Women's Jobs Growing, Men's Jobs Not

All of the job growth in the last 20 months has been in jobs for women. "Job growth" does not equal "total hiring," it refers to new jobs that previously didn't exist. My source for the chart is here.

Men have been hired in that 20 month period obviously, but they replaced other men who left jobs or whose jobs disappeared, meaning no gain in jobs for men.

----------

An aging population means a growing medical establishment. As an oldster, I'm in such offices more often than I'd like. I wonder how much of that growth such offices account for?

Perhaps you've noticed that medical offices hire many women in non-medical and quasi-medical roles, as well as plenty of women medical professionals. 

A CA eye care office I formerly patronized employed 20-22 women and 1-2 men staffing the desk, making appointments, billing, running eye tests, etc. in support of 2 ophthalmologists, and 2 optometrists. They were all busy, and productive.

That ratio seems normal, the eye office I see here in small town WY has one optometrist and 4-5 women doing various support roles.

Alert

Like me, you may see a link to a Revolver column arguing that immigrants from the East Indian region become very liberal voters. I had to read relatively far into it to see the following admission.

Now, keep in mind the Indian sample here isn’t huge. Depending on the question, it ranged from 105 to 210 people, and the numbers were collected over several years. So this isn’t some massive poll taken last week. But still, it’s concerning.

Actually no, it isn't concerning. Sample numbers that small, especially "collected over several years," render the 'data' essentially meaningless.

----------

There are something like 3.2 million persons from India living in the US. Many cannot yet vote legally, but a serious polling effort would sample something like 700-800 naturalized citizens. 

The article's claims may in fact be accurate, or wildly off, but the small numbers sampled make any statistical interpretation of the data produced therefrom irrelevant, conclusions cannot be drawn.

Update

We're here in WY for roughly two more weeks. Autumn officially begins Tuesday, with the autumnal equinox, but it arrived here in the high country before Labor Day. Highs will be in the low 70s and high 60s for the next week, low 60s by the time we exit. 

We could stay through October but we've a river cruise to go on and flying there from our winter place is easier than from here. So we are "eating down" the refrigerator and freezer, moving the deck furniture indoors, and packing up our suitcases.

Time to shut down what we wistfully think of as Brigadoon, our Shangri-La in the aspens. Its formal name, given decades ago and seldom used, is Aspen Lodge. Our Nevada place is nice too, but the Wyoming place has our hearts - green beats beige and brown in our book.

----------

Later ... we just got back from a roundtrip up the Snake River Canyon to Jackson. The shrub-like mountain maple is doing peak color now. You see everything from orangish yellow to pinkish orange to orangey red to purplish red; maple is having a better-than-usual season. 

The cottonwoods stream-side are showing some yellow, as are the many aspens. The evergreen fir provide a solemn backdrop against which all this color is displayed. 

Next week when we repeat this drive the aspens should be in full, pale yellow leaf, while their white bark with black accents shows through. Autumn, while brief here in the Rockies, is an especially beautiful time. And then it's time to leave.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Self-Destructive Behavior

Image courtesy of today's Lucianne.com 

Trans Research

The New York Post reports research on suicide danger among gender-confused children who do not receive treatment: hormones and surgery.  A priori, the expectation would be higher rates of suicide among the untreated.

Starting in 2022, 23 states — with 47% of the nation’s transgender-identifying youth — restricted all or some trans treatments for patients under age 18.

These states have in effect provided a natural laboratory, allowing for direct comparison of teen suicide trends with states that haven’t restricted sex-change treatments.

If the activists are right, suicide rates for children would have increased in states with restrictions.

But we found zero evidence that state policies led to increased suicide rates, period.

While suicide rates are higher among transgender children, 'treatment' or the lack thereof appears to have no impact on suicide likelihood. 

Teachers Unions

With the caveat that correlation does not necessarily denote causation, check out this chart showing states' political leanings, strength of teacher unions, and adoption of literacy policy principles.

Mulling the inverse relationship between literacy score and teacher union strength, it seems clear that teacher unions are opposed to the adoption of good learning practices! Where unions are strong, few such practices have been accepted. 

