This document should be in the Smithsonian. It should be preserved as part of the written history of American democracy. I can hear the spirit of Thomas Paine saying, "Well done." https://t.co/vSs4BpfBU4
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) October 13, 2024
People I Thought Were Dead
- Jim Bakker – televangelist
- Richard Benjamin – actor
- Joe Biden – U.S. president
- Elizabeth Dole – U.S. cabinet secretary
- Sandy Koufax – baseball player
- Kreskin – mentalist and TV host
- Ralph Nader – consumer activist
- Richard Petty – auto racer
Updates
- Jimmy Carter, died 12/29/2024, age 100
- Kreskin, died 12/10/2024, age 89
Be Careful What You Wish For
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) October 8, 2024
I live in the greater L.A. area, so I’m familiar with Gascón. How many times has this happened over the past few years? Voters elect “progressive” DAs, only to vote them out at the first opportunity when it turns out that progressive prosecutors don’t want to prosecute anyone, resulting in high-crime areas that no one wants to live in.
A couple of years ago in San Francisco, voters didn’t even wait till the next election. DA Chesa Boudin was ousted in a recall election. I’m not as familiar with Boudin, but if you’re too progressive for San Francisco, you’ve got to be completely off the charts.
Be careful what you wish for.
Cockiness Gets a Scolding
Let’s Play Some Soccer!
"This Is about Biology': New Hampshire Girls Soccer Players Boycott Game over Male Opponent https://t.co/30nbu2XWwT
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) October 3, 2024
The team didn’t boycott the game, but several of the players did, which required the coach to fill out the roster with JV players. According to the story, this happens in every game that the Kearsarge Regional High School team plays — multiple girls on the opposing team refuse to play.
I don’t blame them. Aside from being unfair, it’s obviously totally unsafe.
I’ve seen men beating the hell out of women in boxing and MMA. I read about a high school girl suffering brain damage from being hit in the face by a volleyball spiked by a boy. I’ve heard about high school girls getting their teeth knocked out by boys playing on girls’ field hockey teams. I’ve seen a large high school boy playing girls basketball and every time he moved, girls were being knocked to the floor.
Even in sports where men compete against men or boys compete against boys, there are often multiple competitive divisions depending on the age and/or size of the competitors. Boxing and wrestling have weight classes. Junior hockey has age brackets in two-year increments. A team of 14-year-olds can’t compete fairly or safely against a team of 18-year-olds.
There’s actually a law in New Hampshire prohibiting high school boys from playing girls’ sports but the Kearsarge School Board voted this summer to ignore the law. I didn’t even know you could vote to ignore laws.
Refusing to play is one method of protesting male intrusion into women’s sports, but if I were coaching a team of girls competing against Kearsarge, I wouldn’t fill out the roster with JV players, I’d fill out the roster with players from the boys varsity team and tell them, “Just say ‘I identify as female.’ Anything beyond that, you say “Talk to my coach.”
Now let’s play some soccer!
My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: Pete Rose
Pete Rose was the greatest baseball player I’ve ever seen. If I had to explain baseball to an alien from another planet, I’d show the alien a highlight reel of Pete Rose.
Rose is baseball’s all-time leader in hits, won three World Series championships, three batting titles, one Most Valuable Player Award, two Gold Gloves, and the Rookie of the Year Award. He made 17 All-Star appearances in an unequaled five positions (second baseman, left fielder, right fielder, third baseman, and first baseman).
Yankees pitcher Whitey Ford gave Rose the nickname “Charlie Hustle” after Rose sprinted to first base after drawing a walk, which he did his entire career. (Current players rarely sprint to first base under any circumstances.) Despite, or because of, the derisive manner in which Ford intended it, Rose adopted that nickname as a badge of honor. There’s another version of the story in which Ford bestowed the nickname after Rose, playing in left field, tried to climb the fence to catch a Mickey Mantle home run that was about a hundred feet over his head.
