Month: March 2025

In many parts of the United States, it has long been understood to be dangerous to be DWB. As you may know, that is shorthand for “driving while black”.

In a somewhat parallel development, it seems that it is now dangerous in the USA to be SWI. Or, in other words, “studying while Islamic”.

For some reason, last night I started thinking about John Astin. I wasn’t sure why.

He had many wonderful roles, but my favorite by far was Gomez Addams in the original Addams Family TV show. His unique sense of intelligent playfulness in that show was a great inspiration for many people, including myself.

But then I started to wonder — why did I start thinking about John Astin just now? And by the way, what has become of him? Is he still alive?

Then today I happened to see on Wikipedia that today is his birthday. The great man was born on March 30, 1930 — and yes, he is still with us.

Now I am wondering — did I somehow already know about his birthday? Or was my thinking about him just now simply one of those magical coincidences?

In any case, I am delighted that one of my childhood heroes is still around to inspire us. And I hope that many people will join me in wishing him a very happy 95th birthday!

It’s not the meanness and focus on petty retribution that worries me most about what is going on now in Washington D.C. — although those things are indeed worrisome. It’s the astonishing level of amateurish incompetence.

It’s like somebody says they will fix your car, and then they proceed to smash it to bits with a sledgehammer. But in this case it’s a government that is being smashed to bits.

And that means the stakes are very high. When idiots start dismantling the mechanisms required for a nation to function, people suffer and people die.

After these goons are voted out (assuming that your vote will still count by then), I wonder how people will remember all this.

I’m imagining a future poll in which citizens are asked how they voted in 2024. I suspect that the number who are willing admit that they voted for this clown will be very close to zero.

Somebody asked me today whether it bothers me that I am getting older.

Without really thinking about it, I responded: “I have no problem with getting older. I have a problem with not getting older.”

Let’s all hang out on Signal
I hear it’s quite the hoot
Where you meet the finest people
And journalists to boot

You can plan attacks on Yemen
And share that with your bros
And with everybody else, in fact
‘Cause that’s the way it goes

When a very stable genius
Picked you to head armed forces
‘Cause he likes your pretty TV hair
So critics, hold your horses

For at least one person’s happy
I can tell as sure as shootin’
See, what’s happened to our country is
The greatest gift to Putin

This is the point in the discussion where honesty requires taking the gloves off. Our president is not merely a racist and white supremacist. He is a proud and determined racist and white supremacist.

He made a point of firing general Charles Q. Brown precisely because of Brown’s superior capability and merit. Brown is a black man who, by any objective measure, is vastly more competent and intelligent and accomplished than either the president or his motley crew of yes-men.

And that means that Brown must be disappeared. In addition, there needs to be an insidious smear campaign suggesting, against all evidence, that this highly decorated fighter pilot and accomplished military officer was hired only because of his skin color.

To put it plainly, the president — who hangs out with people like Nick Fuentes and places his government in the hands of people who give Nazi salutes — is clearly terrified of people who are not white and who are more intelligent and capable than he is. Because the entire premise of racism is to fight against merit.

Once you start to acknowledge that some of the most talented, capable and hard working people are not white, you can no longer maintain the illusion of white superiority. So the fact that a child born into a family that is not white might actually be the smartest kid in the room can never be spoken of.

DEI, when properly implemented, is the most powerful way for a society to economically reward itself. The society that is able to promote those who are most objectively talented and capable, regardless of their background, is a society that will enjoy the greatest prosperity for all.

So if you’re a racist, you need to mislabel DEI as a hand-out to the undeserving. And just to be safe, you also need to implement destructive economic policies that make it difficult or impossible for people to succeed economically on the basis of their own merit.

Which, you will note, is exactly what our current administration is doing. Because actual merit based success is that very last thing a racist will ever tolerate.

In other words, when DEI is implemented properly, it is the best way that a society can marshal its human resources for the benefit of all. The society that is most successful at finding and nurturing the potential talent in each new generation will reap the rewards.

That society will end up getting the best scientists, engineers, artists, writers, surgeons, economists and architects. Wealth will increase all around, and everybody wins.

Yet the U.S. is now in an era when the people in power are telling everyone that DEI is bad. So what is going on?

More tomorrow.

It can certainly be argued that the implementation of DEI programs in the U.S. has been flawed. But the concept of DEI is not.

There are two key points here that need to be unpacked: (1) DEI is, in essence, a way to focus on merit, and (2) the most valuable asset within every nation state is its human capital.

The talent, ambition and hard work of people is what makes everything happen in the world. So one of the primary goals of a society, and therefore of its government, should be to optimize the use of this asset, to the benefit of everyone in that society.

In an ideal world, everyone would start out with equal opportunity, and there would be no need for DEI. But as we all know, we do not live in an ideal world.

A child born into a poor family in certain regions of this country is at a vast disadvantage in terms of educational and economic opportunities. If your school district cannot even afford textbooks, it will be difficult for your child to reach their full potential.

And it is very much in the interest of any society to ensure that as many children in that society reach their full potential. Those children are the society’s store of human capital — its greatest asset.

More tomorrow.

I’ve been thinking a lot about DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), ever since it became a primary target of attack by our current president. And the more I think about the issue, the more I think that the argument being made against DEI is not only wrong, but absurd.

But maybe that’s exactly the point. Perhaps the reason this administration is focusing so many attacks on DEI is that it is a convenient way to hide another truth that it would rather people not think about.

More tomorrow.

I’ve been working on a fairly tricky patch of code, and I am starting to see a pattern in my strategy. Because this part of the program is so delicate, anything I do might break it.

So my general strategy has been to make one small change, test it immediately, and see whether things blow up. If it all still looks good, then I can start from there and make another small change.

But if anything has gone wrong, I undo whatever was the last thing I did. And then I try something else.

It feels kind of like hopping from stone to stone to cross a pond. You slowy proceed across by putting one foot down to test whether there is something solid there.

If the stone supports your weight, you shift to that stone and keep going. Otherwise, you pick up your foot and try another stone.

I suspect that a lot of the progress we make in life actually follows this pattern: step, test, retreat. And then step again.