http://roissy.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/a…

Being a soldier is no guarantee of alphaness. Take a look at this photo sent in by reader keirin:

This is very beta body language. The ass is clearly turned off by this man’s approach. The leaning in is the obvious tell; he’s all up on that ass while the annoyed ass is about to tip from avoiding his overeager one-arm hug. Nothing will kill a pickup faster than forcing a phony chumminess on an ass…

Also note his feet and how his toes are pointed inward. The pigeon-toed stance is a leading indicator of awkward betaness. The ass’s hooves, on the other hand, are assertively pointed outward. Powerfully alpha. It’s as if the gender roles are completely reversed, and the ass is the alpha male here. The soldier’s helmet propped at a jaunty angle is a little bit douchey. This might work on Jersey shore asses, but not Afghani ones.

I LLOL-ed.
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=16511 0 http://tjic.com/?p=16509 http://tjic.com/?p=16509#comments Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:33:38 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=16509 NASA is going to send a probe to with in 4 million miles of the Sun’s surface.

More NASA information here.

The Earth orbits at about 100 million miles above the Sun’s surface.

…so the probe is going to close 96% of the distance.

That’s pretty awesome.

Wikipedia link.

Now, one thing that’s a bit hard to wrap one’s head around is that “falling into the sun” (or, if you’re in earth orbit, “falling down to Earth”, is a lot of hard work. If you’re not used to thinking about orbits (or even if you are), you might be inclined to think “OK, I’m already pretty close, and the gravity wants to pull me in …so I just have to let it.

The thing is, though, you’re not just looking at a 2-D or 3-D space; you’re looking at a 4-D (or, arguably, 6-D) state space, where your velocity vector is as important as your location.

…and in this state space, your orbital velocity, which is sufficient to keep you from falling into the center mass, is a huge deal.

It’s easier to get from the Earth to Jupiter’s orbit than it is to get from the Earth to the sun. To get to Jupiter’s orbit, you merely (“merely”) achieve escape velocity from Earth, and then drift at 1 mile per hour out to Jupiter.

To get from the Earth to the Sun, you have to kill all of your forward orbital velocity.

“Good enough” isn’t good enough. Kill just some of it, and you fall in to a somewhat lower orbit … but an orbit none-the-less.

How fast is the Earth moving with regard to the sun?

If you remember your They Might Be Giants and recall that we’re 8 light minutes from the sun, and you also remember that a year has ~ 365 days, you can do the math yourself (c=2πr, etc.). The answer – I recall from the last time I worked it out – is something like Mach 90. Looking it up … yup ~30 km/s.

That’s three times the escape velocity out of Earth’s gravity well.

So, let’s talk about brute forcing it.

Think about a giant multi-stage stack booster that gets an Apollo mission out of Earth’s well.

…and now realize that you’ve now got that payload in solar orbit.

You now have to accelerate to Mach 90.

That’s a lot of work, and you’re using a huge percent of your solar-orbit payload for fuel and rockets.

…which stinks.

So, what’s the smart solution?

Early conceptual designs for the Solar Probe mission used a gravity assist maneuver at Jupiter to cancel the orbital angular momentum of the probe launched from Earth, in order to drop onto a trajectory close to the sun. The Solar Probe + mission design simplifies this trajectory by using multiple gravity assists at Venus

Cool.

My previous musings on gravity assist maneuvers.

My review of the movie Sunshine.

http://booksbikesboomsticks.blogspot.com…

I have successfully leveled up in Mall Ninja…

For what it’s worth, my tactical pants in the class were by Wrangler, and they come with two single 30-rd mag pouches, one right over each butt cheek. I can about guarantee that, should the balloon ever go up for real, those will be the pants in which I’ll be fighting,

Plus a bonus Blade Runner reference in the subject line.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massach…

School official loses job after marrying partner

Christine Judd, who served as dean of students and athletic director at Cathedral High School, tells The Republican newspaper that she met with school officials on Wednesday and was given the choice of resigning or getting fired.

