"[Elon] Musk is so wedded to the idea of creating a civilization on Mars — he once said he plans to die there — that it has propelled nearly every business endeavor..."

"... he has undertaken on Earth. His vision for Mars underlies most of the six companies that he leads or owns.... The Boring Company, a private tunneling venture founded by Mr. Musk, was started in part to ready equipment to burrow under Mars’s surface, two of the people said. Mr. Musk has told people that he bought X, the social media platform, partly to help test how a citizen-led government that rules by consensus might work on Mars. He has also said that he envisions residents on the planet will drive a version of the steel-paneled Cybertrucks made by Tesla, his electric vehicle company...."

From "Thermonuclear Blasts and New Species: Inside Elon Musk’s Plan to Colonize Mars/SpaceX employees are working on plans for a Martian city, including dome habitats, spacesuits and researching whether humans can procreate off Earth. Mr. Musk has volunteered his sperm" (NYT)(free-access link).

"When the court considers the Harvard and UNC cases, it would do well to reject the 'diversity' rationale entirely, or at least subject it to much tougher standards of review...."

"As one expert in an amicus brief supporting the plaintiffs pointed out, the 'Hispanic' or 'Latino' category lumps together such varied groups as Argentinians, Cubans, Mexicans and immigrants from Spain. 'Asian Americans'' include racial and ethnic groups that cover more than half the world’s population, such as Chinese people, Indians and Filipinos, among others. Such distinct groups as Arab Americans, native-born white Protestants and recent immigrants from Bulgaria are all classified as 'white.' 'African American' combines native-born Black Americans with immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean. Needless to say, these groups have vastly different histories. Lumping them into a few crudely defined categories makes a mockery of the idea that universities are genuinely pursuing diversity as opposed to engaging in gross stereotyping. Perhaps even worse, the diversity rationale could be used to justify all kinds of racial and ethnic preferences.... For many schools, however, the diversity rationale for racial preferences is likely a smokescreen for the real purpose: compensating minority groups that are victims of long-standing discrimination, particularly African Americans. This justification, which has largely been rejected by the Supreme Court, is much more logically compelling than the diversity theory."

Writes Ilya Somin at "Supreme Court affirmative action cases challenging Harvard, UNC policies are overdue/The Harvard suit features extensive evidence that the school’s admissions system discriminates against Asian American applicants" (NBC News). 

Somin says he has has "considerable sympathy" for the alternative rationale, but it's hard to imagine the Supreme Court switching from diversity to compensation for past discrimination, which it rejected as a basis for affirmative action long ago (in the 1970s). 

[T]o my knowledge I was the only Russian Jewish immigrant in my class at Yale Law School. Would 'diversity' justify Yale using ethnic preferences to make sure there was another the following year?

The words "make sure" load that question, but I think — as someone who has served on my law school's admissions committee many times — that it would be perfectly fine to read an applicant's file, find yourself on the line between yes and no, see that this person is a Russian Jewish immigrant, and go with yes. And that yes would be based on what the current doctrine requires — a prediction that this person's contributions will be beneficial to the class as a whole. It would not be based on the idea that Russian Jewish immigrants have been discriminated against in the past. 

How could I possibly assess all the various harms of the past and funnel the urge to compensate into this one applicant? There's no expertise to defer to. With diversity, there is a notion, however hazy, that the school's file-readers have some special intuition about putting together a good student body and making the classroom lively and full of challenging viewpoints. There's a mystique, a magic, a black box that the Court can decide to leave closed. I know many of you are scoffing at that box. But the easiest answer is to leave it closed, not to move to another rationale for affirmative action.

Biden's rhetoric is too bland to pay attention to. It's not meant to be paid attention to. But if you do pay attention...

My administration won’t just build back to the way things were before — we’re going to build back better. We’re going to ensure every single American has a fair shot to get ahead.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) December 1, 2020

I guess that's supposed to make us feel good and safe and protected. Coming next January: Sanity and soundness. 

Should we try to understand the words?

