Where tenure should end

An anthropology professor claims, absolutely falsely, that there are no ways of determining whether a skeleton is male or female.   Now in the article, swimmer Riley Gaines is incorrect about men having an extra rib, but she is 100% correct that anthropologists have been differentiating male from female skeletons based on pelvic structure for over a century.  It's also well known to doctors.

And my take on this matter is that if a professor says something that demonstrably false in what is supposed to be his area of specialty, that's cause for his employer to revoke tenure.  There is academic freedom, yes, and then there is "I'm going to deny the differences in bone density, head size and shape, femur and humerus length, and the sciatic notch and auricular surface differences between men and women."

And if one falls in that category, yes, one is not competent to teach anthropology at any level.  

Make it a mockery

Canadian powerlifting coach, struck by the fact that he (yes, he) could, without any therapy on his part, and without shaving his beard, compete as a woman, shatters a transgender woman's bench press record.  Wasn't even close; he did 167kG (360+ lbs), while the old record was 270.  

To add salt to the wound, the "trans" lifter had raised the ire of "cis-gender" athletes by asking why it was that women don't do bench press like men.  Um, lack of male shoulders, bone structure, musculature, and testosterone, maybe?

I don't know that I'm capable of predicting the future, but I dare say that the "trans" movement into women's sport is stalling.  Between real women getting hurt by trans athletes in sports like basketball and volleyball, real women not getting chances to win, the intrusion of "Megan's List" candidates into locker rooms, and finally the preference of women's athletics fans to actually see a female form competing, I think the pushback will be, and should be, fierce.

No easy solutions here; without testosterone, "trans" athletes are going to have trouble competing as men, and they greatly want to be accepted as women.  But that said, we have women only spaces for the reasons I've enunciated and more, and "there isn't a category that fits us" doesn't mean "you get to blow up the women's category."

A Russian decision I can get behind?

Maybe, at least.  Some are arguing that the insane Russian/Wagner Group drive to take Bakhmut, a drive which has so far cost tens of thousands of Russian lives, is in effect a bid to discredit Wagner head Prigozhin from any designs on the power structure in Moscow.  Exactly how this would help, or hurt, Prigozhin's friend Putina is not clear to me.

All in all, though, in any civilized country, destroying tens of thousands of lives in an attempt to get a person sidelined from politics ought to be a criminal offense.  This is why, really, Ukraine fights.

An interesting comment on human nutrition

Runner's World has put together an article trying to quantify the portion of one's diet that should consist of highly processed foods--not just the classic white flour, refined sugar, and the like, but also packaged snacks, energy gels, and even protein bars.

Now wait?  Protein bars?  Yes, and here's why.  When protein is extracted from other sources--whether from whey/dairy, peas, beans, or other sources--what is done is to take the protein with as little of the "other stuff" as possible.  Now those who like protein bars would say it's a good thing that they're reducing the amount of carbohydrates in their food (advocates of the Mediterranean diet might disagree), but the kicker here is what else is disposed of with the carbohydrates.

You see, bran is just a long chain carbohydrate, so it stands to reason that as you get rid of carbs, you get rid of fiber and all the cool nutrients that are in that fiber--vitamins and minerals especially, as the bran and such is where the precursors to chlorophyll are stored for when the seed sprouts into a plant.  And so even when the "end result" in terms of "macros" seems right, many of these refined protein sources are in fact fairly depleted foods.

Why is this significant?  It goes back to something I remember thinking when talking with friends who were excellent womens' distance runners; they were going to skinless chicken and turkey breast for protein, and then wondered why their red blood cells were in effect turning pink.  Poultry breast is an excellent source of protein, but does not have the iron of beef, pork, or even beans or poultry legs.

And so I wonder if a lot of our "healthy diet advice" is really leading people to adopt a fairly "depleted" diet, and is thus actually making things worse for a lot of otherwise healthy-eating people.  It's one thing to ease off the SAD, but if we simply exchange high carbohydrate refined foods for high protein refined foods, we aren't doing ourselves many favors.

