Sunday, October 25, 2009

Part 2

Now, while the media focuses on Chinese manufacturing drones and Indian IIT graduates outcompeting midwest labor unions and medium quality amercan engineering graduates, no one talks about how screwed the rest of the third world is in the new flat reality. A recent nytimes article highlights how far we have to go in alieviating global poverty:

I live in a third world country and my job entails screening people for an application process that is primarily computer based. In this country, most people are so computer illiterate that they can't even go on to my company's web site and fill out an application. They frequently go to public notaries, and still make basic mistakes with spelling and biographical questions. The big question I always think is: where is Thomas Friedman now? My friends keep saying: don't worry, they'll catch up eventually. I think: they can't even use a computer and are brain dead when I talk to them, how can they compete with an IIT graduate who designs machines to automate them?

Well, here is your answer on what happens to those left behind in the new economy:


The number of hungry people in the world rose to 1.02 billion this year, or nearly one in seven people, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, despite a 12-year concentrated effort to cut the number.

The global financial recession added at least 100 million people by depriving them of the means to buy enough food, but the numbers were inching up even before the crisis, the United Nations noted in a report last week.


You go hungry. You starve.

Now, I'm not another wide eyed liberal in the likes of Nick Kristof or Jeffrey Sachs who pushes campaigns to eliminate poverty as the duty of the west or "something we can achieve in our generation."

I'm just a person who genuinly cares about innocent children starving to death (about 25,000) per day from preventable causes. This is a moral tragedy on an unimaginable scale, but what really infuriates me more are the grandstanding liberals who don't give HBD a chance to UNDERSTAND the root causes of poverty and put into place measures to alleviate this.

Not to mention the meat eaters who misalocate resources into meat production that could easily go towards alleviating third world hunger.

Nytimes continues:


The so-called green revolution of the 1960s and ’70s ended the specter of mass famines then, but the environmental cost of chemical fertilizers and heavy irrigation has spurred a bitter divide over the right ingredients for a second one.


The green revolution just merely delayed a bare minimum economic reality: In a capitalist system, you get what you produce. And in a system in which an unemployed laborer has no land of his own, there is poverty.

I vast swaths of the third world, there are simply masses of people who produce less economic value than what they need to sustain themselves, and they grow hungry. Why do they produce less? HBD.

And it's just going to get worse. While machines become more intelligent, they will make redundant vast swaths of the labor market. The third world and low intelligence races will suffer the most, because they won't even have a shot at developing IT intense industries. They will be simply bypassed.

So if you're stuck in Latin America, Africa, or South Asia, and are an unskilled laborer with nothing to offer, good luck. Thomas Friedman doesn't even have enough time to write about you, because in the new economy you're already screwed.

Change we can believe in.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

The Flat world clashes with HBD Part One

So I've been saying for awhile now that we are living in a "flat" world in which distances and national boundaries aren't as important or constricting as they were before. This reality is easily demonstrated in the world economy through the devastation of American manufacturing and the outsourcing of tons of low end white collar jobs.

But no one talks about the real scary culprit of the decline in manufacturing: increasing automation and inability of american workers to keep up.

Considering that 85% of Americans have cellphones and while lagging behind some others, we are still one of the most connected countries in the world. Yet, Thomas Friedman has words of warning that are quite prescient:


“Our education failure is the largest contributing factor to the decline of the American worker’s global competitiveness, particularly at the middle and bottom ranges,” argued Martin, a former global executive with PepsiCo and Kraft Europe and now an international investor. “This loss of competitiveness has weakened the American worker’s production of wealth, precisely when technology brought global competition much closer to home. So over a decade, American workers have maintained their standard of living by borrowing and overconsuming vis-à-vis their real income. When the Great Recession wiped out all the credit and asset bubbles that made that overconsumption possible, it left too many American workers not only deeper in debt than ever, but out of a job and lacking the skills to compete globally.”


Basically, this is the challenge we face right now in maintaining the US as the top dog economically.

But this is where it hits us on a personal level:

“If you think about the labor market today, the top half of the college market, those with the high-end analytical and problem-solving skills who can compete on the world market or game the financial system or deal with new government regulations, have done great. But the bottom half of the top, those engineers and programmers working on more routine tasks and not actively engaged in developing new ideas or recombining existing technologies or thinking about what new customers want, have done poorly. They’ve been much more exposed to global competitors that make them easily substitutable.”

Those at the high end of the bottom half — high school grads in construction or manufacturing — have been clobbered by global competition and immigration, added Katz. “But those who have some interpersonal skills — the salesperson who can deal with customers face to face or the home contractor who can help you redesign your kitchen without going to an architect — have done well.”

Just being an average accountant, lawyer, contractor or assembly-line worker is not the ticket it used to be.


I think that's scary. Steve Sailer agrees too, but points out some basic problems in Friedman's analysis.


I kind of have the impression that quite a few Americans, like, maybe, two or three hundred million of them, don't possess either the IQs or the personalities to be rainmakers. Are they permanently obsolete in the world that Friedman has been such an energetic cheerleader for?


And there you have it folks. While Friedman is fundamentally correct in his assertions about what hurts us, he's blind as to why it will be nearly impossible to overcome. Because everything can be low skilled can be done cheaply in the third world or automated. White collar work that involves thinking can be done over the internet. No one is untouchable from the need to compete with the world.

But what, ultimately, is the quality that determines who wins and who looses their job in the global economy?

Intelligence and IQ.

Flat world folks, meet HUMAN BIODIVERSITY and the fucked up reality:

THE BASIC SKILLS THAT ARE NECESSARY TO SUCEED IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY ARE GENETIC.

Demography is destiny

Oh shit.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

I am a SWPL

Because I don't like eating feces:


records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.

Using a combination of sources — a practice followed by most large producers of fresh and packaged hamburger — allowed Cargill to spend about 25 percent less than it would have for cuts of whole meat.

Those low-grade ingredients are cut from areas of the cow that are more likely to have had contact with feces, which carries E. coli, industry research shows.



Philophically, the HBD and Steveosphere has to come to a basic realization about the implications of HBD for our modern notion of what constitutes individual rights.

So here are three statements. Pick 2. You CANNOT believe in all three and have a logically coherent belief system:

1) Condemn Vegetarianism

2) Acknowledge that due to HBD, all humans are not equal

3) Condemn slavery


Now, we can get all fuzzy, Watson, and Saletan and say that intelligence is not a sign of inherent worth. But face it. In an information economy there are only so many athletes and entertainers. By far, intelligent people have more to offer than dumb people. They create civilization and technology and elevate us above animals.

