So Close!

Trader Joe's can be a fun little store, but then some 17-yr-old trying to make a name for him/herself decided they'd be an easy target.  Trader Joe's responded:

A few weeks ago, an online petition was launched calling on us to “remove racist packaging from [our] products.” Following were inaccurate reports that the petition prompted us to take action. We want to be clear: we disagree that any of these labels are racist. We do not make decisions based on petitions. 

We make decisions based on what customers purchase, as well as the feedback we receive from our customers and Crew Members. If we feel there is need for change, we do not hesitate to take action.

So far, so good.

Decades ago, our Buying Team started using product names, like Trader Giotto’s, Trader José’s, Trader Ming’s, etc. We thought then—and still do—that this naming of products could be fun and show appreciation for other cultures. For example, we named our Mexican beer “Trader José Premium” and a couple guacamole products are called “Avocado’s Number” in a kitschy reference to a mathematical theory.  These products have been really popular with our customers, including some budding mathematicians. 

Avogadro's Number is a "mathematical theory"?  It's a number used in chemistry class but nowhere else in the world:

The Avogadro constant (N_A^[1] or L^[2]) is the proportionality factor that relates the number of constituent particles (usually molecules, atoms or ions) in a sample with the amount of substance in that sample. Its SI unit is the reciprocal mole, and it is defined as N_A = 6.02214076×10²³ mol⁻¹.^{[3][1][4][5][6]} It is named after the Italian scientist Amedeo Avogadro.^[7]

A "mathematical theory"?  That it's a number doesn't mean it has anything to do with mathematics.  And a number isn't a "theory".  Stick with what you know, Joe.

They were so close to doing the right thing....

Give Them Masks

If masks are so good at protecting people from coronacooties, what explains this?

New Jersey lawmakers seemed close to supporting legislation on Thursday that could free more than 3,000 prisoners — about 20 percent of the state’s prison population — months before their release dates in response to the extraordinary threat posed by the coronavirus in tightly packed correctional facilities.

Just give them masks and keep them on lockdown.

Update:  Here's another case.  Just give them masks!

Jane Faalataina’s son is among the 47 teens and young adults who have tested positive for COVID-19 inside the walls of California’s youth prisons. So far, his symptoms are minor, but he’s locked in an isolation unit inside a Stockton facility, and his studies are suffering, she said.

The state adult prison system has seen thousands of inmates released early as the coronavirus has surged through those institutions. Faalataina said she wonders why California isn’t willing to do the same for incarcerated youth offenders like her 20-year-old son.

There are around 775 teens and young adults in the facilities. Forty-seven inmates infected with COVID-19 represent 6% of the population.

Read more here: https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article244587752.html#storylink=cpy

Too Emotionally Unstable To Be A Teacher

I've been a teacher for over 20 years.  Yes, it can be a difficult job--so was being a manufacturing manager, so was being a sales coordinator, so was being an army officer.  You know what?  It's called work for a reason.

Yes, we teachers work in a petri dish.  If you're afraid of getting any of the cooties that are out in the world, perhaps you should wear an N95 mask when you go to work--no one will hold it against you.  But this emotional diarrhea is a bit much to take:

We are about to encounter a teacher mental health crisis of massive proportions. In the crucial conversation about how we make things right for our students — and we must — we cannot disregard the well-being of educators.

In this moment, our school leaders should be asking: What is being done to support the emotional needs of the teachers? Do they sleep well at night? Are they equipped with the psychological tools to return to an unfamiliar-looking building where they, in turn, are expected to be the emotional and academic cheerleaders for their students? What happens when, instead of getting the virus, we see educators experience anxiety, panic attacks, or stress-induced ailments? Do schools have the necessary supports in place to care for the mental health of its educators?

I would love to see our schools provide teachers with a mental health day, debriefings with counselors, dedicated meditation spaces, and “break cards” that teachers could use to call an administrator or a member of the support staff into their classroom — no questions asked — should they need time to recenter...

The most traumatic part for me is not whether or not we are in the physical school building; it is that students won’t be able to act like children and teachers won’t be able to act like educators — at least not in the traditional sense...

Teachers need your friendship, your love, and your encouragement now more than ever. They need to know that they are heard and that their fears are valid...

They also need to know that you will support them in whatever decisions they make. For some, returning to the classroom is going to be too much, and that is OK. Don’t crucify them for honoring their mental health...

Pray for teachers. Please pray for me. There’s a long road ahead, and we teachers need all the help we can get.

She needs more than a mental health day.

Modern Struggle Sessions

I've made no secret of the fact that I despise communism and communists.  There are no redeeming qualities in the ideology or in those who hold it.

In 1984 we learned that freedom is "the freedom to say that two plus two makes four.  If that is granted, all else follows."  In the two-part Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Chain Of Command, Captain Picard is captured by a militaristic race, humiliated, tortured, and told to state that he saw five lights when he knew there were only four.

Compelling people to say what they know to be untrue is one method totalitarian organizations use to humiliate people into compliance.  In China under Mao this was done in what were called struggle sessions.  Today it's done under the guise of being "anti-racist", a doctrine that is actually pure racism and hatred.  Those of us who work for large organizations, including government, may soon be subjected to this if we haven't been already, and this author suggests a way to thwart the intent:

Of course, if you find yourself in one of these “training sessions,” you will quickly realize that the whole point is to humiliate you and force you to express loyalty to the approved orthodoxy. Suppose you think — as I do — that the progressive programs that are lately put forth as the solution to “systemic racism” are actually counterproductive and make the situation far worse for African Americans. Can you speak up against the insanity you are going through? Or will word immediately get back to your boss, and to your boss’s boss, that you are a “racist,” whereupon you will promptly be fired?

If you find yourself in one of these things, one strategy is of course to do your best to remain silent, or at least to say as little as possible. I can’t tell you not to follow this strategy. But if it were me, it would not be in my nature to just sit back and accept humiliating accusations of “racism” from people who are idiots and who are also themselves racists as I see it. What’s more, if everybody with a brain just remains silent and allows the totalitarians to proceed without pushback, we gradually — maybe rapidly — lose all of our freedom.

But then, anything you say may be quoted back against you. It’s a tricky situation.

Fortunately, the Manhattan Contrarian has a few handy tips should you find yourself required to show up for one or more of these sessions.

My first tip is, it is a mistake ever to make a declaratory statement of any kind, even “yes,” “no,” or “I understand.” So, if asked to assent to something, or to say something, what do you do? The answer is, always respond with a question. Also, there is no need for the question that you pose to have anything to do with the question that has been posed to you. In fact, the less related your question is to the thing you are being asked to concede, the better. You can also try to ask a question even if no question has been posed to you. The point here would be to try to divert the “trainer” off his or her prepared outline or script, and onto something that challenges their assumptions.

Here are a few questions I have come up with if you want to have some fun:

• Are you a racist? (If no,) How do you know that? What facts do you base that on? (If yes,) So why don’t you stop being a racist?

• Can you provide us with a complete list of all words and terminology that are now deemed racist and/or disrespectful so that we can stop using those words going forward? If you can’t give a complete list, how about 20 (or 30 or 40) examples?

• Do all black lives matter? (Note: Don’t make the mistake of using the phrase “all lives matter,” even in a question. That will get you branded as a “racist.” The question of whether all black lives matter will be a new one on them.). Do the lives of approximately 6500 black men murdered by other black men each year matter more or less than the the lives of the far smaller number of blacks killed by police each year (under 300), let alone the number of unarmed black men killed by police each year (which is around 20 or fewer, although you can’t get a precise figure because the Washington Post data base only includes deaths by shooting)?

• How do you explain the fact that Nigerian-Americans and Ghanaian-Americans have higher household median income than native-born white Americans?

• Does the NBA — where average salaries are multiple millions per year and active players are about 75% black — have an obligation to make itself “look more like America”? If not, why not?

That should be enough to get you off to a good start.

My school district has issued a notice that indicates, at least to me, that Marxist BLM and other so-called anti-racist training is coming our way.  Anyone who knows me knows that I will not be silent.

Update, 7/30/20:  The struggle sessions are important because they divert attention from uncomfortable facts:

No state wears its multicultural veneer more ostentatiously than California. The Golden State’s leaders believe that they lead a progressive paradise, ushering in what theorists Laura Tyson and Lenny Mendonca call “a new progressive era.” Others see California as deserving of nationhood; it reflects, as a New York Times columnist put it, “the shared values of our increasingly tolerant and pluralistic society"...

Despite these progressive intentions, Hispanics and African-Americans—some 45 percent of California’s total population—fare worse in the state than almost anywhere nationwide. Based on cost-of-living estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, 28 percent of California’s African-Americans live in poverty, compared with 22 percent nationally. Fully one-third of Latinos, now the state’s largest ethnic group, live in poverty, compared with 21 percent outside the state. “For Latinos,” notes longtime political consultant Mike Madrid, “the California Dream is becoming an unattainable fantasy.”

Update #2, 7/30/20:  I will not be silent or neutral.  I myself do not support the Marxist ideals of the racist Black Lives Matter organization:

A group of students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign signed a letter of demands to the Federalist Society chapter at the university after the chapter stated it would remain neutral on the Black Lives Matter movement.

Note the following, which appears later in the article:  "there is only one, right, non-debatable stance: Black Lives Matter".  First, so much for diversity.  Second, the capital letters mean something, and I don't support that organization or its aims.

Remember that it was the Red Guards, students, who helped propel China's so-called Cultural Revolution.  I will fight them here.

Update #3, 7/30/20:  This article is exceptional and is very clear about the vocabulary so-called anti-racist trainers will use, and how you can use that same vocabulary to challenge their tenets.

Pay Raises? Probably Not.

California teachers will probably be waiting awhile for pay raises.  With education taking up about half the state budget, and with the state shuttering so many of its businesses and thus losing out on tax revenue, money's just not going to be there to fund education like normal.  And more and more of the money teachers and districts do get is going to CalSTRS, the State Teachers Retirement System:

This is the second consecutive year that CalSTRS missed its target, although last year’s performance — a 6.8% return — just barely fell short of the fund’s goal. Officials at the time cited market volatility as the driving force.

CalSTRS is the nation’s largest teacher pension fund, valued at $246.0 billion. It’s about 64% funded, meaning that the state has 64% of the money it needs to fulfill all current and future obligations.

CalSTRS since 2014 has been asking teachers and schools to pay more toward retirement plans in an effort to bring the system to full funding.

Teacher contribution rates have grown from 8.15% in 2014 — about the same rate as in 1972 — to just over 10% last year. In 2013, school districts paid 8.25% of salaries toward teachers’ pensions. Payments were scheduled to increase to around 19% in the upcoming year.

As the coronavirus outbreak introduced new costs and uncertainty about the future of education funding, five superintendents of major school districts in April asked the state to freeze their contributions at 2019 levels. CalSTRS said at the time that delayed contributions could threaten efforts to improve the system’s financial health.

All those anti-capitalist teachers out there should probably reflect on the fact that their retirement pay relies on the stock market.  After all, where do they think that $246 billion is invested?

Moving the Goalposts, Bending the Curve

Why do we need to stay 6 feet away from each other and wear masks?  When did both become a thing?  Because it certainly wasn't a thing during the first few months.

People are getting crazy about the 'rona.

What should I make of this comment?

"By staying home and practicing physical distancing, you’re helping bend the curve," California Department of Public Health Director Dr. Sonia Y. Angell tweeted when announcing the latest numbers on Tuesday.

What does "bend the curve" mean?  It used to mean "buy time for hospitals to prepare for an influx of patients", but now it seems to mean "panic about the virus, whether it kills anyone or not, until there's a vaccine." Is Dr. Angell just using a trite phrase without even thinking about what she means?  Because here in California, it doesn't seem that the first "bend the curve" definition has any meaning anymore.