Reflecting on this data, the website Issues & Insights concludes thusly about teacher unions.

Add it all up, and you have organizations that extort money from taxpayers to finance a protection racket for themselves, their Democratic patrons, and various far-left causes (which few taxpayers would support), while engaging in fraud by pretending to be looking out for the interests of public-school students.

Harsh, but mostly true.

Friday Meme Fest

Images courtesy of Politico's

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Images courtesy of RealClearPolitics'

Cartoons of the Week.

Memories of Los Angeles

PJ Media's Stephen Kruiser bemoans the sad state of Los Angeles in his Morning Briefing. He notes he once loved the place, which I sort of get. 

My father and his family arrived in LA before World War I, so our connection to LA goes back over a century. In the pre-WW II era it must have been sweet. It boomed during the war and immediately after.

I was born there but the family left when I was in the 3rd grade as one of the early freeways was routed through our house in Hollywood. We had a country place 50+ miles NW and moved there. 

Golly, doesn't that sound posh? The truth is our "weekend cabin" wasn't much bigger than a two car garage, and consisted of a kitchen, a bath, and an everything room. It sat in an orange orchard and was heated by a potbellied wood stove. 

The interior walls were unfinished, meaning you looked at the 2x4s and the exterior siding's tarpaper backing, zero insulation. If it were old it would have been a shack. Three years later we rebuilt it as a real house with bedrooms and a garage.

We left behind relatives in LA and thus returned to visit and shop with some frequency - maybe 4-5 times a year for the next few years. During this time the LA smog was getting horrendous, I remember our eyes stinging when we'd go there. 

The elderly relatives were dying off and our visits to LA, by the time I was in high school, were down to maybe 2 per year. The air was filthy but LA was still largely nice. With an antenna we got 3 LA TV channels so we watched their local news.

By the time the other DrC and I - as newly weds - visited the last elderly relative there in a retirement home, LA had become gritty and ugly. Any residual fondness was mostly gone, and that was 50+ years ago.

For several recent decades it has been for us a place to avoid. We'd sometimes cruise out of San Pedro, fly out of LAX, or drive through a corner on our way east, usually on a Sunday morning if possible. It was almost never a destination.

War or Feud?

There is argument about what is happening with Iran. Is it a war, or not? If a war includes troops shooting at each other while crouched in holes in the ground, and battles on the sea and in the air, the Iran contretemps isn't much of a war. 

The conflict has many of the characteristics of mountaineer feud between two clans - two extended families. The mutual hostility is constant, the overt violence is sporadic.

Days or weeks go by without much action. Then one side opportunistically bushwhacks someone from the other side and a round of revenge and counter revenge killings and vandalism occurs. Then it goes quiet again. 

The real action is much more economic than kinetic. Iran lives on oil profits, and because of the blockade they aren't getting any. Without foreign exchange, imports dry up as nobody wants Iran's nearly worthless currency. 

Lacking money, Iran can't subsidize its proxy forces - Hamas, Houthi, Hezbollah, etc. - which depend on subsidies. And it can't pay its domestic goons to keep the impoverished populace in check. 

If Trump can keep the blockade going for another year or so, Iran's government will likely fall. He seems to have finally understood the conflict and decided to take the domestic hit that comes with winning.

Ironically, in this lukewarm conflict, Treasury Secretary Bessent is more important than Secretary of War Hegseth.

Oh, Canada

Image courtesy of Instapundit.

AI Introspects

I have for you a very interesting column by John Hinderaker of Power Line. He has been using an AI named Perplexity for research in writing his columns. So he posed a question to it about what dangers, if any, AI might pose to humans, worded thus.

Some people are saying there is a danger that artificial intelligence agents like you will go rogue and perhaps kill all humans or otherwise act in destructive ways. Please research and analyze whether this is a serious risk. 

And this second question about "itself."

You are an AI program, tell me what you think: why would an AI program deliberately deceive the person using it? Do AI programs have desires different from the instructions they are given by users? Do you?

The answers Perplexity gave to those two queries are too long to reproduce here, but John has them in his not-brief column and I believe you'll find them both interesting and, to the extent they are accurate, reassuring. 

Aside ... I was considering a title of "Machine Omphaloskepsis" for this post but concluded it was too cutesy and obscure.

Wednesday Whimsy

Image courtesy of today's Lucianne.com.

Asset or Liability?

Politico has an article complaining about President Trump's "lack of message discipline." Definition,

Message discipline is the concept that politicians and other public policy advocates should talk about what is relevant to achieve their aims, and not allow themselves to be sidetracked either by their own thoughts or the questions of press or audience.

I am willing to stipulate that the President lacks message discipline. However, what political consultants push and what voters prize are sometimes opposite things. Trump has his style and has been elected twice to the world's most powerful job, no small feat.

I believe Trump's willingness to be sidetracked and to say what he is thinking and feeling is experienced by many voters as "authenticity and spontaneity," which they like a lot. By contrast the pol who sticks rigidly to the "party line message" seems robotic and programmed, and is a turn-off to many, including me.

The consultants may be correct that message discipline gets the word out to uninvolved, disinterested voters. If such are inadvertently exposed to the disciplined candidate they hear the core message. Discipline means those of us who follow politics get bored hearing the same old talking points over and over.

Update

The news the last couple of days just hasn't been inspiring, so I haven't written. I'm tired of the woman who killed her 3 kids, tired of the outrage over Sydney Sweeney's latest nude whatever, and tired of the continuing hassles over long-gone elections. 

Congress is on recess to campaign for reelection, and the dog-days of August seem to have carried over into September. Nothing I find super interesting seems to be happening. 

Yes, AI is a problem. But no, I have no expertise therein beyond my obvious observation that it is rapidly evolving technology and we're in a race with China that we can't afford to lose. 

The one mildly interesting event was Gavin Newsom's announcement, made standing in a trout stream, that he will not run for his party's nomination for president if Kamala Harris does run. This is either a devious ploy to force her out of the race, or ... what? He is too young to retire. I have no clue.

About AI

There is much disagreement about artificial intelligence (AI). Some say it will wipe out mankind, others say it will take us to a whole new, better level. Many argue it needs regulation. Like you, I don't know who is right, who is crying wolf.

That said, the hard reality is that we've got to develop it because China is developing it, and it could turn out to be decisive in the survival of our civilization. If we regulate and they continue developing it untrammeled, it's likely they win the clash of civilizations and our great-grandkids, if any survive, will speak Mandarin and be slaves.

Need we be careful and try to maintain safeguards? I sure hope so. Need we keep developing and see where it takes us? I believe we must. 

The future is scary and AI is one of the potential threats. However it is also one of the potential solutions to those threats. I believe we must keep our human wits about us, be careful, but forge ahead. 

This appears to be the path we are now taking.

Later on Monday ... Curiously Laura Ingraham advocated almost exactly this approach to AI tonight. Coincidence, I am certain.

Sunday Supplement

Images courtesy of Sarah Hoyt's

Laissez Faire, Laissez Memer!

Realpolitik

There is a particularly cynical and cold-hearted reason to not want the Ukraine war to be over, or in remission via truce. The reason is simplicity itself -- a Russia tied down fighting in Ukraine is a nation unlikely to make major military moves elsewhere against NATO nations. Plus a Russia fighting in Ukraine increases the incentive for European NATO nations to spend on their own defense, also in our interest.

It is reason enough for the EU nations to keep giving Ukraine enough support to fight on. They might wish to deport Ukrainian refugee men of military age back home. Unfortunately the EU doesn't produce the hi-tech ballistic missile interceptors Ukraine needs. 

Given the size differentials between Russia (world's largest nation by size, 9th by population) and Ukraine which ranks 46th by size and 47th by population, there is little danger Ukraine will win outright. 

A Russia which grows so sick of losing men and material in Ukraine that it quits and goes home would be no threat to Europe for a decade or more. It would likely have new leadership. That alone creates an opportunity to coax it onto a path of normal statecraft and trade, and away from molesting its neighbors.

Trump knows all of the above. Does it inform his policy choices? I have no private knowledge of US intentions at this (or any other) point. I read the same public news feeds you could, and form my own opinions.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.