PeterMP

Events and things like you describe are about helping students build a support network (of friends), which then helps people graduate. I'm sure places would like to see people feel belong, but that's much harder to do. But having friends that are nearby, going through the same process(es), and can offer emotional and physical support when you need it, help people graduate. (At some level, colleges are fighting social media and the general lack of personal social connections that are declining throughout society. It's great that you've stayed connected to your high school friends, but that high school friend doesn't do you any good when you've been in a car accident at 1:00 am, and they live 2 hours away. You need connections nearby. Over the last 20 years, many colleges/departments have ramped out activities to build connections for all students.) Even at the faculty level, I think most people would be surprised about how much time we spend talking about how do we build more/better community among the students in our majors. Because when we have better community, it helps our students do better, and realistically, it helps us because they then lean on each other more for academic support. Considering the average college graduate makes over 50% more than a high school diploma, people that only have a high school diploma are more likely to cost the state in others ways (e.g. end up in prison), etc. I think $50,000 isn't actually that much. Prior to the Supreme Court decision there was good data and studies that show how to increase minority graduation rates. There are non-affirmative action reasons a place like UM is seeing increased rates of minority graduation and a place like Texas A&M isn't. Anybody that wants to argue that eliminating affirmative action increases graduation rates is going to need real data to back that up vs. people are doing the things they were doing before the Supreme Court decision that are well supported in the education literature as increasing minority graduation rates. I know less about hospitals, but college administrations have pretty much grown directly as a result of government, law, accreditation, technology requirements, and understanding of how they make money. The ADA, Title IX, EPA requirements, computer/wireless/ infrastructure, changes in society, generally just creating an environment that is more equitable, and raising money all have created more college non-teaching roles that get counted as increased administration. Accrediting agencies decided, they wanted to see more effort put into assessment. Where I work, we went out and hired somebody to over see assessment. That's an administrative cost, but it was clear that if we didn't there could be an issue with accreditation next cycle. Universities offer mental health/counseling services to students, that go with the increase in mental health problems in young people in society. Similarly, with the number of students that get some sort of accommodation (the ADA) have gone way up. But then you need staff to deal with those increases. That's an administration cost. In my career, support for writing grants is way up. That's because universities have decided it makes sense to offer that support because they can bring more money back from the federal government, help in terms of recruiting students, and alumni donations (students that do research are more likely to donate money back later). Having staff that help get grants shows up as an increase in administration, but there's good reason to think that it actually ends up helping the college financially. College President pay is the one thing where to me things have gone up and maybe they didn't need to. But that mirrors increases in CEO pay across society. If you want a top level executive, it is hard to not then have to pay more. And in some cases there have been issues with what is essentially government corruption at public universities that have caused increase administration costs. But Harvard is as bad as anywhere in terms of increased administration costs, and their private.

I'm not sure a DEI program can make people feel belonged. But where I work a lot of the work of people in DEI is directed at retention/academic support. Things like early academic intervention, extra (free) tutoring, and getting involved in research (which requires money) all can help minority retention and success. And where I work a lot of that comes from work/funds/ from DEI staff/programs. Texas A&M's graduating 72.1% of their African Americans in 2020 and have been pretty flat since 2016 (after 6 years). Over that same time period whites have gone up from 83% to 87.5% and looks like a real increase. So at Texas A&M African Americans are falling further and further behind whites. Meanwhile UM's African American graduate rate has gone from the upper-70s to over 86%. The values for whites were pretty high to start with (91.9%) so it is hard to say if they've gone up (to 93.7%), but African Americans are at least keeping pace if not gaining. I suspect we'll see 2 things happen in FL: 1. There will be fewer African Americans in the state going to college (especially in state). 2. The ones that will stay will have a lower graduation rate. Obviously, spending money on something that people aren't really committed to doesn't make sense, so I guess if you and your colleges aren't committed to DEI, then cutting DEI programs probably makes sense. But I think as a state, you might be hurting yourself. Those two things will hurt the FL economy. Highly qualified African Americans that can get into other schools where there are DEI programs will leave FL and then are less likely to go back than people that stay. Ones that stay will be less likely to finish and so less likely to have college degrees and will be saddled with debt that they can't really pay back creating a drag on the FL economy (compared to somebody that finished college). And from there, the cost of recruiting students is expensive for colleges so not retaining students is actually bad business. Also, people look at graduation rates when they are selecting a school so lower graduation rates make it that much harder to recruit (good) students. And endowments (which mostly come from wealthy/successful alumni) are an important part of many colleges budgets having less grads and less successful grads negatively impacts the colleges ability to raise an endowment. It isn't unreasonable that you might get in a situation that a good DEI program might actually be saving you money (though I don't know of a study that shows that, just seems possible). Certainly at the state level, but even at the university level, it might make sense to spend another $18 million/year to graduate another 14% of your minority students. I suspect as a state long term FL is costing themselves money. (Many people think about college budgets in terms of tuition in vs. money spent. But that isn't really the case. Like any business, money spent can be an investment that makes it easier for you keep a current customer and obtain future customers. And universities have this odd thing where previous customers will sometimes "pay" even when they are no longer customers. Spending money to build long term relationships and put out people that will be successful can actually make you money. It isn't very common for people to donate money to a university that they dropped or were failed out of. And then for state institutions it is even more complex because graduating people that are successful and in state will increase the tax base and can impact your funding in the future. You get into well are we going to keep more of our more successful students in the state if we do X.)

