In 2011, whites lean Republican across the board

Don't look now, but the Sailer strategy is implementing itself, even if the focus of GOP head honchos like Ed Gillespie remains elsewhere. Pew Research just released a report comparing political leanings by demographic group in 2008 and 2011. The following table, comprised of data from that report, shows the Democratic or Republican advantage in partisan support in 2008 and 2011 followed by the change over that period of time, with blue indicating...

Profile of an alpha

Game, as it currently exists, is a qualitative subject rather than a quantitative one. That qualitative narrative bumps up uncomfortably against the hard data available, so the latter is either minimized or dismissed outright. While this is not the primary reason I find that Game and human biodiversity make strange bedfellows (the primary reason being that the utility of Game is inversely related to the importance of HBD), I'm inherently skeptical...

Happiness by occupation

As I've been on a happiness trip as of late, it seemed natural to look at happiness levels by occupation. The GSS uses the international standard classification of occupations (ISCO88) to record the occupations of respondents and routinely asks a three point question on self-assessed personal happiness. To facilitate comprehension, scores are inverted so that higher values indicate greater levels of happiness. To achieve some level of statistical...

Drank too much so don't drink enough?

I never particularly enjoy new acquaintances discovering that I'm a teetotaler. It's especially annoying in bars after games because in the non-professional sports world (as I was reminded of in Des Moines recently), abstention infringes on the ritual of hosting or being hosted, smashing each other up, shaking hands afterward, and then getting smashed together that night. I'm not out to be an iconoclast or pass judgment on you for your dipsomania...

Where white conservatives and NAMs find common ground

There are those on the right who, attuned to the (liberal) zeitgeist, attempt to bring NAMs into their political ranks by emphasizing the putative social conservatism of blacks and Hispanics. Rick Santorum recently illustrated this, and the late Richard Nadler epitomized it.As the US becomes increasingly multiracial and multicultural, our democratic system will increasingly turn into a spoils system, where votes are determined by the demographic...

Spare and spoil? Not in the US

Recently, a woman in Texas lost custody of her two children and was sentenced to five months of probation for spanking one of them, aged two, hard enough to leave the kid with red marks. In his ruling, the judge in the case apparently set court precedent that the spanking of a child is a criminal act:"You don't spank children today," Judge Jose Longoria told Rosina Gonzales...."In the old days, maybe we got spanked, but there was a different quarrel,"...

Church attendance and happiness

In a previous post that took a look at marriage and happiness among the under-thirty crowd, a commenter wondered how church attendance would influence self-reported levels of happiness.At its vernacular core, Pascal's Wager exhorts one to go through the religious motions and try to believe for a rational reason--the worst that happens to you after you die if you're wrong is the best that happens to the non-believer who is right. Of course, a similar...

Child abuse in Stockholm

From The Onion comes - wait, it's not from TO? It's from the AP? C'mon, look at the school's name for crying out loud... Well, it's beyond parody all the same:At the "Egalia" preschool, staff avoid using words like "him" or "her" and address the 33 kids as "friends" rather than girls and boys.From the color and placement of toys to the choice of books, every detail has been carefully planned to make sure the children don't fall into gender stereotypes....Breaking...

Thaddeus McCotter for President?

He blows the rest of the field out of the water when it comes to immigration restrictionism (see A+). Since that issue dwarfs all others in my mind, I guess I have to say he's my guy. He was also the first Congress critter to attack the 2008 Bush-Paulson bailout plan and he voted against Obamacare. He's definitely on board with the neocon warhawks, however. Still, an aspiring President who wants to break two of the three prongs steadily moving towards...

Why are gay men less promiscuous today than they used to be?

Agnostic suggests that the (gay) AIDS epidemic had the effect of curtailing male homosexual promiscuity. As Pat Buchanan famously wrote, "they have declared war on nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution."Using the GSS, Agnostic looks at the number of partners a respondent has had in the last year. He finds that gay male promiscuity has decreased from the the late eighties through today, presumably as the consequences of AIDS became...