Around 8% of computer programmers are black

Half Sigma writes:As far as I know, no employer of computer programmers has ever been sued for discrimination, even though there are no black people working in programming. OK, that’s a lie, there was one black computer programmer. But he was not a typical black man, he was actually a black Hispanic; he was born somewhere in Central America and moved here when he was a young child. He's obviously exaggerating to make a point, but having a very...

NAM, defined

The Steveosphere has created some catchy and useful acronyms, but they're mostly just used in-house, otherwise unfamiliar to the broader public. Well, one way to induce thinking about HBD is to raise awareness* of some of its unique terminology. I've created the following entry for NAM in the Urban Dictionary:An acronym that stands for non-Asian minority, usually used to more accurately describe a person who is referred to as a member of a minority...

AE in the WSJ

... via an op/ed (fourth paragraph, referencing this post) by City Journal editor, author, and Manhattan Institute senior fellow Steven Malanga on the disconnect between the leftist advocacy and financing provided by union leadership and the sentiments of far more centrist due-paying, rank-and-file union membe...

Conservative or traditionalist?

Ed Tom Kowalsky wondered if "traditionalist" has made any headway as a synonym for "conservative". The frequencies of each, pluralized, among all books published in the US over the last century:I'm surprised to find that the term, while far less common than "conservative", was being used a century ago. I was under the impression that it was pretty new, employed by guys like...

Liberal or progressive?

It's asserted with some frequency that using "liberal" as a political label carries with it too much baggage, and consequently those on the left have increasingly opted to self describe as "progressive" instead. In his syndicated column, Pat Buchanan recently made reference to this.Living in the center of the country, thousands of miles away from the trend-setters on the coasts,...

Who believes in the power of hard work?

Advances in gene sequencing and brain scanning technologies are continually threatening the human notion of free will, and the smart money appears to be on us coming to the uncomfortable realization that we have a lot less control over our actions, behaviors, and abilities than we think we do, sooner rather than later.That said, it's encouraging to find that over two-thirds of Americans, when questioned on what it takes to get ahead, assert that...

Aw, the way we was

I noticed this retrograde, hate-spewing vile of bile while walking through the arcade wing of a shop just the other day (the relevancy ends after the first five seconds):It's possibly even more vile than Double Dragon, where the chivalrous blond-haired, blue-eyed Billy is attacked by blacks, women, and mongoloids--not exclusively, but only because the racists at Technos were sophisticated enough to feign a little tactfulness in their design (start...

Tracing isolationism

There are derogatory terms flung around that have been part of the popular lexicon for as long as I can remember, but whose etymology is something I, at best, only make lazy assumptions about. One of those that has experienced a bit of a resurgence with the NATO bombing campaign in Libya is "isolationism". While the term could conceivably be as old as our republic, the US...

Getting it exactly wrong

On Friday, the day after the GOP presidential debate in Iowa, All Things Considered aired a segment purporting to capture the sentiments of Republican voters a day before the much hyped Ames straw poll.With the exception of one woman who found Mitt Romney a little too low key for her tastes, the insinuated consensus was that the bickering between the two from Minnesota was uncalled for and unhelpful, turning prospective backers of both of them away,...

More on the myth of Hispanic social conservatism

From the Pew Research Center comes more evidence that the open borders Republicans' nonsense about Hispanics being natural Republicans because of their putative "family values" social conservatism is just that, nonsense.Pew conducted a survey earlier this year in which respondents were queried about their positions on seven areas of contemporary change in family structure that has occurred in the US over the last several decades. The seven are "more...

A random day's worth of whining about media bias

Instead of just speaking to the walls as I work out while listening to the news, I'll mix it up by soiling this blog a bit by griping about a few examples of the media's sins of omission. In my personal life I'm hesitant to moan about this kind of thing not so much for fear of the censure it provokes (it's not like talking about differences in IQ or athleticism, where egalitarian...

On the wealth gap

Pew recently published a report accompanied by a press release that highlights the recent growth in the ratio of the median wealth of white households relative to that of black and Hispanic households. As of 2009, the median white household's net worth was 20 times that of blacks. Just four years prior, the multiple had 'only' been 11. The median net worth of white households fell over $22k from $135k in '05 to $113k '09, while black net worth decreased...