Space

Not Impressed

John Derbyshire doesn’t think much of (what I’m guessing is) Keith Cowing’s emails:

I had some exchanges with one fellow who took strong exception to my Space Shuttle piece. “It must really suck being you,” he asserted. Now, this is pretty lame on a first occurrence; but in our subsequent exchanges he just couldn’t think of any way to improve on it. “Like I said, it must really suck being you,” he’d close. It dawned on me at last that the guy thinks this is the most crushing, most devastating put-down that has yet been devised from the English language. I weep for these people.

Which reminds me that I still plan to critique the piece myself.

Science And Society

Brain Size Follow Up

I think that a lot of people misunderstood me in this post, judging by the comments.

I’m not claiming that brain size correlates perfectly with intelligence, and that size is the only factor of interest. Obviously, there’s no reason to think that a non-human brain twice the size of a human brain would be expected to be smarter. My point was that for humans, with normal brain configuration, it’s a reasonable assumption that a bigger brain is generally going to be smarter than a smaller one. There’s just room for more brain stuff that constitutes smarts (and I don’t think that transport speeds have much relevance, relative to numbers of neurons).

With regard to Gould, yes, I did read The Mismeasure of Man, and I also read between the lines. He was a dedicated Marxist, and the very notion that there could be a correlation between “race” (and yes, I know that this is an imprecise concept, and a social rather than biological construct) and intelligence would have been anathema to him, which was why it was so important to him to debunk it. I have no particular beliefs about whether or not whites are on average smarter than blacks, or vice versa, but I think that it’s absurd to claim that it’s impossible for there to be any gross correlation between intelligence and melanin content. Anything that’s heritable will have variability in human populations, and anyone who doesn’t think that IQ, however measured or defined, doesn’t have a heritable component is indulging themselves in the blank slate fallacy.

Of course, the whole issue, while it may be of scientific interest, shouldn’t be so societally controversial. So what if whites are dumber, on average, than blacks, or vice versa? We don’t deal with average people–we do, or at least should, deal with individuals. It doesn’t matter what group I come from if I have a high IQ, and am one of the people raising the average for that group. Such research cannot rationally be used to justify any particular social policy, at least any that’s congruent with the Fourteenth Amendment.

General

Obvious Things

…you never thought about before. From (who else?) Lileks:

Saturday I got out the spade and the claw and dug up the worst spots. Dirt into bags, bags down the steps. Dirt is heavy; no wonder the earth weighs so much. Poor Atlas.

Political Commentary

“We Fully Intended To Fail”

That’s what Andrew Sullivan says.

Let’s assume, just for the sake of the argument, that that’s the case. Why would we do that? What is the benefit, to the nation, or to the Bush administration, for failure in Iraq? Note, he didn’t say that the administration thought we didn’t need more troops, or that they did but that there were other reasons not to send them. No, the intent was to fail. Fully.

Is he now in Dick Durbin’s camp? Are we now just like Pol Pot…evil?

He’s been second in my blogroll for, literally, years. (Yes, yes, there’s a certain amount of inertia there, but still).

Is there any reason to take anything he writes seriously now? It will be fascinating to see if he responds to this, and apologizes (as Durbin should, but probably won’t). If he’ll say that he wasn’t thinking when he typed those words, and wants to clarify them, I’ll accept that. But if he meant it, I see no reason to even bother reading him any more. Or (more certainly) keep him at his current rank in my blogroll.

He’s jumped the Euphrates.

Political Commentary

“We Fully Intended To Fail”

That’s what Andrew Sullivan says.

Let’s assume, just for the sake of the argument, that that’s the case. Why would we do that? What is the benefit, to the nation, or to the Bush administration, for failure in Iraq? Note, he didn’t say that the administration thought we didn’t need more troops, or that they did but that there were other reasons not to send them. No, the intent was to fail. Fully.

Is he now in Dick Durbin’s camp? Are we now just like Pol Pot…evil?

He’s been second in my blogroll for, literally, years. (Yes, yes, there’s a certain amount of inertia there, but still).

Is there any reason to take anything he writes seriously now? It will be fascinating to see if he responds to this, and apologizes (as Durbin should, but probably won’t). If he’ll say that he wasn’t thinking when he typed those words, and wants to clarify them, I’ll accept that. But if he meant it, I see no reason to even bother reading him any more. Or (more certainly) keep him at his current rank in my blogroll.

He’s jumped the Euphrates.

Political Commentary

“We Fully Intended To Fail”

That’s what Andrew Sullivan says.

Let’s assume, just for the sake of the argument, that that’s the case. Why would we do that? What is the benefit, to the nation, or to the Bush administration, for failure in Iraq? Note, he didn’t say that the administration thought we didn’t need more troops, or that they did but that there were other reasons not to send them. No, the intent was to fail. Fully.

Is he now in Dick Durbin’s camp? Are we now just like Pol Pot…evil?

He’s been second in my blogroll for, literally, years. (Yes, yes, there’s a certain amount of inertia there, but still).

Is there any reason to take anything he writes seriously now? It will be fascinating to see if he responds to this, and apologizes (as Durbin should, but probably won’t). If he’ll say that he wasn’t thinking when he typed those words, and wants to clarify them, I’ll accept that. But if he meant it, I see no reason to even bother reading him any more. Or (more certainly) keep him at his current rank in my blogroll.

He’s jumped the Euphrates.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!