For those wondering whether the Dems are going to be generally successful or unsuccessful at blocking things many of them don’t like: DeVos confirmed.
The teachers unions hate Betsy Devos and are big donors to Senators campaigns. Evidently phones have been ringing off the hook. No Democrats voted for Devos; all but 2 GOP voted for her. The 50-50 tie was broken by Pence.
How will thing work out with her at the helm? I have no idea. I like charter schools. I like vouchers even more. She’s for them. Other than that, I have no idea whether she will be an effective administrator and/or whether she can effectively implement programs. So, we’ll see.
I am not sure what the Senate Democrats are thinking.
If they continue voting 48 democrats against Trumps choice for cabinet positions (which some are saying is going to happen), that will be pretty unusual.
Compare how the Senate republicans voted 8 years ago for Obama’s choices.
And for what?
They are all going to get confirmed anyway.
Seems short sighted to me.
They declare Jeff Sessions is a racist. Puzder hates the poor. Yet the one they blocked in total was someone opposed by the teachers unions.
RickA,
This one was 50-50. Principally because the teachers unions are soooooo huge and spread everywhere that two GOP Senators did rely on their donations and got turned.
I don’t believe for a minute the two were convinced by any “argument” about Devos’s qualifications. This is not to say they are stellar, but in terms of votes this really boils down to “for charters/ vouchers” , “against charters/vouchers”. The teachers union is totally, completely against charters/vouchers. And they have a lot of money to throw at Senators.
Well, DeVos is not going to make the teachers happy, but since most education expenditures are local (not federal), what she can accomplish is very limited…
As a passionate reformer of K-12 education over the last 23 years it is strange that I never heard of Betsy Devos.
So I have been reading about her with the disadvantage that most of what is on line has been put together by people who oppose her.
For example I read that she is FOR “School Choice”. That might sound good to the average apathetic parent but school reformers know is not nearly enough. If “School Choice” is all she has nothing worthwhile will be achieved.
What I am hoping is that she will implement Trump’s “Local Control” promise. What does that mean?
Here in Brevard county, Florida there are 100 schools and one school board. When “Local Control” is implemented I expect there to be 100 schools and 100 school boards elected from our local community.
With one school board per school, government K-12 schools will be able to compete with private schools that already use this organization model.
SteveF,
If Devos gives teachers “Freedom to Teach” there will be many more happy teachers and “Teacher Burnout” will be a diminishing problem:
http://www.gallopingcamel.info/docs/EdReform.doc
gallopingcamel,
But school choice does provide local control of at least some schools, such as charters. Even better, since parents can find the type of school that fits the needs of their kids, rather than fighting with a school board.
I think you’re right about giving teachers more freedom.
gallopingcamel
According to your own link, charter schools are a way around the “top down” capture.
Vouchers are an even better way. Kids and parents get money they can use a private schools, which are definitely not under the local school board.
School choice may not be sufficient to totally fix things. But it’s a big help.
The current public education industry has failed. Breaking up the overpriced administration and moribund teacher systems, while empowering parents to take more control of their children’s education is what most Americans have wanted for a very long time. Where it has been honestly tried it seems to have worked.
Has Trump made any statement on school choice? I wonder if he personally thinks the policy is a good idea, or if he supports it as a way of taking money away from his enemies. That would explain his pro-life position as well.
MikeN,
I don’t think it was a big campaign issue. I think it was not asked during debates. But I’m not sure if he’s said anything or not.
I like school choice. I think it’s the only real way to put pressure on urban schools to improve.
Suburban ones tend to be good already. That said, parents in the suburbs can often afford private schools and the schools exist. There’s a big private school a block and half from me.
School choice isn’t going to help rural areas much. When a town has a population of 500 there isn’t enough population to attracted someone to open a charter. On the other hand, the possibility shouldn’t harm them. It will just be the same as it is now: one public school with options for homeschooling and such.
MikeN: “Has Trump made any statement on school choice?”
Yes. He solidly and clearly supported it during the campaign, although he did not give it nearly the same prominence as trade and immigration. Appointing Betsy Devos as Secretary of Education is a very strong statement in favor of choice, that is her big issue.
Mike M.
Picking Devos was definitely a very strong statement. I don’t think the choice was remotely random or haphazard. Her main thing is choice, there is no mistaking that.
gallopingcamel may be correct that “school choice” is not nearly enough. But in my mind, it is key.
Otherthings I’d like to see are creation of summative exams at high school level for individual school topics that give kids a reportable grade or credential– similar to the New York Regents exams. UK has students sit “A levels”, “O levels” and etc. France has the bac. Lots of countries have these things. I do favor having both “A levels” and “O levels” type tests because– lets face it kids abilities do vary and we want to monitor both. (I favor kids being able to retake exams– I’m pretty sure that is permitted on the NY regents.)
Even if sitting for tests were elective, and kids selected from a menu, (as AP and SAT achievement tests are) parents whose kids sat for them would know what their kids got. Each state or the Feds could offer a “Gov. Certified Diploma” (star like rating) for certain curricula. I imagine many parents would encourage their kids to take these the same way many parents encourage kids to take SAT, ACT, AP exams and AP achievement exams.
Meanwhile, a school could still offer their own diploma– as they do in the UK and NY state. (I’m pretty sure that’s the way it works in NY too. Your school can give you a diploma with their imprimature, but if you pass enough regents tests, you get a “Regents Diploma”. If you get more than 90% a sufficient number of tests to count for a diploma, you are granted an “with honors”.)
This sort of thing will permit students, parents, colleges and employers to have a benchmark for what kids actually know. This information is important to all these interested parties regardless of whether a teacher or school system is “good or bad” and whether the fault lies with the kids, the parents or the school system. (In my view, access to this information for individual students is important to all four mentioned parties also.)
I would like to see school be required to compile statistics reporting:
1) How many of their kids took each of the tests offered.
2) When more than 10 kids from a school test report the distribution of scores– by percentile bins. The could be fairly coarse: How many got above the 75%, 50% and how many fell below the 50% percentile. Average percentile could be reported also.
3) The AP is big enough that schools should compile the statistics on AP tests their students took and once again, if more than 10 took a particular one (e.g. AP Physic C ME) report how many got (4 or higher),(3 or lower).
With respect to the AP, schools already get this information from the AP and it’s a matter of tabulating on a spreadsheet and releasing the piece of paper. As far as I am aware, this is not generally available to the public, but if I were a parent and couldn’t get it, I’d try to FOIA it. (Or I might get a friend with no children in the school district to FOIA it. 🙂 )
All of this information becomes especially useful if our system begins to have choices like charters, vouchers, homeschooling in addition to the currently available standard public school.
This information could be used by parents to help discern whether competing schools marketing themselves are more suitable for their children. If their kids is a fast learner a school with lots of kids taking and doing well on “A” level and getting 4 or higher on AP tests would be a good choice. If your kid is a slower learner, you would want good performance on “O level” like classes. But either way, you want good performance on suitable material. And a school should expect good performance on suitable material.
The information could also be used to assess whether a charter or voucher school is sufficiently effective to merit public support. If these existed, there could be flexible ways of using the info to deem a school a “failure”. (For example: a school could have a minimum cut-off for some things– with the caveat that it only “failing” if it is below some formal cut-off and below the achievement expected from the demographic from which their student body is drawn with “demographic” judged by the school that child would go to if their parents had not used the voucher or the charter. So, for example, the kids across the street from me are in the “Lisle High School” demographic. )
The Federal bureaucracy imposed on schools is really something.
My sister-in-law teaches high school disabled children.
some of the peculiarities of the no child left behind bill where that you could only teach high school math if you had a college math degree.
But some students, say in 9th grade, were really at the 3rd grade in math – but because you couldn’t use the math grade, but had to use the actual grade – you had to mainstream these kids into the regular math class.
So the match teacher had a bunch of kids doing 9th grade math and had to take time out to help a couple kids at 3rd grade math level – because the special needs teacher (who is perfectly capable of teaching 3rd grade math) couldn’t teach 3rd grade math to the 9th grader.
I don’t know if they fixed that yet – but they need to be flexible enough to recognize the grade level for each subject for the students.
First, why is a kid in 9th grade when they cannot do 9th grade in all subjects?
But beyond that, some kids are all over the place in different grade levels for different subjects – and they are only allowed to treat the kid as being at the actual grade they got promoted to – even though they flunked multiple years in a row?
Crazy.
No wonder teachers are going crazy – with the rigid and stupid rules they have to follow.
No wonder private schools have it easier.
Although – I doubt private schools have to deal with so many kids with special needs – and perhaps not as many kids who don’t speak English.
Rick A
I agree teachers can have it hard. Also, many rules are stupid and do nothing to improve teaching.
This is obviously wrong. And if a kid is special needs, a parent would certainly pick a different path. (The girl down the street has Downs, and it obviously makes no sense to “mainstream” her in subjects she isn’t achieving in at her grade level.)
It makes more sense to match the teacher credentials to the level they are teaching and to match the course the student has to their objectively assessed performance. But to ensure that happens, there needs to be transparency on any testing that happens. Some external-to-the-school tests need to be available and parents need to be first in line to learn how their kids did on that test.
I’m ok with these tests being optional provided the option is exercised by parents. There doesn’t need to be any “rule” that teachers make students take them. Also: the compiling can be done by the testing agency and reported. This would not be remotely difficult for the AP nor a body like the regents. The students just indicate school when they take the test, the data is compiled and published. No rule for any teacher– just data for parents.
If this sort of external testing existed, if your kid really is at the 3rd grade level, his teacher should be credentialed to teach 3rd graders and he should take math at that level. If, on the other hand, your kids is performing at 8th grade level, but the school wants to push him or her down (which happens) the parent has information about that too.
In such a case, if the feds wanted to say those teaching 9th grade math and up needed a math degree, they could make the rule be those teaching kids who have tested at 9th grade and up must have the math degree. Access to testing would let parents insist the teacher has the right credentials based on proof the student is at 9th grade level and belongs in that class. But otherwise, the school could assign a teacher with a lower level degree. This would make more sense.
Not necessarily easier overall. But they are accountable to parents who will take their kids in and out. Woe betide the teacher at a private school where parents are active. They will be fired. Woe betide a school that doesn’t deliver the things its customers value. Last summer I took a “teacher training” course because I wanted to learn what, exactly, the “modelers” in physics did in class. One of the teachers taught at a small private school with a low student teacher ratio. One of the other teachers said that must be so much less work– ‘cuz less grading and so on. The one at the private school objected– to the disbelief of the other. So, then I told her I went to a small private highschool and I could support the claim that she did more grading. Because parents who send their kids to that sort of school often insist kids get lots of detailed feedback. None of the “check credit” for turning things in and so on. No scantron tests etc.
But often the teachers at these schools agree with the school values so they don’t object to the rules. That makes things psychologically easier than having to deal with a “stupid” rule make by some far off agency that seems disconnected from any positive objective.
Other ways in which private schools can be “hard”: Benet next door wants “college prep” at a high level. Period. They don’t take or have any special needs students– but they would lose their customers if their students ACT average ACT scores and so on fell below that of Naperville North, Central, Metea, Nequa,, Downers Grove, Lisle, or any of the feeder districts. But yes: they don’t need to meet federal reporting guidelines.
Under my “testing” notion, that is a school where nearly all the courses would be “A” level, and parents would expect that their kids would pass that test. If material was published, people would know it. (It also happens to be Roman Catholic.)
Another way in which teaching at a private school is hard: teachers get fired at private schools. My freshman year English teacher was booted after her first year because she the mistaken notion that English was purely about (a) grammar and punctuation and (b) hand writing and the class seemed to be “copy-editor apprentice”. A teacher who’d been there multiple years was fired because rumor had it she developed an alcohol problem and drank at school. I don’t know if that was true. She actually was a great teacher, but “poof” she was gone mid year– around February I think.
My high school included a boarding school. About 1/3rd of the kids were boarding students. Many of them were from other countries and did not speak English or spoke it poorly when they arrived. But the school was organized to deal with that– and these kids in boarding school were generally from well off families. So it’s not quite the same demographic you are thinking off.
My guess is private schools that do not have a boarding school aspect don’t have many non-English language students. But that doesn’t mean schools specializing in that couldn’t spring up.
My English wasn’t too good when I arrived in Buffalo in January of 1st grade. I went to Catholic School nearby. That said: my parents and grandparents spoke English, and I didn’t speak no English. The main concern for the school was I hadn’t had the first half of first grade. But the nuns figured if I failed I could just repeat. So they just threw me in with the other first graders rather than putting me in kindergarten.
SteveF (Comment #158726) “since most education expenditures are local (not federal), what she can accomplish is very limited…”
The feather-weight federal funding sways a camel-load of decision making. As do other feathers in the load. In my district, the federal money was less than 1% of budget, and 80% of that was the funding for the meals program. Yet to keep that penny per dollar the administration would jump backwards through flaming hoops.
The athletic program spent “only” 1% of the total budget, and “only” about 80% of that was football, but guess how much sway the football played had in decision making.
The actual rational share of the funding and the spending has little to do with the emotional response to money moves in a school.
The 2 Republican Senators that voted against confirmation have a track record of voting with the teachers unions and being essentially alone in receiving contributions from these unions. That this and the donations and lobbying power of these unions to leftwing causes was not given more attention in the MSM says much about their reporting. Had this been reversed party-wise it would have been in the news on a daily basis.
I think the most important development in this confirmation was that the Democrats stuck together without any defections. I have stated that I think this red state Democrat defections thing was highly over rated and that it will be more driven by special interests. There is always, in either party, the threat of running someone that better toes the party line in primaries against those that step out of line.
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=L1300
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3520280/posts?page=52
A couple of points I would like to make here:
1. Most public school boards with which I have been familiar have been pretty much in bed with whatever the superintendent had on his plate and were really not very independent and very much in tune with the concept of public schools and against choice. The only board member I knew who openly questioned the board’s financial decisions and lack of independence from the superintendent was a one term member. I think any member of the community who was very independent in these maters would either not run in an election or not win in an election.
2. It is very difficult for public schools in general to handle the special education situation as has been my experience with a grandson with autism. It appears that schools are now sending those students to special schools where the staff is trained to handle these kids. It was a major improvement for my grandson. It does shed light, however, on the public school systems being set-up to pretty much have one size fits all with some flexibility around the edges that might well be driven more by “special” teachers than an administration.
Kenneth
As far as visible rhetoric goes, the teachers unions are against parental choice. Whatever else parental choice does, it definitely weakens teachers unions.
Lucia,
“gallopingcamel may be correct that “school choice†is not nearly enough. But in my mind, it is key.”
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Indeed. My wife taught for many years, and the one thing that was consistent (and what ultimately drove her to ‘officially retire’) was ever growing and useless administrative burden. The student to teacher ratio was pretty constant, but the administrator to student ratio always grew. The more ‘programs’ that were administered, the more time teachers spent doing non-teaching tasks… and most of that time was utterly wasted (eg mandatory training in effective teaching of non-English speakers, when the classes she taught.. advanced chemistry… never actually had a non-English speaker, aside from one Japanese girl who picked up English very quickly and aced the course). Like most bureaucracies, school administrators seem always to insist on the use of hand grenades to kill mosquitoes.
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As much as anything else, “school choice” means choosing less administrative overhead and a greater focus on teaching.
I think the states and local boards have much more control over education than the Feds, which is the way it should be. Much of this seems like a proxy fight over public sector teacher unions which are no doubt scared for their lives. I personally haven’t seen very many indications that teacher unions are good for the taxpayer and many of the exact opposite. They stubbornly resist reform, don’t allow even the most unqualified teachers to be fired, and yield too much power during negotiations with friendly politicians they helped get elected.
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The city of Chicago is a fine example of how this can go disastrously wrong. High pay, abysmally low student performance, great benefits, crippling debt from underfunded pensions.
SteveF,
I think “more administrators/middle management more non-core tasks” is the rule everywhere.
The rule applies independent of whether administrative tasks increased before the new staff were hired or after.
Administrators and managers tend to need to manage something. They usually aren’t seen as people who carry out their own tasks– that’s assigned to others. So if someone adds an administrator before program exists, that new administrator may have a “light” load of things to oversee. They need to do something to justify their existence. This nearly always means creating a project of task and assigning it to others. Those others will often be “worker bees” which in schools means the teachers.
Obviously, if the feds create a task that didn’t need to be done, then likely someone needs to do it. That will generally involve hiring an “adminstrator” who will rarely actually do the task. They assign it to someone else. The fact that teachers are the ones who teach classes, assign grades and so on means those teacher will inevitably have more “reporting” requirements– and generally in a form that eases the load for whoever is compiling. That means teachers will often find themselves needing to use new tools, macros and so on. Each change is a chore — and one that does not improve teaching students.
mandatory training tends to ‘sound’ good in principle. It tends to range from utter crap to less than useful in practice. This is true inside and outside teaching. I could go on for paragraphs… but… oy.
Tom Scharf
It’s partly a proxy fight with public sector teacher’s unions.
But also partly a fight with large “local” boards. Chicago public schools is one school board. I’m guessing that’s the rule in cities. Limiting school board’s ability to block charters, letting children opt out of CPS by use of vouchers affects the power of some of those huge public school boards.
Huge public school districts aren’t necessarily a problem. This can get over the problem of very small districts having much more money than neighboring poor ones. FL has about 90 districts, and NY has about 900, with each having its own administration. I really don’t know enough about the details to have a very informed opinion though.
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Local school politics here seemed to have much more fury than national education policy did. When they tried to move the location of the IB high school to a more centrally located school, the parents went nuclear. Everything else pales in comparison.
Tom
What’s the IB high school? Is that an abbreviation for a school near you? (Real Q. I don’t know so I can’t necessarily say whether a move to a more centrally located school must be right or wrong. Central location is a positive– but sometimes something else might outweigh that.)
Yes. Parents will be more vocal about local decisions– part of the reason is they feel the can exert influence in a time frame that affects their child. So you’ll hear more fury about local decisions.
Huge isn’t necessarily a problem. But when a huge district does have problems, the fact that it is huge makes it more difficult to fix.
Among other things, the board has a large power base, and the lack of competition makes it difficult to compare to a similar district and so the district tends to have deniability with respect to the cause of the problems in the district. Also, that boards decisions affect lots of students and if there is no competition those students don’t have an escape alternative. (Around big cities I think families main ‘escape’ alternative is to move to the suburbs. It’s a longer commute for those parents who work in the city, but many think it’s worth it.)
I really don’t think CPS every admits that CPS is part of the problem. Nor the teachers union that operates under the blanket of CPS.
Illinois has a lot of districts– 863 “regular school” districts.
Chicago has 1 district. It’s #299.
Needless to say, CPS is much, much, much larger than all the other school districts in Illinois.
I like this from John Stossel
http://chicago.suntimes.com/opinion/john-stossel-whats-so-wrong-with-giving-parents-school-choices/
Lucia,
“international baccalaureate”. It is a rigorous course structure, much like AP, but internationally recognized, and requires passing a standardized test to get credit, even if you got good grades from your local school. My wife taught IB chemistry (basic and advanced) and continues to work (seasonally) as a grading coordinator to ensure uniform grading of tests from all over the world. I have seen the tests… they are quite challenging.
lucia,
My guess would be that IB is the state athletic group classification. As we all know, especially if you’re from Texas, football is the most important subject taught in High School.
DeWitt,
See my comment above.
Another way teaching at private schools is harder is they get paid less.
I sent my kids to a catholic grade school and the teachers there were paid 85% of what the local public grade school teachers got paid.
I argued that this was proof that public school teachers were overpaid. Ha Ha.
It didn’t go over very well with my sister-in-law.
As SteveF says, IB probably refers to an international education program that has solid international standards, testing and grading. Both of my children went through the IB high school program with great success.
It is definitely more challenging and rigorous than the standard high school programs/streams. I suspect that one reason it is offered as an option at the larger public high schools in my province (Nova Scotia) is that it neatly sidesteps all of the “social promotion” nonsense – as an international program with international standards, the schools can offer an elite stream for only those students who academically qualify without the accusations of elitism.
IB = International Baccalaureate Program
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Baccalaureate
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As SteveF says, it basically competition to AP, international requirements Almost all colleges give credits for AP tests and IB tests. Full time IB allows one to receive an IB degree and is a full high school program. It is comparable to a good AP high school. It is more liberal arts heavy and less tech (unfortunately in my view).
.
IB Tests = 350,000 people
AP Tests = 2,000,000 people
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The high school my kids went to is split between full time IB and traditional. The 2 IB high schools in our area placed #2 and #4 out of 40 high schools for SAT scores. They also generate about half of Merit Scholars.
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But it is demanding. Quite a few people ended up getting dumped into traditional.
Tom,
There is nothing sadder than a student who went through IB and then didn’t pass the tests for IB credit. Explaining that they have probably learned a lot more than they would have in a standard course doesn’t help much, but maybe in later college courses they appreciate it. I suspect the strong correlation of National Merit Scholars with IB (my second daughter was both) is more due to very smart kids taking IB than IB making merit scholars.
Tom,
Ahh.. IB sounds like a good program. Anything external – to- the particular school that does credentialing is good in my book. Parents, colleges, and kids recognize that.
Tom Scharf-
It can be liberal arts heavy (though that can be a result of what individual schools offer from the program), but the sciences it does have are – at least up here – far superior to the standard offerings.
AP is basically not available here (being of American origin and therefore suspicious), so IB was our only option. We did have to school shop to get the most science-heavy program but it did serve our purpose. My kid’s cousins in Tennessee did AP, and as far as we can tell had a pretty similar experience in terms of academic rigor.
lucia (Comment #158756), quoting John Stossel:
“But that was also true about Arne Duncan, President Obama’s education secretary. We didn’t hear the same complaints about Duncan.”
At this point — and it’s been this way pretty much since the election — *everything* which Trump says or does or appoints, is reflexively opposed by Democratic politicians & groups, with rationalization to follow. One of my state’s Senators, Elizabeth Warren, is among the worst in this regard.
Which is unfortunate, because my natural response is to adapt, and I’ve begun to ignore those politicians/groups/media. So legitimate complaints get tossed along with the illegitimate ones.
IB was dropped from many school districts because it was thought to be a globalist entity.
College Board has also adjusted the AP History guidelines towards promoting liberalism.
HaroldW: “Which is unfortunate, because my natural response is to adapt, and I’ve begun to ignore those politicians/groups/media. So legitimate complaints get tossed along with the illegitimate ones.”
….
Exactly the same reaction on my part. The NYTs, for instance, is so biased and superficial that it is pretty much unreadable anymore with respect to anything political. I still read the sports and obituaries, but if it wishes, it can drive me away from those too.
JD
MikeN,
As you point out some school districts dropped IB. The reason does not matter…….no school district should be in a position to block or impose any curriculum. Curriculum decisions should be made by individual schools. To illustrate this point the third charter school that FREE {my 501(c3)} set up was the Woods charter school.
Our first choice was IB but for a variety of reasons we eventually chose IGCSE (International General Certificate of Secondary Education) covering grades 9 &10. The following year we chose AICE (Advanced International Certificate of Education) covering grades 11 & 12.
Most high schools in North Carolina operate under the Stefan-Boltzman T^4 principle. They “Teach To The Test” and the test is based on the North Carolina “Standard Course of Study”.
The AICE curriculum was developed by Cambridge University in the UK with the idea of covering what every freshman attending the university should already know. As a member of the school board one of my main concerns was that our curriculum might adversely affect SAT scores given that we were teaching our scholars to play cricket while the test would be in baseball.
Back then there were over 350 high schools in North Carolina……….would we be able to compete? I need not have worried as within four years the Woods CS overtook East Chapel Hill High School for the #1 spot.
FREE’s four person managing board had nobody with professional education qualifications (just like Betsy DeVos). A crippled Cherokee housewife, a mictro-biologist, a retired circus worker and an electrical engineer.
http://www.gallopingcamel.info/woods.html
MIkeN
I see this at wikipedia:
If wikipedia’s characterization is correct it looks like the removed making history a class that indoctrinates into a political view. Mind you if other views are still advocated as ones kids should adopt, that’s a problem.
But I think history should be taught as history, not as a means to “foster patriotism” or teach “American exceptionalism” both of which are trying to make kids take a specific political view — just one you happen to like.
Out of curiosity, are there accusations there are views that students are expected to adopt? Or is the problem merely that the curriculum no longer pushes any particular view where it used to do so? (Real questions.)
MikeN,
Well, the IB science and math courses seem pretty apolitical. Can’t comment on the fluffier subjects. Chemistry is, well, global…. even universal in scope.
Kenneth Fritsch, I just wanted to be sure you saw my comment in the last post containing links to data and source code and bug fixes for Karl (2015) supplied by Peter Thorne in his post responding the the latest Karl(2015) dust up. The NOAA administrator that was in charge of data handling protocols blew the whistle this week on Karl et al in posts at CE and article published in the UK Daily Mail.
kch,
IB does very well in basic sciences, my main complaint is they didn’t even offer computer science at our school, no robotics, etc.
SteveF,
We must share the same second daughter, ha ha. My second was both as well. Lots of school don’t even offer the PSAT so there is also a filter there. All IB students took the PSAT here. If you have a bright student make sure they take the PSAT. If they score in the top 1% it opens lots of doors.
MikeN,
I can attest that our IB program produced two HRC voters in my household, but everyone’s a liberal until they look at the taxes in their first real paycheck. I did actually read the entry on climate change in their book and it wasn’t too bad. It was mostly world history heavy. I can say they could write better papers in high school than I ever did in college.
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I find the attempted history rewrite to “old America is evil and shameful” to be self serving so the current generation can pretend they are morally superior historic game changers. They can pretend all they want, it is the tech people that changed the world in the past 30 years, try to rewrite that! NOTICE: The previous comment was self serving since I worked in the tech sector the last 30 years.
My history classes didn’t teach me America was great, they taught me America was effing great. What is this I hear that the great and glorious conquest of the immoral godless Indians was somehow bad? We single handedly won WWII, after doing the same in WWI. The Soviets were waiting in breadlines for hours for food before they went on to work at the government controlled ICBM factory so they could annihilate all the good people. There isn’t even science outside of the US, and the US invented and discovered everything, including fire. And the moon landing…that’s an American flag on the moon I’ll have you know. The rest of the world is 0 for everything on Mars landers, we have dune buggies up there. And best of all, we invented Climate Change and gifted it to the world.
Lucia (#158773)
“But I think history should be taught as history, not as a means to ‘foster patriotism’ or teach ‘American exceptionalism’ both of which are trying to make kids take a specific political view — just one you happen to like.”
History is a difficult subject in this regard as history is written by the winners. The very nature of history is heavily tainted by opinion and often the only “facts” are the dates things happened.
Let me relay a personal experience I had with this:
I became aware of history in the ’70s and started understanding history in the ’80s. As a student of that timeframe, a common theme was that the bombing of Dresden was pretty much a war crime. The city was full of refugees and that there was no strategic reason for the raid. It was a position I never found a need to even challenge for years.
That is until in a side conversation I had with my boss in the mid-90s (a man I hold in the highest technical and moral esteem). He had moved to the US in the ’50s from England and had become a US citizen. As a kid during WWII, however, he was the spotter for his building in London – What’s that? When air raids went off, he went to the roof and spotted the airplanes. When V-1s were overhead, he relayed information on where the planes went down. He had a very distinct and personal view of history from WWII. And in his unequivocal view, there was nothing wrong at all with the bombing of Dresden as the same thing had been happening to London for half a decade.
Up until that point, I had never been exposed to that view. Sure, we all knew the cities had been bombed, but the common point through my classes was that ‘Dresden was different’. I now know that the ‘Dresden was different’ view is just opinion.
DeanP,
We didn’t get to WWII in my high school US history class. The European History class was older stuff– mostly 17th-early 20th. I think we got to WWI. Chronological order is a pesky thing.
But I don’t recall anything being approached in any sort of value laden way. The French|English|Russian revolution occurred. Things happened, people wrote things– we read writings from the time and discussed people views. But I don’t recall anyone suggesting any particular view was or should be though of as the “correct” one.
Dresden was high-profile but apparently the intentional bombing of civilians had started in 1940 .
Monchengladbach was not directed at civilians, it was directed at cutting roads and rail lines in an attempt to disrupt the German invasion of the low countries. It killed 4 people on the ground. The first bombing attack deliberately against civilians was the German bombing of Rotterdam a few days later.
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Until late 1940, British bombing was not directed at civilians, but it was so inaccurate that there were always civilian casualties.
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Addition: The bombing of civilians is intolerable. The British knew that the blitz was aimed at breaking their resolve and that, if anything, it had the opposite effect. But that did not stop them from trying to do the same to the Germans.
A retired British Admiral suggested several other views of WW2 Bombing in Germany.
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1. Some part of the support for the mustached one was based on the belief in Germany that they hadn’t really lost the 1st war. Victory had somehow been stolen from them through the artifices of the usual folks. Accordingly there was considerable drive in high circles in England to make certain there was no room for doubt this time.
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2. Anti-Aircraft gunnery in Germany required some 37,000 88MM guns. Although the gun-crews toward the end of the war might not have been well suited to ground combat, the guns certainly would have been useful.
Tom Scharf, well done!!
Yippee, editing is back.
Lucia,
It wasn’t presented in a value-laden way, at least not that I would have recognized at the time.
It was stated matter of fact – there was no reason to bomb. No alternative viewpoints were shown and being students, we really didn’t know better. And given that we weren’t the little kids on roofs hearing that dreaded buzzing stop, we had no real understanding of what bombing a city really entailed.
I don’t know how one can present history without presenting opinions. If we are to learn the lessons of history, once we know the “what”, we have to ask “why” and “why” is almost always opinion.
DeanP,
You can present readings of what different people thought at the time. Sort of like a debate.
My US history was organized around Supreme Court cases over time.
The main reason both sides started bombing cities in WWII was because it was easier. A study in 1941 showed that only 20% of RAF bombers got within 5 miles of their assigned targets. But you don’t have to be accurate to bomb cities, especially if you use incendiary bombs. Of course it actually had minimal effect on the war effort of either side until Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
So much for all the hoopla about the Norden bombsight. The Germans had the plans before the war started. But it doesn’t matter how good the bombsight is if the plane doesn’t fly over the target. Most of them didn’t and they all dropped their bombs as soon as the lead plane did. And still the fatality rate of bomber pilots was 50%.
‘He started it’ isn’t a particularly good justification. It’s a prime example of the tu quoque logical fallacy.
Back to the original topic:
It turns out that Elizabeth Warren wrote a book, The Two Income Trap, in 2003 that advocated for vouchers and school choice. But that was before she became a politician.
DeWitt,
Yeah. Go figure.
I suspect that may have been before she learned how important it is to have teachers unions donate to your campaign.
It also strikes me that some “issues” discussed after Devos’s hearing are mostly “issues” because there is no school choice. For example: Devos was asked about “progress vs. proficiency”. This equation is really nested in context of a federal education program where the feds of school systems test students, and then measure teachers according to how students did. The question then is: Do we evaluate a — say 7th grade– teacher based on her 7th graders “proficiency” or “progress”. So for example, her kids came in reading at the 3rd grade level, she got them to 5th grade reading in 1 year. Does the “system” rate her as “terrific” based on “progress” or “horrible” based on proficiency? That’s what the “progress vs. proficiency” debate is about.
Now one might say: that’s a generic question and exists no matter what. But that’s not entirely true. If the people who decide whether the school is doing well or poorly are parents then “the system” doesn’t need to decide that. Those parents can judge, and they can use a scale that makes sense to them based on factors they are aware of. The head of the department of education doesn’t need to worry quite so much about how its going to rate the teacher or the school because the parents do most of the rating.
Now: of course schools are then going to end up being rated, and likely based on various metrics. But when we are rating a school external people are always going to look at both proficiency and the rate of change in proficiency as a function of time. Things are averaged out over lots of teachers and the question stops being as contentious.
I think Elizabeth Warren is a stinking low-life worm, and nothing more. When Trump finishes his first term (yes, j ferguson, I assume he will finish his first term), Elizabeth Warren will be 71+ YO… older even than Trump when he was elected. Will the Democrats really try to elect her? I doubt it, especially after people get to know Trump better. She is very far from anything that could be called ‘main stream’ politics. If the Dems are foolish enough to select her as the presidential candidate, I can predict two things:
1) She will lose and give Trump a second term, and
2) Trump will appoint 2 or 3 more justices after Gorsuch, meaning the Court will be conservative for two+ decades after Trump is gone.
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Please Democrats, please, select Elizabeth Warren for 2020! ‘Died and gone to heaven’ is the only suitable description for people who believe what the words of the Constitution mean what they say.
We already know Warren’s nickname from Trump is Goofy.
Lucia, I haven’t experience IB personally, just heard the general criticism of being too liberal. Here is a critique of the MATH curriculum:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/27/AR2007112700971.html
Liberals are concerned about restricting executive power and conservatives are embracing safe spaces. Trump administration is indeed shaking things up.
SteveF (Comment #158815)
February 9th, 2017 at 4:29 pm
Warren might not even be reelected in the most liberal of states.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/01/23/warren-popularity-plummets-in-latest-poll/
RB(#158822) –
Liberals are concerned about restricting *Trump’s* executive power. I heard no indication of any similar concern about such issues during the last 8 years (and further). Perhaps you can point out times when e.g. Pelosi complained about Obama’s actions.
I am happy to welcome any and all sincerely concerned about the accumulation of (to my mind) unwarranted authority in the Executive branch, most notably within its myriad agencies. But frankly, all I hear now is partisan, not principled.
SteveF, I share your view of Warren.
For some reason she is no longer all the rage with my liberal friends. I would add that few of them knew how old she was. Most assumed she was in her 50s.
And SteveF, you might take another whack at that last sentence about going to heaven. Maybe I’m the only one who didn’t get it, or …
HaroldW,
I was saying the same thing. Yes, it’s all partisan politics. Actually has been that way for many many years now.
Warren was not that popular to begin with. Without Obama’s turnout, she would have lost to Scott Brown, who ran against her Harvard position in the most educated state. There are lots of liberals that know she lied to get an affirmative action hire, including at a top liberal radio show, with one host accusing the other of having a crush on Scott Brown. Another reporter was interviewing Warren at her house, with rules about not showing the house. Casually played along listening to Warren talk about her heritage and family photos of Cherokee rituals, then asks,”Can you show us some pictures?” “Those aren’t for you.”
For liberals, this is the modern equivalent of kicking Hillary off the Watergate Committee.
The safe spaces conservatives want are where all people are safe from criminal assault and censorship. The safe places lefties want are spaces where they can never hear or see anything they dislike, and safely attack anyone they dislike.Warren is whining because she was unable to freely slander a fellow Senator. Progressives care more for playing step and fetchit for Microsoft and Google than the Constitution or the law. Cities, dependent on census based funding formulas, seek at all costs to protect their modern peculiar institution of unlimited illegal immigration to inflate theit census quotas, money and power. Interesting times indeed.
MikeN,
Sounds like a squabble over calculator use. I tend to favor “bland only” calculator use for math and most entry level engineering. By that I mean: very little graphing, programming and so on. I can’t know which “view” is right in that critique though because I don’t know how much calculator use they have in Calc AB/BC, IB.
That said: *anything* that has an external “check” on teachers and school and reports to students and their parents is useful. I actually think we need something at the equivalent of UK “O” levels more than A levels– because ambitious kids and parents already voluntarily use AP etc.
But then later, the calculators are useful since no one should be stuck with druggery for no good reason. (That said: i end up firing up R for anything I would do with a calculator. That should certainly not be permitted on a test.)
HaroldW
I’d like to see formal curbs enacted provided they are lasting and bind future presidents too. Executive power has been growing a long time with each successive president. And while partisans tend to only complain about the “other” side, it’s just too large. It doesn’t bother me if the move to reign it in ends up being partisan. That’s a “right” result I’ll happy to get even if it gets enacted for the “wrong” reason.
hunter
That. But beyond that, she actually is able to discuss him all she wants, has and does. What she can’t do is monopolize the senate floor, waste everyone time and turn the Senate into her captive audience while she goes on and on and on and on.
In ordinarily life and the senate, people get to say “I don’t need to listen to this.”
All governing bodies, committees and so on have rules of order including the right to table topics that are unproductive and a waste of time for all the people in the room. Senators wasting time slamming other senators on the Senate is something lots of them would waste time doing were it not prohibited. That’s why this time wasting behavior is prohibitted in the Senate.
Meanwhile any Senator can go buy a megaphone, take out an ad in the NYT, air their videos on Facebook, tweet and use those to slam the other Senator to their hearts content. Such senators have not been silenced— they just aren’t granted a captive audience. Warren has certainly not been “silenced”.
I am all for reigning in the misuse and over reach of Executive Authority. Stripping Article2 explicit power is not an example of correcting that abuse. There is a night and day difference between Obama fabricating laws that did not exist and Mr. Trump exercising basic power under the Constitution and within the law. Warren is the complete fraud: pretend Indian, super rich virtue poser, reactionary progressive bully. I look forward to her nails on blackboard transparent hypocritical screeching.
lucia: “That’s why this time wasting behavior is prohibitted in the Senate.”
Time wasting behavior is perfectly permissible under Senate rules. Think “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” or, for a real world example, Rand Paul a few years ago.
Warren violated a rule of Senate decorum; Senators are not permitted to “directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.†She was warned. Then, when she persisted, she was shut down.
While Warren was slandering Sessions and we don’t want this sort of behavior, let’s not pretend that this decorum standard is being uniformly applied. There are any number of such incidents where this Rule wasn’t applied.
