TAKING THE SHORT VIEW: Report: Sales of 30+ MPG cars fell 10% in first five months of 2010. It’s never made sense to me that people make car choices based on the current pump price; you ought to be making them based on your expectation of prices in the coming five years or so, something that current pump prices don’t predict very well.
Archive for 2010
June 15, 2010
AUSTRALIAN “ANGEL” SAVES LIVES AT SUICIDE SPOT. “In those bleak moments when the lost souls stood atop the cliff, wondering whether to jump, the sound of the wind and the waves was broken by a soft voice. ‘Why don’t you come and have a cup of tea?’ the stranger would ask. And when they turned to him, his smile was often their salvation.”
JOHN TIERNEY: Legislation Won’t Close Gender Gap in Sciences.
So why are women still such a minority in math-oriented sciences? The most balanced answer I’ve seen comes from two psychologists at Cornell, Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams — who, by the way, are married and have a daughter with a graduate degree in engineering. After reviewing hundreds of studies in their new book, “The Mathematics of Sex” (Oxford), they conclude that discrimination is no longer an important factor in keeping out women.
They find consistent evidence for biological differences in math aptitude, particularly in males’ advantage in spatial ability and in their disproportionate presence at the extreme ends of the distribution curve on math tests (the topic of last week’s column). But given all the progress made in math by girls, who now take more math and science classes than boys and get better grades, Dr. Ceci and Dr. Williams say that differences in aptitude are not the primary cause of the gender gap in academic science.
Instead, they point to different personal preferences and choices of men and women, including the much-analyzed difference in the reaction to parenthood. When researchers at Vanderbilt University tracked the aspirations and values of mathematically gifted people in their 20s and 30s, they found a gender gap that widened after children arrived, with fathers focusing more on personal careers and mothers focusing more on the community and the family.
Yes, traditionally marriage and children make men more career-oriented, and women less so. Tierney concludes: “I’d love to see more girls pursuing careers in science (and more women reading science columns), but I wish we’d encourage their individual aspirations instead of obsessing about group disparities. I can’t see how we’re helping them with scare stories about the awful discrimination they’ll face. And I can’t imagine that many scientists, male or female, are looking forward to being yanked out of the lab to play Gender Bias Bingo.” The point, however, isn’t improving science. It’s all about providing jobs and authority for diversity specialists.
MICHAEL TOTTEN INTERVIEWS VICTOR DAVIS HANSON about war, history, and Hanson’s new book, The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.
EXPECTING 10 GIGAWATTS OF SOLAR POWER to be installed in 2010.
TREATING “DISTRACTED DRIVING” as a medical condition. Bah. Behavior is not a disease.
I AGREE: Everyone Should Have A Retail Job At Least Once. I sold cameras, shoes, and even — briefly, but successfully — lingerie, and I learned a lot about people and the world from doing so. I also had a job where one of the duties was cleaning public restrooms, which also teaches you a lot . . .
JIM GERAGHTY ON the WaPo’s soft-pedaling of the Etheridge story: “This is not even bias anymore; this is information management, designed to ensure those who pick up the print version of the Post never encounter what the blogosphere is buzzing about.”
SOMEBODY TELL STEPHEN GREEN: Old Livers Made New Again.
IN THE MAIL: From Mike Cullen, Whiny Little Bitch: The Excuse-Filled Presidency of Barack Obama. That’s rather harsh for a sitting President, but it does support my observation that Obama’s first term has already morphed into Bush’s second term. . . .
ALFONZO RACHEL: Memo To Obama: You Can’t Out-Slick The Oil.
EUGENE VOLOKH on free speech and guns.
PETRAEUS COLLAPSES IN HEARING: “According to the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, the general did not eat or drink before the hearing.” Good grief. A Congressional hearing calls for at least a Venti Latte.
ROGER KIMBALL: Bob Etheridge And The Meaning Of Apology. The worst part about the Etheridge video wasn’t the assault — it was the sense of outraged entitlement.
SO WHAT DOES THIS SAY ABOUT THE HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE? More college-educated jump tracks to become skilled manual laborers.
They started out studying aerospace engineering, creative writing and urban planning. But somewhere on the path to accumulating academic credentials, they decided that working with their hands sounded more pleasant — and lucrative — than a lot of white-collar work. So bye-bye to term papers and graduate theses, and hello to apprenticeships to become plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics and carpenters.
Those jobs are harder to send offshore, too. Read the whole thing.
SOME FLAG-DAY THOUGHTS from Doctor Zero.
BYRON YORK: Enamored With Wind, Obama Ignored Drilling Risks. “The problem was, Obama and Salazar were more interested in pursuing their vision of a clean energy future. Under Obama, the Minerals Management Service, driven by a strongly ideological commitment to green energy sources such as wind and solar power, chose to stress ‘renewables’ while de-emphasizing the tough and dirty work of managing the nation’s existing offshore oil wells. . . . Salazar chose Elizabeth Birnbaum to head the MMS in large part because of her record of environmental and green-energy advocacy. . . . Birnbaum came in for heavy criticism of MMS’ handling of the Deepwater Horizon/BP Gulf oil project. The general tone of the critique was that MMS had not paid enough attention to regulating such environmentally sensitive undertakings. What received less attention was why that attention wasn’t paid, and that was because Interior and MMS were busy pushing offshore renewable energy projects.”
FREE WI-FI COMING TO 7000 STARBUCKS STORES. Good. The old pay-model was dumb.
TAKE ME TO YOUR BASTER: Life on “Planet Barbecue.”
POWER LINE: Etheridge The Unready — And His Enablers. “Perhaps the single most obvious point demonstrated by the video is that Etheridge is unfit for high office. It is a point that applies to many incumbent congressmen, including my own. (That would be Minnesota Fourth District Rep. Betty McCollum.) Whoever the young interrogators of Rep. Etheridge, and whatever their motives, Etheridge unmistakably revealed that he is a bully and a nut.”
AL GORE: Stop Censoring News From The Gulf.
NICK GILLESPIE: Unions Just Have More Muscular Grandfathers Than The Rest Of Us.
Of course the President hasn’t any competence in deep water oil drilling, of for that matter in oil spill cleanup. Why should he? No one expected him, or the Federal Government, to know how to plug the hole. What we did expect is some competence in crisis management. At least we had a right to expect that.
We had a right to expect that the President would take this seriously, if not on the first day, at least in the first week. We had a right to expect him to assemble a team of experts to assess the threat and recommend actions. We had a right to expect a plan to plug the hole, and another plan to deal with the oil contamination.
Instead he throws in Stephen Chu, Nobel physicist, as if Chu, a brilliant man, would have any competence in plugging holes a mile under water, or cleaning up threatened marshes — or crisis management.
Indeed.
UPDATE: Mother Jones: Obama and the BP Spill: A Command Gap? “The problem isn’t that the president hasn’t displayed enough anger. He hasn’t shown that he’s in charge.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Frank Tipler on the limited utility of “brightness” in politicians and others. Brightness is an appealing trait in students, and one that is highly rewarded because it makes professors’ lives more pleasant. Any other benefits it provides are largely coincidental.