Month: July 2012 (Page 1 of 3)

Over at Balloon Juice, Tim F. discussed an article in Pat Buchanan’s stopped watch of a publication, The American Conservative entitled Race, IQ, and Wealth by Ron Unz. It is worth a read.

But I have my own thoughts on this subject. Let us assume, for a moment, that the patrons at the local Heritage Preservation and Patrician Social Club (whites only, please) are correct in their assessment that intelligence is inversely proportional to dermal melanin production. The name of their holy book, The Bell Curve, seems to lend itself to some impressive irony. Suppose blacks have a 5 point deficit in IQ over their white counterparts. Then a man with an IQ of 100 would expect to be smarter than approximately half the white population. Where would this man stand compared to those people (wink, wink)? Well, here is the picture mathematically:

Let the two functions represent the two IQ distributions by race. We can see that even if the claims of race-based IQ differences were not unsupportable scientifically, the average guy with his 100 IQ will still be “inferior” to nearly a third of the “inferior” race. It’s right there in the picture. Of the Gaussian distribution, which is usually called the bell curve by people who do not understand statistics.

Caveats:
1) Different populations of so-called “blacks” in Africa can be more distant genetically than a Belgian is from a Cambodian.
2) I completely made up the IQ difference as part of a hypothetical question.

I was browsing one of my daily reads and noticed something a bit odd. The proprietor of that site used to be a bit of a right winger (though I am hesitant to call him a loon, as he generally kept reasonable standards even then). In fact, he was one of the original suckers contributors in the Pajamas Media debacle experiment. So he still merits anti-Democratic Party ads. A little while ago, I spotted one that struck me as a bit odd. I didn’t really get it at first. Occasionally our brains are on to certain nuances our consciousness takes longer to parse. There was something a bit off in an anti-Obama ad. I went back and looked at it a while later. I did some manipulation in MS Paint to see if I could demonstrate the differences that I could not describe. This is what I found:

See if you notice any differences…

Basically, it comes down to this. Some Romney advertiser must have said something to the effect of, “We must make Barack Obama look slightly more… how should I say it… black, black, blackity, black in any depiction in our advertising.” And behold, we see the result.

I just saw a picture of Rob Pattison that, for some reason, made me think of John Belushi:

It’s just me, I suppose…

Yesterday, Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) declared that the Obama Administration has leaked classified information for its own benefit. I am sure the good Senator has met with the Justice Department and the FBI to ensure that justice is swiftly brought to the perpetrator or perpetrators. What’s that? She hasn’t? Surely Senator Feinstein knows that withholding evidence of a breach of national security is itself a crime. It would be quite odd that she should lay down her career and even her personal freedom for the sake of someone in the Obama administration. She hasn’t been particularly friendly thereto thus far.

Of course, it could be that she’s completely full of shit.

Either way, I’m sure some expensively coiffed professional news-read-aloud-person will declare that Senator Feinstein is taking a courageous stand against an out-of-control Obama “regime.”

I occasionally peruse right wing websites, but not a great amount. So I find it a little odd that the ads that show up on websites are heavily skewed in that direction. By heavily skewed, I mean about 100% of the political ads are of the following types:

1. Support of Romney
2. Criticism of Obama
3. Nutball conspiracy theories by clowns like Michelle Bachmann (R-Mars) or Sheriff Joe Arpaio (R-KKK)
4. “Join [Boehner, Ryan, or some other (R-Ayn Rand)] in defending America from that [dog whistle word or phrase meaning Negro]”

They must have a ton of money to burn. Thank you, Citizens United!