I work in technology. And for the past decade or so, the tech industries and the educational-industrial complex have been fairly begging women to go into “STEM” – Science, Technology, Engineering and Math”. Which is a fine and dandy thing – I work with a lot of exceptional engineers who happen to be women, and it’s not actually a new thing; it’s been true my entire career.

But the appeal has been getting louder, stronger, more strident lately. And I had an idea why.

Turns out I was only half right.

For thirty years now, the education system from kindergarten through the university system has been becoming more and more remorselessly feminized. Boyhood traits – physical play, roughhousing, restless energy – were stigmatized, pathologized and medicated. Being a boy – a young man – was, to the educational-industrial complex that sprang up over the past generation, something to be overcome.

It became, in the parlance of corporate human recourses, a hostile environment.

And as Christine Hoff Summers predicted in The War On Boys, a major result has been higher education becoming largely a female preserve. Currently, about 60% of post-secondary degrees go to women – up from under half forty years ago. Hoff Summers has data predicting it’ll level out around 66% sometime here. That’s two-thirds of all higher education.

“Is this a good thing” is one question – distorting higher ed by making it a hostile environment for one sex is a bad thing – but that’s not the real discussion here.

There’s been an interesting shift as a result of this distortion. Check out this graph, of percentages of bachelors degrees going to women, by year and by degree, over the past five decades:

While the percentage of women in engineering and hard sciences crept slowly up over the past nearly-fifty years – from just about nil in the case of engineering – the share of women in computer science programs actually peaked when I was in college (don’t I know it), has been eroding ever since, and seems to have plunged in the early 2000s. The velocity of the up-curve in engineering slowed around that time, and the percentage of physical science degrees peaked around the same time and is broadly down ever since.

I have absolutely no empirical, objective idea why. But I have a couple of theories.

Solid Ground – if you want to start a fight with a “woke” person with a background in soft science but who is nonetheless an expert at sciencing because they think Neil DeGrasse Tyson is the dreamiest sciencer ever, tell ’em there are innate differences between the sexes. But there is actual scientific evidence that a predisposition toward some traits that are well-suited to sciences – three-dimensional spatial visualization, single-track analytical affect and some others – tend to be associated with males (in a bell-curve distribution with exceptions all over the place, like most human traits).

As a result – my theory, here – young men fled the soft sciences, and especially the humanities (which were in the midst of being taken over by even loonier theorists than had run their high schools), as an alternative to four years of ritual self-abnegation for grades. Young men gravitated toward fields that didn’t innately hate them. Which may have both swelled the numbers of degrees going to males and lowered the proportion of women in the field.

Which, tangentially, is why I suspect gender theorists and “woke” administrators are trying to sqeedge gender theory into, and logic out of, engineering programs.

But I think its also…

Built On Sand – Thirty to forty years ago, before the compete feminization of the academy and the education profession, someone in school – male or female – with an interest in science, learned their math and science from people who taught, well, math and science. To both young men and women.

And that as that focus switched from teaching discplines (and discipline) to teaching ephemeral feelings and lessons in the new social rules, they became less capable of nurturing the STEM-oriented traits of young women who might have been interested in the field. Meaning fewer attempted it.

Since the public schools began their terminal dive into PC twaddle about twenty years ago, I’m going to call it a solid correlation.

Preventing criminals from obtaining firearms is like keeping squirrels out of your bird feeder.  Tricks and gadgets simply don’t work.
Liberals’ solution is to stop feeding the birds.
Conservatives’ solution is a pellet gun.
I know which solution I prefer.
Joe Doakes

Correction: the “progressive” solution isn’t to stop feeding all birds. Some birds are more equal than others.

I listen to a fair amount of public radio – largely because, sans antenna, it’s the only non-music radio I can get in my car.

And public radio, especially the news and public affairs departments, take the news media very, very seriously.

And periodically, I’ll hear programs on which I hear a variety of people – pundits, academics, journos, talking heads of all varieties – talking about the imperative for a free press. For the regular hoi-polloi, much less so – but that’s a separate topic.