RB
A WaPo article with four examples (one that had to be corrected) that weren’t at all like her 5 minute harangue that drew several warnings.
It seems she also disingenuously tried to cite Ted Kennedy’s harsh words against Sessions as a precedent for why she should be allowed to continue.
Sessions wasn’t a Senator when Kennedy spoke his words.
At least the WaPo had the brains to not try that one.
Warren was wrapping her criticism in a cloak of identity politics which she assumed was an impenetrable shield. A person from a protected class said you are an evil slug so you can’t respond without being a racist, or some such bizarro land rules we have in place. I think identity politics is suffocating but being on the left and trying to navigate it must be an even worse nightmare. Steve Martin had to apologize for calling Carrie Fisher a beautiful creature. Huh?
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There was certainly a Streisand Effect here, but I think McConnell was simply laying down a line that the Senate is going to be the last victim of scorched earth partisanship. It may be the last, but it seems certain to go down the way it looks now.
MikeM
Note the word “this”. I wasn’t claiming all time wasting is prohibited.
The Senate has rules for precisely when and how the filibuster sort of time wasting can be done. And they have rules for cloture. They get to enforce them. Always have.
And in my view, the underlying reason for rules of “decorum” is to avoid the silly time wasting behavior involved in people getting into petty disputes about each other’s character (such disputes can erupt into time wasting fist fights). They have those rules to avoid that sort of time wasting behavior.
Tom Scharf
I’d say not giving Merrick Garland a hearing, within the rights of the GOP and not surprising politics, was scorched earth partisanship too. I’m sure there are many other examples in the recent past.
Podhoretz says this at The Commentary
“McConnell didn’t invoke the rule in question when Ted Cruz, a man in his own party, called him a liar on the Senate floor”
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Fake news, according to the WaPo article previously cited by RB.
RB
Of course not giving Merrick a hearing was partisan. Though I’m not seeing how it was “scorched earth”. Nothing burned. America mostly ignored it. No earth was scorched in the process– nor was Garland or his reputation.
Advise and consent is a political process and was designed that way by those who wrote the constitution. I’m never persuaded by arguments that for some reason the President should take his pick — which always involves his politics– but somehow the Senate should then set all their politics aside and pretend to judge a SCOTUS nomineed the way you’d judge a high school algebra test.
For what it’s worth, I think many people approved of the Senates decision to let the upcoming president nominate their pick and not have hearings. Hilary never said she’d nominate Garland and I suspect she wouldn’t have. So this decision allowed whoever won to have their pick rather which seems fine to me. I probably wouldn’t have been happy with Hillary’s pick — quite likely I’d like that pick less than Garland, but that wouldn’t make their decision to not appoint Garland wrong.
I think having no hearing is a better decision than having hearings when the intention is to vote down the candidate no matter what. Having hearings in those cases wastes the Senates time, it wastes the candidate’s time and opens the candidate to a lot of scurrilous criticism. That’s hardly fair if the majority of the Senate are voting against him for other reasons.
It’s better all around for the Senate to be honest and say they aren’t going to vote for him so they aren’t going to bother with hearings.
But of course it’s partisan.
RB,
I had to chuckle at this
To whom does this move make him, the GOP or the Senate look lousy? Not me. Not loads of people. Perhaps those torching things at Berkeley.
Honestly, I think the day of believing calling others bullies will help win your case may be over.
Only lefties seem to confuse “obeying the law/rules/Constitution” with “bullying”.
Lucia,
“Of course not giving Merrick a hearing was partisan.”
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For sure. But at the time it was also a gamble, since Hillary Clinton would certainly select someone closer to Sotomayor than Garland. It was a gamble I was a little surprised McConnell would take, likely locking in a ‘living Constitution’ majority if Clinton were elected… and especially so with later Clinton picks likely; every recent 5-4 case where the conservatives won would be quickly reversed. Perhaps McConnell looked at Garland’s record and concluded his votes on the SC would be pretty much like most any judge Clinton would select.
hunter,
It is just more of the ends justifying most any means, which is broadly practiced on the left…. they simply reject the legitimacy of any rule, law, or Constitutional requirement which interferes with their desired policy outcome.
For the Country’s sake, I do hope Elizabeth Warren is the Democrats’ nominee in 2020. Anyone who endorses the wacko PC policies of ‘Pocahontas’ Warren is unlikely to ever be elected.
Pochahontas? I was thinking more of Princess Summerfallwinterspring, though not as cute.
SteveF,
The plan, if HRC was elected, was to confirm Garland before she had a chance to select someone worse. She wasn’t so he wasn’t. The Republicans didn’t steal a Supreme Court seat, Clinton lost it.
DeWitt,
Can the president withdraw a nomination? Because if he can that plan was clearly not going to work. Obama could just withdraw the Garland nomination as soon as the election was called and let Hillary have her choice. For all we know he would have done so.
Would Obama have withdrawn the nomination. Might he have wanted the legacy of 3 Supreme Court picks?
McConnell’s thinking at the time was that Republicans would win the Presidency, likely Jeb or Rubio.
The rule on Senate decorum was adopted after a fight. Seems silly to be used when someone is up for a Cabinet post, which itself might be unconstitutional under the emoluments clause.
lucia,
I’m not convinced that Obama would have withdrawn the nomination. That usually doesn’t happen unless something embarrassing turns up about the nominee like Harriet Meirs in 2005, replaced by Samuel Alito. Withdrawing Garland would imply that he wasn’t, in fact, the best qualified nominee.
It was still HRC and the Democrats that lost the Supreme Court nomination by losing the Presidential election and failing to win control of the Senate.
And, of course, the Democrats would have done exactly the same thing if roles had been reversed. But hypocrisy seems to be a requirement for politicians.
j ferguson,
Elizabeth Warren has claimed ‘Native American’ status, though there is not a shred of credible evidence she has Native American ancestors. I suggest a DNA test, but of course, the worm will never do that. Kind of grates on me, since I have two 25% Native American nieces, Grates on their dad and mom even more. Warren is a leftist fake, and a stinking worm, nothing more.
I would like to hear the legal experts weigh in on the courts decisions to put some restraint on executive orders. It would be great in my mind to have the courts set a precedent for this much needed action. I am afraid that this will be viewed as a narrow decision that deals mainly with this particular case and those allows activists judges to pick and chose which executive orders pass muster.
It is too bad that it is Trump who is attempting to articulate the other sides of these political issues. He is very naive and uninformed when it comes to political philosophy and his comments come across as rather wacko. There will probably come a time when even his handlers can no longer attempt to make sense of his quips. I like, Ferguson, do not see how he is going to make it through 4 years.
His trade policies will definitely be a disaster if enacted not only for the nation but particularly for the Republican party.
Building a wall is a joke with great potential for cost overruns in building it and heavy costs to man and maintain it and encouraging the discoveries of new paths into the US.
His immigration policies and orders will have no effect on terrorists attacks and the first one that occurs on his watch is going to be thrown directly in his face.
I get what the MSM and Democrats are doing and how hypocritical that is and I get how much Obama got away with during his tenure, but that does not mean I will defend a Trump and his shenanigans.
As someone mentioned above about family disagreements on Trump and I will say that my siblings and I have a very friendly relationship but we do disagree on politics. None of us think well of Trump but my brother and sister do go out of their way to defend Obama and that is where our disagreements arise.
“His trade policies will definitely be a disaster if enacted not only for the nation but particularly for the Republican party.”
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Meh. Disaster for who? The lower two quartiles are serving notice that experts opinions are worth exactly as much as they paid to hear them. Experts decrying the (fill in the blank) will be a (unspecified and unquantifiable) disaster has been overplayed so hard and so often that everyone rolls their eyes when they hear it.
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What I hear here is not a warning, but fear. First the disastrous policies might actually work….for them, and possibly for everyone. Second it might accidentally appear to work when other fundamentals kick in and give the economy a boost, the real secret nagging fear. One thing is certain, they want to find out.
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The only thing more untrustworthy than climate models are economic models. These disaster prognostications come from the same people who didn’t see the real estate bubble coming and thought bundling 200 turds into a 5 pound bag of crap turned it into AAA rated gold. It’s shocking people don’t trust these opinions anymore. It’s comforting to know these shysters were punished…oh wait…they weren’t. No, no reason to perceive the system as rigged.
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I don’t blame Trump voters at all for dismissing this expertise that has been clearly self serving and detrimental to unskilled workers. Think “HRC areas command 65% of the economy!”, well that isn’t an endearing attribute to those outside the knowledge economy, and is in fact a reason they voted for destructive disruption. It probably won’t work for a lot of reasons, but Trump voters will keep voting for change until they get it.
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The most important things to realize is that they don’t care if the knowledge economy burns down along the way. Somebody better start throwing some bones to these guys. Prove to them immigrants and trade policy are not their woes. Prove it. They aren’t taking the expert’s word for it anymore. Time to show the cards, the experts have been called.
SteveF,
How hard could it be to covertly get a DNA sample from Indian Chief Warren? That would be a great thing to release about Nov 1st, 2020, ha ha.
Kenneth F: “His immigration policies and orders will have no effect on terrorists attacks and the first one that occurs on his watch is going to be thrown directly in his face.”
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I disagree with this. Bringing in large numbers of Muslims (for instance, 30,000 Somali’s in Columbus, OH) is like bringing in time bombs that almost certainly will go off sometime. The Muslim religion/ideology is inherently at odds with Western Democracies, and so, far Muslim countries and cultures have been comparatively unsuccessful economically. There is fertile ground for young, resentful [and ungrateful] men to launch terrorist attacks. 20 Muslim terrorists with some knowledge of chemistry could do tremendous damage.
I would also suggest that people may want to go to this site. http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/ Among other things it explains that Muhammad was more violent in the later stages of his life, and the later portions of the Quran take precedence over the earlier more peaceful pronouncements. It does list some scary poll results such as: 18 % of Muslim students in Britain would not disclose an impending terrorist attack and 26% of younger Muslims in America believe suicide bombings are justified. http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages/articles/opinion-polls.aspx
In particular a PEW poll [cited by my link] found that 26% of Young Muslims in the US believed that suicide bombings could be justified (p. 60 of 5/22/07 report — 15% often ; 11% sometimes) Also, on P. 39 of the Pew report only 43% of Muslims said they believed that Muslims should adopt American customs.
Also, the PEW poll explains why the Democrats support Muslim immigration so strongly. Roughly 70% of Muslims voted for Kerry and they are overwhelmingly Democratic.
JD
I find Warren’s public activities contemptible. At the same time I’m very uncomfortable with McConnell’s exercise of Rule 19 which proscribes saying anything ill of another senator.
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Discussion of the qualifications, history, etc of a cabinet nominee should not be throttled because the nominee is a senator. The rule should be waived in situations where the senator is a candidate for higher office.
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What has been done here is to create a precedent much like some of those of Harry Reid which may come back to haunt conservatives. It also smacks of the sort of elitist crap we hear so much.
SteveF,
While this is “Off Topic” I can’t help wondering how judges can be Democrat or Republican.
No matter what your party affiliation is you should arrive at the same conclusion when looking at the Constitution or statutes such as this one:
QUOTE
Section 212(f) of the INA reads as follows:
f. Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.
UNQUOTE
I apologize for the OT comment about partizan judges. Let me try to get this discussion back on track.
After 23 years in the trenches fighting for education reform the good news is that the number of locally controlled schools is rising exponentially thanks to charter schools.
Some charter schools are managed by FEMOs (For-profit Education Management Organizations) that are criticized by the teachers unions for daring to treat education as a profit making business.
Today we have NEMOs (Not-for-profit Education Management Organizations) that are growing even faster than FEMOs and the teachers unions can’t demonize them so easily. I created one of the early NEMOs and am gratified to see them popping up around the country:
http://www.gallopingcamel.info/free.html
The viability of at least two organization models (FEMO & NEMO) has been demonstrated in a growing number of schools, many of which achieve results comparable with private schools.
Then the Educrats fought back using “Common Core” as a tool to regain control of the charter schools that had slipped from their dead hands. As with all previous “Top Down” initiatives it was an unmitigated disaster. If Betsy DeVos has only achievement, namely the elimination of “Common Core” she will be revered by people who demand real eduction reform.
gallop, I remember reading in high school about judicial picks in some states were required to swear loyalty to the Democratic Party.
Precious little about climate science these days here. I would have thought there was plenty of news to chat about.
Steve McIntyre also seems to find it too inconvenient to post about these days as well.
j ferguson,
Senate rule 19 has been in place for a very long time, even if seldom invoked. I think what got the republicans angry enough to use it was Warren insisting on repeating quotations from 20+ years ago, all already in the Senate record, calling Sessions “contemptable” and “a disgrace”. These were nothing but gratuitous insults which served no purpose, since Warren already knew that Sessions had the votes for confirmation. I really do hope Warren is the Democrats’ nominee in 2020.
bugs,
Well, an interesting post might be to show that after taking the influence of ENSO into account, the rate of sea level rise since 1993 in the satellite altimeter data has shown no acceleration at all, completely contrary to many predictions from climate (political-)science. You want to do that, or should I? No, wait, you only want to discuss future doom and forcing people to use solar and wind energy….. and no nukes.
Bugs,
Like what?
I slowed down on posting years ago– before the El Nino and for reasons unrelated to climate. I haven’t gotten back. And FWIW: I am likely to wait a year or so before posting because I want to wait for the more recent projections to have some “age” on them.
It does take time to put together climate posts.
I should add: If I were to post, I would point out that at the top of El Nino, temperature remained in the lower range of the AR projections. Is that the sort of post you are hoping to read more of? (Real question.)
SteveF,
There is something about not interfering with someone making a fool of themselves. As is probably obvious, I circulate with a group whose views range from liberal/centrist/moderate to liberal/nuts. I suspect most of them think NYT a center-of-the-road news purveyor without significant bias. (I don’t). and yet …
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Only one of them, the semi-retired communist, still thinks Elizabeth Warren belongs in the white house. I think the objection is not so much to her approach to governance as her susceptibility to the Jessie Jackson slam, “All he’s ever run is his mouth.”
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A couple of the technical types picked up on her capability for speaking on subjects she doesn’t understand, how the auto industry finances itself for example.
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So you may not get your wish. And the decay (much better word than decline) in her credibility in the group I refer to is almost entirely from their reactions to things she’s said. So if the conserves would love to run against her, maybe the exercise of Rule 19 was a good idea.
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So as far as I can see in our local group, there is no favorite.
that should be propensity to speak on subjects she doesn’t understand, not capability.
Bugs,
I don’t care what people here talk about, I like hearing their views. But I guess it’s understandable that others might want to focus on climate science. Still, there’s WUWT, there’s Climate Etc, there’s Ander’s. Further, of course Lucia’s not contract bound or anything like that to provide climate related posts.
There are other places to find what you’re looking for, if you don’t enjoy chatting with the blackboard crew.
…shrug…
Science of Doom has started his series on Impacts. The most recent post was on temperature projections and probabilities.
Part I: https://scienceofdoom.com/2017/02/02/impacts-i-introduction/
I personally have been missing Steve McIntyre’s and Lucia’s climate posts. Updating model vs reality comparisons would be interesting to me personally. Steve tweeting something but details were missing as always on twitter. There are a lot of other graphs being shown as well by Richard Betts for example. I also understand that it takes a lot of time to do the careful and credible job both usually do.
It may be that many people go through the same cycle on climate. It’s controversial, it’s technical, it’s full of drama queens, and has real world political impacts.
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However after you spend enough time looking into it gets rather boring because the fundamental science questions (sensitivity, sea level rise, etc.) can’t be answered without more long term data, and you just fundamentally can’t get more detailed observations from the past. We will never, ever have detailed global sea temperature readings at different depths prior to 2000. I don’t think anyone is going to find a Rosetta Stone of historical climate data. And as we know through tree rings, proxy data is…ahem…up for different interpretations. So it is kind of stuck in a long term holding pattern.
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So people regurgitate models with different mixes of stuff such as the recent pause buster #999 paper which is really just a rehash of existing data with different assumptions that appears to have no compelling reason to believe it over the first 998 pause busters. The only pause buster that matters is the temperature record.
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Perhaps the recent one is “right” and all the others are “wrong”, but just because it is the most recent doesn’t make it the most accurate. It is very unclear that there have been any substantial revelations at all in the past 10 years. Warming resumed but only the most ardent skeptics thought that wasn’t going to happen. It may be that the most important revelation is what didn’t happen, notable accelerations in temperature or sea levels.
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If climate science was a video tape, every single one of us would immediately hit fast forward about 30 or 50 years to get relevant and reliable answers.
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Ultimately it is still where it always was, clean energy will be adopted as it becomes financially viable to do so, and US taxpayers aren’t going to tolerate heavy carbon sin taxes. My guess is this same statement will be just as true in 2027.
Bugs (Comment #158921)
“Precious little about climate science these days here. I would have thought there was plenty of news to chat about.”
The “Climate Wars” fought out on-line achieved nothing. Unpaid bloggers such as Lucia, McIntyre, Judith Curry, Watts, Bishop Hill, Pointman and many others won but nothing changed. Notice that these voices are falling silent one by one.
Since November 8 real reform is suddenly possible. In the USA, “Climate Science” will no longer be allowed to impede the drive for cheap energy and national self sufficiency. Since Richard Nixon every president has promised to make us less dependent on imported fuel but now we have a president who will make it happen.
I for one will waste no more time debating with learned idiots who think in terms of “Climate Sensitivity” measured in terms of Kelvin per doubling of [CO2]. It was a false hypothesis when stated by Arrhenius in 1986…..today it is embarrassing junk science.
Here is my comment on Pointman’s withdrawal from the on-line “Climate Wars”:
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2017/01/08/a-message-in-two-parts-part-two/#comment-24264
Tom S: I don’t think anyone is going to find a Rosetta Stone of historical climate data.
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A proxy Rosetta Stone is exactly what is needed. If somebody discovers a location where there are 3 or more lengthy proxy records side by side that would solve a lot of uncertainty regarding proxies quality. Clearly, Steve McIntyre and CA crew have revealed that tree rings and other proxies were accepted way too fast without validation testing, (sort of like GCMs).
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I think NOAA will easily weather the current whistleblower controversy on Huang’s ERSST4 and Karl15. But it will only give comfort to Bugs and the CAGW ready primed. I notice that Jagadish Shukla managed to weather his little storm and still holds “Distiguished Professorship” title and George Mason U.
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Bugs, in case you missed it, Shukla had the great idea of getting all of his climate science friends, including Kevin Trenberth, to sign a letter to President Obama calling for those propgating climate science denial be prosecuted under RICO (mob racketeering) laws. This caught the attention of Roger Pielke Jr., who happened to look into Shukla’s non-profit climate justice enterprises to find he had made a very sweet deal for himself, his family and native country’s home town with US tax dollars from NSF and NASA. The India school he built was probably the best used of the 18 million ref page 14 on IGES Inc.’s IRS f990.
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But when the evil Senator Lamar Smith investigated from the CA caused national story, old Shukla just quietly closed shop. But he is still riding comfortably, and did not even have to join Lois Lerner in friendly urged retirement.
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I hope to see Mann v Steyn make it to court too.
NYT is out with another blockbuster Trump expose:
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The Ties That Blind
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/opinion/the-ties-that-blind.html?_r=0
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“Mr. Trump’s symmetrical but overlong tie stands out like a rehearsed macho boast, crass and overcompensating.”
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Yes, an entire op-ed by a Stanford Law professor on the inner meaning of how Trump ties his tie. Some people think the press is too critical of Trump, making the mundane into irresponsible hit pieces. This obviously proves otherwise, ha ha.
@DeWitt Payne,
I read that link you provided. SOD is still sticking to his delusions about CO2 so his analysis won’t be worth anything.
Leonard Weinstein said this:
“”There is NO data that supports that there is mare heat waves, drought, storms, flooding, etc. than in reasonably past history. It is also a fact that there is far more deaths in cold weather or climate than hot. The greening due to CO2 is quite evident. What exactly is your issue?”
In other words more CO2 is a blessing! As usual I am with Leonard, so you will will be happy to hear I have no plans to waste time commenting at SOD.
I left out in my Trump screed his total lack of concern with deficit spending which Republicans were complaining about under Obama. Putting in place another huge spending bill in a Keynesian attempt to jump start the economy like Obama did when he was elected and seeing it admittedly fail under Obama makes no sense at all. If Trump gets support for all his big government proposals from the Republicans and their supporters then the time has truly come for labeling the party the Democrat-Republican coalition.
The only force holding the parties back from a grand coalition is that the party faithful rationalize what their leaders do and turn around to criticize it when the other party leader does it. I see a lot of that in these discussion here.
In looking more a Shukla’s IGES form 990, I notice the statement that they are “winding down” as of filing in March 2016 (just after senate investigation). In doing so they are disposing of their assets in part in a charitable contribution of $150,000 to another 501-c3 charity, the Institute for Global Education Equality of Opportunity & Prosperity (IGEP). I see from the IGEP’s f990 that the IGEP has been getting a steady steam of funding from the IGES (NSF funded) since its inception in 2006. The address for the IGEP is Shukla’s home address in MD but Anne Shukla (wife) is only listed as the secretary. The president is Santosh Jiwrajka, who is a J&J VP of quality for consumer products, who must be a family friend. The contacts for the IGEP are Sonia Shukla (daughter) and Anne.
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Here is a good article about the scandal.
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It looks like in 2014 Shukla was a favorite to Shukla lead the IPCC.
Yes Tom, climate science is stuck and progress is going to be slow as we await more data. However, I personally think there is more to be done to compare existing data to past model runs, not just CMIP5.
Kenneth Fritsch:
This lack of concern was what made me suppose his departure from office would be hastened by Republicans. Even if the Democrats regain control of congress in 2018, I would think them loath to impeach him short of him doing something really amazing. On the other hand the Republicans are going to have to deal with the significant cost of many of his schemes and either not support them or appear to be even more hypocritical than the general run of politicians.
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What he will do if he cannot get congressional support for some of his projects is not easy to imagine. He’s so innovative in his reactions to the sort of guff that comes to most people in his new profession.
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He likes to say that he’ll find private capital for some of his infrastructure projects. Does that mean selling revenue bonds? Does that mean tolls on roads and bridges? Or does selling a general obligation bond count as getting private capital?
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Someone reading this likely understands it a lot better than I do. I invite them to correct me where I have it screwed up.
I commend this George Will piece on the imprudence of Trump’s scheme to renationalize component manufacturing of US products.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/who-will-protect-americans-from-their-protectors/2017/02/10/ba85a074-ef0f-11e6-9973-c5efb7ccfb0d_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-c%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.441e200ab9e4
ferguson, I think you have screwed up by believing a lot of fake news.
Tom Scharf,
That’s for that link to the really stupid opinion piece whining about how Trump weards his ties. Has the NYT hired 9th graders? (I know the answer must be no… but that is one seriously stooooopid opinion piece.)
Re: fake news. You could be right hunter. How about an example, or two.
gc,
I’m sure the delusional thing is mutual.
Lucia – Tom Scharf — NYTs,
During the last several months I have been struck by how delusional the NYTs is.. Recently, it has been running an online ad that states: “Truth it is hard to find. But easier with 1000+ journalists looking.” The idea that the Times is trying to find the truth rather than simply advancing its own agenda is ludicrous. However, the Times staff is so lacking in intellect and is so insular that they convince themselves that they are really looking for the truth.
I would add that in looking for the slogan I went to wikipedia, and it mentioned the criticism of the Times for favoring Clinton over Sanders in the 2016 election. No mention of the Times strident support of Clinton over Trump. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times#Chinese-language_version
JD
hunter, one thing that seems true of Trump more than many public figures is that he supplies a whole lot of original source information, you don’t need secondary sources when you can get it straight from the horse, so to speak.
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My take on his plans for infrastructure investment comes pretty much from what I think I heard himsay. Same with shared public and private investment. AFAIK, he hasn’t said how he intends for this to work, so i hadn’t thought it too out of line to speculate on how he might do it, and I came up with two types of bonds. maybe there are other ways.
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i infer his psychological condition (for want of a less authoritative sounding term, after all I am a duffer in this sort of thing) from transcripts of his speeches, especially the one he gave at the CIA.
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I suppose it’s possible that the CIA transcript I read was doctored, but if so, no-one has suggested it. I was especially enchanted with his weather report, the one where the sun came out when he began to speak at his inauguration. For some reason, no-one else saw it nor was it visible in the TV record which I watched of the ceremony.
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But is any of that fake news? I agree that there’s a lot of fake news out there and even in the NYT and WaPo. I think they try to avoid it, but sometimes (well, often) can’t help themselves.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #158940)
“I left out in my Trump screed his total lack of concern with deficit spending which Republicans were complaining about under Obama.”
Trump’s main effect on the economy will follow the precedents set by John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. He will deliver tax cuts comparable with theirs.
While such tax cuts tend to increase government income it won’t be enough to eliminate the deficit if expenditures continue at current levels.
There are reasons to think that Trump will cut federal government spending. It remains to be seen whether his cuts will be sufficient to balance the budget. If my memory serves me Bill Clinton was the last president to achieve that.
j ferguson, what psychiatric inferences did you get from reading the speeches of his predeccssor? Perhaps you find the analysis of how President Trump vwears his tievto be equally serious? Reagan was accused of ruining the country with his tax reform. History proved him correct and his detractors wrong. That George Will has become such a has been is rather sad.
gallopingcamel,
Clinton and Congress didn’t really ‘balance’ anything, because they ignored the use of Social Security taxes to pay for other (non-Social Security) expenditures. The Treasury continued to issue special non-negotiable bonds for the “trust fund”. If one is willing to simply ignore the ‘internal debt’ due to taking Social Security taxes as general revenue, then yes, the budget was ‘balanced’ for a few years.
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But that happened mainly due to a steep increase in federal income taxes, sharp reductions in allowed deductions/exemptions (further increasing the effective tax rate), and a modest reduction in welfare expenditures…. the price Congress insisted on for raising taxes.
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Bush later reduced taxes, while spending trillions in Iraq (IMO, his greatest error). The 2008/2009 bailouts, a return to rapidly growing ‘social expenditures’ under Obama, and a long reduced rate of economic growth, have ballooned the deficit to an unprescedented scale. I don’t think Trump and Congress will change this, short of an economic crisis (like a return to historically typical interest rates on Treasury bonds).
“SOD is still sticking to his delusions about CO2…”
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Wow. SOD is a voice of reason, and seems not at all delusional.
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I will say that I enjoy reading SOD and it offers a lot of thought, reason and info.
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But recently I stumbled on the quote by Hume:
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“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”
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Reason is great, but it is passion, not reason, that makes us get out of bed each morning ( even if that passion is only to drain one’s bladder some place other than in one’s bed).
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With respect to climate change, fear seems to dominate: 1.) fear that impending disaster awaits and we need to fix things or 2.) the opposing fear that unwarranted government intrusion will impose cost and a green police state.
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There are other passions. Satisfying one’s ego motivates a lot. Satisfying greed determines a lot of behavior. And importantly, curiosity is a passion that would seem to be immune to biases imposed by other passions.
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But curiosity is rarely the only passion of a human being. And while I appreciate the reason of SOD, he is a human being and has also exhibited reason in the service of Fear #1 above ( it’s kinda implicit in the very name: Science of DOOM). And no, I’m not so egocentric ( or at least so completely egocentric ) to believe that I’m somehow immune to the biases of the passions. I tend to serve Fear #2 above.
Turbulent Eddie,
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I am baffled by your claim that Science of Doom has “exhibited reason in the service of Fear #1 above”. He seems to be very careful to avoid that. On his “about” page he writes “The science has been pressed into a political agenda and consequently the spirit of free inquiry has been squashed”. It seems to me that he does an admirable job of living up to that. I think that the title of his blog is meant to be ironic.
Indeed. He resorts to sarcasm and irony fairly frequently. In the latest post, Impacts – V – Climate change is already causing worsening storms, floods and droughts, He has a figure with a number of noisy graphs with no obvious trend with the comment:
Just to make the point clear, SoD refers to Poe’s Law at the bottom of the post:
j ferguson (Comment #158945)
Where Will comments:
There is some good historical stuff in the Will piece, but the activist and protectionist tendency of the Republican party and its predecessor the Whig party back in those days pre-dated the Civil War and included Lincoln big time.
Kenneth Fritsch,
It seems possible that something which would be imprudent to do now, might have been a good idea then.
I should add that I no longer buy Sanatyana’s observation to the effect that if we are unfamiliar with our history we are doomed to repeat it.
Nonsense,
I credit us with the skill to screw it up in new and unprecedented ways regardless.
Protecting infant industries in a developing country might work for a while. But it eventually becomes counterproductive. Mexico was highly protectionist until NAFTA. The Mexican economy has expanded rapidly since and they didn’t just drop tariffs with the US and Canada. The Mexican economists who urged the adoption of NAFTA are now counseling the Mexican government against retaliation if Trump tears up NAFTA.
SteveF,
I maintain that failing to provide adult supervision to the Delay/Frist 108th Congress was a mistake as big or bigger than Iraq. Remember big government conservatism? What a disaster that was.
Jferguson, my point and Will’s is that protectionism is never good. I am not sure what you saying about it.
Kenneth:
What i was saying was that I wasn’t convinced that protectionism is never good. I’m pretty sure it isn’t good now, but maybe in the distant past. I’m not thinking of protection of local industries from more competitive offshore sources, but local farming from sporadic dumping from the outside.
Smith’s and I think Ricardo’s references to taxing grain exports to keep domestic prices down so as not to starve out the peasants might be an example. This seems a beneficial form of protectionism.
DeWitt,
I may count the dead bodies more heavily.
“I personally have been missing Steve McIntyre’s and Lucia’s climate posts. Updating model vs reality comparisons would be interesting to me personally. Steve tweeting something but details were missing as always on twitter. There are a lot of other graphs being shown as well by Richard Betts for example. I also understand that it takes a lot of time to do the careful and credible job both usually do.”
The data involved is massive and not organized very well.
Most folks rely on KNMI to get their model data and dont even
check if that secondary archive is correct. They just download and go.
most days people pass around charts that cant even be reproduced
I have found Mcintyre to be pretty reliable and to focus on the details very well. I noticed Ken Rice had a plot he ginned up. The way he did it seems to give a huge model range. In any case, I’m sure Steve would tell you Mosher what he did if you sent him an email.
Mosher, I think Steve was just trying to update the Rose graphic with more detailed and later data. Betts’ graph was somewhat misleading because it used only yearly data and 2016 was a record fueled by ENSO. McIntyre added projections for 2017. So its probably basically the same datasets Betts used.
BTW, You should drop the nonsense about the F-117 and the crude “models” used for EM scattering. We all know that better models enable vastly better designs and newer models are vastly better thanks to continued progress by more rigorous mathematical types like Demkowicz. They made that progress by being honest about the old models deficiencies.
Steve, welfare reform happened 3 years after the tax hikes, It was vetoed twice before Republicans realized they were going to lose the majority if they didn’t get it passed, while Dick Morris told Bill Clinton that a third veto would cost him re-election.
The capital gains tax cut boosted revenues considerably.
Jesus Mr Camel. That Pointman link was a real trip down a verbose and rabbit hole that took a long time to say not much at all other than that no amount of science will convince him of anything. .
@SteveF
When did I ever say no nukes. The truth is it doesn’t matter you would want to build a new nuclear plant, Republican or Democrat they will oppose the building of it equally depending on how close they live to it.
@Lucia
I should add: If I were to post, I would point out that at the top of El Nino, temperature remained in the lower range of the AR projections. Is that the sort of post you are hoping to read more of? (Real question.)
I have already seen other sites showing charts that show that. Thing is, it is still warming and the lower range is still going to be a serious issue.
The other significant issue is that the events in the cryosphere indicate we can’t take anything for granted. The current trend may be in the lower range but the models didn’t predict what is happening in the Arctic and Antarctic either. Model errors can break both ways.
Bugs,
Thuth is I wouldn’t (and didn’t) oppose a nuclear plant near where I lived and worked (Limerick power station in Pennsylvania). The real opposition to nuclear is with the green-left…. doesn’t matter where, they oppose nuclear (California, Germany, etc.). Which shows that what they really oppose is human wealth and wellbeing, not fossil fuels. So can I assume you would oppose a nuclear plant anywhere near where you live?
By Jupiter?
Bugs
“can’t take anything for granted” is a pretty squishy claim. I don’t even know what it’s supposed to mean.
Where in the AR8 can I find what the predictions for the ice?
Bugs
Of course. If models are imperfect, they are imperfect. I’ve never said otherwise.
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Sea ice is fertile ground for confirmation bias ( the tendency to think that whatever is happening must be due to CO2 ).
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Ice motion, determined by atmospheric motion, determines ice amounts to a great extent. Climate models cannot predict changes in atmospheric motion.
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So, while a decrease in sea ice is predicted on the basis of increased thermal energy, the percent of this decline which is natural versus anthropogenic is probably unknowable.
j ferguson (Comment #158968)
February 12th, 2017 at 2:24 pm
jferguson, your reference to Adam Smith on export taxes must have been an exception for his thinking and directly in opposition to the following:
http://www.futurecasts.com/Smith,%20Wealth%20of%20Nations%20(II).htm
I would think that an export tax on a commodity would cause the amount of that commodity exported to fall and the price of that commodity to fall in the nation placing the export tax on the commodity. Falling prices would discourage production of that commodity and prices would tend to rise domestically back to prices before the tax was initiated given that there are no price controls. With price controls there well could be cut in production and shortages. I do not see how this would help the situation that you mentioned.
Bugs,
“the lower range is still going to be a serious issue”
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This is what I would say is the big arm waving exercise in climate science. It’s warming = it’s a disaster. I have found the equals sign there to be unconvincing so far. I don’t claim zero impacts, but I also think the hysterical climate refugees, more wars, extreme weather, etc. to be almost totally unsupported. I did look into hurricanes and sea level rise in detail and found the evidence wanting.
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There is almost no data to support an increasing trend in hurricanes over the past century.
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Sea levels are rising and will continue to rise, but the one inch per decade rate has been pretty steady for the past 30-50 years. Estimates that we will get to 1M or 2M by the end of the century look highly unrealistic and are quoted uncritically by the media.
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The craziest thing I heard recently was “loss of language”.
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What do you think are going the be most likely serious issues?
Trade policy: I think the Trumpsters are asking to stop making their lives actively worse through globalism. I think what they keep hearing is that the current situation is as good as it gets, and any changes will make it even worse for them. So, go away.
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This claim is unsurprisingly highly suspicious coming from a group that is actively benefiting from globalism while Trumpsters lives declines relatively.
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The economy has many moving parts, the economic system, trade policy, a lower amount of corruption than most countries, an educated work force, an advantage we have been riding since post-WWII, a decline in unions, large consumption, infrastructure, and a hard working innovating culture, the best university in the world, etc.
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It’s not just trade policy. Politicians are elected to serve their constituents, not optimize national per capita GDP. Perhaps doings this best serves their local constituents, but the evidence of this over the past 30 years looks shaky.
Kenneth, You are exactly correct about the domestic effect of an export tax on commodities, and this was the intent, to keep the purchase price affordable for the local peasants. There is a chapter in Wealth of Nations on the subject. it’s been a very long time since i read it but the practice was adopted fairly early.
Since crops are cyclical and especially were in those times, the amount of the harvest may be less sensitive to price manipulation than manufactured goods where production can be ramped up a bit with extra shifts or throttled with layoffs if the effort isn’t worth the return.
Kenneth, sorry. the way i wrote the above seems a bit patronizing. I didn’t intend it to.
Tom Scharf
William Bernstein called it the mean-variance optimization applied to politics. Surprisingly, for an article written in 2006, he also had a reference to Trump.
RB,
That sort of thing is why I don’t believe that per-capita GDP is a good measure of standard of living. PPP adjusted median family income would, IMO, be a better measure.
I would also take anything by Piketty with multiple helpings of salt. Income isn’t necessarily wealth either.
RB,
Interesting link. I’m about 80% libertarian but worry the current globalism / wealth inequality is leading to political instability, not national economic instability.
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It’s a long term problem that is going to require a long term fix, exactly what that would be is very unclear. I would prefer somebody smart figure out a better way before a Sanders type throws a huge wrench into the economy.
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The short term answer is that the political class needs to convince people they actually care about the problem and intend to do something about it. Among the many weaknesses Trump exploited, this is one of them.
Ken, Zeke is visiting Bandon S has a blog post on Juang(2015) answering questions and willing to relay questions to Peter Thorne, the co-author of Juang15.
RB,
For income dispersion, I would suggest looking at the ratios of median individual income or median family income to GDP/capita. The time series on that would be more interesting to me than the income share of the top 1%.
j ferguson (Comment #158992)
I think you might not be good at patronizing because I see nothing patronizing about your post.
My point was that, like so often not done by government planners, you have to look at the entire picture and that would be the effects on the producer and what that can do to supply and prices. Are you attempting to say that export taxes worked?
Also since Smith was against export controls you will have to link me to the case he made for export taxes on grain.
I read Smith on paper, so I need to see if I can find it It’s not easy because he sometimes used ‘Corn’ for wheat, and the export tax would almost certainly be called something else, tariff maybe
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The problem Smith was discussing was that domestic wheat (corn) prices could be driven up by off-shore purchasers who doubtless had their own shortages to deal with. In the 15th century (from memory here so may be erroneous) the government found the cost of wheat beyond the financial means of the peasants not right term, but… and they were starving.
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It’s amazing that the hazard of having starving peasants was realized so many years before Monty Python got to it.
