I think political commentors like Mr. Sailer should demonstrate some restraint when criticizing John McCain’s personal background. Noone has been more forthright in admitting his failings as a young man, especially while a cadet at the Naval Academy. I realize that many prominent conservatives do not like him all that much as a presidential candidate or as a politician, and I think that is fair criticism. However, nothing infuriates me more than individuals who have no military experience or who — like many of the members of the current White House — received deferments during the Vietnam War attacking someone like McCain who was undergoing hideous torture while they were enjoying the peaceful existence of a civilian. While this might not apply Mr. Sailer directly, it does apply to many of his fiercest critics (i.e. Rush Limbaugh), and he is sanctioning the legitimacy of this type of attack when he posts blog entries like that one. Frankly, I think if he had an ounce of personal decency he should retract it.

The fertility rates of white Americans probably has more to do with where they are in the country. If an ethnicity is urban and Democrat-voting, its fertility will be quite a bit lower than those who are rural and Republican-voting. Italians, Greeks, and Jews piled into the big cities, with comparatively few in small-town America, which is mainly the domain of Northwestern Europeans such as British, Irish, German, etc… something similar is the case in Australia too! This also explains the Swede-Norwegian dichotomy: Swedes in the upper Midwest are more urban, Norwegians more rural. There’s also religion: a lot of Danes are Mormons, and Mennonites and Hutterites are of mainly Swiss and Austrian background. As for the two biggest outliers: most people with background in “Spain” are Hispanics who would be better compared to Mexico I think, and French-Americans with Quebec rather than France. I don’t know what’s up with Finnish-Americans…

Link to the SDA software is totally awesome.

"You're just saying that because America got pwned in Boxing this year. Sissies."

No, it was really was that horrible. There was a fight between a Japanese and Azerbaijani where the Japanese kid knocked the other fighter down 6 times. The Azerbaijani fighter still won. Amateur boxing is actually making professional boxing look classy at this point.

The sad thing is that the boxing itself was good. But while you're watching it you have to keep in mind that the judging has absolutely nothing to do with the fight that you just watched or else the whole thing collapses into a joke. I watched the CNBC broadcast with Teddy Atlas, and I've never seen an olympic event where the commentators had such complete mockery and contempt for the proceedings they were covering.

FWIW, the American team's boxing was pretty mediocre from the bouts that I saw. Even the match that got overturned wasn't a blowout or anything. It's just that it didn't make a difference one way or the other since the determination of the matches was obviously completely random if not fixed outright.

"It's like Sailer showing interest in plunging because that is ONE event he might win something in."

I read the plunge for distance page on wikipedia, and I honestly wasn't that impressed with the sport. Supposing though that the ethos of the event could be maintained while using technology unavailable at the 1904 games to make it more entertaining for modern audiences.

Hear me out: instead of plunging for distance, the competitors would DIVE for distance, from a 10m platform. After 60 seconds, a man in scuba gear would measure the depth attained, with the deepest depth winning. Like in plunge for distance the competitors would rely solely on their own momentum and not be allowed to move under their own power at all once they hit the water and while plunging or "diving". Any competitor who could not return to the surface without assistance from the scuba team at the bottom of the pool would default on that attempt.

What makes this so superior is that the competitor actually can't breath at all while sinking for distance because he can't just turn his head to the side like he could in plunge for distance. It's still something that theoretically anyone can compete in, but you've now added the element of willpower to the event. People would watch it and think "hey, is this guy going to be able to plunge deep enough to win AND still have enough oxygen to make it to the surface?" Of course, there are modern cameras capturing the underwater views which would have been completely unavailable at the St. Louis games, and perhaps a laser light show delineating the different depths that the athlete has passed. The sport would likely become the ambient event of the summer game, like curling is in the winter olympics.

Of course, it it's the case that the attitudes described are "the same as it was four years ago", when Obama won, it isn't much of an excuse if he doesn't win in '12.

For national elections, it's true that the Republicans are done. The demographics are too daunting even now and will only get worse. Not just hispanics, but also indoctrinated college grads as well. The shift is huge and permanent I think.

I suspect that rather than disbanding, however, the GOP will have a civil war and will need to decide between moving to the left (the center I guess) to remain "relevant", staying where it is and conceding national elections to the democrats for the most part, or splitting itself into two parties, a moderate one and a conservative one.

The GOP can still win locally and on the state level, of course. But that's also something with a timeframe on it, just a longer one than for the national level. On the national level, however, conservatism appears to be done. What's likely to emerge as the alternative on the national level to outright statist left-wingism is a more pragmatic centrist approach that abjures social issues and ties to religious groups and focuses instead on purely fiscal and small(er)-state type issues. Even this will have a great challenge winning, but a better one than any party that is associated with white men, or religion, or conservative social values — all three of these things (white men, religious voting, social conservatism) are dead on the level of national politics.

This wasn't a "critical election" because it really just preserved the status quo. Nevertheless it is a watershed election, because this is the election that will be remembered in the future as the watershed that revealed the permanent end of conservative white guys politically.

But, hey, there's always video games and internet porn, right?

College football is great — that's why we like it.

I honestly don't think this is a great move for the B1G. These are not going to create marquee matchups for the existing B1G schools who are good in football, and I doubt that it will generate much additional interest for these sports in the DC and NYC areas. College sports are school-related — schools have their own traditional followings, and in the East it's mostly basketball that does well, not football. You won't turn Maryland and Rutgers into Ohio State in terms of football by this move, and it won't generate that much football enthusiasm. Basketball is different, but everyone thinks this is football-oriented.

I don't think that the link to specific acts of violence in the real world has been very well-established — certainly not on any kind of broad or representative scale.

I do think, however, that the "time sink" nature of video games (my understanding is that even "shorter" video games take 20-40 hours to complete, while more open-ended ones like Warcraft seemingly never end) is drastically harmful for people who play them in anything other than occasional, small doses. This is because the form of entertainment adds virtually nothing of use to the person while draining them of many hours of time that could have been spent more productively.

The objection is often raised that "this isn't different from reading books", but the key difference there is that reading books actually adds value to the person reading them in a way that video games do not. Now, there are exceptions to that –> perhaps if someone only reads pulp-type fiction it could be more comparable to video game use on a large scale in terms of being verbal junk food, but virtually any other kind of fiction book or non-fiction book, while also being a time-sink, adds value to the reader, unlike a video game which at best may marginally increase fine motor muscle memory which is basically only useful for … more video game play.

I side with Tyler, Ron. Already we have a large underclass of minority teens who cannot find a job with the current minimum wage. Raising that would make matters worse.

As for supply and demand, that is distorted by the FED and its boom and bust cycle. There is no true supply and demand when central planning is causing boom and bust cycles. However, studies on immigration show that only high school dropouts suffer any significant loss of income due to immigration, and that only marginal.

Along with supply and demand, is Says Law: production creates demand.

Federal intervention in labor markets is as pernicious as federal intervention in capital markets.

Let’s allow that throughout history more immigrants come to work in US for short periods, and go home. The political parties want to grant them citizenship or not depending on whom they will probably vote for. This is once more government looking for trouble, finding it, and missappling the wrong solution… (Groucho Marx)

The reason why the DC area has that profile is that it is home to a very large number of dual-income educated couples who earn, collectively, between 150 and 300k. A good number of these are in the higher end professional level government employee sector, while a larger chunk either work for government contractor companies (tech is especially big in that subsector) or in some related fields that started off as government contractors and now have a wider net. The DC area has pretty much no industrial base — it's almost all knowledge worker, except for the people who need to service the needs of the knowledge workers (i.e., even knowledge workers need some plumbers and mechanics and food service people and so on to service them).

There is a significantly-sized underclass in DC itself (which spills a bit over into some of the closer-in suburbs), but by and large the dual-income high educated couples between 150 and 300k tend to dominate the middle and outer suburbias, as well as Northwest DC itself, and this tends to skew the graph.

It needs to be underscored, however, that the economy in DC is not broad and diverse. Basically, it's all knowledge workers, with particular emphases in technology (from a network and systems perspective, not from the Silicon Valley perspective) and law (either actual practice, or political lobbying), with smaller groups in journalism and academia/think-tanks. It's a very skewed and highly unrepresentative situation compared to almost every other major American metro.

As an investor, and fan of Hempton, and Steve's, I say with confidence: Steve would've been an incredible stock picker. Breadth, contrarianism, rationality, and an insane inductive memory. If you'd gone into investing you'd be filthy rich, but we'd be worse off.

Damn. Steve absolutely nailed this whole thing from day one. Again. The gap between Steve and the 2nd most insightful journalist in the world is a large one.

“Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain”

You would do better, Art, to close your mouth and think instead, and also learn from those who are far more intelligent than you, and who have actually taken the trouble to read and study and think. You are the all too typical American “jerk”–a vulgar loutish insolent philistine without manners or culture or an awareness of your own ignorance, and of course thoroughly brainwashed and therefore an automaton “knee jerk” “love it or leave it” sort of “patriot”. As an American, I am ashamed of you and the hordes of other fools like you.

They aren’t. Black women flirt with me all the time and I’m no Brad Pitt.

iSteve bait. Re: Stanley Fischer and the Federal Reserve and Jews.

