Usually when it comes to pop culture spookily predicting the future, you expect it to be science fiction. But this Saturday Night Live sketch from 2012 accurately predicted a certain current Congresscritter.
Mar 142019
Mar 132019
Today’s News Outrage revolves around a bunch of rich folk who spent a *lot* of money to do some goofy things to get their offspring into expensive “elite” schools like Harvard and Yale. Part of the News Outrage today included a piece I heard on NPR where predictably someone bemoaned how unfair it was that rich people were getting into Yale while poor people weren’t and how even more unfair it was that some rich people were essentially bribing their kids way in.
Got me thinking: what would actually be fair?
Some things I’m sure we can all agree on:
1: You (as in prospective student) do not have the *right* to have a college experience provided to you.
2: You *definitely* don’t have the right to get into, say, Yale. They can only stuff just so many kids in the door.
So, who gets in?
For starters, my opinion is “who cares?” Because do you *really* get a better education at Yale than at State U? There is prestige, which may or may not prove helpful in your job hunt, but if you gt the degree but not the actual education, your employer is going to toss you out on your ear.
For seconds: what is the function of a place like Yale? it is two fold… to educate, and to stay in business. Yale, after all, is a *business.* So… how bout these for ground rules for admission to one of these “elite” schools (note: the percentages given are mere hand-waving, feel free to think of them bigger or smaller):
1: Each new class of freshmen will be composed of a maximum of 25% non-US citizens.
2: Of the US citizen students, a minimum of 25% will be composed of students who receive full ride scholarships based on nothing except their academic record. No attention will be devoted to their extra-curricular activities, their athletic achievements, their family situations, their ethnicities, genders, etc. Just their grades and test scores. The only extras to be examined will be those that deal *directly* with their chosen fields of study… patents they’ve earned, extra courses they may have taken, etc. These are students who have proven excellence in their field of study. Nobody cares if the kid training to be a brain surgeon plays the flute really well or spends his summers in Africa building solar farms or can kick a ball into a goal.
3: Of the US students, 50% will be composed of students who have earned their way in academically *and* can pay the tuition.
4: Of the US students, a *maximum* of 25% will be composed of those students who have *not* academically earned their place… but their parents are willing to pay. Bribery is not allowed; instead, there will be *auctions.* You bid ten grand? Good luck. You bid half a million? Chances are looking good!
5: As the foreign students are strictly limited in number now, seventy-five percent of the openings will be made available via auction. That Saudi prince wants his drooling idiot-child kid in, and is willing to spend ten million per year to do it? Great! That’ll pay a bunch of the scholarships for the poor, smart, capable US kids.
Seems to me that anybody providing a good or service that you do not have a right to has the right to charge whatever the frak he wants for it. So, why not abandon the need for bribery and open the books up to transparency, and allow rich folk to buy their way in? By them doing so they will be making it a whole lot easier for a whole lot of people who otherwise couldn’t afford to get in.
There is a much bigger demand for elite schools than there is a supply. This means that on the whole the price goes up, but people are screaming about the cost, and the debt they will get thrown into. Well… why not let those who are willing to spend *stupid* sums of money do so?
Vaguely related:
Sarah Lawrence College “students of color” protesters issue 9-pages of demands, target conservative professor
Here are students who should be supported neither by taxpayers nor by their families, lil’ leftist terrorists trying to destroy lives because someone has a different opinion than them.
Mar 122019
The logic behind these claims seem to have been left out of the article:
NASA boss says first person on Mars ‘likely to be a woman’
“The answer is absolutely. In fact, it’s likely to be a woman, the first next person on the Moon,” Bridenstine said. “It’s also true that the first person on Mars is likely to be a woman.”
If there was a practical reason for this, fine. Like if women are substantially better adapted to low/no gravity, or if the astronaut corps was predominantly female, or if they already know who they plan on lobbing at the Moon and Mars because they’ve held the trails and it turned out that the clearly best candidates were women… sure, fine. But as it is, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. This is likely to be either “International Soviet Women’s Day” pandering or signs that NASA is being overrun with SJWs at the highest levels.
