The Audacious Epigone

Sea marshals?

2009-11-21T14:32:00.000-08:00

No need for a dramatic rescue this time around:

The Maersk Alabama, the American-flagged ship captured briefly by pirates in April before a dramatic rescue of its captain, came under fire early Wednesday morning off the Somalia coast, but evaded the attackers.

Four men in a skiff sped within 300 yards of the container ship, firing automatic weapons in an attempt to board it, according to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet. A security team aboard the Alabama fired back and managed to fend off the attack, the Navy said.

My instinctive reaction is to cheer the virility the Maersk has acquired over the last year. Whether or not it is economically prudent for cargo ship operators to hire private security forces is another question for which it is difficult to get precise data. Annually, around 20,000 ships pass through the Gulf of Aden, the globe's piracy hotspot. From January to September of last year, there were 63 attempted or successful ship hijackings. That translates to 1 in 235 trips resulting in a pirate encounter. The WSJ article excerpted above also reports on an apparently successful piracy operation:

On Tuesday, pirates released 36 crew members from a Spanish tuna trawler after
holding them hostage for more than six weeks. A man who told the Associated Press he was a pirate said the captors had been paid a $3.3 million ransom.

If the average hijacking attempt results in half that payoff, it comes to $7,000 per ship journey through this susceptible area heading toward the Suez canal. A week's worth of a ten-man security team is going to cost more than that. Obviously these are very rough calculations, but presumably the ultimate conclusion is the same--a cargo ship with firepower doesn't make financial sense for ship operators, else most of them would load their ships up. Other deterrents like arming crew members or randomly equipping some ships with security could conceivably be more cost effective than putting security forces on all of them would be. The problem with the latter tactic is that those who don't lock-and-load become free riders of those who do, like I benefit from several neighbors who own guns, even though I don't have any.

If the free rider problem exists and it is not cost-effective to equip every ship with a security detail, I wonder if something akin to sky marshals for cargo ships would be desirable (the US Coast Guard has a sea marshall program, but it involves boarding searches by identifiable military personnel to ensure in-bound ships do not pose a threat to the harbors receiving them). The current generation of Navy servicemen haven't seen the action those in the Army and Marines have. The capacity is there, so why not use it? These pirates are legitimate military targets. After all, they have official spokesmen:

"It narrowly escaped and opened fire on us," said the man, who identified himself as Abdullahi Nor, a pirate spokesman. "One of our colleagues was injured in the attack." Mr. Nor said he had spoken to the would-be hijackers by satellite phone.

If you're aware of the subject being addressed in detail, please point me to the source in the comments.

Black churches create hostility toward whites, or merely cater to it?

2009-11-18T17:53:00.000-08:00

++Addition++OneSTDV asks:

To consider my specific argument, wouldn't you have to look at those that actually attend BLACK churches?

From Pew's religious landscape survey, a breakdown of blacks by religious affiliation in the US:

Affiliation	%
Black churcher	52.6
Protestant (Evangelical)	16.2
Unaffiliated	11.4
Muslim	7.1
Catholic	4.6
Protestant (Mainline)	4.2
Jehovah's Witness	1.3
Orthodox	0.6
Mormon	0.5
Buddhist	0.5
Other (Christian)	0.4
Other (non-Christian)	0.3
Jewish	0.2
Hindu	0.1

The majority of American blacks belong to black churches, but it isn't overwhelmingly so. Among Christians (including Witnesses), two-thirds are members of black churches.

It is conceivable that active black churchers are more racialist than blacks in aggregate are. The corrolary to this, though, is that other active churchgoers are far less racialist than their black churcher counterparts are, to an extent that they move the religiously active average further toward the non-racialist side than black churchers (and presumably black Muslims) move it toward the racialist side, despite being outnumbered by black churchers. Or, as OneSTDV also suggests, there could be an issue with representativeness among GSS samples.

I'm not aware of data that would offer a conclusive answer one way or the other.

---

In a post on the practical benefit of piety among the less endowed, OneSTDV concludes that the primary consequence of the black church experience tends to be an accentuation of black animosity toward whites:

The black church creates a racially charged cohort eagerly blaming failure on
white racism and lacking any impulse control in what they perceive to be an
unfair society.

I know a lot of underclass blacks, and I've found those who go to church tend to be a cut above the rest as far as middle class values are concerned (expressing moral outrage rather than personal vindictiveness when insulted, preferring hip hop artists whose fortes are love (Outkast, Mario) over those whose trade is the glorification of violence (50 Cent, Young Jeezy), inquiring about how things have been going in my life--my interactions are limited in scope, but I think the patterns I recognize have more than just a subjective basis).

I've speculated in the past that the South's religiosity might be especially beneficial for blacks. The data underlying that line of thinking--that the white-to-black imprisonment ratio is higher there than in the rest of the country--are vaguely suggestive at best, and could well be the consequence of the ethnic composition of southern whites more than anything else.

Whatever the case, is there evidence that religiously active blacks are more racialist than are non-religious blacks? The following table compares the attitudes and perceptions of religiously active (defined as attending at least nearly every week) and religiously inactive blacks (attending less than once a month to never at all). The side with the higher value is relatively less racialist than the other. The variables are more fully defined in the endnote*:

	Attenders	Non-attenders
AA hurts whites	44.7%	48.3%
Blacks should not push	38.6%	32.8%
People rewarded for intelligence, skills	65.9%	57.5%
Feelings towards whites	6.90	6.48
Feelings towards blacks	8.11	7.48
Feel high level of personal freedom in US	63.8%	54.6%
Americans freer today than in the past	63.6%	55.3%
Discrimination doesn't explain differences	35.2%	34.7%

The first thing that jumps out is the lack of much difference between blacks who attend church and those who do not, other than on the issue of feelings towards others. Like blacks who don't go to church, churchgoers feel considerably warmer toward their fellow blacks than they do toward whites. Churchgoers, however, feel considerably warmer about both blacks and whites than non-churchgoing blacks do. The command to love your neighbor gets more play in the pews than it does on the street.

The question concerning whether or not affirmative action hurts whites is the only one in which non-attenders hold a less racialist view than attenders do. What to take from this response isn't clear, though. It could be that benefitting blacks at the expense of whites is viewed as affirmative action functioning optimally. Thus, the question might be a measure of wishful thinking--the number of blacks who approve of whites being hurt by affirmative action--more than regret that whites suffer through positive discrimination. Another question queries respondents on whether or not they support programs giving special preferences to blacks in hiring and promotional considerations. Among attenders, 40.5% support such programs. Among non-attenders, it's a majority at 52.3%.

That non-attenders are even a bit more racially aggrieved than are attenders does not invalidate the assertion that black churches are racially-charged perpetuators of a narrative that sees blacks as forever victims of an oppressive white society. But black churches do not create this perception--they cater to what already exists. Black culture actively works to separate itself from mainstream American culture to the extent that sports (football, really, as the NBA is no longer front-and-center in the world of the white man's sports, and blacks continue to turn away from baseball) are too often the only shared experience white guys and black guys find easy to talk about. The perception is as prevalent on the FM hip hop station, at the local council meeting, or on the front porch as it is in the sanctuary.

GSS variables used: DISCAFF, RACPUSH, REWRDINT, FEELWHTS, FEELBLKS, RHOWFREE, FREENOW, RACDIF1, AFFRMACT, YEAR(1994-2008), RACE(2), ATTEND(0-3)(6-8)

* AA hurts whites: "What do you think the chances are these days that a white person won't get a job or promotion while an equally or less qualified black person gets one instead?" The table includes those who responded with "very likely" or "somewhat likely".

Blacks should not push: "Negroes/blacks/African-Americans shouldn't push themselves
where they're not wanted." The table includes those who responded with "agree strongly" or "agree slightly".

People rewarded for intelligence and skills: "In America people get rewarded for their intelligence and skills." The table includes those who responded with "strongly agree" or "agree".
Feelings towards whites (blacks): "In general, how warm or cool do you feel towards white (black) or Caucasian (African) Americans?" On an inverted scale of 1-9, higher values indicate warmer feelings. One standard deviation for the question regarding whites is 1.90. For blacks, it is 2.05.

Feel high level of personal freedom in US: "Would you say right now that you have complete freedom, a great deal of freedom, a moderate degree of freedom, not much freedom, or no freedom at all?" The table includes those who responded with "complete freedom" or "a great deal of freedom". This question does not concern the issue of free will vs. predestination--it is part of a module on personal rights and liberties in contemporary American society.

Americans freer today than in the past: "Do you think Americans today have more freedom, less freedom, or about the same amount of freedom as in the past?" The table includes those who responded with "more freedom".

Discrimination doesn't explain differences: "On the average negroes/blacks/African-Americans have worse jobs, income, and housing than white people. Do you think these differences are mainly due to discrimination?" The table includes those who responded with "no".

Political orientation by partisan affiliation over time

2009-11-14T16:09:00.000-08:00

In response to a recent post, The Undiscovered Jew writes:

The partisan divide has increased because the Republicans have become much more conservative (and the Democrats more liberal) than they were between 1933 and Reagan's victory over Jimmy Carter in 1980.

People will scoff at the idea that the GOP post-1980 is much more conservative than before 1980, but the facts prove my case.

He continues on to present a general overview of how the Presidents of the last fifty years illustrate this shifting.

Fortunately, there exists an empirical method for examining this assertion. The GSS asks respondents about both their political orientations and their partisan affiliations. The following graph shows the mean political index values of white Democrats and Republicans by year. Positive values indicate conservatism and negative values indicate liberalism, with zero representing exact political moderation. One standard deviation is 1.35 index points.

Indeed, the political gap between Democrats and Republicans has trebled to become a chasm over the last few decades.

My working narrative is largely confirmed by this. With Reagan's asendancy, conservative Democrats began drifting away from the Democratic party and liberal Republicans backed away from the increasing social conservatism of the Republican party. After Reagan and the effective end of communism, the blue-blooded George HW Bush came to signify a more centrist GOP resembling what had existed before Ronnie (with the Iran-contra affair, for which Reagan's popularity suffered, playing a role in tarnishing the conservative label). In a few years, that had faltered and conservatism again came to define GOP voters with the 'Republican Revolution' of 1994. We continue on this political trajectory today.

GSS variables used: PARTYID(0-2)(5-6), POLVIEWS, YEAR, RACE(1)

Hope your job will be saved next!

2009-11-14T09:33:00.000-08:00

This White House press release:

The Obama Administration today reported that recipients of Recovery Act funds have informed the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board that they have created or saved 640,329 direct jobs in reports covering approximately $160 billion, which represents a little less than half of the funds put to work through September 30, 2009. These reports, covering only directly created jobs and less than half the funds spent thus far, support government and private forecaster’s estimates that overall the Recovery Act has created or saved over one million jobs to-date. The majority of the jobs reported were in the construction and education sectors, indicating the Recovery Act is not only bolstering private sector companies during the economic downturn, but also making critical investments in keeping America competitive in the 21st century.

... brings to mind this release from the Ministry of Plenty:

"Comrades!" cried an eager youthful voice. "Attention, comrades! We have glorious news for you. We have won the battle for production! Returns now completed of the output of all classes of consumption goods show that the standard of living has risen by no less than 20 per cent over the past year. All over Oceania this morning there were irrepressible spontaneous demonstrations when workers marched out of factories and offices and paraded through the streets with banners voicing their gratitude to Big Brother for the new, happy life which his wise leadership has bestowed upon us."

Partisan positions on social issues over time

2009-11-11T20:39:00.000-08:00

A month ago, the polymath looked at changes in the religious composition of the two major US political parties over time. The short version is that Catholics are becoming a relatively smaller piece of the Democratic party, while Protestants are taking it in the chin in both parties to make room for those who lack any religious affiliation.

As someone whose firsthand memory of politics extends back only to the 2000 Presidential election, I'm interested in how partisan positions on major social issues have shifted over the last several decades. The accusation is commonly made by libertarian types and those on the 'religious left' that the Religious Right has steadily moved to overtake the GOP. Implicit in this charge is the insinuation that the socially conservative positions these theocons hold have come to be shared by a greater percentage of Republican voters than before the hijacking. Conversely, National Defense Democrats of a pious disposition, like Zell Miller, are said to have been abandoned by an increasingly secular, progressive Democratic party.

The social positions of the two parties feel pretty static to me, but that's a result of my limited frame of reference. I realize history didn't start yesterday, or even the turn of the last millenium. Fortunately, the GSS is a useful tool for helping me fill myself in. The change over time in positions on five major social issues can be tracked back to the seventies. The following graphs depict those changes among self-identified Republicans, Democrats, and indepedents* over the last 35 years.

Other than on the issue of school prayer, the partisan divide has increased modestly over time, lending some truth to the oft-repeated claim that the US is becoming increasingly polarized along political lines, though things do not appear to have changed that much. Partisan alignments on four major social issues have remained pretty stagnant over the last few decades.

The issue of abortion, by contrast, has undergone some shifting along partisan lines. Up to the end of the eighties, there was scarcely a distinguishable difference between Republicans and Democrats on the question, with Republicans actually tending to be slightly more supportive of the right to an abortion for rape victims than Democrats were. That has changed over the last couple of decades, to the extent that one in three Republicans now support granting human rights to the developing fetus of a woman impregnated via rape (and in my view imprudently serving up the rapist with a Darwinian success he shouldn't be permitted to enjoy).

Support for marijuana legalization has crept up across the board from its lows during the crack epidemic of the eighties and early nineties. Independents are generally more supportive of legalization than even Democrats are. Views on capital punishment and wealth redistribution** have reliably retained their partisan alignments, and the distance between Republican and Democratic positions on them have increased. Opposition to the 1963 US Supreme Court ruling in favor of Schempp has declined a bit for each group but the slight partisan divide has held fairly steadily.

GSS variables used: YEAR, PARTYID(0-1)(2-4)(5-6), GRASS, ABRAPE, CAPPUN, EQWLTH, PRAYER

* Respondents are asked to describe their party affiliation by choosing among eight possible options. "Other party" is ignored for the purposes of this post. I've elected to include "Independent, near Republican" and "Independent, near Democrat" in the independent category, with "Not strong Republican/Democrat" and "Strong Republican/Democrat" the two potential choices earning inclusion under the Republican/Democrat classifications. This yields a 36% Democrat, 25% Republican, and 36% indepdent split, which seems preferable to only classifying unadultered independents (15%) as, well, independents. And the respondents are, after all, self-describing as independents leaning toward one party or the other, not partisans leaning toward the center.

** The representation is computed from responses on an inverted (to facilitate viewing the graph) seven-point scale, with a 7 representing the highest level of support for the government reducing income differences and a 1 representing the lowest level of support for it. Annual responses are averaged by year for each political classifcation.

Religious affiliation by ethnicity in the United States

2009-11-07T12:11:00.000-08:00

++Addition++In the comments, "silly girl" suggests:

Maybe more than 2/3's of those who identify as Native Am. are also more than 2/3's white themselves.

What percentage of people who identify as Native American are actually at least 51% Native American? I don't know but there are incentives for identifying as Native.

Very relevant point. Nearly 5% of GSS respondents self-described their ethnicity as Native American, far higher than the 1% or so of the total US population the Census lists as being Native Americans of only one race. There are probably some people with a Cherokee great grandmother who are telling GSS interviewers they are ethnically Native American. Adds a nice mystical element to one's constitution!

---

I'm regularly vexed by my inability to seamlessly rehash empirical data in conversation when I'd assumed it would easily stick as I came upon it for the first time. It's hardly a frustration unique to me, and the conventional explanation that it takes ingesting information three times to internalize it seems to be generally accurate in my experience. Sometimes, though, I am surprised by the inaccuracy of my preconceived notion--which tends to be embarrassing, given how starkly actual data contradicts it--to such an extent that I know without a doubt that a single exposure is sufficient to permanently equip myself with it. Razib's parenthetical remark in a post considering why Catholics are Democrats is the latest instance:

The majority of people of Irish descent today in the United States are Protestant, but I suspect they’re less obviously “Irish” in their cultural markers in part because of their religious break from tradition.

The explanation for why this isn't popularly obvious strikes me as spot on. It describes why I was under the impression that it the split was roughly 60%/40% in Catholicism's favor among those claiming a religious affiliation, with much of the Protestant minority coming from British-controlled northern Ireland (that my maternal grandfather was an Irish Catholic probably had some influence, too). Among those of Irish descent, Catholic church attendance is higher than it is among Protestants (34.6% to 28.8% attending services at least once a week). The variances are minor, but this is in contrast to frequency of attendance among American Catholics and Protestants at large (30.0% to 31.8% weekly or more). Irish Catholics are slightly more pious than their co-religionists in the US are, while Irish Protestants are a bit less so.

As for my errant conception, I had the Catholic/Protestant ratio backwards. It's actually 57%/43% in Protestantism's favor.

The following table shows the Protestant/Catholic/Jewish/unaffiliated breakdown by ethnicity. To balance the desire for contemporary relevance with adequate sample sizes, data are from the last two decades. Sample sizes are at least 100 (okay, technically 98 so that Austrians can be included) for all ethnic groups shown:

	Protestant	Catholic	Jewish	No affiliation	Other
African	79.7	5.6	0.3	8.6	5.8
Austrian	26.2	41.7	13.7	11.3	7.1
Canadian (British)	44.2	36.1	1.3	14.8	3.6
Canadian (French)	19.3	71.8	0.7	6.6	1.6
Chinese	25.3	12.3	0.0	44.3	18.1
Czechoslovakian	35.0	47.9	2.3	9.8	5.0
Danish	74.0	9.7	0.0	15.1	1.2
English/Welsh	75.0	9.4	0.5	12.5	2.6
French	47.5	33.7	1.0	13.6	4.2
German	63.3	21.7	0.7	11.4	2.9
Greek	24.4	16.2	1.1	11.2	47.1
Hungarian	34.1	31.3	16.0	16.3	2.3
Irish	48.6	36.2	0.1	12.1	3.0
Italian	17.5	66.6	0.5	11.8	3.6
Mexican	16.6	73.0	0.0	7.5	2.9
Dutch	77.7	8.1	0.6	10.0	3.6
Norwegian	72.9	13.7	0.0	11.1	2.3
Filipino	16.1	78.6	0.7	2.6	2.0
Polish	17.4	62.2	8.8	8.9	2.7
Puerto Rican	24.1	57.2	0.7	14.2	3.8
Russian	15.6	12.9	47.9	15.1	8.5
Scotish	70.7	10.6	0.2	14.6	3.9
Spanish	25.7	56.4	1.0	12.7	4.2
Swedish	70.7	10.9	0.7	12.8	4.9
Swiss	75.4	11.3	1.1	10.6	1.6
Native American	70.6	8.1	0.0	13.7	7.6
Indian	22.1	7.6	0.0	13.9	56.4
"American"	74.5	12.5	0.8	9.3	2.9

In the case of the Chinese, Greek, and Indian, "other" primarily consists of Buddhist, Orthodox, and Hindu (and to a lesser extent Muslim), respectively. Americans largely consist of Appalachian whites (referred to as Ulster-Scots or Scots-Irish) whose ancestors formed the basis of David Hackett Fischer's fourth set of British folkways.

