My son is visiting . . . we’re in a different place than the last time he visited so he asks, “What’s the wifi?”
“PrettyFlyForAWifi,” I reply.
“What is this, 2002?”
“Don’t use it if you don’t want to.”
Link
EppsNet Book Reviews: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.
Mission accomplished!
Remarque was a German author born Eric Paul Remark, changed his last name to a French spelling and adopted his mother’s middle name, Maria, as his own.
It says on the cover “The GREATEST WAR NOVEL of ALL TIME.” I can’t think of a better one. The Red Badge of Courage is really good. The Emigrants is remarkable but I’d have to put it in a different category, a post-war novel. Regeneration is very good.
Catch-22 and From Here to Eternity I couldn’t even get all the way through either one of them.
Slaughterhouse-Five is good. Mother Night is good. I’m going to call that a war novel, even though it’s not a battlefield novel. But I don’t think either one is Vonnegut’s best work because that would have to be Breakfast of Champions.
War and Peace I have to admit I haven’t read, nor have I read Gone with the Wind, although I loved the movie.
All Quiet hits you like a rifle butt in the face. Really a powerful work. Bob Dylan cited it in his Nobel acceptance speech as a significant influence on his songwriting.
Rating: 
Long Working Hours Killing 745,000 People a Year?
The research found that working 55 hours or more a week was associated with a 35% higher risk of stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from heart disease, compared with a working week of 35 to 40 hours.
The study, conducted with the International Labour Organization (ILO), also showed almost three quarters of those that died as a result of working long hours were middle-aged or older men.
Often, the deaths occurred much later in life, sometimes decades later, than the long hours were worked.
Is this science? You know, people say “follow the science” but most people aren’t smart enough to understand science, let alone explain it to others.
Lots of problems with this one, starting with the fact that “associated with” doesn’t imply cause and effect and doesn’t mean the same thing as “hard work is killing a specific number of people every year.” Were obesity and other comorbidities controlled for? Smoking, drinking, other poor health habits?
I note that a large majority of the deaths were middle-aged or older men. That’s what old men do, you know. They die.
And finally, the deaths often occurred “much later in life, sometimes decades later, than the long hours were worked.”
So maybe the work didn’t kill them at all. Maybe retirement killed them. Maybe if they’d kept their noses to the grindstone, they’d still be alive.
NY Times Annual Dissing of Black Students
First of all, I don’t know who is helped by these annual NY Times headlines on the academic underperformance of students with darker skin pigmentation.
The black kid going out on an interview and the interviewer reads the NY Times — is he helped? Who is helped? What’s the point?
Asian students by the way are doing great! Over half of the offers to “elite” NYC public high schools went to Asian kids. And these are not crazy rich Asians we’re talking about, they’re low-income Asians, immigrants, children of immigrants, who have an added disadvantage of living in homes where English is not the primary language.
In my experience, kids can achieve remarkable competence in anything that’s important to them, and getting into these top schools has enormous significance in Asian families.
Why doesn’t the NY Times run an annual story on how many Asians are selected in the NBA draft?
Playing basketball is not deemed important by Asians. Except Jeremy Lin, and even he went to Harvard.
EppsNet at the Movies: Affliction
Affliction is a sad, painful movie about “boys and men for thousands of years: boys who were beaten by their fathers, whose capacity for love and trust was crippled almost at birth, men whose best hope for connection with other human beings lay in detachment, as if life were over. It’s how we keep from destroying in turn our own children and terrorizing the women who have the misfortune to love us; how we absent ourselves from the tradition of male violence; how we decline the seduction of revenge.”
The beatings, actually, are optional. I don’t remember my dad ever laying a hand on me but my parents were still able to send me into the world afflicted with crippling anxiety, depression and fear of failure.
Not much happens in the world, in my opinion, that can’t be explained by good or bad parents.
Rating: 
Affliction
A deeply troubled small-town cop investigates a suspicious hunting death while other events jeopardize his sanity.Director: Paul Schrader
Cast: Nick Nolte, Brigid Tierney, Holmes Osborne
IMDb rating: 6.9 (21133 votes)
All Your Problems Are Caused By Other People
There are few ideas more potent than the notion that all your problems are caused by other people and their unfairness to you. That was the royal road to unbridled power for Hitler, Lenin, and Mao — which is to say, millions of human beings paid with their lives for believing it.
To find yourself, think for yourself. — Socrates
Minimum Wage: $33.58/hr?
