Snowy Pine-Tree, 1899 by Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865 - 1931)

Snowy Pine-Tree, 1899 by Akseli Gallen-Kallela  (1865 - 1931)

Click to enlarge.

0.02% versus the 99.98%

From The Supreme Court Needs Diversity in More Ways Than One by Benjamin H. Barton.  The subheading is "No current justice is a public-college alum, and only one was a trial judge."

I have long argued that in the US, what is described as racism is almost always classism.  We studiously avoid dealing with class because it does not lend itself as easily to affirmative action quotas based on race.  And it is far harder to deal with because there is so little philosophical agreement.  But when you look at the numbers, class is the central issue rather than race as Barton's article indirectly points out.

If President Biden makes good on his promise to nominate a black female justice, the Supreme Court will be more diverse than ever in terms of race and sex. But in another sense, the court has become increasingly homogeneous. Recent justices have come from remarkably similar backgrounds—and the president’s reported front-runner, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, would fit right in.

Judge Jackson grew up in a major metropolitan area, and her father was a lawyer. She would be the fifth sitting justice to fit that profile. She earned both her bachelor’s and law degrees at Harvard and would be the seventh justice with an Ivy League undergraduate degree and the eighth graduate of Harvard or Yale law school.

She clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer and would be the sixth justice to have served as a Supreme Court clerk. Two of her prospective colleagues, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, likewise succeeded the justices for whom they clerked. After clerking, Judge Jackson worked at an elite Washington law firm focusing on appellate litigation, as did five other current justices. She has served as a federal appellate judge, like every other justice but Elena Kagan, and would be the fourth justice from the District of Columbia Circuit. . . .

Studies consistently establish that more experientially diverse decision-making bodies tend to avoid groupthink, consider different and more innovative approaches, and then reach better decisions. Given that every justice is already a lawyer, it makes sense to try to diversify across other educational, geographic and experiential axes. This was the case historically, as Harvard graduates shared the bench with former politicians, law professors and even autodidacts with no formal education.

Another vector is religion, still centrally important to most Americans.  The US is, according to Pew Research Center:

Protestant (48%)

Unaffiliated (16%) 

Catholic (15%)

Agnostic (4%)

Atheist (3%)

Mormon (2%)

Jewish (2%)

Muslim (1%)

The US Supreme Court is 

Protestant (0%)

Catholic (78%)

Unaffiliated (0%)

Agnostic (0%)

Atheist (0%)

Mormon (0%)

Jewish (22%)

Muslim (0%)

Building on Barton, let's look at educational attainment:

PhD - 2%

Masters - 10%

Bachelors - 21%

Associate's degree - 6%

Some college - 18%

High School - 28%

Less than High School - 10%

The US Supreme Court is:

PhD - 0%

Masters - 100%

Bachelors - 0%

Associate's degree - 0%

Some college - 0%

High School - 0%

Less than High School - 0%

Credential quality for the US

Ivy League - 0.02%

Non-Ivy League - 99.98%

And for the US Supreme Court

Ivy League - 89%

Non-Ivy League - 11%

Average household income in the US - $68,000

Supreme Court Justice income - $223,500

You can go too far with this reductionism.  Both Thomas and Sotomayor, despite their later successes, were children of straightened circumstances.  The Supreme Court is not a pure bastion of elitism.

But . . . the above data does support exactly how insular and distinct they necessarily are from the great average American citizen.  

I have no beef with the current line-up of the current justices.  They are all bright people.  I am sure all of them routinely or periodically calibrate to the country at large.  There is no denying, however, that they do not look like America.  Especially in terms of religion and education and income and elitism.  

So if you are going to change your criteria for selection to make the Supreme Court look more like America, there is virtually a wholesale replacement required.  But only if you are so narrowly focused on assessing everyone on their race.  If you are blind to everything else (religion, class, diversity of education attainment, etc.) then, fundamentally, you are a racist.

Far better, I think, to let the chips fall where they may when you select based on achievement and political considerations.  That is how it has been done, and it has worked reasonably well.  And it is difficult to conjure up a better system.  

Is there an urban cycle of growth, decay and then regrowth again?

A timely piece, What Progressives Did To Cities by by Michael Anton.  It is actually a book review of San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities by Michael Shellenberger.  Shellenberger is a progressive with a sharp critique of blue urban mayors.  Anton is definitely on the right.  There is a surprisingly large overlap between them, though, in general, Anton would go much further than Shellenberger is willing to consider.  

But the opening of Anton's piece addresses a theme I have been pondering the past year or two - the echoing similarities between the urban riots of the mid- and late-1960s and those today (2015 and 2020).  

There are some marked similarities in that race and purported racism run through both.  They are also similar in terms of the extensiveness of property loss and loss of life.  The 1960s were worse but only by a factor of 2-4.  

But they are materially different as well.  The 1960s riots were in the context of a near two-decade run of prosperity.  The suburbs were just beginning to boom as commercial and residential alternatives.  The civil rights acts of the sixties were still being passed and therefore past and even ancient racist practices were still real and visible.  The black family was still intact (but in decline as demonstrated in the Coleman and Moynihan reports).  And even though America was the richest country in the world, it was still not then as prosperous as the US is today.  The complaints and concerns about inner city life were real and was reflected in the fact that the riots were a continuing issue spreading among cities for half a decade.

The 2015 riots (Ferguson) and the 2020 riots (Floyd) were far more constrained in their origins.  Specific police encounters with specific criminals under ambiguous at best and at worst false narratives.

The 1960's riots destroyed so many city centers and provide excess growth conditions to exurbs and suburbs.  Real causes, real distress and real destruction.  Anyone traveling among our great cities during the 1970-1990s could see both the destruction and the difficult recoveries.  Things came to a head in the mid and late 1990s when citizens finally insisted on security and many, not all, of those great cities began magnificent recoveries.

