Of Course, They Did . . . Follow-up

In the wake of the SCOTUS eviscerating affirmative action laws, I read this on The Guardian:

“In 1996, Californians voted to ban race-conscious affirmative action policies in the state’s public universities. Since then, eight other states – Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington – have also barred race-based considerations, often through ballot initiatives approved by the states’ voters. Some universities in these states report that the bans have made it significantly harder to achieve racial diversity on their campuses.”

Full Disclosure—I was born and raised in California and served in its higher education establishments.

Now, I repeat here the statistics for the 2020 undergraduate classes at U.C. Berkeley: “UC Berkeley’s undergraduate population is made up of 42.2% Asian, 19.7% White, 4.4% Black, and 21% Hispanic students.”

Okay, now look at those statistics and explain to me how “racial diversity” does not exist there?

People often equate “proper” diversity when the percentage of students in the college/university parallels the percentages of students in the general population. In California, the only to do that is to admit via a lottery and nobody wants that. If you want to have “admission standards” you are creating a system where some win and some lose. If the standards are valid and properly executed, those who win are the students most likely to benefit from attendance and succeed in those colleges and universities.

If U.C. Berkeley’s admission standards are so executed, they have identified the students who most want to go there, by exhibiting the traits and accomplishments established in the standards.

Apparently “white” students don’t want to attend there as much. Which makes the systems of “legacy students” at places like Harvard even more egregious.

Postscript It also seems that if UCB’s experience were to play out at Harvard University, it would be the farthest thing from “to return higher education to white, elite control.”

And, I focus on California’s systems because those are the ones I have the most experience with.

Of Course They Did

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has made a ruling that will eliminate Affirmative Action enrollments in U.S. colleges and universities. I know, surprise, surprise!

An article in The Guardian contained these paragraphs:

“Experts have argued that the elimination of affirmative action in higher education will lead to drastic reductions in Black and Latino students admitted to selective institutions, upending the fabric of college campuses,” the Guardian’s Edwin Rios wrote after the decision came down.

“A more dire reality undergirds the court’s decision,” writes Eddie R Cole, an education and history professor at UCLA in a op-ed we just published about how today’s decision fits into a history, more than a century old, of resistance against efforts to make American universities more equitable. “It reflects a decades-long drive to return higher education to white, elite control.”

Wow, I guess the sky isn’t falling but “return higher education to white, elite control,” is damned close! The crux of the rulings was a complaint that Asian-Americans were being discriminated against in those admission policies. As someone who walked the campus of U.C. Berkeley, a premier university, and then walked it again some twenty years later, astonished to see that the student body seemed to have morphed into just Asian students, I understand what is happening. Affirmative Action began as a basic reparations scheme to provide places for African-American students who had been systemically weeded out over the decades. But as admissions requirements became more meritocratic, Asian students began to dominate the acceptances.

Many Asian families prize education highly and Asian students are motivated to do well in school. They have done so well, that their acceptance rate to schools of higher education soared. But universities, like Harvard, thought it unseemly to have so many students of color (as well as, historically, of Jews), they created workarounds, one of which was to limit Asian applicants to make room for Black and Brown applicants, keeping the number of students of color at “reasonable” levels.

If that isn’t racism, I don’t know what is. Of course, Harvard has other ways to stack the deck. One such is “legacy students.” If your parents or even a parent graduated from Harvard, you only need to meet the minimum requirements and you are in. No nasty competition for you. “Legacies” constitute 14-15% of all admissions (estimates of 25-35% for all Ivy League schools). Were they to be banned, that would leave all kinds of room for more minority admissions. But our plutocratic society isn’t about to easily give up any advantages already vested in the wealthy.

I am not sure that this ruling is a bad thing. Many of said “AA admissions” involved admitting a disadvantaged student, and then it was “sink or swim” time, often more sink than swim. I have no data on the graduation rates for AA students but I would be shocked if they were higher rather than lower than the others.

And as to “white, elite control,” I think that needs to be re-considered. I see our future educational establishments run by Asian females, based upon talent, skill, and will displayed.

For example, UC Berkeley’s undergraduate population is made up of 42.2% Asian, 19.7% White, 4.4% Black, and 21% Hispanic students as of 2020. White students are a smaller minority than Hispanic students at this point. This is what free unbridled admissions produces.

