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Frank Drebin

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Everything posted by Frank Drebin

  1. Where I live in Houston, it's Texas by a mile. Certain suburbs like Cypress are absolutely Aggie dominated.
  2. Gundy is a hell of a coach. When he is done, it's extremely unlikely that the next few Okie State coaches can even come close to replicating what he has accomplished.
  3. The good thing is they can get great deals on one-way moving truck rentals to the states they do like.
  4. I try not to take too much from any one game. Auburn's offense sucked last year. They have a better offensive coach this year and they still have a defense. Auburn has at least a 30 percent chance of winning. The A&M O-line and secondary are terrible. That can get your ass beat no matter the rest of the team. And the OL can get their concussion prone QB knocked right out.
  5. The average winter temperatures in Whitefish are lower than Aspen, Vail, Telluride, etc. and significantly lower than Breckenridge. Whitefish is at 3,000 feet so it is not as cold as CO mountain towns. Lower elevation has a lot of other benefits too. Especially once you get older -- a lot of olds have trouble with altitudes of 7k or higher.
  6. I can see that sad loser Swayze furiously posting untrue bullshit about me, usually within a couple minutes of my post, and love that I never have to read any of it. My ignore list is robust and makes this site great.
  7. It is not cheap. But I think Whitefish is a really, really solid investment that will appreciate. And is nothing like the crazy prices you see in Telluride, Aspen, and Jackson Hole. You are also close to Kalispell and its airport. I was paying $30 for a burger in Aspen last summer. It has always been expensive. I have been going there forever. But in the last 6-7 years it has gotten absurd.
  8. Which state government should we emulate, in your opinion?
  9. Colorado locals hating Texans and out of state property owners has been a thing forever. I remember complaints going back to the early 80s when my family first bought property there. The proliferation of short term rentals has exacerbated the problem, so I can certainly understand them being pissed about not being able to live in the towns they work in while staring at $10 to 50 million dollar giant houses that stay empty 90% of the time or all the condos that are short term rentals. There are still some cool mountain places that are affordable. If I was looking for a place in CO at today's prices, I would consider something in or around Salida. But most of the resort towns have gotten stupid expensive. I am actually looking now at Montana. Found a place in Whitefish that could be perfect. On the verge of permanently noping out of Texas summers.
  10. Because you can play basketball indoors when it is cold out.
  11. Love Deion. But assuming he succeeds, he ain't staying in the Big 12 or Colorado. He will want to be on the big stage.
  12. This is old data but the results of current data is similar. Here is a blog post explaining the reasoning for adjusting NAEP scores, and NAEP scores are the only standardized tests between the 50 states for public schools: Longhorns 17, Badgers 1 Please pardon this brief departure from my normal folderol, but every so often a member of the chattering class issues a nugget of stupidity so egregious that no amount of mockery will suffice. Particularly when the issuer of said stupidity holds a Nobel Prize. Case in point: Paul Krugman. The Times' staff economics blowhard recently typed, re the state of education in Texas: And in low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings. Nationally, the state ranks fifth in child poverty; it leads in the percentage of children without health insurance. And only 78 percent of Texas children are in excellent or very good health, significantly below the national average. Similarly, The Economist passes on what appears to be the cut-'n'-paste lefty factoid du jour: Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows: South Carolina – 50th North Carolina – 49th Georgia – 48th Texas – 47th Virginia – 44th If you are wondering, Wisconsin, with its collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the country. The point being, I suppose, is that unionized teachers stand as a thin chalk-stained line keeping Wisconsin from descending into the dystopian non-union educational hellscape of Texas. Interesting, if it wasn't complete bullshit. As a son of Iowa, I'm no stranger to bragging about my home state's ranking on various standardized test. Like Wisconsin we Iowans usually rank near the top of the heap on average ACT/SAT scores. We are usually joined there by Minnesota, Nebraska, and the various Dakotas; Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire... ... beginning to see a pattern? Perhaps because a state's "average ACT/SAT" is, for all intents and purposes, a proxy for the percent of white people who live there. In fact, the lion's share of state-to-state variance in test scores is accounted for by differences in ethnic composition. Minority students - regardless of state residence - tend to score lower than white students on standardized test, and the higher the proportion of minority students in a state the lower its overall test scores tend to be. Please note: this has nothing to do with innate ability or aptitude. Quite to the contrary, I believe the test gap between minority students and white students can be attributed to differences in socioeconomic status. And poverty. And yes, racism. And yes, family structure. Whatever combination of reasons, the gap exists, and it's mathematical sophistry to compare the combined average test scores in a state like Wisconsin (4% black, 4% Hispanic) with a state like Texas (12% black, 30% Hispanic). So how to compare educational achievement between two states with such dissimilar populations? In data analysis this is usually done by treating ethnicity as a "covariate." A very simple way to do this is by comparing educational achievement between states within the same ethnic group. In other words, do black students perform better in Wisconsin than Texas? Do Hispanic students perform better in Wisconsin or Texas? White students? If Wisconsin's kids consistently beat their Texas counterparts, after controlling for ethnicity, then there's a strong case that maybe Texas schools ought to become a union shop. Luckily, there is data to answer this question via the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The NAEP is an annual standardized test given to 4th and 8th graders around the country to measure proficiency in math, science, and reading. Participation is fairly universal; if you've had a 4th or 8th grader in the last few years, you're probably familiar with it. Results are compiled on the NAEP website, broken down by grade, state, subject and ethnicity. So how does brokeass, dumbass, redneck Texas stack up against progressive unionized Wisconsin? 2009 4th Grade Math White students: Texas 254, Wisconsin 250 (national average 248) Black students: Texas 231, Wisconsin 217 (national 222) Hispanic students: Texas 233, Wisconsin 228 (national 227) 2009 8th Grade Math White students: Texas 301, Wisconsin 294 (national 294) Black students: Texas 272, Wisconsin 254 (national 260) Hispanic students: Texas 277, Wisconsin 268 (national 260) 2009 4th Grade Reading White students: Texas 232, Wisconsin 227 (national 229) Black students: Texas 213, Wisconsin 192 (national 204) Hispanic students: Texas 210, Wisconsin 202 (national 204) 2009 8th Grade Reading White students: Texas 273, Wisconsin 271 (national 271) Black students: Texas 249, Wisconsin 238 (national 245) Hispanic students: Texas 251, Wisconsin 250 (national 248) 2009 4th Grade Science White students: Texas 168, Wisconsin 164 (national 162) Black students: Texas 139, Wisconsin 121 (national 127) Hispanic students: Wisconsin 138, Texas 136 (national 130) 2009 8th Grade Science White students: Texas 167, Wisconsin 165 (national 161) Black students: Texas 133, Wisconsin 120 (national 125) Hispanic students: Texas 141, Wisconsin 134 (national 131) To recap: white students in Texas perform better than white students in Wisconsin, black students in Texas perform better than black students in Wisconsin, Hispanic students in Texas perform better than Hispanic students in Wisconsin. In 18 separate ethnicity-controlled comparisons, the only one where Wisconsin students performed better than their peers in Texas was 4th grade science for Hispanic students (statistically insignificant), and this was reversed by 8th grade. Further, Texas students exceeded the national average for their ethnic cohort in all 18 comparisons; Wisconsinites were below the national average in 8, above average in 8. Perhaps the most striking thing in these numbers is the within-state gap between white and minority students. Not only did white Texas students outperform white Wisconsin students, the gap between white students and minority students in Texas was much less than the gap between white and minority students in Wisconsin. In other words, students are better off in Texas schools than in Wisconsin schools - especially minority students. Conclusion: instead of chanting slogans in Madison, maybe it's time for Wisconsin teachers to take refresher lessons from their non-union counterparts in the Lone Star State. https://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/longhorns-17-badgers-1.html
  13. The Urban Institute, a liberal think tank, does the adjustments, not me. Do you think raw scores are a better indicator of teacher and school performance than adjusted scores? You want to compare Eanes' raw NAEP scores to HISD's to determine which schools are doing the best job educating or do you think adjusted scores would be better? What is your specific objection to adjusted NAEP scores other than hating the results?
  14. Texas could have filed a dec action in a favorable forum seeking a ruling that sovereign immunity trumps the grant of rights. There is a decent chance of prevailing.
  15. Yes, we know kids at Lake Travis do not read and are just stupid.
  16. The arguments here are a joke. They are made by a bunch of reddit type dorks who hate Texas politics so they want to shit on everything about the state so they can exercise confirmation bias. These are not just NAEP scores. They are NAEP scores adjusted for demographics by the Urban Institute, which is a liberal think tank. https://apps.urban.org/features/naep/ Often called the “nation’s report card,” the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading and mathematics assessments are administered to a representative sample of fourth- and eighth-grade students in each state every two years. NAEP scores offer something rare in education policy: data that are standardized across states and across time. Policymakers and pundits seize upon these data as evidence to support their preferred policies. But comparing NAEP scores assumes that states serve the same students—and we know they don’t. A better way to compare and talk about NAEP performance is to use adjusted NAEP scores that account for demographic differences across students in each state. These adjusted scores allow for students to be compared with their demographically similar peers using factors such as race, receipt of special education services, and status as an English language learner. These are factors we know can affect test results, yet they are not shown in NAEP scores. The interactive tool below brings those adjusted NAEP scores to life.
  17. Texas seems to always do very well in NAEP tests when you adjust for demographics. I’d dispute that our public school are a joke.
  18. Have worn that pattern and it’s been my favorite for 40 years. Thrilled it’s back now. I have been able to add to my repertoire.
  19. Last weekend in Frio County. My son limited three days in a row.
  20. 11 points to TSU is close? I'd say that was a pretty comfortable win. BU never got it to single digits during the last 25 minutes -- the TSU lead was 11 to 18 points.
  21. I don't think I had ever heard of mahjong until a few years ago. Now my wife and her friends get together at least once a week at someone's house or the club and play. I think it's great. These are all early to mid 40s women. For me socially, I get together with friends for golf and hunting pretty regular. Our core friend group often takes our kids hunting, fishing, camping or skiing together for a weekend trip about once a month. In my opinion, nothing beats spending time outdoors with friends and family. My son and I and some other dads spent Thursday to Sunday in South Texas dove hunting last weekend. Phones were barely used other than taking photos. As I get older, I try and do more and more outdoors and specific trips. During the week, I have almost no time to socialize outside of maybe one lunch per week with friends. I have work, church, exercise, and kids stuff that basically keeps me jam packed from when I wake up at 530 until I go to bed at ten. Now some of that includes interacting with friends and colleagues. But weekends are really when I can socialize meaningfully. And during summer I spend most of it in the mountains. Work remote early in morning for a few hours then do fun stuff the rest. I have very close friends who are always in mountains same time as us coming and going. And many of them, I spend more time with in Colorado, and more quality time, than I do in Houston and some live with a few hundred yards of me. I do think society is going to have to figure out something about smart phones and social media.
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