The Detective

Great movie.

From 1951. With Kirk Douglas. It's like a long version of a dramatic episode of "Barney Miller". And it doesn't get better than that.

The movie was adapted from a Broadway play and is entirely set in the detective bullpen area of a Manhattan police precinct. (a couple of scenes are set in the Lieutenant's office, the rear of a paddy wagon, the roof of the precinct station, and on the sidewalk in front of the precinct station.)

Lynda watched it with me and she wondered whether a Manhattan police station would have had a black uniformed officer in 1951. I think it would have -- the white detectives would have needed a black officer to do the booking fingerprints of any blacks that might have been arrested. In 1951 white cops didn't like touching blacks -- that darkiness might have rubbed off on them.

Almost everything about the movie rang true to me.

Billy Jeff

I heard part of Bill Clinton's speech at some MLK event today.

He talked about the day he heard MLK's I have a dream speech. Billy Jeff was 16, living in Hot Springs Arkansas. No one in his family had ever gone to college. He says he cried when he listened to that speech on the radio.

Uh.

Bill's a couple of years older than me. I was 14 in 1963. And I didn't live in Hot Springs, I lived in Austin, Texas, which is quite a bit more liberal and cosmopolitan than Hot Springs (we even had Beatnik coffee houses in Austin and gays were allowed to actually walk down the sidewalk in daylight hours).

I promise you that no 16 year old Arkansas redneck in Hot Springs cried when he heard a black guy give a speech on the radio in 1963. Not even Billy Jeff Clinton.

Watson puts foot in mouth

Watson, of Crick and Watson DNA fame, made some non PC comments about race and intelligence that seems to be getting him in trouble. If he's so smart why didn't he know that was going to get him in trouble?

He said that Africans aren't as smart as Europeans and that aid we give to them won't work if we keep assuming that Africans are as smart as we are.

The 79-year-old geneticist reopened the explosive debate about race and science in a newspaper interview in which he said Western policies towards African countries were wrongly based on an assumption that black people were as clever as their white counterparts when "testing" suggested the contrary. He claimed genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be found within a decade.

He has a new book, Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science, that I expect will get as much attention in the press as Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life did a few years ago.

His views are also reflected in a book published next week, in which he writes: "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

Bell Curve did a disservice to the debates on intelligence differences in the choice of title. It created a popular misconception that's part of what did in Lawrence Summers when he made his comments on gender, science, and women in science that got him canned as President of Harvard. It put a focus off interest on the mean of the distributions of intelligence, when it's not clear at all that the mean is where any differences might lie.

For example, in the case of gender differences, some of the evidence suggests that it might be that women have a slightly higher mean intelligence than men, but men have higher variance. Variance is a measure of the spread of the distribution, about dispersion. Men having a higher variance but lower mean is an explanation for why more men are leaders in science and math (what Summers was talking about) and also more men are in prisons. That might be true even with no discrimination at all, and even if women are smarter than men on the average.

There's more to differences than averages. And if you look at a third characteristic of distributions, skewness, it might be that averages don't even mean that much. Skewness is how much the distribution differs from symmetric, a skewed distribution leans to one side, having more than it's share of real smart or more than it's share of real stupid. So, even if blacks and whites have the same means and variance in intelligence it might be that blacks just have a differently shaped distribution and is skewed more to the left, having more stupid people but with an offset of a few very smart people.

I'm not saying there's any actual differences, just that there might be and that the differences are likely much deeper than just differences in averages.


Update:

I thought this post was a joke. But it's not.

Statement by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Board of Trustees and President Bruce Stillman, Ph.D. Regarding Dr. Watson’s Comments in The Sunday Times on October 14, 2007

Earlier this evening, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Board of Trustees decided to suspend the administrative responsibilities of Chancellor James D. Watson, Ph.D., pending further deliberation by the Board.

This action follows the Board’s public statement yesterday disagreeing with the comments attributed to Dr. Watson in the October 14, 2007 edition of The Sunday Times U.K.

This is just insane. There is a genetic component to intelligence and there's no way to argue that there isn't. That doesn't mean it's related to race, but it's certainly genetic. There's probably also a component related to environmental factors such as pre-natal care. There's no strong reason to think Watson's assertions are wrong.

Put him in jail

A 13 year old boy in Louisiana steals 32c from an unlocked car in a parking lot.

He gets arrested.

What do you think? Do you think he's white?

What's going on in Jena?

Somebody finally published a pretty good step by step review of what's known and not known about what's going on in Jena criminal justice wise.

Update:
Although I'm not sure I buy it, it also seems like it's possible that there was no racial message in the nooses at all, except in the minds of some older observers.

Update:
Louisiana is 33% black. Jena is 12% black.

I've lived in Louisiana, in Mississippi, in East Texas, and in South Texas. It's been my observation that the higher the percentage of blacks (or in the case of South Texas hispanics) the more historic race conflict there has been. When the group in power is not a clear majority then it tends to use more heavy handed methods to stay in power.

That makes me doubt that the motives of the prosecutor are racial. I'm convinced that there is prosecutorial misconduct, I think intentional overcharging is serious misconduct, although most lawyers probably don't agree with me since overcharging seems to be the norm. But I'm becoming less and less convinced that race is the motive.

One observation about Jena that I think is odd, is that it seems to have an excess of teenage boys. There appears to be about 4 times as many boys in their late teens than girls in that age groups. Is there a military base in town or something? It's the county seat, are jail inmates counted as part of the population? That's probably the case, over 12% of the population is institutionalized.

Bottom line, I guess, I don't know what's going on.

Another view on Jena.

A white, female, law professor doesn't understand it.

The Knoxville Murders

I first heard about the Knoxville Murders (not to be confused with the murder in the Louvin Brother's song, Knoxville Girl)when rec.gambling.poker gadfly Paul Popinjay posted about it.

He quoted some heavily footnoted wiki entry that described extensively a bunch of horrific stuff. And of course the wiki had a picture of the pretty white girl and pictures of the thuggish black guys accused of doing all this horrific stuff.

One of the wiki links is to a Grand Jury indictment. Two murders. Four defendants with 46 counts each. That's close to 200 indictments for two murders. That's a big number. In some circles that might even qualify to be described as overkill. They even brought separate indictments for oral rape, anal rape and vaginal rape. Why? It looks to me like no other reason than to demonize the defendants. Maybe they are demons, I don't know. But, is that the purpose of a Grand Jury?

Anyway, whenever I see that kind of overkill I start wondering about what the underlying truth actually is? I never think overkill accurately represents truth, I think the whole purpose of that kind of overkill is to obscure the truth. I know such overcharging is common in the US. But the reason it's common is that it's common for police and prosecutors to try to "win" by misrepresentation and intimidation, irrespective of truth.

Also, all the horrific details described in Paul's original wiki quote came from reports of a deputy US marshal. This was a local murder? There's no federal jurisdiction. The thoughts I expressed at the time were

Why is a deputy US Marshall involved in this?

It's a serious question. Without an explanation for that you can't find
anything about the report reliable. Nothing in this story indicates any reason
at all for the US Marshall's office to be involved, so clearly some part of the
story is being left out.

I just don't trust any of those sonsofbitches.

Also, language like "It has been suggested" is a huge red flag that it's all
bullshit.

Are you sure this isn't something Irish Mike got in an email?

The sonsofbitches I referred to was cops, I don't trust anything cops say. Cops are trained to lie and misrepresent things. It's a standard tool in interrogation and police work in general. I just see no reason to trust anything a trained liar says.

Irish Mike is one of the denizens of rec.gambling.poker who often reports urban myths someone sent him via email as factual.

After a web search I found that the US Marshall was involved because of a federal warrant that the ATF got for some weapons charge. Initially a charge of felon in possession of a weapon was the only actual criminal charge they even had probable cause sufficient to get a warrant. To me that sounded like more grasping and stretching truth.

I didn't know what happened but was reasonably convinced that the reports circulating were probably not fully accurate. Here's what I said in the rgp thread

The only charge that's been made that I could find was that one was charged with
felon in possosion of a firemarm, which explains the US Marshall. The ATF filed
a complaint in a federal court and Marshalls would serve the arrest warrent for
that.