And for all y’all who are bigots out there, I did serious research as to why Asian students were kicking butt in American educational systems. All kinds of things were considered: cultural bias, innate abilities, racism, etc. You know why Asian students do so well in American schools? It is almost exclusively “time on task,” baby! Where white students show that in high school, getting a part-time job for X hours per week reduces study time by X hours, that doesn’t happen in Asian families. The irony is that Asian students are kicking white ass through the “protestant work ethic” so highly praised by Americans. Hard work beats slacking every time.

Texas Perfidy Update

Immediately after Texas passing a law forbidding localities requiring water or other breaks from work due to high temperatures, I read:

“Nine deaths in Texas county due to heat, says official
Nine people have died in the last eight days due to heat-related illnesses in Webb County, Texas, according to a medical official. Webb County medical examiner Dr Corinne Stern, at a meeting with county commissioners, urged residents to stay in their homes if possible. Stern said: ‘We don’t see this in our county. Laredo knows heat. Webb County knows heat. These are unprecedented temperatures.’” (Source: The Guardian)

Ah, Texas, where common sense goes to die . . . to increase godly profits.

Ukraine Should Hire the Wagner Group

Hey, it makes sense. They are mercenaries, working for pay, after all. And any time Vladimir Putin suspects disloyalty on your part, the best you can hope for are personal flying lessons, sans airplane, or a bowl of toxic radioactive borscht. The Ukrainians and Russians are like brother peoples, and so fighting for, rather than against the Ukrainians and getting paid should appeal to the Wagner Group mercenaries. So, instead of the Wagner Group brutalizing the Ukrainians, they would be brutalizing the Ukraine’s enemies.

This is such a good idea that Donald Trump decided he would pay for it out of his incredibly deep pockets. Trump figured that Putin will soon be a deposed dictator, with no power and a very short lifespan, so doing the “rats leaving a sinking ship” routine was appropriate and since the federal government was supporting Ukraine, maybe him helping would convince the feds to go slow or at least slower on his many prosecutions.

So, Mr. Trump made the offer, but the leadership of the Wagner Group turned him down. The reason they provided was that Mr. Trump had a long history of stiffing contractors and they were convinced they would never get paid.

Pride Month: Shoving It Down Our Throats?

Now that Pride Month is almost done, we can get on with more serious acknowledgements, like Avocado Month.

As I wandered around the Internet, I ran across quite a few whines along the lines of “I am not a homophobe, but why is Pride Month being shoved down our throats?” The phrase “being shoved down our throats” was ubiquitous, which made those whines seem like part of a campaign.

If I hadn’t run across those comments/whines I might not have noticed that is was, indeed, Pride Month. A bit of simple investigation showed me the culprit: TV . . . well, not just TV but advertisers wishing to cash in on Pride Month. Beers being promoted by “trans influencers,” whatever those are, popped up. Sales going on with Pride labeling, like Fourth of July advertising, etc. I couldn’t identify which products were being targeted by the advertisers, like President’s Day is when a new mattress needs to be bought.

So, the gay community itself isn’t shoving anything down our throats (and if they are, you are probably in the wrong bar), it is the fucking capitalists trying to cash in for things completely divorced from their business.

If Chick-fil-A ever changes management, I predict that it will run Pride Month promotions, just like its competitors.

If you are one of those whiners whining about having “Pride Month being shoved down my throat” I have a simple solution. Turn off your TV. Your life will be so much more pleasant and you will only be reacting to things around you that you can actually observe.

Addendum Our next door neighbor is moving to Florida because he feels Chicago has too much crime, notwithstanding current statistics showing crime declining precipitously. I have lived in Chicago now for 15 years and I have not personally seen one crime. A dead body washed up on our neighborhood beach, but that was a weekend sailor who fell out of his boat and drowned. There is a lot of jaywalking but other than that I don’t see any crimes being perpetrated. But if I were to read the news . . . or watch the TV news . . . OMG!

Who Was That Masked Man?

Just two days ago, I stopped wearing a mask casually. I will still if I attend a meeting or other gathering of strangers, but just normal day-to-day stuff . . . no mas, no mask.

There is a website dedicated to providing tracking statistics for COVID in my city. From a peak of 100 deaths per day, it is now at less than one half of a death per day (actually less than one death every two days because you can’t have fractions of a death). That is nice to know but basically I stopped casual wearing of a mask because I do not want to live a fear-based life. But then, if I end up in the hospital with COVID I may reconsider this stance.

WTF, Texas?