Central Bank head Janet Yellen, a Jewish woman from Yale, is worried there’s too little “diversity in econ”. Meaning, of course, too many white men. Meaning, of course not, too many Yale Jews.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/10/30/feds-yellen-says-economics-can-benefit-from-more-diversity/?mod=WSJBlog

Right, gender and race are extreme constraints on creativity, which is why all those Hungarian Jewish men like George Soros, Milton Friedman and John von Neumann are so blandly uniform.

Whereas Jewish women from Yale like Janet Yellen are distributed evenly along the ideological spectrum.

Was Rudy always this ballsy? Or is this a sign his political ambitions are extinguished?

(Who woulda thunk there’d come a day when quoting a Black president’s own crime stats was controversially racist?)

Live with her if you must

Isn’t that fraught with legal peril as well? If I live with a girl who contributes to the mortgage, can she make a claim on my house when the relationship goes sour?

Just out of curiosity, are predominantly white communities ever described as “vibrant”?

and what do THESE cities have in common?

TOP 5 MOST LIVEABLE CITIES:

1. Tokyo, Japan

2. Vienna, Austria

3. Berlin, Germany

4. Melbourne, Australia

5. Sydney, Australia

AND MORE CITIES WITH A HIGH QUALITY OF LIFE:

6. Stockholm, Sweden 16. Madrid, Spain

7. Vancouver, Canada 17. Auckland, New Zealand

8. Helsinki, Finland 18. Lisbon, Portugal

9. Munich, Germany 19. Hong Kong, China

10. Zurich, Switzerland 20. Amsterdam, Netherlands

10. Copenhagen, Denmark 21. Hamburg, Germany

12. Fukuoka, Japan 22. Geneva, Switzerland

13. Singapore 23. Oslo, Norway

14. Kyoto, Japan 24. Barcelona, Spain

15. Paris, France 25. Portland, USA

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3126280/Tokyo-rated-world-s-best-city-live-London-New-York-not-making-25.html#ixzz3kWOY0dCo
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The full black republicans tend to be very secure people. They don’t have the melodramatics and mental illness about identity that seems to afflict lots halfies. And liberals.

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2015/11/statestupidity.html#disqus_thread

Robin Hanson is puzzled why institutions don’t discriminate sufficiently against those with low IQ (or in favor of those w/ high) – i.e. your rent depends on your IQ – so that everyone internalizes all their spillover effects.

Seriously.

But to his credit Hive Mind by Jones has cut his conviction that open borders is awesome.

make the exam easier? more like getting rid of it entirely.

http://nypost.com/2015/12/28/graduation-rates-soar-as-more-students-skip-regents-exam/

That guy is a terrific writer. Thanks Steve.

The probability that someone sympathizes w/ folks who call themselves neo-reactionary is at least 50% if that person accepts HBD.

Otherwise it is roughly zero.

HBD is central because if true then conventional wisdom is wrong about most everything of consequence.

And it is true.

No other insight claimed by someone like Moldbug is as certain to be true or as consequential.

So nowadays neo-reaction is HBD.

But that just shows how stupid it is to try to ideologically classify people spaced by centuries. Steve talks HBD not because he’s got some fetish for the past and hates gadgetry and is scared of new ideas but because it’s the lowest hanging fruit in [The current year!].

If Steve were born in the 1880’s we know what he’d be – a progressive like his boy Galton.

So Cowen’s whole thing is silly. To talk usefully about who is what ideologically you need someone more honest than Cowen to define the terms first.

(BTW, Ty says a distinguishing feature of white culture is rape. That’s up there w/ Nate Silver’s claim about how journo’s are maniacally free-speech, unlike Peter Thiel.)

But parks are my “safe space” from those people.

This is like a white collar professional in DC, Montgomery County or NoVa saying “WHAT unemployment?”

Pinker can do what he wants primarily because anyone who reads his books realizes quickly he’s a legit genius (and realizes other people realize this too) willing and capable of publicly shredding them.

I bet on an unlucky confluence of minor shocks. Fed worries about stock bubble, tightness policy, while at same time China slows, and/or commodity price spike scares Fed away from properly leaning against the headwinds.

I see little evidence of any single time bomb capable of crashing things solo.

Strange that a 40-year-old white collar professional would be living in an apartment complex with a bunch of 20 somethings. Maybe he was bad with money or got wiped out in a divorce.

Number of wars started since 2000 by Russia: 0.

Do the Ukraine and Crimea not exist in Fred’s world?

Trump is responsible for Cubans suffering? Holy shit.

I would have LOVED to have been a fly on the wall the day his wife came home from Europe and he had to tell her they lost the house. LOL.

Ugh. Another column where Fred bats his eyelashes at China. “Sure they’re oppressive, but by golly they get things done!”

It wouldn’t be a Fred Reed column if it didn’t endlessly shit on America.

I can’t believe Fred is using the Coronavirus as an example that reflects well on China.