Let's Refudiate Twitter?

Sarah Palin illustrates one of the pitfalls of Web 2.0--you tweet a new word, like "refudiate" and you get mocked.

Best News Today

Is contained in  this NYTimes article. which describes how Greg Mortenson and the US military are getting together.  (Actually, the print version of the headline specifically mentions Mortenson and "Three Cups of Tea", which makes Gene Weingarten's column in the Post more timely.  Gene mourns the decline of headline writers, because headlines on the Web are intended to play into search engines, not for information or humor. Be sure to see his mention of Lady Gaga.)

I read Mortenson's book back when it was just getting a little word of mouth. Briefly, chance leads him into the mountains of Pakistan/Afghanistan and into building schools for girls, schools which are supported by the village elders and therefore protected against outside terrorists The book was well-written and moving. It gradually found an audience, getting onto the Times best seller list, finally selling 4 million copies, including to the wives of Gen. Petraeus and Adm. Mullen, which has led to some rapprochement between Mortenson and the military, a rapprochement described in the article.

So far his site says 70+ schools, the Times article 130+ schools have been built. Mortenson thinks educating females is the ultimate solution to the problem of terrorism in that part of the world.  Makes sense to me.

What Scares a Nuclear Submariner?

I don't think of submariners and Navy Seals in the same way, but I do consider submariners to be tough-minded.  John Phipps is a ex-sub man and he's scared ****less by herbicide-resistant weeds.

I'd score that as one point for the organic types.

Organic Versus Locavore

EWG has a post on organic gains from which I take this quote:

Organic salad greens have fared even more impressively.  According to Nielsen surveys, fresh cut salad greens increased their market share from 8.3 percent in 2006 to 15 percent so far this year.  Pre-packaged specialty salads have grabbed a whopping 46 percent of that market sector, compared to 29 percent in 2006.

I observe the good news for organic isn't good news for locavores, as I'm assuming the pre-packaged greens are shipped. Once again the consumers' desires are conflicting; healthy--yes; convenience--yes.

Keepseagle and Pigford

Here's a piece on the Keepseagle class action suit, which follows in the footsteps of Pigford. Unwittingly, the author may reveal some of the Catch-22 qualities of the FSA loan program.  The farmer given the most attention in the piece cites the discrimination he encountered.  He's described as saying: "After the regional office denied him a loan at 4 percent interest, Porter said he received an 8 percent interest loan through a private bank. He purchased the acres he lives on now, but he said the high interest has put a strain on his finances."

Now FSA's lords  in Congress have laid down commandments to FSA bureaucrats, and to the Farmer's Home Administration bureaucrats before 1994, which go something like this:

• thou shall lend to the new farmers, to the historically disadvantaged, and to the needy
• thou shall never compete with private enterprise, so thou shalt not lend to someone who can receive a loan from local banks
• thou shall not lose money on bad loans
• honor the maxim, late money is worse than no money.

Now, in theory, if the local banker is prejudiced and the FSA bureaucrat is not, there are opportunities to make good loans.  Of course the FSA bureaucrat isn't usually some stranger, she's someone from the locality, or at least the state, so if the banker is prejudiced it increases the chances the bureaucrat is also prejudiced.

Or maybe the local banker runs out of money to loan.  In that case FSA bureaucrat could, in theory, step in. The only problem is the running out of money is likely to occur late in the lending season, so the FSA bureaucrat's loan is likely to be late.

Now suppose both FSA and the bank have money to loan, and neither is prejudiced.  So Jane Doe goes to the bank and gets an offer of a loan at 8 percent.  She goes to FSA  but since she has a loan offer from the local bank, FSA turns her down. Or, as in Porter's case, FSA turns him down, thinking it's likely the local banker will approve the loan. That could be the case, or it may be discriminatory intent.  It certainly feels like discrimination to the loan applicants.

USDA Cafeterias and Memory Lane

The Post's Jane Black visited various government cafeterias and rated them. She rated the USDA cafeteria a "D". I'm not sure how much it's changed in the last 10-15 years, since I last got the salad bar (with blue cheese dressing) every day.

When I started work at USDA I was in the Auditor's building, a red brick building from 1867 or so across 14th street from the South building and Administration buildings.  Back then there was a small cafeteria on the first floor of the Auditor's building, and the South building had at least 2, maybe 4, cafeterias. In the middle 70's they built a new cafeteria by taking over one of the courtyards between wings 2 and 3, big enough to serve the complex.  Once it was complete, they closed the old cafeterias, redid the space and moved my Administrative Services Division to the former site of the 6th floor cafeteria.