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The government realized that if they artificially raised the price of export grain, it would lose it’s attraction overseas and the producers would then be forced to sell it for whatever they could get which hopefully would be what the peasants could afford.
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A problem with Wealth of Nations is that it is often abridged. The abridged editions will have some remarks to the effect that in order to keep the thing down to a manageable size, material subsequently determined to be fallacious had not been included. Determined to be fallacious by whom, indeed?
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The reason I have remembered this section so clearly is because it seems at odds with how most people suppose Smith thought on this sort of thing.
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So I’ll try to find it.
j ferguson,
Corn is the generic English term for cereal grain. Hence, the name Corn Exchange for the building where merchants and farmers traded in cereal grains. So it would cover rye, barley, etc. as well as wheat and maize. It’s like pudding is the generic term for dessert in the UK. Hence Pink Floyd’s lyric: “If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding!”
Hi DeWitt,
I need to get back to Smith. He sometimes uses term corn and other times a more specific name, although in the context of the present discussion it doesn’t matter.
j ferguson,
I doubt that’s accidental. If he uses ‘corn’, then that means all cereal grains. Otherwise it’s whatever grain he specifies. OTOH, if it’s abridged, then it may have been changed from the original text.
Kenneth, DeWitt, It is Book IV, Chapter V – Bounties, in …Wealth of Nations where he gets into the effects of governmental bounties and taxes on exports. Alas, I’ll have to read it again.
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One thing you have to say about Smith is when he gets into something he really covers all of the options and possible variations, alternatives, and on and on.
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It looks like subsistence is the word to search on, at least in this chapter.
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The Gutenberg.org version appears to be the whole thing.
Bugs (Comment #158978),
As a physicist who spent 12 years feeding at the government trough my BS detector is quite sensitive.
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4441032/
This just one of many papers concerning the world’s brightest gamma ray source. Unfortunately they are still behind pay walls so here is a video showing how the HIGS (High Intensity Gamma Source) works:
http://www.tunl.duke.edu/web.tunl.2011a.howhigsworks.php
I can tell you that the Arrhenius (1896) theory was false and the climate models based on it (e.g. CMIP) are examples of junk science.
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4441032/
If you want a serious debate bring it on but please have numerical analysis rather than hand waving:
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/extending-a-new-lunar-thermal-model-part-ii-modelling-an-airless-earth/
Re: Tom Scharf (Comment #158995)
It is not a Bernie Sanders one needs to fear, but a Steve Bannon who is smart and is already in a position of influence.
RB, that comment on Bannon is a pretty nice bit of fake news. So now Bannon is a right wing Leninist? Please stop being as gullible for the Trump hysteria as climate true believers are for the climate apocalypse.
Ron Graf (Comment #158996)
February 13th, 2017 at 2:23 pm
The best part of the Brandon blog discussion to which you linked was the link in there to Ross McKitrick’s discussion of the Karl paper and the ERSST v4 Huang construction. I was searching for that link for awhile now. Important in that it shows how a difference of 2 methods with some biases in the adjustments can lead to a near straight line trend in the difference series that result from the 2 methods.
http://www.rossmckitrick.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/mckitrick_comments_on_karl2015_r1.pdf
hunter,
It is consistent with Bannon’s apocalyptic vision of a conflict between Christianity and Islam and his critique of Ayn Rand capitalism. You can check out excerpts from his speech in the Vatican .
Something that I think so-called skeptics and luke warmers should pay attention in these situations like the ERSST v4 presents is how those people with temperature data sets in opposition respond.
Since most of these scientists are not in the skeptics camp on AGW there appear to be some dillemmas presented here.
j ferguson (Comment #159003)
February 13th, 2017 at 4:32 pm
jferguson, I am awaiting your references from A. Smith that advocate what this excerpt seems to flatly be counter against and with some of arguments that I used.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN15.html
Sloth Kenneth, no other excuse. There is also the strong possibility that what I read, I misunderstood.
Kenneth,
I cannot find it. I read Smith 20 years ago. I clearly remember his acceptance of the idea that corn exports needed regulation to keep the labouring poor from starving because i thought it inconsistent with Smith’s other views. Reading his chapter on bounties suggests that corn exports didn’t really amount to anything before the time of Charles II and so their ‘control’ was unlikely to have had an effect on what the poor paid before then, certainly not the 16th century.
I doubt if I made this up. Maybe it was in a modern footnote. I was also unable to find anything like this by googling, so i guess we have to write it off as nonsense. Too bad. And sorry to have wasted your time.
RB,
Bannon is speaking based on being informed of the Islamic vision. Try reading “The Looming Tower” for some perspective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Looming_Tower
Again, you are being deceived.
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Luke, I am your father.
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Populist = Sanders = Trump
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Sanders blamed everything on Wall Street. Trump blamed Mexicans and Muslims and also Wall Street.
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Ironic, since Bannon is a Goldmann Sachs guy, but I think it’s like nothing’s worse than a reformed smoker, or in this case, investment banker.
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The populist vein can account for the election. Four of the swing states that Trump won that provided the margin(WI,MI,OH,PA), are also the same states that Sanders won during the Democratic primaries. Red states voted for Trump because he was the titular Republican. Swing states voted for Trump because of the populist appeal to union voters.
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We’ll see what happens. As far as the Xenophobia, Flynn’s resignation is interesting and probably much more about infighting than whatever Russian talks were ( though perhaps something else emerges ). Does Patreus replace? If so, it means the grown ups are winning.
Regarding Flynn, it’s nice to know our intelligence agencies are doing a bang up job trying to take our government down, ha ha. Do they listen to other countries too? Lying about calls to Russians is definitely “You’re Fired” territory. The media is going to have a field day with this one. Trump should have fired him weeks ago.
More political theater: Lamar Smith follows up on Bates, asking NOAA for emails relating to Karl 15. The letter mentions that NOAA wasn’t forthcoming last time he asked. I wonder if they will be more cooperative under the current administration.
Glenn Greenwald talks about the leaks:
https://theintercept.com/2017/02/14/the-leakers-who-exposed-gen-flynns-lie-committed-serious-and-wholly-justified-felonies/
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“But this is how political power and the addled partisan brain in D.C. functions. Those in power always regard leaks as a heinous crime, while those out of power regard them as a noble act. They seamlessly shift sides as their position in D.C. changes.”
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This type of stuff is the reason why every person who goes to DC becomes fundamentally altered in a matter of months. They all start playing inside baseball and obsessing on partisan point scoring. It’s hard to look out for the plebes when everyone in the city pulls out a knife the moment you turn your back.
The threshold for craziness apparently is higher than I thought. For those who are at least willing to believe some things in the NYT:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/opinion/an-eminent-psychiatrist-demurs-on-trumps-mental-state.html?emc=eta1&_r=0&referer=
So, once more, i was wrong.
j ferguson,
The same doctor had elaborated in greater detail earlier .
Another doctor in the same article says
Re: Tom Scharf (Comment #159055)
Maybe, but Flynn is the fourth Trump campaign official being investigated for Russian links. I’d say it is likely that there is more to come on the Russian angle. Trump is yet to say a word about Russia violating a missile treaty while Russia seems to be dropping not so subtle hints .
Most presidents are bat guano crazy. Lincoln,Coolidge,LBJ with major depression. TR Bipolar. JFK with all the drugs, was tetched in the haid somehow.
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Substance abuse issues ( in Trump’s case, abstinence ) connote the last four presidents. Father issues include all since JFK.
RB,
I had thought there were two components to sanity. The first was being functional, are you able to do what you need to at least on some level? And the second was do you have a grasp of ‘reality?’
Trump is clearly functional. ‘Reality’ is a tricky concept. I suppose everyone has a right to their own version of it, but one might think that there is a problem if as the saying goes, you believe your own bs. Of course we have no idea whether he believes his.
I haven’t changed my stance that Trump is not up to the job and that his term is very likely to be curtailed. At the same time, if its curtailment doesn’t follow from very careful sound reasoning and some provocation which meets the test of whatever method is selected and does so in a very clear comprehensible manner, a significant part of the country will think he was railroaded out for no good reason, and that would be an even bigger problem to my mind than suffering through his term.
This is one of the reasons i don’t like reading a lot of nonsense about him in the press, such as the bit about how his infrastructure improvement scheme had it been applied to the dam would not have saved the day. I think we don’t have any idea how his infrastructure improvement program will work, yet.
But i suppose it can’t be helped.
j ferguson
Trump seems to be a product of various formative influences including Norman Peale for the power of positive thinking. An NYT journalist also suggested the influence of Ed Koch for forming his political style.
Plus: Roy Cohn for the casual relationship with truth.
j ferguson,
What always seems so strange is the doc could just have stated Trump does not fit the mental illness definitions and it’s unethical to diagnose at a distance, so stop talking about it. Instead there seems to be a requirement that anytime someone from academia says something about Trump that might in anyway be construed as supportive they must include gratuitous and unnecessary sliming to clearly signal which team they are on. I suppose that’s the only way that letter gets printed by the NYT, ha ha.
Hi Tom Scharf,
I took his drift to be more “just cause you don’t like him doesn’t mean he’s crazy”. There’s a Catch 22 lurking in there somewhere.
Teachers Union contributions.
It doesn’t take much to bribe Congress.
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=L1300
J Ferguson,
You tryin’ to muscle in on my territory? What’s the matter with you.
Hi Mark,
I learn by being wrong.
J,
Ideally, I do too. Ideally…
🙂 Thanks.
j ferguson: Yes, mental disorders are usually defined in terms of the impact on the individual, and not the impact on the individual on others.
I guess if, you are happy with who you are, and you are otherwise well adjusted, while your behavior is ruining the lives of people around you, isn’t “narcissistic personality disorder”, then maybe it’s just plain old “flaming a**hole” behavior.
I still think that Trump suffers from a (possibly age associated) moderate cognitive deficiency, one that affects his ability to recognize the long-term repercussions of his behavior. And I still expect that to take its toll on him over time, and negatively affect his ability to govern effectively.
[I realize there are people who actually think Trump’s some kind of genius. That’s fine… time will probably tell which of us is correct.]
Carrick,
i don’t think Trump is a genious, nor is he an idiot. He is just a person who has limitations, like most of us. The difference is that Trump is more…. shall we say….. flamboyant than most, and at the same time subject to implacable oposition from many people with a very loud megaphone, as well as career ‘civil servents’ who are similarly opposed to his policies.
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My guess is that the civil service influence will gradually decline as Trump replaces most of the management of the civil service with his own people. I expect no change in the MSM’s coverage…. they will continue to oppose Trump and his policies in every way they can.
I think Trump might be some sort of genius. He might not be too. Or maybe genius is the wrong word. Trump appears to be special. I do have some evidence:
1. Trump is a billionaire. There are a little over eighteen hundred billionaires in this world of seven billion people.
2. Against all odds apparently, Trump won the Presidency.
We can scoff at Trump the buffoon who doesn’t read all day, but it rings hollow in my ears. Unless the scoffers are former U.S. Presidents who happen to be billionaires.
But as Carrick says, only time will tell.
SteveF: I think it’s pretty much impossible for Trump to replace the 2.8 million civil servants. Nor, if people are doing things either ethically questionable or flat-out illegal (as Flynn was doing) can you anticipate much in loyalty.
Mark Bofill: Regarding his wealth, remember he started out with somewhere between $100 and $300 million dollars. Compare that to somebody like Mark Cuban, who started with practically nothing, and yet is worth about twice what Trump is.
The general belief is that had Trump simply invested his wealth using conservative vehicles, he’d be worth at least $10 billion.
So he’s not brilliant. He’s probably pretty close to average. Without all of the help he received, there’s no way he’d be anything close to a billionaire.
(Then there are the Hunts brothers who lost all of their fortune trying to manipulate the silver market. So it’s possible to be completely stupid. Trump is not that.)
Regarding the presidency—Trump got a lot of help there, and even with that he still ended up with ~2.8 million votes short of winning the plurality. This includes Russian hacking of the DNC and John Podesta’s email account, to interference from the FBI a few weeks before the election, to a much stronger Republican National Committee effort (they learned after losing the 2012 election they should frankly have won) that did a lot of the “ground game” that Trump himself failed to do, to a massive number of unforced errors by HRC, such as mishandling her emails, then mishandling the email controversy, then mishandling the enormous amount of money she raised.
None of this is the sort of thing Trump would have planned, including losing the plurality of votes and still winning in the electoral college. As it happened, as many as half of his votes came from people who couldn’t stand HRC. So this wasn’t an act of genius. More like an act of chance or a “perfect storm” of events that conspired to put him in the White House.
As to reading—my thoughts here are this:
When I was a kid, I used to wish there was some way we could transfer the knowledge, experience and wisdom from other people’s brains directly into our own. And then, when I was older, I realized it had already been invented!
It is the book which lets us do just that, of course.
There is simply no way that any given person is better off not reading than if that same person read books.
Trump being a billionaire does require ability. But without knowing who lent him money after 1995 when major US banks stopped, it is difficult to know how special he is.
The passive investment calculation by Carrick is about right with the following caveats …
the earliest firm net worth estimate for Trump is ~200 million in 1982. Dividend re-invested, that would be 9.2B today. However, that excludes expenses and taxes.
Carrick,
You make a persuasive case. I could argue that the amount he started with isn’t known exactly, and your estimates are definitely on the high end. I could argue that there are many millionaires and few billionares. I could argue a lot of stuff but I don’t know. Fact remains we aren’t all that rich or powerful.
And the illiterate buffoon is among the top couple k in wealth, and is the most powerful leader in the world.
Don’t have it in me to argue with you about books. 🙂 I’m not objective there. Emotionally I am awfully attached to reading.
I’m on my phone, so my comments suck more than usual. :/ Waiting to get the tar kicked out of me. Sparring night! Maybe I’ll engage on this later or tomorrow.
RB:
I’m not knocking the guy, I don’t think he’s particularly brilliant. (You can be a bit below average intellectually, and make it through Yale for example, though having a father give a nice endowment does put you in the “must be passed” category.)
Trump’s got a gift for persuasion. He’s sold a lot of people in the country on his ability to “turn things around”. And I think he’s very knowledgeable and even talented in the hotel industry.
Based on the outcomes, Trump’s instinctive “fly by the seat of the pants” nature doesn’t lend itself to the gambling industry, nor to airlines, or retail, to name a few of the more disastrous outcomes.
Probably not to running a country either. But time will tell there.
(I don’t buy the “if he fails, it’s the Democrats fault” storyline that some people are already working on. You have to be able to persuade people who are disinclined to trust you, if you are to be successful in politics on this level. If you can’t, somebody else needs to be running things.)
Carrick
I agree with this. I recently saw this documentary “Becoming Warren Buffett”. There is a discussion of the events surrounding Salomon Bros. Secretary Brady threw them a lifeline based on Buffett’s reputation . Reputation matters and that is why Trump is not getting the deference his team feels he deserves.
Mark Bofill—somebody was attacking me a week ago about being some liberal elitist for my emphasizing the need to read. I think it’s sad that there are so many conservatives who apparently think this way.
I’ve never thought of reading as a liberal or conservative occupation. Living in Mississippi, most of the people I know are moderates or conservatives.
Most people I know personally read. I have a conservative brother-in-law with a two year degree who is a total bookworm.
My town is home to some very good writers, including a Nobel Prize winner. Mississippi is home to many great writers, as is the South in general.
As a plug, I just finished a fascinating book by Mary Beard entitled SPQR: A History of Rome, which is really about the Senatus Populusque Romanus (The Roman Senate and People).
It’s very interesting to see how many of the problems and issues are similar two thousand years later, and led me to revise the old saw about history to read “those who learn from history will be able to recognize when we are repeating it.”
Carrick,
Many have commented on the similarities between Trump and Crassus, Rome’s real estate rich guy who got Syria as his province and lost his head to the Iran-based Parthian empire 🙂
Carrick (Comment #159071): “The general belief is that had Trump simply invested his wealth using conservative vehicles, he’d be worth at least $10 billion.”
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That is ridiculous. For one thing, so far as I am aware, nobody has ever become a billionaire by passive investing, let alone a billionaire 10 times over. That includes Trump’s siblings, who presumably inherited as much as he did. Also, Trump was very wealthy long before he inherited anything (Fred Trump died in 1999).
Carrick: “Trump got a lot of help there, and even with that he still ended up with ~2.8 million votes short of winning the plurality. This includes Russian hacking of the DNC and John Podesta’s email account, to interference from the FBI a few weeks before the election,…”
In isolation these are all fair points. What you leave out is the unrelenting attacks on Trump by a very biased media. Also, the media didn’t scrutinize Clinton as it did Trump. For instance, I never saw any mention in the media of Clinton’s very dirty “commodity trades.” No one thought to look at what she did while working for the Rose Law Firm in Arkansas. No one looked at what she did while she was on WalMart’s Board of Directors while Bill was governor. However, the media did look at Trump’s rental policies in the 1980s. Although Clinton is such a corrupt individual that part of her corruption was covered by the media, if the media gave her the same treatment that Trump received, undoubtedly much more negative information about Clinton would have come out.
Also, I would point out that there is evidence of Russian hacking of the DNC, but so far as I know no conclusive proof. Additionally, intelligence services are not infallible or impervious to political pressures. We only have to look back to the failed intelligence on the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
JD
Carrick,
Like I said, I don’t have it in me to argue with you regarding reading. Yet I think we can find examples of … how shall we say it. It’s not ‘genius’ in the usual sense. Was Napoleon a genius? His reputation is[was] of both an extremely gifted strategist and tactician. Was he particularly well educated or well read? (Rhetorical questions. Q1: I think he was a genius. Sort of. He had a gift / unusual talent that allowed him to prevail in certain contests. Q2: I don’t believe he was particularly well read. I hope my recollection isn’t faulty here.)
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I don’t think Trump is a closet Napoleon or Alexander or any of that. But I do suspect he has certain characteristics that have helped him prevail in certain forms of contests. But it’s just an idea. The ‘perfect storm’ argument you make isn’t without merit, but I shy away from it for reasons I haven’t finished nailing down yet. There is something that makes me uncomfortable about that.
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Thanks Carrick.
Mike M: Donald Trump took over running Fred’s empire in 1974. There’s a Forbes story that Trump was worth $200 million in 1982. The exact number is unknown.
If you start with $150 million, and you put it in low-risk instruments, it’s pretty much just math what happens to it in 20 years. It’s pretty clear that Trump had a lot of set-backs that reduced what his wealth would have been. Those set-backs aren’t the sign of genius. Mark Cuban and Michael Bloomberg are both examples of “self-made” billionaires. They started with basically nothing and grew it into empires.
Trump started with an empire, and had numerous bumps in the road. The best we can say is “he didn’t lose everything”.
JD Ohio:
I think that’s true to an extent. BUt Trump mostly controlled the media stories through his tweets. So most of the stories amounted to gossip column stories. (The laziness of the press is greater than their bias.)
Clinton certainly had her share of negative stories, but they were usually much more substantive in nature, through a combination of external meddling (Russia, FBI) and HRC’s incredible ability to turn small problems into major crises.
(We can only imagine what would happen if she had become president. She is much more political ept than Trump in many respects, but she’s an idiot… we would have had four years of crazy stupid with her as president.)
I’d put it as much more likely than not that Russia was behind it.
But regardless of who did it, we know the DNC was hacked, right? The consequences for Clinton’s campaign is it put her behind an eight ball and prevented her from gaining any momentum at a critical moment in the political contest.
Mark Bofill:
He was self taught. Here’s a discussion.
JD Ohio (Comment #159082)
Arguably, the near-obsession of the media, unrelenting attacks and all, was actually enabling his campaign.
Carrick, I buy your version of Santayana’s saw about history; if you know it, when it occasionally repeats you’ll recognize it coming around the corner. I think his is nuts.
I do wonder about the truth of some of the things about Trump which are leaking, particularly the one about liking briefings on a single page with lots of maps and graphics. Can he possibly imagine that the stuff which confronts him can be so reduced?
Are there Cliff’s notes for being president?
If his sources are cable tv, I worry. A lot. The dam episode is an example. So much of what was reported in the first couple of days was nonsense. It’s usually same with major aviation accidents. With them, news reports eventually get close and the various violations of physics are filtered out but it usually takes about ten days.
But if this is how Trump ‘gets’ it. ???
Carrick,
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Perhaps I chose a poor example. Maybe there is no good example, and I’ll be unable to find a relatively illiterate yet talented historical figure. Let me see what I can do.
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Thanks!
Oliver: “Arguably, the near-obsession of the media, unrelenting attacks and all, was actually enabling his campaign.”
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At least with respect to me, it certainly was counter-productive, and I suspect to many others. Probably on balance the media attacks helped Clinton, but to a major subset of the population, it is very irritating and counter-productive. I pretty much can’t read the NYTs anymore or listen to what used to be serious public radio.
The attacks on Trump were, and are, cult-like. I have a very low opinion of Clinton, but I don’t blame her for nearly everything. On the other hand, the Left is simply looking for any excuse, no matter how trivial or stupid, to criticize or blame Trump.
JD
Could we call Genghis Khan talented? I sort of think so. He might have been literate and scholarly, but if so it appears to have happened after his conquests mostly.
If not Genghis, I betcha we can find some illiterate yet talented military leader someplace in history.
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I feel like I am wandering off the thread of my argument somehow… mmm.. :/ long day.
[Edit: Oh. I see. I was saying …gift / unusual talent that allowed him to prevail in certain contests.. So, my point was just that. I’m pretty confident Trump isn’t an academic genius. I suspect Trump is gifted or talented in other ways. I don’t think he’s a military ‘genius’. But, I suspect he’s got gifts in some areas that have helped him get where he is. Heh. Sorry. I had to remind myself. Must be bed time!]
JD Ohio (Comment #159089)
Yes, many of the attacks on Trump do seem to be coming out of a cult-like mentality.
Clinton, okay, whatever, not going to touch that with a ten-foot-pole.
As for the “Left,” I think I will push back a bit here. With all due respect (and yes, despite what someone whom I can’t remember said here on this very blog, when some people say those words it is actually meant to indicate respect, which is why they’re bothering to try and explain): I think you’re taking far too monolithic a view here. I consider myself pretty far left, and frankly I am not alone among “left” leaning people I know who are not particularly interested in looking for trivial or stupid excuses for criticizing the President when there are much more serious concerns out there.
Oliver: #159091 — The Left, of course, does not have 100% agreement on all issues. In my mind your “enabling” view [which I pretty much agree with] is a small minority among the Left — otherwise, there would be a stronger push back on the obsession about Trump. However, the Left is much more monolithic than the right. There were virtually no defections from the Democratic party once Clinton was nominated despite her baggage. In the Republican party, on the other hand, many leaders spoke out against and opposed Trump.
JD
JD,
The evidence suggests there were many “defections” from the Obama voting bloc: many who previously voted for Obama ended up voting for Trump this time around.
On the other hand, many Republicans voters (and leaders) made strong statements of opposition against Trump during the campaign, e.g., we will “never” vote for him, his behavior is “unacceptable,” “I could never look my daughter in the eye again,” etc., but voted for him anyway.
The attack on Trump’s business is that he would have been better off investing in a real estate investment trust which grew faster. I think most people given the choice between what Trump did with the money and having even more money from passive investment would have chosen the former, even without the run for President.
I’m not sure if the calculation accounted for Trump’s personal expenses each year.
Oliver,
I don’t know anyone who said they would never vote for Trump, but then did. Perhaps you know some. I think a significant fraction of Trump’s votes were of the “hold your nose and vote for the lesser of evils” type; not really a vote for anything, but rather a vote against a continuation of Obama’s policies. That certainly describes my vote. Trump was clearly a terrible candidate, but for many voters, the prospect of four years of Hillary in the White House was even worse. If you have not already seen it, and if you want to see the rational for voting for Trump, read the essay ‘The Flight 93 Election’.
Alrighty Carrick.
1. I think we have a disconnect someplace. I argue in essence: Trump is special because out of a population of about 7,000,000,000 people he’s among the 1,900 wealthiest. You refute by (as I understand you) saying ‘yeah, but look at this other guy in the 1,900 set. He did better than Trump.’ I don’t understand how that connects to my point.
2. I get you (I think) when you point out that Trump started with a good bit of money. I’ll readily agree that starting with hundreds of millions makes the transition to billions a lot less miraculous. Still, I’m not sure that it’s more or less inevitable that starting with hundreds of millions people become billionaires unless they are really stupid. If this is what you are saying. Maybe this is true, but I don’t think it’s been demonstrated.
3. As a question of fact, I’m not sure Trump really started with that much. Here’s [P]olifact on the subject. Perhaps Trump actually started with something more like 40 million. Then again, maybe Forbes has it right, I don’t know.
Oliver: “The evidence suggests there were many “defections†from the Obama voting bloc”.
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But that was not JD’s point. Many prominent Republicans refused to support Trump or even actively opposed him in the general election. That includes elected officials, backroom types, and opinion leaders such as columnists. So far as I could tell, the number of such individuals who defected from Clinton was near zero. I can only think of one: Jim Webb.
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There was no #NeverHillary movement among Democrats.
MikeN: “The attack on Trump’s business is that he would have been better off investing in a real estate investment trust which grew faster”.
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I have never seen anyone identify a single such trust, let alone a few dozen that performed at that level. Absent that, the attack is unsupported by facts. But then, I have not searched for that, so it may be that people have done that. But I am skeptical, considering that such a result requires double digit annual gains sustained for decades including the crashes in the early nineties and 2007.
I’d also like to toss this out there. It sounds sort of crazy at first, and I know that. But think it through.
I self identify on climate blogs as a denier. Some may truly believe I am 😉 but in fact my positions are consistent with the lukewarmer viewpoint.
Not everything people tell you about themselves is actually so.
How do we know Trump doesn’t read much? (real question, I actually don’t know) I expect in some way shape or form this must have come from Trump himself. If so. Seriously, not making this up – the most successful businessman I personally know / have worked with is like this. He deliberately spread misinformation about himself, so people would underestimate him (among other reasons).
Trump has been a performer for some time. Performing pretty much means being a fake onstage to fool people. He took power by leading a populist charge. It’s not any sort of big secret that maybe it’s an effective idea to speak to the lowest common denominator in such movements. Yes, I’m certain I read that somewhere before. I might be going out on a limb, but somehow I suspect Trump has read that as well.
All pure speculation – I have no evidence whatsoever. But I question that Trump is as illiterate in his habits as he leads us to believe.
*alright, got my tin-foil hat fix. Now I can get back to work! 🙂 *
mark bofill (Comment #159096)
February 16th, 2017 at 8:05 am
Wealth is certainly not any criteria I would use in judging a presidential candidate. George Soros and Vlad Putin are very wealthy. I would even not want the likable Warren Buffett as president as I think his political philosophy is wrong and naive.
There are many different ways of accumulating wealth and it would be an overly generalized correlation between the characteristics that built the personal wealth and those best suited to be a nations leader.
“But as Carrick says, only time will tell.”
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Trump is truly the Rodney Dangerfield of all humans. I have lots of the same reservations many have about Trump, but I find myself actually sympathetic with him here.
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My guess is Trump craves respect more than anything. If being a billionaire, Ivy league graduate, a major prime time reality TV star, married to models, and … ahem … President of the United States of America isn’t enough to earn respect from someone, then I suggest respect isn’t likely forthcoming.
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Let’s just say his list of accomplishments in his obituary is likely to be a lot longer than all the self elected respectees in our society.
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The more he does things that should earn respect in normal circumstances, the more he is ridiculed. It is pretty easy to see how he could consider his treatment “huuugely unfair”.
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For all the people who are convinced he is mentally disturbed, they sure seem intent on exacerbating the condition. It could drive one to push a big red button as the ultimate serial killer in a quest for infamy. Respect that.
Mark Bofill: I think it’s pretty simple: Trump started much close to his current wealth. Cuban started with something like $15,000. I’m just arguing you can’t use the fact that Trump is now a billionaire, starting with the assets he had available, as proof he’s particularly brilliant.
Given the number of bankruptcies and other problems he’s had with his companies, I’d actually say he’s been somewhat lucky to have retained his wealth at all.
I think you’re being a bit over-hopeful about Trump reading more than he lets on.
Mike M: The “safe instrument” argument is a hypothetical exercise, not an actual plan for financial success.. It’s a counter argument to the fawning Trump crowd that think he’s brilliant because he’s rich.
It basically just says “if you took $200,000,000 much money and put it into indexed stocks in 1982, you’d have over $10,000,000,000 now.” Rich was a pretty close to a birthright for Trump.
Mike N:
My instincts would have been to stick with the real estate to be honest. But if I could have converted his father’s empire into cash, I’d probably have chosen indexed funds over that.
SteveF:
And I think that’s a completely rational argument for voting against Clinton. As I’ve said a number of times, there is no way I could ever have voted for Clinton. Pretty much everything we worry about with Trump we already have confirmed in Clinton.
It’s not liberal elitist to read a lot of books, it is liberal elitist to suggest this is a prerequisite to being President. Is it preferable? I suppose so, but only marginally so in my opinion. I read 75 books a year and I don’t find it has enhanced my presidential ability very much. Being a scientist is counter-productive to being a politician at all levels in democracies, much more common in Russia and China. These things are different loosely correlated talents.
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After one has established they read books, the usual suspects will only move on to “which books” to demean their target. Scoff, he hasn’t read Tolstoy or Proust!
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One of my favorite authors is Rowling, JK, and I don’t care what anyone thinks about it. She would win in a landslide against Tolstoy in an election, but being dead is probably a limitation though. Discussions on reading almost always devolve into nauseating signaling exercises when two or more intellectuals are within 10 miles.
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Books are like discussing your favorite music, it doesn’t transfer easily and is highly personal.
j ferguson:
I think there is probably a lot of truth to it. But I’d guess these are more like 2-3 pages long summaries in practice, the sort he’s used to seeing in business deals.
As a businessman, I would expect he would trust the people under him he’s delegated responsibility to, to handle the details. He’d be more interested in the strategic arch of the plan, the core elements of the project and its key objectives.
I think, ironically, if Trump ran the Presidency more like he’d run a business, he’d be very successful.
By that I mean, fewer transformative proposals, more nuts and bolts programs. Go after the low hanging fruit, fix the easy stuff first, while you’re getting your legs under you.
A good start would include: Infrastructure program, fix our broken corporate tax system, fix the broken defense acquisition program, come up with a workable plan to repair the ACA, replace the idiotic wall with law-enforcement-first immigration plan.
Tom Scharf: I do think he has some form of mild cognitive impairment, and I think it’s one of those age onset things. I believe to some extent he offsets this with a greater reliance on close family members.
Carrick,
Add: Do something about the Fed. Specifically, repeal Humphrey-Hawkins as a first step. The Fed should not be in the business of trying to maintain full employment as well as the value of the dollar. At times those goals are mutually exclusive.
Carrick,
I think being a billionaire is just being used as a proxy for understanding business, something many voters who are voting for economic reasons hold up as proof he is more qualified than career politicians to run the economy.
Carrick: “if you took $200,000,000 much money and put it into indexed stocks in 1982, you’d have over $10,000,000,000 now.”
And you’d be in prison for tax evasion.
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Carrick: “Rich was a pretty close to a birthright for Trump.”
Lots of people have inherited 10’s of millions of dollars. None have become billionaires by passively investing their inheritance (unless you count the two Koch brothers you never heard of, who rode their famous brothers’ coat tails). That proves you wrong.
Carrick,
Right, but Cuban is also a billionaire. Are we assuming Cuban is an idiot, is that the part I’m missing? (Sounds rhetorical but it isn’t) Real question. If Cuban is an idiot, then I get the argument. I don’t think Cuban is an idiot. He’s a self made billionaire. Maybe he is also brilliant. If he is brilliant, I don’t see how that speaks one way or the other to how much of a genius Trump is.
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I’m going to kick myself if it turns out to be well known and well documented that Mark Cuban has an IQ of 75.
Thanks Carrick.
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[Edit:
That could certainly be so, I wouldn’t be too terribly surprised. 🙂 Like I said, that was all pure speculation.]
Carrick: “if Trump ran the Presidency more like he’d run a business, he’d be very successful … fewer transformative proposals, more nuts and bolts programs … fix the easy stuff first”.
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One might do that when taking over a successful business. But that would not work in taking over a badly failing business. In that case, major disruption is necessary. You might not think of the U.S. government as failing, but Trump and his supporters do.
WSJ: “U.S. intelligence officials have withheld sensitive intelligence from President Donald Trump because they are concerned it could be leaked or compromised, according to current and former officials.”
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This is a problem. If this is true, Trump is justified in clearing house in the intelligence agencies. End of story. I consider rogue emotionally entangled intelligence agencies a bigger threat than Trump.
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It is apparent the intelligence agencies are now engaged in an internal war of destructive partisan leaking. Putin is loving life right now.
.
Ugh.
Tom,
“Books are like discussing your favorite music, it doesn’t transfer easily and is highly personal.”
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Well, if they are read for entertainment, for sure that is true. Reading “Absorption and Scattering of Light by Small Particles”, “Advanced Inorganic Chemistry”, “Fourier Series and Boundary Value Problems”, or “Photodiode Amplifiers” (four of the books on the shelves in my office) are not normally read for pleasure. I do (or at some point did) need the information they contain. A few technical books are so well written that they actually are entertaining (eg “Statistics for Experimenters” Box, Hunter, & Hunter), but this is the rare exception. 😉
And for the record, I am not suggesting a loyalty purge at the intelligence agencies, but a purge of anyone who can’t seem to figure out what their job is. They are there to provide accurate intelligence to the President, whoever that may be.
SteveF,
I have Photodiode Amplifiers / Graeme sitting on my desk right now, ha ha. What a PITA these things are sometimes. Strangle enough I am currently working on a fluorescence oxygen monitor using FFT’s for analysis. I think you might have access to my webcam?
Tom,
“I consider rogue emotionally entangled intelligence agencies a bigger threat than Trump.”
.
For sure. Congress needs to be involved by passing laws which state clearly: withholding from the Administration any sensitive intelligence is a felony, punishable by up to 30 years in Federal Prison, without the possibility of parole.
Tom,
“I think you might have access to my webcam?”
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Nah… it’s just that science has lots of common threads.
Here. I know how to succinctly put my problem with the Mark Cuban argument:
Trump could be ranked last among the billionaires, but he’d still be wealth rank 1850 out of 7000000000 people; still phenomenal. Even if 1850 people are demonstrably wealthier, more brilliant, started with less and accomplished more, etc., it doesn’t change the fact that Trump remains in the top 0.000026%.
Tom Scharf
Leaving aside whether this is right, I don’t believe it is guided by partisanship but more so that the IC community believes that the administration is deeply compromised by its Russian links.
With regards to the withholding:
From an ex-IC attorney .
RB,
” Story is IC is spooked and being unusually cautious with WH.”
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The “IC” has a bunch of Obama holdovers, as well as “career” staff that have been promoted by those Obama appointees. Leaking classified information to the press about a telephone call between an administration official and a Russian diplomat is a felony. Providing that information to the President, if they thought the call was questionable, is what they were supposed to have done. The fact that the “IC” can get away with felonious leaking just shows that the “IC” needs a major shakeup.
SteveF,
The details of Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak were in fact first reported to Trump’s counsel Don McGahn by the Acting AG on Jan 26. Trump fired Flynn shortly after the WaPo reported on this conversation on Feb 13, three weeks after being made aware of this conversation. We don’t know whether it was the IC community that leaked this information. Per the WaPo
More leaks are coming from within the administration than from the IC community.
hmm. To complicate this, it might be that the IC knows all about what the administration is doing. Would you guys say I’m wearing a tin hat to suggest that our IC spies on the administration, or would your response be more like ‘obviously’? Real but not burning question. I’m not sure what I think about it yet.
RB,
Yes, it is possible the acting AG (an Obama holdover, who later refused to legally defend Trump’s executive order and was instantly fired) could also be the leaker… still a felony. Odd timing that the story is given to the WP after the acting AG is fired for insubordination.
mark bofill,
The Bush administration under the PRISM program authorizes the government to monitor conversations between the US and someone in a foreign country. Plus, foreign intelligence wiretapping is comprehensive and the jargon for Americans thus getting monitored is “incidental collection”. It is under the second category that Flynn got recorded.
SteveF,
Flynn was not popular within the administration, had difficulty staffing his department. The leakers could very well be people in administrative posts.
From WaPo
Thanks RB!
RB,
At the time of the call, late December, Trump had not been sworn into office, so those officials could not have been in the Trump administration. Further, initial news reports of a call between Flynn and the Russian ambassador were published January 12th, long before the acting AG communicated with Trump’s lawyer. It seems unlikely anyone in the Trump administration could have been “senior officials” at the time of the call. Flynn and Trump have lots of enemies both at the Department of Justice and within the intelligence agencies; the most plausible explanation for the leaks was to cause Flynn and Trump problems.
SteveF,
Reports of a call came out earlier, but details of the contents of what were spoken came out later in a Feb 9 article . That is what these nine officials were revealing. In the end though, Flynn was fired not because Trump became aware of the recordings, but when it was made public.
I may have misread – the calls are likely referring to Flynn’s calls.
mark bofill:
You are lost as a goose on this, if you can’t see the difference with starting with $15,000 and becoming a billionaire versus $200,000,000, and becoming a billionaire.
You are the one who brought up Trump’s wealth as proof of his brilliance, weren’t you?
Mike M:
We produce what…something like 25% of the worlds GDP and have maybe 5% of its population? And that’s failing…. right.
