22 December 2011

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

 


You may have missed...


Economic analysis from the clear-eyed, the watchful, with a minimum of bollocks...

Geopolitical musings that would make the Pentagon spit out its coffee...

Immigration stories one is unlikely to read in the corporate-owned or government-owned press...

Social issues boiled down to their biological essence...

Racial co-existence analyzed without the sugar-coating...

Behavior and genetics from a scientific perspective...


Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all-- to those who can see, to those who cannot, and to those whose eyes are just barely beginning to open.

12 December 2011

Ghost in the Machine?

(from the archives...)


'Hope springs eternal.'


Truer words were never spoken of the inner workings of the Human Mind.


Polite fictions get us through the day.

'I'm still attracted to my spouse.'
'I enjoy my job.'
'I love all my children equally.'
'I'm special.'

We tell polite fictions to our children.

'With hard work, you can be anything you want to be.'
'You'll find true love.  There's someone for everyone.'
'When you die, you go... to a nice place.'


And so forth.

04 December 2011

Our Crimes, Ourselves, Part II



As we have seen, white people's criminality has varied greatly over time and space.  W.A. Bonger in the 1940s walked us through Jewish, Mediterranean, Alpine, Nordic, Ugro-Finn, and Dinaric (Slavic) crime rates from his time period.  Such differences, we've argued, are nothing to wring one's hands over, but a simple reality for policy-makers to take into account.

Similarly, for as long as Africans and Europeans have co-existed on North American soil, these two admittedly large and diverse groups have, in the aggregate, shown markedly different criminal tendencies.  The differences seem to be getting more and more marked, and it has become conservative dogma that post-1960s Great Society programs are to blame.

This is true to a point.  As we've seen, any human can be incentivized to be parasitic, be he the son of West Africans or Albion's seed.

But long before public welfare handouts were even a twinkle in LBJ's eye, Afros and Euros committed crime differently in America.  How differently?


26 November 2011

Our Crimes, Ourselves



Part of the Late Twentieth Century Delusion is an aggressive (but selective) blank-slatism that assumes each ethnic / gender group should show up in prisons, universities, and space shuttle missions in precise proportion to its percentage in the general population. (The U.S.'s billion-dollar sports industry excepted.)

Prisons in particular have vexed affirmative-action policy-makers, as they stubbornly refuse to fill up with 72% Euros, 12% Afros, 12% Hispanics, and 4% Asians (to say nothing of 50% male / 50% female).  In more sensible times, social scientists noticed that different groups committed different amounts and types of crimes, and imagined possible reasons why.

"Non-hispanic white", that U.S. Census monolith, is itself a racial stew whose components have long fascinated ethnographers.  Dutch sociologist W.A. Bonger combed through a great many studies on ethnic European criminality and presented his findings in the 1943 tome Race and Crime.  Clearly ill at ease with the determinist worldview and openly derisive of German race science, Bonger was still a man of his age, allowing himself speculations on ethnicity that would ban him from today's academia.  (To say nothing of the title of his book.)

What did he find?


19 November 2011

Provisioning...or Mating?



Morality or Biology?  Those engaged in the culture wars tend to focus on the first; those combing through the genome, the second.  In 'Paternal Provisioning versus Mate Seeking in Human Populations,' Edward M. Miller offers us tantalizing insight into the why of some of our African brethren's puzzling behavior.  An exercise of historical interest, perhaps, to compare his conclusions with the anthropological observations of those who've gone before us.   

Says Miller [all emphasis ours]:

'In some species, males devote more effort to seeking mating opportunities. In other species, they devote more effort to assisting their offspring. In each species, males evolve to use the strategy that most promotes their fitness.

'[...] In warm climates, females typically can gather enough food for themselves and their children. In cold climates, hunting is required to survive winter, and females typically do not hunt (other than for easily captured small game). Hence, offspring survival requires male provisioning in cold climates. Thus, cold climate males were selected to devote more efforts to provisioning, and less to seeking matings. In warm climates, such male provisioning was not essential, even if desirable.'

