All engineers are TERRORISTS

Wassup NSA how's it goin'? That's right you saw the title. The word TERRORISTS in all CAPS. Terrorists of that radical knowledge. Yeah, you heard me, WE ARE smart, the un-civil ones. I'm kidding, civil engineers are smart too.

What I mean to say is not that all terrorists are engineers, engineers of mayhem and destruction, but most home-grown radical islamic terrorists are engineers. According to Homeland Security, 62% of home-grown terrorists are engineers. I didn't know my peers had a dangerous side. Oooh spicy, the plot thickens.

What do Betsy Devos and terrorism have in common? You'll find out.

They are both linked to an interesting conversation I had with an aide of mine. (This "aide" helps me out of my wheelchair during the day.)

When she arrived I was watching this video:

So our conversation began about Betsy Devos, the Trump appointed secretary of education. When the media talks about Devos, it is usually prefaced by billionaire. We talked about how billionaires are vilified, while wealth has almost nothing to do with her advocacy of school choice. We also agreed that wealth does make it easier to be a politician. She has no advanced ivy league-degrees compared to her Obama-appointed predecessor, leaving her qualifications questioned. School choice allows parents of students to choose which school their children attend, outside of district lines.These choices are between public and charter.

I do like her stance on school choice which, according to the CATO Institute has been shown to improve student test scores. However, some argue that the competition would put schools out of business, which it would. But the CATO Institute also cites cases in overburdened schools that cause the competition to improve "failing" schools.

Our conversation then moved on from Betsy Devos to how she feels like the media is not covering important stories fairly or at all. A case of this is the Berkeley Riots. None of the violence caused by the riots were shown, except for a cart burning. There were people being beaten with flag-poles, a woman was pepper-sprayed, by "protestors" a man was almost trampled. Yet many news outlets were calling this a protest. The media she feels has become more unaccountable, feeding off of the Trump hysteria, and pandering more toward extreme viewpoints for better ratings. I believe that news has become more about entertainment than facts. In the 50's news broadcasts were short and sweet, you learned everything you needed to know in 10 minutes with very limited spin. I think the 24 hours news cycle can be blamed for this move to an entertainment-focus in news. In order to keep people interested in the news it has be radical, and this leads the left-leaning media to make many stories about how Trump is Hitler. And this led to us talking about the "muslim ban," which she felt wasn't being covered fairly.

We talked about the temporary travel ban to several muslim majority countries. The countries that have been banned were mentioned as dangerous in several of Obama's executive orders (read the whole page). I bet no one told you that! We also discussed on how it misses the countries where most terrorists and muslims are from. I am not equating all muslims to terrorists, but I am making a point. This is not a muslim ban because it does not ban immigrants from countries with the largest populations of muslims, like Saudi Arabia. Speaking of Saudi Arabia, she lived there for 20+ years, but we will get to her experience of how muslims are radicalized in the next blog. Ha! Bait and switch. After saying radical and radicalized and terrorist so many times, Hitler, mayhem and destruction, and Homeland Security, I know at least one person is reading my blogs. The NSA.

Trigger Warning: You May Learn Something

My parents raised me and my sister's us in a fairly conservative household (Fox News Forever). So my little sister and I have and will likely always be conservative. My older sister was once conservative, but as I like to say college has "brainwashed" her. She is now a hard-core liberal - everything we think or say is either stupid or "[insert]-ist."

I have to figure out a way to help her come back to the light-side. My weapon of choice is the good ol' brow-beatin'. So I have to come up with a way to debate the crap out of her. From watching countless SJW verbal takedowns, I think I know how it works.

I've gleaned that liberal ideology survives on the idea that one or more groups of people is oppressed. And many liberals believe the only way to solve this oppression is by government intervention. Sure government intervention can often solve problems of institutional "blank-ism", as in the civil rights movement. But government intervention cannot solve many of the more minute and often-times cultural issues of a particular group. So I think I can defeat my sister by proving that some of these groups are not oppressed, I will look at African Americans and women.

I seek the prove that African Americans are not as oppressed by whites as the left makes them seem. I will focus on the criminal justice system. One murder is one too many. According to US News and World Report, in 2015, 229 blacks were murdered by whites. Compared to 573 whites who were killed by blacks. According to Politifact, the percentage of blacks killed by other blacks in 2013 was 92%. Compared to 88.5% for whites. Make of these statistics as you wish.

Now. Let's look at prison population, this is where a disparity between blacks and whites becomes more apparent. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 37.9% of the prison inmate population is black. 58.6% of the inmate population is white. However African Americans make up only 13.3% of the population and whites make up 77.1% of the population.  Just by looking at the numbers one can see that there is a much higher proportion of blacks in prison in the US, than their white counterparts.

The reason for this divide is that proportionally blacks are more involved in murder and other violent crimes than whites. The reason violent is bolded is that the statistics on violent crimes are harder to skew with the possibilities of over-policing. It's the same reason why there are more men in prison than women. Prison systems aren't sexist, men are just more involved in crime than women.

