NYT Misrepresents California’s Affirmative Action Results

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In reporting on yesterday’s Supreme Court decision to uphold a Michigan ban on the use of racial preferences in admissions to public universities, the New York Times looks at results in other states that have banned racial preferences.

Here’s what the Times says about my state, California, which voted to ban racial preferences in UC admissions in 1998:

Hispanic and black enrollment at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Los Angeles dropped sharply after voters approved a statewide ban on affirmative action. Those numbers have not recovered, even as the state’s Hispanic population has grown.

That is a misleading analysis for a couple of reasons:

One: Affirmative action was banned at all UC campuses, not just Berkeley and UCLA. Ignoring all the other campuses allows the Times to say that black and Hispanic enrollment “dropped sharply” when there was actually only a 2 percent decline in black and Hispanic enrollment in the University of California system as a whole.

Among other campuses, black and Hispanic enrollment was

* up 22 percent at UC Irvine
* up 18 percent at UC Santa Cruz
* up 65 percent at UC Riverside

There’s been a redistribution of black and Hispanic students, but not a sharp drop in enrollment.

Two: It doesn’t make sense to look at changes in enrollment without also looking at changes in graduation rates.

The number of black and Hispanic students graduating from UC schools

* in four years: up 55 percent
* in four years with a GPA of 3.5 or higher: up 63 percent
* with degrees in science, mathematics and engineering: up nearly 50 percent
* with doctoral degrees: up 20 percent

UCLA and (especially) Berkeley are elite universities. Black and Hispanic students who were admitted based on genetics rather than academic qualifications couldn’t compete at that level and had to drop out.

Who was helped? The dropouts? No. The qualified applicants who were passed over? No. It was a lose-lose scenario.

Now that students are admitted, regardless of race, to schools that they’re academically qualified to attend, graduation rates are much higher.

Always look askance at analysis of college admission policies in the absence of information on graduation rates.

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Everything I Need to Know About Being a Successful Executive in the 1950s I Learned in Kindergarten

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PS105 Ms Crank 1965 60s Brooklyn Public School
Photo by Anthony Catalano

In 1957, The New York Times [published] two lists of skills. One was drawn from a corporate personnel manual, the other from a kindergarten report card:

List A: Dependability; Stability; Imagination; Originality; Self-expression; Health and vitality; Ability to plan and control; Cooperation.

List B: Can be depended on; Contributes to the good work of others; Accepts and uses criticism; Thinks critically; Shows initiative; Plans work well; Physical resistance; Self-expression; Creative ability.

A successful executive in 1950s America, in short, was expected to have essentially the same skills as a well-behaved four-year-old. (B is the kindergarten list, by the way.)

— Matter

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Miss Marple

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Joan Hickson as Miss Marple

Really, I have no gifts — no gifts at all — except perhaps a certain knowledge of human nature. People, I find, are apt to be far too trustful. I’m afraid that I have a tendency always to believe the worst. Not a nice trait, but so often justified by subsequent events.

— Miss Jane Marple

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Gabriel García Márquez, 1927-2014

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Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel García Márquez, the influential, Nobel Prize-winning author of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and “Love in the Time of Cholera,” has died, his family and officials said.

He was 87.

— CNN.com

CNN reported the death of García Márquez with more or less equal weightiness as the following “top stories”:

I didn’t cherry-pick those stories, by the way. They were all listed as Top Stories on CNN.com.

CNN is a “serious” news outlet. García Márquez’s death was also reported in the “popular” media, amongst reality show updates, celebrity pregnancies and Kardashians.

Orwell wrote about a society in which books are banned. As it turns out, there’s no need to ban books because no one has any interest in reading one. We’re drowning in a sea of trivia.

RIP Gabriel García Márquez

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EppsNet at the Movies: A Serious Man

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A Serious Man

When the truth is found . . . to be lies. And all the hope . . . within you dies. What then?

Life is bleak. If you try to lead a good life, bad things happen. If you yield to temptation, worse things happen. Religion offers no more wisdom, insight or consolation than a Jefferson Airplane song.

P.S. I know the lyric should be “joy” and not “hope” but in the movie the rabbi says “hope.”

Rating: 4 stars

A Serious Man

Larry Gopnik, a Midwestern physics teacher, watches his life unravel over multiple sudden incidents. Despite seeking meaning and answers amidst his turmoils, he seems to keep sinking.