12 November 2011

'Lewd, idle, froward, and unconstant'


                            'Yes, Zeus made this the greatest pain of all:
                             Woman.
                            A man who's with a woman can't get through
                            a single day without a troubled mind.'
           
                                                      Semonides of Amorgos, 'Woman,' 7th century B.C.

           Receptionist, to novelist Melvin Udall:   'How do you write women so well?'
        Melvin Udall:   'I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.'

                                           Mark Andrus, 'As Good As It Gets,' 1997 A.D.



Those born and raised amid the Late Twentieth Century Delusion were force-fed many lies.  'Race is only skin-deep,' for one.  'Anything unpleasant happening anywhere on the planet is somehow attributable to Europeans'-- We've all heard that one.  But perhaps the most insidious?

'There are no real differences between women and men.'

How silly it sounds, and yet how thoroughly this bêtise has seized the spirits of our educated classes.  Denying it can cost you your professional reputation, the respect of your peers, even your plum job as president of Harvard.

But reaction has set in. The radical (for our days) notion that women are not the same as men has found eloquent defenders, from the unsentimental Chateau Heartiste to the optimistic Dalrock.  Perusing such sites could prove demoralizing for woman weaned on Late Twentieth Century Delusion.  Yet it is often the case that in criticism lies truth.  Disagreeable truth, but isn't much truth disagreeable?

In this realm as in many others, men who came before us had things to say, though they are today considered high heresy. When a group we belong to is criticized, our first reaction is to shift blame.  The problem lies not with us, no, it lies with you, you hater of the feminine, you misogynist.  And yet... Looking at ourselves through the eyes of this Other Tribe, these Men, could tell us much.   Dare we meet these dead men's gazes unflinchingly?
 

05 November 2011

More Able and Less Able



The More Able will dominate the Less Able, always and everywhere.

Right-thinking people in the West are indignant about Europe's past colonial plunders.  They are furious at the thought of Western companies swooping in to buy up state assets from highly-indebted African countries.  More sanguine are they, however, about this:

"Roll up, roll up, roll up. Elgin Marbles, Acropolis, Mykonos. Anyone? You don't have to be an ancient Greek historian to understand the significance of it. But maybe it helps.  [...]  Under pressure to raise €50bn as the quid pro quo for its massive €110bn (£98bn) bail-out, Greece is being forced to hawk its industrial and commercial backbone to the highest bidder."

Who's buying?


29 October 2011

Lied to?



Those who remarked upon racial differences in the past, we've been promised, did so for one reason: They were European Supremacists.  Anyone who attempted to quantify such differences was driven by the need to prove his own group's superiority.  'Don't read those books,' we're told as youngsters, 'they're a lot of racist nonsense.'

So we don't.  And they molder on library shelves, relics to forget about.

Until we do.

And see we've been deceived.



22 October 2011

Chalk and cheese


"Our Italian colleagues from University of Rome Tor Vergata and University of Parma proposed 
an idea that [as far as] public feelings of security and trust in the judicial system, southern and northern Italy should be treated as two separate countries. 
In their view, they are as different as chalk and cheese: in the northern part,
the sense of necessity in terms of obeying the rules and moral condemnation of corruptive conduct in authoritative organs is much higher than in the South."  



How many 'nations' can a nation contain?  Depends on whom one asks.  Inhabitants of the former Yugoslavia, the former Sudan, the former Rhodesia could perhaps enlighten us.  Or those living in the current Kashmir, or Caucusus, or Flanders.

Richard Griggs and Peter Hocknell have pegged the number of actual nations existing on planet earth at between 6000 and 9000.  Europe alone, they say, is home to over one hundred.  Lines drawn on maps by generals and statesmen tell us lies and half-truths.  One nation, different beliefs, different values, different characters: What can a map really tell us?

Here, for example, is the nation known as the Italian Republic:




15 October 2011

Ethnic Co-existence, Yesterday



People of our age have adopted the curious habit of considering ourselves more advanced, better informed, more wise, than the people of any generation who came before us.

This is new.

Peoples past always looked backwards toward a "golden age" of prosperity and wisdom whose great men were giants of philosophy, of whom we today are but a pale reflection.  Why this change of heart among moderns?

Our technical innovation?  Cuisinarts and contact lenses and polystyrene beer cozies are the proof that we have transcended our forebears in sagacity?

It would appear so, as even the opinions of our most prominent ancestors from two or three centuries past are today often held up to ridicule.  This is particularly so when it comes to that most delicate of modern questions, ethnic co-habitation.  The zeitgeist of our age, here in the West at the start of the 21st century, holds that each neighborhood should be an even blend of many ethnic groups:  salt and pepper and cinammon and cumin put into the same shaker, thoroughly mixed, and sprinkled liberally.

Our forebears, even the most illustrious, would find such a thought curious indeed.

19 August 2011

King of night vision, king of insight?


[Desperately battling a looming academic deadline but having been soothed by repeated listenings of these two formidable women's tribute to Galileo, I shall bow to necessity and take this opportunity to (re-)share my own:]   

HERESY






What is it?



 Nicolaus Copernicus, the “heretical” 16th-century astronomer who was buried in an unmarked grave nearly 500 years ago, was rehabilitated by the Roman Catholic Church this weekend as his remains were reburied in the Polish cathedral where he had once been a canon.

The ceremonial reburial of Copernicus in a tomb in the medieval cathedral at Frombork on Poland’s Baltic coast is seen as a final sign of the Church’s repentance for its treatment of the scientist over his theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun, declared heretical by the Vatican in 1616.

"Heretical?"  Copernicus wasn't a "heretical" astronomer; he was a heretical astronomer.  The Pope being the Infinite's mouthpiece, presumably when he declares something a heresy he means it.  Whatever god is speaking to the current Pope doesn't get to play "backsies" with the one who spoke to Paul V.

The Times doesn't note the year the Vatican finally proclaimed heliocentrism the truth: 1992. 

376 years later.

But no matter.

Hand-wringing over religious heresy (in Christendom anyway) has gone the way of the dodo.  Why dredge up this dreadful word?


11 August 2011

Wha'ever it is...


It was madness, it was good fun . . . showing the rich people we can do what we want . . . it’s the governmen’s fault. The Conserva’ives, Yeah, wha’ever it is . . . who it is. I dunno.

Derek Turner at Alternative Right has kindly posted the above tale, recounted by, as he puts it, one of 'two girl geniuses interviewed by BBC Radio 4, sitting in the street at 9.30am drinking stolen rosé to refresh their maidenly parts after a hectic night of after-hours shopping.'

The destruction of the above-pictured historic Carpetright Building (survivor of the Blitz), as well as countless other homes, businesses, cars, livelihoods, and lives these last five days in England seems to have taken most observers completely by surprise. 

Not here.

The riots' origins in an Afro-Caribbean immigrant neighborhood, of course, surprised few.  Europe's slow colonization  by its erstwhile colonized these last forty years has birthed so much urban violence that it's nearly benumbed us.  Just another part of the landscape at this point: 'Welcome to Europe, don't miss our charming Biergartens, our incomparable croissants, our car-torching immigrants...'

But the photos don't lie.  This orgy of mindless destruction and theft may have been launched by Afros, but their ranks were fast swelled by an army of pure-souche, homegrown, sons-of-the-soil Englishmen, many of whom managed to rival and even surpass their Afro counterparts in pure, blind, destructive fury.


The surprise at this is what surprises us.


How such a great number of indigenous English, the sons and daughters of the old salt-of-the-earth working class of yesteryear, could have reverted into a Hobbesian state of near-total savagery is in fact an easy question to answer.  All that's required is a quick mental trip.  Extend us your hand, dear reader, for this jaunt we can go anywhere you like really, but just for fun, let's go far.


Let's go to China.


05 August 2011

'Jasmine Revolution'

Tahir Square, Cairo, 29 July 2011 
 'Instead of "Peaceful, peaceful," which demonstrators have chanted during confrontations with security forces, they repeated "Islamic, Islamic"... '

[In light of current bumps on the road to English-style liberal democracy in the newly 'free' Arab world, we here re-visit  '"Democracy promotion and the 'Jasmine Revolution'" (6-11-11).]


The 'Arab Spring' seems to have taken the Middle East, and everyone else, a bit by surprise.  While the Pentagon sweats at the thought of a North Africa full of little Irans, the State Department clicks its heels and throws on its apron, anxious to get in the kitchen and start cookin' up some democracy:
In the wake of the democratic revolutions sweeping the region, the State Department is rapidly trying to reevaluate its approach to Middle East democracy promotion. But without a budget for fiscal 2011, and with no idea of what awaits their budget in fiscal 2012, State is being forced to move money around to speed funds to the Arab countries that are trying to make the difficult transition to democracy.


'Democracy' is what they have now.  'Some other kind of democracy' is what the author maybe meant, but perhaps he had a word limit.

In any case fear not, brave tax-payer, you'll do your bit to help the Arabs get 'some other kind of democracy.'  In fact, you already are:


27 July 2011

Don't Fall on Me



Max Weber argued in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism that adherence to this rebellious doctrine was largely the cause of Northern Europe's roaring economic success from the 17th century on.

Perhaps.  But where did this rebel belief come from?  Who thought it up?  Why did it gain such large favor in some places, just a bit in others, and still elsewhere none at all?  And why did it take on so many different faces?

Furthermore, what of the Catholicism that birthed it?  Who thought of that?  And the religion it sprang from?  And the one before that?

One theory is that our religions just fall on us out of the sky, like so many droppings from extraterrestrial spaceships.  We take no part in creating them, or shaping them, or rejecting or accepting them.  They arrive by conquest at sword-point, or else they just drift in like pollen on the breeze, floating into our ears and infecting our souls.  No choice at all, conscious or not.

Were someone to take up the contrary position--that we humans have a very great deal to do with what sky-friends we ascribe to--he might want to start his evidence hunting by looking at some maps.

Let's help him out.


21 July 2011

Colonialism, Today II

A small country, a relatively happy country, a country who's been producing wealth at more or less the same level for years... 


...Who one day decides to abandon control over its own monetary policy.  To take that sovereign control, stuff it in an envelope, stick on a stamp, and mail it to a country far, far away.

A boxing club made up of only heavy-weights and middle-weights has the magnanimity to invite in a few feather-weights.  How kind.  How inclusive. How optimistic.


What could possibly go wrong.


This, apparently:


16 July 2011

Colonialism, Today



For those unable to take care of themselves, life will always be a a vale of tears.

Unless someone else steps in.

Peoples, like water, should be allowed to find their natural level.  An adult can guide the hand of a four-year-old to create the Mona Lisa.  It's lovely, but when you let go of his hand, he may go back to drawing simple forms.  It's no use getting distressed that he can't do what you did for him.  Pretending otherwise is a recipe for frustration. 


Let him draw what he is capable of drawing.  He may want to reproduce your Mona Lisa.  When he can't, he may cry and ask that you give him better crayons, or more paper, or a better table or chair.  Give him all these things if you'd like; nothing you can give him will allow him to do what you did.  Nothing but picking up his hand and drawing it for him again.


Much as it pains you, let him draw his simple forms. Perhaps one day he'll advance to a point where he, too, can draw a Mona Lisa.  But if he can't--not ever--you must accept it. You and he both must steel yourselves and be content with whatever he can produce.  This can be frustrating.

But it is the price of true freedom.


05 July 2011

Comparing Peoples--References

      International policy-makers, particularly economic ones, often consider the Earth's inhabitants as peas in a pod.  All the same, interchangeable units, that one can plug into an equation any old how--the average Kurd, as well as the average Japanese, can be represented as variable "x."

This blog disagrees.

Policy equations reckoned in such a way tend to come out cock-eyed, yet no one ever seems to try fiddling with variable "x."  By our calculations, says Important Washington Think Tank, Anglo-style liberal democracy should be flourishing in Russia, and Ethiopians should be exporting luxury cars as fast as their factories can spit them out.


And twenty, thirty, fifty, a hundred years after all the 'right conditions' have been put into place, when the people in question is still as authoritarian or as poverty-stricken as ever, Think Tank-ers refuse to change the one variable that counts more than any other.

Variable "x."

So let's take one of their very favorite tools, statistics, to find out why Think Tank-ers just might want to have another think coming.



30 June 2011

African-American Crime, Today and Yesterday

from the archives...

         Stories of looting leaking out of tornado-stricken Minneapolis recently have brought to light this 2007 article from Minnesota Public News, revealing two salient points about her sister city St. Paul's African-descended population:

     1) 70% of all St. Paul's aggravated assaults the year before were 
          committed by this population, although they make up just 12% of the 
          city's inhabitants.

     2) Surprise is the correct reaction to this.


          Being of passing familiarity with this particular branch of American jurisprudential history, we imagined it of possible historical interest to present excerpts from the aforementioned article, alongside some voices from the past [all emphasis ours; list of works cited follows the text]:


25 June 2011

Letting things slide



Greeks are furious over the crisis rocking their country.  Disbelief has given way to anger, one minister describing it as 'the darkest page in [our] history.'

No, not that crisis.  This one:

"Nearly 70 people have been named in Greece in connection with an alleged football match-fixing scandal.  They include two Super League club presidents, club owners, players, referees and a chief of police.  They are charged with a variety of offences including illegal gambling, fraud, extortion and money laundering.

The investigation began after European football's governing body Uefa published a list of 41 match results from 2009-10 which they believe to be suspicious. 

Among the 68 suspects named by judicial authorities on Friday were Vangelis Marinakis, Greece's top football league official and chairman of champion club Olympiakos Piraeus, and Avraam Papadopoulos, national team and Olympiakos defender.  Late on Friday, a court order banned all 68 from leaving the country."


But really, sports cheating scandals are hardly anything new.  And they happen all over the world. What's so special about this one?



21 June 2011

Plant biodiversity, Human biodiversity

The author of this blog today had the rare treat of hearing a talk given by a Nobel prize-winning economist.  The first such laureate, apparently, to be equipped with a uterus.  This anatomical oddity so excited our city fathers they invited her across the pond to shine her light on a conference hall full of Southern Frenchmen.  And women.

Policy was what she came to talk about, or as she put it, 'Community Organization of Common Pool Resources.'  Forest management, to be exact.

Who best to manage forests?

Surprise surprise, says Ostrom, government control is not the be-all end-all.  Local user groups can and have managed their forests just fine.  But not all users in all countries do it equally fine.  Some do it markedly less fine than others.

Why?


16 June 2011

Democracy promotion and the 'Jasmine Revolution'

      The 'Arab Spring' seems to have taken the Middle East, and everyone else, a bit by surprise.  While the Pentagon sweats at the thought of a North Africa full of little Irans, the State Department clicks its heels and throws on its apron, anxious to get in the kitchen and start cookin' up some democracy:

In the wake of the democratic revolutions sweeping the region, the State Department is rapidly trying to reevaluate its approach to Middle East democracy promotion. But without a budget for fiscal 2011, and with no idea of what awaits their budget in fiscal 2012, State is being forced to move money around to speed funds to the Arab countries that are trying to make the difficult transition to democracy.


'Democracy' is what they have now.  'Some other kind of democracy' is what the author maybe meant, but perhaps he had a word limit.

In any case fear not, brave tax-payer, you'll do your bit to help the Arabs get 'some other kind of democracy.'  In fact, you already are:


12 June 2011

Immigration, Policy notions

In the 20th century, communication and transport technology reached levels unseen in human history.  One result has been that the movement of peoples, over huge distances, has also reached levels unseen in human history.


But not everywhere.


Western policy-makers faced with an unhappy populace demanding stricter controls might be glad to know that such models needn't necessarily be invented from scratch. Some of our neighbors to the East have been, shall we say, less inclined than us to lift their lamp beside the golden door.  Tour d'horizon:



07 June 2011

Immigration, Yesterday

"NORDIC VICTORY IS SEEN IN DRASTIC RESTRICTIONS"

-- Los Angeles Times headline, April 13, 1924


Very high current levels of immigration to the U.S. are lamented by some.  But others point out that in the late 19th century, legions of non-English poured daily onto our shores, aliens to our founding culture, language, principles, religion, and we absorbed millions of them without breaking a sweat.  So what's the problem?


What could possibly go wrong.



03 June 2011

Self-control


At first glance, I seem rather peaceable.  No scowl, no growl.  I can smile and exchange pleasantries at the grocery store with the best of them.  

But there is a very dangerous part of me.  A part I sometimes have a hard time controlling.


It's my temper.


The Irish in me, perhaps.  In any case, when it goes off, it goes off.  Look out.  Stand back.  All the anger, the animosity, the raw savagery in me can come out in a heartbeat.  And I can't be held responsible for my actions.  



30 May 2011

African History in the U.S.--References

Regarding a request to provide some resources for those interested in the history of Africans in the U.S (North and South) before WWII, we present the following short bibliography, with comments to help guide you to something of possible interest.  


[Links provided where online versions are available.  Online libraries charging a small yearly fee are a treasure trove for such sources; we, for example, highly recommend Questia.]





HISTORY of AFRICANS IN THE U.S.


25 May 2011

Crime, Today and Yesterday



Stories of looting leaking out of tornado-stricken Minneapolis recently have brought to light this 2007 article from Minnesota Public News, revealing two salient points about her sister city St. Paul's African-descended population:

     1) 70% of all St. Paul's aggravated assaults the year before were 
          committed by this population, although they make up just 12% of the 
          city's inhabitants.

     2) Surprise is the correct reaction to this.


          Being of passing familiarity with this particular branch of American jurisprudential history, we imagined it of possible historical interest to present excerpts from the aforementioned article, alongside some voices from the past [all emphasis ours; list of works cited follows the text]:


21 May 2011

Exceptions


"Your group, left to its own devices, couldn't build or maintain a livable society."

Ouch. 

Hurts to hear.  Could you say it to someone?  Looking them in the eye?  "Your group just isn't equipped by nature with the ability to create a pleasant, safe, modern society.  If you want to live in one, the only way you'll ever be able to is by taking up residence in somebody else's.  If they let you."



Ouch, ouch, ouch.  Could I say it?  Sure.  Eye to eye?  

All I have to do is look in a mirror.


My group can't cut it.  If we were running things, as some wag has gently put it, the human race "would never have left the cave."


16 May 2011

Mothers and Welfare: Policy ideas


As we saw in our stroll down Dysgenics lane, there are good reasons a healthy society might want to avoid paying its least productive members to have children while taxing its most productive members to fund them.

Here we pull out our telescope and take a long gaze around the world, to see how other countries (or provinces, or towns) are dealing with the question.

Policy-makers should do the same.


10 May 2011

Hope


'Hope springs eternal.'


Truer words were never spoken of the inner workings of the Human Mind.


Polite fictions get us through the day.

'I'm still attracted to my spouse.'
'I enjoy my job.'
'I love all my children equally.'
'I'm special.'

We tell polite fictions to our children.

'With hard work, you can be anything you want to be.'
'You'll find true love.  There's someone for everyone.'
'When you die, you... go to a nice place.'


And so forth.

07 May 2011

Handicap


Hard to find someone who'll argue this person isn't handicapped:

Butch Lumpkin is one of the approximately 5,000 [Thalidomide] survivors world-wide.  Born with what he calls “short arms,” he really has what amounts to no functional arms at all.  Three fingers extend from his left side in a flipper like manner, and his right arm ends before the elbow with three fingers that point backward toward his body. 

If your tears of pity are flowing, dry them watching Butch enjoy a round of golf followed by a brisk set of tennis.



Or this person--handicapped?

Three years ago Oscar Pistorius had never stepped onto a track, let alone run a race.  Today he is an athletics sensation - holder of world records in the 100m, 200m and 400m events.  His coach, Ampie Louw, says Oscar is "a natural champion - born that way". [...] But Oscar's Olympic bid is like no other - he is a double amputee.

I'd say so.

What about this person?

Sara Blakely had been selling fax machines and office copiers door-to-door for seven years when she had an idea for a clothing line that would transform her from an employee into a successful entrepreneur.  In 2000 she began selling Spanx in major department stores such as Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue. […]  Today, Spanx, based in Atlanta, Ga., is a $150 million company with 55 employees and 100 different styles.

Handicapped?  She probably doesn't think she is.   In this day and age, most people probably don't.

I do.

Because I have the same handicap she does. 

Can you guess what it is?



02 May 2011

Disparate Impact III

[Disparate Impact Part II can be found here.]
[Disparate Impact Part I can be found here.]



      Boxing has kindly shown us why weight classes are a Good Thing:

Featherweight / Lightweight / Middleweight / Heavyweight. =  Everyone gets to play.
All thrown in the ring together. =  Only one gets to play. 

      (And we already know who that is.) 


Low / Average / Bright / Very bright.  =  Everyone gets a job (or into college).
All thrown in the ring together.  =  Only one gets a job (or into college).

     Do we already know who that is?

In our parallel-universe Akron, Ohio, apparently, it's Asian-Americans.


But what about back here in the real universe?


Disparate Impact II

[Disparate Impact Part I can be found here.]



You're employed.

As an accountant at Winter Shoe Company in Akron, Ohio, and have been for a long time.  As long as you've been there, only People Like You—European-descended folks, that is—have worked there.

Happily.

One day, for reasons unknowable, a wave of Chinese-Americans starts to flood into lovely Akron. Descendants of the railroad builders, let's say.  California exiles, driven off by sky-high taxes.  They've come to Akron, and they want to work at Winter Shoe Company too.   

Guess what?  


01 May 2011

Disparate Impact I


'That's not fair!'


One hears it often from the mouths of youngsters.  Universal justice has not been satisfied if I don't get one more cookie.  I was good, I deserve it.

Mom replies,

'Life isn't fair.'

It's a lesson we quickly forget.



29 April 2011

Eugenics II

[Eugenics Part I can be found here.]



You, the Chinese social engineer, have successfully turned Hunan Province into a region of dullards.

Congratulations.

Did you coerce?  You did not.  You incited.  No forced sterilizations, no forced euthanizations.  No stick, just carrot.

Adolf Hitler coerced.

Tony Blair incited.



25 April 2011

Proselytizing


Is HBD a 'gospel' that needs to be 'preached'?

Was heliocentrism a 'gospel' that friends of Copernicus or Galileo would have been wise to 'preach'?



In any case, whatever the 'natural salesman' disposition is, I have the opposite.  I hate selling and I hate being sold to.  First and only telemarketing job, I lasted one afternoon.  Conversely, I hang up on them without a word when they call (saving their time as well as mine, no?) and Jehovah's witnesses always get a brusque door slam.  Don't sell me anything, and don't make me sell to anyone else.

In a word, I don't want to evangelize.  Ever.

However.

Policy is the point of this blog.  Its goal is to present a pool of practical proposals for that mythic future day when Science turns to Government and says, 'HBD is real.  Public policy should reflect that.'

But Science won't.  Not ever.  Not even if Science woke up one day and decided, to a person, it were true.  Why?  Telling Government things is not Science's job (unless it's specifically asked to).  Science doesn't have time.  It's busy doing what it loves--science.

A messenger, therefore, is necessary.  But who?  And why?


Who?    You.


24 April 2011

Heresy

What is it?



 Nicolaus Copernicus, the “heretical” 16th-century astronomer who was buried in an unmarked grave nearly 500 years ago, was rehabilitated by the Roman Catholic Church this weekend as his remains were reburied in the Polish cathedral where he had once been a canon.

The ceremonial reburial of Copernicus in a tomb in the medieval cathedral at Frombork on Poland’s Baltic coast is seen as a final sign of the Church’s repentance for its treatment of the scientist over his theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun, declared heretical by the Vatican in 1616.

"Heretical?"  Copernicus wasn't a "heretical" astronomer; he was a heretical astronomer.  The Pope being infallible, presumably when he declares something a heresy he means it.  Whatever god is speaking to the current Pope doesn't get to play "backsies" with the one who spoke to Paul V.

The Times doesn't note the year the Vatican finally proclaimed heliocentrism the truth: 1992. 

376 years later.

But no matter.

Hand-wringing over religious heresy (in Christendom anyway) has gone the way of the dodo.  Why dredge up this dreadful word?