Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

How much more successful would Rishi Sunak have been if he had been born white?

October 25, 2022 by philg

The UK has a new prime minister. Because they could not find anyone 78-86, which Science proves is the age range in which a human exhibits optimum decision-making skills, they’ve chosen 42-year-old Rishi Sunak.

“Rishi Sunak to become first British PM of colour and also first Hindu at No 10” (Guardian):

Rishi Sunak is about to become the UK’s first prime minister of colour and the first Hindu prime minister, both milestones in Britain’s evolution as a multicultural and multi-faith society. … the UK has never had a black or brown prime minister before.
Neema Begum, assistant professor in British politics at the University of Nottingham, said Sunak’s appointment “shows how far ethnic minority representation has come in politics”. “Sunak as prime minister is not necessarily a cause for celebration for all ethnic minorities. It shouldn’t be used to refute the ongoing existence of racism or obscure the fact that there are well-documented systemic racial and ethnic inequalities in housing, health and education.”

“New British PM Rishi Sunak is richer than King Charles III. How wealthy is he and where did it come from?” (Forbes):

Rishi Sunak and his wife, Akshata Murty, have a combined net worth of around £730 million ($826 million), … That’s around twice the estimated wealth of King Charles III.

So… this guy overcame racism and, as a “brown” person navigated a society in which white privilege is a huge advantage. This leads to the question How much more successful would Rishi Sunak have been if he had been born white? Instead of having to wait to age 42, at what age would he have become prime minister? Instead of being worth $826 million, how much would he be worth if he’d enjoyed white privilege?

Here’s a recent sunny Saturday near the Palace of Westminster. Almost impossible to walk on the bridge because nobody can decide whether to walk on the left or on the right.

And a young Heroine of Faucism who is wearing a non-N95 mask as defense against an aerosol virus while on a 30-minute nearby London Eye ride in close proximity to the unmasked:

Just for fun, a photo at the top:

On the subject of systemic racism, a newspaper that I picked up on my way into a multi-million-dollar electric vehicle:

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Climate change leader tosses a $110 million 6-year-old house into a landfill

October 25, 2022October 26, 2022 by philg

Let’s start off in the Department of Sick with Envy… “Lavish Palm Beach mansion built just six years ago, then bought for $110m last year ‘by Estée Lauder boss’ will be TORN DOWN and replaced with new property” (Daily Mail):

A never-lived-in oceanfront mansion that quietly sold for $110 million last year is to be torn down and replaced with a new property.
The mansion, built in 2016 at 1071 N. Ocean Blvd, Palm Beach, is owned by a company linked to cosmetics billionaire William P. Lauder.
He owns an empty lot next door and is believed to want to combine both parcels of land before building his dream home, just six miles from former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.
The home was originally purchased for $40.42 million by Philadelphia businessman Vahan Gureghian and his wife, Danielle, an attorney, but they never moved in.
There is even room for a two-lane bowling alley in the basement – although it’s soon to be destroyed by the wrecker’s ball.
He purchased that lot, at 1063 N Ocean Blvd, for $25.4 million in April 2020 at which point he demolished the existing home which had stood there since the early 1960s.

(What kind of engineering was involved to make a watertight basement? Almost nobody in Florida has one.)

To make our envy even more intense, the article includes a photo of the dilapidated eyesore:

It is at times like these that I’m glad I voted for Bernie!

What does the guy who is throwing out a 6-year-old 36,000-square-foot house have to say about our beloved planet? A 2021 talk from the committed environmentalist:

During the pandemic, concerns about the environment have intensified and Lauder noted that, at this point, sustainability is no longer a choice for companies.
“We have to think about what we make and sell from cradle to grave,” he noted. “How can we get more recycled material in our packaging? How can we reduce the use of plastic and other components that end up in landfills?”

The entire house will go into a landfill, but that’s okay because very little of it is plastic?

It’s all about the Science:

Sustainability and science go hand-in-hand. Lauder said…

The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) announced on November 2nd that it has achieved Net Zero emissions and sourced 100% renewable electricity globally for its direct operations, reaching the target it set on joining RE1001.
Building upon this achievement, the company has also met its goal to set science-based emissions reduction targets for its direct operations and value chain, positioning the company to take even more decisive action against climate change in the coming decade.
The Estée Lauder Companies commits to reduce absolute scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions 50% by 2030 from a 2018 base year. This target is consistent with reductions required to keep warming to 1.5°C, the most ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement. The Estée Lauder Companies also commits to reduce scope 3 GHG emissions from purchased goods and services, upstream transportation and distribution, and business travel 60% per unit revenue over the same timeframe.

