Think you're safe? Try again

One of the most important things to remember about the Title IX guidance that has recently become notorious (H/T Riley Gaines) for what it appears to do to college and high school sports is that it's not primarily directed at athletic programs, but at schools in general.

That means that when your daughters go to the bathroom or enter a locker room, the Department of "Education" will in effect be there to make sure that they may be sharing that space with a "trans" person who was born male.  When your daughters get assigned dormitory rooms, they may be assigned with one or more people who have a Y chromosome.  When your daughters go to gym class, they will need to play whatever games are available with whatever men decide they are "trans" in their school.  Oops, sorry your daughter got boxed out by someone 50 lbs heavier and twice as strong in that basketball game and got a concussion!

And when this happens, the guidance more or less says that unless the "trans" person actually sexually harasses others or actually assaults them, they have no recourse.  Keep in mind as well that the category of "indecent exposure" does not count if they're in a bathroom or locker room.

If they object to this on their own behalf, or on behalf of a friend, it is extremely likely that they will become the subject of a Title IX investigation.  What's worth noting as well in this regard is that the Department of "Education" also has decreed that certain protections of the accused--the right to counsel, the right to cross examine witnesses, the right to a trial by jury, the "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" standard for conviction--are not applicable, but the consequences of being expelled from a high school or college can be a lifelong penalty.  

Hopefully the courts will slap this down so hard it makes heads spin at the "DoED", but I don't believe we can just wait on this and depend on them to do the right thing.  Send a note to the President and your legislators and explain why this move is totally contrary to the goal of the 1972 legislation that created Title IX, to create opportunities for women and to protect them from poor treatment and discrimination.

Brilliance from the regulatory state

The new Title IX guidance for colleges and high schools goes, apparently, to about 1500 pages, close to the length of "Obamacare", and a third the length of HIPAA.  So while some are appalled (rightly) that it apparently grants biological males (people with XY chromosomes, for those out there in Rio Linda) access to womens' bathrooms and locker rooms, I'm appalled at the fact that it apparently takes the DoED 1500 pages to discuss a concept that is expressed in only 37 words in the actual law:

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, or denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.

Yes, it's appalling that in the "minds" of people trying to "educate" us, "sex" is equivalent to "gender identity", and hopefully the courts will slap them into next week.  It's not as if the common view of "sex" when Title IX was passed by Congress and signed by President Nixon includes "gender identity", after all.  This is another great reason why we want not only jurists, but also bureaucrats, to be legal originalists, remembering what the people who wrote the law were thinking.

Regarding the actual objections, yes, I do think women have a right to determine which males may be allowed to see them naked, as well as which males they are willing to see naked--and vice versa. I guess that makes me a reactionary.

Update: another risk of allowing "trans" men onto womens' teams, and into womens' locker rooms, is that it will destroy mens' sports too.  The trick is that per Title IX, spots in womens' sports need to be proportional to their student population, with an adjustment for the football team.  So if women quit en masse because they don't want to be injured, or because they don't want to see penises in their locker room, or because they don't want to be seen naked by just any male, then those same colleges and universities need to cut mens' sports, too.

We might end up, really, with just football as a sport, which is ironic because football players have, I believe, about the highest rate of sexual assault of athletes overall.  Some win for women!

The horrors of Tavistock

Although I am not a terribly big fan of Harry Potter, I am indebted to J.K. Rowling for her linking on her Twitter feed to the Cass report on the horrors of National Health Service juvenile transition therapies.  More or less, it demonstrates that the science behind juvenile transition therapies is inconclusive at best, and one of the big reasons for that many so-called "doctors" are administering therapies without doing any good tests/assays for gender dysphoria.

Yes, you read that correctly.  Certain "doctors" in the National Health Service are, in effect, saying "Sure, I'll adminster puberty blockers and hormones, or even cut off your breasts or nuts, without figuring out if you've actually got this condition."

I can only imagine that in other areas.  I can imagine someone coming in for blood pressure medications, blood sugar medications, cholesterol medications, colonoscopies, or even open heart surgery, and....the doctors giving that to them without even bringing out a blood pressure cuff, reviewing a patient's medical history, or other diagnostic tools?  Seriously?  Any good medical center would pull that doctor aside and say "knock it off, or we're firing you and going after your medical license."  Or they'd just go directly to the firing and professional discipline stage, as they ought to have known better.

Which is, really, my solution for "doctors" using the "affirmative" model for gender transition therapies.  If we can't simply evict them from the medical profession for life, let's at least make the statute of limitations for criminal and civil cases in this area at least 30 years.

(and yes, this is a bit personal with me, as at least one relative of mine is considering some of these therapies)

If we don't choose to hold these so-called "doctors" accountable by force of law, the sad reality is that the fourth box of freedom will eventually be used by their victims....the cartridge box.  And suffice it to say that if called for a jury for someone who killed the "doctors" who mutilated him, I'd be hard pressed to find reasons to convict.

