Maybe Instead of Killing Them All, We Should Send Them to China?

US law schools are pumping out new graduates like a torrent of toxic waste. Elie Mystal thinks that Obama should create an "Americorps" for law graduates. But Al Fin legal scholars think the fallout from the US lawyer glut has become so bad for the US economy and US society, that extreme measures are called for.

No, Al Fin law scholars don't favour the Shakespearean solution of "first kill all the lawyers!" Instead, these legal gurus recommend sending all US law school graduates to China to act as bank examiners, construction inspectors, labour union organisers, environmental overseers, and political activists. It is time to restore international equilibrium! The program should run for roughly 30 years, after which we can send US law graduates to China to help sweep up -- clean up the mess their predecessors have made. By then, the US should have recovered from its own lawyer-instigated collapse, and be ready to provide foreign aid to a much-diminished China.

From: The Best Colleges

Excess attorneys are toxic to any society, but particularly to societies which have no means by which to dispose of the excess. Automatic deportation of US law graduates to China upon graduation would solve a whole host of problems, according to the legal sages of Al Fin.

The "Good Enough" Revolution Comes to Government?

The "good enough" revolution is about making things cheaper, easier to use, more reliable -- but not necessarily perfect. Examples of the "good enough revolution":

After some trial and error, Pure Digital released what it called the Flip Ultra in 2007. The stripped-down camcorder—like the Single Use Digital Camera—had lots of downsides. It captured relatively low-quality 640 x 480 footage at a time when Sony, Panasonic, and Canon were launching camcorders capable of recording in 1080 hi-def. It had a minuscule viewing screen, no color-adjustment features, and only the most rudimentary controls. It didn't even have an optical zoom. But it was small (slightly bigger than a pack of smokes), inexpensive ($150, compared with $800 for a midpriced Sony), and so simple to operate—from recording to uploading—that pretty much anyone could figure it out in roughly 6.7 seconds.

...By reducing the size of audio files, MP3s allowed us to get music into our computers—and, more important, onto the Internet—at a manageable size. This in turn let us listen to, manage, and manipulate tracks on our PCs, carry thousands of songs in our pockets, purchase songs from our living rooms, and share tracks with friends and even strangers. And as it turned out, those benefits actually mattered a lot more to music lovers than the single measure of quality we had previously applied to recorded music—fidelity. It wasn't long before record labels were wringing their hands over declining CD sales.

...the MQ-1 Predator isn't much of a plane. Its top speed is a mere 135 miles per hour. It has an altitude ceiling of 25,000 feet. It carries only two 100-pound Hellfire missiles. It has a propeller.
_Wired

Yet the MQ-1 Predator is selling off the shelves. Because it is good enough to do the job. And then there are the cheap software legal services, and the mini-clinic storefront satellite offices, and so on.... Good enough is good enough.

You can think of it this way: 20 percent of the effort, features, or investment often delivers 80 percent of the value to consumers. That means you can drastically simplify a product or service in order to make it more accessible and still keep 80 percent of what users want—making it Good Enough—which is exactly what Kaiser [mini clinic] did.

....The phenomenon certainly won't stop with hospitals, lawyers, and military campaigns. As more and more industries move their business online, they too will find success in Good Enough tools that focus on maximizing accessibility. It's a reflection of our new value system. We've changed. To benefit from the MP3 effect, companies will have to change as well. _Wired

So when will this "good enough revolution" come to government? Since government sets the rules that the entire society functions under, it is critical for government to be responsive, reliable, and easy to understand and work with.

Unfortunately the trend in government is in the opposite direction, to larger size, more complexity, less reliability, and greater incomprehensibility. Governments are slow to react to new realities, and get stuck on outmoded and counter-productive solutions that only make things worse.

Simplicity, compactness, reliability, and responsiveness are traits that government should strive for. A good government would. But what we have is not good government, it is a growing monstrosity of destruction.

So what will it take to bring the "good enough revolution" to government?

More: Brian Wang thinks the good enough revolution may enable a future of abundance.

Can City-States Save the Third World?

Paul Romer (via A Thousand Nations) describes a system of "Charter Cities" distributed about the third world, modeled after Hong Kong and Singapore. These chartered city-states would be "in the third world but not of the third world." In other words, the rule of law and economic dynamism in these city-states would provide an environment of living and choice distinctly different from the squalid and corrupt living conditions currently prominent across the third world.

In fact there is a Charter Cities blog that provides much more information about this topic. If you are interested in the concept of city-states and how cities drive the economies of the world, check out the blog and the video above.

Trying to save the third world is well and good. But at this time, the first world itself is in a quite precarious position. Demographically, the populations that fueled the rapid improvement of living conditions in the developed world are shrinking. Social programs that are dependent upon large numbers of younger generation taxpayers appear to be losing their financial support. Educational systems that once provided vital grist for the mills of progress, have been corrupted into special interest bureaucracies of indoctrination. Vital resources that should be invested in future technologies and industries are being squandered on phantom crises created from fudged data and faulty models.

If the vital core of the developed world is to survive current suicidal tendencies by the majority of its citizens, it may well need to learn some vital lessons from the charter cities movement. For example, what type of "charter" would protect a city from being carried away in a lemming's rush by all too frequent "popular delusions and madness of crowds"? Such chaotic fads and fashions of disaster and quasi-suicide are all too frequent.

Romer's vision of saving the third world with charter cities is bold and courageous in comparison to the dieoff.orgiasts of the left who dominate large parts of the developed world's governmental, academic, and media infrastructures. It is a vision worth observing to see what comes of it. But it contains elements of wisdom that first worlders could learn from in their own planning for the future.

Stand By to Repel Boarders! 10 Hi Tech Ways

"Standard maritime doctrine is that crews should not resist once boarders are on deck," he says. "The [Somali] pirates are really just after the ransom money, so it's best to keep things as calm as possible." _Source

In today's politically correct world, using deadly force to repel pirates is simply not done -- at least in polite international maritime company. That means that politically correct captains and crew must find non-lethal means to repel unwelcome guests on the high seas. Here are a few:

Fire hoses. The simplest way to repel boarders is to train high-pressure hoses on them. Spraying them straight down the sides of the ship at bad guys trying to climb aboard usually works. But there's a catch — if there's more baddies standing in the speedboats aiming guns at the crew, then you have to give up.

Remote-controlled fire hoses. To get around that logistical problem, several companies market high-pressure water cannons that can wash pirates overboard without exposing anyone to enemy fire.

Molotov cocktails. If ships' crews aren't given weapons, they can always make their own. In December, Somali pirates shadowed the Zhenhua 4, a Chinese cargo ship, for days, giving its crew ample time to prepare a stockpile of Molotov cocktails using empty beer bottles.

The baddies got on board, but the crew used the homemade bombs and fire hoses to fend them off for six hours, enough time for Malaysian Navy helicopters to show up and scare the pirates away.

Sonic weapons. In November 2005, the cruise ship Seabourn Spirit in the western Indian Ocean fended off pirate speedboats, partly by blasting them with an long range acoustic device (LRAD), which is designed to cause painful level of sound up to 300 meters away. (The Seabourn Spirit also ran over one of the speedboats.)

Slippery foam. Boat decks are wet places. Somali pirates are often barefoot. Hence the need for what the acronym-happy Marine Corps calls its Mobility Denial System (MDS), also known as Non-Lethal Slippery Foam (NLSF) or Anti-Traction Material (ATM).

Basically, it's water, drilling-mud additive (used for boreholes) and a flocculent, an electrically charged suspension of solids that makes liquids even more slippery. No one's actually deployed this stuff yet, but a few serious squirts would send pirates sliding around helplessly like happy penguins on an ice floe.

Rubber bullets. Riot police typically fire non-lethal projectiles from real guns, which wouldn't be allowed on many ships. But high-powered air guns could fire plastic or rubber bullets almost as easily, causing pain if not serious injury to boarders hit in the torso or limbs. Head shots could cause injury or even death, however, and there's always the chance they could be used in a mutiny.

Electric fencing. At least one company sells a high-voltage fence that sticks horizontally outward from a ship's sides, zapping any would-be boarders like so many wayward cattle.

"Only a few [ships have that] so far," says Quick. "I don't know if it's worked or not. In the long run, nothing will against a persistent group of pirates."

Nets. In the same way that police lay out nail strips to stop speeding cars, ships could launch small nets into the water to entangle the propellers of the pirate speedboats. The Coast Guard and the Dept. of Defense are testing these by dropping these from helicopters, but it's possible smaller versions could be launched from the stern of a cargo ship using the sort of catapults that launch clay pigeons in skeet shooting.

Blinding weapons. Airline pilots already deal with jokers who shine laser pointers into the cockpits of landing planes. Pirates might have to face the Dazzle Gun, a futuristic-looking laser rifle designed by the Air Force that temporarily blinds adversaries who get too close to bases and personnel.

The pain ray. The Air Force had fun a couple of year ago bringing reporters to a test facility at Moody Air Force base in Georgia and zapping them with the Active Denial System, a truck-mounted weapon that focuses a tight beam of electromagnetic waves on your skin.

Basically, it's like sticking your hand in a microwave oven. It's nonlethal and very painful. There's a smaller version as well that's effective up to 500 yards, which might work against pirates coming up to a ship. _FoxNews

A final, top-secret method of repelling pirates is related to the blinding weapons mentioned above. A highly trained maritime model, such as the one pictured to the left, will use a secret tooth-whitening agent [advertisement] prior to every voyage. As soon as pirates approach the ship, the model will release a dazzling smile, temporarily blinding the pirates and allowing the ship and crew to escape. Amazingly enough, the method works in either direct sunlight or overcast -- even at night. All that is required is for a small LED-style flashlight to be directed at the maritime model's highly whitened teeth.

Bush the Gray, Obama the Red

There is a direct connection between the graph above and the map below. The graph above is the optimistic, wishful-thinking view of where Obama is taking America. Deeply into debt, but perhaps total catastrophe can be avoided. A more battle hardened viewpoint might state that it is precisely the total catastrophe toward which Obama is aiming. No matter. Intentional or not, catastrophe is the end result of the real fiscal and monetary trajectory of the clueless clown president.

Which is why the Tea Party movement is springing up in towns, hamlets, boroughs, and municipalities across the country. This is a grassroots movement that doesn't depend upon the ill-gotten $ billions of George Soros and his gang of economic demolition specialists. The leftist-dominated news media has studiously ignored the nationwide phenomenon, but not leftist minions such as moveon.org and other groupthinking agitprop organisations. They intend to crash the party on April 15 -- TAX DAY!!! Below are a few of the locations where Tea Party protests are scheduled to occur on tax day. If you attend one, be on the lookout for moveon.org etc. agents provocateur.These agents provocateur will be aiming for a disruption that will play well to the national media -- something to serve as a symbol of disdain at which the Katie Courics and Charlie Gibsons of the media can smirk from a distance -- objective and above the fray, as always. As if.

Certainly Obama will not back down from his radical core ideas. He has been waiting his whole life to carry them out, and now that he is so close what can possibly stop him? Watch for yourself, or attend personally. Be sure to carry a video camera and keep a video journal of the fun.

Escape the System Like Jason Bourne

Multiple passports, moving assets, lock-picking, escape and evasion, foraging, even how to cross borders without detection (one preferred location: McAllen, Texas, page 390)–it’s a veritable encyclopedia of for those who want to disappear or become lawsuit-proof global citizens… _ 4DWW

The author of the best seller "The 4-Hour Workweek" devoted a recent long post on his blog (via Keelynet.com) to the topic of how to slip the system:

I took Spencer’s advice and opened an account with a Canadian bank that had a branch in St. Kitts. Since both Canada and St. Kitts are part of the British Commonwealth, he’d explained, I would have easy access to my money if anything happened in America. Unfortunately, in the process, I discovered that keeping international accounts secret is now illegal: the IRS requires Americans with over $10,000 in foreign accounts to file an annual report disclosing not just the amount of money and the banks it’s kept in, but the account numbers.

Meanwhile, Spencer was moving forward with his ten-year plan. He started an Internet business in Singapore, enabling him to open a private banking account in the country, which he claimed was fast becoming the new Switzerland. Though he hadn’t gotten his St. Kitts passport yet either, Spencer had done more research into buying an island.

“I’m looking at islands in the north, around Iceland, because no one will think of looking for anyone there,” Spencer said, his thick lips spreading into a self-satisfied smile. “If I can get some other B people [billionaires] to go there with me, we can build underground homes and use geothermal energy.”

“What about your submarine?”

“It’s a great way to move between islands undetected, but we’re running out of time. We need to move faster. This is only the beginning.”

“How bad do you think it’s going to get?” Spencer seemed to understand the economy at a higher level than most people did, perhaps because he knew so many of the people who ran it.

“I don’t think the whole country’s going to collapse, but we’re looking at the worst economic disaster in America since the Great Depression. What I’m also concerned about is the increase in violent crime that’s going to accompany this.” _4-HourWorkWeek

To get the information straight from the horse's mouth, check out the book "Emergency" by Neill Strauss.

I’ve begun to look at the world through apocalypse eyes. It usually begins in airports. That’s when I get the first portent of doom. I imagine explosions, sirens, walls blown apart, bodies ripped from life. Then, as I gaze out of the taxi window on my way home, I see people bustling around on their daily routine, endless rows of office buildings and tenements teeming with activity, thousands of automobiles rushing somewhere important. And it all seems so solid, so permanent, so unmovable, so absolutely necessary. But all it would take is one war, one riot, one dirty bomb, one natural disaster, one marauding army, one economic catastrophe, one vial containing one virus, to bring it all smashing down.

We’ve seen it happen in Hiroshima. In Dresden. In My Lai. In Rwanda. In Baghdad. In Halabja. In New Orleans. Our society, which seems so sturdily built out of concrete and custom, is just a temporary resting place, a hotel our civilization checked into a couple hundred years ago and must one day check out of. It’s an inevitability tourists can’t help but realize when visiting Mayan ruins, Egyptian ruins, Roman ruins. How long will it be before someone is visiting American ruins? _Emergency

Update: Dennis Mangan has also taken a look at this topic and has some interesting comments.

Meeting the Pirate Threat on the High Seas

Piracy is once again a serious threat to world shipping -- even to the leisure cruise industry. Ad hoc approaches to defending a ship from well armed pirates in high speed boats have achieved variable results. Current maritime laws prevent crews from using lethal force against armed invaders. Summary justice on the high seas -- immediate execution -- while effective in earlier ages, is prevented by modern international law.

Here is one non-lethal approach for preparing ships in advance for this threat:

Engineers have modified a firefighting robot to fend off attacks by pirates. It can ‘wash away pirates along with their weapons’ and even sink their boats.

The device is based upon a design for extinguishing fires on seagoing vessels and in ports. It was developed by the Centre of Firefighting Robotechnics in Petrozavodsk, a city in northern Russia.

A total of 12 such robots are needed to protect a ship. In automatic mode the system monitors its sector and if motion sensors detect an attack, a water cannon shoots at an approaching boat. Cameras also allow the robot to be operated manually from the bridge.

The water cannon is powerful enough to wash away boarding pirates and even sink their motorboats.

The manufacturer says a freighter company in Murmansk has ordered a number of their novel robots for testing.

