That's mismanagement. Avg per pupil spending in US is almost $15K. 30 kids in a class would be $450K. Deduct the teacher's salary and there should be enough left for supplies. P.S. Non sequiturs and false choice fallacies are not REQUIRED for every post. https://t.co/PMisLtoe4a
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) December 21, 2022
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Loudoun County Public Schools seem to epitomize everything that’s wrong with public education in America.
Former superintendent Scott Ziegler and public information officer Wayde Byard were indicted by a special grand jury amid an eight-month investigation into the district’s mishandling of two sexual assault cases.
A male high-school student sexually assaulted two female students in the LCPS district between May and October of 2021.
The “gender-fluid” male student, who was wearing a skirt at the time (which would make it easier to rape a fellow student than having to remove a pair of trousers), sodomized a ninth-grade girl in the girls’ bathroom at Stone Bridge High School. The perpetrator was transferred to another LCPS school, Broad Run High School (BRHS), where he sexually assaulted another female student.
A 15-year-old boy was convicted of both assaults and sentenced to complete a “residential program in a locked-down facility.”
The initial assault in the girls’ bathroom drew attention to the district’s policy of allowing transgender students to access bathrooms and locker rooms that align with “their consistently asserted gender identity.”
What could possibly go wrong with a policy like that? Oh right, the anal rape of a ninth-grade girl.
My platform as a superintendent — and maybe I couldn’t get the job with this, but then maybe I could — would be:
- If you have a penis, you will either use the boys’ bathroom or piss in your pants, I don’t care which.
- If you wear a skirt into the boys’ bathroom, I can see how that might create a situation, but that’s on you to handle, it’s not on ninth-grade girls getting anally raped.
My Boyhood Sports Icons are Dying: Franco Harris
I’ve always thought Franco Harris was wildly overrated as a running back, but he was a four-time Super Bowl champion so there’s that.
RIP Franco Harris
RIP Franco Harris
The immaculate reception happened 50 years ago this week.
— McNeil (@Reflog_18) December 21, 2022
Labels, Concepts, Division, Polarization
The following is excerpted from Lateral Thinking by Edward de Bono:
It is like having two wooden boxes side by side into which one is putting ping-pong balls. The balls have to go into one box or the other. . . .
If one of the boxes is labelled “black balls” and the other one “white balls” then each ball is dropped into the appropriate box depending on whether it is black or white. If there are any grey balls then some sort of decision has to be made as to whether they go into the black box or the white box. Once the decision has been made the balls go into the white box just as if they were white or into the black box just as if they were black. The apparent nature of the ball has been shifted to make it fit in with the established pattern.
A whole series of boxes might be imagined, each with its own label. As each item came along it would be put into whichever box had the most appropriate label. It would not matter if this most appropriate label was not really very appropriate. There is a shift to fit in with whatever labels are available. Once the shift has been made then it is impossible to tell the item in the box is any different from the other items in the box.
Similarly when there is an established label a new item is either pushed right under that label or else pushed right out. In a community that is sharply divided into “us” and “them” any stranger who happens along is assessed as to whether he is “one of us” or “one of them.”
Probably the stranger has a mix of characteristics which would make hm fit either group. But whichever way the decision goes his characteristics are at once assumed to have changed so that they match exactly the characteristics of the label. . . .
From a practical point of view this polarizing system is very effective. What it means is that one can establish a few major categories and then push everything into one or the other of them. Instead of having to assess everything in detail and then decide how one is going to react one merely assesses whether it fits into one category or another. This is not even a matter of exact fit but of pushing it one way or another. Once the thing has been pushed into a category then reaction is easy since the categories are established and so is the reaction to them.
New categories
At what point does a new category arise? At what point does one decide that the new item will not fit into any of the boxes and so create a new box? At what point does one decide that grey ping-pong balls would go in a special box marked “grey”? At what point is it decided that the stranger is neither “we” nor “they” but something else? The danger of polarization is that things can be shifted around so much that there never comes a point where a new category has to be created. Nor is there any indication as to how many established categories there should be.
One can get by with very few categories.
The dangers of the polarizing tendency may now be summarized:
- Once established the categories become permanent.
- New information is altered so it fits an established category. Once it has done so there is no indication that it is any different from anything else under that category.
- At no point is it essential to create new categories. One can get by with very few categories.
- The fewer the categories the greater the degree of shift.
Lateral thinking
In order to escape from these labels one can do three things:
- Challenge the labels.
- Try and do without them.
- Establish new labels.
Challenge the labels
- Why am I using this label?
- What does it really mean?
- Is it essential?
- Am I just using it as a convenient cliché?
- Why do I have to accept that label used by other people?
