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Dan Hannan:
“…The fall in IQ scores in the West is perhaps the most under-reported story of our era. For most of the twentieth century, IQ rose by around three points per decade globally, probably because of better nutrition. But that trend has recently gone into reverse in developed countries.
You hadn’t heard? I’m not surprised. Journalists and politicians won’t go near the subject and you can see why. Consider the theories offered by neuroscientists for the decline. Some argued it had to do with the rising age of motherhood, because the children of older mothers tend to have lower IQs, other things being equal. No one likes to say this, because it can come across as “older moms have dumb kids,” which is not true. (My wife and I were 44 when our youngest child was born, and my own parents were also elderly, but that didn’t make me too thick to grasp the concept of statistical distributions.)
Other theories were even more explosive. For example, that unintelligent people were having more kids, or that the fall in average scores reflected immigration from places with lower IQs.
But a new study from Norway, which examines IQ scores from 730,000 men (standardized tests are part of military service there) disproves all these ideas, because it shows IQ dropping within the same families. Men born in 1991 score, on average, five points lower than men born in 1975. There must, in other words, be an environmental explanation, and the chronology throws up a clear suspect: the rise in screen-time.
Kids brought up with Facebook and Instagram are more politically bigoted, not because they don’t hear alternative opinions, but because they don’t learn the concentration necessary to listen to opponents — a difficult and unnatural skill…”
ATLANTIC OCEAN (Dec. 12, 2018) The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) transits the sea.
Satire, but is it?
“…A reporter at the German news magazine Der Spiegel — who won CNN’s Journalist of the Year Award in 2014 — resigned on Wednesday after admitted to making up stories.
Claas Relotius “falsified articles on a grand scale and even invented characters,” Der Spiegel admitted in a statement…”
Mrs. Paul Titus (above), a 77-year-old air raid spotter of Bucks County, Pa., carries a gun as she patrols her beat, Dec. 20, 1941. Mrs. Titus signed-up the day after the Pearl Harbor attack. I can carry a gun any time they want me to, she declared.
“…As officials in North Carolina investigate possible voter fraud in last month’s election, 33 people have already been convicted of the crime in Texas this year, more than the state’s combined total for the previous five years.
Eight others accused of voter fraud in the state are awaiting resolution of their cases, which typically involve violations by small-time vote harvesters paid to collect absentee ballots.
The violations were generally in local, nonpartisan elections – such as those for school boards, and primaries of both parties – and are not tied to the well-funded, high-profile Texas race in which Sen. Ted Cruz defeated Democratic rising star Rep. Beto O’Rourke in November.
“…I’ve just asked Lowenthal what he, as an advertiser, would be able to do with data transmitted from an internet-connected appliance, and I happened to mention a toaster. He thought through the possibility of an appliance that can detect what it’s being asked to brown: “If I’m toasting rye bread, a bagel company might be interested in knowing that, because they can re-target that household with bagel advertising because they already know it’s a household that eats bread, toasts bread, is open to carbs. Maybe they would also be open to bagels. And then they can probably cross that with credit-card data and know that this is a household that hasn’t bought bagels in the last year. I mean, it’s going to be amazing, from a targeting perspective.”
The thought experiment I put to Lowenthal—the CEO of The Media Kitchen, an advertising consulting firm—wasn’t some far-off hypothetical. Over the past several years, the American home has seen a proliferation of “smart,” or internet-connected, devices and appliances. There are, of course, smart speakers (which roughly a quarter of American homes have) and smart thermostats, as well as smart thermometers, smart mattress covers, smart coffee makers, smart doorbells, and even, yes, smart toasters. After Amazon recently announced the release of a slew of products compatible with its Alexa voice assistant, including a smart microwave and a smart wall clock, an executive for the company said he could imagine “a future with thousands of devices like this.”…”
Stephen Green:
AND HE MUST WEAR THE CONE OF SHAME: San Francisco Orders Property Owner to Build Exact Replica of Demolished Home.
Back in late 2017, Ross Johnston tore down a two-story home he owned in the city’s Twin Peaks neighborhood, intending to build a larger house on the same site.
The destruction of the home—known as the Largent House and designed by famed architect Richard Neutra back in the 1930s—angered neighbors who bemoaned the loss of a historic building. It also pissed off city officials, who had issued permits for the house to be substantially redesigned, not demolished in its entirety.
On Thursday, the city’s Planning Commission made what the San Francisco Chronicle is calling an “unprecedented” decision. In a 5–0 vote, it ordered Johnston to build an exact replica of the house he destroyed, save for the addition of a new plaque explaining the details of the building’s demolition and reconstruction.
Mao would have understand the purpose behind the plaque.
Editorial of The New York Sun:
“…When General Flynn comes up for sentencing tomorrow, the right move would be for the federal judge to reject the general’s guilty plea and throw out the case altogether. Is that likely to happen? Rarely say never, the editor warned. It’s our view that it should happen, though, after the release Friday of new details of the questioning of General Flynn by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The release of those details was ordered last week by a no-nonsense United States district judge, Emmet Sullivan, who is due tomorrow to decide the sentence for General Flynn for violating section 1001 of Title 18 of the United States Code. This has long been recognized as an outrageously vague statute that all too often tempts prosecutors who are stuck making a better case.
The information released last week suggests this is just what happened in respect of General Flynn, who was misled by the FBI about the interview in which he supposedly lied. Not only could the judge in the case reject General Flynn’s guilty plea but he could cite none other than the most liberal Supreme Court justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
This was pointed out last week by our columnist Ira Stoll, in his blog FutureOfCapitalism.com. He notes that the law to which General Flynn pled guilty provides up to five years in prison for anyone who “knowingly and willfully” makes any materially false statement “in any matter within the jurisdiction” of any of the three branches of the federal government.
The susceptibility of Section 1001 to abuse was, Mr. Stoll points out, nailed as far back as 1998 by Justice Ginsburg in a case called Brogan v. United States. She warned that the law’s “encompassing formulation arms Government agents with authority not simply to apprehend lawbreakers, but to generate felonies, crimes of a kind that only a Government officer could prompt.”
The New York Sun’s columns, Mr. Stoll reminds us, reprised this problem in 2004, when the feds used Section 1001 to bake their pie against Martha Stewart. That was in an editorial called “Martha Stewart and the Law.” We also carried an op-ed by a former deputy Whitewater prosecutor, Solomon Wisenberg, noting the “potential for abuse of this statute” even for normally honest prosecutors.
Justice Ginsburg reckoned that Section 1001 creates the prospect that “an overzealous prosecutor or investigator — aware that a person has committed some suspicious acts, but unable to make a criminal case — will create a crime by surprising the suspect, asking about those acts, and receiving a false denial.” It’s uncanny how clearly she foresaw the kind of trap that ensnared General Flynn.
The justice practically begged Congress to address the flaw, but the legislature shrank from the task. Hence the chance for Judge Sullivan. He certainly has the backbone. He famously set aside a jury’s conviction of Senator Ted Stevens, after learning of prosecutorial misconduct in concealing evidence from the defense. Judge Sullivan held several of the prosecutors themselves in contempt.
General Flynn’s sentencing is a special moment in this special prosecution. His was among the first cases launched by Special Prosecutor Mueller. The sentencing hearing is the last chance to stop the injustice of the tactics used to destroy him and his career. Mr. Stoll reminds us that Judge Sullivan’s first name — Emmet — is Hebrew for “truth.” It’s a good name to live up to…”