Perusing* the table, I'm relieved to see that only in the case of Irish descent was I way off the mark. I've tended to regard those of Russian descent as Jewish unless they happened to be Eastern Orthodox, but a sizable minority (28.5%) have Protestant or Catholic affiliations.

The size of the Catholic contingent among non-French Canadians (for clarity, I term them British Canadians here rather than using the GSS label "other Canadians") is higher than I expected it to be, though I guess I shouldn't be surprised as nearly half of Canadians are at least nominally Catholic.

Also a bit surprising is that more than two-thirds of Native Americans are Protestants, with fewer than 1 in 20 maintaining adherence to traditional tribalistic beliefs. Aggregating all Protestant denominations under a single heading is an oversimplification, of course, but the Native American affiliation profile is nearly identical to the Swedish one! I would not have expected to be able to say that.

As a Catholic of Indian descent, Bobby Jindal wins the rarity award among politicians with some level of national prominence. He's 1 in nearly 2,000 on these two dimensions, easily beating out other affirmative action GOP big shots Sarah Palin and Michael Steele.

GSS variables used: ETHNIC, RELIG, YEAR(1988-2008), ATTEND

* Pursuant to the correct meaning of the word!

Live within your means, and credit cards are blessings

2009-11-05T19:02:00.000-08:00

Tangentially related to the recent post looking at the relatationship between intelligence, conscientiousness, and credit scores at the state level are discussions over tactics to build (or more accurately, inflate) one's individual credit rating. Not long ago, Razib emphasized a few ways of going about this (the web is, incidentally, brimming with this kind of advice), but that's not where the impetus for this post comes from. Instead, it springs from the following:

I talked to another GNXPer recently who didn't have a credit card. Until last year I didn't have one either. My theory was that I lived within my means, have few expenses, was healthy, etc. etc. I know plenty of people like me, young, intelligent and not too interested in signalling with positional goods and such, who didn't get caught up in the real estate craze, and so made a calculation that there was no need for credit (at least for the time being).

Disregard the issue of needing to build good credit for a moment. I've had a credit card since turning 18, despite the personal irrelevance of my credit score, since I've never borrowed money (and never will borrow money) for anything in my life. Yet credit is the virtually exclusive way I go about paying for stuff. As long as you're not so interested in signalling with positional goods that you find yourself unable to pay off your balance each month, there are no reasons not to have a credit card and several economic costs incurred by way of not having one:

- You forgo the TVM advantage of being able to enjoy your half of an economic transaction now without having to pay for it until later. If you have $2,000 a month in total living expenses and it all goes on the card, you're holding $1,000 for 30 days longer every month, give or take. At 6%--which, a couple of years ago was attainable with the safety of a money market--that's $5, twelve times a year. Additionally, if uncertain circumstances create a need to pay for something immediately but for which you lack the necessary funds in your account until tomorrow, it doesn't present a problem.

- So $60 is chump change, not even worth thinking about over the course of a year. Au contrare! It buys me this and this. And anyway, it's effortless. Receive statements online, tie them to a liquid account with online bill pay, and a month's worth of stuff is taken care of with a couple clicks of the mouse. That's less of an energy expenditure than is fumbling around with paper bills or punching in your PIN repeatedly. More and more retailers are moving away from even requiring a signature on small credit purchases.

- Speaking of fumbling around with bills, plastic means you don't have to. No more getting nickel and dimed to death by losing the nickels and dimes given to you in change. Debit cards provide this benefit as well, of course, but if your debit card is lost or stolen, you risk your account being cleaned out without much in the way of recourse. With credit, if you didn't make the purchase, you're not on the hook to pay for it. In reality, it's not quite that simple, but the debt obligation lies with the card provider, not the account holder, and the major players--Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and especially American Express--will, for their own good, go to bat for you.

- There are a slew of different bonus and rewards programs for credit card users to take advantage of. If frequent flyer miles don't elevate you, go for cash back to the tune of 1-2%. That's free money*.

- It's the quickest, easiest way to do business online. While services like Paypal are also convenient, if the item shipped is defective (or never shows up), securing a refund is more of a hassle (not to mention more of an open question) than it will be if you had paid with credit.

* Sort of like government-provided universal healthcare is free. Retailers and service providers essentially remit around 2% of each transaction price paid via credit to the card providers for the 'privilege' of being able to accept their plastics as a form of payment. In the case of products with razor thin margins, like gasoline, in practice this often means Visa is making more revenue on the sale than the retailer is making in profit. This is a cost imposed on retailers and service providers that is factored into the prices they charge for the things they provide. Thus those who pay with cash (no fees) and debit (lower fees) are subsidizing those who use credit. What, do you feel a fiduciary obligation to Macy's? Or Macy's high-risk cash customers? Use your damned credit card! It's one of the few ways you, as a prudent, self-reliant person, are able to be rewarded for your self sufficiency, rather than being punished for it.

High conscientiousness predicts poor credit score?

2009-11-02T18:07:00.000-08:00

I am intrigued by personality variations among populations for many of the same reasons I am interested in how IQ relates to other social attributes, but have been skeptical of the reliability of state level measurements of the Big 5. Eyeballing the research released last year by Peter Jason Rentfrow of Cambridge University, I've had trouble recognizing much in the way of plausibility. Anyway, Razib swiftly highlighted the interesting correlations that have been found to exist (some of which are expected, others which are not). Rentfrow's data suggest, for example, that North Dakota is the nation's most extraverted state--not quite what is expected from an old, sparsely populated state primarily comprised of Norwegians, Germans, and Native Americans, groups not traditionally known for loquacity.

Running a state-level analysis comparing the relationships of estimated conscientiousness (C) and estimated IQ with average credit score does nothing to dissuade me from this skepticism. Because only state rankings (rather than actual figures) are available from Rentfrow's research on Big 5 personality factors, average credit scores and IQ are also displayed in the form of 1-50 rankings. Consequently, both relationships with credit scores appear more linear (and thus more vigorously correlated) than they actually are. The first graph shows how C and credit score relate to one another:

Yes, you are interpreting that correctly. Quite surprisingly, the relationship is an inverse one, yielding an r-value of -.47 (p=.0006). That is, as conscientiousness apparently increases, credit scores decrease.

A credit score measures a person's creditworthiness--how likely he is to pay back what he borrows in a timely and complete manner, live within his means, and effectively manage his personal finances. Government interference notwithstanding, it determines how able he is to achieve home ownership. The traits resulting in higher credit scores are largely captured by a person's level of C. Wikipedia defines conscientiousness as follows:

The trait of being painstaking and careful, or the quality of acting according to the dictates of one's conscience. It includes such elements as self-discipline, carefulness, thoroughness, organization, deliberation (the tendency to think carefully before acting), and need for achievement. It is an aspect of what has traditionally been called character. Conscientious individuals are generally hard working and reliable.

Might the credit scores released by creditscore.com be unreliable? Very doubtful given the strong, positive correlation between a state's average credit score ranking and average IQ (+.83, p=0). The proceding graph depicts this relationship:

My intention is not to dismiss Rentfrow's research, though it is difficult not to be hesitant in endorsing it when the reported findings so sorely lack face validity. As a result, I am presently unsure of what to do with his work, but have in mind other correlations to investigate.

Kaus is off; clockwise the way to cross through intersection on foot

2009-11-01T04:44:00.000-08:00

Mickey Kaus profers some poor advice for navigating four-way intersections on foot (via Steve):

Just realized that pedestrians should always go around intersections counterclockwise. Otherwise left-turners get you. You're welcome.

As one who has run and biked regularly for a decade, I vehemently dispute this. The following is applicable whether you are obeying pedestrian traffic laws or not (I admit I rarely do and simply cross as soon as I am able to, without obstructing traffic of course. When I'm on bike at a light, I hop the curb and become a pedestrian until I've made it through the intersection, at which point I merge back on to the road again). First, an analysis of the counterclockwise move (sorry for not bringing the helicopter a little lower before snapping these shots):

You're on the southeast corner, attempting to head north (orange arrow). You can see the car potentially turning left from the north end of the intersection to head east (blue lines), so he's not going to hit you. However, the car coming from the south and looking to turn right and head east may go at any time, irrespective of whether or not his light is red. That you are able to see his traffic signal makes no difference. As he is preparing to turn, he is primarily looking at the car on the west side of the intersection (purple arrows). Additionally, if this is a two-lane road, he is checking to see the car on the north end is not about to make a left and head east just as he is (if there are four or more lanes, this isn't much of an issue and he is entirely focused on the west end car). Unless he is especially wary of pedestrians, he is definitely not looking to his east, where you are crossing, since there is no chance another car will be coming at him from there.

