March 28, 2009

Obama's brilliant management keeps Fargo from turning into flood ravaged hellhole

Just giving credit where it's due ...

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

By Steve Sailer on 3/28/2009

26 comments:

Lugash said...

I am Lugash.

Off Topic:

While perusing the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, I decided to look up the unemployment rates for the four Sand States.

Arizona: 7.4%
Florida: 9.4%
Nevada: 10.1%
California: 10.5%

U.S. Overall: 8.1%

Of course this is apples to oranges, but it is interesting to note that Arizona, with its strict use of E-Verify, has a lower unemployment rate than the rest of the country, and particularly the other three Sand States.

I am Lugash.

3/28/09, 11:07 PM
Anonymous said...

Interesting point Lugash. Thanks for bringing that up.

3/29/09, 12:25 AM
Anonymous said...

http://www.janicza.com/bravo/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/michelle-obama.jpg

3/29/09, 8:09 AM
Anonymous said...

Steve, that was funny, but I'm going to add another OT comment here. The Slimes has reviewed another flat-earther's book about IQ. Some quotes:

If the racial gap is mostly genetic, then blacks with more European genes ought to have higher I.Q.’s on average. In fact, they don’t.

That statement seems false to me. My experiences contradict it, popular stereotypes contradict it. And most of those stereotypes come from blacks themselves. Has anyone actually studied this rigorously?

When poor children are adopted by upper-middle-class families, they show an I.Q. gain of 12 to 16 points.

Don't such gains disappear in adulthood? I remember reading something to that effect.

In poorer black families, for example, children are rarely asked “known-answer questions” — that is, questions where the parents already know the right answer. (“What color is the elephant, Billy?”) Consequently, as Nisbett observes, the children are nonplussed by such questions at school. (“If the teacher doesn’t know this, then I sure don’t.”)

WHY don't such parents ask their children questions designed to test the children's knowledge? What prevents them from wanting to to find out how much their kids know? I have a few guesses of my own about this, but what are the NYT's guesses? That was a rhetorical question, by the way. They don't tell us.

And now the author comes to his secular religion's equivalent of "We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, of things visible and invisible.":

The racial I.Q. gap, he argues, is “purely environmental.”

Oh yeah.

For one thing, it’s been shrinking: over the last 30 years, the measured I.Q. difference between black and white 12-year-olds has dropped from 15 points to 9.5 points.

Is that actually true?

3/29/09, 8:24 AM
Anonymous said...

paraphrasing kanye west: 'obama does not care about white people.'

3/29/09, 8:38 AM
Jim O said...

I am not Lugash.

3/29/09, 8:59 AM
Anonymous said...

Has this always been historically the case, or is this just a result of E-verify?

Lugash, engage in some stage 2 thinking...

3/29/09, 9:00 AM
rob said...

Also off topic. The NYT reviews Nisbett's book 'Intelligence and How to Get it'

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/books/review/Holt-t.html?pagewanted=2&ref=books

I for one would be interested in Steve's take on some recent studies showing transferability from cognitive skills training.

3/29/09, 9:27 AM
josh said...

The dykes held!

3/29/09, 12:05 PM
Mr. Anon said...

"For one thing, it’s been shrinking: over the last 30 years, the measured I.Q. difference between black and white 12-year-olds has dropped from 15 points to 9.5 points.

Is that actually true?"

Important in assessing this claim would be the following - what is meant by "white"? White as in like the white population prior to 1965 - or white as in self-identified-white, including a lot of mid-easterners and mexicans?

3/29/09, 1:57 PM
Anonymous said...

That river started to rise on Bush's watch you know...

3/29/09, 2:26 PM
James said...

I think they get four trillion dollars now.

3/29/09, 3:03 PM
Giant Attitude said...

Obama's "I have heard you" message to the people of Fargo and the dignity and coolness of his personna in the face of crisis is what persuaded the anti-social elements in Fargo not to engage in the sort of criminal conduct that engulfed New Orleans.

3/29/09, 7:03 PM
David said...

Look for a crime wave out of Fargo, as displaced Fargoians spread thruout the USA stealin rims, bustin caps, and shooting helicopters out of the sky. It's the Coen Brothers' worst nightmare coming to a town near you.

3/29/09, 7:33 PM
Jason said...

It's not just the use of e-verify, it's that most of the jobs we lost were in construction, and those jobs weren't going to Americans anyway. When the jobs disappeared, and the Mexicans left, the overall employment rate didn't change much at all.

Even the mainstream media has started to notice.

3/29/09, 7:59 PM
Ivy said...

