George Clooney

For President.

    

I had to drive up to Kaiser today for a blood draw. Had NPR on the radio (of course).

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men - not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate or to defend the causes that are, for the moment, unpopular. We proclaim ourselves as indeed we are the defenders of freedom wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.”
      —Edward R. Murrow, quoted by George Clooney

HELL NO, I'm not kidding, notwithstanding the nominal seeming unlikelihood (?). The decade thus far of the crass, vulgar, clinically arrogant, breathtakingly willful ignorance and brazen dictatorial dishonesty relentlessly inflicted on the U.S. and the world by He-Of-The-Perfect-MRI is light years more than quite enough, thank you very much.

Might you perhaps benefit from some reminders, just scroll down through a handful of some recent prior posts here.

Listen carefully to the foregoing entire 44 NPR minute interview. Read the transcript. Pay it forward.

Savor the lengthy sequences of grammatically correct complete sentences expressing cogent, rational, empathic, humane, material cognition.

As the late Charlie Kirk was fond of saying, "PROVE ME WRONG."

 

 

MAKE AMERICA SANE AGAIN.
   

Our tax dollars (or, perhaps soon cryptocurrency?):

$235,100 annual salary for the Trump "Secretary of War."

He thinks this shit is funny.

Link

PolyMarket

Polymarket?

What could possibly go awry?

     

"Kill them all."

This is what "War Secretary" Hegseth just posted on TwitteX.

  

MANLY PETE

"Yesterday, the secretary of defense of the United States of America posted a meme on X depicting Franklin, the cartoon turtle who is a beloved children’s-book character, as a Special Forces operator killing people on boats. He added a comment: “For your Christmas wish list…” Just to make the point, the secretary tagged the X account of SOUTHCOM, the Southern Forces Command, which has had to carry out the strikes, as if blowing up boats and killing the survivors was a joke to be shared with a chuckle and a backslap.

Perhaps Hegseth thinks that sinking boats on the high seas is funny. Maybe he just wanted to own the libs and all that. Or maybe he thought he could disrupt the gathering war-crimes narrative, like the school delinquent pulling a fire alarm during an exam. Or maybe he just has poor judgment and even worse impulse control (which would explain a lot of things about Pete Hegseth). No matter the reason, his choice to trivialize the use of American military force reveals both the shallowness of the man’s character and the depth of his contempt for the military as an institution.

 

Posting stupid memes after being accused of murder is not the response of a patriot who must answer to the public about the security of the United States and its people in uniform. It is not the response of a secretary of defense who values the advice of the officers who report to him. It is not the response of a human being who comprehends the risks—and the costs—of ordering other people to kill helpless men clinging to the wreck of a boat.

It is, instead, the response of a sneering, spoiled punk who has been caught doing wrong and is now daring the local fuzz to take him in and risk the anger of his rich dad—a role fulfilled by Donald Trump, in this case." —Tom Nichols

TRUMP CABINET RESPONSE 

 

DONALD TRUMP NATIONAL THANKSGIVING MESSAGE NOVEMBER 27TH, 2025 11:26 PM

A very Happy Thanksgiving salutation to all of our Great American Citizens and Patriots who have been so nice in allowing our Country to be divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged, and laughed at, along with certain other foolish countries throughout the World, for being "Politically Correct," and just plain STUPID, when it comes to Immigration. The official United States Foreign population stands at 53 million people (Census), most of which are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels. They and their children are supported through massive payments from Patriotic American Citizens who, because of their beautiful hearts, do not want to openly complain or cause trouble in any way, shape, or form. They put up with what has happened to our Country, but it's eating them alive to do so! A migrant earning $30,000 with a green card will get roughly $50,000 in yearly benefits for their family. The real migrant population is much higher. This refugee burden is the leading cause of social dysfunction in America, something that did not exist after World War II (Failed schools, high crime, urban decay, overcrowded hospitals, housing shortages, and large deficits, etc.). As an example, hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia are completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota. Somalian gangs are roving the streets looking for "prey" as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone. The seriously retarded Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, does nothing, either through fear, incompetence, or both, while the worst "Congressman/woman" in our Country, Ilhan Omar, always wrapped in her swaddling hijab, and who probably came into the U.S.A. illegally in that you are not allowed to marry your brother, does nothing but hatefully complain about our Country, its Constitution, and how "badly" she is treated, when her place of origin is a decadent, backward, and crime ridden nation, which is essentially not even a country for lack of Government, Military, Police, schools, etc. Even as we have progressed technologically, Immigration Policy has eroded those gains and living conditions for many. I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden's Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country, end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization. These goals will be pursued with the aim of achieving a major reduction in illegal and disruptive populations, including those admitted through an unauthorized and illegal Autopen approval process. Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation. Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for — You won't be here for long!    

______

IT READS BETTER IN THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE

С Днём благодарения всем нашим замечательным американским гражданам и патриотам, которые так любезно позволили нашей стране быть разделённой, разрушенной, поделённой, убитой, избитой, ограбленной и высмеянной, как и некоторым другим неразумным странам по всему миру, за их «политическую корректность» и просто ГЛУПОСТЬ в вопросах иммиграции. Официальная численность иностранного населения Соединённых Штатов составляет 53 миллиона человек (по данным переписи), большинство из которых живут на социальное обеспечение, являются выходцами из неблагополучных стран, тюрьмами, психиатрическими больницами, бандами или наркокартелями. Они и их дети получают огромную поддержку от патриотически настроенных американских граждан, которые, благодаря своим прекрасным сердцам, не желают открыто жаловаться или создавать проблемы каким-либо образом, в какой-либо форме или виде. Они мирятся с тем, что случилось с нашей страной, но это съедает их заживо! Мигрант, зарабатывающий 30 000 долларов с грин-картой, будет получать около 50 000 долларов ежегодного пособия для своей семьи. Реальное число мигрантов гораздо больше. Бремя беженцев – главная причина социальной дисфункции в Америке, чего не было после Второй мировой войны (неудовлетворительное качество школ, высокий уровень преступности, упадок городов, переполненные больницы, нехватка жилья, огромный дефицит и т. д.). Например, сотни тысяч беженцев из Сомали полностью захватили некогда великий штат Миннесота. Сомалийские банды бродят по улицам в поисках «добычи», пока наши замечательные люди заперты в своих квартирах и домах, надеясь, что их оставят в покое. Серьёзно отсталый губернатор Миннесоты Тим Уолц ничего не делает, либо из-за страха, либо из-за некомпетентности, либо из-за того и другого, в то время как худший «конгрессмен/женщина» в нашей стране Ильхан Омар, вечно закутанная в хиджаб и, вероятно, нелегально приехавшая в США, поскольку здесь нельзя выходить замуж за своего брата, только и делает, что с ненавистью жалуется на нашу страну, её Конституцию и на то, как «плохо» с ней обращаются, в то время как её родина — разлагающаяся, отсталая и охваченная преступностью страна, которая по сути даже не является страной из-за отсутствия правительства, армии, полиции, школ и т. д. Несмотря на наш технологический прогресс, иммиграционная политика подорвала эти достижения и условия жизни многих. Я навсегда приостановлю миграцию из всех стран третьего мира, чтобы позволить системе США полностью восстановиться, прекращу все миллионы нелегальных въездов Байдена, включая те, что были подписаны Сонным Джо Байденом по программе Autoopen, и вышлю всех, кто не является чистым активом для Соединенных Штатов или неспособен любить нашу страну, прекращу все федеральные льготы и субсидии негражданам нашей страны, лишу гражданства мигрантов, которые подрывают внутреннее спокойствие, и депортирую любого иностранного гражданина, представляющего собой общественную обузу, угрозу безопасности или несовместимого с западной цивилизацией. Эти цели будут преследоваться с целью значительного сокращения численности нелегального и дестабилизирующего населения, включая тех, кто был принят по несанкционированной и незаконной процедуре одобрения Autoopen. Только ОБРАТНАЯ МИГРАЦИЯ может полностью исправить эту ситуацию. В остальном, СЧАСТЛИВОГО ДНЯ БЛАГОДАРЕНИЯ ВСЕМ, кроме тех, кто ненавидит, ворует, убивает и разрушает все, за что выступает Америка — вы здесь недолго! S Dnom blagodareniya vsem nashim zamechatel'nym amerikanskim grazhdanam i patriotam, kotoryye tak lyubezno