DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

We have seen the future, and it sucks.

Archive for the 'Think about it.' Category

How Serious Is the Feral Pig Problem?

18th March 2024

The Spectator.

Let’s play a guessing game: I’m a dangerous force threatening Americans’ health, safety and way of life. We largely rely on government agencies to monitor and manage me. What to do about me is still a matter of debate, as is the severity of the menace I actually create. The media is likely sensationalizing the threat. A new study suggests I’m “not as bad as originally thought,” that reports of the devastation I’m causing were “premature,” and that if you’re outside a specific subset of people I disproportionately affect, you wouldn’t know I exist. Still, there are interactive maps to track my movement, and I’m reported to be related to a new, “hard-to-eradicate, super” strain invading from a foreign country.

What am I?

Yep, you guessed it. I’m a feral pig.

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Thought for the Day

18th March 2024

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“Reduce Poverty Migration to Zero” – German Politicians Propose Crackdown on Migrants Sending Billions to Their Home Countries

18th March 2024

Read it.

Every year, migrants and refugees transfer billions of euros from Germany to family members in their home countries, with the Bundesbank estimating this to be at least €6.8 billion per year.

I suspect this is dwarfed by the amount of money sent to Mexico every year by ‘migrants’, legal and illegal.

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Artillery: Fire Weaver and Long Spike

18th March 2024

Read it.

In the last year Greece has spent about $400 million on a unique Israeli combat system. The new Fire Weaver Fire Control system uses Orbiter 3 UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) to seek out targets and automatically have a Spike NLOS missile launched from an aircraft, ground vehicle or ship to hit the target. Israel developed this system over several decades and it is now widely used in the Israeli military.

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Real Wealth vs Claims on Wealth: Bitcoin 2020s vs USDollar 1800s

17th March 2024

Read it.

The following excerpts are from Tragedy and Hope. They detail the monetary environment from 1914 to the 1930s. When looked at independently the context helps explain the confusion we find across today’s monetary landscape.

These passages help us better understand money and the lack of order that takes hold when international players desire a change to the system. The greatest challenge then and now was the battle between real wealth and claims on wealth.

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How to Celebrate Orthodox Lent

17th March 2024

The Spectator.

Lent which, under Orthodox tradition means no eggs, meat or dairy (or even fish for designated periods), can be weirdly enjoyable, if only for the break in routine and the longings it unleashes. Besides, set it beside Ramadan, when during the hours of daylight even water can’t be drunk, and you realize things could be a whole lot worse.

Today is Forgiveness Sunday (Sunday of Cheesefare). Full Great Lent starts officially tomorrow.

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The Need for Physical Media

17th March 2024

Read it.

As a scholar of Arthurian literature, particularly that of England in the 15th century, I have a professional appreciation for the existence of physical media. If, instead of diligently writing out his Le Morte Darthur, Sir Thomas Malory had only told his story aloud to friends, relatives, and his gaoler, we almost certainly would not have had the benefit of it over the intervening centuries that have passed since his death. Like so many other fascinating but ephemeral pieces of the past, it would have entirely disappeared, leaving future generations deprived of that which they did not even have the chance to know.

Physical connexions to the past are not only of interest to scholars of literature and history; both well-known texts and more recent discoveries such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library are obvious examples of how ancient written works quite clearly continue to influence the modern world, shaping the religious beliefs and practises of countless people. Such physical records are vital for providing insight into contemporary differences and debates, but they also serve as an objective authority that can speak for the past in a way that no credible scholar can simply dismiss without cause. It is for this reason that George Orwell’s 1984, with its nightmare vision of a totalitarian future, portrays a world in which The Party endlessly destroys and rewrites every record of the past. Once history is destroyed, truth ceases to be a matter of conformity to objective facts and becomes instead a matter of compliance with the powerful.

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Decline Invitations

17th March 2024

Read it.

Skip stand-ups and all-hands. Evade Easter brunches, birthdays, and graduations.

Decline invitations by default. When you’re essential to an event, its host will notify you.

If you must attend an unfun event, make it memorable! Play pranks and plan ruses!

Don’t ghost. Never leave others hanging. Decline invitations with ample notice.

You’re going to die. Spend your time unapologetically. Be polite but direct. Never succumb to obligation.

Good advice.

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Another Thought for the Day

17th March 2024

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Thought for the Day

17th March 2024

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Quotation of the Day

17th March 2024

“Feminists are all about equality until a bill comes or a fight starts.” — Taylor the Fiend (on YouTube)

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A Cloud of Witnesses

17th March 2024

Read it.