It was Science who said “toss that 6-year-old house into the landfill”!

So we started off sick with envy, but ended up learning something profound about the role that each of us can play in saving Spaceship Earth.

Update, 10/26: Government moves fast in Florida! The environmentalist got a demolition permit and the house is on its way to the landfill.

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Florida Gubernatorial Debate Notes

October 24, 2022October 25, 2022 by philg

Charlie Crist and Ron DeSantis debated tonight, moderated by Liz Quirantes, a TV anchor and “Hispanic Woman of Distinction for South Florida”. Here are my notes…

The local NBC station had a pre-debate show in which they attributed Charlie Crist being behind in the polls solely to Ron DeSantis having more money to spend. If Crist had more money, in other words, his all-abortion-care-all-the-time message would have persuaded voters. Ron DeSantis has so much money that he hasn’t even bothered to spend most of it (over $100 million just sitting in the bank ready to be spent on original Hunter Bidens to decorate the campaign HQ).

Crist accuses DeSantis of being responsible for high prices for insurance, gasoline, and other essentials. The Tyrant of Tallahassee turns it around and blames Joe Biden for discouraging domestic fossil fuel production. “You deserve a governor who has your back,” says Crist, in promising to lower insurance rates (but the insurance companies haven’t been making a lot of money in Florida, so how would this work?). He sounded fantastic when he said this. I was ready to vote for him because I want a politician who “has my back” and will lower all of the prices that I find painful to pay. For at least a few seconds of warm feeling, it did not occur to me to question the ability of any governor to deliver the marvelous things that were being promised.

Crist accuses DeSantis of not “encouraging” Lee County to order a mandatory evacuation earlier, which definitely would have saved 100 lives from Hurricane Ian. This assumes the same model of the world as used by the Covidcrats: the population will comply with whatever authorities say to do. But if that is the correct model, the population would have evacuated in response to the orders that actually were issued (more than 24 hours prior to landfall). DeSantis responds that everyone thought it would hit Tampa until the morning of the day prior to the hurricane and the evacuation orders were issued as soon as the forecast track had shifted. He doesn’t duck the question as he might, given that it is solely the job of the countries to issue evacuation orders. Nor does Ron point out that you have to budget for human nature when dealing with humans and assume that not everyone will follow the “mandatory” order. Nor did he point out that the weekend prior he told everyone on the west coast of Florida to prepare and be ready to go at a moment’s notice and that it wouldn’t be easy to predict the hurricane’s track.

When inflation comes up and how the FL governor is going to help Floridians cope, DeSantis points out that Crist says Biden is the best president he’s ever seen and, therefore, Crist is responsible for the Biden policies that have created runaway inflation. DeSantis offers to make all baby products and pet food free of sales tax. (Why not just lower the sales tax rate instead of indirectly paying people to have more kids?)

“Don’t Say Gay” (Parental Rights in Education Act) comes up. Crist had called it “heinous”, notes the moderator. Crist complains that teachers aren’t paid enough in Florida. I would have expected Ron D to point out that this is a county function and counties can and do pay whatever they want, but instead he hits Crist for supporting teaching sexual orientation and gender identity to kindergartners and also crows about protecting “girls” from transgender athletes horning in. (Maybe the state actually does determine teacher pay to some extent? This press release suggests that there is some state function. I am a long way from figuring out how Florida’s government works.)

Critical Race Theory is brought up because apparently Florida bans teaching young people to feel guilty based on stuff that folks with the same skin color did in the old days. Crist says we should teach “facts” and “the truth.” He says slavery will come back if we don’t teach history properly and completely. (An odd prediction given that the trend is for Americans not to work at all.) Ron responds by saying that Crist’s running mate wants to teach kids that America was built on stolen land (exactly what I would tell kids! Except for South Florida, nearly all of which was a mosquito-infested swamp that wasn’t used by the Native Americans because it hadn’t been drained).

Crist says that something he did when he was a (Republican) governor of Florida 10+ years ago is actually the reason that the Sanibel bridge was able to be rebuilt quickly. (Everyone can take credit for the quick bounce-back from Hurricane Ian.)

Crist says governor doesn’t care about women and their right to choose or their right to vote. DeSantis points out that Crist didn’t want women to be able to choose whether to get the “COVID shot”.

