To clarify, he sold guns that had been used in a school shooting earlier (stolen from evidence, I guess?) to an undercover agent. The shooting was on September 27th, and he sold the guns on October 13th.
As every good leftist knows, poverty is the root cause of crime. If sheriff's deputies are forced to sell guns illegally to make ends meet, clearly the department doesn't have enough funding to pay them properly.
Biden's October 6 proclamation applied only to U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents convicted of simple marijuana possession under the Controlled Substances Act or the District of Columbia Code, none of whom was still incarcerated.
It goes on to say that the executive order will not free any prisoners now or ever, and that only people convicted before the age of 21 will have their convictions expunged. It's not a matter of time, but of the scope of Biden's presidential powers.
That said, I disagree with Sullum and think that Biden is right not to issue a blanket pardon to dealers. While I do think that marijuana should be legal, illegal drugs are often sold by violent criminal organizations. Pardoning of dealers should be done on a case-by-case basis and limited to those who are not known to be affiliated with violent gangs.
I watched Matrix Reloaded in a theater full of tech workers. There were two big laugh lines. The first was at the end of the Freddy vs. Jason trailer when the title was announced. The second was "I'm the architect."
There are many, many legitimate criticisms to level at the Biden administration, which has been surprisingly awful, even relative to my already low expectations. In terms of actual policy enacted, as opposed to personal style, the Biden administration might actually be worse than the Trump administration. If I lived in a swing state, I would hold my nose and vote for literally any guaranteed vote against against implementing more of the Democrats' spaghetti-for-brains agenda.
That said, these particular criticisms aren't really fair.
Keep in mind that the percentage of CS graduates not employed in a related field is likely considerably higher than that; this is just the people who are completely unemployed.
I suspect that the issue is that, due to a combination of cheating and lax standards, colleges are handing out too many CS degrees to people who can't program their way out of a paper bag.
I wonder how employers in unrelated fields look at CS majors. Is it seen as a black mark if you have a CS degree and are applying for unrelated jobs that pay much less than software development?
According to the BLS, mean and median wages for lawyers are still a bit higher than for software developers. Not by enough to make an extra three years of school and law school tuition pay off, but it's still a solid upper-middle-class job.
It's important to distinguish between median earnings and value added. Value added is how much impact a major has on earnings controlling for student ability (as determined by, e.g., test scores and high school GPA).
I can't find it now, but years ago I remember seeing a study that examined this question for a handful of majors at one or a few universities, and it found that, e.g., students majoring in English tended to be above average in terms of academic ability, but had average earnings, indicating low added value. Conversely, criminology students were below-average and had average earnings, indicating high added value. Engineering students had high academic ability and very high earnings, also indicating high added value.
Unfortunately, I don't think this analysis has been done on a larger scale.
First, the gap in welfare spending between the US and Europe is overstated. The US spends a smaller percentage of GDP on welfare spending than most Western European countries, but it's also quite a bit wealthier, so in real per-capita terms it's not so different, especially when you account for the fact that, due to not having a 20-25% VAT, US taxes are considerably more progressive than European taxes.
More importantly, parents who obsess over test scores are not the kind of people who are going to regard living on the dole as an acceptable outcome for their children no matter how well it's funded. They're obsessed because they want the best for their children, not the bare minimum. The outcome they're trying to avoid is having their kids grow up to be average, not poor.
There do exist parents who, at a certain level of funding, will say, "Well, whatever. My kids can just go on welfare when they grow up." But these are not the people you were talking about.
I don't know why you insist on trying to reason with Chip. I speak three languages and got an 800 on the verbal SAT, but I still don't have the words to express how little intellectual respect I have for him and his fellow travelers. But since you asked, it's the second, of course.
To be clear, I don't personally feel like a victim. I'm doing fine. I'm not personally offended by left-wing bigotry. I don't care what trashy people think of me.
I do care that the trash has not been taken out. I resent the corruption of science, education, journalism, and my country by midwits in the thrall of a pseudoscientific ideology which is so trivially falsified as to make it clear that not one of them has made the slightest effort to step outside the evidentiary Potemkin village needed to sustain the myth.
Then there's that whole mess with Trump and co. on the other side. I feel like the bread in an inside-out s*** sandwich.
