Half Sigma

Reviewing my past posts on Obamacare

On April 4th, I wrote:

I previously said that I thought the Justices were just making a show at oral argument and would ultimately not find it unconstitutional because “the Supreme Court hasn’t found a major piece of economic legislation unconstitutional for violating the enumerated powers of Congress since the 1930s.”

But instead of repeating what I said above, Obama put his foot in his mouth and said the Supreme Court shouldn’t overturn any laws passed by a democratically elected Congress. I think that the Supreme Court will respond by proving Obama wrong. The Supreme Court will probably find the law unconstitutional based on a technicality of wording. You can’t force people to buy health insurance, but it’s OK to raise their taxes and give them free health insurance, so the statute would just need to be revised to put it that way. Which probably won’t happen because of the deadlocked political process.

I think my previous post is very interesting in light of what actually happened. There has been evidence that Roberts changed his mind at the last minute. I think he was pissed at Obama and was going to find the law unconstitutional (which would have created a 5-4 majority), but then decided it would be bad jurisprudence to find a law unconstitutional because of a “technicality of wording.” As I wrote in April (and it wasn’t an original thought), everyone agrees that it’s OK to raise taxes and give people free health insurance. That’s Medicare. It’s also OK create a tax credit for buying an electric car, which is no different than creating a tax penalty if you don’t buy an electric car, except the wording is different.

Top-14 or bust

The Wall Street Journal article from earlier this week has an awesome interactive chart showing how well graduates fare from all law schools.

No surprise to me, graduates from Top-14 law schools, especially top-six law schools, do vastly better in the job market than graduates from lesser law schools. The top nine schools on the chart for graduates “Employed in jobs requiring a law degree” are all Top-14 schools. At many lesser schools, less than half the class finds jobs which require a law degree. At the “University” of Puerto Rico, not a single graduate is known to have found a job in law.

There are a few weird exceptions, such as the very high employment rate from Louisiana State University, which makes me wonder if some schools are submitting false data. As far as I can tell, the ABA simply created a much stricter methodology for law school job placement reporting, and this is a great step in the right direction, but there’s no auditing of the data so we don’t know if schools are fraudulently submitting bogus data.

The statistics also don’t distinguish between a graduate working at BIGLAW and making $160K/year (which may be increasing to $180K for some lucky first-year associates), and a graduate working for some small divorce lawyer for $10/hour or less, which happens quite frequently. There’s very little middle-ground in entry-level law salaries; it’s either a high BIGLAW salary, or too low to justify the cost of attending (tuition plus the loss of three years not doing something else).

Obamacare upheld

On March 27th, I wrote:

The Supreme Court hasn’t found a major piece of economic legislation unconstitutional for violating the enumerated powers of Congress since the 1930s. And the Supreme Court today is truly conservative, not in the liberal-conservative sense, but in the sense that they don’t want to make big waves and they generally accept prior Supreme Court precedent.

So I find it hard getting excited about this when I am nearly certain the outcome will be that Obamacare is upheld.

The Arizona lawsuit was a much stronger case for the conservative side winning, so the loss for conservatives on that case presaged a loss on Obamacare.

Also, I think the Court was plain wrong on Arizona, but the Court correctly followed precedent from the 1930s and 1940s here.

PDA by the subway entrance

They were going at it like teenagers.

* * *

Regarding the alleged invasion of their privacy, they chose to do this in front of the main entrance to the seventh-busiest subway station in New York City. That's the "Public" in PDA.

Do you spy on your kids?

There’s a NY Times article about parents who use technology to spy on their kids online activities on both computers and mobile devices. (But strangely, there’s no app that records your kids’ phone calls so you can listen to them later.)

I don’t have any children, so I don’t really know what I would do. I do know that when I was a kid, I wouldn’t have liked my parents doing that.

Once upon a time, the only way for a boy to see a naked girl was to convince a girl to take off her clothes. Then they invented photography. Then there were magazines like Playboy featuring pornographic photos. And now instant access to pornographic photos, and videos, on your computer.

Do you spy on your kids? Is there any scientific evidence about harm caused to kids if they view porn?

Arizona v. U.S.

The Supreme Court decision yesterday was a big loss for conservatives. Justice Thomas agreed with everything I previously wrote on this topic (maybe he has been reading my blog), and Justice Scalia came up with a totally surprising argument about State sovereignty which I had never thought of before.

The takeaway from this case is that it’s OK for states to pass laws that are more liberal than federal laws, for example no one cares that California has tougher environmental laws than the federal government, or that many states have higher minimum wages are greater penalties for violating the labor laws. In fact, it’s especially hard to see how the Justices could find Arizona’s tougher sanctions for employers hiring illegal aliens to be preempted by the federal statutes because there’s such a long history of states imposing tough laws on employers, and penalizing employers is not penalizing illegal aliens.

I always figured that conservatives had a much greater chance of winning on the Arizona case than they did on the review of Obamacare; the Supreme Court hasn’t found a major piece of economic legislation unconstitutional for violating the enumerated powers of Congress since the 1930s. Maybe Obama has some secret means to get the Roberts and Kennedy to do what he wants, so it’s likely that this same crew will support Obamacare which is even more important to Obama than overturning the Arizona immigration statute.

Under the tree

In the previous post, people wanted to know what was going on under the tree.

