My arrogant opinions about politics, culture, science fiction, and whatever else I feel like talking about.

I'm Glad I Saw This on the Web

        Some years ago, the wife and I went to an exhibition of the work of a prominent modern architect, whose name I can't be bothered to try to remember.  I embarrassed her tremendously, looking at these photos of things people had paid money for, and laughing loudly.

        And now, I've seen something just as ludicrous.  Stare at this, and ask yourself "Is this some sort of joke?"  Answer, yes, for the most part, and it was played on whoever paid for this crap.  The "Dollhouse" and the 'Inside Rain' are OK, but a lot of the rest is ridiculous.

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        And the angel said unto them, "Be not afraid!  For, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is inaugurated this day in the city of George a Saviour, which is B. Hussein Obama the President."  And since then, everything has been perfect.   (The Gospel According to CNN, Chapter 2, verses 8-11.)

Posted by: saintonge at 11:25 | link | comments

Interesting Article

        Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point, has a very interesting New Yorker article on the way underdogs win by changing the rules and applying maximum effort.  I copied it to the Museum .  It's a bit overstated, perhaps, but definitely worth reading.  Give it a gander.

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        And the angel said unto them, "Be not afraid!  For, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is inaugurated this day in the city of George a Saviour, which is B. Hussein Obama the President."  And since then, everything has been perfect.   (The Gospel According to CNN, Chapter 2, verses 8-11.)

Posted by: saintonge at 07:33 | link | comments (1)
culture, sense, human nature, competence, and now for somthng compltly dif

Close Your Eyes, and the Bad Things Will Go Away

      There are times when I almost feel sorry for liberals.  Consider William Saletan, the "national correspondent" at Slate, and author there of a regular column called "Human Nature."  He recently had two columns on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test scores, and in them, he failed the self-honesty test.

        For those who came in late, a bit of a recap:  Ever since the invention of intelligence and schoolastic aptitude tests, the results have shown substantial differences among racial groups.  There are roughly three explanations for this fact: a) it's entirely the result of the average genetic differences among the races; b) it's partly the result of average genetic differences, and partly the result of other factors; c) it's entirely the result of other factors, and has nothing whatsoever to do with average genetic differences.

        For some reason, racists have always liked explanation a), as it supposedly sanctions their treating all members of racial groups they don't belong to as inferiors.  But we can pass that by, as this isn't about the idiocy of racism.  What's important is that for some reason, liberal anti-racists largely bought into the same illogicallity: if group x is, on average, inferior to group y in some respect, and the reason for said inferiority is the average genetic differences among racial groups, then group x is justified in oppressing group y.  To purge themselves of this nasty thought, they proclaimed their allegiance to explanation c), and went so far as to enact it into policy.  The policy is called "affirmative action," and it proclaims that if anyone has any substantial number of students or employees, then the resulting racial mix of those students/employees better be a fairly close match of the racial mix of the population of potential students/employees.  If the results are different, then whoever picked the students/employees can be presumed to be guilty of racial discrimination.

      And in 2001, Congress enshrined the notion into law, the so-called "No Child Left Behind" act, which is officially titled "An Act
To close the achievement gap with accountability, flexibility, and choice, so that no child is left behind."  As part of said act, the government does the NAEP tests, to see if the goal of closing the average achievement gaps between racial groups is being met.

      Well, it isn't being met, as the story in the New York Treason shows.    Which resulted in someone named Steve Sailer blogging about the Treason story.  Mr. Sailer is would appear to be one of those people who are pretty close to explanation a) in the typology above. (I never heard of Steve Sailer before today, 20090607, so I'll say no more about his presumed beliefs.)  Which brings us back to Mr. Saletan.  He wrote a column about the latest test scores, and suggested that, essentially, we shouldn't pay attention to the disparities between racial groups   He singled out Mr. Sailer as one of those nasty people who believe in racial differences in intelligence, and suggested that the Treason shouldn't have concentrated on the failure of the test score disparities among racial groups to disappear.  That's an inconvenient truth, one we shouldn't mention.  In fact, the very existance of the disparities is another inconvenient truth we shouldn't mention.  It only encourages the Sailers of the world.

      This brought a response from Mr. Sailer, who blogged about Mr. Saletan's first column.  And it brought a rejoinder from Mr. Saletan, one that was linked to by Jerry Pournelle.  I read Jerry post, then followed the chain back to it's source in the Treason, that is I read them in reverse order of their writing.  A couple of things stood out.

      The first was Mr. Saletan's rather selective, and (to be blunt about it) dishonest quotation.  I copied Mr. Sailer's response post into Word® after reading it, and used the word count tool.  The post was 23 paragraphs long, and consisted of 1111 words.  But these figures are somewhat misleading, as the response post has a lot of quoted material.  So I excised that and recounted, getting 9 paragraphs and 421 words.  In his rejoinder column, Mr. Saletan quotes from two of those nine paragraphs, and refers very obliquely to a third.

        The two quoted paragraphs, which are the last two in Mr. Sailer's response post, say that it's natural to look at racial groupings, because races are a kind of extended family and genealogy, and people are naturally interested in their relatives, and in who begat whom.  An interesting thought, that.  But Mr. Sailer had another suggestion as to why people look at test scores and race.  The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) has as one of its official goals erasing those average racial achievement score disparities.  See Section 101, the statement of purpose for the act.  Minorities are officially recognized to have an achievement gap with non-minorities, in need of help to overcome the achievement gap, and to actually be capable of overcoming the achievement gap, if they are given the proper instruction.  Mr. Saletan skips over this part of the response post, and I say that he's 'lying by telling part of the truth, then shutting up.'  He implies that these are the only reason's Mr. Sailer is looking at the average racial disparities, when there is another reason explicitely stated, the educational policy one.  In fact, as I traced it back, it turned out that the failure of the achievement gap to close was the focus of the original NY Treason story, leading to questions about the NCLB act's success or failure.  It was also the focus of the original Sailer post.  Mr. Saletan prefers to pretend that the issue of the NCLB act wasn't raised.  As I said, leaving this material out was dishonest.

      But the other thing that struck me about Saletan's rejoinder column, and his original column to boot, was the absence of a two word phrase.  That phrase is "affirmative action."  "Affirmative action", like the NCLB act, is based squarely on explanation c) above.  If blacks, or hispanics, or whatever group make up x% of a population, but less than x% of a group of employees or students or whatever, then the disparity must be due to invidious racial discrimination, or to invidious lack of opportunity based on racial discrimination.  Too few minority employees/students/whatever is prima facie evidence of racial discrimination, and said discrimination is illegal.  In his original response column, and in his rejoinder column, Mr. Saletan asks how useful it is to measure results by race.  He never allows himself to know that, useful or not, it is legally required to measure results by race.  You'll get yourself hauled into court if you don't.

        And that brings myself to the part about almost feeling sorry for Mr. Saletan, and for liberals like him.  Mr. Saletan doesn't want to believe that "minorities" (meaning blacks, hispanics, amerinds, and sometimes women, but not Asians) may be, on average, genetically distinct and (lets use plain language for once) inferior in some respects to "majorities" (whites and Asians, especially male whites and Asians).  Unfortunately for him, he has just enough honesty to realize that it might be true.  So he asks that we kindly refrain from talking about the issue.  But of course, while not speaking of it, publicly, we are supposed to keep track of it privately, so that we can engage in "affirmative action" to wipe out the different outcomes among racial groups, even if they are partially or wholly rooted in genetics.  And if the differences just refuse to go away?  We won't think about that possibility.

      Must suck to be a liberal, sometimes.

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        And the angel said unto them, "Be not afraid!  For, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is inaugurated this day in the city of George a Saviour, which is B. Hussein Obama the President."  And since then, everything has been perfect.   (The Gospel According to CNN, Chapter 2, verses 8-11.)

Posted by: saintonge at 02:37 | link | comments
crime, public schools, cowardice, dishonesty, race, fairness, human nature, reality, higher noneducation, intelligence, government policy, stupidity springs eternal, wishful thinking, polling, good people, bloggers