You're the lawyer, but I'm reading that the damages are ostensibly all compensatory, which is obviously nonsense. Maybe "appeal" isn't the right term, but surely he can dispute the amount on the grounds that it's wildly out of proportion to actual damages and an obvious attempt to do an end run around Connecticut's punitive damages cap?
It's a good thing we now know that the ACT is racist and only a test of test-taking skill.
Concerningly, the decline in average score is happening in parallel with a decline in the share of students taking the test. It's also happening in every race except Asians, so it's not just a matter of demographics shifting.
The NCES doesn't seem to have as much history for the SAT, but here's a table for 2017 to 2020. Test scores decreased only 9 points (less than 0.05 standard deviations), while percentage taking the test increased from 48% to 60%
It looks like the SAT is taking some market share back from the ACT, though it's not clear how much market will be left after the CRT/DEI cultists have their wicked, ignorant way with it.
Anyway, with the large shifts in market share, it’s hard to say for sure what’s going on here. Are we seeing a major decline in preparedness, or just some artifacts of selection bias?
I assume that will come down on appeal. I wonder how many times the "No, eleventy gajillion is not a real number" conversation has happened either between jury members or between a judge and a jury.
I'm not a lawyer, and I've never gone to law school or taken the bar exam, but there's a common myth in software development that you don't need to know stuff because you can look anything up. The problem with this is that there's all kinds of stuff out there that you wouldn't think to look up unless you already knew about it. You don't have to memorize the details, but you need to understand the general layout of the information available, and a conceptual framework to hold everything together.
I imagine that law works the same way, although it's probably less systematic.
This happened in my theory of computation (the one that covers stuff like automata theory and algorithmic complexity) class in college, but it was a new professor instead of one with decades of experience. On the first test, six weeks in, the whole class did so badly that they replaced him and started the whole class over with another professor. If there was a petition, I wasn't involved, and nobody asked me to sign one, so I'm not sure how it all got started.
I wonder what happened to him. I hope he got a second chance.
I suspect that preferred alcoholic beverage is acting as a proxy for ability to work from home and/or compliance with NPIs and vaccination recommendations. It's possible that there's something in wine that acts as a protective factor, but "wine is associated with reduced risk and beer is associated with increased risk" is exactly the kind of thing you would expect if beverage choice were acting as a proxy for some sort of social/behavioral factors.
In theory, decriminalization of personal possession without legalizing sales could make things worse. When sales are illegal, the supply is controlled by (often) violent criminals. Increasing demand by telling people that they can buy and use drugs with no worry of legal repercussions increases demand, which drives up prices and encourages more people to get into the illegal drug trade, potentially worsening the associated violent crime.
Does it actually work out that way in practice? I'm not sure.
Meanwhile, those innocent drug users are, in fact, funding and encouraging the horribly destructive drug trade. It's not their fault that no legitimate suppliers exist, but if they all stopped using drugs, that would probably result in a lot fewer people being killed by Latin American cartels and US gangs.
It's actually kind of puzzling that we virtually never see calls to boycott illegal drugs. Yes, people advocate abstention on the grounds that drugs are bad for you, but despite drug cartels and gangs being objectively much worse than the vast majority of legitimate corporations and industries that are frequent targets of boycotts, I don't think I've ever heard anyone call for a drug boycott. Apparently every once in a while, somebody in the UK will call for a cocaine boycott, but that seems to be it.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “From Danny Freeman of NBC Philadelphia: A Philadelphia Deputy has been arrested by the feds for illegally selling guns on the street.”
To clarify, he sold guns that had been used in a school shooting earlier (stolen from evidence, I guess?) to an undercover agent. The shooting was on September 27th, and he sold the guns on October 13th.
"
As every good leftist knows, poverty is the root cause of crime. If sheriff's deputies are forced to sell guns illegally to make ends meet, clearly the department doesn't have enough funding to pay them properly.
On “Ten Second News Links and Open Thread for the week of 10/24/22”
Read the article:
It goes on to say that the executive order will not free any prisoners now or ever, and that only people convicted before the age of 21 will have their convictions expunged. It's not a matter of time, but of the scope of Biden's presidential powers.
