Bob Hayes Online

All cars, in fact, suck.

Unless they have this.

Of COURSE there’s a cake disaster blog. Don’t be stupid.

The reaction in the left blogosphere to the recent study of math performance in US schools is interesting. The post at Alas seems fairly representative; boys and girls are the same at math, Larry Summers was an idjit, etc. In fairness to Jeff and others, they are probably taking their interpretations from media reports of the study, which were quite often fundamentally dishonest about one of the study’s key findings.

The study doesn’t show what Jeff Fecke, media figures, and others think that it shows. Yes, it does indicate that the overall performance of boys and girls is equivalent - the average boy and the average girl are at about the same level of mathematical ability. But Summers (and most informed observers) never claimed that “boys are better at math”. Instead, the claim has always been that the increased variability of male performance means that there will be more boys at both ends of the spectrum. The bell curve is flatter for boys, probably for genetic reasons, and there are more geniuses and more poor performers than we find among girls. That effect, in turn, means that at the extreme right-hand side of the bell curve, where (for example), math and science professors tend to come from, we’re going to see more boys as a natural consequence of the statistical reality. That was Summer’s (often-maligned, and in fact, often completely reversed and misrepresented with shocking dishonesty, point.) It would be amusing, if it weren’t so distressing, to see so many people who allegedly know how to read and think interpreting Summer’s comments, which boiled down to “there’s a difference in the number of brains that can hit the target, and there’s also discrimination against the brains that happen to belong to females”, as “there is no discrimination and girls are stupid!”

Unfortunately for egalitarians, though, the study shows that the conventional wisdom about variability is, once again, proven to be a real phenomenon. The study found consistently more variability among boys than among girls, at every grade level, in every state. (Marginal Revolution explains the findings quite coherently here.) The study findings are consistent with the bulk of previous work in the field; it is simply no longer a controversial point that there is greater variability among males than among females in mathematical ability.

But that won’t stop egalitarians from claiming the intellectual high ground, and accusing people of idiocy, for the crime of being 100% correct about a reality that egalitarians find distressing. Larry Summers may have been wrong about his weighting of the three factors he proposed for the differential numbers of men and women in math and science (female reluctance for whatever reason to engage in the horrible grind that many math and science jobs represent, ability-based differences in the population of those able to fill those jobs in the first place, and overt discrimination). He left out the fact that many women who have incredibly high math skills also have incredibly high verbal skills (in contrast to males, where my understanding is that it is more common to find men with just one or the other) and thus have access to other high-status career fields.

But he was right about the fact that at two, three, four or more standard deviations above the median, the small difference in male variability translates to large differences in the number of males with that level of performance versus the number of females. He was pilloried for it - and future scholars who stubbornly persist in recognizing the truth when they see it will no doubt be pilloried for it - but he was right. Efforts at producing a 50-50 outcome at the highest level are going to founder against this population effect. Campaigners for equality - may God bless them - should recognize this fact and move their focus towards ensuring that any woman of aptitude who seeks a career in math or science isn’t discriminated against. Open opportunities, and let outcomes fall where they may.

Caffeine. Is there anything it can’t do?

“Daddy, can you help me put on my goggles?”

“Sure.” (Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle.) “Are you a superhero?”

“Yes.”

“Really? What’s your super power?”

“I can do karate.” (Demonstration of awesome hand-waving skills.)

“Yeah? What’s your point total and build?”

“150, heavy DEX and skill focus, plus stealth adds.”

OK, the last part of the exchange I made up. But it’s only a matter of time.

Because it’s not like we need alternative energy sources, or anything.

Idiots.

Idiots are everywhere.

The show’s despairing, African-American, director:

“You take that word out of this story and you invalidate my history as an African-American male,” said Perry.

“Do I like the word? No. But to pretend nobody said it is wrong. I wouldn’t even consider doing that,” Perry said. “Context is everything, and it’s not gratuitous, it’s not for shock value.

“How can we learn about our present if we don’t educate people about what happened in our past?”

How, indeed.

40.

Let the mockery begin.

I will be working for a victory for John McCain. I think Obama is a bad leader and would make a terrible President. Nobody who has followed my writing would ever misunderstand that. I hope that McCain is going to win a solid victory in November, and I am praying for an undisputed, clean election.

People with my political beliefs, myself included, made a terrible mistake in the Clinton years. We decided en masse that because he was such a dreadful man, because he was so destructive to the office, that he was no longer our President. That he was illegitimate. That we hated him.

This was a profoundly bad thing for America.

Yes, he was a bad man and he did some terrible things and he was, in fact, profoundly destructive to the office of the Presidency. But we on the right lost sight of something: we were not responsible for what Bill Clinton was. We were responsible for what we were.

Our country is predicated on the idea that we don’t need to have civil wars and hyper-partisan destructive political conflict, because we provide a mechanism for the people to select our leadership. If the people vote for you according to the pre-existing rules, then hey, you’re the leader.