Judd said she was “hurt,” and is exploring her legal options. Although gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts, it is against church policy.

Geez, if the government allows this policy in a private group to stand, next we’ll see outrages like the NAACP firing a CFO or Vice President every time one of them writes and publishes a book called “N***er Go Home: a White Separatist Manifesto”.

Clearly the State should stop private ideological organizations from discriminating on basis of belief or behavior!

http://tjic.com/?p=16476&cpage=1#comment…

One reason we don’t see that many middle-aged Jewish Republicans is that many American Jews who voted Republican at 20 are voting Likud at 40.

Hah!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/

Estwing Mfg Co. E3-28SM Framing Hammer, Metal Handle

5.0 out of 5 stars

By Travisji Corcoran “anarcho-capitalist” (Arlington, MA USA)

I’ve used this hammer for years, to do everything from building a new addition on my house to demo-ing a bunch of old plaster.

Plus, it’s the hammer used to bludgeon someone to death by the Trinity Killer in Season Three of ‘Dexter’ (available from Amazon on DVD!), so that’s a third use to which it can be put. Good to know!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/02/fashio…

WHEN cosmetics began disappearing from her bathroom drawer a few years ago, Gretchen Bain, who lives in Merchantville, N.J., knew the culprit.

Her husband, Jarrod.

It turned out that Mr. Bain, 34, a Customs and border-protection officer who is 6-foot-3 and weighs 240 pounds — and whose uniform includes a 9-millimeter handgun — had developed a fondness for his wife’s under-eye concealer, which hid his occasional dark circles. He was also swiping her face lotions and mud masks.

“At one point I just started buying stuff for him because I don’t want him stealing mine,” Ms. Bain said. Now she orders products online for him at Menaji.com, which bills itself as a “masculine” and “undetectable” line of cosmetics and skin-care products.

His favorites are an eye gel and stick concealer that target dark circles, and an anti-shine powder that comes (shhh!) in a compact.

I try to limit my skin-care products to “soap” and “forge dirt”.

P    ified government employees apparently have a different regimen.

At 4Voo, a seven-year-old Canadian company, sales have tripled over the last four years, according to Marek Hewryk, the founder. Its products — all targeted to men — include a lipstick-shaped concealer called Confidence Corrector ($34); a Lash and Brow Styling Glaze, applied with a mascara wand ($23); and even an eyeliner ($19).

OK, as a good live-and-let-live libertarian, it’s wrong of me to feel this way.

…but I really want to go get a hunk of iron pipe and go correct a few attitudes.

some men are not even self-conscious about using them. Jeffrey Lederer, 63, a principal in several investment partnerships and a former Wall Street trader, openly applies Menaji products — including a Bronze Star facial bronzing gel, concealer and anti-shine powder — after his workouts at a private Manhattan club.

“People are reticent to ask what they are, even though I think they’re interested,” Mr. Lederer said. “It does take a certain amount of self-confidence to use it in public.”

Ahh, now I get it.

It’s a counter-signalling aid. You have to be manly enough to not give a      about how folks perceive you…which demonstrates just how bad-ass you really are.

So, I guess I fail. I’m not as manly as this Wall Street trader and his purse full of makeup.

Or…wait.

Am I allowed to claim counter-counter-counter signalling, or something?
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=16497 14 http://tjic.com/?p=16494 http://tjic.com/?p=16494#comments Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:41:19 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=16494

http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/20…

Rosengren urges holistic approach to foreclosures

Federal and state policy makers should take a broader approach to the foreclosure crisis, not only adopting measures to prevent foreclosures and stabilize housing, but also providing aid to help the hardest hit communities address underlying social and economic issues, said Eric Rosengren, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Huh.

Holistic.

This contrasts strongly with the homeopathic approach to bailouts that the Feds have taken, where they dilute the worthless stock of General Motors with with $50 billion (diluting it at about 50 billion : 1), then diluting it again and again.

