Fighting Inequality

A student opened fire Thursday at a university in Prague, killing at least 14 people, officials said, and injuring more than 20 in the Czech Republic’s worst mass shooting.

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Police in Alabama arrested Crimson Tide offensive lineman Elijah Pritchett on Wednesday for allegedly knowingly passing on a sexually transmitted disease.

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United Launch Alliance received buyout bids from Blue Origin, the space-exploration company owned by Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos, and Cerberus, the private-equity firm led by billionaire Stephen Feinberg, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. ULA is jointly owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and had dominated rocket launches for the U.S. ULA has faced delays in the development of its new rocket named Vulcan Centaur, which will carry Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander in its first launch in January. Blue Origin's BE-4 engine powers the spacecraft's first stage. 

In recent years, ULA's launch dominance has first been challenged and then supplanted by the rise of SpaceX and its less expensive and highly reliable Falcon 9 rocket. ULA has developed the large Vulcan rocket, which is intended to be more cost-competitive with the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy vehicles while also ending ULA's dependence on Russian-made rocket engines. The Vulcan launcher uses the BE-4 rocket engine manufactured by Blue Origin.

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Less than half the employees in the U.S. public education are teachers.

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Fighting Inequality

There are some new distortions that recent studies have exposed the demon inequity in the American culture, specifically in scholastic and demographic analysis.

First, the Chicago school system produces very different results depending on the school attended. Its charter system--which has to be tested into--produces better students with higher scholastic achievement, testing, and progression to higher education and better earnings than the regular public system. Different outcomes. Bias.

Secondly, the children of married parents with two-parent households outperform other children in education accomplishment and advancement--and eventual earnings.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has recognized this education disparity and vowed to stop it and restore "equity" by moving to end the selective enrollment process at Chicago schools. This will create a more homogeneous education experience and eliminate the distortions that develop in such a biased system.

This blow for equity could be applied elsewhere, like the marriage bias. There is, without doubt, better academic performance in households with two parents. An obvious solution is to eliminate it by randomizing the children among married and unmarried families or, more efficiently and less bureaucratically, outlawing marriage and two-parent households altogether.