February 6, 2002
Why Canada admits so many immigrants:
February 3, 2002
Is Human Evolution Finally Over?
Is Human Evolution Finally Over? asks the British Observer. Of course not. Some genes are always being selected for and some against. For example, Palestinians are having three times as many children as Israeli Jews. Thus, the gene frequencies in the Holy Land are evolving at a dramatic rate, with massive real world consequences.
Of course, the rate of current gene change pales in comparison to what will be happening not far in the future when genetic technologies mature. (Already, there are children alive today whose embryos were scientifically selected for being genetically superior to their sibling embryos.) This will have massive political and social impact.
Francis Fukuyama's next book Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution will try to predict these consequences. Unfortunately, I fear Fukuyama will ignore the single best tool for estimating the impact of future differences in gene frequencies: looking at the impact of current genetic differences between individuals and groups. He's always played it safe (in career terms) by ignoring race, even to the point of silliness in his last book, which was about crime and illegitimacy!
To see how understanding genetic differences today sheds crucial light on the genetically engineered tomorrow, read my Thatcher Lecture and my "The Future of Human Nature." 2/3/02
February 2, 2002
Tom Brady's Wonderlic IQ score
Of course, IQ tests do a lousy job of measuring improvisational mental ability, which football players, especially the black ones, are particularly good at. (See my classic article "Great Black Hopes" for the full story.)
The Patriots are the underdogs, but they'd be favored if it was a debate tournament. Starting QB Tom Brady scored 126 (that's about what George W. Bush would score, judging from his 1206 SAT score), while backup QB Drew Bledsoe beat that with a 134 (Al Gore's IQ). 2/02/02
Richard Lynn's and Tatu Vanhanen's IQ and the Wealth of Nations
C'mon, you know you want to to read its tables! For instance, those snotty French who think they are so smart? How do they really score? Or, if you've been wondering why so many people in so many Arab countries believe in so much dumb stuff, Lynn's book offers the most direct explanation: generally speaking, they ain't rocket scientists. Not surprisingly, the Northeast Asian tigers lead the world in average national IQ. (Lynn's mediocre score for Israel seems open to question.)
For the correlation between national IQ and per capita GDP, Lynn reports the kind of high number that social scientists normally only dream about finding. If all you know about a country is its average IQ and whether it has a free market economy, you can predict its income level with a surprising degree of accuracy. Of course, this doesn't solve the chicken or egg question. Are they rich because they are smart or smart because they are rich? From what I've seen so far out of the book, it looks to me like both are true.
Culture also plays a role. Lynn lists underachievers with high IQs and low incomes (e.g., perennial screw-up Argentina) and overachievers (e.g., Barbados, with its veddy, veddy English cricket-centric culture that makes it the best-run black country in the world.).
February 1, 2002
Zora Neale Hurston
My review of Nicole Kidman's Birthday Girl.
January 30, 2002
I predicted Bill Clinton's impeachment over sexual harassment in 1992
January 29, 2002
Blondes' Darwinian Advantage
While my [blonde] girlfriends admittedly wield what would seem to average looking girls of any race an enviable disproportion of sexual power in their teens and twenties, these Blonde beauties, especially the sun-goddesses, start looking a tad bit, well peaked, you know, past the sell-by date, once they hit their mid-thirties - unless they happen to be blessed with strong cheekbones and facial structure. Otherwise, Father Time does his cruel linear dance with crows' feet across Mother Nature's fair maiden's countenance, and watching that happen is heart-breaking without the aid of the Botox Wizard. It's like observing a nouveau riche tycoon devolving into a shopping-cart pushing crack head, not a sight for the faint of heart. Unless said fair maiden is married to a plastic surgeon like the fortunate Victoria Principal. I guess it all evens out in the end! YAY!
January 25, 2002
January 23, 2002
Enron: bankruptcy and "ruin"
More Enron: Having noted yesterday how business insiders never kill themselves anymore over being "ruined" (largely because, unlike in the past, they aren't really ruined - they always escape poverty) comes word today that former Enron Vice Chairman J. Clifford Baxter has shot himself in the head. Still, like the Enron scandal in general, that's an exception that proves the rule.
No doubt, prison sentences are in order for several Enron bigshots, but the truth is that criminal trials aren't an adequate deterrent for corporate malfeasance in general. The standard of guilt - beyond a reasonable doubt - is high and the complexity of the cases often makes reaching that level of certainty beyond juries' capabilities. You'll note that Enron is a huge once-a-decade story in elite circles, but it's making most of the public's eyes glaze over.
No, civil trials and regulatory proceedings are more appropriate for deterring routine bad behavior. The problem is that the penalties are seldom severe enough. Executives generally escape scandalous bankruptcies with their lifestyles merely cut down from filthy rich to highly affluent. Consider a parallel case: O.J. Simpson's daily life after losing a gigantic civil suit. He didn't have to get a job at Burger King. He merely went from playing golf daily at ritzy Riviera to playing golf daily at the public courses like Knollwood at which I occasionally treat myself to a round. 1/25/02
January 22, 2002
The problem with polygamy
Bioethics are too important to leave to the bioethicists
With that in mind, Bush's new nominees for his Council on Bioethics seem much stronger than I expected. James Q. Wilson, for example, has a long track record of making successful predictions (e.g., to reduce crime: put more crooks in jail for longer terms and fix broken windows). Francis Fukuyama, Charles Krauthammer, and Stephen Carter are also smart guys that you might have heard of. 1/22/02
January 20, 2002
Enjoying Martin Luther King Day off?
Since most whites don't mind working on Martin Luther King Day, the holiday has just ended up worsening racial divisions. Chris Rock says, "You gotta be pretty racist to not want a day off work!"
Fortunately, I have a solution. Move the holiday from King's birthday to the date of his most memorable accomplishment, his "I Have a Dream" speech on Aug. 28, 1963. All Americans would then unite to demand a three day weekend the week before Labor Day. Racial harmony would prevail across the land. 1/20/02
More MLK: You may have thought that King's "Dream" speech was about allowing black American citizens to share fully in the benefits of American citizenship. But Roger Clegg, of Linda Chavez's Center for Equal Opportunity, sets you straight in National Review Online. It was really about "liberal immigration policies." Thanks, Rog, I can feel the scales falling from my eyes already. 1/20/02
Factually Correct? The 9/11 Firemen Statue
"Factually Correct?" "I think the artistic expression of diversity would supersede any concern over factual correctness," said a black NYC fireman in defense of depicting as minorities two of the three firemen in that 9-11 statue that will be based on a picture of three white firemen. Jonah Goldberg of NRO works up a good head of steam denouncing the poor man for saying "factual correctness." Jonah seems to assume that works of art inspired by reality were always 100% "factually correct" until insidious postmodernists like Stanley Fish corrupted everybody.
Look, Jonah, Iet me let you in on a secret: George Washington didn't really chop down the cherry tree. As Nabokov used to say, art is artifice. It's artificial. People who make art are called artists, not naturists or factists. Artists have been fudging the facts forever to affirm various values. You can argue about which values art should express, but please don't get up on your high horse about postmodernists inventing factual incorrectness in the arts.
What's actually interesting about the statue controversy is that around 95% of the NYFD is white. NYC firemen are largely a hereditary caste for white Catholics. The few blacks who get in can expect lots of on-the-job harassment intended to keep the NYFD that way. Hereditary castes are supposed to justify their existence by living up to the ideals of noblesse oblige - they live better than others because they are not afraid to die to defend the others. That bargain is seldom fulfilled in real life. Yet, the NYFD has not only satisfied the demands of noblesse oblige, but vastly exceeded them. 1/20/02/
Radley Balko: "Race Doesn't Exist"
Headscratcher of the Week: "A black man and a white man from Manhattan, for example, are likely to be more genetically similar than a black man from Manhattan and a black man from Nigeria." - Radley Balko, Cato Institute, "Biologically Speaking, Race Doesn't Exist," FoxNews.com.
Well, sure, if the average "black" guy is more than half white. But most African-Americans are not (1/6th white on average might be the best estimate), so the statement is obviously silly. How do writers and editors get simple family tree stuff like this so wrong?
Yeah, I know, everybody has heard about how "There is more genetic diversity in one African village than in yadda yadda." But that only applies to junk genes, not the genes that actually do anything. The West Africans dragged to the U.S. as slaves were actually biologically fairly homogenous. They were the descendents of the "Bantu expansion" that emerged out of the Nigeria-Cameroon border region a few millennia ago and ethnically cleansed most of Africa of Bushmen and other truly genetically diverse peoples. Dean of population geneticists L.L. Cavalli-Sforza says, "… differences between most sub-Saharan Africans other than Khoisan [Bushmen] and Pygmies seem rather small." 1/20/02
More from Balko's "Race Doesn't Exist:" "Possibly only six genes determine the color of a person’s skin ... Six genes, out of the 30,000 to 40,000 genes that make us human, determine race."
Inspired by this widespread notion that the only biological difference between blacks and whites is skin color, an 11-year-old boy asked a conservative talk show host this question: How come everybody is so worked up over plans to change one of the bronze figures in the 9-11 Firemen's Statue from a white man to a black man? Won't all the statues be bronze-colored, so nobody could tell the difference in race?
The radio host was completely stumped by the question!. White people sure can be morons about race - they just condescendingly assume that blacks are whites with black skins. They never look at blacks carefully enough to notice the myriad other differences. 1/20/02
January 17, 2002
The critically acclaimed art-house film Monster's Ball
January 15, 2002
January 14, 2002
Pathans, pederasty, fueds, brigandage, and smuggling
The larger point is that the reason the Pathans welcomed the Taliban in 1996 is because they knew they have a royally screwed-up culture - one largely dedicated to not just pederasty, but also blood feuds, brigandage, smuggling, and tax evasion. They wanted to change. That's the good news. The bad news is that the best idea they could come up with for fixing their culture was religious totalitarianism. Does anybody have any suggestions for how the Pathans can change for the better? Email me at SteveSlr@aol.com
The most optimistic analogy I've dreamed up for the Pathans is the Scottish Highlanders, who also lived in Bronze Age clans devoted to raiding and feuding up through 1745. Then, however, they followed Bonnie Prince Charlie on his almost-successful invasion of England. Outraged by this 9/11-like provocation, the English subsequently used overwhelming force to modernize the Highlands. A century later, Celtic Highlanders like Thomas Babington Macaulay were at the forefront of British civilization. 1/14/02