The Bell Curve Part 1V- Living Together Chapter 22-A Place for everyone

How should policy deal with the twin realities that people differ in intelligence for reasons that are not their fault, and that intelligence has a powerful bearing on how well they do in life? The answer in the twentieth century was that government should create the condition of equality that society has neglected, or been unable to produce on its own. The assumption that egalitarianism is the proper ideal, however difficult to achieve in practice, changed contemporary political theory. Socialism, communism, social democracy and America's welfare state have been ways liberal thought has attempted to move toward the egalitarian ideal. During these attempts to level the playing field, the phrase social justice has become virtually synonymous with economic and social equality. Until now, the political movements have focused on the societal evils that are thought to produce inequality. Human beings, as the egalitarian theory teaches, are potentially pretty much the same except, of course, for the inequalities induced by society. These same theoreticians have rejected, out of hand, voluminous amounts of evidence showing that individual differences, most importantly, in cognitive ability, are to blame for the inequality in outcome that have plagued American life for the last 100 or more years. If we accept the fact that all people are not born equal, what can be done to make the best of the cards that we, as a nation, have been dealt? All of the great religious traditions define a place for everyone, if not on earth then in heaven. Unfortunately, with the passing of time, the have-nots and their political advocates have become increasingly unwilling to wait for their promised rewards in heaven; they want them now and will settle for nothing less than full equality of outcome regardless of their mental limitations or, for that matter, anything else! For Confucius, society was like a family with a ruling father, obedient sons, devoted husbands and faithful wives, benign masters and loyal servants. People were defined by their place, whether in the family or the community (The reader can see where the authors are going here, a place for everybody). So too for the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers: place was everything. The ancients accepted the basic premise that people differ fundamentally and searched for ways they could contently serve the community, the monarch, the tyrant or the gods, rather than themselves. In our era, political philosophers have argued instead about rights. In the 1600s Thomas Hobbes wrote about a principle whereby all people, not just the rich and well born, might have equal rights to liberty. Hobbes acknowledged that people differ, but not so much that they may justifiably be deprived of liberty in differing amounts. In the modern view that Hobbes helped shape, individuals accept constraints on their own behavior in exchange for ridding themselves of the dangers associated with living in total freedom, hence perfect anarchy. These constraints on personal freedom constitute lawful government. Later, John Locke conceived of people in a state of equality in which no one had no more power and jurisdiction than another and thought to preserve that condition in actual societies through a strictly limited government a theory that the American Founders brought into reality. For modern Americans, if aware of Locke at all, he is identified with the idea of man as tabula rasa, a blank slate on which experience writes or, as most liberals believe, a blank slate to be written upon by the environment. Most contemporary libertarians are hostile to the possibility of genetic differences in intelligence because of their conviction that equal rights can only apply if, in fact, people at birth are tabulae rasae, blank slates. Liberals who follow this train of thought conveniently forget that Locke also maintained that that there was a greater distance between some men than there was between men and some beasts. Locke went on to argue that men were equal in rights though they be unequal in everything else. By human rights Locke meant that all human beings had the right not to have certain things done to them by the state or other human beings, not the right to anything, except freedom of action. Today, the original concept of equal rights is said to be meaningless cant, outmoded as the horse and buggy; to take equal rights seriously, it is thought, requires enforcing equal outcomes. This is not what the framers had in mind when they wrote the constitution. Jefferson saw the consequences of inequalities of ability radiating throughout the institutions of society. The main purpose of education, he believed, was to prepare the natural aristocracy to govern. The "best geniuses", he said should be "raked from the rubbish annually" by competitive grading and examinations, sent on to the next educational stage, and finally called to public life. For Madison, the "great republican principle" was that common people would have the good sense and information necessary to choose "men of virtue and wisdom" to govern them. For Jefferson and Madison, political equality was both right and workable. They would have been amazed by the modern notion that humans are equal in any other sense. (As am I) Indeed we live in an upside down world. The idea of forbidding people to discriminate by race mutated into the idea of compelling everyone to produce, at any cost, equal outcomes based on race. In personal life the idea of forbidding people from interfering with members of other groups as they go about their lives has been extended to the idea of compelling people "to treat them the same". It is an indication of how far things have gone that many people cannot see the distinction between "not interfering" and "treating the same." The authors now discuss the policy implications of the material covered in the first 535 pages of The Bell Curve. The broadest goal is a society in which people throughout the functional range of intelligence can find and feel that they have found a "valued place" for themselves. You occupy a valued place if other people would miss you if you were gone. The fact that you would be missed means that you were valued. The authors suggest that policy decisions should be based, at least in part, on whether they aid or obstruct the goal of creating valued places for all members of society. In this respect, they emphasize the point that most people have sufficient intelligence to get on with life and make a valued place for themselves in American society. The problem is to make it possible for those that aren't very smart to find a valued place in an environment that values, with a few obvious exceptions, intelligence over everything else. Fromits high point in 1973, the medium income of non-farm labor had fallen 36 percent by 1990, a strong back wasn't worth near as much as it had been in the past. But wages and economic factors are not the only reason persons with low cognitive ability are finding it increasingly difficult to find a valued place in society. Communities are rich and vital places to the extent that they engage their members in the stuff of life- birth, death, raising children making a living, playing of the soft ball team etc. As communities enlarged functions like the local volunteer fire