pozvolili nashey strane byt' razdelonnoy, razrushennoy, podelonnoy, ubitoy, izbitoy, ograblennoy i vysmeyannoy, kak i nekotorym drugim nerazumnym stranam po vsemu miru, za ikh «politicheskuyu korrektnost'» i prosto GLUPOST' v voprosakh immigratsii. Ofitsial'naya chislennost' inostrannogo naseleniya Soyedinonnykh Shtatov sostavlyayet 53 milliona chelovek (po dannym perepisi), bol'shinstvo iz kotorykh zhivut na sotsial'noye obespecheniye, yavlyayutsya vykhodtsami iz neblagopoluchnykh stran, tyur'mami, psikhiatricheskimi bol'nitsami, bandami ili narkokartelyami. Oni i ikh deti poluchayut ogromnuyu podderzhku ot patrioticheski nastroyennykh amerikanskikh grazhdan, kotoryye, blagodarya svoim prekrasnym serdtsam, ne zhelayut otkryto zhalovat'sya ili sozdavat' problemy kakim-libo obrazom, v kakoy-libo forme ili vide. Oni miryatsya s tem, chto sluchilos' s nashey stranoy, no eto s"yedayet ikh zazhivo! Migrant, zarabatyvayushchiy 30 000 dollarov s grin-kartoy, budet poluchat' okolo 50 000 dollarov yezhegodnogo posobiya dlya svoyey sem'i. Real'noye chislo migrantov gorazdo bol'she. Bremya bezhentsev – glavnaya prichina sotsial'noy disfunktsii v Amerike, chego ne bylo posle Vtoroy mirovoy voyny (neudovletvoritel'noye kachestvo shkol, vysokiy uroven' prestupnosti, upadok gorodov, perepolnennyye bol'nitsy, nekhvatka zhil'ya, ogromnyy defitsit i t. d.). Naprimer, sotni tysyach bezhentsev iz Somali polnost'yu zakhvatili nekogda velikiy shtat Minnesota. Somaliyskiye bandy brodyat po ulitsam v poiskakh «dobychi», poka nashi zamechatel'nyye lyudi zaperty v svoikh kvartirakh i domakh, nadeyas', chto ikh ostavyat v pokoye. Ser'yozno otstalyy gubernator Minnesoty Tim Uolts nichego ne delayet, libo iz-za strakha, libo iz-za nekompetentnosti, libo iz-za togo i drugogo, v to vremya kak khudshiy «kongressmen/zhenshchina» v nashey strane Il'khan Omar, vechno zakutannaya v khidzhab i, veroyatno, nelegal'no priyekhavshaya v SSHA, poskol'ku zdes' nel'zya vykhodit' zamuzh za svoyego brata, tol'ko i delayet, chto s nenavist'yu zhaluyetsya na nashu stranu, yeyo Konstitutsiyu i na to, kak «plokho» s ney obrashchayutsya, v to vremya kak yeyo rodina — razlagayushchayasya, otstalaya i okhvachennaya prestupnost'yu strana, kotoraya po suti dazhe ne yavlyayetsya stranoy iz-za otsutstviya pravitel'stva, armii, politsii, shkol i t. d. Nesmotrya na nash tekhnologicheskiy progress, immigratsionnaya politika podorvala eti dostizheniya i usloviya zhizni mnogikh. YA navsegda priostanovlyu migratsiyu iz vsekh stran tret'yego mira, chtoby pozvolit' sisteme SSHA polnost'yu vosstanovit'sya, prekrashchu vse milliony nelegal'nykh v"yezdov Baydena, vklyuchaya te, chto byli podpisany Sonnym Dzho Baydenom po programme Autoopen, i vyshlyu vsekh, kto ne yavlyayetsya chistym aktivom dlya Soyedinennykh Shtatov ili nesposoben lyubit' nashu stranu, prekrashchu vse federal'nyye l'goty i subsidii negrazhdanam nashey strany, lishu grazhdanstva migrantov, kotoryye podryvayut vnutrenneye spokoystviye, i deportiruyu lyubogo inostrannogo grazhdanina, predstavlyayushchego soboy obshchestvennuyu obuzu, ugrozu bezopasnosti ili nesovmestimogo s zapadnoy tsivilizatsiyey. Eti tseli budut presledovat'sya s tsel'yu znachitel'nogo sokrashcheniya chislennosti nelegal'nogo i destabiliziruyushchego naseleniya, vklyuchaya tekh, kto byl prinyat po nesanktsionirovannoy i nezakonnoy protsedure odobreniya Autoopen. Tol'ko OBRATNAYA MIGRATSIYA mozhet polnost'yu ispravit' etu situatsiyu. V ostal'nom, SCHASTLIVOGO DNYA BLAGODARENIYA VSEM, krome tekh, kto nenavidit, voruyet, ubivayet i razrushayet vse, za chto vystupayet Amerika — vy zdes' nedolgo!

THE "SERIOUSLY RETARDED GOVERNOR OF MINNESOTA" RESPONDS:

"Release the MRI results."  

NOV 27TH CODA: 
STEPHEN MILLER, THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE 

 

MY RETORT TO UBERBIGOT STEPHEN MILLER

 

READ UP ON STEPHEN MILLER

STEPHEN MILLER WAS CENTER STAGE. He grinned at the sea of red baseball caps in the San Diego Convention Center on May 27, 2016. In a slim suit with a pocket square, he adjusted the podium microphone and told spectators that his boss—the man who would “save” the country—was about to come out. The crowd erupted. “Are you ready to secure that border?” Miller asked, lifting a finger in the air. “Are you ready to stop Islamic terrorism? And are you ready to make sure that American children are given their birthright in their own country?” 

 Miller could hardly contain himself. He rocked back and forth on his heels. He swung side to side. Long dismissed as a sideshow, the svelte pale thirty-year-old was months from becoming one of the most powerful people in the US government. He coaxed cheers from thousands in his home state of California, where once he had faced hisses and boos. “I want you to shout so loud that all the people who betrayed you can hear you!” he cried. “Every single person who’s beaten you down, and ignored you, and said that you were wrong, and mocked and demeaned and scorned you, every person who’s lectured you sanctimoniously while living the high life in DC—shout so loud that their conference tables will shake!” 

 Outside the convention center, more than a thousand people had gathered to protest Trump’s campaign as xenophobic, racist and sexist. They waved signs exclaiming BULLY and BIGOT. They were upset about Trump’s characterizations of Mexicans as “rapists” and “criminals” and his call for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Trump’s fans confronted his critics, ready to brawl. A white man spat the N-word in a black man’s face. Someone screamed “Hitler!” A paunchy Trump supporter with a bullhorn told black men they were going to Hell. “You hate Trump! You despise God!” he said. One responded: “God is black!” The white man replied, “God’s not black!” He continued, “When God puts you in Hell, you’re not gonna play the race card with him.” He added, mockingly, “I’m just a minority member! I’m just a minority member!” 

Trump took the stage. He called his rally a “lovefest.” He said people protesting were “thugs.” The magnate lamented all of the “young children killed by illegal immigrants.” He had hired Miller as a speechwriter and senior policy advisor a few months before. The California native helped craft Trump’s attacks on Mexicans and Muslims, drawing from dubious sources, such as research bankrolled by eugenicists and white nationalist websites and texts. He was inspired in part by The Camp of the Saints, a virulently racist book by French author Jean Raspail that depicted “the end of the white world” after it was overrun by the Third World, with refugees described as “a single, solid mass, like some gigantic beast with a million legs.”1 The title of the novel comes from the Christian Bible’s Book of Revelation, in which Satan and his armies “marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints,” God’s beloved city, “but fire came down from heaven and consumed them.” 

Outside, the racially charged tension and vitriol reached fever pitch. People threw punches. They lit rags on fire. Objects flew. Police showed up in riot gear, wielding batons, and declared an unlawful assembly. “If you refuse to move, chemical agents and other weapons will be used,” authorities declared in Spanish and English. Helicopters buzzed overhead, the skies turned from blue to gray. People linked arms, determined to stay. By the time the sun set over the bay, dozens of people were handcuffed and jailed. 

It’s impossible to understand the Trump era, with its unparalleled polarization, without tracing Miller’s journey to the White House. Miller is the architect of Trump’s border and immigration policies. Prematurely balding and with a penchant for bespoke suits, he has long, articulate fingers that fit a man often depicted as a behind-the-scenes puppeteer. Many are baffled at how someone so young, with little policy or legal expertise, gained so much power—outlasting and overtaking his mentor, Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist. Before joining Trump, Miller was communications director for Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. He had little other work experience. But it’s no accident that a public relations flack guides Trump’s central agenda. Trump has long derived power from mythmakers. Author Tony Schwartz made him an American business icon in The Art of the Deal. Producer Mark Burnett turned him into a reality TV star in The Apprentice. Bannon turned him into an alt-right hero on the blog Breitbart. Miller helped make him president. 

In a White House where people are frequently forced out, Miller has survived...

Guerrero, Jean. Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda (pp. 1-3). (Function). Kindle Edition. 

Bad newa, this dude.

Arizona Senator Mark Kelly

Watched Jake Tapper interview Ben McKenzie on CNN

"Everyone is lying to you for money" 

    

 

Yeah. Imagine our surprise.

 

I was not really hip to Ben McKenzie. My Bad. Rectifying that pronto. Almost done reading the book he co-authored with Jacob Silverman. His documentary has just been released. Gotta see it.

 

 

I've had my recurrent sport with FIRE Sector malfeasance generally and, more recently, the cryptocurrency scam. This delightful, painfully funny book validates my irascible takes on this bullshit.

 

@BobbyGvegas

Ahhh.... interview with the totally badass Andrew Ross Sorkin.

______

 

OMINOUS PORTENTS? THE 2025 CRYPTO "GENIUS ACT"

 

 Deconstructing this POS a bit today. Fairly brief at 48 pages. 70 references to the "Secretary." 75 to "Treasury." 47 to "Comptroller." "Digital Assets," 24... 

 

What could possibly go wrong? 

 

More shortly. Gotta finish the book...

 

UPDATE

 

Finished the book. Excellent. Ben hipped us all to this today.

 

Report link.

 

ON DECK

Click

Ben's collaborator. He's cited repeatedly in the House Committee report.

 

Stay tuned...

‘A Recipe for Idiocracy’

What happens when even college students can’t do math anymore?

 

 

Disturbing piece in The Atlantic. 

For the past several years, America has been using its young people as lab rats in a sweeping, if not exactly thought-out, education experiment. Schools across the country have been lowering standards and removing penalties for failure. The results are coming into focus.

Five years ago, about 30 incoming freshmen at UC San Diego arrived with math skills below high-school level. Now, according to a recent report from UC San Diego faculty and administrators, that number is more than 900—and most of those students don’t fully meet middle-school math standards. Many students struggle with fractions and simple algebra problems. Last year, the university, which admits fewer than 30 percent of undergraduate applicants, launched a remedial-math course that focuses entirely on concepts taught in elementary and middle school. (According to the report, more than 60 percent of students who took the previous version of the course couldn’t divide a fraction by two.) One of the course’s tutors noted that students faced more issues with “logical thinking” than with math facts per se. They didn’t know how to begin solving word problems...

Things are not good. Read the entire Rose Horowitch essay. U.S. education at all levels—public and private—is increasingly enervated.

 

I'll quickly go back to some of my own experiences as a high school and collegiate student, from a prior riff on LLM AI and "fluency."

I was an unremarkable "B" student in high school (1960-64). Opted to not attend college and instead went out on the road as a guitar player in a bar band.

Sixteen years later I entered undergraduate school at Tennessee. Divorced, custody of my two daughters, nothing to put in a resume.Time to make a substantive change.

Upon enrollment I took the CLEP Exam (College Level English Proficiency), a lengthy multiple-choice "reading comprehension / vocabulary" diagnostic with an essay section (topic unknown to the examinee ahead of time). At the time (1980), the national 99% percentile was 920.

I scored a 965.

That simply had to be a reflection of my compulsive reading habit, which had gotten fully underway by 1967, when I arrived in San Francisco and became fully politically aware. Didn't hurt that I lived in North Beach a few blocks west of the venerable City Lights Bookstore.

Across my adult life since that time I have continued to read 2-3 books a week on average, a broad range of periodicals, and, increasingly, all of the internet-based written material now widely available to all of us (i.e, our LLM "training data").

My AI/LLM joke now is that "I'm a Carbon-Based Relatively Large Recursive Language Model," a "CBRLRLM." A one-man "Fluency Heuristic," I suppose.

Got my undergrad at 39 and moved on to the white collar world.

My initial undergrad goal was to obtain a degree in advertising. I'd become a fairly adept photographer and learned some basics in print layout technique from a colleague guitarist who also had a degree in architecture from Auburn. I read everything I could find on the topics at the Knox County library.

My precise interest was focused on "B2B," corporate / industrial communications. While I enjoyed courses in copywriting, ad design, commercial TV production, etc, the UTK Ad Department was totally consumer products and services oriented. I had little enthusiasm for selling shampoo, cars, food & beverage, or tobacco products.

Coursework in deductive logic, inductive logic ("lying with statistics" according to my prof), philospohy of science, the gamut of stats classes, and the breadth of psychology curricula diverted my attention, with an eventual concerted study in "psychometrics" (psychological tests and measures design and empirical validation).

Then in January 1986 I got my first day gig. Systems programmer and QC analyst in a radiation lab in Oak Ridge.

Go figure.

I eventually engaged in other technical writing fields...

The training of a CBRLRLM 

 

And then...

 

After getting my Master's, I got to teach collegiate "critical thinking" for 5 fun years (1999 - 2004) while living in Las Vegas (evening school adjunct faculty; my day gig was that of a credit risk analyst in a bank). I never really liked the curricular title. I'm likewise guarded about cavalierly using the word "idiot."

Too many of my students came in thinking "oh, cool, we're just gonna argue about stuff endlessly and get our gripes off our chests..." 

Also, "idiot" is not a dtrect synonym for "stupid," notwithstanding common invective usage. Greek "idios," aware of only one's self. Yeah, one could argue that such egocentric fixations are "stupid:" I suppose, but, dunno, brosdly.

As that goes to the current Atlantic article topic, I would repeatedly look out over my Critical Thinking classes and think "man, half of y'all need to re-take high school."

