From Icon Dogwear:
17 Things We Love About Pugs
Life is Beautiful, Living is Pain
Hopes rise and dreams flicker and die. Love plans for tomorrow and loneliness thinks of yesterday. Life is beautiful and living is pain. The sound of music floats down a dark street.
Hunter S. Thompson
W.S. Merwin, 1927-2019
I think there’s a kind of desperate hope built into poetry that one really wants, hopelessly, to save the world. One is trying to say everything that can be said for the things that one loves while there’s still time.
W.S. Merwin
RIP W.S. Merwin
Also . . .
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The Moral Compass Oscillates
Following up on the college admission scandal . . .
Now that we have faces and names, sums of money, and details on specific subterfuges, the level of anger, shock and indignation is much higher than I would have expected regarding what I thought was already taken as a truism: that parents with money and influence can get their kids into colleges that they couldn’t get into on their own merits.
Everyone also knows that students are routinely admitted to colleges based on various forms of diversity rather than on academic achievement. Moreover, virtuous Americans agree that tilting the system in this way in favor of academically unqualified individuals is a good thing.
I would have thought that the moral question is whether it’s right to tilt the admissions process at all based on non-meritorious criteria such as demographics, including the demographic of having rich parents.
If everyone agrees that the process should be tilted, I wouldn’t expect the moral compass to oscillate based on the direction of the tilt.
Why would tilting the process in one direction be admirable but tilting it in a different direction be reprehensible?
If it’s admirable for you to put your thumb on the scale, why is it odious and vile for others to do the same?
Are We Agreed That Rigging the College Admissions Process is a Good Thing?
Outraged parents are filing lawsuits in the college admissions scandal . . .
One parent, Jennifer Kay Toy of Oakland, believes her son Joshua was not admitted to some colleges because wealthy parents thought it was “ok to lie, cheat, steal [steal?] and bribe their children’s way into a good college.”
She has therefore filed a $500 billion lawsuit (sounds reasonable) accusing 45 defendants of defrauding and inflicting emotional distress on everyone whose “rights to a fair chance at entrance to college” were stolen through their alleged conspiracy.
Not reported: where (or if) Joshua is actually attending college, or which colleges Ms. Toy thinks he would have been admitted to if not for the aforementioned skulduggery.
There are also students filing suits, alleging among other things that their degrees have been devalued by skepticism over the validity of the admission process.
I think these lawsuits founder on at least a couple of points:
- None of the people or universities involved invented lying, cheating or bribing as a way to get into college. We’re now able to put actual faces to it (William Singer, Lori Loughlin, Felicity Huffman, etc.) but the proposition that the college admission process was untainted until Singer and his fellow fraudsters corrupted it is not going to stand up to scrutiny.
- As regards skepticism about academic bona fides, not only have students for decades been routinely admitted to colleges based on criteria other than academic achievement (e.g., “diversity”), but virtuous Americans seem to agree that rigging the system in favor of otherwise unqualified individuals is a good thing. Where are the lawsuits over diversity admits devaluing academic credentials?
Signing Your Life Away
I had surgery last week to remove a basal cell carcinoma. It’s a common outpatient procedure but the consent form I was given to sign when I checked in listed out all the worst-case scenarios: I might be disfigured, I might bleed to death, etc.
After signing it, I took the form back up to the nurse and said “This information is so alarming that I changed my mind about doing the surgery. See you later.”
“Ha ha,” she chuckled. “You’re signing your life away.”
“Yes . . . maybe you’re not supposed to say that.”
Alex Trebek Has Cancer
And yet Pat Sajak is in perfect health . . . this is fair?!
Actually, I’ve never liked Alex Trebek. I used to watch the original version of Jeopardy!, hosted by a guy named Art Fleming, who, unlike Trebek, didn’t act like he was smarter than the contestants just because he had the answers right there in front of him . . .
Happy Birthday, Johnny Cash
[youtube https://youtu.be/eJlN9jdQFSc]
To honor Johnny Cash on his birthday (Feb 26, 1932), I played this video for my students this morning.
Fortunately, God didn’t cut any of them down before the end of class, but sooner or later . . . 
Robert Kraft Charged With Solicitation
As I understand it, he paid for a massage but received some additional services.
I’ve seen videos where a man meets up with a female real estate agent and receives services above and beyond a home tour. Sometimes people just hit it off.
Or maybe the masseuse was a Patriots fan.
Skyrocketing Pedestrians
New technology shows promise reducing skyrocketing pedestrian fatalities — CNBC
I thought from the headline and the photo that the article was about fatalities involving skyrocketing pedestrians . . .
Media Using the C-Word (“Crisis”)
White House requests $3.7 billion in emergency funds for border crisis
Washington Post
Daniel’s journey: How thousands of children are creating a crisis in America
CNN
Shocking Photos Of Humanitarian Crisis On U.S. Border Emerge
Huffington Post
“$3.7 billion [requested] to cope with the humanitarian crisis on the border and the spike in illegal crossings by unaccompanied minors from Central America.”
ABC News
Caveat: Those media quotes are from 2014 when President Obama was requesting emergency funds to deal with the border crisis.
My go-to question for Democratic politicians would be “How do you respond to the president’s statement that we have a humanitarian crisis at the border?” And when they’re done with their predictably withering response, I’d say, “No, I was referring to President Obama’s statement.”
President Obama, thank you for your great support – I have been saying this all along! pic.twitter.com/L506g9Aq4z
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2019
I Need to Acquire a Quirky Personality Defect
My great uncle died recently . . . of the people who spoke at his funeral, the thing that everyone seemed to zero in on was that he didn’t like to have to tell people how to do something more than once. He told you once and if you didn’t get it, he got angry about it.
I wonder what people will say at my funeral? I don’t know that I have a distinguishing trait that everyone knows.
In any case, I’m going to start telling people things once and once only and then yelling at them if I have to repeat myself.
My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: Frank Robinson
Frank Robinson played and managed for a number of teams, but I remember him best as part of the Baltimore Oriole teams managed by Earl Weaver, with Mark Belanger, Davey Johnson, Boog Powell, Don Buford, Paul Blair, Andy Etchebarren, Elrod Hendricks, Dave McNally, Mike Cuellar, Tom Phoebus, and fellow Hall of Famers Brooks Robinson and Jim Palmer.
RIP Frank Robinson
God’s Silence
“But just think of Gethsemane, Vicar. Christ’s disciples fell asleep. They hadn’t understood the meaning of the last supper, or anything. And when the servants of the law appeared, they ran away. And Peter denied him. Christ had known his disciples for three years. They’d lived together day in and day out — but they never grasped what he meant. They abandoned him, to the last man. And he was left alone. That must have been painful. Realizing that no one understands. To be abandoned when you need someone to rely on — that must be excruciatingly painful. But the worse was yet to come. When Jesus was nailed to the cross — and hung there in torment — he cried out — ‘God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?’ He cried out as loud as he could. He thought that his heavenly father had abandoned him. He believed everything he’d ever preached was a lie. The moments before he died, Christ was seized by doubt. Surely that must have been his greatest hardship? God’s silence.”
Winter Light
Youth E-Cig Use Increases Odds of Cigarette Use?
AMERICAN ADOLESCENTS who smoke e-cigarettes are more than four times as likely to try a cigarette … as those who have no prior tobacco use history, a new cohort study finds.
“Youth E-Cig Use Increases Odds of Cigarette Use,” US News
This is from a report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, using data from a study between 2013 and 2016 of youths aged 12 to 15 years who had never used cigarettes, e-cigarettes or other tobacco products at the beginning of the time period.
Prior e-cigarette users had 4.09 times the odds of having ever smoked a cigarette compared with peers with no previous tobacco use.
That’s the stat I see cited most often, always incorrectly, regarding kids and vaping. The report doesn’t say 4 times more likely to start smoking cigarettes, it says 4 times more likely to have ever smoked a cigarette.
