Common core sunk US kids test scores

No thug left behind

Race gaps in SAT math scores are as big as ever

Race gaps in SAT scores highlight inequality and hinder upward mobility

Obama administration spent billions to fix failing schools, and it didn’t work.

In this post I will outline the political platform upon which I will stand when I run for president of the United States.

Political philosophy: There are a few mission critical services that government provides - the military and police forces, infrastructure maintainence, property rights, rule of law, environmental protection (others??…). In general, government intervention should be minimized. Unnecessary rules and regulations provide bullshit jobs for lawyers and regulators, and provide the wealthy with opportunities to game the system. Consider the areas where government regulation is overbearing- housing, healthcare, and education - all a mess with runaway costs and regulations. A promise to eliminate programs that transfer wealth from the working class to the rich and poor propelled Donald Trump into the White House. I would support the elimination of these wealth transfer programs.

##General
-eliminate affirmative action
-eliminate the Federal Reserve, tie the dollar to the gold standard
-eliminate HUD
-eliminate income redistribution
-eliminate inheritance taxes

##Immigration
-limitted to none
-deport illegals
-build a “wall”
-institute a minimum wage of $130,000 for H1B visa holders

##Defense

##Taxes
-eliminate alternative minimum tax
-eliminate deductions for home mortgage interest
-eliminate deductions for charitable contributions
-eliminate all subsidies including those to big oil and big agriculture
-tax spending, not earnings nor savings

##Education

-eliminate Pell grants
-eliminate college loans

-government is not in the business of coercing people to attend college

##Health care
-single payer universal, contingent on having secure borders

##Universal basic income
-Yes contingent on secure borders
-eliminate social security and all forms of welfare

The paintings of Jon McNaughton.

Why the Trump dynasty will last sixteen years Trump already grooming Ivanka. Car affordability as a predictor of economic security. Income redistribution. “empty quasi-ministerial offices all over Washington” Impact of super-delegates, incompetence of wasserman schultz and brazile etc. etc. very interesting.

Nice graphic showing that Clinton won liberal big cities by a landslide, Trump won the rest of the country.

Pronounced hue-gah

Hygge is racist.

kalsarikännit

“We use the farm to teach chemistry, math, biology,”

Take one flannel shirt, one Mike Napoli beard circa October 2013, mix in an iphone 6 and some workboots, then add an overpolished axe and flavor with homebrewed craft beer and you’ve got the latest lifestyle fashion trend for men: the “Lumbersexual”.

You think I’m making this up. But go ahead, Google it. I dare you. Unless you’re somewhere in the vicinity of PyongYang, your friendly neighborhood Interweb will bring you the full monty search results, from GearJunkie and Gawker, Buzzfeed and Jezebel, The Atlantic and Time, and even Cosmo (“Are You Dating a Lumbersexual?”).

Buzzfeed plunge-cuts to the heartwood, defining the breed: “Wood. Nature. Beard. Leather, denim, plaid and flannel. These are the cornerstones of lumbersexual men.”

And apparently not just any denim. Selvedge denim, woven using old-fashioned techniques on antique looms.

Think Brawny paper towels and Paul Bunyan.

Cosmo tells us more: “In the early 2000s everyone was buzzing about metrosexual guys. You know, the guy who didn’t have to borrow your eye cream because he owned a whole medicine cabinet full of his own. Well, that guy has now slapped on a flannel and is probably chopping down a tree in a forest while smelling like 1950s pine trees and he’s being called a Lumbersexual.”

I’ll have to ask someone slightly older than me what pine trees smelled like in the 1950s and exactly how their scent differed from today’s king of the forest. Better-perfumed, I presume? Alas, the spicy aroma of Cold-War pine is apparently another casualty of climate change. Maybe if we call it “Selvedge Pine” and hand-fell it with a two-man cross-cut we could sell it for a couple thousand bucks a board foot.

What started this trend? Did Oprah appear in public in plaid? Was it Scott Brown tweeting selfies from his pick-up truck? Did Tom Brady buy a Tree Farm? Has Bieber gone Carhartt?

GearJunkie’s Tom Puzak attempts to explain: “Whether the roots of the lumbersexual are a cultural shift toward environmentalism, rebellion against the grind of 9-5 office jobs, or simply recognition that outdoor gear is just more comfortable, functional and durable, the Lumbersexual is on the rise.”

Used to be that all you had to do to signal your rugged, rural mansomeness was to drive a truck and know what 4WD means. And it didn’t even have to be a pick-up—an SUV would do the trick, for what’s not manly about “Sport”, “Utility”, and “Vehicle”? But then soccer moms exchanged mini-vans for Ford Expeditions and SUVs became “sport-utes”. By the time Porsche and BMW started making SUVs, it was all over. More is demanded of the manly men.

