I think most people agree that rugby teams are too heavy. Players are under too much pressure to bulk up, beyond what is healthy. Bigger pack weight does give a big advantage in a match, but it does not make rugby a better game.

There should be a maximum team weight. Maybe 1500kg for 15 players. Teams can still use very heavy players, but they must keep the total team weight under a limit. So being very heavy is a slight disadvantage for a player. The existing incentive will be reversed, to keep below a limit, to a healthier weight.

Very heavy players will still be selected, only if they are skillful enough to be worth keeping, despite the difficulty they create in keeping the team under the limit.

This does reduce the advantage very heavy peoples like the Europeans have over lighter peoples like the Asians. So it might be unpopular among supporters. I think it would instead make things more interesting. It would mean more teams can seriously compete in international events.

After reading what Varadkar said about genocide yesterday (“Varadkar rules out joining South African genocide case”), there are many things you could say. I’m going to gloss over whether a man who contradicts himself in mid argument is fit to be in government, and focus on a bigger issue.

Genocide is where somebody selectively kills part of a population because of their race, religion, ethnicity, creed, etc.

It is not necessary to kill every member of of the target group, to commit a genocide.

Genocide is a two part process. The target population is first isolated in a certain place, then massacred. If non-target people are first given the opportunity to leave, before the massacre starts, then that is further evidence of genocide.

Common definitions of genocide (and there are several) focus on intent. Intent is difficult to prove. Definitions of crimes only make sense when they focus on the actual act, not on speculation about actor’s intent.

A bombing is not a genocide, nor is a massacre. Isolating a certain population inside a walled off region, and then bombing it, is a genocide. Isolating a people in a certain region, then withdrawing the supply of water, or blocking the importation of medicine, is also genocide. Driving into a town and shooting everyone, is not genocide.

After reading what Varadkar said about genocide yesterday ("Varadkar rules out joining South African genocide case"), there are many things you could say. I'm going to gloss over whether a man who contradicts himself in mid argument is fit to be in government, and focus on a bigger issue.

Genocide is where somebody selectively kills part of a population of a certain race, religion, ethnicity, creed, etc.

It is not necessary to kill every member of of the target group, to commit a genocide.

Genocide is a two part process. The target population is first isolated in a certain place, then massacred. If non-target people are first given the opportunity to leave, before the massacre starts, then that is further evidence of genocide.

Common definitions of genocide (and there are several) focus on intent. Intent is difficult to prove. Definitions of crimes only make sense when they focus on the actual act, not on speculation about actor's intent.

A bombing is not a genocide, nor is a massacre. Isolating a certain population inside a walled off region, and then bombing it, is a genocide. Isolating a people in a certain region, then withdrawing the supply of water, or blocking the importation of medicine, is also genocide. Driving into a town and shooting everyone, is not genocide.

I find most news sources and people think of all wars the same way. But that means they only understand the wars superficially. The two recent talked about ones, Palestine and Ukraine, are good examples.

Russia and Ukraine are very poor countries, with memory of extreme poverty and famine. They are obsessed with food security. The recent changes in Ukraine, the coup d'état, the broken peace treaty, etc, don't directly harm Russia, but they are perceived as worsening Russians' food security. This is a the thing that most frightens Russians. They must do everything they can to protect themselves against risk of famine. That is why there is a war.

When Russians say things like "we are acting against an aggression against us. This invasion is purely self-defense."

If you want to stop the war, you must address those concerns.

Israelis are obsessed with the old testament. It says that they are exceptional. Jews are God's one true people. They are precious and other people are disposable. It defines a chunk of the middle east that belongs to the Jews, and says it is their destiny to recapture it and expel or kill its inhabitants. It gives examples where a small crime can justify going to war. It justifies genocide by Jews against other tribes.

That is why there is continuous expansion of Israel into Muslin lands, including massacres and expulsions of Muslims by Israel. But any similar crime against an Israeli is leads to disproportionate and collective punishment against his whole people. That's why Israelis don't have a problem with this activity.

When Israeli statesmen say things like "they are just animals" or "what do you mean innocent Palestinian" this is what they mean.

If you want to stop the war in Palestine, you have to address that underlying rationale.

Supporters of affirmative action demonstrate Thursday outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington.

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

To the editor: The overturning of affirmative action in college admissions by the U.S. Supreme Court does not simply show that the court is out of step with public opinion, which it clearly is. Nor does it simply reflect a partisan point of view.

This decision distorts American history. Our history and present society are not colorblind. Race is a factor in every aspect of life, but there have been real personal and cultural advancements stemming, in part, from affirmative action.

It is even more troubling when the affirmative action decision is seen alongside last year’s abortion decision. That decision also distorts history by harkening back to a vision of women as subservient without control of their own bodies and destinies. It ignores women’s professional and personal advancement, which at its core is based on personal autonomy over one’s body.