SteveF: If it’s viewed as whistleblowing, which I think is the correct description, the behavior would not be deemed illegal in this country.
The main reason that what Flynn did wasn’t illegal is because there is no way they will ever charge him with any crime. Draining the swamp, in other words.
Carrick,
.
Thanks Carrick.
We’re not communicating. I’m sorry. I don’t understand how or why what I’m saying isn’t clear.
1. I can see the difference between Mark Cuban’s performance and Trump’s.
2. I am the one that brought up Trump’s wealth as proof of his brilliance.
I explained in both places (159116 and 159108) that a comparison between Trump and Cuban is uninformative with respect to the question of whether or not Trump is a genius in my view. That you come back telling me that I’m lost because I can’t see the difference between Trump and Cuban’s financial track record indicates to me that we are on different pages. I tell you I can and do see the difference. This is not the problem. I see the difference. I do not understand why you believe this difference says anything about Trump’s genius or lack thereof. But I see the difference. We can agree for the sake of argument that Cuban outperformed Trump. Indeed, in comment 159116 I propose for the sake of argument that we can assume that every last billionare alive has outperformed Trump. He has still overwhelmingly outperformed the general population. In other words, while recognizing that Cuban has outperformed Trump financially, I can still look at Trump’s performance and call it phenomenal and suspect that unusual talent was required to accomplish it. It may be true that every last one of the other 1800-1900 billionaires alive have unusual talent greater than or equal to that of Trump. This doesn’t mean that Trump hasn’t overwhelmingly outperformed billions of other people.
If this isn’t clear, I give. I don’t know how to put this any more plainly.
Thanks for your patience.
Carrick,
It appears that you are being deliberately dense. Matt Ryan is a terrific quarterback. The fact that Tom Brady, and a few others, are better does not change that. In the same vein, mark bofill’s argument that Cuban’s accomplishments do not diminish Trump’s accomplishments is spot on. And so obvious that I don’t see how you can misunderstand it, unless you are trying to misunderstand.
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The U.S. GDP is almost completely irrelevant to the quality of the current government.
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The CIA leaks are illegal, period. Whistleblowing has nothing to do with it. It would be illegal even if Flynn did anything wrong.
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Addition: I think that Richard Feynman was brilliant, even though he was no Einstein.
Carrick,
“If it’s viewed as whistleblowing, which I think is the correct description, the behavior would not be deemed illegal in this country.”
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Revealing that US intelligence agencies were recording a call with the Russian ambassador is almost certainly illegal, especially since at the time Flynn was a private citizen; claims of whistle blowing about official wrongdoing ring hollow. Leaking the content of a telephone call between a siting president of the US and the prime minister of Australia is a clear breach of law.
.
The US “intelligence community” really doesn’t like Trump, I get that. I also get that these people are either Obama holdovers or “career public servants”, and very opposed to Trump and his policies. I even see that Trump has spoken badly about them, and that makes them especially unhappy about him being in office.
.
But none of it excuses unlawful acts by public employees aimed at damaging an elected President. Were I Trump, many, many “career public servants”, especially higher up the food chain, would find their jobs eliminated and their security clearance rescinded, and not just at the intelligence agencies.
RB,
“Reports of a call came out earlier, but details of the contents of what were spoken came out later in a Feb 9 article .”
.
OK, but how do leaks of detailed content some time later make the earlier “reports of a call” somehow not a violation of law? Nobody in the “intelligence community” or FBI (assuming the FBI had received the information by January 12) should have been leaking that to reporters. The leaker(s) will probably get away with it, of course, but the consequences for the “intelligence community” in the long term will likely be very bad.
SteveF,
I don’t know about the legal implications for the leakers. Republicans in Congress have said they won’t investigate Flynn, but will probe leaks. It is unlikely that the leakers will get away with it. There are also people saying that the President cannot win a war with the IC. I have my doubts about that also.
“I don’t believe it is guided by partisanship but more so that the IC community believes that the administration is deeply compromised by its Russian links.”
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No. They don’t get to unilaterally decide that. Either produce the proof or do your job. If not, they should be fired. Protecting citizens from the duly elected president due to unspecified paranoia is not part of their job description.
I’m still not convinced that Trump is a billionaire if you don’t count the value of the Trump brand, i.e. goodwill.
DeWitt,
The focus on Trump’s wealth strikes me as very strange. I can’t see that it matters much if he is worth $600 million or $6 billion. Really who cares? And even more, why care? When someone flys around in a personal jetliner they are plenty rich.
SteveF,
I think it matters because Trump is supposed to be a smart businessman. At $600 million in 2016, corrected for inflation, Trump would be worth no more than he was in 1980 with $200 million. At $6 billion, he would be worth ten times as much. That would be a fairly impressive accomplishment. But I don’t think he is worth $6 billion in real assets, much less $10 billion. Forbes says $3.7 billion currently. That’s a factor of 6, not shabby, but not spectacular like, say, Bill Gates or Warren Buffet.
Mark Bofill: You seem to see what amounts to a modest income increase compared to what could have been achieved via passive mechanisms as more significant than I do. You also seem to see what amounts as a special status afforded primarily by the station in life that Trump was born into as signifying greatness for him. I see nothing in that, so I guess we can leave it at that. You have one opinion and I have a different one.
Mark M:
So there is no relationship between the GDP and the quality of the current government? That’s a new one.
SteveF:
I guess that’s what I was trying to say too.
Mark M & SteveF: The definition of a whistleblower is:
Lying to the FBI and to your superiors certain qualifies as unethical, and possibly illegal activity.
SteveF:
This is absolutely not the case. It’s been public knowledge that we do this for at least a decade, the monitoring is totally legal and even routine, disclosed to the foreign diplomats that it can occur, and I believe in certain cases, mandated.
I’m personally of mixed minds about the leaks. But our country was founded by acts of civil disobedience, and we aren’t very fond of kings, foreign or domestic and self-appointed.
Thank you Carrick.
DeWitt:
I think that’s the argument that Mark and others are using. I obviously am not buying into it.
I do think that Trump is very good in the hotel, apartment and even real estate industries. That takes special skill and knowledge regardless of whether he was a self-made billionaire or not.
I don’t think much of the idea he is some kind of tremendous entrepreneur in general. Most of what he’s tried, other than these industries, he’s really stunk at, as far as I can tell, whether it’s offering good steaks or flying in planes with gold-gilded
toiletssink fixtures.“Most of what he’s tried, other than these industries, he’s really stunk at”
.
14 seasons on prime time with The Apprentice. This was apparently reasonably successful although I have never seen it.
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“Although the series was one of the most-watched programs on NBC in the advertiser-friendly 18–49 age demographic, the franchise’s total audience gradually dissolved, starting in late 2004…”
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apprentice_(U.S._TV_series)#Statistics_by_season
Carrick,
“and we aren’t very fond of kings, foreign or domestic and self-appointed.”
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Are you suggesting Trump is trying to be a king?
Carrick: “So there is no relationship between the GDP and the quality of the current government? That’s a new one.”
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You really are dense. The U.S. GDP is the result of 200 years of history and is only weakly dependent on the current administration (which is what I said earlier). The result of 8 years of poor economic management under Obama is that the U.S. GDP is now 22% of global instead of 23% or 24%. It is GDP growth, not absolute GDP, that matters, especially if you are among the economically less fortunate.
.
But growing the economy is only one way to judge a government. Obama’s crappy economic performance is actually a success when measured against his foreign policy, or Obamacare, or his effect on social and political division, or education, or environmental policy. And he was scarcely worse than his predecessor. And it did not start there; the government has been getting worse and worse at actually serving the needs of the nation for 50 years or more.
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The U.S. federal government is failing. Maybe Trump can do something about that, maybe he can’t. I don’t see anybody else willing to try.
FWIW, it doesn’t sound like Clapper was a leaker.
Trump Hysteria Snapshot(tm), the unscientific comparison
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Front page Feb 16, 2017
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WP: 35 Trumps
NYT: 23 Trumps
WSJ: 27 Trumps
CNN: 21 Trumps
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Feb 16, 2009, Wayback Archive
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WP: 3 Obamas (Feb 13, 2009 closest)
NYT: 8 Obamas
WSJ: 3 Obamas (Feb 13, 2009 closest)
CNN: 9 Obamas
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Trump wins in a landslide 106 to 23
BTW, is there any actual evidence that Mike Flynn discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador, as opposed to what Flynn claims, which is that the ambassador raised the subject and Flynn put him off?
Just to complete the hilarity
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Vox: 41 Trumps
Slate: 57 Trumps
Guardian: 47 Trumps
Salon: 65 Trumps
Huffington Post: 38 Trumps
NBC: 28 Trumps
CBS: 64 Trumps
ABC: 32 Trumps
NPR: 16 Trumps …the winner…
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Insanity
Re: Mark Cuban — He is a reasonably astute businessperson who made $1,000,000,000 off of the sale of Broadcast.com during the dot.com bubble. Broadcast.com was not a great business and Cuban was both lucky and savvy in selling it. Here is a description of the business: “Mark Cuban and Broadcast.com: The Multibillion Dollar Coup ….
This real life fairy tale began with the formation of Audionet.com in 1995 (the predecessor of Broadcast.com); it continued with the record-setting IPO of Broadcast.com in 1998 and culminated in 1999 when Yahoo assimilated Broadcast.com in a deal which was valued at $5.7 billion. …..
,,,,,
As was common during the Internet bubble, massively overvalued companies such as Yahoo did not pay for their acquisitions in cash; rather they used their bloated stock as currency. Yahoo issued the equivalent of $130 per share in Yahoo stock to the owners of Broadcast.com to fund the acquisition.
When Yahoo acquired Broadcast.com in 1999, the company had recorded approximately $100 million in revenue the prior year. That valued the company at 57 times revenues. In its brief history the company had never turned at profit. In fact, in the prior year to its acquisition Broadcast.com had lost millions of dollars. …..
,,,,,,
When Broadcast.com was taken public it had fewer than $7 million in revenues, $28 million in equity, and an accumulated deficit of of nearly $10 million dollars in its brief history. In reality, the company had little or no chance of achieving profitability in the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, the company IPOed at $18 in 1998 and before the market closed on its first day of trading, the stock had appreciated to $62 per share. Just like that, Cuban had a paper net worth of nearly $100 million; however, the much bigger hit was yet to come.” See http://www.gurufocus.com/news/138012/mark-cuban-and-broadcastcom-the-multibillion-dollar-coup (He eventually made $1,000,000,000 on Broadcast.com, and his current worth is $3.3 billion.)
,,,,
What some people are forgetting here is that Cuban has a long history of foot in the mouth disease, and the wikipedia article on him, from what I can see does not indicate that he has formed a great number of successful businesses. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Cuban
,,,,,
So, my conclusion is that Cuban is a reasonably smart, but not particularly brilliant business person. From what I see on Shark Tank, he appears to also be a decent and kind human being.
JD
SteveF:
I think he and his advisors sound that way sometimes. Remember the “Trump’s authority ‘will not be questioned” comment?
I do think he wants to run the executive office more like one would run a company, and it isn’t going to work that way.
Running a country with the checks and balances and traditional distribution of authority is a very different sort of process than running a company, as I’m sure you’re fully aware.
Mike M:
Wat.
The current economy is the result of the full 200 years of history???
Only in the weakest possible sense.
The near term performance of the economy is certainly a function of current and recent fiscal policy (say last 30 years) as well as external influences we can’t control (such as the price of oil).
Actually it’s 24.7% or about 25% as I said. And it’s been growing as a percentage of world for the last 5 1/2 years (from around 21.3% at its lowest ebb), even in the face of the rapid growth of developing countries economies.
Congress has a major role to play in the management of the economy under Obama, just as they did under Bush or under Clinton. It’s not a kingdom, it’s a shared responsibility between president congress and the fifty states.
The distributed nature of our governance and the not total reliance on any one institution is what has made our country great and continues to make it greater.
You keep saying this. In what sense is it failing?
World’s largest economy World’s largest military. World’s largest producer of scientific discovery and engineering achievements.
If this is failure, I’d love to see what success looks like to you.
Governments are works in progress, and there are few countries that have better governance than the US. There are many things that Obama did wrong that hampered growth. But it’s been growing under him. So honestly, the country is great already.
If Trump can stop stepping on his male member so frequently, I think it will get even better under him (I’ve listed these before, and don’t see a reason to repeat what I think he can offer).
Some of you guys have confidence he’ll learn the ropes and get good at this. I hope for all our sakes you’re right.
JD Ohio—Mark Cuban is interesting because he started out as a bartender and ended up a billionaire. No silver spoon in his mouth.
And he’s had a string of successful companies, not just one or two.
MicroSolutions, sold to CompuServe for $6 million in 1990 (7 years after graduating from college). He apparently retired after selling this, and later un-retired to start AudioNet, which became Broadcast.com. He diversified his stock when he saw that the internet bubble was getting ready to burst.
He’s had other successful ventures, including the Dallas Mavericks. No bankruptcies as far as I know.
I’d say he’s a model for the American entrepreneurial spirit, much more so than Trump is. (Though I still stand by my comments about Trump’s prowess in e.g. the hotel industry.)
Re: Donald Trump and the Real Estate Business
…..
I am a landlord,[in addition to being a lawyer] and have rehabbed about 10 houses and have lent money on a fair number of real estate projects. The easy conclusion is that generally, if you are good, you can make good “cottage money” money, but if you are moving in and out of deals, long-term it is very hard to make what I will call big technology money. One of the main reasons that it is very difficult to make huge money is that real estate invariably, has huge, unexpected downturns, which wipe a lot of people out and reduce profit margins for virtually everyone. So, my conclusion is that Trump has done reasonably well, and I would say his business acumen is roughly equal to that of Cuban.
,,,,
I think Trump is reasonably intelligent, but he is juvenile and very immature. I heard part of his news conference today, and he is definitely much quicker than much of the press. (of course, that is faint praise) On the other hand, he lacks the maturity and discipline (along with having a fair amount of self-delusion) to stick to the facts. For instance, I heard him make a couple of good points at the press conference today, and then he said something like his administration was a well-oiled machine. (I had to stop listening when I heard that)
…..
Additionally, a reporter for CNN asked a really goofy and stupid question about whether Trump was undermining First Amendment values by asserting that the legacy media had printed fake news. Of course, the legacy media has been wildly inaccurate at times and has printed what is now called fake news. Even if the legacy media hadn’t had occasions where there was grossly inaccurate reporting, Trump has every right to severely criticize the legacy media for its extreme bias and what I would call Trump Derangement Syndrome.
,,,,
If Trump was disciplined and mature, he would run circles around the legacy media. However, he is not either, and I can only hope that he will become less immature and less poorly disciplined.
JD
Carrick: “Mark Cuban is interesting because he started out as a bartender and ended up a billionaire. No silver spoon in his mouth.” I agree with this statement. He is an admirably hard worker, but I don’t think he is anywhere close to being brilliant or in the class of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.
Carrick: “And he’s had a string of successful companies, not just one or two.” Why don’t you name them. I didn’t see much in the wikipedia article. He seems to have invested in a fair amount of theaters and entertainment companies, which my assumption would be that these businesses have not been very profitable.
,,,,
I would also add that the profit on his sale to compuserve was only $2,000,000. Chump change in this discussion. Additionally, I give Cuban some credit for his ownership of the Mavericks. However, owning an NBA franchise has been profitable for virtually anyone, even Donald Sterling — Therefore, I would credit his successful investment in the Mavericks to the original decision (undoubtedly made in part by his love for basketball as much as for financial reasons), and not so much to any skill in running a business.
JD
JD—see the first paragraph of the wikipedia entry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Cuban
The Mavericks have been valued at $1.4 billion. That’s not exactly chump change.
Regarding Cuban’s $2 million net profit from his first venture…. that’s not chump change either, especially as it was used as seed money to turn Cuban into a billionaire.
Re: Cuban investment in Mavericks. Donald Sterling (not the brightest person in the world) bought the Los Angeles Clippers for $12.5 million and sold them for $2 billion. See http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2014/06/04/donald-sterlings-last-laugh-tax-free-2-billion-clippers-sale/#3fd83f6357cf Making money off of a sports team is not generally a matter of good management or good business skills. Virtually all basketball and football teams have gone up greatly in value and Cuban has shared in the same profits that virtually all others have made in major league sports.
JD
In the meantime, this stupid article by CNN entitled: “Scientists highlight deadly health risks of climate change” See http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/16/health/climate-change-deaths-health-al-gore-bn/
I guess there are no benefits to warmth in some places to be balanced against the disadvantages of warmth and that technology will stand still and that humans will be unable to adapt to any increased warmth that may occur.
JD
Carrick,
I don’t see much evidence of Trump trying to run the government like a company, only the executive branch. The efforts of ‘career public servants’ within the executive branch to resist and undermine his policies is already causing many problems. Which I think rightly pi$$es him off. I think the existance of a permanent entrenched bureaucracy, with little accountability to anyone, is something Trump and Congress should address. The alternative is to ceed policy-making influence to people who are not elected nor can be easily fired. (Lois Learner and thousands like her at EPA, Justice, Energy, Defence, etc.)
JD Ohio,
I avoid the health benefits of cold weather by spending 7 months a year in (much) warmer Florida. Must mean I have some kind of death wish…
SteveF:
The argument his lawyers made for the Executive Order was one of executive sovereignty, which is of course extra-constitutional, but in keeping with how corporate structure works. Stephen Miller made a similar argument last weekend. Maybe Trump knows better, but the message his people keep sending says otherwise.
Billionaires are rare, literally fewer than one in a million. People with the drive and talent of a Trump or Cuban are much more common, though still rare. Most such people, while successful, do not achieve nearly the success of Trump or Cuban. The difference is probably mostly luck. In Trump’s case, having a father that could give him a head start (seed money and contacts) in a business well suited to his talents. In Cuban’s case, being the right person in the right place at the right time. The vast majority of people, given the same luck, would have been unable to fully take advantage of it.
Carrick,
The argument I saw was that the executive order complied explictly with the law, the Constitution, and was consistent with what other presidents have done. The court order blocking Trump’s EO seemed based mainly on what the judge believed were Trump’s ‘true motivations’… eg he hates Muslims… for issuing the order. Nowhere in the statute is there discussion of motives, and I found the judge’s argument simply bizarre; nowhere in the order is the word ‘Muslim’ even used. I expect that after Gorsuch is seated the administration will ask for and get an explicit refudiation of the Ninth circuit rulings from the SC.
[Mike M,
]
I think fewer than that. Forbes can find less than two thousand.
Although now that I think about it, merely because Forbes can’t find any more doesn’t necessarily mean there are no more. But I wouldn’t think there’d be all that many more… I don’t know.
Uhm oops nevermind 🙂
7 billion people in the world, yeah one in a million is a good ballpark. I’m not reading very carefully this morning apparently.
SteveF:
Well, the issue I’m concerned with is the courts have an explicit right to review the executive order, congressional statutes not withstanding.
(Congress can’t give the executive branch unreviewable powers, because Congress does not possess unreviewable powers themselves. Such power must be derived from the people via an Amendment, and hopefully the president will never receive such unreviewable powers.)
Secondly, while the president can control immigration, that power is not arbitrary, congressional edicts not withstanding. The thorny issue is “due process rights”, which applies to any person in the United States, whether that person is here legally or (in the view of the government) illegally.
Part of due process is that the government must have a rational basis for laws and regulations that are applied to individuals. In this particular case, judges were concerned where the list of seven countries came from. If you look at where the main acts of of foreign terror originated from, it’s Saudi Arabia , Egypt, UAE, Pakistan, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Kuwait in rough order of number of incidents. There is little to no evidence that restricting people from the seven nations affected by the Executive Order would affect the material threat of foreign based terrorism.
So the judges asked what the basis was for the list of seven nations, and the US government refused to produce evidence. Instead they simply argued they weren’t required to produce such evidence. That argument obviously doesn’t fly.
I realize that Congress passed a law listing those seven nations. That law may or may not be constitutional. Simply acting on the basis of an existing statute does not guarantee the constitutionality of one’s acts. In a sense, we’re reviewing that statute when we’re reviewing this executive order.
Secondly, with regard to Muslims, the Executive Order explicitly singled out non-Muslims for favorable treatment:
Regardless of what you say about Muslims, there is clearly an explicit favorable treatment of people who are not Muslims (being that the seven countries were Muslim majority) ensconced into this Executive Order, and I don’t see how that meets the constitutionality bar either.
Thirdly, the Executive Order does not, itself, distinguish between people who have green cards, visas and those who are refugees. Green card holders and visas have rights not possessed by refugees. Simply saying “we won’t enforce this EO for green card holders and visas” does not repair the unconstitutionality of the Executive Order. You need to explicitly change the Executive Order to bring it within constitutional boundaries.
So…I personally think there are major problems with this Executive Order. The arguments I’ve seen to the contrary all seem to paper over the issues actually raised by the courts. In other words, predictable partisan dreck.
Mike M:
Yes they are rare. So you have to have unusual circumstances to become one. Either you are very gifted (I suspect nobody here would argue that Warren Buffet or Bill Gates is not a billionaire because of their gifts), or you need some amount of being in the right place at the right time (Mark Cuban), or maybe you’re just born in to a wealthy family… like Trump.
Rare doesn’t tell us how much of the uncommonness of the event is due to the individual versus circumstances outside of that individual’s control.
And the training that Trump received from his father into how to run this type of business.
Here’s a list of terrorist attacks on US soil since & including 9/11.
Executive [Donald Trump] summary:
mark bofill,
While I agree with you broadly on Trump as a successful businessman, you also have to bear in mind the ovarian lottery as Buffett put it, of being born a white male in America. People have mentioned the money he started with, but there was also the $35M loan guarantee by his father in the 1970s, loans when his businesses were in trouble, Fred’s political and business connections etc. New York was hit hard in the 1970s nearly going bankrupt just as Trump was starting out and he rode the real estate boom of the late 1970s. He apparently has a good legacy there.
JD, anyone can make money off an NBA team, but Cuban turned a terrible team into a good one, similar to turning a team like the Bucks into one like the Rockets. Only the Clippers made a similar jump, because Mark Cuban and co. insisted the commissioner veto Chris Paul to the Lakers. Cuban was ahead of the curve in boosting player facilities to make them an attractive destination.
There have been multiple Somali terrorist attacks in Columbus, Ohio: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/11/28/ohio-state-attack-just-latest-stain-on-somali-community-columbus.html
The Somali community in Minnesota has supplied dozens of fighters to ISIS (not to mention the St. Cloud stabber): http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/americans-slip-minnesota-somali-terror-group-fbi/story?id=17609306
Libyans were responsible for the Lockerbee bombing.
Obama suspended immigration from Iraq after some would be terrorists slipped through.
This is just off the top of my head.
Something not happening in the past does not mean it can not happen in the future. No Americans were ever killed by Arabs with box cutters and one-way plane tickets. Until they were.
Of course, immigrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia are much more likely to be threats than immigrants from Iran. The current list is Obama’s. Adding or removing countries requires careful deliberation. That will occur as the final extreme vetting policies get drawn up. By using the established list for the temporary ban, Trump is being careful and responsible.
Thanks RB.
Lest it is not clear what exactly was the list that Obama administration made in a rare compromise deal with the Republican-led Congress in 2015
Source: foreign policy
Also, the express reason was to pressure European countries to share counterterrorism intelligence with the US.
Also here
DeWitt, what were Trump’s personal expenses during the same time period? He would have had to keep earning income to maintain his lifestyle.
Carrick, it may have become lost in the shuffle, but I thought the original rationale for rethinking access to the US from the seven countries was that their internal security organizations weren’t capable of separating the wheat from the chaff.
This presupposes that all the other nations in the world which send us folks ARE able to do this to our satisfaction.
For some reason no-one seems interested in whether Saudi really can filter it’s prospects, or Indonesia, or Pakistan.
Maybe the list should have been 30. And I suppose inevitably they would mostly have been Muslim countries. It’s a tough problem.
The thing that perplexes me about this, is the ‘original rationale’ makes some sense, yet no-one including Trump seems to want to talk about that. Miller did on Sunday morning, but no-one on the Chuck show grasped the opportunity to ask if these seven countries were truly the only ones we didn’t trust to give us reliable bios.
Mike M:
Yes, and my source listed those attacks. The executive summary was that there were no fatalities from these sources.
As it happens there were far more deaths and injuries from domestic right-wing terrorists than there were from the sum of terrorist acts in the US from all seven of these countries.
Well of course that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen in the future!
But the theoretical possibility for a future attack not a exactly a rational argument for why we pick those particular seven countries now, as opposed to UAE and Saudi Arabia. (Trump having business partners in the countries with a higher objective risk likely influenced the choices of which countries would be on the ban. This is the problem with having a president with a vested conflict of interest, and a congress uninterested or unable to actually “drain the swamp”.)
By picking those seven countries, he was being “careful and responsible?”
Well, you’ve provided absolutely no evidence for that.
More importantly, neither has Trump, who has a constitutional obligation to show a rational basis for creating new policy.
It actually looks like populist driven, reactive decision making to me.
Trump could actually be opposite of “careful and responsible” behavior if there were other countries (one where Trump has business partners) which were left off due to Trump’s business arrangements there…because in that case, this Executive Order would give only the appearance of addressing a problem, but instead is allowing the problem to continue.
(That by the way is also my biggest objection to the Paris Accord…it won’t do anything beneficial, but it allows the politicians to say they have addressed the problem. There is no such thing as “it’s a start”. You either solve the problem or you fail. You don’t get many chances for retries.)
Carrick,
Partisan dreck cuts both ways. I think the Washington court and the 9th Circuit were factally wrong in thier analyses. I will note that the Ninth Circuit has by far the worst record of any circuit WRT being overturned by the SC.
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But it is all a bit beside the point: I do expect the Circuit Court will ultimately be overruled…. as I think is appropriate… They are way out of line.
j ferguson: “This presupposes that all the other nations in the world which send us folks ARE able to do this to our satisfaction.
For some reason no-one seems interested in whether Saudi really can filter it’s prospects, or Indonesia, or Pakistan.”
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Nothing of the sort. The text of the order is here: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/02/01/2017-02281/protecting-the-nation-from-foreign-terrorist-entry-into-the-united-states
.
From Sec. 3 “(a) … The Secretary … shall immediately conduct a review to determine the information needed from any country to adjudicate any visa, admission, or other benefit …”
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“(b) The Secretary … shall submit to the President … a list of countries that do not provide adequate information, within 30 days of the date of this order.”
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“(c) To temporarily reduce investigative burdens … and to ensure that adequate standards are established to prevent infiltration by foreign terrorists or criminals … I hereby proclaim that the immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States of aliens from countries referred to in section 217(a)(12) of the INA would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and I hereby suspend entry into the United States, as immigrants and nonimmigrants, of such persons for 90 days from the date of this order”.
Hey mark bofil –
I have been reading with some interest the convo you’re having (about Trump) here with Carrick, and I would be interested in engaging with you on the topic…
So I’d like to ask if you might be interested in having a convo with me over at Anders’ crib? I have his OK as long as it doesn’t get out of hand (I don’t think it will). My impression is that in the past, despite your belief that I’m a poopyhead, you have found convos with me to be of some interest…(of course, I could be wrong about that…there’s a first time for everything).
Just drop a breadcrumb over there at the end of this thread; if you are interested (I promise I’ll at least try to not get too long-winded):
If you let me know you’re interested, I’ll write a first comment.
** Lucia, I don’t know if I’ve been formally put into moderation… but IIRC I’ve been disinvited to comment here. Nonetheless, I’m imagining that you won’t particularly mind this one comment. If I’m wrong about that, FWIW, I apologize. If I have been put into mod, then I would hope you’ll pass this invitation to Mark through.
j ferguson:
I think that goes back to the rational for the Congressional action that Obama signed into law, right? It’s basically a “failed state” argument. But if you’re going to have that list, then you’d need to add countries like Afghanistan to it.
I have a feeling that’s because business would be negatively affected by it, and not just Trump’s.
Which one is the “Chuck show”? (I admit I don’t spend much time watching TV news, from any source.)
It’s interesting they never tried using it in court. And Miller spent a lot of time arguing that Trump’s decisions couldn’t even be questioned. Maybe part of the problem is they just aren’t competent at making rationally based arguments.
Restrictions on immigration from other problematic countries are coming. Presumably that will include some of our “allies” like Afghanistan, Pakistan, maybe Saudi Arabia, and others. Count on their governments screaming. Count on the tut-tutters going crazy. There is no way that could have been done without a careful review, which is now happening. The only action that could be taken immediately was against the seven countries already formally identified as being problematic.
SteveF: “I do expect the Circuit Court will ultimately be overruled”.
I think not. All that exists now is an injunction. Trump will soon be issuing a revised order that will make that moot.
SteveF
Only according to Hannity. It is the third highest . It is also the largest by far.
SteveF:
Well I listed for you the basis for why I thought the courts decisions were valid.
I also pointed out the basis for why I called the other analyses dreck—they simply ignored the arguments actually made by the judge in Seattle and by the 9th Circuit.
In short, I listed three constitutional problems: Violation of due process (lack of a rational basis for the policy), separation of church and state (preferential treatment of certain religious groups), and the failure to distinguish between green card and visa holders and refugees.
So do you have an argument why these aren’t valid criticisms?
And I think if it went to the Supreme Court, it’d be a 7-1 decision in favor of the Circuit Court.
The right thing to do is to rewrite the statute, bringing it within constitutional boundaries. And Trump is doing just that.
As I understand it, they won’t challenge the 9th Circuit Courts decision, which tells me something about how unlikely they think a victory would be.
RB:
LMAO. Thanks for that. Hannity is a complete idiot.
Mike M:
What is your basis for this projection?
I’ve seen nothing from the Trump administration beyond the promise for a much-needed revised executive order dealing with these seven countries.
I expect a revised, softened EO followed by moving on to other things. Congress is already chaffing at the amount of time wasted on this.
Carrick,
We will see if the SC ultimately rules on this issue.
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Courts can (and do) review all kinds of issues, even where that review is nutty and/or inappropriate. Congress is empowered by the Constitution to adust the scale and scope of the Federal Judiciary, including the number of Supreme Court justices, and even the very existence of all lower Fedral courts. I think it is long past due for Congress to assert it’s control over the Federal Judiciary. An out-of-control ‘activist’ (aka leftist) judiciary has been pretty much constant for my adult lifetime…. wildly and inappropriately intrusive upon the Constitutionally specified powers of the other branches. The reason SC confirmations have become so incredibly politicized is because the Court has become a grotesque caricature of its role as specified by the Constitution. I find nothing in the Constitution consistent with the actions of the SC over the last 50 years. I suggest eliminating all lower Federal Courts and reducing the number of SC judges to 3. Let them rule as they wish on 15 or 20 cases per year. Congress can also cut their budget and salaries…. also very sensible policy.
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/333/103.html
“The court below considered, and we think quite rightly, that it could not review such provisions of the order as resulted from Presidential direction. The President, both as Commander-in-Chief and as the Nation’s organ for foreign affairs, has available intelligence services whose reports neither are nor ought to be published to the world. It would be intolerable that courts, without the relevant information, should review and perhaps nullify actions of the Executive taken on information properly held secret. Nor can courts sit in camera in order to be taken into executive confidences. But even if courts could require full disclosure, the very nature of executive decisions as to foreign policy is political, not judicial. Such decisions are wholly confided by our Constitution to the political departments of the government, Executive and Legislative. They are delicate, complex, and involve large elements of prophecy. They are and should be undertaken only by those directly responsible to the people whose welfare they advance or imperil. They are decisions of a kind for which the Judiciary has neither aptitude, facilities nor responsibility and have long been held to belong in the domain of political power not subject to judicial intrusion or inquiry. Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433, 454 , 982, 122 A.L.R. 695; United States v. Curtiss-Wright Corporation, 299 U.S. 304, 319 -321, 220, 221; Oetjen v. Central Leather Co., 246 U.S. 297, 302 , 310. [333 U.S. 103 , 112] We therefore agree that whatever of this order emanates from the President is not susceptible of review by the Judicial Department.”
This case in part informed Congress’ decision to craft the 1952 immigration act in the way they did
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/immigration-act
For a good discussion see Pre Trump documents
http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4913&context=fss_papers
Joshua,
I’m not sure if you are auto-moderated.
You are disinvited to the extent that it remains your specific policy to be rude to me, the hostess of the blog. If you change your policy, the disinvitation is lifted.
I think my intention is for you to police yourself which I assume you have been. I’ll check the setting later.
Joshua being rude? Well that is the strangest thing I have ever heard…/sarc
Josua,
“despite your belief that I’m a poopyhead,”
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I’d suggest that is too kind an evaluation by at least a factor of two.
Joshua,
Thank you for expressing interest in a discussion! This is most kind of you. To quote the movie My Cousin Vinny, ‘I could use a good ass-kicking, I’m going to be very honest with you.’ But Carrick already whooped me here in a moderately Trump friendly environment. ATTP would be harder. Much as I enjoy talking with you (and I genuinely do) I’m going to pass on that I think.
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Random Lex Prin link of the evening; Bear Protection Products. Mocking DeVos of course, but I thought this one was pretty funny. Hope life is treating you well Joshua, and hope it works out for you to hang out I guess. I hope I don’t regret saying that too. Heh. 🙂 It’s good to hear from you.
NAACP calls for moratorium on charter school expansion
“Members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Board of Directors ratified a resolution Saturday adopted by delegates at its 2016 107th National Convention calling for a moratorium on charter school expansion and for the strengthening of oversight in governance and practice.â€
“We are calling for a moratorium on the expansion of the charter schools at least until such time as:
(1) Charter schools are subject to the same transparency and accountability standards as public schools
(2) Public funds are not diverted to charter schools at the expense of the public school system
(3) Charter schools cease expelling students that public schools have a duty to educate and
(4) Charter schools cease to perpetuate de facto segregation of the highest performing children from those whose aspirations may be high but whose talents are not yet as obvious.â€
http://www.naacp.org/latest/statement-regarding-naacps-resolution-moratorium-charter-schools/
_______
Yes, charter schools are a way to separate good and bad students. I can understand some parents of high-performing children wanting that kind of separation and some parents of low performing-children objecting.
I will confess to being a bad student myself. Until now I never thought about whether my presence impeded the progress of the high-performing students in my classes. If it did, I apologize. But I feel I deserve some credit for giving the good students cause to feel superior and helping raise their self-esteem.
SteveF,
I forgot how much you liked Joshua. ~sigh~ Fine. I’ll go talk at Anders. You Poopyhead. :p
Max,
I doubt DeVos and Trump care much what the NAACP think about charter schools. I suspect they do care about giving motivated kids an opportunity to excel. Or paraphrasing MLK, recognizing and rewarding ‘the content of their character’.
Mark,
I don’t really know much about Joshua beyond that he is a dedicated leftist who seems to long ago have undergone an irreversible recto-cranial inversion… hence his being ‘a poopyhead’. Quite normal for people of his political persuasion, and not at all interesting. Good luck at Ken Rice’s echo chamber.
SteveF, motivated kids can excel in charter schools and public schools. If it’s harder to excel in the later, the excelling means more.
SteveF,
But do you never wonder why you and I are not leftists and Joshua is? (rhetorical, but also real question) It’s always absolutely fascinated me that people who are otherwise like me in a great many ways have convictions just as strong in mine in an opposite ideology.
No huh. Well. ~shrug~. I guess I’m just weird that way.
[Edit: thanks for the luck though. I’m gonna need it!]
Max,
For sure, motivation can overcome much, but not being bullied or shaken down by thugs. I remember being quite shocked in high school (in the 1960’s!) how the future criminals sometimes intiminated good students…. and I attended a good suburban school in the NE. I doubt the situation is nearly as good in lots of schools in big cities. Giving dedicated kids an exit is what DeVos has been promoting for decades.
Mark,
Johnathan Haidt has done a lot of interesting work on that question. What he has said is that conservatives tend to consider a range of factors when choosing the ‘right’ policy, while people on the left are concerned almost exclusively with ‘fairness’. Of course everyone values ‘fairness’, but people on the left tend only to consider ‘fairness’,which, of course, always morphs into pathological policies like descrimination against the most accomplished, and racial quotas in admissions, hiring, promotions, etc. To those on the left; ‘fairness’ demands ‘equality of outcome’ not equality of opportunity. So the profoundly poopyheaded, like Elizabeth Warren, choose to discriminate against excellence as they promote ‘diversity’.
SteveF (Comment #159196)
February 17th, 2017 at 9:16 pm
Max,
For sure, motivation can overcome much, but not being bullied or shaken down by thugs. I remember being quite shocked in high school (in the 1960’s!) how the future criminals sometimes intiminated good students…
_______
If a public school has serious problems with students who are “thugs,” and a charter school creams off the school’s best students, this increases the ratio of “thugs” to the remaining students who are not thugs. What was a difficult situation for the teachers becomes even more difficult.
I believe tax-paid education should be good for all students, not just the most gifted.
Thanks SteveF. I didn’t remember Haidt’s name or specifically reading Haidt, but I do remember hearing that, or something like that.
It strikes me as quite odd though (assuming that this idea of fairness /equality being more important to some than other really does predict which way people will go), that such a seemingly small difference causes intelligent people to adopt worldviews that conflict to such degree.
It has always seemed to me that knowing that, I ought to be able to realize something to my advantage. There ought to be some insight there. I don’t know exactly what, but if I could understand how this works intimately I’d realize …something… worth knowing. About the world? The way my mind works? I’m not sure quite what. [Edit: Which is why I particularly enjoy talking with Joshua and people like him.]