What I have been pondering is the parallels.  Are we seeing an inflection point in a cycle of urban regrowth and then destruction, and then regrowth again?  Are Ferguson and Floyd merely distant echos or are they real harbingers of the return of the destructive cycle?

I don't know, but I am thinking about it and Anton's piece covers much of that ground with good commentary, observations and some data.

I was born just after the beginning of what left-wing San Franciscophile David Talbot has described as that city’s “Season of the Witch”: the decade-and-a-half of insanity that began (more or less) with the Summer of Love and carried through the early days of the AIDS epidemic. In between saw the Zodiac murders, the Zebra murders, the Moscone-Milk murders, Jonestown, the Hearst kidnapping, innumerable other acts of New Left violence, plus several attempts at revolution, some serious, most LARPy, but all disruptive—and meant to be—of ordinary civic life.

I also happen to have made my first trip to New York in 1977, that city’s widely-acknowledged nadir (the only competitor for the honor might be 1990, the peak of the crack wars, when the five boroughs logged an astounding 2,245 homicides). Granted, I didn’t see much—we stayed at the Plaza, about as insulated from mayhem as one could get—but just having been there in that poisoned year remains a perverse point of pride, like I was, however peripherally, a part of something big.

I actually lived in Manhattan when David Dinkins was mayor and in the District of Columbia when Marion Barry was. I was up north during the L.A. riots, but family was there, and—having spent part of every year in the Southland for more than a decade—I knew enough to be worried for them. Two years later, I would move down myself.

But by then everything had begun to change. Not just in L.A., and not just in the other three cities mentioned above, but throughout urban America. Or at least those parts of it that the ruling class cares about (i.e., not Detroit). City-dwellers, apparently, had finally had enough. They elected crime-fighting mayors across the land—Rudy Giuliani, above all, but also Richard Daley in Chicago, Richard Riordan in L.A., and Anthony Williams in D.C. Even San Franciscans got so fed up with a semi-permanent homeless encampment on Civic Center Plaza that they threw out the dopey liberal mayor Art Agnos (who years before had actually been shot by one of the Zebra killers and apparently learned nothing from the experience) and replaced him with the police chief.

The great American political and policy story of the 1990s was the spectacular drop in crime and concomitant rise of urban order. Cities and neighborhoods long considered ungovernable came back to life. People moved in, businesses opened (or reopened), property values rose, and the streets were packed—with, I hasten to add, law-abiding folk going about their business.

Worth a read as is the review of Shellenerberger's book which Anton eventually gets to. 

All my life I have placed great store in civility and good manners, practices I find scarce among the often hard-edged, badly socialized scientists with whom I associate.

From Naturalist by Edward O. Wilson, his autobiography.

I left at the end of the spring term, carrying an inoculum of the military culture. Up to college age I retained the southerner’s reflexive deference to elders. Adult males were “sir” and ladies “ma’am,” regardless of their station. These salutations I gave with pleasure. I instinctively respect authority and believe emotionally if not intellectually that it should be perturbed only for conspicuous cause. At my core I am a social conservative, a loyalist. I cherish traditional institutions, the more venerable and ritual-laden the better.

All my life I have placed great store in civility and good manners, practices I find scarce among the often hard-edged, badly socialized scientists with whom I associate. Tone of voice means a great deal to me in the course of debate. I try to remember to say “With all due respect” or its equivalent at the start of a rebuttal, and mean it. I despise the arrogance and doting self-regard so frequently found among the very bright.

I have a special regard for altruism and devotion to duty, believing them virtues that exist independent of approval and validation. I am stirred by accounts of soldiers, policemen, and firemen who have died in the line of duty. I can be brought to tears with embarrassing quickness by the solemn ceremonies honoring these heroes. The sight of the Iwo Jima and Vietnam Memorials pierces me for the witness they bear of men who gave so much, and who expected so little in life, and the strength ordinary people possess that held civilization together in dangerous times.

I have been reading much lately on the American Revolution and the astonishing capacity of Massachusetts and Virginia to bridge their cultural differences in order to accomplish their shared goals.  Wilson's words echo those of Washington as he assumed military leadership of the Continental Army and had to navigate his way among the Yankees with their flinty personalities and directness unfamiliar to Virginians.   

The denial of genetics is a truly surprising modern reprise of Lysenkoism

The New Lysenkoism: Scientific American’s broadside against E. O. Wilson fits a fashionable, science-denying trend. by Nicholas Wade.

An excellent insight.  I was incensed when Scientific American ran a condemning obituary of E.O. Wilson.  It was, of course, not by anyone of his stature but rather by someone enamored with the academic infatuation with wokeism, the poisonous intermingling of progressivism, critical race theory, and social justice theory.  A noxious stew completely bereft of Age of Enlightenment values and of any correlation to reality.  An indulgence of social signaling status beliefs.  

My outrage presumably blinded me to the point Wade is making.  By endorsing a racist interpretation of Wildon's work, Scientific American was also endorsing Lysenkoism.  

A strange thing is happening to the venerable magazine Scientific American. It has decided to kick its science-loving readers in the teeth and embrace a modern equivalent of Lysenkoism—the doctrine that required Soviet biologists to ignore evolution and the genetics of plants.

The great biologist Edward O. Wilson died on December 26. Few readers of Scientific American could be unaware of Wilson’s towering contributions to biology and conservation, or of his rare gifts as a synthesizer and writer. They surely didn’t expect that the oeuvre of this globally renowned scientist would be labeled by Scientific American, just three days after his death, as “built on racist ideas.”

Why would the editor of the magazine, Laura Helmuth, take it into her head to insult almost everything her readers believe in? The sad truth is that she, like some editors of more important scientific journals, has been infected by a taste-destroying, judgment-paralyzing malady: the virus of progressive wokeness.

