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You are here: Home / Politics / Activist Judges! / One Benefit

One Benefit

by John Cole|  December 10, 201512:31 am| 68 Comments

This post is in: Activist Judges!, Post-racial America

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Apparently a couple members of the Supremes went full Klan mode today:

n the oral arguments Wednesday for a Supreme Court affirmative action case, Justice Antonin Scalia—a well known critic of affirmative action—suggested that the policy was hurting minority students by sending them to schools too academically challenging for them.

Referencing an unidentified amicus brief, Scalia said that there were people who would contend that “it does not benefit African-Americans to — to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a less — a slower-track school where they do well.”

He argued that “most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas.”

“They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re — that they’re being pushed ahead in — in classes that are too — too fast for them,” Scalia said.

Roberts was no better:

When it came time for UT’s lawyer to argue the school’s position, Chief Justice Roberts seemed to want a timeline for an end to affirmative action programs, alluding to a 2003 case in which the Supreme Court predicted race-conscious programs would no longer be needed in 25 years.

“Are we going to hit the deadline?” he asked. “Is this going to be done, in your view, in 12 years?”

I don’t know, Johnny. How about we end it when racism is over. Oops. You already think it is.

At any rate, there are so many benefits of diversity for everyone that have been documented in any number of places, so I’m not going to go even bother to list them, but I can give you one benefit I experienced DIRECTLY and TODAY: enhanced quality of life.

It was the annual Christmas pot lunch luck today, and a lot of the usual fried, creamed, rich, and usual stuff was there (I just made a fruit salad because I don’t like dessert foods other than ice cream, really, and figured someone else might be the same- and I was right because only about 1/3 of it was left at the end), but there was also one dish I didn’t recognize that had been made by a colleague from Ghana. It was called Gari Foto, and I gotta tell you, it was pretty damned awesome and I had never had it before. I even took a little home to give to my dad because he’s an amazing cook, and I got the recipe and we are going to try to make some.

So if for no other reason, diversity is good for giving you the opportunity to experience new and amazing food. Personally, that’s enough justification right there, but YMMV.

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Reader Interactions

68Comments

  1. 1.

    redshirt

    December 10, 2015 at 12:33 am

    Good post, Bigfoot.

  2. 2.

    Kay Eye

    December 10, 2015 at 12:41 am

    Just got home from the rehab hospital where my husband is recovering from the broken hip that all of us cotton heads dread. The care teams at the hospital and rehab hospital, from doctors to housekeeping staff, are a veritable United Nations of health care workers. Mexican-American, other hispanic countries, Philippinos, Indians, Muslims from several countries, Polish, several African countries, the occasional Western European-Americans . . . American born or immigrant, what a great assemblage of people. As are their patients.
    No Gari Foto on the dinner tray, though.

  3. 3.

    mclaren

    December 10, 2015 at 12:43 am

    Sounds awesome. I’ve been looking for an African dish to make, so thanks for the recipe! Will definitely have to try this one.

  4. 4.

    Ruckus

    December 10, 2015 at 12:45 am

    John
    I have, for most of my life liked finding out where people are from, usually based on their language/accent. Not a game that works very well if you are tucked away in your own little world, refusing to mingle/travel/speak to strangers. The reason is that I find it fascinating that people will travel the world, to see it/enjoy it, to find a different place to live, to meet interesting people and most of all to find out that people really aren’t all that much different everywhere. That they are enough different to make things interesting is the fun though.

  5. 5.

    scav

    December 10, 2015 at 12:54 am

    All sorts of fun can be had with gari, especially if one likes playing off all the regional variants and wild improvisation (I’ll admit, I come to it via Yoruba Nigeria, so more the plain-polenta-grits end of the spectrum, eaten along with soup aka stews — this Gari Foto looks like a whole new horizon of experimentation). There’s also Fufu, which I just love the name of, plus in comes in other types. Yea Plantain.

  6. 6.

    Mike in NC

    December 10, 2015 at 12:57 am

    Scalia needs to sleep with the fishes.

  7. 7.

    redshirt

    December 10, 2015 at 12:58 am

    I can’t imagine the best of any cuisine being bad.

    All good food is good, in other words.

  8. 8.

    John Cole

    December 10, 2015 at 1:16 am

    @redshirt: Do you even know what bigfooting is? A half hour with a completely different topic is not bigfooting, FFS.