A little over a century ago, in his 1920 encyclical Principi Apostolorum Petro, Pope Benedict XV declared the 4th century poet, theologian, and writer, Saint Ephrem the Syrian, the Deacon of Edessa, to be a Doctor of the Church, a high and rare honor of the universal church. The 24th person so recognized since the Middle Ages, Saint Ephrem, was the first who did not come from the Western (Latin) Church or Eastern (Greek) Church. He was a speaker of Syriac and wrote exclusively in that language. In his encyclical, the pope mentioned the many clerics and bishops who encouraged him to take this step, especially the patriarchs of the Maronite, Chaldean, and Syriac Catholic churches, all spiritual descendants of Saint Ephrem.

The ‘Syriac World’ (some prefer the term Assyrian or Aramean) is the ethnic and religious community that grew out of the Syriac language and Christianity in Late Antiquity—Syriac being a branch of Aramaic, the lingua franca of most of the Middle East in the centuries before the coming of Christ. This status was retained for centuries, until Syriac was displaced by Arabic with the triumph of Islam. The roots of Syriac especially look to Edessa (the modern city of Urfa in Turkey), the city of Saint Ephrem. From there, as much as from nearby Antioch and more distant Jerusalem, and from the peregrinations of Saint Paul, “Christianity, an Asiatic religion,” spread both east and west. The Syriac world became a largely Christian one, best understood in a group of often contending, fissiparous religious bodies, which were often in conflict with their counterparts in Constantinople and Rome: the (Assyrian) Church of the East (disparagingly called the Nestorian Church); the Syrian Orthodox Church (sometimes called the Jacobite Church); various Indian branches of these churches; and related church bodies using Syriac and in communion with the pope in Rome, such as the Maronite Catholic, Chaldean Catholic, Syriac Catholic, Syro-Malabar, and Syro-Malankaran churches. Today, all of these churches have diaspora communities in the West, which are sometimes larger and richer than the original communities from where they sprang in the East.

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NY Subway Rider Who Shot Assailant With His Own Gun Won’t Face Charges

17th March 2024

Read it.

Dajuan Robinson (left) was shot with his own gun by Younece Obuad in the latest episode of NYC subway bloodshed (via New York Post)

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Thought for the Day

16th March 2024

Image

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Do Current Trends in Drone Technology Favor Offense or Defense?

16th March 2024

Tyler Cowen.

At first people thought that drones favored defense, since Ukraine, in its war against Russia, was defending successfully with drones. But now Ukraine is using drones to attack Russia, and Russian oil refinery assets and warships. It is less obvious that drones are defensive assets on net. Furthermore, Russia is now using more electronic jamming, and more weapons that are drone-avoiding or drone-resistant, thereby limiting the defensive value of drones.

 

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Let’s Be Poor

15th March 2024

The American Mind.

I learned about the “Poverty Simulation” by means of a colleague’s letter to campus announcing such an event at the central Pennsylvania liberal arts university where I work. My colleague explained that “many families” in the local communities around the campus are in poverty. The figure she gave was 6 percent, leading me to wonder if “many” is the best term used to describe a phenomenon not being experienced by 94 percent of the people under discussion; also, since the national poverty rate is closer to 12 percent, it would be worth noting that the local poverty rate is extraordinarily low.

In any case, the school looks to involve our students in collaborative work with local communities, and so my colleague argued that they should know something about all this poverty. Such knowledge will require “dispell[ing]…preconceived notions about the experience and roots of poverty,” and an excellent method for dispelling such notions is “through experiencing and sensitizing participants to the realities of poverty.” The Poverty Simulation, I learned from my colleague’s letter, is “not a game [but rather] a role play in which participants get to experience the difficult choices” of those in poverty.

I wonder whether those of us who were actually poor when we were younger can test out of this for credit.

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Watch the Pigs Fly….

15th March 2024

Read it.

Charges will not be filed against a 32-year-old man who shot a gun Thursday in a crowded New York City subway car, with authorities saying he was acting in self-defense when he took a gun from an aggressor and shot him with it.

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Ginsburg Family: Award for Musk Is ‘an Affront’ to RBG

15th March 2024

Read it.

The family of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is sounding off about this year’s class of honorees for a female leadership award named after the liberal icon.

Not unlike the feelings of the families of people who create and fund foundations (Rockefeller, Ford) and see the trustees of such foundations underwrite all sorts of Woke shit that the creators would have found offensive. Welcome to our world, proglodytes.

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Quotation of the Day

15th March 2024

“The law of supply and demand is not taught in Gender Studies.” — “Red Pill Guy”

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Understanding Our History

15th March 2024

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

One of the weird things about the Cloud people is how they talk about history as if it is a spirit force or a god. In his State of the Union speech, Biden kept saying things like “history is watching us” and “history requires us” as if “history” was the name of the guy controlling the simulation. He is not the only one who does this. In fact, he never talked like this until the rest of the Cloud people started doing it.

One reason for talking about history this way is it gives them a false sense of moral authority for their various schemes. They claim that history moves toward some paradise, so if their schemes advance us toward that paradise, then they must be on the side of history. It is all nonsense, of course, but nonsense has been the fuel of fanatics and lunatics since the dawn of time.

Even with a sober-minded ruling class, however, there would still be this need to shape history so that the present feels inevitable. Much of what has brought us to the present crisis is the shaping of history to fit the causes of the moment. Our progressive ruling class has been rewriting history since Gettysburg, maybe even since the Battle of Naseby, because the future is certain, but the past is unpredictable.

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Missing Lagos

14th March 2024

ZMan waxes nostalgic.

Baltimore combines the mindset of the postal clerk with the intellectual dexterity of the population.

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David Chapelle on Donald Trump

14th March 2024

YouTube.

Chapelle characterizes Trump as “an honest liar”.

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South Africa Says Its Citizens Serving in Israel’s Military Will Be Arrested

14th March 2024

Read it.

Many American, British, European and other foreign-born men and women have long served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and often they are dual citizens. As an example, earlier this week Israel announced the death of 19-year old Sgt. Itay Chen, a dual US-Israeli citizen who had been serving in the IDF, at the hands of Hamas.

But South Africa, which brought an International Criminal Court (ICC) case against Israel over allegations of genocide against Palestinians, has issued a new declaration forbidding its citizens from joining or assisting in any way with the Israeli military.

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Thought for the Day

13th March 2024

Climate Guilt

Me, too.

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The First Race Scientist

13th March 2024

Quilette.

The concept of race, we are often told, is a social construct with no basis in biological reality. Some have argued that it was invented by white Europeans for the express purpose of constructing a racial hierarchy in order to justify slavery. According to cultural critic Kenan Malik, “Racism gave birth to race. The ancestors of today’s African Americans were not enslaved because they were black. They became classified as a distinct, and inferior, race as a means of justifying their enslavement.” This view is even espoused by some scientific institutions.

And yet, by analysing your genome, companies like 23andMe can describe your ancestry, and their reports match people’s own accounts of their racial ancestry to a high degree of accuracy. As humans spread across the globe, they tended to breed within ancestral groups, such that gene flow within groups became greater than gene flow between groups. This led to a pattern of “shared-ancestry clustering” that is still apparent across the world—as a result, we can usually differentiate at a glance between people whose ancestry can be traced back multiple generations in, say, Japan, from those whose ancestors came from Ethiopia or Norway. It is these clusterings that we refer to by the term “race”—a common-language term that predates Enlightenment science.

Despite the fact that there is obviously some biological underpinning to what we call “race,” many people claim that “races” are purely sociological. They argue that races could only be real if they were clearly demarcated, discrete categories and thus countable, or that for races to be real, they must be essentialist categories: i.e., there must be at least one trait shared by all the people of Race A and by no one who is not of Race A.

In support of this, leading geneticist Richard Lewontin pointed out that genes vary just as much within a race as between races. While this is true, it does not negate the reality of races. Our ancestry is manifest in correlated patterns of genetic variation, and these correlated patterns are both real and meaningful and reveal our ancestral groupings. Furthermore, while many dismiss race as only skin deep, AI software can discern a patient’s race just by analysing medical X-rays. The AI cannot just be reflecting human bias when it does so, since it is discerning patterns of which human experts are unaware.

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Transgender Golfer Booted After Woman’s Pro Tour Adopts ‘Biological at Birth’ Rules

12th March 2024

Read it.

“Effective immediately, I have been removed (banned) from the next 3 NXXT tournaments that I already signed up for and been approved to play,” wrote transgender golfer Hailey Davidson last week.

The message came after he/she was removed from the NXXT Women’s Pro Tour, who has now announced that participants must be “a biological female at birth” to participate in its events, according to Fox News and the NY Post.

Davidson expressed his/her discontent because he/she was already crushing the woman’s field: “They changed their policy mid season, after me signing up already and being 2nd in Player of the Year race.”

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Burn the Boats

12th March 2024

ZMan peeks behind the curtain.