Director: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Cast: Michael Stuhlbarg Larry Gopnik, Richard Kind Uncle Arthur, Sari Lennick Judith Gopnik, Fred Melamed Sy Ableman

IMDb rating: 7.0 (155273 votes)

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More People I’m Sick Unto Death Of

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People who hijack the occasion of another person’s death to offer up long-winded tributes – to themselves:

“My fondest memory of the deceased is the time many years ago when he fixed me with his penetrating gaze and, in that intense manner of speaking he had that brooked no dissension, he told me how great I am. What an inspiring moment! Blah blah blah . . . me me me . . .”

Thank you, Professor Pompous.

Stuck in India - Humayun's Tomb

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Which Experts Predicted a UConn-Kentucky Title Game?

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UConn logo

PunditTracker tracked March Madness 2014 brackets for 26 “experts” from ESPN, Yahoo, Sports Illustrated and CBS Sports, plus President Obama.

Number of pundits who picked UConn to win the tournament: Zero.

Number of pundits who picked either UConn or Kentucky to reach the final game: Zero.

Number of pundits who picked either UConn or Kentucky to reach the Final Four: Zero.

Number of pundits who picked either UConn or Kentucky to reach the Elite Eight: Zero.

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EppsNet at the Movies: Gravity

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Gravity

As a kid, one of my hobbies was card tricks. When I started learning card tricks, I had the misconception that the quality of a trick was proportional to how difficult it was to perform. Hard tricks = good, easy tricks = lame.

Today I can perform exactly zero card tricks. I don’t remember even one. What I do remember though is the general principle that the quality of a trick depends on the effect – what the audience sees – and not at all on how the trick is done. An audience doesn’t know or care if you’ve practiced a trick for years or if you just learned it five minutes ago.

The principle applies to things other than card tricks. You can read on IMDb and elsewhere about the technological challenges that had to be overcome in making Gravity. The state-of-the-art cinematography and visual effects would not have been possible even a few short years ago.

Again, I don’t care how the trick is done. I just care about what’s on the screen, not how easy or hard it was to get it there.

Rating: 3 stars

Gravity

Dr Ryan Stone, an engineer on her first space mission, and Matt Kowalski, an astronaut on his final expedition, have to survive in space after they are hit by debris while spacewalking.

Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Cast: Sandra Bullock Ryan Stone, George Clooney Matt Kowalski, Ed Harris Mission Control (voice), Orto Ignatiussen Aningaaq (voice)

IMDb rating: 7.7 (895643 votes)

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More People I’m Sick Unto Death Of

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Emblem of the Papacy

If you don’t know me and I don’t know you, don’t call me up and shout, “Hey Paul! It’s Zach Flack with Equity Staffing!” as though I might have been sitting by the phone thinking “Wouldn’t it be a little slice of heaven if I got a call from Zach Flack over at Equity Staffing?”

If I don’t know you, but I might recognize your name, then possibly some heightened level of emotion is warranted, e.g., “Hey Paul! It’s Bill Gates with Microsoft!” or “Hey Paul! It’s Pope Francis at the Vatican!”

Otherwise, tone it down and stop annoying people.

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Let it Bleed

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Hemophiliac (album)
Hemophiliac (album) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

At my piano lesson tonight, I noticed what looked like a streak of blood on one of the keys. The next thing I noticed was that the tip of my right index finger was bleeding — apparently a paper cut from a sheet of music, although I didn’t feel anything at the time.

I didn’t want to ruin the piano so I stopped playing and tried to get everything cleaned up.

I asked my teacher, “If you’re playing a concert and you start bleeding, what should you do? Just keep going?”

“Yes.”

“What if in addition to being a pianist, you’re also a hemophiliac and you might die? Would that alter your advice?”

“Are you a hemophiliac?”

“Fortunately, no.”

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Neil Young Acoustic Show at the Dolby Theater

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We were lucky enough to see Neil Young’s solo acoustic performance at the Dolby Theatre in LA last night. I say “lucky” even though we paid for the tickets because they did sell out rather quickly.

Here’s the set list, to the best of my recollection. I may have some of the harmonica instrumentation wrong. He had the harmonica rack on for the whole show; some songs he played it and some he didn’t.

First Set

From Hank to Hendrix – guitar, harmonica. A good opener for this kind of a show: From Hank to Hendrix / I walked these streets with you / Here I am with this old guitar / Doin’ what I do. / I always expected / That you should see me through / I never believed in much / But I believed in you.

