Some more arrests that need to be made?

Regarding my state's demands that ICE stop working here, and actions that more or less make it impossible for ICE to do their work, it strikes me that if this sets a precedent, any state can shut down the EPA, IRS, DOJ....and then the question comes up "isn't this textbook obstruction of justice, and doesn't Tampon Tim belong in the graybar hotel?".  

I think the answer is yes.  I'm actually not a huge fan of how Trump is doing his immigration sweeps; I'd be much lower key by requesting that jails and prisons notify ICE before releasing illegal immigrants so they can be picked up, and then if they don't comply, make it public exactly which officials want their communities to have more criminals among them.  But that said, we do happen to have millions of illegals here using government services, and forcing lower income Americans to use welfare services, and we've got to do something to mitigate this problem.  

Prohibiting ICE from working altogether should not be on anyone's dance card here, and those public officials who think it ought to be should be in jail.  Let Walz be the "dancing queen" there.

Campaigning hard for a "Darwin Award"

Sadly for the cause of office mirth, the old "Darwin Awards", where people would be "honored" for removing themselves from the gene pool in amazingly stupid ways, seem to have disappeared.  However, if by chance they do still exist, anti-ICE demonstrators may have narrowly evaded getting their names enshrined in this hall of honor.   

How so?  They blocked the stairs in a church that led to the Sunday School wing, and if there are by any chance any anti-ICE demonstrators reading this blog, take heed; the safety & security teams at many evangelical churches are armed.  So are many of the members, and if they believe you're likely to hurt their children, you just might find out who's carrying in exactly the wrong way.

Here's another example; a crowd approaches a number of software engineers wearing engineer-style clothing (often "boring") and accuses them of being ICE.  Pro tip for those anti-ICE demonstrators; do you think that ICE is going to "work sites" without vehicles to carry those apprehended, and quite frankly to protect their own officers these days in Minneapolis?

This has been a public service announcement by Bike Bubba's Boulangerie.  Thank you.

RIP, Scott Adams

As most of us know, the sad news came that Scott Adams, creator of "Dilbert", has died.  I don't know about his spiritual condition--he's evidently made comments both ways--but as the author of one of my favorite documentaries comic strips, I think he's worth a eulogy.  Agree or disagree with various other stands he's taken, he rightly skewered many of the most obnoxious habits of corporate America, to the point that there were studies that showed that the more "Dilbert" comics displayed in an office area, the worse management was. 

A wonderful bit was that about the same time Mrs. Bubba and I got married, one of the themes was that "Tina the tech writer" had fallen in love with Dilbert, and was forced to write "I proactively leverage my synergies" 100 (1000?) times as punishment.

Mrs. Bubba was a tech writer at the time, so we made that phrase into a warmup for the church choir we sang in at the time.  Dilbert has been a source of much comfort in the difficulties of office life, and an outright joy at times.  

One side note is that while reading my favorite yellow magazine, I once saw a picture of a man whose tie was curving upward--sometime in the 1950s.  So apparently that Dilbert tie was a reality.  RIP, Scott Adams.   

More on protein

The higher emphasis on protein in the new USDA food recommendations brings to mind some thoughts I've had about how one can get enough protein.  My daughter--formerly an aspiring dietician--brought home a pamphlet that claims that any athlete needs to use protein powders/supplements to get enough.  It was, of course, from a company making protein supplements.

Now if one gets a lot of calories from sugars (including juices) and fats, that is perhaps true, but with ordinary foods, one will quickly find that one gets reasonable levels of protein without trying.  Fruits and vegetables have 10-20% protein as a portion of calories, dairy products (excluding cream and half & half) are 20% protein and higher (skim milk is about 40% protein as a portion of calories), legumes and beans are about 30% protein, and meats 20% and up--and the 20% is hamburger with a lot of added fat.

Average things together, and reasonable whole food diets will tend to be about 20% protein or more as a portion of calories, which gets a reasonable 2000 calorie diet to about 400 calories from protein, or about 100 grams.  With just a little "nudge" in favor of legumes, meats, and dairy, you're in the range recommended by the USDA.

Why is this so?  Again, it's a simple matter of chemistry and biology; plants have cell walls of fiber bound together with a protein called lignin.  Proteins form a necessary part of all living creatures, so unless you refine them to get just the sugars or fats, you're going to get proteins.

And to get protein powders, what you do is eliminate starches, fiber, vitamins, and minerals from ordinary foods...in short, they are depleted foods, just like sugar or corn oil.  The plea to build one's diet off real, whole foods is well taken. 