  9. 9.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    December 10, 2015 at 1:16 am

    I know of a black guy who couldn’t hack it at UT. Went to Columbia instead after his dissertation committee was dissolved because they didn’t think he was very good at astrophysics. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.

    But, yes, the guy who succeeded at Princeton, Harvard, and Columbia had trouble at UT because he was the problem. He just wasn’t good enough. Right.

  10. 10.

    LAC

    December 10, 2015 at 1:21 am

    How did I get in Georgetown on a full scholarship, massa Scalia? I is so dumb. Thank god that massa Roberts freed us and racism is over.

    Assholes..

  11. 11.

    redshirt

    December 10, 2015 at 1:21 am

    @John Cole: Your feet are suitably big, I imagine. Like 13WWW?

  12. 12.

    RaflW

    December 10, 2015 at 1:23 am

    [Chief Justice] Roberts was no better.

    This needs to be said. Many times.

    I admit, I posted about Scalia today on FB. But I need to follow up, because most everyone already knows Antonin is a pig. But Roberts comes across as much nicer. And that is just a sleazy mask for the same shitty white supremacy.

  13. 13.

    east is east

    December 10, 2015 at 1:23 am

    @redshirt: Please shut the fuck up. Are you obsessed with Cole? What is your major malfunction?

  14. 14.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    December 10, 2015 at 1:23 am

    Also, too, Ghanian chicken and peanut butter soup is the shiznit. A graduate student friend made it for me 20 years ago and I still remember how delicious it was.

  15. 15.

    Commenter2

    December 10, 2015 at 1:27 am

    Racial preferences in university admissions are a good idea because you like diverse ethnic cuisine? I’m not following this line of argument at all.

    And while I don’t like the way Scalia expressed it, there can be a problem with admitting kids who have difficulty competing, where a majority of their classmates had better preparation and higher test scores. Some of this might be addressed through tutoring, and certainly we should be working to make sure all kids have better opportunities before college to prepare.

    But is it better to admit a kid to a higher-prestige school where he will get frustrated and flunk out, or a lower-prestige school where he can succeed? There were students in my law school who plainly did not have good enough preparation to make it. If you think it’s “full Klan mode” to discuss this rather obvious problem, I think you’re living in a bubble.

    Black males fail to complete an undergraduate degree after six years at twice the rate of white males. It’s a complicated problem, probably mostly related to poverty, broken families, and tough upbringing. But surely the graduation rates would be higher if you didn’t throw kids into environments where the great majority had better preparation than they did.

    And no, I don’t think universities and professors are so deeply racist that they’re discriminating in grading to flunk out large numbers of black males. Does anyone seriously believe this?

  16. 16.

    Bobby Thomson

    December 10, 2015 at 1:27 am

    You can get manioc in West Virginia?

  17. 17.

    mclaren

    December 10, 2015 at 1:29 am

    Whoa! This is turning into an African recipe goldmine. Gotta make all of these. Thanks!

  18. 18.

    Yutsano

    December 10, 2015 at 1:32 am

    @Commenter2: Your entire comment solves the wrong problem Mighty white of you as well.

    @mclaren: INORITE??? I’m taking serious notes everywhere!

  19. 19.

    Bobby Thomson

    December 10, 2015 at 1:35 am

    Now I’m craving some baton and feuilles.

  20. 20.

    RaflW

    December 10, 2015 at 1:37 am

    @Commenter2: So saying “most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas” isn’t some racist-assed aboslute bullshit?

    Huh. Interesting.

  21. 21.

    scav

    December 10, 2015 at 1:38 am

    We need something to drink. Ginger Beer. Not exactly the recipe I have, but should be close. I tend to make mine really concentrated and then add it to things, I think the guy who first gave me the recipe added the ginger concentrate to a mixture of pineapple and orange juice. Also, I grated the ginger, and I’ve seen some recipes add a few peppercorns.

  22. 22.

    Yutsano

    December 10, 2015 at 1:38 am

    @Bobby Thomson: Drooling.

    @scav: And now thirsty!

  23. 23.

    mclaren

    December 10, 2015 at 1:40 am

    Scalia’s socipoathic comment also exposes the ingrained contradiction in American higher education. Is the purpose of college to teach people? Or to sieve people?