On the Way Home – guitar, harmonica

Only Love Can Break Your Heart – guitar, harmonica

Love in Mind – piano

Philadelphia – piano

Mellow My Mind – guitar (banjo?), harmonica. He played the Gibson Mastertone you can see in the right foreground of the photo. He said it’s a guitar, not a banjo. It sure looks and sounds like a banjo though.

Reason to Believe (Tim Hardin) – piano

Someday – piano

Changes (Phil Ochs) – guitar

Harvest – guitar, harmonica

Old Man – guitar, harmonica.

Second Set

Goin’ Back – guitar

A Man Needs a Maid – synthesizer, piano, harmonica

Ohio – guitar. What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground? This hasn’t lost any punch over the last 40 years.

Southern Man – guitar

If You Could Read My Mind (Gordon Lightfoot) – guitar. A better interpretation than the original, which I’ve never really liked very much.

Harvest Moon – guitar, harmonica

Mr. Soul – pipe organ, harmonica. I’ve heard a lot of people play guitar and harmonica together. I may have even heard someone play piano and harmonica together. But I’ve never (until now) heard anyone play harmonica riffs while performing on a pipe organ.

Flying on the Ground Is Wrong – piano. Interesting story about this song: when he wrote it, he was living in L.A. at the Commodore Gardens on Orchid Ave. The Commodore Gardens is gone now. It went away when Orchid Ave. was shortened to make room for . . . the Dolby Theatre! (see map)

After the Gold Rush – piano. With a line change: We’ve got Mother Nature on the run in the 21st century.

Heart of Gold – guitar, harmonica.

Encore

Thrasher – guitar, harmonica.

He had seven or eight guitars available, several harmonicas, a grand piano, an upright piano, a synthesizer and a pipe organ.

He has an incredible repertoire of songs to choose from, his voice for some reason sounds better than ever, and he’s a fantastic musician, which you have to be for a solo acoustic performance. If you really can’t play or sing, there’s no place to hide.

Most of the guitars came with stories, related in a laconic, deadpan style. One used to belong to Hank Williams. “I got it from a guy in Nashville. Thanks to you, and people like you, I was a rich hippie. And I was able to buy the guitar.”

Two were given to him by Steve Stills. One — the one he’s playing in the photo — used to belong to a folk singer who was performing in Denver when a gunshot blasted a large hole in the front of the instrument. “That was long before weed was legalized. I don’t know if that has anything to do with it. But no one singing folk songs in Denver has been shot since it was legalized.”

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At Any Rate, That Is Happiness

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Field of pumpkins at harvest time

Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

— Willa Cather, My Antonia

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Get Rich Making Dumb Decisions

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The people on the short side of the subprime mortgage market had gambled with the odds in their favor. The people on the other side — the entire financial system, essentially — had gambled with the odds against them. Up to this point, the story of the big short could not be simpler. What’s strange and complicated about it, however, is that pretty much all the important people on both sides of the gamble left the table rich. . . . The CEOs of every major Wall Street firm were also on the wrong end of the gamble. All of them, without exception, either ran their public corporations into bankruptcy or were saved from bankruptcy by the United States government. They all got rich, too.

What are the odds that people will make smart decisions about money if they don’t need to make smart decisions — if they can get rich making dumb decisions?

— Michael Lewis, The Big Short

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I have only ever made one prayer to God, a very short one: “Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.” And God granted it. — Voltaire

Don’t Try to Be Funny at the Vet

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Veterinary Hospital Parking
(Photo credit: www.myparkingsign.com)

I’m picking up a prescription for Lightning at the vet . . . the new girl, Lauren, is at the desk.

“It’s a little different this time,” Lauren says. “We didn’t have the Prednisone 5mg, so we’re giving you Prednisone 10mg, and instead of giving him half a tablet, you’ll give him a quarter of a tablet. I already cut them.”

“Oh gosh, thanks! Did you cut them on the lines?” Lauren is new so she hasn’t heard this one yet.

“To the best of my ability.”

“That’s good. Lightning doesn’t like it when they’re not cut on the lines.”

She’s not getting the joke but that’s okay. I’ll help her out by taking it completely into the realm of the absurd.

“He feels like it doesn’t show attention to detail,” I say.

“I’ll make a note of that for next time.”

“Yes, you should do that. Go ahead and write it on his chart.”

Pet owners — I know this from spending a lot of time at dog parks — are likely to attribute all sorts of human thoughts and emotions to their animals, so I guess if you work in a veterinary clinic, you can’t assume that customers are joking just because what they’re saying is totally irrational . . .

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