Anyways. Thanks again Steve.
Max,
The answer is get rid of the thugs. But if that is not possible, at least give the motivated students a chance. The truth is, most school districts (without too many thugs) already separate good students from thugs. but when the balance is too far in the direction of thugs, that may not be possible.
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Why is Brazil, graced with a mild climate, vast natural wealth, and no natural disasters, quite poor, while Japan with few resources, an often unpleasant climate, and frequent natural disasters, quite rich? As Shakespeare noted, the answer is not in our stars, but in ourselves: the difference is culture. And that is what has to change to reduce thuggery in public schools. In the mean time, giving good kids a exit seems a reasonable thing to do.
It is up to the students to get something out of education.
The idea that the good students must suffer to prove things are fair, which is the status quo, is immoral and failed and insanely expensive.
Mark,
Haidt did an interesting TED presentation you can find on youtube. His audience (almost 100% on the left) seemed horrified.
Max_OK (Comment #159190), the NAACP is the group completely out of touch. Charter schools are used by minority students to escape failed public schools. It seems the NAACP is just being a straw boss for teacher unions and others feeding at the public school tax trough.
Max_OK: “I believe tax-paid education should be good for all students, not just the most gifted.”
All too often public schools end up being bad for all students, thugs and gifted alike. I suppose that is “fair” in a perverse sort of way.
Max OK: “I believe tax-paid education should be good for all students, not just the most gifted.”
….
Impossible. The problem is parents who don’t take care of their children. There is no amount of money that can be used by public schools to teach undisciplined and unmotivated children.
Up until the spring of 2015 my children attended schools in a roughly average school district. There was a significant component of Sec. 8 children. However, there were many very fine teachers and the classroom size was only about 22 students per teacher. When my son was in the 5th grade, there was an important assignment in one of his classes that was worth 25% of the grade for that class. About 25% of the students didn’t even turn in a project, much less do a decent job.
When my daughter was in the 3rd grade in the 2014/15 school year she constantly complained that the boys were too noisy. In fact, she was embarrassed by her own class and didn’t want me to visit it. In the winter of 2015 she scored in the bottom 45% of math in her MAP test. Now in the winter of 2016/2017, she has scored in the top 11% in her MAP test in a much quieter environment in a new, higher ranking school district.
Many poorly performing school districts, such as Washington DC have high per pupil expenditures. The US as a society should provide schools that give all children a chance to learn and succeed. However, those parents who poorly perform their job as parents have to be held responsible for their child-rearing practices and have to be told by society that it is a parent’s responsibility to send a child to school who is ready to be educated. However, if the parent fails in that regard, it is not the responsibility of the schools to try to attain the impossible.
JD
A general environmental note. It looks like the drought is over in California. Santa Barbara, one of the worst drought hit areas of Calif, has gotten 4 inches of rain so far today. Also, its main reservoir Lake Cachuma is rising rapidly (about 12 feet) today. See https://rain.cosbpw.net/sensor.php?site_id=105&site=70729dd9-97d4-430a-9271-7b6c195b49be&device_id=1&device=5d7a3129-708d-4881-9886-f84c6686ab41&view_id=5
Moreover, additional rain is on the way in a few days.
JD
Carrick (Comment #159178)
The Chuck Show was ‘meet the press’
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What I was trying to say, and probably doing it clumsily, was that there was a very good argument for the choice of the 7 states and for the program itself but Trump himself didn’t make it and Miller sort of screwed it up. And yet no-one questioned whether this list was complete, and if they had, the answer would have been (as someone kindly pointed out above) that the mechanism was in place for a review of the efficacy of other countries’ bad hombre detection.
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It seems possible that in all of his whining about the press, Trump hasn’t realized that his PR team is poor. He isn’t going to get good press if he doesn’t do intelligent press releases.
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Had he said something like “A whole lot of folks want to come here from countries which don’t currently have the facilities to vet them to our satisfaction. This makes us very nervous and should scare the bejszus out of the rest of you. We’d like to put a hold on immigration from those countries until we can qualify their processes or construct our own to fill the gap so we can get them moving again with a higher certainty that the bad hombres will be discovered and sent south of the border or wherever bad hombres are sent.” the thing might have gone down differently.
But they didn’t until the flack started, and then the liberal press never grasped that this was the intent and the only questions which might have made sense were how were they coming on setting up improved vetting for the folks from the magnificent seven, and how were they coming on qualifying other countries which might be added to the list.
Maybe this was all laid out this plainly on Fox.
So my point is that the order was probably mostly reasonable or least something that was worth trying and the Trumpists totally blew the roll-out PR.
And i should add that both Hillary and Obama were/are also very good at assuming that their basic goodness will carry the day and that they don’t really need to share the reasoning about why they are doing something. Often Obama would explain what he had in mind, and at great length, but Hillary? Never. Deplorable.
SteveF (Comment #159200)
February 17th, 2017 at 10:00 pm
Max,
The answer is get rid of the thugs. But if that is not possible, at least give the motivated students a chance. The truth is, most school districts (without too many thugs) already separate good students from thugs. but when the balance is too far in the direction of thugs, that may not be possible.
.
Why is Brazil, graced with a mild climate, vast natural wealth, and no natural disasters, quite poor, while Japan with few resources, an often unpleasant climate, and frequent natural disasters, quite rich? As Shakespeare noted, the answer is not in our stars, but in ourselves:
_________
People who are below average tend to have below-average kids, and lots of ’em. Charter schools are a way to keep these under achievers away from the best students so the latter can concentrate on their studies. But the exclusive nature of charter schools comes at a price. When their students get to be adults they will lack experience in getting along with about one-half of the adult population.
hunter (Comment #159203)
February 17th, 2017 at 10:10 pm
Max_OK (Comment #159190), the NAACP is the group completely out of touch. Charter schools are used by minority students to escape failed public schools. It seems the NAACP is just being a straw boss for teacher unions and others feeding at the public school tax trough.
_____
I doubt the NAACP places what’s good for teacher unions ahead of what’s good for black kids. One of the NAACP’s concerns is that
charter schools perpetuate de facto segregation of the highest performing children from those whose aspirations may be high but whose talents are not yet as obvious.
I believe that’s a valid concern. Moreover, all kids don’t develop at the same speed. The charter school cherry-picking of students favors the early developers.
JD Ohio (Comment #159205)
February 17th, 2017 at 10:23 pm
Max OK: “I believe tax-paid education should be good for all students, not just the most gifted.â€
….
Impossible. The problem is parents who don’t take care of their children. There is no amount of money that can be used by public schools to teach undisciplined and unmotivated children.
______
Well, if that’s the case, charter schools are no better than public schools at teaching the “undisciplined and unmotivated.”
Charter schools are better at separating the disciplined from the undisciplined, the motivated from the unmotivated. But it doesn’t stop there. Charter schools also separate the highest performing students from average and below average students who may be just as disciplined and motivated. Why is that good?
Max OK: “Charter schools also separate the highest performing students from average and below average students who may be just as disciplined and motivated. Why is that good?”
….
The premise of your question is wrong. By far the greatest number of under performing children are not motivated. Those who are average and motivated, will in the vast number of cases have parents motivated to find the best school for their children. These parents will quite often be attracted to charter schools.
….
Even in the public schools, it is obvious to the teaching personnel that the highest performing children cannot learn much when in the same classroom with substantially lower performing students. (and almost certainly vice versa) In my children’s old district, there was an “advanced” and “regular” track for students in the middle school and high school. The advanced was for basically reasonably motivated children who were average and up. The “regular” was functionally for poorly performing children. Even in the so-called advance classes, the motivation was not great by a lot of students and my son said [even in those classes] that no one was interested in science and history. That was what convinced me to move to a higher performing and bigger school district.
….
An example of how impractical it is to mix high achieving children with the poorly performing children is provided by my daughter. At the beginning of this year, she was in the regular 5th grade English class. She told me that it was so easy that she didn’t even want to try. Luckily she scored in the top %5 of her MAP test, and she was moved to gifted English at the beginning of January. Now she is doing much better. However, even a well-behaved class of average and many above average children was not nearly enough for my daughter. The idea that you can mix children of vastly different abilities in a classroom and have a functioning educational process is not within the realm of practicality to me.
JD
JD Ohio (Comment #159211)
February 18th, 2017 at 12:15 am
Max OK: “Charter schools also separate the highest performing students from average and below average students who may be just as disciplined and motivated. Why is that good?â€
….
JD said: “The premise of your question is wrong. By far the greatest number of under performing children are not motivated.”
My reply: I would prefer to think under performance results more from lack of motivation than lack of intelligence, but I’m not sure.
Anyway, I should have said “below average students who are just as disciplined.” I mean below average kids who aren’t bothering other kids, and who may or may not be motivated.
JD said: “Even in the public schools, it is obvious to the teaching personnel that the highest performing children cannot learn much when in the same classroom with substantially lower performing students.”
My reply: Yes, the high performers cannot learn much if the substantially lower performers are disrupting the class. But “cannot learn much” seem like an exaggeration if the latter are not a disruption.
JD said: An example of how impractical it is to mix high achieving children with the poorly performing children is provided by my daughter… However, even a well-behaved class of average and many above average children was not nearly enough for my daughter. The idea that you can mix children of vastly different abilities in a classroom and have a functioning educational process is not within the realm of practicality to me.
My reply: JD, your daughter sounds delightful. When I was her age, I’m afraid I was one of those poor performing students.
As and adult, your daughter may have to work and get along with people of vastly different motivations and abilities. Sometimes, she will be bored and frustrated with those around her. Getting used to it at an early age could give her and advantage later.
Max OK, the assumption that one political group knows what is best for all black children better than their parents is mind blowing. In Houston most Charter schools are made up of minority kids whose parents pulled them out of the horrible public schools. Many Charter schools are run by minority educators. Charter schools save the public schools huge amounts of money by saving construction and operating costs for the schools that public districtsvwoukd have to build. The NAACP has demonstrated no special expertise in education for many years. Their demands are not insightful but are simply echoing the demands of big education. The new Education Secretary has actually helped poor children do better. The NAACP has not been able to make that claim for many many years.
Max_OK:
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I suggested in an earlier note that JD encourage his son to contrive his education to lead to a career not having much of this exposure.
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It may be that my attitude is elitist and currently subject to scorn among some of the electorate, the folks who believe that abject ignorance improves creativity. But working with the less acute is not nearly as interesting or as much fun as working with the sharp.
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In fact, it can be awful. Particularly if you have to manage them, You find yourself the arbiter of problems you never would have guessed existed and discipline yourself to take the silly ones seriously. This last can be very hard if you have any sense of humor.
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I frankly never again want to see the kids who cheated their way through school and snickered at the people who were trying to understand the stuff.
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So I say daughter should not get used to them, there’s no future in it.
MaxOK
First: I think whether it’s harder for the teachers is the last thing to worry about. I don’t think any student should have their interest sacrificed for the sake of a teacher.
Second: I don’t think it is necessarily harder for the teachers. I think it is extremely hard for teachers to have to deal with a range of students. Separating out well behaved ones does not make it “harder” to run the classes.
Everyone believes this. But two things:
1) Charter schools and vouchers are not restricted to “the most gifted”. Charter schools take kids by lottery. At most the only filter is that they take kids whose parents care enough to apply, which means that kids whose parents don’t give a sh*t are filtered. But there is absolutely no guarantee that the “troublesome” kids parents don’t apply– in fact many likely do. If they are in, they are in. The charter schools tend to have better discipline so they reign them in.
2) The current choice with failing schools is between tax paid education that is good for at least some vs. tax paid education that is bad for everyone at the school. Insisting that all kids be stuck in failing schools where no one gets a good education on the principle that it should be “good for all” is foolish. Idiotic. Counter productive.
MaxOK
Rhetorical much? (Yes.)
Perhaps you could provide evidence it’s actually bad.
In fact, separating kids who are performing differently does improve accomplishment of both both the “cream” and the “skim”.
Max,
Suggesting that being a thug (or ‘disruptive student’ if you prefer) is somehow ok if the kid is not a genius, seems to be the “soft bigotry of low expectations” that Micheal Gerson first wrote about. I can see no defensible rational for making that or any similar excuse. Independent of natural ability, kids should be given every opportunity to learn. But whether they learn or not, they should not behave in ways that reduce the ability of others to learn. There are surely lots of below average students in Japan, yet there are no problems I have heard of about schools being disrupted by unruly students in Japan. The fundamental problem is cultural. The NAACP should be talking about that problem, not insisting good students should suffer in disrupted schools.
Max_OK,
Should JD’s daughter pursue a career in education, then it could make sense for her to develop skills and some level of comfort in dealing with the less gifted. And that would be worthy, and might be interesting as well.
MaxOK
Yet another utterly stupid notion.
Yes: She will have to work with people of different abilities and motivations.
But that’s hardly a reason why huge fractions of time in school should be boring, pointless, demotivating and spent not advancing her education. Among other things: kids will experience plenty of boredom in their lives outside of school. Boring experiences where I had to “deal with” people around me I remember:
1) Sitting in church. Listening to stupid stuff.
2) Sitting in the back of the car driving around places like grocery stores.
3) Waiting in the car while the parents finished some last minute thing (that was probably difficult to complete with kids underfoot).
4) Not being allowed go finish girlscouts where we did things like make napkin holders out of popsicle sticks. (Having to deal with the scout leader who lectured me that I should not pronounce my name “lu si a” because it would give people the “wrong idea”.)
5) Visiting elderly friends of my mothers and being expected to be seen not heard.
6) And so on.
I’m sure everyone can remember events they considered boring in their lives. Of course one made the best of it (take a book on the trip– or even in church if allowed. )
We don’t need school to be a place where kids are “exposed” to even more boredom than occurs naturally in everyones life from time to time. School is a place where kids are supposed to be educated. We don’t need tax payer money to be spent forcing them to learn to experience and deal with “boredom”.
Max, once again: you are mostly wrong. Kids cannot learn much if the pace of the course is slowed to re-present material they have already learned over and over and over. This is what happens when you mix slower and faster kids. Disruption makes things worse– but the fact is, kids can’t learn geometry in 8th grade if the 1-3rd grad material is presented from 1-5th. Then 3rth-5tth grade stuff is covered over the time span of 6th-9th. That’s my definition of “cannot learn much”.
Max,
There is no selection for charter schools based on ability. If a student’s parents apply, then the student has an equal chance of getting in. The suggestion that a bright kid in a charter school will never encounter less capable kids is simply wrong. What is true is that the bright student is unlikely to encounter a student who’s parent(s) don’t care about their education. It’s a difference in culture.
Lucia,
“… give people the wrong idea.”
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What wrong idea? (real question)
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Yes, I too found church boring, but it gave me quiet time to think about more interesting things.
https://www.learningandthebrain.com/blog/ability-grouping-the-debate-continues/
From a recent meta analysis of 100 years research.
““Overall, high-, medium-, and low-ability students benefited equally from ability grouping†(p. 889).”
The high ability benefit especially– but the side effect is everyone else does too.
SteveF
She thought it was important that I hide any and all evidence of being in any way shape or form hispanic. “Loosha Tiernan” wouldn’t bring up conversations about the issue of where I was born, that my father grew up partly in Cuba and that my grandmother was Cuban.
And the hour or so a week is closer to the right amount of this rather than 4 hours a day of school with education s_l_o_w_e_d t_o a c_r_a_w_l for kids who still hadn’t learned to add numbers with two digits and needed more practice while you just… sat…
Max: “I mean below average kids who aren’t bothering other kids, and who may or may not be motivated.”
….
I am talking about those kids as well as the disruptive kids. To give you an idea of the great disparity in ability between the children– My daughter scored a 233 on her MAP test in December, which I said put her in the top 5%. In looking at the materials, the average score for an 11th grader is 222.7. Here is link. Go to page 3 of download data. https://www.nwea.org/resources/2015-normative-data/
Seeing that my daughter is currently reading much better than an average 11th grader just astonishes me, and is not a very good commentary on American education.
….
In any event, just imagine that she is in a Fifth grade class dominated by kids who read at the Third grade level. (This is not great, but is not terrible — I am sure that there are many schools where this is the norm for their Fifth graders) There can’t be any meaningful educational communication between those children and my daughter, even if they are well-behaved.
JD
Lucia,
“She thought it was important that I hide any and all evidence of being in any way shape or form hispanic.”
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Wow…. just wow. That little girl you see me kissing in my icon photo is half hispanic… sure hope she doesn’t have deal with too many people like your girl scout leader.
SteveF,
Yep. And she said it. It didn’t have to infer– she flat out said it. She was mean in other ways too.
Lucia, I went to a high school in California that was roughly 50% Mexican-American. There were some children named Menegon that I assumed were Mexican. (dark black hair — latin look) I later found out that their father was Italian-American and strongly disliked Mexicans. I thought it was hilarious. (J Ferguson — You would probably be interested to know that the father was an architect) Adding to the hilarity for me is that I am half-Italian and didn’t recognize Menegon as an Italian name.
JD
JD Ohio
The fact is, if a kid reading at 5th grade level is in a class with kids reading at 3rd grade level, the reading choices the teacher gives the class will almost inevitably be at 3rd grade level. The supporting assignments will be at 3rd grade level. She will basically be repeating stuff she already knows.
MaxOK may think this sacrifice somehow “helps” the other kids– but really it doesn’t. In fact: in the case of many kids, the bright ones start shooting spitballs and flinging paper airplanes when they are finished and bored.
So no, MaxOK’s theory that keeping these kids “in” with the slower reading kids makes things “easier” for the teacher is incorrect.
JD, I note that you are not an architect. Did your Dad talk you out of it or did you never consider it?
I ask because I set out to be an Attorney when i went to college, but then with the very heavy reading load discovered I couldn’t remember what I’d read unless I read it three times and most of the other kids could get it on the first pass. I went down to the law school and talked to the dean about it. He told me that I could practice law with this problem but that I would never make it through law school, so I went into architecture instead.
It sounds like your dad must have enjoyed his career. Did he?
SteveF,
I think some things have changed somewhat over time. But I’m sure some people still harbor prejudices against Hispanics. And not just “illegal” ones– even if some claim that’s their only issue– there are people who harbor prejudice against all of them.
j ferguson (Comment #159207): “Trump hasn’t realized that his PR team is poor. He isn’t going to get good press if he doesn’t do intelligent press releases.”
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You give the press too much credit. Trump is not going to get good press. Period.
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j ferguson: “the liberal press never grasped that this was the intent”
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Because they were too busy pushing their anti-Trump agenda to do their jobs. I managed to grasp the intent fairly early on, in spite of all the noise from the media.
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j ferguson: “the order was probably mostly reasonable or least something that was worth trying and the Trumpists totally blew the roll-out PR.”
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Perhaps, but mainly in that Trump may have failed to fully grasp just how extreme the press opposition was going to be.
Steve, Lucia,
Something I didn’t realize until fairly recently / few years back. I have encountered people of Spanish descent who appear to harbor prejudice against other Hispanics. For example, I have known Cubans who look down on Puerto Ricans or Mexicans. I think the rational is that the other groups are really black Hispanic or indigenous Indian Hispanic or something (insofar as there can be any sort of rational; possibly that was the wrong word). Not really going anywhere with that, except maybe to say such prejudice is more widespread than an initial naive observer might think. For my part, I believe there is substantial North / South prejudice in the U.S. both ways, although I think it’s lessening over time.
[Edit: I’ll add that it always tickles me when people talk of ‘the Hispanic vote’, as if it’s some monolithic thing. I doubt it!]
mark bofill: ” I have encountered people of Spanish descent who appear to harbor prejudice against other Hispanics. … except maybe to say such prejudice is more widespread than an initial naive observer might think.”
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I have read that in Mexico there is a great deal of prejudice based on skin color. Haven’t all the presidents of Mexico been light skinned, unlike the majority of the population?
Such things seem to be pretty much universal. Probably related to a deep seated evolutionary need to know who is “us” and who is “them”. The Japanese look down on people from Okinawa. Tutsi’s and Hutu’s in east Africa. And on and on. Sad.
Steven Mosher: There are without any question elements of any statute or policy which are not reviewable or appealable. As best I can put it, the court may review “questions of the law” but not “questions of policy”.
For example, it’s not the court’s job to determine if a particular tax makes sense or not nor whether a particular immigration policy is good policy. But they can always review whether a particular law or executive order falls within constitutional boundaries.
The President’s counsel in this case argued that the Executive Order itself could not even be reviewed, even if that law stepped on due process rights. That is at odds with our established constitutional law, at least since 1803, so any argument based on that logic has no chance of success in the court system.
This reviewability is a point made by both courts (i.e., the Seattle judge and the 9th Circuit), and it is one that has been consistently avoided by the rhetoricians arguing in favor of the constitutionality of Trump’s Executive Order (or more accurately, engaged in bellicose political attacks against the court system).
SteveF: I don’t think you really addressed the questions of constitutionality that I raised (e.g., due process, separation of church and state), but I think you’re wrong about the 9th Circuit decision being overturned by the SCOTUS, if for no other reason, because the Trump Administration announced they will not appeal the ruling to the SCOTUS. The fact they aren’t appealing the ruling suggests they have little appetite to establish a firm ruling against their questionable legal arguments.
The risks outweigh any advantage of an appeal, and they can get most of what they want simply by properly crafting the Executive Order from the start. So that’s the direction I expect this to resolve itself (replace the flawed Executive Order with hopefully a much more carefully crafted one, and hopefully rolled out with a bit more human decency next time).
j ferguson: Thanks for that. My reading is the reason Trump didn”t make this argument originally is because it wasn’t the basis for how they arrived at those particular seven states. I think they literally used the list generated by Congress, and codefied into an Executive Order by Obama, as suggested by Preibus here.
(As far as I can tell, nobody is sure how the original seven states were selected by Congress, either.)
Mike M:
This sounds a lot like excuse making to me.
Howabout let’s start with Trump’s administration getting a bit more adept at handling the press and roll-outs of policies, and see where that goes. Reagan had a very hostile press too, but generally won the publicity battles.
A good look at Kellyanne Conway’s interview/debate techniques . The key trick seems to be to use keywords to answer the question you’d like to be asked instead of the one that was asked.
RB: “The key trick [in evading questions] seems to be to use keywords to answer the question you’d like to be asked instead of the one that was asked.”
….
She is the first politician I know of to avoid the question asked. (:
….
Clinton commonly deflected or misdirected her answers. For instance, when she was asked at a debate to name one positive trait about Trump, she deflected (and refused to name one positive trait about him) and said that Trump had good children. On the other hand, Trump did mention a positive trait that he found in Clinton. (I believe that she was a tough fighter — don’t trust my memory though)
JD
Carrick: “The fact they aren’t appealing the ruling suggests they have little appetite to establish a firm ruling against their questionable legal arguments.”
….
I would say they know they can frame their position much better with a new order, and also why fight a technical ruling against them. The “due process” basis of the decision simply means that the administration had to give some sort of hearing to those affected; not that the administration couldn’t keep the affected people out after a hearing. (which wouldn’t have to be long or formal)
JD
JD,
Clinton’s answer did not look good at all, I agree. But it looked more like a grudging acknowledgement than a dodge.
RB: “Clinton’s answer did not look good at all, I agree. But it looked more like a grudging acknowledgement than a dodge.”
….
Believe me as a lawyer, I see her dodges all of the time — which others don’t necessarily see. It was spoken, and designed to be, a dodge. I can’t listen to her for any substantial period of time before she starts dodging and misdirecting, so I have to turn her off. Unfortunately, she is a Michelangelo of dodging and misdirection. The same may be true of Conway — I have never listened to her at all.
….
The difference between Trump and Clinton is that, at least sometimes, Trump is authentic. (may be stupid at the same time.) However, Clinton is never authentic and is always calculating. Don’t know if you are aware of the fact that Ivanka and Chelsea are good friends and didn’t let the campaign get in the way of their friendship.
JD
JD: “I would say they know they can frame their position much better with a new order, and also why fight a technical ruling against them.”
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I think it is also likely that they can accomplish what they want more quickly with a new order rather than waiting for the judge in Seattle to make his ruling and then appealing that.
Foreign nationals seeking visas are not entitled to due process. From what I have read, there are three groups who arguably are so entitled: green card holders, others who have established residency here (such as students), and people who make it to U.S. soil (such as the people already on airplanes when the original order was issued).
I’m afraid I have mistakenly given the impression of being against any form of student ability grouping. I think some between-class ability grouping(if that’s what it’s called) makes good sense. For example, it would be reasonable for a student who is good at math but not good at writing to be in a high level math class one hour and go to a medium or low level English class the following hour.
I am undecided about in-class ability grouping. Some elementary schools group children by ability within the class and give the groups labels (e.g. blue birds and canaries). Depending on how it’s done, that might be ok. My concern is as grade levels advance in-class ability grouping could reinforce inequalities.
If a compulsory education reinforces inequalities perhaps we should reconsider whether it should be compulsory beyond the basic level (reading, writing, and arithmetic).
My wife is a first generation immigrant from Colombia. She taught in public schools for over 23 years. She has experienced some pretty offensive treatment from people who should have known better- and were asked to stop- mostly teasing her for her lovely accent. My kids have received a lot less, anti-hispanic prejudice. However they both took advantage of the public magnet school programs in our fair school district, and so actually learned a few things. They rode the “hispanic” ethnic identity train to mostly full rides at excellent schools, and we smiled all the way to graduation. What is really interesting to me is that my daughter, who stayed working for her University’s school of medicine, and is a fluent Spanish speaker, offered on multiple occasions to set up outreach programs to the rapidly growing Hispanic population in her city as well as the University….and got no where, despite nice words from upon high. And she writes grants as part of her job description. So go figure.
lucia (Comment #159220) Boring experiences where I had to “deal with†people around me I remember:
1) Sitting in church. Listening to stupid stuff.
2) Sitting in the back of the car driving around places like grocery stores.
3) Waiting in the car while the parents finished some last minute thing (that was probably difficult to complete with kids underfoot).
4) Not being allowed go finish girlscouts where we did things like make napkin holders out of popsicle sticks. (Having to deal with the scout leader who lectured me that I should not pronounce my name “lu si a†because it would give people the “wrong ideaâ€.)
5) Visiting elderly friends of my mothers and being expected to be seen not heard.
6) And so on.
_______
lucia, I can empathize with you on the boredom of sitting through church services. I was taught enduring suffering was good for me, made me more holy, so I accepted the boredom as a requirement for being a good kid. I also though It made up for the bad of having too much fun. I eventually left the church, but the experience gave me tolerance for suffering.
J Ferguson — “It sounds like your dad must have enjoyed his career. Did he?”
….
To answer your question, I need to give some family history. My father’s father was Italian and could neither read nor write. My father was a good athlete and got a football scholarship to Kent State. He told me he flunked out during his freshman year because he couldn’t do math. (Told my brother something else)
….
After starting out working at a rubber factory, he became a teaching golf pro. My mother went to a small college and graduated. However, after she graduated, she decided to become a stay-at-home mom despite the entreaties of the phone company that she work for them because she had very high test scores.
….
When I was in school, I was naturally a voracious and very fast reader. However, I received 0 direction from my parents other than education was a very good thing and that they would pay for my college no questions asked. Neither my brother nor sister went to college.
….
Eventually, my father became golf pro/concessionaire at a large municipal golf course, and he made good money there. He was a genius at politics and getting along with people and ran circles around MBAs who tried to circumscribe his concession contract. As a teenager, I worked at the (much gambling occurring) municipal golf course and met people ranging from the owners of large companies to pimps and accused murderers. Very good experience for many life experiences that followed.
….
In high school, my main focus was golf tournaments, and I was a good junior golfer who won city level tournaments but never state level tournaments. Eventually, I realized that I had failed as a golfer because I was nowhere near good enough to become a PGA touring pro. I am glad to have failed because it gave me a larger perspective on life. While playing golf in high school, school was a little hobby that I did well at without much effort, and I got accepted at UCSB, which only accepted the top 12% of students at that time. Hated my freshman year at UCSB and transferred to Bowling Green. Did well in college with disciplined but not overly hard-working effort and got accepted into OSU law school. Only reason I went to law school was that I had good grades and didn’t know what to do. So I went to law school, which I was told gave you flexibility in your career. (this was true)
….
Other than making clear that they would pay for whatever I decided to do collegewise, my parents gave me zero academic or career direction or advice. Looking back, I see that with some direction, I could have been good at math because I could instinctively see answers to complicated questions, but I didn’t know how I did it. (Needed to be told to approach math looking for the simplest explanation and to link the math to its practical applications.) Never seriously considered becoming an architect although I always liked the idea of building things.
….
Neither my father nor my mother had any real input into my academic choices and work. My father was a great guy who was greatly respected and loved by many. I am very happy that he was my father, but in the comparatively minor world of academics, I would have been helped with a little bit of direction and guidance. I just winged my way through school and eventually ended up working for a lawyer that I had played a lot of golf with who was extremely good to me.
Now to answer your question about my dad liking his career. He liked it, but in my view not as much as he should have. At around the middle of his career, he was making good money and only working 7 months a year. (would go to California in the winter when it got cold in Cleveland) I always thought that that was an amazing career. However, one time, without explanation, he told me that he thought he was unlucky. Obviously, I don’t understand this.
JD
Carrick, my suspicion is Trump will end up ignoring the court ruling from the 9th circuit and perhaps even the Supreme Court. Not on this go round, but if his new executive order is also ruled against.
In Freakanomics, they describe a lottery for kids in Chicago to go to better schools. The ones who did not get accepted in the lottery did as well as the ones who did. The parents’ motivation to enter the lottery was the more important factor.
>Why is Brazil, graced with a mild climate, vast natural wealth, and no natural disasters, quite poor, while Japan with few resources, an often unpleasant climate, and frequent n
natural disasters, quite rich?
1) Water transport is cheaper and made Japan and UK(iron close to the coal) majors.
2) Because Brazil has Brazilians and Japan has Japanese.
j ferguson (Comment #159219)
February 18th, 2017 at 7:21 am
Max_OK,
Should JD’s daughter pursue a career in education, then it could make sense for her to develop skills and some level of comfort in dealing with the less gifted. And that would be worthy, and might be interesting as well.
_______
Good point, but I’m not sure JD would agree. I can understand JD and others wanting to protect their children by placing them in exclusive groups for their schooling rather than exposing them to the general population of children. I fear too much protection, however, can make it difficult for children to later adjust to the world outside of school.
JD Ohio (Comment #159225)
February 18th, 2017 at 8:19 am
Seeing that my daughter is currently reading much better than an average 11th grader just astonishes me, and is not a very good commentary on American education.
….
In any event, just imagine that she is in a Fifth grade class dominated by kids who read at the Third grade level. (This is not great, but is not terrible — I am sure that there are many schools where this is the norm for their Fifth graders) There can’t be any meaningful educational communication between those children and my daughter, even if they are well-behaved.
______
I am puzzled by what you mean by “meaningful educational communication.” Just because your fifth-grade daughter is reading at an eleventh-grade level doesn’t mean she is more like an eleventh grader in all other ways as well. Putting her in the eleventh grade with older kids could be a bad idea.
Max_OK,
There is something, I think, to the theory that living in a sterile environment reduces one capability to deal with mess when necessary. It may also increase susceptibility to allergies and maybe some other things, but that could be unfounded.
To the horror of some of our friends, our 4 year old daughter was permitted to play almost anywhere and was very frequently really dirty – ready for bath time. She turned out well, PhD on university faculty.
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Maybe exposure to uninteresting people will inoculate you to them somehow.
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At the same time, I’m unconvinced that spending time with the lesser lights will really help with anything assuming you’ve otherwise picked up some social skills, especially being able give someone who is trying to tell you something your undiminished attention, and even more especially if they are struggling to get out a message that you may think not particularly useful.
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This is a remarkably rare skill, and its value is that people will not be afraid to tell you something you should be aware of. If you don’t respect them by paying attention to everything they say, sometime they won’t tell you about the truck that is about to run you over.
.
Mike N,
Yes. That’s an almost 10 year old study. Age doesn’t make it bad, but it’s worth knowing it’s not the only study.
A later, extensive study of NY city schools — which involves lots of schools– finds the opposite– with a small caveat
So: The charter schools did better even after accounting for any “creaming” effect based on the fact that these are kids whose parents made choices.
Note that the “lotteried out” do do better than students who didn’t even apply. That is: They stayed on grade level while, generally, one would expect them to fall behind. But those who “lotteried in” advanced– reaching achievement of suburban students.
See http://users.nber.org/~schools/charterschoolseval/
For more.
Also: there is a note from a statistician pointing out that the some results of a CREDO study have a statistical flaw whose effect was to make the charters look worse than they really are. That would suggest that the actual results at charters may be better than some CREDO studies found.
It’s important to try to find information over time.
RB
Presumably it looked like that to you who mostly like Hilary and intensely dislike Trump.
I voted for Johnson: To me, Hilary’s response looked like a dodge. Lots of politicians dodge. Hilary’s dodging is no less frequent than the median.
The idea of skipping grades may not be a good one. Dad skipped two grades 5th and 6th, and found himself in college at 16. it was an eastern engine school and he did well for one year then had what used to be called a nervous breakdown, stayed home for a semester and finished up at local University.
When we were cleaning out his old correspondence after he’d gone, I found a stack of letters he’d written to his dad recounting the activities of his classmates, who apparently were into serious drinking and ‘whoring’ around. He was 16 and really wasn’t prepared for this sort of thing.
JD, you said your Dad was an architect. It sounds like he didn’t do it.
Did I miss something?
MaxOK
I tolerate necessary unavoidable suffering. Like menstrual cramps. And twisting my ankle. And my dog being hit by a car. And having to move and leave friends behind as a child — repeatedly. (Ok. I don’t remember being tooooo stressed by that. But a little.)
I’m sure everyone here can relate events of unavoidable suffering from their life.
That said: I have little patience for avoidable suffering and think anyone sane should take steps to minimize it. By changing the situation that creates avoidable suffering. Most people manage to have enough unavoidable suffering to learn anything and everything one can possibly need to learn about tolerating necessary suffering.
I think it’s beyond silly for adults to inflict unnecessary suffering particularly if the “goal” of the suffering is to teach the kids to “learn” how to deal with suffering. Certainly, forcing smart kids to sit through boring, unchallenging uneducational classes in school and then trying to justify this decision based on the notion that it will help kids to learn to deal with suffering is nutso. Unless the adult is addled, the adult can perfectly well wait for suffering events to come up by themselves and use those as life lessons.
For what it’s worth, I didn’t consider church to be any sort of major suffering. It was boring. Luckily by high school my parents decided to tolerate letting me sit in the cry room. I took books and read in the back of the cry room. One needs to make the best of sub-optimal situations. I learned to do that.
Max_OK: “rather than exposing them to the general population of children. I fear too much protection, however, can make it difficult for children to later adjust to the world outside of school.”
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Nonsense. Dealing with the idiots in my high school (95% of the “students”) did nothing to prepare me for the real world. Being surrounded by achievement oriented people would have been far more beneficial. Even home schooled kids are apparently at no disadvantage. There are lots of ways that kids can acquire social skills that do not involve school.
J Ferguson: ”
JD, you said your Dad was an architect. It sounds like he didn’t do it.
Did I miss something?”
If I did, there definitely should have been a “not” in front of it. My father couldn’t come close to handling the work that architects do. He wasn’t intellectually oriented at all. I did have the idea that my son might like architecture, which you splashed a lot of cold water on.
JD
MikeM/Max_OK,
I agree with MikeM that dealing with idiots (or even just those who aren’t geniuses) in high school doesn’t particularly prepare people for “the real world”. But even if it did, that doesn’t necessarily mean the high school is either the best or the only place to learn to deal with them. The kids could learn to deal with them in day camp. Or in little league. Or by working at McDonalds during the summer. Or any number of places.
Even if a parent or teacher or politician thinks learning to deal with lots of types of people is important for kids, it simply isn’t a good argument for forcing bright kids to sit in classes with slower kids which are then taught at the pace of the slower kids while the brighter kids learn pretty much nothing– or so much less than they could that it amounts to nothing. One can easily find other places where kids can learn to deal with other kids without harming the educational prospects of innocent children in order to achieve that goal.
By the way: I liked day camp.
Carrick,
Not going to the SC with it divided 4/4 along ideological lines is prudent. If they do ask the SC for clarification, it won’t be until Gorsuch is seated.
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I have read the statutes; I can see zero support for the Court’s decision in the applicable statutes. A different federal judge (Boston) reached an opposite conclusion. This is the kind of case the SC usually takes. Of course, if Trump issues a new EO that is not blocked by the courts, then they may want to let the current ninth circuit order stand, but this serms to me a strategic error.
SteveF and Carrick, I recall that the Seattle judge made some obvious misstatements of fact in his ruling. For example he stated that no one from the 7 countries had done terrorist acts in the US since 9/11. That is obviously false. If you count those arrested on terrorism changes, the number is large. Previous administrations have done similar things. The reason the court ruled as it did I suspect is that Trump’s order was so publicly visible. Perhaps 35% of the country viscerally hates Trump. That would include a higher percentage of the elites including judges.
This is not the first time there have been huge, public, and nasty public discussions of court rulings. It happened all the time in the 19th Century when the court made a large number of truly stupid rulings in one case even citing social Darwinism as a justification. Relax, the Republic will survive.
I don’t mean to interrupt the conversation about charter schools, but I had to laugh about this SCOTUS petition for a re-vote.
Max: “I can understand JD and others wanting to protect their children by placing them in exclusive groups for their schooling rather than exposing them to the general population of children.”
….
This misconstrues (unintentionally I am sure), what I am doing. I am not afraid to expose my children to the general population. Rather, while they are in school, I want them to do as well as possible. Noisy, undisciplined children have not threatened my children; they have merely interrupted their learning.
My son, for instance, has an attraction to air guns, and has been involved in air gun shooting game competitions with classic rednecks played in the winter in mud and muck. (who have been very good to him) Both my son and daughter went boogie board surfing in Makaha, Hawaii over Christmas and went 150 yards out although they are not expert swimmers. (My brother was with them and they had leashes on their boogie boards) My daughter can meet non-academic types in the plays she acts in as well as her gymnastics. Additionally, my son is in the choir and last year he ran track.
So, the idea that I am trying to place my children in a cocoon is false. In fact, part of the motivation for moving to a higher performing school district was to expose my son to more vigorous thoughts and argument by having him interact with intellectually vigorous students. (which has in fact happened) In the old school district, if you wanted to debate serious ideas, you were mostly met with dead silence and disinterest.
JD
JD Ohio, it sounds like you are raising normal well balanced children who are realizing there potential. The rationale for tolerating children who are not interested in doing well or who are dysfunctional and disruptive because it teaches the bright ones doesn’t hold up. Your examples demonstrate why.
HaroldW
In the argument for nullification, they evidently let us know:
I think one of their (many) problems is that the lack of any other remedy doesn’t mean that nullification is a remedy. It’s actually possible that the court would respond that even there was a cyber-invation there simply is no remedy. Period.
http://m.dailykos.com/story/2017/2/12/1632869/-Petition-Before-SCOTUS-Seeks-To-Nullify-Election
JD Ohio:
I realize that. I think they are repairing the current Executive Order because I think they are convinced (now) it is flawed. For example, they announced they are planning a “phase in” this time to avoid affecting people in flight.
SteveF: What I was discussing isn’t so much a question of statutes as the constitutional grounding for the original Executive Order (and probably equally importantly) for the legal argument given by the President’s counsel.
How does one make a law constitutional that singles out certain religious groups for special treatment for example? How does one deny due process to green card and visa holders and remain constitutional?
I think the EO must be repaired before it can survive constitutional tests because it fails on both of those questions.
And I don’t think there is any way any statute gives the President ultimate sovereignty over questions of law, not even when these questions of law relate to national security. So they have to provide a rational basis for why they selected these seven nations.
I’ll leave it at that.
David Young:
So if you have arrest numbers, what are they? (Though arrests measures interest level by the federal government perhaps more than it does actual threat.) How does the risk from these seven countries compare to the risk from Saudi Arabia citizens for example? The numbers readily available are “upside down” from the argument that these seven countries pose the highest threat for new acts of terrorism.
But anyway, the government didn’t provide numbers. It claimed it couldn’t even be challenged, both in front of the first judge and in front of the 9th Circuit. It lost because it gave a pureile failing argument. It might have lost anyway. I think we will never find out.
JD Ohio (Comment #159263)
February 19th, 2017 at 12:12 am
Max: “I can understand JD and others wanting to protect their children by placing them in exclusive groups for their schooling rather than exposing them to the general population of children.â€
….
“This misconstrues (unintentionally I am sure), what I am doing. I am not afraid to expose my children to the general population.”
______
JD, I don’t know what I have misconstrued. I was referring to the general population of children in school. You have said you want your children in schools that exclude some of that population.
From your other comments it’s obvious you want your children’s education to consist of more than the just book learning. I think you recognize the importance of exposing your son and daughter to the world outside of the classroom.
Max_Ok
All schools –including all public schools –exclude part of the “general population” of children. At least they do so if “exclude” means that some students and even some types of students aren’t there.
For example:
Urban schools “exclude” suburban and rural kids.
Suburban schools “exclude” urban and rural kids.
Rural schools “exclude” urban kids.
I’m rather mystified why you think there is anything uniquely exclusive about JD Ohio sending his kids to his local public school– which he does.
Mike M. (Comment #159257)
February 18th, 2017 at 4:28 pm
Max_OK: “rather than exposing them to the general population of children. I fear too much protection, however, can make it difficult for children to later adjust to the world outside of school.â€
.
Nonsense. Dealing with the idiots in my high school (95% of the “studentsâ€) did nothing to prepare me for the real world. Being surrounded by achievement oriented people would have been far more beneficial.
______
MikeM, you are funny. You leave it to the reader to interpret whether you were among the 95% of students who were idiots.
If you were one of the idiots, and you believe you would be better off today had you not surrounded by students like yourself, you could be right. On the other hand, if you were among the 5% of students who were smart, and you believe you would be better off today had you not surrounded by idiots, you could be right about that too.
Either way you have an excuse for being less than you would have liked.
Elizabeth Warren’s 2003 book, which supports full cost education vouchers, used the expense of moving to a better school district as a reason for supporting them. The title was: The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are (still) Going Broke.
The relevant quote is on page 34 and can be seen using the ‘look inside’ feature at Amazon.
Carrick,
The legal argument (AFAICT) was advanced by the justice department, not Trump’s lawyer. The Justice department that remains filled with holdover Obama apointees and those they had promoted. The argument they advanced at the ninth circuit was weak and incomplete. I doubt that would be the case after Trump’s apointees are all in place… and have had time to send to richly deserved career closets those ‘career public servants’ who are dedicated to the previous administration and it’s idiotic foreign policies.
.
With regard to ‘singling out’ Muslims, please demonstrate where in the EO Islam is even named…. you can’t, of course, because the EO does not do that. The EO specified 7 countries, already identified by Comgress and the Obama administration, as places where it is difficult or impossible to do backgroud checks on people who want to enter the USA. I believe the court decided to stop the EO because they didn’t agree with the policy…. and for no other reason. As I said earlier, I think most lower Federal Courts should be eliminated by Congress, because they serve mainly to undermine the Constituion, and the number of SC justices reduced to 3. Both of which are Congressional powers specified by the Constitution. I’ll leave it at that.
>Hilary’s response looked like a dodge.
The reverse of the interview answer, “My greatest flaw is that I work too hard.”
What prevents a new executive order from being similarly blocked by the 9th circuit with a nationwide injunction?
National Review had one writer predicting that Kennedy would side with the circuit on due process rights, making it a 5-3 or 5-4 decision against Trump. They cited a previous case where the Supreme Court declared POWs had due process rights.
MikeN,
Nothing prevents the Ninth Circuit from blocking any Trump policies they disagree with…. which is essentially all. That’s why I think Congress needs to dissolve most Federal Courts. I see no useful purpose circuit courts serve for the nation, but see enormous harm they do. The judiciary is out of control, and has been for the last 60 years. Most of the Federal judiciary needs to be eliminated, using the powers specified for the Congress by the Constitution.
SteveF,
I’m sure the circuit courts do lots of good. The fact is there are many cases decided at the circuit court level that never go to SCOTUS. Some aren’t all that controversial in the end. If we did not have circuit courts, SCOTUS would probably be overwhelmed.
Due process rights at the border are interesting.
heck, at the border immigration can do unreasonable searches and seizures even of americans… like your cell phone and lap top
They can turn you away for no good reason, and the wrong reason.
A Visa actually doesnt give you a right of entry. It gives you a right to present yourself to immigration.
I imagine you could detain people indefinately at the border while you revetted them and gave them due process.. that is kinda how we end up with people in Gitmo
Lucia,
Yes, without the lower courts, the SC would have to be extremely selective in the cases it takes…. I see that as a very good thing, not a bad thing. There are few important cases in the last 50 years where I think the SC got it right (that is, consistent with the Constitution). Most of the time they have been wildly disconnected from the Constitution.
.
WRT criminal cases: Most if not all criminal cases could be (and I think should be!) handeled by State courts. The Constitution is very clear about the kinds of cases the SC is empowered to consider…. I think they are usually beyond the scope of the Constitution in the cases they choose to hear. I suspect Congress could limit the scope of cases for any remaining lower Federal Courts to criminal law if they wanted to.
Snopes.com says that the Federal Circuit court is overruled at a higher rate, 83.33%, than the Ninth Circuit at 80%. The thing is, though, only a tiny fraction of circuit court decisions are reviewed by the SC and the median reversal rate is 68%. The Circuit Court with the lowest reversal rate, the Seventh Circuit, still has 55.3% of its decisions reversed. The obvious assumption is that the SC tends to take cases they think should be reversed.
http://www.snopes.com/ninth-circuit-court-most-overturned/
There are other ways of looking at the numbers. For example, of the 660 cases reviewed by the SC in the ten terms for 1999 to 2008, 175 were from the Ninth Circuit, 2.5 times higher than the next highest, the Sixth Circuit at 70 and 26.5% of cases reviewed by the SC. 140 of those 175 were reversed, or 21.2% of all reversals. That would seem to make the Ninth Circuit something of an outlier. OTOH there were 114,199 cases terminated at the Ninth Circuit from 1999 to 2008, 18.9% of all cases terminated at the Circuit Court level.
SteveF,
Too many lawyers and judges can be bad, but too few, IMO, would be far, far worse. The character in Henry VI, part two that utters the line “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” was Dick the Butcher, who wanted to make Jack Cade king by disturbing law and order.
DeWitt,
I guess the question is if the Federal Courts serve to preserve the rule of law, and the preeminence of the Constitution, or contrary to those goals. It seems to me that far too often they act contrary to one or both (as in the Ninth Circuit’s ruling on Trump’s EO on 7 dangerous countries). The Constitution clearly gives Congress power to set the size and scope of the Federal Courts. I believe the country would be well served if Congress exercized that power to severely limit the size of the Federal judiciary. Seriously, what does the Federal judiciary do that could not be done by State Courts (beyond the specified kinds of cases the Constitution gives to the SC)?
lucia (Comment #159269)
February 19th, 2017 at 1:01 pm
Max_Ok
“All schools –including all public schools –exclude part of the “general population†of children. At least they do so if “exclude†means that some students and even some types of students aren’t there.”
___
Yes, it’s just a matter of geography. Of course there isn’t geographic exclusion in the many small towns that have only one high school
______________________________________
“I’m rather mystified why you think there is anything uniquely exclusive about JD Ohio sending his kids to his local public school– which he does.”
Lucia, I may have been mistaken in believing JD would like his son and daughter to be in SCHOOLS that exclude students who do not perform as well as them. I wouldn’t take issue with JD wanting his kids to be in CLASSES that exclude students who do not perform as well. As I said previously, some between-class ability grouping makes sense to me.
I don’t know whether JD wants his kids challenged by being in classes with students who outperform them.
DeWitt, any stats on 9-0 reversals?
Yes this is what is very strange about this whole matter. No court has actually ruled on the substance of the order. There was a restraining order accompanied with a counter factual justification showing the judge was very confused on simple matters of fact. Mosher is right I think. Foreigners don’t have rights at the border. According to US law the President has broad powers to bar any class of foreigners he wants with no exceptions. This whole “Muslim ban” is just a lie and should have no place in any court decision.
Max_OK
My understanding is JD’s kids are in a public school. He moved to a particular school district so his kids could be in classes where the material in the class is challenging to his kids. His alternative was to live in a school district where his kids would be in classes where the material in the class was not challenging to his kids.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #159271)
February 19th, 2017 at 1:29 pm
“Elizabeth Warren’s 2003 book, which supports full cost education vouchers, used the expense of moving to a better school district as a reason for supporting them.”
________
Yes, the costs of homes in the best school districts are beyond what all but the most affluent families can afford. Vouchers that allow low- and middle- income families to send their kids across town to the best schools are one way to give them access to a better education. An obvious downside for the kids is the longer bus ride, but as adults they may be commuting to work, so they might as well get used to it now.
lucia (Comment #159285)
February 19th, 2017 at 3:55 pm
Max_OK
My understanding is JD’s kids are in a public school. He moved to a particular school district so his kids could be in classes where the material in the class is challenging to his kids.
______
If the trade off was less house for better school, I believe JD made the right choice. I probably would do the same.
I can see parents wanting their kids to be challenged in the classroom by being among students who outperform them, rather than being among students who underperform and present no challenge. Obviously there’s a conflict here. But parents want what they believe is best for their children, regardless of whether it’s good for other children, and who can blame them.
Max_OK,
Vouchers open the possibility to more than “across town”. It opens the possibility to out of town. That would mean kids in– say Warren Township might go to Libertyville and/or Lake Forest. It also opens the possibility of lower income parents using the vouchers to send their kids private school. That opens the possibility of kids who otherwise can’t afford it going to Benet Academy, the private roman Catholic school 2 blocks from me (where the average ACT score in 2016 was 29.1.)
There are lowish-income apartments within walking distance of Benet. I’m sure at least one or two of the parents of kids there would like to send their kids to Benet but can’t afford it. Their kids go to Lisle– which is fine and certainly better than an inner city school– and quite likely why the parents moved to Lisle. But the possibility of Benet would probably attract those parents. Currently, the tuition at Benet would be out of reach. (There are some non-Roman Catholic kids at Benet as there are at most Roman Catholic schools.)
There are a number of other private schools in our area– and also in Chicago. Vouchers would greatly increase the options for parents. (Catholic schools have always been an attractive option to parents in inner cities, even non-Catholic parents.)
Max_OK
I think kids being challenged in their classes is what is best for the children. The alternative of sitting in classes being forced to listen to material they have already mastered is not good for them. It is disrespectful of kids time to do that. It is entirely unfair to them.
Max OK: “Lucia, I may have been mistaken in believing JD would like his son and daughter to be in SCHOOLS that exclude students who do not perform as well as them. I wouldn’t take issue with JD wanting his kids to be in CLASSES that exclude students who do not perform as well.”
….
I in no way want children excluded from my children’s schools. (Unless the children are seriously violent or sell drugs et cet.) On the other hand, I want my children in classes where they are not held back by the needs of other children who may not be as academically motivated as my children are.
…
For example, in the old school district, my daughter had an amazing teacher in the second grade and she was paired with 3 other smart girls at the same table. She did much better in the second grade than in the third grade at the old school district. Her second grade class had many under-performing children, which was fine with me because they didn’t interfere with my daughter’s progress. Apparently, in the third grade, the administrators decided that they could benefit the under-performing children by splitting up the 4 smart girls. It certainly didn’t work for my daughter who has raised her math percentile by about 44% in the new district.
….
I should add parenthetically that she mentioned yesterday that her Social Studies and Science classes were easy. (and in fact, the last I looked she had 100% in both of them). As it happens, there are less disruptive children in the new district and more smart children. My daughter is doing well, but as I look at her effortless raising of her MAP scores by 18 points each in Math and English in first 4 months of school, I am thinking that she still may not be challenged enough. She simply doesn’t belong in a class with lots of underachievers because such classes would be hugely boring for her. To address one of your recurring themes, the new district has a good amount of lower middle class people and upward, so it is not like she is in a super-exclusive enclave district.
….
The bigger issue that is rarely addressed are the parental failures that lead to unmotivated students. In the course, of looking around at school districts 2 years ago, I checked out a 95% (mostly middle class) black district that had a school (global business academy) within the high school. The main virtue of the global business academy was that it was one of the few districts that taught Chinese. Also, it did teach business classes that are not common in high schools.
….
So, I observed the Chinese class and about 4 others in February of that year. The students in the Chinese class were completely unmotivated. Basically, for 90% of the hour, the students funned around and flirted with each other. In the midst of funning around, they would sometimes throw out a Chinese phrase. Any middling, somewhat motivated student, could learn in 8 days what these “students had “learned” in 6 months. The students were totally throwing away a wonderful opportunity and wasting the resources that had been expended for them. I believe the students’ parents are at fault for not motivating their children and that society owes nothing to the parents of these children. I further believe that if we are going to have identity based politics and if the Left is going to call out substantial numbers of people as deplorables the Right has every reason to call out the poor parenting people who are responsible for these unmotivated children.
….
Further, my son told me he loved the teachers but that the classes were not challenging enough. He also told me that he asked his student guides whether he should go to the global business academy or the new district that I am now in, and the students told him to go to my current new district. The students at the global academy recognized the deficiencies of their own school.
JD
Hunter: Re: Problems faced by your children as Hispanics.
….
I am surprised that your children would have any problems. When I married a Chinese woman, I was afraid that isolated incidents that would be hurtful to my [expected] half-asian children might occur. Instead, my children have had virtually no problems. (On one occasion a boy tried to give my son a little bit of a problem because he was Chinese. My son thought the offender was an idiot and totally blew it off). Additionally, they have both been pretty popular among their fellow students. Could you explain what your daughters have experienced?
JD
David Young, the court ruled that excluding foreigners could be a problem because universities may be hurt by it, and thus the state of Washington can sue on their behalf. I don’t see how any executive order can hold up under this reasoning.
JD,
One would think that Chinese might not be the easiest language to learn, although we have a family member who has Mandarin but learned over 8 years, and as it turns out not suitable for the technical work she does with Chinese companies, her is more literary.
Why were the kids in your child’s school taking Chinese? was it an optional class?
J Ferguson: Why were your children in Chinese class?
….
When my Chinese wife got sick with liver cancer, it turned out that my daughter was in Wuhan China with her relatives. She stayed there for 4 years and speaks perfect Chinese. (I was, and am, alone in Ohio with no one to help me when my girl’s mother died when my girl was 2) I took care of my then 7-year-old son in Ohio. My son wants to be able to communicate with his Chinese family and knows how valuable Chinese is. He speaks what I would call good tourist Chinese. Last summer he interned at a Chinese school in Wuhan and taught English to Chinese students during his visit to Wuhan. Same is expected this year.
….
My daughter by virtue of her time in Wuhan speaks perfect Chinese but doesn’t want to. I have her tutored during the week and she attends a Chinese school on Sunday. (I was the parent assistant in her class today] To make sure she doesn’t lose her Chinese, I have her [and her brother] spend 5-6 weeks with her Chinese relatives [who speak no English] virtually every summer.
JD
JD, it was never significant, thanks. Your personal situation is deeply moving. I can only imagine the burdens you are carrying and the choices you are facing.
Hi JD,
I understand why your kids took Chinese. What about the others who didn’t seem interested? Were they forced to be there?
JD Ohio (Comment #159290)
“I in no way want children excluded from my children’s schools. (Unless the children are seriously violent or sell drugs et cet.) On the other hand, I want my children in classes where they are not held back by the needs of other children who may not be as academically motivated as my children are.”
_______
If your child is the top performer in his class, he may be able to perform even better if not held back by some of his classmates who aren’t slouches but don’t do quite as well. It’s possible your child needs a more challenging environment to be all he can be. Place him in another school where classmates perform as well or better than him. Then he can hold back some of them. Only when you are holding back others have you realized your full potential.
JD, of course I’m being tongue-in-cheek, but I think there’s some truth here too.
Hunter: “Your personal situation is deeply moving. I can only imagine the burdens you are carrying and the choices you are facing.”
….
Thanks a lot for your concern and empathy. However, quite frankly, my children are easy to raise and a pleasure to be around. I am very sorry that their mother couldn’t see them mature. However, my son is ridiculously motivated and very helpful. In addition to getting high grades, he washes the dishes and helps me cook about 3 days a week. My girl (who is younger) sometimes needs a little nudging to do her chores, but I have to do virtually nothing to help her with her school work. She likes the structure of school.
….
I am lucky to have multiple businesses — most of the time, I work 7 days a week, but I can work when I want to. Only way I can post here.(:
JD
Max: “JD, of course I’m being tongue-in-cheek, but I think there’s some truth [about daughter needing a more challenging school] here too.”
….
I agree. I have been puzzling as to how effortlessly her scores have been rising. I used to think she was lawyer smart, but I am beginning to think that she is doctor smart. (which is half a step or a step up from the typical academic level of a lawyer). She probably ranks about 10–15th in her class. A fair number of kids are in both gifted English and Math. She is only in gifted English. Way more gifted children in new district than old one.
JD
J Ferguson: “I understand why your kids took Chinese. What about the others who didn’t seem interested? Were they forced to be there?”
….
Don’t really know. The kids in the Chinese class were in the school district I was looking at as a potential spot for my son, but he never attended it. I was only there 1 day. Only reason I can speculate as to why they took the Chinese was that they heard they could fun around and flirt and that the grading must have been easy. As I said, it was embarrassing how little Chinese the students at the global business academy had learned.
JD
Gorsuch: Just stumbled on this summary of highly complimentary comments on Gorsuch by law school faculty. Probably won’t make any difference with respect to the Democrats opposition to him. https://www.overlawyered.com/2017/02/harvard-law-faculty-mike-mcconnell-neil-gorsuch/comment-page-1/#comment-344311
JD
JD Ohio,
Gorsuch could be a reincarnation of Jesus, introduced in the Senate by the voice of God, and he would still be reviled by ‘progressives’. Their view of the role of the Supreme Court (constantly changing the meaning of the Constitution via Orwellian ‘re-interpretation’ to fit a leftist agenda) is exactly the opposite of the role Gorsuch’s statements suggest, so they will do their best to keep him off the Court. There is nothing that will influence the Senate Democrats beyond the threat of the ‘nuclear option’. They will continue to resist both Trump’s appointments and his policies in every way they can. My bet: McConnell will end up having little choice…. the Senate filibuster will soon be history. If not, the Republicans will accomplish very little in the next two or four years.
JD: “Only reason I can speculate as to why they took the Chinese was that they heard they could fun around and flirt and that the grading must have been easy.”
Of course that is the reason. Otherwise, too few students would take Chinese and the teacher would be out of work.
SteveF:
Yes they are Justice Department. I just meant the lawyers representing Trump’s interests.
It’s clear regardless that the administration’s counsel is arguing in a manner which is very atypical and I think unlikely to succeed direction: Namely the idea of executive sovereignty over any matter of law. I would have to assume this theory originated from somebody in Trump’s inner circle. If I had to bet it was Stephen Miller (who wrote the original order of course).
That’s actually pretty easy here. Direct quote from the order:
These are Muslim majority nations and the groups named for special protection are religious minorities. That automatically discriminates against Muslims, and one would have to basically allow their brain to fall out of their skull to think it wasn’t intentional, based on statements that Trump and his advisors have made previously.
But I don’t believe you have to demonstrate it was intentional, just that it has the effect of discriminating against certain religious groups in order for it to run afoul of constitutional law.
lucia:
Totally agree. I think we already have a court system that is overwhelmed.
it’s interesting how willing some people are to simply change the rule of law when they lose, when the appropriate remediation is to change the policy so that it means constitutional guidelines.
David Young:
That’s simply because Trump’s lawyers have not yet challenged it to that level. All we have to date are initial hearings and temporary injunctions.
MikeN:
This was used to determine if the state had legal standing. It gives them the right to sue. It doesn’t say anything about the legal merits of the case, beyond that.
Carrick,
No, my brain is still in place. I think you (along with many others, including the Ninth Circuit Court) are simply misreading or misinterpreting the text of the EO. (Serious question: have you read the whole thing? I am starting to doubt that.) Worse, the Court divines motivations for the EO which are nowhere to be found in either the applicable statute or the EO itself.
.
The section which describes giving priority for refugee status to people suffering religious persecution (Section 5 b) applies to all countries, not just the seven countries identified as high risk in the EO. If a Muslim from Greece claimed religious persecution at the hands of majority Greek-orthodox Christians, then the priority would apply as well. If an Ibadi Muslim in Western Iraq was being persecuted by the Sunni majority (instead of simply beheaded or drowned in a cage as seem to be normal practice), then the refugee priority would also apply. The point is: religious persecution may or may not be a good reason to give someone priority for refugee status, but that is not what most people (and the court) objected to in that section of the EO. What they seem to object to is any recognition of reality: most religious persecution in the world today (including persecution of Muslims!) is at the hands of Muslims. It is the same silly PC rubbish as Barack Obama’s refusal to speak the words “Islamic terrorists”.
.
I do not want to change any laws, I want only that the Courts make rulings based on the actual law, and not their PC sensibilities and political priorities. Politicians are supposed to exercise political judgement, which is why they are elected. Judges are not elected, and have no business making decisions like a politician would make, though it seems that with a lifetime appointment, that is what many are inclined to do. No matter how politically motivated a Federal judge’s decisions, they will face no negative consequences. In this case, I believe the Judges on the Ninth Circuit are ignoring both the letter of the applicable law and the Constitution.
The cynical view.
.
Society wants segregation by ability and behavior, to believe otherwise flies in the face of enumerable direct measurements and actual demonstrated behaviors. We have this situation because it is desirable, even though it may not be fair in a cosmic sense.
.
It’s not about pulling people up, it about parents not wanting their kids unduly influenced by “bad” kids. End of story. It’s called responsible parenting. Yeah it sounds selfish and crass, but it what everyone actually does, and it is what they want.
.
I find most of the high minded rhetoric to be laughable when those same people rarely, if ever, send their kids to bad schools when given a choice. Hypocrisy on steroids.
.
It’s a big factor in the cycle of poverty, and everyone wants to give the good kids in bad neighborhoods the fair opportunity they deserve. Just don’t send those kids to my kid’s school, right? Your kid’s education is too important for social engineering experiments, the answer is in and is immutable. What to do?
.
Government policy such as forced busing didn’t work. White flight. When schools ended desegregation in FL, they segregated again by choice because almost all parents favored neighborhood schools.
.
Bottom line is any system that can’t be rigged by motivated parents will be rejected. It just needs to be equal opportunity rigging so motivated parents in bad neighborhoods have a way out. Any system that smells like dragging good kids down to make things more equal will never survive.
.
There are lots of things that can be done, but one must design around the facts on the ground for the most effective policy.
Carrick,
I’m no lawyer, but just because something has disparate impacts doesn’t make it illegal or biased by definition. Getting into the heads of lawmakers/Presidents and determining intent for bias is something the courts probably need to be very careful with, as this could lead to activist courts gone wild. Clearly the EO can be written more neutrally, and this was a rookie mistake.
.
Like a recent SC case on affirmative action, the more interesting part of this case may not be the actual specifics of this case, but “who gets to decide”. Clearly immigration policy will not originate in the courts and exactly what rights non-citizens have even against blatant biased treatment seems pretty fuzzy to non-existent.
.
We aren’t trying to prevent past terrorism, we are trying to prevent future terrorism, so examining areas that are currently hotbeds for ISIS or terrorist attacks anywhere in the world is reasonable. The courts should defer to lawmakers / executive for these types of decisions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_linked_to_ISIL
.
This is not to say this EO is wise or will be effective, I doubt it. I just don’t think the court needs to intervene unless there are some very clear grounds. Perhaps this was so here, but it seems a rewrite could easily pass muster. I expect the rewrite will be more careful legally and the rhetoric against it to be identical anyway.
Tom Scharf,
Actually, it can come pretty close.
http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/06/paul-hancock-fha/
Tom Scharf: ” everyone wants to give the good kids in bad neighborhoods the fair opportunity they deserve. Just don’t send those kids to my kid’s school, right?”
…
I disagree with this. If a child is striving to overcome bad circumstances and is not disruptive in class, I want him going to my children’s school. The difficulty is separating out the good kids from the truly unmotivated, or, in some circumstances, bad kids. This is a very good argument for charter schools which can make those distinctions. Of course, even a good kid from bad circumstances has to be in striking distance, academically, with the children that are in his class.
….
When my son was in middle school at his old district, several teachers commented about how helpful he was with other students who needed assistance. I was glad that he was in that position and that he did what he did. The problem was not motivated kids in the average academic range — the problem was simply that there were not enough motivated, top-end kids who could challenge my son. (Who ranked, roughly, 5th in his class)
JD
DeWitt,
Certainly disparate impact infers bias, and is the first step to proving bias. There are of course many allowed laws that have huge disparate impacts, such as affirmative action itself, ha ha. In racism cases they ruled that things such as hiring practices need not prove intentional bias. Not a legal scholar, but sure hope these are pretty narrowly allowed. Simple things like software engineering are not limited by racial discrimination, but by supply with blacks only getting ~2% of degrees. It’s complicated, and each case is different.
JD,
“The difficulty is separating out the good kids from the truly unmotivated”
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Yep, and most parents are too lazy and apply a large easy filter to work it out. It is unfair that a “bad” kid should have to prove his worth when the “good” kid does not based on where he lives. Responsible parenting involves paying for preschool (and the ability to do so), reading at home, expectations, etc. which brings them into school ahead of the curve. It is a confusing argument when responsible parenting is equated to unfair advantages that must be retrofitted.
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I think there is a dogma against seriously evaluating the home dysfunction in education in social sciences and this holds back more effective solutions. How much one values education at home influences performance.
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As it sits, minorities aren’t convinced they will succeed through education even if they perform, which needs to be worked on. The message of success through education is pervasive but not trusted somehow.
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It’s a somewhat futile exercise though, if under performers improve their readiness, then all the type A parents will go to turbo-ready mode. The people who care the most about outcomes unsurprisingly tend to get the best results.
Dewitt,
Kind of humorous from your link how circular the problem can get:
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“Thus, the Court warned that to avoid a possible double bind, “potential defendants may adopt racial quotas†in attempting to immunize the outcomes of decisions from disparate impact challenge. According to the Court, that type of decision-making may itself run afoul of the equal protection clause.”
Tom Scharf
I think at least some minorities do think they can succeed through education if they get any. But when schools in the inner cities are very poor and there is no escape, they may not think they can succeed with the level of education available to them. Or at least they can’t reach the level those who have better access to education can achieve. Sadly, they are to some extent correct.
This is one why charters and vouchers are important. When they are available, parents can make choices that help their kids. And even apart from the actual schools, the possibility of control of influence will help the parents and children believe that achievement is possible. This itself is motivating and may be a factor in the success of charters. But even the fact of choice and not the “curriculum” or anything else is the factor in their success, it can’t be replicated by taking away choice and ‘fixing’ the school the students are stuck with. Because if choice is itself the factor then you get its benefits by permitting choice.
Lucia,
Maybe you could work for DeVos. 😉
No doubt change is better than status quo for many in education. Those who fight choice are baffling to me. I think this is simply a proxy fight on teacher’s unions. The unions are not showing their best face here. It’s not likely miracles are in the offing with choice but not trying is inexcusable.
Carrick, You seem unusually confused about this executive order issue. Have you read the statute regarding executive authority on immigration? It is very clear and allows virtually any ban on any class or group of foreigners totally at the discretion of the President. What does “disproportionate” impact have to do with it? We want to disproportionately impact terrorists or Muslim fundamentalists who are after driving a worldwide Jihad resulting in millions of deaths. It is indisputable that Islam is uniquely problematic amoung religions and is properly classified as a political ideology.
And since when does the 14th amendment or US civil rights law apply to foreigners? That would be a very stupid and unenforceable doctrine.
SteveF,
I’ve been for charters and vouchers a long time.
Tom Scharf,
I think the major outcry against choice is teachers unions. Most parents either (a) like choice or (b) don’t mind it. Obviously, the program would require some reasonable standards and reasonable accountability. But having reasonable standards for government expenditures isn’t unique to education. There are standards for government contracts of all types. There are standards for government purchases and so on.
People could debate what the standard should be– but I’m for permitting a fairly wide range of missions in charters provided all are consistent with a decent level of academic accomplishment and transparency. I’m actually for flexibility to permit some focus on vocational schools if there was a demand for that sort of school on the part of parents and their kids not as a shunt that one is pushed into whether they are included to go vocational of not. (We do need plumbers, electricians, machinists and so on. These jobs still exist and moreover, some people want then. These people do still need academic accomplishment higher than in some of the catastrophic urban schools- especially if they want to eventually be in charge of their own small business– but it doesn’t need to be calculus, AP Physics/Chem/Bio and so on.)
Carrick, the court can issue a stay on the executive order followed by an injunction, delaying the executive order for many months. The initial ruling certainly is signalling that the Trump executive order would fall on the merits.
>since when does the 14th amendment or US civil rights law apply to foreigners?
Since the courts ruled that it does. It even applies to POWs.
A couple of years ago, the Telegraph (UK) ran a piece about 16yo potential apprentices applying to join Williams (F1 team). These were motivated lads hoping to join an F1 team. They all failed the maths test.
The Telegraph published the maths test and I set it for my class of two 14yo Japanese English language students. They scored 92% and 94%. I scored 100% (naturally 🙂 )
Lucia,
“I’ve been for charters and vouchers a long time.”
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So has DeVos. Sisters in arms. You are obviously pasionate about giving kids a better chance.
Seth,
A few years ago, I asked a young man who worked for me (a good worker and HS grad!) to drill some half inch diameter holes in a square aluminum plate to allow air passage. When he asked how many, I said “enough so that about a third of the surface area of the plate is open”. An hour later not a hole had been drilled. Neither he, nor any of the three other employees he asked, knew how to calculate the area of a circle…. yes, high schools often turn out kids who know very, very little.
SteveF —
A disheartening story. Even if they couldn’t calculate the area of a circle, one would think that, given the looseness of your request, they could estimate it. “Mmmm…a circle of a half-inch diameter will be smaller than a square which is a half-inch on a side. But more than half as large…call it 3/4 as much.”
MikeN,
I don’t believe that the SC has ruled that due process and the 14th amendment apply to the world outside the boundaries of the US. If it did, there would be no reason for the prison at Guantanamo Bay to exist. Inside, yes. POW’s are also covered by the Geneva Convention.
HaroldW,
In my experience tutoring, kids who don’t know the formula for the area of a circle don’t know how to estimate it by reasoning from the area of a square.
Sometimes this is because they also haven’t learned the formula for the area of a square. Sometimes this is because they haven’t been exposed to the notion of bounding things when calculations are involved. Sometimes they haven’t done any “reasoning” that involves numbers at all.
Or the teachers might have done “reasoning” but explained “reasoned out” problems using series of facts the kids did not know. In this situation the kids do not learn any “reasoning”. Kids– who often have very good short and shortish-term memories end up doing their best to “memorize” the sequence of “reasoning” problems– and since teachers may very well present them with homework and tests that merely mimic the example the teacher “explained” in class, the students short term memory lets them mimic that without ever actually “learning” the individual components.
Many people know how to drill the holes for about a 1/3 of the area by intuition not knowing anything about the specific formulas. If it needs to be exactly 1/3 then breakout the calculator.
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My wife taught math at a high school for one semester and I helped her grade some tests. It is completely unsurprising that most people in construction would not know this. About half the standard ed algebra class literally couldn’t even do fractions. She was told in a coded way to “pass them along” and not fail them. Sigh.
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I am absolutely convinced that many people in the drug trades have obtained valuable business skills. All the same problems exist: government “influence”, supply, demand, competition, product quality, advertising, customer service, people skills, employee management, etc. Drive by shooting of your competitors is about the same level of morals as most patent lawsuits in my opinion ha ha.
David Young:
I don’t think I’m confused about the statute. I’ve addressed this above so I think you’ve either not been reading or maybe understanding what I’ve been saying.
The argument I’ve made is Congress cannot give to the president unreviewable powers with respect to questions of law, because Congress does not have those constitutional powers themselves.
“You can’t give away something you never had.”
Since 1803 (Marbury v Madison), the principle of judicial review is established constitutional law.
As I understand it, not withstanding any law written by Congress that says otherwise, even in matters of immigration and national security, the president must conform to our Constitution, and the ultimate authority for questions of law remains the judicial branch.
MikeN:
And I think I summarized what I think those merits are above. The damage to the states merely establishes they have standing. The merits on which it would fail are whether there is a rational basis for the executive order, whether this order violates the Establishment Clause and whether it violates the due process rights of visa and green card holders.
And with that, I’m bowing out of this back and forth over the Executive Order, especially as it’s going to be an irrelevant question once a revised order gets released.
We’ll see where that takes us.
On brighter note, the media really likes McMaster, whose gotten pretty much 100% positive reviews.
I find it curious that Scott Pruitt got confirmed with hardly any push back (relatively…). They went all out against DeVos but were pretty meek with respect to Pruitt. As expected WV Democrat Manchin voted for confirmation. Climate change still looks like it has mile wide, but inch deep support. I don’t think an EPA smack down is going to cost Trump many votes.
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I’d cut their budget by 50% and let them sort it out internally. If they want to spend all their money on climate models, then so be it. It has the added benefit of making them use their knives against each other for awhile.
Tom Scharf,
The House and Senate have already agreed to a general authorization bill for NASA which maintains most of their previous budget, but changes focus to space exploration, including the requirement to have have a launch vehicle to send people to near Earth orbit by a date certain, and a project to put people on Mars. There is nowhere in the authorization bill with even a mention of climate science or global warming. My guess is Pruitt will be responsible to the details.
DeWitt, the Supreme Court ruled Guantanamo detainees had due process rights in Boumediene v Bush.
Check-out lady at homedepot (my home away from home) said something which indicated more than a passing knowledge of math.
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I asked.
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She was high school AP-math teacher. Somehow we came to my tale of art teacher in 1960’s Chicago school system who had to teach hs juniors how to read rulers – it was tougher because they didn’t understand fractions either (aren’t fractions taught in 4th grade?).
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So i asked if the non ap track juniors in her high school could read rulers. She said “No.”
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I asked how this could be, and the answer was that this wasn’t a skill required by their curricula for anyone not taking industrial arts or drafting (these aren’t what she called it but you get the idea).
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I find this pretty distressing.
Carrick, I may not have seen all you previous comments. In principle courts can review laws for their constitutionality. That was not the reasoning of Robart as far as I can tell. He simply stated that the rule would not accomplish anything and might harm someone so he issued an injunction until he could hear it on the merits. And he made several important misstatements of fact.
In any case, so far as I know there is no precedent for even activist course applying US laws against religions discrimination to foreigners applying for favors from our government. In fact, refugee policy has always recognized religious persecution as a reason to be given priority. In the middle east, Muslims are doing most of the persecuting and murdering themselves.
MikeN,
I think that Boumediene v Bush held that Guantanamo was effectively U.S. territory. People who are outside the U.S. and have no established presence here have no rights under U.S. Law.
Here are a couple of my math stories.
1. About a year ago, I bought some specially made screens. I was entitled to two discounts. Something like 33% off initially and, after that another 15% off. I could get a pretty close number in my head in about 10 seconds. Two clerks went at this for 45 minutes (I am not exaggerating) before it got done. Neither clerk could do the math without entering something into the computer. However, their computer entries were always wrong. The owner of the store was observing from about 20 feet away, undoubtedly hoping that one of his clerks would pick up on a little bit of math and hoping to force them to learn by trial and error. 95% of the time, I would have walked out in circumstances like this, but the store made good screens and I needed them, so I put up with the ridiculously long wait.
2. My former step-daughter, who was from Beijing and attended rigorous schools in Beijing (although she was average for Beijing) was attending her first year as a sophomore in high school in the US in a so-called advanced math class. The teacher gave what she thought was a very challenging problem to the students so they could work on it overnight. My former step-daughter solved the problem in about 5 seconds before the other students could even leave the classroom. (I was told this by a fellow-student, not my then step-daughter). From my perspective (based on this and other observations), Chinese students are about 3 years ahead of American students in math.
JD
Re: SteveF (Comment #159328)
While the above may sound shocking to those of us who grew up having to memorize such things, it may just be one of those obsolete examples that people gripe about, considering that most “kids” today can Google the answer about as quickly as we can write it out!
Oliver: “it may just be one of those obsolete examples that people gripe about, considering that most “kids†today can Google the answer about as quickly as we can write it out!”
….
If that was the case, they would have Googled it and got the job done.
JD
Re: JD Ohio (Comment #159346)
He did say it was “A few years ago.”
I’m reasonably sure that most high school graduates today could Google the words “circle surface area,” if they were so inclined. I just tried it and it even came up with a little calculator.
Re: JD Ohio (Comment #159344)
Interesting scenario. The obvious questions are: what was the “advanced” math class, what was the “very challenging” problem that she solved in 5 seconds, and would 3 years have advanced the average American students from solving it overnight to solving it in 5 seconds?
Oliver: “Interesting scenario. The obvious questions are: what was the “advanced†math class, [probably “advanced” algebra 2] what was the “very challenging†problem that she solved in 5 seconds, [have no idea. High school student was serving me in diner and related the story about my then step-daughter]” and would 3 years have advanced the average American students from solving it overnight to solving it in 5 seconds? [my 3 year observation is just a rough guesstimate based upon my many interactions with educated Chinese who are very good at math. If you look at the way you are, my further guess is that with 3 more years of work most American students still wouldn’t get it.]
JD
Re: JD Ohio (Comment #159349)
?
Do you mean looking at the standard track for American students at that point?
Lucia: You and others interested in charter schools may be interested in this talk by Joel Klein, the outsider brought in by Bloomberg to run the New York City Schools. The Klein talk starts at about 20:30 and is only 20 minutes long (and followed by an interview).
http://constitutioncenter.org/experience/programs-initiatives/past-programs/joel-klein-the-13th-annual-john-m-templeton-jr-lecture
One can also get useful info about constitutional questions, since the organization’s charter requires it to be bipartisan. They usually arrange for the Federalist Society (conservatives) and the Constitutional Society (liberals) to identify qualified speakers. In the case of Trump’s immigration order, both sides were sure the Supremes would prefer to uphold a president’s right to execute the immigration authority Congress had given him and do what he felt was necessary to protect the country. However, the order was so poorly written, that they might reject it on very narrow grounds that wouldn’t limit future president’s freedom to act. That might explain why the order was withdrawn for revision.
MikeM, they did rule along those lines, but the logic of the ruling that people are allowed access to courts over exclusive ruling by the executive may be too tempting for Kennedy.
One person gave me a challenging math problem once, betting me $50 that I could not solve it within 10 minutes. Turns out it is solvable in 5 seconds(though I did not do so).
Find a number n that when divided by 7 leaves a remainder of 1, divided by 9 leaves a remainder of 2, divided by 11 leaves a remainder of 3.
MikeN –
I came up with the answer in about a minute, but couldn’t “see” a 5-second shortcut. I’ve seen a similar puzzle where the remainders are one less than the divisor — 6,8,10 resp. for your problem — which has such an “Aha!” answer. Can you share the trick? [Perhaps after an appropriate delay to allow others the chance to solve.]
Oliver,
“…considering that most “kids†today can Google the answer about as quickly as we can write it out!”
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Yes, I committed the value of pi to 5 decimal places to memory because I used it often enough, but I wasn’t asking for much accuracy. He was in his late 20’s, and there were 5 or 6 computers available with internet access (as well as his cell phone with internet access). I don’t know why he would not just have ‘googled’ the answer, but my guess is that he may not have been able to understand even a simple algebraic equation, and may not have been able to relate the area of individual holes and the dimensions of the plate to a required number of holes. Anyway, neither he nor three others could ‘solve’ that kind of practical problem.
Mike M, Mike N,
Yes, the issue was decided 5/4 based on the de facto sovereign control of Guantanamo by the USA. When detainee’s lawyers started winning releases in the DC circuit (winning about half the cases) by arguing that the military evidence against the detainees would not pass muster in a domestic criminal case, the DC court of appeals required the DC circuit judges to accept military evidence weaker than would be required in a domestic case. That basically stopped the releases (only 1 of 12 later cases led to a release). The I believe the SC refused to hear an appeal of the DC appeals court decision. So the habeas releases were effectively stopped, in spite of the SC ruling.
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I could speculate that the DC appeals court and the SC started to hear too much about the released detainees returning to jihad and killing Americans, but that would suggest judges are influnced by public opinion. And we all know that could never happen. /sarc
j ferguson,
I took a sewing class at the local community college. There are marks on the machine to aid the seamstress gauge 2/8, 3/8, 4/8,… 1″.
For commercial construction, it is conventional for seams to be 1/2″. I had to help the woman who sat across from me in the class with conversion of 4/8 to 1/2″. This woman truly did not know any math. (Another one who sat next to me just marveled… So it wasn’t everyone.)
SteveF
I’d guess the same thing. It could very well have been the fractions– 1/3rd that caused him as much difficulty as the area for the circle. He also may not have understood that the dimension of the drill bit was telling him the approximate ‘diameter’ of the hole it drills or any other number of things.
People who don’t know math really don’t know it!
MikeN, Harold,
I’m interested too, if there’s an elegant solution. I got it but it took me considerably more than 5 seconds or even a minute. I think I came in under 10, but I didn’t set a timer.
I have this sinking feeling that somewhere back decades ago I learned something in compsci about modulo math that would have helped here…
Oliver,
On googling of answers….
I’m tutoring a woman taking first year physics at UI Chicago. Just before the test the teacher evidently told the class that he included questions he believed were “impossible” for kids to do given the level of the class and did so to learn how many were googling. Since most the kids were getting those right, he concluded they were googling.
Well… yeah. Of course. Because (a) he assigns points toward your grade for homework and they do want the points and (b) they don’t know the questions are “impossible”– all they know is they are assigned and (c) the questions are from “Mastering Physics” which means they are all on the web.
And the fact is: the students know sometimes when you find an answer you find an explanation which can help you learn the material. Students who want to learn how to do the problem will google until they find an explanation. Others who just want points will just enter the answer. So of course they will all google. The only questions are: (a) Do they google before or after trying the question? and (b) Do they continue to google until they find the explanation or stop when they find a number? But all will google.
In my view: google can be great provided it’s used after a student makes some effort. But obviously, many students will be tempted to just use it instead of trying which will not help them learn.
FWIW: At least in physics, if a professor or teacher wants to make sure students don’t google answers to homework questions, they need to not use “Mastering Physics” or anything similar– particularly not for a popular book. Based on student reports, nearly all the questions in “Mastering Physics” seem to be googleable either with the exact same numbers or variations of the numbers. (The estimate for “exact same numbers” seems to be about 50%.)
Heck… I googled a question in a test bank I had because I could not get the answer. (Optics/Dispersion…Plus… I thought the wording was screwy. I’m never as confident on optics. I’m not so absolutely positive I’m right on those. ) Several hits just gave the numerical answer in the test bank– no explanation. The one I found with an explanation gave the answer I was getting and explained the test bank answer was wrong. 🙂
It’s also not just google– and it’s not just Mastering Physics questions. Once you google, you will find “Chegg”. You can buy solutions from Chegg. I’m not sure how Chegg gets them all… I have theories….
If you really want your students to not be able to find solutions to an exact question, you need to take questions and reword a little. Then create a homework hand out, collect the stuff… (Or enter it all in Moodle.) Basically: to make questions not googlable, you can’t take advantage of many time saving resources that are now available.
I don’t see a trick either. I just wrote a quick program to search for the answer. Took about 30 seconds.
I did go back and google the problem. Here’s a description for how you do it with four divisors and their remainders:
http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/64439.html
The equation you need to solve becomes:
5 + 2 x = 7*9*11
My method was:
make a list of multiples of 7n+1
Fourth number has a reminder of 2 for division by 9 and a reminder of 7 for division by 11.
The pattern for division by 9 to give a remainder of 2 repeats every 9 numbers and corresponding division by 11 changes remainder by 8 (modulo 11) — due to remainder changing by 63 modulo 11.
Somewhat brutish, I guess.
RB,
Yeah, that’s what I did. I got to 29 as solving for 7 and 9, then started checking 29 + (i * 7 * 9) as i goes from integer 1 to whatever, looking for the number that satisfied the 11 condition.
Carrick –
Thanks! The trick (adapted from your link) is to look at the remainders of 2x modulo those divisors, and notice that they’re all congruent to (-5). Then, like the problem I mentioned above in #159356, it’s “obvious” that the answer should be the product of the terms (more generally, the LCM) minus 5. Bingo! 2x+5=7*9*11, and you’re done in 5 seconds.
I solved the problem along the same lines as RB and mark, except I started with the larger #s. (step 1) Find a number =3 mod 11 which is also =2 mod 9. So…3,14,25,36,47…stop. (step 2) The answer we want will be 47 + n*9*11 for some integer n, and the last criterion is that the number =1 mod 7. 9*11=99 is congruent to 1 mod 7. We start from 47 which is congruent to -2 mod 7, and need to increase the “-2” remainder to the desired “+1”. So we need to add 3 99’s; that is, n=3. Hence, the answer is 47+3*99=344.
This method is called “sieving” in the Wikipedia article on Chinese Remainder Theorem.
I vaguely recall figuring out the more general approach, which relies on finding modular inverses. But I couldn’t recall the formula, and as the numbers were manage-ably small, the sieve approach seemed most practical.
Dang, edit button is still off-line.
Just wanted to add a P.S. — I love learning new shortcuts!
The trick that Carrick posted makes sense – if you multiply the list by 2 and add 5 to all numbers, the first relevant number is divisible by 7, 9 and 11 => it is divisible by 7*9*11.
I get it now. Took me a bit. Nice.
Re: Googling Math Answers–When my son was in late elementary school, some problems would be confusing to me. I would Google them and 95% of the time, they would come straight up.
JD
Well, looks like three of us came up with the same method. The neat method only seems to come “after the fact”. Except if you are a Ramanujan and come up with all kinds of gems from who knows where.
Hilarious.
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Putin is now more popular with Americans than two years ago. The establishment will continue to believe they live in an alternate universe. Their thought leader function is quickly approaching zero.
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http://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/02/22/putin-enjoys-a-trump-bump-in-new-gallup-poll/
NYT ran a story today about a company that collects a database of the value of mentions in the news for people. Trump set the all time record in Jan with $817M. The more interesting stat is that he exceeded the next 1000 people combined. I think we may have finally reached the saturation point.
The method I posted works straightforward when the spacing is 1 or 2. But there is an issue I haven’t overcome yet.
So let’s take the sequence to be:
$latex n_j = n_0 + d j,\qquad j = 1, 2, \ldots, J$,
where $latex n_0, d, j$ are all positive integers. We then as for a value $latex x$ such that,
$latex x \, \hbox{rem} \, n_j = j$, for all $latex j$,
where “rem” is the remainder function. Then application of the method I linked above gives:
$latex x = (P – n_0)/d$
where
$latex P = \prod_{j=1}^J n_j$.
The trouble with this method is there is no guarantee for general $latex d$ that $latex P- n_0$ is divisible by $latex d$.
(For $latex d = 1$ and $latex d=2$, it is always divisible.)
The formula needs to be modified when $latex d$ gets large, but I’m not sure how to do it, other than using an iterative method.
I think that (running by seat of the pants here) that there always exists an integer $latex m$ such that
$latex (m P – n_0)\, \hbox{rem} \,d = 0$.
Furthermore when the numbers have common factors, there can be smaller values of $latex x$ that satisfy the relationship. I don’t know immediately how to find these other than by brute force.
[Let’s hope this works, or that I can edit it if it doesn’t.]
Tom Scharf:
Yeah it’s really cool when undemocratically elected, genocidal leaders of semi-authoritarian states, who murder their political opponents as well as journalists who are critical of them, are becoming more popular in the US.
Woo hoo! (*sound of cheering*)
Carrick,
You appear to imagine we think this is ‘cool’, and something to cheer. I’m not sure if you realize that we (well, I, the me part of we anyways) don’t think this is cool. I think it’s remarkable in that it’s a shocking commentary on the extent to which people may be rejecting the liberal ideas of the past decade under Obama. Why do I think this? For goodness sakes, because you’re right. Why the heck is a thug like Putin popular with Americans, unless Americans are fed up. It’s a commentary that perhaps progressivism got out of hand in the eyes of the people.
You don’t have to agree with this idea to realize that we’re not cheering Putin, nor do we think it’s cool that he’s becoming popular.
The Putin approval rate is another example of the partisan divide. As you can see , his popularity exploded amongst Republicans starting with the general election season.
mark bofill: I’m not really sure that being dismayed by somebody like Putin is a liberal value. Nor do I think the growth in his popularity is really a repudiation of Obama.
I think it’s actually more that Trump defends (and seems to like) Putin, so some of his followers start defending and even liking Putin too.
mark bofill:
RB’s numbers say Putin is at -10 now among Republicans. After being around -66. that’s clearly a surge in popularity, or at least in favorability among Republicans, which is a related concept.
Carrick,
You and the rest of the liberal establishment, I guess. It’s as if you’re impervious to the idea that people are sick of .. you’re right. Maybe it’s not liberal ideas. Let’s call it pansyism for the sake of argument.
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1. Obama goes on the Apology World Tour. Would Putin ever do something like that? Heck no.
2. We can’t defeat ISIS with bullets.
3. Transgendered bathroom use is actually an issue.
4. Safe spaces. Triggers. Microagressions.
5. Climate change is the greatest threat to blahblah..
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For goodness sakes! It’s shocking to see that it’s come to this, that people are so sick of the pansyism that they begin to admire somebody like Putin.
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I think this is what it is anyway, maybe I’m totally off base. Would be neither the first nor the last time!
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Thanks Carrick.
mark bofill,
I think it’s a question of partisan allegiance to the dominant perspective as communicated by party leadership. In the case of Putin, I think it’s a top-down phenomenon. Take a look at this graph for perspective.
Putin is for sure a thug who murders or jails his political opponents. There is every reason in the world to think badly of him. ‘Course, there are similar thugs who seem to just about get a pass from the leftist press…. oh, say, that lifelong murderous thug Fidel Castro, or his sidekick ‘shoot-whoever-you-don’t-trust’ Che’. You also have to compare Putin to other contemporary thugs and murders, like the whole of ISIS, the Iranian leadership, all the radical Islamist terrorists who blow up, run over, or knife people at random in Europe and the States, the North Korean leader ‘loony Kim’ (murders his own uncle and brother?!?), and a host of lesser lights in Africa. By comparison to most of those bad guys, Putin is a relatively tame bad guy. Besides, after 8 years of Obama’s Middle East idiocy, Putin is in a better position than we are to get rid of ISIS and rein in the mullahs in Iran. As the say “The enemy of my enemy…”
Wikileaks is similarly more popular with Republicans.
Thanks RB. Heh. I’ve said this before, BlackBoard automated anti-bot defenses don’t want me to simply thank you. (Got a duplication warning!) So I’ll add this.
mark….Um no, I’m not a modern liberal, let alone a member of the liberal establishment.
I do honestly think that most of Putin’s surge in popularity started with Trump’s support of him, and some is probably related to Putin’s perceived interference with US elections (the enemy of my enemy is my friend effect).
Likewise, were Trump were to attack Putin, the conservative numbers would go way down (and liberal numbers would go up moderately).
Notice that RB’s numbers show a moderate drop in popularity of Putin among liberals. I think that can be easily explained by Trump’s apparent support of Putin too. (If the Republicans are for something, the Democrats are against it and vice versus.)
RB,
That graph soundly rebuts my point. So if it’s right (question of fact), then yup. What I was talking about does not explain that.
[Edit: Carrick, I’m sorry, “you and blah blah” I didn’t mean to imply that you were part of blah blah. I meant, you and blah blah. But yup, nothing I said can have anything to do with that graph. Thanks Carrick!]
“blow up, run over, or knife people at random in Europe and the States”
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I left out “shoot”.
SteveF: Yes, Ché Guevara is a good counter point. People who “like” him have no idea who the guy really is.
But I wasn’t arguing Republican fixation on Putin is really evidence of a phenomenon unique to Republicans. I was just saying it’s an outgrowth of their current leader having more favorable opinions of Putin.
I also thought about “the enemy of my enemy”… with respect to putative Russian interference with US elections. Again, if people thought that Putin was blocking HRC from getting elected, and if they really despise HRC, then that probably raises their opinion of Putin too.
I’m not sure how well Putin’s strategy in Syria will end up. I predict long term, it’s be a catastrophe.
Likely Assad will retain control. Likely he will not fix any of the problems that led to their civil war. So conditions there are likely just get even more horrible.
ISIS will not thrive, but I think that’s as much because of their reversal of fortunes in Iraq as it is because of what’s going on in Syria.
mark bofill:
It’s no problem. I do like to talk, so there is that. lol.
Actually Carrick when I looked back at what I said I see that my words were ‘and the rest of’, so it makes more sense for you to take exception to that. I didn’t realize I said that. I don’t think I meant to, but. Who knows at this point.
Regards sir.
Carrick,
If the Devil himself was involved in defeating Hillary, I suspect a lot of people who despise Hillary, and even more, despise the policies she supports, would applaud the Devil. The enemy of my enemy indeed.
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WRT ISIS, I think you underestimate Trump. Yes, Assad (a murderous thug of the highest level) will likely retain some power, though it may be greatly diminished in much of the country compared to before the civil war. I suspect Trump cares very little about the horrible conditions in Syria… they have been horrible for a very long time. He has talked about establishing “safe zones” for civilians (best way to reduce the flood of refugees), but that is about it. But I suspect he will be uncompromising on ISIS, and will insist they be completely wiped out on the ground in Syria and Iraq. He was very clear during the campaign about ISIS, saying (shouting!) many times that ISIS must be destroyed. I doubt that will change.
Carrick, you posted the 5 second method. All the numbers are -5 /2 , so (7x9x11 -5)/2.
I originally solved it the way Harold did, though the formal solution for any numbers is
7*4 =1 mod 9, 9*4=1 mod 7, 7*8=1 mod 11, 11*2=1 mod 7, 9*5=1 mod 11, 11*5=1 mod 9
1*9*4*11*2 + 2*7*4*11*5 + 3*7*8*9*5, first term is 1 mod 7 and 0 mod 9&11, etc.
Trump may not deserve the credit for the defeating of ISIS but it looks like it might happen on his watch .
MikeN: Using my modified second method turns out to work really well, other than you would need to use an arbitrary precision integer package to perform the calculations, if you used very many terms at all.
Here are some code snippets.
My “brute force” algorithm.
Sample output:
The brute force method gives you more solutions, including the smallest integer that satisfies the set of equations.
My “modified method 2”
Sample output:
Carrick,
I’m sure being of boundless historical information retrieval you somehow overlooked this:
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The 1980’s Are Calling, They Want Their Foreign Policy Back
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS2a44F5TgM
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I only mentioned this because it is humorous that the media went into full Russia is evil paranoia mode and that had little public influence. Obviously the Russian factor is yet another fair weather fan issue with partisans.
Conservatives have been trying to get rid of the Department of Education since Reagan. There is very little about K-12 education that requires federal involvement. I’m tempted to say nothing, but could be the feds are needed to defend vouchers and charters against state teachers unions. Budget, $70 billion. Reclaim all but a little of that.
RB,
Who gets credit for an ISIS take down may be debatable, but who gets credit for the rise of ISIS is not. However it’s not like the Middle East has ever been butterflies and rainbows recently, and any President who enters/leaves office with the Middle East on fire is not an exceptional event. The citizens have to own their own behavior at some point.
“[Putin’s] popularity exploded amongst Republicans”. Meh. They don’t need to vote for him. Nothing there says that they like him. He’s one more thug in a world full of thugs. I think Trump has pushed the idea that the conflict between Putin and Europe is not necessarily our problem. So according to that Putin recedes as an enemy, as opposed to, say, ISIS.
Seems to me this is bad statistics. It reminds me of the Team claiming that climate skeptics tend to believe in conspiracy theories, because some of them Strongly Disbelieved slightly less than AGW believers.
Tom Scharf
Media credibility itself shows partisan influence with a bigger shift for Republicans, and a marked one as a result of Trump’s attacks.
The Russian factor is also fueled by IC community leaks that apparently do not involve political appointees.
Tom Scharf,
“Who gets credit for an ISIS take down may be debatable, but who gets credit for the rise of ISIS is not.”
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Indeed… pulling troops out of Iraq lead to ISIS. And let’s not forget the mess in Libya and the loud humming of Kumbaya by the very naive PC folk during the “Arab spring”. At least Trump and future presidents will have a perfect example of what NOT to do in the Middle East.
Tom Scharf: Nobody is replaying the 1980s. However, I don’t think you have a realistic picture of what kind of person Vlad Putin is.
On to another note, the New York Times had a very positive article on the ways in which Donald Trump may transform our labor market—for the better.
SteveF:
Well ISIS was technically already there before we pulled out the troops. They were of course Al Qaeda in Iraq before the resurgence and name change. The pull-out was a major cock-up though.
The other disaster was Obama’s refusal to address the deteriorating situation in Syria. He may even have “aided” the situation by destablizing Assad’s government.
We’re dealing IMO in Obama (and HRC, Obama set a policy, which Clinton failed to execute on top of that) with one of the greatest foreign policies failures since Neville Chamberlain.
History should not be kind to him on this one.
SteveF, We will see what Trump does. He was pretty emphatic in the campaign that he was against major intervention in the Middle East. It is true that ISIS is sufficiently fragile that they might go down with just special forces and air power.
The whole Middle East has no parallel in terms of pervasive violence and bigotry since the 1930’s. I personally believe that no effective strategy can be devised without grasping the nettle and defanging or destroying if not Islam itself, radical Islam. I actually have hopes that Trump might do that. We did that with Nazism and Communism and it worked in both cases. We still have Nazis and Communists but they are truly fringe elements.
Trump’s plan may be just the safe zones, reducing problem of refugees in Europe, and also making ISIS look bad because people don’t want to be with them.
Carrick (Comment #159375) –
“The trouble with this method is there is no guarantee for general d that P- n_0 is divisible by d. (For d = 1 and d=2, it is always divisible.)”
[I’d try to reproduce the Latex notation if edit were available. As it is, no way — I’d butcher it, guaranteed.]
Even if P-n_0 is divisible by d, x = (P-n_0)/d may not be a solution. For example, take d=2, n_0=2, so the divisors are 4,6,8. The three remainder equations are mutually incompatible (actually any 2 are); there are no solutions even though one can show that any solution x would satisfy d*x+n_0 == 0 mod P.
If the divisors are mutually prime, then we know that there must be a solution (exactly one in the range 1..P). But, as you wrote, we only know that it’s one of (m*P-n_0)/d, where m is in {1..d}.
The smallest case (with mutually prime divisors) that I could find where one needed to go beyond m=1 was d=5, n_0=2, so divisors were 7,12, & 17. The solution (x=1142) corresponds to m=4. That is, x=(4*P-n_0)/d, where P=7*12*17=1428.
David Young,
I am not at all sanguine about ‘destroying radical Islam’. The rather freightening Pew research on attitudes in Muslim nations indicates that ‘radical Islam’ is far too broadly supported to be just eliminated. It seems to me the only policy that is workable is making the consequences for being involved in terrorism and supporting terrorism so terrible that Muslims will choose not to persue or support it.
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WRT Trump and ISIS, yes, he is clearly reluctant to put a lot of troops on the ground, especially to do ‘nation building’, which he thinks is a waste of both blood and treasure. A brief attack to do nothing but kill the bad guys (ISIS) and anyone foolish enough to be anywhere near them would be very different from ‘nation building’; It would send a clear message: the cost for supporting terrorism is very high.
SteceF: “It seems to me the only policy that is workable is making the consequences for being involved in terrorism and supporting terrorism so terrible that Muslims will choose not to persue or support it. … A brief attack to do nothing but kill the bad guys (ISIS) and anyone foolish enough to be anywhere near them would be very different from ‘nation building’; It would send a clear message: the cost for supporting terrorism is very high.”
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Harsh. But true. That is the path I hope Trump chooses.
Carrick,
Everyone knows who Putin is by his demonstrated behavior over decades. A power hungry untrustworthy thug who will do anything to further Russian interests and exploit his opponent’s weaknesses. It must be noted the Russian people love him for it. The right has been in Russia is evil mode for my entire life and it curious to watch opposing sides trade arguments so swiftly and easily on a subject that was very rigid.
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Russia is just like every other country, we should cooperate with them when it furthers our interests, but they are in a special “trust but verify” category.
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What I find entertaining is how much Putin has managed to get under the skin of the US from such a disadvantageous position. He may be a lot of things, but he has been pretty successful at geopolitics recently. His ability needs to be respected but he only understands push back in the form of economic and military might.
HaroldW: Thanks for that.
So it appears that if $latex n_0 > 1$ and $latex n_0$ is a factor of $latex d$, the equations are always incomptable.
There are even choices where a solution for $latex (m P – n_0) \, \hbox{rem}\, d = 0$ with $latex m = 1, \ldots d$ does not exist, for example $latex n_0 = 2, d = 4, J=3$.
If general, if $latex d > 1$ is factor of $latex P$, then $latex (m P – n_0) \, \hbox{rem}\, d$ is always $latex n_0$. This only happens when $latex n_0 >1$ is the only prime factor of $latex d$.
But I’d guess the fastest way to see if the equations are compatable is to first check to if there’s a solution to the equation for $latex x$, and then verify that this solution satisfies the original equations.
Tom Scharf: History will judge how successful Putin has been. In terms of propaganda successes, he’s faired well. In terms of actual shift of the strategic balance, I think the story is still being written on that one.
Tom Scharf, re Putin: “he has been pretty successful at geopolitics recently. His ability needs to be respected”.
Much was made above about a poll showing that 32% of Republicans have a “favorable” opinion of Putin. What does that mean when applied to a foreign leader, such as Putin, or May, or Trudeau? (Real question, but I am not sure there is an answer.) It may be that many with a “favorable” opinion of Putin are merely saying that they respect his ability.
Russian historians or US historians? Ha ha.
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Putin wants his Soviet Union back, that’s his goal. Turn our backs for a minute and the tanks will roll across the border. I took a tour of Eastern Europe and it was pretty clear the locals are in no mood for that to happen again.
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Things do need a little perspective. Russia (not USSR) lost 14M people in WWII, 12.7% of its population. The US lost 0.3% and no infrastructure. Putin’s father was severely wounded in the war. They kind of feel like they earned Eastern Europe the hard way.
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If you look at the war from their side, it is humiliating how the US views the war as if the US paid a big price. The subsequent economic collapse of the Soviet Union and “losing” the Cold War further enrages him no doubt.
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I wouldn’t poke this bear with a ten foot pole. If people are worried about some crazy person launching nukes, I would put Putin at number 1 on that list.
Mike M,
It’s unclear why the right has shifted position, but my guess is this is entirely due to domestic politics and this election cycle. Obviously since Putin got Trump elected he is the good guy to 63M people, ha ha. Anyone who embarrasses Clinton and the DNC was the right’s friend. I doubt this will be sustained but I could be wrong.
McMaster’s book “Dereliction of Duty” is excellent. Available for kindle. looks like paperback edition is sold out. This guy writes well and thinks clearly. His presence in Trump’s shop gives me very great confidence that nothing untoward will be done in the areas subject to his purview.
Not only that but the disruption which I think is needed in many of our polices, especially ones not rethought in twenty years may be well focused and maybe more effective with his input.
Bravo to Trump for another good hire.
It’s pretty clear that Russia’s interests revolve more immediately around Crimea and the sanctions. Crimea is an important naval base of strategic importance to Russia. It was part of Russia from 1783 and gifted to Ukraine in 1954 by Khrushchev as a friendly gesture. He obviously did not anticipate the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Tom Scharf
All of these polls on Putin’s favorability, media credibility, trust in Trump over Republican leaders show that Trump is indeed persuasive to those he is targeting. Putin’s favorability gap between Republicans and Democrats is likely to last for as long as Trump is in favor.
Tom Scharf:
If he doesn’t get his economy back on track, “any and all economists”:
Crash of the Russian ruble, an economic downturn driven by over-reliance on oil, which Putin has done little to fix, his foreign adventures leading to increased isolation with Europe and even to economic sanctions, foreign brain-drain, a breakdown of law and order in Russia (which Putin has contributed to with his own “cowboy” acts), leave me with the picture of a country in serious crisis.
J Ferguson: The sudden surge in book sales of “Dereliction of Duty” is just another example of Trump’s cronies “cashing in” on the publicity surrounding his presidency.
I kid.
[I wonder though how long it’ll take some asshat journalist to write an opinion pretty much saying just that.]
I agree though—McMaster is a home run for Trump’s presidency. (The first being Mike Pence, IMO.)
Carrick (or anyone else interested in that shortcut) –
I made a brief spreadsheet to look into this for 3 divisors. Using your notation,
d = spacing between divisors
n0 = “zero’th” divisor = least divisor (n1) – d
To recapitulate, the problem is to find x such that
x mod n1 = 1
x mod n2 = 2
x mod n3 = 3
where n1=n0+d, n2=n1+d, n3=n2+d
P is the product of the divisors = n1*n2*n3
My conclusions:
(1) There are no solutions if n0 and d have a factor in common.
(2) If n0 & d are co-prime, there is exactly one solution within {1..P}, of the form x=(mP-n0)/d, where m is an integer in the range {1..d}.
(3) The “shortcut” method gives the correct answer when m=1.
(4) Value of m, as a table indexed by d and (n0 mod d). A “-” indicates no solution. Note that the column (n0 mod d)=0 only has “-“, in keeping with rule (1).
……n0 mod d
d….0 1 2 3 4 5 …
2….- 1
3….- 1 1
4….- 1 – 1
5….- 1 4 4 1
6….- 1 – – – 1
7….- 1 2 4 4 2 1
8….- 1 – 1 – 1 – 1
9….- 1 7 – 4 4 – 7 1
10…- 1 – 9 – – – 9 – 1
11…- 1 3 5 9 4 4 9 5 3 1
(5) Observation: The above table has left-right symmetry (skipping the “0” column).
(6) Speculation: The formula for m is m = inverse (mod d) of n0^2
Blogs can be (and fo Lucia,is) a great combination of politics, science, and general knowledge.
‘General knowledge’ranges from fruit flies to climate sciencentists.
HaroldW—thanks!
Really cool stuff.
HaroldW, Carrick, wouldn’t the solution just be (n1*n2*n3-n0)/d?
RE Putin and Russia: We did a lot of research in Russia around 2000 and at one point had hundreds of Russians working on various projects. There was always a problem with safety of American personnel working there and with corruption. My take away was that Russian culture was fundamentally corrupt. There seemed to be no overriding concepts of honesty or openness. In such a culture, simple self interest is the guiding principle for everything. That would I think explain why the Russian government has gradually drifted back to autocracy. The Orthodox church seemed much more supine with regard to worldly matters than the modern Catholic church or Protestant churches and to have no impact on politics and little impact on cultural norms. I could be wrong here but that was my conclusion.
MikeN (#159422) –
Sometimes. Look up the value in the table of #159418, based on the spacing of the divisors (d), and the remainder of the divisors mod d. If the entry is [m=]1, then your solution is correct. Since you started this train of thought with a problem which has d=2 and odd divisors (n0 mod d=1), that entry is in fact 1, and your formula gives the correct answer.
But try doing the same thing for divisors 7,12,17. [d=5, n0=2; table entry is 4.] Your solution would be x=(1428-2)/5, not an integer. Correct solution is x=(4*1428-2)/5=1142. The clever shortcut doesn’t work for all combinations.
HaroldW,
That’s cool. Would it be fair to say that x=(m*P-n0)/d for the first m that gives an integer solution?
I guess you are saying so …
RB: “Would it be fair to say that x=(m*P-n0)/d for the first m that gives an integer solution?”
Yes. If the solution exists. There are choices of n0 and d, for which $latex (m \, P-n_0) \,\hbox{rem}\, d \ne 0$ for any integer m.
Also, simply because you find a value of x that satisfies this equation, doesn’t mean $latex x \,\hbox{rem}\, n_j = 1$ is satisfied.
With all of the attention on Putin’s influence in the US (some of it deserved), it is useful to look at Johnny Chung, the Chinese fundraiser who illegally funneled money to Bill Clinton, with the assistance of Hilary. Appears to be really sordid. Amazing that the legacy media never noticed this story (that I am aware of) during the 2016 campaign See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4251046/Illegal-Clinton-fundraiser-tape-fearing-life.html
Various excerpts from the article:
…..
“‘And so, with assistance from the former government official, Johnny Chung produced an elaborate videotaped testimony that was secreted to friends and family to be forwarded to the media in the case of his death.’
Chung described on the tape how Democrats on the House Committee on Government Reform tried to dissuade him from testifying publicly before the committee by sending his attorney a letter telling him he could plead the Fifth Amendment.
Chung said his attorney thought the letter was ‘ludicrous’ and a veiled threat from Washington Democrats that they wanted Chung to stay quiet.
[Sickly humorous that govt “reform” committee would try to encourage a witness to take the Fifth. From a legal standpoint, such a request is astounding]
….
“The FBI in Los Angeles began providing around-the-clock protection for him. But just a few days before Chung was scheduled to testify before a grand jury, the FBI headquarters in Washington called off the protection detail and told Chung he would have to make the trip alone.
In the secret videotaped statement, Chung claimed the Department of Justice dismissed his safety concerns – with one U.S. attorney telling him to ‘call 911’ if he felt threatened.
‘I called the FBI office and offered to [speak with] the US assistant attorney again on the phone,’ said Chung.
‘And he said ‘Mr. Chung your case is over. As a normal American citizen what do you do if you feel your life is in danger? You just call 911.”
…..
” In total he visited the White House 57 times in a two-year span – eight of these meetings were ‘off the books.’
Most of the meetings were with Hillary Clinton or her staff. During one of these trips, Chung personally handed a $50,000 check to Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff Maggie Williams.
Chung even helped arrange for Bill Clinton to meet with the source of the money – a top Chinese military official – at a Los Angeles fundraiser.”
…..
“During Chung’s case, DNC officials claimed he misled them and urged the judge to give him a harsh sentence. But the judge declined, and even noted in the sentencing statement that it was ‘strange’ nobody from the DNC was prosecuted for accepting the illegal funds.
‘It’s very strange that the giver pleads guilty and the givee gets off free,’ said U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real.
Judge Real also said the leaders of the DNC were ‘two of the dumbest politicians I’ve ever seen’ if they were not aware of the campaign funding scheme.
He blasted U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno for failing to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Democratic involvement in the scandal.”
…..
“”Although Ng [Also tied to the Chinese govt. & Bill Clinton] avoided prosecution at the time, he reappeared at a New York airport carrying a suitcase of cash in 2015, and was arrested for allegedly bribing a United Nations official. He is currently under house arrest at his $3 million Manhattan apartment awaiting trial.
The UN official who allegedly accepted the bribes, John Ashe, 61, was unexpectedly killed by a barbell while lifting weights last summer.
In his book, Wead reports that the New York FBI office wanted to investigate Ng’s connections to the Clintons last year, but the case was shut down by the Obama administration’s Department of Justice.”
JD
I’m glad Bill and Hillary are not around to torment us anymore. Since they aren’t, perhaps we can quit playing that tape and move on…
(We also need to take care to not employ tu quoque arguments.)
Carrick: As the left did in blaming George Bush for virtually everything that went wrong in Obama’s first term and later, it will for at least the next 4 years argue that Putin swayed the election and that Trump was illegitimately elected. I don’t know that Putin actually swayed the election, but if people are going to make that argument (and falsely claim the moral high ground) they need to look at the legacy media and how it savaged Trump and ignored obvious Hilary Clinton stories as well as stories of Democratic corruption. Honestly, until I read this story, it would have been unimaginable for me to consider that an investigatory committee would tell a witness to take the 5th and effectively hide evidence.
….
I would like to put the election behind us, but the Left undoubtedly will not. (It always claimed that Bush stole the election from Gore) That being the case, the Left needs to be reminded of the cockroaches in its own house. Additionally, it is very significant to the election that Obama told the FBI not to investigate NG in the summer of 2016.
JD
JD: I just don’t see much to be gained in these playing old tapes over and over again.
Trump’s president now, not HRC. The buck stops with him, not HRC, and not the DNC. The liberal press is going to savage Trump just like the conservative press savaged Obama and HRC. Nothing new under the sun there.
JD, this is I suspect why Bob Dole was the only Republican nominee to support Trump. Rather than cover the story, the media mocked him for saying, “Where’s the outrage?”
I’d like to see Trump undo the national monument Clinton did during his re-election for Riady.
Carrick: ” The liberal press is going to savage Trump just like the conservative press savaged Obama and HRC.”
….
No comparison. The press is about 90% liberal, and liberal press was much harder on Trump than the conservative press was on Obama. Here is what Charles Blow recently said in Cleveland: “The widely read New York Times columnist called the president “a 70-year-old toddler,” “pathological liar,” “the Grand Wizard of birtherism against President Obama” and “a demi-fascist.” See http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2017/02/new_york_times_columnist_charl.html
He said Trump has “assembled one of the least-educated cabinets in recent history,” and his appointments are “agents of idiocracy.”
….
The reference to the KKK is particularly loathsome and despicable on top of his childish name calling, which just highlights his inability to think logically. In any event, when the Left gives some grudging respect to Trump’s election we can forget about Clinton and the grossly biased legacy media. Don’t hold your breath.
JD
RB: “Would it be fair to say that x=(m*P-n0)/d for the first m that gives an integer solution?”
I hadn’t noticed this (but Carrick did), and it seems to be true that other values of m (within {1..d}) don’t produce integer values of x.
This presumes that you’ve already established that n0 & d are co-prime. When they have a common factor, it’s sometimes the case that multiple values of m produce integer values of x by that formula. But none of those x’s satisfy the remainder constraints (that is, there are remainders of 1,2,3 resp. for the 3 divisors).
I also want to correct my rule (2) of prior comment#159418. I wrote that there’s a unique x in {1..P} which satisfies the remainder equations. This isn’t quite correct. There’s a unique m in {1..d} such that x=(mP+n0)/d is a solution. [Positing that n0 & d are co-prime so that there *is* a solution.] However, every number of the form x+k*X, where k is an integer and X is the least common multiple of the divisors, also is a solution. If divisors have one or more common factors — that is, the l.c.m. X is less than the product P — then there will be multiple solutions in the range {1..P}.
Carrick: “JD: I just don’t see much to be gained in these playing old tapes over and over again.”
….
I knew that Chung had made illegal contributions. Had no idea that he was asked to plead the 5th by the Congressional Committee or that Clinton’s administration stopped protecting him and told him to call 911 if he had problems right before he was to testify. Didn’t know that the recipients of his contributions were not charged. This is the first time that I am aware of these sordid, awful details and that Hilary was substantially involved. These activities should have been publicized during the campaign by the media, but of course, were not covered.
JD
Back to the education topic – The NYTimes has published an opinion piece claiming that vouchers have a negative — “dismal” — effect on performance.
“Putin wants his Soviet Union back, that’s his goal. Turn our backs for a minute and the tanks will roll across the border.” Pardon, but absolutely ridiculous. Don’t know if you’re too young to remember the Soviet Union. It was a credible threat to take over the world. Putin is a credible threat to be a real pain to his neighbors in the area. He wants to gain advantage in various local disputes, as Russia has traditionally done for hundreds of years.
This makes as much sense to me as thinking that AGW is the biggest issue the human race faces. An issue, but there are many bigger issues, and flipping out over one issue makes it impossible to deal with the rest properly.
‘The NYTimes has published an opinion piece claiming that vouchers have a negative — “dismal†— effect on performance.’
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/research-suggests-education-reforms-after-hurricane-katrina-worked/
I think I can trust 538 when they say that the conservatives are right!
The liberal press is going to savage (fill in the blank) Republican president. This is truly a boy who cried wolf story, as much as that phrase is overplayed. They have been forced to turn up the volume louder every election cycle in my lifetime to make it seem that (fill in the blank) Republican president is the worst one ever and it is not even close because (fill in the blank) Republican president is Hitler. At some point it is just screaming noise, and that is what it was this election cycle (and continues to be). Sure, they were really, really, really, serious THIS TIME.
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The wolf ate the sheep, the Trump got elected. Will the boy learn the moral of the story? They probably had a huge revenue boost over the election cycle so the incentives don’t suggest they will.
MikeR,
I think vouchers done correctly will improve outcomes. But people do need to think about controls. For example the NYTimes article writes
It’s possible that they were declining in enrollment because they had problems. It would be useful for private schools to be required to have at least 1 year of history of student score performance before being allowed to enroll students with vouchers. It does not take long for schools to do collect this data. They would need to subject their students to tests as soon as they decide to apply to the program. Schools whose student performance is doesnt meet some reasonable standard (possibly relative to neighboring schools) should not be allowed in.
On this argument
I would say even if standardized tests aren’t perfect measures, they are a measure — and its the measure that can be taken fairly quickly. Measures like “graduation rate” from high school or “college attendance” are both very important but take much longer to collect.
I think private schools allowed to participate in voucher programs should be required to demonstrate their students achieve decent test scores. Just as public schools should be required to do.
I think there should be some wiggle room in evaluating the scores before closing a school. Obviously, if you have two schools one will have better scores than the other. Whether that’s the private, public or charter school, you don’t close the one with lower scores automatically. But there needs to be some minimum cut-off (perhaps, once again, based demographics of the area). And there needs to be transparency about the scores so parents can choose.
But truly under performing schools need to close, be reorganized and so on. In the case of private schools, that should just mean “not eligible for vouchers until they get their scores up”. It’s the easiest one to deal with.
In all: I don’t think these studies should deter implementing vouchers. I think it should motivate people to make sure that private schools can only enter if they can show their student scores are already up to snuff. For an initiating program, I think 1 year of data is enough. Which student test metrics are used can be debated (e.g. high school might, perhaps, be allowed to use ACT, SAT, AP as a start. Then once in be required to have their kids take the same tests public school kids take to remain in the voucher program.)
MikeR,
Don’t know if you are too young to remember the mysterious unmarked force that took over parts of the Ukraine recently, ha ha. Georgia. Syria. If he could retake Eastern Europe, he very likely would. He can’t because of NATO, not because of his goodwill. I don’t think we need to do anything, but if NATO abandoned protection of eastern Europe I think tank production would go up in Russia. NATO won’t end protection. But make no mistake that western Europe is too soft to stop the Ruskies on their own. Would the US really commit ground troops to protect Belarus? A war with the Russians will not be an antiseptic Gulf War, there will be real casualties.
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I lived through some of the Cold War, so that is probably why my Russia paranoia is higher than most. ISIS is nothing compared to the fear in those days. These guys still have heaps of nuclear weapons and had the nastiest biological weapons program ever. They are run by a shady ex-KGB agent who is willing to take risks.
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Russia is economically crippled and has an aging 2nd rate military. They still are #2 in international arms sales. It is unlikely we will get in a war with Russia, but Russia is a dangerous child from the wrong side of town holding a gun.
Graduation rates should be looked at with a grain of salt, they can be manipulated pretty easily. Standardized test are a very good tool as long as they are kept statistically valid and test the right things.
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I always laughed at the “teach to the test” criticism because if the test was done correctly it is a perfectly valid and desirable method. The opposite of that is chaos and teach whatever you want with no accountability which works when you have great teachers, but can fail disastrously otherwise.
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In the end you always have a building with teachers and kids and the kids matter. It is dogma that one can’t examine the kids as opposed to funding, methods, teachers, etc. We have spent 40 years throwing money at schools with almost nothing to show for it. Maybe we are at near optimum or the point of diminishing returns?
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https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/wp-content/uploads/Cato-tot-cost-scores-Coulson-Sept-2012-sm.gif
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https://nationsreportcard.gov/ltt_2012/summary.aspx
Tom Scharf
Of course.
I agree with one caveat: This years precise exam need to be with-held from teachers. Because obviously, you don’t want the teacher to just present those exact questions to the students and then have the students more or less memorize those.
But having tests with predictable content and format but individual questions secret until the test is exactly what is done with NY Regents, AP exams and so on.
WRT to “teaching to the test”: Those tests are actually mostly pretty good and test whether the students learned the material in the curricula chosen. The choice of topics for the tests is by the test maker– so it does take away latitude from the teacher. That is: someone teaching AP Phys C “mechanics” who decides to skip “vibrations” and “rotational dynamics” and substitute “hydrostatics and fluid mechanics” will see students fail at quite high rates even if those students learned something important.
More importantly, teachers who decide they believe they are teaching their kids “critical thinking” without worrying about whether the kids learn those pesky oh so trivial “facts” will get dinged. (Yes. Critical thinking is important. But it can’t be done well without having quite a few facts in long term memory. Interesting essay here:
http://www.ollielovell.com/pedagogy/facts-important-critical-thinking/ )
But…well… so?
Our physics tests didn’t allow cheat sheets for formulas. So I had to go the ridiculous route of memorizing formulas right before the test and the moment the test started I turned the test over and wrote all the formulas on the back of the test. Learning at its finest.
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I unfortunately pretty much just tried the game the system getting through college. Briefly suck in knowledge, regurgitating it on a test, and forgetting it. If I actually learned anything along the way I guess that was OK too but not a priority. Certain teachers can make you think whether you like it or not.
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The US has arguably produce more innovative thinkers than their Asian counterparts who are much more disciplined and rigid in their academics. The causation here is hard to quantify, but is an argument against going too “Asian” in academics.
“Don’t know if you are too young to remember the mysterious unmarked force that took over parts of the Ukraine recently, ha ha. Georgia. Syria.” I think I was fairly precise: “[The Soviet Union] was a credible threat to take over the world. Putin is a credible threat to be a real pain to his neighbors in the area.”
There are a lot of thugs out there. Doesn’t make them a threat to the whole world.
Worst Physics Teacher Ever. True Story.
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Physics II. One of 4 semester tests. Get test back and note that one problem was incorrectly graded, no credit for correct graph. Turn in for a regrade.
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Teacher puts all regraded tests up front in class and I note mine is missing. On inquiry I am told to see him in his office.
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Teacher: “I’m disappointed the test you turned in for a regrade is not the same as the original test”.
Me: WTF????
Teacher: “I took a magnifying glass to your graph and you can clearly see your pencil markings are over the top of big red X pen mark on the graph. You changed your graph after the test”. He hands me the test and magnifying glass. I’m being accused of academic fraud.
Me: Examining the graph, what he says is true, my graph pencil markings appear to be above the red X mark.
Teacher: “I’m sending this the dept chair and I will let you know what we are going to do”.
Me: Panic. Being of not so sound mind and highly questionable maturity I explode with a stream of expletives and denials that can be fairly described as foaming at the mouth and walk out.
Teacher: Stunned look, not expecting that response.
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One week later. Called back to his office.
Teacher: “I have further investigated this using a microscope and am giving you credit for the problem”.
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What happened? It’s physics related! The answer in the next post.
Lots of high school teachers still make the kids memorize the formulas. But the AP gives the cheat sheet– which I think is fine.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with allowing cheat sheets in physics. I don’t think its tremendously important that a kid memorize whether the “Ï€” belongs in the denominator of the formula for magnetic field around a current carrying wire vs the one for a field in the center of a coil.
That said: Teachers might be wise to not allow the cheat sheets during the tests of each topics. So that when the kids were doing kinematics, the would memorized the kinematics questions. Memorizing helps student do questions more quickly and accurately– and even help them recognize the correct set of equations from the cheat sheet later on.
But I tend to think: give the sheet. Just the way the AP does. And give them a “practice final” they can work with the sheet. On the first set of tests the number of formulas to be memorized is small. But on the final test its rather large and, really, physics isn’t about memorizing. And I don’t see any harm in the student being allowed to double check which of the following has a 2 vs. 1/2
Δx = vo t + 1/2 a t2 vs
vf2 = vo2 + 2 a Δx
In fact with respect to learning: once practicing, many people memorize only those equations in their field. So for example: finishing in ME, I knew relevant equations for fluids and strengths of materials, But I certainly no longer had memorized the formula for “Biot-Savart” law and certainly would not be able to say whether any particular constant like Ï€, μ and etc. appeared in it.
I’m not for going “Asian” in academics particularly to the extent that that might mean things like “Kumon”. But there is a point of ridiculousness where no one is expecting anyone to know anything.
After getting the test back I noted he had made a new series of test markings on the second page of the test with his red pen. Turns out graphite is rather slippery, providing precious little friction for the ball in the ball point pen to rotate. Thus the pen markings stop at the graphite line and restart once over it, making it appear the pen mark is under the pencil mark. Never got an apology, probably because of the rather unkind assertions I made the previous week.
I don’t know. Does graphite diffuse?
That was his explanation to me for the mistake, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was another more correct answer. I never verified it. I could see on the second page where he used different pens with different levels of pressure over another pencil marking for his tests. No pen over pencil. As with everything there may be other conditions such as ink type, pen type, pencil type that yield other answers.
I’ve got a few more:
1) River going east-west. Cowboy is 3 miles north of river, his house is 2 miles south and 2 miles east of him. What is the shortest distance he can travel to reach home while stopping his horse at the river?
2) How many zeros at the end of 1000!?
MikeN:
1) 2*sqrt(5) ~= 4.47 miles (~7.2 km if he’s riding a metric horse)
2) 249
Um, surely the question of whether pen is under pencil is an extremely simple thing to work out. Pen is decidedly more permanent than pencil. Lack of friction for the ball or simply the ink couldn’t adhere seem likely possibilities. It would be like trying to write on a powdered surface.
I thought it was actually pretty neat of the teacher to doubt himself based on Tom’s reaction and do some experimenting to see if he’d made a mistake. That doesn’t seem all that common.
Odd. I got sqrt(29) or 5.385164807 Miles. I got this by locating house 2 miles east of cowboy and 2 miles south of river. sqrt((3+2)^2+2^2)
Horses have exactly 4 feet therefore cannot be metric.
HaroldW’s solution seems to be sqrt(1+0.25)+sqrt(9+2.25). There probably is a minimization expression that yields this.
I used j ferguson’s trick: consider a house located at the mirror location south of the river. Distance from the watering spot to the image house is the same as to the real house. Shortest path to the image house is a straight line. Image house is 1 mile south of the river, so 4 miles south, 2 east of starting location. Distance is sqrt (4^2+2^2)=sqrt (20).
Hah, Harold, got me.
ah yes, that’s neat. incidentally maintains a 1:3 ratio for various distances along diagonal and horizontal.
Just realized something. If the horse travels 50% faster (say) after getting water, finding the minimum- *time* path is the same problem as refraction from a medium with n=1.5 to n=1.
Unfortunately, that gets into calculator territory, not something I can do in my head.
P.S. jferguson (159460): 😄
Wow HaroldW, who would have thought this an optics problem?
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There’s likely another issue which is the horse’s thirst. Anyone who has any experience with a thirsty horse will know that the horse will take the shortest route to the river and then to the house where presumably the barn is. There’s even an expression for it, ‘heading for the barn’. Does anyone else here have direct experience with a horse heading to the barn?
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So if I don’t screw up the numbers this time, were looking at 3 miles plus sqrt(2^2+1) or 5.236067977 miles.
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I think this sort of thing is what makes word problems so treacherous.
j ferguson:
Well, technically it didn’t start as an optics problem. You said initially “shortest distance”, which is not geometric optics, but it still can be cast as a variational problem.
When HaroldW effectively started talking “least time” is when geometric optics showed up.
The problem he is describing is still a variational problem, which could be expressed as find the value of x which minimizes d(x):
$latex d(x) = \sqrt{3^2 + x^2} + \sqrt{1 + (2-x)^2}$,
which turns out to be $latex x = 3/2$, and $latex d(x) = 2\sqrt{5} \cong 4.472$.
HaroldW is using the “mirror image” of the barn to speed up the calculation (this relies on the angle that the horse makes with respect to the river being the same when leaving the river as approaching the river, for the shortest path).
When he stated the horse walks 50% faster after drinking, I’m assuming he was thinking of “what is the path that minimizes the time it takes the horse to get home”. In that case, we’re trying to minimize the time rather than the distance:
$latex T(x) = \sqrt{3^2 + x^2}/v_0 + \sqrt{1 + (2-x)^2}/v_1$,
or equivalently, we want to minimize
$latex v_0 T(x) = \sqrt{3^2 + x^2} + (2/3) \sqrt{1 + (2-x)^2}$
if we assume $latex v_1 = (3/2) v_0$.
The only easy way I know to do this, is numerically. This gives $latex x \cong 1.275$ and the new net distance is about 4.495 (versus 4.472 before).
Here is a sketch of the more general problem.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4520911/Math/Horse1.png
I’m using the distances from the river, rather than from the starting point, because the algebra is simpler that way.
It’s basically an undergraduate (calculus based) physics problem to show the value of $latex x$ which minimizes $latex d(x)$ is
$latex x = {h_1\over h_1 + h_2} w$,
that
$latex d_{\hbox{\it min}} = \sqrt{(h_1+h_2)^2 + w^2}$,
and that therefore
$latex \theta_i = \theta_r$.
If you start with the law of reflection (equal angles), you can derive trivially that
$latex x/h_1 = w/(h_1 + h_2)$
from the Law of Similar Triangle, as well as the formula for the minimum distance.
Horses are… complicated.
Carrick beat me to Fermat’s principle. Another link here .
RB, thanks. That’s a good reference and explains how to use Fermat’s principle to derive the laws of reflection and refraction (Snell’s law).
We could turn also turn this into a classic ray-tracing optics problem, by imagine that the horse’s speed is limited by the inverse of the slope of the terrain. As a toy model, we could choose the speed over a given terrain to be:
$latex v(\alpha) = {v_0 \over 1 + \tan^2\alpha}$ ,
where $latex \alpha$ is the local slope of the terrain. Equivalently in terms of the index of refraction, we have:
$latex n(\alpha) = v_0/v(\alpha) = 1 + \tan^2\alpha$.
(For $latex \alpha = 30^\circ$, $latex v = (3/4) v_0$ and the index of refraction is 4/3.)
As an illustration, suppose we have the horse starting $latex h_1$ from the river, then crosses the river after drinking and travels an addition $latex h_2$ south of the river to its home. The horizontal distance is $latex w$ as before.
Here’s a sketch of what I’m talking about:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4520911/Math/Horse2.png
That turns into a classic minimization problem. Again, I don’t know any way off hand to do this (without Mathematica or a spare week to do the algebra) other than by numerical methods (which is trivial and fast to do).
Finding the shortest (in time) path of a horse over varied terrain becomes what is called a “ray tracing” problem. There are a slew of methods for solving this, usually it involves assuming that the index of refraction varies smoothly, so that you end up with a relatively simple equation to solve.
Carrick, RB –
Yes, that’s exactly what I was thinking of. Thanks Carrick for the diagram of the image trick. Thinking of that, the path to the river and then the barn is analogous to a reflected ray, while the path to the image barn is like a transmitted ray, with the river representing an interface, such as the surface where two pieces of glass meet. Then I thought of moving the watering point (x in Carrick’s equation) left or right, and the path to the image barn is now similar to a refracted ray. The second diagram shows that very well, illustrating a minimum-time path when the horse goes slower after drinking. Or in the optical analogue, the index of refraction is greater in the lower half of the picture. RB, thanks for reminding me of the name of Fermat’s Principle.
I can’t say I know the nature of horses as jferguson does. Perhaps they’ll just head straight for the water regardless of calculus optimizations. One should also allow for the wall which is built next to the river — paid for by the horses, of course.
HaroldW,
Yeah, I’m afraid I had the traditional”air above, water below” bias when I drew that. However, the path I drew wasn’t intended to be necessarily the path with the shortest travel time.
For this particular problem, Snell’s Law:
$latex n_1 \sin \theta_1 = n_2 \sin \theta_2$
doesn’t help that much. It’s as convenient to use Fermat’s Principle (Principle of Least Time) as it is to use optics laws to figure out how to optimize our horse’s path.
The general least-time formulation looks like:
$latex v_0 T(x) = n_1 \sqrt{h_1^2 + x^2} + n_2\sqrt{h_2 + (w-x)^2}$.
It’s pretty efficiently just to evaluate $latex x$ from 0 to $latex w$ to find the optimal path.
Snell’s Law falls out trivially from this formula, by the way:
You just set $latex T'(x) = 0$, solve for $latex x$, then identify $latex \sin\theta_i$ and $latex \sin\theta_r$ in the resulting terms.
Employing Snell’s Law ends up just being exactly equivalent to computing $latex T'(x)$ then solving for $latex x$. You get:
$latex {n_1}^2 x^2 \left({h_2}^2+(w-x)^2\right)-{n_2}^2 \left({h_1}^2+x^2\right) (w-x)^2 = 0.$
Trouble is, this equation is quartic in $latex x$. That’s actually a fairly messy equation to solve.
Anyway, it’s probably better to just use a minimum finder for $latex T(x)$. (Bisection method is pretty fast here.)
Problems with more complex geometry (irregular shaped hill in middle of path for example), will need a general raytracing algorithm, and may even admit to multiple “near optimal” solutions.
SteveF & J. Ferguson,
….
In past posts, you have indicated that both of your daughters were academically accomplished. With respect to my 15-year-old son, it is easy to give him direction because he thinks about 95% the same as me. (I have encouraged him to improve his writing and take statistics). However, my daughter’s mind is roughly 70% the same as mine. I don’t really get why she is bored with her hair color and wants to have it dyed for example. I can understand that this is not atypical 11-year-old girl behavior, but I really don’t understand why. Same with respect to painting her nails all of the time.
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In any event, she is effortlessly raising her test scores substantially, and just told me yesterday that her gifted English class [requiring her to be in the top 5%, which she just started in January] was easy. (She has scored in the top 11% in math recently) If either of you, or others with experience here, have any suggestions as to how I might gently guide my daughter into the best situations for her academically, and ultimately career-wise, I would appreciate it.
JD
JD Ohio,
My experience is that such guidance, no matter how offered, may not be (almost certainly will not be?) well received. All I can counsel is to tell her what you honestly think and why, but be prepared to be very patient with her choices in most all things.
FWIW, I suspect that kids raised in relative financial security (as opposed to relative insecurity) tend not to be as career conscious as their parents might like. As a pre-teen and teenager I was painfully aware of my parents’ financial struggles, and for me avoiding those struggles was extremely important. That meant making sure I could find a good job. Most of my kids have never had that kind of fire in their belly.
JD,
Don’t worry about the hair color. 🙂
Also don’t worry about her career choices until she’s at least 15. Not sure I’d advise “worrying” even when she’s 17. The vast majority of kids change their minds in some way or the other before 15– and most even after.
Just focus on making progress in school and emphasize flexibility. She will have more choices if she picks more challenging classes. This includes choices you would not make (and which in the end she may not make.)
How old is she?
Hi SteveF: I am not really planning on pushing her hard on anything. Rather, I would give gentle encouragement. For instance, last summer, she was bored in China during her 6-week stay. She had been pestering me for 18 months about getting an IPhone. I told her that I would get her an IPhone when she came back, and she was pretty happy. (and not resentful of my efforts to refresh her Chinese and spend time with her Chinese family)
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So, on my end, I am interested in hearing about the experiences of others with daughters who have good academic skills. For instance, what were the biggest mistakes your daughter made and her biggest successes, looking back? My daughter is fairly receptive to incentives (others here would call them bribes), and there is a reasonable chance if I approach her gently and subtly, I can help her avoid mistakes that others have made.
JD
Lucia: “don’t worry about her career choices until she’s at least 15. Not sure I’d advise “worrying†even when she’s 17. The vast majority of kids change their minds in some way or the other before 15– and most even after.” [She is 11]
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I agree with that, and I am totally fine if, for instance, it would take until her junior year of college before she would have a good idea of her career. I am more concerned that if she foregoes certain classes (let’s say chemistry), that later on she may regret not being able to apply for instance, to medical school or dental school. In her case, reading and writing is like eating candy. On the other hand, she has to work a bit at math. I would add that she has a good amount of scientific curiosity. (For instance, about 2 weeks ago, she asked when does a beam of light end.) My general approach is to maximize my children’s strengths, but I would hate for her to skip math or chemistry because she doesn’t like it that much when she is in high school, and then have her regret her decision later.
JD
I agree with your view. She needs to take math. She may become fascinated with economics for all you know. Or sociology. Or psychology. Business. Or any number of other things. Math is very important to those.
Heck: math is important to pattern drafting for making beautiful clothes!
Overall: no math is limiting. So– at least through high school she needs to take that even if it’s painful.
Lucia: “She needs to take math. She may become fascinated with economics for all you know. Or sociology. Or psychology. Business. Or any number of other things. Math is very important to those.”
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Very good point about math and I would say statistics. I disagree to some extent about business. So long as you understand compound interest and reducing future values to present value, in my experience, you have enough math to do the great majority of business. The rest of the math can be done with calculators or online business tools. On the other hand, you have to have an instinctive sense of compound interest and reducing future payments to present value, or you will be financially lost in many deals. You can’t be dealing with these concepts mechanically.
JD
JD,
Compound interest still needs exponentiation and logs. People who don’t get past algebra 2 won’t have an instinctive understanding of present and future value.
I suspect calculus is of no use to most business people. But, some schools require it. But either way: every kid who want flexibility needs to get through algebra 2 and be comfortable with it.
Lucia: “Compound interest still needs exponentiation and logs. People who don’t get past algebra 2 won’t have an instinctive understanding of present and future value.”
….
Although Algebra 2 can be fun and very useful, I don’t think you need it for this purpose. Suppose the problem is: how long will it take before your money doubles at 11% compound interest. A very simple way to do that is:
1. 1.11 x 50 =55.5
2. 1.11 x 55.5= 61.605
3. 1.11 x 61.605= 68.38155
4. 1.11 x 68.38155 = 75.90352
5, 1.11 x 75.90352 = 84.252907
6. 1.11 x 84.252907 = 93.520726
7. 1.11 x 93.520726 = 103.808
….
Answer = roughly 7 years. If you play with several different figures, you will see how it works and instinctively understand the idea when investing. If you understand the underlying process, and how fast compound interest accumulates, then you can plug numbers into a computer and not be fooled if by chance you make an improper computer entry.
JD
JD, 72/11 = 6.55, actual answer 6.64.
JD,
I doubt if I had any influence on my daughter beyond infecting her with a truly evil sense of humor. She did the good stuff all herself.
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She does give me credit for three things.
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First, reading Uncle Remus to her when she was little. It’s hard. Try it if you don’t believe me.
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Second, thinking the things she got in trouble for in high school were pretty funny, for example, the D she got for “The Adventures of Raul, Free Range Chicken” written in response to a short story assignment. Teacher apparently thought she was being made fun of, which could have been.
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And last, not retrieving her from Barcelona where she’d run away to avoid going to local community college right after high school. Her prospects were limited by shaky grades. FWIW phenomenal test scores didn’t save the day in the face of mediocre grades – something about growing up.
She taught English in a Barcelona hospital for a year (age 18) and came home for a four year tour at Antioch which by ’93 had dwindled significantly since all the smart people I met in graduate school in the ’60s were there. They had a good work/study setup. She learned Thai and spent semesters in Chiang Mai getting her Thai up to fluent but detectable as non-native. I had nothing to do with any of this either.
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She has additional Southeast Asian languages now, including one of the Shan dialects. She can write it as well.
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University she teaches at has a monthly ‘good deed’ contest. The good deed one month was to compose hand-washing counsel to be printed on porcelain signs to go into each of the restrooms on campus. The advice was to be written in each of the languages known to anyone on campus. Her contribution was Shan and said something like Please try to crap in the toilet. No-one else in the place knew Shan, and even better, no-one on the faculty troubled themselves to check it.
Two years after the signs went up, she found two Asians in her office after class. They asked if she was responsible for the Shan statement in the restrooms. They were Shan and fortunately thought it was pretty funny. They agreed not to tell anyone else.
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She says the signs are still up.
j Ferguson,
Anyone who would write about the adventures of a free range chicken has to have a great sense of humor, as well as a sense of human foibles.
I have two smart, successful daughters. One has an MBA and the other a Ph.D in Chemistry after receiving an NSF graduate research fellowship. Both went to the local public schools for K-12. Both have good jobs. I’d like to say it’s something I did, but I don’t think I can. Sometimes, you just get lucky.
JD,
The Oscars are finished and it’s no longer midnight. You asked about mistakes made by our children in school. I didn’t know it at the time but my ultimate employment and maybe life goal was to avoid boredom and while i was at it, boring people. For me, this turned out to be more difficult than I expected. Had I really worked harder and gotten my math under better control, I might have made it, but alas, i was too saturated by testosterone when I was in my teems to focus.
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Architecture did bring me a flow of construction and design problems which no-one else who was involved could solve. That kept me going. I think this was true for my Dad, too. Although he was mostly involved in marketing in later years, he still kept up with what was going on in the lab. He shared some of the same tendencies we see in some of our colleagues here, the guys who make a horse’s homecoming into a refraction problem.
I don’t think you can really have any idea what is going to appeal to your kids when they are in their ’40s, and whether they can be guided toward it.
I don’t know how daughter likes her plight as a lecturer. If I asked, i don’t know if she’d tell me, but she travels worldwide and seems to have plenty of time to do work in her specialty which is discerning effect of globalization on Thai-Burma border. You’d be amazed at who else is interested in this and will fund her studies. Including English and Spanish, she has seven languages which are good enough to lecture in or better.
You’ve already done what enabled this, have your kids bi-lingual. Daughter started Spanish in 4th grade which is why it could have been good enough to teach English in Spain just out of high school. I think it also made it easier to pick up a third language. Thai, like Chinese is tonal. She thinks she was very lucky to learn it in college because it gave her the control to speak Burmese, the Shan dialects, and Lao. She is not much beyond menu and rest-room location in Japanese and Chinese. Most important thing is she can write well.
So i guess I’d reduce all this blathering to something simple like, learn languages, learn math, and learn to write well.
I’d like to think I can write, but maybe the evidence that i can’t is spread all over Lucia’s forum. Dad wrote sales bulletins fortnightly as part of the marketing manager dodge. After dinner, we’d clear the table and sit down together and collaborate on them. This is how I learned it. His success at the factory was almost a direct result of being one of the few engineers (EE) they had that wrote well.
JD you write well, make sure your kids do, too. This is something you can do.
JD,
One last thing, stage fright.
You can probably contribute to curing your kids’ stage fright if they have it. Career flexibility depends on being able to stand up in front of a bunch of people and deliver the pitch-du-jour. Doubtless if you ever had it, you’ve dealt with it. It also helps to be able to think on your feet. I cannot imagine one could be successful in court without this gift. It’s probably not yours to give though.
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It may be possible to be happy as an employed recluse, but without comfort in public presentations and discussions, your future may be constrained.
JD, since you are likely good at this, you may not even be aware of the threat stage-fright poses to one’s future.
j ferguson: “Architecture did bring me a flow of construction and design problems which no-one else who was involved could solve. That kept me going.”
While not in the field of architecture, I shared the experience of a nearly-continuous flow of challenging problems. While I can’t say that I was the only one around who could solve them, I seemed to enjoy those puzzles more than most. My question is, what skills/knowledge/background/whatever do you think enabled you to solve these problems better than others in your office?
My interest isn’t entirely abstract. Soon to retire, I’m trying to figure out what advice I can offer about replacing my contributions. Seeking common threads, if there are any. Others are welcome to comment as well.
HaroldW,
I’m not sure. I spent most of my very early years trying to do stuff I didn’t understand without appropriate tools. Dad was away most of the time, first on a wartime project, and later trying to make a living. EE’s didn’t get paid much in Minneapolis in late ’40s. He worked three jobs, the day job as a design engineer, dance jobs three nights a week driving a saxophone, and as an engineering consultant to a very bright but non-engineer inventor. I think he liked that one the best. He was very creative, but also almost painfully shy, gone most of the time, except Sunday afternoon hikes.
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So when I was trying to figure out how to make the crystal set work, or build a balsa airplane, i was on my own. Grandfather in NW Minnesota owned a hatchery. I was sent there for the Summer for a number of years. The toy box was full of pipe and valve fittings. I don’t know why my grandfather had them, maybe they were my uncle’s toys. I used to spend the mornings building all sorts of things with the pipes and valves, then hooking it up to the faucet in the back yard to see where the water would come out.
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In high school, the guy across the street who worked for Illinois Bell brought me boxes full of retired relays, DPDT. He also built a 28 volt power supply for me. I built computers with them. I had no idea what I was doing and couldn’t find anyone else interested in it nor any books on the subject. I eventually built a machine which would dial a telephone based on writing the numbers on a segmented copper plate with a live (24 volts) stylus. This was pulse dialing. I think i had two steppers and 16 relays to do it. And it worked. You can get a shock from 24 volts.
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The point is that I puzzled my way through a likely obvious problem without any idea what i was doing. I guess I was used to it by the time I was 14.
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In 1981 (+/-) I bought an Osborne computer. I’d seen Lotus 123 on an Apple and practically wet my pants with concept of painting with numbers. So I bought this thing and a Modem (300 bps) and pretty soon was writing bulletin board software in assembler, all with no training or real understanding. The secret was being able to do three things. 1. Never give up, 2. Remember what you’ve already tried to avoid getting into a loop, 3. Try everything you can think of.
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As to how to determine whether someone might have this ability, I suggest the question to ask is “What have you done where you had no idea what you were doing, and how did it turn out?” I’m pretty sure that you won’t be satisfied with anyone who doesn’t have a bunch of stories.
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If the interviewee doesn’t understand the question he/she won’t help in those situations where a problem has to be solved and there is not even a box to think outside of.
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It may be that I prevented anyone else with this ability to come on board in my operations. If so it wasn’t intentional. Very often the problem would be structural – not enough room to do what was needed. I had very good structural engineers. They were delightful to work with but seldom came up with a solution to the really screwy ones themselves. i think creativity is somewhat throttled by the meticulous almost anal nature of the day to day work of a good building structural engineer. Not all of them by a long shot but there seem to be only a few Fazlur Khans, at least in my direct experience.
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I should add that I expect you will love retirement. Facing a job in Baghdad in late 2003, I retired at 61. We sold the condo moved onto our 36 foot boat and lived on the water for ten years. Coming to land in 2013, we rented a townhouse in South Florida with a garage which has become my shop. I’m using it to make small fixed wing aircraft now R/C someday autonomous and with the aim of being as small as possible. I plan to do the whole thing, airframe, sensors, accelerometers, magnetometers, GPS, micro-controller, code the whole thing. Obviously I have no idea what I’m doing, but there’s plenty of counsel on the web, some of it really helpful. At the rate i’m going I’ll be at it in ten years. Right now i’ve got a pretty good CNC setup for making balsa plane parts quickly and accurately as well as fixtures for assembling wings, tail surfaces and fuselages. Current obstacle is getting appropriate control surface deflection. I’m still wrecking them, mostly by over control. But eventually I’ll prevail. I should add that I am happier than I ever imagined i could be. We go to lectures at FAU’s engine school where at least the faculty and graduate students are pretty bright as well as great books discussion group which has the sharpest people I’ve ever sat with. I’m also very lucky that the love of my life married me and that she tolerates all this.
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If I lived in Boston and could handle the winters, i wouldn’t come down here.
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i’m going to cut this short. I think there’s getting to be entirely too much ferguson at Lucia’s. Maybe you can ask her to send me your email address and I can share some more of this, assuming I haven’t already overdone it.
Thanks for asking.
Huge EPA Smack down:
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“Myron Ebell, who led the Trump transition team focused on the EPA, said the agency’s workforce could be cut to a third of its current size. The agency now has about 15,000 employees nationwide.”
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https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-02-27/proposed-trump-budget-said-to-boost-defense-spending-cut-epa
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Unclear if that will survive House and Senate but the initial scope of this seems rather large.
2. Remember what you’ve already tried to avoid getting into a loop
like Sudoku?
Tom Scharf,
I’m not sure Congress has all that much say on staffing of a department. They can appropriate money, but it’s harder to force the Executive to spend it. I’m just hoping that the employees cut won’t be replaced by contractors. That’s what happened in the 1970’s when staffing was cut at the EPA. The EPA employees were knowledgeable. The contractors weren’t.
For those who were not able to wade through the above, the bon mot could be used in an expression like this. “The place was so lame they didn’t even have a box you could think outside of.”
I herewith release all rights to this sublime insight.
j Ferguson: “One last thing, stage fright.
You can probably contribute to curing your kids’ stage fright if they have it. Career flexibility depends on being able to stand up in front of a bunch of people and deliver the pitch-du-jour.”
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Not an issue with my kids. They are both natural hams and self-confident. In fact, this past Saturday my son spent all day directing about 7 other boys, and acting as well, in a Youtube film that he is making. Very good to see how well-behaved the boys were (mostly friends from the choir) while still having a rollicking good time.
JD
Republicans come out with suggested new health care bill. All conservatives hate it with a passion.
What is going on? Surely they know that this isn’t going to get them off the hook with their base, not even a little bit.
Simple question: How far can Republicans get against a filibuster? My weak understanding is that reconciliation will only get you so far, not really to get rid of all the regulations. Leave out all politics, forget about “replace”, assume that all Republicans vote as a perfect block. Can they actually repeal Obamacare?