's good for you, the coffee part.

Well, it's Black History Month, and despite Trump getting rid of all the DEI in the government, he did do a proclamation recognizing it. And he called out some of the notable, famous black contributors to America. He included Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and then also threw in more modern names like Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas.

Well, here's my take on that. I think Black History Month was a great idea. I also think affirmative action was necessary, even though it didn't work out for me. Didn't work out for me. But we probably needed to do something to kickstart things, to get a little more openness and diversity and all that.

However, it's 2025. When I see Black History Month, do I say to myself, wow, black people have contributed so much to America? Well, yes, that's sort of the point of it. But I already knew that. And all you have to do is turn on the television and it's full of successful black people in every domain, every domain: politics, entertainment. So it feels like having your own month has now gone from a good idea, a solidly good idea, to it feels a little condescending. It feels like it's not giving black Americans what they hoped for, and it just sort of looks like a pat on the head. It's almost like we should have outgrown it by now.

And let me ask you this. Do you think Thomas Sowell would be happy that his name was on the list of great black Americans? I don't know, but I'm not entirely sure he'd be happy about being on the list. And you know, I'm no expert on Thomas Sowell or I can't read his mind, but here's what I think he'd like a lot more: some great American economists include this person, this person, Thomas Sowell. How about just being on the list of really important, unusually effective economists? Now that's a compliment, and then just be done with it.

So I don't think I'm too far off base, because Pete Hegseth in the Department of Defense said that no longer will the Department of Defense host or celebrate any of these cultural awareness months. Now if you don't know how many there are, besides Black History Month there's Women's History Month, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, you've got Pride Month, you've got National Hispanic Heritage Month, National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and National American Indian Heritage Month. Well, I call that Native American because I'm not a racist. My God.

Anyway, so you could go to these events but you can't do anything in your official capacity if you're in the Department of Defense. I think that is the correct point of view for the Department of Defense, because if they're focused on anything but their lethality, as Pete Hegseth likes to point out, they're taking their eye off the ball.

Now obviously you can't spend 24 hours a day working on your lethality. There are other things in life. But I do think this is a step in the right direction, because as soon as you call out some groups, all the other groups are going to say, where's my month? Why don't I get a month? I don't know. Everybody else did.

Over at Stanford University they used their AI to look at faces, and apparently they can tell if you're gay or straight by looking at your face. We've talked about this before, but it made me think. Do you remember, maybe it was the 60s or 70s