Human biodiversity needs you!

In a recent Taki's column, the Derb parenthetically notes the unfortunate competition for primacy of the acronym HBD that the phrase "human biodiversity" shares with the phrase "happy birthday".

Nothing against congratulating people for managing to survive another year, but the former phrase is enhanced by the abbreviation while the latter is cheapened by it. Human biodiversity doesn't have a wikipedia page yet, but HBD does have an urban dictionary entry, albeit a shared one.

I'd grown complacent after human biodiversity easily attained the top spot shortly after its debut over a year ago, but subsequently (possibly as a result of the tripe Derb examined in his article), happy birthday retook the summit, in large part due to a slew of negative votes for human biodiversity. Help keep our version of HBD on top by dropping in to vote human biodiversity up and happy birthday down.

Amnesty redux

Today, in tandem with the legislative push for open borders, NPR ran a segment on the Dillingham Commission that, in 1911, found that immigration into the US from northwestern Europe was preferable toimmigration from southern and eastern Europe. It served as a segue into how it is illegitimate to empirically and clinically track and measure differences in tendencies and behaviors of various population groups. Reporter Audie Cornish quoted a professor of sociology who "studies the immigrant experience". Says one professor Alba:

If we could, if you will, rank groups in terms of their desirability, in terms of their ability to assimilate--that kind of thinking is still present. ... [The Dillingham Commission] was overtly racist. There can be little question about the importance of scientific racism in the early twentieth century and the degree to which it shaped the thinking that went into the Dillingham commission report. And we are not as racist today, but that doesn't mean that we are today altogether free of this thinking that some immigrant groups are superior to other immigrant groups."

Census data make it quite easy to rank immigrant groups into the US (see here and here). That Alba and others like him would rather plug their ears, cover their eyes, and reminisce about the stories their grandparents told them about Ellis Island than face reality doesn't change this.

Incidentally, isn't it just wonderful how there is always a bipartisan gang of congress critters glowing eagerly in the limelight as they wait to introduce amnesty X.0? Let's take a look at the lifetime immigration grade cards that NumbersUSA gives members of the sensible, even-keeled, putatively middle-of-the-road party of amnesty-pushers this time around:

John McCain, AZ (R) -- D
Marco Rubio, FL (R) -- C-
Jeff Flake, AZ (R) -- C
Lindsey Graham, SC (R) -- C
Michael Bennet, CO (D) -- F-
Dick Durbin, IL (D) -- F
Robert Menendez, NJ (D) -- F-
Charles Schumer, NY (D) -- F

The group gets an F+. Congress as a whole earns a C. Not one of the eight are to the restrictionist side of the Congressional center, while six of eight are on the open borders side of the spectrum. When Lindsey Graham and Jeff Flake are your immigration hard-liners, you know you have trouble.

Having grown wary of this seemingly perennial amnesty push, I was at risk of apathy this time around, but tripe like the NPR segment has prodded me into action. I've contacted both my senators and my house member expressing my opposition to 'comprehensive' immigration reform. Pithily, I stated that unemployment is high, the need for low-skilled labor has never been lower, and a path to citizenship is a path to more Democratic voters (all three of my representatives are Republicans) with bastard children in one hand while the other hand stretches out to Uncle Sam.

If you're of a similar mind, please do the same. We've risen up and body-slammed the Establishment before. Let's do it again.

HBD

... now shows human biodiversity as the first definition at Urban Dictionary. Nice work again, everyone.

HBD, defined

Half Sigma asks "What are you doing about HBD-denialism?"

Creating definitions in the Urban Dictionary, that's what! Hey, it's something, at least. And voting these definitions to the top of their respective entries is something any reader is able to do right now, by going here and clicking on the thumbs-up for what is currently definition #7 [now at #2--keep pushing!], which reads as follows:

An acronym that stands for human biodiversity. It is the acknowledgement and study of how humans differ from each other on both the individual and group levels because of differences in genotype. Differences include, but are not limited to, personality traits, athletic ability, intelligence, height, health, and physical appearance.

"What are some things that HBD informs us on?"

"Why professional sports leagues like the NBA and NFL are dominated by people of West African descent, why blacks and Hispanics consistently perform more poorly on all forms of cognitive testing than whites and Asians do, and why the Amerindian immigrants mowing lawns in the suburbs are so much shorter than the residents of those suburbs, just to name a few."

We propelled NAM to the top in a matter of weeks, displacing the entry specifying the Southeast Asian country. The acronym for "happy birthday" is even more formidable, but I'm confident it's reign at the top is on borrowed time!

NAM as non-Asian minority

... now constitutes the first entry in the Urban Dictionary. Great work everybody!

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 group in mainstream media or popular discourse. It is necessitated by the general success and prosperity of Asians in the United States, who do as well or better on a host of social indicators than whites do. Thus when a media figure discusses the economic or educational struggles of a minority, he is almost always referring to a NAM, or a non-Asian minority.



"The minority income gap in the US has only gotten worse since the recession!"



"You mean the NAM income gap has gotten worse. Asians are actually doing even better relative to whites than they were before the recession."

It's competing with nine other definitions. Most of them are garbage, but one of them--the Southeast Asian country--is the formidable king of the hill. If you feel so inclined, help knock it from the head of the heap and propel the non-Asian minority definition to the top by dropping in and clicking on the thumbs-up icon, currently the fourth entry shown.



* Happily, SWPL is already firmly established at UD.

Shades of Simpson-Mazzoli

A cliched but legitimate argument made by restrictionists in opposition to any type of "comprehensive" immigration plan that purports to happily marry enforcement with amnesty is that the same false promise was made 25 years ago, when, numerically-speaking, the stakes were a lot lower. Fool us once, shame on you; fool us twice, shame on us.

Sharing that sentiment, I'd like to see HR 2164 smothered. The resolution is being pushed by Lamar Smith (R-TX). Smith is hardly a champion of the open borders cause. NumbersUSA gives him an A for the last two years, and an A+ for the entirety of his congressional career. But he's dining with the devil, Mephistopheles taking form as the US Chamber of Commerce in this case.

In essence, HR 2164 makes nationwide use of E-Verify mandatory for most private employers (with some egregious exceptions*) in exchange for amending federal law so that SCOTUS precedent set in the Whiting case--which holds that federal and state governments may work together to enforce immigration law--becomes irrelevant, and immigration enforcement solely becomes the domain of the federal government.

With impeccable timing, President Obama recentlyh issued an executive order that basically puts the DREAM Act, which has been repeatedly countered by the will of the people, directly into play. It does not inspire confidence that the federal government wants anything to do with enforcement:

The Obama administration memo from the John Morton, Director of I.C.E. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) directs I.C.E. agents now to use prosecutorial discretion with regard to enforcing immigration laws.

Director Morton says that Obama Administration policy directs border patrol agents not to enforce immigration laws: “When ICE favorably exercises prosecutorial discretion, it essentially decides not to assert the full scope of the enforcement authority available to the agency.”

I have a lot more confidence in Maricopa County deputies than I do in John Morton. If you're of a like mind, consider calling or e-mailing your House representative to express your opinion on HR 2164. Easily find the necessary contact information here.

* For example, all people currently employed, irrespective of their residency status, would be exempted from an E-Verify check so long as they remain in their current positions. And if an employer has worked with an aspiring employee at some point in the past without incident, that potential employee is similarly exempted--an exception that opens the door for all kinds of abuses.

Example 3,441 of why the CPB (PBS and NPR) should lose its federal funding

From an NPR book review earlier this week:

Oreo is the story of a biracial daughter of an African-American woman and Jewish father... The vehicle towards humor is the quirks of language in Jewish and black culture [sic], and at every turn takes the reader deeper into the satire, and into the heart of American identity.

A story about the daughter of a black woman and a Jewish father who abandons them is at the heart of American identity? You really can't make this stuff up. It's so blatantly preposterous that it is beyond parody. A whopping 0.2% of married white men have a black spouse. Roughly 1 in 40 white men in the US are Jewish. Yep, right at the heart of American identity.

The afternoon news show's title, "All Things Considered", is a misnomer almost on par with Orwell's most notorious. There are far more factually and historically grounded attempts to get at the heart of American identity that would never be considered by government radio.

Colorado Congressman Doug Lamborn has reintroduced a bill first put forward in the 111th Congress for consideration in the 112th. If you're of the same mind, encourage your representative and Senators to support HR 68. It's as easy as emailing each of them a cut+paste message that identifies the legislation's name (either HR 68 or the bill to prohibit federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) and your opposition to funding a partisan organization using taxpayer dollars in an age of infinite media alternatives and an annual federal budget deficit approaching $2 trillion.

There is blood in the water. The time to act is now.

My genes, my right?

It's neither my forte nor my foible, but when Razib and Randall get this worked up about something, I'd be a pretty crappy squire not to pay attention. The AMA doesn't want you to be able to access your own genomic profile directly from companies like 23andme (as I have). In the proceeding video, doctor and former Congressman Parker Griffith's paternalism is especially off-putting: