July 31, 2007

A woman's perspective on cousin marriage

A reader writes:


I think that your paper misses one of the prime motivators for first cousin marriage (at least among the community in which I gained some familiarity with it – Panjabi Muslims). In communities where extended families are still the norm, the success or otherwise of a marriage depends a lot on the relationship with the in-laws – for the bride in particular. She may have a great relationship with her husband, but if his mother doesn’t like her, she can make her life hell. And in fact it is almost expected that the relationship between mother in law and daughter in law will be very high conflict. A side effect of patriarchy – generally, older women have authority over younger women, having served their time at the bottom of the heap, they are forthright in exercising power over the “new girls” as they come along. When you give your daughter into her new family, you know that you are giving that family a lot of power over her – the power of life and death, in some cases, given the rate of honour killings and dowry deaths (among Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus alike). So who do you trust your daughter to? Your article refers to an immigrant bringing in “his’ nephew – but it is generally the women who play the major role in arranging the marriages (although the men certainly get to say yes or no). So when it comes to “who can I trust to care for my daughter” the answer is often “she will be safe in my sister’s home”. Or my husband’s sister’s/brother’s home – I haven’t done any empirical research as to how common it is to marry along the matrilineal vs patrilineal line (remembering that those lines are often related).

Of course, that trust is often completely misplaced. I’m not sure that kin relationships mean as much as your article makes out, especially when they are often artificially created – a lot of people aren’t really conscious of how many of their “aunties and uncles” are blood aunties and uncles. I rather doubt that it has much effect on social institutions in the ways described but that is a whole paper in itself rather than an e-mail.

Again, I don’t have the empirical evidence to hand, but it is not true that the cousin-marriage for immigration purposes “almost always works just in one direction -- with the new husband moving from the poor Muslim country to the rich European country” - brides are often brought over for British (or other Western) grooms. This is thought to re-infuse the family with the “home culture”, and there is a perception that a girl from back home will be more “traditional” (again this is often untrue). And while men generally have more autonomy in refusing a marriage, and are more likely to be forgiven if they walk right away from the whole thing, they too come under enormous emotional pressure in these situations. (“you will drag our family’s name into the mud and your sisters will never find husbands”). In Pakistan, I know a middle class man who was not told that his wedding had been planned and the bride selected until 3 days beforehand. He went ahead with it because if he had not, everyone would have assumed that he had somehow found out something disgraceful about the girl’s history, and she would have been dishonoured. Even though he had never met her, he didn’t want to do that to her – not to mention the drama and “dishonour” it would have caused in his own family – the girl’s family (this wasn’t a cousin match) would certainly have defended her honour by attacking their good name.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The Lott v. Levitt lawsuit: looks like a moral victory for Lott

Almost nobody (including me) took seriously the defamation suit filed by itinerant economist John R. Lott against celebrity Freakonomist Steven D. Levitt. After all, Lott is a kind of odd-looking guy with a tightly wound personality, while Levitt is the mediagenic embodiment of boyishly-appealing supergenius. Yet, I now guess I was wrong. The news of the proposed settlement, especially the "doozy of a concession" that Levitt is making to Lott, appears to validate Levitt's whispered-about reputation as a nasty in-fighter at academic politics, a bad man to get on the bad side of.


A Nobel Laureate invited me to speak at a discussion of Levitt's abortion-cut-crime theory at a big economics conference, but the session never materialized because Levitt's critics within the economics profession were reluctant to challenge Levitt in a venue likely to rouse his ire. As one young economist who had written a paper punching holes in Levitt's most famous theory explained to me why he wouldn't participate in the Laureate v. Levitt smackdown, "There's an old African saying: 'When the elephants wrestle, the grass gets trampled."

The Chronicle of Higher Education now reports that Levitt has offered "a doozy of a concession" to make the lawsuit go away:


Unusual Agreement Means Settlement May Be Near in 'Lott v. Levitt'

John R. Lott Jr.’s defamation lawsuit against his fellow economist Steven D. Levitt has provisionally been settled — but it may yet roar back to life.

In documents filed today in federal court, the two parties outlined a settlement that requires Mr. Levitt, who is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and a co-author of the best-selling book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explains the Hidden Side of Everything, to send a letter of clarification to John B. McCall, a retired economist in Texas.

