Don Marshall writes:
>
> I can agree with Mark Jones last post expressing shock at rkm's
> capitulation to bell-curve backed notions of racialist differences. My
> view is that the jury is still out on the method, ontology,
> and assumptions of such research.
The jury being out is Qualification One for any science.
>The complexities and processes
> involved in the shaping of a human being seem to defy behavioural
> methodologies with their predictive and scientistic leanings. I am
> prepared however to believe that the crudities in rkm's post was perhaps
> in his articulation. The pursuit of a nuance can prove hazardous if the
> articulation is rushed. I do agree with rkm's last point though on the
> dangers of IQ-chauvinism.
Without entering the debate, I have, as always, a funny story.
I am an ex-Governor of the Educational Testing Service, they indeed of
Princeton. The vestrymen, uh, vestrypeople, of the joint call them/our
selves governors with a capital G with a wry smile at the amount of power
involved in the role. Most have a great deal of power in their other
roles.
I got this job, and the vote that went with it, on a proxy: my boss had to
go to another meeting as a Visitor at Harvard the same day. (That's real
class and power: when you don't pretend to govern, you just visit.) John
told me to get primed for bear, so I spent a couple of weeks before the
meeting looking into things. Fortunately Ben Wood, the founder of the
joint, was a friend, so I was able to find out where the skeletons were
buried.
At the same time I had a librarian friend scurry up all the press stuff on
ETS, and she came up with a number of stories from Atlantic and suchlike.
They were uniform: the writer always found a test question to mock, and it
was always clear that neither the writer nor their editors actually
understood the question fully. Give that ink-stained wretch a 680 and tell
'em to piss off.
So I took the train up to New York for a night of debauchery and then the
subway to Princeton to be picked up by the limousine in the morning. (The
trains to Princeton Junction stopped at 3:30, probably to make the kids do
their homework, so to get back to Washington, if you didn't have a LearJet
waiting -- Bill Lear, 97, died the other day, I'm sorry to hear -- you had
to take the Alleghany, now known as USAir. 18 seater "Well
lazeungennullmen, Ah see lil weather ahead, so Ah'm gonna take it up to
four thousand...")
Arriving I find myself at a square of tables with 18 of the most powerful
people on the planet -- Bilderberg prefigured -- plus none of the jerks are
there. Not a Rostow in sight. The Chair is the Chairman of Prudential (by
coincidence the next generation of their computer security is on my desk
right now) who proceeds to do an amazing act: through roughly eight hours
of meeting he keeps both feet flat on the floor, no crossed ankles in any
direction. In all the BoD meetings I have been to in my life, this is an
act of unprecedented anality.
Agenda makes sense. Support papers are literately written. This is one of
the most amazing meetings I have ever been to.
The meeting starts: pure gut-wrenching epistemology start to finish. The
pre-loaded critiques I might have thought of raising are not even in the
league, let alone the ballpark: they have paid dynamite experts on staff.
The day goes forward. ETS was, afik, the first place on the east coast to
feed the automatic whitewinequichespinachandlemonjuice lunch. Everything is
passed by acclamation, the nearest thing to a vote being when the chairman
asks me if $550,000 sounds about right for a particular bit of research.
Apparently I've been elected the house numbercruncher.
A meeting of smart powerful people is done with remarkable economy.
Nothing is barred. If anything is not understood a raised eyebrow, or at
most a five word question, gets to the bottom of it.
Here is the nub of it: the people "in charge" of IQ are far more sceptical
about it (and far better informed on the subject) than the officious
opposition out there. "IQ is an index of ability to pass IQ tests" is a
banner of the people who write -- and test, and test... -- the tests, not
of their critics.
* * *
> On another note, we can appreciate the socially useful
> benefits that can arise out of the Norweigian solar &
> wind-powered vehicle.
This is a curiosity. In North America engineering undergraduates turn out
this kind of stuff for sport. (University of Toronto's Lady Godiva Gang
briefly threatened MIT's hegemony this spring, but MIT won out...)
All the car technology we need is on the shelf, just waiting for the prices
to adjust themselves. Meanwhile the people in a position to choose will
choose: Toyota jeeps in Sudan, black MB's in Mali, air conditioned Lexises
that never get out of second gear in Calcutta... (The nice thing about
Rolls Royces is they can't be faked. I was driving one at 125 mph down the
Queen E a few years ago when a Provincial hove into my mirror. I put it to
the floor, the machine moved smartly to 145, and the cop waved me a
friendly goodbye.)
Ivan Illich and his donkeys can grunt and moan all they want, but the fact
is people will eat white bread before they go back to whole grain, white
rice before their abberrant grandchildren go macrobiotic, and drive a car
with the back seat empty long before they can afford horses.
-dlj.