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So there was a protest at UCLA calling for reform of the UC system’s affirmative action policy. As a fairly white skinned kid, affirmative action has always been anathema to me. That, and my Mexican grandparents were able to thrive in a foreign land after they put their sweat and blood into making a better life for themselves and their kids. The second one has always given me great pride, and has always precluded me from sympathizing with AA proponents and beneficiaries.

I still feel that AA is as discriminatory as what it’s trying to help, but there is a darn good argument to support the idea that grades are not the full measure of how a student will do in college. It sucks if you’re a disadvantaged white or Asian kid who gets cut from the line because an AA spot was given to another minority student, but so too does it suck to be a poor black kid who did his damnedest to persevere–and will continue to do this in college–who gets bumped by a rich white kid who had every advantage provided to him.

I’ll talk more about it later, but the whole idea of “diversity” is crap. Universities should not have an obligation to have a genetic makeup resembling that of the community at large. That’s just stupid. The point of college, after all, is to homogenize students along academic lines so that they are able to assimilate more easily into the work force. That is, the point of college is to reduce diversity amongst the student body and the community through English and uniform scientific and artistic training. Don’t call genetic pooling diversity, call it genetic pooling. Diversity would be teaching an advanced calculus class in Tagalog and requiring the students to learn it before starting. That’s diversification.

What universities should do is try and give everyone whom applies a level playing field on which to apply. That’s what AA tries to do, and that’s admirable. But to give primary consideration to the pigmentation of one’s skin as a reason for special consideration is inherently unfair to many others. If a black student has done less well in school than another student, the reason for this might be because he grew up in a poor neighborhood with bad schools. But that’s the same for a poor white or Asian kid. And what if an AA black student bumped a Mexican student who experienced worse social or economic discrimination? Etc….

I personally haven’t read prop 209, so I can’t speak to much of it. But, if it merely exists to prevent admission considerations based on race or ethnicity, I’m all for it. If an AA consideration needs to be made, screen applicants based on income. Chances are, this will result in a higher number of minority students getting special consideration since they are the ones most likely to come from a lower socio-economic past. At the same time, it might help some disadvantaged white and Asian kids get the consideration they deserve.

By no means, however, should university policies be amended simply to get people who look different from the majority into schools simply because they look different. Life is a competition, and so is admittance into a college which has limited resources and space. If a particular community decides that it’s not in its interest to promote the well-being of its youth, other communities shouldn’t be penalized for the sins of the first. If, on the other hand, that community really has suffered from past transgressions against it despite its best efforts to stand up, financial resources and history will bear out the special worthiness of a student without ever having to consider the color of his or her skin.

Someone recommend a book for me. No non-fiction unless it’s really good. I’ve been reading too much of it for the last few years. I just recently finished The Rule of Four, which was a crappy pretender to the Da Vinci Code craze. Bleh. Don’t buy it.

Give me something good, eh?

So Tennie Pierce is being beaten up in the news over his 2.7 million dollar settlement with the city of Los Angeles. Good. His lawsuit is ridiculous, and the idiots on the LA city council have allowed him to set what will become an onerous precedent in future lawsuits.

Even if the dog food incident was racially motivated, 2.7 mil is an awful lot of compensation. LA has one of the worst school systems in the country, a horrible infrastructure, and in general just all around sucks. That money could have been a lot better spent in those endeavors than on payment to one hardly-abused man. Think what that money would have done for multitudes of poor black LA children who face a far harsher legacy of past racial discrimination than Pierce does.

In any event, I just wanted to link to photos published by the John and Ken show. The photos may be completely irrelevant to the facts of this particular case. Nevertheless, they illustrate the myopic nature of the decision by the council to award the money. At the very least, these should have been considered.

Put aging, incompetent managers in charge of the most important problems facing society and what do you get?

This gem of a clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lYiDo0DjSk

You should have seen this clip by now. If not, you should really think about giving up the Internet. I’m just trotting it out again because I love it so much.

While Internet “tubes” are the primary subject of the video, you do need to ask yourself: seriously, what’s wrong with Internet gambling? If the feds want to keep people from feeding gambling addictions through Internet anonymity, they should probably consider banning credit cards at the same time.

At least gambling is up front about stealing your money. Have you actually ever read a credit card’s terms and conditions? I’m surprised they don’t just bust your kneecaps open….

Fortunately, it looks like senile Senator Stevens won’t be getting his tubes unclogged anytime soon.

You’ve probably seen it already, but I love this photo. It’s sad, because you know a couple of the guys probably died. But it’s also funny. Really funny. Especially the driver. Hahahaha.

Seriously, who’s bright idea was this?

Thanks to JB for the pic, and Kenji before him.

Clicky for full size.

I started a Krav Maga program today. More specifically, I tried a related class at a school which offers Krav Maga, which I’ll start in a couple of days. The class tonight was called something like “Ultimate Bags”. Basically, you have high intensity music blaring while you do very specific punching and kicking sequences on a 150lb bag. It’s a lot of fun, but man, is it hard work! The idea is to build strength and stamina while reinforcing good KM technique. Given that I don’t use many of my muscles very often aside from scuba, I’m about dead right now. Tomorrow morning I’ll probably feel like lead.