The old cafeterias were old-style: one line with limited choices for appetizer/salad, entrees, which were served by attendants, desserts, beverages, and payment at the end. The new cafeteria had more choices and was set up on the scramble system, with different stations for different things. Took a little getting used to.

[Added]  I think this is just a small example of the expansion of choice, particularly choice in food, over the last 50 years.  We expect lots of choices everywhere, we let and want our children to choose.  That's fine, but it also is a factor in obesity.

All Heart, Not the Shirt Off His Back, But the Tie Off His Rack

That's our President.

CRS Graphic

CRS

I mentioned the CRS report on farm programs in this post. This graphic is snipped from the report because it clearly shows the reduction in farm program payments and the increase in crop insurance. Click on it to enlarge.

Fort Bliss More Dangerous Than Iraq?

That's a headline which could be derived from a NYTimes piece yesterday on the tribulations of an Army brigade returned from Iraq to Fort Bliss, Texas

I Helped Create a Monster

Farm Policy reports on calls for simplifying farm programs. Neither ACRE nor SURE work in all parts of the country.

I'm afraid I take a little credit for this.  By participating in installing computers and software programs in FSA county offices in the mid-80's, I became an "enabler".  Essentially we enabled the idiots in Congress and the farm lobby groups to design new and more complicated programs. I apologize.

I Don't Believe the Army Recruits

From a Politico piece on changes in basic training:

" Of those who are recruited, 54 percent of males and 43 percent of females are overweight."

Of course, most of my basic training unit were draftees, but I doubt there were more than 3 or 4 who were overweight.  The whole story is interesting.

One Time I Agree With Althouse

Ann Althouse quotes from a Washington Post interview with the head of Zappos.  The last bit:

Tony Hsieh: We offer tours to the public, and our headquarters are in Las Vegas. We will pick you up at the airport, ride in the Zappos shuttle, take an hour long tour and then drop you off at the hotel.

For candidates we do the same thing: We pick them up, give them a tour, and then they spend the day interviewing. But at the end of the interview process, our head of recruiting goes back to the shuttle driver and asks them how they were treated. If they were not treated well when they thought they were off the clock then we won't hire them, it's not even a question.

There are a lot of big shots who, away from the camera and the media, are a**holes. But this is about how you create a culture in your organization. And it's good--certainly makes me more likely to buy again from Zappos, not that a retired codger needs much wearing apparel.

Elect That Man to Congress

We need the incisive insights on Capitol Hill, as displayed here: " I think home teams play better at home,"  NL manager Manuel.

Ms Sullivan, C-Span and the FBI

I was channel surfing, partially catching Fran Sullivan, GWB's staffer over DHS, etc.  Quite interesting, in that she's coming from a bureaucratic perspective, and some of the audience were also bureaucrats (i.e Chertoff, Ben-Veniste).  One thing which caught my attention in the area of sharing data was mention of the FBI's case file system.  As she observed, if the key to your filing system is a case tied to an individual, and all information gets entered in that system, you're liable to be unable to find  data which doesn't.  Unfortunately the case file is embedded in the FBI's DNA, so their ability to design their software is limited.  Rather like FSA's reliance on county files.

Bureaucrat Who Did His Duty

You always have to have a signature on an order.  That's what Lt. Hamburger said.  See this Brad DeLong post

Open Government at NTIS

My first contact with NTIS (which I think stands for National Technical Information Service, the techie wing of the Commerce Department) was back in 1970 or so when I was trying to research word processors and then CRT's--bought a couple publications of theirs.  Not much has changed, as Matt Yglesias discovers--their publications are now on CD's, but they still cost ($80). Matt thinks information yearns to be free; I believe the problem for NTIS is their operations are not funded by Congress, but by user fees.  This is somewhat similar to the Administrative Conference of the US which uses its online document service fees ($.08 per page to download) rather expansively.

In principle I think all information generated within the government should be on line, searchable, and available at no charge.

Striking Sentence of July 11

" The engineers programmed RUBI to cry when its arms were pulled. "

This comes from a NYTimes article on how computer scientists are creating robots who act as partners, teachers, or helpers, particularly for children, especially autistic children. The first trial with RUBI, two boys pulled off its arms.  So crying turned out to be the solution; the boys backed off.  I recommend the article.