Here’s a factoid someone posted on LinkedIn:
If the minimum wage had kept up with CEO pay since 1978, it would be $33.58 an hour now.
Assuming that’s true, it’s also true that a lot of people do not have skills worth $33.58/hr and it would therefore be illegal for those people to have a job.
Also, no one is required to work for minimum wage. If you want to make $33.58/hr, get a job that pays that. If you can’t, then be happy that $33.58/hr isn’t the minimum wage and you can still get a job that pays what your skills are worth.
Healthy Enough to Type
I have a student in my class — let’s call him John — who missed the entire first week, so I sent him an email to the effect that I hadn’t seen him in class yet and what were his plans going forward.
He replied that he had really been looking forward to the class but had a health condition that was going to force him to drop and who could he contact about a tuition refund.
So he’s healthy enough to type. The class is online, so he could watch from his hospital bed if necessary.
In short, I don’t believe him but what can you do?
A slightly better way to play it, in my opinion, is to send me back an email saying “I’m typing this for John because he’s too sick to move his fingers. It’s really touch and go at this point. Please remember him in your prayers. P.S. Who should I — errr, he — contact about a tuition refund?”
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Biological Women Will Be Extinct. Also: Roger Bannister
On this date, May 6, in 1954, in Oxford, England, 25-year-old medical student Roger Bannister became the first athlete to break the four-minute mile, finishing with a time of 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds.
In other news, there’s currently a controversy over whether or not transgender girls and women should be allowed to compete against biological girls and women in sporting events.
To that debate, we add a few more facts:
- The current men’s world record for the mile run is 3:43:13 by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco.
- The current boys’ high school record for the mile is 3:53:43 by Alan Webb.
- High school boys have been running sub-four-minute miles since at least the 1960s.
- The current women’s world record for the mile run is 4:12:33 by Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands.
The athletic performance gap between men and women is so big that the best women in the world couldn’t come close to competing against high school boys.
If transgender girls and women competing against biological girls and women becomes a thing, biological female athletes will become extinct. “Competitive athlete” will no longer be on the list of things that women can be.
The Doors of Perception
We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude.
I Couldn’t Afford to Smoke if I Wanted To
I was at the local gas station/convenience store and the guy in line ahead of me was buying a couple of Monster energy drinks and a carton of cigarettes.
“90 dollars,” the clerk said.
I figured he must be buying a tank of gas as well and the price included that, but I asked the clerk when I got to the front of the line, “Did that guy just pay 90 dollars for two Monsters and a carton of cigarettes?”
“Yeah — and those are not really expensive cigarettes.”
“Wow, I remember when I could buy a carton of cigs AND fill my motorcycle for 15 bucks.”
“I know what you mean,” the clerk replied, even though I’ve never smoked or owned a motorcycle.
We Owe All Students High Expectations
EppsNet at the Movies: Night in Paradise
I found this film first-rate in every respect except . . .
SPOILER ALERT!
. . . the way the death of the hero was handled. Didn’t like that at all. That being said, I hope if something similarly bad happens to me that my girlfriend will also pack a gym bag with guns and ammo and massacre an entire restaurant full of the people responsible.
That’s a great scene. She comes in, locks the front door, a creepy gangster type comes over and says with a sleazy grin, “No more seats. Come sit with us. We’re nice.”
“I didn’t come to eat,” she replies, cocking a gun under his chin. “And get your hands off me.”
So he’s the first guy to end up with his brains on the ceiling but not the last!
Rating:
Night in Paradise
Hiding out in Jeju Island following a brutal tragedy, a wronged mobster with a target on his back connects with a woman who has her own demons.Director: Park Hoon-jung
Cast: Um Tae-goo, Jeon Yeo-been, Cha Seung-won
IMDb rating: 6.8 (9399 votes)
Thomas Jefferson: Why Are Democratic Cities Such Disaster Areas?
My fellow Americans –
A lot of people ask me, “Tom, why are Democrat-run cities such shitholes?” I was reminded of this by President Biden’s upcoming “soak the rich” tax plan.
In my view, there are three Democratic philosophies that destroy American cities. For example, did you know that Detroit in 1950 was the richest city in America? Now it’s a wasteland where half the residents can’t even read.
The first philosophy is that Democrats hate rich people because “they don’t pay their fair share.” What is their “fair share”? What is your “fair share” of what someone else has worked for? I would suggest it’s nothing, but Democrats enact punitive tax rates on the most productive people, who then leave town and go somewhere else.