    Clearly, if the function of college is to sieve people, then we’re operating from a theory of human nature whereby people are like race horses — some are genetically superior to others and the result of the sieving process is a hierarchical society, run by wealthy oligarchs who are wealthy and on top because they’re genetically superior. Basically, German race “science” circa 1930.

    On the other hand, if the function of college is to teach people, then the theory of human nature is that anyone can learn anything — it’s just a matter of time and effort. This leads to a society where everyone can potentially do anything, and the main reason why people don’t wind up on top involves luck.

    What’s interesting is that the American university system has long had an opinion about how college is supposed to work. It’s supposed to sieve people. The problem with that theory is that after WW II, when the GI Bill let anyone who wanted to enter college, schmucks from the ass end of nowhere got into colleges and did incredibly well. But the Ivy League administrators predicted exactly the opposite. The president of the University of Chicago predicted that the GI Bill would turn America’s colleges into “educational hobo jungles.”

    Asshole.

    He was wrong, of course.

    As colleges and universities watched anxiously to see how G.I.s would fit in with their fellow students, critics continued to rail against the bill’s education provisions. “We may find the least capable among the war generation, instead of the most capable, flooding the facilities for advanced education in the United States,” warned James Bryant Conant, the president of Harvard. Robert Maynard Hutchins, the president of the University of Chicago, was even more blunt: “Colleges and universities will find themselves converted into educational hobo jungles. And veterans . . . will find themselves educational hobos.”

    The ensuing years, as David Kennedy notes in Freedom from Fear, would prove Conant and Hutchins wrong. “More than a million eager veterans attended the nation’s universities at Uncle Sam’s expense in the immediate postwar years. Within a decade some eight million had taken advantage of the bill’s educational programs. They were hardly hobos. On the contrary, they were highly motivated students who helped to transform American universities from sleepy citadels of privilege into vibrant educational centers.” The G.I. Bill, says Kennedy, “roared on after 1945 as a kind of afterburner to the engines of social change and upward mobility that the war had ignited, propelling an entire generation along an ascending curve of achievement and affluence that their parents could not have dreamed.”

    Source: “How the GI Bill Became Law in Spite of Some Veterans’ Groups,” NEH website, 2014.

    What’s so interesting about Scalia’s ignorant smear is that the very same smear was tried back in the 1940s, but this time, against poor white people who wanted to go to elite colleges on the GI Bill. Back then, we were told (in tones of punitive hysteria) that these impoverished white folks just didn’t have the intellectual capacity to cut it in elite colleges like the University of Chicago. These hillbillies and dirt-poor Bronx kids just didn’t have the right genes to get the grades in serious colleges.

    The smear turned out to be bullshit. Yet Scalia is so uninformed and so incompetent that he trots out the same type of smear, this time against blacks, 70 years later.

    The available evidence overwhelmingly shows that anyone can learn anything, given enough drive and work and persistence. Why do sociopaths like Scalia persist in claiming otherwise?

  24. 24.

    Bobby Thomson

    December 10, 2015 at 1:41 am

    @Commenter2:

    there can be a problem with admitting kids who have difficulty competing, where a majority of their classmates had better preparation and higher test scores.

    Which is why the plaintiff in the Texas case didn’t get into Texas. And which has nothing to do with how we choose between otherwise qualified applicants.

  25. 25.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    December 10, 2015 at 1:46 am

    @Commenter2:

    Actually, you and Scalia have it exactly backwards — most studies show that bright students from underprivileged backgrounds do better at elite schools, which have more resources to help them than the community colleges and mid-level schools that people foolishly recommend because they don’t actually understand the issue and want to sound smart.

    Do you honestly think that UT Austin is a better school than Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia, and that’s why it has a lower rate of minority graduates?

  26. 26.

    scav

    December 10, 2015 at 1:49 am

    Who will think of all those legacy admits, thrown in above their little C+ Augustus intellectual heads!? They really need to be shunted into the local community colleges where they may possibly thrive.

  27. 27.

    JordanRules

    December 10, 2015 at 1:51 am

    @John Cole: The shit you choose to respond to. LOL and FFS

  28. 28.

    east is east

    December 10, 2015 at 1:58 am

    This redshirt person is replicating regular human behavior but he is not getting it quite right. Watch the news for the bodies being exhumed from his backyard.