The administrator said that “NASA is committed to making sure that we have a broad … on the Moon.”
Mar 122019
Sandmann, family sue CNN for $275M in Covington Catholic controversy
Strategizing lawsuits is not my schtick, but it would seem to be important to first sue someone that you are pretty certain you have a good, winnable case against. The purpose of a lot of lawsuits is, I suppose, to force a settlement rather that go to the bother of holding an actual trial. But *if* you hold a trial, you want to win it.
Either winning a trial or forcing a settlement will, it seems, aid your cause in further lawsuits down the road; it will inspire your future targets to settle ASAP. So far the Sandmann family have sued CNN and the Washington post for a combined total of more than half a billion dollars; I’ve seen conflicting opinions on just how winnable the suits are, but I would assume the lawyer knows what he’s doing.
Should make for an interesting show.
The filing is HERE.
Mar 122019
Woolly mammoth cells brought back to life in shocking scientific achievement
The headline, shockingly enough, is a tad overblown. The cells weren’t brought back to life, but “showed signs of biological activity” after nuclei were transferred into mouse cells. The DNA, as might be expected, was chopped to bits by freezing and the passage of time, but cells can continue to survive- at least for a while – even if the DNA is trashed. However, trashed DNA does not replicate, so more work will need to be done before a living mammoth can be cloned.
From the actual report:
The 28,000-year-old remains of a woolly mammoth, named ‘Yuka’, were found in Siberian permafrost. Here we recovered the less-damaged nucleus-like structures from the remains and visualised their dynamics in living mouse oocytes after nuclear transfer. Proteomic analyses demonstrated the presence of nuclear components in the remains. Nucleus-like structures found in the tissue homogenate were histone- and lamin-positive by immunostaining. In the reconstructed oocytes, the mammoth nuclei showed the spindle assembly, histone incorporation and partial nuclear formation; however, the full activation of nuclei for cleavage was not confirmed. DNA damage levels, which varied among the nuclei, were comparable to those of frozen-thawed mouse sperm and were reduced in some reconstructed oocytes. Our work provides a platform to evaluate the biological activities of nuclei in extinct animal species.
Mar 112019
White House is looking to cut back on the SLS.
NASA budget proposal targets SLS
The NASA budget proposal is about half billion dollars less, but a lot of that would be made up for in going with cheaper options. For instance, by switching from SLS to a commercial launcher (presumably the Falcon 9 Heavy), $700 million would be saved. In this proposed budget most areas of NASA would get some amount of cuts, but an interesting bump up is in “Exploration R&D.” Given that NASA works best as an R&D organization, that’s very likely a good thing.
| Account | FY19 Enacted | FY20 Proposal | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| SCIENCE | $6,905.7 | $6,303.7 | -$602.0 |
| – Earth Science | $1,931.0 | $1,779.8 | -$151.2 |
| – Planetary Science | $2,758.5 | $2,622.1 | -$136.4 |
| – Astrophysics | $1,496.2 | $1,197.4 | -$298.8 |
| – Heliophysics | $720.0 | $704.5 | -$15.5 |
| AERONAUTICS | $725.0 | $666.9 | -$58.1 |
| SPACE TECHNOLOGY | $926.9 | $1,014.3 | $87.4 |
| EXPLORATION | $5,050.8 | $5,021.7 | -$29.1 |
| – Orion | $1,350.0 | $1,266.2 | -$83.8 |
| – Space Launch System | $2,150.0 | $1,775.4 | -$374.6 |
| – Exploration Ground Systems | $592.8 | $400.1 | -$192.7 |
| – Exploration R&D | $958.0 | $1,580.0 | $622.0 |
| SPACE OPERATIONS | $4,639.1 | $4,285.7 | -$353.4 |
| STEM ENGAGEMENT | $110.0 | $0.0 | -$110.0 |
| SAFETY, SECURITY AND MISSION SERVICES | $2,755.0 | $3,084.6 | $329.6 |
| CONSTRUCTION & ENVIRONMENTAL | $348.2 | $600.4 | $252.2 |
| INSPECTOR GENERAL | $39.3 | $41.7 | $2.4 |
| TOTAL | $21,500.0 | $21,019.0 | -$481.0 |
Active stupidity is its own reward
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Mar 102019