Mr. Lott’s lawsuit alleges that Mr. Levitt defamed him in a 2005 e-mail message to Mr. McCall (who, contrary to what was reported in an earlier version of this blog item, is not the same John McCall who once taught Mr. Lott at the University of California at Los Angeles). In that message, Mr. Levitt criticized Mr. Lott’s work as guest editor of a special 2001 issue of The Journal of Law and Economics that stemmed from a conference on gun issues held in 1999.

The letter of clarification, which was included in today’s filing, offers a doozy of a concession. In his 2005 message, Mr. Levitt told Mr. McCall that “it was not a peer-refereed edition of the Journal.” But in his letter of clarification, Mr. Levitt writes: “I acknowledge that the articles that were published in the conference issue were reviewed by referees engaged by the editors of the JLE. In fact, I was one of the peer referees.”

Mr. Levitt’s letter also concedes that he had been invited to present a paper at the 1999 conference. (He did not do so.) That admission undermines his e-mail message’s statement that Mr. Lott had “put in only work that supported him.”

The provisional settlement is simple: Beyond the letter of clarification, the agreement does not require any formal apology from Mr. Levitt, and no money will change hands. [More]


My Washington Times review of Lott's anti-Freakonomics book Freedomnomics is here.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Pinker on Sailer

Steven Pinker's "Inherit the Wind: Our Weird Obsession with Genealogy" is the cover story in\ the August 6, 2007 issue of The New Republic. Here's an excerpt:


In the struggle between society and family, the exponential mathematics of kinship ordinarily works to the advantage of society. As time passes or groups get larger, family trees intertwine, dynasties dissipate, and nepotistic emotions get diluted. But families can defend themselves with a potent tactic: they can graft the twig tips of the family tree together by cousin marriage. If you force your daughter to marry her first cousin, then your son-in-law is your nephew, her father-inlaw is your brother, your parents’ estate will be worth twice as much per grandchild, and the couple will never have to bicker about which side of the family to visit on holidays. For these reasons, clans and dynasties in many cultures encourage first-or second-cousin marriage, tolerating the slightly elevated risk of genetic disease. Not only does cousin marriage amplify the average degree of relatedness among members of the clan, but it enmeshes them in a network of triangular relationships, with kinsmen valuing each other because of their many mutual kin as well as their own relatedness. As a result, the extended family, clan, or tribe can emerge as a powerfully cohesive bloc—and one with little common cause with other families, clans, or tribes in the larger polity that comprises them. The anthropologist Nancy Thornhill has shown that the prohibitions against incestuous marriages in most societies are not public-health measures aimed at reducing birth defects but the society’s way of fighting back against extended families.

In January 2003, during the buildup to the war in Iraq, the journalist and blogger Steven Sailer published an article in The American Conservative in which he warned readers about a feature of that country that had been ignored in the ongoing debate. As in many traditional Middle Eastern societies, Iraqis tend to marry their cousins. About half of all marriages are consanguineous (including that of Saddam Hussein, who filled many government positions with his relatives from Tikrit). The connection between Iraqis’ strong family ties and their tribalism, corruption, and lack of commitment to an overarching nation had long been noted by those familiar with the country. In 1931, King Faisal described his subjects as “devoid of any patriotic idea ... connected by no common tie, giving ear to evil; prone to anarchy, and perpetually ready to rise against any government whatsoever.” Sailer presciently suggested that Iraqi family structure and its mismatch with the sensibilities of civil society would frustrate any attempt at democratic nation-building. [More]



Overall, Pinker does an excellent job of synthesizing what I've been writing for years, with one lacuna, which I'll explain at another time.



My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Back from camping:

I am sorry about no postings, but the family went camping at the spectacular Montana de Oro state park just south of Morro Bay. I never announce ahead of time when I will travel because it's just an invitation to bad guys to come burgle my house. I'm especially sensitive about security because, back before our recent local move, some jerks put my old address on the web to try to intimidate me by threatening my family.