A final note is that I found this bit of beautiful wisdom by Mrs. Rowling, one I think is worthy of none less than Winston Churchill or Samuel Clemens, when a commenter claimed there was no reality to biological sex.  Put this woman in Parliament, if she'll consent to stand.  I am also personally very glad that all six of my children "chose" to gestate in Mrs. Bubba's womb, too, for obvious reasons.

Yep. I'm still amazed all three of our kids chose to gestate inside me, because I thought it was 50/50 they'd come to term inside one of Neil's testicles. By coincidence, my father never gave birth out of his balls, either. Random luck or ancestral curse? I doubt we'll ever know.

I'm inspired by our leadership

President Biden has apparently claimed that his uncle, an aviator in the Army Air Force in World War Two, was killed and eaten by cannibals in New Guinea.   Now the real story is that the plane crashed into the ocean off the coast, and three crewmen didn't survive that crash, but the wag in me thinks it would really be fun to get into TOTUS ("Teleprompter Of The United States") and see if Biden will claim that his uncle crash-landed in the Avocado Jungle of Death.

(but can Biden actually pronounce "Avocado"?.....)

The horrors of working from home....

On a call at work, my coworker's search history showed up...."cheeseburger soup with Velveeta".   So be very careful what's on your browsing history when you're on meetings!  It could show that your taste buds were shot off in the war.

On the dangers of co-sleeping?

The CDC has published a report on the dangers of infant co-sleeping, noting that between 2/3 and 3/4 of infant "SIDS" deaths occur when the infant is sleeping in an adult bed or with an adult.  Interestingly, though, these numbers are far less than the 4-7000 deaths annually that were stated when my first children were young, and then I decided to take a look and see what percentage of parents sleep with their infant children.

The answer?  81% of infants below 3 months of age, and 63% of infants up to 6 months of age.  In other words, infant co-sleeping deaths are roughly proportional to the rate of infants sharing beds with their parents, and there does not appear to be a significant relative risk to co-sleeping.

It's also remarkable how much SIDS deaths have dropped in the past few decades, from around 7000 annually to 1500 or less.  I'm guessing a huge portion of this is because infants are sleeping on their backs or sides instead of on their stomachs, as used to be customary.  

It doesn't mean we don't need to be careful--there is still a lot of bedding that doesn't need to be there with a child, and certainly it doesn't mean that it's OK to come to bed with a child while intoxicated--but it does mean that we've made tremendous progress, and we're at a point where the things we're looking for are far more subtle than they used to be.

Right

Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares points out that for electric vehicles to be environmentally friendly, the weight of  the battery needs to drop by about half.  The problem with that is that we're already using the lightest metal (lithium) for the battery, and the other major component of a lithium ion battery is nickel or cobalt.  If you look at a periodic table of the elements, you will see that there are no lighter transition metals than nickel and cobalt.

In other words, batteries are rapidly approaching a dead end in terms of energy per weight, and that imposes a dead end for electrics.  

Which really isn't that sad.  When you correct mpg-e values by the efficiency of a power plant--typically an upper bound of about 35%--the 94mpg-e for a Tesla becomes about 31-32mpg, which is only marginally better than a Chevy Malibu or similar midsize car.  Moreover, the Malibu is a hefty 700 lbs lighter than the Tesla Model 3, refuels in five minutes, retails for $15000 less, and battery replacements cost hundreds, not thousands, of dollars.

There are great ways to help the environment, but electric cars are not among them.  The cost in terms of rare earth mining (and accompanying implicit subsidy of Communist China), particulate contamination, heating to be able to charge them north of the Mason-Dixon, and more is far too high.

They have a choice

I've said for years that obstetricians have a choice; they can practice medicine, or they can perform abortions, but not both.  My--and my family's--stance becomes crystal clear as this horror story from the Czech Republic comes to light; a woman came for a basic appointment, and her baby was aborted against her will.   

If a physician has "muscle memory" that will allow him to do things like abortion or transition surgeries, I don't want him anywhere near anyone in my family, period.  Hats off to Catholic and other hospitals who have steadfastly said "not here, buster."

Yes, the Cold War is back....

How so?  There is increasing evidence that the "Havana Syndrome" reported by U.S. and other diplomats working on Russian issues may be orchestrated by the Russian GRU.  Really, this is worse than a lot of things done during the Cold War, as the Soviets would spy on U.S. diplomats, but generally would not attack them physically.

Say what?

If you want a great reason to enact revenue tariffs to rein in the abuses of international shipping, the sad case of the collision of the container ship Dali ought to give you a good one.  It appears that the ship had been having major electrical issues for a while, but the owners decided to go to sea anyways.   

Interestingly, the ship has redundant power generation capacity with four diesel generators and a bow thruster, so what apparently went on is that whatever electronics control those generators had difficulties.  Redundant, but not redundant enough, and it suggests that ship safety needs to go a step closer to what we're trying to do with airliner safety--but maybe failing there with Boeing these days, of course.  