I've been commenting on this topic for months now:

How did we go from “flatten the COVID-19 curve” to “shut up and wear the mask—or else” in just a few short months? Back in March, we were told that lockdowns were necessary to ensure COVID-19 cases would not overwhelm hospitals and, in particular, intensive-care units. In most parts of the country, hospitals were not only not overwhelmed, many were forced to lay off nurses and other employees because elective procedures were put on hold — a move that likely cost lives as people postponed health critical screenings and avoided going to the hospital when they had chest pains for fear of catching COVID-19.

Yep.

But at the beginning of the pandemic, we were assured that once hospitals had things under control we could go back to our regularly scheduled lives, with the understanding that as things reopened and testing increased there would be a spike in the number of cases. Now it seems the goalposts are moving again and we’re being sent into further lockdown —in some cases more stringent lockdowns than before — by governors and other mini-tyrants who are in panic mode because people are catching a contagious (but not very deadly for most people) disease that is, you know, contagious.

Yep.  They operate out of fear.  But back to the article linked above:

So what is the goal at this point? Are we to wear masks until COVID is completely eradicated in the U.S.? Until we have zero cases? And once COVID is eradicated (it won’t be, but stick with me here), shouldn’t we continue to wear them until the flu is eradicated? And the common cold? Rotavirus? RSV? We’re being told that if we love our neighbors (and, by the way, you’re not a real Christian if you don’t’ want to wear a mask) we should be happy to wear a mask to protect them from COVID-19. If that’s the case, we’re going to have to continue to wear them until all contagions have been purged from the face of the earth—in other words, forever.

Yep.

A "Person of Color" Challenges the Idea of White Privilege

I accept that there's "wealth privilege", but white privilege?  Nah, not in several decades.  This Sikh immigrant agrees:

The notion of white privilege stems from the idea that white people have benefited in American history relative to “people of color.” And it’s true that the institution of slavery and the following decades of anti-black dehumanization has a continuing impact today. A major 2013 study from Brandeis University found that 32 percent of the wealth gap between whites and blacks can be attributed to inherited wealth and length of homeownership, two factors linked to institutionalized racism. Meanwhile, Harvard economist Roland Fryer’s much-publicized study on racial bias in policing found that cops are 53 percent more likely to use physical force on black civilians compared to whites (his study, however, found no anti-black bias in fatal police shootings).

Because of facts like these, an emerging definition of white privilege is now being widely circulated on social media: “White privilege doesn’t mean your life hasn’t been hard. It just means your race isn’t one of the things that make it harder.”

And yet, this definition suffers from several shortcomings. For one, it ignores anti-Semitism — the second leading cause of hate crimes in America, according to the FBI. In addition, the growing demonization of whiteness now means that white people are no longer immune to racism. I can think of several instances where friends and colleagues have been racially targeted for being white and holding contrarian but intellectually defensible positions such as “we need to have generous, but reasonable limits on our immigration system” or even “I don’t think racial minorities are systematically oppressed in Western society today.”

And the concept of white privilege can’t explain why several historically marginalized groups out-perform whites today. Take Japanese Americans, for example: For nearly four decades in the 20th century (1913 – 1952), this group was legally prevented from owning land and property in over a dozen American states. Moreover, 120,000 Japanese Americans were interned during World War II. But by 1959, the income disparity between Japanese Americans and white Americans nearly vanished. Today, Japanese Americans outperform whites by large margins in income statistics, education outcomes, test scores and incarceration rates...

According to median household income statistics from the US Census Bureau, several minority groups substantially out-earn whites. These groups include Pakistani Americans, Lebanese Americans, South African Americans, Filipino Americans, Sri Lankan Americans and Iranian Americans (in addition to several others). Indians, the group I belong to, are the highest-earning ethnic group the census keeps track of, with almost double the household median income of whites. In Canada, several minority groups also significantly out-earn whites, including South Asian Canadians, Arab Canadians and Japanese Canadians.

Interestingly, several black immigrant groups such as Nigerians, Barbadians, Ghanaians and Trinidadians & Tobagonians have a median household income well above the American average. Ghanian Americans, to take one example, earn more than several specific white groups such as Dutch Americans, French Americans, Polish Americans, British Americans and Russian Americans. Do Ghanaians have some kind of sub-Saharan African privilege?

Nigerian Americans, meanwhile, are one of the most educated groups in America, as one Rice University survey indicates. Though they make up less than 1 percent of the black population in America, nearly 25 percent of the black student body at Harvard Business School in 2013 consisted of Nigerians. In post-bachelor education, 61 percent of Nigerian Americans over the age of 25 hold a graduate degree compared to only 32 percent for the US-born population.

These facts challenge the prevailing progressive notion that America’s institutions are built to universally favor whites and “oppress” minorities or blacks. On the whole, whatever “systemic racism” exists appears to be incredibly ineffectual, or even nonexistent, given the multitude of groups who consistently eclipse whites.

He nailed this part:

Writing this essay, I also have the immense privilege of being a person of color. I receive plentiful backlash for defending the positions I hold, but had I been a white person, I would have easily been demonized as “alt-right” or even a “white supremacist,” despite having average libertarian or classical liberal views on politics.

Go read the whole thing, and wait till you get to the end to see how old the author is.

Trip Videos

Shoshone Falls in Twin Falls, ID

A coyote in Yellowstone

Bison in the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone

Grand Prismatic Spring

Elk at Mammoth Hot Springs.  You're supposed to stay at least 25 yards from elk and bison--not everyone follows that safety rule.

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

Making Math Political

The old TV show Numb3rs hardest hit.

I don't believe that there is "systemic racism" in police departments, and the people supposedly helped by reducing police presence (i.e., poor black Americans) are the ones who tell you they want more police on the streets to protect them.  Ideas like this keep police from helping the vulnerable among us:

Several prominent academic mathematicians want to sever ties with police departments across the U.S., according to a letter submitted to Notices of the American Mathematical Society on June 15. The letter arrived weeks after widespread protests against police brutality, and has inspired over 1,500 other researchers to join the boycott.

These mathematicians are urging fellow researchers to stop all work related to predictive policing software, which broadly includes any data analytics tools that use historical data to help forecast future crime, potential offenders, and victims. The technology is supposed to use probability to help police departments tailor their neighborhood coverage so it puts officers in the right place at the right time.

"Given the structural racism and brutality in U.S. policing, we do not believe that mathematicians should be collaborating with police departments in this manner," the authors write in the letter. "It is simply too easy to create a 'scientific' veneer for racism. Please join us in committing to not collaborating with police. It is, at this moment, the very least we can do as a community."

I'm against police brutality in all forms.  In fact, I've had many debates with a cop friend of mine--I don't even want my small Northern California city to have the military surplus vehicle (an MRAP) that it has because of the potential for abuse.  But when using data to deter crime is a called a "'scientific' veneer for racism", you know that politics and not helping others has taken over.

That can include statistical or machine learning algorithms that rely on police records detailing the time, location, and nature of past crimes in a bid to predict if, when, where, and who may commit future infractions. In theory, this should help authorities use resources more wisely and spend more time policing certain neighborhoods that they think will yield higher crime rates.

Predictive policing is not the same thing as facial recognition technology, which is more often used after a crime is committed to attempt to identify a perpetrator. Police may use these technologies together, but they are fundamentally different.

I'm all for algorithms to help prevent crime and catch perpetrators, I'm against facial recognition technology.  The latter's potential for abuse is too high for my liking.

If the accuracy of the predictive policing models is low, then don't rely on it until it gets better.  But if the concern is not accuracy but the rather the racial results, then the problem isn't the mathematics.

More Trip Pictures

Grand Prismatic Spring

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (River)

Campground setup in Ely, NV

There's not a lot to see in Ely itself, but I love this mural and the Hotel Nevada building:

Along Highway 50 just east of Fallon, NV, is the Grimes Point Archeological Area (and rest area).  I love seeing all the petroglyphs there.

