Recently in Social Science Category

Over the past year and a half I've listened to a large number of people disparaging the Tea party movement. Most of them have been card-carrying Democrats (or at least those with the belief they know how to spend my money better than I do). Others have been RINOs or part of the so-called "Establishment" Republicans.

The Tea party has been excoriated in the press, with the New York Times, the Washington Post, and a number of other media organs of the Left leading the way. Washington politicians and other Beltway insiders have derided the Tea party as "hobbits", "terrorists", "Nazis", "racists", "jack-booted thugs", and a whole host of other derogatory labels.

As the volume of hateful rhetoric aimed at the Tea party and its supporters has increased, it has made me and others realize that the groups making these accusations must be really getting nervous. As one commenter to this piece wrote, "If you're getting a lot of [flak], you must be over the target." And so it must be as the Tea party gains supporters throughout the country at a local, state, and national level because they're tired of being ignored by the Coastal elite and the Beltway intellectuals.

My most memorable run in with an unabashed Tea party hater took place at our business when one of our customers went on a rant about "those goddamn Tea partiers wanting to take everything away from us!" There was no way I could not respond, so I asked her where she'd gotten that idea. Apparently she'd read it in the paper, in this case the Boston Globe. (One must remember, the Globe is owned by the NYT and has the same editorial policies as its parent corporation.) I calmly informed her that if her opinion was based solely on what she'd read in the Globe, then she'd been misinformed and lied to. She saw the Tea party as a bunch of religious fundamentalists bent on depriving the poor, doing away with Social Security and Medicare, and undoing decades of civil rights advances. I had to remind her that many of the civil rights advances came from the GOP, not her sainted Democrats. I reminded her the KKK were primarily Southern Democrats, not Republicans. I reminded her it was the Democrats who started us down this path of unsustainable spending going all the way back to FDR. I reminded her that it was LBJ who decided his Great Society was the answer to all of our society's problems, that it had failed miserably, and that it was funded by stealing from the Social Security trust fund.. I reminder her it was the Democrat majorities in Congress going back to 2007 that multiplied the annual deficits to many times that of all of Dubya's deficits combined.

I gave her the URL for the Contract From America website which explains the Tea party platform, none of which deals with social issues she claims the Tea party is involved with. She wasn't interested. Instead she chose willful ignorance and adherence to libelous propaganda from those who do not have her best interests at heart.

Maybe she will care when the country is unable to pay its bills and all of the government support she is 'owed' ends because there's no money left to pay for it all. Maybe she will care when all "the rich" she's constantly complaining about are either driven into bankruptcy or flee with their wealth to friendly climes and no one is left to pay for everything she is owed.

But I'm not holding my breath.

UPDATE:It appears Senator John Kerry has decided to add fuel to the fire by expressing his opinion that the media should not give equal time to those "absolutely absurd notions" voiced by the Tea Party because their opinions "are not factual."

What a putz.

Can Mayor Dave Bing turn Detroit around? (This isn't the first time I've asked this question.)

Maybe. He has a long way to go before anyone can say Detroit has been saved.

He is doing one thing long overdue for his blighted and ever shrinking city: tearing down abandoned homes that have become nothing more than shelter for the homeless or hideouts for drug dealers, rapists, and other criminals preying upon the rest of Detroit's citizens. Some of those dilapidated homes are too dangerous to be occupied even by the criminals or the homeless.

I think I can safely say many of us have seen video or photos of what's left of Detroit's once vibrant neighborhoods, with many of them looking like something out of a zombie-apocalypse movie thriller. Most of the homes and buildings in those areas aren't worth rehabilitating or renovating, leaving block after block after block of decaying homes and businesses empty and soulless.

One of the more interesting parts in the article linked above are the thoughts of those actually performing the demolitions. You wouldn't think that tearing down abandoned homes would be an emotional trial for the wreckers, but for many of them it is.

Wreckers hide it, but when you spend weeks with them, riding in their trucks, sitting in their machines, trailing them all over their job sites right out to the dump where they'll deposit the remains of a house, it becomes clear that they're a reflective and empathetic group. They're raconteurs and historians. They want you to know what they've seen in this city. They want to take you there. They believe it'll help.

Mark Sherman insists on driving me down a street called Robinwood, a few blocks from Adamo's home base. "This one," he says, "breaks me up every time I'm on it." The stretch is so blighted it seems haunted. Somehow it's totally devoid of color. All the Craftsman-style homes, with their tapered support columns and stonework porches, are empty. "You can see," says Mark, tugging on the brim of his black John Deere cap, "these were really beautiful. Unique." And he's right. They're exactly the kinds of homes young families in Portland and Los Angeles line up to live in. "This is the perfect example," he continues, "of what can happen in two years. Two years ago, this street was mostly full. This is what happens when nobody cares."

They try not to think of the people who used to live in those homes. Those who worked hard, raised families, took pride in their homes, now long gone, leaving echoes of what used to be behind them.

I'm not sure I could do their job and not feel what they do. But they know it's a necessary job, so-called creative destruction, where the only way to rebuild Detroit is to remove those homes and other buildings that are now a blight infesting their city.

Will it work?

Only time will tell.

At least according to a recent study that Randall Parker links to, joking that he hopes the egalitarian PC won't drag him away in the middle of the night.

There's even a book written on the subject, peer-reviewed and all that, by Richard Lynn and a Finnish scholar, _IQ and the Wealth of Nations_.  Why is wasn't given a larger hearing among the chattering classes is solely because of a childish disregard for group differences.

Over the years I have had interesting conversations, and not a few heated discussions with progressives of all stripes. Far too often their arguments devolve into what they feel about something rather than what they think about it. Other times it's one lame talking point after another, many which sound good on the face of it but aren't backed up by personal experience, or history. It's all theory and feel-good sound bites. Failures in practical applications of their beliefs are explained away with excuses like "It was implemented poorly" or "Everyone has to be brought into the fold otherwise it doesn't work" or "We won't make the same mistakes the others made."

That last one is always my favorite, allowing me to use one of two rejoinders, those being: "Yeah, you'll make worse mistakes!" and "Do you know the definition of insanity? It's doing the same thing over and over, but expecting the results to be different this time." That always brings them up short.

But I am not the best person to speak on such matters. That title belongs to those who lived under the oppressive regimes of "progressive" or "socialist" utopian countries. More often than not they're capable of skewering ever single talking point or nonsensical utterance brought forth by the 'enlightened' progressives because they suffered under the very system the progressives wish to force upon us.

One such is ex-Soviet immigrant Oleg Atbashian, who poses a number of questions progressives are loath to answer:

Dear Americans, these are some questions I have collected in 16 years of living in your country. Please see if you can answer them for me:

If all cultures are equal, why doesn't UNESCO organize International Cannibalism Week festivals?

If all beliefs are equally valid, how come my belief in the absurdity of this maxim gets rejected by its proponents?

Once a politician labels the truth as hate speech, can anyone trust him to speak the truth afterward?

If a politician gets elected by the poor on a promise to eliminate poverty, wouldn't fulfilling his promise destroy his voting base? Wouldn't he rather benefit from the growing numbers of poor people? Isn't this an obvious conflict of interests?

How did the "war on poverty" end? Has there been a peace treaty or a ceasefire? Who is the occupying force and who are the insurgents?

Why weren't there demonstrations with anti-feudal slogans under feudal rule? And under Stalin, no anti-communist demonstrations? And under Hitler, no anti-fascist demonstrations? In a free capitalist society, anti-capitalist demonstrations are commonplace. Is capitalism really the worst system?

If the poor in America have things that people in other countries can only dream about, why is there a movement to make America more like those other countries?

If diversity training benefits everyone, why do those classes mostly consist of white heterosexual males?

How come those calling Sarah Palin a "bimbo" often look like part of Paris Hilton's entourage?

How come the unselfish Americans hate their country out of personal frustrations, while the selfish ones defend America with their lives?

If being a winner in nature's struggle for survival is selfish, does being extinct make you an altruist?

How come so many anti-American radicals are wearing American brands, listen to American music, watch American movies, and play American video games on computers designed by American engineers?

And finally, if all opinions are equal, how come a liberal who disagrees with a conservative is open-minded, but a conservative who disagrees with a liberal is a bigot?

Indeed. Read the whole thing and if there are any questions you can think of that might also annoy progressives, add them to the comments of Oleg's post.

Here are a few questions gleaned from the comments:

Why are gun control advocates so violent?

Why is it that the Left's mantra is "Celebrate Diversity" yet they all think the exact same and anybody who has a "diverse thought" is taken to the town square and hung?

Why is it I've never worked for a poor person?

If Communism was such a shining example for everyone, why didn't they put up a "Picture Window" instead of an Iron Curtain?

If all cultures are equal, then why are the liberals down on red-necks and conservatives?

Why do all leftist states have to build walls to keep their own people in, whereas rightist states have to build walls to keep other people out?

Why is leftism never judged by its reality but only by its lofty promises?

And the list goes on and on. Can any of you think of questions that would annoy progressives?

(H/T Maggie's Farm)

Charles Murray wonders if NY Times writers read the paper's science section? Nicolas Wade says 25 genes are involved just in melanin in the skin. Race is clearly more than skin deep.

And I never knew that Caucasins and Negros have "wet" ear wax, while Asians have a "dry" version.

And, like Chan, I've distanced myself from most traditional liberal-dominated news outlets. See below, his statement about not watching 60 Minutes much any more.

Is there much wisdom any more? We've largely abandoned it, even as the pointy-heads celebrate their own intelligence--while simultaneously denying intelligence is 1) largely inherited; 2) an impressive indicator of future success; and, 3) not present in the same distributions for different racial groups.

While at college, one can't make statements that working-class people can and do make all the time. Here's one: Girls like assholes. Don't need a study to prove that, when a weekend on the Jersey shore does the trick.

Bill Whittle addresses American Exceptionalism, something we know our present President doesn't like and has been working hard to destroy. But I think Obama will find that while he may dent it a bit, he doesn't have the wherewithal to overcome the sheer inertia of American Exceptionalism. American know-how and those providing it will always find a way around those in this country working hard to bring about its downfall.

One thing I found interesting: With only 5% of the world's population, American produces 24% of the world's GDP, which is 3 times more than China produces even though it has over 4 times as many people.

I could have gone with my traditional Thanksgiving Day post, a repost of one of Andrew Sullivan's Thanksgiving Day posts from long ago, but this year I felt I needed to take a different tack and remind you of the forgotten lesson of the first Thanksgiving.

Had today's political class been in power in 1623, tomorrow's holiday would have been called "Starvation Day" instead of Thanksgiving. Of course, most of us wouldn't be alive to celebrate it.

Every year around this time, schoolchildren are taught about that wonderful day when Pilgrims and Native Americans shared the fruits of the harvest. But the first Thanksgiving in 1623 almost didn't happen.

Long before the failure of modern socialism, the earliest European settlers gave us a dramatic demonstration of the fatal flaws of collectivism. Unfortunately, few Americans today know it.

The Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony organized their farm economy along communal lines. The goal was to share the work and produce equally.

That's why they nearly all starved.

Is this Thanksgiving Day message a politically motivated one? Of course it is. After all, the history of the first Thanksgiving gives us much to ponder about present day conditions and those wishing to repeat the failed social experiment tried by the first English settlers in New England.

One of the reasons the Pilgrims nearly starved to death was because unlike today, they had no one else's largess to 'appropriate' in order to survive. It wasn't like they had the means to take what Indians had from them. (Yes, I wrote 'Indians'. I refuse to use politically correct terms just to not offend those who would gladly be offended on behalf of the original indigenous inhabitants of the North American continent.)

This experiment in socialism/communalism proved the innate falsehood of "From each according his ability, to each according his needs," as well as hard proof of the tragedy of the commons. The first illustrates the shortsightedness of Marx and his followers who, either by chance or choice, ignored the one thing that made Marx's theories totally unworkable - human nature. The second defines that shortsightedness. If nothing else, the Pilgrims were the first society to try living under what would later become part of Marx's theory. Because they were an insular society at the time (there were no real neighbors to go to for aid as there are today), the falsity of the theory was there for everyone who survived the famine to see.

But do the modern day socialists/communalists/communists take a lesson from that failure? Of course not. Over the past 100 years or so they have tried to run the experiment again and again, which always ends with the same tragic results, but at the cost of millions of lives. Members of our own government seem to think they can make it work when history proves otherwise. They have refused to learn from lesson of the first Thanksgiving. I have no doubt they will continue to ignore it.

Only a BBC reporter would cover this--the American left, of which the Old Stream Media has largely been a part, is too embarrassed to do so--the dramatic, difficult to be believed rise and fall of Gary, Indiana. Truly stunning. To see what it used to be--representing the best of America (albeit with vicious racism), notice the idyllic old footage of the downtown that looks like Keene, NH, with a vibrant downtown with people with dazzling smiles--and now what it's become, the ghost town of largely Underclass Blacks that's it's become is worthy of the novelistic approach of a Tolstoy or Dreiser.

I'm almost speechless.

Thomas Jefferson had children with his slave-mistress Sally Hemmings.

Most of the guns in violence-plagued Mexico come from the U.S. Not true.

I'm starting to feel like Michael Medved.

It undermines the family's role in educating children. The responsibility becomes de facto the state's. And the next time someone suggests academic performance is tied to spending, show them this, two dramatic graphs by Andrew Coulson of the Cato Institute showing massive increases in spending (adjusted for inflation) and in the number of teachers over the years--class sizes have gradually shrunk--and no increase in academic performance. The President is simply a mouthpiece for the pro-tax-and-spend NEA on this issue.

And that's understandable. The Left is in epistemological denial over what Thomas Jefferson knew to be the case. Did he refer to the typical student as "rubbish"? Yep. The truth is deeply inegalitarian. The Left's religion is equality. I say religion because it is not only the worship of the unseen but, more dramatic, it's the belief in what we all know to be fundamentally untrue: people are unequal.

It's all about IQ and the family. The latter was conclusively shown by the James S. Coleman Study that libs have conveniently forgot.

One can receive a decent education at the crappiest of schools. It's all about personal volition.

When I suggest to my children and wife--who is employed as a teacher--to educate the children once they hit the junior high school, they treat the proposal as unworthy of consideration. Only a socially maladjusted crank would consider removal of his children from the state's pedagogical embrace. Yet, this is the time when performance declines, esp. nationally. And if your town has a middle school? Forget about it--academic standards tank. And high school is largely a waste of time. The bright students who are a bit nerdy, shy, and non-athletic pay a big cost in a lack of popularity. It's truly no exaggeration to say people go to college to learn what they should have in high school.

No more than 20 percent of 18-year-olds can cope with college-level material, a fact documented by Charles Murray in his 2008 book Real Education. ~ John Derbyshire

I don't think we fully appreciate the societal costs of seemingly endless "schooling." One is the restriction of the baby-making window of women. After the five-year party at an education-free zone, entrance into and a foothold gained in the job market, what age is one? Thirty-four or -five? Ultimately, it all comes down to demographics. College-educated white women barely have a child apiece. By about 38 their biological clocks are going all Marisa Tomei. (Remember My Cousin Vinny?) White women with advanced degrees average less than a child. If you don't believe me, come on over and I can point out the graph in _The Bell Curve_ that is frightening to me.

People are coming to appreciate it, recently for example, that dramatic piece in The Weekly Standard. Philip Longman's Empty Cradle. And there's Mark Steyn's America Along.

It isn't often I get to fisk someone's post on another blog. It's rare I get to do so twice in as many weeks. It's even rarer when I get to do it to the same blogger. I am going to enjoy this.

A Warning: This is a lengthy post.

Our friend Paulina, an occasional commenter here at WP, has posted about her confusion in regards to the upcoming elections. Let's help clear up her confusion, shall we?

The midterms are almost upon us, and the latest polls show Republicans overall ahead by 10%. As it stands now, Dems will probably keep the Senate majority (51 to 49) but the House is up for grabs. This is sad news indeed. And to be honest, I don't entirely understand the reason why Republicans are favored. So here is my post about why Dems are better than Republicans for the future of this country. (But mostly it's me being really mad).

She doesn't understand why Republicans are favored? Hmm. I think I can explain that easily - The people are tired of being ripped off by a spendthrift, thieving government filled with people who really don't really give a rat's ass about the American people except how to exploit them (and their money). Not only that, but Americans are tired of being condescended to by those very same people in government who have never had to meet a payroll, don't understand what it's like to run a business, and truly believe they are far better qualified to run our lives than we are.

Better yet I can explain it in fewer words: The government doesn't have a clue what the American people are really like or what they want, which is primarily to be left alone. Certainly the Democrats, including the President, don't understand this. They stopped listening to the American people once they got into office. That's why they'll likely be on the losing end of the mid-term elections.

The last line sums up a lot of her problem: she's emoting rather than actually thinking.

The economy and jobs situation in the US is still pretty sh***y. Unemployment rates are high, banks that profited from the bailout aren't lending, corporations are turning a profit but not hiring. Little guy on the street gets screwed. Surely this is bad, but has everyone forgotten WHY we are in this mess???? Did we forget the Bush tax cuts and pointless wars that depleted the treasury? Did we forget the deregulation of the banks that allowed this entire subprime-mortgage/housing bubble, economy-downturn thing to happen in the first place?

She'll get no argument from me about the economy and unemployment, but I'm not buying her explanation.

The Bush tax cuts weren't a contributing factor to the deficits. It was Congress's profligate spending that was the biggest factor. After the tax cuts the economy grew and with it, tax revenues. Revenues were the highest they've ever been. But Congress increased spending faster than the revenues grew.

Business may be making profits but they aren't hiring for a very good and sound business reason: Obama's hostility towards business and Congressional efforts to slap even more taxes, more regulations, and more onerous (and expensive) programs on them. Until they know what the effects of all of them will be they aren't likely to invest in expanding their businesses. Why should they when it's highly likely they'll be punished by the government for their efforts? Talk about a disincentive!

I'd like to know what deregulation of the banks she's talking about. It certainly didn't happen during the Bush Administration. Maybe she means the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 during the Clinton Administration? The act separated commercial banks from investment banks. The repeal allowed a the merging of the two, which in turn led to some of the problems we saw in the collapse of the housing bubble.

Also, the so-called pointless wars were a small percentage of the overall deficit. Afghanistan was not a pointless war. The Taliban were supporting and hiding Al Qaeda, refusing to hand them over after 9/11. They gave aid and comfort to the enemy. That were given the opportunity to avoid war. They refused. We obliged them and with the help of the Northern Alliance, threw the murdering medieval bastards out.
 
Iraq was merely the continuation of the original Gulf War - Saddam had continuously violated the terms of the cease fire agreement since shortly after the Gulf War , so hostilities resumed. (Yes, I know it's simplistic, but in the end that's what it boils down to.)

The bail out and taxes deserve their own little paragraph. Republican's bailed out the banks (upper class). Democrats bailed out the car industry (middle class). Bush cut taxes for the rich (still in effect!), Obama cut taxes for the low/middle class AND is trying to cut taxes for small business which the Republicans in Congress are blocking. And don't even get me started on all the shit the Republicans blocked these past few years, including health coverage for 9/11 rescue workers! And they are upset about a community center!??!?!?

Ah, I can see her memory has again failed her. Blaming the Republicans for the bank bailouts? Really? Too bad it was the Democrats who pulled that off. Yes, Bush may have been in office, but the Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate. If they really didn't want to bail out the banks, then why did they pass the legislation? They had more than enough votes to kill it. Could it be because the legislation that created the bailout - H.R. 1424 - was sponsored by Representative Patrick J. Kennedy, a Democrat? Naw, that couldn't be it. It must have been the evil thought-control rays used by the GOP to get the Democrats to do their bidding.

In regards to the auto industry "bailout", again her memory fails her. It wasn't so much a bailout as it was a government takeover of GM and Chrysler, using over $60 billion of taxpayer money to short circuit the usual Chapter 11 bankruptcy process, bypass established bankruptcy law, rip off the bondholders (mostly mutual funds owned by pension and retirement funds) who should have been first in line for redress, and instead handed over bondholder funds to the UAW. That's right, the UAW, the same folks that helped force GM and Chrysler into Chapter 11.

Another memory failure? Obama cut taxes for the lower and middle classes when? Did I miss that? I recall something as part of the stimulus program that temporarily rebated income taxes. In other words they were tax credits, not tax cuts, and those 'cuts' will have to be paid back. And how did he cut taxes for low income people who weren't paying taxes? No one has been able to answer that question for me yet. About the only tax 'cut' that comes to mind is the annual adjustment to the trigger level that forces taxpayers to pay the Alternative Minimum Tax. That's nothing new.

I know Obama has proposed tax incentives for small businesses (which is not the same thing as tax cuts), but I am not aware of any actual tax cuts. (I would know as my wife and I are small business owners and we haven't heard squat about any tax cuts that would affect us in any way, shape, or form.) And those tax incentives? Any idea what they are? I do. They are basically tax credits for hiring new employees. Like that's going to work. Businesses won't hire employees unless they have work for them to do. The tax credits won't even come close to covering the actual cost of adding more employees. They certainly won't induce my wife or I to hire anyone. We can barely cover our payroll, bills, rent, and other expenses as it is. Another employee will end up putting us in the red, even with the tax credit. All this shows is that the President and his financial advisors haven't got a clue about why businesses hire new employees. And let's not get into the new taxes and fees that will be leveled on small businesses under the provisions of ObamaCare.

As far as " all the shit the Republicans blocked these past few years, including health coverage for 9/11 rescue workers", Paulina had better look at the legislation that was supposed to do that. It included so many riders and amendments that would allow waste, fraud, and a whole host of new entitlements that had nothing to do with 9/11 rescue workers and victims that it became an odious piece of legislation. If all it had done was address the health coverage as originally intended the GOP would probably have signed on. But it didn't. Shame on the Democrats for trying to use such a sleazy tactic to ramrod through pet projects and money wasting programs that wouldn't have stood a chance of passing any other way.

Here is a little list of the Dems major accomplishments lately from USA today:

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: The $862 billion "stimulus bill" invested in transportation and energy projects, tax cuts and education grants.

Oh, yeah, that's been such a big success. The only problem is that less than $55 billion has been allocated to infrastructure (building or repairing roads, bridges, and railways; water and sewer systems; electrical distribution and generations systems; communications [broadband access]; etc.), things that will be needed when the economy recovers. (Alternative energy and efficiency upgrades for homes, government buildings, and commercial facilities were not included in the total above.) What about the other $823 billion in stimulus funds? Wasted on unimportant things as far as I can see.

Affordable Health Care for America Act: The law $940 billion in the first 10 years will create new health care exchanges, expand insurance coverage to 32 million people who have gone without, close gaps in Medicare prescription-drug coverage and forbid insurance companies from rejecting people for pre-existing conditions.

This was an abominable piece of legislation that will cost hundreds of billions more than Congress has projected and provide nothing but substandard health care. How can anyone have voted for this piece of crap without knowing what was actually in it? That's insanity. It should not have passed as written because it has so many hidden and buried costs, obligations, and outright unconstitutional provisions that it should be scrapped in its entirety. Congress should start with a clean sheet of paper and try again, this time with complete transparency and true bipartisanship (not the "Sit down, shut up, and vote the way we tell you!" kind of bipartisanship as practiced by the Democrats in Congress) and with ideas that will actually work without destroying our health care system. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, "We have the worst health care system...except for all the others."

One of the first things that should have been done is tort reform. Without that the rest is moot. Doctors are forced to practice defensive medicine, which costs money, rather than actually working to treat their patients. Can anyone blame them? Who wants to be sued because they didn't perform all the tests to back up their diagnosis or because a patient demands extra tests? So the doctors cave and perform the extra tests to gather evidence in case they're sued for malpractice. That's no way to practice medicine. Unfortunately it's far too common.

It must also be remembered that every time government adds health insurance mandates, it costs money to provide those new services. They aren't free.

Oh, and one last thing: It will take 10 years worth of revenues to pay for 6 years worth of benefits. How do we pay for the following 6 years of benefits? No one has explained that yet.

As I was heading out during my lunch break I made the mistake of listening to the Diane Rehm show on NPR, where guest host Frank Sesno had author/sociologist Juliet B. Schor as a guest. Schor's book, Plenitude talks about the need to make profound changes in how we live. As I listened I came to realize that while her goals may be laudable, those goals have ignored one thing that she, being a sociologist, should understand: human nature.

How many times over the decades have utopian/progressive/socialist plans for this country or for the world tried to make it sound that if people would only change how they look at things that we could create a perfect society/world? The problems is that people tend to resist change, particularly when they see little return for all the effort that will be required. They have higher priorities, such as providing for their families. Unless people can be shown up front such changes will benefit them and their families directly, they will resist those changes. To rely on altruism to fuel such changes is foolish and a waste of time. As I and many others have come to realize, altruism is something we feel from time to time. It cannot be sustained 24/7/365. Unfortunately far too many of the Left have chosen to ignore that one little truth. Most of there utopian ideals demand altruism from is all day, every day. It's the only way their world will work.

If people like Schor want to see those kinds of changes they shouldn't waste their time appealing to people's better nature. They may not have one, particularly when it comes to their families or businesses. Those are the most important things in their lives. If someone tries to convince them they should sacrifice the well-being of either in the name of some nebulous cause, the response they get will likely be "Screw you and the horse you rode in on!"

More than once during the show Schor lamented the "greed" that seems to drive the Western world and tried hard to guilt us into giving up everything everyone has worked so hard to achieve. I had a hard time figuring out exactly how she defined greed. Was it overweening avarice? Was it profiting from the misfortune of others? Or was it simply making money at one's job or business and having a little left over to do something other than buy necessities? (I get the feeling she didn't differentiate between them at all, with the last one being the worst of the three.) More than once she played the leftist egalitarian card, implying no one should have [place name of item or possession here] unless everyone can have one. But that's a straw man argument because by that logic no one will ever be able to have whatever it is because no one has them. Someone has to be first. Call it the Lowest Common Denominator premise, which always turns out to be false, unrealistic, and impossible to achieve.

One of her favorite targets was the oil companies. Another target was big corporations. While I have no love for either, her remedy (smaller innovation driven companies to replace them) isn't something that can be forced. For one thing, who decides and on what basis? Some things can't easily be done by smaller companies, if at all. Does that mean they shouldn't be done at all? Again, who decides?

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that Schor and those like her seem to think that someone should be making these decisions for us rather than letting things develop on their own. Forcing the issue, either by heavy government intervention or outright government control, never works out and always causes far more problems than such changes were meant to fix. History is rife with examples of how and why we should not to do such things. Yet the Left sees the previous failures not as a flaw in their theories but as poor execution of them. They'll explain that this time they'll get it right...but they never do.

When is reward detrimental to the wellbeing of of those receiving it?

When it is undeserved.

Unfortunately the mindset of too many of our educators is that rewards are needed to build self-esteem, and self-esteem was far more important than actual achievement. The side effect of this esteem building? Increasing academic failure because there are no negative consequences for failure. With no consequences no one bothers to try. Such a system is set up to ensure failure and minimize success. That's no way to build a future for our kids.

Leland Teschler writes:

"When I was a kid, we'd just have first, second, and third-place winners for stuff like this," he remarked. "Most of the time you didn't win anything. When that happened, you'd just shrug and go out for a milkshake. I'm not sure giving everybody a prize is healthy."

There is a body of research that shows that accolades handed out too generously may cause kids to underperform. In one case, researchers did a series of experiments on 400 fifth-graders, some of whom were praised for their intelligence, others for their effort. It turned out that kids praised for their intelligence tended to give up when confronted with tough tasks at which they didn't excel. They assumed their poor performance was evidence they weren't really smart after all. Kids praised for effort, however, reacted to failure differently. They generally just assumed they hadn't focused enough and bore down on the problem.

The "everyone wins" philosophy is nothing more than means of imposing leftist egalitarianism, where equal outcome is far more important than equal opportunity. Far too often (every time, actually) the "equal outcome" is worse than if actual competition were allowed. Even the 'losers' in a competitive atmosphere will, more often than not, perform better than the 'equal' outcome of the "everyone wins" scenario. The equal outcome scenario always pulls everyone down to the lowest common denominator, which is usually pretty bad. The true competition scenario tends to pull everyone up, though not to exactly same level. Call it an effect of the Law of Unintended Consequences, sort of. It's like a scene out of Harrison Bergeron, where everyone is forced to be equal.

I suspect the everybody-gets-a-gold-star movement arose from misguided attempts to bolster kid self-esteem. After all, the self-esteem bandwagon started rolling downhill with such momentum that in 1984 California created an official self-esteem task force. But there's evidence that performance doesn't rise with self-esteem. One study in particular conducted by social psychologist Roy Baumeister concluded that having high self-esteem didn't improve grades or career achievement. Nor did it reduce alcohol usage or use of violence. (In fact, other studies show that criminals have plenty of self-esteem.)

It seems all kinds of bad ideas, particularly when it comes to education and social engineering, start in California. The self-esteem movement started there and spread like a cancer. Self-esteem became more important than actually learning anything useful. Self-esteem became more important than performance. When I'm flying in a commercial airliner, give me a pilot that knows what he's doing over a pilot that is a marginal performer but has great self-esteem.

Self-esteem only gets you so far. Beyond that you actually have to know something and know how to perform, no matter what type of job you have.

Yeah, yeah. I know the name has been "evolutionary psychology" for fifteen years or so, at least since Robert Wright's very useful book The Moral Animal, which I felt compelled to read twice.

But I've been interested in this stuff too long to be calling it anything other than what it was when first coined by E.O. Wilson in the 1970s.

A Charlotte Allen Weekly Standard column is interesting stuff.

Men, eager for replication, are naturally polygamous, while women are naturally monogamous--but only until a man they perceive as of higher status than their current mate comes along. Hypergamy--marrying up, or, in the absence of any constrained linkage between sex and marriage, mating up--is a more accurate description of women's natural inclinations. Long-term monogamy--one spouse for one person at one time--may be the most desirable condition for ensuring personal happiness, accumulating property, and raising children, but it is an artifact of civilization, Western civilization in particular.

Are you monogamous? I am. Being faithful to one's wife is a laudable goal, to be sure. But the culture pulls at me not to be. I wish women would employ more modesty. As a curious note, my life is so monastic that the occasion for sin on the most regular basis--not porn on the web--is tightly covered female behinds at church. Policing my eyes takes an effort of will I'm not always inclined to employ. Harumph!

HT: Luke Ford

Yet another topic about which I can say "I'm shocked!!"

NOT.

The trend of men opting out of marriage has been growing, with more of them deciding it isn't worth all the hassles that go along with a modern marriage. I started seeing this about 10 or 15 years ago, particularly among those men who have been married before. They had no desire to "put themselves into that position again."

This is a phenomenon seen most among younger men (35 and younger). There are a number of reasons for this. Two of the most prominent causes: money and education.

Part of the answer is found in a Pew Research Center report released this week: A sea change in relationships is taking place as everyone adjusts to the new reality of women being better educated and in some cases more preferred than men in the workforce. Especially unsettling to some men is their role as second-best earner in the family. As the Pew report documents, 22% of men with "some college" are now outearned by their wives, up from 4% in 1970.

Personally, whether my spouse makes more or less than me hasn't been a concern. Growing up there were times when my mom made more than my dad and vice versa. None of us thought anything about it. (Maybe my parents did, but they never voiced opinions about it one way or the other to any of us that I'm aware of.) Maybe that means my folks were ahead of their time.

With the greater financial resources of today's single women, a long standing dynamic has shifted, and not necessarily for the better for such women.

Understanding this change requires dipping into the personal. "I've found a lot of Mr. Almosts, but I can't find Mr. Right," Ms. [Rachel] Downtain says. "I've been dating forever. Where is he?" When she brings men back to her very nice, four-bedroom home, they often comment about her success. A few flat-out say they're uncomfortable with her salary advantage, education advantage (master's degree), or both. The final blow comes when she tells them about all her prominent volunteer work in the Kansas City area. "I'm being honest and telling them about my life, but I feel like I'm coming across as too good for them. That is never my intention."

It may not have been her intention, but whether she realizes it or not she's sending out the wrong signal. Two commenters brought this up, too, and I have to agree with their analysis. The first one wrote:

I always find that interest in the other party is a good way to start off and maintain a relationship. Perhaps whatshername can remember this the next time she talks about herself and all her "accomplishments" on a first date. It sounds like bragging to me, which is a turnoff in either sex.

Followed by this response:

I liked the line about her being concerned the men might think she's "too good" for them. It comes off as conceited and high maintenance which isn't very attractive. Even if that first impression is wrong, not many people would want to stick around to find out.

More than a few of my younger male friends and associates have voiced the opinion that there's no way they'd get married as they see marriage as a losing proposition. Some few of them realized they could never measure up to their prospective mate's expectation of perfection and didn't want to be emotionally or verbally beat up because they failed to meet an unrealistic and unreachable standard. More than one stated too many women they've dated have the expectation that the men would have to change who they are without a reciprocal change on their part.

Their griping may be over the top, but there's a kernel of truth in it. I've seen too many relationships go down in flames because expectations or demands on one side were far out of proportion to the other, with the men being on the losing end of that imbalance far too often.

Michael Bellesiles=Phil Jones

Notice both now have stepped down from their lofty respective perches but in Bellesiles's case he is now back teaching at an obscure school in Connecticut. He sounds unrepentent. It's another indication of how lousy academia is.

Do you want to win in Pashtun land, Obama? The only feasible way is this. Send in the lawyers. Lord knows, we're going to be producing an excess number of them as record numbers are taking the LSAT.

UPDATE: I'm not alone in making the connection. Though I was there first.

Michael Bellesiles=Phil Jones.

HT: The Michigan Posse

After the hacked and leaked e-mails and data files from the University of East Anglia's CRU became public, the hew and cry from both sides of the AGW debate rose to a level I've not witnessed before. The leaked information illuminated the fraudulent, dishonest, and in some cases, illegal activities of some of the 'premier' global warming researchers, both in the UK and elsewhere in the world. Cover ups, destruction and willful denial of publicly financed research data to those requesting it under both the UK and US Freedom of Information laws, and collusion to 'jigger' data to eliminate evidence that show climate models are wrong and to bolster preconceived ideas about human-caused climate change.

The AGW skeptics, including yours truly, can point to the files to show that scientific integrity has been lost, that all AGW alarmist doom-and-gloom predictions are based upon fraudulent, cherry-picked data and algorithms designed to produce a predetermined outcome regardless of the data fed into them.

That in itself might be a major news story, but the deafening silence from the MSM implies the fix is still in. Other than Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and a few other news outlets, there has been little, if anything from the major media. About the only exception has been the New York Times, and that surprised me (though it appears they tried to downplay the significance of the leaked data). The rest of the media are acting like nothing's changed, still publishing iffy reports laying out "We're all gonna DIE if we don't impoverish ourselves NOW!!" scenarios. But readers/listeners/watchers aren't buying it, making comment after comment about Climategate and lambasting the media for acting like it doesn't exist.

But what disturbs me more than lack of attention by the MSM and the governments of the UK and the US are the comments posted by the faithful AlGoristas, bending over backwards to explain away the leaked e-mails, data, and jiggered computer code. Reading the comments to the WSJ article linked above, it is quite apparent that quite a few of those trying to debunk the leaked information have an ax to grind, their reasoning having absolutely nothing to do with the AGW fraud exposed. They blame the WSJ (as if reporting about the hacked and leaked data was somehow 'just not done'). They blame George Bush (I haven't quite figured that one out). They blame a nameless conspiracy bent on the destruction of the human race (I haven't figured out the logic of that one, either). Others seem to be lamenting the fact they won't receive the financial gains they expected due to AGW carbon credits/alternative energy schemes/complete control over the energy production portion of the economy. And yet others claim the multi-megabytes of e-mails, data, and computer code is all a hoax, created to discredit the researchers and their sainted AlGore. Never mind that the folks at the University of East Anglia say it appears the files posted onto the 'net are genuine. That will not deter the true believers.

As the old saying goes, don't confuse the issue with facts. The Warmists will not be denied despite evidence saying their beliefs are based upon falsified data and computer climate models that are little more than means of manipulating other data to 'prove' AGW regardless of what the data really says.

I read this piece in WSJ's Online Journal some time last week. I had to think about this one for a while because what it reported sounded true, but I had my doubts. I wanted to check things out for myself. A few days of asking questions as well as observing the interactions between members of the so-called "Generation-Y" proved to me the piece wasn't far off the mark. What am I talking about?

Their inability to read non-verbal clues from those around them. Such a deficit can lead to all kinds of social problems because they won't catch the subtle clues about how others are reacting to them in face-to-face social situations.

In September 2008, when Nielsen Mobile announced that teenagers with cellphones each sent and received, on average, 1,742 text messages a month, the number sounded high, but just a few months later Nielsen raised the tally to 2,272. A year earlier, the National School Boards Association estimated that middle- and high-school students devoted an average of nine hours to social networking each week. Add email, blogging, IM, tweets and other digital customs and you realize what kind of hurried, 24/7 communications system young people experience today.

Unfortunately, nearly all of their communication tools involve the exchange of written words alone. At least phones, cellular and otherwise, allow the transmission of tone of voice, pauses and the like. But even these clues are absent in the text-dependent world. Users insert smiley-faces into emails, but they don't see each others' actual faces. They read comments on Facebook, but they don't "read" each others' posture, hand gestures, eye movements, shifts in personal space and other nonverbal--and expressive--behaviors.

How many times have we seen teens sitting off to one side during a family social gathering, busily tapping away at the keypads of the cell phones, texting friends rather than interacting with people in the same room. It isn't necessarily that the teens are being rude. Instead it's because they really don't know how to interact without that electronic crutch as an interface, be it a cell phone, computer, or Blackberry.

So far my son has been able to avoid the 'need' for such an electronic crutch. For him a cell phone is nothing more than something you use to make a phone call. Beyond that it has no allure for him at all. While he does chat occasionally with friends on Facebook, he's rarely at it for more than a few minutes before he returns to what he was doing before the chat window opened. He much prefers to talk with his friends face to face.

So do I.

An old story from 1994 has been resurrected and is making the rounds again. While it hasn't been confirmed as being true according to Snopes, it is illustrative of the dream of socialism versus the reality. Like my previous post I found this version on one of the Politico.com forums.

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had once failed an entire class.

That class had insisted that socialism, the great equalizer, worked. That no one would be poor and no one would be rich.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.

The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To their great surprise all failed and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that.

Would that more economics or political science professors would run that experiment. It reminds me of something a resident of the socialist paradise of the Soviet Union once said: "We pretend to work. They pretend to pay us."