As it turns out, the Lumbersexual’s “1950s pine” is apparently masking the not-so-subtle scent of a poser. As Tracy Moore writes on Jezebel, “… it’s a nice look, but somewhat misleading—reading these [descriptions] feels like meeting a retro sexy librarian type who isn’t actually into books. With the Lumbersexual, the very things that might draw to you such a manly dressed man are likely to disappoint when you discover he won’t be building a campfire, crafting some bookshelves, or investigating that weird noise outside the tent.”

Here in New Hampshire, where we all but invented the woodsy, can-do look of a handy, hale and hearty fella, the emergence of the lumbersexual man presents a problem. How do we tell them apart? Well, I asked this question of some observant, discerning women and came up with the following 12 tips on how distinguish a real New Hampshire man from the carefully crafted catalog version:

The Lumbersexual lets his beard grow and cultivates the style in order to attract good-looking women. The real New Hampshire man grows his beard and chooses his clothing in order to ward off women who only look good.
If you find yourself faced with a bearded, flannel-clad man, ask him how many belts he owns. The Lumbersexual will think for a moment, then answer with a number, like five. The real New Hampshire man won’t understand the question.
Bearded man in denim rides a bicycle to the coffee shop? Likely Lumbersexual.  Drives a pick-up to dump? Probably a real New Hampshire man--that’s where he got his only belt.
If you are the daring type and can get close, take a good sniff.  As we learned, the Lumbersexual smells like vintage pine. The real New Hampshire man has about him the aroma of combusted two-stroke with undertones of off-road diesel. If you like that smell, you are probably a woman from Maine.
If you see a bearded man in plaid using a flip-phone, that is not a Lumbersexual. That is his dad.
Both take pride in their woodpiles. Lumbersexual men stack their wood neatly by the cord, away from the house so that it won’t attract termites and wood ants. Real New Hampshire men stack wood on the porch so their real New Hampshire women don’t have far to go when they fetch it. Chivalry is not dead.
Beard oil? Lumbersexual. Bar oil? Real New Hampshire man.
Real New Hampshire men know that cutting your own firewood warms you three times. Lumbersexuals know that to get Windows to work you have to reboot three times. If your bearded, plaid and denim man laughs at this joke? Lumbersexual.
The lumbersexual man enjoys splitting wood, wielding the refurbished axe he bought at an estate sale. A real New Hampshire man has a love-hate relationship with the chore, and curses the balky hydraulic splitter he borrowed from his neighbor. One of them keeps the woodstove warm all winter.
The lumbersexual man might spend a weekend lining the closet with hand-planed tongue-and-groove cedar to keep the moths out of his flannel shirts. The real New Hampshire man? He really doesn’t need a closet.
Look carefully at the flannel. Is it creased? If so, that’s neither fish nor fowl—what you’ve got there is a Connecticut lawyer who retired to New Hampshire and has decided to run for Selectman.
Real New Hampshire men are members of the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests who volunteer as Land Stewards. Lumbersexual men just wear the hat.

MBC - a lumbersexual poseur:

Lumbersexuals psychologically analyzed

Inevitably, this cherished symbol of Americana and manhood is reduced to a diagnosis of neurosis.

Lumbersexuality, a sport and a pastime

Lumbersexuality and its discontents

Abstract: We find that hedge fund managers who own powerful sports cars take on more investment risk. Conversely, managers who own practical but unexciting cars take on less investment risk. The incremental risk taking by performance car buyers does not translate to higher returns. Consequently, they deliver lower Sharpe ratios than do car buyers who eschew performance. In addition, performance car owners are more likely to terminate their funds, engage in fraudulent behavior, load up on non-index stocks, exhibit lower R-squareds with respect to systematic factors, and succumb to overconfidence. We consider several alternative explanations and conclude that manager revealed preference in the automobile market captures the personality trait of sensation seeking, which in turn drives manager behavior in the investment arena.

..men’s testosterone levels increased and decreased partially (directionally), after driving an expensive sports car and an old family sedan, respectively. Additionally, the location of the drive, either a busy downtown area or a semi-deserted highway, partially moderated this response…

I am a BEV advocate. Once you have owned an BEV, you will not go back to ICEV. There is a lot of best-case-scenario discussions of BEVs out there. Here I present what I have read or learned from experience to give you a more realistic idea of the costs and (in)conveniences of living with an BEV. Though some of this may sound negative, it is presented in the spirit of full disclosure.

• The Leaf loses up to 50% of its value in the first year. Consider leasing if you plan to keep the car for 3 years or less.
• Range will decline with battery age. How much depends on your charging habits (see below). Certain behaviors can invalidate your warranty. You will sign a form to acknowledge you understand the situations that can invalidate the warranty.
• The stated 107 mile range of the 30kWh battery is achieved only under ideal conditions. Many factors (speed, use of climate control, multiple passengers, etc.) reduce the practical anxiety free range to about 80 miles.
• You cannot use the Tesla level 3 chargers to charge a Leaf
• The level 3 Leaf (Chademo) chargers are more abundant than the Tesla chargers, but most are located on the west coast. In New England most Chademo chargers are located at Nissan dealers or Whole Foods markets, not conveniently positioned in highway rest stops. Consequently, long range driving is not practical in a Leaf.
• Most BEV owners charge overnight at home and drive their BEV within a 40 mile radius of home.
• Level 1 charging (120V) requires 20 hours to fill the battery, ~5 miles of range per hour of charging.
• If you drive daily, depending on how far, you may not have enough time to get a full charge from overnight level 1 charging
• Level 2 charging (240V, 3.3kW) requires 8 hours to fill the battery, ~12 miles of range per hour of charging.
• Installing a level 2, 240V charger costs ~$1000 to $2000 (parts and labor)
• Using off-peak electric rates, it costs ~$2 to fill the battery from empty. This translates to about two cents per mile of driving.
• The Leaf does not come with a spare tire
• The spoiler mounted photovoltaic cell is more of a marketing gimmick than a useful feature. It charges the 12V battery.
• Dealers earn more on service than sales. Your dealership would prefer that you buy a gasoline rather than an electric vehicle.
• The EZ-charge card (“no charge to charge”) is not universally accepted
• To utilize the NissanConnectEV app, you must surrender all your Leaf related personal data, including GPS coordinates of your travels, to Nissan.
• The NissanConnectEV app does not communicate directly with the car. It communicates with the Nissa Data Center using your data plan or Wifi.
• The Leaf has a telematics unit that allows it to communicate with the Nissan Data Center using the AT&T 3G network.
• If you are in a location with no AT&T service, all telematics functionality (app connectivity, charging station updates, etc.) is lost.
• To qualify for the $2500 Massachusetts state rebate you must agree to purchase, register, and drive the Leaf in Massachusetts for three years. You must sign a form agreeing to provide registration information on demand.
• If you run out of charge on the road you will need to call a tow truck. Most locations don’t have mobile charging units.
• Beginning with the 2014 model year you no longer have the option to limit charging to 80%
• The protruding headlights redirect air around the mirrors, reducing drag and wind noise.
• You can accept a jump start but you should not provide a jump start to another car.
• It is OK to drive through puddles.
• The Leaf is unlikely to increase testosterone levels.
• Because you are not paying gas taxes, some states will charge you a yearly fee for owning a BEV.
• BEV incentives do not reduce green-house gas emissions and are regressive.
• The 60KW battery with 100% charge will have ~81 miles of range at 2F (-17C).
• BEVs were more common in 1900 than ICEVs.

Recommended charging habits

• Cycle between 20% and 80% charge
• Do not let the car sit for extended periods of time with 100% or less than 10% charge
• Do not supercharge (level 3) more than once a day.
• Do not depend on level 1 charging for routine charging i.e. get a 240V charging station

Behaviors that will invalidate the warranty

• Do not leave the car at less than -13F for more than 7 days
• Do not leave the car at more than 120F for more than 24 hours.
• Do not repeatedly cycle the battery between 95% and 100% charge (top off charging)
• Other common sense requirements - read the warranty

Note that if you are using the NissanConnectEV app all your personal Leaf related data, including charging behavior and GPS coordinates, is being sent to Nissan.

Additional reading

Death of ICE exaggerated

The Secret Life of an EV Battery

Acupuncturists show that acupuncture doesn’t work

Backup

FireFox favorites
Firefox addins unpaywall addblock plus

Copy directories that aren’t syncd:

config files ~/.xxxxx
~/.thunderbird
~/.ssh keys and directory
~/.gnupg
~/.keystorefiles
~/.password-store
~/.electrum
~/.electrum-ltc

Reconfigure ~/syncd/Calibre Library

Bitcoin wallets
~/syncd/ directory
backup mail contacts
Electrum tags

Prep a USB

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$cat /proc/partitions   ;;to see partitions MUST SELECT CORRECT ONE!!!
# tee </dev/zero /dev/sdb1    ;;to erase all 
# mkfs.ext2 /dev/sdb1
# chown -R mbc:mbc /media/usb0
$ cp -R ./owncloud/ /media/usb0

Fresh Debian Install

sudo blkid -o list -c /dev/null to see what USB is called
sudo fdisk -l to see name of USB

for XPS (amd64)
root@dc7700s:/home/mbc/Downloads# dd if=debian-8.6.0-amd64-xfce-CD-1.iso of=/dev/sdb

(!not /dev/sdb1)

amd uses the same wifi driver firmware-iwlwifi_0.43_all.deb in blue usb stick “Drivers”
Do not start the install with the wifi driver usb plugged in.
Do not wait for the prompt to plug in wifi driver USB.
Plug in the wifi driver USB once the install has started (but before prompt) otherwise the install will choke.
With the USB in place, the wifi drivers will be found and installed without a prompt.

