Follow The Science

I'm sure someone can explain to me how this makes any sense from a scientific standpoint as opposed to a power and control standpoint:

Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania released its Fall 2022 COVID-19 vaccination protocol, stating that returning students must be fully vaccinated prior to arriving on campus.

In contrast to the student vaccination requirement, employees are only “strongly encouraged” to be vaccinated prior to returning to campus, suggesting that unvaccinated employees should “talk to [their] doctor about the benefits.”

Students employed by the university are subject to stricter protocols.

I Guess Even A Flatworm Will Turn Away From Pain

Remember, California will shut off power if it gets too windy or too hot!  And this week, electric car owners were asked not to charge their cars when they got home from work.  When are they supposed to charge them, after the sun goes down?  When all the solar panels aren't quite working at their optimum?  Here's a technology that always works:

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation Friday intended to open the way for the state’s last operating nuclear power plant to run an additional five years, a move that he said was needed to ward off possible blackouts as the state transitions to solar and other renewable sources.

His endorsement came one day after the plan was approved in a lopsided vote in the state Assembly and Senate, and despite criticism from environmentalists that the plant was dangerous and should be shut down as scheduled by 2025.

Would be hard to run for president as the governor who couldn't keep the lights turned on.

Biden's Thursday Speech

It was supposed to be bad, and it apparently met and exceeded expectations.  This struck home with me:

“Dark Brandon,” flanked by Marines and backed by Hellish lighting, mumbled, shouted, and emoted his way through a Hitleresque scapegoating of large swaths of the population. And his call to arms has energized all the woke and virtuous defenders of democracy, who are now demanding a one-party system and the shunning of Republicans as lesser humans. Because, in the same way you sometimes have to destroy villages to save them, sometimes you have to become an unelected Administrative dictatorship to save democracy from the benighted and filthy MAGAts who so frustratingly vote incorrectly. 

President Turnip’s speech — presented with the full backing of the Executive branch and its law enforcement and justice arms — was perhaps the most egregious speech ever given by a US president. It was more than simply divisive. It was tacit permission to treat those who don’t favor progressive governance as enemies of the State. It’s the summer of 2020 with presidential approval. It’s dangerous. It’s unconscionable.

As for what Biden said:

 

Update, 9/5/22:  Hard to disagree with any of this:

Joe Biden gave a speech last week in which he gave lip service to things that Democrats don’t actually believe in, e.g., the Constitution and the rule of law, as a pretext to accuse Republicans — all 74 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump — of being a “threat to our democracy.”

Biden spoke in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, a gesture by which he attempted to identify himself as defending the founding principles of America when, in fact, he and his party are against those principles and are doing everything in their power to destroy America.

Biden does not deceive us. It is Democrats, not Republicans, who spent the summer of 2020 tearing down statues of our nation’s Founding Fathers. It is Democrats, not Republicans, who have denounced the Electoral College as undemocratic, just as it is Democrats, not Republicans, who endanger Supreme Court justices whose rulings they don’t like. Everything good about America, Democrats seek to destroy, and everything bad in America (e.g., drug dealers, cop killers, perverts in public libraries and junkies defecating on city streets) Democrats defend.

The symbolism of choosing Philadelphia as the site of last week’s speech was perhaps more fitting than Biden realized, because Philadelphia is a city that Democrats have absolutely ruined.

If you want to know what the Democrats are doing, just listen to what they accuse the Republicans of doing and you won't be far off. 

Yes, I believe there was rampant cheating in the 2020 election, and the mail-in voting from overwrought 'rona reaction made it easy.  I don't just say it, I have some evidence for my belief.  There were four areas that were going to be close--Georgia, Wisconsin, and I believe Michigan and Pennsylvania.  When I went to bed at 10pm, President Trump was leading in all four of those areas.  When I woke up at 2am, he was still leading comfortably in those areas.  By the time I woke up at 6am, he had "lost".  It's not such a leap to think that shenanigans occurred overnight.