I think this is unlikely. Quantum mechanics tells us the universe is not really deterministic but probabilistic. While the brain function itself seems to be mostly the result of the movement of relatively large things where QM won't matter much, it is clear that in totality a person's mental state is related to the whole body (including the microbiome) and some reactions and processes at the larger scale will be based on the movements of small things (electrons and protons) and QM will matter. The end result will be at best we'll be able to define probabilities for people's actions/thoughts. I suspect in the not to far off future we'll be able to do things to affect people's thoughts and actions by flooding certain parts of the brain with certain molecules/ions and some people will declare that the death of free will. But really if you do X, the person will do Y is not new. If I hit the knee in the right place with the right amount of pressure the person's leg will move and historically has not thought to be a violation of the idea of free will. For what you are saying to be true, I think we'll have to understand what underlies QM and that will have to be deterministic in nature and not probabilistic.

Obviously, they care about ratings, but I do think just saying that all that matters is selling them short. Fox News has made the path to ratings clear. If that's all you care about, you'd go hire Tucker Carlson. But NBC and Meet the Press haven't done that, so I think they deserve more credit than that. Though I also do think we get the news that we deserve. To me that's another angle. Stories that debunk things and break news requires more work and so money. That means paying for it. Which means we have to pay for it. If you don't like the news you are getting, looking in the mirror might be a good place to start.

Ok. This might be the grad student in me still coming out. But every where I go, the price is the same for the cup or the cone. The cone is then free food. And they're not bad. You don't pass up reasonably good free food. When I see people eating out of a cup, my thought is they're idiots. They've passed up reasonably good free food. (I guess if you have IBS or something and can't eat a cone that might make sense. But other than that.)

Keeping in mind (that as I've already pointed out) the interviewer acknowledges that people that meet privately with Biden say he's still mentally sharp. Please explain how MTP is supposed to debunk the idea that Joe Biden is having some and might have some more age related mental decline over the next 4+ years. When was the last time Biden sat down with somebody from MTP for any significant conversation? He's certainly not going on the show. He's not releasing large numbers of medical records, including a neurological exam, that they can interview a doctor about. He's certainly not going to release his private doctor from doctor-patient privilege and let them go on MTP. They certainly don't know the future and don't know what his mental state will be in 3-4 years. Even his doctors can't make guarantees about that. (And yes, the story is going to keep cycling because Biden is going to keep being old unless he starts making appearances where he seems much younger. The press is going to keep reporting on it, because it isn't going away (unless something worse comes up. If you're Biden and this is the focus of the press, that's actually a win.).) What do you want MTP to do debunk the idea that a guy over 80 might have suffered some mental decline and might suffer some more in the future? What is there to debunk?

I don't know what Jon Stewart did so I can't comment. The Meet the Press question didn't trash Biden. Like I've said, if she would have given a run down of his recent flubs and then been like his age a concern, that would have been a different thing. That would have been running down Biden and been an issue. But that's not what happened. The question was this is something people are concerned about given that was nominating him responsible? It is a concern for some people. What Meet the Press gets out if it is they are doing their job. Their job isn't to be Democrats or be Democrat cheerleaders or to balance the right wing media. Meet the Press doing or trying to do any of those things long term is going to make the situation worse and not better. So what Meet the Press gets out if is being a responsible news organization which is their job. Yes and he also has issues walking from the foot he broke back in 2020 when playing with his dog. This is where I think @Jumbo is right about acknowledging with some humor. I'm not nearly that old, but I know that I don't move like I used to because of some injuries. That's something that I think a lot of people can relate to. That the stupid foot doesn't work like it used to because it got hurt playing with a dog seems a ripe area for some humor, and I think might put some people more at ease with his age.

