The Sunset of Excellence

by

You know a society is on the verge of collapse when people’s brains start falling into disuse.  It’s right there in Diamond and Tainter, if you read anything, anymore.

But here’s a (we don’t write on Wednesday) note that screams will are dying from within:

Seattle closes gifted and talented schools because they had too many white and Asian students, with consultant branding black parents who complained about move ‘tokenized’ | Daily Mail Online

In our rush to give even DFL finishers something to help their frail selves cope, dumbing down the masses is “lowest common denominator life.”  It was seen in the remnants of Rome, for example.

Everyone has a gift and to attack Americas best and brightest is huckster racism is appalling at least.

Everyone has gifts.  Everyone should have the chance to excel. This isn’t done by burning down all the excellence first.

Still, it’s a troubling sign: That as AI comes out of the lab, schools are herding our young into feed lots bounced by hate.

Write when you get rich,

George@Ure.net

44 thoughts on “The Sunset of Excellence”

  3. At least theoretically, we’re all equal in the eyes of God and before the law.
    Other than that, it’s a bunch of nonsense.

  4. Fed-Bux in public schools did that.
    Fed-Bux in industry created DEI.
    PBGC started backing the privates during 1974. CAFE standards started the next year.

    Everyone takes the money but then get angered seeing the strings.

  5. “The Young” will bi-furcate. Most will find jobs working for corps or other people, but some will go it alone and seek more challenge; will BE the entrepreneuers of their days. Start small and work it — just as many of today’s giants (now) once did, sarting in garages.

    It might be harder now — I suspect that’s true — but them’s with the Nads will persist.

    Some will fail, and try something else, some will fail and be destroyed by it; and some will succeed. These last will determine the shape of life for the rest.

    (Some will be destroyed by success; but that is another disquisition for another time.)

  6. You know, I’ve been on this rock a minute or two and I’ve been around a lot of different kinds of people in a lot of places. I’ve seen humans in a lot of different habitats. I’ve come to the conclusion that we are really no different than any other beast. You give us something for nothing and that’s what we’ll turn in to.

    Human’s are in their most high and noble form when we have to cooperatively compete to survive. Only through that fire will we ever get off this rock and take our place in the cosmos as God intended.

    Don’t feed the animals.

      • “The Lord of the Flies” by William Golding is total fiction and Sheer Hogwash.
        There is an actual real life story of six boys being lost on an island alone for about 15 months. The guardian gives a good read about it.

        https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months

        The ~elite overlords~ of the world want people to believe that if authority (their authority of SCARCITY and competition and fear) is removed from society – savagery will prevail. Most things in nature have a symbiotic relationship. Man can as well – it doesn’t have to be dog eats dog.

      • Look at the actual story of the survivors of the Mutiny on the Bounty … and what happened wrt their living situation after they sank the boat and were then on their isolated island in the middle of nowhere.

        It is NOT a pretty picture of people helping each other out … NOPE … just the opposite. Opposing groups, murder after murder, and a vitural dictatorship ensued.

        That story is not of a short period of time of say just a couple of years … but a story that covers an extended period of time a decade and more. Savagery at it’s most elemental.

    • you know.. I have to disagree Maj…through the years.. I have met people from all walks of life.. well not all.. you never see it all.. but.. was it Stanford.. or Harvard that did the study on the poorer neighborhoods.. they put out a sign.. Need a dollar take a dollar.. the poor only took what they needed.give a homeless man money and he will share it with everyone.. the can man.. lived in a dumpster most giving man I have ever met.. he just made a few unwise moves and ended up in the dumpster.. the engineer.. he was at the top of his game.. came to our spare room.. and he had a hard time accepting that he was at the bottom. He had all the wonders of life handed to him.. worked hard made it to the top then lost it all in two moves.. first a hurricane then a deep water drilling platform blowing up had to give testimony told the truth and was blackballed.. couldn’t get a job cleaning dog doo doo…. the wealthier neighborhoods on the other hand.. someone that didn’t need it would come up and take it all off the sign… there was the thought that those on food stamps were all drug users.. so they did this study only to find out .. that the notion was false.. sure there are a few.. but from what I have seen is someone that is truly being abused.. won’t say they are being abused.. they blame themselves.. figure that is the best and that they desreve that kind of treatment.. look at the prosecuter fanny something.. she screams abuse but the image that is being shown to everyone is that she and her boyfriend and the judge are the ones that have questionable moral standings.. she gets on screaming the abuse of the african american..somehow I wonder if she truly believes that her screaming all of this while doing the stuff they have done will make their activities seem right or honorable rather than realizing that they have the golden goose in the luck of the draw… those that take are not the ones that need it.. those that need the services.. truly need the hand up..
      Here is a tex talks on this and several other studies..
      https://youtu.be/OtU_nXV0i4E?si=3av4-T54tGRrYWli

      Now I wonder.. If I had never had had the situations that I have lived through.. would I be the same person that I am today.
      I told my guys that I had to do the hardest thing in my life.. the other day.. it was the hardest thing in my life to.. they need the spare room.. my ability to do for them is where the drama comes in.. I won’t be able to.. its time to back away.. Today I get a call from a family member of one of the gents.. and asked if I thought he would be predjudiced because there was a home that was doing the same thing but the family is african american.. Heck no.. what does someone having a tan have to do with what is in their heart the neighbors that moved in from seattle are wonderfull .. they are not going to take him in for MONEY or FAME they are going to give a hand up because they have a heart..and probably have been at the bottom.
      themselves..

      anyway enjoy this small lecture..
      https://youtu.be/OtU_nXV0i4E?si=3av4-T54tGRrYWli

  7. Ever since my brush with the military (Army, VietNam era) I have kept my head down out of notoriety’s path… at least as far as the guvvy is concerned. They found out from my entrance exams that I was a ‘brain boy’ and they wanted me. I saw pretty much thru the security complex industry and wanted nothing to do with it. I’m pretty proud of the fact that I navigated a lifetime without ever getting another security clearance or taking a govvy check… not even a related contractor pay. But they did… and probably still do… follow me. Six years after my discharge, I was visited at my workplace… a busy TV control room… by a ‘man in black’ (literally) who weaseled his way in via a janitor at the back door and wanted to take me to a private room somewhere for a ‘security interview’. Leaving my headset and mic on, I read him the riot act and told him where the front door was located… and next time make an appointment and see me at home. After he left, the commercial director that I was working with on the headset came into the room, white faced. “Who was that? FBI? Are you a criminal, Hank?”
    “Worse that that… government security. Leftovers from my Army job years ago” I told the director.

    I have learned to project a ‘normal’ appearance and outlook with drawing undo attention to myself. But I was always able to achieve my goals as the bright boy with ‘the knack’ who could solve and fix things that others around me could not. Never wanted to be on the Mensa ‘list’ for recognition from other nefarious entities. First, they come for the ‘eggheads’. I pity the smart ones now, being dragged down by DEI discrimination.

    • Someone tried to get me into Mensa once, too. But, on discovering the head at the time was a UK mil NCO, mI took a pass. But, like you, I wonder if our clearances from back in the day hav e been quiet charms or curses.. we may never know for sure…

      • My motivation was specifically to meet and hang out with Isaac Asimov. After contemplation, I decided I’d end up on a gmt list upon which I really didn’t want to be, and abandoned the idea. Because I could talk “normal,” I contented myself with hanging out with Mensans, counseling them WRT how to “handle people” (‘cuz they get impatient easily — I counseled older teens and young marrieds in a Methodist neighborhood outreach. Counseling Mensans of any age was like counseling teens), and translating Menspeak into a language that average people could understand. Einstein once remarked that intelligent people used big words, but brilliant people learned how, then used common language, so average people could understand them.

        Mensans are very, very intelligent, but they’re not brilliant…

        • Amen.. Mensans only can see patterns in abstract.. it doesnt’ give them the ability to take advantage of the opportunities that pass each and every one of us by.. Many of them think they are special because they can do that.. but they are no better than anyone else.. just a little more odd.. LOL LOL LOL
          see humorous things different..
          Everyone is brilliant in their own way.. each one has the genius to survive in their world whether it is in a mansion or in a dumpster..

        • (“cuz they get impatient easily “)

          My grand daughters teacher was trying to tell everyone that she was a slow learner.. I thought how could she be that slow.. and was baffled.. then when she was Five.. she came and wanted to play with a puzzle I had.. ( I gave it to her) I tried my damdest to talk her out of playing with it.. but she insisted.. so I said go ahead.. NOW I had seen college professors take ten minutes to get it taken apart.. so I figured.. she wouldn’t get it apart.. where I was shocked was she had it apart and back together in less than five minutes.. then she said.. I am bored.. I walked back to my room got my hearing aides and put them in.. she wasn’t slow.. or impatient.. she was moving so fast that by the time the teachers realized what she was asking .. she was long past that.. I told her parents to get her into special classes to push her.. they couldn’t afford it.. and she is the loser in this.. she still have the goal.. Coding and physics is her specialties.. and she would be great at any of it.. if given the chance.. that is what is wrong with Mensans.. their thought patterns are faster.. then they are gone on something else like a teenager with raging hormones.. My mind didn’t start to slow down until I got older..I still think about fifty to a hundred different things at one time..
          (““There’s this belief that some people have ‘it’ and some people don’t—a raw ability, a spark of brilliance that you need to succeed,” said Andrei Cimpian, PhD, a professor of psychology at New York University. The seeds of that belief are planted early.”)
          What anyone needs is the ability to take advantage of the situations that pass each and everyone by through life.. without the ability to take advantages of these events.. decides who will succeed and who won’t..
          Take the cabinet shop.. once a month if you could come up with an idea.. or a change that would save a company ten grand.. you got to go to the country club for lunch with the boss.. I went every month for twelve years.. when I left I asked can I leave my six or seven for someone else to use LOL… it didn’t make a difference that I saved the company what through the years has amounted to a chunk of change.. it had to do with a paper on the wall.. if I had a paper on the wall.. who knows.. wouldn’t matter if you couldn’t read the daily paper or had a clue about anything it is the paper on the wall that speaks ..
          Life isn’t fair.. but then what is.. I don’t begrudge anyone for taking advantage of the opportunities.. go for it.. I have had a rich life.. I can tell you my down sides of life gave me a whole different perspective on life.. and once you see it.. you know it and cannot ever not see it again..
          Never judge a book by its cover.. Each has value. through life experiences I have gained more than I could have ever have imagined..learned a lot of great things..

      • Thank goodness I would never qualify!!

        Here’s to being a “below the radar” kinda guy!!

        • Trust me you wouldn’t want to be a member… except the meeting of the POITS.. that is fun..
          ( Piss on it tomorrow is saturday)

    • Very interesting. I suppose great minds do think alike, especially after understanding the power structure, even in a rudimentary way. I also had the opportunity to do the Mensa thing, and had the same confrontation with the mirror regarding lists. I never did join, though I did get to sleep with a Mensa girl. That was probably the best compromise. I also chose to never get a security clearance and avoided military contracts. There are benefits and costs, but maximizing freedom is one of my top personal values.

  8. Question for the group. Anyone else not able to get the Wend. subscriber page to load? Thanks for any information!

  9. My sister is in the Seattle VA hospital for a bone marrow transplant. I gear for her health and safety.

  10. Apologies for the multiple comments. My phone was wonky today. I saw that article this morning and while I normally consider the source as far as Daily Mail is concerned, it hit too close to home this time.
    My sister is undergoing a bone marrow transplant this week and next, in the Seattle VA Hospital. She normally lives in AZ. She has the odds stacked against her. #1 Seattle, I’ve been there a few times and wouldn’t go back at gunpoint. #2 VA Hospital, due to events in her life it is the only healthcare option she has at this time besides Medicare. She is mostly satisfied with it but it is still the VA regardless of the many negative things that have happened to her and her husband there over the last few years. I enrolled years ago as a backup in case I should ever need it and by the Grace of God I do not and will not.
    Again, I fear for her health and safety there.
    Prayers are welcome.

    • As someone who believes in the power of prayer Jim, I will put your sister in mine. Keep us informed.

    • ya never know Jim. I could be in the area and show up eating cookies, and say a prayer for her.

      done it before.

      I know the place very well.

    • I don’t know how the VA is out there.. but here in the wastelands.. they are better than the other hospitals.. I will add her to my prayers.. I have a lot of faith.. I keep telling my sister and her husband to move from seattle.. when fukishima happened .. they wouldn’t release a lot of the reports to the general public.. but the last one I had read was they were going to study long term exposures to see about spikes in cancer. rates.. I still won’t buy wild caught fish from up that way..
      I hope and pray the bone marrow transplant goes good.. a friend of my daughters son is getting the same thing done this week.. she leaves tomorrow to go to Arizona for that..

  11. beautiful. im happy with a little and im happy with alot.

    im happy sitting on a basss boat, with a line water and a big mouth Bass looking at my lure thinking yum!

    hahaa.

    there is an old saying,

    sometimes a Man has to go to The Mountain by himself.

    today is my last day on the mountain. i have been here one year today. seen all 4 seasons.

    i spent a year on the beach. all 4 seasons before that.

    i spent a year in the desert before that. all 4 seasons.

    yesterday, i was checking out my wiggle wagon. Giant tonka truck. (with a pivit in the center)

    when i started driving it, it was brand new. Big Cat 787. only had .8 hours on it. i been driving it since october last year.

    yester day. a little plastic cover piece fell off from under the motor as i was walking by. i picked it off the ground and was looking to see where it came from. like a fuse cover. i found where it fell off.

    when i got down in there, i shined my flashlight on it to put it back on. the place where it fell off read,

    “Flux Capacitor, 1.21 GW.” in black sharpie.

    i shit you not.

    hahahhahahahahahha.

    the whole time since october last year, i has no idea, i was driving a giant time machine.

    hahahahhahaa

    last day on the mountain. then on to see about them 100s of horses and parade of brides.

  13. After I graduated from Ranger School., I went to Panama for the Jungle Warfare School. I thought Ranger training was brutal., but those five weeks were hell. All the cadre spoke only Vietnamese., you learned, very quick, or you were gone.
    Just before I graduated I had two interviews – one for a security clearance: Top Secret/ Crypto – which I never did figure out why I needed it and the second was a recruitment interview for a new combat intelligence warrant officers’ program. I believe they were tied together.
    Received the security clearance., but passed on the warrant officers intel school – having a desk job., in the Amry., after all the training., just sounded horrible to me.
    They tried again after a little over a year – but by that time I was well beyond the new Ranger recruit they talked to before, back in Panama. I had no interest at all in a desk job. Not my career path.
    Upon discharge I discovered that I still had the security clearance all that time and wonder to this day what kind of trouble-n-fun I could have gotten myself into if I had ‘used’ it.
    *
    – Passed the Mensa test and almost joined., but decided not to. Heard they have turned into an elitist, holier than thou organization – but don’t know for sure.

    • IQ is a lot like money. Having a lots of it doesn’t do shit for you or anyone else. It’s what you do with it. Looking around the ultra rich, I’m pretty sure we’d agree “Not impressed….”

      • It was elitist in the 1960s. Asimov knew how hard it was for the bright kids to communicate with their not-as-bright classmates. I always felt a part of the “Mensa experience,” the way he and the other early Mensans designed it, was to collect people who all lacked the same communications skills and place them in surroundings and proximity where their strengths could feed one-another and their social awkwardness, eventually be exorcised from their social selves.

        IMO it didn’t work because they never learned, either “how to be common,” or (and more-importantly) that it could be desirable to be so — at least in social circles. They used their intelligence to reinforce each other, but never learned the social part, and held their awkwardness as “superior aloofness” rather than seeing it as the social liability of which “normal people” view it.

    • I had one engineer friend who was Mensa. All they did was sit around and play mind game puzzles. I wasn’t interested. That was before I found out I qualified. Ray is right. He was very intelligent, but not brilliant. Lacking in some life-coping skills that I found to be ridiculously obvious. When I would point out the obvious (to me) that was confounding him, he would tell me I’m ‘too picking practical’.

      • This is why I differentiate between “intelligent” and “smart.”

        “Intelligence” is possessing the raw capacity or capability.

        “Smarts” is possessing the ability to use or utilize one’s intelligence.

        My High School class valedictorian had a Stanford/Binet of 124 (140 was “genius level,” at that time.) He was “smarter” than all the rest of us, not because he was more-intelligent (‘cuz he warn’t), but because he used his capabilities much better and more-efficiently than the rest of us. It was a lesson I personally didn’t learn until my Sophomore year in college, when I learned the difference between a “C” and an “A” was 37 minutes over the course of a semester… 37 minutes of actual, focused application, that is.

    • (“Heard they have turned into an elitist, holier than thou organization – but don’t know for sure.”)

      They do.. It was the looking down their nose at someone else because they lacked the abilities to take advantage of the opportunities that pass them buy.
      Just because they can see patterns in abstract situations does not make them better.. they are the same.. I believe that EVERYONE has value.. from the least educated to the most educated.. I have read many books on doing surgery.. sat through surgeries being done while a teacher was teaching his students..( I wanted to know what was going to be done to me) But.. I can tell you I sure wouldn’t let me do any surgeries.. a wealthy man will look down on someone flipping burgers or sacking groceries.. they look down on a farmer.. but without them.. who would do the job..
      Yes my friends that are retired rangers.. some of them have been called back to active duty.. which has me quite worried.. they aren’t in their twenties anymore.. most of them are in their fifties.. hovering towards sixties.. I am praying for their safe return..

    • I was being to hard on the mensaje members..
      the reason they do the self grandure is because..they are the odd balls..the kids at school that everyone licked on and made fun of.
      I dumbed myself down trying to fit in. and yes Hank is right..they mostly play mind games. I still get t-shirts with things printed on it that only a few catch the meaning of.
      every third Friday the meeting of the poits..is fun they pick a lounge and kick back.
      had a few that were close friends until they passed on.A good friend In the NE is probably the smartest woman I’ve ever met.. she’s close to ninety and still reads a book and a half a day. what did she do.. govt. retired worked as a secretary and no I will not debate her on any subject she would send me to the stacks.. I get a tickle out of her though. she says stuff like. if I ever Meet a smart person..lol she’s a hoot.
      so I do appreciate their oddity.. it just upset me that they referred everyone as stupid morons.. when in reality everyone everywhere has a value. no one is better than another. the only difference is the ability to take advantage of the opportunities that passes them by and how they are viewed by those around them.

  14. Parents of gifted and talented kids in Seattle now have three choices: Move, Private School, or Home School. All three avoid wasting the children’s time as a kid, and will involve healthy introspection and conversations between the parents.

    I’m amazed at the incredible lack of intelligence shown by the school board members. DEI is insane, but this shows an alarming lack of understanding regarding basic statistics!

    What is the racial composition of the school district? How do you determine the “race” of a bi-racial kid? What is the racial composition of the kids in that school district(separate from the racial composition of adults in the school district)? Does the racial composition of those kids in the gifted programs agree with the racial composition of the totality of the kids in the school(s)? The percentages quoted in the DM article are totally meaningless. They are more an agenda item than anything of consequence.

    I find that public schools are of little benefit at best, and a major impediment to learning at worst. They also seed violence and emotional contagion, somewhat like “correctional institutions”. Kids are forced to interact with age segregated other kids in an authoritarian system. Meaningless competition is encouraged – think “sports”. Public schools don’t teach important things like how to be happy and thinking from first principles. They teach mass following behavior with harsh penalties for free thinking.

    Personally, I pay little to no attention to race, such as it is. I note it because it’s obvious, but beyond that, it’s about the person, and not some stupid government mandated attention to “race”. I think the government would be way ahead of the game by deleting everything that even mentions “race”, including forms, programs, benefits, penalties, etc. Race didn’t matter much since the 70’s and before Obama, and since then it’s been constant rabble-rousing and race-baiting! An entire new jargon has been invented including Whiteness, intersectionality, privilege, critical race theory, micro-aggressions, etc. We’re supposed to be in a melting pot, not a separatory funnel!

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