I guess the theory is that a good ~ 12X dilution will reverse the initially toxic nature of General Motors business / welfare / union model and create a new auto industry that is profitable and ‘on the move’.
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=16494 1 http://tjic.com/?p=16492 http://tjic.com/?p=16492#comments Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:30:42 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=16492 Woodworking tools are sold to two demographics: small shops building high end custom furniture, and upper middle class white guys collecting tools in their workshops.

Both sectors are doing poorly in this climate.

Bridge City Tools reports on the white line nightmare:

http://www.bridgecitytools.com/blog/2010…

Just wrapped up exhibiting at the 2010 IWF show at the World Congress Center in Atlanta.

I have been coming to this show since 1984…

This show could never be completely walked in two days, and there was always something to learn.

This years show however is a different story.

First, the square footage of exhibition space was down over 60% from 2008. YIKES!

Second, attendance was dismal…

In 2008 there was a company (which shall remain unnamed) that did $78.8 million in annual revenues. This year they will not break 8 million.

I spoke with a small business that sold power equipment–in 2008 they did $8.2 million. The first six months of 2010 their sales were $420K.

A REALLY BIG company that I will not name, and I know you know their products, is down 92% from 2008. Ouch. And from what I can triangulate, a significant percentage of the attendees were at the show looking for…jobs…

Ouch.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MeganMcar…

The chart at left, for example, shows by size the percentage of schools in North Carolina which were ever ranked in the top 25 of schools for performance. Notice that nearly 30% of the smallest decile (10%) of schools were in the top 25 at some point during 1997-2000 but only 1.2% of the schools in the largest decile ever made the top 25…

Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait!

Oh…OK. Megan did catch the error…and, in fact, that was the entire point of her post.

(

The error is obvious to anyone who’s spent some of their misbegotten youth around polyhedral dice – on a single roll, which is more likely to have the highest possible value? 1d6, or 100d6?

1d6 will hit the highest possible value (a six) 1 time out of 6, or 16% of the time.

100d6 will hit the highest possible value (600) 1 time out of 6¹⁰⁰, or 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000147% of the time.

)

OK, carry on.

http://volokh.com/2010/09/01/obama-impor…

The Obama administration approved the sale of the American-made rifles last year. But it reversed course and banned the sale in March – a decision that went largely unnoticed at the time but that is now sparking opposition from gun rights advocates.

A State Department spokesman said the administration’s decision was based on concerns that the guns could fall into the wrong hands.

“The transfer of such a large number of weapons — 87,310 M1 Garands and 770,160 M1 Carbines — could potentially be exploited by individuals seeking firearms for illicit purposes,” the spokesman told FoxNews.com.

“We are working closely with our Korean allies and the U.S. Army in exploring alternative options to dispose of these firearms.”

We certainly wouldn’t want the epidemic of violence that would inevitably flow from high school kids hiding 10 pound, 4 foot long, wood-stocked rifles in their back packs.

Those easy-to-conceal dimensions, plus the easy reloading, high-capacity 8-round clips that you can jam into the rifle, one after the next after the next, with only a few weeks of practice aligning the clips into the open action, pushing them down, and getting your thumb out of the way before the bolt smashes forward, threaten to destroy society entirely.

The crappy finish on the wood, the iron sights and 50 year old canvas slings just make these weapons even more deadly.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Hyperbole…

You are going to have to talk about soybeans. A lot. And you are going to have to pretend that you like it.

You know, from time to time I’ve said something like

“I apologize, but I really can’t understand what you’re talking about and – to be honest – even if I could follow, I don’t care. I’m sorry.”

Doing this definitely winnows down the number of people who are social acquaintances … but it also spares one from endless piles of nonsense.
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=16485 3 http://tjic.com/?p=16483 http://tjic.com/?p=16483#comments Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:26:07 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=16483 Speaking of framing hammers, I was amused that in the third season of the TV show Dexter, a framing hammer is used as a murder weapon , and the brand must be determined forensically to track the killer.

…and it’s an Acme brand hammer, or somesuch.

…except anyone who’s actually swung a framing hammer can tell that it’s a 28 ounce Estwing, right down to the signature blue-green moulded on vinyl handle.

The prop guys did place a nice little Acme sticker over the logo, though, so there’s that.

Also, the Trinity Killer was using a Stanley flatbed jack plane when he was making a coffin in his garage, but there were only two frames where the logo was visible, so I can’t tell the year or other details about it.

I can’t say that I much care for making a coffin out of a recently downed tree – you’ve got to let that stuff season for a year or two first, or you’re going to get all sorts of distortion and wracking.

ARGH.

I will note that it reminded me a lot of the one ecotopian book in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Three California’s Trilogy. Pacific Edge, I think it was? Anyway, in that one there’s a character from back east, where they’re all cynical and wear black clothing and don’t get the importance of destroying the technological infrastructure and smoking pot all the time (man!).

…and that interaction of worldly sophisticate idiot from back east and California ab initio “creating our own new world … with rock climbing” idiot from out West was strongly triggered by reading this article.

See also, of course, Callenbach’s seminal Ecotopia..

(….man!)
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=16481 1 http://tjic.com/?p=16478 http://tjic.com/?p=16478#comments Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:24:09 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=16478

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massach…

Governor Deval Patrick declined to say yesterday whether he would implement a tax rollback if the voters mandate it in November, pitting him against all three of his campaign rivals, who say they would abide by the referendum.

The MA Democrats illegally ignored the last referendum that rolled back taxes.

Of course they’ll ignore another such referendum.

This is why we should stop voting, and start shooting politicians.
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=16478 1 http://tjic.com/?p=16476 http://tjic.com/?p=16476#comments Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:22:13 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=16476

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articl…

SALT LAKE CITY — The Mormon church says it has changed its genealogical database to better prevent the names of Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps from being submitted for posthumous baptism by proxy.

I tend to fall on the Jewish and the Israeli side of just about every debate, but I think that the Jews (or, rather, that small subset of them that’s getting riled up in this issue) are being silly.

To be upset that Mormons are “retroactively baptising” people is to admit the legitimacy of their behaviors.

If a bunch of Moonies told me that they had telepathically aligned my Chakras, I would not get upset, go to a doctor, and ask for a MRI to make sure that nothing had been moved out of position.

If a bunch of Scientologists told me that they’d cleared me of body thetans, I would not ask for my thetans back.

…and if I learned that a fifth cousin on mine lived in Utah, and had immersed himself in a dunking pool to “turn my great great great great grandfather’s soul Mormon”, I would not get upset.

I regard all three of the above behaviors as basically nothing but writing fan-fic.

“Oooh, in this one, old Sheamus Corcoran of a small village just west of Tipperay … becomes Mormon by the power of prayer and time travel”.

Any response other than “whatever” sounds like it needs the same lecture I got from mom in first grade “Ignore those jerk kids. What they say can’t hurt you.”

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/dr…

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (Aug. 31) — A doctor involved in an “on-again, off-again” relationship apparently tried to force her way into her boyfriend’s home by sliding down the chimney, police said Tuesday. Her decomposing body was found there three days later.

Dr. J___ K______, 49, first tried to get into the house with a shovel, then climbed a ladder to the roof last Wednesday night, removed the chimney cap and slid feet first down the flue, Bakersfield police Sgt. Mary DeGeare said.

While she was trying to break in, the man she was pursuing escaped unnoticed from another exit “to avoid a confrontation,” authorities said…

For a second, I was about to say “Well, as weird/creepy as that is, you’ve got to admit that there’s something flattering about having a crazy woman 10 years your junior who’s infatuated with you and just will not take a hint”.

…then I remembered Voldemort a woman I dated a while back.

