September 13, 2009

Boone Pickens not getting much for his $265,000,000

University of Houston (unranked, Conference USA): 45
Oklahoma State (#5, Big 12): 35

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

By Steve Sailer on 9/13/2009 Labels:

21 comments:

Garland said...

Think of all the Mike Judge movies that 265 mil could have financed!

9/13/09, 4:57 AM
Anonymous said...

45 to 35? Seems pretty similar. Seems like that whoever got the ball managed to score. I would say both teams are weak on defense to allow that many points.

9/13/09, 5:17 AM
SFG said...

Maybe it's because I'm a Northeastern nerd, but this strikes me as a huge waste of money. I know, free market and all, but couldn't we spend 265 million dollars paying auto workers to build more cars (if you're conservative) or wind turbines (if you're liberal) or something?

Wall Street's bought the government so nothing can be done about them...

9/13/09, 6:29 AM
Anonymous said...

OT:

Bizarre ending to Serena's title defense at Open

"If I could, I would take this ... ball and shove it down your ... throat," Williams said."

I didn't watch it on TV, but I have a feeling that those ellipses are hiding something :-)

"She continued yelling at the line judge, and went back over, shaking her racket in the official's direction."

...

"Then the line judge said something to the chair umpire, and Williams responded, "I didn't say I would kill you. Are you serious? I didn't say that." The line judge replied by shaking her head and saying, "Yes."

Williams already had been given a code violation warning when she broke her racket after losing the first set. So the chair umpire now awarded a penalty point to Clijsters, ending the match."

When I first saw the word "bizarre" in the headline, my mind went racing through all kinds of possibilities. When I read through the whole thing however, I was a little disappointed. That's not bizarre. Kind of funny maybe.

9/13/09, 7:27 AM
OhioStater said...

Player and coaching talent is spread really wide in college football. The problem is you don't want schools with 15,000 seat stadiums beating schools with 105,000 seat stadiums. College football is the only sport where 3 losses (75% win%) is a bad season. This aspect of dominance is a vehicle individuals like Boone Pickens use to project power, but as the dominance fades away, so does the attractiveness of the program and therefore the money.

9/13/09, 7:32 AM
Anonymous said...

OT:

OK, I just watched it on YouTube. The line judge Serena Williams yelled at was a little Asian lady. I'm sure a white woman would have been more politically correct about it (she wouldn't have complained), but this plucky line judge immediately went to complain to her superiors.

9/13/09, 7:37 AM
jody said...

wait, i thought the idea was that NCAA football was keeping him from going into politics and invading foreign nations to take their oil.

isn't everybody on the planet actually getting a huge return on his investment? not bombed, not missiled, not shot, still in control of their own land...

9/13/09, 8:59 AM
Anonymous said...

What do you expect from someone named "Boone Pickens"? As John Derbyshire has said, "all stereotypes are true".

9/13/09, 9:28 AM
Anonymous said...

What did Annenberg get for its $160 Million?

What did Gates get for its $2 Billion?

Seriously, when was the last time that big bucks purchased anything worthwhile in our society?

FTR - Andrew Carnegie died in 1919.

BTW, we are coming up on the 40th Anniversary of Carlo Maria Giulini's recording of Brahms's 4th Symphony with the CSO in the Medinah Temple:

I, Allegro non troppo
II, Andante moderato
III, Allegro giocoso
IV, Allegro energico e passionato

October 15, 1969


Medinah was built by the Freemasons in 1912:

Beginning in late 2000 the exterior of the building was restored and the interior gutted and reconstructed for use as retail space. It was designated a Chicago Landmark on June 27, 2001. It is currently occupied by Bloomingdale's Home and Furniture Store, which opened in 2003.

Sigh.

Now I'm getting really, really depressed.

9/13/09, 12:05 PM
Anonymous said...

For you movie buffs at iSteve, a fellow named John Powell recycled the Andante moderato in the closing credits of a Brangelina vehicle a few years ago.

9/13/09, 12:14 PM
ben tillman said...

Seriously, when was the last time that big bucks purchased anything worthwhile in our society?

FTR - Andrew Carnegie died in 1919.

Yeah, I love the Peace Palace -- a wonderful place to arbitrate a case.

9/13/09, 2:34 PM
Anonymous said...

"What did Gates get for its $2 Billion?

Bill Gates wasted all that money because he came down on the wrong side of the nature/nurture debate. Which reminds me - I once read an interview in which Gates' great rival Steve Jobs came out on the RIGHT side of this controversy.

Jobs was adopted at a very young age. As an adult (in his 30s, I think) he tracked down a biological sister of his. She turned out to be a novelist. He said in that interview that he was always a "nurture" guy until he met her. His sisters' personality turned out to be so close to his own (famously distinctive) personality, that he changed his mind and became a proponent of the "nature" side of that debate.

9/13/09, 2:53 PM
Unknown said...

Before the racists here start making all kinds of speculations about Serena's behavior, learn a little about tennis.

1. The Asian lady made a call that most lines judges would refrain from making at such a critical juncture in the game.

2. Serena's response was inexcusable, but she was frustrated that she was two match points down on the basis of a call that was most likely petty (replays have not shown that the foot fault was glaringly obvious if it was committed).