Moderator asks about public health and says that the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade is the biggest “public health” issue (a softball for Crist!). Ron talks about a Jamaican woman who contemplated abortion care, but eventually decided not to get one and how the not-subjected-to-abortion-care baby grew up to get appointed to the Florida Supreme Court. (As in Star Wars, Democrats will say “This is not the Black woman we are looking for”?)

Crist says DeSantis has made Florida “unaffordable to most of our citizens” (true, but he had a lot of help from Andrew Cuomo, Gavin Newsom, and other lockdowners!). Crist doesn’t say how he is going to get rid of all of the Californians and New Yorkers bringing money into the state and bidding up prices. And what if Science-following Beto O’Rourke wins Texas and the lockdown-averse from there begin migrating to Florida, which does have some limits to growth?

Moderator points out that Crist called for stay-at-home orders and mask orders and asks whether he sticks by his. Crist says he would have “listened to Science”. You take a “commonsense approach and listen to health care providers.” Crist blames DeSantis for at least half of the COVID-19 deaths suffered in Florida. Crist says over 6 million Floridians have gotten COVID under DeSantis and implies that it is his fault.

Now it is gender transitions for minors. DeSantis points out that Europeans have backed away from “genital mutilation”. Crist says that this reminds him of DeSantis’s position on a woman’s right to choose. DeSantis imagines that he knows better than doctors, the ultimate example of sinful pride. DeSantis says “we’re talking about 15-year-old kids” and they can’t get a tattoo under Florida law and they also shouldn’t be able to decide if they want a double mastectomy. Crist works the woman’s right to choose into almost every response, regardless of apparent relevance.

Moderator talks about “illegal immigration” (a false premise, since it is not illegal to walk across the Rio Grande and ask for asylum) and the Martha’s Vineyard migrant deposit. Crist said it was “inhumane”. Moderator asks if Crist wants to make Florida a sanctuary state. Crist responds that he wants to secure our border (not with a wall, I hope!) and points out that the migrants transported included a pregnant woman and a 1-year-old baby (we are informed that migrants boost our economy by adding workers; when will this currently pregnant woman be entering the workforce and paying taxes? And the yet-to-be-born baby?).

What will you do to protect Floridians from drug overdoses and related problems? DeSantis talks about providing NARCAN, harsher penalties for fentanyl dealers, and addiction treatment (does that work?). Crist says he will be tough on crime and that crime is up under DeSantis (the population has grown a lot; is he talking rate or absolute numbers?). Ron D replies that “Charlie was tough on crime about six political parties ago”.

Asks about the death penalty for Nikolas Cruz. Crist says Cruz should have gotten the death penalty (i.e., the jury was stupid?). DeSantis agrees that Cruz should have gotten the death penalty and that it was a travesty that one juror was a holdout. DeSantis stresses that the shooting happened before he was governor and then talks about increasing school security, firing the cowardly and incompetent sheriffs, and other actions in response. (I personally would not have supported the death penalty for Cruz, 19 years old at the time. And I disagree with Ron DeSantis on the merits of ugly chain link fence around every school (I would work on making it easy for all of the children to run away from the school, e.g., with an exit door in every classroom, rather than rely on making it impossible for a motivated criminal to get in; the Uvalde school was fenced and had defenses against entry).)

One-minute closing statements…

Crist: I want to unite Florida, not divide it like the bad man is doing. I want women to have the right to choose, especially in the cases of rape or incest. He says that when he was governor, he lowered insurance rates and property taxes (how? aren’t they set by the counties?).

DeSantis: We have accomplished a lot in the past four years. Talks about the massive budget surplus. Largest increase in teacher pay in Florida history. “I led based on facts, not based on fear,” says DeSantis regarding coronapanic. “I took a lot of flak, but I protected your job and wasn’t worried about saving my own.”

My impression of the 66-year-old Crist was improved by watching. He seemed to have a fully-functioning brain, which is more than one can say about a lot of top Democrats. He exuded empathy, which seems to be the Democrats’ strong point. Maybe hyperinflation will wipe out all of your savings, but Joe Biden and Charlie Crist will care deeply about your plight and that will make everything okay from the point of view of more than half of us. Ron DeSantis seemed fairly humble and not too harsh/mean so my impression of him was also improved. Given that Americans want the appearance of empathy above all else in a politician, I was not convinced by his debate performance that he is presidential material.

Crist, the old guy, came off as perhaps the better choice for old people. (He’s also the better choice for unionized teachers, presumably, since he running mate is the president of the Miami teachers’ union.) Crist’s vision is to try to dial back prices to what they were before all of the rich lockdown-averse New Yorkers moved in (“The Manhattan residents who moved to Palm Beach County had an average income of $728,351, IRS data showed.” (NYT)). If he can deliver on his promises, most of which assume the full powers of a central economic planner, it would be a huge help to the elderly on fixed incomes. The “abortion care in every health care facility” concept is also good for reducing pressure on housing!

DeSantis, the young guy, came across as the better choice for children and working-age Floridians. He’s all about making sure that kids have a school and people who want to work have jobs. The result will be explosive growth, but it is better to try to help people adjust to that growth rather than try to strangle the growth in its crib.

Speaking of growth and the invasion of the rich, here’s a McLaren (720S?) in our neighborhood, built for the middle class and 30 minutes away from the rich parts of Palm Beach County (Palm Beach island itself and the horse farms of Wellington).

If the McLaren owner can afford $300,000+ for two seats and no baggage space, he/she/ze/they is presumably driving up prices for a range of goods and services. Crist wants to send him/her/zir/them back to California. DeSantis wants to build him (Ron is not pronoun-compliant) a garage.

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Massachusetts Migrant Welcome

October 24, 2022October 23, 2022 by philg

“Battenfeld: Charlie Baker quietly sends migrants to Methuen hotel with no warning” (Boston Herald):

the Baker administration quietly bused scores of immigrant families to a questionable Methuen hotel last Friday without even telling local authorities.
The lack of transparency is shocking enough but what about the ethics of sending these hungry and confused immigrants, including more than 100 children, to a hotel without any initial support.
“Eight days later, there’s still no concrete plan on how to deal with it,” said Methuen Mayor Neil Perry after meeting with the state Department of Housing and Community Development on Thursday. “They didn’t even present, you know, how many of these school-aged children are what age, whether they would be going to Methuen (schools) or not.”
The state is providing no public explanation for why the migrants were sent to the Methuen motel, bypassing motels and hotels in more affluent areas like Andover and North Andover. It’s unclear whether the families and children are here legally or illegally.
“All families in the shelter program receive services through local service providers, including three meals a day, assistance with housing search, case management work, and DCHD is working closely with other state agencies, local entities, and service providers to address the needs of the families that are currently housed in Methuen,” a DCHD statement said.
The migrants are from Haiti, Colombia and Venezuela, according to Perry, and some came from outside Massachusetts.
Now they’re Methuen’s problem. Well done, Charlie.
Baker was among those who questioned Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for sending dozens of migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard last month.
“Sending people all over the country, many of whom have no idea why they’re being sent where they’re going, isn’t a solution to the very screwed up immigration system we have in the U.S.” Baker said.
Now Baker has essentially done the same thing DeSantis did, providing no warning or explanation to Methuen officials and no plan for assimilating the migrants into schools and housing. The hotel the migrants are staying in is known for having safety issues, according to local officials.
“If the plan is to find them housing in the Methuen community, I have to respectfully push back,” Mayor Perry said. “Not that I don’t want them to have housing, I have housing needs of my own community today I’m not satisfying.”

It’s the last line that I find interesting. The guy who runs Methuen is a Massachusetts Democrat and, therefore, presumably as welcoming to migrants as anyone in the U.S. And in fact he says that he wants migrants to have housing… but not in his city. Where exactly are the next few million migrants going to live then?

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Fortress Florida

October 24, 2022October 17, 2022 by philg

“Florida Coastal Living Reshaped by Hurricane Housing Codes” (Wall Street Journal, October 17, 2022) opens with what I think is the usual misleading footage of a destroyed section of Fort Myers Beach, i.e., of a trailer park that was predictably no match for a hurricane. The article contains, however, some interesting stuff about what is entailed in building a house that can survive on barrier islands:

Five blocks away [from a destroyed wooden 1976 “cottage”] stands a roughly $2 million house that weathered the storm with negligible damage. Fernando Gonzalez built the two-story, concrete-block home six years ago to exceed the requirements of the building code at the time.
Instead of raising the house 12 feet as required, he said he lifted it 4 feet more. He said he also built the foundation stronger than mandated, going 6 feet below the ground and installing thick concrete walls instead of columns, with vents to allow water to flow through in case of storm surge. He estimated such upgrades added about $15,000 to the construction costs.
“If you want the luxury of living near the ocean, you have to pay,” said Mr. Gonzalez, 57.

The accompanying photo shows a house that won’t win any awards for architectural beauty:

The middle class will have to move inland or maybe to other states:

As older homes in the Fort Myers area are taken down, those that replace them will cost significantly more, Mr. Wilson said.

Here’s the required roof tech for a new house:

Nobody with money in Florida wants to live in an old house regardless of stormworthiness, so the process of hardening the coastal housing stock to survive the expected hurricanes shouldn’t be as wrenching as in states where tradition is valued.

Alternatively, of course, Floridians could refrain from building in vulnerable areas. But as long as there are people with sufficient funds to pay Cemex, I wouldn’t bet on restraint.

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The religion of Diversity and the failure of the recent UK government

October 23, 2022October 23, 2022 by philg

“Liz Truss has appointed the most diverse cabinet ever.” (Guardian, 9/7/2022):

None of the four most senior jobs in the British government will be held by a white man.

We are informed that Diversity leads to superior results and that this has been proven as a Scientific fact. “There is a wealth of research that says diverse teams perform better because each team member brings a different perspective to the table.” (NYT 2018). “Why Diverse Teams Are Smarter” (Harvard Business Review, 2019):

In recent years a body of research has revealed another, more nuanced benefit of workplace diversity: nonhomogenous teams are simply smarter.

So the Liz Truss government was more diverse and more intelligent than any previous British government. Science would have predicted high performance for this group. Yet the same folks who tell us that diverse teams are better says that the Liz Truss team was incompetent:

Prime Minister Liz Truss announced on Thursday that she would resign, just days after her new finance minister reversed virtually all of her planned tax cuts, sweeping away a free-market fiscal agenda that promised a radical policy shift for Britain but instead plunged the country into weeks of economic and political turmoil.
Ms. Truss’s political viability had become tenuous after her proposals for broad unfunded tax cuts roiled markets and sent the pound’s value plunging. She suffered a grave blow on Monday, when her newly appointed chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, said that the government was undoing the last vestiges of Ms. Truss’s tax proposals.
That announcement constituted one of the most dramatic reversals in modern British political history, and a humiliating repudiation of Ms. Truss’s leadership. In recent weeks, support for her Conservative Party had collapsed in opinion polls and unrest among its lawmakers intensified, undermining her ability to remain in office.

How do we maintain our faith in the religion of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion after this spectacular failure? Do we point out that not enough people on the Liz Truss team were members of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community? (and do they have the “2S” over there?)

Speaking of diversity and “2S”, the Elizabeth Warren section of the Diana, Princess of Wales’ Memorial Playground:

Going forward, Britain will feature high tax rates and rule by white men? Here’s the new money guy:

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Movie recommendation: Official Competition

October 23, 2022October 23, 2022 by philg

It is rare for me to recommend a movie without helicopter scenes, but on the Paris-JFK leg of our recent trip, I enjoyed Official Competition, a movie about a rich old guy (comically characterized as a “millionaire” and therefore rich enough to buy a tract house in South Florida?) who funds an enfant terrible director (Penélope Cruz, with spectacular hair) to make a movie from a novel by a Nobel literature winner. The director chooses a popular star (Antonio Banderas) and a brooding acting nerd (Oscar Martínez) to play brothers. The nerd actor lives in an apartment surrounded by books and plays vinyl LPs of avant garde music. He condemns the mass audience for not appreciating great art. Memorable line from an angry actor: “I’ll turn your face into a Picasso.”

All in Spanish with subtitles.

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Taxes and productivity lessons from Pablo Picasso

October 22, 2022October 22, 2022 by philg

The Picasso museum in Paris is built on inheritance tax, according to a sign there. Pablo Picasso died in 1973 and his children had to give paintings to the French government or pay estate taxes that would certainly have exceeded their ability to pay (since the paintings that they had in their houses, gifts from their dad, were valuable but hadn’t been sold voluntarily).

For those who are concerned about Joe Biden’s ability to handle the demanding job of president more than 60 years after his defeat of Corn Pop, here’s some comfort: Picasso (born 1881) was cranking out as many as 2 paintings per week at 90 years old:

Maybe the wife, 46 years younger, assisted?