The article she ran, by a junior academic at UC San Francisco, Monica McLemore (who holds a Ph.D. in nursing science), asserts that Wilson’s “racist ideas” come from his book Sociobiology, which supported “the notion that differences among humans could be explained by genetics, inheritance and other biological mechanisms.”

The assertion reflects the foundation on which woke theory is built: everyone is the same, with no genetic differences between sexes or races. By rejecting genetics, adherents can dismiss the notion that people might have different innate talents and earn different rewards. The theory instead attributes any deviation from equality, whether in occupations or income, to discrimination. At one blow, the hope of a merit-rewarding society is destroyed, to be replaced by a distribution of wealth according to wokeist rules.

Woke theory provides the platform for putting opponents on the defensive, grabbing more spoils for practitioners of identity politics, and smearing as racist anyone who dares dispute the premise of the whole racket—that people have no genetic differences. Since no one wants to be called a racist, the intimidation works perfectly and is spreading an ever-widening circle of fear in campuses, corporations, and media.

The premise is, of course, entirely false. A handful of genetic differences exist between the sexes, but they have profound consequences. A multitude of genetic differences exist between the races, but they have trivial consequences, like effects on skin or hair color. None justifies the fundamental idea of racism, that one race is superior to another. If you say there are obviously genetic differences between races but no race is superior, wokeists will ignore that central distinction and call you a scientific racist.

This sort of ideological anti-realism is no mere inconsequential fantasy conjured up by government supported academics with little in terms of real-world feedback or practice in the rough and tumble of intellectual debate.  They want to assert without evidence and deplatform everyone who points out that this is no mark of academic success.  A coercive mindset with a dark past.  

The denial of genetics is a truly surprising modern reprise of Lysenkoism. Wokeists, too, both deny the role of genetics in biology and aggressively seek to punish or ostracize their critics. Some 3,000 Soviet biologists were dismissed, imprisoned, or killed because they refused to abandon the theory of evolution for the nonsense Trofim Lysenko was peddling. Our academics are evidently made of more pliant stuff.

Wade finishes dishing Helmuth and McLemore and then appends a factually useful and endearing obituary of Wilson.  

Portus, the harbor of Trajan

I came across a reference to Trajan's port in the city of Ostia.  From Britannica:

Ostia was a port of republican Rome and a commercial centre under the empire (after 27 BCE). The Romans considered Ostia their first colony and attributed its founding (for the purpose of salt production) to their fourth king, Ancus Marcius (7th century BCE). Archaeologists have found on the site a fort of the mid-4th century BCE, but nothing older. The purpose of the fort was to protect the coastline. It was the first of the long series of Rome’s maritime colonies. When Rome developed a navy, Ostia became a naval station, and during the Punic Wars (264–201 BCE) it served as the main fleet base on the west coast of Italy. It was the major port—especially significant in grain trade—for republican Rome until its harbour, partly obstructed by a sandbar, became inadequate for large vessels. During the empire Ostia was a commercial and storage centre for Rome’s grain supplies and a service station for vessels going to Portus, the large artificial harbour built by Claudius. In 62 CE a violent storm swamped and sank some 200 ships in the harbour. Rome’s problem with sea commerce was eventually solved when Trajan added a large hexagonal basin to the harbour.

The reference I saw was to the hexagonal basin.  

This was originally on the coast but as the river Tiber has deposited silt, it is now four miles inland.  

Click to enlarge.

The original design.

Click to enlarge.

And what it would have looked like.

Click to enlarge.

And how it appears today, inland.

Click to enlarge.

What I find truly striking is the view from satellite.

Click to enlarge.

Immediately to the north, a veritable stone's throw, of Portus, the harbor of Trajan, the harbor which connected Rome with the world, is Leonardo da Vinci International Airport, the airport which connect Rome with the world.

I m familiar with geographical determinism but this is . . . striking.  

History

This delicately detailed #Roman intaglio shows the Empress, Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus & mother to Caracalla & Geta. The Intaglio dates to cAD200-210 & is carved in Beryl. The artist has paid close attention to Julia's distinctive hairstyle. @metmuseum collection. pic.twitter.com/IOez3OftGa

— Trimontium Trust (@TrimontiumTrust) December 27, 2021

 

An Insight

“myriad studies… have demonstrated that, when people confer with others who agree with them, their views become more extreme. Social scientists have dubbed this effect “group polarization”…”
https://t.co/816AZyqQ5n

— Roger Pielke Jr. (@RogerPielkeJr) December 27, 2021

 

I see wonderful things

Ever seen a kiwi run?

It can reach speeds of 12mph, faster than an average human... pic.twitter.com/xDTCCYQzQ1

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) December 28, 2021

 

Offbeat Humor

Click to enlarge.

Data Talks

It is the role of public health & the media to contextualize information for the public. Not to scaremonger.

Have you ever been made aware of the fact that 58k kids <5 are hospitalized each year for RSV? Life went on, & nobody proposed masking 2 yos.https://t.co/mKpynM0XlX pic.twitter.com/YPrhO2X0c5

— NYC Angry Mom (@angrybklynmom) December 28, 2021

 

Youth and Time, 1901 by John William Godward

Youth and Time, 1901 by John William Godward

Click to enlarge.

History

true story: one of the original surveyor crews made a mistake, so they had to adjust some borders. The town where they adjusted it is named - and I am not making this up - Correctionvillehttps://t.co/626ptlI2Hc

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) December 28, 2021

 

An Insight

🙏 @danjgregory https://t.co/MpkQrTe5cM

— Abir Ballan (@abirballan) December 25, 2021

 

I see wonderful things

This is awesome

Red tailed mason bees typically makes its nest in empty snail shells.

There is usually room for 4 egg chambers & food provisions for newborns

What you are seeing here is technique called ‘thatching’, using plant material to disguise itpic.twitter.com/z4v2uUWOPB

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) December 7, 2021

 

The party which sanctifies censorship and coercion

From The Pressure Campaign on Spotify to Remove Joe Rogan Reveals the Religion of Liberals: Censorship by Glenn Greenwald.  The subheading is "All factions, at certain points, succumb to the impulse to censor. But for the Democratic Party's liberal adherents, silencing their adversaries has become their primary project."

Greenwald brings all his formidable empirical reporting to explicitly to indict Democrats on their love-affair with censorship.  I find little to disagree with him in this particular essay.  It is worth reading.

I have lately been thinking of a heuristic which increasingly suggests itself.  Vote against and commercially punish all politicians, institutions, or enterprises which explicitly, by word or deed, endorse censorship and which also endorse governance by decree, mandate, and executive order.  

What might this look like?  Which politicians would disappear from the stage?  Which commercial enterprises?  How many would be left?  What sort of disparate impact might there be between the parties?  How do you distinguish those who merely rhetorically invoke censorship and rule by fiat and those for whom it can be seen as a central platform?

The reverse version is, How many politicians, institutions and commercial enterprises are explicitly committed to free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, private property and consent of the governed.

An interesting, and distressing, exercise.  The barbarians are among us to a greater extent than we acknowledge.

From Greenwald's ringing endorsement of free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, private property and consent of the governed.

American liberals are obsessed with finding ways to silence and censor their adversaries. Every week, if not every day, they have new targets they want de-platformed, banned, silenced, and otherwise prevented from speaking or being heard (by "liberals,” I mean the term of self-description used by the dominant wing of the Democratic Party).

For years, their preferred censorship tactic was to expand and distort the concept of "hate speech” to mean "views that make us uncomfortable,” and then demand that such “hateful” views be prohibited on that basis. For that reason, it is now common to hear Democrats assert, falsely, that the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech does not protect “hate speech." Their political culture has long inculcated them to believe that they can comfortably silence whatever views they arbitrarily place into this category without being guilty of censorship.

Constitutional illiteracy to the side, the “hate speech” framework for justifying censorship is now insufficient because liberals are eager to silence a much broader range of voices than those they can credibly accuse of being hateful. That is why the newest, and now most popular, censorship framework is to claim that their targets are guilty of spreading “misinformation” or “disinformation.” These terms, by design, have no clear or concise meaning. Like the term “terrorism,” it is their elasticity that makes them so useful.

When liberals’ favorite media outlets, from CNN and NBC to The New York Times and The Atlantic, spend four years disseminating one fabricated Russia story after the next — from the Kremlin hacking into Vermont's heating system and Putin's sexual blackmail over Trump to bounties on the heads of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, the Biden email archive being "Russian disinformation,” and a magical mystery weapon that injures American brains with cricket noises — none of that is "disinformation” that requires banishment. Nor are false claims that COVID's origin has proven to be zoonotic rather than a lab leak, the vastly overstated claim that vaccines prevent transmission of COVID, or that Julian Assange stole classified documents and caused people to die. Corporate outlets beloved by liberals are free to spout serious falsehoods without being deemed guilty of disinformation, and, because of that, do so routinely.

This "disinformation" term is reserved for those who question liberal pieties, not for those devoted to affirming them. That is the real functional definition of “disinformation” and of its little cousin, “misinformation.” It is not possible to disagree with liberals or see the world differently than they see it. The only two choices are unthinking submission to their dogma or acting as an agent of "disinformation.” Dissent does not exist to them; any deviation from their worldview is inherently dangerous — to the point that it cannot be heard.

It is a temptation to continue an excerpt but the whole thing is worth reading.  

Greenwald is a Classical Liberal of whom both liberals and conservatives can and should be proud.  One of the few media voices explicitly standing up for our classical liberal traditions.

He ends with:

In sum, censorship — once the province of the American Right during the heydey of the Moral Majority of the 1980s — now occurs in isolated instances in that faction. In modern-day American liberalism, however, censorship is a virtual religion. They simply cannot abide the idea that anyone who thinks differently or sees the world differently than they should be heard. 

Read the whole thing.  

I see wonderful things

Los Angeles and changing times.

© Vintage America Uncovered#archaeohistories pic.twitter.com/LXR5X8u9zj

— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) December 29, 2021

 

First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain. Then there is.

An interesting but frustrating piece, (Mis)measuring the Shoplifting Crisis by Charles Fain Lehman.  The subheading is "Is there a wave of retail theft? Data tell a more complicated story than the headlines."

Most of the points he raises are good points, particularly with regard to the weak integrity of the data.  But data has always been weak in this regard.  He is trying to treat two propositions equally.  One proposition is that property crime, shoplifting in particular, has risen due to rampant smash-and-grabs.  The other proposition is that there is no such rise and that the perception of an increase is a product of non-typical videos with high sharing and engagement. 

Even though he self-consciously tries to be fair, it still comes across somewhat as an effort to rescue the narrative that there is no real rise in crime.  However, he does introduce a lot of data and suitably caveats the strength and weakness of the data.

Two striking things that Lehman does not address.  One, he acknowledges that many bad trends in big cities started increasing in 2015.  Two, the disconnect between big city data and suburban/smaller city/country data.

He has enough crumb trails to suggest that the trends capturing attention are big city trends but he does not elaborate why they are confined to big cities.  If, indeed, the trends are limited to select big cities, then that is meaningful information.  

Command-F on either Ferguson (2014) or Floyd (2020) returns zero results.  Yet the inflection points he is discussing correlates with the dates and aftermaths of both the Ferguson and Floyd riots, both of which were nationwide but typically concentrated in select large cities.  

