His problem is that he does not quite understand that the development of individuals is a complex subject tied to the psychology of identity and the experiences of childhood.

It is absurd to me that a person born in the 1950’s or 1960’s fancies themselves on the same level intelligence-wise as such individuals as Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo, just because they have have similar skin colors or ancestries.

This kind of racial egoism is the height of pathological narcissism.

For goodness sakes, human beings still have not found a cure for cancer but can send men to the moon. Scientific development, believe it or not, has much more to do with LUCK and massive resources and time being poured into research than anything else. Any person of any race can be a researcher, and any person of any race can be the one to finally articulate those secrets of science that humanity has still not been able to unsheathe.

Many schools and school districts have special programs for “gifted” children, that is, children who are brighter, learn better, and are quicker mentally than the average youngster. These programs try to challenge the brighter students more and give …

Answer: 4 (not 5). Calling the tail a leg doesn’t make it one. Defining “gifted” down won’t make those kids any better off…in fact it may set them up for major disappointments.

Our famous linkfest offering you links to sites with MANY different viewpoints. Links do not necessarily reflect the opinion of TMV or its cobloggers.
A Libertarian Republican In Congress Breaks With The White House Over The Expected Policy To “S…

That had the effect of giving geographic preference to people who lived in mostly white counties. The areas that had most Blacks had municipal fire departments.

The volunteer fire department experience extra points was removed.

The Archaeology of Ancient China,

Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, and London

ISBN: 0300014589

That’s absolutely true, but the problem today is that “disparate impact” has been codified into something it isn’t – proof of discriminatory practice.

Every given exam will have some degree of “disparate impact” as groups don’t always perform according to their numbers taking that exam.

In NYC the City is looking to make the physical portion of the entrance exam a pass/fail, ostensibly to admit more women, while the Vulcan society has fought against the written portion of the exam claiming that “written exams discriminate against blacks,” due to what Claude Steele (Shelby’s brother) calls, “test anxiety.”

For over 70 of its 142 years the FDNY has hired its membership via the Civil Service Merit System, a system that was put in place to eradicate the nepotism, cronyism and patronage (actual discriminatory practices) that existed in New York City prior to that under Tammany Hall.

Since 1970 that system has been challenged by various groups – women have challenged the physical requirements and blacks have challenged the written portion of the exam.

Ironically enough, one of the few people ever to hold the ranks of both Chief of Department (via written promotion exam) and later, Fire Commissioner (political appointment) was a black man named Augustus Beekman who was raised in an orphanage and went on to score at the top of every Civil Service exam he ever took, from the entrance exam he took in the early 1950s, to the Chief-of-Department exam.

If Gus Beekman could succeed when the standards were even more rigorous than they are today (today’s written entrance exam is very watered down), why can’t the blacks of today?

The answer is, some certainly can.

The travesty is all this “counting by race,” and using a false indicator, “disparate impact,” as proof of something that it’s no proof of at all.

The standards for College entrance, Civil Service Exams and Gifted Programs should be kept high without counting by race, gender or ethnicity at all.

On that issue, there are a lot of whites who are hypocrites on that issue, they support high standards when they perceive their in the best interests of their kids, but when many of these programs and the Freshmen class of MIT, Cal Tech and Stanford start to get over 60% Asian, they’re not as enthused.

To eradicate the current plague of race/gender preferences, we need to eardicate the other preferences that undermine merit, from alumni, to geographic to donor preferences, as they’re all part of the same problem. If we let the standards be and just stopped all the bean counting, we’d be a lot better off.

It’s been so warm in New England this past month that the plant in the photo just popped up in my front yard. Is it some kind of giant daffodil or something?I missed this. Bush and Steve Bridges at the 2006 White House Correspondent’s Dinner. Cute.B…

The “Server Outage” edition in the continuing saga of interesting and thought provoking news from around the web. After this weeks server outage I’m going to roundup some stories I, and you, may have missed. This is a long one…

Title: “Who’s gifted? Criteria in flux”

If they are talking about lowering the IQ requirement, that is a single criterion. Is that what you’re talking about?

You are 100% correct. In fact, the Incas are considered a unique civilization for being the only advanced, city-dwelling civilization that never invented or absorbed someone else’s method of writing. They kept their accounts, maps, etc on a device called a quipu, a rack of leather thongs with coded beads to mark incidentals. For instance, one string with three green beads and one blue bead might mean, “walk overland for three days until you reach a river” and thus serve as a map of sorts. Or strings of beads in different colors might mark numbers of livestock or produce of different types. It was very clever . It was also odd in that it showed how isolated they were from the Mayas that they never absorbed Maya writing ideas.

But the Incas are considered unique for never acquiring writing during their Golden Age. They’re the only known advanced civilization who did NOT write.