One of the things the paleos missed when they began to flesh out managerialism in the last century is how it assumes the qualities of democracy. This is something Robert Dahl picked up in his analysis of American government against the standard of democracy he developed. While the institutions of America were not democratic and could never be democratic, the people in these institutions were motivated by a democratic sense in that they wanted to act according to public will.

This explains, in part, how our institutions have grown increasingly authoritarian over the last three decades, while the people running them have become obsessed with defending what they call “our democracy.” They do not view democracy as a process, but rather as a goal. The truly democratic society is open, and the people freely exchange the right ideas. Defending democracy in this sense means dragging the people to this place, by force if necessary.

This democratic sensibility within democracy is important in understanding the reckless behavior of the people running the institutions. If one were to pick a single word to describe the cause of the current crisis it would be “reckless”. Whether it is reckless foreign policy adventures or poorly conceived domestic fads, the ruling class seems to take pleasure in reckless projects. They operate like gamblers with unlimited credit that they assume will be repaid by others.

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Thought for the Day

12th March 2024

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Thought for the Day

11th March 2024

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Thought for the Day

11th March 2024

Infographic: How Couples Met | Statista

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Thought for the Day

10th March 2024

Free Range Comic Strip for March 07, 2024

It’s often more trouble than it’s worth.

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Ireland’s Conservatives Jubilant as Government Loses Family Redefinition Referendum

9th March 2024

Read it.

The Irish electorate looks like having solidly rejected two constitutional amendments that would have erased the word “woman” from the Irish constitution and altered the legal definition of family in what is shaping up to be a 70-30 shock victory for tradition over the nation’s well-financed NGO lobby.

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The West’s Reckoning?

9th March 2024

Read it.

Western leaders are experiencing two stunning events: defeat in Ukraine, genocide in Palestine. The first is humiliating, the other shameful. Yet, they feel no humiliation or shame. Their actions show vividly that those sentiments are alien to them – unable to penetrate the entrenched barriers of dogma, arrogance and deep-seated insecurities. The last are personal as well as political. Therein lies a puzzle. For, as a consequence, the West has set itself on a path of collective suicide. Moral suicide in Gaza; diplomatic suicide – the foundations laid in Europe, the Middle East and across Eurasia; economic suicide – the dollar-based global financial system jeopardized, Europe deindustrializing. It is not a pretty picture. Astoundingly, this self-destruction is occurring in the absence of any major trauma – external or internal. Therein lies another, related puzzle.

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Thought for the Day: Thank You, Joe Biden

9th March 2024

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Conservatism: “An Instinct, Not an Idea”

9th March 2024

Read it.

Sir Roger Scruton suggested that “conservatism is more of an instinct than an idea.” Apparently, what he meant was that conservatism was not primarily a construct of intellectuals, but something that comes from our natural human dispositions.

Scruton’s insight seems to be corroborated by research on the connection between human personality and political ideology. Psychologists have identified correlations between certain personality traits and ideological and political preferences. These findings suggest that there is a lot in the conservatism-progressivism divide that results from differences in personality traits.

A leading approach to the study of human personality today, called The Big Five, identifies five dimensions of the human personality: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience, and emotional stability (or, conversely, neuroticism). Researchers interested in assessing the extent to which differences in personality affect ideological inclinations and political choices seek to identify possible associations of these five personality traits with specific political ideologies.

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Robots & Retards

8th March 2024

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

Anyway, that is the show this week. It is about how the decline in intelligence will impact our live and society. The people who think AI will solve it or that robots will pick up the slack have not thought about the problem hard enough. All of those things will make the decline worse for the people with anything on the ball. Imagine Idiocracy by terminators are in charge instead of morons.

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Victory for Students

7th March 2024

Read it.

An earthquake has shaken Republican politics in Texas. Sixteen GOP state representatives who previously voted against school choice were on the ballot for the March 5 primary. Six won, six lost, and four now face runoffs. Given the advantages of incumbency, this outcome is staggering. The results are clear: Texas Republicans want school choice, and they’re happy to vote out politicians who don’t.

Some of the biggest opponents to school choice in the Texas House won’t return to the legislature in 2025. These include Steve Allison, Ernest Bailes, Travis Clardy, Glenn Rogers, Hugh Shine, and Reggie Smith. Also, Reps. DeWayne Burns, Justin Holland, John Kuempel, and Gary VanDeavers face highly competitive runoffs—and it’s entirely possible the incumbents lose each one.