department, which provided a place of value for many men, were replaced by paid members of large professional fire departments. With the passage of time, Congress and presidents have removed more and more functions from the neighborhoods deeming them too difficult for voluntary organizations to perform. As a result, we have neighborhoods that are merely localities, not groups of people tending to their communal affairs and providing valued places while doing so. Places where you would be missed if you were gone. So, the first policy change the authors suggest is to restore, whenever possible, a wide range of social functions that are now performed by the federal and state governments to the neighborhoods where people work and live. The idea being to make people feel better about themselves by working to improve the community. Next, they would simplify the rules. The authors contend that the United States is run by rules that only the cognitive elite can understand and make life more difficult for everyone else. The income tax code is one example of the unnecessary complexity that makes life more difficult than it need be. Credentialing is a closely related problem. Now days, you must have a license to do just about anything. For practical purposes, this means jumping through bureaucratic hoops that have little to do with one's ability to do the job. The authors would like to simplify life for everyone, especially those with low cognitive ability, by stripping away the nonsense. For example, by replacing the present multi-page income tax form with a simple one or two page document that can be completed by almost anyone in a few minutes. The authors go on to argue that we should make it easier for everyone to live a virtuous life. With respect to crime, they believe that the rules for criminality should be simple and the consequences of breaking the rules should be equally simple. Punishment should follow arrest quickly, within a few days or weeks. At present, at every level, it has become fashionable to point out the complexities of moral decisions, and all the ways things that might seem "wrong" at first glance, are really "right," or at least excusable, when properly analyzed. The authors argue that it is much easier for people with limited intelligence to lead moral lives in a society that is run on the basis of " Thou shall not steal" than it is to them to be law abiding citizens in a society that is run on the basis of "Thou shalt not steel unless there is a really good reason to do so." Moving on to marriage, the authors argue that it has become increasingly difficult for a person with low IQ to figure out why marriage is a good thing, and once in a marriage even more difficult to figure out why one should stick with it through bad times. The sexual revolution is the most obvious culprit. One no longer has to marry a lady to sleep with her. This is particularly important because marriage constituted one of the richest of all "valued places." Once the law said, " Well, in a legal sense, living together is the same as being married" we as a society were in deep trouble. The authors policy position is to return marriage to its formally unique status. In particular, they urge that marriage once again becomes the sole legal institution through which rights and responsibilities regarding children are exercised. Finally, the authors deal with income. Ever since most people quit believing that a person's income on earth reflected God's judgment of his worth, it has been argued that income distributions were inherently unfair. Today, many believe that most wealthy people do not deserve their wealth nor the poor their poverty. That being the case, it is deemed appropriate for societies to take from the rich and give to the poor. The data in this book support the argument for supplementing the incomes of the poor, without giving any new guidance for how to do it. The authors believe that people working full time should not be so poor that they cannot have a decent standard of living, even if the kinds of work they do are not highly valued in the marketplace. This is not a realistic goal for many poor countries- but it is appropriate for rich countries (is America still rich?) to try to do so. How is this to be done? Any government supplement of wages produces negative effects of many kinds. Such defects are not the result of bad policy but are inherent. The lease damaging strategies are the simplest ones, which do not oversee the labor market or the behavior of low income people. Rather, they should be designed to augment the income of low skilled workers to a minimum floor. The earned income tax credit seems to be a generally good way to accomplish this goal, albeit with the unavoidable drawbacks of any income supplement. Irrespective of the methodology, some form income redistribution is here to stay. The question is how to redistribute the nation's wealth in ways that increase the chances for people at the bottom of society to take control of their lives, to be engaged meaningful in their communities and to find a "valued place" the themselves in an increasingly complex world. The authors end this final chapter of The Bell Curve by addressing the most pressing problem facing twenty-first century America, Americans, on average are becoming dumber with each passing day. (Finally, after 549 pages, they acknowledge the obvious), the most efficient way to raise the nation's IQ, and lessen its social problems, is for smarter women to have higher birth rates than duller women. The authors maintain that we already have policies that socially engineer who has babies, unfortunately they are encouraging the wrong women. They urge that policies which encourage welfare moms to have babies be ended! They recommend that we make better use of the variety of birth control options that are safe, increasingly flexible and inexpensive. Finally, they recommend that immigration laws be rewritten to reflect America's interests. There should be a shift from nepotistic rules which encourage reunification of families to policies that encourage and facilitate the immigration of bright educated people from foreign countries who have the tools to prosper in America and, in the long run, increase the IQ of its gene pool. Comment: I began this book review in January of 2015, almost a year ago. Was it worth the effort? Probably not, but as I sat here at the computer last January, with the nation crumbling around me, I felt compelled to do something to, perhaps, stem the tide. What better than to make an admittedly feeble attempt to revitalize one of the most important books every written. If even a handful of young people are informed and enlighten by the material reviewed, it will have been worth the effort. If they just realize that we are not all born equal, it will be enough. This last chapter of The Bell Curve is by far, the weakest in the book. I am not convinced that the solutions suggested by Herrnstein and Murray, such as simplifying the rules we live by; encouraging low IQ women to take birth control pills; or tweaking the immigration laws will be sufficient to change the self-destructive course our nation is on. Maybe nothing can, but in my first blog of the New Year, I will suggest a few simple steps we can take to right our floundering ship of state. In the mean time, I wish you a happy and prosperous New Year!

