| Friday, July
28, 2006
Subject: An economist sounding
like Pournelle
Pournelle-esque paragraph:
"This situation distinguishes the social sciences from
the physical sciences in two notable ways. First, a higher proportion of
empirical research in the social sciences is subject to legitimate --
oftentimes irresolvable -- dispute. Second, as a consequence, in the social
sciences theoretical considerations inevitably play a larger role in
navigating around these disputes and in forming judgments about desirable
public policies."
Cut the Minimum Wage With Ockham's Razor By Donald
Boudreaux on 28 Jul 2006 You can view it at
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=072806B
Rod
==========
Subject: "official" version of Swift story
http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=24698Jerry
<http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=24698Jerry>
:
Here's the navy.mil version of the story. Same quote
from LCDR Pournelle.
Steve
* “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of
thinking we used when we created them.” ----Albert Einstein
=
Subject: Another article mentioning SWIFT -
Looks like they are shifting to delivering
humanitarian aid:
http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/
0/45F504C3DF34C651852571B5005F9C2A?opendocument
Scott Kitterman
==========
Subject: Korea - CFC commander's last job
Please don't post this with my name.
If you want an interesting factoid, find out who the
current korean combined forces command commander is, and what his last job
was.
=========
Subject: The Arab-American
psychologist,
Jerry
Here is an in-your-face challenge to Islam from MEMRI
television.
The woman who is being interviewed speaking is Wafa
Sultan.
Ms. Sultan is an Arab-American psychologist from Los
Angeles.
http://tinyurl.com/m99x8
http://switch3.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ai=214&ar=1050wmv&ak=null
Ed
===========
Subject: The Dept of Education Report on Public
vs. Private Schools
Jerry,
This
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5584516
is the link to the report on NPR if it has not been
posted here before. The trouble with this topic is encapsulated in the quote
from Chester Finn as to whether the Bush DOE is downplaying this report. He
thinks of course they are, because, "You don't make a big deal about data
you don't like."
Huh. In real science, as opposed to the facade that we
have in public education policy debates, you make the BIGGEST deal about
"data you don't like" because that's the data that teaches you the most. Of
course, every scientist knows this, of course, no public education policy
analyst will pay any attention to this. I would suggest that the Bush
administration is culpable on this, as was the Clinton administration, but
with the polarity reversed.
One of my children is moving to a private school this
year, and the interesting thing is that the people who run the school pay
lots of attention to "data you don't like", because if they don't, they find
themselves with an interesting type of "failing school"....one with no
students.
Chuck
==============
Subject: Outer-space sex carries complications,
Jerry
The Zero-G Club: Outer-space sex carries
complications:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14002908/print/1/displaymode/1098/
Ed
No comment.
===========
Subject: AT&T Labs vs. Google Labs:
not your grandfather's R&D,
Jerry
AT&T Labs vs. Google Labs: not your grandfather's R&D:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060724-7340.html
It explains to the younger set why you so mourn the
old Bell Labs.
Ed
=======
Subject: Someone else who thinks the Delta Clipper was
a good idea
It seems that the new design will have some things in
common with the DC-X/XA (a rocket I believe you're familiar with) - but some
notable differences too.
They are planning to use HTP as oxidiser, rather than
Lox. Also RP-1 will be their fuel instead of liquid hydrogen.
I wondered if you had an opinion about their plans.
Link to an article discussing their plans...
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/060705_blue_origin.html
and their own web-page is...
http://www.blueorigin.com/
David.
============
Subject: Just to make your day
Avoid Las Vegas...
<http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/07/sky_marshals_na.html>
-- "The data (or the marks when teaching) are
sacrosanct--they tell us what actually happened."
Harry Erwin, PhD http://osiris.sunderland.ac.uk/~cs0her
I have always suspected this.
==========
Subject: the genetics of
domestication,
Jerry
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/health/25rats.html
Very interesting story about nice rats and nasty rats.