But what about all of those police shootings? Whites are more likely to be shot by police than blacks. Although the previous statement is true, these statistics are very dubious. They don't adjust for population! If you do adjust for population, you'll see blacks are 2.5x more likely than whites
per-capita to be shot by police. I'm not exactly sure where this discrepancy comes from, but I'd imagine its not all due to race.

Was I able to prove that blacks are not as oppressed by whites as the left makes them seem? You decide.

I seek to prove women, the largest "minority" are not "oppressed" in the western world.

1. Gender pay gap is almost nonexistent
We've all heard it: "women make 79 cents for every dollar a man makes doing the same work" Many have bought into this very misleading statistic. Why this is misleading:

• Women and men of different ages have different amounts of experience 
• Men have on average 2+ years of experience. When this is taken into account the pay-gap falls from 79.4 cents/dollar to 88.6 cents/dollar.
• Women often leave the workforce for extended periods compared to men
• "Because child rearing and other family responsibilities fall disproportionately upon women, they are significantly more likely to leave the workforce for an extended period. Furthermore, women are more likely to seek employment at nonprofits or in government agencies — employment which is associated with lower pay. These positions are usually more flexible and amenable to the needs of working mothers."
• Gap falls from 88.6 cents to 90.9 cents
• Women choose different careers
• "Women tend to work in fields dominated by women, in large part because these fields best satisfy women’s’ dual careers as workers and household managers. This can include less stressful work environments (noise, strenuous activity, etc.), more flexible policies regarding time off, and a number of other factors."
• Gap falls from 90.9 cents to 96.7 cents

According to June O'Neill, of the National Center for Political Analysis, a single, childless woman between ages 35-43 makes on average MORE than the male counter-part.

2. Women often have greater educational opportunity than men
These opportunities are only limited by choice. Women have equal opportunity in education compared to men. Women between the ages of 25 and 34 are 21% more likely than men to have bachelor's degrees and 48% more likely to receive graduate degrees than men.

Again. You decide. I think I made a pretty solid argument though.

This blog is turning more political in nature. But now I know some statistics that'll help me bring back my sister. All kidding aside, I hope the next blog will be less serious, we will see next week.

I hope people read this blog and have some meaningful discussion. I attempted to be as thorough in my analysis as possible. If I'm wrong tell me. I believe in free speech for all.

Scalia Wags

After the suspense of waiting for Trump's Primetime Pick, we now know who it is. It's Neil Gorsuch. Nice guy Neil. Just because he was picked by Trump doesn't mean he'll be approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Neil Gorsuch is slightly more conservative than Antonin Scalia, the justice he would replace. But he is also being appointed much earlier in his career. If appointed he would be the youngest supreme court justice on the court. Gorsuch believes in strict interpretations of the constitution. He thinks that slaves should be legal. I'm only kidding. I'm a budding comedian. Gorsuch wouldn't like me that much. He would support me if I were a non-budding comedian. Enough of that, he also believes human life is intrinsically valuable. He stands firmly against assisted suicide and is not keen on abortion. On abortion, some like Nanci Pelosi, see his positions as being "hostile towards women's rights." 

But for all you depressed demmies out there, there is some hope. America is not lost. If appointed, he'll eventually shift to the left. Wait?

What? Yes maybe you already know this, but I just learned this today so I must muse about it. Hard-right conservative justices tend to mellow out as their time on the court increases.

A picture tells a thousand words, a graph tells ... more

This graphic comes from FiveThirtyEight.com

Looking a little deeper, according to FiveThirtyEight, there are a number of factors that cause this. I've narrowed the list down for easier consumption.

Justices want to be good justices and because science. SCOTUS justices don't want to be remembered as bad justices. Conservative views in the court often get bad press and go down in the books as bad decisions. Some examples of unpopular decisions include the Dredd-Scott decision, Plessy V. Ferguson, Burwell V. Hobby Lobby.

They want to have friends. All of the friendly get-togethers around the D.C. area features some of the finest Democrats in the USA. “Justices may be subject to influences by the Beltway cocktail scene and want to be perceived as reasonable and moderate,” according to a Supreme Court Scholar. So what you're saying Mr. Supreme Court Scholar Sir is that they change their identities and personalities to have friends. 

Finally, because science, ala Michael Scott. Should have had dredds, catch my drift. Studies have shown that as we age we become more liberal. This liberal-ness can be associated with our increase in acceptance of non-traditonal values like gay marriage, etc. But I'd imagine this changes from generation to generation. Perhaps after another generation everyone will have such a personalized non-traditional identities that people begin to become more conservative as they age.

The other interesting thing is that the average weight of the Supreme Court comes out a little bit left of center. Maybe if anything the appointment of Gorsuch would make the court more fair. Maybe?