Now there's a great argument

Apparently a lawyer for the plaintiffs (confused) side of the current Supreme Court case arguing whether Title IX refers to biological sex or gender identity has claimed that biological males on girls' cross country team doesn't matter because "cross country doesn't have cuts".   Having personally been cut from my college cross country team (and deservedly so, I really wasn't good enough), that one got a belly laugh out of me.  Even at the high school or junior high school level, the king of athletics has limited varsity/first team roster spots, so adding a (often faster) biological male to the girls' team generally does push a girl off the varsity roster.

Of course, since the plaintiffs' whole point is to deny reality, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they would deny the reality of roster cuts in my favorite sport, too, but it's still amusing.

New government guidance on diet

As the son of a dietician who still enjoys studying the subject as a hobby, the updated diet recommendations from the USDA are of interest. I grew up in the "early days" of the "Four food groups", then replaced by the "Food pyramid", then replaced by "MyPlate", and now the "inverted food pyramid".  Now if you read carefully, the overall science isn't that different; there is a higher acceptance of saturated/animal fats in the diet, and a higher emphasis on protein in the diet, but overall, the guidance would be recognizable by those who founded the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (then the American Dietetic Association) in the 1920s.  

The increased emphasis on protein is welcome, in my view; I remember that even in middle school, I questioned the limit for protein sources/meats of two servings.  I've always felt that a portion of overall calories would have been more appropriate, and then the new guidance's linking of protein intake to body mass is welcome.  Perhaps it overshoots the target--it recommends, for a 215 lb guy like me, about 120-160 grams of protein, perhaps a bit excessive--but nevertheless, it is a welcome correction.

The most interesting part of the new guidance for me is that the visual guidance doesn't really indicate how many servings of each kind of food is warranted, and I'm still working through my thoughts on this.  On one hand, one of the genius things in MyPlate and the "Four Food Groups" is that it emphasized the need for a varied diet, but on the other side, if you're eating whole foods, there is a fair amount of overlap in nutrition from grains, tubers, legumes, vegetables, fruits, meats, and dairy.  As my brother said once to me, every food we eat has exactly what was needed for that plant, seed, or animal to preserve or create life, and our nutritional needs are not as different from that of cabbage, corn, or cows as we might like to think, and perhaps it's not as important that we emphasize some food groups over others.

But all that noted, I think that the benefits and risks to this will be muted, because in my view, the big problem we've got in our country is massive subsidies for corn, dairy, and sugar.  Because of these, meats, fried foods, starches, and sugars--which are "eating triggers" in pretty much every place I can think of--are cheaper than they otherwise would be, and real foods are more expensive.  That, along with an increasingly sedentary society, are the big drivers of our obesity related diseases.

Unclear on the concept

Prosecutor Jack Smith has apparently told Congress that he had provided "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" regarding the alleged guilt of Donald Trump.   Weird me, I'd thought that conclusion was supposed to be brought about by a "jury", not a "prosecutor".  

Beaten again

One of the travails of being a Spartan is the frequency with which the University of Michigan beats us.  Yes, you've got the obvious losses on the gridiron, basketball court, and hockey rink, but then consider.  Michigan State embarrassed itself with its handling of Larry Nassar, but Michigan not only gave Nassar his bachelor's degree in 1985, but also trained him in athletic training with one Robert Anderson, who molested about 200 more people than did Nassar.  Worse yet, there's evidence that head coach Bo Schembechler used Anderson to keep football players in line. Wolverines for the win, so to speak.

We thought we'd done well with Mel Tucker getting fired for hitting on a sexual assault prevention consultant (Brenda Tracy), but then Michigan showed us again why they are "the leaders and best", as Sherrone Moore not only got fired for carrying on a physical relationship with a subordinate, but also got himself arrested for at least one felony as he threatened to kill himself with a butter knife after apparently breaking into his ex-girlfriend's home.

Not being a graduate of Michigan's esteemed general studies program, I'm not quite sure how one would kill oneself with a butter knife (maybe bruise yourself pretty badly?), but again, Michigan for the win.   

So here's the result of Moore's final days with Michigan.

• The fight song will be renamed "Jail to the Victors" (lyrics composed initially in honor of Gary Moeller, of course, after his drunken rampage)
  
• The Michigan prison system is going to start using Michigan swag as the new uniforms to save money, as incoming inmates already have it.
• Moore is a top candidate for the head coach of the Raiders, if the Davis family ("Just win, baby") can negotiate work release for him.

Seriously, I think the reality here is that Moore has a good lawyer, and he's likely to plea down to misdemeanors with no jail time, and the school will respond to any findings of the independent investigation by shrugging them off, just as they did with the half-billion dollar settlement with the victims of Robert Anderson.  It'll go on, really, until the alumni and donors finally get disgusted enough to close their wallets to Ann Arbor.