The Last Days OF Saint Nicholas

"I 'm definitely getting to old for this," Nicholas said to his best friend and lead reindeer Rudolf. "How long have we been playing Santa Claus do you think?" "I don't know that I can rightly recall," replied Rudolf, "but it must be close to 300 years, give or take a decade or two." Nicholas' sainted father, the first Santa Claus, had learned to communicate with reindeer years before Nicholas was born. His father had taught Nicholas the reindeer language shortly before he was killed by an errant meteorite that hit his sleigh while he and his reindeer were making their rounds on that fateful Christmas eve night in the year 1842. Nicholas had inherited his father's job and, with the help of his faithful reindeer, had been navigating through the cold Christmas Eve nights ever since. With the exception of a few times when the weather was so bad that mail could not be delivered to the north pole, Nicholas and his reindeer had never failed to deliver the books, toys and dolls that the good little boys and girls of the world had asked for. Nicholas also made sure that never ran out of lumps of coal for the children who had not been so good. But Nicholas was getting old and Rudolph was also beginning to feel the ravishes of age."You know Rudolph," Nicholas said, " my eye sight isn't what it used to be and I'm having a fair amount of difficulty navigating by the stars anymore." "I'm a little afraid that we might not be able to find our way home this year." "I'm not feeling so great myself," replied Rudolph, "My poor old nose isn't near a bright as it used to be and the arthritis in my right rear hoof won't let me fly nearly as fast as I could when you first recruited me to lead your sleigh." "In truth, I just don't know how much longer I can go on." "I know Vixen and Prancer aren't in all that great shape either." " Vixen was saying just the other day, when the elves were packing the toys in the back of the sleigh, that his arthritis was so bad that he could barely walk." "Our Prancer can't exercise anymore and has gained so much weight during the off season that it will be difficult for him to get in his harness, let alone fly any great distance." "Obviously, it's time to call it quits," Nicholas said, "in fact, it's long past time that we retired." "Rudolph looked sadly into his old friends eyes, placed both a front hoofs on his shoulder and began to cry as he shook his stately antlered head in agreement." It was only a month before Christmas and that left Nicholas very little time. He had to make certain that those presents were delivered on Christmas Eve night, just as they had been for almost three centuries. Nicholas called his friend billionaire Bill Gates and asked for help. "Bill," he said, "we're in big trouble up here at the North Pole." "My reindeer and I are too old and infirm to make the Christmas run this year." "An awful lot of children are going to be very disappointed if we don't deliver their Christmas presents on time. "I've made a tentative deal with UPS." "They have agreed to deliver the presents on Christmas Eve night as has always been the case." "Our friend Scott Davis of UPS has even agreed to dress their drivers up in Santa Clause suits if we are willing to pay a little extra for the deliveries." "Unfortunately, Mrs. Nicholas and I do not have the resources to finance an operation of this size, could you help?" "Of course, I can," Mr. Gates Replied without hesitation. "Look Nicholas, I'm a little tied up right at the moment." "Just have Scott send me the bill, If he wants to he can call me." So it came to be. The Christmas presents were delivered on time and no one was the wiser. Knowing the end was near, Nicholas sold his toy factory at the North Pole, as well as his other possessions including the sleigh, and moved with Mrs. Claus to their secret island in the Caribbean. He and his beloved reindeer spent their last days swimming in the warm ocean water and building sand castles with their new monkey friends on the beautiful black sand beaches of the island's idyllic shore.