  29. 29.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    December 10, 2015 at 1:58 am

    Also, too, if raven checks in on this thread tomorrow, he may have some information and/or links. I think he said his dissertation was on a similar topic (though it may have concentrated on veterans).

  30. 30.

    Yutsano

    December 10, 2015 at 1:58 am

    @RaflW: @Bobby Thomson: @Mnemosyne (tablet): Methinks the troll left a steaming bag on the front porch then ran off like a coward.

  31. 31.

    Commenter2

    December 10, 2015 at 2:05 am

    @Yutsano:

    It’s trolling to mention that it may not be helpful to admit less prepared kids into schools where their peers generally have better prep and test scores, and this may have something to do with catastrophically high flunk out rates? If that’s what you think, you are simply incapable of hearing an alternative point of view.

  32. 32.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    December 10, 2015 at 2:07 am

    @Yutsano:

    Most likely. But the fact remains that most of the students who are the first in their families to go to college get really, really bad advice about concentrating on smaller, less competitive schools that don’t have an interest in helping those students graduate.

    I’ll look for it some more tomorrow, but I saw a really interesting article last year about an elite East Coast college (I want to say it was Columbia) that started a new program to help first-generation college students succeed. It taught them fairly basic things like study habits that they hadn’t needed or been able to cultivate in high school, grouped them together residentially with other first-generation students, matched them up with student mentors, etc, and it greatly reduced the dropout rate. That’s not the kind of program that Podunk U is interested in doing or has the money for, but people are constantly telling first-gen college students to go to Podunk U because it’s cheaper and less competitive. It’s exactly the wrong advice, but people keep giving it.

  33. 33.

    redshirt

    December 10, 2015 at 2:07 am

    @east is east: I have a troll!

  34. 34.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    December 10, 2015 at 2:11 am

    @Commenter2:

    Prep and test mean nothing once you get into college, except that you have the kind of support system that allows you to take prep classes and keep taking the SATs until you get a score you like.

    Please provide links of your own to show that my links above are wrong and kids who are first-generation college students graduate in greater numbers from smaller, less competitive schools.

    Your theory is simple, easy to explain, and dead wrong.

  35. 35.

    Frankensteinbeck

    December 10, 2015 at 2:12 am

    @John Cole:
    I’m sorry you have to deal with meaningless bullshit like that, John. Thank you for enduring it so we can have this place.

  36. 36.

    Mnemosyne (tablet)

    December 10, 2015 at 2:20 am

    Final debunking before bed — not only does the SAT have only minor predictive ability for success in one’s first year of college (high school GPA is a better predictor), it has ZERO predictive ability on the rest of college and on graduation rate.

  37. 37.

    east is east

    December 10, 2015 at 2:20 am

    @redshirt: I’m not trolling you, but what is your problem? You are on John on his twitter, whenever he posts. There is a difference between kidding with someone and just plain hassling him. what is your issue?

  38. 38.

    east is east

    December 10, 2015 at 2:29 am

    yea, I thought so. Think of something clever to say.

  39. 39.

    joel hanes

    December 10, 2015 at 2:36 am

    @Commenter2:

    It’s trolling not to understand that legacy admissions are a bigger merit violation than affirmative action.

    Let me know when you’re ready to oppose legacy admission.

  40. 40.

    ? Martin

    December 10, 2015 at 2:47 am

    @Commenter2:

    And while I don’t like the way Scalia expressed it, there can be a problem with admitting kids who have difficulty competing, where a majority of their classmates had better preparation and higher test scores. Some of this might be addressed through tutoring, and certainly we should be working to make sure all kids have better opportunities before college to prepare.

    But is it better to admit a kid to a higher-prestige school where he will get frustrated and flunk out, or a lower-prestige school where he can succeed? There were students in my law school who plainly did not have good enough preparation to make it. If you think it’s “full Klan mode” to discuss this rather obvious problem, I think you’re living in a bubble.

    This is my job, and here’s how it works.

    Universities are generally identifying two things.

    1) Which students are qualified to attend. This is generally based on their ability to complete the program successfully and graduate in a reasonable timeframe.
    2) Which students from 1) that will be admitted in order to enroll the appropriate number of students.

    When Harvard advertises their 15% admission rate, it doesn’t mean only 1 in 7 students is qualified. It probably means that 6 in 7 students is qualified, but in anticipation of a given yield rate they can only afford to admit 1 in 7, so 5 in 7 qualified students gets turned away. Which ones you turn away help determine that yield rate and shape your class. If you have limited financial aid funding, you might have to balance your pool between need and non-need students (usually no benefit to not handing out all of your financial aid, but only half-funding your students usually means that most of them drop out due to affordability). Usually within the pool there’s a pile of other balancing that needs to happen. The nursing and architecture programs probably can’t take many students relative to their applications, while business can probably take unlimited numbers. You have athletics and other kinds of programs that are affecting your decisions – so you can never compare any arbitrary student to any other simply due to some of these factors.

    But what you find at most top public universities is that the success rates from the ‘qualified’ line up to perhaps the midpoint of the qualified pool is almost totally flat. Basically, it’s arbitrary who you admit in terms of their success rate, but it’s not arbitrary in terms of their likelihood to attend. If I attend a poor black kid and a middle-class white kid with identical scores, the black kid is 3x as likely to attend. The white kid probably applied to at least twice as many schools, stronger schools including privates. The white kid got more offers if for no other reason than he had less impact on the financial aid pool than the black kid would have, which would affect some schools ability to admit. Now, that makes the black kid more valuable to me because he’s more predictable – I may only need to admit 1 other kid like him to get one to attend, but I need to admit 3 other kids like the white kid to get one to attend. Remember, I always run the risk of my estimations on yield being wrong. If I wind up with too many students, I have a big problem. If I wind up with too few, I also have a big problem. Getting it right is really, really, really goddamn important. And if the success rate of these students is arbitrary, why shouldn’t I be able to pick an approach that best favors the taxpayers? We would do that in two ways:

    1) An approach that puts the taxpayer dollars to the broadest use
    2) An approach that would produce a graduating class that is as representative of the state as I can

    And in that latter, I mean that not just ethnically, but also geographically. It should not be that students from the problem city in your state are excluded from taxpayer opportunities. It turns out that these things are really damn hard to do – and virtually impossible to actually achieve, but you can put these constraints into your model and have the computer do the best job it can to achieve them. But to someone on USSC it’s going to look super-discriminatory, and the reason is that you’re going to admit pretty much every single poor black kid because poor black kids don’t have the money to apply to 20 schools, so they show up in your pool at much lower rates than middle-class white kids. Basically, more poor kids need to choose not to apply to my school for financial reasons than middle and upper-class kids, so they show up less frequently. Further, they’re less likely to apply in the first place for a host of well documented reasons related to how students self-evaluate their own ability to succeed in college, to be accepted, to take this path in life. And so you end up having to go after the students that do apply more aggressively to broadcast back to their communities that they will be selected, they will succeed, and that others from that community should try as well.

  41. 41.

    ? Martin

    December 10, 2015 at 2:52 am

    @joel hanes: Legacy admissions are almost unheard of at public universities. There are times when you can do a few small things around the edges – grant an appeal to a sibling when you are otherwise in need of more students, that kind of thing. But that’s about it.

  42. 42.

    Betty Cracker

    December 10, 2015 at 2:54 am

    @Kay Eye: Here’s hoping your husband recovers fully and expeditiously!

  43. 43.

    Ripley

    December 10, 2015 at 3:00 am

    @Commenter2: Your position is a de facto apology for institutional racism, or maybe an intentional one. In any case, your “alternative point of view” is all too familiar. Play coy if you want, but realize it’s transparent.

  44. 44.

    Betty Cracker

    December 10, 2015 at 3:02 am

    @? Martin: Interesting insights into the process and considerations. Thanks for that.

  45. 45.

    Mustang Bobby

    December 10, 2015 at 3:02 am

    First link in the post is broken.

  46. 46.

    amk

    December 10, 2015 at 3:40 am

    @Commenter2: yeah if only those fair skinned legacy admissions like dubya lived up to their potential.

  47. 47.

    J R in WV

    December 10, 2015 at 4:32 am

    @redshirt:

    A good friend, Muslim, who traveled enough in his youth to say “I was beat up on every continent but Antarctica!” once told me that he had learned in his travel that African food was wonderful, except in Nigeria. Never eat Nigerian food if you can avoid it. he said. They use what they have the best ways they can, and it’s still terrible.

  48. 48.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    December 10, 2015 at 4:43 am

    GWB hated the ‘soft bigotry of low expectations’. Aside from becoming his epitaph, all I want Not Qualified Fisher to do is sue UT about their legacies. Yknow, the ones which took her admission slot.

  49. 49.

    raven

    December 10, 2015 at 5:07 am

    @Mnemosyne (tablet): No, I concentrated on GED graduates. The GED was originally a program aimed at giving credit to military personnel and vets so they could pursue post-secondary education. I looked at the how some of the “elite” institutions viewed vets as potential students as part of that. McClaren’s link to the NEH article is a very good look at that view.

  50. 50.

    J R in WV

    December 10, 2015 at 5:08 am

    @Kay Eye:

    Best of luck to Mr Eye. I was primary caregiver for my Dad when he fell and broke his hip – it felt like it took forever. He was taking a drug in a clinical study which was successfully beating his leukemia, and no rehab center around would admit him, so I did it all. Good that your hubby is in a center, I’m sure he’ll get better care than I (with the help of a local woman) could provide.

    Mrs J just found out today (well yesterday by now) for sure that her poorly performing knees are shot, and will need replacement. This will effect our plans for the next year in terms of travel over the winter and next spring. Less of am emergency than falling and breaking something, but still kind of a shock.

    Best of luck!

  51. 51.

    raven

    December 10, 2015 at 5:14 am

    @raven: I actually do have some better quotes by administrators who vilified vets, I’ll try to dig them up.

  52. 52.

    raven

    December 10, 2015 at 5:16 am

    @J R in WV: I have a young friend, in her late 30’s, who is having hip labrum surgery Monday. A year ago I rejected shoulder labrum surgery because of the nasty rehab and I’m hoping she is ready for what is ahead.

  53. 53.

    Punchy

    December 10, 2015 at 6:22 am

    While 4 of the robes are applying US laws, the other 5 only care about enforcing Cleek’s Law. Once you realize that Fat Tony only says this shit to troll the proggys, you’ll understand you’re just dealing with a dickhead, perhaps not a bumbling fool.

  54. 54.

    Another Holocene Human

    December 10, 2015 at 6:33 am

    @RaflW: Roberts isn’t nice, he’s creepy. Someday, far in the future, they’re going to dig up his back yard….

  55. 55.

    kdaug

    December 10, 2015 at 6:36 am

    @J R in WV: “Replace the knees”.

    Wow.

    100 years ago?

  56. 56.

    Another Holocene Human

    December 10, 2015 at 6:37 am

    @Commenter2: I don’t follow your logic, hombre. It’s well known that a lot of that graduation gap has to do with what’s going on during college, NOT preparation level.

    If prep level was everything, why do schools have giant freshman prereq catchup sections taught by TA’s????

    People farther down the income scale have trouble graduating because of shit like MONEY MONEY MONEY. Okay? That’s real life. Also social problems at school that make it hard to stick it out, culture clashes with professors (which is why you need diverse faculty as well) and so on.

    More people FAIL to graduate at STATE schools which have lower admission standards–what about that, Mr. I’m-Not-A-Race-Realist?

  57. 57.

    Another Holocene Human

    December 10, 2015 at 6:39 am

    @Bobby Thomson: Manioc = cassava, it’s a New World plant and if not available fresh (I can get it fresh in Gainesville) will be available frozen at any Hispanic market.

    ps: And while it would be no good for John’s recipe, EVERY US supermarket has Tapioca, which is made from cassava root!

  58. 58.

    Another Holocene Human

    December 10, 2015 at 6:42 am

    @Bobby Thomson: Pollo Loco in DC area had the best roast chicken, yucca fries, and salsa. (Don’t think Pace sauce, think pesto consistency.)

    Mmmm, yucca fries.

  59. 59.

    Another Holocene Human

    December 10, 2015 at 6:46 am

    @mclaren:

    The available evidence overwhelmingly shows that anyone can learn anything, given enough drive and work and persistence. Why do sociopaths like Scalia persist in claiming otherwise?

    Asked and answered.

    It occurs to me that human learning (neuro training or whatever trendy term they’re giving it now) is one special field where Lysenkoism actually works. You can improve a person’s measured IQ and then their kids will have a higher IQ as well and repeat.