The second philosophy is that Democrats hate business because corporate fat cats “don’t pay their fair share.” So they enact anti-business policies, the result being that businesses leave town and go somewhere else.
And the third philosophy is that Democrats are soft on crime because they like to call Republicans racists for wanting to live in safe cities, the result being that Democratic cities have a lot of violent crime.
These policies at a federal level have a somewhat different effect because it’s harder for people and businesses to move out of the country than to move out of a city, but people can move their money out of the country and businesses can move their operations and jobs out of the country.
Rich people are rich because they’re good at holding onto their money and not paying it all out in taxes to fools like Joe Biden.
And That’s the Truth: Columbus Cop Saves Black Girl’s Life
[And That’s the Truth is a feature by our guest blogger, Sojourner Truth — PE]
I don care how old she is, if some 200-pound female be swingin a 6-inch kitchen knife at one o’ my chillen, I hope dey’s a cop there to shoot her.
People say cops need more trainin’, that the cop shoulda tasered her, or hit her with a baton or some pepper spray, or shot her in the leg or sumthin. Man you dumbfucks be watchin too much television. Maybe he shoulda shot the knife right outta her hand like Clint Eastwood.
When you get on a airplane, do you tell the pilot how to fly it? Do you tell doctors how to do surgery? Do you tell mechanics how to fix a motor?
Maybe we need more trainin for chillen not to be stabbin people in broad daylight.
I know they’s people think it makes sense to meet lethal force with non-lethal force but you caint ask ’em how dat worked out ’cause they all dead.
You see the girl in pink here:
She in a combination between a dee-fensive posture and collapsin in terror cause she knows she got about 1 second to live but the cop saved her life. She wasnt gonna get no help from the guy on the right. He hightailin’ it.
I dont even know why cops show up for calls like this. It’s what you call a lose-lose. It’s probly gonna ruin your life if you shoot the knife girl and its probly gonna ruin your life if you let the pink girl get stabbed.
If I was a cop I swear to god I’d never leave the station house.
And that’s the Truth!
Dershowitz on Maxine Waters
[Maxine Waters’] message was clearly intended to get to the jury. If you acquit, or if you find a charge less than murder, we will burn down your buildings. We will burn down your businesses. We will attack you. This was an attempt to intimidate the jury. It’s borrowed precisely from the Ku Klux Klan of the 1930s and 1920s when the Klan would march outside of courthouses and threaten all kinds of reprisals if the jury ever dare convict a white person or acquit a black person. And so efforts to intimidate a jury should result in a mistrial.
Rep. Waters lives in a nice house in the wealthy Los Angeles neighborhood of Hancock Park. Her mansion is valued at $6 million.
I guess living outside the boundaries of the district you represent is allowed, because Hancock Park is outside of her South Central LA district, where the poverty rate is 27 percent.
Bernie Madoff and Barack Obama
The death of Bernie Madoff reminds me that I never understood why he was so vilified. He ran a Ponzi scheme. All of his investors knew it was a Ponzi scheme. They chose to get in, and gambled that they could time their exits just right. Some succeeded, some failed. . . .
The fact that he not only claimed to return 10% in every kind of market condition but actually did so constituted something like proof positive that he was running a Ponzi scheme, for anyone who cared to take notice.
So I think Madoff’s “lies” go into the same category as the alleged “lies” of Barack Obama when he said that under Obamacare, anybody who liked his/her old health insurance policy would be able to keep it. Nobody capable of arithmetic could have believed such an outlandish statement — unless they gave it no thought whatsoever, in which case even if they were fooled, they were fooled about something they apparently didn’t care about.
In other words: It’s not a lie if nobody believes it.
And That’s the Truth: The Talk
[And That’s the Truth is a feature by our guest blogger, Sojourner Truth — PE]
Man I am so tired of hearing about “the talk” that black parents supposed to have with their boys. What do they talk about? “Carry guns in your car, resist arrest, get into a fight with a cop, flee the scene of a crime”?
That ain’t the same talk white parents give, which is you have an encounter with a cop, you say yes sir, no sir, follow directions, be deferential. Have your day in court if it comes to that. Cop tells you to stand on your head, then stand on your fuckin head. Don’t be some “I know my rights” wiseass.
Resistin arrest is a damn poor survival tactic. You dont even need a talk for that. All you got to be is a person living in America to know that. Black boys gettin shot cause they dont know how to act. What is “the talk”? What are you talkin about? Either you aint talkin right or they aint listning and theyre gettin killed.
And that’s the Truth!