It is too simple a solution to ask the justices of the Supreme Court to reacquaint themselves with our history — for them to come out of their marble tower and learn about the changes in our history over the past 50 years. But we have to start somewhere. The justices should protect our heritage and history, not dismantle it.

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Marcy Sheinwold, Laguna Woods

..

To the editor: Now that the Supreme Court has struck down affirmative action in college admissions, I wonder if will also prohibit admissions based on athletic prowess.

Or does the conservative majority place a higher value on the ability to sink baskets from outside the three-point line than it does in enrolling a diverse university student body?

Larry Harmell, Granada Hills

..

To the editor: In 1996, California voters decided to abolish the discriminatory effects of racial preferences in college admissions by passing Proposition 209.

Then, in 2020, after a dramatic change in the state’s demographics over a 24-year period, proponents of affirmative action decided that the time was ripe to repeal Proposition 209 and put Proposition 16 on the ballot. It was decisively rejected by California voters, in favor of retaining the ban on racial preferences.

Apparently, in its editorial, The Times misses the point that the Supreme Court may have taken a cue from the people of California in deciding to outlaw affirmative action in college admissions.

Jim Redhead, San Diego

..

To the editor: Justices appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote have struck again. To listen to entitled fossils try to spin their hate under the guise of judicial fairness would be hilarious if it weren’t so bleak. We have sunk to the equivalent of “separate but equal” being offered as legal rationale again.

I truly believe the justices in the majority know they actually represent the minority. There is desperation mixed through all their specious garbage.

I never dreamed I would live in a time where a president could be elected while losing the popular vote twice in 16 years. I never dreamed I could live in a time where supposed legal giants would be so immoral with their pouting Wall Street Journal editorials and arrogant senses of entitlement.

How many more dominoes that protect our precious freedoms have to fall before the electoral college is abolished and Supreme Court impeachments and term limits are enacted?

Mark Diniakos, Thousand Oaks

..

To the editor: The Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action in admissions does not have to mean, as California has shown, the end of diversity at universities. Affirmative action was meant to be an adjustment to compensate for disparities in primary education. A focus on improving primary education is what is needed.

No eighth-grade history teacher should be faced with teaching students who struggle to read, nor should an algebra teacher have pupils who are unable to do long division. Moving students forward in school due to their age must stop.

If focused resources assured that all elementary school students were capable of reading, writing a paragraph, understanding arithmetic including multiplication, fractions and percentages prior to moving on to middle school, the need for affirmative action would diminish.

Replacing traditional grade levels with performance levels would narrow gas in learning while maintaining the value of a college degree, which is lessened if basic education that should be taught prior to college has to be offered at universities.

Glenn Egelko, Ventura

Source

Elections are always high-stakes affairs in countries experiencing democratic backsliding. This was true of Turkey’s recent presidential election — described as “free but unfair.” Likewise, when Poles go to vote this fall, democracy itself will be on the line.

Since coming to power in 2015, Poland’s populist Law and Justice (PiS) party has politicized the judiciary, harassed civil society and worked tirelessly to drive independent media out of business. It has capitalized on the politics of fear and grievance, pitted urban voters against rural constituencies and touted a mythologized version of Polish history.

In this sense, the PiS has been following in the footsteps of both Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán, whose country can no longer even be considered a democracy, though it remains a member of the European Union. The difference is that Poland’s de facto leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, has left the presidency to someone else — Andrzej Duda — thereby shielding his influence from vigorous scrutiny.

Ultimately, only Poland’s voters can decide their country’s political future. But that is no reason for complacency on the part of the international community, especially the world’s democracies. Full-blown authoritarianism would inflict incalculable damage on the West while a war rages next door.

A Polish government that eschews democracy, the rule of law, and European unity would embolden illiberal forces elsewhere, including in the United States, where Donald Trump is leading the Republican field ahead of next year’s presidential election.

Another PiS victory might also weaken Poland’s position as a bulwark against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s imperial designs. Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last year, Poland has provided sanctuary for millions of refugees and has served as the main conduit for Western military supplies flowing to Ukraine’s armed forces. Poles can identify with the refugees’ plight, which recalls the barbarism they suffered at the hands of the Nazis, including the destruction of Warsaw on Hitler’s orders (while the Red Army, on Stalin’s orders, sat on the opposite bank of the Vistula and watched).

The PiS government deserves high praise for its support of Ukraine, which stands in stark contrast with the Orbán government’s “Hungary for Hungarians” stance and grotesque embrace of Putin. But its commitment to this approach may have its limits. In an apparent attempt to secure farmers’ votes, it announced in April that it was halting imports of Ukrainian grain, though it must be said that Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia also have prohibited grain imports from Ukraine, and all have done so with the EU’s blessing.