This is important, say the talking heads, because “journalists” are “trained to ask questions”, and feature an intellect noted for “insatiable curiosity”.

And I usually end up shouting at the radio: “Where? Where are these mythicsl curious journos?”

Because of people like this – about a Babylon Bee satirical piece about Democrats flying their flags at half-mast over the death of General Soleimani:

• Today’s “elite” “journalists” are some of the least curious, inquisitive people there are.

This tweet from Time – kids, ask your parents…

…explains a lot about how Greta Thunberg became their “Person of the Year”.

Among many other things.

The Babylon Bee may actually be giving the big media too much credit.

Education Minnesota has released its legislative priorities.

And it’s focused on students like a dog chasing a squirrel:

Minnesota’s teachers’ union Education Minnesota recently posted its 2020 resolutions, laying out its three priorities for the new year:

1. Get out 100% of the educator vote
2. Take back the state Senate
3. Win full funding for Minnesota students

OK, I lied. Their resolutions are all about browbeating teachers and holding the taxpayer completely hostage.

Could there be a more Orwellian sentence than “win full funding for MInnesota students?”

Check out this still photo of the guy who shot the gunman in church [Jack Wilson – Ed]. If you figure 5 feet between pews, he’s 25 feet away when he takes the shot. That’s good shooting, Tex, way better than me. 
I need to hit the range. I need practice.
Joe Doakes

It’s definitely gotten me thinking more seriously about the subject.

Or would, if guns didn’t terrify me, and if mine hadn’t all fallen in the lake.

“Protect” Minnesota – which, as we all know, is Nancy Nord Bence and a bunch of the kind of people who think armed churchgoers are a bad thing, but only if they have never shot anyone and will never shoot anyone – posted this on social media last week:

So – prohibition doesn’t work, and people who want to flout laws will seek what they want on a black market which will leap to fill the demand, with the higher price enforced by the legal risk to the product…

…but “Universal Background Checks” will curb crime!

The reason we say gun grabbers are irrational bobbleheads is, they are irrational bobbleheads.

Mayor Frey is apparently a White Supremacist:

I mean, we’re just going by the standards they impose on others…

Scott Adams on the situation in Iran:

It’s a thread, and I urge you to read the whole thing. 

Putting an Obama-era template – or even a Bush or Reagan-era template – on the situation might be a huge mistake for everyone. 

Article in the new Bench and Bar magazine written by Justice Paul Thissen of the Minnesota Supreme Court, entitled “When Rules Get in the Way of Reason: One Judge’s View of Legislative Interpretation.”

No need to read the article,  the title says it all.  Isn’t this pretty much the definition of judicial activism?
By giving it prominent play in the Bar Association magazine, aren’t they normalizing radical behavior?
Or is radical the new normal, so this view is not controversial, it’s mainstream?
Joe doakes

Pretty simple, really.

Radical is radical on the right. On the left, it’s progress because shut up.

The Strib puts faces – and, to a fairly cryptic and inconsistent extent, causes – to the 31 homicides in Saint Paul last year.

Of the 31 victims, two are white, and five are Latino. Of the remaining 26 victims, gang violence is explicitly noted in several incidents.

• Gang members were specifically listed as the killers in three of the blurbs – and the three victims were also apparently gang members. There is no doubt that that number is low –
• Of the remaining 28 homicides, 11 showed (reading between the lines) signs of being gang-related; young men being shot while sitting in cars, or in the middle of drug deals. This omits several that smelled of common street crime – people shot outside bars, in alleys, that sort of thing. It’s a guess, but I”m going to say it’s a good guess.
• 27 of the victims were shot – two of them accidentally, and one by the SPPD in what looked like “suicide by cop”.
• Three, incuding one of the children, were the result of domestic violence.
• Two were children – one killed by blunt force trauma, one from being left in a hot car.
• No arrests have been made in eight (and no mention of an arrest is in one other blurb) of the homicides.
• Mental illness seems to be an explicit part of at least 2-3, including a suicide by cop and good samaritan killed by mentally-ill man.
• Two are white, five are Latino, 26 are black.
• None of murders were deterred, and none of the homicides, were solved by the city’s “resilience director”, or the two-dozen deputy mayors that clog the city payroll. Or by the city’s Tony Soprano-style

Interesting to see if the city triples down on its Carter-era pollyannaism about crime.

