I’m of a couple minds here

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Mar 252023

The story:

North Carolina English teacher resigns after ‘covering mouth of boy, 11, with heavy duty TAPE to stop him talking in class’

First up, the flaw in the headline: the tape isn’t “heavy duty.” It’s not Gorilla Tape… it’s blue painters tape. Which means it’s not especially sticky. It’s masking tape with less tack, really easy to pull off.

But as to the issue: taping a talkative kids mouth shut. On the one hand, kids are supposed to shut he hell up in class. Constantly yammering on is not only bad for class discipline, it damages the other kids in class by impairing their ability to concentrate on the lesson. On the other hand, boys this age are full of energy (or at least they should be). This is not a “problem,” this is not “wrong,” this is basic biology. So physical punishment for something as relatively inoffensive as talking – as opposed to throwing things, fighting, stealing, assaults, etc. – may seem excessive.

What say y’all?

I do know one thing: teacher was a moron. How do I know this? She was a foreigner, here on a visa. She lost her job *and* her visa over this. Whatever plans she may have had for the future have been shot to hell. And this was an unforced error on her part. You don’t go to another land and screw with their kids if you want a better life. Unless you go to Britain. They seem to be cool with foreigners screwing with their kids. But the US/ We still, in general, care for our offspring. For the most part.

– – – – –

Meme unrelated. But I just wanted to share it.

“Picard” rejects “Discovery”

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Mar 242023

Season three of “Star Trek Picard” has been an astonishing breath of fresh “Star Trek.” After four dismal years of “Discovery” insulting the fandom and crapping on the legacy, and two hideous seasons of “Picard” that took a steamer on the character of “Picard,” season three, under new management, has really turned things around. And the latest episode goes so far as to wipe out the Discovery production design aesthetic.

There is a visit to the Star fleet Museum, showing a number of of ships on display. These include the Defiant from Deep Space Nine, Janeway’s Voyager, the NCC-1701-A Enterprise, the HMS Bounty whale hauler… and the USS New Jersey. This is a never before seen, probably never before mentioned ship. Which makes sense; doubtless Star Fleet has lots of ships worthy of keeping that never showed up in any prior episode or movie. But what makes the scene really special: all of these ships are, so far as I can tell, *exactly* what they should be in terms of design. The Bounty looks like a Klingon vessel from Star trek III and IV, not one of those gibberish ships from Discovery. The Enterprise, Voyager, Defiant are all quite correct. And the New Jersey? Take a look:

That’s a *proper* TOS-era Connie-class. Not like the sad spectacle of “Pikes” Enterprise from STD/SNW.

And there’s the fact that Worf looks like a Trek Klingon, not a nuTrek Klingork.

So, yeah. Picard ends with this season. But the powers that be will be *really* missing out if they don’t follow this up with a series that spins off of Picard Season Three… same production crew, same production aesthetic, same writers, same producers. They finally found people to work on Trek who actually *like* Trek.

OK, so how do you game the system on this one?

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Mar 212023

OSU requires DEI statements from mechanical, aerospace engineer job applicants

Scholars seeking a job in Ohio State University’s College of Engineering must pledge their allegiance to diversity, equity and inclusion as part of the process.

University officials ask applicants to provide a statement that describes their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, along with “specific examples such as teaching and/or mentoring students from underrepresented backgrounds, outreach activities to underrepresented groups, or conducting research that address social inequities,” according to a copy of the application rubric recently tweeted by John Sailer with the National Association of Scholars.

One suggestion I have: use the current terminology against them. What, exactly, is an “underrepresented” group? That’s nicely vague. One could simply assume that it means “minority.” Okey doke. Well, what is one of the “progressives” most favoritist descriptions these days? “The Global Majority.”

“Global majority” is a collective term for ethnic groups which constitute approximately 85 percent of the global population. It has been used as an alternative to terms which are seen as racialized like “ethnic minority” and “person of color” (POC), or more regional terms like “visible minority” in Canada and “Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic” (BAME) in the United Kingdom.

OK. Cool. Then that means “The Global Minority” is anyone not described by that 85%. You know… white people. So… say “why yes, I’m committed to mentoring minorities.” By doing so, and keeping it vague, it means you’re committed to mentoring EVERY TYPE OF HUMAN IMAGINABLE. Because by one definition or another, everyone is a minority.

Also:

High scores are given to candidates who have a “sophisticated understanding of differences stemming from ethnic, socioeconomic, racial, gender, disability, sexual orientation, and cultural backgrounds and the obstacles people from these backgrounds face in higher education.”

