Our nation was founded on a bedrock principle that we are all created equal. The project of each generation is to bridge the meaning of those founding words with the realities of changing times -- a never-ending quest to ensure those words ring true for every single American.

Progress on this journey often comes in small increments. Sometimes two steps forward, one step back, compelled by the persistent effort of dedicated citizens. And then sometimes there are days like this, when that slow, steady effort is rewarded with justice that arrives like a thunderbolt.

This decision will end the patchwork system we currently have. It will end the uncertainty hundreds of thousands of same-sex couples face from not knowing whether their marriage, legitimate in the eyes of one state, will remain if they decide to move or even visit another.

This ruling will strengthen all of our communities by offering to all loving same-sex couples the dignity of marriage across this great land.

We are people who believe every child is entitled to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There is so much more work to be done to extend the full promise of America to every American. But today, we can say in no uncertain terms that we’ve made our union a little more perfect. (...)

The right to marry whoever one wishes is an elementary human right compared to which "the right to attend an integrated school, the right to sit where one pleases on a bus, the right to go into any hotel or recreation area or place of amusement, regardless of one’s skin or color or race" are minor indeed. Even

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Scott Alexander, writing at Slate Star Codex, has some words:

So presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has proposed universal free college tuition.

On the one hand, I sympathize with his goals. If you can’t get any job better than 'fast food worker' without a college degree, and poor people can’t afford college degrees, that’s a pretty grim situation, and obviously unfair to the poor.

...

But, well, when we require doctors to get a college degree before they can go to medical school, we’re throwing out [$5 billion], enough to house all the homeless people in the country... Senator Sanders admits that his plan would cost $70 billion per year. That's... enough to give $2000 every year to every American in poverty.

At what point do we say "Actually, no, let's not do that, and just let people hold basic jobs even if they don't cough up a a hundred thousand dollars from somewhere to get a degree in Medieval History"?

...

If I were Sanders, I'd propose a different strategy. Make "college degree" a protected characteristic, like race and religion and sexuality. If you’re not allowed to ask a job candidate whether they’re gay, you’re not allowed to ask them whether they’re a college graduate or not. You can give them all sorts of examinations, you can ask them their high school grades and SAT scores, you can ask their work history, but if you ask them if they have a degree then that’s illegal class-based discrimination and you’re going to jail. I realize this is a blatant violation of my

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I love the place I'm working this summer. (A smallish proprietary trading firm in lower Manhattan.) It has one of the most vibrantly intellectual atmospheres I've seen anywhere, and the problems that we're working on really are interesting, often novel, and eminently practical. For a place that aims to compete in international financial markets by hiring the best mathematical talent that (1) cool math problems and (2) money can buy, it's...just about exactly what you might expect.

In particular, I'm in love with my current research project, which is easily the coolest thing I've been asked to do yet. (I also interned for all of last summer there.) What exactly it is is proprietary (sorry), but it has me mixing machine-learning and stochastic calculus in some really cool ways that have me alternating between coding furiously and filling up whiteboard upon whiteboard with math. Also, I recently got yelled at for taking up too much computing power on the shared intern server, so I got upgraded to supercomputing-cluster access.

The day I got my project (and after I had spent the entire morning figuring out just what it was), I was pretty insufferable. Most of the interns had just gotten our projects, but I was ready to explain mine to anyone who would listen, and would consistently get animated and excited about just how darn cool it was.

On my way out of the office, I ran into one of my mentors from last summer, who asked me what I was working on now, and I launched right into---

---nothing, as the elevator stopped on another floor, someone else got in, and my ready explanation of this tremendously

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Today (a few days ago) from the NYT's Upshot column: When Family-Friendly Policies Backfire.

In Chile, a law requires employers to provide working mothers with child care. One result? Women are paid less.

In Spain, a policy to give parents of young children the right to work part-time has led to a decline in full-time, stable jobs available to all women -- even those who are not mothers.

Elsewhere in Europe, generous maternity leaves have meant that women are much less likely than men to become managers or achieve other high-powered positions at work.

Family-friendly policies can help parents balance jobs and responsibilities at home, and go a long way toward making it possible for women with children to remain in the work force. But these policies often have unintended consequences.

They can end up discouraging employers from hiring women in the first place, because they fear women will leave for long periods or use expensive benefits. "For employers, it becomes much easier to justify discrimination," said Sarah Jane Glynn, director of women's economic policy at the Center for American Progress.

It goes on to rattle off some supporting statistics: In the wake of strong maternity-leave protections, women are more likely to remain employed after having a child, but less likely to be hired or promoted (even if not planning on having

Well, okay, somehow the fact that his life inspired a Hollywood film made it into the obit before the fact that he won the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics. (Note: "Nash called the film an 'artistic' interpretation based on his life of how mental illness could evolve -- one that did not 'describe accurately' the nature of his delusions or treatment.") But in actuality, it's enormously difficult to describe the impact that this man had on the field of Game Theory, which now underlies much of economics, politics, and has even been applied to describe the strategy of penalty shootouts in soccer (where it closely predicts the strategies that top players actually use).

And if you're anything like me, you'll find his 1950 dissertation a refreshing respite from page after page of obituary:

Non-Cooperative Games (typewriter facsimile)

Introduction

Von Neumann and Morgenstern have developed a very fruitful theory of two-person zero-sum games in their book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. This book also contains a theory of n-person games of a type which we would call cooperative. This theory is based on an analysis of the interrelationships of the various coalitions which can be formed by the players of the game.

Our theory, in contradistinction, is based on the absence of coalitions in that it is assumed that each participant acts independently, without collaboration or communication with any of the others.

The notion of an equilibrium

King:

Now I wanted to say something about the fact that we have lived over these last two or three summers with agony and we have seen our cities going up in flames. And I would be the first to say that I am still committed to militant, powerful, massive, non­-violence as the most potent weapon in grappling with the problem from a direct action point of view. I'm absolutely convinced that a riot merely intensifies the fears of the white community while relieving the guilt. And I feel that we must always work with an effective, powerful weapon and method that brings about tangible results.

But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.

And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity. (...)

Derrick Jaxn:

I heard someone say "tearing up the city is not going to make it better"... Y'know, that's some

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This is not what I had in mind.

This is not at all what I had in mind when I wrote, two weeks ago:

Just once, couldn't someone pitch a "controversy" slow and over the plate, so I can opine against [X]ism and for the way in which good people have chosen to oppose it?

And yet...

...they're words which are stuck in my head.

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A week ago, William Murphy, Jr., an attorney representing the surviving family of Freddie Gray, released the statement:

On last Sunday morning at about 8am, the police chased Freddie Gray, a 25 year old healthy man, without any evidence he had committed a crime. His take-down and arrest without probable cause occurred under a police video camera, which taped everything including the police dragging and throwing Freddy into a police vehicle while he screamed in pain. While in police custody, his spine was 80 percent severed at his neck. He lapsed into a coma, died, was resuscitated, stayed in a coma and on Monday, underwent extensive surgery at Shock Trauma to save his life. He clung to life for seven days and died today at approximately 7am. (excerpted)

CNN reports "What we know,