Cost Per Visit

Federal Computer Week has an article on the United Kingdom's effort to reduce the number of web sites the government supports. perhaps 75 percent of the 820 sites. They've also come up with a metric the US government should use: the cost per visit to the site. (The priciest was $17+ per visit.)  Although, on second thought maybe the metric should be the cost per minute of visit.  I've proposed before each government website should have a link to a set of metrics describing usage of the website.  I repeat the suggestion.

And How About Federal Standards (Chickens)?

Understanding Government has a post on California chicken.  As they say, the animal rights people imposed tougher standards on CA chicken growers 2 years ago, over poultry opposition.  This year, animal rights and poultry people imposed the same tougher standards on eggs imported into CA.   One can see this in many ways.  I'd add to UG's discussion the  idea that liberals usually tend to support one nationwide standard for things, except when they don't, as here.  Again I go back to the idea of our weak government, due in part to federalism.  Political principle is easily discarded when the government structure makes it easy for you to win.

Housing Size

Ezra Klein has a post responding to a suggestion of mine--discussing the difference in housing size among the nations and cities. The US is sitting at something over 800 square feet per person (that's including all square footage in the house); European figures, which are "usable space", presumably just kitchens, living rooms, bed rooms, range from 300 for Estonia to about 550 for Denmark

US median housing size has gone from about 1500 in 1973 to 2500 in 2005, with the Northeast leading the way.

I doubt how much value the increased square footage adds to human happiness.  After all, it only takes 100-200 square feet to give each child a bedroom.

The Trials of the Bureaucrat

Census takers are bureaucrats. Via Chris Blattman, here's how the great American public deals with them.

Burke on Causes of the Revolution

Then, Sir, from these six capital sources; of descent; of form of government; of religion in the northern provinces; of manners in the southern; of education; of the remoteness of situation from the first mover of government; from all these causes a fierce spirit of liberty has grown up. It has grown with the growth of the people in your colonies, and increased with the increase of their wealth; a spirit, that unhappily meeting with an exercise of power in England, which, however lawful, is not reconcilable to any ideas of liberty, much less with theirs, has kindled this flame that is ready to consume us.

Funniest Sentence for Codgers Today

From Joel Achenbach at the Post, who's got a 50th birthday upcoming:

 It's a milestone when "nap" makes your daily To Do list.

A Lawyer Knows Soccer

David Post at Volokh Conspiracy made a bet at 23  to 1 odds that Spain and the Netherlands would be in the World Cup final.

Immigration and Housing Prices

I still have a bee in my bonnet about the relationship of immigration to housing prices, and the tightening of enforcement to price drops.  I found another bit of support in these paragraphs from a Calculated Risk post:

I can add a little to this story: I know of an individual investor (through a close friend) in the Phoenix area who has bought almost 100 homes over the last 18 months. The investor has shared with me his portfolio. He has only bought single family homes, no condos. His average purchase price was under $35,000 and most of the homes are 3 br / 2 ba.

He is renting the homes, many by the room. Yeah, they sound like flophouses! The investor is starting to have a vacancy problem that he attributes to the new Arizona immigration law that takes effect on July 29th.

 Incidentally the housing prices in Manassas Park are now about half what they used to be.

Questions on Reading "Revolutionaries"

I've started reading Jack Rakove's "Revolutionaries,  A New History of the Invention of America".  It's not doing well on Amazon's ratings, except when you look at the one-stars you find people complaining, not about the book but about the Kindle price. So far I'd recommend it--it reads easily. I'm reasonably familiar with the period but it has triggered a couple questions/observations so far. 

• I wasn't familiar with Edmund Burke's speech on conciliating the colonies--Rakove quotes enough that I've looked it up on line.
• I wonder why none of the Canadian provinces attended the "First Continental Congress".  I grew up reading Kenneth Roberts, whose historical fiction included the attack on Quebec/Montreal led by Benedict Arnold and Gen. Montgomery, which was an attempt to get those northern provinces to join the revolution.
• although Americans don't usually like having the national government exercise powers over individual citizens, that's exactly what the First CC did--establish local committees to enforce the boycott on British goods.

Obama Uses Poles for His Tomatoes

That's the takeaway I got from this Obamafoodorama post, which includes a photo of the President showing off the White House garden to Biden and Reid.  It's good to see Obama involved with the garden; look what my better half has done. Although, just to carp, I've yet to see any of the Obamas doing any actual work in the garden other than the first plantings and harvesting--who is doing the weeding, since they don't use mulch down the rows?

So Much for the Myth of the Loving Bonobos

Beneath the velvet glove lies an iron hand, according to this article in today's Times:

Once, while in the Congo, I witnessed Tatango, this young male bonobo, start to do what the chimps in Uganda regularly did: he went up to the alpha female, Mimi, and backhanded her across the face. She gave him the most withering look. Within seconds, five unrelated females chased him into the forest. Poor guy. They almost took his testicles off. After that, he never made another problem. Bonobo females seem to know that if they stick together, the males can’t dominate.

Ohio Compromise--How to Treat Livestock

It's not the Missouri Compromise of 1820, but Gov. Strickland probably faced some similar passions: the Farm Bureau protecting current methods of raising livestock, particularly cages for hens and farrowing  crates for sows, while the Humane Society wants to end both.  Farm Policy has a description here. 

If I understand, they took a standard approach in these sorts of disputes: grandfather in the existing operations and apply new rules to new operations. (Same tactics have been used in lots of labor union-employer disputes; keep the old-timers whole and make the newbies suffer.) John Phipps has a slightly jaundiced, dare I say cynical evaluation.

Given the proliferation of outlets, the bottom line for farmers and processors is: if you and your customers wouldn't like seeing it on-line, don't do it, because it will be on-line.  Just ask Dave Weigel about the ability to keep data private.

Those Regimented French--Govt. Prescribed Sales Days

From Mr. Beauregarde:

France being France, shopkeepers just can’t hold sales when they like, sales are national évents with precise dates set for when they start and finish. So, they started yesterday and will go on for five weeks. Bargain hunters were out eary yesterday morning. Some stores were offering réductions of up to 40% on some articles. [fixed typos]

Words of Wisdom from the President

Obamafoodorama reports on the picnic the Obamas had for 1100 military and dependents.  To quote:

He noted that due to the sweltering heat, he and Mrs. Obama had advised the troops not to come in uniform. But the President pointed out one fellow, a corporal, who was attired in a dark suit.
"I said man, you must be hot," President Obama said. "And he said, I'm sorry sir, I know you're my Commander In Chief, but my grandmother said I had to dress up."

"You can't argue with Grandma,"  President Obama said, to laughter.

FSA, MIDAS, and ARRA

It took over a year (from May 30, 2009 to June 16, 2010) but FSA finally updated the link from its page on the ARRA to MIDAS (i.e, from the Recovery Act to the project to redo FSA computer systems.)  I have to say the data they provide doesn't do much for me.

The Age of Blogging: Bellesiles

The American Historical Association included a link to a piece by Michael Bellesiles on teaching military history in time of war.  It's well-written, with the key being the serious injury to the brother of one of the class.  It got a good reaction in the comments, until one commenter asked why Bellesiles was only an adjunct at Central Connecticut.  Other commenters jumped in, recalling the scandal over his sourcing of Arming America, and loss of his Emory U job and his Bancroft Prize.

Moral?  These days it's hard to escape your past

Numbers for Today

An assortment of numbers which struck me:

41--the number of deaths in Iraq among the combat forces, though most were non-combat
78 percent--the number of NFL players who are bankrupt or in financial difficulties 2 years after leaving the league
37--the number of Shakespearean plays Sen. Byrd quoted in his speeches on the floor of the Senate in 1994.

4th--the day of July.

The Alpha and Omega of Bureaucracy

The Post today had pieces showing the alpha and omega of bureaucracy:
Ezra Klein discusses the need for "creative bureaucrats" (my term, not his) to write the regulations for health care reform and financial reform.  Getting the system right up front is critical to success or failure. He writes:

Both bills require the creation of institutions, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the state health insurance exchanges. And both require existing agencies, like the Federal Reserve and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, to take on much larger roles. All of this tends to play poorly politically, with naysayers worrying about unelected bureaucrats making important decisions behind closed doors. But in some ways, the greater danger is that the doors will be open and the wrong people will walk through

Peter Carlson has a piece from the other end of the bureaucracy: the "operator", the person who has to apply the rules and regulations in face to face dealings with the (in this case) American public as a census worker.  He had to contact people who failed to mail back their form.  His account, including the creation of two new races (Armenian-Irish and Irish-Peruvian) shows the reality behind government statistics, as well as being a reflection of where we are in the great melting pot.

Soft on Crime--Republican Justices?

  From the Scotus Blog (hat tip Volokh Conspiracy),  counter-intuitive sentences, though I don't intend to revive the "soft on crime" political slur, regardless of to whom it is applied:

"But it is easy to overlook that their principled reading of other provisions regularly leads Scalia and Thomas to adopt the very most defendant-favoring positions on the Court.  In previous Terms, Scalia and Thomas have been a part of the majority revolutionizing both sentencing and the right of confrontation, which favor criminal defendants."

Pigford Update

The Pigford money has been having a hard time making it through Congress because it's attached to legislation the Reps and Dems are fighting over.  But there was a switch to a plan B which may help, described here.

But this quote from John Boyd puzzles me:

"Boyd also called on southern Republican senators to "do the right thing for the black farmers" who are their constituents and vote for it. He noted that Mississippi and Alabama each has about 20,000 black farmers who would get settlements."

I don't see anything in this which supports his figures, though he may be thinking of people who would/have applied and not the "black principal operator"  ERS uses.  Mr. Boyd should also note that (20,000 + 20,000) * $50,000 = $2,000,000,000, which is more than is available and more than is agreed to in the recent negotiations.

Those Tough French Schools--Factoid of the Day

Via Mr. Beauregarde:
"40% of French school kids up to the age of fifteen have repeated a year at some stage in their éducation."

And, within living memory, French kids used to go to school on Saturday.

NRCS and FSA--Testimony from FSA

I quote from a legislative statement dated today, the testimony of Mr. Lohr:

Both FSA and NRCS are in the process of upgrading their technology and business processes, FSA through the Modernize and Innovate the Delivery of Agricultural Systems (MIDAS) project and NRCS through the Conservation Delivery Streamlining Initiative. Having FSA administer conservation programs would go a long way towards assisting NRCS in reaching its Streamlining Initiative goals of reducing field staff administrative workloads by 80%. It would also enable their field staff to reach the goal of spending 75% of their time in the field providing conservation assistance to farmers and ranchers. NRCS has indicated concern with the administrative burden on field office technical staff from expanded roles for contract development and management. NRCS’s Streamlining Initiative encourages a move to a “natural resource centric view” concentrating on identifying and solving resource problems and moving away from a “financial assistance centric view.”

The NRCS Streamlining Initiative highlighted as one of its top objectives the implementation of programs through alternative staffing and delivery approaches designed around more efficient business processes to minimize the non-technical workload on field staff.

Now is the time to make the IT changes to enhance FSA’s administrative and NRCS’s technical capabilities .For example, FSA and NRCS use different GIS software programs, ArcGIS and Toolkit, respectively. This is not practical. It is extremely inefficient to develop and maintain two USDA systems to administer farm and conservation programs. We can no longer afford these inefficiencies.

The third from the last sentence surprises me.  So much for the work of Kevin Wickey.

What Does Extension Do?

Here's an article on the shift of an extension director over to FSA, which provides some information on what extension actually does, at least in Iowa.

A Bit of History

Brad DeLong has been running a series of posts related to WWII.  Here he quotes Neville Chamberlain's speech when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia.  I found this sentence striking:

"Every man and woman in this country who remembers the fate of the Jews and the political prisoners in Austria must be filled today with distress and foreboding."

McArdle and Normalizing Children

Megan McArdle is back from her honeymoon and worrying about normalizing children: human interventions to adjust the height, and other characteristics, of our children.  As a very tall woman, she tentatively plumps for normalizing:

"If I were presented with a virtually riskless way to let my daughters buy clothing off the rack, and blend into the classroom a little better?  Frankly, no child of mine is ever going to have a brilliant athletic future in front of her.  So why not?  I'm pretty sure she could fight the patriarchy just as easily without a 35 inch inseam."

I'm bugged by the middle sentence and would have commented but I come late to the party so I'll post here instead:

• she does not allow for the genetics her daughter will receive from her husband.  He may be a total klutz, but maybe not.
• even if neither parent contributes much in the way of coordination, I'm reading the sentence, perhaps wrongly, as saying Ms McArdle looks down on athletics, at least as it pertains to her and hers. I'm hearing in it an echo of the attitude I get from some older relatives of mine: I'm no good on computers and technical type stuff.  That drives me up the wall. Now if they'd say: the world is full of wondrous things and my time on the planet is limited, so I choose not to invest the time needed to learn the ins and outs of Windows and the Internet--that I could understand.  
• so I guess I'd wish McArdle to say: while I'm not good at athletics, I'll try to keep my daughter's eyes open to athletics, just as I keep them open to a possible career in nuclear physics.

Balls and Strikes

Andrew Pincus at TPM reports on an exchange with Ms. Kagan on the famous Roberts definition of a judge's role: call balls and strikes.  I'm disappointed she didn't go further with the metaphor.  Anyone who grew up when I did was told the strike zone was between the knees and the armpits, and over the plate.  Anyone who watches baseball on TV today knows that's not the way umpires see it today.  And there's no consistency from umpire to umpire.  The best the pitcher and the batters can hope for is consistency through the day.

Reinventing the Wheel at the Federal Government

Buying in bulk.  That's the new idea, which is really an old idea.  If I remember correctly, Al Gore's Reinventing Government emphasized procurement reform, in part by giving government credit cards out to the field.  The idea was you cut the paperwork, the procurement delays, and you make government smaller and more responsive.  Of course that reform ran into problems, particularly because no one was watching over the use of the credit cards, so they got misused.  Now the Obama administration thinks we can save money by moving more of the procurement action back to GSA.  Perhaps.  And perhaps 15 years from now another administration will try again to decentralize procurement.

Obesity at Lake Woebegon

From Farm Policy, quoting an AP article on the new obesity report:

The article stated that, “The new survey shows that 84 percent of parents believe their children are at a healthy weight, even though nearly a third of children and teens are considered obese or overweight.”

Good for the White House--Composting

Obamafoodorama posts on a video showing the White House compost operation. Although I sometimes mock parts of the food movement, composting is right down my alley.  It fits the Calvinistic/Lutheran piety I was brought up with: waste not, want not.  Inevitably if you're cooking there is some waste, trimmings and inedible parts of plants (although I eat baked potatoes skins and all).  And the larger the operation the more likely you'll have some spoilage.  So I like to see people composting, even though it's difficult to do the way the books say.  You don't always have the right mixture of materials and it can be difficult to keep the moisture and oxygen at the right level.

But all that said, composting is a good thing.

Obesity Is Sam Walton's Fault, Not Farmers

A report cited at Barking Up the Wrong Tree says there's a correlation between Walmart Supercenters and the rate of obesity.  (Of course correlation is not cause and in this instance there's probably a whole set of causal factors affecting obesity and the siting of Walmarts.)

Collision and Comprehensive From Different Insurance Companies?

Would it make sense for me to get my collision insurance from GEICO and my comprehensive liability insurance from Allstate?  (The companies agree it doesn't make sense for me to get my homeowners and auto insurance from different companies; they just disagree on which of them should provide both.)

That's the situation we have with crop insurance and disaster payment programs.  GAO recently released a report pointing out problems because of the different rules, in particular FSA gets reports of disaster damage long after the fact.  So they recommend:

To better ensure that payments under the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Payments Program compensate farmers who experienced eligible crop losses, we recommend that the Secretary of Agriculture implement procedures so that FSA county officials are notified at the time of crop insurance claims for disaster-related losses so those officials have an opportunity to verify that crop disaster payment applicants experienced losses because of an eligible cause.

I'm sorry, but this doesn't make much sense to me.  Data flowing the other way, from FSA to the insurance companies makes a little sense--you've got one source which theoretically can propagate the data to each company.  But having the data flow from the companies to FSA is problematic.

An addendum: this FSA notice shows the problems involved with having different shares reported to RMA and FSA.

So Much for the Innocence of Nature

Chris Blattman passes on a research report which he labels: "Are Whales Racist"? Once you start distinguishing between "us" and "them", it's a short slippery slope to racism and war.

Weingarten and National IQ's

Pulitzer-prize winning columnist Gene Weingarten uses his weekly humor column to pass on his commencement address to the Bronx High School of Science graduating class.  It's very good--first paragraph:

"I want to begin by apologizing for some of the many, many cruel things I've written over the years about this school. I was basing those comments on my time here, which was 40 years ago, and I can see right now that Bronx Science has improved enormously since then, particularly in the area of diversity. You're no longer all a bunch of Jewish nerds. Now you're all a bunch of Asian nerds"

That quote ties in with an interesting factoid from a research paper I ran across, hat tip Tyler Cowen, I think. The paper was looking at the immigration in light of the average IQ of the countries from which the immigrants came.  (I'd personally take it with a huge amount of salt--I can't comprehend how to obtain such a figure.)  According to the  table they used (in an appendix, but derived from other research), Hong Kong was 108, South Korea 106, and Israel 95.