George Rebane
Lowell Robinson RIP. A sad email from a friend this morning reported the passing last night of Lowell Robinson, one of the giants of our community. Lowell was the founder of what today we know as Robinson Enterprises, a multi-faceted business that has served Nevada County for decades. He also put his money where his mouth was as a prominent supporter of uncounted philanthropies, local educational programs, and political causes. We will miss his good humor, wisdom, and generosity.
IQ scores have been rising for decades. So we learn from the work of James Flynn, a social scientist at the University of Otago in New Zealand. Since IQ is a relative or a ‘normed measure’ of intelligence represented by the bell curve in which 100 is set so as to indicate the average or mean IQ, and every ten point difference from 100 is one standard deviation, your 80 or 120 IQ respectively says that about 2.5% of the population scores lower than you, or the same percentage scores higher. But Dr Flynn reports that IQ tests have had to be made tougher over the course of the last century in order to keep the mean at 100.
IQ scores shot up in the 1920s after WW1, then plateaued, and then shot up again after WW2. Scores plateaued again in the 1970s (coincident with when Great Society education started kicking in). After picking up for a quarter century, the recent rise has again slowed down. One of the several theories to account for this ‘Flynn Effect’ is that childhoods have become longer as countries became richer during the last hundred years or so.
Several people are beginning to notice Jonathan Rauch’s (Political Realism, 2015) development of what he has labeled “transactional politics”. The left-leaning political commentator sounds almost like a conservative when he defends ‘political machines’ as the grease that keeps the wheels of government turning, and not grinding to a halt as seems to be the current propensity of Washington. He observes that “American government may be less corrupt. But it also has more difficulty getting anything done.” One of his nostrums includes reinstatement of ‘earmarks’ as the currency which allowed (motivated?) politicians to wheel and deal and then compromise in getting major legislation through Congress. I’ll have more to say about Rauch’s thoughts in a future post on our government’s sclerotic corruption, a dysfunction that is now beyond the tipping point as also analyzed by Charles Murray (By the People, 2015).
The success of our sandboxes in promoting conversation on divers topics seems assured given the length of their comment streams, each containing multiple threads between various commenters who enter and leave topics as their interest varies. The sandboxes are also sites for the inevitable interpersonal dust devils that rise and fall when commenters begin to dissect each other’s ideological deficiencies, and then attribute these to more seminal shortcomings that need to be identified and exposed. From the evident enthusiasm and duration of these eruptions, one may conclude that they serve some purpose and provide participants a measure of relief, no matter how fleeting. But I’m still convinced that readers would rather encounter some new observation or insight about our life and times rather than wading through the next exchange of snark on snark.
[31may15 update] The federal mental midgets can't make up their minds about climate change aka global warming aka AGW. Out of one side (Dept of Commerce) of the administration come laments that our economy continued to skooch along on its butt during 1Q15 because of an unusually cold and severe winter, and from the other side (NOAA) we are assured that the past winter was the warmest on record. But the real tragedy is that our electorate is way too far gone to even understand such blatant contradictions – both reports make a lot of sense to such folks in how they interpret the world around them.
[1jun15 update] Union columnist George Boardman, who often comments on these pages, laments today about people picking and choosing “the science they want to believe” as if there was something wrong or ignorant about that. Not being a scientist, he assumes that ‘science’ speaks with one voice. It is not clear what he thinks is the voice of science, but it seems to issue from either an assumed ‘consensus’ of scientists, or at least a plurality of such people. In his column Mr Boardman uses public attitudes toward genetically modified foods, vaccination, and, of course, man-made (anthropogenic) global warming. For him the revealed scientific truth is GMOs are good, vaccines are good, and AGW is an existential threat to mankind.
He is amazed that people are still “selective” and choose to believe some of these things while rejecting others, since all this science comes from “precisely the same organizations that most of us trust”. Well that’s not even approximately correct, because the UN’s IPCC promoting (a recently qualified view of) AGW is not even an organization per se, and does not deal with medicines or advanced agricultural products. But his article (here) sounds authoritative, speaks of a pedestal-mounted science, and cites economists on human rationality - so what is the poor innumerate layman to do in light of Mr Boardman’s obvious admonition to listen and accept the one booming voice of science? From his presentation it is clear that in such cases one should not look behind the curtain, for God only knows what will be found there.
(BTW, the author is also not familiar with when economists began “finally embracing the idea that people don’t make rational decisions when it comes to money.” Actually, Kahneman and Tversky showed as early as the mid-1970s that people’s rationality about money and many other things is in short supply. How else can one explain the electorate’s continual acceptance of prevaricating and pernicious politicians?)
This is not the place to rehash the global debate about climate science and AGW skepticism, nor even the rationality of the electorate. Both topics have received extensive coverage in these pages over the years, and the arguments can be either googled or obtained by directly searching RR.
[2jun15 update] Jade Helm preparations are proceeding apace across our land. These widespread counter insurgency exercises are scheduled for this July and August. Local jurisdictions and LEO organizations are being quietly briefed on their considerable roles and requirements for co-operation with the participating troops. The lamestream reports don't tie with what is planned. Please read this report and view the video (here) of the recent briefing to the county council in Big Springs, TX, then ask your congressman what this is all about. (H/T to reader)
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