This can also go pretty much any way you want it to. “Yes, I fully understand the importance of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs. (Because I understand how they cause a general reduction in competence and quality.) I understand how all these different factors can play into the difficulties people face. (Because I’ve seen how Asians and The Global Minority are shut out of educational opportunities due to quotas.)” And so on.

There is a way to game any system, no matter how devious and malicious. However, better still would be to toss out this nonsense. *Especially* in stem fields of education and endeavor, where competence and merit are the only metrics by which someone should advance. otherwise buildings burn, bridges collapse, planes crash and people die. But in the mean time, people have to decide to either stand up to the bullies and risk it all, or undermine the bastards.

“Gladiator” sequel

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Mar 192023

Denzel Washington Is Poised to Sign On for Gladiator Sequel

There are as yet few details. Ridley Scott is on board as director, and the character “Lucius,” a child in the first movie, is returning as an adult.

But here’s the thing: “Gladiator” ended as something of an alternate history movie. Maximum killed the emperor Commodus in the Colosseum (unlike in reality where he was assassinated by a wrestler). It was implied fairly strongly that Maximus’s desire to see Rome restored to an emperor-less republic would be adhered to. I suspect that the sequel will simply gloss over those details and restore something like Roman history, emperors and all. Commodus died in 192AD; if the sequel takes place 25 years later in 217 AD, that would mean Marcus Opellius Macrinus would be emperor. That said… it would be interesting if they decided to run with the alternate history idea, Rome restored to a Republic. Twenty five years might be too few to make major changes in Rome… but maybe not. The possibilities are endless.

As unconventional as that approach might be, it’s nothing on the “Gladiator 2” that was originally pitched. That one saw Russel Crowe’s Maximus return as the main character… a neat trick given as he’s dead and all, but the script ran with it, throwing in the Roman gods sending dead Maximus on a mission to hunt down Jehovah. I highly doubt any studio would have *ever* approved such a wacky movie, but, hey, given the rapid advanced in AI, perhaps soon it will be made anyway.

And it only took me four decades

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Mar 162023

At last, my collection of “Tom Swift Jr.” novels is complete. Since I’m a miser/dirt poor, I was only willing to spend a pittance for each book, but if you wait long enough pretty much everything shows up on ebay.

Woo.

And because why not, here’s the next shelf over:

On a related note: turns out that last year a bit of good news slipped by me un-noticed. The CW a few years ago decided to make a TV series about Tom Swift Jr… it could have been good (I mean, it’s not beyond the bounds of the physically possible), but CW decided instead to make an abomination. The series began airing on May 31, 2022. It was promptly cancelled on June 30, 2022, due to low ratings. And of course: Tom Swift had been turned from a no-nonsense STEM-focused blond blue-eyed teenager with a girlfriend into a flamboyant gay black adult. Thus assuring that the existing fanbase would be uninterested. And who among that fraction of the population for whom “flamboyant gay black man” is a draw would be interested in a crappy sci-fantasy show?

From the Wikipedia article on the series:

Lead actor Richards said of the adaptation, “The original Tom Swift was great for his time and what he represented. At the time, that was the face of young boys, All-American kids full of possibilities. But in 2021, that can look so different. It can look like someone like me—a Black guy who is chocolate, who is queer, who is all those things that we’re told aren’t the normal or the status quo.” He added, “We’re going to dive into so many sectors of identity. We’re going to talk about Blackness—and a different kind of Blackness than we’re used to seeing, which is the Black elite, the 1 percent, the billionaires. We’re also going to talk about a queer boy’s journey into becoming a queer man. Not only self-acceptance, but acceptance as a whole, having the community and people around you.”

Gosh. I wonder why it failed to grab ratings.

“The Russian Grab”

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Mar 162023

This video from at least 7 years ago lays out some of the reasons why the Russians may well have gotten rather adventurous of late: they are running out of Russians, but they’re not running out of routes to invade Russia. So rather than cultivate good relations with the surrounding nations or get on about the task of making more Russians, they seem to have gone the other route of trying to seize all the invasion routes while they still have a military with which to do it. As the last year of their little two-week “military operation” has shown, that hasn’t gone so well.

Note the “demographic pyramid” he shows here. It lays out the population of Russia by age; a growing population has a wide base of young people, but back when this video was made (circa 2015) Russias base was looking kinda weak. However, it did seem to be growing somewhat:

So how is it looking today?

Oh, dear. It looks like baby-making fell off a cliff right after this guy made his video, so instead of things maybe getting better they’ve gotten much worse.

“Population pyramids” are interesting things to consider. Nations like this with shrinking young uns are in serious trouble; the pyramid for South Korea looks especially dire:

China’s not looking so good:

Nor is Japan:

Iceland, in contrast, looks kinda ok:

but if you really want to see where the population of the future is coming from, you need pyramids that look like this:

Or this:

The nations with wide bases will have greatly increased populations, with greatly increased pressures for those populations to leave and colonize low-population regions. The dying nations will, like Russia, likely try to defend themselves with constantly diminishing human resources, or they will, like much of Europe is currently doing, simply allow themselves to be colonized and replaced, culturally, religiously, ethnically.

Gonna be an interesting century.

Say goodbye to South Korea

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Mar 152023

Apparently life is bad for women in South Korea, with a heavily patriarchal society that treats ’em like garbage. So, perhaps not surprisingly, a lot of South Korean women are doing what they can to avoid the worst of it. And for some number of them, that means avoiding men entirely:

A World Without Men

The women of South Korea’s 4B movement aren’t fighting the patriarchy — they’re leaving it behind entirely.

The “4B” movement is essentially the “Men Going Their Own Way” movement of South Korean women, separating themselves from any relationships with men, including family and male friends. They’re cutting their hair short (or bald) and avoiding makeup in order to be less attractive, and are either living alone or shacking up with other women. And according to the article, a lot of these women seem satisfied with this arrangement. There is, of course, the inevitable result:

In December of that year (2016), as Korea’s fertility rate hovered at 1.2 births per woman (it has since slid to 0.78, the lowest in the world)

The birth rate has plummeted from 1.2 to 0.78 in well under a decade. And 1.2 was *well* under replacement rate. South Korea will soon begin to run low on young people, though likely not on old people. This will mean that the burden of caring for an elderly population will fall more and more on fewer and fewer younger Koreans, likely driving some kind of an exodus… And quite possibly driving an *influx* of cheap, low-paid “migrants.” This will lead to South Korean culture being gradually replaced with some other culture. And the question will be… what is this other culture’s views on such things as women’s rights? Just as Europe celebrates gay and trans while not making their own babies and importing *vast* numbers of people from cultures that not only like to make babies but also like to throw gay people off rooftops, there will be an inevitable clash. A South Korea filled with elderly Koreans and young non-Koreans seems like a poor force to stack up against an invasion of young, armed North Koreans. All the Norks needs to do is wait and keep making babies, and the peninsula is theirs.

If you won;t make the next generation, someone else will. That might well suck… but there it is regardless.

Oscars: I don’t know if this means anything…

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Mar 132023

Wikipedia, unsurprisingly, has a list of all the Best Movie Oscar winners. For no readily apparent reason I decided to look them all up and see how many I’ve watched. Starting in the forties (because why not):

40s: 4
50s: 5
60s: 4
70s: 7
80s: 8
90s: 9
00s: 4
10s: 2
20s: 0 (out of three)

Hmmm. Seventies through the 90’s seemed to make movies I actually wanted to watch. But how about just the movies that were nominated?

40s: 16/50 (32%)
50s: 15/50 (30%)
60s: 21/50 (42%)
70s: 27/50 (54%)
80s: 27/50 (54%)
90s: 32/50 (64%)
00s: 14/55 (25.5%)
10s: 27/88 (30.7%)
20s: 2/28 (7.1%)

It’s less stark here, but again the 70s through 90s won. The outlier is the 20’s… so far it’s looking like a big pile of yawn.

One could argue that the older movies have the advantage, as I’ve had more time to watch them. But in the age of streaming, DVD, Blu Ray, 4k… any movie I *want* to watch, I can. If I haven’t by now, it’s most likely because I’ve seen the trailer or read the propaganda… and it’s just not interesting. Granted, not every movie is for everyone; I’m never going to be a big fan of “chick flicks” or artsy indie flicks about gay cowboys eating pudding any more than some people are never going to be fans of science fiction. But the fact that there seems to be a decline in movies I give a crap about might mean something to someone, I dunno.

Hell, here’s the list of nominees from the 2020’s:

Nomadland
The Father
Judas and the Black Messiah
Mank
Minari
Promising Young Woman
Sound of Metal
The Trial of the Chicago 7
CODA
Belfast
Don’t Look Up
Drive My Car
Dune
King Richard
Licorice Pizza
Nightmare Alley
The Power of the Dog
West Side Story
Everything Everywhere All at Once
All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
The Banshees of Inisherin
Elvis
The Fabelmans
Tár
Top Gun: Maverick
Triangle of Sadness
Women Talking

How many have you actually even *heard* of? And how many, when you look them up, look like unwatchable preachy or artsy garbage?

