Background Circumstances

Title VII prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.  Under our Title VII precedents, a plaintiff may make out a prima facie case of disparate treatment by showing "that she applied for an available position for which she was qualified, but was rejected under circumstances which give rise to an inference of unlawful discrimination." Texas Dept. of Community Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U. S. 248, 253 (1981).

The question in this case is whether, to satisfy that prima facie burden, a plaintiff who is a member of a majority group must also show " 'background circumstances to support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.' " 87 F. 4th 822, 825 (CA6 2023) (per curiam).  We hold that this additional "background circumstances" requirement is not consistent with Title VII's text or our case law construing the statute.  Accordingly, we vacate the judgment below and remand for application of the proper prima facie standard.

-- Justice Jackson, for the unanimous Supreme Court of the United States in Marlean A. Ames, Petitioner v Ohio Department of Youth Services, in which the court ruled that cases of reverse discrimination require no higher standard of proof than other discrimination cases (5 June 2025)

Getting There

It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.  When I have clarified and exhausted a subject, then I turn away from it, in order to go into darkness again.  The never-satisfied man is so strange; if he has completed a structure, then it is not in order to dwell in it peacefully, but in order to begin another.  I imagine the world conqueror must feel thus, who, after one kingdom is scarcely conquered, stretches out his arms for others.

-- Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777 - 1855), German mathematician, astronomer and physicist, Letter to Farkas Bolyai (2 September 1808)

Equally Convenient

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

-- Henri Poincaré (1854 - 1912), French mathematician, theoretical physicist, and philosopher of science, Science and Hypothesis (1901), Preface, Dover abridged edition (1952), p. xxii

What Do We Get For That?

The total actual 2024 budget to run the country was about 7 trillion dollars.  That means the NASA budget was only 0.004 of the national budget -- less than half a percent.  For every hundred dollars the US government spent, it put 40 cents in the bucket for NASA.

And what do we get for that?  The Universe. 

Missions to Mercury, Venus, Jupiter.  Landers on Mars, telescopes that peer through the depths of the cosmos, a fleet of spacecraft monitoring the Sun, the star to which we owe our existence.  The abject awe and wonder of images of a glorious cosmos.  The first A in NASA is for Aeronautics, too; research that makes air travel better, faster, and safer.  NASA science includes observing and monitoring our own planet as well, making satellites that track our water, atmosphere, and land. NASA scientists study climate change, one of the single biggest existential threats to humanity.

NASA employs about 18,000 people across all 50 states (and that doesn't include contractors, of which I was one for many years, and people such as  academics who have NASA grants).  NASA partners with space agencies around the world, a diversified portfolio that guarantees the best scientific research always pushing past the cutting edge and accelerating our understanding of, well, everything. 

-- Philip Plait, Bad Astronomy Newsletter, "Trump threatens to eviscerate NASA" (2 June 2025)