I'm glad they are taking such care to keep the nasty ones out of the sewers
of Leipzig.
Ed
How many generations would it take to
breed domesticated human beings?
========
Subject: South Lebanon report
Hi Jerry.
One of the UN observers killed in South Lebanon sent a
report to the CTV a few days before his death. The text of the report (an
email message) is supplied in Canadian MP Garth Turner's weblog; scroll down
about one page to "Our fallen hero in South Lebanon, in his own words":
http://www.garth.ca/weblog/2006/07/26/united-sad/
Cheers,
Mike Casey
===========
Why humans have the best artificial intelligence.
http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/
2006/07/why_humans_have.html
- Roland Dobbins
Old axiom: you never appreciate how smart
a moron is until you try to program a robot.
=======
Subject: Standardized tests and
No Child Left Behind
Jerry,
This is an important piece on NCLB by Charles Murray
on the type of testing that is done to "validate" the program.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008701
The central point is that, in my state (VA), Texas,
and North Carolina, and possibly all the states, the standardized test used
to measure compliance with NCLB uses pass rates (percentage of children
exceeding a test score threshold) rather than scale scores (the actual score
on the test). In simplified form, what this means is:
Take two kids and have them stand up, then draw a line
on the floor between the them and call it the "pass level". They're on
opposite sides of the line and that means....one is passing and one isn't;
the distance between them represents an "achievement gap". Now have them
each take one step to the side so that they are both on the same side of the
line. Now they both "pass", but you'll note they are still the same distance
apart. Imagine that these kids represent the centers of test score
distributions for two groups and you have the whole picture. We can go from
half the kids passing and half failing, to 100% "pass" while the distance
between the two groups remains constant, ie, no achievement gap closure at
all.
This WSJ piece also has a reference to La Griffe du
Lion, which I first learned of via your site, and who analyzes this pass
rate nonsense in quantitative detail, showing that the results mean nothing.
Perhaps La Griffe is a reader?
Charles Murray refers to this process of using pass
rates as "deceptive". He doesn't use the word "fraud" because that implies
intent, which is a difficult thing to measure. However, I think the people
running these testing programs know -exactly- what they're doing and that
it's a knowing and planned deception.
Chuck
More voodoo sciences. But
see below
==
Regarding No Child Left
Behind and Murray's article:
I get this strong feeling that the Dept. of Education
is leaving the egalitarian aspects of the No Child Left Behind Act behind
and emphasizing what might as well be called "All Children Pushed Ahead,"
namely by bragging that test scores are going up for everybody in today's
globalizing world. It is just incidental that the "achievement gap" is being
narrowed.
Rising test scores have very little to do with g. What
school does to enable higher income potential, if it can't or at least so
far doesn't change g is a mystery that won't be solved until g is taken
seriously.
g correlates with income only about 0.50 (25% of the
variance) anyhow. Besides the correlation between income and happiness is
even lower.
The Left has long been captured by the teachers'
unions and endorsed NCLB mostly for the money. Very few of them care about
equality. Murray does not know that and is flogging a dead horse. Or maybe
he *does* know but knows that the Right is still opposing the Left over a
dead issue and wants to keep up his good credentials on the right.
The truest statement is that NCLB "holds good students
hostage to the performance of the least talented, at a time when the
economic future of the country depends more than ever on the performance of
the most talented." I don't know about the more than ever part, actually.
The thing to watch is the declining passion for
equality.
Frank
==
I find it interesting that THE WALL STREET JOURNAL has
published an article with a "generic" link to La Griffe's web site, rather
than a link to the specific article:
"Closing The Racial Learning Gap"
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/gap.htm
The link actually proffered,
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/
exposes the reader to all *sorts* of interesting
topics, such as:
"Politics, Imprisonment and Race"
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/prison.htm
"Sex Differences in Mathematical Aptitude"
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math.htm
And perhaps most topically for the specific fight we
are in on the Hill:
"Cognitive Decline: The Irreducible Legacy of Open
Borders"
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/imm.htm
The "Money Quote" from this last:
> "As its third-world population fraction
increases,
> (3) specifies the linear path by which a first-world
> Western European country will slide into
> economic oblivion."
And, of course, the linearity of this curve implies
that, somehow, "governance" will not be affected by the cognitive decline.
Alas, the lesson of Zimbabwe is that governance (rule of law, and all that),
*is* affected, and things slide downhill much faster once it is.
As this situation develops, the children of the
Permanently Disadvantaged will suffer the most the soonest, as the
ever-smaller First World population of the nation is unable to maintain the
supply of First World services to its Third World population.
Jim
==
Good to see Murray has smelled what ed reform is
really about now.
The right is in on this too. They want schools to
prove that students are achieving, and they aren't satisfied that "average
is good enough either". The PC right also holds that students of all incomes
and races can all achieve at higher levels.
Education reform has abandoned the progressive left
when my jr High school teacher can give an F to a completed by project by my
son, and A student when the original idea of project was to make it easier
for A "D" student to pass, not make it easy for an "A" student to get an "F"
grade. The google video "run silent, run deep" is still up there, it's doing
20 views a day and over 1000 total since spring. I got an appointment with
the vice-superintendent over the grading, but my wife and son didn't want to
risk the wrath of the teacher's union lawyers over getting a grade raised
from an F to a D. I'm getting my sets together for the Sequel JFK and
Gilligan take the PT 109 out for a 3 hour tour and get run over by a minivan
by Bloody Mary "you cheap crummy GI Democrat!!"
Arthur
======
Sex differences run deeper than we think
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?
id=mg19125605.200&print=true
* 15 July 2006
MEN and women often appear to be poles
apart. Now it seems we really can blame our genes. In mice, at least, it
appears that many thousands of genes are expressed differently in the
two sexes, far more than suspected.
"More than half the genes are different
between genders, an order of magnitude more than previously thought,"
says Xia Yang, head of the team at the University of California, Los
Angeles, that compared gene expression in four different tissues in male
and female mice.
The team profiled a total of 23,574 genes
from 334 mice. In fat, liver and muscle, up to 70 per cent of the genes
produced different amounts of protein in the two sexes. In brain tissue,
14 per cent of genes were expressed differently in males and females.
"The biggest implication is that the
mechanisms underlying many common diseases may be different between
males and females," Yang says. The heart drug digitalis causes more
deaths in women than in men, for example, while aspirin protects men
better from heart disease. This was previously thought to be due to
differences in drug metabolism in male and female livers, but Yang says
his results suggest that the sex differences go way beyond this. He says
this means that drug trials should be gender-specific.<snip>
============
From another conference:
Steve,
From a member of your profession at a nearby
institution:
From: NO MAN'S LAND: Men's Changing Commitments to
Family and Work, by Kathleen Gerson (1993). Ms. Gerson is Associate
Professor of Sociology at New York University.
Page 97 in the soft-cover edition in Part II "Paths Of
Change", the chapter entitled, "Turning Towards Breadwinning" she writes:
"For better or worse, becoming a parent had a
stabilizing effect on men's commitment to work. It had similar effects on
their family ties, their personal goals, and their lives in general."
FOR BETTER OR WORSE????
Jim
==
Hi, Jim--
>>"For better or worse, becoming a parent had a
stabilizing effect on men's commitment to work. It had similar effects on
their family ties, their personal goals, and their lives in general." FOR
BETTER OR WORSE????<<
The "better" part refers to the fact that a man's
becoming a parent (and living with the wife and child, I assume) results in
more stable marriages, less poverty, a far better future for the kids, and
more satisfaction with life..
The "worse" part refers to the fact that these results
are discordant with the author's dopey ideological desire that women not
live with men.
It's really quite simple when you know how to look at
it.
Hope all is well.
Best,
Steve
And that's the way it is in Sociology and
the V0odoo Sciences in this year of Grace 2006.
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