Remarkable Videos

TV was so blurry at the time, and screens were so small, it's amazing anyone could tell what was going on at all while watching video from the surface of the moon.  Here are some "enhanced" videos, and they are remarkable:

A photo and film restoration specialist, who goes by the name of DutchSteamMachine, has worked some AI magic to enhance original Apollo film, creating strikingly clear and vivid video clips and images.

"I really wanted to provide an experience on this old footage that has not been seen before," he told Universe Today...

Motion interpolation or motion-compensated frame interpolation is a form of video processing in which intermediate animation frames are generated between existing ones, in an attempt to make the video more fluid, to compensate for blurriness, etc.

"People have used the same AI programs to bring old film recordings from the 1900s back to life, in high definition and colour," he said. "This technique seemed like a great thing to apply to much newer footage."

But you may not be able to try this at home. It takes a powerful, high-end GPU (with special cooling fans!). DutchSteamMachine said that a video of just 5 minutes can take anywhere from six to 20 hours to complete. But the results speak for themselves.

Travel in the Time of the 'Rona

In my little corner of California, there are plenty of people who are militant about wearing masks.  As I traveled through Nevada, it was just as bad.  The few stops I made in Idaho, no one seemed to care.  But cross into Montana, at least in West Yellowstone, and we were back to "mask nazis".

In Reno last night I walked into my favorite casino--and even with my mask on, the cigarette smoke hit me like a 2x4.  Now, the particulate matter comprising cigarette smoke is no doubt significantly larger than the 'rona virus, and it got through my mask without a problem.  Yes, I know that masks are supposed to protect others, not me, but I'm convinced that cooties can travel through a cloth mask in both directions.  And it amazes me how I can't get the 'rona if I'm eating, drinking, or smoking, but I can by playing a slot machine or walking from the front door of a restaurant to a table.

Of the many frustrating experiences I had, one stands out.  I was in the vicinity of Old Faithful,  it was warm out, and I wanted to refill my water bottle (which I got 4 years ago in Vulcan, AB, Canada).  There was a bottle refilling station in the gift shop, but I'd have to wait in line outside because they were only letting so many people in the gift shop at once--while wearing masks.  The line was long.  There was another filling station just outside the small restroom building across the street; it had a line, too, because it seemed clear the restrooms were being cleaned.

I walked up to the front of the line and said, "I don't need the restroom, I just want to fill my water bottle."  The response:  "We're sanitizing it right now, come back at 2:24 (it was 2:17 at the time)."  What did they do to the water bottle filler to "sanitize" it, run a Handy Wipe over the activation button?  Where did the "time until sanitized" come from?

It reminds me of one of the ideas floating around for opening school.  Half the kids would come to school on Monday and Tuesday, the other half would come to school Thursday and Friday.  Wednesday would be used for "deep cleaning".  What the heck is "deep cleaning"?  I'm trying to imagine the custodians at my school adding this "deep cleaning" to their repertoire.  I'd be surprised if they did anything other than rush through the classrooms with a can of Lysol, spraying all the desks.  Quickly.

Some people choose to freak out about the 'rona.  My position is clearly summed up in the picture here.

But it was nice to get out of the Sacramento Valley for a bit.

English Grammar

Read between the lines, and what you get is the racist belief that American blacks can't be educated to the level of other groups of Americans:

The English Department at Rutgers University recently announced a list of “anti-racist” directives and initiatives for the upcoming fall and spring semesters, including an effort to deemphasize traditional grammar rules...

One of the initiatives is described as “incorporating ‘critical grammar’ into our pedagogy"...

Under a so-called critical grammar pedagogy, “This approach challenges the familiar dogma that writing instruction should limit emphasis on grammar/sentence-level issues so as to not put students from multilingual, non-standard ‘academic’ English backgrounds at a disadvantage,” the email states.

“Instead, it encourages students to develop a critical awareness of the variety of choices available to them w/ regard to micro-level issues in order to empower them and equip them to push against biases based on ‘written’ accents.”

Today's Progressives Are Just Like The Racists of the Past

If they knew any history, perhaps they'd see the parallels.

Made It Home!

One of the propane tanks is empty, and two of the trailer's 4 tires look low, but I've made it home!

After leaving Yellowstone I went to Ely, NV.  Why Ely?  Because I've driven through it a few times and wanted to spend some time in the town.  TBH, it doesn't take long to see the "sights" there.  But it was nice to sit outside in the campground, with a nice breeze blowing, and not have a care in the world.

Yesterday I drove to Reno, where I had dinner with an aunt and uncle.  A pilot friend of mine just happened to have a terminating flight into Reno just after noon today, so I spent last night in my trailer in the almost-empty parking lot of a big casino--almost empty, and last night was Saturday night.  My friend and I walked a little and had lunch, then I drove home.

The trailer's parked out front.  I emptied the frig/freezer and brought one or two other things in, the rest can wait till tomorrow.  I'm enjoying some air conditioning!

2 Trips Into Yellowstone So Far

The plan is to go in once more tomorrow, and then to have a "rest and visit the town" day before heading to my next location.  Here are a few pictures I've taken thus far:

Shoshone Falls, Twin Falls, ID

Now Yellowstone:

In addition to the bison and elk you see here, I've also seen deer, pronghorns, and a coyote.  No bears or wolves yet.

Blogging Will Be Light

The house is cared for, the trailer is connected and loaded, and tonight's planned stopover is here.

Schools Will Open Online

I tried to be positive in outlook, but yesterday the bad news became official:

Public school campuses in Sacramento County will remain closed when instruction resumes in the fall, leaving tens of thousands of families and teachers to begin planning for an extension of distance-learning programs.

The Sacramento County Office of Education, which oversees districts serving more than 250,000 students from kindergarten through high school, announced that its 13 districts will continue distance learning programs they implemented in the spring. The decision to close campuses was made by school officials.

“Conditions are not safe enough for students, staff and families to allow school to open up in person at this time,” said Sacramento County Superintendent of Schools Dave Gordon...

Trustee Harold Fong said he was uncomfortable with the office’s plan to reopen classrooms.

“I am very uncomfortable with your decision to open up our community schools and other ones that we have control over either in a split format and then doing distance learning,” Fong told Sacramento County Superintendent of Schools Dave Gordon. “I would prefer you look at the recommendations of the California Teachers Association and the National Teachers and some of the medical people that we do distance learning as much as possible.”

Yes, because a teachers union is the best place to look for political advice--and let's be blunt, opening schools or not is a political decision.

I understand that my own district's school board is to meet today or tomorrow.  I wonder what they're going to say, now that the decision has been made for them.

Cops and Race

First, some study results:

Looking at the data, the answer might actually be no. According to a 2019 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, white officers are not more likely to shoot black civilians than black or Hispanic officers are. According to the study, there is “no evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities across shootings, and White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers. Instead, race-specific crime strongly predicts civilian race. This suggests that increasing diversity among officers by itself is unlikely to reduce racial disparity in police shootings.”

Other studies have reached similar conclusions, including a Harvard study that found no racial bias in police using deadly force, though there is some disparity when it comes to physical force. With regard to lethal force, however, no disparity exists.

That study, published several months before the race riots of this spring, was fine until a conservative quoted it:

Psychologists Joseph Cesario of Michigan State and David Johnson of the University of Maryland say they stand behind their work, which concludes there was “no significant evidence of anti-black disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by the police.” But they objected to its “misuse.” MacDonald cited the study in congressoinal testimony last September and again in an article for City Journal. But it wasn’t until her June 3 op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that cited the study when there were “complications” on campus and outraged wokesters demanded that the profs be flogged — or something.

Here are two prominent black Americans discussing race and policing:

A Good Way To Live

A friend sent me this and said that Mother Teresa had it on the wall in Calcutta.  I fall short of it but aspire:

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.  Succeed anyway.

if you are honest and sincere, people may deceive you.  Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.  Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.  Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, will often be forgotten.  Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.  Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them anyway.