Half Sigma

The Social Network and HBD and game

Zuckerberg is portrayed as a bitter nerd. The reason why he’s bitter is because girls don’t like him, and his white girlfriend from BU (played by Rooney Mara who also played the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) cruelly explains that to him at the beginning of the movie when she dumps him. It’s not clear how he even came to have a girlfriend in the first place. One of the unexplained mysteries of the movie.

But after he becomes famous, he gets a bunch of Asian girl groupies, and they even give him blowjobs. The message is that Asian girls like nerdy white computer geniuses, and they like them even better if they are Jewish. For people watching the movie who are too colorblind to get the message, Eduardo Saverin makes the observation out loud.

However, the movie attempts to show that Asian girls can be as big psycho-bitches as white girls. Eduardo’s hot Asian groupie girlfriend attempts to burn down his apartment because he didn’t give her enough attention.

* * *

It has been pointed out that the real-life Zuckerberg has had the same Asian girlfriend the entire time, and that he doesn’t come across as bitter or an asshole in his real-life public appearances like he did in the movie.

So instead of showing the real Zuckerberg, what this movie shows is how liberal arts majors—the kind of people who become screenplay writers and movie directors and actors—think of people like Zuckerberg, in other words STEM types. And it’s not pretty.

(I thank “The Undiscovered Jew” for this insight.)

Travyon Martin, muscular without a shirt

The photo at Lawrence Auster's blog show Travyon showing off his physique to the camera. He's thin, but all muscle. As you would expect from a guy on the high school football team.

The photo helps to explain how Zimmerman, a short fat guy with a desk job, was getting beaten up.

UPDATE

Auster thinks maybe the photo was of some other black guy, so he took it down.

UPDATE: Interview with witness

Click here for an interview with the witness who says that he saw Zimmerman on the ground and Trayvon beating him up, and that it was Zimmerman who was screaming.

The impression I am getting is that Zimmerman was actually on the ground when he pulled the trigger, which means the new Florida law is irrelevant to this case. Zimmerman didn't have an opportunity to get away if he was lying on the ground. This would be considered self defense in any state, so long as Trayvon was the one who started the fight.

More about George Zimmerman

An Orlando Sentinal article has a more recent photo of Zimmerman, showing him in a jacket and tie. But he still looks very Hispanic.

Zimmerman is a mortgage underwriter/analyst, but he hasn’t showed up at work since the day of the shooting.

In addition to his job, he also appears to be a part-time student at Seminole State College.

Also, he’s Catholic, and not Jewish. Furthermore, I don’t have a link to a source, but I have read that his father actually moved here from Mexico. Is a Mexican not a Mexican when he has a German last name?

Regarding Zimmerman’s arrest record, the Sentinel reports:

Zimmerman had been arrested in 2005 at a UCF-area bar and charged with resisting arrest without violence. He completed a pretrial-diversion program, meaning the case was officially dropped, and he wound up with no conviction on his record. It's not clear when, but police did check Zimmerman's criminal record and know about that arrest.

Reported by Fox News:

In July 2005, Zimmerman, then 21, was at a bar near the University of Central Florida when a friend was arrested by state alcohol agents on suspicion of serving underage drinkers, according to an arrest report in the Sentinel. Zimmerman became profane and pushed away an agent who tried to escort him, the report said. Authorities said he was arrested after a short struggle. Charged with resisting arrest without violence, he avoided conviction by entering a pretrial-diversion program, something common for first-time offenders.

Sounds like Zimmerman was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He interfered with an undercover cop arresting his friend for a non-violent crime. He was not involved in a barfight, nor did he punch the cop or anything like that.

* * *

He's really not as much as a loser as I once thought. Maybe he drifted around a bit in his early twenties, but he seemed to have his life together before the shooting incident. He had a job, a wife, owns a house, and was working towards getting his college degree.

* * *

In other news, a special prosecutor was appointed by the Governor of Florida to look into the case. This is bad news for Zimmerman. This special prosecutor is obviously going to go all-out to try to get him convicted.

Future-time orientation map

Who’d have thought such a map was possible? However a while back, the Wall Street Journal created a Metrocard map of New York City that shows what percentage of people in the area around a subway station are using the 30-day unlimited metrocards vs. regular pay-per-ride Metrocards. I assume that people who buy the 30-day card have higher future-time orientation because they have to lay out a large amount of money in advance.

You need to be familiar with the neighborhoods of New York City to filter out some of the noise. Car-friendly neighborhoods, such as the Rockways, tend to have a lower percentage of people using the 30-day Metrocards. And the same for subway stations that attract a lot of tourists. Subway stations in areas with office buildings tell us about the people who work in that neighborhood rather than the people who live in that neighborhood.

However, the map gives us a hint that Asians have the highest future-time orientation because they are the heaviest users of the 30-day Metrocards. Asian areas like Flushing, Chinatown, and the south side of Sunset Park have very high 30-day Metrocard use. Whites come in second, of course. You can see this effect for example in the areas around Prospect Park. The good side of Prospect Park where the whites live (Park Slope) has higher 30-day Metrocard use than the NAM side. In Upper Manhattan, the white neighborhood, Hudson Heights, has higher 30-day Metrocard use then the surrounding Hispanic neighborhoods.

Zimmerman’s 2005 arrest

A lot is made of Zimmerman's arrest in 2005 for an incident which took place in a bar, by people who hope to see Zimmerman convicted of murder. Read this CNN article.

George Zimmerman is obviously not someone who represents the white elite. He’s a fat prole Hispanic guy who didn’t graduate college, and there’s obviously some evidence that he had a hot temper 7 years ago. But people mature a lot between the age of 21 and 28. Today he’s a married homeowner. He’s in a different phase of his life.

In contrast, Trayvon Martin was currently suspended from school, for reasons no one will say, when the incident happened. Maybe he was suspended for starting fights?

* * *

CNN also addresses the issue of whether Zimmerman used a “racial slur” in the 911 call:

A top CNN audio engineer enhanced the sound of the 911 call, and several members of CNN's editorial staff repeatedly reviewed the tape but could reach no consensus on whether Zimmerman used a racial slur.

A surprising admission from CNN.

* * *

People will probably dig up some "racist" sounding statements that Zimmerman may have made in the past, but remember that he's just a prole who didn't graduate from college; he doesn't know how to speak in the politically correct manner of the SWPL elite. If you pick over the life history of any prole, you will usually find that they have said some politically incorrect stuff at some time or other.

Orlando Sentinel Letter

The Orlando Sentinel reports that George Zimmerman’s father, Robert Zimmerman, sent them a one page letter.

The most interesting part of the letter:

"At no time did George follow or confront Mr. Martin. When the true details of the event became public, and I hope that will be soon," the letter said, "everyone should be outraged by the treatment of George Zimmerman in the media."

The implication of that is that George merely got out of his car to look around, and then Trayvon surprised him by charging and attacking. Which would explain why there was grass on George’s back, as reported previously. He was knocked to the ground.

With a black thug beating him up, it’s understandable he would defend himself by shooting. Remember, there’s no report about Trayvon being shot in the back. I'm sure if Travyon had been shot in the back, we would have heard about it by now.

If that's the way it happened. There's no convincing evidence that it didn't happen that way. This is an outrageous case of media bias. The media decided what they story should be, and then they are trying to find facts justifying that depiction while ignoring contrary evidence.

George Zimmerman - Trayvon Martin incident, take 2

The more I think about this story, the more annoyed I get.

The MSM is happily spinning this as large racist white man shoots skinny innocent unarmed black kid, but the story could easily be fat unathletic Hispanic man shoots black football player in self-defense after being attacked and beaten.

The MSM has certainly done a crappy job about telling us anything about the individuals involved. I think they fear to look to closely because they might find that the more they look into the facts, the more it looks like self-defense.

Here’s a Chicago Tribute story about Zimmerman which doesn’t have much information.

From what I gather about George Zimmerman, he’s half white and half Hispanic. I don’t know anything about the exact Hispanic ethnicity of his mother. People have said he is Cuban, but is that based on a well-sourced news story or merely the assumption that there are lots of Cubans in Florida? Zimmerman looks too Mestizo, in my opinion, to be half white and half Cuban. If his last name sounded Spanish instead of German or Jewish, everyone would have said he was an Hispanic and this would not be spun as a "racist" white committing a "hate crime."

By all accounts, Zimmerman is fat, but I have no idea what the source is for his actual weight or size. And then there have been accounts of Trayvon only weighing 140 lbs, but I have no idea where that came from. Did the coroners weigh the dead body and release it to the public? Doubtful. Is his family purposely understating his weight in order to make him appear to be a victim? Probably. Other accounts said that Trayvon is six feet tall and 160 lbs. Big enough, and strong and aggressive enough with his football training, to beat up a fat guy who doesn’t exercise much. Not that I know anything about Trayvon’s exercise routines.

Zimmerman seems to be what some would call a loser. He did not graduate from college. He “aspired” to work in law enforcement, but obviously wasn’t considered qualified enough to get any sort of real job in law enforcement, so as a hobby he patrolled his gated community, an activity in which he was overzealous (because he had nothing else going on to give his life meaning), but he also helped to catch a real thief, and most of his neighbors didn’t mind his activities.

The article says he was married to “Shellie Nicole Dean, a cosmetologist” but there’s no information about whether he’s still married and if not what happened to the marriage. [Update: a commenter says they are still married.] He’s at least alpha enough to get married. As a burly Hispanic man who was arrested once for getting into a bar fight, he has more machismo than a skinny Asian guy.

It’s not clear to me if he’s a homeowner or if he lives with his parents, or even if he has a job. [Update: Based on info that he is still married, I suspect he lives in the house with his wife, and that his parents' names may have appeared on the deed or mortgage because they helped him buy the house (not uncommon), but that has given people the false impression that he lives with his parents.]

Zimmerman certainly doesn't represent the "white racist elite" who run the country.

Less is known about Trayvon. Apparently he has no criminal record and he didn’t commit any crimes that day, at least not before he got into a fight with Zimmerman. However, he was not a nice kid. He was suspended from school (according to CBS News), and you don’t get suspended from school by being the nice angelic kid the media is making him out to be.

The more I think about the more it seems to me like the following happened:

Zimmerman seeks a black kid he’s never seen before walking around the gated community wearing a hoodie. If people don’t get why the kid looks “suspicious” to Zimmerman then they are being purposely dense.

Zimmerman, rather stupidly, gets out of his car and asks the guy “what are you doing here?” or something like that. He asks this in a manner that Trayvon finds offensive, and Trayvon responds by attacking Zimmerman. Trayvon is stronger than Zimmerman (despite weighing less because Trayvon lifts weights with the high school football team while Zimmerman is just fat) and an aggressive fighter. Zimmerman gets scared, after being punched and knocked to the ground, and shoots him.

* * *

Kyle Rogers at the Charleston Examiner does a good job presenting Zimmerman’s side of the story.

Coup in Mali

There was a coup in Mali. The previous “Democratic” government was overthrown.

Now the typical MSM reaction to this is “OMG!!! A COUP!!!! THIS IS HORRRIBLE!!!!!”

But for myself, I don’t know anything about the previous government of Mail, nor do I know anything about what the new military government intends to do, so I have no way of saying whether this turn of events is good or bad.

Muslim kills Jews

It turns out that the suspect in the shootings at the Jewish school in France is named Mohammed Merah, and is a self-proclaimed member of al Qaeda.

Some people on the left assumed this guy must be a neo-Nazi type, but I doubted it. What both the American MSM as well as American white supremacists don't understand is that the modern-day far-right in Europe actually likes Jews and its Muslims whom they have a problem with (for justifiable reasons, I might add).

* * *

A Steve Sailer post this morning points out the epic fail nature of an article from yesterday’s NY Times about how the French shooter, obviously a “nationalist” type in the mind of the reporter, would weaken France’s “far-right” National Front party.

It turns out the shooter was exactly the type of person the National Front party has been warning about, and these shootings will actually strengthen the National Front party.

NAM kills NAM, white racism blamed

In Florida, a Hispanic man shot a black youth, and this is a big news story because it has become a story about a racist white killing an innocent black.

We should be reminded that NAMs kill NAMs and NAMs kill whites all the time, and it’s never much of a story because the mainstream media has low expectations for NAMs.

The shooter, George Zimmerman, looks Hispanic, but the MSM thinks he’s white because (1) he has a non-Hispanic last name (inherited from his non-Hispanic father, but if Obama can have a white mother and still be black, then why can't George Zimmerman have a white father and be Hispanic?); and (2) as a homeowner who’s afraid of black youths walking around in his gated community, he is acting white.

On the other hand, if a bunch of Skinheads killed Mr. Zimmerman, then the same MSM would be saying that he was the Hispanic victim of a racist murder.

* * *

This incident also demonstrates why it's a bad idea to carry a gun around for "self-defense." There's too high of a risk of using it in a manner that gets you convicted of murder.

I think that Zimmerman believed he was shooting a bad guy, but evidence points to a jury not seeing it that way.

* * *

Also, news reports say that the cop reported that Zimmerman was bleeding from his nose and the back of his head and had grass on his back, so unless Zimmerman bloodied himself to fake the look of a fight, the most likely scenario is that Zimmerman (who appears to be a prolish loser) was overzealous in pursuing this kid, and the kid acted in a typically low-class black manner and attempted to assert his manhood by engaging in a physical altercation; god-forbid he lose face to a fat half-white half-Hispanic guy pretending to be a cop.

Fewer taking the LSAT

David Segal writing for the NY Times reports that the number of people taking the LSAT has declined 16% since last year, and furthermore he documents how the perception of law school as a safe haven for those unemployed or underemployed has been changing.

I was at the forefront of the anti-law school movement even before I ever blogged anything; I frequently wrote anti-law school comments on the Vault message boards, but I was a decade ahead of the times.

Apple vs IBM

Market cap comparisons:

IBM: 237.68 billion
AAPL: 553.25 billion

We see that Apple is worth twice as much as IBM.

Back in the late 1980s to early 1990s, the conventional wisdom was that IBM made a bold and correct choice in opening up the PC to allow other companies to clone it, and that Apple was doomed to die out with its closed proprietary model.

How did that eventually work out for the two companies?

More education articles in the NY Times

There are two related articles at the NY Times about race and class at the NYC public schools.

Article one demonstrates that some SWPLs feel intense guilt about sending their children to white schools. The dream school is one where there is the perfect blend of races and social classes, yet their own precious kids don’t have to live in fear of getting beaten up by the NAM kids.

Some SWPL parents apparently think that this ideal exists at P.S. 261 (although I suspect the reality isn’t really as great as they think it is), and are upset about being forced to send their children to whiter charter schools. To quote Ms. Rosenfeld, the parent of a girl in kindergarten:

The apparent reason for opening a charter school in a gentrified neighborhood like Cobble Hill (or the Upper West Side, where a Success Academy opened last year) is to bring more middle-class and upper-middle-class families into the publicly funded charter system. But if the Success Academy succeeds in its mission, it could well end up destroying schools like P.S. 261 that already succeed in attracting these families. My daughter’s new friends include the children of both marketing executives and maintenance workers. At drop-off recently, I watched as she and a friend who lives in a nearby housing project walked hand in hand down the hall. In its promise of a more just world, the sight made me almost teary-eyed. I wonder how much longer those kinds of scenes will prevail.

Nevertheless, at PTA meetings, the rich SWPL parents don’t get along well with the working-class NAM parents. The SWPL parents want to raise funds for the school, while the NAM parents don’t understand why they should be donating money when the education is supposed to be free. The NAM parents don't understand why the events have to have expensive wine when it's much more efficient to mix some cheap booze with Hawaiian Punch (it tastes better, and you get a buzz for a fraction of the price). Even when the SWPLs throw an event that the NAM parents can afford to attend, the NAMs don’t bother to show up.

Whit Stillman in the NY Times

I think that the movie Metropolitan is the greatest movie ever made about young people talking to each other (on the other hand, I didn’t get his third movie Last Days of Disco and I never watched Barcelona). But I never knew much about the filmmaker, Whit Stillman, until I read the biographical article about him in this weekend’s NY Times Magazine.

Like most people who are successful in film, he comes from a privileged background and he attended Harvard, but apparently his father abandoned him after he got remarried and his stepmother apparently convinced him to jettison the kids from the old marriage.

Two additional interesting facts about Stillman are (1) he’s a Republican or at least he’s conservative on certain issues; and (2) he likes Dunkin Donuts. Both of these traits show that he’s an independent thinker who has political believes and tastes in food that are looked down upon by other members of his social class.

He has two daughters. One is a lawyer in Dublin, and the other is attending Columbia University. This demonstrates that eliteness runs in families. Is it merely good genes, or is it the ability to pass on values that are good for getting into Ivy League schools? And of course, having a dad who's a semi-famous filmmaker has to look pretty good on a college application.

Wall-to-wall carpeting vs hardwood floors?

Wood is more prestigious.

Carpeting is better for walking around the house barefoot.

I think rich people only like wood because it's more expensive and older (Paul Fussell explains that rich people like old stuff). What do you think?

Musings on the rent being too damn high

I read Steve Sailer’s take on Matthew Yglesias’ ebook The Rent is Too Damn High, and Yglesias’ own take, and I’m not sure I get the point of any of it.

Ever since I’ve been blogging, I’ve been complaining about the high cost of housing, and I traditionally blamed it on regulations which prevent enough housing units from being built.

Some interesting events have happened since then. There was a real-estate crash, and allegedly one of the causes of the crash was overbuilding of houses! How can there be too many houses if there aren’t enough houses? This real estate crash certainly hasn’t led to lower rents in Manhattan. My rent this year is the highest I ever paid for my crappy apartment, and I expect the greedy building owner to raise the rent again when my lease expires.

Part of the story is that developers built houses in places where the government allowed the houses to be built, but which weren’t necessary desirable places to live. For example, Maricopa, Arizona. Why would anyone want to move to the middle of nowhere?

I also find it weird whenever I read a local real-estate story about developers losing money on condos because they had to sell a one-bedroom condo for only $500,000, or $1,000,000, or some number that would buy several brand-new two-bedroom houses in the Midwest. What causes condos in New York City to be so expensive to build? I don’t work in the real estate industry, but these are guesses:

(1) The developer has to pay a lot of money for the land that condo building is built on, and then it takes time and money to remove the structure that was previously there.

(2) The zoning and approval process takes a long time, which means the money invested in the land has to sit there a long time, and the developer needs to pay interest on that money.

(3) The zoning and approval process uses up a lot of billable hours from attorneys, and BIGLAW lawyers bill at high rates

(4) The unionized construction industry in New York City means the labor costs for the construction of the condo are a lot higher than in the Midwest.

(5) In many cases, condo developers are required to build 20% “affordable” units, which are money-losing units, so the developer needs to charge more for the market-rate units in order to break even.

(6) New units in NYC have really expensive “finishes,” whereas that cheap house in the Midwest probably has wall-to-wall carpeting and GE appliances.

But still, the cost of many of these things above can be alleviated with easier zoning and regulations, and by allowing denser construction so the costs can be spread among more units.

However, there’s still the problem of positional competition among the really rich people who live in New York City. One factor that significantly raises the cost of housing is the existence of a lot of rich people. It’s a factor that I’ve only recently come to understand and didn’t get nine years ago when I started blogging. Some conservative types always ask, “why should I care if someone else gets rich? I should be happy for them!” Actually, you should care because they bid of the price of all goods and services that are in limited supply. Part of the reason why housing is so expensive in New York City is related to the reason why pre-school costs $30,000 in New York City, and even with such high prices the waiting list is so long that mothers have to apply while they are still pregnant otherwise their kids don’t get in.

Santorum's last gasp

The headline news is that Santorum "won" last night, but if you look at the actual delegate count from last night, Romney is actually the winner. At least that's what it shows on the front page of the NY Times, Romney 38, Santorum 35. That probably includes "superdelegates" who support Romney and weren't decided in yesterday's elections, but nevertheless, in order to catch up to Romney Santorum needs big delegate wins, and he didn't get that last night.

Once the primaries move to Romney-friendly areas of the country, Santorum is finished. Good riddance. The GOP needs smart people like Romney, not religious nuts with unexceptional mental abilities.

* * *

And to some commenters who will complain that Romney isn't conservative enough to win the general election, that's just stupid talk. The states where Santorum does well, the southern states, are solid Republican states that will vote against Obama no matter who is running. Romney has the best chance of winning swing states like Florida.

The real base of the Republican party is college-educated white people. This demographic is strongly Republican, and the exit polls from the primaries always show that Romney does better among college graduates than among non-college graduates.

Romney also does better among women, and this is a very important demographic for winning the general election, because there are more female voters and they tend to vote for the guy they like for reasons having nothing to do with policy positions.

No Dune remake

I think I gave out some misleading info yesterday. It was reported a year ago that the Dune remake was scrapped.

This is kind of sad. I think that Dune could be a good movie if they do it right. The focus needs to be on impressive-looking interiors (unlike the 1984 movie in which the imperial throne room looks like the basement of my apartment building with a few plastic royal doodads), and play up the romance between Paul and Chani who should be played by a hot young actress. Paul’s mother, Jessica, should also be a hot MILF. Not bald and scary-looking like in the horrible 1984 movie. Some romance scenes between her and Duke Leto; the audience needs to like him so they feel really bad when he’s killed by the Harkonnens. Add some Dances with Wolves stuff with Paul learning the Fremen ways, and some good classical music. Fewer scenes with the Baron Harkonnen who is just a generic bad guy and shouldn’t steal scenes from the Atriedes.

How the government can fix the college problem

In certain quarters of the right-wing blogosphere, people dream about a future in which the higher education oligopoly is broken. But the right-wingers have an incorrect understanding of the problem and what’s needed for there to be a solution.

In a column from last weekend’s NY Times, Robert Frank explains that college costs are rising because of a prestige race:

But there’s a second major source of tuition growth that universities are less able to ameliorate on their own: the escalating competition for academic prestige.

This phenomenon is rooted in the growing disparities in graduates’ starting salaries, which resemble those we’ve seen for the country as a whole. After adjusting for inflation, starting salaries for most graduates have remained essentially stagnant for several decades, while those at the bottom of the group have actually declined. Only the highest-paid graduates have enjoyed significant salary growth, and among those a very thin slice at the top has seen truly spectacular increases.

Because of the bitter competition for those premium salaries, elite educational credentials are often a precondition for even landing a job interview. With so many applications for every vacancy, many consulting firms and investment banks, for example, now consider only candidates from a short list of top-ranked schools.

Degrees from those schools clearly open doors. For example, more than 40 percent of the 2007 graduating class at Princeton landed one of the most highly sought prizes: a position in the lucrative financial services industry.

Universities have responded vigorously to escalating student demands for elite degrees. Their main strategy has been to bid more aggressively for the most distinguished researchers, which explains not only the rapid salary growth for top faculty members in the last several decades, but also the fact that teaching loads at many elite schools have decreased by more than 25 percent. Similar, albeit smaller, changes in salaries and workloads have percolated throughout higher education.

Yet no matter how much universities might spend in pursuit of elite status, only 10 percent at any moment can end up in the top 10 percent.

We should also note that it’s private industry that’s pushing along the status quo. Elite financial services and professional services firms, the firms that pay the highest salaries, only want to hire from the best schools. And it’s not simply about hiring people with the highest IQs; they don’t seek out candidates with high IQs from non-elite schools. They don’t think about IQ as much as people reading HBD blogs think about it, and certainly not in the same way. To the extent they want to hire smart people, they most likely subscribe to the belief that Harvard education makes people smart, and not the other way around.

Alt-right suggestions, such as Randall Parker’s ideas about online education, are not going to take off as long as the best employers are just going to laugh at the idea.

If the status quo is going to change, it needs to come from, the government. That’s right, only the evil government can do something about the problem.

Let’s note how the government currently subsidizes the higher-education racket:

1. Federal financial aid to students.
2. Federal financial aid to universities.
3. Federally guaranteed student loans which can’t be discharged in bankruptcy.
4. Colleges are “non-profit” so they don’t pay taxes.
5. Donations to colleges are tax deductible.
6. Federal government hiring practices which require educational credentials.
7. Government bans IQ tests and other employee testing in certain situations which creates the perception among some that it’s altogether forbidden. On the other hand, no one has ever lost a disparate impact lawsuit for requiring job applicants to have college degree.

Government, however, has the power to fix the problem using the following methods:

1. Create a government-approved alternate credential method. So you can get a government-issued degree in business or engineering or what-not by passing a series of exams. There would be no “residency” requirement for getting this government-issued degree. If someone has the willpower to study for the tests without ever taking a formal class, then great for them.

2. The government must use this new credential as the only basis for government hiring. This will create prestige around the new credential, and as the nation’s biggest employer, the government has the ability to make a lot of jobs available for holders of the new credential.

3. The government grants immunity from disparate impact lawsuits when using the new credential to make hiring decisions.

4. Eliminate government aid to schools and students and eliminate student loans. This will force poor people to use the new less expensive credential method. The only government aid should be in the form of government-sponsored test-prep schools, although people would be free to attend private test-prep (which of course they will).

Will my ideas ever happen? Not very likely. The elite, the people who control everything, are happy with the status quo and have no desire to change it.

Living next door to a prison

This NY Times article expresses surprise that a women’s prison hasn’t lowered the property values of the luxury condominium building next door.

But why should it? The inmates are kept locked up. It’s much more dangerous to live next to a housing project, which houses a large number of undesirables who should be in prison but are allowed to roam free.

$30,000 tuition for private school for 1-year-olds?

That's right, the Wall Street Journal reports that rich parents in Manhattan are enrolling their children under-two in early learning programs with $30,000 tuition, so that their children don't get left behind. And demand is so high that mothers have to enroll their children during the first trimester of pregnancy, otherwise they won't get in. And their children could still get rejected if they fail the interview.

Dune: the worst sci-fi movie ever made?

In my previous post about the failure of John Carter, I suggested that sci-fi movies that take place on desert planets don’t do very well at the box office.

It’s possible I was trying to hard too find a correlation that doesn’t exist, but unfortunately the sample size is small so we will probably not be able to know for sure. But independent of the ugly desert landscape, it’s my opinion that Dune was the worst sci-fi movie ever made.

I remember going to see it in 1984 with my high school sci-fi friends. And I thought it was absolutely horrible. However, after I wrote my blog post comparing Avatar to Dune, I got suckered into re-watching Dune. There are a bunch of reviews at Netflix suggesting that Dune is a lost classic, misunderstood, etc. So I gave it another try, and that made me pretty certain that Dune is indeed the worst sci-fi movie ever. The movie has no redeeming qualities.

I am going to go out on a limb here and predict that the 2014 Dune remake is going to be another flop. It still has the desert thing going against it, and maybe Dune is a story that just doesn’t work well as a movie.

The Lord of the Rings was successfully made into three movies, but LOTR doesn’t take place in a desert.

John Carter, a huge flop

It cost $350 million to create and market the movie, and it’s a huge flop (relative to the whopping amount of money spent on it—it will still gross more than a Woody Allen movie).

I didn’t watch the movie, but I doubt it’s any worse than profitable movies like the last three Star Wars prequels and various comic-book-based movies.

What did they do wrong? Here are my guesses:

(1) Not a sequel to a previous successful move or old TV show (especially if based on a comic book).
(2) Unknown actor. Who the heck is Taylor Kitsch?
(3) Takes place on a desert planet. Movies on desert planets always do poorly unless they are a Star Wars sequel. Remember the failure that was Dune? People want to see trees, like in Avatar.

If the movie starred Tom Cruise (if he's not too old to play an action hero), took place on a planet with trees, and was called Star Wars Episode XXII, it would have been a huge success, even though it had the exact same story.

Underoccupied public housing

According to this NY Times article, one-third of public housing units are “underoccupied.” Which means there are two few people living in the apartment for the size of the apartment. The most common type of underoccupied apartment is an older unmarried woman living by herself.

What’s funny is the Housing Authoritiy’s cluelessness in dealing with the problem. They sent out letters kindly asking people to voluntarily move to smaller apartments, in different housing projects, offering nothing but a $350 stipend to cover moving expenses (not high enough to cover the cost of professional movers), and with absolutely no negative consequence to ignoring the letter. It’s hardly surprising that people are going to voluntarily surrender a really cushy living situations paid for by the taxpayers. (I should add that it's only cushy if you don't mind living in a housing project full of poor people. But it's probably safe enough if you're an older black woman and you avoid going out at night.)

Inequality and the murder rate

Yesterday in the NY Times Economix blog, there was a post by Catherine Rampell about inequality by county.

I felt that there wasn’t anything that useful in there. It’s easier to do this analysis by State. So look at this Wikipedia article listing the Gini coefficient by state.

And then look at this chart showing the murder rate by state.

Notice that there is a very strong correlation between having a low Gini coefficient (which means less inequality) and having a low murder rate. So if people ask, what’s the benefit of having less inequality, the answer might be that it significantly decreases the chance that you will be murdered.

West Virginia is an interesting state to look at. Most of the states with a low murder rate and low Gini coefficient are white states, but West Virginia is one of the top-four whitest states along with Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. But West Virginia has both a higher Gini coefficient and a higher murder rate than the three other whitest states.

There are two factors that increase the Gini coefficient of a state; poor people and rich people. I suspect that West Virginia, although there aren’t many rich people there, has a lot of poor white people living there. This poor white trash commits crime and increases the Gini coefficient.

Vermont is an outlier state because it has a much lower murder rate than is predicted by its average Gini coefficient. Unlike West Virginia which has inequality caused by a lot of poor people, the inequality of Vermont is caused by too many rich people.

Alaska is another interesting outlier state. Alaska has a low Gini coefficient, yet a high murder rate. Maybe it's caused by the labor shortage which causes people who would be poor in any other state to have a middle-class salary. This demonstrates the truth of HBD: you can give a poor person a higher-paying job, but he still acts like a poor person.

I think the lesson of Alaska and Vermont is that people with bad genes cause crime and not inequality, but that getting rid of the people with bad genes tends to lower inequality because then there are fewer poor people around.

Shocking Breitbart video not that shocking

So the video was released, and it shows that Obama was a buddy of Harvard law professor Derrick Bell.

This is evidence that Obama sympathizes with the leftist worldview of people like Derrick Bell, a worldview far outside the mainstream, and he only pretends to be moderate in order get votes and surreptitiously implement his true hidden leftist agenda.

But big deal, there was already plenty of evidence of the above before the release of the video, and this new piece of information isn’t going to change any minds. It’s like a new damning piece of evidence showing that HBD is true. No one cares; there was already overwhelming evidence of the truth of HBD two decades ago, so new evidence does nothing.

If Breitbart was murdered, it certainly wasn’t because of this video.

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It will be several weeks before we get the results of Breitbart’s toxicology report. I predict the report will show that there’s no evidence of poisoning.

Super Tuesday analysis

Santorum won in all of the Bible Belt states, Gingrich won his home state (Georgia, also a Bible Belt state), Romney won everywhere else.

Don't confuse Bible Belt with conservative. Wyoming and Idaho are very conservative, but they are libertarian conservative and not Bible Belt conservative.

Callista Gingrich bought $500,000 of jewelry from Tiffany’s

Yes, this is old news.

But it’s relevant again because a day or two ago, Newt was criticizing Romney for being too rich to care about gasoline prices (although Romney has clearly stated that he supports various policies that will increase oil and gas production).

A guy whose wife spends half a million dollars on jewelry at Tiffany’s has no business criticizing Romney for being too rich.

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This reminds me of a line from the movie Wall Street, in which Bud Fox's blue collar dad, played by Martin Sheen, tells Bud, played by Martin Sheen's real-life son Charlie Sheen, after meeting his beautiful and sophisticated girlfriend played by Daryl Hannah:

I don't go to bed with no whore, and I don't wake up with no whore. That's how I live with myself. I don't know how you do it.

I was never entirely sure about whether or not I agreed with Bud's dad. But I am sure that a lot of older blue collar guys probably feel that way about Callista. I wonder what the blogger formerly known as Roissy thinks about Callista.

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If you've never seen Wall Street, you need to Netflix it right away; it's one of the best movies ever made about social class differences in New York City.

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This also reminds me of the song Losing my Religion by REM, because Newt, in addition to buying Callista a fortune in jewelry, also had to convert to Catholicism to please her.

I think the way that Newt sold out to Callista is like the way he sells out his political principles to the highest bidder such as Fannie Mae.

Lawsuit against law schools

A reader provided me the link to this NY Magazine article about a class action lawsuit against law schools, for committing consumer fraud by lying about their job placement statistics.

I think this lawsuit is a great idea. Back in 2004, I wrote in my previous blog that I suspected law schools of lying about their job placements, and stated that their statistics couldn’t be trusted unless they were independently audited. This is what I wrote:

I further suspect that some law schools outright lie on their reported career placement statistics. Think about public companies. They have a strong incentive to lie on their financial statements, so that is why they have to prepare their statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, and the accounting has to be audited by an independent public accounting firm. Despite these safeguards, companies like Enron are still caught lying on their financial statements.

I will be happy if proven right.

Mitt is right on gasoline prices

Read about the controversy here.

Mitt Romney is correct that the President cannot magically bring about $2.50 gasoline prices, unless of course you want to resort to communistic solutions such as socializing the oil and gas industry and then selling the gasoline below cost.

Sure, we want to encourage more domestic production, but remember that gasoline is a worldwide traded commodity. How is the President going to stop China from demanding ever more petroleum?

Newt Gingrich calling Romney too rich to understand what it’s like to be a regular person is like the pot calling the kettle black. Newt makes millions of dollars a year from his lobbying business.

This is why I support Romney over all other candidates. Romney is the only candidate who sounds like an intelligent person most of the time, and usually keeps the policy debate at a more intelligible level instead of resorting to stupid and gimmicky soundbites.