I remember very well the discussion among a small group of fencing parents whose kids trained with my son. It was back when our children were applying to college. They were all top students with top grades and scores, and each was a top nationally ranked fencer. I complained about how colleges had no interest in my son, a white Jewish boy from Long Island.

The other parents laughed. What about their children, Asian kids with perfect SAT scores who played all-state cello and won national science prizes? They didn’t stand a chance.** Continue reading →

The the other day, a question was posed whether the fact that an interlocutor was a “mediocre cis white dude” was relevant to anything, in juxtaposition to the uniformity of opinion by, in this instance, “‘every’ trans writer” as related by @AngryBlackLady.

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Elon Musk spent $44 billion to buy twitter. What a maroon. I own twitter, and I didn’t spend a dime. When twitter first appeared, I refused to play. I said then I had no thoughts that could be reduced to 140 characters, as it was when it forced people to be disciplined in their expression to fit within the confines of a twit.

Do you really want to know what book I’m reading, in real time?  What about my thoughts on the Giant’s chances of making it to the playoffs?  Or how many cups of coffee I drink every morning.  As I said to Kevin, we already have too much information.  This is just way too much. Continue reading →

It can prove hard to figure out what’s harmful these days, given that people are rather promiscuous in their claim of victimhood and suffering from anything they choose. Whether they’re really harmed or just play-acting is hard to say, which is why there exists terms and conditions that makes it unacceptable to question someone claiming victimhood.

But this has given rise to a sub rosa suspicion that many who proclaim their inner pain without any physical harm are mostly performing, and they consequently dismiss the seriousness of all such claims. No one punched, cut or otherwise struck Corionsa Ramey, and yet her claim of irreparable harm deserved better than she got. Continue reading →

In what can only be described as a move of laughable cynicism, the Republicans in the Pennsylvania House voted to impeach Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner. They formed a committee to impeach Krasner. They held a party line vote to impeach Krasner. And voted to impeach Krasner.

What’s breaking their hearts is that Krasner, the original progressive prosecutor, not only turned out to be the real deal when it came to doing what he said he was going to do, from not prosecuting petty offenses to aggressively prosecuting cops who engaged in crime to reviewing old convictions of dubious merit, not only was elected the first time, but was re-elected by the people of Philly a second time, winning 69% of the vote. They kinda liked Larry. This blew up heads in Harrisburg. Continue reading →

I appreciate that there are some people who reject Thanksgiving traditions. I am not one of those people. I wish you all the blessing of your family and friends, and hope you have a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat.

As the chorus of voices condemning the Club Q shooting leveled blame for hatred against transgender people in general, and drag shows in particular, at a broad swathe of people who richly deserve the blame, the accused shooter’s lawyers threw a wrench into the works.

In new court filing, public defenders for the suspect in the mass shooting at a Colorado gay club that left 5 people dead say that their client is non-binary and that "they use they/them pronouns." The lawyers refer to their client as Mx. Anderson Aldrich. pic.twitter.com/dPaUpiFXKN

— Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs (@NickAtNews) November 23, 2022

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For the past few years, somebody has offered a Thanksgiving column or op-ed about how some young, woke, genius should deal with drunken Uncle Erwin who doesn’t appreciate their purple hair, face tats and new pronouns to accompany their gender identify of delisexual. Are we finally past this?

For four unforgiving years, from 2016 to 2020, the problem was breaking bread with your political nemeses. Advice columns bristled with agita. How do you handle your Trump-loving father-in-law or the out-of-towners who show up in MAGA gear? “No baseball caps at the table” was USA Today’s Rule No. 7 for avoiding political food fights in 2019. In some other neck of the woods, aggrieved citizens despaired about their Occupy nephew storming in unshaven from his sophomore year at some college “back East.”

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There isn’t much San Francisco does well anymore, but it managed to be pretty good at running elections. That was largely due to a guy named John Arntz, the Frisco elections director. So naturally, they refused to renew his contract.

Elections director John Arntz, who oversees one of the few San Francisco departments that unambiguously accomplishes its core mission, has not been renewed for his post by the city’s Elections Commission.
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As frauds go, Theranos was a doozy, for which Elizabeth Holmes was properly convicted.and sentenced to 135 months (11 years, three months for base 12 impaired). Few people shed tears over the length of her sentence. Many condemned the sentence as far too lenient, given the magnitude of her fraud and the nature of harm Theranos’ false claims could have caused. As for Holmes, she went from high tech waif to the embodiment of “fake it till you make it,” a sadly admired state for many in the tech industry.

There was a time, however, when the public wasn’t addicted to astronomical sentences, when a sentence over ten years was reserved for the most heinous of crimes, murders and rapes. There was also a time when a distinction of moral culpability was made between the person who would commit a violent crime from financial crime, so-called “white collar” crime. Should there be? Continue reading →