As it implies challenging a label means a direct challenge to the use of a label, a word, or a name. It does not mean that one disagrees with its use or that one has any better alternative. It just means that one is not prepared to accept the cliché label without challenging it.
Trying to do without labels
Using the label “mob” it is easy to develop a certain line of thought but if one has to do without the label then one might be able to look at the situation in a diffferent way. One tries to see things as they actually are and not in terms of labels.
Establishing new labels
The fewer the categories the greater the shift and distortion. By establishing a new category one can accept information with less distortion. So one establishes a new label in order to protect incoming information from the polarizing effect of already established labels.
I Got a Bonus
I got my year-end bonus today. I really hadn’t given it any thought, how it was calculated, where it maxed out, because any company I’ve ever worked with where I was eligible for a bonus, I never got it.
And my experience has been that nobody else ever gets the bonus either, with the exception of people in sales and people in the highest echelons of the company.
Rank-and-file people don’t get bonuses. If the company wanted to pay you the bonus, they’d make it part of your salary.
Anyway . . . I do training classes for software engineers, and it turns out my bonus is calculated based on graduation rate and student surveys, where students respond to statements like “I receive actionable feedback on my performance” on a 5-point scale from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree.
I had no idea. As it turns out, I did get the full bonus, but if I’d known it was based in part on student feedback, I might have been a little nicer to people.
Thus spoke The Programmer.
COVID Vaccine Side Effects
Every drug commercial you see on TV, half the commercial is a voice-over listing all the side effects, many of which are worse than the disease that the drug is intended to treat.
May reduce your body’s ability to fight infection, which could lead to serious illness or death . . .
“Death” is almost always in there somewhere.
And these are drugs that have been through years of trials, full FDA approval, not just emergency approval or experimental approval or whatever it’s called for the COVID vaccines.
What are the side effects of COVID vaccines? Who knows? There wasn’t time to test for them, except very short-term stuff like you might feel tired or you might have a sore arm.
In the software business, we call this “testing in production,” meaning we don’t have time to fully test the product in a non-destructive way, so we slam it into production and hope for the best.
Have the vaccines killed anybody? I’d say if drugs with years of trials and a possible side effect of death can get FDA approval, then yes, the vaccines have killed some people and done serious health damage to others.
I did decide myself to get COVID vaccinations and boosters. I don’t know if they did me any good or not. There’s no question at this point that vaccines didn’t stop or slow the spread of COVID. The CEO of Pfizer is on record saying they didn’t even test for that.
Vaccines do seem to reduce the likelihood that you’ll wind up in a hospital or dead. They did allow me to do a few things over the past couple of years that I wouldn’t have been able to do without proof of vaccination.
All drugs have potentially serious side effects, and the more I think about forcing people to take a drug that they don’t want to take, the more it seems borderline criminal.
Sam Brinton: History-Making Government Official or Mental Case?
This article seems to be nominating the guy for sainthood. “History-making”?! He’s the first male government official to come to work in a dress? I’m not even sure he can claim that title. Maybe Rachel Levine was first. Or maybe it was someone else. But Levine uses female pronouns and Brinton doesn’t, so I guess that’s historic.
This, to me, is not a good look for a government nuclear energy official:
Yes, we all of us have our kinks or peccadillos, but we don’t have photos of them on the internet.
What sort of vetting process is in place in the Biden administration? Mental disorders are obviously not a disqualifier. Are we seeking to make ourselves an international laughingstock?
The article is as sympathetic as it’s possible to be, lamenting the fact that Brinton has been “misgendered,” and referring to his thefts as “accusations.” (Yes I know, innocent until proven guilty, but we’ve all seen videos of him stealing the luggage.)
And to think that some bigots will not treat all trans people with dignity.
Why Is a Same-Sex Marriage Bill Historic When It’s Already Legal in Every State?
I’ve seen a lot of coverage on this and I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve seen the bill described as “historic.”
I can, however, count the number of times I’ve seen mention of the fact that same-sex marriage and interracial marriage are already legal in all 50 states: Zero.
I know people, probably you do as well, who’ve been in same-sex marriages for decades. I know people (including me) who’ve been in interracial marriages for decades.
So what is historic?
The Employment Numbers WERE Wrong. Implications for Elections?
It looks like I was right about the employment numbers not making sense, which is maybe not such a good thing, in that everyone could see the same things I saw and yet I didn’t notice anyone (including “reporters”) asking “Why am I being told things that do not match up with reality?”
Thank god I’ve been assured by powerful people that there is no possible way our government could propagate these same kinds of mistakes (lies?) with regard to election results.
What Does “Woke” Mean?
Recently I’ve heard “woke” defined as being awake to injustice, particularly racial injustice.
That takes the edge off it. It makes it sound like a good thing, except to the extent that it propagates untrue ideas like racism is everywhere, or anything you don’t like is racist.
