My hit counts continue to be high, and most of them are new visitors. The same 15-20 people who hit this place on a regular basis are still there, but they have been joined by dozens drawn by my gratuitous use of the word "nude" in my posts. I guess I will stop and see what happens to my numbers. I'm guessing that when "nude" stops appearing in my posts, my 28-day rolling average will drop back to around 18 where it has been since I started tracking it.

More on IQ, college graduation rates, etc.

First, I was sent a link to the article I mentioned yesterday published on a different (and free) web site. I'm surprised that the Times thinks it can charge for a column that is being given away at other newspaper sites. Do they really believe that they add that much value just by having it posted on their web site that I will pay for it?

Anyway, the column is mostly observations and not much on conclusions other than this is important and we really need to understand what is going on here, and stop crucifying those who dare suggest that not every human being has exactly the same innate abilities. To recap, the column discusses the growing gap in the number of female-to-male college graduates. Females do better in grade school, and seem to stick with college and graduate in higher numbers than males. Over-all, the ratio is 133 females for every 100 males (with the ratio being 200 black females for every 100 black males). Give what we know about the various bell curves involved, combined with what we know is necessary to function in science, math, and engineering, you would think we as a society might want to take a hard look at what is going on and why it is happening.

Brooks gives a lot of data, some of which conflicts with what I have seen from other places. But nothing he presents changes the conclusions drawn by many others that have been beat down by the PC police (Larry Summers being just the latest in a long line). Rather than beat a patch of grass where a dead horse used to be, I'll just pick a few sound bites out:

"...kindergarten teachers report that girls are more attentive than boys and more persistent at tasks. Through elementary school, girls are less likely to be asked to repeat a grade. They are much less likely to be diagnosed with a learning disability."

Of course: boys need to be forced to pay attention, while girls are, in general, less willful. No parent would be surprised by this. We have removed the ability of our schools to force little boys to pay attention to the teacher, so they are diagnosed as learning disabled and drugged. Nothing new here.

"In high school, girls get higher grades in every subject, usually by about a quarter of a point, and have a higher median class rank. They are more likely to take advanced placement courses and the hardest math courses and are more likely to be straight-A students. They have much higher reading and writing scores on national assessment tests. Boys still enjoy an advantage on math and science tests, but that gap is smaller and closing."

So the girls are more likely to sign up for AP classes or advanced math classes, but fail to do as well as the boys do. Given what I have observed in the Kalkaska schools, I would guess that more girls sign up for AP classes due to a teacher or school counselor telling them to,while more boys sign up because they are genuinely interested in the subject matter. Girls, in general, tend to be more compliant to authority figures.

Here is also where I take issue with Brooks' data. Every comparative study I have seen of standardized tests shows boys out front in both verbal and math/science scores. The gap is far less on the verbal than on math and science, but boys still have the advantage. That information may be out of date. If it is, I'd like to see some sources for this.

"Girls are much more likely to be involved in the school paper or yearbook, to be elected to student government and to be members of academic clubs."

In other words, girls are better socializers. Again, I'm not sure what this has to do with academic success nor can I think of a single parent that doesn't know this. As a test, monitor the phone usage of a teenage girl vs. a teenage guy. Compare the number of calls made and received, the length of the calls, and "bit rate." See if you detect any patterns.

"They [girls] set higher goals for their post-high-school career."

That's nice. But do they achieve those goals? One of the guys that graduated from our church's youth group told anyone who asked that he wanted to own a junk yard after he graduated from high school. Not a very lofty goal by today's standards, but he achieved it, and by the looks of things, he is a very successful junk yard owner. Compare that to the girls I started college with who enrolled in computer science only to wind up as education majors or in the newly-formed "Women's Studies" (renamed soon after to "Womyn's Studies) when they cracked their skulls on the first real math class or computer language lab. All the guys I knew (including me) all had jobs related to their major by their sophomore year and dropped out of college soon after.

"Women are more likely to enroll in college and they are more likely to have better applications,"

Because colleges look at all the social stuff like being on twenty different committees or involved in a dozen clubs. Teacher recommendations are also important and who is a (most always female) teacher more likely to write a letter of recommendation for? The girl in class that never speaks out of turn and never argues with the teacher, or the guy that sits in the back of the class being a jerk?

"If boys like to read about war and combat, why can't there be books about combat on the curriculum?"

Because we have feminized not just our schools, but our entire culture. Boys must play with Barbie dolls because boys running around pretending to shoot things or wrestling on the playground upsets the pretty blond heads that now run our schools. Boys must read books where all the characters cooperate because competition is evil and may result in someone doing better than someone else. So we bore them to death until they can't take it anymore and start acting out, then we drug them into submission.

"Would elementary school boys do better if they spent more time outside the classroom and less time chained to a desk?"

As a general rule, yes. Again, ask any parent. A significant number of our girls would benefit from this as well.

"Or would they thrive more in a rigorous, competitive environment?"

As a general rule, yes. Again, ask any parent.

"...honest discussion of innate differences has been stifled (ask Larry Summers)."

Exactly.

And just to add to that, here is a discussion over on Jerry Pournelle's site about IQ and what it means for education. Jerry hits it dead on with "God and the Universe are not designed to change facts in order to relieve me of stress." It does not matter one bit if people are uncomfortable discussing the differences in ability (whether we are talking IQ, standardized tests, g, or any of a dozen other measures) between genders and between races. As a society, we must have the discussion and it must happen sooner rather than later. Or we can all start learning Chinese, because I guarantee they don't give a damn about political correctness. China is way behind and knows it. The difference is that they are running hard and closing in on our lead, while we repeatedly shoot ourselves in the feet.

And from the Law is an Ass files, we have three perfect examples of what is meant by the term anarcho-tyranny:

What is an accident?
Jail time for $1.16 in back taxes
Cheerleaders or prostitutes?

More on obesity here. Greg Cochran says that many things we consider to be hereditary are actually infectious diseases. He has been proven right far more often than wrong. It is also important to note that, like intelligence, the question of heredity vs. disease vs. environment is most likely "all of the above in varying proportions depending on a few dozen other variables."

Bob Thompson takes on Fred Reed's latest column on evolution. He includes one of the best explanations of a fact vs. a theory I have ever seen:

The ID folks sneer at Evolution as being "only a theory", with the implication that the theory is unproven and therefore their ID garbage is just as likely an explanation, if not more so. In science, a theory is the next best thing to a fact. A fact, in case anyone is unclear about the terminology, is something that has been observed. That the sun rose this morning is a fact. That the sun will rise tomorrow is a theory. Sadly, the vast majority of the public doesn't understand the difference. If asked, they would state with certainty that the sun rising tomorrow is a fact. And the ID zealots play upon this ignorance.

A theory must be falsifiable by observation. If the sun doesn't rise tomorrow morning, our theory is falsified. We, as scientists, discard that theory and propose another theory that fits observed facts. If the sun does rise tomorrow morning, it proves our theory that the sun would rise tomorrow morning, but it does not prove our extended theory that the sun will rise on each successive morning. But, as the sun continues to rise each morning, that provides another observed datum. As the sun continues to rise, morning after morning, for hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, of mornings, that adds additional weight to our theory. But our theory remains only a theory, not a fact. It can be falsified very simply by the sun not rising one morning.

Evolution is just such a theory, supported by the weight of a huge number of observed facts, all of which support the theory. Not one observed fact, ever, has falsified evolution theory. If one had, we'd be looking for a new theory.

Now, I know that most of the people in the Intelligent Design movement have to know and understand this. Many have college degrees, and a few even have scientific degrees. So when I see them using words like "theory" incorrectly, I can only assume that they are lying and know that the majority in their audience won't catch them. Show me in the Bible where we are instructed to lie to fellow-believers to further the Kingdom of Heaven?

And that's it for today. Our last soccer practice is tonight. I hope the entire team shows up so we can really kick some butt on Saturday.