Heisman nominees

From the AP:

Tim Tebow and Colt McCoy are headed back to the Heisman Trophy presentation as finalists, along with running backs Mark Ingram and Toby Gerhart and defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh. The five finalists were announced Monday. The Heisman Trophy will be awarded Saturday in Manhattan.

A decent list. Good to see a defensive player getting nominated during a year without a single overwhelming offensive player: Nebraska's Suh flung Texas's McCoy around like a rag doll in Nebraska's 13-12 loss to Texas on Saturday. I probably would have left off the two quarterbacks, Tebow and McCoy, and put in C.J. Spiller of Clemson and Golden Tate of Notre Dame, but the QBs deserved it on career achievement grounds.

When was the last time a white guy finished in the top 5 who wasn't a quarterback? Perhaps defensive lineman Steve Emtman of Washington in 1990? When was the last time a white running back was in the top 5?

Update: Commenters point to Gordon Lockbaum, who finished third in Heisman balloting in 1987 despite playing for I-AA Holy Cross. He played 60 minutes per game as a halfback and cornerback on defense.

And here's one of those convenient cheat sheets I always like so I can act like I have an intelligent opinion:

Tebow is trying to become the second two-time Heisman winner. The Florida quarterback won the award for college football's top player in 2007 and finished third last season.

McCoy was the runner-up last season to Oklahoma's Sam Bradford and has led No. 2 Texas to the BCS national championship game this season.

Ingram has rushed for 1,542 yards and scored 15 touchdowns for No. 1 Alabama.

Stanford's Gerhart, meanwhile, has run for more yards (1,736) than any player in the nation.

And Nebraska's Suh had 4 1/2 sacks in an attention-grabbing performance against Texas in the Big 12 title game.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

"Moody, indecisive and always trying to behave like a man, why ladies make truly lousy bosses "

A friend sends this article from the U.K. Daily Mail by Amanda Platell about problems women have being good bosses.

I was a good manager of people, but a lousy risk-taker. With our typical propensity for multi-tasking, I was more comfortable doing ten things at once and keeping all the balls in the air than what was really needed, to focus on one task and nail that ball in the back of the net.

He wonders why a provocative, but also well-balanced, insightful, and interesting article like this one would seldom be published in an American newspaper. Is it being sold via subscription rather than on newsstands that makes American newspapers duller? Or is it because Fleet Street journalists are drunk all the time?

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Ahhhooogggaaa! WaPo discovers a "second" generation of Latinos

The Washington Post breaks the astonishing news that there's actually a second generation of Latinos in the United States. Who could possibly have known that not all Mexican-Americans are immigrants? Nobody in Washington -- or in New York, for that matter -- ever noticed any Mexicans around before a few years ago. How could we in the East Coast media centers have foreseen that they would reproduce?

And just think, that implies that there will someday be a third generation of Latinos!

And, it turns out, that this second generation of Mexicans isn't doing all that well. Who could have possibly predicted that? Doesn't it say on the Statue of Liberty that all immigrants will rapidly join the middle class?

Struggles of the second generation
U.S.-born children of Latino immigrants fight to secure a higher foothold
By N.C. Aizenman

Javier Saavedra slumped his burly frame into a worn, plaid couch in the cramped basement room he shares with his girlfriend and their 2-year-old daughter, his expression darkening as he ticked off all the wrong turns that had gotten them stuck below the economy's ground floor.

Raised by Mexican immigrant parents, Saavedra was a gang member by 13, a high school dropout by 16 and a father by 21. Now 23, he has been trying to turn his life around since his daughter, Julissa, was born.

But without a high school diploma, Saavedra was unable to find a job that paid enough for him and his girlfriend, Mayra Hererra, 20 and pregnant with their second child, to move out of her parents' brick home in Hyattsville.

Even the dim, wood-paneled room piled with baby toys and large plastic bags of clothing was costing them $350 a month.

"I get so upset with myself," Saavedra said. "I should have a better chance at a job [than our parents]. I want to be helping them with their bills, not them still helping me."

Millions of children of Latino immigrants are confronting the same challenge as they come of age in one of the most difficult economic climates in decades.

Whether they succeed will have consequences far beyond immigrant circles. As a result of the arrival of more than 20 million mostly Mexican and Central American newcomers in a wave that swelled in the 1970s and soared during the 1990s, the offspring of Latino immigrants now account for one of every 10 children, both in the United States and the Washington region.

Largely because of the growth of this second generation, Latino immigrants and their U.S.-born children and grandchildren will represent almost a third of the nation's working-age adults by mid-century, according to projections from U.S. Census Bureau data by Jeffrey S. Passel, a demographer with the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center in Washington.

Not since the last great wave of immigration to the United States around 1900 has the country's economic future been so closely entwined with the generational progress of an immigrant group. And so far, on nearly every measure, the news is troubling.

Second-generation Latinos have the highest high school dropout rate -- one in seven [sic] -- of any U.S.-born racial or ethnic group and the highest teen pregnancy rate. These Latinos also receive far fewer college degrees and make significantly less money than non-Hispanic whites and other second-generation immigrants.

I realize that nobody in the East ever heard of Mexican-Americans before recently, but there are actually more than two generations in the U.S.

The UCLA sociology department tracked first through fifth generation Mexican-Americans, parents, children, and grandchildren in LA and San Antonio from 1965 through 2000. Edward E. Telles and Vilma Ortiz reported on the results in their 2008 book Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation, and Race. They found that education progress stopped with the second generation, and that the fourth generation (whose grandparents were born in America) was particularly unaccomplished:

"Sadly and directly in contradistinction to assimilation theory, the fourth generation differs the most from whites, with a college completion rate of only 6 percent [compared to 35 percent for whites of that era]."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Golfers and Divorce

I haven't tried to look at the numbers, but my impression is that tour golfers have a higher divorce rate than is typical for men of their backgrounds: 95-120 IQ, some college, middle-class-to-wealthy upbringings, high levels of work ethic and emotional control, low to medium levels of gregariousness. Most articles I've read breaking down the high burn rate of golfers' money (they don't get free travel or lodging like team athletes do) include a line item for alimony. Presumably, it's the travel. Two quick divorces, though, are unusual: the caddies called Hal Sutton "Halimony" because he was paying two ex-wives, not the usual one. A whole passel of divorces, like John Daly's, is quite unusual -- he's never fit in on Tour culturally, and wouldn't have been out there but for his otherworldly skills.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Tiger Woods accused of being a racist hound

From the AP:

Tiger's troubles widen his distance from blacks

By JESSE WASHINGTON

Amid all the headlines generated by Tiger Woods' troubles - the puzzling car accident, the suggestions of marital turmoil and multiple mistresses - little attention has been given to the race of the women linked with the world's greatest golfer.

Except in the black community.

When three white women were said to be romantically involved with Woods in addition to his blonde, Swedish wife, blogs, airwaves and barbershops started humming, and Woods' already tenuous standing among many blacks took a beating.

... "The question everyone in America wants to ask you is, how many white women does one brother waaant?"

As one blogger, Robert Paul Reyes, wrote: "If Tiger Woods had cheated on his gorgeous white wife with black women, the golfing great's accident would have been barely a blip in the [black] blogosphere."

The darts reflect blacks' resistance to interracial romance. They also are a reflection of discomfort with a man who has smashed barriers in one of America's whitest sports and assumed the mantle of the world's most famous athlete, once worn by Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan.

But Woods has declined to identify himself as black, and famously chose the term "Cablinasian" (Caucasian, black, Indian and Asian) to describe the racial mixture he inherited from his African-American father and Thai mother.

It's more accurate to say that Tiger has declined to identify himself as solely black, in the way that Barack Obama has.

Keep in mind that both of Tiger's parents were highly mixed too. Both were 1/4th Chinese, for example. His father was also 1/4th American Indian while his mother was 1/4th European.

This vexed some blacks, but it hasn't stopped them from claiming Woods as one of their own. Or from disapproving of his marriage to Elin Nordegren, despite blacks' historical fight against white racist opponents of mixed marriage.

On the one hand, Ebonie Johnson Cooper doesn't care that Tiger Woods' wife and alleged mistresses are white because Woods is "quote-unquote not really black."

"But at the same time we still see him as a black man with a white woman, and it makes a difference," said Johnson Cooper, a 26-year-old African-American from New York City. "There's just this preservation thing we have among one another. We like to see each other with each other."

Black women have long felt slighted by the tendency of famous black men to pair with white women, and many have a list of current transgressors at the ready.

"We've discussed this for years among black women," said Denene Millner, author of several books on black relationships. "Why is it when they get to this level ... they tend to go directly for the nearest blonde?"