Morro Bay is only 200 miles north of LA, but the summer climate north of Point Concepcion west of Santa Barbara is wildly different - it was about 65 degrees, with a dense drizzly fog within a mile of the Pacific. Apparently, when the summer sun beats down on California's Central Valley, the air near the baking ground heats up and rises. To replace this air, cool, moist air is sucked in off the Pacific, which is why Mark Twain said the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. The same phenomenon is seen earlier in the year in LA: the notorious "June Gloom" that runs from about May 15 to June 25, making most days overcast until the late afternoon, and ruining the vacations of a lot of tourists looking for fun in the LA sun. When Palms Springs heats up in May, the air rising off the desert vacuums in cool air off the Pacific through the windmill-choked pass 100 miles east of LA between Mt. San Gorgonio (11,502 ft.) and Mt. San Jacinto (10,831 ft.).


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

July 30, 2007

Why the Axis of Amnesty coalition failed

My new VDARE.com column examines why what was wrong with the seemingly mile-wide coalition of special interests behind the Kennedy-Bush-McCain: It was only an inch deep. "What the Axis didn't have was any Americans below the elites who actually cared enough about the amnesty bill to write their Senators." For example, white liberals below the elite ranks did almost nothing to help the amnesty bill pass:

As Randall Burns has documented on VDARE.com, white liberals who are ordinary citizens showed negligible zeal for amnesty. The "progressive netroots" who hang out on Daily Kos and the like have turned themselves into a formidable political force, but they were yet another dog that didn't bark for amnesty. On the rare occasions when the Senate legislation came up on liberal blogs, the comments sections tended toward hostility.

Just about the only pro-amnesty talking point that white liberals could rally around was that passing the bill would make white conservatives—who are, by definition, evil racists, morally far inferior to white liberals—mad.

That kind of status-striving certainly motivated a lot of the biased pro-amnesty press coverage in the MSM. But it didn't seem to drive much positive political activism among the netroots.

The truth is that white liberals are bored by Mexican illegal immigrants, who lack the glamour of the 1960s black civil rights protestors. At the 2006 march for illegal aliens that I witnessed, I didn't see a single white American. Everyone marching down Van Nuys Blvd. appeared to be mestizo or full-blooded Indian. (Indeed, judging from how short the marchers were on average, there weren't many American-born Latinos in attendance either.) ...

In summary, the Axis of Amnesty coalition turned out to be a lot of chiefs and very few Indians. [More]


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

July 27, 2007

Cable Broadband Question

Time-Warner provides me with fine cable modem Internet service during the day and evening, but about ten o'clock each night for the last few weeks, reliability falls apart, with intermittent outages all night long. The support desk claims that this is because their signal to my house is too strong after other users call it a day (and, implicitly, if I'd just go to bed like a normal person I wouldn't be having this problem). It's easy for my computer to sip from the firehose when everybody else is sipping too, they say, but not when I'm drinking alone (metaphorically speaking). They want to send a man to put a device on the box where the cable comes into the house that would reduce the signal strength.

Does this make any sense? If not, how should I fix it?


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

July 26, 2007

Harry Potter

A Story of Race and Inheritance? Dana Goldstein at the American Prospect is irked that the Harry Potter books (not to mention Lord of the Rings) are full of sexism, racism, and hereditism:


Harry Potter and the Complicated Identity Politics

J.K. Rowling subtly critiques, yet ultimately hews to, a fantasy script dependent on stereotypes culled from real-life racism.


Gosh, I'm so astonished that the most popular children's literary work of our time reflects deep human archetypes about sex, family, and inheritance. I can't imagine why feminist ideology hasn't been able to produce anything remotely as appealing to kids. It must be society's fault. If only feminists and multiculturalists were given more control over the education system, children's interests could be social-engineered into perfection!

(My old essay "KidTV: A Guide for the Perplexed" explains why the things children like are so politically incorrect.)


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Tom Piatak v. Christopher Hitchens

"Hitchens' Hubris:" In a review in Taki's magazine, Tom Piatak goes after Christopher Hitchens' bestseller God Is Not Great hammer and tongs in one of the few impolite reviews Hitchens has received.

The widespread notion in America that Christopher Hitchens is a Major Thinker is a puzzling one. I have to imagine that much of the reception he gets on this side of the pond is due to the naiveté of us Colonials about British journalists. Hitchens has the Fleet Street knack for being able to churn out publishable prose fast and fluently despite spending a lot of time in fashionable watering holes getting well-watered, in which condition he conducts publicized feuds with other well-watered British personalities. Few American hacks can long function like that. But an ability to type while nursing a hangover does not make Hitchens the second coming of John Stuart Mill.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

NYT readers can't get enough IQ blather

Here's what seems like the 87th New York Times article of the last month on that single study in Norway finding a slightly higher average IQ for oldest brothers:


Separated by Birth


By ELIZABETH GILBERT and CATHERINE GILBERT MURDOCK


The eldest children in families tend to develop higher I.Q.’s than their siblings, researchers are reporting. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Kelly Blair

— The Times, June 22


LIZ So ... how not surprised were you when you learned that science has now officially declared older children to have higher I.Q.’s than their unfortunate younger siblings? [More]


I'm starting to wish the NYT would go back to treating IQ as That Which Must Not Be Mentioned if it would just get them to shut up about this one IQ study...


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

July 25, 2007

Our brilliant leaders:

Two continuing themes here at iSteve.com are that

1. Liberals think they are better than the average person because:

- They believe everybody is equal

- They have higher IQs.

2. The members of America's political overclass aren't as smart as they think they are.

Illustrating these two points nicely, a reader points to this bit from the Concord Monitor about Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden, who chairs the important Senate committee on Foreign Relations:

When Joe Biden was running for president in 1987, he held an event in Claremont. [Local man Frank] Fahey asked Biden about his academic credentials, Fahey's wife, Jean, confirmed yesterday. Biden proceeded to challenge Fahey to compare IQs: "I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do," said Biden, who proceeded to tout his academic accomplishments (graduating in the top half of his Syracuse University College of Law class).

Beyond the irritated nature of Biden's response, his answer was incorrect: Newspaper reports at the time showed that in his final year of law school, Biden was ranked 76th in his class of 85. Biden eventually dropped out of the 1988 presidential race amid charges of plagiarism. His Claremont comments were broadcast on C-SPAN.

Biden is hardly along among Presidential candidates. John McCain graduated fifth from the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy. Rudy Giuliani scored 1073 on the SAT.

The point is not that book smarts are utterly crucial to being President, but that we have an enormous country, so why can't we find some multitalented people -- who have both the personality to get elected and the intelligence to do the job -- to be President? Is that too much to ask?


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

July 24, 2007

Upcoming

Publication is scheduled for October for


Abraham's Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People
by Jon Entine


Here's my interview with science writer Entine about this book from several years ago.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Nice work if you can get it

From Mahalanobis on energy trader genius Brian Hunter, who lost $6 billion betting on natural gas for Amaranth:


As he lost $6B, one would think that is punishment enough, but he does seem to be getting away with murder, in that he put on a really large calendar spread on oil, bet big and personally pocketed around $75mm in 2005, then lost $6B and got no bonus the next year on the same dumb trade. That annualizes at $37.5mm/year, not bad. As a further reward, some Middle Eastern investors are giving him $650mm for his next venture (he lost $6B? Brilliant!).


This seems to reflect a general tendency among incentive structures for the extremely well-paid, whether Wall Streeters, CEOs, movie stars, or athletes: heads you win, tails you don't lose.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Study: "Night People" More Anti-Social

Well, all I can say is that we night people would be a lot more cheerful and well-rested if society would stop waking us up with early afternoon phone calls.

Here's the Reuter's article.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Who has "the greatest computer set-up of all time?"

according to Reihan Salam's accurate assessment on American Scene?

Click here to find out. Unfortunately, the non-energy-draining part of this Apple aficionado's office resembles mine, just with a vaster footprint (both physical and carbon-emitting).


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Mexican Machismo

In 1979, I took a tour boat around Acapulco. The guide, a local lady, pointed at a house on top of the cliff overlooking the ocean and proudly announced: "The home of movie estar Yon Wen!"

After about five minutes, I finally figured out that "Yon Wen" was John Wayne.

The great cowboy actor was probably the most prominent Mexicophilic American of the 20th Century. All three of the Duke's wives were from Latin America (Panama, Mexico, and Peru), and he loved making cowboy moves in Durango in Mexico, which looked a lot more like the Old West than anyplace in modern America. The movie closest to his heart, 1960's "The Alamo" (which he produced and directed in an era when movie stars seldom did either), was highly sympathetic to the Mexicans.

