Monday, April 30, 2007

God is Not Going Anywhere: I see that Hitchens has a new book out entitled, "God is Not Great," but it seems to me that a much more interesting topic might be called "God is Not Going Anywhere." The argument that religion is terribly harmful seems about as fresh as grandma's fart, and it makes Hitchens sound like his mom made him go to Sunday School when he wanted to be watching girls' boobies at the matinee.

I'll do a more careful analysis later, but for now I looked at the earliest and latest years (1981 and 2001) that the World Values Survey asked a very large sample of people all around the world how often they attend religious services. In 1981, 8.0% went more than once a week. In 2001, the number was 21.0%. Attending for holidays, etc. was also up from 6.3% to 14.7%. The one large drop was the never- or almost never-attending category--down from 29.5% to 17.9%.

Friday, April 27, 2007

HBD Humor

Asian American groups call for CBS to fire New York shock-jocks

SAN FRANCISCO -- Prominent Asian American civil rights groups in the Bay Area are demanding that CBS Radio fire New York shock-jocks Jeff Vandergrift and Dan Lay, who were suspended earlier this week for making a prank phone call to a Chinese restaurant seen as racist and sexist.

Today, the coalition of groups submitted a letter to CBS Radio, calling for the network to improve its guidelines on offensive terms, to communicate periodically with civil rights and community groups and to fire the duo -- who had broadcast on Bay Area airwaves for more than a decade before they went to New York in 2005 -- and their producer at WFNY-FM.

The coalition includes the Asian Law Caucus, Chinese for Affirmative Action of San Francisco and Equal Rights Advocates -- all in San Francisco -- along with Oakland's Organization for Justice & Equality and, in New York, the 80-20 Initiative, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Organization of Chinese Americans.

The station's general manager, Tom Chiusano, has agreed to meet with the coalition, but no date has been set. He had no comment on the groups' petition.

Vandergrift and Lay, who go by the monikers JV and Elvis on their show "The Dog House," placed a six-minute call to a Chinese restaurant in which they requested "shlimp flied lice," used sexually explicit language to proposition a waitress, referred to another employee's body part as a "tiny egg roll" and claimed to know kung fu.

The station suspended the pair without pay until further notice on Monday. [More....]


"Civil rights group" is a code word for American Glavlit. These groups don't even care that they are ruining the income of a Korean woman--the wife of one of the jocks. I expected to see more of this kind of thing, so as I promised, here's Chinese HBD humor I just made up:

Question: Why do Chinese people have slanted eyes?

Answer: To hide the dollar signs.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Play it again, Sam: Every once in a while, I miss Sam Francis' VDARE columns and will go back and read an old one. Today was one of those days, and I found this article: Why Immigrants Kill. He was writing about the Hmong immigrant who shot all those hunters, but his words could apply to Cho:

The link between immigration and violence is that the aliens lack roots in the society and civilization into which they import themselves. The people they see aren't their people, and their moral and social norms aren't theirs either. Being strangers in a strange land, they feel little obligation to it or its members.

For immigrants on the fringe, the resulting tensions can overflow, and it's not easy even for those not so fringe.

Sociologists write all the time about the evils of alienation, but somehow ignore immigration as an important source of it. The connection is a bit hard to miss since the word "alienation" contains the word "alien" in it.

Anyway, my point is not about immigration and alienation, it's that Francis' writings will shake you up, so you should check him out if you haven't.

Monday, April 23, 2007

The GSS says whites wanting to prohibit marriage between blacks and whites are dumb, but not crazy: The stereotype of a white nationalist (WN) is a inbred hillbilly who's missing some teeth and who missed school after about the 6th grade. But the folks of this persuasion on the Internet I've talked to are generally a smart bunch. My students stare at me in disbelief when I tell them that William Pierce had a PhD in physics. I imagine people who debate on the Internet are the cream of the crop, but I don't know--the dumb stereotype may be the product of hostility. And the image is not just one of low intelligence, but also mental illness. Just yesterday, I talked to a guy who lived in Hayden Lake, Idaho for many years and was on friendly terms with a number of WNs, but he told me that when he moved from there, the WN types were getting pretty psycho.

I couldn't find a perfect question to identify WNs, but the General Social Survey did ask if you are in favor of a law forbidding marriage between blacks and whites. Respondents were also asked if they have ever had a mental illness. Here are the results:


Mean IQ--whites

Against laws prohibiting intermarriage 102.1
For laws prohibiting intermarriage 92.2


Percent having had a mental illness--whites

Against laws prohibiting intermarriage 8.3
For laws prohibiting intermarriage 1.7

Keep in mind that that sample of those in favor of this type of law is small--only 59 people. But going on what we have here, these folks have a low average IQ but are less likely to have experienced some kind of mental health problem.
The university is the last place you'll find free speech: This AP story shows why I have so much contempt for these O'Briens I have to work with at the university:


Professor fired over Va. Tech discussion

An adjunct professor was fired after leading a classroom discussion about the Virginia Tech shootings in which he pointed a marker at some students and said "pow."

The five-minute demonstration at Emmanuel College on Wednesday, two days after a student killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus, included a discussion of gun control, whether to respond to violence with violence, and the public's "celebration of victimhood," said the professor, Nicholas Winset.

During the demonstration, Winset pretended to shoot some students. Then one student pretended to shoot Winset to illustrate his point that the gunman might have been stopped had another student or faculty member been armed.

"A classroom is supposed to be a place for academic exploration," Winset, who taught financial accounting, told the Boston Herald. [More...]

Saturday, April 21, 2007

HBD Humor: Thinking about the Imus fiasco, I'm upset that a guy could lose his job for a joke, albeit an unfunny and gratuitous one. Over the years, all this race hysteria has made a contrarian like me want to speak louder when others get shut up. So I decided this evening to fight back with what I call HBD Humor. Anytime I hear that about someone getting punished for a joke, I'm going to make up another. Since Imus' joke was about black women, so is my first one:

Question: What's the difference between a black chick's ass and a Union Pacific caboose?

Answer: I mentioned the black chick's ass first.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Are immigrants crazier than the rest of us? Cho Seung-Hui was clearly not right in the head. Is this a common problem among immigrants? Mentally troubled people might escape the messes they've made at home by moving to another country. Or maybe stress from living in an alien culture might send some over the edge.

General Social Survey participants were asked if they have ever suffered from a mental illness. This is the share who said "yes":


Percent having had mental illness

Native-born 7.5
Immigrants 4.5


Keep in mind that the immigrant sample is only 89 people, but these results indicate a comparatively healthy immigrant population. Immigrants, at least those from distant lands, have to be pretty high-functioning to navigate the challenges of a new life. If I find data on the children of immigrants, I'll post the results.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Those hell-raising Finnish-Americans own the most guns: The Virginia Tech. massacre got me thinking about the connection between ethnicity and being into guns. The General Social Survey asked 13,000 Americans about whether they keep a gun in the house. Here are the percent who said "yes" by ethnic group:


Percent with gun in house:

Finns 53.0
Dutch 50.9
American Indians 50.7
Scots 50.6
English/Welsh 50.2
French 49.9
Danes 49.7
Germans 49.2
Swiss 48.4
Norwegians 47.9
Belgians 47.4
Swedes 46.5
Czechs 45.3
Irish 45.2

USA 40.9

French Canadians 39.7
Hungarians 39.3
Austrians 39.0
Yugoslavs 38.1
Poles 32.8
Italians 30.5
Blacks 28.9
Portuguese 28.4
Mexicans 24.5
Japanese 23.8
Lithuanians 24.4
Greeks 23.8
Arabs 21.3
Russians 19.9
Filipinos 14.0
Jews 13.3
Indians 11.7
Chinese 10.0
Puerto Ricans 9.1
West Indians 7.0

It looks like northern and western Europeans have the highest rates, while eastern Europeans and various non-white groups are toward the bottom. This reflects the orientation toward hunting and target shooting. Notice how Amerindians are an exception among non-whites: their rural status and hunting heritage probably explain the pattern. You might expect urban folks to have high possession rates for self-defense purposes, but just the opposite is true. Looks at Jews, for example. I'm sure urban rates of pistol ownership (as opposed to rifles and shotguns) are higher.

Monday, April 16, 2007

On the Virginia Tech. massacre: Pop quiz--name as many female mass murderers as you can in 30 seconds--go....I'm still waiting. The libs are already calling for LaPierre's head on a platter. Funny thing is that women have as much access to guns as men. Did I miss all the stories of the Sally Slaughterers?

Sunday, April 15, 2007

I saw two chicks fighting, and it was not a turn-on: Stopping to get gas the other day, I saw two women duking it out--one black, one Hispanic. I never did learn what the issue was, but the poor Mex-Am women's face looked like hamburger, while the black women was untouched and ready for more. Luckily, another man beat me to the scene, because I sized up the black woman and wondered if she could to take me.

Maybe you're thinking to yourself that this Ron guy is a real wuss to think twice about stepping between these two women, but maybe you don't know the facts: a black woman and a white man are in the same ballpark in terms of violence. It wasn't that long ago that adult black women killed at higher rates than white men. The former's rates have come down, perhaps due to high incarceration rates for drugs. But even the latest Bureau of Justice Statistics puts black females only a bit below Joe Six-Pack:


Homicides per 100,000 population

Black men 38.0
White men 5.6
Black women 3.9
White female 0.8

So tell me--which two groups are most similar here: it ain't the women or the men. And it wasn't just size that gave the black girl the advantage. She knew how to fight.

I was so disgusted after I witnessed this. These were not teenagers. They probably have families to take care of. If any foreign tourists had been there, I would have been ashamed. Call me old-fashioned, but it's particularly disturbing to see two women acting like cave men.
Black atheists think cheating on taxes is okay: Today marks the beginning of the second year of this blog. Last April 15th, I showed that, of all American ethnic groups, Puerto Ricans are most likely to think that cheating on your taxes is not wrong. This year let's see if this attitude varies with belief in God. Using the General Social Survey (which I have done about 250 times in the past year), I calculated the mean score for thinking cheating on taxes is wrong. Respondents were given a 1 for "not wrong" and a 4 for "very wrong."


"Cheating on taxes is wrong" mean score--whites

Doesn't believe 3.20
No way to find out 3.05
Some higher power 3.01
Believes sometimes 2.98
Believes but doubts 3.01
Knows God exists 3.23
All whites 3.14


"Cheating on taxes is wrong" mean score--blacks

Doesn't believe 2.11
Now way to find out 2.71
Some higher power 2.92
Believes sometimes 3.11
Believes but doubts 2.82
Knows god exists 3.01
All blacks 2.96


First, there is an overall racial difference. Blacks are probably more likely to see nothing wrong with cheating the system since many of them believe it is designed to victimize them. A common belief among blacks is, "Are you going to be a predator or the prey?"

Black and white atheists are very different. White non-believers are the second-most moral, while black atheists have the lowest mean. This suggests that whites in this category are the principled type and that blacks are the nihilist type.

As I showed in previous post, among whites, atheists and confident believers have the most positive answers. They seem to have unambiguous views in general: being dishonest with taxes is not a little bit wrong, it's very wrong; I'm not kind of happy, I'm happy. Those with squishy views in one area seem to be squashy in another area.

Friday, April 13, 2007

Mexicans have the worst English-speaking abilities of all immigrant groups: Long-term assimilation aside, immigration creates the immediate problem in America of people not being able to communicate with each other. This is not true in all cases: some immigrants speak English better than native-born American do. So which immigrant groups reduce the problem, and which groups add to it?

The General Social Survey's measure of IQ is based on a vocabulary test, and for immigrants it serves as an indication of their English-speaking abilities. The following shows the mean score for each immigrant group:


Mean English-speaking ability (expressed like IQ):

English/Welsh 112.4
Irish 103.0
Scots 102.6

Native-born Americans 99.3

Germans 98.4
Poles 97.4
Indians 95.4
Filipinos 95.3
Spanish 94.4

All immigrants 92.1

Italians 90.0
Africans 90.0
Russians 89.9
Chinese 86.5
Puerto Ricans 80.5
Mexicans 80.3

English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish immigrants speak English better than Americans do. On the other end, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans have, by far, the lowest scores, and since they are also large groups, they make a big contribution to the Tower of Babel problem.

Let me give a personal example of the situation: On my way home from teaching night class, there is only one grocery store that is along my route home. All of the sections and the food in the store are labeled in Spanish, and only occasionally do the managers bother to also label items in English. Most of the stock is geared toward Mexican tastes, and even though the store is large, it does not always carry what I am looking for, and it's not like I'm hunting for exotic items. The problem is much worse for whites and blacks who do not understand Spanish like I do. I can't imagine that folks don't complain, but there it is.

Adults schools are an example of how this language problem costs taxpayers. In my city, there are a number of campuses that offer free courses in English to all immigrants. They get to learn the language of success, and I get to pay for it.

Update: Joe Guzzardi writes about his 20 years of experience with immigrants who don't want to learn English at the adult school where he has been a teacher.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Latinos are most likely to drive drunk: Last Thursday, Geraldo and O'Reilly practically started throwing punches over Bill's coverage of a Mexican illegal who killed two people while driving drunk. Mustache-From-Hell claimed that there was no story there, so the only reason to cover it was racial animosity.

Well, USA Today seems to think the Hispanic angle on drunk driving is worth covering:


Anti-drunken-driving efforts aimed at Latinos

"North Carolina is trying to combat a major problem among young Hispanic men drawn to the state by plentiful jobs: drunken-driving rates two to three times as high as those of other groups.

"According to the University of North Carolina's Highway Safety Research Center, 7.04% of Hispanic drivers involved in crashes in the state in 2005 were suspected of driving while intoxicated. That compares with 2.82% of whites in crashes and 2.29% of African-Americans, according to Eric Rodgman, a researcher at the center. Most of the Hispanics involved in crashes are young men, he says.

"Many of them have left their family, church and social networks behind when they come to the USA to work, and they sometimes drink to combat loneliness, says Antonio Asion, public safety director for El Pueblo, a non-profit Hispanic advocacy group in Raleigh." More...

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Old people don't like diversity: The other day, Steve Sailer wrote a VDare piece that included, among other things, the idea that many white college-age students long to get away from their boring surroundings to more ethnically diverse and thus more exciting environments. He then wondered in the comments section if a desire for diversity peaks during that age. Well, the General Social Survey doesn't interview children, but we can look at 18 plus. People were asked about the ethnic changes that will happen in the next 25 years, and their answers ranged from a very good thing (=1) to a very bad thing (=5). (Notice how everyone assumes the changes are inevitable, like they have already happened.) Here are the mean scores by age for whites:


"The growing diversity is bad" mean score--whites

Ages 18-25, 2.87
26-35, 2.91
36-45, 2.99
46-55, 2.95
56-65, 3.07
66-75, 3.25
76-85, 3.17


So, enthusiasm for diversity declines with age, especially from the mid-50s on. But I'm not sure if the correct interpretation here is that getting older turns you into a conservative, or if multi-culti messages have found fertile ground in impressionable youths. I suspect that the experience of having children turns many people's minds to safety issues, and what once looked stimulating now looks scary.

Friday, April 06, 2007

O'Reilly v. Rivera: Did you guys see the shouting match between O'Reilly and Geraldo Rivera over illegal immigration? I didn't realize that elites were this passionate about the issue. You gotta see it to believe it. For Rivera, it's racist to express any concern over people being here illegally.

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Mexican immigrants are the most anti-Semitic: Surveys show that most Jews are immigration enthusiasts. Critics argue that America is importing a lot of people who are tilting the country in an anti-Semitic direction. But not all immigrant groups are equal. Let's see what light the General Social Survey can shed on this question. People were asked how much they liked Israel with answers ranging from 0 for "like very much" to 9 for "dislike very much." It's not the perfect measure of anti-Semitism, but it's the best I could find with an adequate sample size. Here are the mean scores for immigrants from each country (or region):


Anti-Israel mean score

Mexico 4.55
Africa 4.45
Germany 4.25
China 3.87
Italy 3.87

All Immigrants 3.84

Puerto Rico 3.84
England/Wales 3.58
Spain 3.06


As some people have suggested, Mexicans are anti-Israel, as are Africans. The sample sizes for many countries are too small to list estimates, but Europe, even Eastern Europe, is generally pro-Israel. (Eastern Europeans are probably pro-Israel because many immigrants are Jewish). Japanese and Indian immigrants are anti-Israel, as is the small sample of Arabs. There is a correlation between being a white immigrant and being pro-Israel: white immigrants average 3.73; blacks, 4.20; and others, 3.90.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Those who sometimes believe in God are the least happy: Does believing in God contribute to happiness, unhappiness, or is it neutral? Here are the mean sadness score from the General Social Survey (1=very happy, 2=pretty happy, 3=not too happy):

Mean Sadness Score--Whites

Doesn't believe 1.79
No way to find out 1.88
Some higher power 1.77
Believes sometimes 1.93
Believes but doubts 1.82
Knows God exists 1.73


Mean Sadness Score--Blacks

Doesn't believe 1.86
No way to find out 2.00
Some higher power 2.04
Believes sometimes 2.26
Believes but doubts 2.08
Knows God exists 1.97

These numbers echo my earlier analysis that it isn't so healthy to be squishy on these issues. Emile Durkheim argued that it is a pathological condition to have Socrates' outlook: "The only thing I know is that I know nothing."

Some might think that atheists would be miserable, but they are the happiest black group, and the third happiest white group. The differences are not large, but they are statistically significant.

Are gun owners mentally ill?

  Some anti-gun people think owning a gun is a sign of some kind of mental abnormality. According to General Social Survey data, gun owners ...