On turnaround experts and specialized executives

Over the course of my career, I've interacted with a fair number of coworkers who clue in to the fact that certain executives are brought in for very specific purposes.  Some are (shudder) turnaround artists, some are there to milk the last penny of revenue and profit from aging capital, and more.  Well, I had the opportunity to talk with a man yesterday who apparently is a psychologist whose company goes a few steps beyond "Strengths Finder" and Gallup testing to help select executives for these specific purposes. 

We had a nice talk, and he was gratified to see that his take on the executives of my company was shared by myself, but one thing that struck me was that if I had this man's skills in psychology, and I were asked to select an executive to be the proverbial "Chainsaw Al Dunlap", I'd have to say "no, thank you, doing so involves too much cruelty to ordinary workers."

Now I don't know whether this man has the exact same perspective as I or not--I'm guessing he has at least some moral code given some of what he told me--but it is nonetheless sobering to think that there is a group of people out there whose specific job is to do this kind of things, and might not have that moral guide.  It reminds me of the time when a former company let a lot of people go, and people were openly wondering who was going to "go postal".  At some point, someone needs to tell elites "this is way too far."

Additional thought: it strikes me that one of the key issues we've got going here is that if an executive is significantly or mostly responsible for managing changes in business, locking in a specific set of psychological profiles for one short term goal is going to be one of the most harmful things for a business that I can thinkof.

And a fake foreign minister

Check it out here; Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov gets laughed at as he claims that Russia was invaded by Ukraine.  OK, propriety and all, but one is almost disappointed that something more blunt was not said, and (Google translate) in Russian.

Fake chocolate....

.....and apparently endorsed by a fake woman.   I would boycott Hershey for this, but quite frankly, I've been boycotting Hershey for many years for the crime of making inferior products.  Somehow this all seems to fit together.

On another note, this beatdown of a teacher's aide suggests that a lot of schools could do little better than to have a convocation discussing a return to the student discipline policies of the past--and to exclude "students" with multiple cases of assault and battery, as the perpetrator here had.  In related news, a majority of Ontario teachers report being assaulted due to their "soft on disruptive kids" policies there. 

A bigger question

 This editorial notes that China must be made to pay for their leak of the coronavirus from WIV in Wuhan, and while I agree--let's start by not sponsoring research that could be used for bioweapons with the worst practicioner of genocide in history!--it strikes me that even more important question is why basic questions like this gained no traction at the CDC and NIH, let alone the media.  

After all, it's an obvious point that if an epidemic starts near a virology research center, that's a suspect, in the same way that it's an obvious point that 126nm particles tend to form aerosols, and in the same way that it's an obvious point that you don't do research that could be used for bioweapons with a government sponsored lab in a nation that's killed 65 million of their own people and is waving the sword against its neighbors.

I can see a few people missing this, but how is it that pretty much everybody outside a conservative "bubble" missed these issues?  That's something we ought to investigate.

Surprise, surprise

 The same kind of electronics reliability issues I've dealt with for my entire career are plaguing electric vehicle recharging stations.  What a shocker.

Where am I coming from here?  Simple.  The same economics that shift production of electronics to Asia--save a nickel per widget with dollar an hour labor--are in place for electronics reliability.  So things that ought to be done to protect the business simply aren't done.  You see it in data storage (my industry), lightbulbs (I noticed bathroom CF bulbs didn't last worth beans about ten years back), appliances, and more.

The question arises "OK, why doesn't this cause problems in gas stations, too?", and the answer is "it does".  But the trick is that when one gas pump goes out, that doesn't generally take out the whole gas station.  Plus, it takes five minutes to fill a car with gasoline, and hours to recharge an electric.  Hence troubles with electric chargers impact drivers far worse than do troubles with gasoline pumps.

Maybe it's time to take a good look at the risks of going all-electric.

Observations from the Super Bowl

KC's head coach appears to be ready to endorse Quaker Oatmeal.

One of their star receivers seems to have a bit of a "Ronald McDonald" vibe going with those yellow shoes and gloves.

Does Eagles player Zach Pascal make wagers?