(sad to say, we have some suggestion that the intestinal fortitude of some regulators and inspectors needs an upgrade as well....from personal experience doing quality and reliability work, it can be hard to be the guy saying "no" to people who are several pay grades above you)

On the light side, I'd suggest sending the Dali to the Kerch strait and see if it can do the same trick again.  Slava Ukraini!

Good luck with that

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador says that if "his conditions are met", he'll stop illegal immigration.  Those conditions?  Amnesty for illegals here, $20 billion in annual subsidies, and an end to sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba.  Of course, left unsaid is that if ten or twenty million illegals get green cards, that's going to put the demand to leave Mexico through the roof.  Lopez Obrador can more more stop illegal immigration to the U.S. than he can control the cartels that are destroying his country, if even he wants to.

My counter-proposal would be continued sanctions against the countries that have stolen billions of dollars in assets from U.S. citizens and companies, no annual subsidies, and a 5% revenue tariff on all goods coming from Mexico, with the funds obtained to be used to install and maintain a robust border wall and drug interdiction, along with robust punishment of the coyotes who are driving the illegal immigrant and drug trades while raping countless thousands of illegal immigrants in the process.

Let's check it out

After a terrorist attack in Moscow, it was somewhat natural at this point to suspect someone from Ukraine, but of course, the accused gets to talk back, and boy howdy,  does Mykhailo Podolyak, speaker for President Zelensky, lay it out.  If his sources are correct, basically every security system was turned off to allow this to happen.

One thing Mr. Podolyak didn't mention; the building had sprinklers, but went up in flames as if the pipes were filled with oil.  As with so much out of Moscow, I smell a rat here.  Hopefully the Russian people catch on to the particular rat I'm thinking about and stomp him.

This one should get some "corrective action"

In Livonia, Michigan, a 12 year old boy ordered a "virgin daiquiri", but was served the alcoholic version instead.  Despite the fact that the young man only drank part of it, he apparently woke up with a splitting hangover.  How so?  Well, the daiquiri is one of many sweetened drinks with a typical alcohol content below 20% that does not "burn" as it goes down.  

I can see a couple of corrective actions here, one for the family, and a few for the restaurant.  For the family, it's probably a good idea to not order the "virgin" type of drink, because somebody back in the bar is going to eventually get confused and include the booze.

For the restaurant, there are two major corrective actions.  First of all, give the drink another name so the wait-staff doesn't confuse it with the alcoholic version, and second, take a very close look at how strong the bartenders are making them.  To get to the level of excessive drinking that would cause a hangover, a 75-100 lb boy of that age would need 3-4 shots of rum in the drink.  Given that the lad didn't drink the whole thing, that means most likely 5 shots of rum  (or more) was in the drink, which is over twice the strength of a standard daiquiri.

And that means that the "Outhouse Steakback" was squandering a fair amount of money on extra rum (at least if it wasn't total rotgut stuff), and was also risking having patrons hitting the roads with a couple of sheets to the wind.  Four to five drinks gets a 210 lb man (like myself) to the legal limit for driving, and....let's be honest....the daiquiri is very often a woman's drink.  A woman of 140 lbs is going to be at about twice the legal limit with that dose of alcohol.

I'm all for the responsible use of alcohol, but quite frankly, this isn't it.  Hopefully the family and the restaurant learn their lessons before someone gets seriously hurt.  Getting to know lawyers (and the police) on a professional basis is no fun.

Happy Spring

My second daughter made sure that she sang this song when she was visiting Honduras, and saw a large flock of the winged vermin in a church square, much to the horror of her boyfriend.  Her boyfriend's father, when told, noted that he had thought he was usually the weird one in the room....

Happy Spring!

 

Side note; this podcast/videocast says a lot of things about how young women are all too often "aging like milk."  If you've got teen daughters, they might be blessed by this.  I've personally seen some putting way too much effort into their appearance this way.

A thought on "trans rights"

As a former competitive runner, the things that occurred to me first regarding "trans" competitors in women's sport are:

• That larger, stronger men will take opportunities and podium places away from women.  Only about 2-3% of the performance differences between men and women are due to testosterone; about 10-30% difference remains.
• That larger, stronger men will injure female competitors due to size & strength.
• That people who are not trans at all will use the "opened" locker rooms to harass and violate female competitors.
• That spectators will not buy tickets to, in effect, watch "men in drag".  Part of the attraction of women's sports is that it is a woman doing the sport, after all.

Expending on the third point, it strikes me that when MTF trans people in various stages of transition are allowed into women's locker rooms--or FTM trans people in men's locker rooms--what is implicitly being told to the "cisgender" residents of those locker rooms is that they no longer have a right to decide which naked individuals of the opposite gender they might see, and that they also no longer have a right to decide which individuals of the opposite gender might see them naked.

Put differently, "trans" activists are in effect telling us that if the perpetrator is trans, "flashing" or being a "peeping tom" is no longer a crime if the crime occurs in a bathroom or locker room.  One might wonder whether every flasher or peeping tom whose name is rightly on Megan's List ought to have his crime downgraded to "mere" indecent exposure if this precedent holds.