Fortunately, the U.S. and the EU do have some leverage that they can use to prevent Poland from threatening foundations of the post-Cold War order, including Poland’s obvious reliance on NATO for its security and the EU for financial support.

The EU must adopt a constructive yet firm approach to the Polish government, backed by the enforcement of the rule-of-law conditionality that was imposed on diplomatic and financial support for both Poland and Hungary last year. Already, the EU has withheld billions of euros that were supposed to go to Poland.

Moreover, the European Court of Justice has imposed a massive daily fine on the country — recently reduced from 1 million euros to 500,000 euros — over its refusal to comply with EU demands to alter its 2019 judicial reforms, which the ECJ ruled violate EU law. The EU must back this ruling with even more institutional and financial muscle. The restoration of judicial independence is nonnegotiable.

Democratic and humanist values — the values for which the Ukrainian people are now fighting, at extraordinary cost — are at the heart of the post-Cold War European order. Fortunately, Polish civil society remains robust, with younger generations increasingly leading the fight against PiS’s depredations. They are committed to preventing further democratic backsliding and upholding European values, even if Kaczyński is not. And they deserve greater support from their Western allies.

The large Polish diaspora in the U.S. and Western Europe is uniquely positioned to help, along with the broader international community. Brave Polish NGOs — such as Women’s Strike — are fighting on the front lines to defend women’s rights, under direct threat from PiS. We must amplify their voices, as well as those of Poland’s increasingly threatened LGBT+ community.

It is up to today’s Poles to take up the mantle of the Gdansk shipyard workers whose strike in 1980 led to the establishment of the anti-authoritarian Solidarity trade union and social movement, which ultimately brought down communist rule in Central Europe in 1989. But Poland’s friends must also support those Poles who embody this spirit. Without solidarity, Poland may well lose its democracy.

Kati Marton, chair of Action for Democracy Advisory Council, is a journalist, human rights activist and the author, most recently, of “The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel.”

Officially, House Republicans censured Rep. Adam B. Schiff this week. What they actually did was give a YUGE in-kind contribution to the California Democrat’s campaign for the Senate.

That was just one example in recent days of the Republicans’ clown car backfiring in the party’s bumbling drive to weaponize the government against political foes — the very crime it inaptly projects onto Democrats.

Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.

Separately, Republicans trumpeted a House hearing into a recent report widely derided as a dud — except in their parallel, fact-free, Fox-friendly MAGA universe — that tried to show Democratic bias in the origins of the government investigation, ultimately led by Robert S. Mueller III, into the 2016 Trump campaign’s dalliance with Russian operatives. Predictably, Democrats, including Schiff, humiliated the Republicans’ star witness, special counsel John Durham, a Trump holdover and the report’s author, as they confronted him with the fact that he found no Deep State shenanigans and won no convictions.

And in a third episode, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) had to scramble to prevent one of his caucus’ most incendiary troublemakers, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, from forcing a House vote on a resolution to impeach President Biden. That contretemps included a nasty face-off on the House floor between Boebert and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, sponsor of a competing impeachment resolution. (The term “cat fight” is loathsomely sexist, but in the case of these right-wing rivals, if the fur fits ….)

All of these goings-on add up to a big waste of time and money. The Durham investigation alone took four years and more than $6.5 million to end “with a whimper.” Sure, the battling satisfies former President Trump and serves up red meat for a party base that likes vengeance as much as he does. But the Republican carnivores are doing nothing to advance a positive agenda for the country and expand their party’s appeal beyond the bloodthirsty true believers.

Which is just the point Schiff made in a fundraising email about his censure: “These political smear tactics divert the resources of the House away from the pressing priorities that Congress should be addressing, and that I want to tackle as your Senator.”

Are the Republicans so blinded by Trumpian sycophancy that they didn’t realize what a gift they gave Schiff by singling him out for supposedly misleading voters about Trump? It’s not just the money Schiff no doubt is raising for his race against Democratic Reps. Katie Porter of Irvine and Barbara Lee of Oakland to succeed Sen. Dianne Feinstein. By making a victim of Schiff, the Republicans polished the otherwise colorless congressman’s image and established him as one of Congress’ most effective anti-Trump figures.

For anyone grounded in reality, the censure was downright comical. The resolution charged that Schiff, as the former lead Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and a Trump impeachment manager, “spread false accusations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.”

But the accusations weren’t false. However much the Republicans malign the Mueller investigation, its account of a Trump Tower meeting, shared polling data, WikiLeaks and more establishes that. Forget the semantic or legalistic debate over the word “collude” and call it by another name: The Trump campaign and Trump himself were cooperating, encouraging and welcoming any help from Russia. (“Russia, if you’re listening ....”)

Also, how rich that McCarthy, from the speaker’s dais, would cite Schiff’s alleged “falsehoods, misrepresentations and abuse of sensitive information.” You’d think he was describing Trump’s 37-count indictment for hoarding and hiding hundreds of classified documents.