3. Serena created so much of a distraction that it was inevitable that what she said to the lines judge would be communicated to the umpire. However, tennis rules installed a few years ago require all communication to lines judges to be relayed to umpires - race has nothing to do with it, so you can speculate and denigrate white people all you want.

4. Serena lost the game since a point was awarded to her opponent on match point.

5. Serena has unfortunately carried her usual stubbornness to unfortunate limits and has not apologized for her anger yet. Maybe evidence will be shown some day that Serena is known for randomly violent acts, but annoyed high testosterone female athletes expressing anger is nothing special. She will be duly disciplined but this is not common behavior for her. She is after all from Compton.

9/13/09, 6:51 PM
Anonymous said...

Steve Jobs's biological father was Arab and his mother was German-American. That probably approximates Jewish doesn't it?

9/13/09, 7:46 PM
Anonymous said...

"Steve Jobs's biological father was Arab and his mother was German-American."

I'm curious about what kind of Arab he was. We know he was Syrian. There are lots of Christians in Syria. Levantine Christians are definitely smarter on average than their Muslim neighbors. I'd guess they're in the 95-100 range, though there seems to be no hard data about this. I'm sure that some group of overeducated nerds is busy finding out all there is to know about some obscure Papuan worm's digestive system as we speak, and with taxpayer funding too, and yet truly important and interesting things like the mean IQ of Levantine Christians have to be guessed. Oh well.

Books have been written and movies have been filmed comparing and contrasting Gates and Jobs. Gates is a WASP, so he's WASPishly earnest about everything, including his charity. PC ideology is what most earnest people believe nowadays. There's probably a guilt angle involved here too - he probably thinks that his enormous success was partially caused by all that money his wealthy parents spent on his private schooling.

Jobs, being half Syrian, seems to lack some of these hangups.

By the way, Steve, Job's father was a foreign student from an exotic land who had a kid with a young American woman, then abandoned his child. When the kid grew up, he made a huge impact on the world.

Since pop culture wasn't obsessed with Arabs back then, Jobs seems to have skipped any and all torment about his race and inheritance.

9/13/09, 8:33 PM
stan said...

High testosterone? With breasts and curves like that? Soft features in the face?

She's not Semenya Caster, who appears to have testes and no uterus or ovaries.

9/13/09, 9:38 PM
Anonymous said...

Michael F Atiyah's father was a Lebanese Christian.

[And his brother wrote a book on freedom of contract - or maybe ridiculing freedom of contract - I don't know, I haven't read it.]

Michael DeBakey was a Lebanese Christian.

Carlos Slim is a Lebanese Christian.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a Lebanese Christian; he and Charles Murray talked a little about the Lebanese diaspora back in 2007.

[I remember Taleb being impressed with the (French) Huguenot diaspora, as well.]

9/13/09, 11:50 PM
Unknown said...

Stan,

Testosterone is required to build muscle mass and while Serena's testosterone is nothing like that of Semenya, I'm not sure why you are disputing that female athletes in general and Serena in particular would have higher than average testosterone levels. I think anyone can tell by visual inspection that Serena is one of the most muscular female players on tour.

9/14/09, 4:41 AM
read it said...

"What did Annenberg get for its $160 Million?

What did Gates get for its $2 Billion?

Seriously, when was the last time that big bucks purchased anything worthwhile in our society?"


Good point,

What did anyone get really?

Big bucks purchase something worthwhile when they start businesses that require people to work and produce something of value to those who purchase the goods and services.

Similarly those big bucks do more good for more people when they build something everyone benefits from, like the Panama Canal or the interstate highway system. Giving money to the poor is pissed away promptly. Offering a job, even digging ditches is better, because they have the dignity of having worked for wages, and they can't be breaking into our houses while they are at work.

9/14/09, 7:08 AM
Alain said...

At least Herb and Marion Sandler, former CEO’s of the infamous Golden West Financial Corporation, seem to be getting their money’s worth. Aside from their recent funding of Pro Publica, Ron Arnold’s book, Freezing in the Dark. Money, Power, Politics and The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, lists other organizations funded by the Sandlers:
• Center for Biological Diversity
• Turtle Island Restoration Network
• National Environmental Trust
• Moveon.org
• America Votes
• ACORN
• Center for American Progress
• Human Rights Watch
• American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
• Foundation for National Progress (publisher of Mother Jones)
• People for the American Way Foundation

So, despite having to take time from their busy schedule posing as models for gargoyle sculptures, the Sandlers have been fairly generous in donating some of their mega profits. Who says the spirit of Andrew Carnegie is dead? I mean, not exactly libraries, but still.

9/14/09, 10:36 AM
Truth said...

"I think anyone can tell by visual inspection that Serena is one of the most muscular female players on tour."

Additionally, people automatically assume that higher levels of testosterone also means lower levels of estrogen. It does not. Citing her emotional outbursts and large breasts and hips, Serena probably has higher than average levels of both.

9/14/09, 1:05 PM

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