When Philadelphia's QB got hit, Jalen Hurts.

Did the dancers at the halftime show remind anyone else of the Teletubbies?

Watching a football game after reading Bennett Omalu's biography (Omalu discovered CTE) is a very interesting instance of seeing, and cringing at, every blow to the head.   Praising God that He gave me lineman's speed (if that), a receiver's body(but skinnier), and hands of stone, so I'd be ready to run cross country.

An interesting idea

In Massachusetts, a bill has been submitted that would allow prison inmates to get up to a 12 month reduction in their sentence if they donate an organ.   Somehow it seems like a good idea to me, though you'd have your hands full making sure that the prisoner was in fact in a condition to survive the surgery without passing on jailhouse infections (jailhouse rape is endemic, sad to say, with accompanying STDs and more) to the recipient.

Especially compelling is the reality that if a prisoner donates a kidney, he simultaneously becomes a more vulnerable person--we have two kidneys in case one becomes damaged, but if you've only got one, brawling and crime becomes a less attractive option because....one is in a condition where one could quickly become the person on dialysis.

I don't expect that it would make a night and day difference in organ donations, since you've got to do a lot of screening and matching, but it's an interesting idea nonetheless.

What is really afoot

A pro-Putina TV host has suggested that the United States ought to be destroyed, and its territory replaced with a "strait" named after....Joseph Stalin. 

Now, call me weird if you like, that's fine, but while I get hyperbolic and over the top statements from citizens of countries that are at war, it's pretty telling that people are actually thinking of naming a geographical feature after the second worst genocidal dictator of history (after Mao).  Nobody but blithering idiots names a street after Hitler, after all, and it strikes me that the cult of Putin is showing itself for what any sane observer knows it really is; a bid for the revival of the old Soviet Union.

And in honor of that attempted revival...great memories of my childhood.

Murder for your 13th Amendment rights?

This article is an interesting take on the 13th Amendment;  more or less, that since an abortion ban would compel a woman to carry her baby to term, it amounts to involuntary servitude, and thus abortion must be allowed.  Lost in Judge Kollar-Kotelly's analysis is another little thing; does the state's requirement for parents to care for their children amount to slavery as well, and hence not just abortion, but homicide, is permissible for parents?

As much as parents might sometimes agree, I think our answer must be "no".  And shocker here; this judge is a Clinton appointee.  Folks, it does matter who you vote for, and if you vote for Democrats, this is the kind of thing you're supporting.

Why Ukraine Fights?

Putin's Chef Yevgeny Prigozhin is now bragging that he is turning recruits for his "Wagner Group" into "real cannibals".   Well, given Prigozhin's history of pretty nasty food safety violations, Wagner's current status as a haven for illness due to nonexistent sanitation, and Wagner's pattern of not providing luxuries like "food" to their soldiers, it all makes a lot of sense.  Might have something to do with why Russia is invading a major supplier of food to the world, eh?  The only thing hanging out there is whether they're using Monty Python's "Lifeboat" sketch as a training video.

Hopefully at some point in the future, to paraphrase the sketch, the Wagner Group and the Russian Army will get cannibalism mostly under control.  

What kind of war is this?

One thing that is very interesting about the war for Ukraine is that  Russia often "retaliates" against Ukraine when Ukraine advances, gets new weapons systems, and the like.  Now as a (very) amateur historian, it seems to me that Russia is telling us a lot about their objectives and motivations.  In an ordinary war, the parties relentlessly move to achieve strategic goals--we didn't wait for Hitler to make a shipment of Tiger tanks, for example, before we bombed his ball bearing plants.  We bombed the ball bearing plants so shipments of Tiger tanks and such would never arrive.

But Russia does, and it tells us that their goal is to get what they can by bullying, committing a lot of war crimes in the process.  Our response therefore ought to be to grant Ukraine the ability to give them a real war.  They'll back down soon enough, and hopefully giving Russia and Belarus the ability to do what Ukraine has started to do; eliminate the power of the old KGB/FSB.  Hopefully soon, Benito Putina will have his own "Lake Como" moment.

Putin delenda est!