Smartest Kids in Class

Spotted by the Queen Of The World.  You could add that she takes money from foreign governments that deny rights to women and execute homosexuals, but there isn't room for all the hypocrisy in the caption.

Blogiversary

Divemedic's place is nine years old.

No, sharing a password isn't "hacking"

Using someone's password to access someone's computer is:

One of the nation’s most powerful appeals courts ruled Wednesday that sharing passwords can be a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a catch-all “hacking” law that has been widely used to prosecute behavior that bears no resemblance to hacking.

In this particular instance, the conviction of David Nosal, a former employee of Korn/Ferry International research firm, was upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, who said that Nosal’s use of a former coworker’s password to access one of the firm’s databases was an “unauthorized” use of a computer system under the CFAA.

Notice that the journalist changes the topic between the first and second paragraphs:

• "... sharing passwords can be a violation ..."
• "... use of a former coworker's password to access one of the firm's databases ..."

These things are different, and should be treated differently.  At the end of the day, the law exists to discourage people from acting like dicks.  This guy did exactly that.  While I am not a lawyer, the Court seems exactly right here.

Welfare keeps people out of the work force

From the "Department of what everyone already knows":

If you live in an expensive city and are acquainted with families collecting welfare the book confirms what you might have noticed, i.e., that it would be irrational for the adults in the family to enter the workforce. Here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for example, the welfare families that I have spent the most time with occupy apartments with a market rent of about $4,500 per month ($54,000 per year in post-tax income) in a building with a swimming pool, two gyms, and a variety of other luxurious facilities. Their health care is free through some combination of Medicaid, Obamacare, and a city-run health system. Their food is mostly free through food stamps. They can get cash from TANF and some similar programs. They would need to earn at least $160,000 per year pre-tax to obtain the same standard of living at market prices. However, even if someone were to offer the adults in the family a $160,000 per year job it would not be rational for them to accept it. If they were ever to lose that job it would take many years of paperwork, bureaucracy, and waiting lists to get back to their current welfare lifestyle.

It's irrelevant whether this is intentional by the Democratic party (to create a class of clients who reliably vote Democrat) or simply a reflection of the Iron Law of Bureaucracy (where the departments administering welfare create a system that requires a department to administer welfare, rather than end it).

But the core of Mulligan’s analysis is that income-based government handouts function as a high marginal tax rate in that if the low-income person earns a bit more he or she qualifies for fewer government benefits and therefore has only slightly more spending power than before. Mulligan looks at the 2009 expansion of means-tested welfare in at least the following areas:

• unemployment benefits
• food stamps
• mortgage forgiveness
• non-mortgage debt forgiveness
• health insurance subsidies (Obamacare; not yet implemented during the period of Mulligan’s analysis)

Underlying Mulligan’s work is an assumption that policymakers (and family court judges) reject:

A basic economic principle in this chapter, and much economic analysis of the labor market, is that the pecuniary reward to working is an important determinant of how much people work. When social programs increase what they pay to someone who does not work, they diminish this difference, and the result is that some people work less.

Shorter analysis: you get more of what you pay for.  If you pay more for people not to work, you'll get more people not working.

Huh. It seems I agree with Elizabeth Warren

Didn't see that coming, but can't say she's wrong:

The next president can honor the simple notion that nobody is above the law, but it will happen only if voters demand it.

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) January 29, 2016

Obligatory bootnote: unlike Sen. Warren, I actually am part native american.  Mom has a membership card and everything, so unlike Fauxahontis, there's documentation.

Hat tip: Chris Lynch.

Requirements for an email server

It's funny because it's true.

Musings about Hillary

The law in its majesty bows to the throne.  Queen Hillary beat the rap.

This will not work out well for her.  Consider:

The entire western world  is suffering from a crisis of governmental legitimacy, as an increasingly isolated technocratic governing class can no longer hide its incompetency and venality.  The populations see the game is rigged, and increasingly are rejecting the elite.  We see this explicitly with the UK voter's Brexit choice (and the related constellation of exit from other EU countries: Frexit, Nexit, Auexit, etc).  The elite can only respond by clamping down even harder, further fanning the flames consuming perceived governmental legitimacy.  Where this dynamic ends is clear even to the dim wit talking heads.