This arrangement is in danger. It was in danger in the 1990s from the right, and it is in danger today from the left. If Obama wins, then it will be the right’s turn to be the ones tearing down the fragile network of customs and beliefs that holds our nation together. I don’t think we should do that. I don’t want to be a part of doing that again. I did it in the 1990s and it was stupid and destructive and wrong of me. I’m sorry about it, but the only thing I can do about it now is to resolve not to do it again.

If Barack Obama wins, reasonably fair, reasonably square, then he will become my President and I will support him. That doesn’t mean I won’t fight him like the devil on all the many, many things he will do that are wrong and bad; I will. That doesn’t mean I won’t criticize him ferociously and with a partisan growl; I will.

But I won’t declare that he is an illegitimate leader.

I won’t undermine him in front of the national leaders that he has to relate to in order to do his job.

I won’t call him President-Select Obama if the Supreme Court has to intervene, again, to keep the electoral machinery moving.

I won’t print up bumper stickers in 2012 saying Re-Unelect Obama.

I won’t, in short, do any of the things that the nauseating anti-Bush left has done in the last eight years. I did that stuff with Clinton, and now that I’ve grown up a little bit, and now that I’ve seen what it looks like when the other side does it to my guy, and now that they’ve held up a mirror, it’s a little bit sickening, and I’m more than a little bit ashamed.

Here’s what it boils down to, folks:

If Obama wins the election, reasonably fair, reasonably square, then he becomes my President and your President.

If McCain wins the election, reasonably fair, reasonably square, then he becomes my President and your President.

This is my pledge, my promise, my what-have-you. It’s written down, in black and white. Call me on it if I renege.

I ask everybody who reads this to do two things if they agree with me.

One, say it loud and say it proud, the winner of the 2008 election is my President, and whether I like him or not, whether I agree with him or not, I’m not going to be a Michael Moore-style flaming gasbag asshat about it.

Two, pass the link along. Send it to your friends, post it on your blog, whatever. It’s important. We are one country, and we have to pull together whether we agree with one another or not.

We are citizens of a republic.  Because our republic is so massively wealthy and so enormous in size, we can afford to have a professional military that has achieved a level of skill and deadliness that is unprecedented in history.  I don’t say that lightly; I’ve studied military issues all my life, grew up in a military family, missed going into the service myself through various physical defects.  I grew up admiring the Roman legions, Alexander’s hoplites, the Zulu Impi, and all the rest.  Military organizations are not the simple product of the weaponry and equipment and logistics that they can bring to bear.  Those things help in achieving deadliness, and they certainly make a huge contribution to the success of any military.  However, what really makes a military are the moral factors - comradeship, duty, loyalty, the feeling of being connected organically to the nation they are fighting for, etc.

Our military has achieved levels of those factors that are extremely high.  That, coupled with training resources that would make Caesar weep with envy, creates a human military that is of unparalleled effectiveness.  When you combine that with the fact that our technology, weaponry, and logistical capabilities are also unprecedentedly awesome, we wind up with, quite literally, the greatest military force in recorded human history.

That creates a problem.  The general citizenry begins to think of itself as being truly distinct from the military class.  We think of soldiers as “those brave men and women who protect us”.  And of course they are - and may God bless every one of them, every day. 

But at the same time, we are losing track of something that has to be a core value of a republic, if that republic is to survive over the long term.  The citizens of the republic, ultimately, are the people responsible for its defense.  We ably discharge our obligation to maintain and support our professional military, and obviously that military is going to be the front line in any conflict.  Consider, though, what happened on 9/11.  I am not the first person to notice that the professional military was not able to defend our country.  (Not their fault, I hasten to add - just the nature of an open society.)  The only effective military action launched on that day was launched by the citizen soldiers of Flight 93 - Americans who realized that they were now in combat, and acted accordingly.

That Flight 93 mentality is the mentality that all of us should be engaged in, all of the time.  I don’t mean that we should be wearing fatigues and constantly scanning the horizon for Charlie.  That would be counter-productive, as well as somewhat silly.  I mean, though, that we all need to realize in our bones that we are soldiers.  We are soldiers far behind the lines, and we are soldiers who have a great deal of material comfort and physical security, but we are soldiers nonetheless. 

Republics are defended, in the final analysis, not by their military forces, but by the fact that in time of need, every single able-bodied citizen is a fighting man or woman.  Al-Qaeda did not make 2,000,000 enemies on 9/11 - they made 300,000,000 enemies.  Every one of us is a citizen soldier, part of the defense in depth of our country, our culture, and our civilization.

That means that when we go on a business trip overseas and get caught by our enemies, we comport ourselves like soldiers.  We don’t give our enemies the propaganda victory they’re looking for; we spit in their faces and we die trying to kill them and get away.

That means that when we’re on an airline and three men suddenly stand up, pull knives, and start heading for the cabin door, we don’t wonder where the air marshal is or call 911 on our cell phones.  We form up and we take them out.

That means that we don’t breed nuance in our hearts, we breed ferocity.  We don’t look for excuses to hand over the job to someone else, we look for opportunities to defend our country. 

We are all of us soldiers, and our enemies should learn the lesson the hard way, every time they make war on America, every time they capture an American, every time they encounter an American.