Then, speaking of misrepresentations, there’s this: The Republican sponsor of the censure was freshman Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, who hails from the Rep. George Santos school of self-creation, according to a deep dive the Washington Post did into her background. (Speaking of Santos, why haven’t Republicans censured him for his lies and admitted fraud?)

Luna charged that Schiff had “ripped apart American families across the country” with his falsehoods about Trump. Has she followed the former president’s career? Read about the Thanksgiving dinners nationwide disrupted by his divisiveness? Forgotten the families literally ripped apart at the border by his policies?

The Durham hearing was supposed to dovetail with Schiff’s censure. Yet try as they might, the Republicans on the House committee could not spin their way out of the facts: Durham found no criminal wrongdoing by high-level Justice and FBI officials (let alone former President Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden), no Deep State conspiracy to get Trump, nothing prosecutable on the part of the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of Torrance mockingly said at one point, “I don’t actually know what we’re doing here.”

Neither did the Republicans, it turns out. The House is such a circus under their (mis)management, one can hardly wait for the jesters to bring their half-baked Biden impeachment resolutions back to the floor. If you want to weaponize the levers of power, you need facts, not pop guns.

@jackiekcalmes

There’s no doubt about it.

It’s anyone’s pride to finish a university degree cum laude. More so if magna cum laude or summa cum laude. The longer the title, the greater the prestige.

When the honors system was first established at Oxford University in the early 19th century, it was meant “for superior students to separate themselves from the rest of their classmates.”

To this day its purpose remains the same. This is why honor students have a special place in every graduation ceremony. To their peers and parents, they are the embodiment of academic success.

But do these honors mean anything beyond the academe? Do they really matter in the “real world”? Debate

In a way, you can say that the jury’s still out.

Commentaries, on the one hand, abound as to why graduating with distinction matters. They argue that your academic record says a great deal about you, your work ethic, and subject mastery.

One even goes so far as to say that graduating with honors demonstrates soft skills. After all, a student must also embody “diligence, self-discipline, and time-management skills to succeed in a class.”

According to this view, these soft skills matter to a potential employer.

But others maintain a more meticulous view, suggesting that Latin honors are important only for fresh graduates. They have, after all, no work experience. Thus, from the perspective of potential employers, academic recognitions may be “predictive of future performance.”

At the same time, they are also aware that emotional quotient may matter more in assessing a fresh graduate’s preparedness. Personality tests and interviews are helpful in this regard.

Some local case studies validate this point too. Those who end up in managerial positions, according to a university-based study, are not necessarily the honor graduates. Organizations, after all, tend to look for the right fit, paying attention to the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need. During the job search, applicants need to demonstrate that they are ready to “deal with changes and challenging situations at the workplace” while maintaining “harmonious relationships” with colleagues.

From this vantage point, it’s no wonder that a lot of “self-made Filipinos” would question the merits of graduating with honors. They might say that being maabilidad or madiskarte is far more consequential, regardless of one’s academic achievements. In effect they question the prestige accorded to one’s academic credentials.

But there’s also a sociological point to be made here and it’s about the proverbial elephant in the room: social class and academic elitism.

In the Philippine context, a case could be made that elites breed more elites.

Based on a tracer study commissioned by CHED in 1999, graduates of the University of the Philippines, De La Salle University, and the Ateneo de Manila University were employed faster and with higher incomes at a shorter period of time, compared to graduates of other institutions. (To be fair this study needs to be updated but I suspect the observation is still valid.)

This, among other factors, explains why many Filipinos consider it desirable to study in these institutions.

But as we all know, it’s generally students from affluent families—via private schools—who make it to these tertiary institutions. For various reasons, many students from low-income families are ill-equipped to pass these universities’ entrance examinations. These reasons include malnutrition and the general quality of learning in impoverished areas.

And in spite of free education in state universities and colleges, underprivileged students have yet other financial ordeals to confront to finish their degrees. Transportation, meals, projects, and term papers all incur costs.

If the mark of good education is social mobility and of an excellent student graduating with honors, then we have a problem in the Philippine context.

In other words, finishing a degree with honors may not be as important as graduating from the “right” (read: elite) institution. While we have inspiring stories among the poor who have finished their degrees to become successful in their chosen careers, the wider pattern is still in favor of privileged youths.

Thus, the mark of academic success that is the Latin honors is for the most part also a mark of economic privilege. This does not bode well for a society like ours where four out of ten learners drop out by Grade 10. Pragmatic matter

One can also approach graduating with honors as a pragmatic matter.

In sociological speak, university education is a competitive field where a student needs to be strategic in order to move up the ladder of recognitions. At the top of this ladder is its most prized possession, the Latin honors.

I don’t know if many students are conscious about it, but I have encountered a few who took my class thinking that they could ace it and protect their cherished GPAs. I’m certain that my colleagues have other stories to tell, and often these moments disappoint us.

While I’m hopeful that these students do not constitute the majority, I can also see how university education is designed to foster this kind of thinking, in which one’s ultimate goal is the “highest possible grade, rather than an opportunity for intellectual exploration.”

So, does graduating with honors really matter?

I think it does, but only if in the context of a curriculum that fosters critical thinking and challenges its community of learners to reflect on the choices they make. In my view, academic excellence without regard for what is just will only be self-serving.

At the end of the day, it’s the only education that matters, one in which its learners – students and professors alike – are in a constant conversation about how to live their lives with honor. – Rappler.com

Jayeel Cornelio, PhD (TOYM 2021) is Professor of Development Studies and the Associate Dean for Research and Creative Work at the Ateneo de Manila University. Follow him on Twitter @jayeel_cornelio.

A state government should not be able to sue the federal government just because it disagrees with a federal policy. This principle, affirmed by the Supreme Court in an 8-1 decision on Friday, should be obvious.

But in recent years, as the country has become more politically polarized, there have been a proliferation of suits filed by states to dismantle White House policies. Blue states, including California, did this during the Trump years and the trend has intensified with red states taking the Biden administration to court.

Friday’s ruling in United States vs. Texas is a perfect illustration. In 2021, the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security announced its priorities in arresting and deporting those who are illegally in the United States. There are more than 11 million undocumented individuals in the country, but only several hundred thousand can practically be deported each year. The Biden administration said that it would focus its arrest and deportation efforts on suspected terrorists or dangerous criminals, or people who unlawfully entered the country recently.

Texas and Louisiana sued the administration in federal court claiming that federal laws require it to arrest more people pending their deportation. But Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, writing for the majority (only Justice Samuel Alito dissented), ruled that the states lacked standing to sue. The decision was also a rebuke to the federal district court in Texas and the Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, both of which ruled that the states could sue the federal government over a policy disagreement.

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It is a longstanding principle that for a federal court to hear a case, the plaintiff must show that it was directly harmed, that the defendant caused the harm and that the harm could be remedied by a court decision. The court said that neither Texas nor Louisiana met that test.

In the past, the standing issue was often used by the Supreme Court to dismiss suits seeking to change the law in a progressive direction. For example, 40 years ago, the court dismissed a case involving use of chokeholds by Los Angeles police officers for lack of standing to sue, concluding that the plaintiff could not show that he was likely to be injured in the future. And suits seeking to protect the environment have been dismissed for lack of standing.

Although I think the court is often too restrictive in its standing rulings, Friday’s decision closely follows from earlier precedents and rightly limits the ability of states to sue in federal court because they disagree with a presidential policy.

The practical effect of the court’s analysis is its recognition that the government must make choices in enforcing the law. Thus, the Department of Homeland Security must set priorities in arresting and deporting non-citizens and it is not for the federal courts to second guess those choices. As Kavanaugh wrote, “If the Court green-lighted this suit, we could anticipate complaints in future years about alleged Executive Branch under-enforcement of any similarly worded laws — whether they be drug laws, gun laws, obstruction of justice laws, or the like. We decline to start the Federal Judiciary down that uncharted path.”

This is actually the second time this month that the court restricted the ability of states to sue when they dislike federal policy. Last week, in upholding the federal Indian Child Welfare Act — a law that says priority should be given to Native American families when Native American children are placed for adoption in foster care — the court again dismissed a claim by Texas that the law was an unconstitutional racial preference. In a 7-2 opinion by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court concluded that the state of Texas could not show that it was injured by the federal law.

Friday’s decision is a double-edged sword. It will mean that when there is a conservative Republican president, states like California will be limited in their ability to sue. But the court did not close the door to all suits by states, only that they must meet the standing test. While the law in this area certainly is not new, the court did the right thing by applying it in this case.

Erwin Chemerinsky is a contributing writer to Opinion and dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law.

A cure for the common opinion

Of all the urgent problems House Republicans could be tackling — gun violence, voting rights, climate change — they are using some of their power to fan the flames of a cultural war over gas stoves.

Last week the GOP-controlled House passed legislation that would prevent the Consumer Product Safety Commission from using federal money to regulate or ban gas stoves and block the U.S. Energy Department from making gas ranges and ovens less wasteful by setting stricter energy efficiency standards.

The Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act and the Save Our Gas Stoves Act amount to little more than political posturing. Yet the measures show how much Republicans are trying to cling to the polluting fossil fuel technology of the past in a world that is slowly but surely going all-electric.

The legislation purports to respond to a nonexistent problem: The unfounded fear that the feds are trying to seize people’s gas stoves ( which they’re not

) or ban them ( they’re not doing that, either

). These bills would needlessly hamper regulators by preventing them from setting standards to keep Americans safe from gas leaks and indoor pollution and saving them money by increasing energy efficiency in the kitchen — as they have done with little controversy for decades for every type of home appliance you can imagine.