Sometimes it’s cited incorrectly (I suspect) intentionally in support of an agenda, and sometimes it’s cited incorrectly just because journalists don’t understand numbers.
Extrapolating their data, the researchers estimated that 820,414 youths had smoked a cigarette over the examined years, with nearly 180,000 of those having used e-cigarettes previously.
In other words, far more of the kids (> 70 percent) smoking cigarettes had never used e-cigarettes.
Another detail of the study never mentioned in the anti-vaping ads:
Because the PATH study data was observational, the researchers admitted their analysis is unable to “establish causal relations or rule out the possibility of residual confounding by underlying risk-taking propensities.”
They can’t say that vaping “causes” smoking. Vaping and smoking are things that kids may tend to do together because, among other reasons, some kids have a propensity for doing things they’re “not supposed to do.”
Sex Dolls vs. Real Women?
A Sun article comparing the merits of sex dolls vs. real women includes an interview with the man below, Nick, seen with his “girlfriend” Kristal, who enjoys many of the same things Nick does, e.g., sitting on the sofa watching football with a beer and a cigarette.
Kristal retails for £6,000, about $7,800 in US dollars.
Nick is described — superfluously, in my opinion — as “single with no children.”
Arizona is the Next California?
Unfortunately, my experience in Arizona … has been that people have zero ability to correlate specific elements of public policy with particular outcomes. In particular, people who flee California because it is too expensive and dysfunctional come to Arizona and immediately begin voting for exactly the same policies that made California expensive and dysfunctional.
Coyote Blog
Why is Sexual Harassment the Only Workplace Malfunction That Merits National Attention?
Many workers in Silicon Valley have said tech companies aren’t doing enough to promote women and minorities, or to stamp out misogyny and harassment. — wsj.com
“Not doing enough” . . . I remember last year a female engineer at Uber wrote in a blog post that she was being harassed and mistreated and Uber actually hired the former attorney general of the United States to launch an investigation.
One woman!
The assertion that Uber in particular and Silicon Valley in general are cesspools of misogyny is based on confirmation bias and small sample sizes.
Uber has more than 16,000 employees in 600 cities and 65 countries. If you’re inclined to believe that women are more virtuous and vulnerable than men, then the reported experience of one person out of 16,000 may be enough to confirm you in your view of the world.
A man (or woman) hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest, as Paul Simon has sagely pointed out.
To be fair, the ensuing investigation resulted in the firing of 20 Uber employees, so that raises the sample size from 0.00625 percent to 0.125 percent.
There are lots of ways other than sexual harassment to create a hostile workplace: verbal intimidation, favoritism, overwork, lying to you, lying about you, stealing credit for your work, evaluating you unfairly, threatening you with the loss of your job . . . the list goes on!
Men can lose their wives, lose their kids, destroy their health, all from stress and overwork — and who cares? I’m not saying anyone should care, but why is sexual harassment the only workplace malfunction that merits national attention?
Can we have workplace equity or must we have extra-special handling of one particular grievance?
Thus spoke The Programmer.
5 Questions on the Covington Story
- A group of black men taunted a group of white kids as faggots, incest babies and niggers (one kid was black). Would the story have been reported differently if the men were white and the kids were black?
- Would the story have been reported differently (or at all) if a white guy was banging a drum in an Indian kid’s face?
- Would the story have been reported differently if no one was wearing a MAGA hat?
- Would the story have been reported differently if the kids were girls instead of boys? (Again, assume no MAGA hats.)
- Should morality of action be calculated based on race, sex and hats? (I’m going to say no to this one.)
Starbucks Open-Door Poses Challenge
After a much publicized confrontation in a Philadelphia store last year, Starbucks now aims to ensure all visitors to its cafes are treated like paying customers, regardless of whether they purchase anything. All visitors can now use cafe bathrooms and also occupy tables. That policy has brought its own challenges, says a new report in Bloomberg, particularly for baristas and other staff who are forced to regularly confront drug use, homelessness, and mental illness.
LinkedIn