If intelligence is genetic, then we are not equal. Deal with it. This post is for atheists and agnostics (aka thinking people) who think for themselves rather than look to a book to worry about the scheme of humans in the universe.

So back to my original point. I suscribe to statements 2 and 3.
Most people in the Steveosphere have been vocal about believing in 1 and 2 but have been moot about number 3.

Most hippies suscribe only to statement 3. The mainstream media and republicans suscribe to 1, with half and half for 2 and 3 depending on if you lean KKK or lean center.

But you can't go all out on all three. You can't say:

Even though all humans are not equal, I still think it's wrong for us to enslave one another and still perfectly fine to brutally slaughter innocent animals.

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Conservatives on Derrion Smith

I don't have to re hash what happened.

But it is starting to wear away, this idealism that I had after the election. Here is the key phrase from a anti Obama blog I look at:


It is high time for black activists and so-called leaders to put to rest the idea that this is all due to racism. Racism on the part of whites is the very least of the problems facing black America today. There is nothing white America can do other than treat each human being fairly. When you watch the video of the beating death of Derrion Albert, you see no whites involved. This young boy was not the victim of racism.


No racism here.


Notwithstanding the title of this essay, I don't know the solution to this intractable problem. I reject the notion, however, that the government has the solution, that money or programs is the solution or that this is another moment for white America to look itself in the mirror. We have done that. We have recognized our past history and, except for fringe elements, rejected the idea that we are "superior". We do believe in fair play for all. One thing I learned from working in inner cities as a DEA agent is that those areas have lots of good people trying to survive, live in security and keep their kids out of trouble. Unfortunately, there is the criminal element that preys first and foremost on the people in their own community. They are enabled by the radicals and hate-mongers who tell them they are victims of a racist society. They are enabled by liberal judges, academics, journalists and politicians who echo that sentiment. It does no one any good.

The fact is that nobody in Washington has the answer. Nobody in Chicago's city hall has the answer. The answer, whatever it is, is to be found in the south side of Chicago.


And here is the problem. Conservatives shake their heads and blame dysfunctional black culture and black apologists for the problems of black society.

But they are fundamentally wrong. The problem is biology, the fact that 100,000 thousand years ago some enterprising homo sapiens decided to head north and cross into Asia while many more stayed behind. Those that left were quickly culled by the more brutal climate that they had to face and only the intelligent and cooperative survived.

For those that remained, mother nature wasn't a problem. Rather, it was their fellow man. Dominating other men became the means to survive.

And so fundamentally different survival strategies led to fundamentally different beings that emerged.

And now, we are forced to deal with it as a society. How long will the charade of white racism persist? I don't know, but when it crashes, it will crash hard.

So the singularitarians have to be ready to put forth an alternative philosophy, one that involves conquering nature and changing our genetics to erase all these inequalities. We will technologically merge with each other to create a giant living universe where the ego is irrelevant and the concept of equality is incomprehensible.

We are one. Om.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

HBD by any other name

So...back from a long break, just thought I'd share this tidbit on our strange national immigration policy:

This recent article in slate talks about our immigration problems. Here is the key phrase:


About one-quarter of American tech companies are founded in part or entirely by foreigners. The proportion in Silicon Valley is even higher—a recent survey (PDF) by Vivek Wadhwa, an engineering professor at Duke University, showed that more than 52 percent of Valley startups were founded or co-founded by people born outside of the United States. According to Wadhwa's research, immigrant-founded firms produced $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 workers in 2005.


That's pretty significant if you ask me.

And this should just make you cry:


about 60 percent of doctorate degrees in engineering at American universities are awarded to foreign students who are in the country on temporary visas (PDF). And foreign workers are responsible for some of the tech world's signature innovations. In April, the Times profiled Sanjay Mavinkurve, one of Google's most respected engineers, who, among other things, came up with a brilliant way of reducing the time that Google Maps takes to load on mobile phones. But Mavinkurve—who was born in India, educated at Harvard, and would love to live in America—is stuck working in Google's Toronto office, because the United States won't let him bring his family into the country.


How the hell are we going to maintain our high tech competitiveness if we allow the Vdare anti foreigner crowd to run our immigration policy?

Now, read this phrase by Intel's chairman:


'I'm going to make it such that those smart kids—and as many of them as want to—can stay in the United States.' They're here today, they're graduating today—and they're going home today."


Is this not HBD immigration policy?

Returning to the jist of the article, one thing should jump out. Farhad Manjoo not ONCE mentions Mexicans. Not once does he mention legalization. Not once does he mention Spanish as a second language or borders. Why? Because he cares about the country more than ideology.

See the writing on the wall. The world is becoming more automated. Low skilled jobs that pay a living market wage are becoming rarer and rarer, while our low IQ population is balooning. China and India and Russia are rising to compete with us, and we have to fight back. How do we do that? Raise our national IQ.

That won't work. It's not palatable.

Alternatives? Create a new visa class:


He wants the government to create a new immigration class for founders of new firms. Every year, Graham's "Founder Visa" program would let in 10,000 immigrants who've shown a plan for starting a new company. These people would be barred from working at existing companies—in other words, they wouldn't be "taking American jobs." Instead, Graham argues, they'd be creating jobs: "If we assume four people per startup, which is probably an overestimate, that's 2,500 new companies. Each year," Graham writes. "They wouldn't all grow as big as Google, but out of 2,500 some would come close."



How do you implement HBD oriented policies without using HBD reasoning to sell it to the masses?

Marketing.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Desperation

It's closing in on Kristof, and he's panicking. His latest column, #1 on nytimes.com, is total drivel and bs.


A common thread among these three groups may be an emphasis on diligence or education, perhaps linked in part to an immigrant drive. Jews and Chinese have a particularly strong tradition of respect for scholarship, with Jews said to have achieved complete adult male literacy — the better to read the Talmud — some 1,700 years before any other group.

The parallel force in China was Confucianism and its reverence for education. You can still sometimes see in rural China the remains of a monument to a villager who triumphed in the imperial exams. In contrast, if an American town has someone who earns a Ph.D., the impulse is not to build a monument but to pass a hat.


But what happens when a culture values intelligence? The intelligent procreate more.



Perhaps the larger lesson is a very empowering one: success depends less on intellectual endowment than on perseverance and drive. As Professor Nisbett puts it, “Intelligence and academic achievement are very much under people’s control.”