The Bell Curve Part 1V- Living Together Chapter 21-The way We Are Headed

In this penultimate chapter the authors speculate about the impact of cognitive stratification on American life and government. They predict that the cognitive elite will be increasingly isolated; that the mentally gifted will be increasingly affluent; and that the quality of life for the people at the bottom of the cognitive ability distribution will continue to deteriorate. Unchecked, they predict, these trends will lead America towards something resembling a caste society, with the underclass mired ever more firmly at the bottom and the cognitive elite more firmly anchored at the top with the rules of society structured so that it is harder and harder for the haves to lose and the have-nots to succeed. American civil society will also continue to deteriorate as this scenario plays out, more crime, more illegitimacy and more poverty. Like any apocalyptic vision, this one is pessimistic, perhaps too much so. On the other hand, there is a great deal to be pessimistic about. To recapitulate, at the beginning of the last century, the great majority of really smart people were not college educated, often they had not even gone to high school. In fact, about 50 percent of them kept house, reared children and were often leaders in their religious and social communities. The really smart people lived next door to those who were not as bright. This is not to say that communities were not stratified by wealth, religion, class or ethnic background but they were not stratified by cognitive ability as is the case now. The upshot is that the scattered brightness of the early twentieth century has congregated, forming a new class that lives together, plays together and, most importantly, marries each other. Cognitive ability is the predominate deciding factor in our twenty-first century world; neither social background, ethnicity or money will bar the way, but low IQ will. Billions, if not trillions, have been spent trying to move the cognitive challenged people of the ghettos to the affluent communities of the intellectually elite in the suburbs, all to no avail. The invisible intellectual migration of the last 125 years has done more than allow the intellectually able succeed if every facet of life, it has also segregated and socialized them. Members of the cognitive elite are likely to have gone to the same kinds of schools, lived in similar neighborhoods, gone to the same kinds of theaters and restaurants, read the same magazines and newspapers and even drove the same makes of cars. All of these changes has resulted in Americans being more divided than ever before. The intellectual have-nots of society are finding it more difficult to survive in today's America with each passing day. The changing politics in our country has made the struggles of the millions of unemployed, homeless and impoverished even more difficult. For most of the twentieth century, intellectuals and the affluent were antagonists. Traditionally, intellectuals have been identified with the economic left, while the affluent have been identified with big business and cultural conservatism. These diverse categories have become muddled in recent years, as faculties at top universities put together higher salaries, lucrative consulting fees and royalties that garner them six-figure incomes. As the very bright who populate academia have become more uniformly affluent the interests of the affluent and the cognitive elite have begun to blend, and at this At this point, there is not a dimes worth of difference between them. At first glance, the high-IQ Stanford professor with a bestselling book may have little in common to the person who makes a similar income from his chain of shoe stores; however, when considering future alliances and social trends it seems likely that their increasing commonalities, including the political policies they support, are becoming increasingly similar as the intellectually elite become more affluent. The Stanford professor's best-selling book may be a diatribe against the unjust criminal justice system, but that doesn't mean that he will vote with his feet and leave his safe neighborhood in Palo Alto and move his family to Oakland, Richmond, or even San Jose. Meanwhile, the man with the chain of shoe stores may be politically to the right of the Stanford professor, but he also is looking for the same safe neighborhood and the same good schools for his children. Irrespective of their diverse occupations, the shoe store owner and the professor are likely to be quite comfortable with the idea that government is there to be used to serve their joint interests. The constitutional restraints on how a faction may use government to further its ends has loosened and an unprecedented coalition of the smart and the rich are taking advantage of this new latitude to the determent of the less well off and the mentally challenged. The authors fear for the underclass in the new America which is dominated by intellectual elite and the rich and famous. They worry that we are developing a new type of conservatism along Latin American lines where to be conservative means doing whatever is necessary to preserve the mansions on the hills from the menace of those living in the slums below. They wrote, in the mid 1900s, that the new coalition was already afraid of the underclass and was going to have a lot more to fear in the near future. The near continual demonstrations (riots) in our inner cities, such as the black lives matter demonstrations, attest to the accuracy of their predictions. They go on to discuss the implications of cognitive stratification for the underclass, beginning with the fate of children. The greatest problems afflict children unlucky enough to be born and reared by unmarried mothers who are below average in intelligence, about 20 percent of children currently being born. They tend to have low cognitive ability themselves and suffer disproportionately from behavioral problems and are more likely to end up in prison. T

hey are less likely to marry and will produce large proportions of illegitimate children of low intelligence. Increasing numbers of children are born into the deplorable conditions discussed in chapter 15 that the government is almost helpless to influence. What happens to the child of low intelligence who survives childhood and reaches adulthood trying his best to be a productive citizen? There will be jobs for low skill labor but the wage for these jobs will be low. Attempts to artificially increase the wage for low skill labor, by raising the minimal wage for example, may backfire by making alternatives to human labor more affordable and, in some cases by making low skill jobs disappear altogether as has been the case for machines that lay track for railroads. All the fine rhetoric about "investing in human capital" to "make America competitive in the twenty-first century" is unlikely to overturn this reality: because most low IQ people are incapable of learning the skills that will make them competitive in today's high tech world. The dry tender for the formation of an underclass is a large number of births to single women of low intelligence in a concentrated spatial area. There is nothing about being white that will keep them from joining the emerging underclass of the twenty-first century. The proportion of white illegitimate births (including Latinos) reached 22 percent in 1991. In Britain, where the illegitimacy rate has historically been lower than in the United States, 32 percent of all births in 1992 were illegitimate, with no signs of slowing down. The proportion in low income communities is perhaps twice that of the general population. In America, 43 percent of all births to impoverished women were illegitimate. White illegitimacy is overwhelmingly a lower-class phenomenon and it is largely responsible for the emergence of our burgeoning underclass. An underclass needs a critical mass, At what point is that critical mass reached? How much illegitimacy can a community tolerate? At this point no one knows, but historical fact is that the trend lines on black crime, black dropout from the labor force and illegitimacy all shifted sharply upward when the overall black illegitimacy ratio passed 25 percent and the rate in low-income black communities moved above 50 percent. But we need not rely on the black analogy to understand the emergence of a white underclass. Seventy-five percent of all white illegitimate births are to women with below average IQs and 45 percent are to women with IQS under 90. These women are poorly equipped for the labor market, often poorly equipped to be mothers and there is no reason to thinks that the outcomes of their intellectually challenged children will fare any better than has been the case for black children raised under similar circumstances. Meanwhile, as the illegitimacy rate continues to grow, the dynamics in the public housing market (where they will continue to be welcome) and the private housing market ( where they will not) will foster increasing concentrations of whites with high unemployment, high crime, high illegitimacy and low cognitive ability, creating communities that look very much like the inner-city neighborhoods that people now tend to associate with minorities. The authors now discuss the coming custodial state. When a society reaches a certain overall level of affluence, the haves begin to feel guilty about the condition of the have-nots. Thus dawns the welfare state, the attempt to raise the poor and needy out of their plight. What happens when those that are willing to spend their money to end poverty lose faith that their remedial social programs will work? The authors believe that the affluent cognitive elite will then implement an even more expansive welfare state for the underclass that will provide for their basis needs but also keep them out from underfoot. In other words, the economic and intellectual segregation we are now experiencing will become even more pronounced. Ultimately the affluent cognitive elite will conclude that the underclass are in that position, through no fault of their own, but because of inherent short coming about which little or nothing can be done. At that point, the ruling class will become more accepting of the dysfunctional behavior of the underclass and more willing to overlook their self destructive behavior (drug addiction, criminality, unavailability for work, child abuse and family disorganization including, most importantly, their propensity for illegitimacy. Ultimately, it will be agreed that the underclass cannot be trusted with money so public policy will be in the form of greater benefits in the form of services rather than cash. These benefits and services will come with new restrictions which will have the following consequences. Child rearing in the inner cities will become solely the responsibility of the state. Inner city day care centers and elementary schools will provide not only education, medical care and nutrition but training in hygiene, sexual socialization, work training and the other functions that their parents are deemed incapable of providing. The homeless will vanish. The cognitive elite will join the broad public sentiment and reassert control over public places. People with mental problems, that now constitute a high proportion of the homeless will be required to reside in shelters, more elaborately equipped and staffed than the shelters of today, but nonetheless institutions from which it will be difficult for them to escape. The underclass will become even more concentrated spatially than they are today. The expanded network of day care centers, homeless shelters, public housing and other services will always be located in the poorest parts of the inner cities, which means that anyone who wants access to them will have to live there. Political support for such measures as relocation of people from the inner cities to the suburbs, which has never been strong to begin with, will wither altogether. The underclass will continue to grow. During the 1980s, scholars found evidence that the size of the underclass was no longer expanding. But even as they wrote, the welfare rolls, which had moved within a narrow range since the late 1970s, began to surge again. the authors predict that the government will try yet another round of the customary social programs, sex education, job training, parental training, and the like, and they will be as ineffective this round as they were in the 1960s and 1970s. Meanwhile, many low-income parents who try to do all that is possible to assure that their children will escape poverty will find it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to do so. They will find it impossible to propagate their norms when surrounded by a local culture in which illegitimacy, welfare, crime and drugs are common place and the norm rather than the exception. In each succeeding generation a higher proportion of the working class will become members of the underclass, and fewer of their children will be able to escape their impoverished surroundings. Social budgets and measures of social control will become increasingly more centralize. The costs for the mandated social programs to "fix the problem" will be enormous. As the states become overwhelmed the costs will be shifted to the federal budget. The mounting costs, and increasing national debt, also will generate intense political pressure on Washington to do something. Unable to bring itself to do away with the welfare edifice, for by that time it will be assumed that social chaos will follow any significant cutback in the numerous welfare programs, the government will be left with no choice but to engineer behavior through new programs and regulations. These policies are likely to become even more authoritarian than they are now and rely increasingly on custodial care. Finally, the authors predict that racism will reemerge in a new and more virulent form. The tension between what the white elite is supposed to think and what it actually is thinking about race will reach something close to a breaking point. When this break comes, there most likely will be an overreaction in the opposite direction and racism will become more pronounced than it was before the civil rights movement. The authors do not know how likely this is to happen, but they believe it is a distinct possibility. If it were to happen, all of the scenarios for the custodial state would be more unpleasant and more vicious than anyone can now imagine. In short, the custodial state Herrnstein and Murray have in mind is a high-tech and more lavish version of an Indian reservation for some substantial minority of the nation's population, while the rest of America tries to go about its business as usual. However, "going about its business as usual" in the old sense will not be possible. It is difficult to imagine the United States preserving its founding principles once it is accepted that a significant part of the population become wards of the state. The authors close this chapter with this admonishment. If we wish to avoid the possibility of a nation run by the haves with little or nothing left over for the have-nots, we cannot count on the natural course of events to make things come out right. Now is the time (mid 1990s, when this book was written) to think long and hard on how we can make good on the American' promise of an equal opportunity for everyone to live a satisfying life, in a society in which the cognitive elite dominate and those of low cognitive ability are increasingly handicapped. Is this even possible? ( My though, not the authors). Comment: In this disquieting chapter, Herrnstein and Murray speculate on what is likely to be the outcome in a society that is increasingly segregated by intellectual factors that are beyond human control. They are correct in their assertion that little can be done to increase the IQ of a person once he is born. In this respect, the failures of school busing, affirmative action and, most recently, head start attest to the futility of our attempts to alter the effects of the genetic code we are all born with. Yes, unfair as it may be, intelligence is an inherited trait, similar to body size and skin color, and there is little that can be done to alter it by manipulating environmental factors after birth. It has been twenty years since The Bell Curve was published. During these two decades not much has changed. The social engineers have not given up on their attempts to equalize outcomes by altering the environment of the underclass, whether it be white , black or Latino. Until such time as our political leaders wake up to the fact that little can be done to change outcomes simply by throwing money at the problems facing the emerging underclass, nothing is likely to change. At this point, the liberal elite have not yet "thrown in the towel" on their ineffective attempts to equalize outcomes by redistributing the wealth of the haves to the have-nots. Until they do, we will not know if Herrnstein and Murray's version of an custodial state (where the intellectually affluent elite provide for every need of an increasingly feeble and dependent underclass) will materialize.

Killing Yellow Jackets (Muslims)

Killing Yellow Jackets (Muslims) When I was growing up in rural Southern Humboldt County in the late 1930s and 1940s, yellow Jackets were a problem in the summer. Fortunately, my father knew how to get rid of them. I can't recall him ever trying to kill a yellow jacket white it was in flight and I'm quite sure he never considered buying some kind of yellow jacket trap. No Dad's method of killing yellow jackets was simple, inexpensive and fool proof. Not a single one in the hive ever escaped to plague our family again.

My job was to find the yellow jackets' nest. This was relatively easy to do, I simply placed a piece of meat on the ground and waited for the insects to find it, which they did in 30 minutes or so. At this point, it was simply a matter following the winged creatures back to their nest. I would run after one of them until I lost sight of it, then wait for another one to fly by and follow it as far as possible. The yellow Jackets always took the same flight path to their nest so it was easy to follow them. At that point my job was done. Dad would wait until it was dark because all of the yellow jackets return to their nest at dusk. I led Dad to the entrance of the nest, invariably a hole in the ground. He pored some gasoline into the hole and lit a match, that was it. Our yellow jacket problems for that summer were over. I believe we should be using Dad's yellow jacket abatement program to kill the radical Muslims who are slaughtering innocent Christians, and other non-Muslims, throughout the Western world. I'm sure there are some good Muslims sprinkled in with the terrorists, maybe even more good than bad, but no matter how much money we spend on projects aimed at distinguishing between the two we come up short and more innocents are slaughtered. The yellow jacket extermination policies employed by my Dad cannot be used to eliminate home grown Muslim Terrorism in the United States, at least until we learn how to distinguish between the good and the bad Muslim. However, we are shown nightly on the evening news exactly where and how much land ISIS and their related Muslim cohorts control in places like Syria and Iraq. At present our feckless president, and the group of moronic females who advise him (Susan Rice comes immediately to mind), seem willing to fight terrorism with both hands tied behind our backs. A drone strike here and there, bombing raids that return 60 percent of the time without dropping a single boom, and endless useless meetings with weak European leaders who are as clueless as our hopeless Obama. The message is loud and clear we can't accomplish anything of significance by killing yellow jacks or Muslim terrorists one at a time. Rather, we have to wipe out their nests and we should be doing this from 40,000 feet without a single boot on the ground. Yes, women and children will be among the casualties, that's the way it is in times of war, always has been and always will be! As to the home front, the president should be doing whatever is necessary to infiltrate every single Mosque in America with agents whose sole purpose is to keep track of what is going on in these so called religious centers. This is the only way we will be able to stop the slaughter of innocents by deranged mad men, and women, of the third world.

The mysteries Of Worm Castings Revealed

At first glance, earthworm casting would seem to be no big deal, after all the castings of worms have a NPK value, at most, of only 1-1-1. Hardly earthshaking, when you consider that most chemical fertilizers have NPK values of 8-8-8 or higher.

But there is much more to the story than at first meets the eye. It just so happens that fertilizers that have low NPK values are ideal for most vegetables and other types of plant life. What plants require is a constant source of nutrients, not intermittent high doses of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium that may burn them. Worm castings are so effective an organic fertilizer because they release slowly, over a long period of time, the small amounts of the nutrients so essential for optimal plant growth. Indeed, earthworm castings are the ideal slow release organic fertilizer. Here's how it happens? The microorganisms that live in the earthworms gut, and are secreted in their castings, are the key to this incomparable organic food source for plant life. For example, ammonium is a common ingredient of most soils but it cannot be absorbed by plants until it is broken down to nitrates by the bacteria. These microorganisms, for the most part, originate in the gut of the composting earthworm and were secreted in their castings. Thus, as long as the soil contains the beneficial bacteria which originated in the worm's gut, the plants and vegetables in your garden will have a constant source of nitrogen for many months. This process will go on indefinitely if the soil contains a sufficient number of earthworms since they will continually be adding fresh castings to the soil. In this respect, a single teaspoon of worm castings will feed a plant in a six inch pot for two months, but if a sufficient number of earthworms are also present in the pot the plant will be fed indefinitely. This assumes, of course, that there also are enough organic material in the pot to feed the earthworms. But that's only part of the story. Earthworm casting contain all of the minerals essential for plant growth including potassium, copper, zinc, phosphate, manganese, magnesium and several others that I can't think of at the moment. In any case, earthworm castings contain all of the trace elements required for healthy plant growth. Chemical fertilizers are, for the most part, devoid of these essential trace elements. Worm castings also contain powerful growth hormones including, most importantly, the humic acids (not to be confused with the humus found in regular compost which is not a growth hormone). These hormones are essential for optimal plant growth. However, it is important to realize that an excess of worm castings can actually stunt plant growth. This does not pose a problem in the garden but the percentage of castings in potting soils should not exceed 25 percent since higher concentrations of castings will impede plant growth. Earthworm castings also stimulate the germination of seeds. The next time you are starting plants from seeds try this simple experiment. Divide your seed trays (plastic cells) in two. In one section plant the seeds in a standard organic mixture like peat moss and vermiculite. In the second add 20 to 30 percent earthworm castings to the mixture. I think you will be amazed at how much better the seedlings grow in the mixture containing worm castings. Finally, worm castings inhibit plant diseases like root rot and if the castings are used to make worm tea, which is sprayed on the plants leaves, it inhibits the infestations of pests like powdery mildew and aphids. This is so, because the microorganisms in worm tea attach to the binding sights on the plant's leaves leaving no place for the pests to affix to them. Yep, earthworm castings are the answer to the maiden's prayer, especially if she is a gardener. Happy gardening!

Next Question, What Can Earthworms Eat?

The short answer is anything that was once alive. However, earthworms do not have teeth; thus, their food must be reasonably soft, or fine like sand, so that they can suck it into their mouths to ingest it. For example, earthworms cannot consume a fresh carrot but will readily devoured a rotten one. I should point out that composting earthworm have no interest in the carrot itself; rather, they are actually eating the microorganisms (bacteria and fungi) that cover the food they eat. These tiny organisms thrive and multiply in the worms intestinal tract and are excreted in their castings.

Having said this, there are a few, a very few, organic materials that should not be fed to composting earthworms. Red Wigglers do not like scented words like cedar, eucalyptus or redwood, or their sawdust. They cannot tolerate animal fat or the oil from a frying pan and these substances should be separated from the kitchen scraps you feed to your composting earthworms. Almost anything else from your kitchen table may be deposited in the wormery without fear of harming the worms. You may have heard or read that meat products should not be fed to earthworms. To the contrary, my composting earthworms love meat of any kind, the rottener the better! However, if meat products are fed to Red Wigglers, it should be buried deeply in the worm's bedding so that flies cannot get to it. Otherwise, the worms bedding will quickly become infested with maggots. While maggots are part of the chain of organisms that devour our organic waste, they are unsightly and, thus, unwelcome in the worm's bedding. I feed my Red Wigglers a diet which primarily consisting of aged horse manure, shredded newspaper, cardboard, coffee grounds and, of course, kitchen scraps. The cardboard is placed over the worm's bedding to conserve heat during the cold winter months and to conserve water and lower the temperature in the worms bedding during the summer. Composting earthworms love to burrow their way through cardboard consuming it as they go. Kitchen scraps represent less than five percent of my Red Wiggler's diet because of the size of my wormeries and the scarcity of the kitchen waste I have to feed them. Coffee grounds make up about 25 percent of the organic material fed to the worms. The mixture of aged horse manure, readily available for free almost anywhere in Northern California, coffee grounds and shredded paper products (primarily newspaper) produce excellent worm castings. There is nothing better for your garden, nothing even close. You will not be able to generate a significant amount of coffee grounds from your kitchen; however, Americans are addicted to their coffee and there is a Starbucks in nearly every supermarket in the country and on most street corners. The enterprises generate enormous amounts of coffee ground waste and are more than happy to give it to you, all you have to do is smile and ask for it! Happy gardening!

Raising Earthworms on the Cheap

Many people know that earthworm castings are a valuable organic fertilizer that will make anything in the garden grow like crazy. Most home owners have a source of kitchen scraps and newspaper that could be turned into these valuable castings if they just had the composting earthworms and something to keep them in. Unfortunately, a little research reveals that composting earthworms are expensive, at least $30.00 a pound, and stackable worm bins are very costly, around $130.00 for a stackable three bin set. In this blog I will tell you how to do it for free! Nope, you don't have to spend a small fortune to have your own wormery, not even a dime!

First, where do you get those free composting earthworms? Not a chance you probably are thinking! Do you have a horse stable nearby? I'll bet you do. If so, you have a ready supply of horse manure and the owners of these operations are more than willing to give it to you for free, just to get rid of it. If you can take a truck load, many of they will even deliver it to you at no cost. Now here's the good part. Every horse manure pile in the world is full of live red wiggler composting earthworms and their cocoons. Every single one! You don't even have to make a bedding for your worms because the manure is the worm's bedding. All you have to do is house your new worms and begin feeding them table scraps and other organic material that you are now throwing in the garbage can, like kitchen scraps, shredded newspaper, cardboard and dried leaves. So far so good, but how do you house them? Surprise, surprise, you simply place the worm's bedding (the manure they came in) and the organic material you feed them on the ground or a asphalt or concrete slab. Cover the new wormery with an old tarp to conserve water (slow down evaporation ) and keep the birds out and you have the most efficient wormery ever designed by man! You are probably wondering why your composting red wigglers will not escape. After all this wormery has no sides, no top and, if placed on the ground, no bottom. The answer is simple. Red Wiggler earthworms, the kind you want for composting, are surface dwellers and live in the top three inches or so of their bedding. They never attempt to dig their way to freedom or crawl away unless the environment they live in becomes uninhabitable (too dry, to wet or for some other reason toxic to them). All you have to do to manage your new wormery is add additional feeding of organic material to the top of the pile and keep it moist. As the worms eat the organic material you feed them they will move upward and leave their castings behind, at the bottom of the pile where they can be easily harvested and placed in your garden. Happy gardening!