It luckily happens that I took a second photo, and then I heavily cropped it to get the tree area. I think some non-SWPLs, possibly even Hispanics, are having a picnic, but most of the people in the vicinity of the tree are just there for the shade.

Olympus OM-D E-M5 part 6: photos from Manhattan

There’s a new building dominating the midtown skyline: One57, a combination hotel/condo. This building tops 1,000 feet in height. The Essex House hotel next to it, of which only the sign atop the building is visible, has 43 floors, so that should give you an idea of how tall this project is.

How do I feel about the new building? As someone who doesn’t have any ownership interest in Manhattan real estate, I’m always happy to see more residential units go up because it means lower prices (the basic rules of supply and demand). However, One57 is only going to have 135 residential units, and prices start at $7.4 million, so this will have close to zero impact on my end of the market. I’d really like to see a big development that creates thousands of new apartments.

The people in the building across the street, whose views are being obstructed, are probably pretty pissed about this, but I can’t really feel sorry for people who are so rich that they can afford to live on the top floors of that other building.

At the bottom of the photo is the roof of what used to be Tavern on the Green.

The Sheep Meadow is a popular place for SWPLs to sunbathe (although there’s a person in a gray t-shirt near the bottom left of the photo who looks too large to be a SWPL).

This is an activity I don’t get at all. Sitting in the hot sun feels more like torture than anything I’d want to do for “fun.” Some of the people look like they are reading books, or at least pretending to, but a good number of sunbathers are just sitting there and vegetating.

If you sit in front of your computer, in a comfortable air-conditioned room, and play a game of Civilization IV, society thinks you’re a loser, but if you sit outside in the sun while doing nothing except increasing your chance of dying from cancer, then you’re one of the cool people (figuratively speaking). (This topic was mentioned by Christian Lander, the dean of SWPL.)

Olympus OM-D E-M5 part 5: HBD street photography

The E-M5 is perhaps the ultimate camera for street photography. It has a quieter shutter than previous micro-four-thirds cameras, and it’s quite small with the 14mm f/2.5 pancake lens which I used to take these photos. If I had bought the all-black model it would have been more discreet, but I couldn’t resist the beautiful retro looks of the silver model.

The feature which makes it really great for street photography is the touchscreen tilting OLED display. This allows you to look down at the camera (which makes it look like you are just fiddling with it and not framing it to take a photo) and then you just touch the screen where you want the camera to focus, and BAM! it takes a picture for you.

In the first street photo, shown above, the main area of interest is at the bottom right where we see some tourists from the Midwest eating an early dinner. I know that they are not from Manhattan based on their looks and their heft. People who live in Manhattan aren’t that heavy. Unless they are NAMs. There are some heavy whites in the outer boroughs, but this group looks like Midwest tourists and not bridge-and-tunnel prole whites.

Another element in this photo that I like is the man sitting down in the middle, two tables back, with a little blonde girl standing up next to him who is presumably his daughter. They obviously live in Manhattan.

The tourists probably think they are eating a fancy Manhattan meal, while the guy from Manhattan thinks this restaurant is just for taking his daughter out for a quick dinner while his wife is off doing something else.

In the photo above we see some more fat tourists from the Midwest. The tourist on the left is holding onto a cup from McDonalds which clearly looks to be bigger than 16 ounces. Now Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed ban on large soft drinks makes perfect sense.

But what’s interesting is the woman on the right who appears to be part of this group, yet she looks Indian. Why would these fat women from the Midwest be hanging out with an Indian girl? I may add that, although she’s on the voluptuous side, she’s quite attractive.

Maybe this fat woman from the Midwest adopted an Indian orphan girl, and they fed her really well from McDonalds, and she grew up to be this tall beautiful voluptuous Indian girl, totally outclassing her natural daughter seen in the middle of the photo.

No one seems to mind when I post photos of unattractive or old people, but when I post a street photo of a beautiful girl, some people think it’s pervy for some reason. But I’m going to risk getting those comments because this is just too good of a photo not to post.

Unlike the people in the previous photos, she clearly lives in Manhattan or maybe the SWPL parts of Brooklyn, and is not a tourist.

Olympus OM-D E-M5 part 4: aboard the Staten Island Ferry

I had to ride the Staten Island Ferry today. But I brought my Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera with me so I could take some tourist photos.

Shortly after taking the photo above, two young Lubavitch Hasidim walked down the aisle asking people “are you Jewish?” If you answer “yes,” then they try to talk you into doing a religious ritual with them. They walked right past me without asking. I guess I didn’t look Jewish. Or maybe I just didn’t look like I was in need of a religious ritual.

The Lubavitchers then spent a really long time talking to the guy in the photo above, but I never did see a religious ritual performed, so I guess they weren’t able to convince him of the value of doing a mitzvah.

Even though we are having a heat wave in New York City, the Lubavitch guy on the left is still wearing a dark jacket. The Lubavitch guy on the right went a little crazy and is only wearing a shirt.

Why do the Lubavitch care if non-observant Jews do a religious ritual? I have no idea. I also don’t understand why Christian religious nuts care so much about whether some atheist woman can abort her demon-spawn.

Olympus OM-D E-M5 part 3: autofocus on a mirrorless camera

A commenter suggested that the mirrorless Olympus OM-D E-M5 can’t be as good as a DSLR because it can’t possibly focus as fast.

Actually, Olympus claims that they have achieved the world’s fastest autofocus speed with the E-M5. Maybe there’s an asterisk in there somewhere, but the camera’s “Single AF” speed is probably faster than any DSLR in the same price range. (You should look at real camera review sites for actual focus-speed measurements.)

For some background here, autofocus DSLRs use phase detection autofocus (PDAF), which uses different areas within the lens to create a rangefinder which can determine how much out of phase the high-contrast areas in the focusing area are off, and move the lens exactly the correct amount to put it into focus.

Contrast detection autofocus (CDAF) is a more iterative process which focuses the lens the way a human would, which is to move the lens around until the focus area is as sharp (highest contrast) as possible. This is the focus method used on all non-DSLR autofocus digital cameras, and yes, traditionally it has been a lot slower. But thanks to Moore’s law, the computing power now exists to read out the sensor, determine contrast in multiple areas of the image, move the lens, and then do it over and over again, all in just a fraction of a second.

The advantage of CDAF is that it’s more accurate because it doesn’t depend on the precise calibration of the lens and the PDAF mechanism. CDAF uses the same sensor that records the image to determine sharpest focus. Online photography forums are full of complaints from people having focusing problems with their DSLR systems, especially when they use wide-aperture lenses. This generally doesn’t happen with CDAF-based focusing systems.

CDAF also allows other neat tricks. For example, there’s a face-detect mode in which the camera is able to identify a face and focus on the eyes. And the E-M5 has a touchscreen display; just touch the display where you want to focus, and the camera will focus there and take a picture.

But PDAF still retains an advantage with 3D focus tracking, because PDAF is an inherently three-dimensional measurement. However, most inexpensive DSLRs lack enough focus points to have quality 3D focus tracking. I see PDAF becoming a niche thing for people photographing sports, with CDAF being becoming the preferred choice for regular photography because of its better accuracy and other features.

Religiosity and NOT intelligence is correlated with fertility

This is a follow-up of a post from 2006 that everyone has forgotten about.

I’ve added Wordsum to the regression analysis.

Variables
Role	Name	Label	Range	MD	Dataset
Dependent	CHILDS	NUMBER OF CHILDREN	0-8	9	1
Independent	EQWLTH	SHOULD GOVT REDUCE INCOME DIFFERENCES	1-7	0,8,9	1
Independent	BIBLE(1-3)	FEELINGS ABOUT THE BIBLE	1-4	0,8,9	1
Independent	WORDSUM(3-10)	NUMBER WORDS CORRECT IN VOCABULARY TEST	0-10	-1,98,99	1
Weight	COMPWT	Composite weight = WTSSALL * OVERSAMP * FORMWT	.1927-11.1290		1
Filter	YEAR(2000-2010)	GSS YEAR FOR THIS RESPONDENT	1972-2010		1

Regression Coefficients					Test That Each Coefficient = 0
	B	SE(B)	Beta	SE(Beta)	T-statistic	Probability
EQWLTH	.031	.017	.038	.020	1.857	.064
BIBLE(1-3)	-.369	.048	-.159	.021	-7.606	.000
WORDSUM(3-10)	-.001	.020	-.001	.021	-.030	.976
Constant	2.385	.144			16.558	.000

The purpose of this regression analysis is to tell us what predicts the number of children people report having. (That's the variable CHILDS.)

What this regression is telling us is that Wordsum (which is a good proxy for intelligence) has absolutely no correlation with number of children, when these other two variables are included in the regression analysis. (Without those other two variables, Wordsum would have a -0.045 correlation with number of children and a T-statistic of -3.797).

The most powerful correlation with number of children is religiosity. Let me remind you of the text for this question:

120a. Which of these statements comes closest to describing your feelings about teh Bible? 1. The Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word. 2. The Bible is the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally, word for word. 3. The Bible is an ancient book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts recorded by men.

The predicted difference between being a fundamentalist Christian (answering #1) or being a non-believer in the Bible although often still a believer in a more abstract concept of God (answering #3) is having an extra 0.74 children, which is a pretty huge difference for one little variable.

The other question, EQWLTH goes like this:

74a. Some people think that the government in Washington ought to reduce the income differences between the rich and the poor, perhaps by raising the taxes of wealthy families or by giving income assistance to the poor. Others think that the government should not concern itself with reducing this income difference between the rich and the poor. Here is a card with a scale from 1 to 7. Think of a score of 1 as meaning that the government ought to reduce the income differences between rich and poor, and a score of 7 meaning that the government should not concern itself with reducing income differences. What score between 1 and 7 comes closest to the way you feel?

I think this question is a good proxy for having “liberal” or “conservative” economic views, and it’s asked on the GSS every year. The difference between being an extreme liberal and an extreme conservative on this issue is a modest 0.19 children.

So when people say that conservatives have more children, or that intelligent people have fewer children, they are actually wrong. What’s really happening here is that having “conservative” politics is correlated with being more religious, and being more intelligent is correlated with being less religious, and it’s really being religious which causes people to have more children.

It’s possible that cause and effect could run the other way. Does having children cause people to change their beliefs about the Bible or does it cause people to change their beliefs about whether Washington should reduce income differences?

I don’t think that having children would change one’s viewpoint on the Bible, even if it causes one to attend Church more often for the sake of the children’s religious upbringing. Having children might make one more fiscally conservative, however, because maybe it causes working people to feel a greater need to keep the money they think they earned.

Olympus OM-D E-M5 part 2

The Olympus product photography above shows the version of the OM-D EM-5 camera which I recently purchased. What you immediately notice is that it looks like an SLR from the 1960s or 1970s. This is one of the keys to the camera’s surging popularity on the internet. It looks really cool.

For some reason, camera manufacturers drifted away from this elegant look in the 1980s and 1990s, and all modern SLRs are huge and bulbous. Olympus, rather ingeniously, designed a new camera to evoke the feeling of the cameras of yesteryear. Olympus understands that SWPLs like retro things. And that’s pretty amazing that they understand that, because despite the Western name (after the tallest mountain in Greece where, according to myth, the gods lived) Olympus is a thoroughly Japanese company, and I am sure it was Japanese people who came up with this design idea and not white people. Japan is the only country in Asia where a camera like this could have been designed. Has a Chinese company ever designed anything that looks aesthetically pleasing? I don’t think so.

People who are familiar with retro 35mm SLRs will get the impression from the photo that the camera is larger than it actually is. Nope, this camera is quite a bit smaller than a retro 35mm SLR, and quite a bit smaller than any modern Nikon or Canon DSLR. It’s not really an SLR at all, it’s completely mirrorless. The “pentaprism” hump only contains an electronic viewfinder and the image stabilization mechanism.

One of the interesting things about cameras today is how resistant the manufacturers are to new ways of doing things. The single lens reflex, which uses a mirror and a prism to direct the image from the lens into the viewfinder, solved the problem of how to present to the user the exact image that the film will see when you snap the shutter. But this technology is pretty close to obsolete, because an electronic viewfinder can do this more efficiently. Some people may complain that the image in the EVF doesn’t match the quality of a true image seen through a mirror, and they probably have a valid point, but it has reached the state in which it’s pretty close, and EVFs can only improve in quality.

By dumping the mirror, the result is a smaller and lighter camera, a camera without the vibration and noise caused by the mirror being rapidly swung aside before the shutter opens, and a camera in which there’s less space between the lens mount and the sensor which allows for better lens designs (although I can’t say that I understand the physics of camera lenses). You get the benefits of a Leica-style rangefinder without the kludgy rangefinder focusing mechanism.

Blue Collar Guys at Work

This is a picture I took with the E-M5 this evening of some blue collar guys at work. (It looks too light out to be evening, but today is the day of the summer solstice.)

I can’t help but notice that all of the blue collar guys are white.

The guy on the right has an American flag patch on his t-shirt which reads “Inwood NYC.” Paul Fussell, if he were alive, would point out that legible clothing is extremely prole. Inwood is the northernmost neighborhood of Manhattan. Maybe he lives there? The very tip of Inwood, near the Columbia University football field, is white. Most of the rest of northern Manhattan is Hispanic, and we are talking about mulatto Hispanics and not Mestizo Hispanics.

Anyway, even though he has this crappy job working outside in the heat, while lawyers and investment bankers who make massively more money ride by in air-conditioned taxis, he’s proud to be an American. More proud than any of those lawyers or investment bankers who would never go to work with an American flag sewn to their clothing.

The Intelligence Paradox

Steve Sailer has a brief mention of an amazing new book by Satoshi Kanazawa, The Intelligence Paradox: Why the Intelligent Choice Isn't Always the Smart One. The review at Economist Magazine gives you a good feel for what this book is about.

This book covers a lot of topics that I’ve blogged about during the last several years. There’s an entire chapter devoted to the issue of why atheists are smarter than religious people. And I just love the subchapter that has the title “If Liberals Are More Intelligent than Conservatives, Why Are Liberals So Stupid.”

I’ve previously suggested that the best IQ for having grandchildren is the average IQ, because that’s what evolution had determined is the IQ that gives us the greatest survival advantage. Historically, people with higher or lower IQs had fewer grandchildren. Note that I say grandchildren and not children, because you can have a lot of children but it does the evolutionary future of your genes no good if they don’t have their own children. I suspect that people with below-average IQs historically had more children but fewer grandchildren than people with average IQs. This is no longer true today. The government gives away free food and healthcare, so even the stupidest people have no problem ensuring that their children survive long enough to give them grandchildren. Kanazawa clearly takes the same point of view as me about intelligence being a detriment to having children, partially because it’s a detriment to having carnal relations with the opposite sex, and partially because more intelligent people are less likely to want to have a bunch of children. (I know, for example, that children bring no joy to me.)

Kanazawa also has a pretty cool blog at Psychology today. For example, I like his post on Why Modern Feminism Is Illogical, Unnecessary, and Evil.

Pew survey of Asians

Well talk about interesting coincidences. The same day I write a blog post about Asians, Pew release a survey of Asian Americans. This is well worth reading, one of the best pieces on an important demographic trend that I’ve ever seen.

The following interesting facts:

During the last two years, newly arrived Asian immigrants outnumbered Hispanic immigrants.

Median Asian household income is $66,000, but only $54,000 for whites. But remember, they are more likely than non-Asian Americans to be married, so they have more two-income households working in their favor.

61% of recent Asian immigrants have a Bachelor’s degree, which is significantly higher than the percent of people in their home countries.

Japanese Americans are the most likely to marry a non-Asian, and Indian Americans are the least likely. The Pew survey has definitely confirmed my suspicions that the Japanese are the most Americanized of all Asians, and the Indians the most clannish.

More about mixed-race marriage:

From 2008 to 2010, 29% of all Asian newlyweds married someone of a different race, compared with 26% of Hispanics, 17% of blacks and 9% of whites. There are notable gender differences. Asian women are twice as likely as Asian men to marry out. Among blacks, the gender pattern runs the other way—men are more than twice as likely as women to marry out. Among whites and Hispanics, there are no differences by gender.

In a very bad trend, 31% of native-born Asian women who had children had them out of wedlock, compared to only 9.6% of foreign-born Asian women. This is an example of downward cultural drift, with Asians picking up our bad morals.

Only 12% of Asians think that being Asian hurts their chances of college admission. Isn’t that cute. The vast majority of Asians are completely unaware that colleges discriminate against them. I guess they’ve adopted the liberal viewpoint that discrimination is based on outcomes rather than actual treatment.

Talking about liberals, the majority of Asians vote Democratic, and one very important difference between Asians and other Americans is their view of big government:

Asian Americans prefer a big government that provides more services (55%) over a smaller government than provides fewer services (36%). In contrast, the general public prefers a smaller government over a bigger government, by 52% to 39%.

Asians don’t get the American spirit of independence and self-sufficiency.

Rubio not Romney’s VP pick

I previously wrote about how Marco Rubio would be a bad choice for Vice President. Romney has listened. ABC News reports that Rubio is not being considered by Romney.

Asians v. whites

There has been a commenter talking about how we need to stop Asian immigration because Asians and whites have different personalities and mental abilities, and therefore they don’t enjoy each other’s company.

I agree that the average Asian is more introverted than the average white, but the extent of the difference is vastly exaggerated by the cultural norms of Asian countries (which encourage grinding) and the United States (which encourage extreme extroversion).

The level of extroversion that’s considered desirable in the United States is a lot greater than in the typical white European country where the norm is more introverted and taciturn, especially among the Germans and the British.

The Asian-dominated public schools in the United States which white parents avoid sending their children to are full of Asians who were either born overseas or who are at most first-generation whose parents have Asian values. If you happen to know any Japanese-Americans, you will know that they are a lot more laid back and American in their attitudes than other Asians because most Japanese-Americans have been here for several generations.

I think that Asians also make SWPL whites uncomfortable because of all of the white male/Asian female couples and the lack of mixed-race couples who run in the other direction. This brings up a lot of HBD issues that good white liberals don’t want to think about. Asians also make liberal whites uncomfortable because the existence of a successful minority lends support to the taboo idea that maybe blacks don’t succeed because of their genes and not because they are a minority. The best way to avoid thinking about these things is to avoid Asians.

Olympus OM-D E-M5

ISO 800, f/2.5, 1/25 sec, -0.7 EV

I got my Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera today.

The photo above is unexceptional, except for the fact that I could just go out at night and take it, without a tripod. This would have been an impossible feat a few years ago.

Even though Olympus is just a big corporation with a bunch of executives who engaged in criminal behavior, with the release of this camera, the first ever Olympus digital camera that has the photography world all gaga over it, I feel vindicated for rooting so long for the underdog company.

I will write more about this camera in the coming days.

Girls, episode 10

At the end of the episode, I was left wondering how Hannah is going to get back to Greenpoint from Coney Island without any money.

* * *

This is the first episode in which there was a scene filmed on a subway.

* * *

Marnie looked so extremely pissed while watching Jessa and Thomas John getting married. Then at the end she hits on his fat nerdy friend who performed the marriage ceremony, presumably to piss off Charlie.

* **

It still appears that Shoshanna was in the series for comic relief. Now that she’s no longer a virgin, the writers will no longer be able to mine that for humor. She lost her virginity too quickly.

* * *

What else is there to say, except to point out the obvious irony that Hannah wanted so badly for Adam to be her boyfriend, and now she’s the one who’s afraid of commitment.

And just as obviously, it won’t be long into next season before Jessa starts complaining about Thomas John the way Marnie complained about Charlie, and then she’s going to cheat on him, and then if this were real life she’d find the best divorce lawyer she can and try to get as much money out of him as possible.

School segregation in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Although we hear a lot about Williamsburg being a place full of hipsters, Williamsburg is actually a pretty large area of Brooklyn. The part of Williamsburg near the Bedford Ave L subway stop has become a very white area, but southern Williamsburg is full of Hasidic Jews, and outside of the good area on the other side of the BQE there are a lot of NAMs and housing projects.

And then there’s the fact that NAMs (as well as Hasidic Jews) are really good at having lots of children, while the white hipsters of Williamsburg are mostly childfree. But Williamsburg has been attracting a lot of white married people because it is now a safe white area with convenient access to Manhattan, so there are now white babies and even school-aged white children in Williamsburg. Which creates a problem for the white parents because they need to send their children to a school where they won’t get beaten up by NAMs.

Apparently, for school principals in the area, their biggest goal is to “diversify” their schools by getting these middle/upper-middle class white parents to enroll their children. But they will have to compete against the new Williamsburg Northside School where the tuition is only $21,850, a real bargain compared to Manhattan private schools. There’s a even a Wall Street Journal article about the incredibly low tuition. The existence of the new private school is strangely not mentioned in the NY Times article.

Obama’s executive order on immigration

Is it legal? The theory behind its legality is that the government doesn’t have to prioritize prosecuting any particular crime. Sort of like how no one is ever prosecuted for perjury except for cases in which the state is really out to get someone.

This makes it even more important to vote for Romney, so he can remove the executive order.

The liberal MSM is gloating over this executive order, saying that Obama will now easily win the election because all of the Hispanics will vote against him and turn against Romney who will be “forced” to move to the left in order to avoid losing all of those Hispanic votes.

The logic behind the liberal MSM analysis is pretty strange. By creating some benefit that’s primarily for people who aren’t even allowed to vote, this somehow dooms Romney in November. Huh? Everyone who knows anything about this knows that if you want to pander to someone, you should pander to old white people, because they vote more than any other voting bloc. Old white people like my parents are actually fed up with all the immigration, and they are the kind of people who were traditionally Democrats but who will vote for Romney in November.

The end of the summer job

There has been an AP story going around saying that 7 in 10 teens lack summer jobs.

The NY Times parenting blog says the end of the summer job.

Let’s examine the reasons why employers may have hired teens for summer jobs in the past, and why it’s no longer relevant today.

1. In the past there was a lot of farm work that needed to be done during the summer. And in fact, the original reason for giving children summer vacations was so they could work around the farm. But today, agriculture is highly automated and only a tiny percentage of the population actually works on farms, and there are migrant farm laborers from Mexico who work for less than the minimum wage, and it’s crappy work that no teen wants to do anyway.

2. In the past there was other seasonal labor related to the vacation industry, and teens were ideal for this labor because they happened to be available during the vacation season. However, today, the vacation season extends from Memorial Day until late September, and teens aren’t available for this entire period. The solution is special H2B and J1 visas for non-citizens, who live in crappy dormitories, get paid low wages, and sign up to work for an entire vacation season. No need for teens. Most teens don’t live in vacation areas anyway.

3. Teens were hired just because they were cheap labor. But today there is cheap Mexican labor, and Mexicans don’t quit at the end of the summer, so they are more ideally suited to filling the demand for cheap labor than teens. And teens often don’t take their jobs seriously anyway. Mexicans, especially if they are here illegally and have family to support, are more reliably subservient than teens.

4. Teens were given summer jobs out of community spirit. Ha, that doesn’t happen anymore. What’s community spirit?

Does it really matter that teens don’t have summer jobs? What’s the value of teens doing menial work when they should be acquiring real job skills so they can have a future career that doesn’t involve menial work? I think that too many people are worrying about a trend that isn’t a real problem.

* * *

Note that I got the idea for this post from a link at Gucci Little Piggy, a blogger who has been contributing some good stuff.

More on Shellie Zimmerman’s alleged perjury

The blog Legal Insurrection has some good legal analysis of Shellie Zimmerman’s alleged “perjury,” and while it’s clear that Shellie was evasive in her testimony, and you can even say that as a whole it was misleading, but there’s no specific false statement in there.

If this actually goes to a jury, and Shellie has a good lawyer, it would be hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she stated anything she knew to be false. She didn’t say “we only collected $10,000” when she just looked at her $100,000 bank statement earlier that day. Nope, she said “she didn’t know” which is rather vague, and could mean she didn’t know if it was $100,000 or $101,000. No one ever asked her anything specific at the hearing.

It's even debatable as to whether the state's probable cause affidavit against Zimmerman is any less misleading than Shellie Zimmerman's evasive answers at the bail hearing.

Have you ever spent a day at the criminal courts? I have, and you don’t have to hang around there very long before you hear some testimony that sounds like complete bullshit. But there doesn’t seem to be any impetus on the part of prosecutorial agencies to go after this behavior.

The state of Florida is out to get the Zimmermans. This is obvious based on the fact that a special prosecutor, with a full-time-staff, has been tasked with this single prosecution. The state doesn’t do that unless it’s out to get someone, because there’s surely a lot more useful work they could be doing. Going after friendly witnesses and family members brings this up to a new level. If Florida really cared about perjury in general, I'm sure they would have no problem finding some obvious and easy-to-prove whoppers if they reviewed a day of transcripts from the criminal courts.

Zimmerman is not a deity

“Patrick,” one of Zimmerman’s few defenders in the blog comments, writes:

Sigma, should all defendents' spouses be allowed to lie about their assets so as to obtain lower bail? Your Zimmerman deification is really revealing you as somebody who has little to no regard for the rule of law. They're just "out to get him," in your moronic view.

It’s ironic that the same liberals who are out to get Shellie Zimmerman for her perjury didn’t care that Bill Clinton committed perjury.

I have always thought that perjury is a serious crime, but the point I will make again is that prosecutors obviously don’t think it’s a serious crime because they know it happens all the time but they don’t put any resources into going after it.

Also, I’ve been pretty consistent in pointing out that George Zimmerman is a prole, and proles do stupid stuff like this. Zimmerman’s stupidity started out when he talked to the police the night that he defended himself instead of invoking his right to remain silent and calling a lawyer. I’ve never “deified” Zimmerman.

