NOTE TO VISITORS
Hello all. Since we've stopped selling tables, I decided to re-work the website to add some functionality to it that has nothing to do with the old business. If you would like help with building your own table, check out the Beer Pong Tables link on the left, or just email me.Tuesday, June 30 2009
Ricci v. DeStefano
I was wondering what people thought about the case involving the Connecticut Firefighters, testing and discrimination. I thought Roy might especially have some insight considering his involvement with educational measurements and standards or whatever it was.
I will say I feel bad for New Haven officials - they probably would've gotten sued whether or not they certified the results. I believe the city was right to pause for a moment and to assess whether or not the test was biased, and I probably wouldn't have argued against such an action if I was part of the team that did that, but I do feel that given the specifics of this case, the correct judgment was reached.
The legalese is hard for me to parse, but I feel that ultimately the city used the results of the test as prima facie evidence that the test had a racial bias, and it appears that that alone is not enough evidence to suggest the test was flawed. If 18 of those that passed were white, out of 118, that does seem to ring alarm bells. But how many civil agencies give tests like this every year? Maryland alone has 139 fire agencies and 95 law enforcement agencies. Add up all the civil agencies across all the jurisdictions we have in this country, and you're bound to have outliers like this pop up (I think… Roy?)
Rick posted this at 3:04 PM on Jun 30Monday, June 22 2009
Smoke
Interesting article about a guy who took up smoking for a month to write about it.
Tuesday, June 16 2009
Extract
Probably behind the curve on this, but Mike Judge is coming out with a new movie.