1. "My administration won’t just build back to the way things were before — we’re going to build back better." In the future, things will be the same as the past and different from the past. Please feel free to think that everything that you liked about the past will be restored and be forewarned that we're also going to change things. All the changes will be improvements. 

2. "We’re going to ensure every single American has a fair shot to get ahead." I'm always skeptical of assertions that politicians are going to "make sure" something happens. It's a tic that has a tag here on the Althouse blog. And it's not physically possible for everyone to "get ahead" over everyone else. But he doesn't say that we will, only that we will all get "a fair shot" in the big competition, which sounds ultra-conservative, doesn't it? 

President Trump won't commit to a peaceful transfer of power after the election!

You've seen the headlines. They're the drama of the day, extracted from yesterday's press briefing where a reporter said words that Trump chose not to repeat. It was a trap, and I presume Trump could see the various ways it would function as a trap, depending on how he answered.

Let's look at the original text:

Speaker 2: Win, lose, or draw in this election. Will you commit here today for a peaceful transfer of power after the election... There’s been rioting in many cities across this country.... Will you commit to making sure that there is a peaceful transferral of power after the election?

President Donald Trump: Well, we’re going to have to see what happens. You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots. And the ballots are a disaster.

Speaker 2: I understand that but people are rioting. Do you commit to making sure that there’s a peaceful transferal of power?

President Donald Trump: We want to have… Get rid of the ballots and we’ll have a very peaceful… There won’t be a transfer frankly, there’ll be a continuation. The ballots are out of control. You know it, and you know who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats know it better than anybody else.

Let's break it down:

Will you commit here today for a peaceful transfer of power after the election... Will you commit to making sure that there is a peaceful transferral of power after the election?

I live-blog my first reading of Joe Biden's convention speech.

Transcript (with punctuation improved in spots based on the video):

Good evening, Ella Baker, a giant of the civil rights movement left us with this wisdom: give people light and they will find the way. Give people light.

I give this post my "light and shade" tag (one of my favorites).  I don't remember ever hearing about Ella Baker, but it's a good quote, and it sets up a theme, and gives us something we can use to test the success of this speech. He must give light. He cannot simply claim to be the light. Jesus said, "I am the light of the world," but Biden is not Jesus.

Those are words for our time. The current president has cloaked American darkness for much too long, too much anger, too much fear, too much division here.

I don't yet know if Biden is going to claim to be the light, but he has asserted that Trump is the dark. The dark is defined as anger, fear, and division, but I don't know how the Democrats can say they are not part of that darkness. The speech is already marked with divisiveness: The other side is the darkness and we bring the light.

And now I give you my word. If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us. Not the worst. I’ll be an ally of the light, not the darkness.

So he's not the light, but an ally of the light.

It’s time for us, for We, the People to come together and make no mistake. United, we can and will overcome this season of darkness in America.

"We can... overcome." Not: We shall overcome. He didn't Lyndon Johnson it! If he'd said "We shall overcome" it would have tied to the Civil Rights Movement, and he did begin the speech with a quote from "a giant of the civil rights movement," but he's not talking about racial justice specifically here. He's talking in the most generic way about light and darkness. There's nothing about any specific people, just all the people, the ethereal entity "We, the People," which needs to "come together."

We’ll choose hope over fear, facts, over fiction, fairness, over privilege....

Pretty much everyone chooses those things in the abstract, but he's telling us what we will do. What's the evidence of that? It seems to me that We, the People have been, in reality, choosing the negative side of each of those binaries, but if Donald Trump can be made to embody fear, fiction, and privilege, then it's correct to say we'll choose hope, facts, and fairness if only we vote him out of office.

Biden accepts the Democratic Party nomination for President, but if he is elected, he'll be "an American President," working for everyone, "not just our base or our party":

This is not a partisan moment. This must be an American moment. Someone with a cause for hope and light and love — hope for our future, light to see our way forward, and love for one another. 

I've been wondering where's the love. He's offering love — love and hope and light. That's all very abstract, of course.