On these shores, Donald Trump will use this mercilessly in his "Crooked Hillary" campaign.  And quite frankly, she is crooked, and the optics are inescapable for her.  After all (as she put it so many years ago), what did she know and when did she know it?  The drip, drip, drip of Trump's water torture (along with likely FBI leaks from career bureaucrats enraged at the subversion of the law of the land) may cost her the Presidency.  We shall see, but none of this is good for her.

If she wins, the twin memes of "Crooked Hillary" and "the game is rigged" will make it very difficult for her to govern.  The bonfire of governmental legitimacy will burn much brighter - after all, perhaps 40% of her own party thinks that the game is rigged and that she's a crook.  The numbers are certainly higher with non Democratic voters - they may vote for her, but they will never like her.  As she pays off her big money donors they will like her less.

And she is perhaps the most paranoid public figure of the last 40 years.  She is likely to keep a very small group of insiders as a ruling cabal, each of which will collect big money for access to her royal throne.  This will further alienate the public.

As she cracks down on her enemies - gun control, anyone? - expect to hear the first serious rumblings of secession.  After all, if the ruling center is illegitimate and unpopular, this opens opportunities for regional figures to gain at the center's expense.  The UK just seceded from the EU; other EU member states may follow.  There's nothing that says this can't happen here, for the same reasons as there.

Feels like Monday

Err, yeah

Sounds legit.

After us, the Deluge

I find myself pessimistic for the Republic, whose finances make the Ancien Regime of Louis XV look like prudence itself.  The laws are widely touted but are sporadically enforced as both the rich and the poor both are prohibited from sleeping on the park bench.

Increasingly I fear that we shall have a choice to make: take the path of Brutus, or the path of Horace (who fought against Octavius but then spent a life sucking up to Augustus).

Happy Fourth, everyone.

Henry Purcell - Overture to The Fairy Queen

On this day, the Queen Of The World was born.  People were so happy that they celebrated with fireworks the following day.*

And so we need music worthy of this Royal day. Henry Purcell adapted Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream into a demi-opera.  This piece is disturbingly appropriate to this day: today is the mid point of the year; the music is about a Queen; the Queen was going to marry a donkey (ahem!).

And so if you were to hoist a toast to the Queen (or even launch some fireworks), she will smile her royal smile in thanks.



* This is the origin of the moniker "Queen Of The World".  She told this to her kids when they were growing up.

The beer prayer

Amen.

Ray Charles - America The Beautiful

A requiem for the Republic that was.

Great Big Sea - Captain Kidd

LC Scotty left a comment pointing to these guys.  It's full of win for a holiday weekend.  If your toes don't tap listening to this then maybe we can't be friends anymore.

Lions, led by Donkeys

100 years ago on the Somme, the Royal Newfoundland Regiment got the order to go over the top:

At 8:45 a.m. the Newfoundland Regiment and 1st Battalion, Essex Regiment received orders to move forward.^[20] The Newfoundland Regiment was situated at St. John's Road, a support trench 250 yards (230 m) behind the British forward line and out of sight of the enemy.^[22] Movement forward through the communication trenches was not possible because they were congested with dead and wounded men and under shell fire.^[23] Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Lovell Hadow, the battalion commander, decided to move immediately into attack formation and advance across the surface, which involved first navigating through the British barbed wire defences.^[22] As they breasted the skyline behind the British first line, they were effectively the only troops moving on the battlefield and clearly visible to the German defenders.^[23] Subjected to the full force of the 119th (Reserve) Infantry Regiment, most of the Newfoundland Regiment who had started forward were dead, dying or wounded within 15 to 20 minutes of leaving St. John's Road trench.^[24] Most reached no further than the Danger Tree, a skeleton of a tree that lay in No Man's Land that was being utilized as a landmark.^[25] So far as can be ascertained, 22 officers and 758 other ranks were directly involved in the advance.^[25] Of these, all the officers and slightly under 658 other ranks became casualties.^[25] Of the 780 men who went forward only about 110 survived unscathed, of whom only 68 were available for roll call the following day.^[25]For all intents and purposes the Newfoundland Regiment had been wiped out, the unit as a whole having suffered a casualty rate of approximately 90 percent.

It is plausible that Newfoundland never recovered from the loss of so many of her sons that day, and other days in that War To End Wars.

Music for the weekend

Bob has a fine selection for you.  Six posts of some of his favorite singers.

The polls are garbage

I don't feel like I have a dog in the hunt this election season, but the polls are entirely useless:

The polls immediately before the [Brexit] election leaned “Remain” or showed a 44%-to-44% tie, with 12% undecided. The referendum’s result was 52%-to-48% “Leave.” The idea that the undecideds broke 2-to-1 for “Leave”—against the status quo—is not tenable. That said, the pollsters are not at fault. The pollsters cannot conduct an accurate poll because voters are unwilling to tell pollsters how they intend to vote. It is that simple. 

Why are the voters doing this? 

The UK now has its own version of America’s Bradley/Wilder effect: people—decent, ordinary, hard-working, law-abiding people—are afraid of abuse and reprisals if they reveal their true political preferences. People are tactically deceiving the pollsters because the pattern-and-practice of British politics is now: 

(i) to demonize opponents; 

(ii) to invade and shut down their peaceful political meetings and conferences (and then to “justify” speech suppression as “free speech” or other lawful protest); 

(iii) to threaten and physically assault their party leaders and members; 

(iv) to destroy their political posters and/or to paint over them (and then to call their vandalism “art”); and,

(v) to use the state’s regulatory authorities against private citizens for expressing (or, merely, holding) unpopular political views.

It looks like the polls were off by 8% because of this.  So what's the percentage here?  Whatever it is, it's not zero.

(via)

The latest idea from the Left

Don't let old people vote:

GQ Magazine went all out, producing: “WE SHOULD BAN OLD PEOPLE FROM VOTING”. Writing about “them” as if the older generations are some foreign species, the reasons given by the author included:

“The EU referendum result will have less effect on older people”; “Over 65s read the Daily Mail”; “There was no ‘golden age’ of Britain”; and “We take pensioners’ driving licences away… why not their right to vote?”

It's time for the Government to dissolve the People and elect a new one ...

(via)

No, we don't need more STEM majors in Universities

Peter has an interesting post up about IQ and field of study in College.  Unsurprisingly, the STEM fields skew towards higher IQ.  Queue the old joke: Math is hard, mkay?

But the implication that College should encourage more STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) students is not just wrong, but is actively bad for the students.  Several reasons come to bear here:

1. The population of high IQ students seems to be a fixed proportion of the population.  If STEM enrollment increases, it can only happen by bringing in less intelligent students.  These students will be less able to successfully complete the curriculum: I believe from my own experience as an Engineering student that the IQ is high because there's a high wash-out rate from students who can't hack the complexity.  Bringing in more students who can't hack the work won't increase the graduation rate, but will increase the number of students who drop out after running up a bunch of student loans that they can't pay off.

2. You don't need a college degree to get a job as a computer programmer.  What you need to be able to do is code.  If you know a kid who likes to do this sort of thing, point him towards Code Academy.  This is free online training that employers recognize as valuable instruction (I know this from conversations with hiring managers).  Did I mention that it's free?

3.  I've posted often about how you can teach yourself the fundamentals of network security, leading to a six figure salary.  It's free as well.

Neither of these are rocket science - it's just putting in the time to study and do the work.  If a kid can't do this then they don't need College, they need a baby sitter.

4. We have too many scientists doing too much bad science.  The incredible pressure to get (government) grants and to publish (something, anything) is what's led to sites like Retraction Watch. Eisenhower warned about this in the same speech he warned about the Military Industrial Complex - the "professionalization" of the scientific world has led to a scientific bureaucracy that increasingly isn't making scientific advances anymore.

At this point I need to admit that my items #2 and #3 select for both intelligence and self-motivation. Guilty as charged.  However, that combination will lead to success, and these paths will avoid tens of thousands of dollars of student debt for those who complete the work.  And quite frankly, it will avoid the debt for those who don't complete the work.

And this is what I think about STEM fields.  Imagine my opinion of the rest ....

It's quite odd for the son of a University Professor to write a jeremiad against The Academy, but quite frankly it's pretty worthless these days.  For a lot of students, it has a negative impact on their lifetime earnings (certainly for those who drop out after running up student debt; perhaps for those who major in the "Grievance Studies" who I wouldn't hire if you paid me).

Well Played