This tendency may be more prominent due to a relative lack of interracial marriages among average blacks. Although a recent Pew poll showed that 94 percent of blacks say it's all right for blacks and whites to date, a study published this year in Sociological Quarterly showed that blacks are less likely to actually date outside their race than are other groups.

"There is a call for loyalty that is stronger in some ways than in other racial communities," said the author of the study, George Yancey, a sociology professor at the University of North Texas and author of the book "Just Don't Marry One."

The color of one's companion has long been a major measure of "blackness" - which is a big reason why the biracial Barack Obama was able to fend off early questions about his black authenticity.

"Had Barack had a white wife, I would have thought twice about voting for him," Johnson Cooper said.

So do Woods' women say something about the intensely private golfer's views on race?

"I would like to say no, but I think it garners a bit of a yes," Johnson Cooper said.

Carmen Van Kerckhove, founder of the race-meets-pop-culture blog Racialicious, said there have been frequent discussions on her site about the fine line between preference and fetish.

"Is there any difference between a white guy with a thing for blondes, and a non-white guy with a thing for blondes?" asked Van Kerckhove, who has a Chinese mother, a Belgian father and a husband born in America to parents from Benin.

She claims that Asians don't fully embrace Woods, either.

"There are two layers of suspicion toward him," Van Kerkhove said. "One toward the apparent pattern in the race of his partners, and the second in the way he sees himself. ... People have been giving him the side-eye for a while."

There's nothing wrong with wanting a mate who shares your culture, as long as it's for the right reasons, the comedienne Sheryl Underwood said after unleashing a withering Woods monologue on Tom Joyner's radio show.

"Would we question when a Jewish person wants to marry other Jewish people?" she said in an interview. "It's not racist. It's not bigotry. It's cultural pride."

"The issue comes in when you choose something white because you think it's better," Underwood said. "And then you never date a black woman or a woman of color or you never sample the greatness of the international buffet of human beings. If you never do that, we got a problem."

So, the complaint here is that there are no allegations as of yet that Tiger has cheated on his wife with a black or Asian or, presumably, an American Indian, Samoan, or pygmy negrito woman. I don't know, but considering how fast allegations are pouring in, that may just be a problem that takes care of itself.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Tiger Woods and Steroids

Here's my column, "Tiger Juice," from Taki's Magazine last May speculating about whether Tiger Woods might have started using steroids during this decade. I didn't find any proof, but I found more evidence than I had expected.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Hospital slang

Medical slang appears to be slowly dying out due to the discovery process in lawsuits, but it offered a rich lexicon when I first learned of it in the 1980s from a friend who worked in an emergency room. Here are some selections from Wikipedia's rather British-oriented list:

• Agnostication - A substitute for prognostication. Term used to describe the usually vain attempt to answer the question: "How long have I got, doc?" ^[2]
• ART - Assuming Room Temperature (dying)
• ATS - Acute Thespian Syndrome (the patient is faking illness)
• Bury the Hatchet - accidentally leaving a surgical instrument inside a patient ^[3]
• CNS-QNS - Central Nervous System - Quantity Not Sufficient. ^[1]
• DBI - Dirt Bag Index - multiply the number of tattoos by the number of missing teeth to give an estimate of the number of days since the patient last bathed. ^[1]
• Dermaholiday - dermatology, considered to be a less-busy department. See rheumaholiday
• Donorcycle - nursing slang for a motorcycle, so named due to the amount of head trauma associated with motorcycle accidents, but less so with the body, making the perfect candidate for organ donation^[6]
• GOMER - "get out of my emergency room" - a patient, usually poor or elderly, in the emergency room with a chronic, non-emergency condition. The name was popularized by Samuel Shem in his novel The House of God.^[8]
• GROLIES - Guardian Reader Of Low Intelligence in Ethnic Skirt. ^[1]
• Hasselhoff - a term for any patient who shows up in the emergency room with an injury for which there is a bizarre explanation. Original Source: Baywatch actor David Hasselhoff, who hit his head on a chandelier while shaving. The broken glass severed four tendons and an artery in his right arm. ^[2]
• Oligoneuronal meaning someone who is thick (not smart). ^[2]
• Polybabydadic - The state of having illegitimate children by several fathers, known or unknown.^[9]
• Pumpkin positive refers to the idea that a person's brain is so tiny that a penlight shone into their mouth will make their empty head gleam like a Halloween pumpkin. ^[1][2]
• Rear Admiral - a proctologist ^[3]
• Status Hispanicus - An overly agitated Hispanic patient (often Caribbean, seldom Mexican) who cannot stop screaming about their condition without providing useful information. ^[10]
• TEETH - tried everything else, try homeopathy.^[1][5]
• UBI - "Unexplained Beer Injury" ^[1][2][3][5]
• Vitamin H - A Haldol injection, used in the ER setting to rapidly sedate patients (often already drunk or high) who display dangerous or destructive behavior that threatens the safety of hospital staff and other patients^[11].
  

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The Forgotten Hall of Fame

From the New York Times:

A Hall of Fame, Forgotten and Forlorn

By SAM DOLNICK

On a leafy hilltop, dozens of busts of once-famous men stare mournfully at an empty walkway, their unfamiliar names chiseled in grand letters, their feats now obscure.

Josiah W. Gibbs? Augustus Saint-Gaudens?

Saint-Gaudens was the greatest American sculptor of the late 19th Century. Gibbs was a phenomenally accomplished physicist, chemist, and mathematician.

In general, the honorees reflects the tastes of the high-brow electors. For example, the first cohort of 29 elected in 1900 includes botanist Asa Gray, to whom Darwin addressed the 1857 letter that established Darwin's precedence over Alfred Russel Wallace in developing the theory of natural selection.

Welcome to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, a lonely outpost in the University Heights section of the Bronx.

When it was founded in 1900, it was the first Hall of Fame in the nation, local historians say, and the elections to induct members were covered by the national press. ...

But when the hall’s host, New York University, sold its Bronx campus in 1973, the collection languished. The 98 busts tarnished, soot gathered, and the Hall of Fame slowly slipped into irrelevance. An election has not been held since 1976.

Today, the colonnaded hall sits high above the city as an awkward appendage to the campus of Bronx Community College. To history buffs, it is a forgotten gem; to nearly everyone else, it is just forgotten.

While the college faculty has sought to integrate the Hall of Fame into the school’s curriculum, the disconnect between the honorees and the student body has grown only wider, leaving even the hall’s few defenders to acknowledge that it is in desperate need of a face-lift. More than half of the college’s students are Hispanic; the Hall of Fame, however, honors few women and even fewer minorities.

Actually, the number of women seems about right: I come up with 11% female. If you made up a list today of the 100 most distinguished Americans who have been dead over 25 years, would it be much more than 11% female? What about among living Americans? The first name that springs to my mind among living Americans as a worthy honoree would be Edward O. Wilson for accomplishments as a scientific specialist (ants), scientific generalist (sociobiology), writer, and conservationist. James D. Watson would rank up there, too. Noam Chomsky, as well. How many living women approach the Wilson-Watson level?

In this Hall of Fame, I count two blacks (Booker T. Washington and George W. Carver), no American Indians, and no Hispanics. Two American Indians were nominated (Chief Joseph and Sacajawea), but didn't make it to enshrinement.

In general, I suspect that in the future, the lists of famous Americans of the 20th Century will reflect the tastes of the current students of Bronx Community College, so the recent equivalents of Josiah Willard Gibbs and Asa Gray will be even more forgotten than their predecessors.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Woods Executed

From the New York Times:

Killer with Low I.Q. Executed in Texas
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

HOUSTON — Bobby Wayne Woods was executed Thursday evening in Texas after his lawyers lost a battle to persuade the courts that he was too mentally impaired to qualify for capital punishment.

Mr. Woods, 44, was convicted of raping and killing an 11-year-old girl in 1997. He received a lethal injection and was pronounced dead at 6:48 p.m. in the death chamber at a state prison in Huntsville, Tex., after the United States Supreme Court denied a request from his lawyers to stay his execution. His last words, at 6:40, were: “Bye. I am ready.”

Tests administered to Mr. Woods over the years placed his I.Q. between 68 and 86, prompting a bitter debate between his lawyers and the state over whether he was too impaired to face execution. The state and federal courts repeatedly sided with prosecutors.

The debate reflects the gray area left by the Supreme Court in 2002, when it ruled that the mentally impaired were not eligible for the death penalty but left it up to state courts to interpret which inmates qualified as impaired.

Mr. Woods’s lawyers argued that his intelligence scores were low enough that he should be spared because of the Supreme Court ban in Atkins v. Virginia. Maurie Levin, a University of Texas law professor who represented Mr. Woods, said in a pleading that “his I.Q. hovers around 70, the magical cutoff point for determining whether someone is mentally retarded.”