Anyways…for the actual KM class, men are encouraged to wear a cup. KM is a particularly violent martial art designed for close quarters combat with immediate disablement or defense in mind. As one of the instructors says, “it’s heavy on the martial and low on the art.” So, there’s lots of nuts getting kicked, hit, and elbowed in this program. I wore a cup one time in my life when I was like 11 in Peewee football. I have no idea how they’re supposed to fit. Well, I do know generally how they’re supposed to fit: the contraption is pretty straight forward.

Nevertheless, the cup sticks waaaaaaaaay out, almost like I have kitten or something in my underwear. I feel stupid. So I turn to Google. Google knows everything. It reassures me when I’m lost. It answers my questions when all 1.5 of my friends don’t know. Today, however, it failed me. I typed in “how should a cup fit”, and received zero replies.

Apparently, I am the first person on the internets to type the expression “how should a cup fit?” Yay me!

So, until I can ask another adult male how my apparently complex male protection device should work, I’ll just have to put off going to class I guess. *sigh* What a dark day in my life.

Isreal has tried to make more friends today by killing some Palestinian kids sleeping in a row of houses.

A thought occurred to me as I was reading that: if the highest honor in Islam is to be martyred in the service of Islam, and if we suppose that this qualifies as such (since the Zionists did it), shouldn’t Palestinians and other Muslims be lining up to have their kids killed by the infidels? If this form of death results in the greatest place in paradise, I’m not sure what the problem is. They should be applauding Israel.

Not too long ago, I was reading a Christian book by a guy called Lee Strobel. There’s a brief discussion of whether children go to Heaven if they die before the age of accountability. Since they can’t responsibly have chosen Christ, the argument goes, god grants mercy and brings them into the fold gratis. That’s cool. If I were god, that’s what I’d do. Unless the kid had a mullet hair cut. It’s a coin toss at that point.

But I digress…The point here is that if that really is what the ideology teaches, it seems to me to make complete moral sense to kill your children. By allowing them to grow up, you are risking their eternal damnation. Kill them in their crib, and they get free seats in the heavenly choir.

It sounds like I’m joking, but follow me: if a) children killed by their infidel enemy or b) children killed in any manner get to go to heaven, it should follow that their deaths should be welcomed and even encouraged. To do any less would be to grant them greater leeway in spending eternity away from god. The fact that you’re alive today demonstrates–to me at least–that your parents didn’t love you enough to want you to go to heaven. How sad.

Note: please don’t kill your children.

Oh, and one other note: Strobel’s book has a byline title of “…the greatest objections to Christianity.” His book has absolutely nothing to do with the greatest objections to Christianity, so don’t pick it up thinking that it does.

I’m not sure why everyone is having such a hard time with illegal immigration. Here’s what you should be considering when thinking about this:

1. Too many people moving into a confined geographic space in a limited amount of time will decrease the general welfare for those already there.
2. If you need the labor that cheap migrants offer, don’t pretend that you don’t.
3. Don’t get behind unfettered immigration simply because the people coming over speak the same language as you or look like you. Point 1 still applies. Your life can still be made worse if there are too many people on the freeways, too many people draining public resources, and so on.
4. People migrate. You or someone you know migrated to where you are today. Don’t give me this crap about “we were here first”. Someone or something has always invariably been here before you. You were just able to take it from them in some way. That goes for white Europeans taking land from Indians or Mexicans, white Europeans taking land from other white Europeans, Aztecs taking land from other Mexican tribes, original tribes taking land from animals, etc. Someone takes something from someone else. Simple as that.

I’m third-generation Mexican on one side and like fourth-generation European on the other. You’re all in the same boat one way or the other. Realize that you can’t let everyone in that wants to be, but neither should you keep out all the ones your racist ass wants to. In short, figure out a reasonable number of legal immigrants to allow in based on economic needs and social well being. Stop the rest.

It’s 10:06 pm and CNN is saying that the Democrats are set to take over the House. No big deal to me as an independent. That said, what I find interesting is that the Dems will find themselves in the awkward position having to be somewhat more Republican than the Republicans on certain matters.

Two points stick out: first, there will be strong pressure to get the deficit and spending under control. While Republicans haven’t been strong on this historically, it’s the Democrats who are most often characterized as being the spenders.

Second, if they’re going to survive, the Dems will have to be strong on Iraq and the terrorism bogey man. This may not mean supporting the war forever, but I think all Americans want us to do what’s “right” in Iraq, and it’s going to require a strong policy if the Democrats want any shot at the Presidency. It won’t be enough to just oppose Bush. Americans want a plan that will work out best for everyone.

I’m kind of nervous about what this means for immigration reform, but on the whole I think the change will probably be good for the nation. Sure, we’ll still take it up the rear, but maybe we’ll get some lube this time.