    Doesn’t work so well on wheat breeding, sadly. Or maybe wheat kernels are just counterrevolutionaries. That’s probably it….

  60. 60.

    Another Holocene Human

    December 10, 2015 at 6:54 am

    @Mnemosyne (tablet): All students do better at these schools. It’s not hard to figure that out because the private schools brag about their four year completion rates. Harvard, in particular, takes it personally when students drop out. They will work strenuously to make sure you graduate. State school? Doesn’t give a fuck.

    Community college actually can be great if you already have a job, because they’re pretty much set up to work with people who have a life going on already but need to further their education or learn a new skill. By the same token, it’s not the best entree for a kid fresh out of high school (unless you still need to make up fundamentals, something community colleges also do).

    State schools are very sink or swim. If you leave? No worries, somebody else just matriculated. The better private schools have–

    *more resources for fin aid. You may owe more later, but right now you’re covered.

    *more tutoring resources for undergrads

    *smaller class sizes

    *a culture that is more focused on academic achievement (this isn’t universal–cough, Dartmouth, cough–but without writing a book here there’s a reason major state schools tend to be party schools)

    *better professors! yeah! b/c they can afford them

    *better hookups to internships and career training

    *smaller, more compact campuses so less of your day is spent commuting

    And I’m sure some stuff I didn’t think of right now.

  61. 61.

    Another Holocene Human

    December 10, 2015 at 6:57 am

    @Commenter2: Well, turns out test scores don’t predict college academic success. Next!

  62. 62.

    Another Holocene Human

    December 10, 2015 at 7:01 am

    @Mnemosyne (tablet): Yup. My private alma mater did that as well and I knew one of the people in that program and it seemed to work pretty well. I kind of wished I had a support group like that. I had severe emotional problems in college. The school did hook me up with a counselor for free.

    I’ve heard UF lets you go to student health so many times and then they start charging.

    I think there can be examples where the social situation is so intolerable that a kid makes a mistake in going there. That would be smaller, rich kid playground private schools. It can be really tough to be a poor kid there. The bigger, more elite (academically) private schools aren’t like this, of course. Even at Harvard, the legacy douche bros can’t dominate all of campus life.

    I know someone who went to a girl’s school that gave her a free ride and had lots and lots of resources for her, but when that freshman major depression/agoraphobia hit, everything hit the rails. She didn’t graduate. Small school, fish out of water, and even admin kind of decided she didn’t belong there.

  63. 63.

    Bobby Thomson

    December 10, 2015 at 7:14 am

    @Another Holocene Human: baton is steamed and has a sour cheese like consistency, but takes the place of bread.

  64. 64.

    Bobby Thomson

    December 10, 2015 at 7:18 am

    @Another Holocene Human: also, too, smarter peers actually facilitate learning. Education doesn’t have to be zero sum. I suspect state schools are more likely to feel pressured to fail a certain percentage of students ex ante.

  65. 65.

    p.a.

    December 10, 2015 at 8:20 am

    I take it step 7 in the recipe is new, not from grammy’s original.

  66. 66.

    BlueNC

    December 10, 2015 at 8:38 am

    @Mnemosyne (tablet): It’s possible that Columbia also has such a program. Here’s one at Duke:

    Duke creates new scholarship for first-generation students

  67. 67.

    Scapegoat

    December 10, 2015 at 9:01 am

    @Commenter2:

    And no, I don’t think universities and professors are so deeply racist that they’re discriminating in grading to flunk out large numbers of black males. Does anyone seriously believe this?

    I taught in a program at a state university where in the decade before my arrival of the roughly 500 graduates, only 3 were black. No black faculty.

    Racism is dead. Uh huh….

  68. 68.

    Sherparick

    December 10, 2015 at 10:36 am

    1. To all the Dudebros who will never, ever vote for Hilary and that a Cruz, Trump, Rubio Presidency would just “heighten the contradictions,” I can only say “Alito” and “Roberts,” who I don’t think would be on the Supreme Court if we had President Al Gore as opposed to George W.

    2. Brian Beutler and Jonathan Chait are going full “SHRILL” and full “Driftglass” (my favorite blog after Balloon Juice) on the Republican Party and MSM media mental breakdown trying to sustain “Both Sides” in the face of Trump’s comapaign. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_12/quick_hits_1058924.php

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