He did refer to some dead people as if they were still alive recently. We can say he just misspoke, but that is something. I think it is also admitted that he moves less well now than he did 4 years ago which doesn't help. Even if it is just appearances and physical and not mental, it doesn't help. Among some sources, it is one sided sure. Fox News and Newsmax aren't going to report things evenly. But the conversation was about a specific question that happened on Meet the Press. I'm not going to defend the right wing news media, but NBC has absolutely covered things like Trump mixing up Haley and Pelosi. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-confuses-nikki-haley-pelosi-talking-jan-6-rcna134863 (Some people seem to think that since the right wing news media is so biased for Republicans that other news systems by being more fact based are to, that the other news media are some how to blame for what the right wing news media does, the other news systems should move further to the left to "balance" the right wing news media, or just dumping all of the news media all together as "news media" as if talking about NBC News and Fox News as if they are the same thing makes sense. I don't think any of those things make sense. If you want to tell me that this is a story that is being driven by right wing media and would be less of an issue without the right wing media, I'm not going to disagree. But once they've driven it to the point that it is an issue, it doesn't make sense for the Democrats or larger media to ignore it.) At this point in time if you are the Democrats, it doesn't really matter how it became important. It is an issue you have to deal with it. If you are a media organization, it might be worth doing a story on how it became important. But there is also nothing wrong with covering the fact that is an issue. When you are talking to somebody that is there as a representative of the Democratic party, there is nothing wrong with asking about it. I've also tried to make the point that comfort with the VP is important. The hard core Trump voter is going to stay with Trump no matter what. I think some people have similar concerns about Trump, and I think who he nominates for VP might affect their thinking. I generally don't think the VP matters very much. But if Trump nominates a member of his family or the likes of MTG then I think that could actually hurt him because I do think people are concerned.

I don't think even the car market is that complex. There are different levels of cars. Dealers make more money when they can get you to buy the higher level of car that costs more. I don't think MRSPs are set so that the car dealer makes the same amount money off of each car sale, but instead higher priced cars normally result in more money for the dealer. Sales people are trying to get you into the highest level car they can so the dealer will make more money. Mattresses aren't any different.

That might make you feel good. It might be accurate. But I don't think it is probably very effective at getting people to vote for Biden or against Trump. In this case, what it likely does is get people to lie to you about what they'll do.

It wasn't a question designed to freak people out. Even she ends up talking about how people that talk to him in private talk about how he's still sharp in and command. If she wanted to freak people out, she would have gone through a list of his recent flubs. She would have said something like, "Given that Biden can't seem to remember which world leaders are dead and which ones are still living, is nominating him for President responsible?" And if she had done that, I'd be in here agreeing with you. But that's not what was done. Harris' experience doesn't matter to my mom. She doesn't trust her. She does not believe that Harris shares her values or anything close to her values. Harris getting more experience doesn't change that. Look, I don't disagree about it being too late and who else was the Democratic party going to run. A few pages ago I was making essentially the same point in that Biden easily cleared the field in 2020 and that somebody else would now beat him is unlikely. While my mom has concerns about Biden's age, it isn't like there is some other Democrat out there that she's more likely to vote for. But his age is a concern to a lot of voters. They aren't comfortable with Harris as VP. Democrats need to confront concerns about Biden's age directly. That question allowed Newsome to do so.

I'm sorry. This just isn't true. The stuff from the prosecutor didn't help. But people were concerned before that. As I stated, my mom was concerned when he ran the first time. It was already something out there in 2020. You can think the concerns are stupid, but they are real.

I don't know. I generally don't seem to have this issue. I've generally been able to get dealerships to give me a clear quote including all fees. To me, today it is much better than it used to be. The last 2 cars we bought we knew exactly what the cost was before entering the dealership. The ability to text and e-mail has very much changed car buying IMO. The first new car I bought I spent a day walking back and forth between two dealers that were across the street from one another (not the same brand of car) until I got a deal hammered out where it was clear what the final price was going to be and was pretty sure I wasn't going to get a better deal.

