Ron Unz has debuted a nice-looking website at Unz.com:
The Unz Review: An Alternative Media Selection
A Collection of Interesting, Important, and Controversial Perspectives Largely Excluded from the American Mainstream Media
This isn't your usual Pepsi v. Coke partisan bickering. It's the UnzCola!
I've told this story a million times, but in 1991 I was in the expensive Dean and DeLuca grocery store in Manhattan. Ahead of me in line was a huge, bald black man, both imposing and cultured in demeanor: Geoffrey Holder. The checkout clerk looked up at him and said, "Hey, you're ... you're ... "
Holder interrupted him genially in that deep, deep voice : "That's right! I am James Earl Jones. But don't tell anyone. I'm traveling in ... cog ... neeeeeeee ... to!" And then he laughed like an erupting gas main and strolled out.
Nice! I still don't know whether I hate Unz or love him. But he sure seems to draft a lot of water so I better pay attention to him.
ReplyDeleteBTW, I'm glad Fred Reed has gotten his groove back. A few years ago as his blindness was advancing he wrote a purported last column. I remember old Gary North from Lew's stable wrote an open letter pleading with him to keep up his work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_REmdjgMjSE
ReplyDeleteLibs say they hate racial stereotypes.
So why do they treat a Mexican like Steppin Fetchez?
ReplyDeleteDuring 7-Up's "Un-cola" ad campaign the company sold "un-cola" glasses - the flared-top Coca-Cola fountain glass shape inverted, so that its narrow and "bottom" opening was now the top of the "un-cola" glass. I still have one of those "un-cola" glasses, which on 'The Antiques Road Show' would probably be valued at a buck three-ninety.
Of course, he doesn't have an Education topic. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteI didn't wanna be on his ol site, anyway.
Whenever I see "Unz" I think of constipation or Utz potato chips.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/boycott_the_enders_game_boycott/14227#.Unw6inC-o2Q
ReplyDeletehttp://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2013-10-31.shtml
ReplyDelete'Which brings me to the very useful book The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance, by David Epstein.'
Unz has an IQ of 214:
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Unz#Politics
"Newspapers referred to Unz's candidacy as a Revenge of the Nerds and often quoted his claim of a 214 IQ.[4][5][6][7]"
the "just try making that out of a cola nut" guy - no relation to eric, i take it. since only the former has a sense of humor.
ReplyDeleteI notice he left out Greg and Henry's blog.
ReplyDeleteUnz has an IQ of 214:
ReplyDeleteAccording to the following article, he lied about that, on his resume, no less. That's quite brazen. It's hard to fathom someone blatantly lying on a professional resume like that. I guess that's chutzpah for you.
https://web.archive.org/web/20010608114515/http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/971124/24bil.htm
"Although he was working on a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, when Unz applied for his first summer job on Wall Street several years ago he was concerned about how his résumé would play, since he had no financial experience. So he inflated his IQ, listing it as 214 on the Stanford-Binet scale--way beyond genius range. "I was applying for a job for which I had no experience and I needed a hook," says Unz, whose political aspirations may land him in a similar predicament again."
I notice he left out Greg and Henry's blog.
ReplyDeleteWell they did ban him. Or Cochran did, I should say. Cochran doesn't like anyone who can challenge him in debate. He only wants sycophants and toadies around him, namely amateurs interested in HBD who are too intimidated by a "physicist" to say anything.
So he inflated his IQ, listing it as 214 on the Stanford-Binet scale--way beyond genius range.
ReplyDelete"Inflating" your IQ would be like adding 20 or 30 pts to it. This is more like claiming to be 10 feet tall.
Amconmag+Counterpunch=.9(Unz.com)
ReplyDeleteMore towards the fogey ends of both.
(Is the 'alternative media' basically just 2 websites?)
You don't want to check out unz.com's alexa page.
Unz defended himself against that charge here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ronunz.org/1997/11/23/is-it-hasta-la-vista-for-bilingual-ed/
"Although the story is fine overall, there is one factual error, namely the claim that I inflated some information on a job resume, which is certainly untrue."
Not taking sides; never heard this accusation before. Perhaps he was tested at a young age and got the 214, but believed the score would not have held up in a retest at an older age, but put it down anyway. Or somebody is really stretching...
Anyway, glad to see Steve get some respect.
He has recruited quite a scrum of elderly cranks to write for him.
ReplyDeleteUnz defended himself against that charge here:
ReplyDeleteThat was a very lawyerly defense: "there is one factual error, namely the claim that I inflated some information on a job resume, which is certainly untrue."
It's vague enough that we don't know what exactly he's denying.
"He has recruited quite a scrum of elderly cranks to write for him."
ReplyDeleteBut they are scrumptuous.
Unz has an IQ of 214.
ReplyDeleteBut what's his Guy-Q?
Gladwell is high in Lie-Q.
Unz has an IQ of 214:
ReplyDeleteI like Unz, but if he really does have an IQ of 214, why isn't he curing cancer or out building warp drives or something instead of writing long articles on crime and domestic politics?
I remember reading about how Marilyn vos Savant had an IQ above 200: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_vos_Savant#Rise_to_fame_and_IQ_score
Since she's a woman, I could at least understand why she was just spending her time answering puzzles and lame questions in Parade Magazine instead of doing something more momentous. But what's Ron's excuse?
"But what's Ron's excuse?"
ReplyDeleteI know, I know. Sad to see a man wasting his talents on an issue as trifling as the political destiny of the United States.
"(Is the 'alternative media' basically just 2 websites?)
ReplyDeleteYou don't want to check out unz.com's alexa page."
He's not exactly aiming for a mass audience, but even if he were, don't you have to start somewhere? Or is that just more outmoded "white guy thinking"?
ps - I'm warming up to your panicked snark anony. Used to be it interrupted the flow, now it's getting to be fun.
"I like Unz, but if he really does have an IQ of 214, why isn't he curing cancer..."
ReplyDeletePC is a societal cancer.
If you want to feel depressed, compare the length, linguistic complexity, and overall tone of that ad with today's TV spots. If you want to feel even worse, compare the long takes and relative emphasis on constumes, set design and acting in the "uncola" ad with the splashy digital effects, blow-your-ears-out sound and frenetic camera angles that are par for the course now.
ReplyDeleteIt's bad out there!
"Unz has an IQ of 214."
ReplyDeletein some <50iq country in sub-saharan africa.
Is it possible to have an IQ of 214?
ReplyDeleteOr is that like some commenter said, like being ten feet tall? Leading to the further question is it possible to be ten feet tall?
The answer to that last one seems to clearly be no. The tallest man in the history books was Maximinius Thrax at about eight and a half feet. Of course that item from the Augustan Histories is almost certainly false (like Unz's IQ).
There is a web site (look it up) for men over eight feet tall. There is some speculation that Wadlow may have briefly been nine feet tall. Just about every eight footer walks with a cane if he can walk at all. There almost certainly never has been a man ten feet tall.
The US male height averages about 69 inches (5'9") with a SD of about 2.8 inches. That makes Steve at 6'4" (76") about 2.5 SDs above the mean. That makes him in the 99th percentile. A ten foot man would be more than 18 SDs above the mean. No one publishes a z table like that.
For IQ the mean is of course 100 and the SD 15. That makes an IQ of 214 more than 8 SDs above the mean. Not only are there no z tables for such a value there are no tests.
All group tests have a finite number of questions if they are power tests. You can't get better than 100%. On an individual test in theory you could go higher but in fact on the Stanford-Binet many of the sub-tests are also limited. For example the vocabulary sub-test has about thirty words. It is not all that unusual for a testee to know them all.
On a speed test I suppose you could do a calculation that took a normal person an hour in less than five minutes. That might yield a super high IQ result but I know of no test that actually works that way.
An IQ of 214 is equivalent to a height of only about seven and a half feet - not ten feet. There are basketball players that tall. So you might think there would be at least a few people with IQs of 214.
But extreme height is not normal at all. It is what Taleb would call a Black Swan - a very fat tail. All of the circus giants and a couple pro wrestlers are only very tall because they are diseased. They have pituitary tumors. All the human eight footers are pituitary giants.
A 'normal' real tall person is one who just happens to have the tall version of the 217 SNPs known to effect height. Few of the real giants in the record books are among these.
So the answer to the leading questions is no. No one is ten feet tall. Because of physical limitations. Also no one has an IQ of 214 because of test limitations. But an IQ of 214 - meaning the happy confluence of the 138 SNPs that effect IQ - should be possible. It's not that far out on the Gaussian tail to be impossible.
Jensen developed a reflex measuring machine which may have accessed the underlying mechanisms of IQ. I don't know. But if he did, it should be capable of locating one of those rare people with an IQ as high as 214.
Of course that wouldn't include Unz. He was obviously lying.
Albertosaurus
I agree that the IQ of 214 is ludicrous. I doubt that there is a test that could adequately distinguish between 180 and 214. I also doubt that someone that smart would be in the social sciences, unless they are lazy (is he lazy?).
ReplyDeleteAn IQ of 214 is equivalent to a height of only about seven and a half feet - not ten feet. There are basketball players that tall. So you might think there would be at least a few people with IQs of 214.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the following chart, the odds of someone with an IQ of 195 would be about 1 in 8.3 billion:
http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/iqtable.aspx
So the smartest person alive right now might have an IQ of 195.
There's more than one person alive right now that's 7 and a half feet tall.
I agree that the IQ of 214 is ludicrous. I doubt that there is a test that could adequately distinguish between 180 and 214. I also doubt that someone that smart would be in the social sciences, unless they are lazy (is he lazy?).
ReplyDeleteApparently he was in grad school for physics, but didn't complete. But you raise a good point. If you have an IQ of 214, shouldn't you be working on anti-gravity or something, not domestic politics?
I know, I know. Sad to see a man wasting his talents on an issue as trifling as the political destiny of the United States.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to domestic politics, there's nothing Unz or anyone else with a 214 IQ could say that Steve hasn't already said better.
While a warp drive or anti-gravity device would immediately make the political destiny of the US a trivial, trifling matter compared to the new world that would be opened up.
Pat, everyone,
ReplyDeleteRemembering that Marilyn vos Savant was listed for years in the Guinness book with an IQ of 228*, it is my impression that such staggeringly high numbers were given back then and that this is no longer the case. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I don't remember why they took it from her, but didn't it have something to do with looking upon those older I.Q.s as being untrustworthy?
Giving the benefit of the doubt, perhaps something along those lines happened here. Unz may have been told his I.Q. was 214, but he was able to figure out later on that this was too high.
*Looking at wikipedia, the new estimates for her I.Q. seem to be either simply 170+ or 186.
When it comes to domestic politics, there's nothing Unz or anyone else with a 214 IQ could say that Steve hasn't already said better.
ReplyDeleteOne man saying it as a kook. Many saying it is a movement. Unz and his 214 IQ may not be able to create those millions, but why scorn his efforts? (And the man does have millions of dollars...)
Steve,
ReplyDeleteSince Unz doesn't allow comments...Ann Jones on the Military is wrong, patronizing and insulting. The US Military is not the bottom 1%. It doesn't for instance allow in the bottom quintile of intelligence, or criminals. Or people with substance use, and so on.
And the didn't know what we were getting into involved nothing in front of us, but the C___ts behind us. So degenerate ye now betray those that guard you out of habit, to little gain.
To those arguing high IQ numbers:
ReplyDeleteTests are normed on samples ranging from 1,000 to 10,000. That means that anything with frequencies below 10^(-4) cannot be reliable. That means that numerical IQ is only good to about +4SD, or 160-165. After that, the numbers are essentially random. That's not to say that there is no way to tell a genius from a merely very smart - just that IQ test is not a good way of doing it.