links for 2008-07-25

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Good Math, Bad Math : Credit Default Swaps: Gambling as Insurance "Credit default swaps are interesting - in the same way that a Rube Goldberg device is interesting. They are in a fundamental sense very simple, but the structure that's built up around them is so bizarre, so ridiculous on the face…
Backreaction: Experimental Traffic Jams More detail on the Japanese simulation of Washington, DC. (tags: physics science experiment video youtube) What is the matter with the universe? - Telegraph An article on CP violation experiments, which is pretty good, but might be dated=-- I thought…
Gesturing helps grade-schoolers solve math problems Hand-waving is the key to any calculation. (tags: academia education math) Easily Distracted » Blog Archive » In Which I Pick Some Nits A historian reads Novik's Temeraire books. (tags: books SF) slacktivist: Gay-Hatin' Gospel (pt. 5) The…
Southern Baptists Back a Shift on Climate Change - New York Times '[T]he new declaration, which will be released Monday, states, "Our cautious response to these issues in the face of mounting evidence may be seen by the world as uncaring, reckless and ill-informed."' (tags: politics religion…

1957-1970 New York City heavily invested in intelligence and standardized testing. Tracks for the Gifted, the average, the manually talented, and the stupid efficiently allocated resources and disgorged utilitarian products. The Community screamed that intelligence was a paradigm of institutional racism - Blacks as a group scored 15 and Browns 10 IQ points lower than Whites. (NY had a huge fractional Jewish population.)

A "Black IQ test" was written and normed. When administered citywide minorities did indeed ring the bell curve at ~100 IQ. It was later leaked the average White scored ~120. Intelligence and standardized testing were compassionately ended, ending functional public education.

"No gender differences in math performance" would evaporate like morning dew in summer given standardized tests exhumed from the mid-1960s. Ability resides between the ears not between the thighs. "No gender differences in math performance" is rigorous characterization of the topology and function of cluelessness. It is political and it stinks.

http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/immig.htm
36 years later on the Left Coast