| Monday
July 19, 2010 NYT
Column: The Roots of White Anxiety
Its here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/opinion/
19douthat.html?ref=columnists
A couple of things that are interesting from the
article:
Last year, two Princeton sociologists, Thomas
Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford, published a book-lengthstudy of
admissions and affirmative action at eight highly selective colleges and
universities. Unsurprisingly, they found that the admissions process seemed
to favor black and Hispanic applicants, while whites and Asians needed
higher grades and SAT scores to get in. But what was striking, as Russell K.
Nieli pointed out last week on the conservative Web site Minding the
Campus,which whites were most disadvantaged by the process: the downscale,
the rural and the working-class.
This was particularly pronounced among the private
colleges in the study. For minority applicants, the lower a family’s
socioeconomic position, the more likely the student was to be admitted. For
whites, though, it was the reverse. An upper-middle-class white applicant
was three times more likely to be admitted than a lower-class white with
similar qualifications.
At one time, those working-class whites were the heart
of the Democratic party. They elected Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, etc....
Have they been left behind by their party's values and just don't realize
it?
A decade later, the note of white grievance that
Buchanan struck that night is part of the conservative melody. ... It was
sounded last year during the backlash against Sonia Sotomayor’s suggestion
that a “wise Latina” jurist might have advantages over a white male judge
... To liberals, these grievances seem at once noxious and ridiculous.
I'd be interested in the reaction of those same
liberals if someone intimated that a wise white, male Supreme Court Nominee
of European ethnicity might have the advantage of thinking more like the
framers of the Constitution did, since they were wise, white males of
European ethnicity. The left's reaction would be immediate, vitriolic and
over-the-top to such an occurrence.
Yet, such as statement would be in the same vein as
and just as insulting and just as racially prejudiced as Sotomayor's
statement.
There's apparently no place left for rational thought
in our political processes anymore.
John Harlow, President BravePoint
==
I've quoted a paragraph below and highlighted the
statement that caught my attention. Of course, it isn't any surprise to
anyone here, but that the liberals are starting to realize it - wow!
It's amazing that they do not see this as a self
fulfilling prophecy If you select for the brightest folks who are both white
and Christian, then put their performance against folks selected for other
characteristics, which group is going to perform better?
Gosh...
-Paul
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19
/opinion/19douthat.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
"Last year, two Princeton sociologists, Thomas
Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford, published a book-lengthstudy <http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9072.html>
of admissions and affirmative action at eight highly selective colleges
and universities. Unsurprisingly, they found that the admissions process
seemed to favor black and Hispanic applicants, while whites and Asians
needed higher grades and SAT scores to get in. But what was striking, as
Russell K. Nieli pointed out last week <http://www.mindingthecampus.com
/originals/2010/07/how_diversity_punishes_asians.html> on the
conservative Web site Minding the Campus, was which whites were most
disadvantaged by the process: the downscale, the rural and the
working-class."
It is always better to have clients than equals.
By bringing in people dependent on the ruling class who will remain
dependent on the system, the perpetuation of the existing arrangements are
assured. If you're running things, you don't want rivals, you want
compliant clients dependent on you.
That's one reason for the destruction of the
public school system. But then we've been seeing that coming for a long
time. There's a bit about this in
today's View.
As to your observation, of course it's true.
Actually it is worse: to take a student who would have done well at UCLA
-- i.e. someone quite bright -- and send that student to Cal Tech because
of minority status makes for disaster. It has happened before and is
happening even as I write this. It's the ruin of the student, and the loss
of a good UCLA graduate to political correctness.
================
Hello Dr. Pournelle:
Once upon a time, in Great Britain and some other
places, you would buy a military commission, and then attempt to profit from
it by spoils or some other means.
What this did was fill the officer corps with
gentlemen, who considered it their right and privilege to be there, and who
saw themselves as apart and superior to those who worked under them. Often
they were incompetent, usually they were arrogant, always they were not as
good as they would have been, had the process been more competitive. The
army was, of course, run by the sergeants, who would probably have made much
better officers, but who had not the money or the connections to get a
commission.
Today, you pay a school to issue you a credential. Now
you might be required to attend some training, and put in your four years or
two years of orientation, but you have paid to enter a certain career path
and to make of it what you will. Those who are unable or unwilling to pay,
or who can not arrange a loan or get a grant are essentially eliminated from
the market and the competition.
Today, the lines are so well drawn that you could
invent a faster than light drive, and still not get a position as an
engineer or scientist without the appropriate degree. Exempt, non-exempt;
management, labor; professional, unskilled; white collar, blue collar;
however you want to define it, the class without merit system is being put
back into place.
This is largely being done by our business schools,
who are training all of the hiring managers that this is the proper way to
do things. These are the same schools that are teaching that layoffs and off
shoring are appropriate cost cutting measures. To this way of thinking, the
employees are a commodity (a human resource), not worthy of too much
consideration. So once again we have people running things who consider it
their right and privilege to be there, and who see themselves as apart and
superior to those who working under them. Multiply this by a factor of four,
if these people work in the government and are dealing with "ordinary"
citizens.
Incidentally, regarding our wonderful school systems.
A fourteen year old boy is going to trial in a couple of weeks because he
took some sauce in a cafeteria line, for some chicken nuggets that a friend
had given him. He was charged with theft, handcuffed and cited.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=132587310110953 <http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=132587310110953>
. It’s a good thing he didn’t grab any napkins or ketchup – he might have
been charged with grand theft.
You can’t make up stuff this stupid, because it is
hard to imagine people in positions of responsibility being so careless and
ignorant. If I were this boy’s father, I would be in jail right now, and at
least two alleged adults would be in the hospital. On the bright side, after
hearing the facts, I wonder if any jury would convict me.
While the case will certainly be dismissed or found in
the boys favor, we are paying for this trial, we paid the idiot cop, and the
back up squad that was sent, and we are paying this sad excuse for an
assistant principal and allowing him authority over our children. We also
taught a boy the most important lesson that the schools are teaching these
days - that you are always at the whim of even the lowest level governmetn
employee.
Not all of the child molesters in our schools are
sexual.
Neal Pritchett
The ruling class is not competent except in
preserving its power. On that it is united.
=============
Recount
"I know no more about it than this, but I did find it
interesting that they
kept counting until Franken won."
There's the key. No need to fret about hypothetically
ineligible votes cast by felons. A way would have been found with or without
them.
--Mike
=============
Rejoice Dr. Pournelle - There is
Solid Progress on Fusion
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
To expand on my earlier submission*. The Polywell
concept does not use heat, or pressure or momentum to encourage the nuclei
to fuse. So Polywell is not thermo-nuclear fusion. The large thermo-nuclear
fusion projects of the last forty plus years have mostly being
thermo-nuclear or inertial confinement. Polywell is best described as
electro-dynamic confinement.
The idea is to use magnetic fields to circulate
electrons around and into a central "well." The attractive force of the
electron is sufficient guide positively-charge nuclei into multiple passes
through the well for collisions and fusion.
The United States Navy is funding most of the current
research for power at sea. EMC2 is being quiet about their results and the
Navy has recently refused a Freedom of Information Act request from the
enthusiasts to release the results of EMC2's work. Nevertheless, the Navy
keeps funding successive stages of EMC2's work...but the Millenium is not
yet upon us.
Although the secondary indicators we (the enthusiasts)
get from EMC2 and the Navy are positive; no raw data, non-peer-reviewed or
peer-reviewed data has been released for public consumption. Since Dr.
Bussard's death, EMC2's work is lead by a Dr. Richard Nebel most recently of
one of the National Laboratories (Los Alamos, I think).
The near-term hope is for the Polywell reactor to
allow fusion where the reactor is a source of neutrons for "steam" power.
The very attractive farther-term hope is for boron fusion which will allow
direct conversion of alpha particle products into electric charge.
About once a week, I include the EMC2 folks in my
nightly prayers.
Best Regards,
R. Peters
*All of this is much better explained at:
http://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/index.php The Polywell concept
first came to my attention in an Analog article written by Tom Ligon who was
also a colleague of Dr. Bussard's.
We can all cheer them on. I still have not seen
the data, but if the Navy's happy then I certainly am. As to
electro-magnetic confinement, the concept has been around a long time, and
since the EMF is a whale of a lot stronger than gravity, would seem to be
on the right track vs. inertial confinement: at least for anything
continuous, we can hope; but again I haven't seen data and results.
Doesn't mean they aren't out there, but I haven't seen them and I'd think
making neutrons without muss would be headline news in some publications.
===========
Letter from Catalonia
I'm in Barcelona for a conference. It's a modern
Mediterranean city, a lot cleaner than Naples or Rome. Worth visiting!
I've sent you some
links earlier in the week. We've learned that Labour was no friend of
civil rights and the rights of its citizens.
Then we've learned that Labour built up a loan burden of about $100,000
per person that has to be paid out of taxes. The Tory-Liberal coalition has
come up with some proposals about the universities--first to reduce the
baccalaureate to two years, and second to replace the current system of
loans with a graduate tax. My reaction to the latter is that it will reduce
social mobility even below the low levels of the Labour years. I'll be glad
to return to America in a few years...
-- Harry Erwin
=============
"Antenna design when you can't have an external
antenna is a black art, and everyone has problems."
I'm not an electrical engineer, but I do remember
moving the 'rabbit ears' on the TV and enhancing the reception with tin foil
affixed... Am I being to simple to suggest that an antenna be designed that
includes using the human body?
David Couvillon Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps, Retired.;
Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of
the time; Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; Chef de Hot Dog
Excellance; Collector of Hot Sauce; Avoider of Yard Work
The problem is that human bodies come in many sizes
and coupling is not standard...
===========
About those Vikings in Greenland
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1091717/posts
Steve Chu
==========
Climate Change
Jerry,
Please see Dr. Spencer's "Global Warming for Dummies"
post. It's an excellent summary of the situation on global warming studies.
www.drroyspencer.com
I'll also note that the previous post is the June
global temperature data from NASA satellite observation. while the
temperature is in excess, June shows clear cooling as the current El Nino
ends, and comparison with the 1997-8 El Nino shows that the current El Nino
has NOT been warmer than that event.
Jim
The relevant entry is for July 17, 2010. It's not
bookmarked so far as I can tell [but see below], so you need to scroll down to it. I think
we have discussed all his major points here, but this is an excellent
summary of what's going on, including a defense of using climate models. He
does not discuss policy in this exposition.
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