Mindy Kaling’s brother, Vijay Chokal-Ingam claims he was able to win admission to medical school by pretending to be black on his admissions forms, when the real him couldn’t make the cut. This article shows that it’s nonsense—among other things, Chokal-Ingam didn’t apply to the same schools as himself, so how does he know?
And of course, if it were possible to fake being a legacy admission and get admission that way, surely it would be just as un-meritocratic, but critics of affirmative action just skip over that bit.
•Tucker Carlson of the Daily Caller
has a brother, Buckley who’s charming message to a New York official is described here. Suffice to say, he implies she’s some kind of frigid bitch who has never engaged in certain sexual acts, which proves she’s worth of mockery.
Tucker Carlson says his brother meant it in “the nicest way.” I am … unconvinced. And he can’t imagine why anyone thinks this is worthy of fuss and ooh, his brother has been very hurt by the public response.
Cry me a river.
•Textbooks used in Texas schools must emphasize how the Bible and Moses are the foundations of American democracy. Never mind facts when you can force religion on schoolkids.
•A conservative predicts how gay marriage and birth control (except the rhythm method which is totally different from all other birth control) will destroy America. Meanwhile, over in Iran, the religious authorities continue restricting access to birth control and abortion (as well as not meeting clothing rules and other mandates).
•As I’ve mentioned before, when men snap, some people are willing to blame women. Some men’s rights activists in fact think it makes perfect sense to take violent action against the oppressor feminists.
•Libertarians frequently invoke the danger of ridiculous customer lawsuits to justify tort reform. They rarely acknowledge that lawsuits and the threat of lawsuits can be just as bad in business-to-business courtroom action. Like the Italian pizza-making association threatening to sue McDonalds for a commercial implying kids prefer burgers to pizza. Or patent trolls who claim to have patented podcasting so everyone better pay up.
•A number of companies have adopted an on-call approach to retail work: workers don’t know until right before their shift whether they’re actually working or not (which makes a mess of both scheduling and budgeting). New York’s attorney general is looking into the legality.
•Equally nasty, Amazon makes warehouse workers sign non-compete agreements that ban them from working with any company that sells competing products for 18 months after they leave Amazon (as the article notes, what products don’t compete with Amazon). Non-compete agreements are supposed to protect against employees walking off with trade secrets; targeting warehouse workers feels more like a way to discourage them quitting grueling jobs that pay poorly for the work.