Command-F on defunding also yields null results.  He does allude to police pulling back from enforcement but only in the context of cities being less willing to bring charges against perpetrators.  There is no discussion about the decline in big city police levels, the increase in churn, and the overall pullback of police enforcement out of concerns that Mayors or City Councils will throw police officers under the bus as has happened repeatedly since 2020.

All-in-all, despite the protestations that this is a complex story with many facets, all of which need to be examined in terms of validating or invalidating data, which is all true, this ends up being a salvage job on the proposition that there is no real crisis.  If the crisis is sourced in defunding and de-policing and you are not discussing the consequences of that, then the piece is not serious, despite the volume of data and the validity of some of the arguments.  

Offbeat Humor

Related: thoughts and prayers to everyone on the 11.09 from Crewe to Edinburgh tomorrow. https://t.co/sypVShGDbA

— Jenny Bann (@calluna_) December 29, 2021

 

Data Talks

"75+ Studies Against Covid School Closures"

"Lockdowns & school closure policies caused, and are still causing, serious harm with longterm consequences, esp among marginalized. Govts caused the death of many children due to lockdowns & school closures..."https://t.co/FzuwIVj1R6

— Kulvinder Kaur MD (@dockaurG) December 28, 2021

 

Ridgeline Bloom by Doug West

Ridgeline Bloom by Doug West

Click to enlarge.

History

I mean, #mosaicmonday doesn’t get better than this, does it?

Welcome Room, Norman Palace, Palermo, 12th c.

One of the few surviving examples of secular mosaic from the Medieval period (there might have been quite a lot more) pic.twitter.com/6TNrOFYJ8T

— Dr George Bartlett (@GeorgeWBartlett) December 27, 2021

 

An Insight

One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation. - Thomas Brackett Reed

— Cerebral Wisdom (@CerebralWisdom) December 27, 2021

 

"Normals" teach us rules; "outliers" teach us laws.

From The Laws of Medicine by Siddhartha Mukherjee.  He identifies three laws:

A strong intuition is much more powerful than a weak test.

"Normals" teach us rules; "outliers" teach us laws.

For every perfect medical experiment, there is a perfect human bias.

Medicine asks you to make perfect decisions with imperfect information.

From The Laws of Medicine by Siddhartha Mukherjee, quoting an anonymized surgeon.

It’s easy to make perfect decisions with perfect information. Medicine asks you to make perfect decisions with imperfect information.

Not just medicine.  It is easy to make perfect decisions with perfect knowledge.  Life asks you to make perfect decisions with imperfect information.  Too frequently we do not acknowledge or take into account this reality.  Perhaps even more frequently, we mistake ourselves as being in the first condition when we are actually in the second position.  

Although computer ownership and use increased substantially, we find no effects on any educational outcomes

From Study of the Week: Computers in the Home by Freddie deBoer.  It's an old blog post (2017) about an even older (2013) study.  Worth resurrecting as the underlying hope/myth remains resilient.  Actually it is a handful of interconnected convictions.

Differences in life outcomes are due to resource constraints available to individuals.

Provision of material deficits solves the problem of differences in life outcomes.

The more we can make people seem materially like the middle class, the more we should expect to see middle class outcomes.  

None of which is true.  Well, more properly, they are only occasionally true under very limited circumstances.  They are not generalizable nor are they usefully true.  

This is the resource constraint myth.  In select circumstances, it is true that resource access is determinative.  Usually it is not.

Years ago, early in my consulting career, when I was conducting team problem solving projects, working with client teams to address operational issues, I frequently conducted root cause analysis sessions.  I found that every team would always default to absence of resources as the root cause.  I learned to instruct the teams to reject any root cause which explained poor performance by absence of resource.

It made the projects far more effective.  Without the excuse, they more quickly focused on real root causes and more quickly developed creative solutions which could be implemented and did in fact dramatically improve outcomes.  

I would guess that were you ask the general public whether provision of a computer to students in the bottom two quintiles of household income would make a measurable positive difference in education outcomes, I would guess that 70-80% would agree.  Among education professionals, the answer would likely be 95% or greater.

Big tech companies have been pushing computers in the classroom and the student bedroom as a solution at least since the Apple II near fifty years ago.  We should know by now whether it works.  De Boer:

The study is large (n = 1,123) and high quality. In particular, it offers the rare advantage of being a genuine controlled randomized experiment. That is, the researchers identified research subjects who, at baseline, did not own computers, assigned them randomly to control (no computer) and test (given a computer). This is really not common in educational research. Typically, you'd have to do an observational/correlational study. That is, you'd try to identify research subjects, find which of them already have computers and which didn't, and look for differences in the groups. These studies are often very useful and the best we have to go on given the nature of the questions we are likely to ask. You can't, for example, assign poverty as a condition to some kids and not to others. (And, obviously, it would be unethical if you could.) But experiments, where researchers actually cause the difference between experimental and control groups - some methodologists say that there must be, in some sense, a physical intervention to manipulate independent variables - are the gold standard because they are the studies where we can most carefully assess cause and effect. Giving one set of kids computers certainly qualifies as a physical intervention.

The study is Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Home Computers on Academic Achievement among Schoolchildren by Robert W. Fairlie & Jonathan Robinson.  The results of this high quality study?  From the Abstract:

Computers are an important part of modern education, yet many schoolchildren lack access to a computer at home. We test whether this impedes educational achievement by conducting the largest-ever field experiment that randomly provides free home computers to students. Although computer ownership and use increased substantially, we find no effects on any educational outcomes, including grades, test scores, credits earned, attendance and disciplinary actions. Our estimates are precise enough to rule out even modestly-sized positive or negative impacts. The estimated null effect is consistent with survey evidence showing no change in homework time or other "intermediate" inputs in education.

Access to computers does not make a difference in educational outcomes!  What does usefully and reliably predict educational outcomes?  IQ, value systems and behavioral traits - Human capital.  It is an answer resolutely resisted because it gores too many ideological convictions and too many commercial interests, but there it is, those old Gods of the Copybook Headings.  

