CNN educates us regarding the glass ceiling

by philg

An immigrant friend’s comment on news from the CNN executive suite:

These are defenders of liberal morality and destroyers of glass ceilings

A Google search for

“glass ceiling” site:cnn.com

yields 2,520 results. “10 reasons single women should be mad” (2017) is typical:

Many voters are upset with the status quo this year, but single women have an especially long list of reasons to be mad. Simply being born female in the United States means you’ll probably earn less than your male peers and pay more for life’s basic necessities.

American women get less money than men. Females earn 84 cents for every dollar a male does, according to Pew Research. PayScale says the gender gap is even worse: women make only 77 cents for every dollar that men do.

(Companies aren’t smart enough to cut their payroll costs by hiring only women, who do the same quality of work for 20 percent less.)

Whether you call it a glass ceiling or a pink ghetto, the reality is there aren’t many American women who make it to the top. PayScale found that the wage gap gets worse the higher up the career ladder women go. No wonder there are fewer female millionaires and billionaires.

Only 24 CEOs at America’s 500 biggest publicly traded companies are female. And the pipeline behind them isn’t encouraging. At large corporations, only 16.5% of the top five positions are held by women, according to a CNNMoney analysis last year.

More recently we learn from these experts on gender equality about a path to an executive VP job at CNN for a person who identified as female. From “CNN’s worst-kept secret that even NYC doormen knew about: Staff at swanky apartment building where Zucker AND his staffer lover had apartments would try to stop his wife from ending up in same elevator as her” (Daily Mail):

Ousted CNN President Jeff Zucker’s relationship with his subordinate Allison Gollust was such an ‘open secret’ that even doormen at the building where they both had apartments tried to ensure that Zucker’s wife and Gollust were never in the elevator together.

Zucker resigned from his $6 million-a-year job at the network on Wednesday, following an internal investigation into his relationship with Gollust, who works as CNN’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer.

‘Jeff and I have been close friends and professional partners for over 20 years,’ she wrote. ‘Recently, our relationship changed during COVID. I regret that we didn’t disclose it at the right time.’

But media sources have said the affair was an ‘open secret’ for more than 10 years – and even the doormen at their Manhattan apartment building tried to keep Allison and Zucker’s wife, Caryn, from interacting.

Their affair reportedly stretches back to when they both worked at NBC in the late 1990s. Zucker worked at the network from 1986 to 2010, becoming executive producer of the Today show, then head of NBC Entertainment before becoming president and CEO of NBC Universal.

America’s #2 expert on COVID-19 was also tied into this story…

In 2012, Gollust was picked by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo to serve as his communications director, before Zucker brought her into work at CNN, where he became president in 2013.

Related:

Full post, including comments

Voter participation increases as government expands?

by philg

Friends from Maskachusetts (a.k.a. “Democrats”) were attributing all of the nations’ current woes to Donald Trump. One example that they highlighted was Trump’s reference to the 2020 election as “stolen” and/or “rigged.” I am not the best audience for outrage regarding the election due to my belief that we should return to the standards of the early 1800s, i.e., voting should be limited to those have worked for approximately 8 years (it was “21-year-old males” back then and men began working at 13; of course, to update this system for the 21st century we would have to allow a full rainbow of gender IDs because people in a full rainbow of gender IDs can and do work).

One of my examples was that college students could be reliably expected to vote for free college tuition, student loan forgiveness, etc., without regard to the burden that this would place on working Americans. These folks might not start working until age 28, so the idea that they might be burdened with higher tax rates was an abstract and uncertain one.

This discussion resulted in a a review of some voting statistics. Did the constant drumbeat of Facebook and Google telling young people to register and then vote result in a significant change in college student voting? “College Students Voted at Record-High Rate in 2020” (Inside Higher Ed):

Voter turnout among college students jumped to a record high of 66 percent in the 2020 presidential election, according to a new report from the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education.

That was 14 percent higher than college student turnout in the 2016 election, the report found, and just a shade lower than the national rate of 67 percent for all voters in 2020, as calculated by the U.S. Census Bureau. The student “yield” rate — the rate at which students who registered to vote actually cast their ballots — hit 80 percent, which the report called “an important milestone and signal that they are vested in their own futures and the health of democracy.” In 2016, the yield rate was 60 percent. Other data found that younger students outvoted older ones, with those aged 18 to 21 voting at higher rates than the 30-and-over crowd.

But maybe more college students voted simply because more Americans voted? From Wikipedia:

This made me wonder if the growth in tendency to vote could be correlated with growth in the role of government. From Trading Economics:

From usgovernmentspending.com:

But maybe the sharp rise in 2020 isn’t about the dollars and isn’t about the unsolicited mail-in ballots? In 2020, Republicans realized that technocratic government had the power to lock them into their apartments, prevent them from working, deny an education to their children, prevent them from breathing outdoors without a mask, etc. Democrats realized that bad government, ignoring Science, had the power to kill millions of people by not ordering life-saving lockdowns, not ordering virus-preventing masks, and not closing virus-spreading schools.

(Separately, from these same Democrats’ point of view, Trump continues to be responsible for most of the hate crimes in the U.S. The U.S. was mostly hate-free under Obama’s leadership. Trump made hate acceptable. The election of Joe Biden, however, did not reverse the trend and restore us to a hate-free situation because Trump remains stubbornly alive and his existence on Planet Earth makes the expression of hate acceptable.)

Related:

Full post, including comments

Even with COVID-19 anxiety, there is always room for climate anxiety

by philg

For readers who demand to know why I continue to pay for a NYT subscription… “Climate Change Enters the Therapy Room” (NYT, today):

Ten years ago, psychologists proposed that a wide range of people would suffer anxiety and grief over climate. Skepticism about that idea is gone.

It would hit Alina Black in the snack aisle at Trader Joe’s, a wave of guilt and shame that made her skin crawl.

Something as simple as nuts. They came wrapped in plastic, often in layers of it, that she imagined leaving her house and traveling to a landfill, where it would remain through her lifetime and the lifetime of her children.

She longed, really longed, to make less of a mark on the earth. But she had also had a baby in diapers, and a full-time job, and a 5-year-old who wanted snacks. At the age of 37, these conflicting forces were slowly closing on her, like a set of jaws.

In the early-morning hours, after nursing the baby, she would slip down a rabbit hole, scrolling through news reports of droughts, fires, mass extinction. Then she would stare into the dark.

It was for this reason that, around six months ago, she searched “climate anxiety” and pulled up the name of Thomas J. Doherty, a Portland psychologist who specializes in climate.

Eco-anxiety, a concept introduced by young activists, has entered a mainstream vocabulary. And professional organizations are hurrying to catch up, exploring approaches to treating anxiety that is both existential and, many would argue, rational.

Though there is little empirical data on effective treatments, the field is expanding swiftly.

Caroline Wiese, 18, described her previous therapist as “a typical New Yorker who likes to follow politics and would read The New York Times, but also really didn’t know what a Keeling Curve was,” referring to the daily record of carbon dioxide concentration.

Ms. Wiese had little interest in “Freudian B.S.” She sought out Dr. Doherty for help with a concrete problem: The data she was reading was sending her into “multiday panic episodes” that interfered with her schoolwork.

Note that both patient and therapist are described as living in Portland, Oregon, but they met via videoconference.

I’m still confused how people who are convinced that 50 percent of humanity will die due to climate change can simultaneously be concerned that COVID-19 will kill up to 1 percent of humanity. (Also, the folks convinced that climate change is an existential threat tend to also be passionate supporters of unlimited migration from low-carbon-output societies to high-carbon-output societies. It is tough to think of a better way to accelerate climate doom than bringing millions of people from low-income countries to the carbon-profligate U.S.)

If you’re anxious about climate change and need a decent place to relax for the next few years, consider William Jennings Bryan’s old house in Miami. It will soon be inundated by the rising sea and can be yours for $150 million. From the preceding link, “sitting directly on the water” is a selling point.

Full post, including comments

MIT spirit in Washington, D.C.

by philg

“‘I am deeply sorry for my conduct’: Biden’s top science adviser apologizes to staff” (Politico):

[MIT prof] Eric Lander, the president’s top science adviser and a member of his Cabinet, sent a Friday night email to his roughly 150-person staff apologizing for speaking to colleagues in a “disrespectful and demeaning way.”

“It’s my responsibility to set a respectful tone for our community. It’s clear that I have not lived up to this responsibility,” Lander wrote in an email provided to POLITICO. “This is not only wrong, but also inconsistent with our Safe and Respectful Workplace Policy. It is never acceptable for me to speak that way. I am deeply sorry for my conduct. I especially want to apologize to those of you who I treated poorly or were present at the time.”

Lander heads the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy and is leading President Joe Biden’s “Cancer Moonshot,” an initiative aimed at reducing cancer deaths that had its splashy launch event earlier this week.

The email appears to reference an investigation POLITICO has been conducting into Lander’s treatment of staff, which Lander acknowledges in his email. “I understand that some of you have been asked about this, and I thought it was important to write directly to you,” he wrote. “I also realize that my conduct reflects poorly on this Administration, and interferes with our work. I deeply regret that.”

Biden himself declared a zero-tolerance policy for improper conduct on the first day of his administration. He pledged that “if you are ever working with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone, I promise you I will fire you on the spot. On the spot. No ifs, ands or buts.”

Lander pledges in his email that “[w]e will take concrete steps to promote a better workplace. We will schedule regular forums to check in with staff on how we are doing in creating and upholding a safe and respectful workplace. We will also ensure that every employee knows how to report conduct that concerns them.”

Lander is probably one of the nicer people at MIT (like being a dwarf among midgets, admittedly), so perhaps this shows that Science is something to follow every day while scientists are best restricted to their labs.

Related:

Full post, including comments

Report on a Southern Secession (Buckhead City)

by philg

On our return from Denver, we stopped overnight in Buckhead, the rich area of Atlanta that was annexed by the city in 1952 and that soon hopes to vote on seceding into “Buckhead City.” Our local host explained that the secession wouldn’t starve Atlanta of significant tax revenue, e.g., for schools. The big difference would be that Buckhead could fund and run its own police force (see “In Atlanta’s Buckhead Neighborhood, Rising Crime Fuels Move to Secede” (WSJ): “Potential loss of the city’s wealthiest and whitest area spurs debate as officials move to address homicides and property crime”).

From what I observed, Buckhead already essentially does fund and run its own police force. The restaurant where we dined and the hotel where I stayed both had hired off-duty police officers, clad in bulletproof vests and wearing guns, to make sure that roving thugs didn’t rob all of the customers. Immigrants from Caracas, Venezuela will feel right at home.

Here’s one from the only part of Umi, our inland sushi destination, that wasn’t too dark to photograph:

Faith in cloth masks is alive and well in Atlanta. Here are a couple of signs encountered on 1/29/2022:

Atlanta adheres to the proven-by-Science principle that if restaurant customers are wearing masks when walking in the door, it doesn’t matter how close together unrelated parties sit once unmasked and talking, drinking, or eating (we saw some counter-serve places with long communal tables that were completely jammed). The FBO where we parked had the obligatory signs reminding pilots and passengers that Uncle Joe’s 1/21/2021 order regarding masks at airports applied even to the world of private planes. Nobody inside was wearing a mask, however.

Our local host was in favor of secession. In his opinion, the city government was incompetent and plagued by nepotism.

(I am not sure how Georgia can compete with neighbors Florida and Tennessee in the long run. The state income tax rate is 5.75 percent (compare to 0% in FL and TN).)

Related:

Full post, including comments

The 6-year-old hater responds to an interview with a World War II veteran

by philg

Follow-up to The 6-year-old hater…

We took the kids to the National Navy SEAL Museum (a mask-free and indoor/outdoor experience, like most Florida experiences). The museum was showing an interview with a World War II veteran in his 90s. The 6-year-old asked “Is that Joe Biden?”

We learned that Anthony Fauci was a SEAL (“Using Science to Maximize Success”):

We did not enter the raffle to win a sniper rifle…

The Museum’s yard is filled with interesting boats, submarines, and a very-tough-visitors-welcome obstacle course:

Earlier in the day, we learned at the St. Lucie County Aquarium that high-fertility immigrants make life difficult for natives:

Full post, including comments

Unmasked Vladimir Putin braves a stadium packed with the infected

by philg

There is a high demand for pageantry in our household, but we don’t have a TV, so I signed up for the “ad-free” “Peacock Premium Plus” streaming service and used an iPad to show the Olympics opening ceremony (which arrived… with ads, disrespectfully side-by-side with athletes from countries that NBC deems unimportant; the Chinese refused to insert commercial breaks, apparently, so the righteous American boycotters (see below) added commercials to the event itself).

Science tells us that only N95 masks stand any chance of blocking Omicron, yet the athletes paraded out using various forms of non-N95 masks. Other than some performers, Vladimir Putin seemed to be the only person at the event who wasn’t wearing a mask.

Given that nearly everyone in the stadium is vaccinated, was in quarantine before and after international flights, and has been tested multiple times for COVID-19, what’s the chance that SARS-CoV-2 got through to the stadium? The official stats page shows that 308 people involved in the Olympics have thus far tested positive:

See also “A COVID-Free Pacific Nation Opened Its Border a Crack. The Virus Came Rushing In” (TIME):

On Jan. 14, the first passenger plane for 10 months landed in the country, which is located about 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii. It may also be the last for the foreseeable future. The plane brought the first cases of COVID-19 to the country; more than two-thirds of the passengers tested positive. The flight subsequently set off a wave of COVID-19 cases in the archipelagos, where 120,000 people live across 33 islands with land area smaller than Rhode Island.

Thirty-six out of 54 passengers on the flight to Kiribati tested positive on arrival. Six others tested positive in quarantine. That’s despite the travelers spending two weeks in pre-departure quarantine, and only being allowed on the flight after testing negative for COVID-19.

The border closures also bought Kiribati and others time to roll out vaccinations. Over 93% of Kiribati’s eligible population has received one COVID-19 vaccine shot, but just over 50% are fully vaccinated.

A few times NBC’s commentators (sports experts?) mentioned “human rights abuses” in China, but their own coverage of the event contradicted their statements. The NBC reporters sounded relaxed. The people in the stadium looked happy and relaxed, including Chinese ethnic minorities such as the Uyghurs who are purportedly victims of “genocide” (we throw this word around and then show up en masse with $1 billion in TV rights cash?). See this statement from the Chinese embassy for another perspective:

The so-called allegations of “forced labor” and “genocide” in Xinjiang are nothing but vicious lies concocted by anti-China forces. Xinjiang’s economic development and social stability is recognized by the whole world. The fact that residents of all ethnic groups there enjoy happy and fulfilling lives is witnessed by all. The US side keeps using Xinjiang-related issues to create rumors and make trouble. Essentially it is engaging in political manipulation and economic coercion, and seeking to undermine Xinjiang’s prosperity and stability and contain China’s development under the pretext of human rights.

It is preposterous for the US, a country with a deplorable track record of human rights issues, to accuse and smear China. The US has serious problems of human trafficking and forced labor. Up to 100,000 people were trafficked into the US for forced labor annually over the past five years. Crimes against humanity against Native Americans in the past constitute de facto genocide. The US should save the labels of “forced labor” and “genocide” for itself.

Xinjiang-related issues are not human rights issues at all, but in essence about countering violent terrorism and separatism.

Who else watched the opening ceremony? What did you notice?

Related:

Full post, including comments

New Orleans update

by philg

The Cirrus Vision Jet is a great machine, but one thing that it can’t do is go non-stop from South Florida to Denver against a winter headwind. We decided to stop at Flightline KNEW for fuel, muffulettas, and beignets in “The City That Care Forgot”.

After a 15-minute drive over falling-apart roads, we hit Cochon Butcher for the muffulettas and they were everything we dreamed they would be. It is counter service like Panera, but the staff check up on tables periodically, e.g., to make sure that water glasses are full and to see who wants more booze (not us!). This seems like a good system for a country where labor is scarce/expensive.

How about the vaccine papers check that resulted in a family trip cancellation? (see Karen orders two dozen beignets and a three-gallon Hurricane and “Children as Young as 5 Now Under New Orleans Vaccine Mandate” (U.S. News, 12/17/2021) and “New Orleans residents prepare for school vaccine mandate for kids as young as 5” (NBC, 1/22/2022)) It was done with a similar degree of precision as refugee screening during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. My friend was ordering while I was parking the crew car. Prior to ordering, he was asked to show a photo of a vaccine card, but not a photo ID. So the restaurant had no way to know whether the card had any relationship to the customer. I walked in from the street directly to the table and never went to the counter, so my vaccine status was never investigated.

We proceeded to the French Quarter to walk off the sandwiches and build up our beignet appetite. “Most of these people look like they’re on meth and haven’t bathed,” said my companion. The buildings and infrastructure in general seemed to be in rough shape. It was a Monday, admittedly, but the streets did not seem busy enough to sustain the shops and restaurants. Café du Monde is operating in a degraded COVID-19-safe fashion. There are no waiters. You order and pick up beignets and coffee from some ladies working behind a counter, then carry them to a table.

Nearly every shop had a significant amount of signage regarding masks. Following CDC guidance, virtually any piece of fabric qualifies as PPE. An official city poster for businesses, downloaded 1/27/2022:

A saliva-soaked bandana not only qualifies as PPE, but is officially recommended. Alternatively, if you’re visiting from New England, pack a scarf to block aerosol Omicron.

Here’s an example of some disrepair and, if you click to enlarge then zoom in, you’ll see that all of the people walking on the sidewalk are wearing masks of various types:

Voodoo is powerful enough to heal or kill people, but its magic isn’t effective against SARS-CoV-2 without cloth masks:

Hot sauce was powerful enough to propel Hillary Clinton to the forefront of American politics (BBC), but it is also insufficient in the fight against Omicron:

The physical shop behind https://www.themaskstore.com/:

How well have these orders from Covidcrats worked? From the NYT, 1/27/2022:

Cases have decreased recently but are still extremely high. The numbers of hospitalized Covid patients and deaths in the Orleans Parish area have risen. The test positivity rate in Orleans Parish is very high, suggesting that cases are being significantly undercounted.

How does this compare to our home of Palm Beach County, Florida, which is not under any vaccine or mask orders?

#CurveFlattened? Our impression was that “The City that All Recent Economic Booms Forgot” would be a better sobriquet for New Orleans than its trademark “Care Forgot.” Yet median household income does not seem to explain the mournful condition of the city:

(Is the Broken Windows Fallacy actually a fallacy? Katrina (2005) seems to have resulted in an income boost.)

Income in the New Orleans metro area is lower than in the U.S. overall, but higher than in Louisiana overall and it should still be sufficient to keep public infrastructure, such as roads, in decent condition.

Our take-away from the visit: “Covid is the least of this city’s problems.”

See also, OpenTable data from 1/26/2022 back to 1/6/2022:

The tourism-dependent cities of Miami Beach, Naples, and Orlando are much more active, relative to 2019, than New Orleans.

Related:

Full post, including comments

Adult life at MIT

by philg

Excerpts from today’s email from MIT Hillel (Jewish organization on campus):

One trend we have seen is students are still craving IRL (in-real-life) interactions and events, even if MIT rules say no food at events, at least for the first two weeks of the semester. As this new term begins, coffee meet-and-greets have involved in-person conversations and to-go gift cards. Students in some of our on-going weekly classes have voted to still meet at lunchtime, despite the fact they won’t be fed or eat together. We are exploring “wellness break rooms” for puppy petting, or even coloring books and doodling, that students can pop into.

Within the same email, but from a student….

… as COVID seized the globe in early 2020, it became increasingly apparent that I would spend (at least) my first semester of college at the same desk I used for my kindergarten English homework.

Let’s hope that the above-mentioned puppies don’t grab and run with the cloth masks that the #FollowersOfScience typically wear! Here’s Mindy the Crippler (September 2020; see What to do when a family member is an anti-masker?) sharing her opinion of the effectiveness of non-N95 masks….

Related:

Full post, including comments

Medical School 2020, Year 3, Week 30 (family medicine, exam week)

by philg

The clinic staff throws a party for my last day. One of the secretaries brought in homemade rhubarb turnovers. I express my gratitude and they respond with “We take any excuse to throw a party!” I am sorry to bid farewell to Doctor Dunker.

Family Medicine students then go to a culinary medicine workshop at the YMCA. Our school gives us each of the five groups a Visa gift card to buy food for a hypothetical family of four, one of whom has a medical issue, e.g., a diabetic child or an adult with a heart condition. A recently graduated dietician leads the class. She teaches different ways to cut an onion, but is unable to answer our questions about the current popular diets (e.g., ketogenic versus intermittent fasting versus carnivore). After an hour cooking our respective meals (paella, lentil soup, and Korean chicken with rice, etc.), it was time to eat and rate. Our paella won!

Gentle Greg organized a musical variety night at a local bar for Tuesday. Several weeks ago, 15 classmates had agreed to perform, but only 5 showed up due to exam pressure. Greg had to sing every song (examples: Silver Lining by Mt. Joy, Going to California by Led Zeppelin, and Mama, You Been on My Mind by Bob Dylan). 

Exams begin with two standardized patients. The first is a 65-year-old female active smoker presenting for cardiovascular risk assessment and blood pressure management. We had to indicate all the USPSTF grade A/B recommended screenings and appropriate medications to deal with elevated blood pressure. 

The second standardized patient was a 78-year-old cheerful female presenting at the behest of her daughter who wrote a note expressing concern about her ability to drive: “She is forgetting where she parked.” I perform most of a mini mental status exam (MMSE) by asking her to recall three words, name a few objects (a pencil, watch), and serial sevens. I mistakenly forgot to ask the standard “orientation” questions (person, place, and time). Afterwards in the debrief, I learn that the patient believed that it is 1961 and the president is Richard Nixon.

[Editor: Maybe she was cheerful because Nixon was an awesome president compared to Donald Trump!]

The main exam is a 100-question multiple-choice exam on Blackboard. There were several questions on differentiating gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) from peptic ulcer disease (PUD), and on the workup of PUD (proton-pump inhibitor trial versus Helicobacter pylori stool antigen test). Every time a question had statin as an answer, it was always correct. A challenging question: A patient on warfarin for atrial fibrillation recently started treatment for symptoms suggestive of GERD. What medication caused an elevated INR (delayed clotting) test? (answer: Prilosec). I missed a question on what antihypertensive medication is contraindicated in gout (answer: thiazides because it decreases urate excretion).

After the exam, we have a debrief with the clerkship director. Pinterest Penelope complained about the limited time on family medicine: “We learn about all the different stress-relieving practices like mindfulness in this rotation, but we don’t have enough time to practice what you preach.” Clerkship Director: “Yeah, you’re going to be busy as a doctor, get used to it.” Gigolo Giorgio complained about the different format of the exam: “I couldn’t mark questions for review.” Father Fred: “I thought we could’ve done without a day at the nursing home, and instead spend a day with Sports Medicine. I don’t feel comfortable with a lot of fractures.”

Statistics for the week… Study: 5 hours. Sleep: 8 hours/night; Fun: 1 night. For Gigolo Giorgio’s birthday, he requests to go to the gay nightclub for a night of dancing after several margaritas at his downtown apartment.

The rest of the book: http://fifthchance.com/MedicalSchool2020

Full post, including comments