Steve Sailer thinks about these things so that you don’t have to.

As a society, we don’t benefit when people wash out of expensive training programs for predictable reasons.

So, why wouldn’t a trucking firm at least consider a parallel parking test for job applicants?

Well, how about “disparate impact?” What if a legally protected demographic group such as, say, women turned out to pass the parallel parking test at less than four-fifths rate of the highest scoring demographic group?

(And, indeed, I suspect that most of you don’t.)

Lynn Viehl, New York Times bestselling author of stuff I probably wouldn’t want to read, isn’t too proud to wait.

I hate moving to another line. I’m superstitious; I usually have bad luck if I believe the promise of no-waiting. If I try to go to that place, someone faster with a truckload of purchases will dart in front of me, or the register will need a new tape, or some other calamity will happen that will make me wait three times as long as I would have if I’d just stayed put.

One of the most endearing characteristics of professional writers is that they can make anything interesting. Read it and see.

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I suspect a Jesuit plot.

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Remember when Russians, outside of the Communist Party, were terminally poor?

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Imagine that.

As schools struggle more than they have in decades to fund their core operations, many are looking to a rich pool of so-called restricted gifts — held in endowments whose donors often provide firm instructions on how their money should be spent.

In other words, the arrogance of academics is exceeded only by their dishonesty. No surprises here.

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Now there’s a hole with no bottom….

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During the course of a white person’s education they will go through many phases including but not limited to:  “awkward,”  “classic rock,” and “being really into a foreign country.”  Of these phases, there is only one  that all white people are required to go through before they can obtain their  bachelor’s degree. It is known as “Bob Marley.”

Under no circumstances should you ever bring a white person to a dancehall reggae concert,  it will frighten them.

Steve Sailer is always worth reading.

Also, as my theory of Affordable Family Formation would predict, Santa Monica is famously liberal — e.g., the joke about it being the People’s Republic of Santa Monica. Jane Fonda’s ex-husband Tom Hayden represented the Santa Monica area in the state legislature for 18 years. Republican “family values” campaign themes don’t go over big in Santa Monica. The people who raise kids in Santa Monica can afford to insulate them with private schools, tutors, and all the rest. They don’t need politicians’ help in making it a little easier to raise their kids.

David Friedman, as always, gets right to the core issue.

I think it is a more plausible slogan than the usual version. If you and I disagree because I want an outcome more favorable to me and you want an outcome more favorable to you, there is room for compromise—as we see whenever people bargain over the price of a house. But if we disagree because I see what I want as just and the alternative as unjust and you see it the other way around, compromise looks to both of us like moral treason.

There you have modern American politics. There you have modern American foreign policy. Hell, there you have the fargin Civil War.

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Here’s something that has gotten lost in the drive to institute universal health insurance: Health insurance doesn’t automatically lead to health care. And with more and more doctors dropping out of one insurance plan or another, especially government plans, there is no guarantee that you will be able to see a physician no matter what coverage you have.

I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

Steve Sailer is always worth reading.

I remember when I got the memo from Society informing me that my wife and I had been assigned the task of socializing our children. It came as quite a shock, let me tell you.

Each of the 450 or so episodes of The Simpsons is a lot more mentally stimulating than listening to your parents or to your daycare worker talk. (Okay, well, some of the episodes from this decade might not live up to that standard, but there are still a couple of hundred good ones.)

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I see the hand of God in here, somewhere.

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Red light camera’s a scam? I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

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Let me know when they take up smoking again.

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This creeps me out.

The Hog is in rare form.

Ladies who choose to live with single men (every man who is not married is single), let me tell you what it means when your live-in boyfriend proposes after a period of years. It means he gave up and decided you were the best he could do. If he had thought you were a catch, he would have married you sooner, to keep someone else from getting you. Or it could mean he hates being with you less than he hates dating.

And that’s the truest thing you’ll read today.

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Incompetence is as perennial as the grass.

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There are things the rich do that working class and middle class folks don’t. Some of them–living off the return on capital rather than wages or salary–are only available to the rich. Others–seeking a first-rate education for your kids, working for yourself rather than others–are things that ordinary folks do to the extent that they can, but their ability is limited. Even so, it’s worth learning the tactics of the rich and applying them where possible.

Don’t say we never have useful stuff here.

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Something to ponder, along with this map.

The Hog isn’t doing politics any more.

Here’s a funny question. Has anyone noticed how American troops stopped dying in Iraq after Obama was elected?

Seriously, when was the last time you read about “mounting death tolls”? When was the last time you saw a journalist quote the latest figure? We know journalists are honest and fair, so the only possible explanation is that Americans aren’t being killed any more.

I’ve also noticed that global warming has slowed down, the planet is no longer running out of oil, and crazy government spending is no longer a bad thing. When Bush spent billions, it was very, very bad! Bush was a bad man! Now Obama spends trillions, and we all realize it just makes life better for kitties and puppies and flowers and baby ducks, which is what government is supposed to do.

Hold it, I have to throw up.

Timothy Burke is rather an odd fellow but occasionally he hits a jackpot. Here he discusses buying fantasy books.

Other things that are likely to drive me off:

1) “Book One in the Dark Swords of Black Terror Trilogy”.
2) Mostly, if the word “vampire” appears anywhere in the cover, title or blurb. It stops being “mostly” if “vampire” appears in the same blurb with “elf”.
3) Titles or blurbs that contain the name of a fantasy kingdom that sounds more like a prescription medicine for depression or impotence.
4) Anything that contains three of the following four elements in the blurb: plucky but innocent young heroine, farmboy with a destiny, dark lord of evil, wise ancient wizard. “Handsome voodoo priest” is a bonus demerit.
5) The word, “Drizzt”.

I have to confess, I’m with him there. He also has the virtue of being of one mind with me regarding the defects in most modern fantasy fiction:

The problem with Acacia is a problem that a lot of genre fantasy has: it too often reads like the detailed notes of a Dungeons & Dragons’ gamemaster about his campaign world rather than as a work of narrative fiction. The tedious (but accurate) old dictum to “show, not tell” is violated with astonishing aggressiveness within the first hundred pages, but not in any consistent or deliberate fashion. You know you’re in trouble when the king’s chief advisor Thaddeus murders a messenger who carries vital news and following a description of the act, Durham continues, “Thaddeus was not entirely the loyal servant of the king that he seemed” (and more still along those lines following). No shit, Sherlock. Of the many things that could go unsaid in the novel, this is only the beginning. Almost any of them–the lengthy expositional asides about the cultures, practices or peoples in the novel, the omniscient descriptions of characters and actions that suddenly erupt out of (a great many) viewpoint characters, could be unsaid or said minimally to vastly greater effect. As a sparce, fast-moving narrative that concentrated on its plot, it wouldn’t be half-bad. As a diagrammatic and pointlessly long act of world-creation, it’s clumsy and tedious at many points.

The Hog doesn’t do political commentary any more. Nope. Wouldn’t think of it.

It looks like the liberals have won the education battle. Socialism has caused the deaths of tens of millions of people, and it has never produced a good standard of living anywhere, and it is the greatest evil mankind has ever encountered. But a fair number of Americans, especially those who were “educated” after our school system was destroyed by liberals, think socialism is…pretty rad. No work! Free beers! Che T-shirts! If you want to be a lazy, flabby slouch all your life, socialism is the bomb. A lot of people are content to live that way. Clip your own wings and belly up to the trough.

Just tools and food, and some religion here and there. That’s all. Nothing else.

Here is the lesson conservatives should have learned from the last three elections, especially after seeing the impact of swing voters. The stupid are incredibly dangerous. The stupid make totalitarianism possible. Our kids are stupid, and they’re getting more stupid every decade. Look out.

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Elizabeth Wurzel, a writer turned lawyer, bites the hand that fed her.

Anyone who toils in the legal-industrial complex — better known as Big Law — should be able to tell you how we got here. Corporate attorneys like me, even those with the eyesight and insight of Mr. Magoo, all should have been able to see this financial collapse coming.

Carrie Vaughn (whose books you really ought to read, by the way; she’s in the list of Recommended Writers over there on the right) takes on the love that launched a thousand books.

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I rather suspect that the Red State/Blue State borders are a more accurate predictor of where the U.S. would split, but I still find this sort of speculation fascinating. Fragmentation of the U.S is not an uncommon conceit in speculative fiction but usually depends more on the needs of the plot than of any practical analysis.

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There are many factors contributing to this trend. Diminishing social mobility, the cult of celebrity, the decline in serious learning, the increasing disregard for empiricism and social attitudes verging on “valuephobia” all threaten to cast a shadow on the enlightened western Liberalism which has taken us so far.

Distracted by celebrity, softened up by the education system, we have also succumbed to what you could call intellectual relativism. We have reached a state of affairs whereby people believe that the validity of their views is determined by the strength with which they hold them, not by any reference to empiricism. And so we hear phrases such as “Well that is your truth – it’s not mine”, or, increasingly, the word which is doing untold damage to the concept of objectivity: “whatever”. When confronted with evidence which undermines the current fashion or your own prejudices, simply lift your hand and say “whatever”, and you can avoid all the discomforts of the value of truth, or objectivity, or of being plain wrong.

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When the federal government keeps changing the rules, it’s like having Darth Vader in control, John H. Cochrane, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, said during a panel. “I have changed the deal,” he intoned like Vader, the “Star Wars” villain. “Pray I don’t change it any further.”

And that tells you everything you need to know abut government “regulation” of the economy.

Mr. Vedder playfully offered another analogy: the recession of 1920. Why was that slump, over and done with by 1922, so much shorter than the following decade’s? Well, for starters, he said, President Woodrow Wilson suffered an incapacitating stroke at the end of 1919, while his successor, Warren G. Harding, universally considered one of the worst presidents in American history, preferred drinking, playing poker and golf, and womanizing, to governing. “So nothing happened,” Mr. Vedder said.

Of course Mr. Vedder does not wish ill health — or obliviousness — on any chief executive. Still, in his view, when you’re talking about government intervention in the economy, doing nothing is about the best you can hope for from any president.

And that’s the truest thing you’ll read today.

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One of the reasons we’re often skeptical of legislative/regulatory solutions to things is that they almost always have unintended consequences that do a lot more harm than good — and quite often those unintended consequences are the exact opposite of what the regulation was supposed to do.

Every legislator ought to have that tattooed on his (or her) forehead.

A few years back, the government passed a bill to encourage “greener” transportation by providing tax credits for the use of alternative fuels — including for the use of fuel mixtures that combined alternative fuels with gasoline or diesel. As Chris Hayes explains, this resulted in America’s paper companies suddenly dumping diesel into their production process solely to qualify for the tax credit.

Free markets work, even when you don’t want them to.

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The story of my life.

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Guess the ghost doesn’t get out much.

Update: Link fixed.

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Now that’s comedy.

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Not really a surprise, but a useful reminder.

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I don’t think I’ve used a phone book in ten years. Of course, I don’t often have occasion to call anybody I don’t know, so maybe that’s just me. Certainly for businesses I just look them up on the Internet.

Steve Sailer is always worth reading.

The point is that despite all that sophomore silliness that cultural anthropologists teach about how race doesn’t exist, the forensic anthropologists usually don’t have much trouble figuring out which Race box to check on the “Missing Person” ID form. In fact, they are now so good at it, that they can often tell a Swede from a Greek or whatever from the shape of the skull, supposedly “contradicting the classic biological race concept of physical anthropology,” (although not my partly inbred extended family model).

Almost certainly not.

The people who make that case are mostly affluent, upper-middle class folks. They want to eat local (preferably organic) food, buy stuff that isn’t made by children or slave labor, and avoid supporting activities that deplete fisheries or promote global warming. Their choices are limited, though, because there aren’t enough people like them. In order for the choices they want to be readily available, they need to expand the market–by getting the poor, working class, and middle class to buy into the whole “vote with your dollars” notion of supporting local production of food and crafts.

Think AlGore. Think the Obama Nation.

Yes, the folks shopping at the big box stores and eating at chain fast food restaurants are sending out of town money that local businesses might have used to hire them or buy from them, but they’re still coming out ahead. And that’s especially true of the poor and working-class folks.

Yes, if everyone tried to buy local, the money would stay in town–ready to be turned around to buy other local stuff and hire other local folks. The production wouldn’t end up in China or India or Bangladesh, and the profits wouldn’t end up on Wall Street. But the young couple trying to furnish their first apartment would have to sleep on the floor for months to cover the difference between a bed from Ikea and a bed made by a local woodworker. How long should they eat out of cooking pots to save up enough money to buy ceramic dishes produced by a local potter when they could buy some Corelle for just a few dollars? I’ve seen stainless steel flatwear on sale cheaper than plastic–what local producer could come close?

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I had suspected as much.

Perhaps, if Aniston had died her hair brown, Pitt would have taken her more seriously.

Hey, it’s worth a thought.

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I guess that’s why everyone regards Winona Ryder as a Serious Person. Uh, yeah.

So the ones that remain blonde don’t want to be taken seriously? This is a useful indicator.

Actually, if they wanted to be taken seriously, they wouldn’t wear so much lipstick.

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Or at least thinks he does. But you knew that.

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I am not making this up.

Steve Sailer is never afraid to ask the questions nobody else dares ask.

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However, the report published in the academic journal Neurobiology Of Ageing, found that abilities based on accumulated knowledge, such as performance on tests of vocabulary or general information, increased until at the age of 60.

So younger people are quick-witted but ignorant. I can buy that.

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On the other hand, this is a valuable life lesson not vouchsafed to his contemporaries.

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It all used to be pretty simple. You’d have a cutthroat razor which you kept honed to perfection on a leather strop. They lasted for decades. The only drawback was that in the hands of the very drunk or the very stupid they could live up to their name, but no one cared; if you killed yourself while trying to scrape unwanted hair from your face it was probably inferred that your life was hardly worth living anyway.

I’m an electric gizmo chap. A pack of cheap Bic disposables lurks somewhere in the bowels of the house in case I forget to recharge the Philishave, although this hasn’t happened yet. And how close is my shave? Well, you see, that’s just the point. I have no idea. I run the machine over my flabby jowls and end up with a face that looks shaved to me. Could I find a device that cuts off a little bit more? Possibly, but why should I want to? What does it matter? What benefit will result if I do and what detriment do I now suffer because I don’t? The answer of course is that it makes no difference to anything.

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The Guardian just announced that it is releasing all its content through an API as well as making available many different data sets through a data store, all of which can be mashed up into others’ sites and applications. They join other organizations – the BBC, National Public Radio, and The New York Times – in releasing APIs; notes that it’s the creme of news that sees the wisdom in APIs. The Guardian’s offers more than headlines: articles, video, galleries, everything. It also adds one more important element to its offering: a business model, creating an ad network for users of the API.

David Friedman needs a good rat, which is the technical term for a pointing device moved by the foot.

As any enthusiastic player of World of Warcraft—or other video games played on computers—knows, giving up the prehensile tail was a great mistake.

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They used to do that 200 years ago.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Ross Douthat does an excellent analysis of Obama’s situation.

The Hog isn’t doing politics these days. Obviously.

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If law enforcement officials break the law, fine, punish them. But don’t “punish” them by letting criminals off the hook; that “cure” is worse than the disease.

When people see criminals escape without punishment on technicalities, they lose respect for the law, and either give up and cease to resist crime, or take their own steps to prevent and punish it. Neither is characteristic of a civilized society.