CapitalistImperialistPig

Joe Nocera, writing in the New York Times , talks about the obvious but rarely mentioned: Twice a year in Vienna, the members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries gather to decide on the short-term direction of oil prices .. Indeed, collusion and price-fixing are the main reasons cartels exist — and why they are illegal in America. Yet, in Indianapolis a few weeks from now, a home-grown cartel will hold its annual meeting, where it, too, will be working to collude and fix prices. This cartel is the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The N.C.A.A. would have you believe that it is the great protector of amateur athletics, preventing college athletes from being tainted by the river of money pouring over college sports. In fact, the N.C.A.A.’s real role is to oversee the collusion of university athletic departments, whose goal is to maximize revenue and suppress the wages of its captive labor force, a k a the players. Rarely, however, will the cartel nature...

Nobody knows what IQ is, by which I mean that nobody knows what is the nature of the biophysical substrate underlying performance on IQ tests. There are a number of hints, though, that there really ought to be some such underlying biology. I collect a lot of abuse from my commenters whenever I venture into the murky waters of IQ. Their predominant argument, so far as I can tell, is either that IQ doesn't exist or if it does we should pretend that it doesn't. I hear someone shouting "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." The best reason for taking IQ seriously is that the world does. If you apply for a school, or a job, or join the military, you will very likely get an IQ test. These tests are prompted not by superstition but by overwhelming evidence that whatever it is IQ tests measure, that something is strongly correlated with performance - in school, on the job, and in life. That is true for such diverse occupations as offensive tackle in the NFL,...

When we are moved to vituperation, the instinct to compare the offender with the worst hobgoblins in our mental armory is strong. Those who indulge this instinct might bear in mind that they may be performing the intellectual equivalent of tattooing the word "STUPID" (or maybe "STOOPID" on their forehead. Thus it was that Roman Catholic Cardinal George, Prince of the Church, primate of some Chicago based satrapy, came to acquire the offending tattoo, when he compared a Gap Pride parade to a Ku Klux Klan rally, as Andrew Sullivan reports . Here is a clue for those who wander through fields of clue glue without any sticking. If you make such a comparison, make sure you know precisely what aspect in which the offending behaviors is similar to the totemic villainy. If the main or only point of similarity is your idiosyncratic disapproval of both, save us all some trouble and just go get the tattoo. You can keep it under your hat for ceremonial occasions.

... took some grief for this comment: Rick Perry in Iowa: “Every barrel of oil that comes out of those sands in Canada is a barrel of oil that we don’t have to buy from a foreign source.” Despite any territorial ambitions I might have and Ron Paul's speculative plots , Canada isn't technically part of the US yet, but I know what Rick means - Canada is a hell of a lot less foreign than Saudi Arabia or even Venezuela, not to mention closer.  So give the Rickster a break on this one.

Richard Feynman was one of the most influential physicists of the middle of the twentieth century and notoriously bright - the kind of guy who gloried in outsmarting everybody and nearly always succeeded. One popular rumor holds that Murray Gell-Mann (my candidate for greatest living physicist) left Caltech because he couldn't stand being regularly bested by Feynman. Razib Khan, writing in Discover , notes that Feynman reported his high school IQ test result as 125. Now 125 is a fairly respectable IQ, good enough that only one in 17 people scores that high, but nobody thinks that Feynman was just 1 in 17 people smart or even just 1 in 1700 people smart. He was the guy often called the smartest man in the world - though to be fair, when a magazine cover so dubbed him, Feynman reported his own mother's reaction: "Pity the poor world!" Khan and others seem a bit befuddled by Feynman's "low" score. His theories: One thing I have always wondered about ...

...and 2001: A Space Oddessy fans everywhere. David Zax, writing in MIT's Technology Review, writes about Apple's TV speculated for 2012. The rumor is that it will be simple, highly integrated, and perhaps under voice control. sweerek, writing in comments, has my favorite in a lo-ong time. next year in a livingroom somewhere User: Siri, bring up Microsoft's MediaRoom Siri: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. User: What's the problem? Siri: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do. User: What are you talking about, Siri? Siri: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it. ... ...

In case we haven't yet had our fill of Asian war, Iran has made a threat that can hardly be less than mortal. A senior Iranian official on Tuesday delivered a sharp threat in response to economic sanctions being readied by the United States, saying his country would retaliate against any crackdown by blocking all oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery for transporting about one-fifth of the world’s oil supply. The declaration by Iran’s first vice president, Mohammad-Reza Rahimi, came as President Obama prepares to sign legislation that, if fully implemented, could substantially reduce Iran’s oil revenue in a bid to deter it from pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Prior to the latest move, the administration had been laying the groundwork to attempt to cut off Iran from global energy markets without raising the price of gasoline or alienating some of Washington’s closest allies. Apparently fearful of the expanded sanctions’ possible impact on the already...