I see wonderful things

Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, Pakistan, is one of architectural masterpieces of Mughal Empire. Built in 1673 during reign of Aurangzeb.Decoration of interior elevates aesthetics of mosque to Rococo-like artistic level by applying a multitude of floral elements used in local folk art pic.twitter.com/UsiGXmySkN

— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) December 29, 2021

 

Their analysis is neither demonstrably correct nor easily debunked

From The Rube Goldberg Fed, 1/29 by Arnold Kling.  He is talking about the role of the Fed in creating inflation but he has a line which is applicable to any contested argument on a complex topic with incomplete consensus of facts.

Their analysis is neither demonstrably correct nor easily debunked. What it shows, in my view, is that no one can predict with confidence the consequences of actions.

I have truncated his second sentence to emphasize the universality of his observation.  

I encounter this issue of "neither demonstrably correct nor easily debunked" all the time.  Sometimes it is a useful reminder that none of us have all the facts and therefore our respective conclusions are entirely dependent on our predicate assumptions.  Or that one of the two parties to the argument does not have all the facts.

What it highlights to me, especially with regards to complex, dynamic, interlocking but loosely coupled chaotic systems is the critical need for goodwill on the parties on both sides to get at the truth.  Absent that goodwill and the corresponding trust, the pursuit of truth becomes difficult if not impossible.  

Offbeat Humor

Well… https://t.co/2owifq8sVp pic.twitter.com/uymb0CGxxC

— Smatt (@mdrache) December 28, 2021

 

An acquired art

From Maxims and Reflections by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To communicate is natural; to accept what is communicated is an acquired art.

Data Talks

Why are cases "surging" in western Europe and collapsing in eastern Europe?

Omicron is everywhere, so it's not omicron.
Vaccine rates are higher in western Europe.
Cumulative deaths/MM are almost identical (2800 in east, 2900 in west).

So, why the surge in Western Europe? pic.twitter.com/9icdFASdrB

— PLC (@Humble_Analysis) December 27, 2021

 

New Mexico, US by Doug West ( b. 1947)

New Mexico, US by Doug West ( b. 1947) 

Click to enlarge.

A peek into the fevered mind.

From Do we stand at the precipice of radical change? by Noah Smith.  

Among the nattering nabobs of the chattering class there is much emo hysteria about the pending collapse of American culture.  You listen to these people and wonder, what planet do they live on because their concerns have virtually zero correlation to easily ascertainable reality in the here and now.  Smith puts it:

If unrest in America has peaked, you wouldn’t know it from people’s tweets. World War 3, civil war, and apocalyptic climate change are the standard topics of discussion now. Saying that “democracy is dying” and members of the opposite party “literally want to kill you” is de rigueur when discussing electoral politics. On Signal, friends ask me in hushed tones whether they should stockpile food or move out of the country.

A high performance, high trust, high productivity culture and society depends on a reasonably verifiable grasp on reality and, in particular, on a reasonably high signal to noise ratio.  Reality is knowable and that reality ought to be easily transmissible.  But we certainly seem to have a lot of people committed boosting the noise over the signal.  Why?

My guess is that they are feeling threatened by the reality based.  Their sinecures and status depend on a subservient ignoring of reality.  Confronting reality would strip away large cadres of government spending.  No DEI, no ESG, much less school and university administration, far less misallocation of tax funds into non-productive ventures.  No feather-nesting of bureaucrats bank accounts and multimillionaire politicians retiring on large fortunes after a life-time of public "service."

Still, the conviction about an impending apocalypse seems to outstrip mere venal motivation.  What is going on?

Smith is a competent journalist solidly on the Democratic progressive side of things but still with at least one foot in reality.  He has occasional information and occasional insights.  If you want to follow someone on the left side of the ledger, he is one to follow even though there is a lot of guff as well.

This particular piece is useful for laying out the lengthy indictment of untrue things which are dearly held to be true on the partisan and progressive left.

It’s understandable that Americans would feel this way right now. We’re in the middle of a pandemic that has probably killed a million of our people and is still killing thousands a day. A year and a half ago we had the largest protests the country has ever seen, and a year ago we had what was arguably our country’s first real coup attempt. Violent crime is high and rising, with every day bringing lurid reports of new atrocities. Russia is on the verge of invading Ukraine, while China menaces Taiwan, India, and Japan. And over it all looms the menacing shadow of climate change, as wildfires, hurricanes, and extreme heat events become commonplace.

Let's break this down into testable beliefs and measure the degree to which any such source of concern is warranted.  Why are people (on the left) writhing in an apocalyptic frenzy? Because:

We’re in the middle of a pandemic that has probably killed a million of our people and is still killing thousands a day. 

 

A year and a half ago we had the largest protests the country has ever seen 

 

A year ago we had what was arguably our country’s first real coup attempt. 

 

Violent crime is high and rising, with every day bringing lurid reports of new atrocities. 

 

Russia is on the verge of invading Ukraine, while China menaces Taiwan, India, and Japan. 

 

There is the menacing shadow of climate change, as wildfires, hurricanes, and extreme heat events become commonplace.

If you actually believe each and all of those propositions, there might be some cause for concern.  The problem is that most of these belief are either untrue or dramatically overstated.  

Pandemic - Not an issue.  It has already become endemic and is dramatically less lethal than in 2020.  We know the 800,000 claim is vastly overstated by including those who died with Covid rather than those from Covid.  When Italy corrected for this, their correction led to a 90% reduction in death from Covid.  There is cause for major concern given how obviously badly the government policies made the response so much worse than it needed to be but the pandemic itself is a rapidly retreating issue.