Regarding review of Nisbett's "Intelligence and How to get it" from the New York Times:

I posted some of this guy's research a few weeks ago in another thread, stating it's the only anti-heriditarian evidence I've found reasonable.

As others have stated, really interested to hear Steve's (or anyone else's like HalfSigma's or other blogs) take on this data.

I know for sure that the racial gap has NOT decreased to 9.5 points. That's just a flat out lie. Most ineresting section is about disparity of heredity between socio-economic classes. Though this doesn't really explain racial gap b/c richest blacks score slightly worse than poorest whites.

3/29/09, 8:10 PM
ben tillman said...

If the racial gap is mostly genetic, then blacks with more European genes ought to have higher I.Q.’s on average. In fact, they don’t.

If the racial gap isn't genetic, then there's no such thing as "European genes" in the context of intelligence.

3/29/09, 8:22 PM
Anonymous said...

josh said...
The dykes held!

3/29/2009


Yay for dykes! Nothing like good, sturdy, no-nonsense, strong dykes when you need some muscle to keep Mother Nature at bay.

3/29/09, 8:45 PM
Mr. Anon said...

But will Fargo remain a "Vanilla" city after the water subsides?

3/29/09, 10:30 PM
silver said...

Anon, IQ flat-earthers just keep rehashing and repackaging the same set of stale lies for every generation. It wouldn't be so bad if their pathetic lies actually mitigated racial reality, but they don't -- not even close. Yes, let's close our eyes and pray even harder that everything will work out well, even though realistically we have something on the order of zero reason to think so, because the most important thing in the history of the world is that no one should be offended by knowledge of the reality of their being, even though the case for true liberation resulting from one's acceptance of oneself, warts and all, is at the very least plausible. Better dead, impoverished, beaten, spat upon, dispossessed, and ultimately extinct than rude, apparently.

3/29/09, 11:29 PM
Lugash said...

I am Lugash.

@anonymous:

Good point. I went back and graphed the unemployment data from 2001. California has the highest unemployment, as you would expect. Arizona is second until 2006 or 2007 when Nevada overtakes it. Florida goes from fourth to third in early 2008.

The biggest changes are in January and February of 2009 where the other Sand States sharply increase in unemployment. It's quite possible that I'm misreading the tea leaves, or there are other factors, such as Arizona's meager unemployment benefits. I still think it should be watched though.

@JasonThank you for the link.

I am Lugash.

3/30/09, 12:00 AM
james said...

I'm living in Sweden.

Local car lots here leave their cars unlocked after hours so that interested customers can open them up, sit in them, open the hood and so on. This high trust made me laugh. They would be stolen in seconds in my home country.

3/30/09, 1:40 AM
Truth said...

"Look for a crime wave out of Fargo, as displaced Fargoians spread thruout the USA stealin rims, bustin caps, and shooting helicopters out of the sky. It's the Coen Brothers' worst nightmare coming to a town near you.

Naaaah, a flood wouldn't do it, X-Box would have to price their new game console at $99

3/30/09, 8:01 AM
frost said...

To the anonymous poster who called Nisbett a 'flat earther': Why do you say this if you can't refute his arguments?

For ammunition, I'd suggest reading Jason Malloy's defense of James Watson here:

http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php

This will answer most of your questions.

3/30/09, 8:19 PM
Richard Hoste said...

From the review in the Times

"Social policy can get rid of ethnic I.Q. gaps, he thinks, but “the social-class gap” in I.Q. “is never going to be closed.”"

It seems to me liberals would have no problem with IQ and it's heredity if it wasn't for racial differences. The author and his reviewer are happy to accept that they're smarter than low IQ whites.

" I would frame the matter a little differently. Even if I.Q. inequality is inevitable, it may eventually become irrelevant. Over the last century, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, I.Q. scores around the world have been rising by three points a decade. Some of this rise, Nisbett argues, represents a real gain in intelligence. But beyond a certain threshold — an I.Q. of 115, say — there is no correlation between intelligence and creativity or genius. As more of us are propelled above this threshold — and, if Nisbett is right, nearly all of us can be — the role of intelligence in determining success will come to be infinitesimal by comparison with such “moral” traits as conscientiousness and perseverance."

Height in the last 100 years has been rising. Eventually, we'll all be 7 feet tall.

3/31/09, 3:41 AM
Anonymous said...

Naaaah, a flood wouldn't do it, X-Box would have to price their new game console at $99

In which case, Fargo residents would line up at Best Buy to purchase them. What point are you trying to make?

--Senor Doug

3/31/09, 3:45 AM

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