Damaging to public policy. Another generation of college dropouts that would have made decent mechanics, police officers, or army platoon leaders.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Race...IQ...Yawn

I don't know, maybe Brooks was reading Saletan and was starting to get scared. After all, there aren't really too many non partisan columnists who try to challenge mainstream wisdom and avoid being pigeonholed. Brooks is one of them. So he saw a challenge when he read those Saletan columns.

So, in response to Saletan's agonizing over racial gaps, Brooks pens the The Harlem miracle essay.

Here's his point:


They found that the Harlem Children’s Zone schools produced “enormous” gains. The typical student entered the charter middle school, Promise Academy, in sixth grade and scored in the 39th percentile among New York City students in math. By the eighth grade, the typical student in the school was in the 74th percentile. The typical student entered the school scoring in the 39th percentile in English Language Arts (verbal ability). By eighth grade, the typical student was in the 53rd percentile.


Great!

Oh, wait, there's a problems. Though refuted by Half Sigma and Steve Sailer I wanted to add some of my own points:


In math, Promise Academy eliminated the achievement gap between its black students and the city average for white students.

Let me repeat that. It eliminated the black-white achievement gap.


Did you see how sly that is? Basically, he claims that when black students in a highly rigorous, self selective, intensively studied program equal the average white students in an average academic program, that's eliminating the achievement gap.

What? Brooks himself even details what the black students have to go through:


Promise Academy students who are performing below grade level spent twice as much time in school as other students in New York City. Students who are performing at grade level spend 50 percent more time in school.

Assessments are rigorous. Standardized tests are woven into the fabric of school life.


Increase by 50-100% time spent in class, and teach to the test, and you call it a miracle when these students equal non-advantaged white students? This is absurd. Like HS and Sailer said, there was no control group. The gap between black and white exists because given the same resources and opportunities white students will perform better than black students due to innate differences in intelligence.

That's it.

The desperation of Brook's columns and his previous ones such as:

The waning of IQ which is filled with rubbish

and

Genius: The Modern View which is well written but ignores the genetic basis of personality and the ability of people to have easy success with certain fields while others toil.

These columns are in response to his astute observations in The Cognitive Age where he writes:


The chief force reshaping manufacturing is technological change (hastened by competition with other companies in Canada, Germany or down the street). Thanks to innovation, manufacturing productivity has doubled over two decades. Employers now require fewer but more highly skilled workers.

The central process driving this is not globalization. It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked.

The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of information’s journey is the last few inches — the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain. Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information? Does he or she have the training to exploit it? Are there cultural assumptions that distort the way it is perceived?



How can he write this and also claim IQ is losing its relevance? There is some serious intellectual dishonesty going on with Brooks. On the one hand, he espouses relative conservative views and astute observations about human nature and the economy.

But challenge the notion that all humans are exactly the same, and he shrivels.

He isn't alone.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Woah!

So Saletan pulls a fast one on us.

In a recent post he criticizes categorizing test scores by race.

Why?


Liberal creationists—people who think no genetically based difference can be admitted in average ability between populations—are mistaken. But that doesn't make race a useful or socially healthy way of categorizing people.


Damn. I didn't think he'd come out and say it. But yeah, NCLB is a failure.

Recently he asked himself what the solution to the problem of egalitarianism was. In a well written deliberation he comes to the conclusion:

In the age of genetics, egalitarianism doesn't mean you have to deny differences in racial averages. It means you have to beware the injustice this kind of grouping and averaging does to individuals.


I wholeheartedly agree. However, we have 2 serious problems:

1) All of international economic development theory is predicated on the idea that all races have equal intelligence. If this is not true, then institutions will fail. The idea that there are simply not enough smart people in Africa to lead to advanced development will be devastating on multiple levels.

2) The idea of human equality is fundamentally predicated on equality of intelligence between races. Our subjugation of animals is predicated on the idea that it is "natural" and that animals are inferior due to their lower intelligence.

But guess what? Slavery existed in human society just as long as animal domestication. Slavery still exists in some ant societies.

And if it is ok to slaughter animals due to their inferior intelligence, what about humans? Can we enslave them?


To the 1 or 2 people reading this, pay attention. This issue of racial differences in intelligence is a serious problem that our current worldview is totally UNABLE to answer. In an age of massive civilian casualties in Afghanistan, widespread genocide, and political unrest, what is the future of humanity when confronted with this disturbing truth?

All humans are not equal.

Really. Let that sink in for awhile. And now think about how that tears down all our cherished beliefs, institutions, assumptions, and dreams for a better world.

The road ahead is perilous.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Kristof vs. Reality 2

So, you may ask: what the hell is Nick Kristof doing writing about intelligence?
This article has jumped to #1 on the nytimes emailed list so obviously people are interested in it.

Let me tell you:

The field of statistics has advanced significantly. In the previous ages, people could claim a correlation out of thin air and we'd have to take them at their word. But now, with the use of regression analysis through easily accessible computers, people can ask which numbers correlate with which.

So, people naturally asked the same question of IQ. And guess what? Independent of income, race, gender, etc, IQ has tremendous predictive power. And there's only so long that people can go on denying it. Even Kristof.

But then we look at what Kristof says about the third world. Every week he writes a column guilt tripping us about how the US is responsible for the problems of the third world and that capitalism is flawed. We have to do more to help them. We should throw money at Darfur and Congo.

But then someone asked: what more can we do? After trillions in aid to Africa, what development has there been? Mexico has spent a century next to the most prosperous nation in world history, with export, remissions, and immigration benefits, and they can barely muster a per capita GDP around the world average. What gives? Could it be that they're just dumber than we are?

So he sees this and he gets nervous. His message goes down the tube if people start thinking that biology is destiny. So he pre empts them saying: "sure, IQ matters. But since it's not genetic, there is still a chance for Africa."

The sad truth is that there is no hope. Africa had a higher per capita GDP during colonial white rule. Recently, a poll found that South Africans are less optimistic about their country than when apartheid ended, and they are about the elect a homophobic, rapist, polygamist, AIDS denying future president.

Zimbabwe's economy collapsed when land was taken away from White farmers.

Kenya endured a bloodbath after an election because the tribes couldn't agree who won, while the United States elected it's first minority president.

Somalia's largest source of income is foreign aid and hostage ransoms.


It's a very basic question. If human civilization has collectively abused, mistreated, and slaughtered animals because it is in our benefit, why should we sacrifice our money and time to save Africa? Shouldn't we just let Darfur burn and allow Rwanda to repeat?

Why should species membership alone qualify someone for the collective sympathy and charity of the developed world? If sentient beings perish daily due to the harsh reality of nature, should barbaric humans be the exception?