At least I have some reason to believe what I believe.  Bush/Gore 2000?  Stacey Abrams?  Granny Boxwine?  There's no evidence in those, just carping at a loss--but only we Trump supporters are dangers to the country by suggesting one side cheated.  In fact, here is a video showing 10 minutes of Democrats' saying outright that President Trump cheated to win in 2016, that he was in league with Putin of Russia, etc, all without a shred of evidence (or decency).  They're disgusting.

If you want to know what the Democrats are doing, just listen to what they accuse the Republicans of doing.  I don't know about any threat to "our democracy", but I do know about threats to the Republic and what side of the aisle they're coming from.

Update #2, 9/14/22:  Via Instapundit:

Democrats Are Quite Comfortable Being Violent Extremists. “The Democrats’ ongoing fairy tale about the nonexistent right-wing domestic threat is on my last nerve now, especially since we all know that the real dark evil in this country is lurking on the left. It’s not even on the fringes.”

Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc

Turning leftie isn't enough to save you:

“Go woke, go broke” is the slogan that keeps on giving. The latest installment of woke, politically active retailers now facing financial ruin in the form of shuttering stores and mass layoffs is none other than conservative-hating Bed Bath & Beyond...

As you’ll recall, BBB made headlines in early 2021 after it was confirmed by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell that the retailer had canceled his legendary MyPillow line at the same time he was involved with conservative activism on behalf of former President Donald Trump, specifically working on issues related to election fraud claims.

MyPillow is still in business, BB&B may not be for long.

I bought 2 MyPillows last year and love them--first pillows I've ever had that were comfortable for me. 

I always liked BB&B stores, but I cannot muster any sorrow for them here--only regret that "they chose poorly".

Lefties Are Fascists

Even though Sleepy Joe will tell us differently tomorrow, it is he and his ilk who are the true fascists:

The assault on democracy that the Democrats and their flying monkeys in the mainstream media are carrying on about is very much in progress, but it’s coming from them. They are waging a full-scale ideological war on anyone who doesn’t agree with their increasingly commie policies. Make no mistake about this: their endgame is one-party rule in the United States of America...

What has changed now is the level of hyperbole and the complete absence of truthfulness in their rhetoric. There was a time when the Dems didn’t lie about virtually everything. It’s now pathological with them. The pathological penchant for prevarication (alliteration gold star to me) is the reason they can keep straight faces when saying things like Republican opposition to the Inflation Reduction Act means that we all want the planet to die. Never mind that the bill does nothing to reduce inflation and that it’s merely a boondoggle sop to Big Green, the mean Republicans want to see Floaty the Polar Bear bobbing on waves down the streets of Manhattan.

The laundry list of things they lie about grows every day and has done so at a greater pace since Donald Trump won the 2016 election. Russia collusion. J6 was an insurrection. The 2020 presidential election was one of the cleanest ever. Republican efforts to shore up election integrity are racist.

On it goes.

Who wants to change the make-up of the Supreme Court because it doesn't go their way? Who wants to enshrine voting by mail to make their cheating easier?  Who wants the "interstate compact" regarding presidential electors, who wants to get rid of the electoral college?  Who wants to abolish the 2nd Amendment?  Add those to the list above.

I'm obviously not the only one seeing it:

On "The News & Why It Matters" Monday, BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales and guests took a look at the actual definition of fascism and concluded that the press secretary has clearly not been doing her homework.

"I just want to just to set the record straight here, give some perspective," said Sara. "The definition of fascism is: a system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, an economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism."

"I can't think of anything that describes the left any better," she added.

"Look at what they're doing just in the simple fact of labeling people who are, quote, Trump supporters or anybody with a conservative value system or political philosophy. The labeling thing, that's step one," said BlazeTV's Chad Prather.

"Identifying, labeling, then they categorize you. They put you in the box. They shove you away until they need to deal with you," he continued. "You know, we all do that to some degree, but most of us, we just ignore that person. That's not what their plan is. ... They have nefarious purposes for what they're doing with these labels ... and 'MAGA,' 'Trump,' 'conservative,' 'small government,' all the buzzwords are all going to mean 'fascism' very soon."

Heck, there's more.  Mussolini had his blackshirts, thugs in the streets to beat and otherwise intimidate the non-fascists.  Hitler had his brownshirts, doing the very same thing.  Today's lefties have their Antifa blackshirts (with masks!), doing the very same thing.  They don't even try to hide it, they just lie to your face about it.