The increased number of attacks in the Gulf of Aden off the African shore has forced several countries, including Russia, to send warships to patrol the troubled waters. _RussiaToday

High pressure salt water might just be the ticket, if properly targeted -- and if the systems are properly maintained. Of course pirates would immediately attempt to develop counter-measures to this new threat to their livelihood.

Interesting question: In the course of defending their ships, would crews be obligated by international law to rescue any pirates that end up thrashing about in shark-infested waters after a failed attempt at piracy?

A Duel To The Pain

To the pain means the first thing you will lose will be your feet below the ankles. Then your hands at the wrists. Next your nose....The next thing you will lose will be your left eye followed by your right....Your ears you keep and I'll tell you why. So that every shriek of every child at seeing your hideousness will be yours to cherish. Every babe that weeps at your approach, every woman who cries out, "Dear God! What is that thing," will echo in your perfect ears. That is what to the pain means. It means I leave you in anguish, wallowing in freakish misery forever. _PrincessBride

The US Justice Department has its own ideas of what "to the pain" might mean. In order to use pain as a non-lethal weapon against crime, the US DOJ research labs are developing a "pain beam" weapon for use by its agents of the law.

The research arm of the US Department of Justice is working on two portable non-lethal weapons that inflict pain from a distance using beams of laser light or microwaves, with the intention of putting them into the hands of police to subdue suspects.

The two devices under development by the civilian National Institute of Justice both build on knowledge gained from the Pentagon's controversial Active Denial System (ADS) - first demonstrated in public last year, which uses a 2-metre beam of short microwaves to heat up the outer layer of a person's skin and cause pain.
'Reduced injuries'

Like the ADS, the new portable devices will also heat the skin, but will have beams only a few centimetres across. They are designed to elicit what the Pentagon calls a "repel response" - a strong urge to escape from the beam.

A spokesperson for the National Institute for Justice likens the effect of the new devices to that of "blunt trauma" weapons such as rubber bullets, "But unlike blunt trauma devices, the injury should not be present. This research is looking to reduce the injuries to suspects," they say. _NewScientist

Only two cases of second-degree burns have been recorded from thousands of experimental uses of the pain beam. I have had worse from an afternoon in the sun, as have many of my readers, no doubt.

We all know, however, that such weapons always find their way outside of official channels, in the hands of well to do criminals who have a flair for organisation and bribery. Thieves and rapists are already using Tasers to bring their victims to submission. What sort of uses will criminals find for pain beam devices?

Sure, you may see this new P-beamer as a torture weapon, in line for use at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo, or perhaps for the secret dungeons under the White House. But what about using it as a proper dueling weapon, for the satisfaction of matters of honour? Is it possible that the fear of pain might encourage better manners among the teeming and worthless generations of psychological neotenates and the academically lobotomised? Could such P-beam devices find a use in today's high schools and universities, as a way of encouraging learning and discouraging delinquency and boorishness? Perhaps, perhaps, and thanks for suggesting it.

Because here at the top secret government labs, we are just the same as all branches of government. We're here to help you. And the bigger and more powerful we grow, the better equipped we will be to provide assistance. Don't worry. Just be good, and we will make sure you are happy. Or, we will at least not beam you.

Kicking Canadian Fascists In the Teeth -- Opening Statement Before a Kangaroo Court

Who is this feisty bulldog of a man who dares to sit before a Canadian "Human Rights Court" and tell them to their face what fascists they have become? No wonder so many Canadians go outside Canada to live and work. Canada is a beautiful country, and its people are beautiful and strong. But who could live in peace, subject to the type of kangaroo court described in the video above?

It is time for all North Americans to wake up to the creeping fascism of "human rights courts", "hate speech crimes," and other PC Thought Police administered criminal codes and rules that are making a bloody minefield out of the public commons.

For additional YouTube clips of this HRC hearing, go to Ezra Levant.

Canada's Human Rights Commission Wants to Know: What is the Relationship Between Muslims in Europe, and Breeding Mosquitos?

This is a very important point of entomology and demographics--to say nothing of freedom of Canada's media: what is the relationship between breeding mosquitoes and European muslims? And do Canadian muslims have the right to restrict free speech in Canada if they are offended by the very thought of such a relationship being expressed?

The specific dispute is over a Maclean's Magazine column by Mark Steyn. Steyn and Maclean's are being taken to Canada's Human Rights Commission Court, to determine whether the column is "offensive" to Canada's muslims, and whether the defendants should be punished in some way.

If you examine Dr. Mohamed Elmasry's formal complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission about my article, Grievance #16 objects to the following assertion:

"The number of Muslims in Europe is expanding like 'mosquitoes.' "

That claim certainly appears in my piece. But they're the words not of a notorious right-wing Islamophobic columnist but of a big­­shot Scandinavian Muslim:
" 'We're the ones who will change you,' the Norwegian imam Mullah Krekar told the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet in 2006. 'Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children.' "

Given that the "mosquitoes" line is part of the basis on which the HRC accepted Dr. Elmasry's complaint of "Islamophobia," I'm interested to know what precisely is the of­­fence? Are Mullah Krekar's words themselves Islamophobic? Or do they only become so when I quote them? The complainants want a world in which a Norwegian imam can make statements in a Norwegian newspaper but if a Canadian columnist reprints them in a Canadian publication it's a "hate crime."

Maclean's

One has to wonder how Canada's HRC could be so idiotic as to accept this case at all. Is it possible that the HRC is so steeped in its own importance that it does not understand how tenuous its authority over the free press must be in any free society? The HRC is accustomed to administering its kangaroo justice in a kangaroo court--free of oversight or appeal. In this case, it is the HRC itself that will be going on trial.

And it will be an interesting case to watch--so long as Mark Steyn is allowed to present his case to the larger court: the court of public opinion. Canadians have shown remarkable spirit and resilience recently in the political sphere--as have the French and the Germans. It is possible that the Canadian public themselves will do what is necessary to assure their own freedom to speak their minds--publicly and privately.

Cocaine Drug Runners Forced to Go Semi-Submersible

Radar and aerial drug surveillance has grounded most drug smuggling flights, and forced drugrunners to resort to sea routes. For long distance runs from South America to the Caribbean, (Puerto Rico and Cuba are two stopover islands used) boats with low radar profiles are preferred. Semi-submersibles have become quite popular with drugrunners--capable of carrying several tons of cocaine--but the Colombian Navy may have picked up a few tricks from the US Coastguard on detecting these sneaky boats.

The Colombian Navy took down another cocaine carrying submarine [PHOTO], off the Pacific coast. This sub appeared to be carrying several tons of cocaine, but the crew of four scuttled the craft before the navy could capture it. The water was about 9,000 feet deep where the craft went down. The four crewmen of the submersible were captured, and found to have traces of cocaine on their clothing. The submersible was first spotted by an air force plane, which called in a nearby navy patrol boat. That makes the third cocaine carrying sub to be caught in the last three months. This makes ten such craft the Colombians have captured in the last two years.

Strategy Page by way of The Subreport

The US Coast Guard is also picking up a number of these semi-submerisbles along the drug seaways between S. America and US waters.

Coast Guard officials in Alameda, Calif., said a 50-foot semi-submersible craft was spotted Monday by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection surveillance aircraft about 300 miles southwest of the Mexico-Guatemala border. The vessel was abandoned by its crew and sank a short time later, the Coast Guard said. The cocaine bundles bobbed to the surface as a boarding team from the USS DeWert approached to rescue the crew.

"This case shows the challenges our counter-drug patrol forces face, and the lengths to which the drug smuggling organization will go to get their deadly product to the U.S.," said Rear Adm. Craig Bone, tactical commander of U.S. counter drug operations in the Eastern Pacific. "This low-profile semi-submersible craft was very difficult to detect."

Eaglespeak
While you might think that regular submarines would serve better than semi-submersibles, apparently the semi-'s are cheaper, capable of carrying more cargo, and given the limited submersion time of most conventional subs, the semi-'s are almost as stealthy. Unfortunately for the drug interdiction effort, most of the semi-submersibles appear to be getting through--judging by cocaine prices graphed below.The total cocaine market is estimated to be over US$70 Billion. Apparently Venezuela is willing to lend a helping hand to the cocaine trade. Very neighborly of Hugo, eh?

Even at those bargain basement prices, cocaine is profitable enough to allow drug runners to buy new boats (for those lost to interdiction), and there are profits aplenty for distributors to bribe federal and local law enforcement. If you want to know the approximate profits and mark-ups at each step in the cocaine production, and distribution pathway, check out the YouTube graphics below:

Egalitarianism: An Ideological Fallacy?

egalitarianism

[From French egalite: equality.]

(politics) The view that equality is the most important societal (and even ethical) value. Egalitarians usually focus on equality of results, rather than equality of opportunity or equality before the law, which are ideas usually associated with classical liberalism or libertarianism. In practice, egalitarian policies usually focus on the equal distribution [ed: redistribution] of wealth, sometimes verging on socialism.
the ism book

The type of egalitarianism defined above is the basis for most counter-productive leftist social policies. As the curve above shows, the closer society tries to get to the leftist ideal of egalitarianism, the more it falls into the characteristic "traps" that bedevil all attempts to implement socialism on the scale of large populations--particularly those with heterogeneous populations such as the US, New Zealand, and Australia.

The likelihood that different population groups can be characterized by different "Bell Curves of natural ability" makes it particularly difficult to achieve an ideal "Gini-curve" placement of a heterogeneous society, while simultaneously avoiding the traps above.

Ideological leftists tend to deny all scientifically measurable differences between population intellectual aptitudes. Physical aptitude differences between populations appear beyond dispute, and are generally ignored by egalitarian theorists and acolytes. But where population differences in physical aptitudes and characteristics exist, it is not unreasonable to also expect population differences in mental and intellectual (as well as emotional) characteristics and aptitudes.The blogger Half Sigma looks at an interesting way to study possible genetic contributors to IQ differences between populations:

There exists a publicly available gene database, The HapMap Project, that contains random samples of genetic sequences from people in China, Japan, Nigeria, and people in the United States with European ancestry. It’s now possible to search the HapMap database for genes that have been linked with intelligence in published scientific studies. In this manner, we can determine if high intelligence genes occur with greater or lesser frequency in the various races.

Now, here’s an interesting point. If even a single gene correlated with intelligence occurs with different frequencies in the different races, this alone proves that there are racial differences in intelligence. How is that? Well, the egalitarian theory holds that every race has identical intelligence. Therefore, whatever genes there are that affect intelligence, they must be distributed exactly equally in all human races. Once even a small race difference is proven, the egalitarian theory is proven false. At that point, it’s only a matter of determining which race has the higher average intelligence based on the genetic evidence.

Half Sigma

Of course it is really far too early to use the HapMap for a definitive demonstration of population genetic differences that may lead to IQ differences in populations. Only a few of the genes that contribute to IQ have been found, and far too few genomes have been sampled to provide representative comparisons of populations. Even so, the idea is promising, and within the next decade should begin providing results that go beyond twins studies, IQ test studies of schoolchildren, adoptees, and military members, and other methods currently used to compare population IQs.

True genomic and hapmap studies of population IQ and aptitude differences lie in the future. But they will be done, and there is no use for ideologues to attempt to stop them. And whether the race bigots and lobotomised ideologues like it or not some of the findings that emerge will make them all unhappy.

It is quite easy to get caught up in lazy arguments on this (and most any complex controversial) argument. One one extreme you find bitter and bigoted people with their minds made up, and on the other extreme you find people completely disassociated from reality with their minds made up. Anyone who uses either racially charged language, or ideologically charged language should not be trusted here. Their biases are already showing, even before touching on the substance.

Eventually the laws that force society into regressive, leftward positions on the Gini Curve will have to be changed. Reality, rather than ideology, will have to guide society into the future.



Among the blogs that follow these issues, GNXP, Audacious Epigone, and ISteve are among the best.

More on the 88 Monkeys of Duke

What did the infamous 88 Duke University faculty accusers say, when Mike Nifong's case against the athletes began to collapse? "I'm sorry I jumped to conclusions without evidence?" Hardly.

--History professor Peter Wood claimed, in an interview with the New Yorker, that a lacrosse player advocated genocide against Native Americans. His evidence: an anonymous student evaluation in a class of 65.

--Literature professor Grant Farred published an October 2006 op-ed accusing Duke students of “secret racism” for seeking to vote Nifong out of office; in April 2007, he publicly deemed unnamed lacrosse players guilty of “perjury.”

--Houston Baker, by this point having been hired away by Vanderbilt, suggested that the lacrosse players might have been guilty of other rapes (he supplied no evidence) and e-mailed one player’s mother that her son and his teammates were “farm animals.”

Such statements seemed to violate the spirit if not the letter of Duke’s Faculty Handbook, which contains the following passage: “Members of the faculty expect Duke students to meet high standards of performance and behavior. It is only appropriate, therefore, that the faculty adheres to comparably high standards in dealing with students . . . Students are fellow members of the university community, deserving of respect and consideration in their dealings with the faculty.”

Yet — as our book makes clear — the Brodhead administration had shown no willingness to enforce the Handbook’s provisions at any point in the lacrosse affair. In spring 2006, at least three History professors used class time (in classes with lacrosse players) to deliver guilt-presuming lectures, including one who offered what he termed the findings of his “research” — that an “ejaculation had occurred.” An anthropology professor dismissed her class so the students could go outside and watch an anti-lacrosse rally. And a political science professor — after sending an e-mail in which she described the two lacrosse players in her class as accomplices to rape — gave both students an F on the final paper. One sued Duke; in an out-of-court settlement, Duke publicly announced that the grade had been changed (to a “pass”) and paid an undisclosed sum.

Group members disinclined toward unsubstantiated attacks or unprofessional behavior engaged in an Orwellian attempt to redefine the past. Perhaps the best example came in a January 2007 op-ed from English professor Cathy Davidson, who rationalized the Group of 88’s statement as nothing more than saying “that we faculty were listening to the anguish of students who felt demeaned by racist and sexist remarks swirling around in the media and on the campus quad in the aftermath of what happened on March 13 in the lacrosse house. The insults, at that time, were rampant. It was as if defending David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann necessitated reverting to pernicious stereotypes about African-Americans, especially poor black women.”

These claims were absurd: in late March and early April 2006 virtually no one was publicly defending the lacrosse players “on the campus quad” or anyplace else, much less using racial stereotypes to do so.

While the Group members’ positions might have been divorced from reality, they had a chilling effect on campus discourse. For nearly six months, as an extraordinarily high-profile case of prosecutorial misconduct involving their own students unfolded before their very eyes, not one member of the Duke arts and sciences faculty publicly criticized Nifong’s behavior. The first who did so, Chemistry professor Steven Baldwin, also blasted the Group of 88 for betraying their responsibilities as professors. The response? The next day, the director of Duke’s women’s studies program accused Baldwin of using the “language of lynching,” while the co-director of Duke’s Center for Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender sent Baldwin an e-mail implying that they should settle their differences through violence.

Volokh Conspiracy

But the unprofessional behaviour of Duke U's faculty is par for the course for the humanities, on North American university campuses. These tenured clowns rule over their universities like monkey kings, preventing students from being exposed to a diversity of ideas--the only kind of diversity that truly counts in an educational setting such as an university.

Something Smells: The Unfortunate and Unintended Consequences of Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action appears to be one of those open-ended, never-ending social programs that promises to be impossible to phase out, despite doing more harm than good.

Three years ago, UCLA law professor Richard Sander published an explosive, fact-based study of the consequences of affirmative action in American law schools in the Stanford Law Review. Most of his findings were grim, and they caused dismay among many of the champions of affirmative action--and indeed, among those who were not.

Easily the most startling conclusion of his research: Mr. Sander calculated that there are fewer black attorneys today than there would have been if law schools had practiced color-blind admissions--about 7.9% fewer by his reckoning. He identified the culprit as the practice of admitting minority students to schools for which they are inadequately prepared.

...Some of the same people who argue Mr. Sander's data are inconclusive are now actively trying to prevent him from conducting follow-up research that might yield definitive answers. If racial preferences really are causing more harm than good, they apparently don't want you--or anyone else--to know.

Take William Kidder, a University of California staff advisor and co-author of a frequently cited attack of Sander's study. When Mr. Sander and his co-investigators sought bar passage data from the State Bar of California that would allow analysis by race, Mr. Kidder passionately argued that access should be denied, because disclosure "risks stigmatizing African American attorneys." At the same time, the Society of American Law Teachers, which leans so heavily to the left it risks falling over sideways, gleefully warned that the state bar would be sued if it cooperated with Mr. Sander.

Sadly, the State Bar's Committee of Bar Examiners caved under the pressure. The committee members didn't formally explain their decision to deny Mr. Sander's request for these data

... While some students will outperform their entering academic credentials, just as some students will underperform theirs, most students will perform in the range that their academic credentials predict. As a result, in elite law schools, 51.6% of black students had first-year grade point averages in the bottom 10% of their class as opposed to only 5.6% of white students. Nearly identical performance gaps existed at law schools at all levels. This much is uncontroversial.

Supporters of race-based admissions argue that, despite the likelihood of poor grades, minority students are still better off accepting the benefit of a preference and graduating from a more prestigious school. But Mr. Sander's research suggests that just the opposite may be true--that law students, no matter what their race, may learn less, not more, when they enroll in schools for which they are not academically prepared. Students who could have performed well at less competitive schools may end up lost and demoralized. As a result, they may fail the bar.

... Mr. Sander calculated that if law schools were to use color-blind admissions policies, fewer black law students would be admitted to law schools (3,182 students instead of 3,706), but since those who were admitted would be attending schools where they have a substantial likelihood of doing well, fewer would fail or drop out (403 vs. 670). In the end, more would pass the bar on their first try (1,859 vs. 1,567) and more would eventually pass the bar (2,150 vs. 1,981) than under the current system of race preferences.

...A friend of mine wasted a decade of his life going to law school and working as a hospital orderly while flunking the bar exam nine or ten times before giving up. If he'd become a salesman out of college, he might have been making six figures by then.

For blacks, the 43% of black law students who never pass the bar exam represent a well-above average group who could have used their 20s to do something more productive.

Source

Law school is just one example of this phenomenon. It would be nice if researchers had full access to the data necessary to examine expensive social policies such as affirmative action, and other "diversity" policies. But they are simply too explosive, politically. Which means that the status quo will continue, regardless of efficacy, regardless of unintended consequences.

The State vs. the People

In Western Europe, it is difficult to imagine that we would have accepted the massively bureaucratic European Union if we hadn’t already been conditioned to accept state intrusion on all levels of our lives in our nation states. The EU became just another layer of bureaucracy. We now have a situation where a massive, inflated national and transnational bureaucracy runs our lives, and even writes our laws. We have become serfs, just as Hayek warned against.

...if individual liberty diminishes with high taxation and intrusive bureaucracy, and if democracies have a built-in tendency to gradually increase taxes and create more state jobs, does that mean that democracy will, over time, diminish individual liberty? Is democracy bound to go through cycles of bureaucratic inflation and collapse?

....Parallel with an explosion in street crime, the state turns on its law-abiding citizens with a proliferation of regulations and an inflation of laws. The less control the state has over the the most important tasks of society, the stronger its desire to assert its power over the tiniest details becomes. Or is it a subtle show of force, a constant reminder to the average citizen of who’s boss, a sign that resistance to state policies is feared?

...“Parliaments all over the world are churning out laws by the bucketful. Yet, they fail to protect citizens so spectacularly that one is tempted to think that this is not their real purpose. […] Governments are no longer there to protect society and the individuals within it. [...] For that reason a crime committed by one individual against another is of little consequence to them.”

...The state interferes in all aspects of life, and contributes to breaking down the nuclear family. Later, it creates expensive social programs to try and remedy the problems it has itself partly created. Whether this dynamic is part of an intentional policy or the result of a dysfunctional ideology is debatable, but the result is disastrous either way.

....When does the rule of law break down? It breaks down when laws are no longer passed with the consent of free people, when citizens no longer feel that the law is just, when regulations become so numerous that it is virtually impossible even for decent individuals not to break the law on a regular basis and when the authorities are incapable of protecting their country’s borders while criminals rule the streets. It breaks down when the law appears increasingly arbitrary, when it invades the most intimate details of the life of law-abiding citizens while it allows great freedom to criminals. In short, it breaks down when it no longer corresponds to reality and to the sense of justice experienced by ordinary people.

Source

Once the people lose the will and the power to limit the size and control of government, the end of liberty and the beginning of serfdom is not far off.

Sperm Donor No More

Some men gain a certain satisfaction beyond the minimal monetary reward, for donating sperm to a couple who desire children. But some lesbian parents want to make the sperm donor pay for his generosity--and pay--and pay--and pay . . . .

In what legal experts are calling a precedent, a three-judge panel of the state Superior Court has ruled that a York County man must pay child support for two children of a lesbian couple for whom he acted as a sperm donor.

Source

No, the photo above is not of the proud parents. The actual proud and self-satisfied parents are pictured below.

A Song for the Pubs of Durham

Here are verses to a song to sing in all the pubs in the general vicinity of Durham, North Carolina. It concerns the 88 Duke professors whose prejudice and bigotry condemned a number of Duke students without a trial. You should easily find a likely tune to go with the verses. Feel free to make up more verses, using the pattern that I will demonstrate thus:

88 monkeys of Duke on the wall
88 monkeys of Duke
If one of the monkeys should happen to fall
87 monkeys of Duke on the wall

87 monkeys of Duke on the wall
87 monkeys of Duke
If one of the monkeys should happen to fall
86 monkeys of Duke on the wall

86 monkeys of Duke on the wall
86 monkeys of Duke
If one of the monkeys should happen to fall
85 monkeys of Duke on the wall
....

....

Regular readers of this blog should have no trouble extending the verses through several more iterations at least. The 88 Duke professors, on the other hand, will always have difficulty with any task more difficult than basic reflexes.
;-)

Rapid Growth in Media Choice

People have never had so many choices for information.

In China and Iran, most sources of information we in the west take for granted, are denied the people. That is not surprising, given the totalitarian natures of those societies.

But why are some lawmakers trying to make the information landscape of North America more like China, or Iran?

Durham-in-Wonderland

The recent Durham, North Carolina case against the Duke lacrosse players is a fascinating study into the US system of law, and how various factions in US society are continuously trying to influence US law--with varying degrees of success.

One particular website has captured this spectacle in all its shame and splendor--Durham-in-Wonderland. Written by a history professor at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, the weblog carefully documents the chronological statements and actions of prosecutors, defendants, journalists, Duke faculty members, and other important players in this drama.

The weblog author, Professor KC Johnson, has painstakingly laid out the entire scenario from start to finish--in fact he continues documenting the significant aftermath of the case, even after all charges are dropped.

Professor Johnson illustrates what academic and public scholarship should be. His weblog is far more professional than the writings of over 99% of big-publication journalists. For anyone who aspires to write a weblog, essay, or book on a topic bearing on society and the law, a study of Durham-in-Wonderland would provide a quality goal toward which to aim.

Can 88 Duke Professors All Be Wrong?

The infamous Duke lacrosse players have been cleared of all charges. But there are still some loose ends hanging around. What will happen to District Attorney Nifong, the prosecutor who abused his office to pursue a blatantly political case? What will happen to the New York Times, a newspaper that willingly served as judge, jury, and executioner of the lacrosse players simply because it could get away with it?

Most of all, what will happen to the 88 Duke Professors--the pampered sinecured monkeys who took it upon themselves to declare the lacrosse players guilty, and demand their expulsion from school? What will happen to those assholes who let their insignificant political ideas lead them to verbally libel and abuse students at their own university?

Unlike Don Imus, none of the 88 professors has apologized for what was basically an assault on the legal system. One of the 88 is an English professor named Karla Holloway. She is chair of the Race Subcommittee of Duke University President William Broadhead’s Campus Cultures Initiative. Shouldn’t she resign?

The three young men face huge legal bills and will have the stain of false accusation with them forever. The 88 faculty professors face no sanction for their behavior at all.

Source

The Duke president, no profile in courage, canceled the lacrosse season and fired the coach. As recently as a few months ago President Richard Brodhead was still defending the 88 professors who trampled on the presumption of innocence, going so far as to describe some of them as victims, too.

Source

Worst of all, this story so neatly fit the radical agenda of our "newspaper of record," The New York Times, that the paper disgustingly advanced the hoax on its front page, long after other media outlets had backed off.

In a case of "all the lies fit to print," the paper on Aug. 25 affected an air of Timesian authority in a damning article, spoon-fed by DA Nifong. It tried to put to rest some of the alarming inconsistencies in the accuser's story about the night she was "attacked."

"While there are big weaknesses in Mr. Nifong's case, there is also a body of evidence to support his decision to take the matter to a jury," quoth the Times. And, "The full files, reviewed by The New York Times, contain evidence stronger than that highlighted by the defense."

Will the Times make reparations now?

Source

The shit-throwing monkeys at the NY Times, and the monkeys on the Duke faculty, are apparently made of the same material.

The double standard that allows these monkeys to hound and abuse innocent students into severe legal debt and ruination of reputation, but drives an inconsequential radio/TV clown like Imus off the air for a poorly considered joke, is something that an intelligent society would take a long hard look at.