Having its police chief focusing on copy-editing the Constitution probably isn’t a good sign.

A GOP volunteer, volunteering at the “Log Cabin Republican” booth at the “Pride” event last summer, got set up by an attack and accompanying smear campaign.

He’s currently been convicted of disorderly conduct, in a set of proceedings that the Kangaroos called up and said was b***h*t.

A video captured by a Democrat operative, who instead of stopping haters from punching Republican volunteers and destroying signs of our President, spent time entrapping and videoing Republicans who were protecting their property and colleagues in the designated Republican space.
After the first round of Minneapolis park police officers disbanded the perpetrators and cleared all bystanders of the melee, two individuals among the perpetrators sought a different group of police officers to present Republican volunteers with citations.
The idea that our volunteer who was ultimately charged with disorderly conduct is preposterous. The notion that the haters who pressed charges and later claimed they were trying to protect Republican volunteers is preposterous. The thought that our friend and fellow volunteer/victim would behave with intent to harm or frighten someone, or to create an intentional disturbance, is contrary to everything we know about the individual.
This legal assault on our Republican volunteer is an assault on all of us.

Find out more here.  If the spirit moves you, consider donating. 

Listening to the garment-rending among western “progressives” over the death of Otto Skorzeny, the head of Nazi special operations…

…sorry. I got my historical eras mixed up. Otto Skorzeny was Germany’s top commando – sort of the David Stirling of the World War 2 Wehrmacht, Germany’s top commando, in charge of creating terror and disorder behind allied lines.

Of course, I’m referring to the death of Iranian General Soleimani – “Austere Religious Scholar”…

…no, wait. That was the NYTimes’ obit for Al-Baghdadi, the former Caliph of ISIS.

What I meant was that he was some person who did some stuff…

…Dammit. I’m sorry, that was Ilhan Omar’s characterization of the 9/11 terrorists, who’d done us the favor of killing themselves before a drone or SOF team had to do it.

The media stuck with “Iran’s most revered general” (or, occasionally, as a combination of Lady Gaga and James Bond – and no, this is not one of my “Avery Librelle” spoofs), which probably was what brought up my erroneous Skorzeny reference.

No, Soleimani was the head of the “Quds Force”, which as been referred to as the most accomplished intelligence, unconventional warfare and special operations organization, besides (and and alongside of, and often against) Mossad in the Middle East. It was, among other things, responsible for the deaths of about 600 Americans in Iraq over the past fifteen years.

“But not between 2012 and 2018!”, “progressives” bleat. “Quds helped us defeat ISIS! He was an ally!”

Right – in the same sense that Stalin was Hitler’s “ally” in dismembering Poland in 1939. They, like Iran and the US, had mutual interests in delaying or displacing their fighting for a while – in Quds’ case, keeping up weapons supplies to Hezbollah (which wound up as craters and Iron-Dome-chaff all over southern Israel) and keeping the bloodletting in Syria at a steady simmer (including its support for whatever remains of the Assad regime, longtime Iranian clients and the worst among a cast of bad actors in that whole sorry nation), and blowing up a Saudi Oil refinery and a couple of tankers in the Gulf, just to keep things interesting.

It’s just been interesting watching the Democrats exercising their 50-year-long penchants for not only betting on America’s enemies, but for exercising, shall we say, flexible ethics when it comes to assassinating “some people who do some things”.

All my old heroes are passing.  A Moonshiner turned NASCAR racer?  Now THAT is the Resistance!
Joe Doakes

Wow. Shows what I know – I thought Johnson died in the seventies – and that he’d have been a lot older than that. He was a legend when I was a little kid and followed auto racing.

Wow.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is walking out of a Ukrainian sausage shop in Northeast Minneapolis when he notes Avery LIBRELLE, wearing matching “Meat is Murder” hat, T-Shirt, and carrying a matching sign, beginning to picket the store. BERG tries to tiptoe back inside, but LIBRELLE notices him.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Er, hey, Avery. What brings you… (But LIBRELLE interrupts)

LIBRELLE: The presence of those guns in that church in Tennesee…

BERG: Texas

LIBRELLE: Tomayto tomahto. The presence of guns in that peckerwood church made the murders possible.

BERG: So let me get this straight…

LIBRELLE: Inclusivity!

BERG: Sure fine – look, almost nobody makes the jump from “clean criminal record” to “mass murderer”, and even less so “street criminal”, without some kind of warning sign.

But we’re dodging the point here. Society really has two options:

1. Disarm the law-abiding, Which leaves only those who don’t bother following the law with guns.
2. Let the law-abiding exercise their right to defend themselves.

LIBRELLE: Option three – take away all the guns.

BERG: Er, yeah – in a society of 320 million people, with 100 million gun owners and probably 200 million guns, you won’t get ’em all, and a ban will do for guns what prohibition did for booze, pot and cocaine. So we’re back to two options: disarm the law abiding, or recognize their right to defend themselves.

LIBRELLE: Nope. If you disarm the so-called “law-abiding”, you’ll get rid of all guns.

BERG: (Sounding tired) Huh. Do tell.

LIBRELLE: Every criminal was once a so-called “law biding citizen”. So if you disarm them, eventually criminals will be disarmed.

BERG: Huh. Hey, look – that guy is wearing a “Carnivores for Trump” cap!

LIBRELLE: (Frantically looks for cap) Where? Where?

(But BERG has already made his escape)

And SCENE

None of which will come from our idiot “elite”.

Rose MacGowan – who, I’m told, is something of a movie star – twote:

Ms. McGowan – I suggest going to Teheran to work this out personally.

Wearing the outfit in your Twitter profile photo.

Get back to us. If you can.

The assassination of Soleimani does present some gnarly questions: he was a fair target under current international agreements about terrorism – but one could raise questions about whether it was a great idea. Also whether it was an act of war.

On the other hand, we’re treated to the spectacle of watching politicians, deep-staters, media drones and celebs who batted not an eyelash over Obama’s constant, intense campaign of drone, air and special ops “hits”, complaining about Orange LIterally Hitler Man doing it to a target that actually matters, but up to whom The LIghtworker sucked…

…and having to choose, in public, during an election year, with whom to side in public.

Troublling?

Brilliant?

Why choose? It’s both.

Bet you a brand-new nickel he won’t send cops door-to-door seizing guns in black neighborhoods to fill the jails with non-compliant gun owners.
Joe Doakes

Aiin’t risking a nickel on that bet.

It’ll be someone in the “blue” suburbs of DC.

Saint Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell sends New Years greetings to the city – with a challenge (to which I’ve added emphasis):

Happy New Year, Everyone!
As we embark on another trip around the sun, I want to take a minute to thank each of you for the friendship, support, advice and adventure we’ve shared over the past year.
And this year, I want to try something new. For a change, I want to make a resolution that’s actually achievable (unlike my previous resolutions related to exercise and weight loss—which have obviously failed …).
For some time now, I’ve been troubled by a clause in the Minnesota State Constitution. It involves the word slavery, which doesn’t reflect our state values.
Article I, Section 2 reads:
“There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the state otherwise than as punishment for a crime of which the party has been convicted.”
This means that even today, 162 years since the State of Minnesota banned slavery and servitude, there is still an exception in our Constitution that allows it.
Slavery is not a Minnesota value.
Words matter. That’s why I’m making it my 2020 resolution to raise awareness of this clause to ignite a movement among people who care about doing what’s right—a movement to champion an amendment removing slavery from the Minnesota State Constitution.
This document, the original of which is kept right here in Saint Paul, is wonderful in so many ways. It protects our rights, defines and limits government power, and guides us as we address emerging issues and concerns.
It’s also supposed to reflect our values. And here in Minnesota, they include equity, freedom and respect for all people. It’s time we amend our constitution to make that clear.
As a Minnesotan, at the start of the 2020s, it is my belief that it is time – beyond time – to move forward together and strike out slavery from our shared constitution.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. I hope you have a safe New Year’s Eve and a new year filled with happiness and health.
#WordsMatterMN

I’m an English major, so let’s briefly re-read the sentence. The constitution bans slavery and involuntary servitude except as a result of a criminal conviction – referring to the “involuntary servitude” to the state known as prison.