School choice indeed was on the ballot. Corey DeAngelis, an education researcher and well-known “school choice evangelist,” calls the results a clear “mandate for school choice in Texas.” Unseating or forcing a runoff for 77 percent of sitting state representatives is astounding. Republicans who backed the government school monopoly—and they really ought to have known better—now face the likely end of their political careers.

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Quotation of the Day

7th March 2024

“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” — various anonymous clever people

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Thought for the Day

7th March 2024

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School Choice’s Texas-Size Victory

6th March 2024

Read it.

The Texas House of Representatives last year failed to pass a school choice bill even after Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, repeatedly called the lawmakers back into special session. Twenty-one Texas House Republicans joined with all House Democrats to defeat the school choice proposal.

In response, Abbott took a page out of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds’ book. If the Legislature wouldn’t support school choice—which had the support of 88% of Texas Republican voters—then he would find a new Legislature.

When the Iowa Legislature voted down Reynolds’ education savings account proposal in 2022, she endorsed nine pro-school choice candidates who were challenging anti-school choice incumbents. Eight of them won.

 

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Tradwife Ideology Won’t Save You

6th March 2024

The American Mind.

If only ideologies worked. It’s easy to see why they tempt us: they promise to absolve us from having to think about complex practical decisions. They hold out the hope of black and white absolutes. We reach for theory when we sense our prudence coming up short.

But it’s best not to be an ideologue if you can help it. Falling for ideology means inviting dogmatists and snake oil salesmen to make your decisions for you. This is never more true than when it comes to education. The sad fact is that public school isn’t always and everywhere a bad option. Even worse—homeschooling isn’t always a good idea. It depends. You have to figure it out for yourself.

As long as ‘traditionalists’ keep denying the realities pointed out to us by evolutionary psychology, they will flounder around like crabs in a bucket and make no progress.

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San Francisco Voters Deliver Blow to Soft-on-Crime Policies

6th March 2024

Read it.

San Francisco residents on Tuesday voted to let police conduct more vehicle chases and deploy drones and surveillance cameras to fight crime. They also ordered mandatory drug screening for childless adults who receive welfare and housing assistance—benefits that will now be yanked from those who refuse testing.

Both measures passed by wide margins. The police initiative, which voters approved by nearly 20 points, would give law enforcement more leeway in when and why they can chase down suspects fleeing in vehicles. Officers are currently barred from chasing suspected thieves and can only go after those who they believe have committed a violent felony or pose immediate danger to the public. Police would also be able to deploy drones, facial recognition, and other surveillance technology to fight crime.

The welfare measure, which passed by 26 points, would require poor and homeless adults under 65 and without dependent children to be tested for drug use, and if they don’t pass their screening they would have to enter treatment to receive San Francisco’s cash payments and housing assistance. Those who fail a drug test and refuse to receive treatment will not be eligible for benefits.

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The Blame Game

6th March 2024

Steve Sailer.

One of the stranger aspects of the long-running American affirmative action debate is that both supporters and critics of racial quotas seldom admit in public how scarce blacks would be in cognitively elite institutions without the now traditional massive thumb on the scale in their favor.

Liberal racial preference advocates tend to argue as if black representation in prestige positions in percentages close to their share of the population (12 percent or 14 percent, depending on whether or not you count individuals who identify as black and another race) merely requires tie-breakers favoring African-Americans among extremely equal applicants. They present an image of affirmative action as resembling the baseball rule that “a tie goes to the runner”: In the rare instances when the baserunner (black applicant in this analogy) and baseball (nonblack applicant) arrive exactly simultaneously, the umpire is obliged to declare the runner safe.

Who could object to something so trivial?

Racists, that’s who!

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Thought for the Day

6th March 2024

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Thought for the Day

5th March 2024

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Obsolete Occupations

5th March 2024

Wikipedia.

My favorites:

  • Alnagers? (5 P)
  • Elocutionists? (54 P)
  • Germanic seeresses? (12 P)
  • Nazi concentration camp occupations? (1 C, 8 P)

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Trump and the “Corrupt Obstruction” Charge

5th March 2024

Richard Epstein.

Now that the efforts to keep Donald Trump off the ballot were soundly rejected in the Supreme Court in Trump v. Anderson, the largest cloud over the former president’s re-election campaign is Jack Smith’s four-count indictment, which makes no reference to insurrection but alleges only “a conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 [2021] congressional proceeding” to certify the election of the next president.

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Thought for the Day

4th March 2024

Infographic: The State of Global Fertility | Statista

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Thought for the Day

2nd March 2024

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Thought for the Day

1st March 2024

Good advice.

 

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