Why Do So Many People Distrust Public Education?

5/7/26 Daily Mail:

 A group of Canadian schoolchildren were forced to flee a theater performance about Indigenous rights after a drag queen began gyrating and 'putting their boobs in kids faces.'

Campbell Collegiate students in Saskatchewan were pulled out midway through a performance at the Globe Theatre this week after the 'production reached levels of maturity beyond expectations,' according to teachers.

I guess that i should be pleased that the teachers realized that indigenous rights claims mattered less than sexual depravity.  Admittedly, it is Saskatchewan a fairly conservative part of Canada   

Well Pump Installation Under Way

So looking forward to a shower.

It took less time thsn expected so less than $5000.

Things to Know About Well Pumps

I was thrilled that Burgess Pump & Well had a technician at my house in an hour. After troubleshooting the segment from the pump controller to the well it seemed clear the problem was down the well. He lifted the well pump and motor out in 20 foot sections. Pull 20 feet up unscrew that section pull up another 20 feet.

The well is 250 feet deep. The pump was at 120 feet. The pump part was okay. The motor was toast. Whoever put in the well cheaped out to get a lower bid. The pump was rated for 3 horsepower; the motor was 1 1/2  horsepower. The extra load of running the motor at too  high a load burned it up a few months out of warranty.

Anyway, the cost of replacing it is about $5200. At least when we list it, "New well pump under warranty."  American Home Shield will cover $1500 of it. I expect authorization tomorrow and new pump same day or next. I am getting tired of not showering, doing dishes, laundry, and turning flushing into a complex reloading process.

AI May Destroy Teaching But It Is Going to Revolutionize Many Fields

4/30/26 Science:

If you walk into an emergency room (ER) in 10 years, you’ll encounter a new type of caregiver: an artificial intelligence (AI) system designed to get you a diagnosis faster and help your care team make more informed decisions. While you sit in the waiting room, you’ll be hooked up to a blood pressure cuff that’s constantly and autonomously monitored. All the while, an AI agent will be listening in while you and your doctor talk about your symptoms, ready to flag any mistakes your physician makes or suggest next steps.

This vision of AI-assisted emergency health care may soon be reality. In a new study, researchers show that a type of AI known as a large language model (LLM) often outperformed physicians at diagnosing complex and potentially life-threatening conditions, including decreased blood flow to the heart, even in the fast-moving stages of real ER care when information is limited, they report today in Science. In early ER cases, the model identified the correct or a very close diagnosis in about 67% of cases, compared with roughly 50% to 55% for physicians. And the technology is only getting better.

“Evaluating AI in medicine demands both depth and breadth across different clinical tasks and settings,” and these authors were able to incorporate both in this study, says Shreya Johri, a computer scientist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute who was uninvolved with the new research. Still, she notes, wide adoption of these AI systems in health care will hinge on knowing the contexts in which they’re most reliable.

Fine with me as long as the LLMs are not filled with antiracism crap which denies that there are genuine physiological differences, at least at the means between races. 

Faster, no exhausted ER doctors at the end of a long shift, less fear of lawsuits. For some specialty medical care, shorter wait times and larger supply.

This is also an earlier version of OpenAI. Everything is getting better and faster.

Well Pump

After repeated calls, our home warranty company has authorized us to get a local vendor to come and do an estimate. 

When the Communists Come to Power...

whining millionaires

Yes. They will pass by her mansion because she showed her solidarity with the people! $12 million means she could invest it in municipal bonds of her state and enjoy $480,000 a year income exempt from federal and state income tax. Can you live comfortably on $40,000 a month. Let's see her try 

History

 It is an article of faith that the enormous loss of Indian life after the Spanish arrived was because the Indians had no immunities to measles, smallpox, and a bunch of other diseases that had been killing people in the Old World long enough that our gene pool had selected the weak ones out. One of the student papers referenced a CDC article that I found fascinating:

Abstract

The native population collapse in 16th century Mexico was a demographic catastrophe with one of the highest death rates in history. Recently developed tree-ring evidence has allowed the levels of precipitation to be reconstructed for north central Mexico, adding to the growing body of epidemiologic evidence and indicating that the 1545 and 1576 epidemics of cocoliztli (Nahuatl for "pest”) were indigenous hemorrhagic fevers transmitted by rodent hosts and aggravated by extreme drought conditions.

Now, this was not entirely without Spanish involvement:

These infections appear to have been aggravated by the extreme climatic conditions of the time and by the poor living conditions and harsh treatment of the native people under the encomienda system of New Spain. The Mexican natives in the encomienda system were treated as virtual slaves, were poorly fed and clothed, and were greatly overworked as farm and mine laborers. This harsh treatment appears to have left them particularly vulnerable to epidemic disease.