Priorities!

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Mar 122023

So it looks like Silicon Valley Bank employed people to do fundamentally pointless time- and resource-wasting stuff. This, sad to say, is hardly unique; lots of companies devote surprising amounts of effort end employees time to things that have nothing to do with the companies business or mission. Company baseball teams, for example, have nothing to do with, say, an auto manufacturers core function; claims about “building morale/cohesion” *might* have some validity, but if the company is in dire distress, spending resources on that is a bit unwise. However, a baseball team is unlikely to be a major source of revenue drain.

DIE (Diversity, Inclusion and Equity) initiatives, however, CAN be a major drain on a company. Not only directly by consuming payroll in hiring these people, but in consuming productivity in redirecting employees to do stuff on company time. And probably more importantly, indirectly by tearing apart the fundamental cultures that promote productivity and setting employees at each others throats and by causing HR departments to drive away – or not hire in the first place – good employees due to them not filling Enough checkboxes, and retaining less qualified employees because they identify with the current politically favored victimhood groups.

So, any time, money, resources devoted to “woke” policies is of course a bad thing. But how bad it was for SVB is yet to be determined, but it looks like they were at least at the standard American major corporate level of wokist self-sabotagery.

While Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, top executive pushed ‘woke’ programs

Perhaps this will serve as a valuable lesson to other companies to avoid this sort of nonsense. I’m not optimistic, though… a century of blood driven by big-government collectivism, from the socialists to the Nazis to the Commies, has hardly stopped people from “but this time we’ll get it right.” Additionally: since the list of “conspiracy theories” being proven right seems to grow day by day, conspiracy theories that hold that failures like this are all part of some long plan to centralize power into fewer and fewer institutions seem undismissable.

Shut the F Up, Nerd

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Mar 082023

Are you ready for the *dumbest* thing you’ll read today? Prepare yourselves…

End ‘colonial’ approach to space exploration, scientists urge

Short response: eat me.

Longer response: let’s take a look at what this idea is, shall we?

But Dr Pamela Conrad of the Carnegie Institution of Science said the focus should shift away from seeking to exploit discoveries.

Speaking ahead of a panel event on Saturday on the ethics of space exploration at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Washington DC, she said: “If we were willing to seize that as not just a possibility, but an imperative then oddly enough, the Star Trek series and culture becomes a prime directive for how we could explore space: seeking not to interfere.”

In the Star Trek series, the Prime Directive, or General Order 1, of Starfleet Command sets out that the Starfleet should not interfere with the social, cultural or technological development of any other planet.

Conrad said that rather than setting out to own or take resources from space, humans should endeavour to be “gentle explorers”.

Tell me you’ve never actually watched Star Trek without telling me you’ve never actually watched Star Trek. The Prime Directive – which they broke all the freakin’ time – said not to interfere with the development of an intelligent species. but strip mining moons and asteroids? Hell, yes? Starfleet and the United Federation of planets were *all* about resource extraction. Hell, they were in favor of the damned Genesis Device which would completely pave over entire solar systems to build brand new ones with shiny new planets. Because of course they were: the UFP weren’t stupid.

Oh, but it gets worse. So much worse:

What’s more, he said Indigenous people had deep connections with bodies such as the moon.

“Part of that connection is inherent to the culture and the way of living and way of knowing,” he said, adding any damage to such bodies was therefore a concern.

As a result, Neilson said those working on space missions, such as the Nasa Artemis programme – which seeks to establish a long-term presence on the moon and eventually send humans to Mars – should engage with Indigenous people in advance.

Haha no. Why the frak should NASA give a damn what a bunch of ignorant boobs who think the Moon is a space fairy think? When they build their own rockets, then they, too, can have a say.

Around a week ago I read yet another article about how cloning the woolly mammoth was right around the corner. Well, maybe. But what stuck with me were some of the comments: the scientists were “playing God,” and the mammoths being extinct were part of “Gods plan” and that it was wrong to try to upend that. Well, here’s the thing: if one assumes God exists, then humans de-exticting the mammoth would either:

1) Also be part of Gods plan

2) Be proof that God ain’t so great; mere humans can reverse what a supposed omnipotent being did.

So if some “indigenous group” thinks the moon is some neato-keen religious symbol that should not be tinkered with, and the United States and China race to pave the place with mines and solar panels… maybe those indigenous groups need to rethink their religion.

Leaving the future of humanity in the hands of people who are stuck in the past is not just dumb, it’s criminal.

The United Federation of Planets didn’t screw with primitives. But they also didn’t put primitives on the Federation council.

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