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These bills aren’t expected to go anywhere, because they’re unlikely to clear the Senate or be signed into law by President Biden. The White House issued a statement opposing the bills, saying they would undermine the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s “ability to make science-based decisions to protect the public” and “block common sense efforts to help Americans cut their energy bills.”

Proponents such as Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) have cast the legislation in “don’t tread on me” terms, to protect “consumer choice” from the Biden administration’s supposed “war against gas stoves.” And it’s disappointing that Californians from both sides of the aisle were among those voting in favor.

California, like other blue states, is heavily reliant on gas for home cooking and heating, but state and local officials are adopting a growing number of policies aimed at electrifying buildings, including measures to ban gas hookups in new construction and phase out sales of gas furnaces and water heaters. Still, targeting stoves remains touchy for regulators, in part because of the success of a decades-long industry disinformation campaign that mythologized methane gas as a “clean” and “natural” fuel.

Republicans seized on gas stoves earlier this year after Richard Trumka Jr., a member of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, suggested the agency could regulate or even ban gas stoves as a health hazard. The commission was quick to clarify that it was not seeking to ban gas stoves, only asking for public input on their health hazards. And the White House has been clear that President Biden does not support banning gas stoves.

This move is not an entirely hollow gesture because it’s part of a broader GOP-led push to restrict government’s power to protect people from pollution while propping up the fossil fuel industry. It aligns squarely with the interests of oil and gas companies that have successfully blocked efforts by states to ban new gas hookups, improve energy standards and otherwise prevent states and cities from switching to more efficient electric appliances fueled by clean, renewable energy.

It’s a transition that is going to happen whether fossil-fuel-supporting politicians like it or not. There’s been mounting evidence of the health risks of gas stoves, including a recently published study by Stanford University researchers who tested them in homes in California and Colorado and found they emit unhealthful levels of benzene, a cancer-causing pollutant, that can linger indoors for hours and reach higher concentrations than in secondhand cigarette smoke. It’s only the latest research to find dangerous levels of health-damaging air pollutants, including nitrogen dioxide, formaldehyde and carbon monoxide, inside homes with gas stoves, even when they are turned off.

Republicans are trying to turn what should be a sober, science-based discussion about kitchen appliances into another wedge issue — or as Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio put it earlier this year, “God. Guns. Gas stoves.” But such efforts show they care more about defending the fossil fuel industry than protecting people’s health and lowering utility bills. Those priorities are wildly misplaced and should be laughed out of the chamber.

A cure for the common opinion

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Birds have feathers. And birds fly. But the feathers are not to aid flight. And I'll prove it.

Dinosaurs evolved from reptiles. And birds evolved from dinosaurs (theropods). After all that evolution, much is still similar. Birds still have beaks and make nests and lay eggs in them. But birds and theropods have a new body shape (their legs that go straight down from their bodies), feathers, skin, and they lay hard eggs.

Compare photos of a chicken and a veliciraptor. Then compare their skeletons. There is not much difference at all. It is like comparing prehistoric and modern crocodiles.

The flying animals in dinosaur times did not even have feathers, but the flightless therapods did. And most modern flying animals do not have feathers.

Some birds have evolved feathers with special aerodynamic properties. But then bats have evolved skin, and insects have evolved wing-tissue with the similar properties.

Birds also evolved special bone structure to aid flight. Saying feathers are for flight is like saying bones are for flight.

Theropods evolved feathers, but they did that millions of years before they started flying. Many of them never evolved to fly at all, including many extinct dinosaurs and many living birds. The ability to fly is distinct from the bearing of feathers. There is no connection at all.

Somebody today coined the term "hygiene poverty" which means not having enough money for things like toothpaste or perfume. It sounds exactly like normal poverty, like we don't need a new term for that.

But it could be useful to categorise it. We already have food-poverty, bed-poverty, and housing-poverty. They are specific problems people have. People suffering one type of poverty are not necessarily suffering any of the others. So it is useful to be specific instead of lumping everyone together as if they are all face a more-or-less similar problem.

We should use, extend, and formalise this concept.

Grade inflation is a problem. I think most people are already convinced of that, so I'll skip to the solution.

It's simple. Percentiles. People no longer receive scores based directly on how many answers they got right. These scores are converted into percentiles. Percentiles are the number "what percentage of people did you score better than". So the subjects are divided equally into 100 groups.

It is a simple and old thing, but it does solve the major problems with exams which are intractable under normal systems, and are today costing examining bodies years of effort to try to deal with.

This is just a simple solution to one age old problem - stopping the party with most power (usually the seller) from using deposits as a way to gain leverage the weaker one. It removes the unfairness and flaws the the way deposits normally work.

Deposits are usually asymmetrical. They are charged by one party to give it leverage over the other, in the event that something falls through. For example if a hotel guest cancels a booking he loses the deposit, but if the hotel cancels it it pays nothing. So there is an asymmetry of power. It's unfair.

In well-regulated areas, deposits are held by a trust. For example in the UK a deposit paid by a tenant does not go to the landlord. It goes to a "deposit protection scheme". This helps resolve all sorts of disputes. An uninterested party will judge whether the tenant has forfeited his deposit.

Combining these two ideas yields the solution to the problem. The best way to deal with deposits is this: Both parties pay the same amount to a trust as a deposit. If either party breaks the agreement, he receives the other party's deposit plus his own.

There is one additional benefits, made possible by this innovation: The deposit amount should be set not by one of the parties, but by regulation. For example it could be 10% of the transaction price. When entering the scheme, both parties can state if they prefer a different amount. The final deposit amount will be the median of the three amounts (the buyer's preference, the seller's preference, and the regulated amount).

This plan is indeed radical. It punishes suppliers would can produce energy cheaply and efficiently by taking away their profits. It rewards suppliers using Russian gas by letting them sell for higher prices than everyone else.

All excess revenues above the cost of production would be taken by the state.

It incentivises renewable energy suppliers to turn off their generators, which will worsen the problem. If a wind turbine (for example) is broken or is due maintenance, it will be cheaper to turn it off than to repair it. Building new turbines will be financially suicidal.

What would make sense? Taxing profits or taxing income. This is not radical but it works well.

They also want to reduce consumption during peak hours using some crazy voucher scheme. Instead, they need to charge different rates to consumers at different times of the day. This is so simple and un-radical it is already common in many places.

They want to use the tax income to renumerate energy consumers (ie everybody). There is one simple and known way to do this, called UBI. The tax is re-distributed equally as a subsidy every resident.

In fact, the most effective solution is to raise a tax on all electricity energy and gas consumption, per kJ used. (Ideally prices are also set depending on time of day.) This further inflates the price and drives unessential consumption sharply down. This tax revenue is redistributed as a UBI. So people who use very little electricity make a good income. But every extra unit you use is very expensive.

You also need a way for consumers to measure the cost. For example website showing the price of boiling a kettle and of other common activities, in euros.

The solution is exactly the same for businesses.

The big advantage of the existing plan? Governments can choose the criteria for receiving grants and vouchers. So it can be selective, choosing (to some extent) who gets money. This power is the life-blood of politicians. It allows them to trade favours with businessmen. For example,

measuring the growth in energy costs as a proportion of revenues to trigger quailification for supports.

So the ROI government is planning to subsidise only the thirstiest energy consumers, the same ones they already have a strong political relationship with.

This is why the subsidies/vouchers/grants system is appealing to them. It allows them to look like they are solving the problem, while really setting up a scheme to trade influences with their political allies, and worsening the problem.

99% invisible recently released a good documentary about the CDC.

It shows the CDC to be (at least in some parts of its remit) incompetent. It's about the data-collection work the CDC was doing (or not doing) in 2020.

It reminds me of an article the CDC wrote in 2020, and my criticism of it at the time, for a different aspect of its work. So I post all three here together.

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/pandemic-tracking-and-the-future-of-data/

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0714-americans-to-wear-masks.html

The hairdressers anecdote. This is a dangerous study. There is no control group, so the results are 100% meaningless. That the CDC is taking this kind of story as evidence is damaging for its credibility.

That said, there is evidence that hairdressers should wear masks. It comes from the Wells curve and all the follow up research over many decades. If you are standing over someone, within 50cm-ish, then masks are an appropriate barrier measure.

That's the thing. People like CDC experts want to believe that the world is simple - mask usage is either good or bad. But the world is full of complexity, different types of situation where different behaviours are appropriate. They reject a complicated truth over a simple fiction.

(TBH even if there was a control group, you might need more info before you consider using that anecdote as evidence for anything - for example cloth face coverings and surgical masks are not the same thing! you'd need to categorise by how much time they are wearing each one, and other factors, then do some statistics ... then you know if the result is meaningful)

It's knowing the difference between a study and an anecdote/case-study.

I try not to be too dismissive. But in this case ... this is really disappointing. The CDC should do better than this, given its importance in global policy making. I, a total layman, can instantly find serious mistakes.

...and it's not just a mistake. it's a lack of curiosity. it's not being interested in what is true or false, as long as it supports your preconception. it's not being analytical at all, just following a dogma.

The CDC is revealing itself to be grossly incompetent in its role.

...even though its point about mask-wearing hairdressers is actually correct!

Under the rule of law, how can breaking the law be justified?

Firemen are allowed break any law (destroying property, traffic laws, tresspassing, even setting off bombs) in their line of work. But firemen have no special legal powers. So how can they do that, and why can't I?

Under the rule of law, the same law applies to everyone. In some countries the police are above the law (France), in others it is a monarch (UK), in others there is different law for different ethnicities (Israel). They do not have rule of law.

Under the rule of law, there are no automatic punishments handed out by robots or algorithms, extra-judicial punishments, or punishments without a crime (UK, UK, and UK). No ASBOs, fixed-penalties, or internment. When somebody commits a crime, he is called before a judge, who applies a punishment, in accordance with a written (unlike the UK) non-secret (unlike the USA) set of laws.

So one day a fireman gets called out to an emergency, and he breaks some laws. He could get called before a judge for that. But the judge will always excuse crimes reasonably done to tackle an emergency. If the fireman does the same thing when there is no emergency, he will be sentenced.

If somebody calls me to help with a fire, I can do the same. The crucial and only difference between him and me, is that I'm unlikely to ever be called out to a fire.

So firemen (and police, organ-transplant drivers, gas pipeline repairmen, etc) must all obey the law outside of an emergency or some other great exceptional need. Even with emergencies, they can expect to get called to court occasionally to justify their actions.

And if I need to break a window or a traffic light in my rush rush to get to a doctor (or even a fire) I can do that without fear of punishment.

This also means that police and airport staff have no need for special legal powers. For example in the UK, anybody an make an arrest. But non-police rarely do so, except in exceptional situations. It's nearly always better to call the police instead, not least because you'll later have to explain your actions in court. This is the example which should be made more general.

This is the only reasonable way for the law to be organised.

They're hilarious! I can't stop watching them over and over, even though I need to work on late school work.

I saw TF2 sound mods that used 15.ai; but there's not enough of them. There needs to be more!

• I made some random lines with 15.ai
• I also tried to make TF2 voicelines of characters making actual competitive calls..
• I even tried to make a Japanese Dub of TF2; but I gave up because I lost interest.

I want to make more; but I feel cringe for doing so.

I don't like seeing people being swindled in politics. Regardless if the propaganda is capitalist, communist, socialist, distributist, left-wing, right-wing, LGBT+, Ableist, etc.

I feel empathy for the persuaded crowd and want to help them; but humanity is not always logical.

It seems like few people support proper critical thinking (as in, giving every political belief a fair education). I wish more people advocated for education of proper critical thinking.

(Maybe I should make a political flag for critical thinking.)

There are several changes that need to be made to retail law, to stop predatory practices.

Firstly there is one thing that legislators usually do wrong:

The trick is in making law is to make the rules general and mild. For example a law banning cafés from giving away plastic toys is a defective law. The toy manufacturer will just sell them to a different type of business to be given away for free. And it says nothing about other kinds of plastic wastage (or non plastic wastage). And what if there is a good reason to be giving away toys, like birthday party - it should still be possible.

A good version of this law would be a general tax (not a ban) on plastic. So it becomes expensive to give away plastic toys, but also to do other wasteful things with plastic. Only when there is a real utility to using the plastic will businesses be willing to pay the tax.

Here are the changes needed right now.

Sneaky price changes/inflation (Targeted mostly at airlines) The seller must post a sign on the item one week before to one week after the price change. Just having to inform customers should dissuade sellers from most frivolous increases. Price changes cannot be more than 10% per week. Different customers cannot be charged different prices for the same thing on the same day. This also discourages charging very high prices for new products, because it will be difficult to reduce the price later.

Sales tax is a function of the weight of packaging in each material, per weight of product. Very high tax rates for non-recyclable packaging. Most territories already have variable VAT rates for different categories of items, so there's no technical challenge here.

Tax on the production or import of bad things like plastics, coal, wild animals, non-managed wood.

Encourage repairability Targeted at dishwashers, cars. Each package has a parts list. For each part, is it replaceable, are replacements currently being made by more than one manufacturer (not patented)?

Anything sold without a guarantee suffers a higher VAT. The rate reduces in function of the lifespan of the thing. So disposable and bad quality things become expensive.

The wholesale price must also be available. Markup of >100% not allowed. Not only does it let people see which things are over-priced by the retailer, but it lets retailers see what other ones are paying the wholesaler. So it has a deflationary effect on both the retail and wholesale markets.

Things sold in units of 1, 2 or 5 only. So 1000g bags of flour are permitted. But selling a 950g bag will incur a charge. These odd quantities are nearly always scams. There's not normally a good reason to sell 190g or 480g or something.

It's important to have a mechanism for people to report non-compliance, and for the fines on businesses to be public.

As always when raising a tax, it increases the cost of living, so something else must be changed to compensate, like UBI, the dole and minimum wage, income tax, the general VAT rate. This is another thing legislators usually neglect.

Each of these has negative consequences, but all of them can be easily fixed. But this post is already long enough.