Update and side note; the paramour has lawyered up and is claiming Moore had a longstanding pattern of domestic violence.  We'll see where that goes, but Moore's got a bigger challenge now.

And really, the same applies in East Lansing, and all over the country.  I don't know that we can get college sportsball back to an Olympic ideal--training for an olive wreath--but there's got to be a better way than what we're doing now.

More entitlement from AOC

Apparently Congress-critter Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes has dropped, in campaign funds, about $50k to go to Puerto Rico to protest the entitlement of the rich.  Now the article makes a good point that those who protest the excesses of capitalism just might do well to avoid indulging in them themselves, but the thought that comes to me is the question of whether campaign finance law really ought to allow any politician to use campaign funds to buy things like luxury boxes at Bad Bunny concerts.  At the very least, her supporters really ought to ask themselves whether this kind of thing is really what they were voting for--AOC living high on the hog while her supporters scrape to find an affordable apartment.

It is, really, the same kind of Politburo behavior that observers of Communism have always noted.  The leaders live like kings (which they are in effect) while the peasants suffer.  If Karl Marx weren't already being tormented in Hell, he might find some time to spin in his grave over this.

This will leave a mark

Apparently the woman with whom former Michigan football coach had his affair received a 55% raise last year, but at the same point, an internal investigation did not show any flags.  Now perhaps she had received a promotion--which is problematic enough in itself--but generally speaking, 55% raises are not common unless one has gotten to executive ranks.

(update; no promotion, no increase in qualifications, and over three years, a 70% raise.  And apparently nobody that mattered ever asked "why is this woman getting such a big raise?")

I would dare say the failure to flag this is, absent some really exonerating evidence, evidence that (just like a few years ago up the road in East Lansing) institutional controls have completely failed in Ann Arbor, and it's even possible that this is linked to Michigan's well-known problems with NCAA compliance--impermissible payments to players, the sign stealing/cheating scandal, etc..  So it's very possible that this could get a lot uglier.

On another level, perhaps this is a sign that the collegiate athletic structure is out of control--I'm told that extremely long work weeks are common, and as a rule, this is not good for family life or spousal fidelity.  It's going to be really rough for Moore, especially if he's indicted and/or convicted for assaulting someone linked to this investigation, horrendous on his wife and kids, and is going to be pretty bad for the assistant coaches, many of whom will probably lose their jobs as a new head coach is hired.  For that matter, any assistant coaches who knew that something was going on, but did not speak up, could end up nearly as unemployable as their former boss. 

Sadly, I don't think that this is going to help colleges and universities re-evaluate their commitment to big time sportsball.  It will take a lot more to get our attention here.

Yikes

A sperm donor in Europe has apparently passed on a genetic disease  to no fewer than 197 children "fathered" by him.  Now the article discusses how things could be mitigated, which is fine, but one angle that we ought to see is "knowing how genetic disease, specifically hemophilia, is widespread among the royal families of Europe, shouldn't we have some reasonable limits on how many women receive a given donor's seed?".  After all, it's not as if we have no evidence of what happens due to inbreeding, not only in royal families, but also in domestic animals.  

Not that I'm deaf to the pleas of those who cannot conceive children in the ordinary way, but it seems reasonable that, yes, we ought to do some level of genetic testing, and perhaps more importantly (since genetic testing is imperfect at best), we ought to limit the number of recipients for a given donor to, say, a couple dozen or so?

More on college sportsball

Stung by being excluded from the CFP, Notre Dame has decided not to go to a bowl game at all--they were invited, apparently, to the Pop-Tarts Bowl.  Word on the street has it that their new fight song will be "I'll be Home for Christmas".   

Seriously, Notre Dame is not the only decent team to refuse a bowl game, as Iowa State and Kansas State have also declined bowl invitations, and I dare say part of the deal is that where previously, players would be seen by pro scouts at bowl games, the current system is that key players are already earning hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in school.  It's hard to maintain motivation when everybody's really comfortable already.  

The bright side here is that players in South Bend, Ames, and Manhattan are less likely to get injured in the bowl games they're not going to, and the bad side is that viewership of those games will drop without top tier teams in the game.  Another bad side is that the prospective opponents will then get a second tier opponent, and the players for that team are going to be more likely to get injured.

No easy way out except for watching real sports like cross country, I guess.

What's wrong with college sports...