Selecting encrypted hard drive will start a >10 hour random write to disk which you
can cancel out of and continue install

Select “Guided – use entire disk and set up LVM”; this is for the xfce window manager installation
Partition all files in one partition

UPGRADE to the latest packages

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

comment out the line referring to a cd

deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ sid main #for electrum (sid is always the unstable release and maybe shouldn’t be included)

#apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade

—–”upgrade is used to install the newest versions of all packages currently installed on the system
—–dist-upgrade, in addition to performing the function of upgrade, also intelligently handles changing dependencies with new versions of packages”

Install packages of interest

sudo apt-get install conkeror icedove emacs ess guile-2.0 calibre yapet xrandr electrum evince sudo
flahplugin-nonfree chromium rsync referencer nodejs

separately must deal with guile-ncurses litecoin namecoin

configure browser favorites, yapet, mail, electrum seed, conkeror with instapaper, evince,

Copy over ~/.gnupg, ~/.ssh ~/.mutt

Custom configuration

PDFs are opened by default with GIMP; to change:
/usr/share/applications/gimp.desktop
remove from the last line the reference to pdf files

Add a user with no password:
#adduser guest

There is a hack to do this which works. Replace the user’s /etc/shadow password entry with this string…
$1$VNMbpxGH$sew7cnwH9ixU.x27UbFNn.
…e.g…
anon1:$1$VNMbpxGH$sew7cnwH9ixU.x27UbFNn.:14284:0:99999:7:::

yapet

config file is ~/.yapet
password file is ~/syncd/.pw.pet

load=~/syncd/.pw.pet

chown mbc /home/mbc/owncloud/.pw.pet
chmod 0600 /home/mbc/owncloud/.pw.pet

for Manjaro there is a bug in cfg.h, must edit

https://bugs.guengel.ch/attachment.cgi?id=20&action=edit

must run makepkg
go into yapet-1.0/yapet/cfg.h edit line 167
go into src and ./config then make then make install
if you keep doing mkpkg, you will overwrite the edited cfg.h

Flash player

download from adobe and unpack
cp -r usr/* /usr
some files will conflict with dirs but doesn’t seem to matter

~/.mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so is where it goes, may need to make the plugins directory

#apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

to upgrade
#update-flashplugin-nonfree –install

On chromium - Stretch

deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org stretch main non-free
to /etc/apt/sources.list, then

apt-get update
apt-get install deb-multimedia-keyring
apt-get install flashplayer-chromium

Boot into root prompt

wait for Grub to load, then press e to edit Debian’s entry. After the line with /vmlinuz… add the following:

–add rw init=/bin/bash

add at the end of the line - it is a switch
And press F10 to boot. Debian will load as a shell with root permissions,

to cure the “A start job is running for Create Volatile Files and Directories”

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rm -rf /tmp
mkdir /tmp
chmod 1777 /tmp

Stop beep when cursor reaches limit

in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

blacklist pcspkr
blacklist snd_pcsp

Bluetooth

$ systemctl status bluetooth

aptitude install blueman

USB with windows

edit fstab so automount mounts as FAT

/dev/sdb1 /media/usb0 vfat rw,user,umask=000,utf8,flush,noauto 0 0

The “user” and “noauto” will allow the user to mount the device automatically when inserted.

The “umask=000” will allow read / write access to everyone.

When you’re done, save fstab, exit gedit, and back in the Terminal type:
sudo mount -a

Printing

aptitude update
aptitude install cups cups-client

/etc/init.d/cups start

sudo usermod -a -G lpadmin pl

Now you can add a printer by going to http://localhost:631/

Use the CUPS driver when queried for LaserJet 4L

Selecting []Print Server in the initial setup may have installed all this

Firefox

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1026743

To fix download problem:

Stop Firefox from telling the web server that you will accept compressed files? Here’s how:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste enco and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the network.http.accept-encoding preference ( gzip, deflate is the value)

(A) If it has the default value (line is not bolded), delete all of the text and click OK.

(B) If it has a customized value, copy the current value to a safe place for potential later use, then delete all of the text and click OK.

When you visit the site again, Firefox should omit the usual headers saying that it accepted gzip/deflate encoded responses. Any difference?