Having an awareness of injustice is universal though, isn’t it? Although people have very different ideas about what’s just or unjust, everyone has their own sense of it. It doesn’t require a new word. We have words like “compassionate” and “empathetic” that seem to mean the same thing.
I don’t think even the person or persons who coined the word “woke” meant it to be as inoffensive as “being awake to injustice.” I think it was intended to be confrontational.
Here’s another possible definition: Making sweeping, prejudicial generalizations about race, gender and sexual orientation.
I like that definition better. I think it’s useful to have a single word for that concept.
My Dismay at Bruce Springsteen’s Facelifts is Boundless
Bruce Springsteen never had good skin. And his face was kind of puffy. Take a look:
And that’s when he was still young. Now who is this 70-year-old guy?
You might say he works out, eats right, that’s how he stays young-looking. There are no exercises to tighten your face, as far as I know. 70 years of gravity takes its toll.
You might say that the photo is retouched and you’re probably right, but there are enough unposed Springsteen photos available with the same tight face.
The hair is fake too, by the way. Here’s a selfie taken on the occasion of becoming a grandfather. Didn’t have time to slap on the toupee.
I’m not taking a position against cosmetic surgery or other artificial ways of looking younger. Getting old and having to look at yourself sucks.
But you have to be true to who you are, and Springsteen is supposed to have been the embodiment of the American working man, Joe Lunchpail with the t-shirts, flannel shirts, jeans, cheap jackets, uncombed hair. And Joe Lunchpail doesn’t get facelifts.
Did Johnny Cash get a facelift? Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Clint Eastwood? No, because they’re true to who they are. Clint Eastwood was a very handsome man. Now he’s quite old and he looks the way old men look: terrible. But he didn’t get a facelift trying to be someone else.
Of course if you’re Barry Manilow or Wayne Newton, you get nipped and tucked and put on the fake hair because that’s who you are. Being an authentic person is not what you’re about.
I don’t know if Springsteen really was the person that he seemed to be in his older songs. Probably he was, and decided later that he didn’t want to be an old man, at the expense of his integrity. You are your age. All of us are.
I will listen to Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson music forever. No sane person still listens to Barry Manilow. I can’t listen to Springsteen anymore either.
Twitter Files and Two-Party Politics
Most major media outlets united to disseminate an absolute lie concocted by the CIA: the Biden archive was "Russian disinformation." Not one media outlet that spread this lie has admitted that they did this or explained what happened. https://t.co/BYsLbH5lbR
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) December 10, 2022
The media outlets listed above, along with most others, will not and cannot recognize any scandalous or improper behavior by leading Democratic politicians. Ask them to name any.
The same is true for individuals who are quite happy to parrot the statement that Twitter is a private company that was perfectly entitled to enforce its Terms of Service. Hence, a nothing burger.
I don’t know if anyone is even arguing that point. However, the Terms of Service violation cited for killing the laptop story had to do with hacked materials. Of course, there were no hacked materials and there was no evidence of hacked materials because the hacked materials story was an obvious lie put out by the CIA.
How obvious was the lie? I can’t remember to this day anyone named Biden coming out and stating flatly that the materials on the laptop were fake. There are some things even a Biden won’t do.
Isn’t that what you would do if some damning information about you that you knew to be fake were revealed? That’s what I would do, say unequivocally that the materials are fake.
And the same people who sanguinely parrot the Terms of Service, nothing burger talking points would be singing quite a different tune, don’t you think, if damning information about Donald Trump had been hushed up right before the election, via a collaboration between the Republican Party, the CIA, the FBI, the news media and multiple tech giants?
I have to research what is so great about a two-party system because to me it amounts to nothing more than trench warfare that benefits, well, I was going to say no one, but it does play out to the benefit of politicians who become quite wealthy, far beyond what their salaries would dictate. But it doesn’t benefit me or anyone like me.
And morality goes completely out the window. As I said, if your team is able to pull off a dirty trick and get away with it, well, that’s just too bad for the other side, but if they pull off the same trick, you’ll tell me that every one of the scoundrels ought to be in prison.
Maiden Name
Marrying left your maiden name disused.
Its five light sounds no longer mean your face,
Your voice, and all your variants of grace;
For since you were so thankfully confused
By law with someone else, you cannot be
Semantically the same as that young beauty:
It was of her that these two words were used.Now it’s a phrase applicable to no one,
Lying just where you left it, scattered through
Old lists, old programmes, a school prize or two
Packets of letters tied with tartan ribbon –
Then is it scentless, weightless, strengthless, wholly
Untruthful? Try whispering it slowly.
No, it means you. Or, since you’re past and gone,It means what we feel now about you then:
How beautiful you were, and near, and young,
So vivid, you might still be there among
Those first few days, unfingermarked again.