Rose was placed on baseball’s “permanently ineligible” list in 1989 by then-Commissioner Bart Giamatti, allegedly for gambling on baseball games, although MLB made no formal finding on the gambling allegations, and Rose continued to deny them for many years afterward.
Giamatti died of a heart attack eight days after announcing the Rose ban, which I’ve always viewed as a message from God.
As far as the gambling, I think every baseball player should be required to place a bet on his own team every game. You’d see a lot more players sprinting to first base, I assure you.
Rose still holds dozens of MLB and National League records, including the highest career fielding percentage for a right fielder at 99.14% and the highest National League career fielding percentage for a left fielder at 99.07%.
RIP Pete Rose
Perverse Incentives
CORRUPTION: Ever wonder how politicians get so rich? They funnel billions into NGOs where their families work and who pay them to speak and to serve on boards. The $24 billion California spent on the homeless crisis went almost exclusively to NGOs who rely on a steady stream of… pic.twitter.com/48g8WkO9Y0
— @amuse (@amuse) September 22, 2024
This is common. People make money advocating for the solution to a social problem. They don’t solve the problem, they advocate for a solution to the problem.
If the problem were solved, their money stream would dry up. Perverse incentives, as the poster says.
Fear
NBC: Trump Is Just Asking to Get Shot
So he was asking for it, according to NBC. Use fierce rhetoric, get shot. No mention of the possible effect of fierce rhetoric used *against* Trump.https://t.co/yPQEnLSujz
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) September 16, 2024
Another Instance When it Would Be Great to Have Functioning Media
If indeed this turns out to be true, which is looking increasingly likely, consider the character of the presidential candidate that would cheat in a debate, allowing her staff to negotiate the questions in advance, the camera angles, the required fact checking of her opponent,… https://t.co/RrmYoy151N
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) September 15, 2024
I’d like to see CBS or NBC or some other news outlet look into this but I don’t think it’s going to happen. Everyone seems to be on the same team.
Luck and Skill
Every endeavor involves 2 things: skill and luck. Depending on what the endeavor is, more of one may be needed than the other.
Concert pianist? Your odds of playing all the right notes in a concerto by luck are pretty low.
Actor? Anyone can do it. Bodybuilders, wrestlers, singers, comedians. Luck is paramount.
Technologist? My experience in software engineering is that it’s a skills-based profession. If you know things other people don’t know and you can solve problems other people can’t solve, you are the king or queen of the programming jungle.
That said, I can’t recommend a course or bootcamp or resume trick, and in a bad market, you may need some luck, but it’s a skills-based profession. Skills and hard work. Get behind the mule and plow.
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Jesus and Mo: Lesions
Political Suicide Averted
Gavin Newsom Slaps Down Democrats’ Attempt To Give Home Loans To Illegal Migrants https://t.co/NPkK9lDjDu via @dailycaller
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) September 8, 2024
I heard Nancy Pelosi on Bill Maher’s show saying this bill was a great idea. Maher suggested that free houses for migrants is maybe not a great idea.
“It’s not free housing,” Pelosi said. “It’s making the American dream available to more people.”
HAHA. “It’s making the American dream available to people who are not Americans.” People who’ve lived and worked in the US their whole lives can’t afford to buy houses. Especially in California.
Let’s say we did give free down payments to illegal immigrants. How are they going to make the payments? It’s illegal for them to hold a job. How are they going to pay for insurance, property tax, HOA, upkeep?
To Newsom’s credit, he recognizes political suicide when he sees it.
Complacent Mental Laziness
I can’t find even one comment on this LinkedIn post from someone who went to X and did a search for “billie eilish donald trump” and discovered, as I did, that that video is all over the platform. It’s not deleted.
Or forget the search. Even the phrasing is an obvious lie. How can you retweet something if it’s been banned?
Complacent mental laziness is a national disease at this point.
A Simple Equation That No One Can Figure Out
‘A Disaster’: Black Chicago Residents Slam Democrats For Ignoring Them In Favor Of Migrants https://t.co/Eg1Zy6gThR via @dailycaller
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) August 24, 2024
Black Americans vote for Democrats in very high numbers. They have an unswerving loyalty to the Democratic party. If Kamala Harris literally spit in their face, they would still vote for her.
This isn’t the way to exercise political power, or any other kind of power. The way to exercise political power is “I’ll give you what you want but only if you give me what I want.”
If you announce in advance “I’ll give you what you want (my vote) no matter what.” you’ll spend your life begging for a few crumbs, which will not be forthcoming. No elected official cares what you want, or what you think, or what you say, because you’ve already given them what they want.
Chicago has probably not elected a Republican to any political office in my lifetime. But Chicago is just one example. There are other cities in America where Black residents live in terrible conditions, every elected official is a Democrat and it’s been that way for decades.
This is a pretty simple equation that somebody should have figured out by now.
The Melting Pot
https://t.co/NJuaJumx5R, https://t.co/DaaxpAmyoB
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) August 7, 2024
The “outrage” seems to be over Trump’s implication that Kamala Harris is using racial identity in an opportunistic manner. Which she probably is, making it a fair topic of discussion.
Let’s go back a few years to President Obama. His mother was white, his father was black. I never heard anyone refer to him as anything other than black.
Do you think it would have been silly if President Obama had identified as white? It would have been silly, right? But he had one white parent and one black parent, so if you can just pick the race of one parent and say “that’s what I am”, ignoring the race of the other parent, what difference does it make which one you pick?
To me, the only accurate description would be to say that he’s mixed-race, but mixed-race doesn’t get you 12 percent of the vote, so he was black.
My son is mixed-race. His mom is Asian. I’ve never heard anyone — including me, him, or his mom — refer to him as being white or Asian. I don’t think it would make sense. He’d have to erase one parent and half of his heritage. He’s mixed.
To the right is a picture of Kamala Harris’s parents. Her father is Jamaican, her mother is Indian. It’s hard to tell from one photo, but her father looks like a light-skinned black man. His skin color doesn’t look much different from his wife’s.
Is Kamala Harris now identifying as black and that’s it? That’s a rhetorical question because I don’t really know, but if she is, it does seem opportunistic to me, or at least open to question.
Google “Bugs” in Trump Searches
Google's "explanations" are a complete joke. https://t.co/nluR7FtC1c
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) August 7, 2024
Google’s “explanation” for this is a complete joke as is their “explanation” for why searching for “Donald Trump” brings up information about Kamala Harris.
Software engineers have always called software errors “bugs,” because if you call something an error, it implies that someone is responsible for making the error, whereas if you call something a bug, it sounds like it’s nobody’s fault, really, just something that crawled in there of its own volition, like a cockroach in your kitchen.
You could also use the word “bug” for something that was not an error at all. You did it on purpose but got caught out and need to disavow it. That’s what Google is doing here.
This seems very important to me. It’s not good at all and here’s why: Google has become synonymous with online search. No one says, “You should look that up on the internet.” They say, “You should Google that.”
And as a result, Google wields immense power over how people see the world. If Google doesn’t want people to think too much about the attempted assassination of a former president, oops, it doesn’t come up in autocomplete. If Google prefers Candidate X to Candidate Y, “bugs” cause information about Candidate X to be displayed in response to a search for Candidate Y. It’s a brainwashing operation.
I’d like to see something done about this. I don’t know what can be done or who can do it, but I was glad this week to see Google on the losing end of a landmark antitrust suit, so maybe there is hope.
I Don’t Believe in God, I Believe in Vouchers
We spent a few days in Orlando . . . coming back to Orange County, we had a connecting flight booked through Atlanta. The Orlando flight was supposed to take off at 3:20 p.m. but there was (allegedly) a tornado watch in effect, which delayed the flight until 4:30, then 5:30, then 6:15.
By that time, we were guaranteed of missing the connecting flight in Atlanta, so we rebooked on an 8:50 flight from Atlanta to Orange County, the last Orange County flight of the night. Unfortunately, the flight from Orlando to Atlanta was delayed again, didn’t take off until 7:30, and we missed the 8:50 flight.
There were weather issues throughout the Southeast, a lot of flights were delayed or cancelled, and the line we had to stand in at the Delta customer service center was very, very long. We were already able to use the Delta app to book a flight from Atlanta to Orange County for the next morning, so really all we wanted was a voucher for a hotel room to stay the night.
After a couple of hours in line, we made it to the front, where a young man offered to book us on a flight the next day.
“Thanks,” I said, “but we already did that. We just want to get a voucher for a hotel room because we’re stuck here for the night.”
After some consultation with his colleagues, he informed us that Delta only gives vouchers when the delay is their own fault, e.g., a maintenance issue, a crew member doesn’t show up, etc.
“Which never happens,” I said. “Delays are always weather.”
“Usually they’re weather,” he conceded. “But weather is considered an act of God and it’s out of our control, so we don’t give vouchers.”
“Well, see, I don’t believe in God. I believe in vouchers. And if there were a God, he would want me to have a voucher. What would Jesus do?”
Maybe I was hitting him with too much rapid-fire theology because he didn’t respond, so I helped him with the answer: “Jesus would give me the voucher.”
I could have gone on with this for some time, but I couldn’t see any scenario that ended with us getting the voucher so we gave up and left.
We talked over our options, but by that time, it was 1 a.m. and we had a 9 a.m. flight, so it probably didn’t make sense to try to book a hotel, get a shuttle, check in, pay for the room, sleep a few hours, then get a shuttle back, go through airport security again, etc.
That’s the way the process works. According to our boarding pass, a Delta aircraft was going to leave the Orlando airport at 3:20 p.m. but it didn’t. The passengers had to wait four hours for the plane to take off, as a result of which, many of us missed our connecting flight in Atlanta because the connecting flights went out right on time. Passengers have to wait for the airline, but the airline will not wait for the passengers.
In fact, it’s a windfall for the airline because I assume they sold the seats that were supposed to be occupied by delayed Orlando passengers to standby fliers. Essentially, they sold the same seats twice.
And don’t get the idea that there was a tornado sweeping through Orlando. I’m sure Delta had access to more weather data than I did and they decided it wasn’t safe to fly to Atlanta any earlier than they did. But how safe does it have to be? There are no sure things in life. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
The weather in Orlando looked fine to me. There were no “acts of God” going on. It wasn’t even raining.
Maybe some people can fall asleep on the floor of an airport but I can’t. I tried but I was awake all night. I did have some fun walking around saying “Thanks for flying Delta” to other stranded passengers.
Actually the whole vacation was an exercise in sleep deprivation. We took what I guess you could call a “red eye” into Orlando, leaving Orange County at 7:50 p.m. with a layover in Salt Lake City, and arriving in Orlando at 6 a.m. the next morning.
Again, some people can sleep on airplanes, but I cannot fall asleep in a sitting position.
And finally, I don’t want to leave you with the impression that I didn’t enjoy the vacation because I did. I hate travel, but not because I don’t enjoy being in a new place; it’s mostly the overhead of going to and fro.
What Has Happened to Major League Baseball?
Blake Snell of the San Francisco Giants, the league’s reigning Cy Young Award winner, pitched the first no-hit game of his career a couple of nights ago, beating the Cincinnati Reds 3-0.
Not only was it Snell’s first career no-hitter, it was the first complete game of his career. What has major league baseball come to when a starting pitcher wins a Cy Young award without throwing one single complete game?!
It’s not as common as you might think for a reigning Cy Young winner to throw a no-hitter. It’s only happened five times before.
Going back to when I was growing up watching baseball, Bob Gibson did it in 1971. As the Cy Young winner in 1970, Gibson pitched 20 complete games. That’s for one season. In his career, Gibson had 255 complete games.
Baseball’s a totally different game now. Much worse.
Enlightenment is the Ultimate Disappointment
Perhaps I had inadvertently brushed up against the Buddhist axiom, that enlightenment is the ultimate disappointment. “From the mountain you see the mountain,” wrote Emerson.