Category: Knowledge

Harvard’s grade inflation experiment

Scoop, ... 18 comments.

85% of all grades awarded at Harvard are either A or A-. 67% are A.

In the Harvard class of 2025, 21% of the graduates finished with a perfect 4.0!! That’s more than 300 students.

(SIDEBAR: I wondered how they select a valedictorian when there is a 300-way tie for first? It turns out that they don’t. The concept of “valedictorian” no longer exists.)

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What does that mean in reality?

Imagine a class of 100 students. The best student in the class gets the same grade as the 67th best. One can essentially graduate cum laude at the bottom of the class.

B is the new F.

Many educators feel, probably correctly, that this has two important negative effects on society:

1. Employers and grad schools who want the very best students have no idea who they are. They have to resort to logic like “This guy got a B in one of his classes. He’s probably cognitively impaired.” (This was especially true when the use of standardized tests was declining, although I have read that elite universities are going back to the standardized tests after a brief experiment with abandonment.)

2. The students are not encouraged to really master the subject matter when 67th best produces the same results, leading to an overall decline in competence in all fields.

Do the brilliant educators at America’s most elite university have a solution?

Well, maybe.

But it ain’t gonna to be a popular one.

The betting markets on leaving the Trump administration

Scoop, ... 30 comments.

Who will be the next to leave?

Polymarket

Tulsi Gabbard 27%
Lori Chavez-DeRemer 21%
Pete Hegseth 16%
Howard Lutnick 10%

The betting above is restricted to cabinet members.

I don’t see Hegseth as a smart bet, since he is a white, male Christian. I can’t see Trump firing him unless Iran goes so far south that Trump needs a scapegoat. Lutnick is not a Christian, but he has some insulation because of his friendship with Trump, and I don’t think Trump really cares about religion other than as a tool to pander to his base. Faith requires the acknowledgement of a power higher than oneself, which Trump is not wont to do. If Jesus returned and criticized the President, Trump would call him a “low IQ God.”

Given Trump’s need for sycophancy, Gabbard could be in trouble. She is not an enthusiastic supporter of his Iran strategy, and she is an ethnic woman. That’s three strikes when Trump is the umpire.

Outside the cabinet:

The betting on Kash Patel is that he will be gone soon. If you want to bet on him getting nuked before the end of August, you would risk 98 cents to earn two cents! It is an even money wager that he will be out by the end of June

RFK Jr. loves some raccoon dick

Scoop, ... 5 comments.

In his diary, he writes about cutting off the penis of a road-killed raccoon in 2001, while his kids waited patiently in the car, so that he could examine it later.

Damn, my parents’ road trips were so boring. The only time we ever stopped was to pick up some pralines at Stuckey’s. It would have really broken up the boredom if my dad had stopped occasionally to mutilate some woodland creatures.

The Onion’s take:

‘I Am 6 Animal Penises Away From Curing Cancer’

Bill Maher will get the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor

Scoop, ... 1 comment.

It was announced officially on March 26

The chronology:

  1. The Atlantic reported this last week.
  2. The White House flatly denied this to be true. “This is fake news. Bill Maher will NOT be getting this award,” said secretary Karoline Leavitt.
  3. But on Thursday, the center confirmed Maher was the pick.
  4. The White House explained: “This was false reporting at the time of the Atlantic’s reporting, but the situation changed.”

So they lied, then lied about whether they lied!

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I wondered how Maher would react to receiving something that is officially named “The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor,” but he seems to be OK with it.

Thank you to the Mark Twain people: I just had the award explained to me, and apparently it’s like an Emmy, except I win. I’d just like to say that it is indeed humbling to get anything named for a man who’s been thrown out of as many school libraries as Mark Twain.

Trump, of course, has never been thrown out of a library. That would require him to enter a library.

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The capper on the story:

According to several sources, outgoing Kennedy Center president Richard Grenell wanted to give the prize to Fox News talk show host Greg Gutfeld. Then he actually watched Gutfeld’s show and asked, “When does he get to the funny stuff?”

Pete Hegseth calls on Jesus to bless his Crusade

Scoop, ... 8 comments.

To honor the Crusader legacy, just call him Peter the Lyin’-Hearted.

In another demonstration that facts and satire have become indistinguishable, this is real, not from The Onion.

Every day, on bended knee, with your family, in your schools, in your churches in the name of Jesus Christ.

I’m not very religious, so I am assuming Jesus was a huge war guy, who always preached destruction and vengeance, and asserted that your faith and your government are inseparable.

In yet another example of the ever-increasing irrelevance of irony, it appears that Fox News is actually being inspired by The Onion. There was an Onion story last week about how MAGA nation was happy about the high gas prices, was hoping they would go even higher, and even gave a little extra to the gas stations to show their patriotism. Just a few days later, the MAGA media hive actually started trying to convince us that high gas prices were our patriotic duty, and the sacrifice we have to make for our nation, a la gas rationing in WW2.

I’ve forgotten Das Kapital from my college days, but I assume that only dirty commies want average people to be able to afford gas.

Britain is ejecting hereditary nobles from Parliament

Scoop, ... 16 comments.

Unfortunately, the British don’t follow the same traditions as the Czechs, and the nobles will not be defenestrated (literally thrown out of the windows of government buildings).

Europe needs to revitalize some of these ancient traditions. Prince Andrew was apparently sharing state secrets with the famous pervert Jeffrey Epstein. That seems sufficiently treasonous for a beheading.

Here’s one for you history buffs

Scoop, ... 34 comments.

In all of history, which leader amassed the most followers in his own lifetime, from scratch (meaning voluntary followers who were not inherited from ancestors or predecessors)?

Muhammad had about 100,000 followers when he died, about one of every 2,000 people on Earth.

Genghis Khan’s number of VOLUNTARY followers is indeterminate. He controlled millions, but he had no more than 250,000 in his armies, placing him in the same general category as Muhammad – about one for every 1600 on Earth

Darius the Great had an army of some 250,000 men way back in 500 BC, about one for every 400 people on Earth.

Kim Il-sung had about 22 million followers when he died in 1994, about one for every 260 people on the planet.

Hitler’s Nazi party had about nine million members, approximately one out of every 246 people on the planet.

Chairman Mao had about 30 million followers when he died in 1976, about one out of every 140 people on Earth.

As one commenter noted, Gandhi had as many as 300 million Indians willing to die, unarmed if necessary, if he led the charge. They were true believers, and he created his movement from scratch, ticking off all the boxes. That’s about one out of every eight people on earth at the time. How could I have forgotten him? I don’t know whether any leader can ever get to that level again. If you include him in the discussion, it’s like discussing relief pitchers, in the sense that you can debate about who was the second-best, but the top spot is occupied.

The population of Earth is almost exactly double what it was when Mao died in 1976, so Trump needs about 61 million true believers to beat Mao for second place. He may have done that. Between MAGA cultists and his die-hard fans in right-wing groups outside the USA, he may, in fact, have 61 million cultists who would be OK with him shooting Paul McCartney or some other universally beloved figure in Times Square.

Donald Trump may, in fact, be the second-most successful leader in history by that definition.

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Do you amateur and professional historians have other examples?

Britney Spears exposes a breast, gets arrested for DUI in California, deactivates her IG

Scoop, ... 9 comments.

She’s been busy!

It’s about time they brought her to justice! That’s the third 7-Eleven she robbed this week. It’s a shame for her, though. You need to rob four before you get the free Slurpee.

This was an especially bad one, because she pistol-whipped the assistant manager. Then, even worse, she forced him to eat four taquitos from the roller grill.

I believe we can all sleep a little easier now that she has been captured.

Or we could, except that they already released her, because I made all that up. It was a DUI arrest.

Britney deactivated her Instagram account after this arrest, but she had just enough time to sneak in a nipple!


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Note that the picture with the red censorship heart has a clear see-thru of the other nipple!

Video here