 

It was by no means irascible, cynical snark. UNLV had admitted that 60% of incoming frosh found themselves promptliy remanded to remedial English and math.

_____ 

 

BACK TO THE ATLANTIC PIECE 

...Many schools across the country have shifted toward making math engaging for students at the expense of evidence-based teaching practices. And due to funding shortages or misguided efforts to improve equity, many students are held back from taking the hardest math courses.

The pandemic supercharged the decline. Districts that spent most of the 2020–21 school year mandating remote learning saw students fall more than half a grade behind in math; districts that reopened earlier saw more modest declines. These difficulties prompted teachers to further relax their standards. “Everyone was just exhausted and challenged by the circumstances around the pandemic,” Joshua Goodman, a Boston University professor of economics and education, told me. “And I think one of the reactions to that was for everyone involved to say: ‘Let’s lower our expectations. Let’s make sure that we don’t fail students when they’re not doing their work, because the world is challenging right now.’” Many districts adopted a “no zeros” policy, forcing teachers to pass students who had little command of the material. One study of public-school students across Washington State found that almost none received an F in spring 2020, while the share of students who received A’s skyrocketed. Math grades have remained elevated in the years since.

Together, these changes meant that even as students’ math preparation was stagnating, their grades were going up. The UC San Diego report notes that more than a quarter of the students who placed into the elementary- and middle-school-level remedial course last year had earned straight A’s in their high-school math classes. Almost all of them had taken advanced math courses in high school.

At the same time, the UC system eliminated its best tool for assessing students’ academic preparedness. In 2020, system leaders voted to phase standardized-test scores out of admissions decisions. They argued that the tests worsened racial divides and unfairly privileged wealthy students. But SAT and ACT scores are the most reliable predictors of a student’s math ability, the report found. “It’s not really surprising, then, that you’re going to be admitting more students who aren’t ready for mathematics, because you removed the one piece of data that would have told you that,” Morgan Polikoff, an education professor at the University of Southern California, told me. That same year, the UC system dramatically increased the number of students it enrolled from under-resourced high schools. These students are much more likely to place into Math 2, the elementary- and middle-school-level remedial course.

The new report calls on the UC system to consider reinstating the use of standardized-test scores in admissions, and for UC San Diego to bring its enrollment of students from under-resourced schools back in line with that of other selective UC colleges. “Admitting large numbers of students who are profoundly underprepared risks harming the very students we hope to support, by setting them up for failure,” the report observes.

Bringing back standardized-test scores might help elite institutions get out of the remedial-math business, but it will not address the underlying problem of widespread innumeracy.

Standardized admissions tests remain frequently viewed as a component of the minorities-stifling "woke faux-meritocracy" academic canard. More on that in a bit.

 

CAM3 ASSOCIATES

 

At UTK, I signed up for undergrad "Social Psychology."

The instructor, Michael K. Smith, was a doctoral student GTA. I subsequently served long-term as as his principal undergrad research assistant. His PhD effort comprised a broad and deep study on the salient psych elements of "math anxiety" afflticting undergraduate students.

We became fast friends.

And then business partners in an "Exam Cram" A/V production company. Mike, who'd been doing a long side-hustle of exam prep courses (PSAT, SAT, ACT, GRE, etc) was the Prez & content developer.

I was co-counder, VP, Producer, Director, Editor, Ads & Packaging Designer, Office Mgr, Customer Service Rep, Shipping Clerk and overall gofer. I built our A/V studio.

We Princeton Review wannabees scuffled for 5-6 yrs, managed to break even at about $600k. We pretty much sold to Guidance Departments and libraries (never could accrue the $$$ Juice to go consumer-national). The experience was priceless. Mike remains one of my favorite people.

Hence my interest in the Horowitch topic. I've learned standardaized exam development, validation, and administration rather thoroughly. Power, speeded, recall, recognition, internal/external validity, the gamut.

 

They remain widely regarded as "aptitude tests." (e.g., tangential IQ proxies). They are in fact "achievement tests." You can in fact train for them.

 

What of salience the  examinees have usefully "achieved" is a separate, inadequately addressed question. 
____

 

Also during my undergrad days, I took physics. The professor was from Greece. Final exam? Three physics problems. No formula sheets or other crib stuff, no partial credit. My young classmates were horrified. He shruggingly asked "would you feel comfortable driving across a bridge designed by an engineer who got through college on "partial credit?"

 

I had to laugh. He also recounted his college student days in Greece: "You attend university for 4 years, and at the end you take 2 weeks of general exams. Pass/Fail. They want to see whether you actually learned and retained anything."