They havn't been charged with the murders or rapes, apparantly there's not
enough evidnece even to arrest them on those charges.

Just as I suspected, the story you reprinted was overblown and a
misrepresntation.


http://www.knoxnews.com

Now my early suspicions have been validated by the Knoxville News (via Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit)

The victims were white. The suspects are black.

Authorities said the case began as a carjacking but wound up a kidnapping, rape and murder. They have said little else, however, tightlipped on every aspect of the case, from where it occurred to how Christian died.

It didn't take long for details -- horrific ones -- to eke out. The problem is, many of them are wrong.

Worked for the same wages

I'm watching a show on the History Channel about the cattle trail days of Dodge City, Kansas. A short segment was on black cowboys.

The claim was that the black cowboys on the trial were treated the same as the white cowboys, while in town they were segregated and treated very poorly. There was one funny line, about how in town the blacks only had the lowest menial jobs -- as if cowboying was high status.

But the line that triggered this post is that black cowboys and white cowboys did the same job and worked for the same wages.

I suspect that's complete bullshit.

In one of his books, J. Frank Dobie wrote of his youth as a South Texas cowboy early in the Twentieth Century. He talked about the difference in pay between anglo cowboys and Mexican cowboys. They weren't paid the same. The rancher's claim was that the pay differential was based on whether the cowboy owned his own horse or used a ranch horse. Dobie pointed out the he used a ranch horse, but was paid the same as the anglo cowboys who used their own horses.

More on Imus

Well, MSNBC dropped Imus and CBS Radio says they're keeping him on. Maybe his income will drop from 10 million a year down to only 8 million or so. That'll teach him.

The blog world isn't as fixated on Imus as cable news shows are, but we're still talking about it.

Ed Brayton compares Imus to rap singers.

However, there are two other aspects of the situation that have gotten a lot of attention. One is that it is hypocritical of some people to criticize Imus for using a phrase like that while praising rappers who call women the same thing and worse in virtually every rap song. Dead on accurate. And it's been disappointing to me to see even some otherwise intelligent people not grasping this idea.

Ed thinks he's getting it right, but he's not. Song lyrics are basically a form of fiction. References in song lyrics aren't to individual people, they are references to fictional people, to things that are in the mind, not flesh and blood. Imus might have used the same words that some gangsta-rap singers use, but there's a big difference in that Imus directed his words at specific, identifiable, individual people. That makes it very different.

I agree with him in the other part of his complaint.

The other aspect is the inevitable spectacle of watching Imus prostrate himself before, of all people, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Of all people, we're going to listen to Jesse "Hymietown" Jackson about saying racially insensitive things? We're going to have to say penance to a shabby race pimp like Al "Please don't bring up Tawana Brawley" Sharpton? It's long since past time that we stopped paying attention to these men. There are serious civil rights leaders who deserve our respect and whose counsel we should keep in situation like this; Jackson and Sharpton are not among them.

Alec Baldwin actually makes what I think is a somewhat rational observation,

Imus is an entertainer. He is not Tim Russert. In order to appeal to a crowd that is a notch or two above Hannity's, however, he must combine a bit of Russert to his persona. He must walk a line between informed, reliable broadcaster and witty madman. Jon Stewart walks that line effectively, or one similar to it. Letterman walks it better than anyone. Intelligent, yet free. Sometimes even loopy, but always in a controlled way.

Imus said something that sounded racist without really being a racist. His only crime was that he didn't walk that line very carefully. And that's his job. Don't fire Imus because he's racially insensitive. His employers should have let his audience decide that. But, perhaps, fire him because his talent is diminishing. Imus was once one of the smartest guys in radio. Maybe he's just another radio host now. Like when the Jayson Blair scandal made people realize that the New York Times had, basically, become just another newspaper. Imus isn't a bad guy. He's just not the old Imus anymore. He's no longer that guy who always keeps that line in the corner of his eye.

Ann Althouse seems to think that Imus is holding too many racist thoughts in his head.

Now, Imus wasn't drunk, but he was doing ad lib comedy. How can you do that but to let go of the inhibitions that allow ordinary people to function in social situations? He's got to take that risk to give a comic performance. But what comes out must in some way be in there. He's funny -- when he is -- because he's got a mix of interesting things in his head, some of which are the bad and unkind thoughts that may make us laugh because they are things that we hold in too.

Okay, so maybe Imus is racist, maybe not. I really don't think that even matters. Apparently neither does Ann.

We are all flawed, and we do need our comedians. We should talk back and express outrage about some things, but when is the censuring too much? How long must a man abase himself and apologize? How much do we want to see a man grovel?

I'm starting to get sick of the cable news talking heads going on and on about how this is an opportunity to have a public dialogue about race relations in this country. Nonsense. This Imus stuff pretty much ensures we won't have such a dialogue. You can't have a dialogue when one side of the conversation is constrained in a way where their number one concern is not saying something that might offend somebody.

If we really want to have a dialogue we need to start ignoring some of the thin-skinned twits that yell for firing everyone that offends somebody.

Observations on Imus and his nappy hair

Should Imus be fired?

I don't know, I don't really care. But the whole thing sure is interesting.

I often watch Imus on MSNBC and although I missed the day of the nappy hair comment I did notice that during the week before that he was apologizing about something almost every day.

An example is some comments he'd made about General Motors. They had donated a few hundred thousand dollars worth of trucks to the Imus Ranch, his wholly owned charity subsidiary, and Imus made the comment on the air that they'd given the trucks to the ranch because they couldn't sell them.

No, no, no, Don.

The next day he was apologizing for it every 20 minutes or so. Two days later he was still apologizing every half hour or so. He even brought in a GM marketing VP as a guest and interviewed him about what great vehicles GM was making and how the news about a possible bankruptcy was all a misunderstanding. I was actually embarrassed for Imus.

Then he came up with his nappy headed hos. What a twit.

He apologized, and apologized, and just won't shut up about it.

On Tuesday he made the absurd claim that he's not running a PR campaign about the issue. He should be fired for saying that, of course he's running a PR campaign to try to frame it as a "good man who did a bad thing". To pretend he's not is just insulting. Every interview he did Tuesday was centered on what they thought about Imus's public relations problems. Every one.

He did an interview of Bill Maher that started out with what happens to people who say something stupid on the air. Bill Maher certainly knows about that. After a minute or two of that Maher tried to change the subject to politics, what the show is supposed to be about. Imus was having none of that. Everytime Maher brought up Bush Imus changed the subject to race relations in the US and what Imus was on record with about race relations in the US. Pathetic.

For two weeks Imus has been hyping an appearance by his wife to promote a new book she's written. It was supposed to be yesterday. She didn't show up. Imus mumbled some excuse. Even his wife is deserting the sinking ship.

The really funny part of all this, that I haven't seen any TV commentator comment about, is the basketball team's press conference on Tuesday. I guess they waited until Tuesday to meet the public so they could all go to the beauty shop. None of them had nappy hair.

I'm watching him right now (Wednesday morning) and he's relating a story about how he sent some kids with cancer home from his charity ranch because they were calling the girls "bitches and whores". Sent them home. Is he suggesting he should be sent home? Maybe that's how this all will end up.

Some other blog comments on Imus:

The Trouble With Imus' "It's Not Fair, Other People Do It" Defense

Sponsors yanking ads from Imus

Firing Imus is Too Good

When is an apology not enough?

Meet Al Roker, Fired-Up Blogger

The Spocko Effect

Imus Should Get Sirius

Don Imus and Megan Kanka In A Soundbite Nation

Re: Don Imus and the Rutgers Basketball Team

Department of huh?


From the NYT

More from NYT

USA Today on Imus

Real race issues (not about Imus)

Prom night in Georgia

UPDATE
Wednesday Imus keeps re-running clips of the basketball teams press conference. Over and over. Including the speech the team captain made where she talked about the biggest problem being all the unwanted media attention they are getting as a result of all this. Good thinking Imus. Just exploit the hell out of those girls, fill your airtime with their pleas to be left alone. Then apologize. That ought to work.