So your old name shelters our faithfulness,
Instead of losing shape and meaning less
With your depreciating luggage laden.
Equality vs. Freedom
The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the passion for equality made vain the hope for freedom.
Formal equality before the law is in conflict, and in fact incompatible, with any activity of the government deliberately aiming at material or substantive equality of different people, and any policy aiming directly at a substantive ideal of distributive justice must lead to the destruction of the Rule of Law. To produce the same result for different people, it is necessary to treat them differently. To give different people the same objective opportunities is not to give them the same subjective chance. It cannot be denied that the Rule of Law produces economic inequality — all that can be claimed for it is that this inequality is not designed to affect particular people in a particular way. It is very significant and characteristic that socialists (and Nazis) have always protested against “merely” formal justice, that they have always objected to a law that had no views on how well off particular people ought to be, and that they have always demanded a “socialization of the law,” attacked the independence of judges, and at the same time given their support to all such movements as the Freirechtsshule which undermined the Rule of Law.
Freirechtsshule is the German term for “legal realism,” a doctrine that holds that instinct rather than rule-following is the actual basis of judicial interpretation of the law.
Thomas Jefferson on Same-Sex Wedding Websites
My fellow Americans –
The Supreme Court has been asked to decide whether the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act requires a website designer named Lorie Smith to create wedding websites celebrating same-sex couples in violation of her religious beliefs.
The state law requires equal access to places of public accommodation regardless of disability, race, sex, sexual orientation, or religion. “Places of public accommodation” include any business engaged in offering sales, services, or facilities to the public.
It’s an un-American law, anti-freedom. If you’re gay, you’re gay. If you want to get married, get married. That doesn’t mean everyone has to accept you and love you and make websites for you.
Also note that the law places an unequal burden on the parties involved. The couple can hire any website designer they want for any reason. They’re under no legal obligation to show that they didn’t reject a designer based on the designer’s race, religion, disability, etc.
We included a freedom of association provision in the First Amendment to allow Americans to associate with whoever they want to or not associate with whoever they don’t want to for any reason.
This would include business transactions. You can do business with whoever you want to for any reason.
It’s simple, easy to understand and enforce, and doesn’t require a waste of everyone’s goddamn time waiting for a Supreme Court pronouncement regarding a stupid wedding website.
Suck it Up, Censors!
- This is kind of obvious but have you noticed that when someone is revealed to have done something they shouldn’t have done, they try to deflect the blame to whoever revealed the wrongdoing?
- It’s becoming customary, almost compulsory, on any point of contention to assert that your opponent’s position is not only wrong but that it would result in a loss of safety for, and in fact the probable death of, some unfortunate person or persons.
Suck it up, censors!
What They Said vs. What They Meant
Recall how Twitter touted its purpose back in 2016: “Twitter connects you with the people you’re interested in — whether that’s someone across the world who shares your love for science-fiction, your friends and family, a politician, or your local sports team.”
If, from the beginning, Twitter had declared that, “We are a progressive company, and we are only interested in connecting progressives with other progressives, and we will suspend the accounts of conservative users with little warning and with vague explanations, and we will block the public’s ability to see news that we think might make them want to vote against Democrats,” well, at least then it would have been honest, and most conservatives never would have bothered to set up accounts on Twitter.
Can You Pass the Harvard Entrance Exam?
Yes! On the question that asks for your race, the correct answer is Black.
Veritas!
Another Reason Dogs are Better Than Cats
That is a badass sheepdog. Killed 8 coyotes single-handed! Btw, I don't mean to offend cat people but cats are useless for killing coyotes. https://t.co/Luy9qX0Ezg
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) December 5, 2022
Thomas Jefferson on the Midterm Results
My fellow Americans –
I thought Republicans would fare better than they did in the recent midterm elections. My reasoning was that Joe Biden and his administration have taken so much away from us that Americans would never vote to continue down the same path.
Some of my readers may be financially well-to-do. If you fall into that group, I ask that you consider some of what I’m about to say from the perspective of the majority of your countrymen who live near, at or below the median level of income.
Biden has taken away
- the ability to buy a tank of gas at an affordable price.
- the ability to buy groceries without gasping in shock at the total cost.
- the ability to retire comfortably. Retirement accounts have been drained due to the performance of the investment markets and inflation rates have gone through the roof. The ability to retire in poverty is still available, or people can just keep working and hope things get better.
- the ability to buy or sell a home. Inflation and interest rates have made home ownership impossible for most Americans.
- the ability of parents to supervise the education of their children without being treated like terrorists.
- freedom of speech
You Americans now are certainly much more tolerant of government incompetence and maltreatment than we were as colonists. Of course, we didn’t have elections at that time so we had to say “it stops here” in a more contentious manner.