That said, I disagree with Sullum and think that Biden is right not to issue a blanket pardon to dealers. While I do think that marijuana should be legal, illegal drugs are often sold by violent criminal organizations. Pardoning of dealers should be done on a case-by-case basis and limited to those who are not known to be affiliated with violent gangs.
On “Avatar Has No “Hasta la Vista, Baby””
I watched Matrix Reloaded in a theater full of tech workers. There were two big laugh lines. The first was at the end of the Freddy vs. Jason trailer when the title was announced. The second was "I'm the architect."
On “The Biden Weight Loss Plan”
There are many, many legitimate criticisms to level at the Biden administration, which has been surprisingly awful, even relative to my already low expectations. In terms of actual policy enacted, as opposed to personal style, the Biden administration might actually be worse than the Trump administration. If I lived in a swing state, I would hold my nose and vote for literally any guaranteed vote against against implementing more of the Democrats' spaghetti-for-brains agenda.
That said, these particular criticisms aren't really fair.
On “Ten Second News Links and Open Thread for the week of 10/17/22”
Well, it finally happened. Conservatives got so fishing stupid that they turned into leftists.
On “From the AP: ACT test scores drop to lowest in 30 years in pandemic slide”
Computer science majors actually have relatively high unemployment.
Keep in mind that the percentage of CS graduates not employed in a related field is likely considerably higher than that; this is just the people who are completely unemployed.
I suspect that the issue is that, due to a combination of cheating and lax standards, colleges are handing out too many CS degrees to people who can't program their way out of a paper bag.
I wonder how employers in unrelated fields look at CS majors. Is it seen as a black mark if you have a CS degree and are applying for unrelated jobs that pay much less than software development?
"
According to the BLS, mean and median wages for lawyers are still a bit higher than for software developers. Not by enough to make an extra three years of school and law school tuition pay off, but it's still a solid upper-middle-class job.
"
It's important to distinguish between median earnings and value added. Value added is how much impact a major has on earnings controlling for student ability (as determined by, e.g., test scores and high school GPA).
I can't find it now, but years ago I remember seeing a study that examined this question for a handful of majors at one or a few universities, and it found that, e.g., students majoring in English tended to be above average in terms of academic ability, but had average earnings, indicating low added value. Conversely, criminology students were below-average and had average earnings, indicating high added value. Engineering students had high academic ability and very high earnings, also indicating high added value.
Unfortunately, I don't think this analysis has been done on a larger scale.
"
This doesn't sound right to me.
First, the gap in welfare spending between the US and Europe is overstated. The US spends a smaller percentage of GDP on welfare spending than most Western European countries, but it's also quite a bit wealthier, so in real per-capita terms it's not so different, especially when you account for the fact that, due to not having a 20-25% VAT, US taxes are considerably more progressive than European taxes.
More importantly, parents who obsess over test scores are not the kind of people who are going to regard living on the dole as an acceptable outcome for their children no matter how well it's funded. They're obsessed because they want the best for their children, not the bare minimum. The outcome they're trying to avoid is having their kids grow up to be average, not poor.
There do exist parents who, at a certain level of funding, will say, "Well, whatever. My kids can just go on welfare when they grow up." But these are not the people you were talking about.
On “Extra! Extra! The Ten Second News Links We’ve Overlooked!”
I don't know why you insist on trying to reason with Chip. I speak three languages and got an 800 on the verbal SAT, but I still don't have the words to express how little intellectual respect I have for him and his fellow travelers. But since you asked, it's the second, of course.
To be clear, I don't personally feel like a victim. I'm doing fine. I'm not personally offended by left-wing bigotry. I don't care what trashy people think of me.
I do care that the trash has not been taken out. I resent the corruption of science, education, journalism, and my country by midwits in the thrall of a pseudoscientific ideology which is so trivially falsified as to make it clear that not one of them has made the slightest effort to step outside the evidentiary Potemkin village needed to sustain the myth.
Then there's that whole mess with Trump and co. on the other side. I feel like the bread in an inside-out s*** sandwich.
On “Ten Second News Links and Open Thread for the week of 10/10/22”
Reports are that the painting was behind a glass pane and not damaged.
That BPD hair, though.
"
Well, it is an oil painting.