Human intelligence is a spectrum, from people lacking in the most basic functionality on up to people so smart that they are virtually incomprehensible to regular smart folk. And there is precisely zero morality attached to any level of that spectrum… it’s neither “right” nor “wrong” to be either dumb or smart. It is, of course, generally more *useful* to be smart than to be dumb. There is also evidence of statistically measurable differences in that spectrum between different populations; one of the more interesting (to me, anyway) variations is the much argued about “variability hypothesis.” This holds that the *average* IQ of men is 100… and the average IQ of women is *also* 100. The difference, though is that women *tend* to cluster around the mean, while mens scores are more spread out. This means that there are more very smart men than very smart women… and more very dumb men than very dumb women. Like so:
This is one of those things that just *sounds* right… when you think of someone doing something profoundly stupid, chances are good you’ll think of some drunk guy saying “hold my beer” just before he sets himself on fire and blows himself to bits.
But it doesn’t say that there are *no* very dumb women. And just to prove the point…
It takes a special kind of stupid to climb over zoo barriers to go take a selfie with a predator that can shred you. I have little to no sympathy for the woman here, but I do feel bad for both the zoo (likely to get hit with lawsuits and other legal issues) and the jaguar. Unfortunately, animals that attack humans often are made to suffer for it, even though what they did was *entirely* predictable.
“Did something dangerously stupid” immediately makes me think it was a guy. “Did something dangerously stupid while taking a selfie,” makes me think it was a gal.
The weird thing is that it often seems to me that lower-IQ people who *know* they’re not that smart generally don’t behave stupidly. If you want truly stupid behavior, look to people who really aught to know better.
Mar 102019
This is an entertaining story, well told. In short: a South Carolina mayor tried to Smollett by claiming that pollen landing on her car was a hate crime.
The next time you hear someone screaming about having been hate crimed, ask yourself: is it more likely that could bees have done this? Is springtime to blame? Would race relations be more improved by accepting the story at face value, or by cutting down all the trees and spraying Agent Orange on all the flowers?
“I’m not saying it was Hate Crime, but it was Bees.”
Mar 102019
And this time I’m not being sarcastic.
US ‘Gets Its Ass Handed To It’ In Wargames
In short: modern US Navy supercarriers are marvels of technology and engineering, and they are fantastically useful in peacetime. in wartime? Giant easily-sunk targets. F-22s and F-35s sweep the skies clean of enemy fighters, then get erased when they land back at the base.
The US goes for quality over quantity. The likes of Russia and China go for quantity over quality. But when it comes to offensive missiles, at a certain point “Chinese quality” is “good enough.” A relatively cheap ballistic missile can be produced in substantial numbers by the likes of China, and even without a nuclear warhead such a missile would be perfectly capable of holing a carrier or trashing an airbase. And the US has done fark-all about building up the sort of anti-missile capability that we need.
And then there’s the easily smashed command and control system, which the Chinese can likely turn into a vast field of blue screens of death with relative ease.
The Russians and the Chinese cannot conquer the US. But they could conquer, say, the South China Sea or Eastern Europe by taking America’s terribly expensive and terribly undefended local resources out of the fight in short order. If this is demonstrated *anywhere,* it is probably safe to assume that the whole world order will collapse overnight.
Mar 092019
No relationship, surely.
#Democrats pic.twitter.com/P2KncBphnN
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) March 5, 2019
STD are caused by racism and stigma? Yes, that would certainly explain the writing and other decisions behind Star Trek Discovery.