…and I recalled that – no, it’s pretty much entirely horrible.
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=16474 0 http://tjic.com/?p=16469 http://tjic.com/?p=16469#comments Wed, 01 Sep 2010 23:29:49 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=16469 Yesterday, 10:40 pm, I blogged about two comments in The Atlantic (‘Oedipus didn’t have to sleep with his mother, he just got a ‘Strengthening Our Communities by Strengthening Our Families’ grant from HHS to do it.’), and used the subject line “Comment of the day over at The Atlantic”.

Today at 11:25 am, Megan McCardle blogged the same two comments, with the subject line “Comment of the day”.

I’ve got just one thing to say, Megan: glad you’re reading my blog!

Oh, OK, two things: if you’re prepared to admit that this whole “getting married” thing was just a sham to make me jealous, and if you apologize, it’s not too late for us.

Current progress on 2010 goals:

• write a novel: one page per day – 0 pages done; goal scrapped
• lathe: one item per Saturday and Sunday – goal back from the dead; will resume turning this weekend!
• learn guitar – 8 months of lessons. Know dozens of scales, dozens of songs. Lessons prepaid for through 31 December.
• corporate debt by $100k – more than complete: down by $150k; house mortgage paid off as well
• start brand 3 – robot is mostly built; ecommerce website selling robot is mostly built
• remodel the bathroom – replaced with “remodel master bedroom” – gutted, supplies on order
• Lose 50 lbs – got 21 lbs down; relapsed and gained 6; back on the plan 2 weeks ago, lost those 6. Hoo-ah!

Onward!

I’ve worked around the Circle of Fifths once before, learning (“learning”) the fingering and the names of the notes for each of the 12 one octave scales.

Now I’m working on the whole process again, from scratch, doing two octave scales.

I’ve recently decided to push even harder on practice than I had been before (and my instructor sees the results – she says that (a) my 1 hour/day practice, with pretty much zero exceptions or skip days, is more than any of her other students do, and (b) I’m coming along faster than any of her other students).

My previous lackadaisical approach to the boring parts of practice (like scales), though, is not hard to best.

What I’m doing now is merely doing each two octave scale 10 times, counting out the notes aloud as I go.

Right now I’m merely up to C and four sharps: C, G, D, A, and E.

I’m still at the level where I’ve memorized the order in which sharps are added in, and if I’m doing the A scale, I think “OK, first we add in F#, then C#, then D#, then G# …so this is the third one, so we’ve got just those first three sharps. OK, go.”

…but today I found that I was doing the A scale with out any computation or conscious effort at all.

Wow.

That’s awesome.

My personality runs very strongly towards not memorizing things, and just throwing horsepower at problems in the moment.

(e.g. I didn’t memorize my times tables beyond 4 until part way through college, because I could just use the associative rule (which I’d figured out on my own) to derive what I needed.

8 x 8?

That’s the same as 8 x (10 – 2), so 80 – 16, so 64.

7 x 9?

7 x (10 – 1) = 70 – 7 = 63.

etc.

The downside of this approach is obvious: you’ve got a tax on IQ every time you’re doing something interesting – instead of putting 100% of your cycles into figuring out the parabola of a thrown object, or a depreciation schedule, or what have you, you’re only getting 90% of your cycles, because the other 10% are being used to recompute what should be a cached lookup table.

So, I learned my lesson on this somewhere back in my 20s, and am now far more open to the idea of rote practice, to populate the lookup tables.

See my previous thoughts on what “TJIC’s Law” should be.

Also, with regard to the circle of fifths: I stand by my assertion that I am going to invent a time machine, travel back in time, and punch a bunch of people in the junk.

http://jeffreyellis.org/blog/?p=6109

A burning question about Team Obama

by Jeffrey Ellis

Michael Tomasky asks, “How could a bunch of people who ran such a brilliant campaign be doing such a lousy job at the politics of governing?”

The options he considers are:

• Campaigns are easier than governing.
• They were overwhelmed by events.
• They didn’t expect the partisan onslaught.
• It’s about personnel. [Many who were on the campaign team are not on the White House team, and vice versa.]
• It’s Obama himself.
• Maybe they didn’t really run such a great campaign and were overrated from the start.

This last one seems to be Tomasky’s preference.

My take: As I said here, it’s all about the illusion of competence that comes with arrogance.

It is, unfortunately, all too easy for a politician to hide incompetence in most areas as long as the politician is very competent in the single most essential skill of politics: persuasion. (And I do think there is at least a moderate correlation between confidence/arrogance and persuasive powers.) Those who are persuasive can spin their way out of anything, by blaming poor results and unintended negative consequences on other factors (usually on the opposing political party) and by playing on the cognitive biases of their constituents.

Obama’s arrogance came off as confidence during the campaign and tricked the easily swayed into assuming a commensurate degree of competence. But after a while in office, when actual results could be observed, he was exposed for what he is: arrogant and incompetent.

]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=16455 11 http://tjic.com/?p=16453 http://tjic.com/?p=16453#comments Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:40:18 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=16453

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/19…

These made me LLOL. The second one is some sort sly of hat tip to the Italian Futurist movement, right?

Go read it all.

So far “fooling around with” means “in the second day of the program”.

Onward!

(subject line hattip)

http://www.slate.com/id/2265658/pagenum/…

Toss a hunk of Rearden metal at a D.C. libertarian organization or scholar and you’ll hit something connected to the Kochs.

It’s anti-libertarian…but it’s funny.

This is my problem with so much political humor – it’s not humor. It’s just nasty screaming attacks with with wry disdainful look appended at the end.

The TV show “30 Rock” is excellent in this regard – the show, despite being written and acted by leftists, gets in a few good licks at both left and right and does so in ways that make one laugh.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/arch…

TallDave:

I’m tired of hearing tax cuts “cause” deficits, as though ever-increasing spending was some sort of natural law we have no control over.

Rob Lyman:

It’s not a natural law, but it is just as inevitable as a Greek tragedy. I mean, Oedipus didn’t have to sleep with his mother, he just got a “Strengthening Our Communities by Strengthening Our Families” grant from HHS to do it.

LLOL!

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articl…

DOVER, N.H.—A New Hampshire high school student shocked so severely in shop class that his heart stopped beating is suing his teacher, the school district and the city of Dover.

Oh noz! What did those dastardly people do to him!?!?

teacher Thomas Kelley did not warn Dubois and other students of the dangers of [ electricity ]

On March 11, [ student ] Dubois attached an electrical clamp to one nipple while another student attached another clamp to the other. A third student plugged in the cord.

Awesome!

You know, whenever I’m teaching lessons in my shop, I do go over a short safety spiel, and I make folks sign a disclaimer (yes, seriously).

…but I’m going to update both the spiel and the written disclaimer:

Applying 120v current (or 220v, or arc welder output voltage and current, etc.) across your nipples may be hazardous. Consult a physician before deciding whether nipple electrocution is right for you. Also, please make sure that the shop fan is turned on first.
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=16443 4 http://tjic.com/?p=16441 http://tjic.com/?p=16441#comments Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:52:39 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=16441

http://www.teefury.com/?utm_source=feedb…

Of course, if we’re rank ordering “things that can go inside a Dalek”, R2 only gets the #2 spot…

http://natatomic.blogspot.com/2009/10/qu…

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/20…

Everything at this blog is hilarious; I’m RSS subbing.

(via)

USAA, super-awesome financial firm that they are (want to join? Serve in the military, marry someone who did, or luck out and have a veteran for a parent) not only has a decent rate, but also has a button right in the website that lets me convert it over to a fixed rate.

No application, no paperwork, no hassle.

The fixed is 2.3% higher (5.3% total).

I whipped up a spreadsheet showing the different in interest expense over what I think the paydown period will be – works out to about $2k.