It is a question because people are concerned. You can argue that they shouldn't be. But they are. Ignoring that is a mistake. Even before Biden was first elected, my mom who is her 70s herself, was worried about it. And her concern was that Harris (who she doesn't really know but doesn't like because she sees CA and therefore any elected official from CA as a far left vipers nest) would end up running the country. I was able to alleviate those fears some (made the point that if Biden can't do it, it would really fall to his staff that has been working for him for decades as a Senator and than VP. Not the VP who he has no history of working with). You might think concerns about his age aren't valid or are stupid. But it is reality and ignoring it is mistake. The better way is to deal it with it directly. What Newsome essentially has said is however things are working, it is working well. That will put people at ease. My mom voted for Biden last time (I think). You want her to vote for Biden again, you need to directly address concerns about his age and mental abilities. Ignoring them are a mistake. (or get another VP w/o ticking off and losing a bunch of voters).

In the context of being an interviewer and an interviewee where you are interviewing a Democrat, how does that middle ground play out? What should she have done that wouldn't have been ignoring it that wouldn't have been whataboutism? Right now, Democrats should want to go on news programs and talk about Biden's age and then do what was done there and flip it and talk about what is happening that is good. It isn't like she went through a list of his flubs the last few months. By asking that question the way she did (and with Newsome's prep and ability to handle it), she did Biden a favor. That was the softest of softballs.

To me ignoring it doesn't make sense. It is out there and ignoring it doesn't make it better. Better off asking and letting the person address it. Which he did a good job of. And Conway got called on for using the phrase.

The NH and SC primaries are misleading. They are both open and with the Democratic primary being no contest, there has been plenty of cross over. Only 68% of the voters in the SC Republican primary self-identified as Republican in exit polls. Unless he dies, Trump is going to win South Carolina, and it isn't going be close. And he might win it even if he's dead.

Biofuels aren't very economical now and even with today's technology and engineered plants, their equivalence to fossil fuels is at best questionable. And the fossil fuels we're extracting today for the most part are much more expensive and require more technology than the ones that were extracted at the start of the industrial revolution. Even today nuclear only makes sense in the context of having machines that run on relatively cheap fossil fuels to build nuclear power plants and the equipment in them. Even today, if you said you had to build a nuclear power plant with limited fossil fuel usage, it be unlikely to work. Human ingenuity has limits. As anybody can see by looking at the problems in the world we haven't fixed. Human ingenuity can't over come the laws of thermodynamics. For a given mass, there are limits to how much energy it contains and how much of that energy can converted into work that even today appear to immutable. So yes, I'm placing limits on human ingenuity. Fossil fuels contain a lot of easily accessed energy per a unit mass. Coal used early in the industrial revolution was relatively cheap and easy to access. Transporting it made sense because it contained a lot of energy that allowed a lot of work to be done. Ethanol per a mass unit doesn't easily nearly deliver the same energy or allow the same amount of work to be easily accessed. Ethanol was common at the time of the industrial revolution. There's are reasons why the industrial revolution was based on fossil fuels and not ethanol that are tied to the laws of physics and chemistry. I can't completely discount somehow society will end up shaped very differently and somehow humans would over come the limitations of the lack of easy to access fossil fuels. And I didn't. I said it wasn't hard to imagine a situation where the current methods of producing energy collapsed, the global trade and technology network that modern economies and energy generation require collapse, and it isn't possible to get back to where we are. Not that if there is a collapse it will be impossible to get back to where we are. But it will be very difficult and so unlikely. And much more difficult than in the past. Recovering from the dark ages was relatively easy because they could keep using the same things for energy that they had been. And the dark ages weren't really a global phenomena. While Europe was in its dark ages, the Chinese were printing the first books. Europe doesn't recover from the middle ages on its own. But today it isn't hard to imagine where we do something where the whole world goes backwards and unlike the dark ages, it isn't just a regional thing. There is no comparison between Europe recovering from the Middle Ages and recovering today from something like a large scale nuclear war. I mean it will take hundreds of millions of years for there to be a build up of biomass and conversion into fossil fuels for there to be easily accessible fossil fuels at the scale there was at the start of the industrial revolution.

That's actually pretty impressive by Brett Baier and Fox News (yes, I realize they probably are doing this to avoid more lawsuits or as a result of the settlement they have, but he still did a really good job of holding the line there). He's got the facts. He's go the info. He's prepared.