Kristof says yes because we're all equal.

Unfortunately, he is wrong.

Darfur burns.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Kristof vs. Reality

So today in the New York Times there is an editorial by Nick Kristof on the role of intelligence. He basically tries to shoot down the notion that intelligence in inherited. Here are some of his arguments:


One gauge of that is that when poor children are adopted into upper-middle-class households, their I.Q.’s rise by 12 to 18 points, depending on the study. For example, a French study showed that children from poor households adopted into upper-middle-class homes averaged an I.Q. of 107 by one test and 111 by another. Their siblings who were not adopted averaged 95 on both tests.



Indeed, the average I.Q. of a person in 1917 would amount to only 73 on today’s I.Q. test. Half the population of 1917 would be considered mentally retarded by today’s measurements, Professor Nisbett says.


Flynn Effect



Another proven intervention is to tell junior-high-school students that I.Q. is expandable, and that their intelligence is something they can help shape. Students exposed to that idea work harder and get better grades.



He has some interesting points. However, the report entitled Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns showcases a basic fact:

"Recent twin and adoption studies suggest that while the effect of the family environment is substantial in early childhood, it becomes quite small by late adolescence. These findings suggest that differences in the life styles of families whatever their importance may be for many aspects of children's lives make little long-term difference for the skills measured by intelligence tests."


So we can dispute statistics and tests. Every liberal commentator can easily cherry pick a few tests that show that in certain circumstance, stupid people will do better than usual with certain environments. But he never addressed the deep structural contradictions with claiming that everyone has equal IQ. On the surface, you know that's absurd-families raising non-twin siblings easily see the differences in intelligence between them.

What they key is, is that brain structure matters. It's what makes humans more intelligent than animals, and it gives us our own personalities


The researchers said the brain differences are structural and can be measured as variations in the size of specific regions of the brain that appear to be linked with each of the four personality types.



And even just a few years ago the NY Times reported that intelligence was genetic.


The researchers found that average children (I.Q. scores 83 to 108) reached a peak of cortical thickness at age 7 or 8. Highly intelligent children (121 to 149 in I.Q.) reached a peak thickness much later, at 13, followed by a more dynamic pruning process.

One interpretation, Dr. Rapoport said, is that the brains of highly intelligent children are more plastic or changeable, swinging through a higher trajectory of cortical thickening and thinning than occurs in average children. The scans show the "sculpturing or fine tuning of parts of the cortex which support higher level thought, and maybe this is happening more efficiently in the most intelligent children," Dr. Shaw said.



So Part I addressed why the basic science of Kristof is wrong. Part II will address the implications.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Hey

So after taking some time off, I've come to some conclusions:

1) All people are all equal-not just in their rights, but in intelligence, athletic ability, and attractiveness. Actually, the oppressed groups are probably more equal than everyone else.

2) We should eat meat, since animals were created by a benevolent overlord to be eaten by humans, who were created in his image.

3) Islam is actually a quite beautiful religion once you take everything into account

4) The main purpose of life is to buy stuff to show to others and impress them. Thank God for marketers! If not for them we wouldn't know what to spend on to max out our credit cards!

5) People are usually rational and all their decisions make sense.

6) There is a meaning to our existence

7) Sex outside of holy matrimony is one of the worst sins possible

8) Beware of those advocating using technology to improve the human condition. Natural is the way to go

9) All economic differences between countries are caused by oppression by the Western world.

10) We should let as many unskilled immigrants in as possible, so that we can repay them for holding down their countries.

11) Don't pay attention to the 25K children who will die tonight because of hunger or genocide, and don't let that fact question the previous statements.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Automation is liberation

How do you end slavery in the world?

How do you end the sexual exploitation of women?

Answer? automation .

But once someone no longer is forced to work because their labor is no longer needed, will they be able to sell it?

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Now

Sure, the negative stuff is below.

But I'm absolutely giddy of the idea of seeing Obama address a joint address to Congress. It's like the inauguration all over again.

How does the Al-Qaeda propoganda machine match this? Shouldn't the oppressed of the Middle East realize that Islam is a broken ideology and American secularism is the way to go?

What's particularly amazing is that Obama's race is no longer such a big deal. We've come far enough as a country that the focus is now shifted to the economy. What can the president do for the people? That is now far more important than what interest or racial group he belongs to.

This is what makes America, and democracy, great.

Dating and the singularity

People ask why I am so obsessed with the singularity. My answer is that traveling around the world and paying attention to current events without minding political correctness or victim ideology has made me realize that human beings are seriously fucked up. Evolution is a series of selfish genes, not directed by any central intelligence. Humans are not designed to be in the image of god. We are bags of chemicals and DNA that are capable of unlimited cruelty.

Denial of human reality is manifested in the modern day dating debacle following the feminist revolution.

The problem? Women reward bad people with sex.

I'm an avid Roissy reader, but he just hit one out of the park and it's necessary that you read this in order to confront the dark side of human nature.

Hitting a woman will turn her on"

An important quotes:


I am not claiming that women WISH to be beaten. Naturally, if you ask a woman, she will say “No way I don’t want to be beaten!”. What I do claim is that despite a woman’s conscious feelings towards abusers, her loins and her heart melt for men who abuse them, as can be seen by not only their return trips to the poisoned well (50% of women return to their abusive lovers), but by their very REAL and GENUINE love for their violently abusive lovers. Nothwithstanding to the contrary all the feminist squid ink attempting to whitewash in proper PC politesse why women go back to men who hit them, the simplest, and most parsimonious explanation, is that women return to abusers because THEY LOVE THEM. They are drawn to them. I have looked into the eyes of women who were in relationships with men who hit them, and I saw love. True, deep, fathomless love. If you have ever seen the eyes of a woman in love, you’ll know what I mean. They look as if they’re cavorting on another plane of existence.

Even beautiful women like Rihanna, with nearly illimitable options on the sexual market and an extensive support network that would protect her from abusive boyfriends, cannot help but keep going back to the man who hits her. Rihanna is said to be lonely without Chris Brown. She could have almost any man, but she chooses the man who punched her in the face.


Human nature is hell. Free will does not exist. Rationality is a farce. Equality is a myth. The human idealism of leftist ideology and the resistance to change of conservatism are both based on a false premise: that humanity is capable of creating a better world.

This deep insult to our values infects the world we live in. Where women with access to all the men and money in the world go to men who hit them. When drug dealers in mexico recently returned from a beheading, mafia in russia and terror sheiks in the middle east all have access to the beautiful women of the world who happily submit themselves, what has our species become?

This is why I eagerly await the end of the human era. I am not proud to be human. My species is not worth saving and I think machines making logical decisions with moral programming will be far better beings than humans ever could. Don't be afraid. If we change things can only get better.

Don't hold on to the past if it is not worth saving.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Modern day implications of Darwin and Lincoln: Part I

So on the occasion of the just passed birthday of Darwin AND Lincoln it is appropriate to reflect on their lives and the implications of what they did.

These were two phenomenal men. One of them kept the Union together and freed the slaves. The other revolutionized biology and convulsed religion.

But their legacy remains obscured. Why? Because both men, while the objects of admiration from the left, are deeply misunderstood.

Both men had very different racial views from today's prevailing wisdom. And they happen to have been right.

I'll be honest. As a perennial fan of evolutionary biology and psychology, I always knew that evolution had more to say about race than what we let on. Humans magically didn't stop changing after they branched out from Africa.

And I knew that Lincoln did not have the highest opinion of African Americans, even though he thought they had inherent rights.

But what I didn't do was put it into context. We have just sworn in the first African American President of the United States who used Lincoln's Bible to assume office. Lincoln happened to be born in the same year as Charles Darwin.

So let's dive into it. I'm going to take Lincoln quotes from a recent root article to save myself and yourself the hassle of searching.


"There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”


Woah! Come again?

Apparently Lincoln took the unlivability to heart


Even as he was writing the Emancipation Proclamation during the summer of 1862, Lincoln was working feverishly to ship all those slaves he was about to free out of the United States. So taken was he with the concept of colonization that he invited five black men to the White House and offered them funding to found a black republic in Panama, for the slaves he was about to free. Earlier, he had advocated that the slaves be freed and shipped to Liberia or Haiti. And just one month before the Emancipation became the law of the land, in his Annual Message to Congress on Dec. 1, 1862, Lincoln proposed a constitutional amendment that would “appropriate money, and otherwise provide, for colonizing free colored persons with their own consent, at any place or places without the United States.”


No complaints here. That would have been quite useful.

But you know what? Despite the fact that Lincoln believed this, what makes him more amazing is that he pushed an unpopular policy of giving African Americans citizenship, realizing that ultimately in order to redeem the promise of the American revolution he couldn't lead a country where people were born without freedom.

End of Part I

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

The individual takes a hit

So now that people will have to report their location to their loved ones.

Individual Liberty. R.I.P.

Welcome to Gaia.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Subtle Differences among the third world

So I was tuned into a nytimes article earlier today on rice market betting in Senegal.

Here is a key phrase to look out for:


In countries like Senegal, which, with a population of 13 million, consumes about 600,000 tons of rice a year, cheap imports of staples like rice and wheat from farms in Asia that are vastly more efficient, and often government-subsidized, typically flood local markets. The imports drive out more expensive locally produced rice.
...
Rice is the staple of the Senegalese diet — the national dish, thieboudienne, consists of fish and broken rice grains cooked in a thick and spicy tomato sauce.

But the price of producing rice locally made it more expensive than imports, and as a result, Senegalese farmers produce on average only about 80,000 tons of rice a year, and often struggle to sell that much, according to farming experts here.



The question is why. Why, in a country like Senegal, with a per capita income of 1,800, unable to compete in prices with a big rice exporter like Thailand, with a per capita income of 8,700?

Shouldn't the low wages of the Senegalese workers make it cheap to produce a given quantity of rice in Senegal vs. Thailand?

I have the answer.


Human capital.

In economic terms, we view things simply

P=F(L,C)

Production is a function of labor and capital.

But, what if human capital isn't equal? What if for the same level of capital and labor two groups produce difference products?

HC2>HC1 as the IQ of human capital group 2 is higher than 1.

F(L,C,HC1) < F(L,C,HC2) becomes the only logical conclusion.

You wonder why the Senegalese can't compete? THIS is why.

Read it and weep. Read between the lines. IQ is everywhere. The fall will come one day. It may be sudden, it may be gradual. It may come after genetic engineering makes it irrelevant. But it will come. And we will be vindicated.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Why the Singularity Can't Wait

So every day that totalitarian governments gain access to future technology while the average person remains aloof is a bad thing.

A Saletan post on Iranian citizens using cell phone cameras to tape a mixed gender soccer game and the resulting aftermath.


The first mixed soccer game—females vs. males—since the 1979 Islamic revolution led to swift punishment Monday, as an Iranian soccer club said it had suspended three officials involved and handed out fines of up to $5,000. Iran's strict Islamic rules ban any physical contact between unrelated men and women, and Iranian women are even banned from attending soccer games when male teams play. ... [The club] said its disciplinary committee suspended two officials for a year while a third was suspended for six months.

The officials—a coach and two managers—first denied the game took place, but video clips on cell phones of the game were used as evidence against them, the daily newspaper reported.

democratized technology can be used just as easily to enforce tyranny as to challenge it. Devices won't point us in the right direction. We'll have to be the ones who point them.


This is why I advocate people keeping up with machines to prevent them being used to turn us into sheep.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Tempering Obama fever

Politicians are not supposed to be worshiped.

They are politicians, after all.

Barack Obama is no exception.

But yet, on Tuesday, in the National Mall in Washington DC, I was treated to a pretty amazing sight. The entire Mall was filled stretching back to the Monument and beyond.







People are saying he's an amazing man. Sure, his meteoric rise in American politics is amazing, but that is a testament to the openness of our system rather than his ability.

For one, he rose through the Illinois political establishment and ingratiating himself to a racist pastor (who he later throws under a bus when he's no longer convenient) by accommodating the corrupt powers at large. Then, to get his senate seat he was going against Alan Keyes.

You're kidding me, right?

Anyway, this guy never truly faced hardship in life. He was never accused of anything, never served in the military, and failed upwards his life. Sure, maybe racial identification issues, but that's the case with every ABCD (American Born Confused Desi) also!

But anyway, returning to the inauguration. African Americans celebrated, and they deserve that celebration. But, here's a difficult question: what is it that they are celebrating?

Obama is an African American, but he's the son of a PHD Kenyan student and a white woman from Kansas. He grew up in Hawaii. Culturally, his background is as far from the average African American as anyone else in the US.

Obamas behavior is classic "acting white". He would be ridiculed if he grew up in any inner city ghetto.