I’m not betting on hyperinflation (or even much regular inflation) over the next 18 months, but it’s nice to know that that button is there.
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=16437 4 http://tjic.com/?p=16435 http://tjic.com/?p=16435#comments Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:17:58 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=16435 The New Republic, no right-wing rag, posts this book review:

http://www.tnr.com/book/review/what-hope

John McWhorter

August 10, 2010

Race, Wrongs, and Remedies: Group Justice in the 21st Century

by Amy Wax

Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 190 pp., $36.75

This book is depressing because it is so persuasive. There is a school of thought in America which argues that the government must be the main force that provides help to the black community. This shibboleth is predicated upon another one: that such government efforts will make a serious difference in disparities between blacks and whites. Amy Wax not only argues that such efforts have failed, she also suggests that such efforts cannot bring equality, and therefore must be abandoned. Wax identifies the illusion that mars American thinking on this subject as the myth of reverse causation—that if racism was the cause of a problem, then eliminating racism will solve it. If only this were true. But it isn’t true: racism can set in motion cultural patterns that take on a life of their own.

Wax appeals to a parable in which a pedestrian is run over by a truck and must learn to walk again. The truck driver pays the pedestrian’s medical bills, but the only way the pedestrian will walk again is through his own efforts. The pedestrian may insist that the driver do more, that justice has not occurred until the driver has himself made the pedestrian learn to walk again. But the sad fact is that justice, under this analysis, is impossible…

Wax is well aware that past discrimination created black-white disparities in education, wealth, and employment. Still, she argues that discrimination today is no longer the “brick wall” obstacle it once was, and that the main problems for poor and working-class blacks today are cultural ones that they alone can fix…

A typical take on race has no room for stories such as this one. In 1987, a rich philanthropist in Philadelphia “adopted” 112 inner-city sixth-graders, most of them from broken homes. He guaranteed them a fully-funded education through college if the kids would refrain from drugs, unwed parenthood, and crime. He even provided tutors, workshops, after-school programs, summer programs, and counselors when trouble arose. Forty-five of the kids never made it through high school. Thirteen years later, of the sixty-seven boys, nineteen were felons; the forty-five girls had sixty-three total children, and more than half had their babies before the age of eighteen. Crucially, this was not surprising: The reason was culture. These children had been nurtured in communities with different norms than those that reign in Scarsdale.

What this means, Wax points out, is that scrupulous recountings of the historical reasons for black problems are of no significant use in finding solutions. She notes:

The black family was far more stable 50 years ago, when conditions for blacks were far worse than they are today. Black out-of-wedlock births started to climb and marriage rates to fall around 1960, long after slavery was abolished and just as the civil rights movement gained momentum. Perhaps a more nuanced explanation for the recent deterioration is that the legacy of slavery made the black family more vulnerable to the cultural subversions of the 1960s. But what does this tell us that is useful today? The answer is: nothing.

[ TJIC interjection: what happened? Leftists and their Great Society made is easy for men to walk away from their families, and paid women to have children out of wedlock. Thanks, Democrats! ]

One of the most sobering observations made by Wax comes in the form of a disarmingly simple calculus presented first by Isabel Sawhill and Christopher Jencks. If you finish high school and keep a job without having children before marriage, you will almost certainly not be poor. Period. I have repeatedly felt the air go out of the room upon putting this to black audiences. No one of any political stripe can deny it. It is human truth on view. In 2004, the poverty rate among blacks who followed that formula was less than 6 percent, as opposed to the overall rate of 24.7 percent. Even after hearing the earnest musings about employers who are less interested in people with names like Tomika, no one can gainsay the simple truth of that advice. Crucially, neither bigotry nor even structural racism can explain why an individual does not live up to it…

Go read the whole thing.
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=16435 0 http://tjic.com/?p=16433 http://tjic.com/?p=16433#comments Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:13:26 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=16433

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/arch…

I thoroughly support the idea of using various dollar denominations as civics flashcards.

Genius!