"
You're the lawyer, but I'm reading that the damages are ostensibly all compensatory, which is obviously nonsense. Maybe "appeal" isn't the right term, but surely he can dispute the amount on the grounds that it's wildly out of proportion to actual damages and an obvious attempt to do an end run around Connecticut's punitive damages cap?
On “On Columbus Day”
Sounds like those uppity guidos need to learn their place.
On “From the AP: ACT test scores drop to lowest in 30 years in pandemic slide”
It's a good thing we now know that the ACT is racist and only a test of test-taking skill.
Concerningly, the decline in average score is happening in parallel with a decline in the share of students taking the test. It's also happening in every race except Asians, so it's not just a matter of demographics shifting.
The NCES doesn't seem to have as much history for the SAT, but here's a table for 2017 to 2020. Test scores decreased only 9 points (less than 0.05 standard deviations), while percentage taking the test increased from 48% to 60%
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_226.40.asp
It looks like the SAT is taking some market share back from the ACT, though it's not clear how much market will be left after the CRT/DEI cultists have their wicked, ignorant way with it.
Anyway, with the large shifts in market share, it’s hard to say for sure what’s going on here. Are we seeing a major decline in preparedness, or just some artifacts of selection bias?
On “Ten Second News Links and Open Thread for the week of 10/10/22”
I assume that will come down on appeal. I wonder how many times the "No, eleventy gajillion is not a real number" conversation has happened either between jury members or between a judge and a jury.
On “From NBC News: Rail union rejects labor deal brokered by Biden administration, raising possibility of strike”
It's important to take good care of one's pets.
On “Extra! Extra! The Ten Second News Links We’ve Overlooked!”
The problem isn't that she disrespected a group of citizens. It's that she disrespected the wrong group of citizens.
"
We don't need to settle for the lesser of two evils. We can get the evils to obstruct each other.
"
All the talk about how hard organic chemistry is made me really want to take it, but I could never fit it into my schedule.
"
I'm not a lawyer, and I've never gone to law school or taken the bar exam, but there's a common myth in software development that you don't need to know stuff because you can look anything up. The problem with this is that there's all kinds of stuff out there that you wouldn't think to look up unless you already knew about it. You don't have to memorize the details, but you need to understand the general layout of the information available, and a conceptual framework to hold everything together.
I imagine that law works the same way, although it's probably less systematic.
"
This happened in my theory of computation (the one that covers stuff like automata theory and algorithmic complexity) class in college, but it was a new professor instead of one with decades of experience. On the first test, six weeks in, the whole class did so badly that they replaced him and started the whole class over with another professor. If there was a petition, I wasn't involved, and nobody asked me to sign one, so I'm not sure how it all got started.
I wonder what happened to him. I hope he got a second chance.
"
I suspect that preferred alcoholic beverage is acting as a proxy for ability to work from home and/or compliance with NPIs and vaccination recommendations. It's possible that there's something in wine that acts as a protective factor, but "wine is associated with reduced risk and beer is associated with increased risk" is exactly the kind of thing you would expect if beverage choice were acting as a proxy for some sort of social/behavioral factors.
On “President Biden Pardons Federal Marijuana Offensives”
In theory, decriminalization of personal possession without legalizing sales could make things worse. When sales are illegal, the supply is controlled by (often) violent criminals. Increasing demand by telling people that they can buy and use drugs with no worry of legal repercussions increases demand, which drives up prices and encourages more people to get into the illegal drug trade, potentially worsening the associated violent crime.
Does it actually work out that way in practice? I'm not sure.
Meanwhile, those innocent drug users are, in fact, funding and encouraging the horribly destructive drug trade. It's not their fault that no legitimate suppliers exist, but if they all stopped using drugs, that would probably result in a lot fewer people being killed by Latin American cartels and US gangs.
It's actually kind of puzzling that we virtually never see calls to boycott illegal drugs. Yes, people advocate abstention on the grounds that drugs are bad for you, but despite drug cartels and gangs being objectively much worse than the vast majority of legitimate corporations and industries that are frequent targets of boycotts, I don't think I've ever heard anyone call for a drug boycott. Apparently every once in a while, somebody in the UK will call for a cocaine boycott, but that seems to be it.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.