I want to point he's pretty much admitted that and it is discussed in the CNN link that I posted earlier.

There's a fundamental difference between the past and the present in terms of coming out of major set back. With any set back, there is a decrease in population which causes a decrease in specialization which results in loss knowledge. And loss of specialization today results in further disasters that will lead to a further spiral down turn. I think I've talked about this here before, but if you consider something like Thanos' snap. The nuclear industry does not have a 50% over capacity in workers. You lose 50% of those workers that specialization is going to lost. There will almost certainly be corresponding nuclear plant meltdowns, further environmental deterioration, and loss of life. The same thing is true for things like oil rigs. You'll see the failure of some oil rigs, leaking oil, and environmental consequences. Any prior major societal breakdowns didn't come with the same consequences. The other thing that has helped in the past was abundant and cheap fuel for the given technology. Having pretty major societal break down actually helps when your main source of energy is burning trees because trees will regrow. The coal mines that fueled the industrial revolution with relatively easily accessible and cheap fuel are not coming back on any sort of relevant time frame. Essentially every modern way of generating energy in a way that is very efficient is based on global market of goods, technology, and skills that if fails we don't have the energy to rebuild. The other thing that becomes an issue is that I'm a useful biochemist. But my skills are pretty much completely dependent on essentially post 1980 technology and a corresponding international trade and technology market. It isn't hard to imagine where there is some sort of event (e.g. large scale nuclear war), loss of life and power (electricity not political or something like that) generates further disasters and loss of life a corresponding loss of knowledge and the human population finds itself in what is essentially a pre or early-industrial condition without the access to (affordable and efficient) energy to boost itself back out. (I think the combination of things in this thread then give us an answer to the Fermi Paradox. We don't see advanced species exploring space because it it didn't make economical sense for them to do so. And when society collapses, like us, they've used all of the energy sources that low technology societies can use to build up. And you get stuck. Even if you retain some of the knowledge of what society was building back up gets really hard because of things like in our case there isn't coal that can easily be dug out by axe, pick, and man power to generate the energy to run the machines you need to build back up. The fossil fuels that were used to build up are gone, aren't coming back any time soon, and gave us one shot to build to where we are. A slip back down to where they are needed again, and you aren't coming back.)

I'm not ruling that out either. That's just another way that we don't colonize other planets is if we never achieve the level of technology to do it efficiently.

When was the last time that 30% of an incumbent President's party thought they lost the last election? Trump is a historical abnormality. Maybe it will become normal but treating him like an incumbent President and viewing his success in the GOP primary like an incumbent President doesn't make any sense. Admitting that treating somebody doing something that hasn't been done in generations the same way something that happens every decade or so doesn't make any sense shouldn't be this hard. Based on any reasonable historical comparison that he's had the success he's had is abnormal. The fact that 70% of his party thinks he won the last election is abnormal. Using one thing that is abnormal to argue something that stems from it is normal is nonsensical.

There have been several one term Presidents in my life time. One term President's don't run again because they don't have the support of their party to win. Bush 1 wasn't going to win another GOP primary which is why he didn't run. But it doesn't really matter. If he's doing something that hasn't been one in anybody's life time treating him as if he is something that is common doesn't make any sense. At this time, he's a historical abnormality. Incumbents winning sweeping their primary is common. That's inarguable.

In the context of normal political actions, Trump isn't effectively an incumbent. Trump is doing something nobody else has done in anybody that is livings life time. If being a one term President that lost made you essentially an incumbent, then one term President's coming back the next election and sweeping their party's primaries would be common. If 40% were never Trumpers, you'd have a point. But that's not the case. And that's never the case in a primary. The people that vote for somebody else in the primary are never I'm not going to vote for the other person. Party labels matter. Never Trumpers have had 8 years to leave/reject the GOP. There's no reason to believe that people that a large percentage of the people that are registered GOP or report leaning GOP are never Trumpers. The SC primary was an open primary. There is no real reason to believe that 40% of Republican voters won't vote for Trump. There's every reason to believe that the vast majority of them will end up voting for the person who their party nominates and is broadly supported by their party. And the election will be close. And for the press to report on the election as if it is going to be close. And the 40% number is going to end up being wrong. That's 40% in her home state where she was governor and NH where independents can vote. Nationally over the course of the primaries, it is going to be much lower unless something big happens.