Did you read the JoePo link?

Like the couple in the joke: they're in their nineties, been married 70+ years,  show up at the lawyer's office to announce they want a divorce.  He's flabbergasted and wants to know why they want a divorce at this late date.  "Oh, we wanted one all along," they explain.  "We were just waiting for the children to die."

Curiously, I was just thinking about Niven's Wu and Elephant last night.

You must have me confused with someone else.  I've never even hinted at such a thing, and have said repeatedly that low-IQ people can have happy and successful lives.  I resent your false allegation. (nice voice)

Even the early tests were quite objective.  Studying more does usually result in higher IQ scores, but they aren't very persistent.  A year or two after the intensive studying the IQ reverts to pre-studying levels.

(I think there was an Argentinian study showing a gain of 10 points for the class, but that was an outlier - typical results were 4 points.  In any event, the Argentinian children reverted as well.)

The correlation exists.  Since you disbelieve me, look it up for yourself.

IQ has remained stable for decades.  I'd say that society has gotten dumber in valuing less the things that were traditional markers of success for mature adults.

The best evidence I've seen shows the genetic component of IQ as 40-80%, which is a broad range, but significant even at the lowest level.

What is unarguably true is that people with IQs of 115 are much better at getting and staying married, keeping out of prison, finding work, etc. than people with IQs of 85.  It's near-perfect correlation.  The exceptions may be interesting, but they are irrelevant to the population as a whole.

Knox will be sad.  :-)

(Sorry about the delayed response - Ricochet is going to have to make do with my limited presence until the new year.)

Does Mr. Steyn have it wrong?  (I do not ask this as an either/or; it's entirely possible you are both right.)

Thank you for returning Hyacinth Girl to my attention.  I read her sporadically, and this is probably the first visit to her blog I've done in a year.  There are probably 30 or 40 blogs like that in my bookmarks, people I find with interesting things to say, but that I visit infrequently.

I don't find Ms. Paglia nearly so interesting, I suppose because we have no common terms of reference.  I like art, or at least I like looking at paintings and sculptures, but the reverential way she describes it escapes me, and in general I find her politics awful.

If you want a lot of people at your funeral, it's better to die young.  A co-worker died for no good reason (he had a remarkably bad hospital experience, with repeated "we've never seen that happen before" episodes), and pretty much our entire office took the day off to go to his funeral.  It wasn't planned, as such, we just drove up there in our company white Dodge Caravans and to hell with the customers that day.  He was 30, 31, something like that, so a lot of people from his high school days turned out.  On the way to the grave one of his widow's friends noticed all the company vans and suggested we have a company meeting, levity in the midst of tragedy.

I'm still bitter about his death, not only because it was apparently needless fumbling by his doctors, but because he played a trick on me shortly before, and I never got to pay him back.  I felt it would have been inappropriate to pinch off his IV with a paper clip.

How I loathe that guy.  1996 was the first year I lived in Iowa, and it looked like we were going to kick him to the curb.  Lightfoot was well ahead, and then something happened - I don't remember for sure, but I think his wife died, and Lightfoot naturally lost interest in the campaign, resulting in a 51-48 Harkin win.  "For want of a nail...."

Anyway, there's one guy who could beat Harkin in 2014: Terry Branstad.  But he's already governor.

I wonder if his wife would care to run....

In Arizona at least, it's a matter of law.  There was a ballot initiative this year calling for open primaries.  It was soundly defeated.

And the other 30% lie about it?

Off topic, but inspired by the conversation: An old Marine DI told me that one reason the military favors jacketed bullets over hollow points is because of the collateral damage - a non-lethal round (either passing through the target or missing & ricocheting) takes out five or six combatants on average.  I wish I had questioned him about it more closely; I think he was saying that wounded soldiers require recovery teams, transport, and hospitalization.

And there was that Spitfire pilot (Bader, maybe?) who said that he thought it was more effective to riddle a Heinkel, shoot out one engine, kill the pilot, and send the co-pilot home coughing out his lungs, rather than shoot it down.

What do you think of Polytechnique?

Mark Steyn wrote:

Yet the defining image of contemporary Canadian maleness is not M Lepine/Gharbi but the professors and the men in that classroom, who, ordered to leave by the lone gunman, meekly did so, and abandoned their female classmates to their fate — an act of abdication that would have been unthinkable in almost any other culture throughout human history. The “men” stood outside in the corridor and, even as they heard the first shots, they did nothing. And, when it was over and Gharbi walked out of the room and past them, they still did nothing.

I'm merely curious.