Everyone In Education Should Read The Linked Post And Take Its Intent to Heart

Joanne hit one out of the park today.  In a post entitled "The child is not the creature of the state", Joanne posits that parents should have a significant say in the education of their children.  Enough of this keeping secrets from parents, something I've railed about for quite some time:

Advocates say secrecy is needed to protect children from abusive parents. But the law already requires teachers to report suspected child abuse to child protective services, says attorney Vernadette Broyles of the Child and Parental Rights Campaign. “You’re not entitled to take it onto yourself as a teacher to make the judgment that somehow this parent does not share the right value system, or is going to correct or guide their child in a way that you don’t approve of.” 

Just in case you didn't get the important part, here it is again:

“You’re not entitled to take it onto yourself as a teacher to make the judgment that somehow this parent does not share the right value system, or is going to correct or guide their child in a way that you don’t approve of.”

I give this my loudest and most thunderous "hear hear". 

Taking A Knife To A Gun Fight

Henry Rogers is a fool, and he looks doubly so going up against John McWhorter:

John McWhorter’s latest column for the NY Times is about a Change.org petition demanding an end to “discriminatory” licensing exams. Here’s a bit of what the petition says...

So, according to the petition, the test’s design is biased and denying it’s biased is racist. In his opinion piece, McWhorter notices that the petition doesn’t point to any proof of these claims...

He concludes that it’s still possible there is a problem with the exams but that before we get rid of them we should at least ask to see the evidence the exams are racist.

Ibram Kendi’s name is never mentioned in McWhorter’s column but the idea that something is racist simply because the outcome doesn’t benefit all races equally is clearly his baby. And Kendi has argued in the past for ending standardized testing. So yesterday he posted a tweet thread in response to McWhorter’s column...

Read the whole thing.  It's more evidence that Henry Rogers is a race hustler, while McWhorter is a brilliant and thoughtful man.  It's really that simple.

Another Decision Goes Against Oberlin

I hope the Oberlin administration and their lawyers run out of dirty tricks before the Gibsons run out of money:

Hopefully the long, hard road Gibson’s Bakery has traveled in its fight with Oberlin College has come to an end.

The Ohio Supreme Court just refused to accept jurisdiction over Oberlin College’s appeal (the Court also refused to hear the Gibsons’ appeal seeking to reinstate the full punitive damages award). It was a 4-3 decision, and it means the Gibsons now can collect approximately $36 million...

Several commenters mention Oberlin College going to federal court. That is a long, long, long shot. The appeal would be from the Ohio Supreme Court to the U.S. Supreme Court. The likelihood the U.S. Supreme Court would agree to hear a case the Ohio Supreme Court refused to hear is not zero, but it’s approaching zero. I would not be shocked if they tried, but they would have to obtain another stay of enforcement of the judgment from the U.S. Supreme Court, another major hurdle that has little likelihood of success.

As I've said previously, there's a special place in Hell reserved for the Oberlin administration, in part because the Gibsons have put all their family's money into fighting this injustice and say that have enough remaining for just a couple months.

The Dreaded Teacher Shortage

Last spring I completed my 25th year of teaching.  After a quarter of a century in this business I've seen the comings and goings, and one of the most persistent of stories in this field is that of the coming teacher shortage.  It's always coming, but it never quite happens:

While pundits caution that schools are facing catastrophic teacher shortages — the result of substantial exit from the profession during the chaos of COVID — new research indicates that those warnings could be overstated. 

Teacher turnover rates are actually about the same as they were before the pandemic, according to a working paper released this month through the Annenberg Institute at Brown University. Flush with pandemic relief money and faced with the generational challenge of fostering learning recovery, school districts are hiring for more positions and leaving vacancies open for longer.

Even after the 'rona, we're not flocking to the exits. I have 5 years until I flock.  Then, like a mother goose in Kansas, I'm getting the flock out of Dodge.

Confirmed!

I went to a clinic today, where the doctor confirmed my diagnosis:  my biennial case of bronchitis.  The steroids they prescribe usually have me feeling better in under a day.  I look forward to that, this coughing and hacking has got to cease.

