Raise your hands if you're tired of the same old story from Jared Polis. As long as CDOT maintains its budget for "Road Damage" signs, we'll be okay. And, for Friday, something humorous.
Raise your hands if you're tired of the same old story from Jared Polis.
The Colorado Politics article linked below details how the Colorado Civil Rights Commission has ...
1. Absolutely NO geographic diversity
2. No Republicans since Jared Polis became governor in 2019.
The reasons seem, from the article, pretty complex. They're likely (as reality often is) the result of more than one dynamic.
I won't go into full and glorious detail, but to give you a sense look at screenshot 1 attached.
The law governing who can be on the board changed due to a 2018 law, and the table shows the new rules vs. the old. Obviously the criteria became more proscribed and complex.
Still, more complex does not make for impossible. As I tell my students, people do what they feel is important. If [fill in the blank] is important, it gets done.
The opposite is also true. If you see someone ignore something, if you see them put it off, it is fair to conclude that what they put off is a lesser priority.
Put that idea next to the following quote from the story, the response of our governor to this situation:
"A spokesperson for Gov. Jared Polis told Colorado Politics that the governor 'takes appointments to boards and commissions very seriously and always looks for the best, most qualified candidates for the job while also meeting requirements outlined in statute.' 'As the audit says, the statute is very prescriptive since the changes in 2018, which has made recruiting and retention difficult, and the governor strongly supports making the positions more flexible to help with greater geographic diversity. This has resulted in two current openings for the seven-member board,' the governor's office said. 'The governor previously appointed Ajay Menon, who was from Fort Collins. He looks forward to filling the two current vacancies and encourages qualified Coloradans from across the state to apply.'”
Repeating the governor's statement for emphasis:
"...the governor strongly supports making the positions more flexible to help with greater geographic diversity. This has resulted in two current openings for the seven-member board"
Golly, I really wanted to do well on the test Mr. Gaines. The difficulty of the questions really prevented my doing my best. I really hope our next test can be shorter with easier questions so I can do better!
We all know Polis' history of appointments. Some lowlights? Sure.
--No one east of I-25 on the State Fair Board
--The execrable Ellen Kessler on the State Vet Board
--Somehow (?!) making the case that JeffCo is a major oil producing county or region
This is crap. The lack of diversity on this board (ideological and geographic), the lack of following the rules on the board's makeup is not the law's fault.
It is at best a reflection of how low a priority things like actual representation of the diversity of perspectives in this state really are for our Guv. At worst, it's intentional.
And whichever it is, it's a pattern. Raise your hands if you're tired of this crap by now.
https://www.coloradopolitics.com/news/colorado-civil-rights-commission-has-zero-geographic-diversity-audit-says/article_02355b96-8a4c-11ef-8ba7-0f2dbab1f4ad.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=user-share#google_vignette
Well, as long as CDOT maintains its budget for "Road Damage" signs, I think we'll be okay.
The op ed below covers some familiar ground: how absolutely terrible a job CDOT and our current state government are doing with keeping our highways in good shape.
What I really like about this op ed is the fact that the author takes special note of the absolutely abysmal condition of rural roads.
See for instance his take on the first few miles of I-70 coming into the state from Kansas, US 24 and US 285 (both also out East).
My own rear end and the fillings in my teeth rattle in sympathy with what Mr. Hillman writes; his writing echoes my own personal experience driving out here.
Before I leave you to read the op ed, I want to make special note of the following by quoting:
"Neither Polis nor the [CDOT] Commission seem to care that good highways are essential to rural life where walking and biking are impractical. Nine northeastern counties in CDOT District 11 have been without representation for several months, a vacancy that lies squarely at the feet of Polis who has purged the commission of members who prioritize maintaining rural roads. Sometimes the War on Rural Colorado is waged aggressively. When it comes to rural roads, it’s waged by outright neglect."
Do you find phlegm humorous? Bile?
That time of the week again. Time to wrap up the day and close up shop til Sunday.
That means something for fun, a curiosity.
I was talking with my algebra-based physics class about medical humors and the words that live on in our language today from that history.**
If you are curious to learn more about the old four humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile) theory of medicine, I put a Wikipedia link below and then a blog post that I found interesting about how it played out in medieval times.
I'll skip ahead to sharing the words that I know of that live on from this time. If you know of others, please share.
The three other screenshots attached give the definitions for sanguine, bilious, and phlegmatic.
It is left as an exercise for the interested reader to find out why, say, the personality trait or mood of someone labeled sanguine would connect to one of the four humors.
One last thing, humorism in medicine speaks loudly to the importance of science.
If you were alive way back when, and your experience as to what the body contained was greatly informed by fluids that came from the body, it might be natural to assume that an excess of one might relate to other observable symptoms.
That is, in a certain sense the philosophy behind humorism (and in my mind it's cousins ayurvedick and Chinese medicines), is commonsensical, complete.
But you must remember that the standard of what defines truth in science is not whether or not a given idea makes sense. Empirical, experimental verification is the standard.
When we started applying that standard to what we knew about our bodies and medicine in general, its (medicine's) ability to fix things was greatly improved.
That's it for today. Be sanguine out there and not bilious.
See you on Sunday!
**Algebra-based physics is by far and away the most popular with those heading to medical/veterinary fields--I will occasionally get some high-flyers in my Calc-based physics, but it's rare.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism
https://timothyrjeveland.com/medieval-bloodletting-and-the-four-humors/
Not rural, I live in the metro area, but I bought a new car two years ago. So far thanks to highway damage (mostly I-76) I've had to replace three tires, two rims and a control arm. Thanks CDOT!