Today is my late wife’s birthday, and I’m surprised how much it is affecting me. And I really can’t afford to be off my metaphorical game right now.
Here’s a Facebook post from another once reasonable, calm, considered lawyer Facebook Friend: “We entered The Great War 108 years ago today. Don’t tell The Orange Dick-tater that name or he’ll get jealous and want to start an even Greater War.” Another anti-Trump warrior—and former staffer of mine— claimed that AG Bondi has announced a new policy allowing the Feds to “seize” the gun of anyone deemed to be a “threat.” I couldn’t find any news reports on such a development. “They said the Democrats were coming for their guns!” she wrote in high dudgeon today. The only gun policy development, posted on today by WaPo, is “Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Monday that she would rescind a Biden-era gun policy that yanked licenses from federally licensed firearm dealers if they intentionally falsified records or sold weapons without running a background check.” That’s deliberate fake news. The Biden gun policy yanked licenses from federally licensed firearm dealers if they were deemed to have intentionally falsified records or sold weapons without running a background check under a “no-tolerance” perspective. Opponents said that this would cause dealers to lose their licenses for paperwork errors.
It is increasingly difficult to find straightforward, honest and complete reporting.
Meanwhile,
1. Over at the New York Times, John MacWhorter devoted an entire column (Gift link!) to explaining why Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s “Hot Wheels” ad hominem attack on Texas’s paraplegic governor is “hitting way below the belt and helping bring our standards of civic exchange ever lower than they already are.” Ya think? Who needs to have that explained? I’ve written about Crockett’s despicable rhetoric, including that example, several times already.
2. Speaking of irresponsible “Squad” demagogues, Democrat Pramila Jayapal of Washington state told a recent town hall that the Department of Government Efficiency effort is an excuse to “implement a far-right, authoritarian, white ultranationalist Christian ideology under a dictatorial leader — otherwise known as American fascism.” Oh. That’s interesting…
3. Nah, there’s no PBS bias! Jonathan Capehart, is the ostentatiously gay progressive pundit at the Washington Post who first came to my attention when he intentionally used a deceptively edited video to impugn Mitt Romney in 2012. Later he got two cheers from Ethics Alarms for admitting that the Mike Brown “hands-up, don’t shoot” narrative was garbage months after readers here were informed of that fact. PBS has been featuring this hack in a news commentary show along with Times fake conservative David Brooks. Commentary has a revealing post about just how trustworthy he is and his penchant for playing the “black and gay” card.
4. Now THIS sounds like “malicious compliance” or, of course, stupidity. After Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s order to purge DEI content from military libraries and classrooms, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” was removed along with 380 other books, from the U.S. Naval Academy’s Nimitz Library. Now, I think the book is over-praised junk: Maia Angelou is about as remarkable a writer as Rod McKuen. And, yes, I suppose her elevation to icon status is sort-of DEI-ish. But pulling her book from a library looks like racial animus, or is intended to look like racial animus, because, you know, Trump and his team are all racists.
5. The Great Stupid Watch: “Last night, the UK’s Ultimate Pool Women’s Pro Series Event 2 in Wigan had its final match. This women’s pool event wouldn’t ordinarily have grabbed the headlines, except for one curious detail: this year, there were no women in the final. It was played between two transgender-identified men – Harriet Haynes and Lucy Smith. They had defeated four female opponents each before making it to the final, which Haynes ultimately won. Broadcaster Piers Morgan took to X to call the incident ‘preposterous’ and ‘cheating bullshit’. Meanwhile, former Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies described it as ‘bloody ridiculous and grossly wrong in every way’”
That’s from Spiked, and flagged by Old Bill. Question, and I’ve asked it before: Why is pool, of all sports, divided by sex?
6. Companies are discovering that job seekers aren’t who they say they are, as many are using AI to fabricate photo IDs, generate employment histories and provide answers during interview. Nice. Story here.
Ethics Alarms 
#5: I too wondered why pool is segregated by sex. Height advantage?
#6: I have long held that companies requiring special expertise must have thorough applicant testing, with theoretical and practical components. You can’t even guarantee that people can read and write these days!
In Australia we have a three-month probation period for new employees; after that sacking someone becomes ….. protracted and problematic. I had one person who was FINE for three months, but suddenly taking sickies, having problems with other staff, not being able to perform certain tasks etc, etc, after that! Funnily enough, he subsequently tried to use me as a reference for another job. Insert Nelson here!
#5: I, for one, am shocked to find out pool is considered a sport. Next you’ll be telling me that avocados and tomatoes are fruits.
“Next you’ll be telling me that avocados and tomatoes are fruits.”
Knowledge is knowing a Tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting one in a fruit salad.
Philosophy is wondering if that means ketchup/catsup is a smoothie…
PWS
Excellent
#5 well, it would appear that pool is divided by sex because, even if the reasons aren’t clear, it would statistically seem that men have an advantage over women.
Granted it’s a small sample size and so two guys beating out all the women can just be a fluke.
Perhaps on average men have greater reach and therefore easier access to trickier angles?
Perhaps there’s enough subtle strength difference that some breaks by men set the balls up better or sink more balls on the break giving a greater first player advantage?
On 5, Men, on average tend, to have better depth perception and are better with spatial geometry, and those differences tend to be amplified at competitive levels. It wouldn’t surprise me if there was a big enough disparity that absence a division, women wouldn’t be competitive.
4. malicious compliance” or, of course, stupidity.
Really? Let’s place the blame squarely where it belongs, on Hegseth and Trump.
Not all government employees can readily afford to quit or be fired, and so, in an environment where many of the firings that are not random are instead spiteful, they do what they believe the boss wants. If they have misunderstood, an effective leader would make corrections and provide clarification immediately, even before the public outcry reached a crescendo.
Those who don’t want to be perceived as racists take care to not act as racists. Then, there are those who are racists or who just don’t care.
But Hegseth and Trump hardly have time to review websites, or shouldn’t. Managers, if they are qualified to be managers, could have and should have figured out that dropping Jackie Robinson was poor PR as well and missing the point of the order. “What they believe the boss wants” shouldn’t include bad publicity and more fuel for partisan attacks. Ignorance or malicious enforcement. Either way, the botch is at the lower management and oversight levels.
It is not a matter of them reviewing web sites, it is a matter of them paying attention to what their public affairs advisors tell them in their daily media briefings and what they are told by their subordinates in their chain of command. It is inconceivable that either Trump or Hegseth were unaware of the controversy. It is conceivable that they just don’t care; it also is conceivable, perhaps less so, that they are racist. Else, why allow this to go on as it has.
#5. The reason is obvious and widely known. Note that the second article cites 9 previous studies on this. This has been studied for a long time. Although the difference may seem small, these differences become large at the extremes. So, although the average man has only a small advantage, when you get to the top levels of hand-eye coordination (top pool players), the population will be highly male.
Why doesn’t everyone know this? It was so widely know that it was ‘common knowledge’ when I was a child. When I saw the article on this, I immediately knew why. When I told others, however, they blushed or became visibly uncomfortable. One told me that I can’t say that. So, do people really not know this, or have they been cowed into pretending it isn’t true by societal pressure?
Just do a simple Google search, you will find a lot of articles like these. It isn’t like this is a secret.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-68069-0
https://www.jcdr.net/articles/PDF/17430/59208_CE%5BRa1%5D_F%5BSK%5D_PF1(AB_KM)_PFA(SS)_PB(JY_SHU)_PN(SHU).pdf
Still doesn’t answer the question. The average man can’t hit a fastball. The ability to be excellent at pool as well as the ability to equal elite male players is certainly within female skill and physical ability ranges. If you have a special category for females because of hand-eye coordination, why isn’t pool segregated by height?
Now do chess….
What’s your basis for claiming that women are capable of equaling men in pool at elite levels?
In addition to the hand-eye coordination, men generally have more strength and faster-twitch muscles, which make it easier to execute many shots (especially power shots) with more accuracy, control, and consistency.
In the article, you mention that you’ve asked before about why pool is sex-segregated. These are the kinds of answers that were furnished last time. Do you find them incredible or do you have another reason for rejecting them?
Dividing pool by height categories wouldn’t fix this imbalance, and there’s only so many times you can split up a sport into different categories before it becomes absurd. Sex is the greatest predictor of athletic success, so that’s the most logical dividing line.
“What’s your basis for claiming that women are capable of equaling men in pool at elite levels?”
Because some women have unusual skills and abilities. Some women are capable. But they may never take up pool.
This sounds intuition-based, and not fact-based. It does not logically follow that some women having unusual skills and abilities means they can equal (or beat) the very best men. Especially not after factoring in all the other things commenters have mentioned, like:
-average height and arm-length gives men greater reach
-the proportion of fast-twitch vs. slow-twitch muscles, as compared to women, gives men an edge
-men typically have greater hand-eye coordination than women
Clearly, the women don’t think it’s fair. I’m going to assume they know how men have a significant advantage. Maybe the fact that out of all the contestants, both these two shmucks ended up being the finalists tells us something?
100%. It’s utterly predictable that when you let men in the women’s competition, you’ll end up with men in the championship game.
There’s actual prize money at stake, too. Although money was designated for the best man and the best woman, men managed to walk away with all of it. How very progressive of them!
It does answer the question. The average man probably has no discernible advantage over the average woman in pool because a little practice and training will eliminate that advantage (or even a little luck). However, we aren’t talking about the average man. The average man will never become a world-champion-level pool player just like an average man will never become a starting NFL quarterback. No matter how much training and coaching they get, it isn’t going to happen. To be REALLY good at pool, you need top level hand-eye coordination. Because of the way Gaussian statistics work, those people are going to be almost always men. So, a man with really good (but not the greatest) hand-eye coordination may be good, but never good enough to be a champion in the men’s division, but can still have much better hand-eye coordination than the best female pool players.
OK, do you really want to do chess? If you can’t accept pool, you are going to have a really hard time accepting chess. Although men and women have the same basic mean IQ, men have a larger standard deviation. This means that most of the truly low IQ people are men, but most of the truly high IQ people are also men. When you get above 160-170 IQ, it becomes overwhelmingly male.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Gaussian-distribution-of-IQ-of-men-s-162-and-women-s-132_fig1_344751288
#6. That is what the companies get for doing Zoom interviews instead of in-person interviews. You can’t tell who is really there when an interview, a job, or coursework is done online.
Re: #1, MacWhorter’s article is depressingly necessary. The Washington Post had a story about Crockett’s insult, and the comment section was awash with people thinking she did nothing wrong.
At this point, anyone who relies on the Washington Post is beyond help.