 

In the States we have kids slavishly honing their (ordinal metric) GPAs to 4 decimal places every quarter or semester.

 

Lordy. Yeah, right, that final one-ten thusandth of a GPA is gonna get me into Hopkins Med School or Harvard Law.
______

 

UPDATE. AI IN THE COLLEGE CLASSROOM

 

'eh? 

 

Stay tuned...

The American Revolution

The Ken Burns Documentary

      

The American Revolution is a six-part, 12-hour documentary series directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt. The series premieres nationally on November 16, 2025, on PBS ahead of the nation’s commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Revolutionary War in 2026. The film explores the complex origins of the United States through the lens of the eight-year war for independence and the revolutionary ideas that continue to shape the nation.

The film, narrated by Peter Coyote, includes the first-person voices of nearly 200 individual historic figures, read by a cast of actors, including Adam Arkin, Jeremiah Bitsui, Corbin Bleu, Kenneth Branagh, Josh Brolin, Bill Camp, Tantoo Cardinal, Josh Charles, Hugh Dancy, Claire Danes, Jeff Daniels, Keith David, Hope Davis, Marcus Davis-Orrom, Bruce Davison, Leon Dische Becker, Alden Ehrenreich, Craig Ferguson, Morgan Freeman, Christian Friedel, Paul Giamatti, Domhnall Gleeson, Amanda Gorman, Michael Greyeyes, Jonathan Groff, Charlotte Hacke, Tom Hanks, Ethan Hawke, Maya Hawke, Lucas Hedges, Josh Hutcherson, Samuel L. Jackson, Gene Jones, Michael Keaton, Joe Keery, Joel Kinnaman, Tracy Letts, Damian Lewis, Laura Linney, Josh Lucas, Michael Mando, Carolyn McCormick, Lindsay Mendez, Tobias Menzies, Joe Morton, Edward Norton, David Oyelowo, Mandy Patinkin, Wendell Pierce, Jon Proudstar, Matthew Rhys, LaTanya Richardson, Liev Schreiber, Chaske Spencer, Dan Stevens, Meryl Streep, and Yul Vazquez, among others…

I thought myself to be fairly well-steeped in U.S history lore. Born in 1946, son of patriotic WWII Gold Star families. Started elementary school in 1952 at George Washington Elementary School in Morristown, NJ, 2 blocks from General Washington's Winter Revolutionary War Headquarters.

 

Now, nearing 80, I find that I still have so much to learn about the details of the founding of our nation. This Ken Burns documentary is an invaluable place to locate and grasp spme vital new information.

 

 

Trust me. Watch it.

 

An iconic painting. I crossed the Delaware in canoes many times growing up, during summer camp near Port Jervis (Deleware Water Gap).

 

More shortly... 

2547

Kinga Glyk

Stunning young jazz bass guitarist from Poland.  

   

 

I'm an instant fan.

 

 

So, I asked Gemini AI "What are the fundamentals of logical reasoning in ordinary language?"

This is what it spit back in 2-3 seconds. 

Logical reasoning in ordinary language is the process of using everyday language to analyze information and construct or evaluate arguments in a rational, systematic way. It involves identifying the structure of arguments, distinguishing good reasoning from bad, and recognizing potential flaws like logical fallacies. 

Core Concepts
* Arguments: The fundamental unit of logical reasoning, consisting of a set of premises(facts or assumptions) that provide reasons to accept a conclusion.
* Inference: The logical connection or bridge that links the premises to the conclusion. Reasoning is the activity of drawing these inferences.
* Validity: A characteristic of a deductive argument's structure where if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. Validity depends on the form, not the actual truth of the premises.
* Soundness: A sound argument is one that is not only valid but also has factually truepremises.
* Strength/Cogency: These terms apply to inductive arguments. A strong argument makes the conclusion likely or probable, but not certain.
* Assumptions/Hidden Premises: Unstated beliefs or premises that are necessary for an argument to reach its conclusion. Identifying these is crucial for evaluation.
* Fallacies: Common errors or defects in reasoning that weaken an argument or make it deceptive, even if it seems persuasive on the surface (e.g., "begging the question", "hasty generalizations"). 

Types of Reasoning
Logical reasoning broadly includes several types, which differ in their goals and the certainty of their conclusions: 

Type of Reasoning    Description    Certainty of Conclusion    Example in Ordinary Language
Deductive    Moves from general principles to a specific conclusion.    Guaranteed (if premises are true and valid)    "All humans are mortal. Socrates is a human. Therefore, Socrates is mortal."
Inductive    Moves from specific observations to a broader generalization or hypothesis.    Probable/Likely, but not certain    "Every time I've observed adult stem cells, they've treated patients successfully. Therefore, adult stem cells may be an ideal source for clinical therapy."
Abductive    Starts with an incomplete set of observations and proceeds to the likeliest possible explanation (a "best guess").    Best possible explanation at the time    A doctor making a diagnosis based on a limited set of symptoms.
Practical Application
In everyday language, logical reasoning skills empower individuals to:
* Analyze texts and arguments effectively.
* Construct strong, coherent arguments in writing and discussion.
* Identify biases and flaws in others' reasoning.
* Make informed decisions and solve problems more effectively in various contexts, from personal life to professional fields like law, science, and computer programming. 
To improve these skills, practice is essential, including breaking down arguments...

Not bad, for starters. Of course, I already knew the material. having first taught it nearly 30 years ago. So, I was just "AI-curious."

 

Interesting topical video below:

 

 See my prior post from a cou[le of days prior.

 

Just getting re-started,,,

 

Cleto Escobedo III, R.I.P.

A tragic Loss

I have a small bit of tangential history here. I am heartbroken for all of Cleto's family and all of his friends in our mutual Las Vegas music tribe.

"Thinking critically?"

 

I got to teach collegiate "critical thinking" for 5 fun years while living in Las Vegas (evening school adjunct faculty; my day gig was that of a credit risk analyst in a bank). I never really liked the curricular title. I'm likewise guarded about cavalierly using the word "idiot."

Too many of my students came in thinking "oh, cool, we're just gonna argue about stuff endlessly and get our gripes off our chests..." 

Also, "idiot" is not a dtrect synonym for "stupid," notwithstanding common invective usage. Greek "idios," aware of only one's self. Yeah, one could argue that such egocentric fixations are "stupid:" I suppose, but, dunno, brosdly.

Stay tuned... 

 

UPDATE

 

Will have to get back to this. Cleto Escobedo III just died.

Andrew Ross Sorkin follow-up.

The gift who keeps on giving.
   

   
apropos of some prior posts, e.g., here, and here.

 

He's certainly making the interview rounds of late. Justifiably so. A delightful man. His SME chops are compelling. His totally pleasant, self-deprecating personality could not be more endearing.

 

See also Andrew's chat with Anthony Scaramucci. Interview length ~0.002 Scaramuccis.

Gotta say, I have new respect for Scaramucci after viewing his 1929 Sorkin interview. Astute guy. I've not paid sufficient attention to him. 

Do yourselves some serious favors; acquire and study Andrew'a books. I've moved on to several new titles, but keep looping back around.

 

  

Below: Recurrent relevant riff of mine. "An ongoing concern, one rather acutely ramping up in recent years, is one of our sociopolitical Bifurcation (particularly as it goes to economic policies). to wit, [1] Those of us bound by the law yet not protected by it, in contrast with [2] those protected by the law but not bound by it. Which cohort applies to you?"

 

Human affairs get "governed" one way or another. Sorry, MAGA you're-not-the-boss-of-me "FreeDumb & Liberty" peeps.

Another, older fav book of mine:

 

If there were only one man in the world, he would have a lot of problems, but none of them would be legal ones. Add a second inhabitant, and we have the possibility of conflict. Both of us try to pick the same apple from the same branch. I track the deer I wounded only to find that you have killed it, butchered it, and are in the process of cooking and eating it. 

The obvious solution is violence. It is not a very good solution; if we employ it, our little world may shrink back down to one person, or perhaps none. A better solution, one that all known human societies have found, is a system of legal rules explicit or implicit, some reasonably peaceful way of determining, when desires conflict, who gets to do what and what happens if he doesn’t. 

The legal rules that we are most familiar with are laws created by legislatures and enforced by courts and police. But even in our society much of the law is the creation not of legislatures but of judges, embedded in past precedents that determine how future cases will be decided; much enforcement of law is by private parties such as tort victims and their lawyers rather than by police; and substantial bodies of legal rules take the form not of laws. but of private norms, privately enforced. 

Going farther afield in time and space we encounter a much greater diversity, both in the sources of legal rules and in the ways in which they are enforced. If we are considering all systems of legal rules in all times and places, the ways in which legal rules are created and enforced in America in this century are simply data—one out of many possible solutions to the problem of human conflict, one out of many possible systems of legal rules.

Friedman, David D.. Law's Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters (p. 3). (Function). Kindle Edition.  

Connection to these newer books will commence as we speculate upon where things might plausibly (interconnectedly) head—e.g., AGI/LLM/robotics, private finance/ECON markets, crypto, etc...

 

UPDATE

 

This is nicely done.

 

Recall my "Tranche Warfare" 'eh?