God Save the Queen on her 50th Anniversary

Queen Elizabeth's 50th Anniversary: The only time I ever sawn the Queen was in 1983. I had just arrived in San Francisco on business, and the TV news was trumpeting that President Reagan was going to have dinner with Queen Elizabeth at a Golden Gate Park museum. So, I grabbed a taxi and issued the Mother Goose-like command, "Take me to see the Queen!"

"Any queen in particular?" asked the cabbie. "This town's loaded with 'em."

I eventually landed on a street corner full of Irish protestors holding signs denouncing British rule in Northern Ireland. After a long wait, the biggest motorcade in the history of world rolled by, and there at the back was Elizabeth II, giving her famous little wave to all of us on the corner. I turned around to watch the furious Irish protestors, only to see them leaping up and down in joyous excitement, waving back with tears of adulation in their eyes. When she was gone, the embarrassed Fenians skulked off.

By the way, a lot of hyper-intellectual bilge has been written in the years since the Queen's 25th anniversary "explaining" the Sex Pistol's great single "God Save the Queen." The real reason Johnny Rotten (a.k.a., John Lydon) hated the Queen with such memorable passion was simple: he's an Irishman.

Edward Said, Jonah Goldberg, and "Orientalist" scholars

Jonah Goldberg in NRO defends the old European "Orientalist" scholars of Middle Eastern culture against the Palestinian-American literary critic Edward Said's celebrated attack on them as racists. But Jonah misses three key points.

First, as is so common among multiculturalists, Said prefers to write about Europeans who wrote about Arabs, rather than writing about Arabs themselves, because Said is bored and embarrassed by his own people.

Second, many of these European scholars were not only not biased against Arabia, they were in fact "desperately in love with the Arab Muslim world," according to the great economic historian David Landes (click here for my review of his last book.) The British archaeologist turned Arab guerilla leader Lawrence of Arabia is only the most famous "sand-smitten" example.

Third, more than a few Orientalists were not only in love with Arabia, they were in love with individual Arab boys or men. Arab culture's tendency toward bisexuality made it particularly attractive to gay Englishmen. When asked why he had fought for Arab independence, Lawrence replied, ""Personal: I liked a particular Arab, and I thought that freedom for the race would be an acceptable present." This particular Arab was apparently Dahoum, a teenage waterboy. In The Source, James Michener suggested that British rulers in Palestine tended to emotionally bond with the Arabs because they both shared a taste for Brideshead Revisited-style male-male "romantic friendships." In contrast, the highly heterosexual Jews and Americans found each other on the same wavelength.

The essential problem with the European Union

The essential problem with the European Union: It's not democratic, and it can't be - because Europeans don't speak a common language. Until they do, power will be in the hands of multilingual bureaucrats in Brussels, not of the people.

New Frontiers in Multicultural Sensitivity

New Frontiers in Multicultural Sensitivity: My 7th grader's Spanish teacher just announced that she does not want her students to develop correct accents because "some people think that would be making fun of my people." Man, I would have ruled if she had been my Spanish teacher, because I always sounded like W.C. Fields trying to speak Spanish. Unfortunately, my high school Spanish teacher, Mr. De Soto, had reactionary ideas about how the language of Cervantes and Borges should be pronounced. After I'd recite, he'd groan and call me "Super Gringo."

Why Canada admits so many immigrants:

Why Canada admits so many immigrants: It's not to fill up Canada's vast empty spaces, since a large majority of the newcomers crowd into Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. No, immigration and multiculturalism are the passive-aggressive revenge by English Canada and the bilingual elite on the monoculturalists of French Canada. Since few immigrants want to learn a declining language like French, the immigrant vote is all that keeps Quebec in Canada. Wouldn't it be simpler just to expel the French?

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

Tom Brady's Wonderlic IQ score

Superbowl Special! Are football players dumb? Actually, they are fairly smart. The NFL requires draft prospects to take the Wonderlic IQ test. Offensive guards averaged 107, centers and punters 106, quarterbacks and kickers 104. The speed positions averaged lower: halfbacks, free safeties, cornerbacks, and wide receivers averaged from 91 to 94. Still, at both the white positions and the black positions, prospects scored about a half standard deviation higher than the respective white and black national means.

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

Irresistible upcoming book: Richard Lynn's IQ and the Wealth of Nations lists average IQ scores for dozens of countries.

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.).

Zora Neale Hurston

Black History Month: Okay, I know your attention is wandering already. And, no doubt, having Black History Month immediately follow Martin Luther King day is overkill. Still, the topic can be fascinating, especially in the hands of someone with an independent perspective, such as, well, me. Here's my take on one of more delightful figures in American literature, Zora Neale Hurston. 2/1/02

My review of Nicole Kidman's Birthday Girl.

I predicted Bill Clinton's impeachment over sexual harassment in 1992

By the way, did I ever mention that way back in Dec. of 1992 I accurately predicted that Bill Clinton's Presidency would one day be threatened by a sexual harassment charge made by an Arkansas state employee (who turned out to be Paula Jones) and dredged up by an investigative reporter (which turned out to be David Brock of The American Spectator). Here's the remarkably prophetic article I wrote (but no one would publish) before Clinton was even sworn in. 1/30/02

Blondes' Darwinian Advantage

Faithful iSteve.com reader Nikki, who says she looks "like a Latin Dorothy Dandridge meets Jessica Rabbit type," writes to point out that while, as I theorized below, young blonde women may indeed have a Darwinian advantage in catching men's eyes, their edge fades:

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!

My review of "The Count of Monte Cristo"

My review of "The Count of Monte Cristo"

Enron: bankruptcy and "ruin"

Enron: In finance, reward is proportional to risk. So, corporate insiders have an incentive to take big risks. If they succeed, they are vastly rich. If they fail, the current stockholders are wiped out. The insiders, however, typically have previously sold enough stock to manage to shield millions of personal assets from corporate creditors, so they walk away merely rich. So, why not take huge risks? In J.P. Morgan's time, in contrast, bankruptcy meant "ruin:" i.e., poverty. That's why they jumped out windows back then. Corporate bankruptees never kill themselves anymore because they still have highly comfortable lives ahead of them. The solution is to make top corporate officers more personally responsible for paying off corporate collapses.

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

The problem with polygamy

"The Problem with Polygamy" - Here's my fun little article on the logical blindspot in every article I've ever read about polygamy. See if you can spot the common fallacy displayed in this Onion-like but genuine quote from the BBC: "Sudan's President Omar Hassan al Bashir has urged Sudanese men to take more than one wife in order to double the country's population of 30 million ... 'We should achieve this aim by having many wives,' Bashir said." 1/22/02

Bioethics are too important to leave to the bioethicists

One of my longstanding complaints is that bioethics are too important to leave to the bioethicists. It's an insular profession where insiders who have never written anything of interest outside bioethics are treated as if they were Marcus Aurelius, Confucius, and Einstein rolled into one. The only two bioethicists whose names anyone on the outside can remember are Peter Singer and Leon Kass, and they got that way for their sophomoric extremism. Pete, you know that old saying Dog is Man's best friend? Well, you are supposed to stay just friends. And Leon, civilization won't collapse if people eat ice cream cones while walking down the street.

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

Enjoying Martin Luther King Day off?

Enjoying MLK day off? What, you don't get the day off? And you don't care because the dead of winter is a worthless time for a three day weekend?

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/