“He’s transparently childlike and simple,” she said before the execution. “It’s a travesty.”

What's more like a child than rapist/murderer?

In its 2002 ruling, the Supreme Court said that to demonstrate that someone is mentally retarded, one must prove that the person has had low I.Q. scores and a lack of fundamental skills from a young age. The court said a score on intelligence tests of “around 70” indicated mental retardation.

But that standard has been applied unevenly by state courts, according to a study by Cornell law professors. Some state courts in Alabama, Mississippi and Texas have held that inmates with scores as low as 66 are not impaired, while an inmate in California with a score of 84 was declared mentally retarded.

How many people in California have IQs no higher than 84? Seven to twelve million?

As I pointed out back in 2002 when the Supreme Court made its ruling, that this decision reflects the lack of realism in elite institutions about the distribution of IQ in America. Any grandchild or nephew that a Supreme Court Justice has with an IQ below 70 is almost certainly organically retarded, with Down's Syndrome or other impairment that makes him what cynical obstetricians call an FLK -- Funny Looking Kid. In contrast, there are large swathes of American society where people with IQs below 70 are more likely just to be the slow one in the family.

Courts in Texas repeatedly rejected Mr. Woods’s claims of impairment, although the state’s highest criminal court halted his execution last year to allow more hearings. That reprieve was lifted in October, and this week, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously to reject a clemency request.

As a child, Mr. Woods struggled in school and dropped out in the seventh grade. He was barely literate and had to copy words from a spelling list to write the simple notes he sent his family.

His intelligence was tested twice in grade school, and he received scores of 80 and 78, but defense lawyers argued that those scores should be adjusted downward to account for the age of the tests. As an adult, he was tested just before his trial and scored 70. A second full-scale test done in prison in 2002 showed him with an I.Q. of 68. He scored higher on two short-form tests.

Still, the Texas attorney general, Greg Abbott, argued in a motion before the Supreme Court that the only times Mr. Woods had scored under 70 was when the test was administered by an expert for the defense. He also pointed out that Mr. Woods had successfully held jobs as a short order cook and a roofer.

“The only experts to ever conclude that Woods was mentally retarded did so after he had committed this murder and had motivation to underperform,” Mr. Abbott wrote in his brief.

Mr. Woods was convicted of killing his former girlfriend’s daughter. A jury determined he had abducted the 11-year-old girl, Sarah Patterson, along with her brother, Cody, from the family’s home in Granbury, Tex.. The girl was raped before her throat was slit. The boy was severely beaten and left for dead, but he survived.

I dunno, but I kinda figure that "Thou shalt not kill" isn't that hard to figure out.

By the way, Bobby Wayne Woods was white. That reminds me, when I went to Rice in Texas in the 1970s, I heard that the Houston cops would say that if they could just arrest a white guy named "Wayne" and a black guy named "Charles Williams," there would be no more crime in Houston. That was because every white guy they arrested said, "No, man, it wasn't me, it was Wayne," and every black guy they arrested said, "No, man, it wasn't me, it was that Charles Williams."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Sen. Boxer: "You call it 'Climategate'; I call it 'E-mail-theft-gate'"

The Hill reports:

Leaked e-mails allegedly undermining climate change science should be treated as a criminal matter, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Wednesday afternoon.

Boxer, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said that the recently released e-mails, showing scientists allegedly overstating the case for climate change, should be treated as a crime.

"You call it 'Climategate'; I call it 'E-mail-theft-gate,'" she said during a committee meeting. "Whatever it is, the main issue is, Are we facing global warming or are we not? I'm looking at these e-mails, that, even though they were stolen, are now out in the public."

The e-mails, from scientists at the University of East Anglia, were obtained through hacking. The messages showed the director of the university's Climate Research Unit discussing ways to strengthen the unit's case for global warming. Climate change skeptics have seized on the e-mails, arguing that they demonstrate manipulation in environmental science.

Boxer said her committee may hold hearings into the matter as its top Republican, Sen. James Inhofe (Okla.), has asked for, but that a criminal probe would be part of any such hearings.

"We may well have a hearing on this, we may not. We may have a briefing for senators, we may not," Boxer said. "Part of our looking at this will be looking at a criminal activity which could have well been coordinated.

"This is a crime," Boxer said.