....as exemplified by a $401 million gift to my alma mater, Michigan State.   Now perhaps I am old--at 56, yes I am--but I remember the good old days when Spartan Stadium was mostly bare reinforced concrete, and the athletics budget was, if memory serves, a "mere" $14 million.  Even that seemed excessive when we considered that the football coach was getting a then-massive $350,000 per year or so--far more than a good surgeon would take home at the time.  It was also irritating to pay $2/credit hour as an "athletic fee" to build the Breslin Center--an offense repeated when I went to Colorado for grad school.  Ah, the good old days when that was the extent of the problem!

And of course, it's not just Michigan State or Colorado; I'm told that a big player in Michigan's NIL money is Larry Ellison's wife's desire to help the stinky weasels beat the Buckeyes.  

Now yes, sportsball is big business, and yes, we shouldn't be taking four or five years of a young person's life and giving him Cadillac tastes and a Chevy budget (worthless or nonexistent degree), combined with lifelong injuries.  But at a certain point, I'd have hoped that the educational mission of schools would attract at least equal attention with the sportsball mission, as most of us have no prospects of earning a living in sportsball.

Perhaps more importantly, we need to remember what the point of sports is supposed to be; character, character that probably is diminished when a player has money coming in that allows him to buy a new BMW off the lot.  It's diminished when a player's tattoo budget isn't just for a single rose on his ankle to celebrate the 1987 Rose Bowl champions, but rather allows him to cover both arms with ink.  It's diminished when the coach's plea "get to class" is answered with "I have a couple million in the bank, coach."

I don't know what the fix is--a salary cap would be a great start--but things are seriously getting out of hand.

Thoughts on Mark Kelly

The Trump administration is starting what can really only politely be called a vendetta against Democratic Senators who have made a public statement warning service members against carrying out illegal orders, and Senator Kelly is in the crosshairs because he's still in the reserves.  Now part of it is simply petty; the Secretary of Defense commenting on how Kelly was wearing his awards.  OK, Hegseth, are you trying to prove your career is about chicken manure?  

More significantly, as a young skull full of much, I tried (and failed) to get into the service academies, and one of the things I and others asked was something that was clearly on our minds as we'd learned about the history of the Vietnam War; what are cadets being taught about the proper response to situations like My Lai.

The response was not tense at all--the officers we were talking with had clearly been taught well that there are cases where the lowliest private gets to ignore the commands of someone with stars on their shoulders.  

And that is the thing that troubles me about Trump's response to Kelly et al.  Hegseth at least ought to make clear that Kelly has a point, and his main response ought to be something like "Senator Kelly, precisely what examples do you have in mind here?".  The fact that he does not do this is, in my mind, very damning about the culture he's trying to create in the Department of Defence.  It's as bad, really, as a Naval Academy graduate ignoring the Honor Code ("We will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those among us who do.") to help Michigan steal a national championship.  (OK, I shouldn't care about concussion-ball, but the fact that Stallions so blithely ignored that code suggests to me that it's not as big a deal at Navy as it used to be)

And really, the example that I've got in mind is the Trump administration hitting speedboats with missiles instead of apprehending them.  Now it is possible that this is difficult, and it is possible that the boats would go up in flames anyways.  But that said, hitting them with a missile destroys witnesses (the drivers are generally poor people, not drug kingpins) to where the drugs are being made and shipped, and of course puts the cargo into bazillions of gallons of water.  

So at the least, it's poor criminal justice, as well as poor international relations--apprehend the wrongdoers, yes, and let the world know who's sending drugs to the U.S. and Europe, absolutely.  But get the evidence.

And since you don't have evidence to justify the action that we know of, it's at least closer to My Lai than I would care to be associated with.  Perhaps a judge will sign off on it, but I still don't like it, and if nobody objected to the action, that troubles me a lot.

My family is a pandemic...

...according to the University of Minnesota, which is now publishing "student materials" claiming that whiteness is a "pandemic".   As the parents of six children and grandparents to one (and hopefully a lot more), my wife and I are of course contributing mightily to this problem.  Especially interesting to us is the fact that "The U", as it's affectionately called here, is saying that "colorblindness" is a symptom of white racism.  Weird me, I thought that Dr. King had advocated something about that in his epic "I have a dream" speech.  

It is also very troubling that "The U" identifies the family as one of the opposing features that they need to work against; quite frankly, we have over six decades of experience with what happens in communities where nuclear families are not formed, and our jails and graveyards are filled with the results.  

We might somewhat bitterly joke that since Minnesota is regulating the application of fertilizer to farm fields more strictly, all of the "bovine scat" is regrettably going to DEI offices at the U.  in St. Paul.

Update: we might also wonder what some of our black friends, devoted to the principle "they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the contact of their character", and devoted to their own nuclear families, might respond to the notion that they were somehow promoting white racism in honoring Dr. King's memory.