As I mentioned in "Sunday in the Park with Jorge," I'm ambivalent about Mexican machismo. I admire it in some ways, but not as much as John Wayne did.

One of the oddities of mass immigration from Mexico, however, is that, when praising the magic of diversity, almost nobody in liberal white America ever expresses any John Wayne-like appreciation for the stark Mexican sex role divide. The whole concept that Latin culture exaggerates natural sex differences just doesn't seem to register in the mainstream media. Diversity is supposed to overcome stereotypes, not reinforce them, so bringing in more Mexicans must be a victory for feminists.

What's even weirder is that the diversicrats are right on the political impact of this. Mass immigration from Mexico ultimately pushes power into the hands of the nanny state and the feminist establishment because Mexican immigrant dysfunction justifies huge numbers of government and foundation jobs for social workers. Further, macho Mexican-American politicians and activists find their white allies on the feminist-aligned left. For example, LA's strutting mayor Antonio Villaraigosa long worked for the ACLU and has one of those silly gender-equal surnames combining his last name (Villar) with his long-suffering wife's (Raigosa).

By the way, a reader writes:

I've spent a lot of time working with Mexicans and spent a lot of time in Mexico. Your observations are right on the mark. I've always thought that the Mexican practice of the "Pinata" at kids birthday parties was typically "mexican" and particularly dangerous to boot. A blinfolded kid wildy swinging a baseball bat at a paper mache' donkey filled with candy while a whole bunch of kids wait just feet away to rush in and capture the candy........That is if the kid swinging the bat stops swinging the bat when the candy starts to fall out of the Pinata. I'm sure there has been plenty of cracked skulls and concussions as a result of that mexican funfest. But, hey!, que lastima! pobrecito! Traiga la nina al cuarto emergencia donde hay muchos gringos medicos. Todo es libre, tambien! (What a pity poor thing. Just take him to the emergency room where there are lots of American doctors. It's all free too!)


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

July 22, 2007

My new VDARE.com column

Sunday in the Park with Jorge

At the big Hansen Dam Recreation Center in the northeast San Fernando Valley last Sunday afternoon, a couple of thousand people were gathered to picnic. This was no special occasion, just a normal Sunday.

The crowd was virtually 100% Latino -- before I arrived with my family, a friendly African-American guy selling funnel cakes was the sole non-Hispanic. While we are constantly lectured about the wonders of "diversity," Mexicans seem to prefer ethnic homogeneity and monoculturalism. Indeed, the scene was identical to ones taking place a thousand miles to the south, and the picnickers couldn't be happier about that....

Neoconservative commentators frequently assume that Mexican immigrants will automatically assimilate into American culture because our way of life is just so much more wonderful. In reality, however, Mexican culture is mature, stable, deeply rooted, and highly appealing to Mexicans. ...

The idea that Mexican immigrants will gladly give up Mexican culture wouldn't make much sense to the people in Hansen Dam park. They were having a lot more fun than gringos would have.

About a dozen small bands were blaring mariachi music, creating a festive (if clashing) sound track. Horseback riders wove in and out among toddlers. Vendors sold South-of-the-Border specialties such as watermelon chunks covered with hot sauce.

Of course, the reason for much of the fun at Hansen Dam was that the LAPD has apparently given up trying, under sheer weight of numbers, to enforce any of those maricon American laws.

I'm not even talking about immigration laws, but about the kind of health, safety, and environment rules that are the pride of American liberalism. In contrast, Fred Reed, the curmudgeonly columnist who recently moved to Mexico because America has gotten too regulated for his rugged individualist tastes, would have had a great time.

One of the conundrums of modern politics is that lax immigration enforcement is importing a vast class of people who hold many of the proudest accomplishments of modern American liberals in contempt, on those rare occasions when the illegal immigrants even notice them. Mexicans bring with them a macho culture, which has its strengths and weaknesses, but they aren't strengths that liberals admire when found in white Americans.

... Say you're sitting around in the park with your brand new cowboy hat on, pounding back a few cervezas, and it occurs to you that since you have got the hat, you should get the horse to go with it. What could make more sense than going for a horseback ride through a crowded park full of tiny children?

