Sunday, July 9, 2023
According to one industry source, home prices declined for the first time in six years. https://www.realtor.com/news/
Whether you consider
$441,000, the latest median price, a bargain depends upon location, the magic word in real estate. If you are looking to relax, another survey ties stress to location, with finances as only one variable.
https://wallethub.com/edu/
https://wallethub.com/edu/
What I found most interesting in this collection is how 9 out of 10 of the least stressed cities are cold places. Only one, Fremont, California, does not experience winter, the others typically facing harsh winters. The converse is not true, however. The 10 most stressed cities are a mixture of rust belt and sun belt locations. I'm pleased and somewhat surprised that the Holy Land, sitting 38 out of 182, isn't exceedingly anxiety ridden.
Monday, July 10, 2023
"The New York Times to Disband Its Sports Department"
Shame!
. . .
I made a partial return to civilization today. Accompanied by America’s Favorite Epidemiologist, I visited my primary care physician. I took public transportation for the first time in a month, buses only, subway steps still too challenging. And, I wore long pants. Big deal, you think? Try putting on long pants when one leg doesn’t bend.
Michael Perskin, M.D., master diagnostician, basically liked what he saw.
Tuesday, July 11, 2023
Today is Tuesday, my deductive powers tell me. That accounts for Gentleman Jerry and Caring Ken Klein joining me for lunch at Pastrami Queen, 138 West 72nd Street, to enjoy the Tuesday Special, pastrami and corned beef sliders and French fries for $19.95. Previously, you could substitute a potato knish for the fries, my preference, but not today. Whether it was the company or the destination, I moved much faster than I had for weeks. Definitely a successful venture.
. . .
The leader of a prominent alumni group at Texas A&M said, "I think identity politics have done a lot of damage to our country." Slavery? No. Jim Crow? No. Redlining? No. "I
think identity politics have done a lot of damage to our country, and
the manifestation of that on campus, the D.E.I. ideology, has done
damage to our culture at A&M.” Is it possible that he meant D.U.I.?
Wednesday, July 12, 2023
I took another vital step in my rehabilitation today. I went to New Jersey, specifically the gargantuan ShopRite supermarket, 40 Nathaniel Place, Englewood, 77,400 square feet, larger than a football field. Mother Ruth Gotthelf was a world class shopper, researching the bargains offered over the decades by Bohack’s, A&P, Waldbaum’s, Daitch-Shopwell, C-Town, the Associated and Pathmark to optimize her time and dollars. I learned from her and have usually been the designated shopper throughout my adult life. My universe of alternatives consists of Fairway, ShopRite, Trader Joe's and Zabar's, each having special strengths.
. . .
Patrick Kane is one of the leading players in the National Hockey league. Last season, he was traded to the New York Rangers after 16 years with the Chicago Blackhawks. Now, he is unsigned by any team, because of "Kane's decision to undergo major hip surgery a month before free agency
opened, which will keep him out of action for four to six months."
https://www.espn.com/nhl/
I expect to be skating as well as I ever did in much less time.
Friday, July 14, 2023
In 2019, 46 percent of Asian American high school graduates nationally had completed calculus, compared with 18 percent of white students, 9 percent of Hispanic students and 6 percent of Black students, according to a study by the National Center for Education Statistics.
This prodded me to find an article by Arthur Ashe, "Send Your Child to the Libraries." https://www.nytimes.com/1977/02/06/archives/send-your-children-to-the-libraries.html
Ashe, a Black tennis champion, wrote that "we blacks spend too much time on the playing fields and too little time in the libraries." He believed that the same diligence that so many young Blacks applied to their athletic skills, against very long odds of reaching the top, should be applied to other areas of accomplishment. "We
have been on the same roads—sports and entertainment—too long. We need
to pull over, fill up at the library and speed away to Congress and the
Supreme Court, the unions and the business world." The presence of two Blacks on the United States Supreme Court today doesn't change his basic message. Is it unfair to put the burden on Black parents? History teaches us that waiting on the goodwill and largesse of the white majority is often unrewarded.
. . .
1940,
a year within the lifetime of some of us. New York University (NYU), an institution that
many of you have attended as undergraduates, law students, film
students, medical students, or graduate students in a large variety of
disciplines. Back then, NYU had a football team and one that played a national schedule. In 1939, in fact, it was ranked high on the Associated Press poll. In 1940, NYU was scheduled to play the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. Bowing to "a little-known but widespread practice in college athletics known as the 'gentlemen's agreement,''' NYU left Leonard Bates, a star fullback, an African American, at home. Thousands of students protested to no avail, a handful suspended for their role.
NYU lost 33-0. I could find no trace of Leonard Bates, but Evelyn Witkin, one of the suspended students, went on to great things.
I think the remark about DEI was, roughly speaking, on target: it often has a pernicious influence. One needn't ignore the effect of slavery and Jim Crow to find fault with a more recent phenomenon.
ReplyDeleteFor example, you posted that "In 2019, 46 percent of Asian American high school graduates nationally had completed calculus, compared with 18 percent of white students, 9 percent of Hispanic students and 6 percent of Black students".
The spirit that animates DEI would deal with that discrepancy by removing the evidence of the discrepancy rather than by seeking effective actions to reduce it. (In the same way that people want to remove the entrance exam for Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech, and in many places are dropping the SAT, for similar reasons.)
You think I'm exaggerating? That's literally what's been going on in Cambridge with respect to teaching Algebra in middle school:
"Cambridge Public Schools no longer offers advanced math in middle school, something that could hinder his son Isaac from reaching more advanced classes, like calculus, in high school. So Udengaard is pulling his child, a rising sixth grader, out of the district, weighing whether to homeschool or send him to private school, where he can take algebra 1 in middle school.
Udengaard is one of dozens of parents who recently have publicly voiced frustration with a years-old decision made by Cambridge to remove advanced math classes in grades six to eight. The district’s aim was to reduce disparities between low-income children of color, who weren’t often represented in such courses, and their more affluent peers. But some families and educators argue the decision has had the opposite effect, limiting advanced math to students whose parents can afford to pay for private lessons, like the popular after-school program Russian Math, or find other options for their kids, like Udengaard is doing."
That's from the Boston Globe.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/07/14/metro/cambridge-schools-divided-over-middle-school-math/?camp=bg%3Abrief%3Arss%3Afeedly&rss_id=feedly_rss_brief&s_campaign=bostonglobe%3Asocialflow%3Atwitter