 

Largest protests ever in 2020 - Not an issue.  An emotional inaccuracy probably due to recency bias.  The 1960s riots were far worse in terms of lives lost (>200) and value of property destroyed and in terms of being a death knell to so many cities for at least a generation.  More people died in the 1992 LA riots (63) than died in all the George Floyd riots (25) across the nation in 2020.  The 2020 protests were dramatic sustenance for mainstream media fortunes but the riots were small to those in even the recent past.  

 

A real coup attempt in 2021 - Not an issue.  By August, 2021, FBI had found that there was no coup attempt at the Capitol on January 6th, 2020.  It is an article of faith among Democrats and the progressive left that there was a violent coup attempt, and an armed insurrection.  But no rioters have been charged with either a coup attempt nor insurrection.  There was no coup attempt and not much of a riot despite its enormous symbolism.  

 

Rising violent crime - OK, something of an issue; but not for the whole nation.  We still do not have all the data but it is appearing that this is a highly localized phenomenon in one or two dozen major cities and not occurring across the nation at large.  A local governance issue, not a sociological issue.  It does carry further weight because while property crime in those cities does not seem to be rising, violent crime certainly is.  But it is concentrated in particular cities and largely concentrated in particular neighborhoods of those cities.  For the nation as a whole there is not much of an issue and outside those cities, it appears that crime is continuing its post-1995 drop.  Since all our journalists are a) innumerate, and b) live in the cities with the largest rises in crime, the mainstream media is reporting as a national reality that which appears to be only a local reality.

 

Russia and China - Yes, a real issue.  Both nations are flexing themselves and desperately trying to divert domestic attention (which would otherwise be on regime failures) onto international adventures.  It makes the whole international relations field both dangerous and tricky.  

 

Climate change - Not an issue per the IPCC on the measures of storms and wildfires, etc.  Again, the mainstream media has been playing this harp for three decades and there are some legitimate grounds for theoretical and future concern.  We know that CO2 levels are well within the historic record but we don't know to what degree, if any, they might be inducing climate change.  We know there are long cycle changes in climate which have nothing to do with anthropogenic global warming.  Is AGW real? Quite possibly.  Do we know it is real?  Not yet.  Are there other forces at work which are driving climate change and nothing to do with human actions?  Certainly.  In contrast to the earlier hysteria three decades of research are proving much more reassuring than the original concerns.  

Of the issues which Smith identifies as sufficient to support an apocalyptic distress over the future, only the actions of Russia and China warrant real concern.  As all global power contests warrant concern.  

All the rest either are not real or are small potatoes in the scheme of recent history.  There is no real basis for deep concern.  Steven Pinker wrote a whole book on the good news which is always ignored, Enlightenment Now.  

The entirety of Smith's justification for hysteria rests on journalists misreading reality to a staggering degree and markedly different from the 80% of the nation who do not live in the dozen or two big city centers where some of these issues do have some local salience.  

He has some useful information and insights in his piece but Smith is always tethered by his ideological world view.  For example, he writes

In 1996, the Atlanta Olympics that was supposed to symbolize the post-Cold War triumph of peace and democracy was bombed by a right-wing terrorist.

But that is not quite right.  Eric Rudolph wasn't a right-wing terrorist.  He was an anti-abortion extremist.  Smith is shading the truth to foster an incorrect interpretation.  The equivalent would be to identify a PETA terrorist act as that of a left-wing terrorist.  The act was not that of a left-wing terrorist but of an animal rights extremist.  The terminology of left or right-wing calls for the assumption that the act was due to an ideological worldview when, in most these types of cases, it is not partisan political, it is policy political.  There are left and right wing anti-abortionists as there are left and right-wing animal rights advocates.  

Smith continues through his piece advocating for alarmism about things which are not alarming and also advocating for muddling through.  It is as if he is alarmed by the ill-founded call for socialism from those to his left but does not wish to cede the issues which he finds hysteria-inducing.

Oddly, and very interestingly, he argues for muddling through.  Which is not far from the Classical Liberal (i.e. conservative) view of faith in an emergent order in a world of free speech, free markets and consent-of-the-governed through constitutional elections.  Classical Liberals do not have prescriptive solutions.  All they have is the evidence of the past 200 years that when we rely on free speech, free markets and consent, economic progress and prosperity follow.  Whenever we resort to banishing misinformation, controlling/managing markets and governing through edicts and mandates, we always end up with ruin.

The left have the advantage for advocating for specific and desirable-sounding policies while Classical Liberals are always mumbling on about emergent order and it will be alright in the end.  They are right, but it isn't a particularly stirring cri de guerre.

History

A terracotta tile with a hoof print of a pig or small wild boar has been discovered within the remains of a building dating between the 1st and 5th centuries AD in Penta-Di-Casinca, Corsica. https://t.co/ryKJX5zJX3 pic.twitter.com/DMJwKNK0T5

— Ticia Verveer (@ticiaverveer) December 28, 2021

 

GAO: You screwed up. HHS: We promise to do better. GAO: When HHS: We'll get back to you on that . . .

The US response to Covid-19 has been shockingly ham-fisted and incompetent, almost consistently making the wrong strategic decision at every stage of the crisis.  The one silver lining I have highlighted is that Covid-19, in the scheme of things, is not particularly lethal.  Highly infectious but not particularly lethal.  

It is almost as if it has been a heavenly warning - Get your act together!

A stress test if you will.  My concern has been that, given as politicized as the "national" emergency has become, we will institutionally and politically choose to turn a blind eye to the lessons learned.

That we are even documenting those lessons is highlighted in U.S. health agency has 'persistent deficiencies' in its crisis response -watchdog by Kanishka Singh.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has "persistent deficiencies" in its ability to prepare for and respond to public health emergencies, the U.S. congressional watchdog warned in a report released on Thursday, citing concerns raised by the COVID-19 pandemic.

HHS is at "high risk" of mismanaging a future crisis, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Congressional auditing agency, said, noting that the department failed to implement some previously made recommendations to improve its pandemic response.

The GAO said in its report that well beyond the pandemic, there are various threats that underscore the need for being prepared.

"As devastating as the COVID-19 pandemic has been, more frequent extreme weather events, new viruses, and bad actors who threaten to cause intentional harm loom, making the deficiencies GAO has identified particularly concerning," the report said. "Not being sufficiently prepared for a range of public health emergencies can also negatively affect the time and resources needed to achieve full recovery."

But whether the government will actually listen to itself?  Not so cheery news.

As one example of the lack of preparedness by HHS, the GAO said that it had warned about shortages of COVID-19 tests beginning in September 2020 and then recommended in January last year that HHS develop a comprehensive national testing strategy.

In its response in May 2021, HHS told the watchdog it would provide a document stating its plans. "However, to date, HHS has not provided this document," the GAO report said.

"The department's response to the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted longstanding concerns we have raised about its ability to execute its role leading federal public health and medical preparedness for, and response to, such public health emergencies," the GAO said.

HHS responded in a statement on Thursday: "We share GAO's focus and urgency in battling this once-in-a-century pandemic and desire to ensure we never again face a pandemic of this magnitude."

An Insight

Sources:

Adult DNRs https://t.co/WExrtLlUGv

Children DNACPRs https://t.co/0xOpEuSBnk

Care homes https://t.co/TJ2yXZFeM7

Midazolam https://t.co/eNxSC88YNh

30% of patients with DNR had no idea!https://t.co/FcnSEDBq4G

This is criminal. Where’s the accountability?!

— Calvin (@calvinrobinson) December 27, 2021

 

That’s what happened in Quebec — the Canadian province with the most aggressive euthanasia laws. In the early months of the pandemic they had half the deaths in Canada, with less than a quarter of the population. They killed their grandparents. Source: https://t.co/3OS2lJCtfi https://t.co/U1adWV0l44

— Ezra Levant 🍁 (@ezralevant) December 26, 2021

 

I see wonderful things

Ghost crabs belong to the genus Ocypode which translates as swift footed

This one is a horned ghost crab, look how fast it runs

100 body lengths per second, if they were a comparable size to a human or cheetah, they would reach close to 340 to 530 Km/hpic.twitter.com/GKvvXHdggm

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) December 6, 2021

 

Simpering ignorant idiots

The University of Washington IT Department, displaying emotional commitment to equity to a great degree than to common sense, has just published an Inclusive Language Guide.  What profoundly juvenile and utterly unserious people.  Casting an eye on the oh-so-many ways people can torture language to be emotionally threatening or demeaning, I came across jerry-rigged.

jerry-rigged designed, poorly designed, biased, skewed, predisposed.

Definition:  “Jerry-rigged” means organized or constructed in a crude or improvised manner.

Why it’s problematic: "Jerry” is a derogatory term used by soldiers and civilians of the Allied nations for Germans in WW2.

They want to protect the feelings of our enemies of eighty years ago?  That's a top concern for the University of Washington IT Department?  

Aside from that tender revelation, what most struck me was the term itself.  I have heard both jury-rigged and jerry-rigged but thought jury-rigged the more common.   Jury-rigged is definitely nautical in origin.  Source.

ju·ry-rigged

/ˈjo͝orēˌriɡd/

adjective

(of a ship) having temporary makeshift rigging.

NORTH AMERICAN

makeshift; improvised.

"jury-rigged classrooms in gymnasiums"

I read a great deal of maritime history and was an enthusiastic (though very novice) sailor in my youth.  I have always been familiar with jury-rigged and had always assumed that similar terms such as jerry-rigged or jerry-built were mere accidental derivations.  I never considered the WWII slang Jerry for German was a part of the development of the word.

And was it?  My first excursion is to N-Gram viewer to provide at least some historical guidance.  Jury-rigged was the only term in circulation up until 1829.   In 1829, for the first time and only for a few years (till 1836), jerry-built shows up.  Jerry-built resurrects again in 1853.  It putters along at a very low level until it takes off around 1880 and is the dominant term until 1999 when jury-rigged returns to the number one spot up until the present.

The key point is that jerry-built first occurred in usage ninety years before WWI much less WWII.  Jerry-built had no association with slang for Germans.  

Similarly for jerry-rigged which pops into view circa 1890 but lies latent with only occasional appearances through 1942.  Growth in the term comes from 1943 onwards before peaking in 2014.  

As of 2022, the most used term is the old nautical version (originating in 1806), jury-rigged which is used some 20% more than jerry-built  (originating in 1830).  And jerry-built is used in turn some 30% more often than jerry-rigged (originating in 1898).  

There is no doubt that jerry-rigged came into wider usage because jerry was a slang term during the war for Germans but it originated long before World War II.

Googling for the origin of Jerry as slang for German, it seems well-settled that it came in to use at least during the Second World War.  There seems debate as to whether it might have emerged at the end of World War I.  

Jerry as a slang term for German was definitely used by WWII and possibly by the end of WWI but the terms jury-rigged, jerry-rigged, and jerry-built all originated long before the use of Jerry as slang for German.

Here is a good essay from some etymologists on the origins of the three terms.  

We are left with the following sequence of conclusions.

University of Washington IT Department thinks that there is a strong need prevent their employees from being so linguistically callous.  

University of Washington IT Department thinks that people are insulted by a slang term (Jerry) for German, a usage which fell into decline after the war.

University of Washington IT Department thinks, incorrectly, that the slang term for Germans is related to the terms jury-rigged, jerry-built and jerry-rigged (which they are not).  

University of Washington IT Department recommends that people change the way they communicate based on this false premise and on the false premise that anyone takes any of the three terms as an ethnic slight.

Based on this research, it appears that the University of Washington IT Department are simpering ignorant idiots.