Half Sigma

Girls getting injured playing sports

There’s a NY Times article about how girls are getting injured at an alarming rate playing sports.

Girl soccer players get injured at the same rate as boy football players. This is not because soccer is as violent a sport as football, but because girls’ bodies are weaker than boys’ bodies and get injured more easily. When boys play the same sport as girls, the girls get injured five times as often as boys.

The cult of athletics doesn’t make much sense even when it’s just applied to boys. Children these days are expected to give their complete devotion to some sport, until they graduate college at the age of 22, at which time they never play that sport again, but they may live with sports injuries for the rest of their lives. Does the system really make any sense?

Feminazi’s with penis envy have now forced this same athletic regimen on girls. Boys at least get some negative-sum advantage in the game of life. For example, I previously blogged about how playing lacrosse leads to good jobs on Wall Street. Also, willingness to suffer injury probably demonstrates some sort of useful alpha-male characteristic. But there don’t seem to be any similar advantages for women.

Demography of eastern Long Island

Some comments to my previous post expressed doubts that there were hardly any white people in the Hamptons. I was referring to the "South Fork" of Long Island between eastern Southampton and Montauk. Unfortunately, there's no Census PUMA code for just that area. PUMA code 4304 is for all of eastern Suffolk County, which includes both "forks" as well as land west of the forks.

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Column percent -N of cases		Distribution
race	1: White	88.5 108,366
	2: Black/Negro	5.4 6,566
	3: American Indian or Alaska Native	.5 603
	4: Chinese	.3 310
	5: Japanese	.1 104
	6: Other Asian or Pacific Islander	.7 901
	7: Other race, nec	2.7 3,255
	8: Two major races	1.8 2,257
	9: Three or more major races	.0 57
	COL TOTAL	100.0 122,419

Eastern Long Island is a pretty white place. I suspect that most of the black people living in the prestigious South Fork are someone's live-in help. Furthermore, most of the rich white people who own homes there don't show up on the Census because they are mostly second homes and not primary residences.

You'll just have to believe me when I say that, when you walk around the main shopping area of Sag Harbor or East Hampton, you don't see a single black person.

The Census "FactFinder" for East Hampton shows that it's officially 3.6% black, but you really don't see them. Remember that the Census also shows that 52.7% of the housing units in East Hampton are vacant so their owners don't show up on the Census at all.

The chart also backs up my point about their not being any Asians in the Hamptons. New York State is 5.5% Asian, but eastern Long Island is only 1.1% Asian.

Democrats: the party of the rich

There’s an article in today’s NY Times about a shop in the Hamptons that sells $3 plastic cups with either Obama, Clinton, or McCain on it. So far the tally of cups sold is: “Barack Obama, 637; Hillary Rodham Clinton, 329; John McCain, 89”

The Hamptons are where rich New Yorkers summer. Clearly the Democratic Party is the party of the rich. For some reason, the Republican Party wrongly has the reputation as the party of the rich, yet actual rich people overwhelmingly support Democrats. The Republican Party is the party of the middle class.

* * *

The Hamptons has to be the whitest place in a hundred mile radius of New York City. You rarely see a minority in the Hamptons, except for nannies. Although Asians have money, they don’t go to the Hamptons. Asians don’t get it.

Anyway, this demonstrates the hypocrisy of the limousine liberals who insulate themselves from the blacks while at the same time they overwhelmingly support a black guy for president.

The funny thing about blogging

The funny thing about blogging is that I tend to do it when I'm procrastinating. When there's nothing that I'm trying to avoid doing, suddenly there's less interest in blogging.

I'm sorry I haven't posted anything for a few days.

We are not "losing" a "war" in Iraq

I'm sick and tired of hearing people say that we are "losing" the "war" in Iraq.

If fifty years ago, you told someone that our troops went into a country, took the place over in a few weeks, and now run the place, they would have responded, "wow, you guys won a really big victory!"

But someone has managed to redefine the term "win" so it means that you have to transform a nation into a peaceful Democracy while taking zero casualties and not being allowed to attack and kill enemy guerillas unless you have a clear shot at them without any women, children, or Mosques in the way.

Obviously the political left is responsible for this redefinition, and the political left is so powerful that they managed to sucker a lot of people in the Bush administration into believing this nonsense.

Yes, the Bush administration is thought of as hardcore conservative, but actually Bush has been brainwashed into believing in liberal left-wing hate-America nonsense. He has bought into the idea that you can't just win a war by taking over a country; he has bought into the nonsense that America is inherently evil and that the only way to cleanse the evilness of a military victory is by subsequently taking a lot of casualties and showing that we are the good guys by bringing peaceful Democracy while, all the time, respecting the most absurd and evil religion on the planet.

The real story is that:

(1) We won the war in Iraq in a few weeks.

(2) It's impossible to bring peaceful Democracy to religious fanatics with lower genetic intelligence than the average caucasian American.

(3) We could reduce our casualties substantially if we made the enemy guerrillas truly fear the consequences of attacking us, both for themselves as well as their families. But then, I don't see the point of keeping our troops there if doing so will just to cost us money without bringing us anything in return except for avoiding the false perception that we "lost."

Measuring capital

This is the second in my series of posts on the capital/labor ratio.

Capital (like labor) is a somewhat abstract concept that can’t be precisely measured. It’s tempting to try to measure capital by looking at fair market values of things that might be considered capital, but that can lead to all sorts of false results.

Take for example Homeowner Bob. Bob bought his house for $200,000 in 1995. Today, the house has a fair market value of $400,000. Based on market value, it might seem that Bob has twice as much capital today as he had 13 years ago. But that’s nonsense, it’s the same house, and in fact there’s less capital in the house than there was 13 years ago because the house now has 13 years of wear and tear.

The reason why housing prices have gone up so much is because of government regulations (such as zoning) which prevent as many houses from being built as the market would otherwise demand. These government regulations, by restricting the creation of housing capital, have the effect of lowering the capital/labor ratio. And as I stated in my first post, a low capital/labor ratio leads to wealth and income inequality.

Because it’s the liberal Democrats who promote policies that restrict the supply of houses (see, for example, my endorsement of John Faso for governor of New York), this demonstrates my previous point about how liberal Democrats have caused the increase in inequality. If people would elect conservative Republicans who promote a laissez-faire approach to homebuilding (an opportunity that New Yorkers rejected when they rejected John Faso and instead elected the Elliot Spitzer), inequality would be reduced.

Flies, like humans, inherit their mental traits

This NY Times article about flies demonstrates what I’ve written about before with respect to humans.

First, scientists bred flies that were better at learning. This proves that, in flies, the ability to learn is a genetically inherited trait. Why do people have such a hard time accepting that the same is true in humans?

Then the scientists mixed up the smart flies with regular flies, in an environment with a limited supply of food. It turns out that the smart flies didn’t survive as well as the regular dumb flies. It’s not clear, exactly, why the smart flies didn’t fare so well, but it would seem that as the flies got smarter, various other traits changed as well.

According to the article, “Dr. Kawecki suspects that each species evolves until it reaches an equilibrium between the costs and benefits of learning.” Yep, I suspect the same thing about human. It’s also interesting to note that, in the modern welfare state, the equilibrium has change. No matter how dumb you are, you can still have children and the welfare state will ensure they grow up to have more children. The welfare state will cause a big dumbing down of humans over the course of future generations.

The capital/labor ratio and inequality

I believe that the capital/labor ratio is one of the primary drivers of wage and wealth equality or inequality.

When the capital/labor ratio is high, that means there’s a relative shortage of labor, so people who own capital have to pay higher wages in order get the labor necessary to make their capital profitable.

When the capital/labor ratio is low, this means there’s a surplus of labor, so wages are depressed, and the worker is often unable to earn enough money to get ahead. When the capital/labor ratio is low, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

The 1950s is often hailed as the golden age of America’s middle class. Strong unions are often cited as a reason for this, but that’s actually a reversal of the cause and effect. In the 1950s, there was a perfect storm of a high capital-labor ratio, and unions and high wages were both the results of the high bargaining power that workers have when there’s a high capital-labor ratio.

There are two political axes in the United States. The conservative-Republican axis doesn’t care that much about wage and wealth inequality. The liberal-Democratic axis claims to care about inequality, but this axis is too stupid to understand economics and, very ironically, it’s the very policies supported by the liberal-Democratic axis that has caused the increase in inequality by lowering the capital/labor ratio.

UPDATE

This is not merely an anti-immigration post; many other factors have conspired to lower the capital/labor ratio. I will write about them in the near future.

White peope imagine that they have black friends

I like this quote from a WSJ article:

Obama, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a Duke sociologist, asked his white students how many had a black friend on campus. All the white students raised their hands.

He then asked the black students how many of them had a white friend on campus. None of them raised their hands.

What does this mean? That the guy who wrote the Stuff White People Like blog was right. White people like having black friends. Or more accurately, white people like to imagine that they have black friends, because it gives them a warm fuzzy feeling that they’re racially enlightened, and not racist like rednecks.

(Unlike the typical white liberal, Half Sigma had a black friend when he was in high school. Half Sigma hung out with him a lot and played chess with him. I guess Half Sigma is more racially enlightened and less redneck than the typical white liberal.)

Hillary Clinton: bad for the environment

The NY Times reports that sales of small, and thus fuel-efficient, cars is up. This is such an unsurprising response to higher gasoline prices that I’m not even sure it that newsworthy.

However, Hillary Clinton wants to reverse this move towards smaller cars by instituting a gas tax holiday. Hillary Clinton: no better for the environment than John McCain.

(It should be noted that Half Sigma thinks global warming is bogus, but Hillary Clinton thinks it's a Big Deal, so her proposed gas tax holiday is pretty darn hypocritical of her. Or perhaps she just has no clue about economics?)

Global cooling ahead

Global warming alarmists are trying to prepare the public for the coming global cooling. They want everyone to believe that it’s just a temporary thing, and eventually everything will go all to hell.

My prediction is that warnings of global warming will just sound like a lot of hot air when the globe actually cools. Most of the supposed evidence for global warming has been of the nature of “look, the earth is hotter now than it was thirty years ago!” What evidence will they have if the globe cools again?

As I’ve previously pointed out, predictions of catastrophic global warming are bogus.

DC elite thinks immigration is "swell"

I don’t have any time to blog today, so please read Steve Sailer’s blog post on Why the DC elite thinks immigration is swell.

Thoughts on the Miley Cyrus brouhaha

I’ve never seen the show “Hannah Montana” and I’ve never seen her sing, so I really have no idea what she’s about. The news articles repeatedly describe her as “wholesome” and as a “role model” for young girls.

How come young boys don’t have any same-aged role models? OK, I suppose that’s a discussion for another post.

It seems to me that the “wholesome” image sells well on the Disney Channel, but what’s the market for “wholesome” adult female actresses and singers? Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be much of a market for that. I remember the first time I saw the famous Julia Roberts. It was the comedy movie in which she played a prostitute. Yet she’s about as wholesome as adult female stars get. More typical is Madonna, who lives off of her slutty image.

Given these realities, it’s obvious that her parents and handlers would want to start positioning the young Miley for her post-Disney career. Miley must be a pretty good actress if she can apologize for this “mistake” with a straight face.

The real dupes here are the church-going people in flyover country who have been sold on the absurd notion that there are rich and famous people, such as Miley Cyrus and her dad Billy Ray “achy breaky heart” Cyrus, who also share their conventional middle class values.

Checking in on Meghan McCain

I haven’t checked in at Meghan McCain’s bloggette for a while. Meghan is still cute and blonde, but the photography still sucks.

Heather Brand, her “professional” photographer writes:

We are creating a photo gallery section of the site that will address different photography-related issues and answer some of the questions about my work.

I want to know why the photography sucks so bad. Why can’t you learn how to bounce a flash, or do color balancing? [Spungen says it's "because they're both busy partying with alpha males" and thus they presumably have no time to bother with boring stuff that's too much like the jobs that regular middle class people have to go to everyday.] Why does every photo look like it was taken with a $200 point and shoot camera?

Young girls from sect had children or are pregnant

According to the Dallas Morning News:

Texas child welfare officials say that more than half the 14- to 17-year-old girls – 31 of 53 – swept into state custody from a polygamist sect's ranch already have children or are pregnant.

There’s no religious freedom in this country if your religion requires you to have sex with young girls.

Too bad we can’t find some loophole to outlaw Islam. Apparently, a religion that requires you to have sex with young girls is worse than a religion that requires you to kill Jews.