But yes, I'm going to live :-)

Theatrics

Among its other symptoms, the 'rona made some people stupid:

I Cannot Fathom The Injustice

It's good that The Innocence Project exists, and sad that it needs to:

A Louisiana man has been exonerated after spending more than 36 years in jail for rape, according to court documents.

Sullivan Walter, now 53, was "exonerated after 36 years, 1 month, and 30 days incarcerated for a rape he did not commit," Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO) said in an Instagram post...

 

Walter was arrested for the rape and his jury trial lasted one day, according to court documents. 

 

Walter went through numerous appeals, but from 1997 until October 2021, Walter had no legal assistance, court documents say. 

 

After taking on Walter's case in October 2021, IPNO attorneys "discovered that though the serological testing in the 1980s concluded that Mr. Walter was not the perpetrator, the jury that convicted Mr. Walter did not know this," the organization said. 

There's no indication in the story that there was a racial bias in this situation:

About a month and-a-half after the rape, Walter was arrested for simple burglary and when police thought he looked like the man L.S. (the rape victim) described, a photo array was presented to L.S. and she identified Walter as the rapist, court documents say. Walter was wearing a blue baseball cap in the photo, the same color hat the man who raped her was wearing.

Race?  Trauma of being raped?  Hard to say.

So much sadness in this story.

Math Sites

While I lean towards the more traditional methods of teaching, there is certainly a place (however limited) for math web sites--and here are 11 of them.

Charging Drug Dealers With Murder?

I'm against holding car manufacturers responsible when a car kills a person, I'm against holding firearms manufacturers responsible when a firearm is used to kill a person, and I'm against holding a drug dealer responsible when someone dies from drug usage:

Elected Democrats in California’s State Senate have once again voted down a plan that would allow local and state prosecutors to more easily charge drug dealers with manslaughter or murder when Americans die as a result of the drugs they sold to them. 

On Wednesday, Democrat State Senators rejected an amendment to include “Alexandra’s Law” in Assembly Bill 2195. The law, as Breitbart News chronicled, was named after 20-year-old Alexandra Capelouto, who was poisoned and killed by fentanyl when she was sold what she believed was a pharmaceutical drug for depression and insomnia. 

Alexandra’s Law would notify convicted drug dealers that should they be convicted again in the state of California, they could be charged with manslaughter and murder if the drugs they sell have led to a person’s death.

This is the right call.  Increase the penalties for dealing drugs, if you want to, but let's not muddy the waters with trying to assign blame this way.

The Effects of Tracking in Schools

From a working paper: 

Schools often track students to classes based on ability. Proponents of tracking argue it is a low-cost tool to improve learning since instruction is more effective when students are more homogeneous, while opponents argue it exacerbates initial differences in opportunities without strong evidence of efficacy. In fact, little is known about the pervasiveness or determinants of ability tracking in the US. To fill this gap, we use detailed administrative data from Texas to estimate the extent of tracking within schools for grades 4 through 8 over the years 2011-2019. We find substantial tracking; tracking within schools overwhelms any sorting by ability that takes place across schools. The most important determinant of tracking is heterogeneity in student ability, and schools operationalize tracking through the classification of students into categories such as gifted and disabled and curricular differentiation. When we examine how tracking changes in response to educational policies, we see that schools decrease tracking in response to accountability pressures. Finally, when we explore how exposure to tracking correlates with student mobility in the achievement distribution, we find positive effects on high-achieving students with no negative effects on low-achieving students, suggesting that tracking may increase inequality by raising the ceiling.

So it could help high-achieving students but not hurt low-achieving students.  Then what's the problem?  That gap, that's the problem.  Excellence isn't the standard in education anymore, mediocrity (or worse) is.

Canceling College Debt

Of course I'm against it, and for the same reasons listed in this article:

1) it's probably illegal,

2) it's still regressive, and

3) it still screws over taxpayers.

I'd add that it infantilizes adults, who are no longer required to fulfill obligations into which they freely entered.

Update, 8/27/22:  I've long loved this story about Davy Crockett and Horatio Bunce, it speaks to giving away other people's money.

Not Feeling Great

I've had a sore throat since late last week.  And for the last few days you can add in sinus pain and hacking up crud.  Did the inevitable finally happen, did I get the 'rona?

I'm not interested in missing work, but neither am I interested in becoming Patient 0 for the next major outbreak in the neighborhood.  I went to the office today and asked for a 'rona test.

No, I didn't want the take-home type, which are about as reliable as reading goat entrails.  I wanted the official, super-duper test.  One of our office workers administered it for me, although I had to put the swab in my nose myself.

The result?  A loud and thunderous negatory.  Maybe I have a summer cold, but I don't have the 'rona.  So off to 1st period I went.

Good-bye To An Old Friend

After I graduated from West Point and reported to Fort Bliss, Texas, for my Air Defense Artillery Officer Basic Course, I needed to take care of some things that West Point had always taken care of for me.  Much like my high school days, I had to do my own laundry again.  And since no one was around to iron my uniforms, I had to iron them myself.  (Mama West Point took care of our laundry and ironing for us.  For a price, of course.)

Back in my day, our "fatigue uniform" was the woodland camouflage pattern BDU's.  How many fatigue uniforms have come and gone since then?  But I digress.

So back in the summer of 1987, I bought a Norelco iron.  And I've kept and used that iron since that summer.  Until now.

I began to iron some pants a week or two ago, and I noticed that no steam came out of the iron.  I checked to ensure it was set to be hot enough for steam--it was--but I couldn't figure out why there was no steam.  Nothing I did seemed to work.

An iron that gets hot isn't satisfactory, I need one with steam.  It's been 35 years, perhaps it's time to get a new iron.

"There Is No Climate Emergency"

The left doesn't like it when we challenge their talking points, but they are so often wrong:

Legal Insurrection readers may recall that relatively early on in the covid pandemic cycle, leading infectious disease experts created the Great Barrington Declaration.

The formal declaration stressed that lockdowns were destructive and “focused protection” of vulnerable individuals was the way to properly address the highly infectious, novel virus. Over 4000 scientists, including a good number of epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists, signed the document.

It turns out these scientists were correct...

Perhaps it is time to consider if the World Climate Declaration, which has been signed by 1,200 climate scientists and related professionals, may be something to seriously consider, promote, and act on. In the document, these scientists affirm that there is “no climate emergency.”

The political fiction that humans cause most or all climate change and the claim that the science behind this notion is ‘settled’, has been dealt a savage blow by the publication of a ‘World Climate Declaration (WCD)’ signed by over 1,100 scientists and professionals. There is no climate emergency, say the authors, who are drawn from across the world and led by the Norwegian physics Nobel Prize laureate Professor Ivar Giaever. Climate science is said to have degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science.

The article continues: 

I am thinking that most of the advice they will give will be unsolicited. Here is hoping that policy makers, teachers, and everyone else listen to the group’s many points:

• Natural causes contribute to climate changes.
• Warming has been slower than predicted.
• Climate policy is being based on inadequate models.
• Carbon dioxide is plant food, and the basis for life on Earth.
• Global warming has not increased natural disasters.

Perhaps the last point the CLINTEL Group makes is the most critical:  Climate policy must respect scientific and economic realities.

Hear hear.

The 37% Rule

Until today I'd never heard of this rule:

We’ve all found ourselves in this situation, whether we’re considering job offers, buying a new car, or dating new people. When it comes to love, how many people should you date before settling down? It’s a problem that bridges mathematics and psychology, and it’s got a name: the optimal stopping problem.

...How long do you spend sampling options to give the optimum chances of a successful final decision? How many frogs must you kiss to secure your chances of getting a prince?

Mathematicians have given us an answer: 37%. The basic idea is that, if you need to make a decision from 100 different options, you should sample and discard (or hold off on) the first 37. The 37% rule is not some mindless, automatic thing. It’s a calibration period during which you identify what works and what does not. From the rejected 37%, we choose the best and keep that information in our heads moving forward. If any subsequent options beat that benchmark standard, then you should stick with that option to get the best ultimate outcome.

Throw some pop psychology into the article and it's an intriguing read.