Well, at Hansen Dam, you're in luck!

In the American part of America, renting a horse has gotten expensive and time-consuming because liability insurance is so steep -- riding is quite dangerous, as the sad fates of Christopher Reeve and Cole Porter attest.

But at Hansen Dam on weekends, there are horse-owners around everywhere who will rent you a horse, few questions asked. They don't have signs advertising their business because what they are doing is illegal, so you have to ask (in Spanish, of course).

If one of the many toddlers about happens to stumble under the hooves of your mount and get trampled, well, that's tragic, but who could have foreseen such bad luck?

About 50 feet from where we were sitting, two young men started punching each other as hard as their state of inebriation would allow. Their friends swarmed in and separated them, trying to get the hotheads to calm down. But every few minutes, one would slip free from the restraining hands and attack his rival again. This was quite entertaining, but the fourth time the fight flared up, I got concerned that eventually somebody might pull out a gun.

So, we took off, gingerly dodging the drunk drivers in the parking lot. ...

In summary, there's much about Mexican culture I like. Ultimately, though, while Mexico is a nice place to visit, I wouldn't want to live there.

I shouldn't have to. That's what having separate countries is for. [More]



I shouldn't have to. That's what having separate countries is for. [More]


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Sarkozy's new government advises the French to think less

In the NYT, Elaine Sciolino explains "New Leaders Say Pensive French Think Too Much." "Pensive" isn't the right word, since it implies the French have unexpressed thoughts, but it is pretty funny:


In proposing a tax-cut law last week, Finance Minister Christine Lagarde bluntly advised the French people to abandon their “old national habit.”

France is a country that thinks,” she told the National Assembly. “There is hardly an ideology that we haven’t turned into a theory. We have in our libraries enough to talk about for centuries to come. This is why I would like to tell you: Enough thinking, already. Roll up your sleeves.”


To graduate from college in France, you have to pass a test that consists of writing a three hour essay on a philosophical topic such as "Being or nothingness: which is more ineffable?" I may have a few details wrong about this, but the general point is that the ability to philosophize fluently off the top of one's head at great length is a status marker that shows you are a college graduate and thus important to cafe flirtation. Michael Blowhard explained:


Hard though it is for an American to believe, the French wake up in the morning and look forward to a full day's-worth of Being French. ...French philosophy is, IMHO, best understood as a cross between a hyperrefined entertainment form, and an industry for the supplying of fodder for cafe-and-flirtation chatter. Take French philosophy straight and you're likely to wind up doing something stupid like destroying a department of English, or maybe even ruining your own life. The French would never make such a mistake; after all, nothing -- not even philosophy -- can distract them from the pursuit of Being French. In fact, part of Being French is enjoying philosophical chitchat, the more fashionable the better. We may not have much patience with it, but the French love the spectacle of radical posturing. We tend to engage with the substance of a radical position. For the French, this kind of attitudinizing is enjoyed. It adds spice to life; it's sexy intellectual titillation... French philosophy? Well, it gives the French something sophisticated-seeming to say (and to gab about) as they go about the genuinely serious business of Being French.


The NYT continues:


Citing Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” she said the French should work harder, earn more and be rewarded with lower taxes if they get rich.


Ms. Lagarde knows well the Horatio Alger story of making money through hard work. She looked west to make her fortune, spending much of her career as a lawyer at the firm of Baker & McKenzie, based in the American city identified by its broad shoulders and work ethic: Chicago. She rose to become the first woman to head the firm’s executive committee and was named one of the world’s most powerful women by Forbes magazine.

So now, two years back in France, she is a natural to promote the program of Mr. Sarkozy, whose driving force is doing rather than musing, and whose mantra is “work more to earn more.”

Certainly, the new president himself has cultivated his image as a nonintellectual. “I am not a theoretician,” he told a television interviewer last month. “I am not an ideologue. Oh, I am not an intellectual! I am someone concrete!”

But the disdain for reflection may be going a bit too far. It certainly has set the French intellectual class on edge.

“How absurd to say we should think less!” said Alain Finkielkraut, the philosopher, writer, professor and radio show host. “If you have the chance to consecrate your life to thinking, you work all the time, even in your sleep. Thinking requires setbacks, suffering, a lot of sweat.”