So, if they say "we did it, we got the presidency" I don't think so. White people in Iowa who were willing to vote for him did it. Sure, electorally African Americans helped Obama, but given that they voted for him based on his race rather than his policies



is this something to be celebrated?


So look. This election is something for Americans to celebrate because it shows the world that we have the most open, fair, meritocratic society out there.

African Americans, on the other hand should be afraid.

The jig is up. The myth of racist America is dead. If a first generation African American can win the Presidency with no accomplishments and no executive experience, running on a theme of change(which is quickly being thrown out the window) and good speeches, then the country truly is open.

Already, writers are trying to pre-empt this notion of a non-racist America with no more excuses


Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, the majority whip, tapped into the fervor Monday night at the BET Honors awards in Washington when he proclaimed, “Every child has lost every excuse.”

What? That’s where I have to put my foot down. That’s going a bridge too far.

I’m a big proponent of personal responsibility, but children too often don’t have a choice. They are either prisoners of their parentage or privileged by it. Some of their excuses are hollow. But other excuses are legitimate, and they didn’t magically disappear when Obama put his left hand on the Lincoln Bible.


Too late. Americans are sick and tired of racial guilt. You want racism? Travel ANYWHERE is the world outside the US. I have experienced it. I've been through racism. The US doesn't compare.

So, we're going to be skeptical of excuses made by blacks.

We're going to expect Obama to change the ghetto culture


Until at least 2013, the whole world will watch a debonair black man whose studiousness and diligence transported him from a broken home to the world's most famous house. He will share it with Michelle Obama, his wife of 16 years. Just like her husband, the first lady avoided the 50-percent black high-school dropout rate, graduated from an Ivy League university and earned a Harvard law degree. The Obamas' two daughters know their father and enjoy him in their daily lives.


What a great thought. Black America sees a great role model and emulates him and removes themselves from the pits of American society.

Sorry to burst your bubble, people, but this ain't going to happen.

Why?

Because behavior is genetic. And the behavior of African Americans (failure in schools, out of wedlock births, high crime rate) is genetic in nature.

Sorry, folks.

Even more fascinating, Roissy has a post on inter racial dating.


Why don’t black chicks dig white guys and vice versa? In a word: testosterone. Blacks have more of it, and more androgen receptors, than other races. The same testosterone that imbues black men with attractive masculine features and musculature makes black women look less feminine. On average. This isn’t an assertion from anecdote, because in my personal life I know quite a few really cute black chicks. I’m judging based on general observations and what I’ve heard from men of all races when the subject came up. Since women are attracted to men with lots of testosterone (for fucking, at least), it stands to reason that black women would want men who have more of it relative to their own. Here, few white and even fewer Asian men qualify as acceptable partners for black women.


It's really that simple. Steve Sailer has been talking about it for a decade.

So now we get the racist accusations from his readers. Hedgie claims:


This is some racist shit, but hey whatever keeps you happy.


But guess what? Roissy knows his shit. Call him racist, but that doesn't make it wrong.

The jig is up. Human nature is doomed. Enter the singularity.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Ants and the Islam

Is this the root of our sexual prudery, back millions of years ago when humans diverged from ants?

Roissy generally has scathing things to say about them. To me, it's simple. Marriage is a dead institution. Let women be sluts as long as they use birth control. But apparently our cultural intolerance of profligate sex isn't just a human thing.


To the long list of reasons you should be glad you're not an ant, add this: You'd have to forget about having sex. You'd also have to forget about even trying. Sneak off for a little insectile assignation and the other members of the colony would know immediately — and attack you for it...


Ants that are capable of reproducing naturally emit hydrocarbon-based odors, and the eggs they produce smell the same way. Ants that can't reproduce emit no such odor. Liebig and Smith produced a synthetic hydrocarbon in the lab that had the same olfactory properties as the natural one, then plucked a few innocent ants from a nest and dabbed the chemical on them. When they were returned to the colony, they were promptly attacked — never mind that they had essentially been framed.





"I was convinced, because I knew that Koran was giving them the responsibility to do that."


Change we can believe in? Let's wait and see. Multicultural tolerance is not going to do anything for women in the Islamic world.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Dawkins on Speciesm

So for the upteenth time: It's wrong to eat meat just because humans dominate animals. Why? Because whites used Africans for slave labor because they "could". And then we realized that it was wrong.

So when I bring this up to the typical HBD crowd they freeze up. To them, most vegetarians that they criticize are tree hugging Obama groupies who eat organic and want the welfare state.

Not me. I'm a cold hearted atheist utilitarian who simply thinks it's barbaric to kill sentient beings just for nutrients that we can get more efficiently from other sources.

What's the defense of the HBD community? Humanity matters. Blacks are human beings so we don't enslave them.

But here's a simple question: So what?

A species is just a species. It's just a bunch of living beings who can mate with each other. Membership is not automatically a guarantor of rights. I fight hobbes in that respect, though I still like democracy (it's the worst system, aside from all the others).

So, I have a likely ally in the fight. Richard Dawkins. In response to the edge question of the year: What will change everything? Here is his answer:


Our ethics and our politics assume, largely without question or serious discussion, that the division between human and 'animal' is absolute. 'Pro-life', to take just one example, is a potent political badge, associated with a gamut of ethical issues such as opposition to abortion and euthanasia.

What it really means is pro-human-life. Abortion clinic bombers are not known for their veganism, nor do Roman Catholics show any particular reluctance to have their suffering pets 'put to sleep'. In the minds of many confused people, a single-celled human zygote, which has no nerves and cannot suffer, is infinitely sacred, simply because it is 'human'. No other cells enjoy this exalted status.

But such 'essentialism' is deeply un-evolutionary. If there were a heaven in which all the animals who ever lived could frolic, we would find an interbreeding continuum between every species and every other. For example I could interbreed with a female who could interbreed with a male who could ... fill in a few gaps, probably not very many in this case ... who could interbreed with a chimpanzee.

We could construct longer, but still unbroken chains of interbreeding individuals to connect a human with a warthog, a kangaroo, a catfish. This is not a matter of speculative conjecture; it necessarily follows from the fact of evolution.



VICTORY IS MINE!

One of the greatest biologists of the century just declared that human being doesn't matter.

I recommend morningstar farms for beginners. :)

Thursday, January 8, 2009

I am immortal (and so are you).

Don't know, but check out this post by Saletan.


The announcement, from the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, requests "a highly interactive PC or web-based application to allow family members to verbally interact with virtual renditions of deployed Service Members." The application must "produce compelling interactive dialogue between a Service member and their families … using video footage or high-resolution 3-D rendering. The child should be able to have a simulated conversation with a parent about generic, everyday topics. For instance, a child may get a response from saying 'I love you', or 'I miss you', or 'Good night mommy/daddy.' "



What we have here is a primitive form of uploading


In transhumanism and science fiction, mind uploading (also occasionally referred to by other terms such as mind transfer, whole brain emulation, or whole body emulation) refers to the hypothetical transfer of a human mind to a substrate different from a biological brain, such as a detailed computer simulation of an individual human brain.

Mind uploading, then, is the act of copying or transferring this "software" from the hardware of the human brain to another processing environment, typically an artificially created one.

The concept of mind uploading then is strongly mechanist, relying on several assumptions about the nature of human consciousness and the philosophy of artificial intelligence. It assumes that strong AI machine intelligence is not only possible, but is indistinguishable from human intelligence, and denies the vitalist view of human life and consciousness.

The idea of uploading human consciousness in this manner raises many philosophical questions which people may find interesting or disturbing, such as matters of individuality and the soul. Vitalists would say that uploading was a priori impossible. Many people also wonder whether, if they were uploaded, it would be their sentience uploaded, or simply a copy



It's actually quite simple. You record as much of your personality as possible. Let's say we can have a camera follow us around and record everything we say. Then it uses an algorithm to predict our next words. Do this over the course of 10 years. That's alot of interactions. Freeze it and upload it. Parent dies, kid can still talk to it when it feels lonely.

It's a very simple idea. You replace one neuron in your brain with a chip that simulates the neuron perfectly and feel exactly the same. Do the same thing a billion times and still feel the same.

Who is the real you?

My question is simple: How are Muslims going to possibly handle the challenge of mind uploading and AI in the future? That barbaric religion is finished first.

15-20 years before the modern world (or at least Deep Blue/Blue Gene verson 10.5) laughs and pities them. Then the rest of the devout and environmental hippies.

At that point, who the hell cares about race and IQ? People, the meaning of
HUMAN-DEATH-LIFE-EXISTENCE-IS is changing before our eyes.

I could see why Saletan dropped IQ, even though he was right. The simple fact is that while its implications are important, in the long run it DOES NOT MATTER.

Monday, January 5, 2009

The World is not fuzzy

So, some article to point out that have a mild thread of tearing down a kumbaya vision of the world. So let's get to it.

We'll start with a Wall Street Journal article linked by Steve Sailer.


For years, immigrants to the U.S. have viewed buying a home as the ultimate benchmark of success. Between 2000 and 2007, as the Hispanic population increased, Hispanic homeownership grew even faster, increasing by 47%, to 6.1 million from 4.1 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Over that same period, homeownership nationally grew by 8%. In 2005 alone, mortgages to Hispanics jumped by 29%, with expensive nonprime mortgages soaring 169%, according to the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council.

An examination of that borrowing spree by The Wall Street Journal reveals that it wasn't simply the mortgage market at work. It was fueled by a campaign by low-income housing groups, Hispanic lawmakers, a congressional Hispanic housing initiative, mortgage lenders and brokers, who all were pushing to increase homeownership among Latinos.



Fishy.


Mortgage lending to Hispanics took off between 2004 and 2007, powered by nonprime loans. The biggest jump occurred in 2005. The 169% increase in nonprime mortgages to Hispanics that year outpaced a 122% gain for blacks, and a 110% increase for whites, according to a Journal analysis of mortgage-industry and federal-housing data. Nonprime mortgages carry high interest rates and are tailored to borrowers with low credit scores or few assets.

Between 2004 and 2007, black borrowers were offered nonprime loans at a slightly higher rate than Hispanics, but the overall number of Hispanic borrowers was much larger. From 2004 to 2005, total nonprime home loans to Hispanics more than tripled to $69 billion from $19 billion, and peaked in 2006 at $73 billion.

Regions of the country where the housing bubble grew biggest, such as California, Nevada and Florida, are heavily populated by Latinos, many of whom worked in the construction industry during the housing boom. When these markets began to weaken, bad loans depressed the value of neighboring properties, creating a downward spiral. Neighborhoods are now dotted with vacant homes.




So yeah... the MSM now knows where to point to finger.

But taking this even further is an column in National Review:
"The Upside of Obama"

Hey, I voted for Obama for a variety of reasons. But one of the more subtle reasons was to demonstrate to the world and minorities that the US is not a racist nation. Looks like someone got the message.


If the election of Barack Obama — a 47-year-old black man with a political resume as ephemeral as a Mets pennant drive and a governing philosophy as dubious as Paris Hilton’s choice of boyfriends — accomplishes nothing else, it should illustrate the peculiar distorting effect on American society of white liberal guilt.


Ouch. But it gets better.


Whatever caused the current fiscal crisis, therefore, must be considered a prime factor in McCain’s defeat. The seeds of the crisis date back the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 — which initiated a concerted, decades-long effort by the federal government to coerce banks into making loans to lower-income borrowers.

The sentiment was noble, albeit rooted in a desperate race consciousness: If more black families owned their homes, the theory went, they’d accumulate wealth as the properties increased in value. They would pass that wealth down to their children, and the financial inequalities stemming from America’s sordid racial past would gradually diminish.

The problem, of course, is that mathematical probabilities don’t bend to noble sentiments. The reason banks weren’t lending to black borrowers as frequently, or on as good of terms, as to white borrowers, had nothing to do with racism. It had to do with risk analysis. Writing loans to lower-income, lower-collateral borrowers means more defaults.


Oh man. I sense something tough coming.


Ironies abound. The most bitter is that a disproportionate number of foreclosures have affected black homeowners, because they were riskier buyers to begin with. But the most profound is that the fiscal crisis precipitated decades ago by the Community Reinvestment Act has contributed decisively to the election of the first black president, Barack Obama.


The fallacy behind the Community Reinvestment Act, AFDC expansion, forced busing, and affirmative action is that government intervention can accelerate the natural progress of blacks in American society. Experience has shown, time and again, that the government can only ensure equal opportunities. It cannot compel equal outcomes. That’s the work of generations — just as the subjugation and exploitation of blacks was the work of generations. The white-liberal-guilt-besotted desire for quick remedies to racial inequities has produced more far more misery than redress.


Then he goes on to describe the elation people felt on election night. I felt it too when partying in DC and yelling with the mobs near the white house.


On election night, at the moment Barack Obama’s electoral vote count surpassed the necessary 270, I was walking down Ninth Avenue in midtown Manhattan, a bar-and-restaurant district. People streamed out onto the street, screaming and cheering; men and women, friends and strangers, black and white, young and old, began hugging. A number were weeping with joy. Amid the commotion, a 30-ish black man came running up the sidewalk and yelled, “There’s a new sheriff in town!” I didn’t realize he’d directed the remark to me until I saw him pass a young black couple with a knowing nod, then yell it again at a group of three white women.


Yeah...


No one has ever assumed the presidency with the unrealistic expectations Obama faces.
...
Obama, therefore, is certain to disappoint as soon as he passes from promiser to decider. But he’s also uniquely situated to effect a genuine change in America’s race consciousness.
...
The best-case scenario, though the least likely, is that President Obama, in a Nixon-to-China moment, turns to the NAACP, the Congressional Black Congress, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and the entire ethno-grievance chorus and says, “Enough.” There are, he explains in a primetime speech, no governmental quick fixes to the collective inequalities in American society. Indeed, every time the government intervenes, it sets back the cause of justice for generations. Over time, without government interference, through parental sacrifice and individual initiative, inequalities will even out — unless, of course, you believe that black people and white people are INNATELY DIFFERENT IN THEIR POTENTIALS.


Caps mine. But, look at the tone in the paragraph. This guy who wrote this reads Sailer and Lynn. He knows what's up and is directly taunting people to challenge him.


Obama isn’t being kept down by the Man. He is the Man. How will that fact sit with the subset of blacks, especially black men, who attribute their personal failures to invisible racist conspiracies working against them? The thought has to cross each of their minds: If nothing stopped a black man from becoming president, then maybe the reason my life is screwed up is because I’ve screwed it up.

In the final analysis, if an Obama presidency accomplishes any of the above — if it brings an end to the politics of white liberal guilt, or provides a role model for struggling blacks — it could serve a cause that outweighs and outlasts whatever wrongheaded policies the president-elect might pursue.


People, this is what I have been saying since I wrote this after the election.


This is important. Obama's election should demonstrate a simple fact that I've long discovered over and over again while traveling: the United States is not a fundamentally racist country. In fact, the rest of the world is much, much more wedded to race than we are. Even before the election, an Indian American, Neal Kashkari, was chosen to run the bailout program.

So, what happens if African Americans are confront with this?

Despite the admirable openness of the American people, the achievement gap and high prison population remains. Africa remains a basket case. While Saletan's landmark piece on race and intelligence was widely condemned, the data remains and the state of the modern African American is still dismal.

I think this election will allow moderates and those tired of Al Sharpton's rants a chance to shed their guilt and instead focus on perfecting the Union for ALL americans.

So what happens when HBD clashes with the reality of the American promise? People will start asking questions. And people will demand solutions.


People, this Singularity starts here. At the very moment that Obama is inaugurated.



Anyway, continuing on the notion of a difficult world, just some more comments.

Fareed Zakaria on Samuel Huntington



Look around. So many of the world's problems—from terrorists in Waziristan to the devastating AIDS epidemic in Africa to piracy in Somalia—are caused or made worse by governments that are unable to exercise real authority over their lands or people. That was the central insight of Samuel P. Huntington, the greatest political scientist of the last half-century, who died on Christmas Eve.

Living through change, people have often stuck with their oldest and most durable source of security: religion. That was the most important message of "The Clash of Civilizations." While others were celebrating the fall of communism and the rise of globalization, he saw that with ideology disappearing as a source of human identity, religion was returning to the fore.



Nation states don't rise up out of nothing. People will not pay taxes or put their lives on the line to support an entity that has little relevance to them. And that's why we won't have world government for quite some time.

So, how does Huntington close his book?


He closed one of his books, another classic, by noting of such critics, "[They] say that America is a lie because its reality falls so far short of its ideals. They are wrong. America is not a lie; it is a disappointment. But it can be a disappointment only because it is also a hope."


But you know what? I actually have another comment. The one sidedness of the Israel-Hamas war, in both moral authority and military power, will continue to humiliate the Muslim world and force them to confront the reason for resentment of Israel:

The presence of a successful, open, democratic society in the middle of the dysfunctional Middle East.


The essential dilemma Israel faces is this: It can't ignore Hamas's attacks, not only because of the damage they inflict, but also because of the terrible precedent they set. Israel has always been a state that is one battle away from destruction, and it cannot allow its enemies to think that it can be attacked with impunity. But at the same time Israel cannot do what it takes to wipe out the enemy, because of the constraints imposed by its own public, which is far less willing than in the past to suffer or inflict bloodletting.


IQ disparities in the Middle East cause a portion of resentment towards Israel. Enter the Singularity. Solve the unsolveable.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

College: Irrelevant

So in addition to Murray's column


For most of the nation’s youths, making the bachelor’s degree a job qualification means demanding a credential that is beyond their reach. It is a truth that politicians and educators cannot bring themselves to say out loud: A large majority of young people do not have the intellectual ability to do genuine college-level work.


We have another recent column in the washington post on the need for job qualification tests:


Small wonder, then, that many employers, fearing endless litigation about multiple uncertainties, threw up their hands and, to avoid legal liability, threw out intelligence and aptitude tests for potential employees. Instead, they began requiring college degrees as indices of applicants' satisfactory intelligence and diligence.



OOOOOO

Is it just me, or are people starting to question things now that the Obama election is disproving the notion of a racist America?

Clarence Page even thinks so


Yet on CBS's "The Early Show," Rush pressed further. He compared plans by Senate Democrats to block Burris to white governors in the Jim Crow south who blocked the desegregation of public schools and colleges. Never have images from the bad old days of white bigotry sounded so breathtakingly inappropriate, especially when they come so soon after the election of the nation's first black president.

Is this where the revolution has come? Has the black community become the last refuge for scalawags like Blagojevich, whose approval ratings had fallen to only 13 percent in a Chicago Tribune poll even before his arrest?

As a fellow African American, I resent that notion, and I don't appear to be alone. Secretary of State Jesse White, a black Democratic friend of Rush and Burris, nevertheless is refusing to certify Burris' appointment in what he called "a moral decision," even if it fails to hold up in court.


I don't know. Something is in the air. Especially this column vindicating Huntington.

Far from the smug racist many critics accused him of being, Huntington was attempting to shake arrogant Americans out of their delusion that the rest of the world's people are like them - or want to be. Believe that nonsense, he said, and you'll blunder into all kinds of trouble. Within a decade, the 9/11 attacks and the Bush administration's catastrophic moral crusade to turn Muslims into good Western liberals would do much to prove Huntington's point.