As everyone knows, you cannot use IQ as a measure because the number might reveal answers that are unacceptable to our elites. That some people are smarter than other people is unambiguous. That some groups might be smarter than others would however mean that some groups would be less intelligent than others, and that is unacceptable. A quite interesting article by Jason Richwine who is described as a public policy analyst in Washington, D.C, makes the point he only too well understands himself:

Let’s start 25 years ago, with the publication of The IQ Controversy, a book by Mark Snyderman and Stanley Rothman. The authors surveyed more than 1,000 experts in the field of cognitive science to develop a picture of what the mainstream really looks like. It was very similar to the description I’ve supplied above.

Snyderman and Rothman then systematically analyzed television, newspaper, and magazine coverage of IQ issues. They were alarmed to find that the media were presenting a much different picture than what the expert survey showed. Based on media portrayals, it would seem that most experts think IQ scores have little meaning, that genes have no influence on IQ, and that the tests are hopelessly biased. “Our work demonstrates that, by any reasonable standard, media coverage of the IQ controversy has been quite inaccurate,” the authors concluded.

In conducting the expert survey and contrasting the results with media depictions of IQ research, one would think Snyderman and Rothman had performed a valuable service. Surely public discussion of IQ would now be more firmly grounded in science?

It didn’t happen. Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve was published in 1994, and real science was hard to find in the media circus that ensued. Herrnstein and Murray’s central claim about IQ differences shaping class divisions continues to be the subject of reasoned debate among social scientists. But non-experts in the media questioned whether IQ is even a valid concept. Intelligence research – psychometrics — is a pseudoscience, they said. The tests are meaningless, elitist, biased against women and minorities, important only to genetic determinists. And even to discuss group differences in IQ was called racist.

In short, the media did everything Snyderman and Rothman had warned against six years earlier. As a consequence, the interesting policy implications explored by Herrnstein and Murray were lost in the firestorm.

Smart people often think it’s a tragedy to be stupid. And if it were like money, they would try to redistribute in the way they normally redistribute, from everyone else but themselves. So instead they choose their second favourite tactic, they lie about it and hide the truth. Here’s the conclusion:

What causes so many in the media to react emotionally when it comes to IQ? Snyderman and Rothman believe it is a naturally uncomfortable topic in modern liberal democracies. The possibility of intractable differences among people does not fit easily into the worldview of journalists and other members of the intellectual class who have an aversion to inequality. The unfortunate — but all too human — reaction is to avoid seriously grappling with inconvenient truths. And I suspect the people who lash out in anger are the ones who are most internally conflicted.

But I see little value in speculating further about causes. Change is what’s needed. And the first thing for reporters, commentators, and non-experts to do is to stop demonizing public discussion of IQ differences. Stop calling names. Stop trying to get people fired. Most of all, stop making pronouncements about research without first reading the literature or consulting people who have.

This is not just about academic freedom or any one scholar’s reputation. Cognitive differences can inform our understanding of a number of policy issues — everything from education, to military recruitment, to employment discrimination to, yes, immigration. Start treating the science of mental ability seriously, and both political discourse and public policy will be better for it.

A man of goodwill, obviously, but still unfamiliar with the left. If it shouldn’t be it cannot be and therefore they will not let it be, at least not let it be openly discussed.

It is almost unimaginable that anyone at any level could pass a test like this. Yet this would have been pretty standard when I was in Grade VIII which was some fifty years after that. Which is why I can answer them now myself but how likely is it for anyone who graduated from high school since the 1970s? Of course, in any trivia quiz I have no idea who wrote or sang any song at all, at least those written since 1973.

[Via Instapundit]

Sent the following letter to a friend of mine who had last written that he was about to be made redundant. Having not heard from him in a while I sent him this:

Writing for no particular reason other than to see how you are and what’s new in your life. Last you wrote you were on the edge of redundancy which I can only hope has not come to pass, or if it did that you have found your way to something new and better. Our lives are getting so chancy and difficult. Today I went on strike for the first time in my life. Would not have had to except that the union called for a two-hour stoppage right in the middle of my class time so out I went. It was a funny business but in the end and what swayed me to join the strike was the memory of my Father, organiser for the Electrical Trades Union of Canada and a left winger till his last day. More pragmatically, there is no point in joining a union and expecting its help if you cross the picket line when they ask you to take action. I’m not particularly militant since I worry that the claim will do no good for employment prospects generally and mine in particular, but having duly voted against the strike and found the strike was overwhelmingly supported the die was cast.

The other oddity was that I ran into the oldest person in the department whose age I didn’t actually know but white haired he is and clearly of something like my vintage. So I said to him – which I had picked up on the grapevine – that I’d heard he was retiring and why was that? Oh, he said, he’d always intended to retire when he turned 60! Holy mackerel. There must now be at least a decade between me and whoever comes next after him. Where do they go and why do they do it? I’m going to write my own version of Father William, I think, that will begin:

You are young Father William, the old man said.
So what that your hair has turned grey?
There are still many years before you are dead.
Why retire when you can still stay?

A bit morbid perhaps, but the rhyme scheme is all. About half the people I know are still working, and the rest play golf. I don’t play golf so what would I do? I hope you aren’t able to fill me in on that.

Anyway, be well. Hope things are good.

Kind regards.

How much this is just the point. And what’s more, implied but not directly stated, is that the living standards of those on lower incomes are dependent on the actions of those earning higher incomes:

Tom Corley, on his website RichHabits.net, outlines a few of the differences between the habits of the rich and the poor:

1. 70% of wealthy eat less than 300 junk food calories per day. 97% of poor people eat more than 300 junk food calories per day. 23% of wealthy gamble. 52% of poor people gamble.

2. 80% of wealthy are focused on accomplishing some single goal. Only 12% of the poor do this.

3. 76% of wealthy exercise aerobically 4 days a week. 23% of poor do this.

4. 63% of wealthy listen to audio books during commute to work vs. 5% for poor people.

5. 81% of wealthy maintain a to-do list vs. 19% for poor.

6. 63% of wealthy parents make their children read 2 or more non-fiction books a month vs. 3% for poor.

7. 70% of wealthy parents make their children volunteer 10 hours or more a month vs. 3% for poor.

8. 80% of wealthy make hbd calls vs. 11% of poor

9. 67% of wealthy write down their goals vs. 17% for poor

10. 88% of wealthy read 30 minutes or more each day for education or career reasons vs 2% for poor.

11. 6% of wealthy say what’s on their mind vs. 69% for poor.

12. 79% of wealthy network 5 hours or more each month vs. 16% for poor.

13. 67% of wealthy watch 1 hour or less of TV. every day vs. 23% for poor

14. 6% of wealthy watch reality TV vs. 78% for poor.

15. 44% of wealthy wake up 3 hours before work starts vs.3% for poor.

16. 74% of wealthy teach good daily success habits to their children vs. 1% for poor.

17. 84% of wealthy believe good habits create opportunity luck vs. 4% for poor.

18. 76% of wealthy believe bad habits create detrimental luck vs. 9% for poor.

19. 86% of wealthy believe in life-long educational self-improvement vs. 5% for poor.

20. 86% of wealthy love to read vs. 26% for poor.

Found at Instapundit

From Anthony Tao in a post he titled, “Beijing Subway Can Get A Wee Crowded In The Mornings” via Instapundit. I’m not sure there is anything that can be done to change this, certainly not in anything like a realistic time frame. Yet I suspect that the price of a ticket is well below the cost covering price but what do I know? And it is possible that thirty minutes either side of this moment and things have calmed down quite a lot. Still, quite incredible and not beyond possibility here without proper planning and capital investment.