Indeed, sweat is pouring from my brow as I try to think up something smarter to say about this than "Indeed."


Bernard-Henri Lévy, the much more splashy philosopher-journalist who wrote a book retracing Tocqueville’s 19th-century travels throughout the United States, is similarly appalled by Ms. Lagarde’s comments.

“This is the sort of thing you can hear in cafe conversations from morons who drink too much,” said Mr. Lévy, who is so well-known in French that he is known simply by his initials B.H.L. “To my knowledge this is the first time in modern French history that a minister dares to utter such phrases. I’m pro-American and pro-market, so I could have voted for Nicolas Sarkozy, but this anti-intellectual tendency is one of the reasons that I did not.”

Mr. Lévy, who ultimately endorsed Mr. Sarkozy’s Socialist rival, Ségolène Royal, said that Ms. Lagarde was much too selective in quoting Tocqueville and suggested that she read his complete works. In her leisure time. ...


Here's Garrison Keillor's well-known review of BHL's insufferable American Vertigo.


Indeed, the idea of admitting one’s wealth, once considered déclassé, is becoming more acceptable. A cover story in the popular weekly magazine VSD this month included revelations that just a few years ago would have been unthinkable: the 2006 income of leading French personalities ($18 million for soccer star Zinedine Zidane, $12.1 million for rock star Johnny Hallyday, $334,000 for Prime Minister François Fillon, $109,000 for Mr. Sarkozy).


Johnny Hallyday is 64 years old. How do you make $12 million per year when you are 64 as a rock star, especially one who is utterly unknown in the English-speaking world? I guess maybe the reason is that M. Hallyday is the only French rock star. Perhaps an emphasis on rationalism prevents the French from developing rock stars more often than once every 40 years?

And do you want to guess that Mr. Sarkozy lived a little better than $109,000-worth?

Still, the French devotion to Cartesian rationality has served the French fairly well. The French don't score any higher in IQ than Americans or other Europeans, but they sometimes seem to think things through better than others do, as in nuclear power or health care. Unlike the Marines, the French tend to believe that there are two ways to do anything: the wrong way and the right way, which should be the French way.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Making the San Fernando Valley more vibrant

The eastern half of the San Fernando Valley has had a big influx in just the last few years of people from a big swath of the planet running from, roughly Moscow to Yemen. Lots of them are good eggs, but a few have definitely made the place more, uh, colorful. For example, there was this gang who kidnapped and murdered five fellow ex-Soviet immigrants from a luxurious house in the hills of Encino.

And now, from the LA Times:

Yana Kovalevsky made a colorful entrance. Not long out of the hospital, she hobbled into her neighborhood Starbucks for an interview on a purple-and-pink-striped cane. A blond-and-brown-streaked wig roosted on her head.

Under the wig, her scalp was a patchy landscape. A traumatic shedding had left the locks that once cascaded to her elbows struggling to regrow.

She needed the cane because a nerve-pinging disorder that somehow combined pain and numbness had turned her legs to rubber.

Last February, during a visit to their native Russia, Kovalevsky, a 27-year-old North Hollywood social worker, and her physician mother became critically ill from the effects of thallium. Their ordeal made worldwide headlines because thallium is a rare poison usually associated with political assassins and murderous inheritance seekers, not with the likes of Yana and Dr. Marina Kovalevsky.

It remains unknown how they came to ingest the tiny but potentially lethal amounts of the heavy metal. Among the other unanswered questions is who targeted them and why — if the poisoning was intentional, as mother, daughter and their doctors now believe. ...

A decade and a half before they were poisoned, the Kovalevskys had been an unheralded part of another international story — the emigration of Soviet Jews. They had followed Marina's brother Dr. Leon Peck, a fellow physician, to the United States. Peck had been a refusenik for 10 years before he received a visa to leave Russia in 1988. The Kovalevskys got out in 1991, settling in Los Angeles and then moving to Louisiana, where Marina, 50, completed a medical residency. They returned to California, where Marina established a family practice out of a West Hollywood storefront.

She is now back at work and has declined to be interviewed, pleading for privacy. Yana said her mother's reticence hardened after FBI agents investigating the poisoning queried her about the Russian American medical community, which has been a focus of insurance fraud inquiries.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer