Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

After roe, women are no longer free.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Let there be snark.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Bark louder, little dog.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Second rate reporter says what?

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Not all heroes wear capes.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

The words do not have to be perfect.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Correction

Correction

by | 206 Comments

This post is in: 

Freddie deBoer emailed me about DougJ’s post the other day, and wants to state emphatically he is not writing a pro race-science book:

Since this has come up – I am not writing a pro-race science book. I am writing a book that, among other things, is anti-race science. It unequivocally rejects the idea that different races have inherent differences in intelligence. Whatever you might think of me or my project, I have denied racist pseudoscience my entire political life, and that has not and will not change. Find a different angle of attack.

I ate too much for dinner and am now going to go back to lying on the couch, moaning, and holding my belly. Although there are still some deviled eggs left.

Reader Interactions

206Comments

  1. 1.

    Schlemazel

    I hope he proves our first impressions wrong but I have never been an optimist in all my life and this is not the circumstances that would induce that change in me.

  3. 3.

    geg6

    @Baud:

    My thoughts exactly. But I’ll wait and see what he actually produces. Color me a bit of a FdB skeptic.

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    among other things

    Uh-huh. Awfully vague qualifier there. Meanwhile, the track record speaks for itself.

  5. 5.

    efgoldman

    Whatever he writes will be about five times as wordy as it needs to be, boring, unreadable, and tell some groupd of Dems/progressives that thare dewing it WRONGG!

  6. 6.

    Ruckus

    @efgoldman:

    tell some groupd of Dems/progressives that thare dewing it WRONGG!

    I thought we always are, that’s what makes us Dems/progressives.

  8. 8.

    Mnemosyne

    @Roger Moore:

    The blurb also said he would be criticizing “gender essentialists,” so I’m guessing it will be more about attacking feminists for not being as good at being feminist as Freddie is. Again.

    ETA: I tend to think that gender essentialism is dumb and overly narrow, but I have a feeling that a lot of women researchers are going to get labeled as “gender essentialists” who actually aren’t, but they disagreed with Freddie, so they must be gender essentialists.

  13. 13.

    Ohio Mom

    Whatever, the world does not need another book on this topic. It’s been done to death.

  14. 14.

    randy khan

    His track record is not encouraging, but I’m willing to wait and see if his response here is consistent with what he’s actually writing.

  16. 16.

    JPL

    Hopefully Freddie proves Doug wrong, but it’s still a wait and see.

    As far as a food coma, the mutt Finch, was allowed to lick a platter that had contained the roast beef clean. He plopped himself on the sofa with legs straight in the air. I think that’s dog for I’ve experienced heaven or the resurrection or something.
    edited … the beef was removed.. just the drippings

  17. 17.

    Mnemosyne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Because it’s Freddie, and he has a track record. I suppose that theoretically he has gone 180 degrees from all of his previous writings and no longer thinks that feminists are what’s wrong with feminism, but I take leave to doubt it. I guess we’ll have to wait and see but, for me, he long ago used up any benefit of the doubt.

  19. 19.

    Ohio Mom

    Also, um, Cole, do we have to worry that the huge meal you just ate is going to set off your pancreas, or gall bladder, or whatever it is that’s been malfunctioning? We need you here!

  20. 20.

    PeakVT

    Find a different angle of attack.

    You don’t follow Will Rodger’s advice often enough.

    Neither does Donald Trump. Think about it.

  23. 23.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @randy khan:
    And that has been the story before every out-of-the-park hit special election for the last year. They just KNOW it’s not possible for anyone to actually care about policy or helping people or good government.

  28. 28.

    efgoldman

    @Roger Moore:

    I’m actually willing to wait until it comes out before criticizing it.

    If you pre-order it, you can pre-criticize.
    Seriously, Freddie has written the same thing the same way for way more than a decode. Why would you expect anything different? It would be like Sully giving credit to HRC.

  29. 29.

    Aimai

    I ate too much of a beautiful meal, too, and now am miserably trying to do a stats problem set and feeling logey and stupid. I basically should just fast. I really don’t function well after meals.

  30. 30.

    PeakVT

    Although there are still some deviled eggs left.

    Leftover tyrosalata got me out of bed and downstairs twice yesterday evening. Because feta.

  31. 31.

    Schlemazel

    @Mnemosyne:
    That was my point. OK, so lets not judge his work yet but also lets not be surprised when he blathers on endlessly and cluelessly about how liberals have it all wrong and if we would just understand that conservatives have a point we could all do better.

  32. 32.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    I hate my relatives. The evil “system” and all those lazy good for nothings on welfare! The Democrats and Republicans need to work together for the Middle.

  33. 33.

    JPL

    @Bostondreams: I tuned in late because most of the live musicals have been disappointing, but this one is different. I’m regretting my decision not to watch since the beginning.

  34. 34.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Well, wait and see, but Freddie doesn’t seem to grok that he’s created his own aura of derp.

  36. 36.

    efgoldman

    @Aimai:

    I ate too much of a beautiful meal, too

    Took 88 year old MIL for mandatory Easter dinner. Nice place. Not nice enough: even though mrs efg had a confirmed rreservation, they lost it. We waited a long, long time to get seated.
    And once MIL gets alcohol in her, she’s a non stop talking machine.

  41. 41.

    Washburn

    Elsewhere on his blog, deBoer states:

    A couple people have reached out to me recently because of a bubbling controversy over genetics and intelligence, which has inevitably turned to questions of race, as I have written at length about related issues. As a frequent email correspondent of mine said, “You’re writing a whole book on the subject.”

    Well, not quite. I have a book under contract about individual genetic variation and what it means for education, meritocracy, and the need for a new egalitarian social order to replace liberalism. That is, my interest lies in why John and Joe have different academic potentials, not why black and white or girls and boys might be perceived to. This is an absolutely essential distinction to understand, and yet nearly everything I’ve read in the popular press about this subject elides the two. That is an analytical mistake and a moral disaster. If you believe that black people are genetically predisposed to be less intelligent than white, that is indeed racist, and in my view not supported by the research. If you believe that some individual students are born predisposed to be less intelligent than others, and that these predispositions profoundly shape academic outcomes, you are simply expressing the consensus view of experimental psychology, one established by literally hundreds of high-quality studies. James Flynn, to pick one example, has long disputed the idea that genetic differences are responsible for the academic achievement gap; he also fully supports the consensus view of behavioral genetics. That is no conflict. It would help if people would read some books.

    Until that gets sorted out – until people grasp the difference between genetic influences on individual intellectual potential and on group differences – the conversation can’t work.

    He does raise a point that could be very interesting. There are considerable differences in innate intelligence between individuals. Some people, no matter how hard they work and study just ain’t gonna be that bright. In a world where education and skills are increasingly important and where automation is replacing many low-skill jobs, what is to be done to address these differences?

  42. 42.

    Shalimar

    I am willing to give Freddie the benefit of the doubt on racial topics. I can’t recall any specifically dumb incidents in that field from his oeuvre.

    His history with women, on the other hand, is a massively clueless ego-driven clusterfuck and he should avoid all women and any comments on any female-related subject for the rest of his days.

  43. 43.

    Another Scott

    Since this has come up – I am not writing a pro-race science book. I am writing a book that, among other things, is anti-race science. It unequivocally rejects the idea that different races have inherent differences in intelligence.

    Meh.

    He’s still framing the topic in terms of race and intelligence.

    Unless he can somehow come up with some rigorous, scientific, definition of “race” other than as a social construct then it’s still just wanking.

    Mays in ARPH:

    INTRODUCTION

    The collection of data by the federal government to classify individuals by their race has a long and somewhat contentious history in the United States (3). In recent years, some have challenged the methods or purposes of classifying race on the grounds that race is a social construct and not an essentialistic feature of human beings that can be reliably measured in order to draw meaningful conclusions (40, 57, 126, 127). Each of us writing this paper confesses at the start that we share, along with a number of social scientists, the perspective that race, as currently measured in most health surveys, reflects a social construct in the minds of Americans that is imprecisely mapped to the differences that exist among us. However, we also recognize that both federal and state governments, using mechanisms such as the Census or vital health statistics, classify individuals by their race and ethnicity in the hope of obtaining useful information to improve the public health. In what follows, we sidestep the bulk of the essentialist-social constructivist debate to focus instead on practical, applied problems in the classification of race and ethnicity in federal health statistics, as well as the implication of these classifications for public health.

    There are several reasons why public health is struggling with the problem of measuring race and ethnicity. In recent years, newly emerging trends in demography, science, and public policy have once again brought to the forefront the difficulties of measuring constructs that are far more complex than they might appear at first blush. Changing demographics in the United States make categories from even a half century ago inadequate, whatever one’s perspective on the nature of race and ethnicity (1, 12, 35, 39, 69, 89, 109, 112, 119, 123, 129). Further, this trend is likely to accelerate with the current pattern of immigration to the United States, reductions in social barriers against racial or ethnic intermarriages, and increasing racial and ethnic heterogeneity in cities, job sites, and neighborhoods. An increasing percentage of the American population can now trace its roots to multiracial or multiethnic sources. At the same time, rapid gains in science, such as the Human Genome Project, promise eventual health benefits from knowing one’s genetic make up, including information about diseases that are associated with racial or geographic origins (86, 102, 118). To the extent that measurement of current racial or ethnic status can provide accurate information concerning genetic liabilities, then the health benefits of these new findings might be further maximized. Finally, there is a growing recognition that current methods of assessing race/ethnicity are insufficiently precise for the needs of researchers. Community groups too have come to recognize the usefulness of health statistics in addressing local health needs, but this information must be specific and appropriate to the neighborhoods in which they live.

    I’ve related the story before about an Ethiopian home health aid we had who exasperatedly muttered under her breath once about “those Africans” – some other aids who were from Nigeria and Ghana…

    tl;dr – Freddie is not even wrong.

    Cheers,
    Scott.
    (“Who recognizes he is speculating about what FdB will write.”)

  44. 44.

    Roger Moore

    @efgoldman:

    eriously, Freddie has written the same thing the same way for way more than a decode.

    Actually, I don’t know that. I stopped reading Freddie a long time ago, so I have to trust other people to know that he’s unchanged. I don’t think I’m going to change that for his new book, so I’ll probably leave the criticism for people who have actually bothered to read it.

  46. 46.

    geg6

    They are killing it on NBC right now. Well done!

    I need some peanut butter meltaways to go with this red wine and good entertainment. Good thing it’s Easter.

  47. 47.

    Doug R

    @JPL:

    I tuned in late because most of the live musicals have been disappointing, but this one is different. I’m regretting my decision not to watch since the beginning.

    It’s “tape” delayed here on the left coast. Are you saying we should bother?

  48. 48.

    Ben Cisco

    If it’s Freddie vs. the field, I’m taking the field. He’s been consistently bad at this for way too long to ignore. If he surprises me, it will be a pleasant one, and a first.

  50. 50.

    Ohio Mom

    @Washburn: Yes, as the old joke goes: about half of all people have below average intellingence.

    Freddie could take a step back and consider why he thinks intelligence is the be-all and end-all. That is a value judgement, not some unalterable truth. There are many other human qualities to consider.

  55. 55.

    chopper

    there is nothing freddie boners can write on any subject that is more insightful than what literally anybody else can, even if the subject is himself. everything he writes boils down to “i’m freddie boners and i’m smarter than you”.

  56. 56.

    zhena gogolia

    @JPL:

    They had a mega-Broadway star playing just one of the high priests in the “Blood Money.” The bench is really deep.

  61. 61.

    Another Scott

    @Washburn:

    There are considerable differences in innate intelligence between individuals.

    “Citation needed.”

    IOW, show me a careful, statistically valid, study that separates “innate intelligence” from upbringing. Be careful if you’re thinking of citing separated twin studies.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  62. 62.

    Schlemazel

    @Doug R:
    If you are familiar with the material you will enjoy it a lot I think. If you have never heard it you will be very impressed. It is a very impressive work, well written & performed with power here.

  63. 63.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Washburn:

    Some people, no matter how hard they work and study just ain’t gonna be that bright.

    Donald J. Trump, Devin Nunes, and Ted Nougat instantly come to mind.

  65. 65.

    Schlemazel

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    He is writing a book. A book we can suppose will be read and influence some number of people. That should be a concern no matter whether he posts here or not.

  67. 67.

    efgoldman

    @Washburn:

    He does raise a point that could be very interesting.

    No it can’t. if he writes it.
    An elephant could fly, too.
    Trolling for Freddie. This is new and exciting.

  70. 70.

    FlipYrWhig

    He has a Ph.D. in Rhetoric. Who cares what the fuck he has to say about any of these topics? He’s a douchebag gasbag and I wish my brain didn’t have any cells devoted to knowing who the fuck that asshole is.

  72. 72.

    zhena gogolia

    @Schlemazel:

    I’m trying not to measure him against Ian Gillan because he’s a different kind of singer. I think he’s doing a good job under the circumstances. But Brandon Victor Dixon and Norm Lewis are superb.

  73. 73.

    psycholinguist

    I thought English majors were supposed to be waiters, but whatever. Never clear to me why anyone with a pulse can be an expert on intelligence, genetics, evolutionary psych (bletch) cognitive sciences. And i did bother to look at the Vita. Calling himself an academic is stretching that rubber band till it snaps.

  74. 74.

    jl

    OK, I’ll take back some of the criticism I made in my comment on the incorrect announcement.
    But, to be really useful, I think an anti-race-science book has to directly attack the impression, among innumerate pundits, and many ordinary people who just don’t have the time, or are over awed by math and stats stuff, that the stats in books like The Bell Curve are just wrong. And there is no coherent underlying causal framework to support that bad statistical analysis.That latter is easy to do, since the authors of The Bell Curve, just admit blandly and boldly at times that they are throwing away their own hodge-podge or whatever glop of causal theory exists in the book up to certain point, whenever it gets in the way their preferred policy prescriptions.

    so, I’ll withhold judgment. But we don’t need more woolly scattershot think pieces on this. We need an analysis of why and how the numbers and concepts don’t add up in this kind of research. Something like the Goldberge and Manski review of The Bell Curve in Journal of Economic Literature, that is presented in a simple nontechnical way. And the bogus population genetics would be good to attack too, as some commenters above noted.

  76. 76.

    Schlemazel

    @raven:
    I have room for many concerns, this does not have to be high up but that does not mean I am going to pretend it isn’t going to cause problems. His work, like “The Bell Curve” could be used to justify racism and require the constant pushback TBC does.

  77. 77.

    zhena gogolia

    @zhena gogolia:

    Correcting myself, he is playing Caiaphas. Still it’s not a huge part so I’m surprised they got such a prominent person to do it. He is so perfect.

  78. 78.

    Suzanne

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    One thing we can be sure of with FdB is that he will take 100 words to say what could easily expressed in 10 and it will be boring.

    TRUTH. And it will be pretentious and garbled up in pseudo-academic language that doesn’t really say anything.

  83. 83.

    Schlemazel

    @zhena gogolia:
    Agreed, Legend is doing OK, he is not bad just not as good as the original.
    In this mornings thread I identified him as my favorite JC in movies. I wore that album out.

  85. 85.

    Mnemosyne

    @eemom:

    Given that the thread almost immediately abandoned the topic of his fascinating self and started talking about other things, my guess is Yes.

  87. 87.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @raven: Apparently, he is quite tall. Does that help?

    @Schlemazel: We, at this blog, give too much importance to people like Sullivan and deBoer. Sullivan once had positions of influence. He no longer does. If we ignore him, he will will go away. If we give him click and talk about him, he will stay around. Freddie? This blog gave him keys. It was a mistake. Let’s not compound it.

  88. 88.

    eemom

    @raven:

    It’s like all this Sullivan shit, I never cared and don’t care now.

    Oh no no. It is NOT like that. To be like that, there’d have to be 800 million more threads on de Booboo.

  90. 90.

    PeakVT

    @efgoldman: I find spoons productive. But I have pitas, baked pitas, and other pita-like objects in the house for the four types of dip in the fridge. Tomorrow I will up it to five as I have plans for a big batch of tzatziki. Also, some spanakorizo. Though I’ll eat that with a fork.

  93. 93.

    PJ

    @Washburn: The not-so-bright have never had a problem getting jobs in real estate, reality TV, politics, and punditry.

    De Boer is a good example – his biggest problem is the fact that he is not the deep thinker he thinks he is, but his brand of entitled male contrarian is, unfortunately, popular enough in a medium given to “liking” hot takes. When he posted here, he was unable to support or defend his positions, and always resorted to whining about being unfairly attacked and making personal attacks on those criticizing his intellectual laziness and obtuseness. (Hmm, I wonder who that reminds me of . . .)

  95. 95.

    Jay

    Floriduh man move over:

    “Stockman’s trial is currently in its second week in a federal court in Houston. And it’s a doozy.

    The far-right Republican firebrand is accused of using hundreds of thousands in charitable donations from two conservative mega-donors for personal expenses in what prosecutors call a “white-collar crime spree.” They say he’s used the money to spy on political rivals with Inspector Gadget-style tools, to pay off his credit card debt, to go on dolphin boat rides, and to buy up copies of pop-up Advent books published by his brother.”

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/fivepoints/steve-stockman-wild-federal-fraud-trial

  100. 100.

    Ohio Mom

    The irony is that Freddie has first hand experience that brains are unpredictable and very unknowable. He has a serious mental illness. His brain is a challenge to him.

    Still, he persists in looking at brains through the single lens of IQ, a measurement that is very limited in scope. It is focused on how a small range of types of information are processed. It is pretty good at predicting how well an individual will do in school but Life is much larger than School.

    He is blind to the wild mysteries of consciousness, to all the things about our minds and brains that make their study so compelling.

  103. 103.

    zhena gogolia

    They’re killing “Could We Start Again Please” (which has been playing in my head since Nov 2016).

  104. 104.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    That’s quite comical. Does he have a google alert for himself or did he just stumble in it?

    @eemom: Happy Pascha next week! I have a friend of Greek descent who told me one day years ago “our Easter is later than yours” when I told her that we weren’t working Good Friday afternoon, because it was an important day to so many people. I later impressed (oddly) a guy when I asked him “when is your Easter this year” because I knew he was Greek Orthodox. I did not understand that knowing that was such an uncommon thing until then.

  105. 105.

    Washburn

    @PJ:

    And how many millions of jobs are there in those occupations? I don’t know where deBoer is going with his book – unlike many hereabout I tend to read books before I offer my flaming hot take – but his statement so far suggest that he is going to argue that innate differences, and the outcomes they tend to create, argue for greater socialism.

    This isn’t exactly groundbreaking territory. I mean anyone with half a fucking brain recognizes that historical careers in manufacturing, trucking, transport, etc. are disappearing ior have disappeared n this country and that there is going to be a massive problem. I don’t think you have to resolve the question of whether people end up on dead-end jobs because of innate differences in intelligence to recognize that this is a probably the greatest problem facing this country over the next few decades.

  109. 109.

    efgoldman

    @Schlemazel:

    if we don’t talk about him his book will not sell & nobody will use it as a reference?

    Whether we talk about him or not.

  110. 110.

    Mnemosyne

    @Washburn:

    Not everyone can be a Mozart or a Picasso even if raised in the right environment, and yet I don’t see all of the same hand-wringing over that reality.

  111. 111.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Schlemazel: We don’t need to be part of the process of promoting it. And who the fuck ever read him? He is a joke. Don’t we have better things to do with our time?

  112. 112.

    Schlemazel

    @efgoldman:
    my point. he has an audience and if there is a chance to use his work to justify racism the book will do very well in certain circles no mater who doesn’t mention he who must not be named.

  114. 114.

    PeakVT

    @eemom: Just cooking a bunch of Greek food these days. I’ve been working on dips and sides. Next up is phyllo-based stuff and some mains, maybe next week.

  115. 115.

    Suzanne

    @Ohio Mom: I took one of them—-have been there for five weeks. I am enjoying it so far.

    We got shortlisted for a really big project that I can’t talk about yet. I will be the lead architect on it if we win it. The interview is on Thursday, so I’m not counting on doing anything but work for the next four days.

  116. 116.

    lamh36

    @Bostondreams: I am loving it. I’ve never actually seen the musical, or heard the music in it’s entirety…it was well before my time and I wasn’t much into musicals in my formative years.

    I came for John Legend, who didn’t disappoit, Sara Bareilles, who sounds great and stayig for the revelation that is Brandon Dixon who plays Judas! That young man should be a superstar

  117. 117.

    Washburn

    @Mnemosyne:

    I was responding to Another Scott who asked:

    “Citation needed.”

    IOW, show me a careful, statistically valid, study that separates “innate intelligence” from upbringing. Be careful if you’re thinking of citing separated twin studies.

    You point about Mozart or Picasso being born with gifts that are not amenable to reproduction solely by nurturing environments is spot on.

  118. 118.

    Jay

    “I don’t think you have to resolve the question of whether people end up on dead-end jobs because of innate differences in intelligence to recognize that this is a probably the greatest problem facing this country over the next few decades.”

    LMFAO

    As a child of the Reagan Recession, I can glibly inform you that people don’t “dead end” in careers because of intelligence.

    The first and foremost thing is to win the sperm lottery,

    If you can’t do that, then graduate from school, ( high school, technical school, community college, university), early on in a growth period in the economy where you will have enough time to accumulate work history before the layoffs.

  119. 119.

    FlipYrWhig

    The book is going to be “people are different so that’s why we need socialism to make up for it and not neoliberals neoliberaling because they suck.” Repeated 3500 times and somehow both self-pitying and self-aggrandizing.

  120. 120.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Schlemazel: Okay. Let’s freak out about the possibility that the book FdB is writing is going to be racist. That makes a lot of sense. Pragmatic even.

  121. 121.

    geg6

    @Ohio Mom:

    I tend to agree with Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences theory. There are all different types of intelligences from verbal to kinesthetic and traditional IQ tests only measure one or two or three, at most.

  122. 122.

    Suzanne

    I should add that the project will be a really great one. The kind of project that a bleeding-heart liberal like me would just loooooooove to do, as it will be a huge community asset for an underserved, vulnerable population. So plz cross any and all appendages.

  124. 124.

    PJ

    @Washburn: People end up in dead-end jobs because bosses need people to do dead-end jobs. Having a shitty job, or being unemployed, or having an amazing, fun-filled job, or being incredibly powerful and making life and death decisions every day that impact hundreds of thousands of people, throughout history, have mostly had nothing to do with anyone’s intelligence, however you define it. Mostly it’s been about when and where you were born, and to which family, and, where schools existed, which schools you went to and who you met. In other words, luck. Throughout history, the trajectory of most peoples lives has been set before they were adults, and their intelligence played little part in it.

  126. 126.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @geg6: IQ tests, the SAT, etc, largely measure one’s ability to take those tests. I am good at standardized tests. It means that I am good at standardized tests.

  127. 127.

    geg6

    @PJ:

    This. It only comes into the equation if you are lucky enough to find yourself in a job/career that plays to your intelligence.

  130. 130.

    Amir Khalid

    A kwibel: Freddie’s statement is a denial, not a correction. DougJ said Freddie was fixing to write a pro race-science book, and Freddie is denying it.

    Since none of us has read the book, we don’t yet know what it will be. If Freddie ain’t wrote none of it yet, one could argue that he himself doesn’t know either. Those of us who read it (so the rest of us don’t have to, I guess) will have to judge what it is. For all we know, it might turn out to present data as viewed from a race science angle, or arguments/conclusions borrowed from race science even as Freddie claims to repudiate it.

    On the other hand, Freddie might have developed some intellectual integrity. Hey, it could happen.

  131. 131.

    efgoldman

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Everyone who is worrying about it is freaking out

    Take another look at Cole’s OP. Even though we often go far afield, it’s what starts/started the conversation. If you think Cole was wrong to bring it up, send him an ALL CAPS email

  132. 132.

    eemom

    @Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho:

    Thanks!

    So, this is how it works: the Eastern Orthodox Easter is always after Passover, because that’s when the event is supposed to have occurred. (E.g., the Last Supper was a Passover supper.) Catholics and Protestants just peg the date to the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox — IOW, in purely Pagan terms. The result is a three year pattern wherein one year, the Easters are really far apart, the next year — as in this one — they’re one week apart, and the third year, they actually are the same day.

    It kind of sucked when I was a kid. Now, even though I don’t care about any of it, I kind of like the idea that ours is the RIGHT one.

  133. 133.

    geg6

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Agreed. And standardized tests are designed to test for those one, two or three types of intelligences. I’m good at them, too. Killed on the SAT and GRE math and I suck at math. But I’m good at logic and game theory, so I can play logic games to game the tests. I did it even as a kid in the Iowa Basic Skills tests we took in elementary school. So it is obviously an innate skill for me since I knew nothing about logic or game theory then.

  134. 134.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @schrodingers_cat: I was supporting the view that you and raven were putting forth. When he posted here kicking him was reasonable. Once he left, it became mean. Sorry if I was not clear.

  136. 136.

    Schlemazel

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    Yeah, I guess I see a difference between expressing an opinion and freaking out. What was happening here did not strike me as freaking out. YMMV

  137. 137.

    JPL

    @lamh36: It’s great to have the perspective of someone not familiar with the original one.

    I’m at the point where I’m saying, dear lord don’t drop John Legend.
    It is April 1st and all.

  138. 138.

    zhena gogolia

    @lamh36:

    He took over the role of Aaron Burr in Hamilton — I wish that were on record!

    The man really made an impression tonight!

  142. 142.

    Schlemazel

    @lamh36:
    There were several very good performances. The guy playing Pilate was doing really well until his big finish & his voice broke. But that is a hell of a number & unmerciful to have to do live.

  146. 146.

    eemom

    I didn’t watch JCS — did they do I Don’t Know How To Love Him? That is a beautiful song.

  148. 148.

    Corner Stone

    @FlipYrWhig:

    The book is going to be “people are different so that’s why we need socialism to make up for it and not neoliberals neoliberaling because they suck.” Repeated 3500 times

    I…uhhh…I could actually get behind this.

  149. 149.

    J R in WV

    I have academically brilliant friends who cannot organize their lives so as to accomplish anything. I have other friends who are not academically brilliant, but who have other talents and an ability to organize complex tasks who successfully accomplish major projects repeatedly.

  150. 150.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @efgoldman: Cole was fine to bring this up, given DougJ’s earlier post. Cole offered no commentary. I think that FdB is an insignificant person as a public intellectual. I don’t think his blather is worth much discussion. Do you disagree?

  153. 153.

    Corner Stone

    @Schlemazel:

    The guy playing Pilate was doing really well until his big finish & his voice broke.

    I’ve heard he was quite flexible in his role.

  154. 154.

    PJ

    @Omnes Omnibus: To label him an intellectual is to debase the term even more than it has been lowered in the past 50 years. Might as well call Sullivan or Dowd or the Himalayan salt lady an intellectual.

  156. 156.

    Schlemazel

    @JPL:
    A friend sent me a link a couple weeks ago to a youtube video that was a compilation of passion plays gone wrong. Crosses falling over, Jesuses falling off & the grand finale was one of a guy they were going to fly to heaven on fires but his robes came apart so he was wobbling overhead in just a diaper.

    It is a risk role

  161. 161.

    lamh36

    As someone who has NEVER seen the orginal and who only vaguely knows a song or two…this was my first real full exposure to any part of the musical #JesusChristSuperstar this is only the 2nd one of these “LIVE Tv musicals” that i really watched from beginning to end!

    They had me at @johnlegend and @SaraBareilles but @BrandonVDixon as Judas made me LOVE IT #JesusChristSuperstar

    https://media.giphy.com/media/9aPBhThp26KIg/giphy.gif

    ETA: Best one of these “live tv musicals” since The Wiz, which i LOVED

  165. 165.

    Felanius Kootea

    Maybe Freddie should consider writing a book on stereotype threat, stereotype boost and stereotype lift in the US versus other countries. I’d be interested in reading that (assuming it was handled well).

  166. 166.

    Schlemazel

    @lamh36:
    Was Sara Mary? I have no idea who she is but the woman in that role was also amazing. Her part gets some great songs & she knocked them out of the park

  170. 170.

    efgoldman

    @Amir Khalid:

    I have rather fond memories of LA Law. RIP Steven Bochco

    Also Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, and others. Among the best cop shows ever.

  171. 171.

    Washburn

    @Another Scott:
    No Scott, you are absolutely right. Any parents who provide a most excellent environment can have their child grow up to be Picasso, Stephen Hawking, Mozart, Judit Polgar, etc.

  175. 175.

    Brachiator

    @efgoldman: One of the local stations recently re-broadcast a good chunk of the first season of Hill Street Blues. It held up pretty well, and you could see how it influenced a lot of later TV.

    RIP, Mr Bochco.

  176. 176.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh36:

    According to IMDb, he’s the Hamilton actor who read the statement to Mike Pence from the stage after the show Pence attended. I think he plays Burr, which makes sense since LMM has said that Burr was partially inspired by Judas in JCS.

  177. 177.

    JPL

    @efgoldman: He brought David Kelly on board and created Doogie Howser, besides LA Law. Kelly then branched out on his own, but what an amazing career. .

  178. 178.

    Brachiator

    @JPL: A couple of bits from Bochco’s obituary.

    He worked on Columbo for a few seasons; the first 90-minute episode he wrote was 1971’s “Murder by the Book,” directed by Steven Spielberg, and Bochco received his first of his 34 Emmy noms….

    L.A. Law, which took Hill Street’s 10 p.m. Thursday slot, amassed 15 Emmys, including four for outstanding drama series.

    Bochco gave David E. Kelley, then a practicing attorney in Boston, his first show business job as a writer, then handed the L.A. Law reins to him when he stepped aside to focus on his ABC deal.

  179. 179.

    Another Scott

    @Washburn: It’s clear that you can’t support your claim.

    It seems to me that anyone looking at a collection of one week old infants and arguing that they are somehow different in their “innate intelligence” is fooling themselves.

    Here’s my view: There’s an awful lot of stuff that people have “known” about “innate intelligence” that is little more than supposition and prejudice wrapped around lazy thinking. For every Ramanujan one learns about, there’s (almost) invariably the availability of advanced materials at a young age to spark their genius or extraordinary abilities. Similarly, people who are taking college-level courses in middle-school (or earlier). Or composing orchestral works at young ages. It’s not all (and maybe not even mostly) “innate intelligence”. Brains are plastic and can absorb a lot more than many of us realize.

    Poor nutrition, fear and violence, lack of educational opportunities, lack of interest and time investment by parents and mentors, environmental pollution, and similar things, are very tough to separate from biological factors in humans.

    If you want to claim (as you did above) that “there are considerable differences in innate intelligence between individuals”, and want to be taken seriously, then you should be prepared to back up your claim.

    /fin

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  181. 181.

    Mnemosyne

    All right, Jesus Christ Superstar just started and I already see the difference between this and the previous TV musicals — they have an actual audience. It’s already making a difference.

  182. 182.

    Amir Khalid

    I am saddened to learn, from John Cole’s Twitter feed, of Nils Lofgren’s favourite guitars being stolen from a van parked at a gig venue.

  184. 184.

    smedley the uncertain

    @JPL: Was absolutely great. Fortunately, spouse and I tuned from the start. Was annoyed at the chopping effect of the commercials…. An emotional high point was reached and without pause they cut to a car commercial. Better management of less commercials maybe or have one big intermission. The cute little thumbnail of ‘back stage ” was useless. The performance and staging from the Armory was superb.

  185. 185.

    BruceFromOhio

    @Washburn:

    In a world where education and skills are increasingly important and where automation is replacing many low-skill jobs, what is to be done to address these differences?

    Sorry to feed it, but BWAHAHAHAHAHA please just stop it already.

  186. 186.

    Washburn

    @Another Scott:

    No, you’ve convinced me. Given a healthy diet, protection from fear and violence, good educational opportunities, and involved and motivated parents, there’s no reason why any child can’t grow up to be Stephen Hawking or Judit Polgar.

    The idea that there is any innate difference between people’s intelligence an abilities is just hokum.

  193. 193.

    James E. Powell

    @Bostondreams:

    The crowd is really getting on my nerves. Or maybe whoever is doing sound is to blame.

    The screaming nearly ruined Heaven on Their Minds.

  196. 196.

    J R in WV

    @Suzanne:

    Good luck, woman, you rock, and will lead your project like the champion you are. Take charge and execute!

    How are the spawn? Significant other? All well? I heard the camping trip was less hard core than feared… that’s good too. We’re doing well here, waiting for spring to actually happen, post snowfall.

  197. 197.

    Jay

    “Seventy-five years ago, the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, said, “Socialism is the economic realization of the Christian gospel.”

  198. 198.

    different-church-lady

    @FlipYrWhig:

    He has a Ph.D. in Rhetoric.

    FdB: Don’t touch me, I’m a doctor.
    Judge Maxwell: Of what?
    FdB: Rhetoric.
    Judge Maxwell: Can you fix a broken metaphor?
    FdB: No, sir.
    Judge Maxwell: Then shut up!

  201. 201.

    Suzanne

    @J R in WV: Spawns are as good as can be expected. Elder cut himself (cut the word “fat” into his leg) about two weeks ago, which is stressing me out. On the plus side, mood is improving steadily, he’s doing things with friends, and both yesterday at the mall and today at church he conversed normally with adults and shook hands and the like. A year ago, that would have led to a massive anxiety attack. Grades are also somewhat improved. And he eats. I am looking for signs of purging, but haven’t seen any.

    Can I just say that I fucking hate parenting? I fucking hate it.

  202. 202.

    Chris Johnson

    @Corner Stone:

    The book is going to be “people are different so that’s why we need socialism to make up for it and not neoliberals neoliberaling because they suck.” Repeated 3500 times

    I…uhhh…I could actually get behind this.

    Yup. Seems like the takeaway is meant to be ‘meritocracy is garbage and a lie’, and I’m profoundly uninterested in the ‘proper color’ for the untermenschen who don’t make the cut. As if them being white or black makes it any better.

    The world’s built to cull ‘failure of merit’ and we get… Donald Trump? No way does this work if that’s what we got. I don’t want to ever hear about aspirationalism again. That will take care of itself, and we need socialism to support this global population of organic beings. We have gone way past the point where the typical human being can justify their existence with merit/performance of ANY kind.

  203. 203.

    different-church-lady

    @Chris Johnson:

    We have gone way past the point where the typical human being can justify their existence with merit/performance of ANY kind.

    We have gone way past the point where any human being can justify their existence for damn near any reason at all. We’re entirely unnecessary to this planet, and could be the end of it.

  204. 204.

    cokane

    I can’t imagine why anyone would want to slog thru book-length deBoer. Also, he’s not an expert on biology and not exactly statistically savvy either. I just don’t understand the point of this book.

    That being said, it was a grossly unfair attack by DougJ, who unfortunately has induldged in a lot of bad faith, twitterfied arguments about people lately.

  205. 205.

    Keith G

    From the NIH

    Researchers have conducted many studies to look for genes that influence intelligence. Many of these studies have focused on similarities and differences in IQ within families, particularly looking at adopted children and twins. These studies suggest that genetic factors underlie about 50 percent of the difference in intelligence among individuals.

    Not everyone walks into the school door with the same capabilities. In older days, that was thought to be caused by some easily explainable observation, eg: parental neglect. As the National Institute for Health points out it’s not just factors related to a child’s home environment and parenting, education, and availability of learning resources. Genetic factors play a role. Once were internalize the truth of the science, it is incumbent upon us to develop policies that better deal with this reality.

  206. 206.

    Another Scott

    @Keith G: Thanks for that.

    The NIH link, and a longer excerpt:

    Is intelligence determined by genetics?

    Like most aspects of human behavior and cognition, intelligence is a complex trait that is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors.

    Intelligence is challenging to study, in part because it can be defined and measured in different ways. Most definitions of intelligence include the ability to learn from experiences and adapt to changing environments. Elements of intelligence include the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, and understand complex ideas. Many studies rely on a measure of intelligence called the intelligence quotient (IQ).

    Researchers have conducted many studies to look for genes that influence intelligence. Many of these studies have focused on similarities and differences in IQ within families, particularly looking at adopted children and twins. These studies suggest that genetic factors underlie about 50 percent of the difference in intelligence among individuals. Other studies have examined variations across the entire genomes of many people (an approach called genome-wide association studies or GWAS) to determine whether any specific areas of the genome are associated with IQ. These studies have not conclusively identified any genes that underlie differences in intelligence. It is likely that a large number of genes are involved, each of which makes only a small contribution to a person’s intelligence.

    Intelligence is also strongly influenced by the environment. Factors related to a child’s home environment and parenting, education and availability of learning resources, and nutrition, among others, all contribute to intelligence. A person’s environment and genes influence each other, and it can be challenging to tease apart the effects of the environment from those of genetics. For example, if a child’s IQ is similar to that of his or her parents, is that similarity due to genetic factors passed down from parent to child, to shared environmental factors, or (most likely) to a combination of both? It is clear that both environmental and genetic factors play a part in determining intelligence.

    [ embedded links to original sources ]

    Cheers,
    Scott.

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