“They” (the elites and the state of Florida) are most certainly out to get the Zimmermans as evidenced by this perjury prosecution when they ignore the same behavior all the time, every day, from other defendants’ family members.

The future of school integration

Liberals who talk about the need for school integration seem like they are still stuck in the 1950s, when we didn’t count Hispanics and the population was generally considered 88% white and 12% black. People imagined the ideal school being 88% white and 12% black, and being a believer in the importance of teaching middle class values, I actually concede that this situation would be beneficial to the black students because they would pick up white middle class values from the dominant white majority.

However that picture, which wasn’t even entirely realistic in the 1950s, no longer applies at all today when non-Hispanic white babies are less than 50% of the population.

Because white parents are trying ever harder to keep their children in majority-white schools, the number of whites available to liberal social engineers to integrate with minorities is actually a lot fewer than suggested by white students being almost 50% of the population. White parents will send their children to white private schools or move to whiteopias with public schools removed from the control of liberal social engineering types. An integrated school in the future will look more like 30% white and Asian, and 70% NAM. In this integrated school, the NAMs will outnumber the whites and instead of NAMs picking up white middle class values, the white students will pick up dysfunctional NAM values. The whites who attend these school will be poor prole whites and not the middle class whites with the good values, because part of those middle class values dictate that you should ensure your children attend good schools.

The vast majority of NAMs will have to attend majority-NAM schools in the future. Any other result is mathematically and socially impossible unless there is a radical reversal in demographic trends.

What I don’t know the answer to is whether liberal social engineering types will admit defeat on this issue and give up on the idea of integrated schools as a major policy goal, or will they keep at it even though it’s impossible, put in keeping at it they will force whites to move further and further away from NAMs?

Shellie Zimmerman arrested and charged with perjury

Story in the Orlando Sentinel.

Now, on the one hand, there’s surely probable cause to support a charge of perjury.

On the other hand, rare is the criminal trial in which some witness for the defendant doesn’t lie. And in approximately 0.01% of these cases, someone is charged with perjury.

Clearly, the prosecution is out to ruin the Zimmermans as much as they possibly can, because George is the most evil person ever to live since Hitler and they can’t let him get off on a technicality like the fact that he was attacked and was being beaten up when he fired the fatal shot.

Girls, episode 9 (penultimate season 1 episode)

This is an episode about Hannah, and not about Hannah and her boyfriend Adam, or about Hannah and her parents, it’s just about Hannah.

It starts out at a book party for a girl, Tally, who Hannah knows from college. Hannah is jealous of Tally’s success, and Tally uses the opportunity to dish out some backhanded compliments to Hannah. Then Hannah meets her former writing professor, Professor Goldman, who is played by 46-year-old Michael Imperioli, yes, that’s Chris Molitisanti from the Sopranos, and I also enjoyed his role as Detective Ray Carling in Life on Mars. He’s also the best actor to ever appear in Girls. Professor Goldman invites Hannah to a reading.

In the next Hannah scene, she shows up for her first day of work at Ray’s coffee shop. Ray acts sort of like a dick to her. This is surprising, because I thought Ray was a good guy. I also thought Ray and Shoshanna would get together, but that apparently never happened, because Shoshanna went on a J-Date with someone who we don’t get to see. And while we are talking about the non-Hannah parts of this episode, the mom whose kids Jessa used to watch comes to pay her a visit, and alternatively begs her to come back to work and expresses her anger with her for possibly contributing to the wrecking of their marriage.

Because Ray, who doesn’t appear to have Hannah’s best interests at heart, convinces Hannah that the essay she has chosen to read is a bad selection, Hannah writes a really crappy essay about meeting some guy on IM, and then finding out that he’s dead and reads that. This is probably supposed to demonstrate that Hannah hates herself so she deliberately sabotages her chance of success.

Then Hannah returns to her apartment where she has a big argument with Marnie who strangely looks better when she’s not wearing a bunch of makeup. As much as I dislike Marnie, I found myself agreeing more with Marnie than with Hannah. I hope that’s not because Marnie is tall and beautiful while Hannah is overweight and dumpy and has ugly tattoos. Interestingly, this episode made more of a point than any other of showing how bad Hannah looks. The episode ends with the girls telling each other they no longer want to be roommates. Where will Hannah live without money?

While I enjoyed this episode for seeing how the characters arcs are progressing, I agree with the commenters that this show becoming more a soap opera and less biting social commentary. And this will probably be the last good season, because next season they will have to introduce a lot of unrealistic minority characters because the show is too white.

* * *

It occurs to me that Shoshanna is probably in this series only for comic relief, and that Lena Dunham doesn’t think that a girl like Shoshanna, a Jappy virgin non-hipster, is worthy of being explored more deeply.

Tax policies for the top out-of-sight

What tax policies would the top out-of-sight class favor, assuming they are selfishly interested in preserving their wealth and status and passing it on to the next generation?

1. They would favor low estate, gift and inheritance taxes so they can pass on their wealth to the next generation.

2. They would favor low taxes on investment income, because their ratio of investment income to salary income is much higher than for the average person.