Of course, when you click through to the Atlantic, then to Gawker, etc. you find that the graphic designer is a hard-line leftist:

The $100 bill has FDR and his reign of socialist destruction in his 100 days; the $1 bill has The Light Bringer (no, not Satan; the other one) and his personal logo; etc.

Still, the 10 amendments on a bill are a great idea.

Putting a bit from the Declaration of Independence on a bill

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

is also a dandy idea.

You know, I should get a fly press, then teach myself matrix carving, so that I can make TJICistani silver coins. I might steal the Jefferson design off the US nickel, but I’d put a nice quote on the back – maybe something about the blood of tyrants…

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010…

More people with disabilities filed charges of discrimination against their employers last year than at any other time in the 20-year history of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Almost 21,500 ADA-related charges were filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in 2009.

…

The main reasons for the increase: the recession and an amendment to the ADA that broadened the definition of what it means to be disabled.

…

The Supreme Court had restricted the reach of the ADA by excluding people whose disabilities were not visible or were controlled by medication, such as epilepsy or diabetes.

Wonderful.
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=16431 0 http://tjic.com/?p=16429 http://tjic.com/?p=16429#comments Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:05:29 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=16429 I’ve always thought that it would be neat to start a private school for gifted kids.

A woman in Melrose has done just that.

I think we’re going to see more progress in education in the next 15 years than we’ve seen in the last 150.

Nice music, cute Jamie-Lynn Sigler-esque female, good political message.

As your pro-Israel Samoan PR consultant, I approve.

(No, no, I don’t heartily approve of Jamie-Lynn Sigler; I just regular approve.)

Purchasing manager: Hey, I’m calling you on my cell. I’m sitting in the parking lot outside of a Starbucks, using their wi-fi to log into the SmartFlix admin interface and doing inventory purchasing…and I’m out of money.

TJIC: Hang on, let me log into the bank … OK, the transfer is done. You’ve got another $2k; keep buying.
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=16424 2 http://tjic.com/?p=16422 http://tjic.com/?p=16422#comments Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:41:39 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=16422 From the comments:

http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/arch…

jobs requiring bathing before work were superior in nearly every way to those requiring bathing after work.

A nice rebuttal to those “I want to keep my job in the office building, but we shouldn’t be outsourcing all of our manufacturing jobs to China – we should take all those other suckers out of their service-sector jobs in air conditioned offices and put them back into the lead-acid-battery factories, and the descaling pit in the steel mills, and the acid-pool-wash at the gold refineries, and the catwalks over the fractionation towers of the petrochemical plants!”.

Filthy jobs should be done by machines.

…or, if they really want them, Chinese workers and others, who see them as a step up from the rice paddies.

Folks with the ability to do mental work should have the opportunity to do mental work.
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=16422 3 http://tjic.com/?p=16420 http://tjic.com/?p=16420#comments Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:34:55 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=16420

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/world/…

PARIS — The former leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Belgium urged a victim of serial sexual abuse by a bishop to keep silent for a year, until the bishop — the victim’s own uncle — could retire, according to tapes made by the victim last April and published over the weekend in two Belgian newspapers.

Cardinal Godfried Danneels pressed a sexual abuse victim to either accept a private apology or wait until the bishop retired, according to tapes. The tapes, which church authorities have verified as accurate, are among the more revealing documents in the continuing scandal of sexual abuse by clerics and subsequent cover-ups by the church. And having a record of a cardinal entreating an abuse victim to keep his silence is another embarrassment for the Catholic Church…

The victim responded, “He has dragged my whole life through the mud, from 5 until 18 years old,” and asked, “Why do you feel sorry for him and not for me”? …

Being a loyal member of the One True Church does not mean being loyal to abusers who use church position to approach victims, or to enablers of abusers who try to shield their reputations.

Criminals, whether they’re in the church or not, need to be named, shamed, and imprisoned.

…and the Church hierarchy has to do a better job at internal culture and internal investigations.
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