A debate at Harvard about the efficacy and results of minority-recruitment programs is fascinating, if largely because it starts to illumine the conflict between trying to divide the world into groups and dealing with actual individuals. In this case, there doesn’t seem to be a question that Harvard has succeeded in increasing the number of black students in the University. However, once you start subdividing the ethnicity they have used as a touchstone, some odd differences start to come to light: Students of recently-immigrated black families — Africans and West Indians, for example — make up the bulk of the increase. Descendents of African-American slaves — familes that have been in the US for more than three generations — have not been as successful. ...

Pretty good argument for Kerry picking John Edwards as his running mate. However, according to the article, it looks like Kerry is leaning towards Dick Gephardt or Tom Vilsack, which I don’t quite understand. I don’t know much about Governor Vilsack (Iowa), but I do know that Gephardt has a record of not being able to deliver in elections, aside from his home district. Why would a man who struggles with the charisma/connection thing select Gephardt, who has an even worse time connecting, as his VP choice? ...

Interesting article on the confusion concerning the numbers of al-Qaeda terrorists around the world, brought to us by Spiked. It doesn’t seem it is possible to talk about al-Qaeda without bringing up a question that just puzzles me. For a terrorist group with supposedly well-established political aims and members all over the world, doesn’t al-Qaeda seem far more murderous than strategic? In other words, do they really have a plan of how any of their horrific acts are going to accomplish what they say they want? For instance: ...

One of the nice things about working where I do is that we occasionally have little sales during the day, primarily for charitable purposes. In this case the sale was of used books, and the charity was the Food Bank of North Carolina. Now, anyone who has seen our house knows we do not need more books, but I ended up with 11 of them anyway. Must keep the books circulating. The weird thing is, I almost never buy biographies new, but I’m compelled to when I see them used. Something about thumbing through a musty biography just seems right. Good haul in this set: ...

As has been blogged about quite a bit since it happened, SCOTUS has ruled in a 5-4 decision that people are required to give their names if asked by a police officer. (With the caveat that there must be a law on the books that requires you to do so, which isn’t necessarily true in every state.) I find it interesting that the Court ruled that you had no Constitutional right to withhold your name, but didn’t necessarily rule on producing your identification papers. It provokes the idea you could simply give a false name, but, if arrested, differing from one’s physical ID would probably lead to being charged with giving a false statement. ...

This list has some great suggestions. Personally, I suggest games. I’ve spent many an hour staring at the trading screen in Madden 2004 or optimizing my cities in Civ III without once having to look at the Internet. Books are also a good choice, but I usually find I’m not in print-reading mode if I’m noticing the Internet is down. TV, not so good. Using the TV as a substitute for more interactive activities you’d rather be doing tends to lead to lots of fiddling around with the DVR, which can be irritating to those attempting to watch with you. ...

Since I use them as my primary browser and email programs, I should point out that Firefox 0.9 and Thunderbird 0.7 are now available for download from the Mozilla site. I have noticed a couple of problems with the update feature — which has caused some folks to not be able to use the browser — but I suspect that may be due to site traffic as “us geeks” flood the servers. Seems to be calming down now, though. ...

Watching a display of good fundamentals and team play like the Pistons’ dismantling of the Lakers just makes me want college basketball season to get here more quickly. It was basketball played the Carolina Way. Go Heels!

In Philip Greenspun’s Weblog, he notes he just ran into a family of circus performers where the children were far more well-behaved and polite than others he has met. Since the children were “home-schooled,” Greenspun hypothesizes that spending time with a high percentage of adults might be good for manners. Well, aside from the obvious “It depends on the adults,” I think it would be far more likely in this case that two other factors come into play: social space and professionalism. ...

As you may have noticed if you’ve been alive and in the US the past week, our 40th President passed away recently. I think there was some sort of requirement that if you blogged, you talked about/beatified/criticized/cussed about Reagan at least once this week, which is probably as good an indicator as any what a personal impact his Presidency had on us.