Have you ever met a doctor with the same opinions as the parent? Have you ever met a lawyer with those opinions? I suspect the reason your comments is that you haven't met many people who don't share your views on this matter, and that even if you have you have n't given them a fair hearing because you were to busy making presumptions about their motivations and background.

It looks like I mis-remembered one thing - the article doesn't mention people of Asian ancestry.

Way back when this came out, I read about it in National Review. Here is the original: http://iowahawk.typepad.com/io...

Yes I have met a black person with a college degree. And I have met a woman who is more than 6 feet tall. (In fact I've met a black women with a college degree who is more than six feet tall).

From this I conclude that all statistics about most women being less than 6 feet tall are pure nonsense, or at least that any statistic claiming most black women with college degrees are less than six feet tall is pure nonsense.

Some years back when Bush II was running for president, someone pointed out how dismal education was in Texas, pointing to another state that was doing so much better (run by Democrats if I recall) based on test results.

Someone else look at the statistics and compared the two states demographically.

White kids in Texas were doing better than the white kids in the other state.
Black kids in Texas were doing better than the black kids in the other state.
Hispanic kids in Texas were doing better than the hispanic kids in the other state.
Kids with Asian ancestry were doing better in Texas than kids with Asian ancestry in the other state.


Looking at each group, they were doing better in Texas than in the other state.

So why was Texas worse overall? Texas had more black and hispanic kids, while the other state had more white kids and kids with Asian ancestry, and in both states the white kids and the kids with Asian ancestry outperformed the black and hispanic kids on the tests.


Lesson: if you want to compare education systems fairly based on results, you can't ignore the demographics.

I hope someday we can have a scientific discussion about why that is. Actually, I hope even more that things can change before then so we don't need to have the discussion.

This is especially important for writing because the reader can't get any clues from tone or facial expression, and the reader can't ask for clarification.

I get asked frequently to proofread the writing of a foreign friend. It amazes me how I can understand this person when we talk but I can find it so difficult to understand her writing.

And yet native English speakers often seem to know the rules even if they don't know consciously know them. We can generally guess when that "ch" is pronounced like a "k" and when it is not.

It's amazing how the mind can do that in some instances. I remember a Japanese friend once asking me and a group of my friends how we know when to use "get in" a vehicle vs "get on" a vehicle. We get on a bus; we get in a car; we get on a motorcycle; we get on a plane; we get in a canoe; we get on a boat...

None of use could figure it out. Finally it was the Japanese guy who had an aha! moment and suggested something that made sense.

As an American who grew up in the middle of the country, I can't make fun of any foreigner for their bad English because they almost always speak my language much better than I speak theirs. I remember hearing about other countries teaching their children English and wishing my schools would teach me a foreign language. When I finally had the opportunity to learn Spanish in High School we learned at a snail's pace.

Some years back when Bush II was running for president, someone pointed out how dismal education was in Texas, pointing to another state that was doing so much better (run by Democrats if I recall) based on test results.

Someone else look at the statistics and compared the two states demographically.

White kids in Texas were doing better than the white kids in the other state.
Before you get all smug about Bush being a racist you should know that
Black kids in Texas were doing better than the black kids in the other state.
Hispanic kids in Texas were doing better than the hispanic kids in the other state.
Kids with Asian ancestry were doing better in Texas than kids with Asian ancestry in the other state.

Looking at each group, they were doing better in Texas than in the other state.

So why was Texas worse overall? Texas had more black and hispanic kids, while the other state had more white kids and kids with Asian ancestry, and in both states the white kids and the kids with Asian ancestry outperformed the black and hispanic kids on the tests.


Lesson: if you want to compare education systems fairly based on results, you can't ignore the demographics.

Why you can't ignore the demographics is a religious question (in that people have dogmatic beliefs).

The egalitarian system may have had benefits, but so does standardized spelling. I can read the same thing anyone from England does even though we pronounce many words completely differently. When people from Boston talk about write about Haavaad and people from St. Louis write about Warshington DC, I don't have to read it twice because the spell them "Harvard" and "Washington" just like I do even though they may pronounce the words differently.

And of course there is the benefit of reading faster when words are always spelled the same. I recognize how words appear and it goes straight to my brain without having to go through a phonetic decoder.

I like the standardized spellings.



The concept of standard pronunciations is something I'm less enthusiastic about. Since pronunciation is based primarily on hearing other people talk or, for the self-educated, guessing the pronunciation from spelling, I often get annoyed when people think they're better than others because of their pronunciations. If someone says "false fakade" instead of "false fasahd" because that's the way the word "facade"' looks, why should we make fun of them. All it means is that why one person was born in a family that used fancy words, someone else had the initiative to read and learn on his own.

I'm always confused by this kind of logic. If you were arguing that the goal is to make sure individual women have a fair shot then that would be one thing (though I would still question the method of focusing on the group rather than the individual). But here you say that it isn't a matter of helping individuals, it is that we need women in these fields.

Why? If men and women are equal in ability, competence, qualifications, attitudes, or whatever else is deemed relevant to the ability to do the job, then what difference does it make to us whether the job of providing us with IT goodies is being done by men or women?

And if men and women aren't equal in all those things, then why should we be surprised if women are better at some fields than men and men are better at some fields than women? And why should we consider it a problem that needs fixing?

Yes, not only are boys being left behind at college, now the women are trying to crowd them out of one of the few fields where boys seem to have a fair chance.

You wrote, " it would be easy to prove a great deal about an omnipotent God [sic], presuming you had it's cooperation." And now you tell me you shouldn't be expected to be able to figure out any of those easy proofs.

He'll leave office. There are too many ambitious Democrats who want to be president someday for him to be able to get away with staying around. And there are too many ambitious Democrats who want to take the current job of whoever becomes the next Democratic president. If you're a politician with ambition, one thing you don't want is for the people at the top to stay there forever. You want them moving up or retiring to make room for you.

Unlikely. Establishment conservatives (the kind who ran Congress under Bush and expanded government and grew the debt just like Democrats) simply don't do what they say they will. If one gets elected he'll just let Obamacare go on its way enriching health insurance companies like it was designed by the Democrats to do.

If someone like Cruz gets elected he'll be faced with a conundrum. As a limited government fiscal conservative he'll no likely want to get rid of Obamacare. However the same tendencies that lead someone to want limited government also lead that person to believe the laws that limit the President to his Constitutional role should be followed - and unilaterally overturning laws is not within the President's power.

Perhaps though he has an out. If you remember the Democrats "deemed" the law to have passed and there was some controversy about it. Perhaps a President could say that on review of the record, the bill never passed Congress and is therefore not a law and never was a law and that enforcement must cease immediately.