Speaking of Picasso and younger humans who identified as female, here are some photos from October 2022 taken in the National Gallery (London):

The curators tell us the married 45-year-old artist was having sex with a 17-year-old and, perhaps after consultation with Kentaji’s panel of biologists, that this 17-year-old can be characterized as a “woman”. Yet when something sexual happens with a 17-year-old today, he/she/ze/they is typically characterized as a “child” (example regarding a 36-year-old who supposedly had sex with a 17-year-old; from Australia: a teacher in his 30s having sex with a 17-year-old “young girl” and “child”). Why hasn’t Picasso been canceled or at least devalued? Is it worth paying $100 million to have a work by a child molester on your wall? Why not invest in a Hunter Biden instead, at a $99.5 million savings? Why would a collector want to be reminded of Picasso’s reprehensible actions every time that he/she/ze/they looks at his/her/zir/their living room wall?

Circling back to the productivity-in-old-age topic, if Joe Biden is the “Picasso of Government Spending”, should the “Picasso of the Art World”‘s staggering late-life productivity give us confidence in President Biden as a hands-on leader?

Finally, let me say that I loved the museum. Below we can see two guys who decided to improve their primitive masks’ seals against an aerosol virus by not shaving their beards (this is after deciding to head into crowded indoor art museums as part of the COVID-free lifestyle):

And here’s a patron on the rooftop deck who shows how exciting 100-year-old paintings can be:

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Too elite to fail at NYU

October 21, 2022October 4, 2022 by philg

Some years ago I spoke with a mathematician who earned a Ph.D. at Florida State University and went on to become a professor at Vanderbilt. “At FSU,” she said, “I taught calculus and about a third of the students didn’t do the homework, didn’t learn any calculus, expected to fail the class, and did fail the class.” No surprise considering the football obsession of FSU! (And when are they going to change the name of the team to something other than “Seminoles”? The only way to show that one is not prejudiced against Native Americans is to erase all references to Native Americans while keeping what used to be their land.)

How was Vanderbilt different? “The students behaved exactly the same as at FSU,” she responded. “About one third of them did nothing and learned nothing. So I failed them.” What happened next? “Every dean at the university descended on my office to explain that Vanderbilt students were not failures and that it was not possible to fail one third of the class, even if they had learned no calculus.”

NYU has an elite price, at least. Let’s check out “At N.Y.U., Students Were Failing Organic Chemistry. Who Was to Blame?” (NYT):

In the field of organic chemistry, Maitland Jones Jr. has a storied reputation. He taught the subject for decades, first at Princeton and then at New York University, and wrote an influential textbook. He received awards for his teaching, as well as recognition as one of N.Y.U.’s coolest professors.
But last spring, as the campus emerged from pandemic restrictions, 82 of his 350 students signed a petition against him.
Students said the high-stakes course — notorious for ending many a dream of medical school — was too hard, blaming Dr. Jones for their poor test scores.

Good news for those who say that an 80-year-old is not sharp enough to be president of the USA:

Dr. Jones, 84, is known for changing the way the subject is taught. In addition to writing the 1,300-page textbook “Organic Chemistry,” now in its fifth edition, he pioneered a new method of instruction that relied less on rote memorization and more on problem solving.

What did the ex-professor notice about kids today?

“Students were misreading exam questions at an astonishing rate,” he wrote in a grievance to the university, protesting his termination. Grades fell even as he reduced the difficulty of his exams.
The problem was exacerbated by the pandemic, he said. “In the last two years, they fell off a cliff,” he wrote. “We now see single digit scores and even zeros.”
After several years of Covid learning loss, the students not only didn’t study, they didn’t seem to know how to study, Dr. Jones said.

MIT and Harvard Medical Students are still amazingly gifted, in my experience, but they definitely did not learn as much during coronapanic. In our ground school class we use the FAA knowledge test to verify mastery of the subject and students who go through the YouTube+Zoom version score about 10 points lower (out of 100) compared to students who sit in a classroom for three days straight.

(Don’t read this as a defense of Professor Jones at NYU and the low grades that he gave on exams. I am against the entire system that prevails in the U.S. under which professors grade their own students. In my view, professors should teach and a neutral evaluator should grade, as is done with the Microsoft and Cisco certifications as well as with the granting of FAA certificates. There is an unavoidable bias when a teacher grades his/her/zir/their own students: “This student appears to have learned nothing, but I am the smartest person in the world and the student sat through my lectures, which means he/she/ze/they must have learned a lot even if the exam does not reflect that. B+”)

“Universities and Economic Growth”

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