DOJ Thinks Firefighter Math is Racist

Now, here's a subject I do know something about: firefighter examinations in North Carolina. I've taken several of the certification exams in the firefighter series as part of my training as a volunteer; I'm also a fully certified Technical Rescuer in rope rescue, water rescue (Swiftwater and still water), and wilderness rescue, and those certifications come out of the same department (the Department of Insurance, whose elected head is ex officio State Fire Marshal as well).

[T]he lawsuits... claim that tests are racist because blacks fail them at a higher percentage than whites, and require cash awards to be paid to those blacks who failed them. Most blacks generally pass the tests, and the lawsuits do not explain how the tests can be racist against only some blacks. Blacks who passed the tests are excluded from the financial payouts.

Last week, Durham, North Carolina settled with the DOJ, saying blacks failed the tests required to become a firefighter more often, and “Employers should identify and eliminate practices that have a disparate impact based on race.” It said the Durham Fire Department must pay nearly a million dollars to people who failed the test, and hire up to 16 of them.

While the DOJ said the tests were not relevant to actually being a good firefighter, an online practice test suggests that it is directly relevant, that people could die if such firefighters were hired. One question asks if a building is 350 feet away, how many 60-foot hoses would be needed.

The tests are of uneven quality at best. The way they work is that the questions are drawn at random from a large database of test questions that were approved in advance, and the instructor has no way of knowing which questions will appear. The test is administered by a proctor, so the instructor doesn't even see the test on the day of the test. 

The intent is to foster honest testing, but the effects entail that there is no guarantee that the firefighters will have been taught the material on which they are tested. The testing database is only reviewed occasionally, so there are reasonable odds that a question might appear that is out of date. Two examples: in the helicopter rescue operations test we were asked one question about an outdated practice dating to pilots who would have been trained on Medievac in Vietnam; on another occasion, we were asked multiple technical questions about standards for Type I Harnesses, which no longer exist because that entire type was disqualified as acceptable by the NFPA standard a long time ago.

I've also seen test answers that were outright violations of logic. For example, once we received a question about how much heat a device could be exposed to before needing to be replaced. The answers were, I believe, 100 degrees, 200 degrees, 240 degrees, and 300 degrees. Logically only 300 could be correct given that only one answer was acceptable, because if you were exposed to 300 degrees you were also exposed to at least 240, 200, and 100 as well. However, the correct answer was (IIRC) 240, even though being exposed to 300 degrees would exceed that standard also.

So there's a lot of cramming and memorization, just stuffing your head with the exact technical figures that are likely to turn up on a test. Almost none of it is relevant to an emergency, as the decisions about what equipment you will have on the occasion were made long ago when the stuff was purchased -- and the purchases were made by people who had ample leisure to check the technical standards and be sure they were correct. 

I don't think the tests are racist, unless there's a racial disparity in the ability to memorize trivia. I do think they're not the most useful way to test qualifications. As for the one question they ask in the article, maybe it's helpful to know that you will need six hose sections; but probably you aren't going to have an exact measurement of the distance, and you'll just keep adding hose until you get there. I have trouble imagining an occasion when you'd park the apparatus 350 feet away from the fire you wanted to fight anyway; more likely you'll be parked a lot closer, and using the hoses to link multiple apparatus together to boost pressure (and, in rural environments without fireplugs, to increase your water supply or to enable tankers to tie in and out as they go to get more).

The whole system could usefully be rethought. The DOJ's effort, however, is not likely to improve it because it isn't aimed at the parts that don't work well.

VDH on Harris' Mythology

The noted historian raises many of the strange things we are asked to believe in spite of evidence to the contrary, or serious omissions.

My favorite of these is that she was raised in a "middle-class" household. This is meant to make her sound like an ordinary American, as almost all of America thinks of itself as "middle class" even though that isn't statistically feasible. 

Yet to be 'middle class' means less to be part of an economic category, and more to have certain values. Both of her parents were college professors, one feminist and one Marxist, each deeply critical in its way of that cultural 'middle class' that they refer to as the bourgeoisie. (In this she is very like Obama, except that both of her parents were aliens and she mostly grew up not in Hawaii but in a foreign country, Canada.) College professors earn a comfortable living; the only reality behind the claim that she was 'middle class' comes from the fact that her parents divorced, leading to straitened circumstances she would not have experienced if they had done that most 'middle class' thing and "stayed together for the children."

As we discussed some time ago, what she actually comes from is a caste -- the Brahmins -- that is so famously upper-class that its name was assumed by the historic elite of Boston. Her values are the values of the academic heights that can continue to entertain fantasies like Marxism, generation after generation, because they are so insulated from pragmatic realities. Vladimir Lenin wrote a book about why Marxism hadn't come true more than a hundred years ago, but Marxists and 'Marxian' economists and historians like her father remain gainfully employed at universities around the world. 

Oh, and she likes Glocks. Sure. 

Columbus Day

Today Columbus Day is celebrated, in the words of Joe Biden as a monument to Italian-Americans. It's still better than his replacement's version.

As we stand on the brink of another age of exploration, let us not forget to celebrate the spirit that drove those earlier explorers to seek new lands and go beyond known frontiers of knowledge. We may ourselves know children who will go on to explore farther reaches yet. They will need courage and confidence. Knowing they come from a heritage of such feats will be helpful to them.

Let's go to the stars. Ad astra per aspera.

'Not Worse than Landmines'

The least discriminate weapon in common military use is the landmine; they are nevertheless very commonly used because of their military utility. One of the AI bros in Silicon Valley thinks he's thus got a great argument for building killer robots:

'The U.S.’s adversaries “use phrases that sound really good in a sound bite: Well, can’t you agree that a robot should never be able to decide who lives and dies?” Luckey said during a talk earlier this month at Pepperdine University. “And my point to them is, where’s the moral high ground in a landmine that can’t tell the difference between a school bus full of kids and a Russian tank?”'

Unlike rifles, which are the weapon of democracy and a tool of equality, automated killing is a tool of oligarchy. The ability to manufacture and deploy large numbers of landmines that will kill anyone who comes close is an industrial ability that favors the state, not the individual. Things that seem justifiable by analogy to landmines are things wisely avoided. The world would be a better place without them.

At War Again

The US is deploying THAAD to protect Israel in its current war. I support this war, and Israel, but did Congress debate this entry into a regional war at all? Did it even become a matter of debate in the Presidential campaign? You’d think that it might, given that the Democratic administration has a base divided over the war.  

Democrats control 2/3rds of the elected branches. How much democracy is really going on here? We keep hearing that it’s important, and on the ballot. Is it really?

Full anti-Musk freakout mode

I've been re-reading with pleasure a John Ringo 2010 scifi adventure called "Live Free or Die," about a one-man engineering/entrepreneurial powerhouse's effort to combat an extraterrestrial invasion. It's an enjoyable romp, but on this reading I'm noticing a remarkable pre-figuring of the Elon Musk phenomenon.

When the action starts, hostile aliens have emerged through a galactic gate and cratered Earth's economy by demanding all its heavy metals as tribute. Our hero is a down-on-his luck ex-IT engineer who makes ends meet by multiple odd jobs. The hostile aliens being only one of the alien races in contact with Earth, the hero takes a stab at finding any non-heavy-metal terrestrial product that might interest the friendlier ETs, and stumbles by luck on a substance that has an irresistable psychic effect on them.

Abruptly the richest man in the world, the hero quickly applies his new leverage to master alien technology, resist the bad-guy ETs, and launch mankind into a new era. Naturally he incurs the wrath of government bureaucrats and the press in a way that quite sharply resembles the current anti-Musk clown show. This book being written before iPhones (to judge by the references to Blackberries as the ultimate in net-linked accessories), Ringo is unlikely to have had Musk in mind, but it's great fun to see how good his guesses were. That's one of my favorites parts of scifi, anyway, seeing which authors guessed trends early. Bonus points if the author is one of the few conservative free-market enthusiasts publishing in the field.

"Live Free or Die" follows the basic Heinlein juvenile-series formula: the protagonist is posited as Everyman, but of course is unusually bright, self-directed, trained in basic science in engineering, and Boy Scout to the core. Plunged into conflict, he rises to the occasion, vaulting through level after higher level of influence and crisis, until he saves the world. A good example is the highly entertaining "Have Space Suit--Will Travel," a book I'll never get tired of.