Vox Popoli

I can’t decide who is the biggest moron, Brad Childress, Tarvaris Jackson or Chad Greenway. If the Raiders had won thanks to Childress’s gutless AND lower-percentage decision to punt the ball instead of going for it on 4th-and-inches to close out the game, I would have gone berserk if Wilf hadn’t fired him before tomorrow morning.

He still needs to go, obviously, but my hatred for Coach Clueless merely burns hot, it’s not actually melting steel at this point. Tarvaris’s decision to lob the ball into coverage on second-and-goal was merely infuriating by comparison; fortunately the Raiders aren’t any too bright and the cornerback’s decision to take the ball out to the two-yard line handed the Vikes the subsequent safety.

But Greenway’s decision to get up and run with the ball after what should have been the game-clinching interception was definitely the dumbest decision of the day. Just stay down! What was the dumb galoot thinking, that he was going to run through nine Raiders and score? Instead, he fumbled and kept hope alive for Oakland. Still, this doesn’t let Childress off the hook either, because that sort of foolishness by a starter is a major sign of a poorly coached team.

On the bright side, Chester Taylor ran like a madman in scoring his three TDs. He’s been eminently supportive of Adrian Peterson, so it’s nice to see him have his moment in the sun in Peterson’s absence.

This appears to indicate that I actually underestimated the negative effect of increased female labor force participation on wages, although I suspect that in extrapolating their research to the present, they haven’t accounted for the concomitant reduction in 55+ male employment that took place post-1960:

A cardinal rule of economics is that increases in the labor supply yield decreases in wages, an empirical reality rarely acknowledged when the discussion turns to the influx of women into the workforce. Yet a study by economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the U.S. Military Academy, and the National Bureau of Research has quantified that the “Rosie the Riveter” phenomenon of the 1940s—a decade that the researchers say registered the largest proportional rise in female labor force of the twentieth century—ended up depressing the wages of men, and especially the 85 percent of whom were high school graduates, at mid-century….

One of those effects is the relative decline in wages across the board for women as well as men. The researchers demonstrate that a 10 percent increase in female employment relative to male labor yields a 7 to 8 percent decline in female wages and a 3 to 5 percent decline in male wages…. If these same factors are still in play, then the additional growth in the female labor supply since 1960 has not helped the wage situation and explains why supporting a family on just one income has become increasingly difficult.

(Source: Daron Acemoglu, David H. Autor, and David Lyle, “Women, War, and Wages: The Effect of Female Labor Supply on the Wage Structure at Midcentury,” Journal of Political Economy 112 [2002]: 497-551.)

The significant phrase is “relative to male labor”, as the percentage of men working has dropped to 76 percent, while the number of teenagers working has plummeted from nearly 60 percent in 1979 to 44 percent in 2006. Anyhow, it’s interesting that people are finally beginning to pay some attention to the basic economics of the issue. I expect more than a few people on both sides of the feminist aisle are going to be very upset when the period from 1970 to the present is studied.

Feminists will be upset because it will make feminism look like a disaster for women. Working, married non-feminists will be upset because they’ll realize that they are essentially working for nothing. Men won’t like it either, since they’ll realize that they’re getting paid less for the same work that their fathers did.

It’s interesting how everyone understands that immigrants cause labor prices to fall, but most people don’t grasp that a substantial increase in domestic work force participation, by any group, has the same effect.

The NYT attempts to excuse black America for the obvious consequences of its actions:

People who own property feel a sense of ownership in their future and their society. They study, save, work, strive and vote. And people trapped in a culture of tenancy do not.

This parochial statement is interesting in light of the fact that in Switzerland, only 35 percent of the population own their own homes. No doubt that’s why it’s such an impoverished, shiftless nation. Seriously, the media these days increasingly appears to be nothing more than a constant flow of left-leaning fictional narrative.

Science figures out that women miss more work without suffering consequences:

A new study formally links the data and the norm, indicating women miss more work than men because that’s what society expects. This seemingly benign “policy” could foster workplace discrimination in wages and advancement for women, the study authors suggest.

“The results suggest that a distinct absence culture exists for women that might legitimize their absenteeism, but it might also perpetuate gender stereotypes and lead to gender discrimination,” said researcher Eric Patton of Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

Another way of putting that would be that women miss more work because, being generally viewed as an advanced form of children, they aren’t held fully accountable for their actions. How any of this would lead to grammar-based discrimination is beyond me, but I have some doubts that an entirely sex-blind workplace where women were always expected to work as many hours as men would ultimately be regarded as being to the advantage of women in general.

There’s the Mommy thing, of course, but beyond that, I can’t recall a single woman in our office ever requiring a reminder that she needed to use up her vacation/sick days before the end of the year, whereas I can’t remember any of the unmarried programmers or tech guys ever using all the days to which they were entitled. My boss used to wonder why I never bothered taking vacations, he didn’t seem to understand that from my perspective, my business trips were more fun than any vacation was likely to be.

It still astounds me how many people have such a difficult time understanding the inverse relationship between fear and liberty:

Boston police are launching a program that will call upon parents in high-crime neighborhoods to allow detectives into their homes, without a warrant, to search for guns in their children’s bedrooms.

The program, which is already raising questions about civil liberties, is based on the premise that parents are so fearful of gun violence and the possibility that their own teenagers will be caught up in it that they will turn to police for help, even in their own households.

Of course, this is a very dangerous way to think, because then you just might start to think about what sort of voter tends to be more particularly fearful and susceptible to this sort of deal….

“I understand people’s concerns about this, but the mothers of the young men who have been arrested with firearms that I’ve talked to are in a quandary,” he said. “They don’t know what to do when faced with the problem of dealing with a teenage boy in possession of a firearm. We’re giving them an option in that case.”

It never ends.

And the repercussions of the Rodriguezes:

The number of Hispanics living in the United States grew by 58 percent in the 1990s to nearly 13 percent of the total population, and cracking the list of top 10 names suggests just how pervasively the Latino migration has permeated everyday American culture.

Garcia moved to No. 8 in 2000, up from No. 18, and Rodriguez jumped to No. 9 from 22nd place. The number of Hispanic surnames among the top 25 doubled, to 6.

Compiling the rankings is a cumbersome task, in part because of confidentiality and accuracy issues, according to the Census Bureau, and it is only the second time it has prepared such a list. While the historical record is sketchy, several demographers said it was probably the first time that any non-Anglo name was among the 10 most common in the nation. “It’s difficult to say, but it’s probably likely,” said Robert A. Kominski, assistant chief of social characteristics for the census.

Luis Padilla, 48, a banker who has lived in Miami since he arrived from Colombia 14 years ago, greeted the ascendance of Hispanic surnames enthusiastically.

“It shows we’re getting stronger,” Mr. Padilla said. “If there’s that many of us to outnumber the Anglo names, it’s a great thing.”

Lovely. And when their wonderfully corrupt Colombian culture replaces Anglo civilization, I wonder if Senor Padilla, who presumably wanted to escape the barbarity of Colombia 14 years ago, will consider that to be an equally great thing too.

There’s no two ways about it. If you continue to support immigration at this point in American history, you’re stupid,, short-sighted and historically ignorant. Assuming you can cram the concept into what is obviously your tiny little mind, try to think through the implications of the fact that the conservative party in Mexico is a revolutionary socialist one.

Then think about what sort of society those immigrants are going to enthusiastically vote into existence.

If you happen to harbor any desire to listen to last weekend’s interview with the Northern Alliance guys, you can now do so here.

The DM of the Rings:

Aragorn: “We need a name for our group. What do you guys think?”
DM: “I suggest Fellowship of the Ring.”
Legolas: “Gay. how about Legion of the Ring?”
Gimli: “Nay, makes us sound evil.”
Merri: “I know! The Guardians of the Ring!”
Pippin: “Um, we’re not really guarding it, we’re trying to destroy it.”
Sam: “The Seven Keepers of the Ring?”
Frodo: “There are nine of us.”

The thing I love most about geek humor is that while the normal person who comes up with a funny take on something will turn it into an amusing anecdote, only a committed geek can take a single amusing concept and somehow turn it into an ongoing epic that somehow continues to be funny even though it’s merely explication of the one thought.

It’s like the guy who remade Star Wars in ASCII text. You know he’s hopelessly insane, but you have to love him for it. This excerpt from the guy’s bio tells you all that you really need to know about whether reading his graphic saga is worthwhile.

(And as my wife reminds me below: At one point I forgot to pay the phone bill and the phone was disconnected. Took me a week to notice.)

This post brought to you courtesy of our atheist friends at Unscrewing the Inscrutable.

Little Australian Boy: “Wot’s thaht thing agayan?” “

VD: “What thing?”

LAB: “Thaht thing thaht was on yir cah!”

VD: “Oh, the weasel?”

LAB: “Yiea. Was hay fat and juicy loik may?”

VD: (trying not to laugh) “How’d you get so fat and juicy?”

LAB: “Oi exercoise!

Now, that was funny. But you haven’t experienced true humor until you’ve overheard two little kids discussing a ventriloquist who was, very convincingly, using a dog in the place of the usual dummy. I nearly asphyxiated myself trying to keep from laughing out loud.

Little Girl: “That pup is from NARNIA!”

Little Boy: “Narnia’s just a story. I think it’s a parrot in a dog suit.”

How to create a third world country:

Last year, 510,000 foreign migrants came to the UK to stay for at least 12 months, according to the Office for National Statistics. At the same time 400,000 people, more than half of whom were British, emigrated….

It is the first time the number of foreign migrants has topped half a million and the statistics do not include hundreds of thousands of east Europeans who have arrived to work in Britain in the past two years.

And that’s just the legals. Londonistan and North Mexico, now there’s a winning combination for the ages! At least the food will be spicy.

Update – A Member of Parliament explains why so many Englishmen are emigrating:

The papers today ask why 400,000 left the Uk last year to live and work somewhere else. I would have thought the answer was obvious.

They’ve had enough.

We live in a country where anyone who has gained some qualifications, who tries to pay their own way and to live a decent life feels targetted by this government. We have our identity assaulted, our democratic views ignored, our pockets and purses rifled by the state, our opinions criticised or banned and the public services we do wish to use run incompetently or rationed for us.