I was under the impression that East Anglia is in the United Kingdom, not the United States, which would suggest that any criminal probe would be up to British authorities, not U.S. Senators, but what do I know compared to Senator Boxer?

Does anybody know who hacked and/or leaked the emails?

British libertarian activist Sean Gabb tosses out a fun conspiracy theory: Vladimir Putin dunnit.

But the Russians had means and opportunity to do the job. Perhaps their security services are no longer as efficient and as well-funded as in Soviet times. But they are still there. Their mission is no longer to win the Cold War. But making life easier for Mr Putin and his friends is a large mission in itself. They no longer have an active network in British universities. But there must be any number of senior managers there whose activities back in the 1980s would merit an outing in The Daily Mail, and who therefore are open to blackmail.

And the Russians had the best motive imaginable. Anthropogenic global warming is, as said, a pack of lies. But there is huge money behind it. And it is conceivable that Western scientific ingenuity will find a “carbon free” energy source that both works and is economically viable. Now, where would that leave Russia? Without its exports of oil and gas, the place is little more than a bankrupt post-Soviet slagheap.

I can top that conspiracy theory! If I were Putin, I would want to discredit Global Warming theorists in order to make Global Warming more likely. It's too damn cold in Russia right now.

What a hero Putin would become to Russians of the future! Grateful Russians would annually celebrate the anniversary of his ascent to power on December 31, 1999 by, say, holding a huge beach volleyball tournament in Murmansk.

It would be like Lex Luthor's plan in Superman to own all the beachfront property in Nevada by having California fall into the ocean. Russia has 38,000 kilometers of coastline, much of it on the Arctic Ocean, which would become the new Russian Riviera.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Two Slavic-American artists: Warhol and Szukalski

An excerpt from my new column in Taki's Magazine:

The sharply contrasting careers of two Slavic-American artists who both died in 1987, the droll commercial illustrator Andy Warhol and the titanic sculptor Stanislaw Szukalski, illustrate much about how culture has changed over the last century.

For over 40 years, Warhol (1928-1987) has been famously famous for saying, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Warhol’s own renown, however, is undying. Last week, for example, saw the opening of a musical with the onomatopoeic title POP! about Warhol’s shooting by an irate feminist in 1968.

In contrast, Szukalski (1893-1987) spent much of his life on the edge of poverty. Yet, Szukalski actually was suddenly famous in his native Poland in the late 1930s. Then, much of his life’s work was blown to smithereens during WWII.

The great screenwriter Ben Hecht, who had met him in Chicago in 1914, wrote of him in the 1950s:

His works are vanished. He is without public, without critics, and so complete is the world’s ignorance of him that he may as well have never existed.

Yet, Szukalski toiled on, endlessly creating statues and drawings, a living legend to a handful of admirers, including Leonardo DiCaprio in 1980s Burbank.

Szukalski’s politics weren’t helpful. In Chicago in 1914, to which his blacksmith father had brought him a half decade earlier, he was training 20 Polish boys in the manual of arms, “So when the time comes they will be ready to go back and fight for the freedom of Poland.” Polish nationalism, however, was not exactly the most career-promoting ideological obsession for a 20th-century artist. To the right is his plate, Ahuman and Human commemorating the Soviet massacre of the young leaders of Poland at Katyn in 1940, which shows an ape in a Soviet Red Army uniform shooting a Pole in the back of the head.

As C. van Carter pointed out to me, Szukalski’s fan Jim Woodring wrote in “The Neglected Genius of Stanislav Szukalski”:

Among his most strongly held (and extensively documented) theories was the notion that a race of malevolent Yeti have been interbreeding with humans since time out of mind, and that the hybrid offspring are bringing about the end of civilization. As proof of this, he pointed to the Russians.

Szukalsi dared the world that his stupendous talent would make it forgive his megalomania, obstreperousness, obsession with vicious apes, general craziness, and exquisitely bad manners, the way it had forgiven Beethoven, Wagner, and so many other artistic heroes.

It didn’t.

Warhol, in contrast, invented a more consumer-friendly role for the artist in a culture tiring of greatness. Andy pointed out, “Art is what you can get away with.”

Read the whole thing there and comment upon it below.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Why I'm Steve

Malcolm Gladwell begins his latest tussle with Steven Pinker with these confidence-inducing words:

In Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, Stephen Pinker responds to my description of him as occupying the “lonely ice floe of IQ fundamentalism”:

If you're going to wrestle with Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker over who is a more credible authority on cognitive science, you should probably try to learn how to spell his first name, especially after the "igon values" fiasco.