The Guardian had an article today that began thus:

“Amid a dangerous heatwave that has brought blistering temperatures across Texas, the state’s governor signed a law this week eliminating local rules requiring water breaks for workers.

“The measure, which will take effect later this year, will nullify ordinances enacted by Austin and Dallas that mandate 10-minute breaks for construction workers every four hours. It also prevents any other local governments from passing similar worker protections.”

The “logic” behind this idiotic move may be shown from the fact that “Hispanic workers made up a third of all worker heat deaths since 2010, according to an NPR/Columbia study.”

It is common knowledge that the military services limit exposure to extreme temperatures, with required breaks in air-conditioned facilities, etc. and the Republicans used to like the military services, but I guess that was back when we had real Republicans and not these Faux Republicans, otherwise known as Republicans In Name Only (RINOs).

Don’t Need No Stinking Immigrants! (Legal or Illegal)

I have seen more than a few articles claiming a labor shortage in areas that used to be served by immigrants (of all types) . . . even in Florida where worker shortages are preventing crops from being harvested. But do not fear, Republicans have the answer. Recently Iowa, along with 14 other states have reduced or modified child labor laws to remove “barriers” (they used to be called protections) from the law that prevented children from participating in the workforce. Now children under the age of 18 can operate heavy machinery, serve alcohol at bars, work night shifts while still in school, etc. In other words “Republican Progress!”

I am sure Republican Jesus would approve . . . “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for we are burning daylight and there are crops to reap.” (Republican Jesus)

Still Struggling

The more I think of the Big Bang Theory (BBT) the more I struggle with it making sense. According to that theory, the universe expanded for 380,000 years before the first atoms fell together (almost all of those being H atoms). Space was expanding such that all of the energy and matter which were compressed into a tiny dot was spread way, way, way out before atoms were born (380,000 years of spreading).

Yet we are told that gravity caused the clumping together of much matter (initially almost all hydrogen atoms), in lumps big enough that the compression resulted in nuclear fusion happening and stars were born (after about 100,000,000 years of space expansion).

But we also learn that at the atomic realm, gravity is a miniscule force compared to electromagnetic forces and nuclear forces. So, how could incredibly weak gravity cause atoms of such tiny mass (H atoms are the lightest of all atoms) to coalesce into blobs of star stuff?

If the BB were an explosion, all of the exploding particles should have trajectories that diverge and to get them to converge requires a dominant force. (I know the BB was not an explosion; it is an analogy!)

So, add this to the list of things not making any sense in this topic, along with cosmic inflation, the expansion of space, dark energy, and dark matter.

Do realize that I am someone who insists if things do not make sense, one hasn’t yet figured out how to think about them. To understand nature, your thoughts have to be in similar patterns. And subatomic physicists, quantum mechanics, and cosmogonists are certainly odd human beings, for the most part, because of how they are teaching themselves to think. Maybe we can’t go there yet to explain these BBT oddities . . .or maybe the BBT is just wrong. It sure looks like time to consider alternatives.

Note—There are myriad details in the BBT, such as BB Nucleosynthesis. This in the early stages of the BB, there was so much energy that some protons, and neutrons fused to make heavy hydrogen (deuterium) and helium. These are still the lightest atoms in existence, so I left this detail out as they do not change my argument much if at all.

Why All of the OT References in the NT?

I had a bit of an ah-hah moment last night when I read that Romans were very much into prophecy. I had read that before and it had been described as a point of attraction for Romans of Christianity. I had also read that the early Christian writers scoured the Old Testament (OT), their only scripture at the time, prophecy-mining as it were. They found scads of OT prophecies and re-framed them as prophecies of the coming of Jesus.

All of a suddenly it clicked. Why did those New Testament (NT) writers scour “scripture” for references predicting the coming of Jesus on Earth? It was because they were focused on converting pagans to the “new” religion and since they were in the Roman Empire, that meant they were trying to attract Romans. Romans being impressed by prophecies, caused the NT authors to find as many as they could, even to the point of making them up or reframing them in ways they clearly were not intended for.

And modern Christians often point to the prophecies in the NT as “proof” of the existence of Jesus and his god, as the Romans themselves did.

So, you now understand that the NT authors included prophecies (which were both out of time and place) into their writings, claiming them to be linked to Jesus, in order to attract Romans, and then millennia later Christians use those prophesies as “proof” of the existence of their god-man.

I wonder if the original prophets knew that their work would come around like that: turned into fiction (different fictions?) and then used as concrete proof of the existence of the fictional Jesus.