3. Their favorite hobby is philanthropy, so they would favor special tax breaks for charitable giving.

4. Their other favorite hobby sending their children to elite and expensive private schools so they don’t have to mingle with the lower classes, and they would like some sort of tax break for that.

Well it turns out that issues #1 and #2 are pet issues of the Republican Party.

The tax code provides lavish tax subsidies for charitable giving because the gifts are completely exempt from gift taxation, and they can generally be used as a deduction against other income.

The tax code isn’t quite as generous with tuition for private school; it’s just exempt from the gift tax.

Democrats and Republicans alike seem to be behind issues #3 and #4. This is because the Republican Party has never met a tax break it doesn’t like, and the liberals who control the Democratic Party realize that these gifts mostly benefit liberal-controlled institutions, which are practically 100% of all colleges and universities, and the vast majority of non-profits and charitable trusts. The interesting thing about charitable trusts is that, even when they are founded by rich patriarchs with a conservative bent, they wind up being controlled by their much more liberal descendents or by the professional non-profit workers who are probably as strongly liberal as college professors.

Why do Republicans support #1 and #2 so strongly when two-thirds of the top-out-of-sight, maybe even more, probably vote Democratic? The commenter Mercy Vetsel suggested that the one-third of top out-of-sighters who vote Republican have enough control over the Republican Party to get it to fall behind their two most important tax wants.

However, it must be pointed out that the fact that most top out-of-sighters vote Democratic even though the Republican Party is more in their pocket goes to show you that they either don’t operate out of self-interest, or they lack awareness of their interests, or they feel guilty about their interests.

Some more evidence about whom the top out-of-sight vote for

As reported by Robert Frank (the writer for the Wall Street Journal and not the economist from Cornell):

According to a new survey by Prince & Associates, voters worth $1 million to $10 million are favoring Sen. John McCain, while voters worth $30 million or more are favoring Sen. Barack Obama. The survey of 493 families showed:

More than three quarters of those worth $1 million to $10 million plan to vote for Sen. McCain. Only 15% plan to vote for Sen. Obama (the rest are undecided). Of those worth more than $30 million, two-thirds support Sen. Obama, while one third support Sen. McCain.

To understand who a “millionaire” is, we can turn to Thomas Stanley. The typical person with a million dollar net worth did not inherit money, but is a married person in his or her fifties with a household income between $100,000 and $200,000 and who saves 20% of income.

As I’ve pointed out before, people with household incomes between $100K and $200K are the staunchest Republican voters, and they do not represent the true rich nor even the top 1%. And then on top of that, the kind of person who saves such a large percent of his salary has a conservative personality.

But we see that among the true rich people, those worth more than $30 million, two-thirds supported Obama.

There is also evidence that people born to money are a lot more liberal than people who are self-made. A high proportion of self-made affluent people (that’s merely affluent and not super rich) buy into the idea that they have earned their money themselves and they don’t want no government stealing their hard earned money. They are also likely to look at the class above them and think that high taxes are preventing them from getting to that next class. But people in topmost class have no class above them to be jealous of.

Given that two-thirds of upper class rich people supported Obama, I’d guess that three-quarters of top out-of-sight people supported Obama.

Culture and beliefs of the top out-of-sight

MachoManMadness writes:

HS you talk a lot about who this class is but you haven't talked a lot about their culture and beliefs other than adopting them is a prerequisite for admittance. What do these people believe? Are they like SWPLs?

I always thought of SWPLs as upper middle class whites whose main motivation is culture displays proving they aren't like proles.

This is a perfectly good question, but unfortunately I can’t provide the best answer because I don’t normally socialize with top out-of-sight people, and because they stay out of sight, it’s difficult to learn about them.

Like all other classes, they are primarily concerned with demonstrating they are better than the class immediately beneath them, and don’t care at all about what classes several tiers below them think. This means that the stuff that SWPLs do to distinguish themselves from the classes below are not necessarily things that the top out-of-sight class does.

It is known that the top out-of-sight is very interested in philanthropy, which is probably as important to them as being environmentally conscious is to SWPLs. The top-out-sight also places a high value on insulation, and they mostly use their money to keep themselves and their family insulated from lower classes. They probably take cabs rather than subways, even when a subway would actually save time (such as during heavy rush hour traffic). But I’m not sure about that. If they have a full-time private driver, then they might be upper class rather than top out-of-sight. Two weeks ago when I was walking home from the subway, I saw Anderson Cooper walk out of the Time Warner building and into the back seat of a black SUV. I think that Anderson Cooper might have been top out-of-sight if he didn’t become a famous news reporter, so now he’s upper class. Top-out-of-sight who live anywhere besides Manhattan drive their own cars, and they avoid the most expensive cars. Someone who travels in a chauffeured Rolls Royce is not top out-of-sight.

Unlike in the days of Edith Wharton, today the top out-of-sight want to do something that looks like work, unless they are women with children in which case it’s OK to not to work (although of course they still have a nanny). They like to work in philanthropy, the arts, and the non-profit sector. Some of the men will seek out real money-making jobs in hedge funds or venture capital. You will never see a top out-of-sight person working as a dentist.

The majority of the top out-of-sight class voted for Obama in 2008. Overwhelmingly so in liberal states in the northeast, and only by a slim margin in red states.

This is all speculation, I could be wrong about anything or everything I wrote above.