Things Have Changed
People are crazy, times are strange I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range I used to care, but — things have changed Read more →
More Words and Phrases I’m Sick Unto Death Of: X Hours of Homework
School is back in session and I’m listening to one of my colleagues say that his son started junior high school this year and had 6 hours of homework last night. It’s a way of bragging: My kid’s school is more academically oriented than your kid’s school. Maybe your kid is just slow. Maybe other people’s kids are finishing the homework in an hour. Or maybe your kid finished his homework 6 hours after he said he was starting his homework because he worked for an hour and spent 5 hours surfing the net for pornography. It doesn’t make sense to say the school assigned X hours of homework . . . Read more →
Poll: Most Black Americans Don’t Want Confederate Statues Removed
NPR and PBS News Hour conducted a poll asking whether statues “honoring leaders of the Confederacy” should “remain as a historical symbol” or “be removed because they are offensive to some people.” Results by race: White: 65 percent of respondents said the statues should stay, 25 percent said they should be taken down and 8 percent were unsure. (I know these numbers don’t sum to 100 percent but I’m taking them directly from the link above.) Black: 44 percent stay, 40 percent remove, 11 percent unsure. (Same comment as previous.) Latino: 65 percent stay, 24 percent remove, 11 percent unsure. The media, which according to a Harvard University study are very biased against Donald Trump, have been flogging him with this issue for the past week and a half, the thinking being that anyone who doesn’t support the removal of Confederate statues is a white supremacist, in which case 75… Read more →
See You in Hell
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] I hate to say I told you so. See you in Hell . . . Read more →
No Political Violence on the Left?
I’m still shaking my head on this one: Even left-wing stalwarts like The Atlantic know that the Post’s “no violence on the left” premise is bogus: Look how peaceful and non-violent everyone is in the Post photo. Contrast that with, for example, these protesters at Berkeley earlier this year: I’m drawn to Berkeley examples because our son went to Berkeley and still lives in the area, because I know some current Berkeley students, and because Berkeley, ironically, used to be synonymous with the Free Speech Movement. The photos above show the protesters who showed up to violently shut down a scheduled talk by Milo Yiannopoulos, but the same thing seems to happen whenever any university schedules a conservative speaker. Here are a couple more left-wing protests, in Chicago and Charlottesville: We could go on and on with this . . . we’ve all seen this before so I don’t know… Read more →
See You in Hell: Robert E. Lee Edition
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] Greetings from the underworld! I saw this on Facebook today: First of all, the temperature on that screencap — 81 degrees? That’s the temperature in Los Angeles. The temperature here in Hell is much hotter. Secondly, Americans are the fattest, dumbest people on the planet. Did you know that 25 percent of them think that the sun goes around the earth? So most Americans don’t even know who Robert E. Lee was, let alone the name of his horse (it was Traveller, with two l’s). Once it’s explained to them — who Robert E. Lee was, his horse’s name, what the Civil War was all about — they put it all together: the USC mascot is a racist horse! Also coming under scrutiny: everyone named Robert or Lee or having the middle initial E. See you… Read more →
USC Village Opens
The Reign of Troy continues . . . Read more →
Wandering Boy
I hope he’s warm and I hope he’s dry And that a strangers eye is a friendly eye And I hope he has someone close by his side And I hope that he’ll come home Where is my wandering boy tonight? Where is my wandering boy? If you see him, tell him everything is alright Push him towards the light Where is my wandering boy? — Randy Newman, “Wandering Boy” Read more →
American Workplace: Grueling, Stressful and Surprisingly Hostile?
Washington (AP) — The American workplace is grueling, stressful and surprisingly hostile. So concludes an in-depth study of 3,066 U.S. workers by the Rand Corp., Harvard Medical School and the University of California, Los Angeles. Among the findings: — Nearly one in five workers — a share the study calls “disturbingly high” — say they face a hostile or threatening environment at work . . . — “One-Fifth of Americans Find Workplace Hostile or Threatening” If nearly one in five US workers finds their workplace hostile or threatening, that means more than 4 in 5 workers do not find their workplace hostile or threatening. Assuming these two groups are not in completely separate workplaces, does this finding say something about the workplace or about the people who perceive a hostility that a large majority of their colleagues do not perceive? Another finding: — Telecommuting is rare: 78 percent say they… Read more →
10 Reasons That NY Times Chart Might Not Mean What You Think It Means
From the New York Times: Money is not the only metric for measuring life outcomes. Charts and articles like this seem to reflect an inappropriate obsession with narrowly materialist values. If you do want to measure your life with money, it looks like the 99th percentile is where you want to be. Why aren’t you there? Why aren’t you a CEO? Why aren’t you making a million a year? If you can’t figure out how to get there, don’t begrudge the people who did figure it out. If you don’t have the education, motivation, intelligence or skills to get there, don’t begrudge those who do. The amount of wealth is not a fixed amount. It’s not a zero-sum game. If it were, it would be concerning that a few people are very wealthy. But it isn’t. The distribution of income has to be skewed to the right because income is… Read more →
Pug Photos on Flickr
Identity Politics = Liberal Suicide?
Mark Lilla is professor of the humanities at Columbia University. He’s got a book coming out, The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics. As you might have surmised from his job title, Lilla is a liberal himself. His concern is “the divisive, zero-sum world of identity politics” and its negative effect on liberalism in America. Here’s an excerpt of an excerpt published in the Wall Street Journal: As a teacher, I am increasingly struck by a difference between my conservative and progressive students. Contrary to the stereotype, the conservatives are far more likely to connect their engagements to a set of political ideas and principles. Young people on the left are much more inclined to say that they are engaged in politics as an X, concerned about other Xs and those issues touching on X-ness. And they are less and less comfortable with debate. Over the past decade a… Read more →
Silver and Gold
I’m gonna go out dancin’ every night I’m gonna see all the city lights I’ll do everything silver and gold I got to hurry up before I grow too old I’m gonna take a trip around the world I’m gonna kiss all the pretty girls I’ll do everything silver and gold And I got to hurry up before I grow too old Oh, I do a lotta things, I know is wrong Hope I’m forgiven before I’m gone It’ll take a lotta prayers to save my soul And I got to hurry up before I grow too old Read more →
EppsNet at the Movies: The Matrix
The Matrix is 75 percent juvenile philosophizing and 25 percent sci-fi action. Someone must have told the Wachowski brothers (now the Wachowski sisters) that they’re a lot smarter than they really are because the movie would have been much better with 25 percent juvenile philosophizing and 75 percent sci-fi action. Rating: The Matrix Director: Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski Cast: Keanu Reeves NeoLaurence Fishburne MorpheusCarrie-Anne Moss TrinityHugo Weaving Agent Smith IMDb rating: ( votes) Read more →
We Know We Have to Improve
Saw this on a tech company blog (not Google) : We know we have to improve the diversity of our teams and the balance of representation amongst our colleagues. We do not want to miss out on the contribution of a potential colleague merely because they are in some way different from the rest of our people. Yes, that seems obvious. Do you want to miss out on the contribution of a potential colleague merely because they don’t improve the diversity of your teams? Read more →
One Thing I Can’t Tolerate is Intolerance: The Google Memo
The now-famous Google memo was first published by Gizmodo under the headline Here’s The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google. If you’re interested in the topic, you should read the memo yourself, otherwise you’re going to get a terribly slanted second-hand judgment, e.g., “anti-diversity screed.” I’ve read it and I don’t think it’s “anti-diversity” and it’s definitely not what I’d call a screed. I’ve seen that word — screed — used by multiple sources. That’s one way of dismissing and declining to engage with an opinion you don’t like: give it a label like “screed,” suggesting that the author is angry and irrational and not fit to have a discussion with. In my reading though, I found the original memo to be academic and clinical, much less screed-like than the responses I’ve seen. As usual (in my experience), the most intolerant people in the mix are the ones… Read more →
EppsNet at the Movies: Superbad
This inexplicably gets a good rating on IMDb. I couldn’t sit through 10 minutes of it. If your age and/or IQ is somewhere in the teens, you might enjoy it. My rating would be lower but there was one funny joke. Rating: Superbad Director: Greg Mottola Cast: Michael Cera EvanJonah Hill SethChristopher Mintz-Plasse FogellBill Hader Officer Slater IMDb rating: ( votes) Read more →
More Words and Phrases I’m Sick Unto Death Of
“Hacks” — when used as a synonym for “advice,” “tips” or “recommendations.” Health hacks, productivity hacks, work-life balance hacks, time management hacks, stress management hacks, creativity hacks, memory hacks, etc. . . . Read more →