support of racial justice in the last month, according to people familiar with the matter.
Some U.S. employees had recently raised concerns about what they considered the company’s inaction on the Black Lives Matter movement.

Hope all those “some employees” were canned as well.  “Diversity hiring” is one thing;  overt support for a bunch of Commie street thugs is another thing altogether.

I don’t drink Red Bull or any other “energy drink” (unless 10-year-old Glen Morangie gives you energy — not according to my experience, though).  But just for the hell of it, I might try it as a mixer with a shot of  Tanqueray tomorrow morning, as a wake-up call.

I mean, such good deeds should not go unrewarded, right?  Hell, I might even start supporting Red Bull Racing and Max Verstappen:

Prosit  to Herr Kozak, and a hearty fuck you to the wokesters.