By the way, that reminds me of why I'm going to go to my grave still using the adolescent-sounding name of "Steve." I noticed when I was a kid that it was hard for other people to remember whether my name was spelled "Steven" or "Stephen." For some reason, they just didn't care about the matter as much as I did. So, I eventually chose "Steve" to simplify matters for everybody.

Similarly, few can remember what the vowels in my last name are: Sailor? Saylor? Seiler? So when choosing my email address way back in 1996, I just left out the vowels from my last name: SteveSlr.

That's the kind of guy I am: just trying to be helpful.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

A wee bit more hair of the dog that bit us, please

The government's 40 year campaign to get more mortgages in the hands of the poor and the minority having worked out so well, the FDIC has moved on to new goals:

From the Washington Post:

Blacks, poor lack access to banks

FDIC report finds one-quarter of U.S. households exist largely below radar of financial institutions.

... On Wednesday, Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) proposed legislation aimed at encouraging banks to compete with payday lenders and provide small, short-term loans to unbanked and underbanked consumers. The legislation would establish a federal fund to guarantee up to 60 percent of those loans. In return, banks must cap the loans at $2,500 and the interest rates at 36 percent, among other requirements.

"As we consider changes to our financial system, we should include reforms that will help increase access to many of those who are left out," Kohl said in a statement.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Your Wall St. bailout dollars at work

The New Criterion's article The Art Market Explained by James Panero points out that at a New York auction on November 11, 2009:

Defying expectations, even after the fall of Lehman Brothers, the price bubble that had been inflating for post-war and contemporary art refused to pop for Pop. A silkscreen by [Andy] Warhol, 200 One Dollar Bills from 1962, a large canvas of facsimiles of dollar bills arranged across it, brought in over $43 million, far exceeding the pre-sale estimate of $8–12 million ...

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Asian Animated Tiger Woods Crash

At the Business Insider, John Carney writes:

We really don't know what to say except: you really, really want to watch this animated recreation of the Tiger Woods crash. It seems to be some sort of foreign newscast. And it is amazing.

See it here.

I don't really have much to say on the subject, except that Woods is reacting in a very old-fashioned way by not going on Oprah and having a cry about it or going into therapy or rehab or Twittering about it. He's just playing dumb and taking his lumps, probably how his dad, the old Green Beret Lt. Col., did when he screwed up.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Gladwell renews his War on Intelligence

As many have pointed out, Malcolm Gladwell stuck to his guns over his obviously false assertion that there's "no connection" between draft rank and NFL quarterback performance in his attack on Steven Pinker because that was just a proxy for IQ and race.

Now, Gladwell goes on the attack against Pinker on IQ with exactly what you'd expect: the usual point and sputter about Six Degrees of the Pioneer Fund and all of that:

Pinker, Round Two

Still, you've got to admit that Gladwell has a point: if people can make more accurate than random predictions about which college quarterbacks will be better than other college quarterbacks, then they can make predictions about more politically incorrect things, too. Thus, Gladwell wages relentless war upon predictions, upon quantitative thinking, upon science, indeed, upon that ultimate evil: knowledge.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Portrait of an Activist

Here are excerpts from an article about some activist in the rich suburbs of Philadelphia whom the New York Times thought was worthy of 1200 words, as he relentlessly wages an endless war that was already won decades ago, using arguments that are as unanswerable under the reigning mindset as they are pointless. Even the poor NYT reporter seems to have picked up on how funny this story is, in an unmentionable kind of way.

Advocating for Girls' Sports With a Sharp Tongue
by Katie Thomas

HAVERFORD, Pa. — Few girls who play sports in suburban Philadelphia would recognize Robert H. Landau, but many coaches and athletic directors know that spotting him in the bleachers could spell trouble.

With a sharp tongue, a refusal to compromise and a well-honed sense of injustice, Landau is that familiar breed of community activist with a knack for pushing public officials over the edge. His specialty is girls’ sports, and his targets are usually wealthy public schools from the Main Line suburbs that pride themselves on being progressive and fair in offering a rich array of opportunities.

No slight to girls is too small for Landau to take on. His victories range from the momentous to the less obvious, like forcing his daughters’ school district to provide more athletic choices, pressuring leagues to showcase their title games and getting a school mascot to perform at their games.

Landau’s complaint against Haverford High School — over issues like publicity for and scheduling of boys’ and girls’ basketball games — has upset even those who would otherwise support him.

“I am like: ‘Buddy, you know what? You just threw the wrong punch,’ “ said Bobbi Morgan, the women’s basketball coach at Haverford College, who used to coach the girls’ team at Haverford High School. “I never worked anywhere where it was better.” ...

Landau, who owns a lighting business, started as a parent activist and never stopped. Now 63, he has two daughters who have been out of school about 20 years and four grandchildren. ...

Landau is a rabid fan of Cheltenham High School girls’ basketball, and his commentary during games often turns heads. The coach, Bob Schaefer, said, “He’s yelling things that you might be thinking, but he just belts it out.”

When it comes to speaking out about unfairness, Landau can be just as passionate. He boasts that athletic directors regularly hang up on him, and relishes the time he made a cheerleading coach cry. ...

Girls typically played basketball in the afternoons, and the boys in the evenings. Cheerleaders performed only at boys’ games. Boys played their title games at arenas like the Palestra at the University of Pennsylvania, and girls were relegated to school gyms. His complainted have helped eliminate those inequities. ...

Landau has never been paid for his advocacy, but it worked in his favor in 1996, when he faced federal charges of defrauding a commercial loan company as the owner of a janitorial supply business. Landau repaid the $120,000 he owed the loan company, and later pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud. Although Landau was facing prison, the judge, citing his local involvement, sentenced him to time in a halfway house and under house arrest, according to news reports.

“I made a business mistake, I got snagged, and that was that,” Landau said. “I have no excuse. It makes me human. More human than most.”

That reminds me of when I was in the passport office waiting room back in May. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an elegantly dressed elderly man sit down two chairs away. While I read my book, a younger man sat down between us, and started talking to the older man, calling him "Marty" and wheedling him to put in an appearance at his workshop, requests which Marty graciously sidestepped. The man then asked Marty what he was up to. In a cultured voice, Marty explained that he had to get his passport renewed so he could pick up a Lifetime Achievement Award at a film festival, and then he was hoping to make a small movie about an elderly couple, with Ellen Burstyn playing his wife.

I hadn't yet looked directly at Marty, but I had it figured out by now: Marty wasn't Martin Scorsese, as I'd first wondered, but Martin Landau, the master character actor. Then it occurred to me that about a decade ago, I had decided that Landau's portrayal of washed-up Dracula actor Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton's Ed Wood (with Johnny Depp as the world's worst movie director), was the best supporting performance I'd ever seen for comedy and pathos combined. Perhaps I can't fully justify that opinion, but it's not implausible: for that role, Landau finally won the Oscar at age 66.

How often, I asked myself, do you run into a person you've previously decided was Best.Whatever.Ever?

So, when my number was called, I stood up and said, "Mr. Landau, I just wanted to say that I've long thought your portrayal of Bela Lugosi" -- for about a quarter of a second he seemed uncertain as he mentally sorted through all the roles he's had (IMDB.com lists 158 different movies and television shows since 1956), then he smiled; yes, he remembered that role -- "was the best supporting performance I've ever seen." He thanked me very nicely, and I went and got my passport.

That reminded me that of the several dozen celebrities I've run into over the years, I can't think of anything I've observed more scandalous than that forty-something actresses aren't as glamorous-looking when they rush out to the store without their makeup on than when you see them in movies. It would be fun to have outrageous gossip to retail, but, in fact, most celebrities I've accidentally met have been superior in manners and comportment.

Most of the celebrities I've run into fall into that oxymoronic category of "famous supporting actors," so they are, almost by definition, good at acting gracious to civilians who, like I try to do, acknowledge them respectfully and unpresumptuously formally ... and then leave. But, it's also that to become a celebrity character actor like Martin Landau, somebody with a career distinguished enough that I'll finally attach a name to your face, you have to be a consummate professional over decades. To have Martin Landau's 53-year career, you can't be a mess like Bela Lugosi.

In summary, now that I think about it, Martin Landau isn't much like Robert H. Landau at all.

But, that's the point of having a blog, isn't it -- to be able to careen drunkenly from topic to topic without having to gin up a Deep Think justification tying together your randomness?

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Whooping cough, whooping cranes: what's the difference:

From the Washington Post website, confirmation of my theory that nobody ever looks at the last half of the letters in a word:

Cultural Rewind: No more Swedish minarets?

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer