Meritocratic Math

Posted on by
2

IF one believes all people are created equal and that men and women of all ethnicities are similarly smart, skilled, and hardworking and IF there’s genuine equality of opportunity for all people, we can assume some things. Mathematically. 

The Supreme Court should have 4 or 5 women on it. A school’s “Advanced Placement” or college prep tracks should consist of the same proportion of students of color as the student body more generally. Thirteen to fourteen percent of Congress should be African-American.

Forty percent of professional football players are African-American. IF we believe African-American coaching candidates are as smart, skilled, and hardworking as any other subgroup, and IF there’s genuine equality of opportunity in National Football League hiring practices, a similar proportion of the coaches should be African-American. 30-50%, all the time.

Right now however, 1 of 32 of the NFL’s coaches are African-American. And zero owners. If all of my “ifs” hold, it’s easy to understand exactly why Brian Flores is so angry.

Not Proof Of The American Dream

Posted on by
1

The best thing you’ll read today. “I Am Not Proof of the American Dream”. As a general policy, if Tara Westover writes something, you should read it.

Upon receiving a $4,000 Pell Grant, Westover writes:

“In those desperate years a few thousand dollars was enough to alter the whole course of my life. It contained a universe. It allowed me to experience for the first time what I now know to be the most powerful advantage of money, which is the ability to think of things besides money. That’s what money does. It frees your mind for living.”

How on earth does the Right, with their knee-jerk complaints of Big Government waste and social program dependency make sense of the Tara Westovers of the world?

The World Needs More Beau Miles

Posted on by
2

I was mountain biking in Sunriver, Oregon once on a treacherous, hella rocky, single track trail. When lo and behold, I went head over handlebars over a similarly big ass rock. I wish I could say it had been dark. 

Funny thing though, my “friend” that I was with, who has a place in Sunriver and visits there every few months, never returned to dig it out. 

Forget the world needing more Beau Miles, I need more Beau Miles.

Vid assist—SMW. 

Sentence To Ponder

Posted on by
Reply

From “How Trump Coins Became an Internet Sensation“.

Some context. Watchdogs have warned that Telegram a Facebook and Twitter-like social media platform exercises far less moderation than its rivals.

“In one post, a fake account for Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican closely aligned with Mr. Trump, shared a fake story on a fake Fox News website about a fake tweet by a fake Elon Musk, falsely claiming that Tesla’s chief executive would soon accept Trump coins as payment.”

Heaven help us.

Two Years In

Posted on by
Reply
A doctor friend of mine has been a very careful, and I believe thoughtful, observer of all things ‘rona. This was today’s email message:
“The New York Times had information about the vaccine protection. This was October to November, so it was with Delta. Omicron death rates will be lower, but the vaccinated/unvaccinated difference is proportionally the same.
Screen Shot 2022-01-31 at 11.53.08 AM
The graph shows weekly deaths per 100,000, so annually, there are 5.2 deaths per 100,000 for boosted, 31.2 for vaccinated, and 405.6 for unvaccinated for the Delta variant.
Omicron is only 20% as lethal, so annually, there are 1.04 deaths per 100,000 for boosted, 6.24 for vaccinated, and 81.1 for unvaccinated.
By comparison, influenza causes 16.3 deaths per 100,000 annually. Except for the unvaccinated, covid is now less lethal than the flu.
There are also major studies from all of 2021, so it includes the various covid variants, and it also showed that covid was less lethal than the flu. They didn’t separate out the fully vaccinated from the boosted and boosting only was present for the last 3 months of the year, yet the flu was still more deadly.
The unvaccinated are 25 times more likely to die from Delta than the flu and 5 times more likely to die from Omicron than the flu.”
His take-away:
“I’m tired of all the restrictions that are basically in place to protect those that chose not to get vaccinated. They made their bed and now they can lie in it, but I don’t see why I need to lie in it with them.”
Me too.