No, nearly a century ago, Franklin Roosevelt pledged a new deal in a time of massive unemployment, uncertainty, and fear. Stricken by a disease — stricken by a virus — FDR insisted that he would recover and prevail, and he believed America could as well. And he did. And we can as well. This campaign isn’t just about winning votes. It’s about winning the heart and yes, the soul of America — winning it for the generous among us, not the selfish when needed for workers who keep this country going, not just the privileged few at the top, winning for those communities who have known the injustice of a knee on the neck, for all the young people [who] have known only America being  rising inequity and shrinking opportunity....

The metaphorical "knee on the neck" has affected whole communities... but weren't these communities in cities run by the Democratic Party?

And now history has delivered us to one of the most difficult moments America has ever faced: four historic crises.

The 4 crises are: the pandemic, the economy, the "call for racial justice," and climate change.

As many have said America is at an inflection point...

Inflection point! (I blogged about the term "inflection point" twice yesterday — 1, 2 — after Kamala Harris used it in her speech.)

We can choose a path to becoming angrier, less hopeful, more divided, a path of shadow and suspicion or, or we can choose a different path and together take this chance to heal, to reform, to unite, a path of hope and light.

As if the idea of light could meet 4 crises. By the way — only 4? Why not 6?



Back to Joe:

"We want law and order. We have to have a lot of good things, but we have to have law and order. Got to have some strength. You have to have strength."

"You have to do what you have to do. And you look at a Seattle. We just came in. We just see over the screen and we’ve been hearing about it. Bill and I were talking about it. The law and order, look at what happened in Seattle. They took over a city, a city, a big city, Seattle, a chunk of it. A big chunk. Can’t happen. That couldn’t happen here I don’t think in the state of Texas. I don’t think so. I don’t think so."

Shockingly short sentences and sentence fragments began Donald Trump remarks at the Roundtable Meeting on Justice Disparities in America yesterday in Dallas, Texas (full transcript).

A city, a city, a big city, Seattle, a chunk of it. A big chunk. Can’t happen.

I wonder why he's doing that. Perhaps he can't help it, but I think he's choosing it. It's political poetry. It says: LAW AND ORDER. It's the simplest theme for a politician. He's there. On that theme. You know it. It's everything. Got to have law and order. Or you have nothing. Nothing.

The speech becomes somewhat less staccato:

Joe Biden did a town hall about coronavirus last night on CNN, and I don't think there is a single news article about it...

... other than on CNN itself, which doesn't seem to have a transcript, only "5 takeaways from Joe Biden's CNN town hall on the coronavirus response."

We watched most of it, and I was going to do a substantial blog post about it — if I had a transcript. But I've just go this stupid "5 takeaways" format, which is highly protective of Joe Biden. I watched to see what kind of shape he was in, because I didn't think he had the ability to string cogent sentences together. I can report that when I switched it off somewhere after the midpoint, I said, "He wasn't that bad." Nevertheless, he was not challenged by any of the questions — from Anderson Cooper and various citizens — and he never said anything clear that distinguished himself from Trump or that hit Trump in any serious way.

Biden relied on a rhetorical device that has been driving me crazy throughout the campaign season. It's the phrase "make sure." There's a question about how some desired goal can be reached, and the answer is: We need to make sure that we reach that goal. That's no answer! If I had the transcript, I'd pick out the examples. But — just hypothetically — assume the question is "What would you do about the shortage of ventilators?" The "make sure" answer is — with verbiage to pad the nonanswer — "I would make sure that we have plenty of ventilators." Start looking for it. It's everywhere!

But there's no "make sure" in the few snippets in the pathetical little "5 takeaways" article. We used to scoff at junky little articles like that and call them "listicles." They were the stuff of Buzzfeed. But now it's all we get when the major-party opponent to the President goes on TV for an hour (or was it 2 hours?) to enlighten us about his positions on a mind-crushing crisis.

CNN tells us he offered "an uplifting message — one in tune with his campaign's core theme — about the soul of the nation being on display in Americans' reaction to the crisis." That's a paraphrase of this quote from Biden: