Here's a quote I like, authored by someone using the handle "BuckCreekBreaker."
People who are downwardly mobile loathe those who made better choices in life.
So true, it's the Darwin principle in action.
Tuesday, August 11, 2026
Monday, August 10, 2026
Old Movie Review: Never So Few
Last night we watched a 1959 film - Never So Few - that neither of us had seen or knew of, because it has a blockbuster cast: Frank Sinatra, Gina Lollobrigida, Peter Lawford, Steve McQueen, Paul Henreid, Charles Bronson, Dean Jones, and Brian Donlevy.
Set in Burma during World War II, it was inspired by actual OSS and British officers who led Kachin tribal forces against the Japanese who had invaded Burma and threatened to invade British colonial India. Never So Few is set in the same theater of war as Bridge on the River Kwai but it’s not in the same league theatrically.
The scriptwriters grafted an unbelievable love story onto a war movie and, as we say in horticulture, the graft “didn’t take.” The plot has holes in it you can’t overlook, supposedly crafty experienced troops fail to post sentries and get bushwhacked repeatedly.
Reviewers weren’t impressed with Sinatra but like McQueen’s work. The film lost money, and that tells you how weak the word-of-mouth was on the film. Don’t be conned by the glossy cast list, this film isn’t their best work.
Instapundit Reaches Milestone
Professor Glenn Reynolds is celebrating the 25th anniversary of Instapundit. Congratulations, Glenn, well done.
Speaking of which, COTTonLINE will celebrate its 20th anniversary later this year, I’ll let you know when the date rolls around a few days before Christmas.
I just checked and so far in nearly 20 years I’ve posted 16.6k items, averaging over 800 per year. It is my hobby and it keeps my no-longer-young mind active.
I’m fortunate I have no need to monetize COTTonLINE. Therefore I don’t pester you with ads or appeals for donations, the absence of which I'm certain you appreciate.
B-School Exceptionalism
An interesting quote from an article looking at stereotypes about various majors on higher ed campuses. I like this one as I was a business prof.
The professors in the business school had next to nothing to do with the rest of the university. They had the nicest cars, the most up-to-date building, and the lowest level of union membership.
To what extent was that descriptive of the campus where I spent 28 of my 34 years in academia? We certainly had little to do with the rest of the university, and a quite low level of union membership.
Our building was no better or worse than the rest of the campus. I shared an office for the first 6 years, and had a private office thereafter.
About cars I have no overall idea, an accounting prof drove an elegant pre war Mercedes convertible coupe. At various times I drove a VW beetle, a VW Rabbit, a Thunderbird, a Buick, and a Ford Probe. Overlapping these, also a Chevy, a Dodge, and multiple Ford diesel pickups, used to pull RVs - something very few profs did.
The WNBA Dilemma
Two men with non-trivial NBA experience have decided to file for the WNBA draft, the rules of which apparently permit them to do so. Neither is overtly transsexual.
This creates a fascinating dilemma for the women’s league. Either (a) take a stand for keeping biological males out of women’s sports, or (b) a stand for transsexual rights.
Knowing nothing but the names of the two leagues, you’d suppose choice (a) would be automatic. Knowing what we know about the WNBA, many of its players are strong supporters of LGBTQ+ rights. This means their bias favors men who identify as women being able to do whatever biological women are able to do, to the greatest extent possible, including play pro basketball.
However, if the league is open to XY players, it is likely it could become dominated by taller, heavier biological males. Actual XX players will be to varying degrees marginalized or left off rosters.
The conflict is between LGBTQ+ rights and economic self interest. It will be fascinating to see how the WNBA navigates this maze when many players simultaneously hold membership in two groups with opposing interests.
I can imagine a (admittedly unlikely) future in which most WNBA players are XY but required to cosplay XX, like classical Japanese kabuki drama in which all roles are played by XY men. It will be interesting to see this conflict of interest unfold.
Sunday, August 9, 2026
History ... Rhyming
The Spanish Civil War served as a lead-in to World War II. What are the chances the Ukraine War will serve as a precursor to World War III?
Both dragged on for years, creating many casualties. Both have served as proving grounds for new military technology. And of course, both had external allies who supported the side more closely allied to their interests.
The Spanish civil war ended on April 1, 1939. Hitler invaded Poland exactly 5 months later on September 1, 1939, beginning World War II.
Anybody want to take bets on the lag time between an end of war in Ukraine and the beginning of the as-yet-hypothetical World War III? At this point I would start with 5 months as an unbiased estimator thereof.
The Spanish war lasted roughly 3 years. Ukraine's war has already lasted ca. 4.5 years and shows no sign of ending.
If the Ukraine war's continuation precludes the beginning of a much wider war, perhaps it is better for most of us if it does not end. For sure the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) and Poland could think so. I fear this speculation sounds a bit outré, which doesn't make it any less possible.
Saturday, August 8, 2026
Friday, August 7, 2026
Good News
After graduation I 'launched;' I never needed to return to live with my parents. In the current job market, I'm glad I'm not a new grad looking for my first career job offer. Hat tip to Power Line for the chart.
Realignment, Revisited
Ten days ago I wrote that what is happening to the Democrat Party now - with Democratic Socialists - is what happened to the Republican Party a few years ago - with MAGA. I privately wondered then if or when the commentariat would catch up.
Turns out it was "when," not "if," and I'll admit to being pleased. A Daily Caller column is entitled "'DSA Is Our MAGA': The Democratic Establishment Faces a Reckoning."
The column makes some of the same points I made about young Democrat voters being bummed with the Party's establishment figures. Among them, the downwardly mobile, "overcredentialed, underemployed college grads who are in debt up to their eyebrows, can't find suitable career employment, or afford to buy homes."
MAGA succeeded in taking over the GOP; it isn't yet clear that DSA will do the same to Democrats. They definitely have a shot at doing so.
A lot will be revealed by the results this coming November. If many DSA-flavored nominees succeed in winning, that's one thing. If they do only so-so, the movement may flounder like the Tea Party, or may spawn a successor that is even more radical, which you could argue the Tea Party did with MAGA.
Later: A really good situation summary from Jesse Arm, writing at City Journal about Democrats.
The party is shifting from the politics of the black church to the politics of the campus encampment.
As a Republican I view both as problematic, albeit in quite different ways.
Thursday, August 6, 2026
The Window Is Closing
A very interesting geopolitical analysis at RealClearWorld. It looks at current goings-on in China, compares them to Russia’s current quagmire in Ukraine, and finds interesting parallels. China’s shrinking population is clearly an issue. Key thoughts on China.
China's Central Military Commission normally seats seven men. It currently seats two.
More than a hundred senior PLA officers have been removed or have simply stopped appearing in public since 2022.
Fewer than eight million children were born there in 2025, the lowest figure since the People's Republic began keeping records in 1949, and the fourth consecutive year of outright population decline. The working-age population peaked around 2011 and has shrunk every year since.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company produces roughly ninety percent of the world's leading-edge chips, the three-nanometer and smaller processors inside every advanced weapons system, every AI data center, and every flagship phone on the planet.
Russia moved through its closing window and lost the thing it was trying to protect. China is standing at the same window with a shrinking population, a client instead of a partner in Moscow, an energy buffer it has now spent twice, a semiconductor trap that punishes the very move it contemplates, and a high command that its own leader has spent four years hollowing out.
Translation: Don’t envy Xi as he looks at what happened to Russia in Ukraine and contemplates what could happen to China in Taiwan. He commands a shrinking resource.
In Defense of Thanksgiving
Governor candidate Francesca Hong has a problem with Thanksgiving, she seems to see it celebrating colonialism - one of the current era’s big no-nos. Leaving aside her history of mental illness, what’s missing here is a knowledge of history.
Thanksgiving is a harvest festival. Humans have been celebrating the harvest ever since we made the transition from hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists, thousands of years ago.
The land rewards our hard work in the fields with enough food to last through the winter and spring, an event certainly worth celebrating. The crops are in and stored, now it is time to brace ourselves for the cold and dark.
If you think about it, Thanksgiving celebrates the autumnal equinox, Christmas the winter solstice, and Easter the spring equinox. Don’t be surprised if many non-Christian nations have similar patterns of celebration, however they are locally labeled.
Wednesday, August 5, 2026
Good News
A week ago I wrote about Jason Arday, a DEI faculty hire at Cambridge U. who is guilty of plagiarism and multiple examples of claiming glorious deeds he's never done. Today comes the good news that he has resigned from Cambridge, effective immediately.
It is nice when con artists are sent packing with tail between legs. Cambridge meanwhile looks foolish and credulous.
The U.K. can't seem to catch a break these days. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.
Racial Crossroads
A very interesting, long article with this title about how supposedly "temporary" affirmative action (reverse discrimination) has become mostly permanent and turned into "racial communism." Warning: the article is not upbeat, not optimistic.
It ends up arguing for dropping all mention of race from our legal structure, and leaning hard instead on government treating everyone equally, and dropping the emphasis on "equity" or equal outcomes.
I found myself skimming parts which recapped steps in the evolution of racial relations with which I was already more familiar than I'd like to be. You may wish to do the same.
The parallels drawn between our experiences and those of citizens of the Soviet Union are very interesting, and possibly controversial. It suggests we may be suffering from some of the same decline for some of the same reasons, parallels of which we’ve not become aware as we go about our daily routines.
Tuesday, August 4, 2026
Old Movie Review: MASH
During a summer of TV reruns with all of the good streaming series already binged, the DrsC have been rewatching some old films - some we’ve seen before, others we missed when new. A couple of nights ago we rewatched MASH, the film, not the TV series.
Fun fact: Gary Burghoff (aka Radar O’Reilly) was the only cast member carryover to TV. Released in 1970, MASH in many ways broke new ground with off color references and behavior, insubordination, silliness as a way to tolerate the intolerable, and plot non-linearity.
We saw this when we were courting and my dear lady didn’t like it much then. Rewatching it 55+ years later she enjoyed it. I liked it both times.
Fun fact: Per Wikipedia, Robert Altman, who directed MASH, “despised the TV series.” It is certainly true the TV series cleaned up a lot of the off-color stuff. On TV the commanding officer didn’t cohabit with a nurse, as the film C.O. does.
Some old films, as we say, “hold up” many years later, others are so much “of their era” that they are no longer fun to watch. MASH still works as comedy and entertainment. It is crazy fun, and its hospital sexual hijinks are echoed in today’s Grey’s Anatomy.
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Later: Did you know MASH was not the first film about Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals? In 1953 there was a B&W MGM film called Battle Circus starring Humphrey Bogart and June Allyson. It was of a MASH unit in Korea, with Bogart as a surgeon and Allison as a nurse who falls for him.
Not a bad film, particularly interesting how they could pitch and strike the tents when the unit has to move to a new location. It is much less racy than the 1970 version, but has more shooting and the same choppers and muddy tents.
Monday, August 3, 2026
Perverse Incentives
Francis Menton posts as the Manhattan Contrarian and is often worth reading. Today he writes about two large pseudoscience scams that have been perpetrated upon us in recent years: the Covid overreaction spearheaded by Fauci, and the climate scare hoax. Menton concludes:
Is there any reason to believe that the still ongoing climate scare narrative is any more trustworthy than the Covid-scare narrative has proven to have been? Both have been backed by a vast research apparatus, almost entirely government funded, which looks to lose most of its funding and associated careers and promotions and prestige if there really is no underlying existential crisis.
The issue in both cases is perverse incentives, which reward scientists for exaggerating the dangers of the issue they are ideally situated to confront. Instead of “trust the science” the reward structure suggests we should “distrust the science,” or at least those scientists whose iron rice bowl the research is.
Skepticism is in fact both healthy and appropriate - as Ronald Reagan famously said: "Trust, but verify." Hat tip to RealClearScience for the link.
Sunday, August 2, 2026
Remembering
My rhetorical question for our times, reflecting on the abrupt rise of the so-called Democratic Socialists.
Where are this generation’s Sen. Joseph McCarthy and HUAC? We need them.
IYKYK, and IYK of course you’re not young.
Saturday, August 1, 2026
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