The Chief is right – words have meanings.

So does history.

In 1859, banning slavery in a state Constitution was a solid, courageous statement. Minnesota was admitted to the union during the run-up to a war this nation fought, entirely over slavery and its side-effects. That clause was a pretty stark line in the sand in its day; the new state committed itself to human freedom.

Does this effort – which has garnered the support in the House of the estimable Representative and profile in courage John Lesch – merely respond to the current trend of erasing the most trivial reminders of history, while repeating its mistakes wholesale?

I mean, fine – erase the word “slavery”. Does that mean Minnesota has joined the 20th Century 12- years late?

Or will it erase the principled stance of a generation for whom principle was a matter of life, death, blood and lost years?

We live in a generation that is forgetting its history. You know the rest of the sentence, right?

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing the two winners of the “Speaking Proudly” speech contest on my show.

Much as I razz the kids, they were both pretty impressive. It kind of made me feel a little more sanguine about the near future.

And I needed that little dose of sanguinity, when I read this report from the academic front lines.

Office of the President of the United States. 

Dear Mister Berg.
Congratulations, you’ve been selected to participate on President Trump’s advisory team. Its job is to come up with the priorities for this administration for the next four years.
I started a list of priorities, which I’d like you to rank. Feel free to add others if I’ve missed some. 
Please note that when ranking your priorities, we are hoping to concentrate on two or three which actually can be accomplished, given that the House of Representatives is dead set against us and half the Senate Republicans are Never-Trumpers who will back-stab us the first chance they get.
Climate change. Border wall with Mexico. Trade Agreement with China. North Korean nuclear weapons. Islamic Terror. Fracking. Taxes. Conservative judges. The national debt. Health insurance. Immigration law reform. Foreign aid. United Nations. NATO.
Thank you for your assistance. I know it’s a frustrating and challenging task to make a list which the media will blast and everyone whose pet peeve doesn’t get top billing will hate. 
Now you know what it feels like to sit in the big chair.
Sincerely yours

Joe Doakes
Advisory Team Lead

I’ve been a critic of Trump, especially his personality, since most Democrats were faithfully tuning in “Celebrity Apprentice” weekly.

But under the circumstances, seeing the legislative landscape greeting his agenda makes “Crank the Trump Persoanlity to 11 and let fly” actually makes a lot of sense.

He’s mad so he’s suing because the primary election ballot has limited choices.  Party officials decide who we get to vote for. 
You’re just figuring this out, now?  Never heard of the smoke-filled back room?
The entire point of a political party is so that voters won’t have to study every candidate’s slate of ideas.  Instead, if some is endorsed by the Marijuana Reform Party, voters can be assured the candidate will support reforming the laws governing marijuana.  
There isn’t a penny-worth of difference between all the Democrat candidates so running all of them makes no difference to eventual party success.  “Vote for [insert name here]” would work just as well because in the end, they all vote in lock-step for the same things. 
The Republican party has come around in the last three years.  They now want Trump to win so naturally, they’re not interested in other candidates stealing his donations of time or money.  They don’t have a serious primary challenger and don’t want one.  That’s the party’s choice.  If you don’t like it, join a different party or form your own.
The Supreme Court ought to throw out the lawsuit as meritless but since it’s a chance to bash Republicans in general and Trump in particular, I could see the court ruling that Republicans violated the spirit of the intent of the concept of democracy by restricting voter choices and therefore all Republican candidates must be stricken from the primary election ballot.  And since that means Trump can’t win the primary, he can’t be listed as the candidate in the general, so Biden wins Minnesota by default.
Joe Doakes

I started laughing – until I remembered Berg’s 21st Law: “When it comes to “progressive” policy, yesterday’s absurd joke is today’s serious proposal and tomorrow’s potential law.”

I’m’ not laughing any more.