This is the essence of why you should always progress through an intersection in a clockwise direction--those making right-hand turns are the only ones who are consistently not looking where they're going. Even if there is not a car waiting to turn right when you begin crossing, it doesn't take long for one to appear. Because drivers often roll through right turns on red*, you are vulnerable.

As you cross the lane(s) heading east and into the lane(s) heading west, you are again at risk of a car on the east end of the intersection wanting to turn right and head north. He is looking in your general direction, but he's not looking at you. And as pedestrians and drivers alike know, until a driver makes eye contact with a man on foot, the safe bet is that the driver has not seen him.

Finally, when moving counterclockwise, if the light changes on you halfway across, you're faced with cars a couple of feet away whose paths are through you.

Now the more prudent clockwise move:

As you begin to cross, you are able to easily navigate past your biggest threat, the south end car turning right to head east. You have an opportunity (which you should take) to make eye contact with him, or if need be you can just run behind him.

The west end car turning right to head south is a potential problem because he is not going to be looking at you as he turns. However, you have been directly in front of him for as long as he's been sitting there and continue to be as you cross. Thus there is a better chance he will see you than the east end car heading north will in the counterclockwise scenario. More importantly, you are easily able to see him during the entire duration of your crossing.

The east end car turning left and heading south is really you're only concern. You are able to see his light, so if this is a left-turn signal only intersection, you're golden. If left turners just have to yield on green, you have the west end traffic heading east directly in view. If there is a steady flow of cars moving through in this direction, they protect you and again you're golden. If not, you have to turn your head at a 90 degree angle to see whether or not a left turner is coming toward you as you go through the second half of the crossing. If he is initially waiting at the east end, you should attempt to make eye contact with him before you begin.

If the light changes on you halfway through, the cars bearing down on you have the length of the intersection--rather than just a few feet--to go before flattening you.

* When I was a senior in high school, I got the only two traffic tickets I've ever received. Seeing there were no cars coming from my left, I rolled (slowly) through a right on red. A cop was behind me, but I'd always driven in such a manner and so thought nothing of it. Exactly one mile later I did the same thing. The officer then pulled me over and handed me two citations for the same damn thing--running a red light! Truly a dick, I know.

More evidence men more interested than women in non-biological science

2009-10-28T19:28:00.001-07:00

Upon finding out that two of the three winners of this year's Nobel prize in physiology or medicine are women, Steve Sailer points out what he sees as encouraging sex trends in accomplishment:

This announcement reflects an on-going trend in which the top female scientific talent is concentrating in the life sciences and leaving the lifeless sciences, physics and chemistry, to the boys. ...

This strikes me as healthy: women specializing in what they (and I, as a beneficiary of medical science) find most important. Of course, in the wake of the 2005 Larry Summers brouhaha, vast amounts of money are being spent to lure women scientists away from the life sciences and into the inanimate sciences in the name of diversity. Will all that money spent make humanity better off?

Results from an interactive quiz from the Pew Research Center show that this trend doesn't just exist in the upper echelons of the scientific research establishment. It is evident at far more modest levels of involvement. Pew's 12-question quiz (which you must take before being able to view overall performance) assesses test-takers' basic scientific knowledge. None of the questions are difficult enough that only someone in a scientific field should be expected to know the correct answers to them. Consequently, they serve as good indicators of levels of personal interest--lay people motivated enough to acquire a basic understanding of modern science will answer the questions correctly without any specialized education or formal training.

The following nine questions were more frequently answered correctly by men than they were by women:

- According to most astronomers, which of the following is no longer considered a planet?
- Which of the following may cause a tsunami?
- The global positioning system, or GPS, relies on which of these to work?
- What gas do most scientists believe causes temperatures in the atmosphere to rise?
- What have scientists recently discovered on Mars?
- The continents on which we live have been moving their location for millions of years and will continue to move in the future. (T/F)
- Lasers work by focusing sound waves. (T/F)
- Electrons are smaller than atoms. (T/F)
- All radioactivity is man-made. (T/F)

In contrast, women did better than men did on the following three questions:

- Which OTC drug do doctors recommend that people take to help prevent heart attacks?
- How are stem cells different from other cells?
- Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria. (T/F)

Although the public faces of outrage over sex differences in scientific accomplishment are those of feminist academics, I suspect most women are indifferent or even a bit annoyed by the push for them to pursue avenues of study they are largely uninterested in, just as I'd be irked at encouragement to become skilled in the fields of interior decorating or primary education.

Parenthetically, Agnostic has shown similar evidence for a relative lack of interest in non-biological science among women using GSS data.

Feelings towards members of various demographic groups, by race

2009-10-25T18:51:00.000-07:00

Lately Inductivist has been investigating how whites feel towards blacks and other whites, the feelings Jews have for various racial groups, and to what extent these groups return the favor. Having seen group perceptions looked at in these ways from fairly contemporary (2002) data, bringing it all together in a single graphical representation is irresistible.

The following shows how members of various groups feel about members of other groups*. In a previous post depicting group differences in perceptions of intelligence, the method of visual representation employed was unnecessarily confusing. By following Al Fin's advice, there should be less obfuscation this time.

Groups for which perceptions are measured are listed along the x-axis. The feelings each of these groups has for whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Jews are respectively illustrated by the five consecutive colored bars springing up along the y-axis above them. The white bar shows each group's feelings towards whites, the black bar towards blacks, the brown bar towards Hispanics, the yellow bar towards Asians, and the baby blue bar towards Jews. So farthest to the left, we see that whites feel about as equally warmly towards whites and Jews, while they are cooler towards Hispanics, blacks, and Asians. The iciest vibes are emitted by Native Americans towards Asians, while the steamiest stuff comes from Jewish feelings towards other Jews.

The first thing that jumps out is how members of each group reserve the warmest feelings for other members of their group. Jews are the most clannish**, followed by blacks, then Hispanics, whites, and finally Asians (who, represented by people of Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, and Indian descent, among others, probably don't have a lot of enthusiasm for being identified by as amorphous and unmeaningful a term as "Asian").

Jews are notable for the generally positive feelings they have for all groups, while Native Americans are similarly remarkable for the relatively negative feelings they hold across the board (at n = 10, the Native American sample on Jews is prohibitively small--please see below for more on the technical aspects of the data).

Though leftist Jews (is that a redundancy?) act as though the inherently racist white majority must be monitored lest its truculent bigotry lead to the rapid formation of pitchfork-wielding angry mobs out for minority--especially Jewish!--blood, whites tend to hold Jews in higher regard than non-whites do.

Despite waging a perpetual battle with Jews over who is the world's most oppressed and including a large segment of Muslims living in the US, blacks indicate slightly warmer feelings towards Jews than other non-white minority groups do.

Asian's coolness towards Jews surprises me a little. As the previously referenced post shows, they also perceive Jews to be less intelligent than other groups do. Anyone have an explanation for this?

Hispanic hostility for Jews is hardly novel. As ADL director Abe Foxman pointed out in a report on putative anti-Semitism in the US:

It is not surprising yet very distressing that one of the fastest growing segments in America holds strongly anti-Semitic views," said Mr. Foxman. "There is no doubt that this is a reflection of what is being learned about Jews in the schools, churches and communities of Hispanic nations, which is anti-Semitism at its most basic. We need to re-focus our efforts on reaching out to these groups in addition to the larger American public."

Excluding Jews for a moment, the three largest non-white minorities all hold whites in higher regard than they do members of other minority groups they are not part of. That is, blacks have warmer feelings for whites than they do for Hispanics or Asians, Hispanics have warmer feelings for whites than they do for blacks or Asians, and Asians have warmer feelings for whites than they do for blacks or Hispanics. As much as they might like receiving special treatment at whitey's expense, and as much as their extortionist, self-appointed racial representatives may encourage disdain for him, by and large non-white minorities don't hate their pale neighbors. This is encouraging.

GSS variables used: RACECEN1(1)(2)(3)(4-10), HISPANIC(2-99), JEW, FEELWHTS, FEELBLKS, FEELHSPS, FEELASNS, JEWTEMP

* Sample sizes for perceptions of whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians are as follows: Whites = 2,177; blacks = 358; Hispanics = 222; Asians = 74; Native Americans = 35; and Jews = 38. The questions are posed thus: "In general, how warm or cool do you feel towards [group]?". To make the graphical representation more intuitive, I've inverted responses from the GSS so that higher scores reveal warmer feelings and lower scores depict cooler feelings.

The question regarding Jews is pulled from a different module, one that concerns perceptions of members of various religions rather than of various races. The questions on feelings towards whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians are on a 1-9 scale, while the item on Jews is on a 0-100 scale. For ease of viewing, I converted perceptions of Jews by group from the 0-100 scale to a 1-9 scale using the standard deviation and mean perception of whites as an anchor, thus presuming that in aggregate, feelings towards whites are identical to feelings towards Jews. This is almost certainly not precisely the case, but I had to come up with an arbitrary scale somehow. Further, because of the disparate range of the sacles, it's not a perfect apples-to-apples comparison. Consequently, intragroup differences in feelings towards Jews are what is important.

Sample sizes for perceptions of Jews are smaller (except among Jews, as this question has been asked in four different years, all of which contain Jewish responses but only one of which--2004--contains responses for the other racial groups) and are as follows: Whites = 642; blacks = 81; Hispanics = 83; Asians = 47; Native Americans = 10; and Jews = 51. How the question is posed: "I'll read the name of a group [Jews in this case] and I'd like you to rate that group using the feeling thermometer. Ratings between 50 degrees and 100 degrees mean that you feel favorable and warm toward the group. Ratings between 0 degrees and 50 degrees mean that you don't feel favorable toward the group and that you don't care too much for that group."

** Because the mean levels of warm feelings are nearer the maximum for whites than for Jews, converting Jewish sentiments for other Jews to the racial scale yields a value of 9.12 that is slightly above the ceiling of 9. I've shown it at exactly 9.0 to make the graph in its entirety more comprehendible. Again, keep in mind that the baby blue bars are only reliable in comparison to one another, not to the other bars of different colors.

Exit polling underrepresents Asians as well as whites?

2009-10-24T15:17:00.000-07:00

Steve Sailer has repeatedly pointed out that election-time exit polling consistently overstates the Hispanic share of the vote. Just as consistently, this tendency putatively provides evidence of the rapidly increasing importance of courting Hispanic voters. Inevitably, the more thorough and reliable Census phone survey of some 50,000 people released months later downwardly adjusts Hispanic representation among the electorate. In consequence, while the media fire of election night coverage is blazing, whites are short shrifted. Only later, long after the embers have cooled, is the record set straight.

Because pollsters must physically be present at polling places, the organizations conducting the polls are only able to cover a small fraction of total voting locations. Among large demographic groups like whites or women, there is no concern that too few members will be interviewed. But among smaller groups like Asians and Hispanics, it's a concern. And since these groups are growing in size (proportionally as well as absolutely), overrepresenting them doesn't carry the risk of embarrassment (ie, "Only 1% of voters were Asian? Obviously your methodology is poor.") that underrepresenting them does.

At least that was how I conceptualized it. However, the Census surveys show that exit polling underrepresents Asians as well as whites. Using state level exit polling data from the 2004 and 2008 Presidential elections to get precise numbers*, I calculated electoral representation by race as reported by Edison Media Research and used by all the major media sources during and directly after each election cycle. Steve has provided a handy table containing data for the same groups from the Census surveys from these years. The following table compares them and shows to what extent exit polling reported on by media sources during the election cycle inflated the size of the non-white vote at the expense of white voters:

Race	04 exit poll	04 Census	In(de)flation	08 exit poll	08 Census	In(de)flation
Whites	77.6%	79.2%	(1.6)	75.0%	76.3%	(1.3)
Blacks	11.1%	11.0%	0.1	12.8%	12.1%	0.7
Hispanics	7.6%	6.0%	1.6	8.0%	7.4%	0.6
Asians	1.7%	2.3%	(0.6)	2.0%	2.5%	(0.5)
Others	2.0%	1.5%	1.5	2.2%	1.7%	0.5

The table shows changes in terms of absolute representation among the total electorate. Among Asians, who comprise something approximating 1 in 50 voters, the relative variance between the two methods is substantial. The Census surveys suggest that exit polling underrepresents Asians by more than 20% (and overrepresents "others" by a similar factor). For whites, by comparison, although white underrepresentation in exit polling appears to exist, it amounts to a 3% or so reduction in participation.

The methodology behind the Census surveys is explained in this pdf (see chapter 7, 56 pages in) and it appears that addresses are confirmed before phone interviewing begins. Thus the lack of an old landline phone does not lead to those only possessing a cell phone (like myself) being overlooked.

It is not surprising that whites are short-shrifted, but I am at a loss to explain the Asian variance among exit polling and Census surveys. Any ideas? State-level exit polling data from Presidential elections are apparently only available for the two most recent elections, so the presumed underrepresentation of Asians and overrepresentation of NAMs in exit polling might just be a fluke. Whatever the explanation, it's worth being aware of this when considering exit polling data.

* The exit polls at both the national and state levels report figures in whole percentages. At the state level, a 7.54% reported as 8% here should presumably be balanced out by a 12.46% reported as 12% there while still allowing percentages to be broken out into tenths of a percent when amalgamated to constitute national totals. Further, participation in state-level polls totals around 50,000 people, compared to 17,000 participants at the national level. Keep in mind, too, that national-level polling is even less accurate than state-level polling is when it comes to accurately determining the demographic characteristics of the electorate.

Movement to squelch Medical Hypotheses afoot

2009-10-22T17:38:00.000-07:00

Medical Hypotheses, the ideologically iconoclastic medical journal edited by academic and Steveosphere giant Bruce G. Charlton, is under siege for entertaining the ideas of 'AIDS-denialist' Peter Duesberg. Dennis Mangan takes an in-depth look at what has transpired. Rather than try to rehash what he has written, I'll urge you to go there to get the story.

If there is anything Bruce believes sympathetic readers will be able to do in his aid, I'll be sure to make it known.

Fidelity and fecundity

2009-10-21T20:50:00.000-07:00

At Futurepundit, Randall Parker wonders:

The most surprising thing I've read lately related to impulsiveness is that men who have had fewer sexual partners have more babies. I take that to mean that at least monogamy is being selected for. Possibly lower impulsiveness is also getting selected for. I'd like to see an impulsiveness study on middle aged men and women where they are questioned about their offspring. Do less impulsive people have more babies? That'd be good news if so.

Inductivist recently showed that lifelong monogamy continues to be selected for at the expense of lifelong polygamy, although not as overwhelmingly as it had been in previous decades. The GSS does not address impulsivity directly, but RP's train of thought spurs me into approaching the question of whether or not monogamy is being selected for from another angle--whether or not contemporary procreation patterns are favoring serial monogamy.

To gauge this, I turned to the GSS question asked of those who have been married during some point in their lives whether or not they have ever cheated on their spouses and cross referenced it with fecundity. Only those aged 40-65 from the turn of the millenium on are considered for contemporary relevance and to avoid the problem of incomplete baby making. The following table shows the mean number of children among those who have been married at some point during their lives:

Cheat?	Kids
Yes (n = 838)	2.30
No (n = 3,538)	2.27

It appears to be a wash at first blush. But gender matters. Again, this time broken down by sex:

	Kids
Cheat?	Men	Women
Yes	2.46	2.09
No	2.23	2.30

Men who cheat procreate more than those who remain faithful do. Among women, the opposite tends to be true.

Perhaps this should not come as a surprise but an indication that human sexual selection continues to influence reproductive patterns. Men with greater attraction and higher perceived reproductive value tend to be more successful with women than men who lack the necessary traits. For men, previous success is an asset to be leveraged in realizing greater success in the future. For women, however, accumulating a large number of partners lowers perceived attraction and mating value. Selective women are more desirable and have higher reproductive value.

It does not necessarily follow that those who are more attractive are also more fecund, but it's obviously plausible. Assuming this trend continues, I'd expect male instincts to do anything with all the appendages and orifices in the right places and female instincts to secure a desirable male and maintain exclusive sexual access with him to both increase. Sexual selection putatively should, after all, increase differentiation between the sexes, not hem them in.

This may initially appear to contradict the finding that the more partners men have, the fewer children they produce, but it doesn't. Among married men within the preceding parameters, the median number of partners is five, compared to ten among never-married men (ignoring virgins and homosexuals), and married men outdo their never-married counterparts by a factor five, 2.41 kids to just .51. So while philandering married men are the kings of genetic transmission, the married men of fidelity, who outnumber the philanderers 3 to 1, are aristocracy in their own right when it comes to passing on their genes. The men who never settle down, in contrast, hit double digits as often as they do not, but the majority of them do not reproduce at all.

Parenthetically, I recall seeing a bumper sticker that read "Your dollar is your vote" when I was in middle school. The message isn't especially profound, but it has stuck with me for over a decade, reliably informing my purchasing decisions the entire time. In a similar vein, your offspring are your contributions to the future. If you have an aversion to prevailing social mores (or dysgenic birthing patterns, demographic trends, the inversion of the age pyramid, etc), by far the most influential thing for the vast majority of people--including you, unless you're especially influential--to do in response is to pop out a glut of kids of your own to combat the status quo.

Tangential to the parentheses, I had dinner the other night with my first lover and real girlfriend. I broke up with her over the summer before my first year of college in part because she had become overly dependent and needy, and also to be with another girl. Until this week, I'd only seen her on two other occasions since then, and kept up with her only indirectly through the contact she maintained with my family. I was stunned by her beauty. Despite being 25, she is nearly as hot now as she was then and she really has her stuff together. Both of these things surprised me to the point that my enthusiasm in interacting with her almost felt forced (I'm generally very high-energy all the time, irrespective of who I' around). It did not surprise me, however, to find out that she is now happily married (without going into detail, suffice it to say that our meeting up is not an indicator of her potential willingness to run around on her husband).

For the last few days, I've not been able to shake the hollow feeling that I squandered a golden opportunity to achieve what I want to achieve in this world--namely, physical health (check), financial abundancy (check), occupational success (check), and the construction of a nuclear family as happy and functional as the one I grew up in (no check, the pen nowhere near the paper--I'm not willing to make the lifestyle changes to get me there, and I'm not getting any younger, either).

GSS variables used: YEAR(2000-2008), AGE(40-65), MARITAL(1)(5), SEX, NUMWOMEN(1-500), EVSTRAY

Heeeeee's back!

2009-10-19T19:24:00.000-07:00

Illka, that is. In fact, he's been back for a few months now. Where have I been? Never mind where I've been, The Fourth Checkraise is where I am now!

Economic, social, and foreign policy congressional conservatism by state, 2008

2009-10-17T15:04:00.000-07:00

++Addition++Blogger Sully compares stimulus jobs created to congressional conservatism and finds that conservative states appear to be faring better than liberal states are. I find it exceedingly difficult to have any faith in our political leaders.

---

Razib's post at Secular Right looking at the relationship between economic and social liberalism made me wonder how the states rank in terms of the legislative activity of the Congressional delegations they send. Each year, National Journal rates each representative based on his voting behavior over the course of preceding congressional legislative sessions throughout the previous year. Votes are separated into three major categories (economic, social, and foreign policy) and representatives are assigned (nearly, but not entirely, inverse) liberal and conservative scores based on the totality of their voting behavior in each category.

The following tables rank states by conservatism, calculated by taking each representative's conservative score (on a 0-100 scale, with higher values indicating stronger conservatism) and subtracting from it his liberal score (displayed in the same way), and then averaging these scores among all members from a state to arrive at the state's index*.

Underestimating the importance of partisanship, I originally hoped to do more with the data than I've ended up doing. All the same, here they are, perhaps to be utilized by someone more perspicacious than I am. Economic conservatism, by state:

State	Economic con
1. Wyoming	88.0
2. Idaho	67.0
3. Nebraska	57.3
3. Utah	57.3
5. Oklahoma	51.6
6. Montana	42.0
7. Texas	34.5
8. Louisiana	34.3
9. Alabama	32.6
10. New Mexico	28.7
11. Kentucky	26.0
12. Colorado	25.9
13. Alaska	22.0
14. South Carolina	21.7
15. Virginia	19.7
16. Georgia	19.5
17. Arizona	17.6
18. Kansas	17.3
19. Tennessee	16.2
20. Indiana	14.0
21. Iowa	13.0
22. Ohio	12.3
23. Florida	11.2
24. Missouri	10.3
25. Delaware	10.0
26. Arkansas	8.0
27. Nevada	7.0
28. South Dakota	5.0
29. North Carolina	1.5
30. Michigan	(7.3)
31. Washington	(7.7)
32. Pennsylvania	(9.7)
33. Minnesota	(10.3)
34. New Jersey	(10.5)
35. Wisconsin	(11.8)
36. California	(12.4)
37. West Virginia	(15.0)
38. Illinois	(16.0)
38. North Dakota	(16.0)
40. Mississippi	(22.0)
41. Oregon	(30.0)
42. Maine	(35.5)
42. New Hampshire	(35.5)
44. New York	(42.0)
45. Connecticut	(43.4)
46. Maryland	(45.1)
47. Vermont	(52.0)
48. Rhode Island	(62.0)
49. Massachusetts	(76.1)
50. Hawaii	(85.0)

Social conservatism, by state:

State	Social con
1. Wyoming	68.0
2. Idaho	61.5
3. Utah	55.3
4. Nebraska	43.3
5. Alabama	39.3
6. Oklahoma	34.6
7. Kentucky	31.8
8. Georgia	31.8
9. South Carolina	31.5
10. Montana	31.0
11. Virginia	30.6
12. New Mexico	25.0
13. Texas	23.8
14. Alaska	20.0
15. Tennessee	18.0
16. Arizona	17.0
17. Florida	16.0
18. Louisiana	15.6
19. Indiana	13.9
20. Ohio	12.4
21. North Carolina	12.0
22. Colorado	11.9
23. Delaware	9.0
24. Nevada	3.0
25. Michigan	2.9
26. Missouri	0.8
27. Kansas	(0.3)
28. Iowa	(4.6)
29. Pennsylvania	(5.6)
30. Wisconsin	(7.3)
31. New Jersey	(9.4)
32. Mississippi	(10.5)
33. Minnesota	(11.0)
34. South Dakota	(12.0)
35. West Virginia	(12.7)
36. Arkansas	(12.8)
37. New Hampshire	(13.0)
38. Illinois	(13.3)
39. California	(13.8)
40. Maine	(21.0)
40. Vermont	(21.0)
42. Washington	(25.0)
43. North Dakota	(28.0)
44. New York	(31.1)
45. Oregon	(36.8)
46. Maryland	(42.4)
47. Connecticut	(56.2)
48. Hawaii	(64.0)
49. Rhode Island	(69.5)
50. Massachusetts	(71.1)

Conservatism in foreign policy (phrasing it this way seems Orwellian, since 'conservative' foreign policy in the US tends toward assertiveness and interventionism, while 'liberal' foreign policy trends in the opposite direction):

State	FP con
1. Wyoming	76.0
2. Idaho	66.5
3. Oklahoma	60.4
4. Utah	58.7
5. Nebraska	46.0
6. Alaska	38.0
7. Alabama	34.9
8. Texas	34.8
9. Georgia	31.4
10. Montana	31.0
11. Nevada	30.0
12. Kentucky	29.7
13. Louisiana	29.3
14. Virginia	25.7
15. New Mexico	24.7
16. South Carolina	24.2
17. Florida	19.4
18. Colorado	16.9
19. Ohio	16.8
20. Kansas	16.5
21. Arizona	14.9
22. Indiana	13.6
23. Tennessee	11.6
24. Delaware	9.0
25. Missouri	7.8
26. Michigan	2.7
27. Mississippi	1.3
28. Arkansas	0.3
29. Pennsylvania	(0.7)
30. North Carolina	(1.5)
31. South Dakota	(2.0)
32. Washington	(6.8)
33. Illinois	(10.1)
34. Minnesota	(15.3)
35. California	(17.4)
36. New Jersey	(24.2)
37. West Virginia	(26.3)
38. Wisconsin	(26.5)
39. North Dakota	(27.0)
40. Rhode Island	(30.5)
41. Iowa	(32.0)
42. Connecticut	(38.4)
43. New York	(38.7)
44. Maryland	(40.8)
45. New Hampshire	(53.0)
46. Oregon	(53.6)
47. Hawaii	(61.0)
48. Maine	(62.5)
49. Massachusetts	(76.7)
50. Vermont	(77.0)

To keep the above from becoming frustratingly disparate, the following table orders states by overall congressional conservatism, arrived at by averaging the three categories while also showing each state's respective rankings by category:

State	Overall	Econ rank	Social rank	FP rank
1. Wyoming	77.3	1	1	1
2. Idaho	64.8	2	2	2
3. Utah	57.0	3	3	4
4. Oklahoma	48.9	5	6	3
4. Nebraska	48.9	3	4	5
6. Alabama	35.6	9	5	7
7. Montana	34.7	6	10	10
8. Texas	31.0	7	13	8
9. Kentucky	29.2	11	7	12
10. Georgia	27.6	16	8	9
11. Alaska	26.7	13	14	6
12. Louisiana	26.4	8	18	13
13. New Mexico	26.1	10	12	15
14. South Carolina	25.8	14	9	16
15. Virginia	25.3	15	11	14
16. Colorado	18.2	12	22	18
17. Arizona	16.5	17	16	21
18. Florida	15.5	23	17	17
19. Tennessee	15.3	19	15	23
20. Indiana	13.8	20	19	22
20. Ohio	13.8	22	20	19
22. Nevada	13.3	27	24	11
23. Kansas	11.2	18	27	20
24. Delaware	9.3	25	23	24
25. Missouri	6.3	24	26	25
26. North Carolina	4.0	29	21	30
27. Michigan	(0.6)	30	25	26
28. Arkansas	(1.5)	26	36	28
29. South Dakota	(3.0)	28	34	31
30. Pennsylvania	(5.3)	32	29	29
31. Iowa	(7.9)	21	28	41
32. Mississippi	(10.4)	40	32	27
33. Minnesota	(12.2)	33	33	34
34. Illinois	(13.1)	38	38	33
35. Washington	(13.2)	31	42	32
36. California	(14.5)	36	39	35
37. New Jersey	(14.7)	34	31	36
38. Wisconsin	(15.2)	35	30	38
39. West Virginia	(18.0)	37	35	37
40. North Dakota	(23.7)	38	43	39
41. New Hampshire	(33.8)	42	37	45
42. New York	(37.3)	44	44	43
43. Maine	(39.7)	42	40	48
44. Oregon	(40.1)	41	45	46
45. Maryland	(42.8)	46	46	44
46. Connecticut	(46.0)	45	47	42
47. Vermont	(50.0)	47	40	50
48. Rhode Island	(54.0)	48	49	40
49. Hawaii	(70.0)	50	48	47
50. Massachusetts	(74.6)	49	50	49

About what you'd expect, with a few exceptions. New Mexico's delegation is quite conservative, while Mississippi's is pretty leftist, as is North Dakota's Earl Pomeroy, relative to his state's uninterrupted support for Republican presidential candidates extending all the way back to Richard Nixon's election in 1968.

It is important to realize that the enormous inherent advantages of incumbency can make representation appear to be arbitrary from this nationwide vantage point. Why was Wyoming's representative, the now-retired Barbara Cubin, so stridently conservative, while North Dakota's Earl Pomeroy is a moderate Democrat? Wyoming did replace Utah as the reddest state in '08, but the Presidential and political gaps--exit polls indicate 39% of Wyoming voters consider themselves conservative and 14% liberal to North Dakota's 36% and 16%, respectively--are not nearly as wide as the chasm between the their respective Congressional representatives are. The same sort of contrast is apparent on the left end by looking at Delaware's Michael Castle, a centrist Republican, and Rhode Island's Patrick Kennedy and James Langevin, both of whom are reliably leftist Democrats.

The question is meant to be rhetorical. I don't have an answer, other than point out that Wyoming's Cubin had been in office since the Republican revolution of '94, the same year Ted Kennedy's son Patrick took office in Rhode Island, Pomeroy and Castle were first elected to Congress in '92, and Langevin, at age 45, has been in his spot for five consecutive terms. Especially when a representative is opposite the center of his constituency, the longer he stays, the easier it becomes to keep staying. There are a combination of reasons for this, including voter appreciation of pork brought in from the federal level to the district feeding trough, name recognition and its conseqeunt media advantages, and financial backing from the party's national committee.

As the House putatively exists to enact legislation at the federal level, the charge that North Dakotans are being poorly served relative to Wyomingites ignores the fact that it is the nationwide aggregate that is ultimately important from the political perspective of voters. State and local governments matter more than Congressional representatives do in the way residents go about their daily lives. Their congressional representatives mostly matter to the extent they are able to win stuff through the spoils system. With the odd exception of a Ron Paul, the vast majority of congress critters are making concerted efforts to bring home the federal bacon, whether they be on the left or the right.

Despite apparent randomness in some solidly red (blue) states fielding conservative (liberal) congressional delegations while others send center-left (-right) groups, for the most part voters get what they want. The correlations between McCain's support and economic, social, and foreign policy congressional conservatism are .80, .75, and .77, respectively. These are hardly distinguishable from the correlations between the percentage of a state's voters who consider themselves liberal subtracted from the percentage who self-describe as conservative, and congressional conservatism, which are .77, .73, and .89, respectively.

Bruce Charlton recently published an editorial in Medical Hypotheses examining the personality attributes accompanying high IQ, "including the trait of ‘Openness to experience’, ‘enlightened’ or progressive left-wing political values, and atheism." Does this hold at the state level in the US? IQ estimates derived from NAEP testing and National Journal data referenced above suggests it does. The correlations between a state's average IQ and economic, social, and foreign policy conservatism are -.09, -.14, and -.28, respectively. The relationship with foreign policy is the only one to reach significance at the 95% confidence level, giving the ordering face validity. Knowing nothing else about them, if one guy tells you he is fiscally conservative but opposes nation-building, you're likely to assume he is more intelligent than the other guy who tells you he supports strong military action overseas but thinks the federal government needs to do more to help people at home. This pattern emerges at the state level as well.

* Eight representatives were present for fewer than half of roll calls in at least one of the three categories during 2008. Their behavior is estimated by averaging the votes of the rest of the representatives in their state who share their party affiliation. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones of Ohio's 11th district died last August and was not replaced until November by Marcia Fudge. Consequently, only Tubbs-Jones votes are used to determine Ohio's political composition.

Mexicans say amnesty encourages them to come to US illegally; enforcement discourages them from doing so

2009-10-14T13:15:00.000-07:00

A new Zogby poll exposes what amnesty proponents are aiming for. Among the key findings:

• A clear majority of people in Mexico, 56 percent, thought giving legal status to illegal immigrants in the United States would make it more likely that people they know would go to the United States illegally. Just 17 percent thought it would make Mexicans less likely to go illegally. The rest were unsure or thought it would make no difference.

• Of Mexicans with a member of their immediate household in the United States, 65 percent said a legalization program would make people they know more likely to go to America illegally.

...

• A new Pew Research Center poll also found that about one-third of Mexicans would go to the United States if they could.

• An overwhelming majority (69 percent) of people in Mexico thought that the primary loyalty of Mexican-Americans (Mexico- and U.S.-born) should be to Mexico. Just 20 percent said it should be to the United States. The rest were unsure.

• Also, 69 percent of people in Mexico felt that the Mexican government should represent the interests of Mexican-Americans (Mexico- and U.S.-born) in the United States.

...

•Both the bad economy and increased immigration enforcement were cited as reasons fewer people were going to America as illegal immigrants and more were coming back to Mexico.

Granting legalization to those currently illegally residing in the US will encourage more Mexicans to come stateside illegally. Tougher internal and border enforcement of existing immigration laws, in contrast, will discourage potential illegal immigrants from coming to the US. Make life easier for illegal immigrants and more of them will show up. Make life more difficult for illegal immigrants and more of them will go home. Simple stuff.

By more than 3 to 1, Mexicans say a McCain-Kennedy redux will lead to an increase in those leaving Mexico to settle in the US illegally.

By 7 to 2, Mexicans believe the loyalty of their compatriots living in the US should primarily be to Mexico. Mexicans currently living in the US were these people until they headed north, so this strongly suggests that an overwhelming majority of Mexicans residing in the US right now feel closer to Mexico than they do to America.

Among the plurality of Mexicans who think the number of Mexicans in the US has decreased in recent years, one-third cite tougher immigration enforcement as the primary reason. A couple of high-profile raids and hollow lip service about being a nation of laws is a formidable deterrent. Imagine the effects that serious enforcement and restrictionist measures would have!

More than one-third of Mexicans living south of the border profess that they would head to the US if they had the "means and opportunity" to do so. That's 41 million aspiring settlers from a country where the purchasing power parity is less then one-third what it is in the US. There is no better way to increase poverty in the US than to import it on such a massive scale.

Sex frequency by age and marital status

2009-10-14T13:09:00.000-07:00

In response to a married commenter with a thoroughly middling sex life, Roissy wrote the following in faux astonishment:

Once a week? What are you guys, 90? Once a week is a sexual starvation diet for
me.

Having just been presented with evidence showing that once a week is the average amount of action married men and unmarried men who are hungry and successful enough with women to hit double-digits, it's obvious that you're atypical, superman. Does being tracked down by women as you're drearily hacking and trying to keep the mucus from running out of your pores while playing lonely wallflower not give you some indication that you have an enormously helpful built-in advantage?

The response did get me thinking of another way of gauging at what age men and women are most fertile. Previously, I've looked at the number of sexual partners unmarried people have had. The results have plenty of face validity, but there are potential shortfalls in looking at total number of partners instead of the total quantity of sexual activity, most notably the inability to decipher whether or not the respondent is in a committed relationship. Further, there are pious types who actively work at being monogamous so long as the hedonistic consolation prize of plenty of in-house access is on the table. Removing married folks from the equation might cause some unwanted skew as well.

The graph below depicts frequency of sexual activity* by age range for men and women, married and unmarried.

It comes as no surprise to see that married people get more action at every age than their unmarried counterparts do. Men in their early twenties who marry women in their late teens really rock the house. Among unmarried men and women, the peak of sexual activity comes in the mid-twenties. After hitting menopause, female sexual desire drops to almost nothing, as illustrated by index scores under 2--less than once a month, on average--from the late-forties on. Married women probably continue to put out mostly for the sake of their husbands once they reach that point. Men mellow gently as time goes on, but don't really lose their lust until they reach their sixties.

Regarding Roissy's comment, an index score of 4 indicates weekly sex, something the average unmarried man never attains, let alone one who is 90 years old! Past the age of 70, once a quarter is nothing to be ashamed of (although I'm ashamed to have just thought about it occurring).

GSS variables used: SEXFREQ, MARITAL(1)(2-5), AGE, SEX(1)(2)

* Responses range from 0 to 6; 0 indicates no sex in the year; 1 indicates once or twice a year; 2 indicates once a month; 3 indicates 2-3x a month; 4 indicates weekly; 5 indicates 2-3x a week; 6 indicates 4+ times per week.

Away for a bit

2009-10-09T11:43:00.000-07:00

For any readers in the Cincinnati area, I'll be there through the weekend if anyone has interest in getting together. Let me know via email.

Support for private property rights by ethnicity

2009-10-08T18:48:00.001-07:00

Last month blogger TGGP wondered why the myth that Native Americans had no concept of private property is so remains so reticent today:

He claims that native americans were baffled by the concept of private property, believing all land was holy and belonged to nature. That was a myth made up to justify seizing their land, then later adopted by environmentalists sympathetic to their plight. A few pages later he writes “the local Buryats seemed able to make as
many distinctions between one kind of dung an another as Eskimos could with snow”. The Eskimo-words-for-snow meme is also mythical. What is it about native americans that results in this stuff being so widely believed?

The image of North America's indigenous population has been transformed over the last century from the stoic warrior (which is why their variations have been such popular sports team mascots) to the pacifist proto-hippie, partially in the service of environmentalists, for which myths like those surrounding Chief Seattle are used to portray real estate development sacrilege.

What about contemporary views on private property? In 2000, the GSS asked if, in a free society, it is right if a few people accumulate a lot of wealth and property while many others live in poverty. For ease of presentation, I've inverted the responses so that, on a 5 point scale, 5 indicates strong agreement and 1 indicates strong disagreement. Thus, the higher the index value, the more supportive a group is of private property rights. The following table shows average scores for various ethnic groups:

Ethnicity	Index	N
English	3.46	169
Scandanavian	3.27	48
German	3.04	184
Eastern European	3.03	68
Irish	3.01	130
French	2.98	26
Italian	2.97	64
Asian	2.88	39
Hispanic	2.74	108
Native American	2.66	54
African (Black)	2.42	118

English also includes Welsh and Scotish; Scandanavian includes Norwegians, Danes, Swedes, and Finns; German also includes Austrians; Eastern European includes Russian, Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Lithuanians, and those from the former Yugoslavia; Asian includes Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Indians, and "other Asians"; Hispanics, of course, can be of any race but are primarily Mexican.

Descending from Locke and Harrington, Anglos show the most support for private property, followed by Scandanavians. The rest of Europe is bunched together with moderately lower levels of enthusiasm. The Asian sample is prohibitively small, but the sub-European value is not surprising given higher self-reported levels of 'collectivism' in Asia. Native Americans fall in with their mostly Amerindian Hispanic cousins. In the spirit of MLK, blacks show the greatest opposition to unequal levels of affluence as a consequence of private property. One standard deviation is 1.22 points on the index, placing the black average one SD 'below' the English average.

Crudely put, the lighter you are, the more supportive of property rights you tend to be (and likely of individualism more generally). As the percentage of Americans of European descent shrinks, private property rights will come up against increasing political and legal pressures for increased redistribution of private resources.

Parenthetically, the male average is 3.07; the female average is 2.78.

GSS variables used: WLTHPOV, ETHNIC, HISPANIC(2-99)

Missing Mangan sucks

2009-10-05T20:42:00.000-07:00

Following is my response to Dennis Mangan's post on a previous comment of mine to another post of his (tracking?) where I raised objections to the putatively transformative power of game. Unfortunately, I'm more than a fortnight too late and the thread is dead, but as many readers were involved in it at Mangan's, it's worth reproducing here. Also, it helps clarify my line of reasoning. Brackets are additions I made after proofing.

---

Man, I have to get back to following the RSS feeder, but as of late I've gotten so far behind that I devote an open evening to catching up on a month's worth of output from my favorite bloggers. Being several weeks late to the discussion is the frustrating consequence.

Whiskey,

TGGP's response does not require further iteration, but it might be clarifying nonetheless.

Unless the purpose of an analysis is to find out the behavior of 54 year old married men in 1998, that a sample only contains eight married men aged 54 in 1998 is immaterial. If it were otherwise, Gallup and Rasmussen would have to obtain sample sizes at every age (and where to draw the line? By year? By month? By week?) sufficiently large enough to reach a margin of error +/- 3% for each specific age category. But when Gallup reports on President Obama's approval rating, it is presenting the sentiments of a much broader swath of the population (adults 18 and over, likely voters, etc). [Your line of criticism is only relevant if Gallup is claiming that approval for Obama has dropped significantly since his inauguration among those aged 26 years and four months.]

To someone immersed in the quantitative side of the Steveosphere, this is intuitively obvious. I do not mean to be condescending, but you really should stop trying to float such a silly argument against the validity of the GSS.

Dennis,

The pattern is the same for men. The fewer the number of sexual partners he has had, the more fecund he tends to be, so long, of course, as he has at least one (in Roissy's terminology, alphas aren't in the evolutionary septic tank, omegas are. But betas are faring best of all).

Re: humans being progressively selected for monogamy, Thursday nails it:

The 80% of women reproduce while only 40% of men do stat is only accurate over the entire history of humans. It's not what is happening today or what has happened over the past few centuries.

The majority of males who have historically not procreated have also had very little, if any, sex. Polygyny was something our ancestors saw first hand much more than we do today. We might be sliding backwards--hell, we seem to be on so many other fronts, after all--but it is the general hysteria surrounding such putatively seismic shifts that I find tiresome. [According to data from the GSS, currently among those aged 50 and over--essentially having written the final chapter in their procreative stories--89% of women and 86% of men have at least one child. The vast majority of men are passing their genes on to offspring, something many paleolithic men were not fortunate enough to experience.]

The shift toward greater levels of monogamy--and more egalitarian sexual access for men--presumably started to kick into high gear with settled agriculture. The resulting selection pressures probably shouldn't be separated from the larger 10,000 Year Explosion phenomenon. [As female choice has increasingly come to dominate human sexual relations--again something far removed from chimps, where the lowliest male socially outranks the highest-status female--so has more inclusive monogamy (serial, not necessarily lifelong) increasingly come to gain ground at the expense of winner-take-all polygamy.]

Also, I do not argue that Roissy or the game narrative are fundamentally incorrect, just overblown. And it's not Roissy's fault. His expectations for the benefits greater self-assuredness bring strike me as accurate based on my own personal experience--on the 1-10 scale, it'll allow most guys to reach about a point higher than they were previously able to, depending on where they're starting from.

Generally, n/a is not "on my side". When he does drop by, it's to kick my ass for some wrongly held working presumption I'm holding at the time. He's worth paying attention to.

[GSS variables used: CHILDS, YEAR(2000-2008), AGE(50-89), SEX(1)(2)]

Who is fighting for egalitarian sexual fulfillment?

2009-10-04T08:07:00.000-07:00

The Dave Matthews Band has been running through my head since their show in Kansas City last week. From the song Spaceman:

All the freaks are on parade
I wanna fill my belly, so I gotta get paid
Doesn't everybody deserve to have the good life?
But it don't always work out
Cry cry baby, if we must
Just remember, remember
I love the way you love me,
And I love the way you move

Matthews' politics are leftist boilerplate. The band played at Bill Clinton's 1997 inauguration, partnered up with Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream to raise awareness about global warming, strongly supported the Kerry and Obama campaigns, and their eponymous leader even took himself to Jimmy Carter's level by charging that opposition to President Obama's policies is largely the result of white racism. DMB is a strong candidate for being the most SWPL musical act in existence.

So he illustrates as well as anyone a curious feature of egalitarianism in popular Western leftism. When it comes to actual material inequality or perceived cultural inequality, leftists reliably criticize and lament the unfairness. Racism and exploitation are everywhere. But as the lyrics to Spaceman illustrate, personal sexual success is seen as existing outside of the world of equality concerns. The world's so unfair, but at least I have you, lover(s).

It's hard to imagine someone like Matthews speaking out about the aphrodiasical injustice that drove George Sodini over the edge. It is effectively inconceivable that a well-off, healthy guy with a moderately prestigious occupation whose agoraphobia (or whatever was responsible for his social awkwardness) could be more deserving of pity than a chronically unemployed, uneducated cad who's been in and out of jail. Instead, Sodini is more likely to be portrayed in the same light as Comic Book Guy (starts 18:50):

Inspired by the most logical race in the galaxy, the Vulcans, breeding will be permitted once every seven years. For many of you, this will be much less breeding. For me, much, much more.

To protest sexual inequality is tantamount to admitting one has low mating attractiveness. Policies to reduce it are not seen as legitimate ideological positions. CBG's announcement to the Springfield citizenry is booed and precipitates the ousting of the Mensa leadership in favor of the return of the corrupt Quimby machine. This is in stark contrast to protesting economic inequality, often a method of displaying one's affluence and high earning capacity, and a broadly lauded goal across most of the socio-political spectrum.

Some cover is provided for the dereliction with the presumption that The One is out there for everyone to find, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that consequently there are not, objectively, some people who are smokin and others who are fugly. But that politically correct myth commands about as much credulity as the Greek pantheon does today.

Conceptualizing the Real Man

2009-09-27T17:05:00.000-07:00

The Inductivist suggests two contrasting images of a Real Man, broadly defined as representing the apotheosis of alphahood. He favors Gary Cooper's character Will Kane in High Noon and assigns Family Guy's Quagmire to Roissy's followers.

The use of those two characters as competing Real Man iconic images is not something a PUA is going to agree to. Kane is a bona fide BAMF, willing to let his woman leave him for the opportunity to face down four men out to kill him, alone. He does offer himself to suffer in her place--a beta indicator--but he's far from what Roissy would call a herb.

Quagmire is a sex fiend (and sex offender) who is generally unsuccessful and shamelessly desperate in his attempts to indiscriminately pick up anything with the right kind of orifice, despite his affluence and occupational prestige as an airline pilot. He's closer to George Sodini than James Bond.

A fairer contrast can be made by considering a couple of characters from Mike Judge's King of the Hill series. Hank Hill is the quintessential football coach-type Real Man. He follows his instincts instead of going along to get along, tries to learn from his mistakes with humility and come to terms with the consequences of his personal failings, loves his lawn and his dog, and naturally fits into the traditional patriarchal role of the monogamous married man. While he doesn't seek out confrontation, he's not hesitant to put on the knucks when honor, duty, or rectitude requires it ("I'm gonna kick your ass!"). He encourages Bobby to become the same kind of Real Man he is, but accepts his son for who he is.

Boomhauer is the PUA's Real Man**. Despite apparently being out of work*, he perpetually jumps from one short-term relationship to another with relatively desirable women. He clearly has a healthy libido, but he's not a pervert like Quagmire. He's the show's most cultured character, a skilled mechanic, surfer, and artist. While he has no desire to burden himself with other people's problems, he is personally responsible. He refuses to encourage Dale's asinine antics or Bill's moping sissiness, treating both men with disdainful aloofness.

* In the series finale he is revealed to be a Texas Ranger, but given the inordinate amount of downtime he was portrayed as having throughout the life of the show, it's not very satisfying.

** An argument can be made that Hank's father, Cotton, is an even better pick than Boomhauer. With a penchant for stretching the truth to its limits so as to portray himself in the best light possible, he is uncompromisingly self-assured. He had at least one extramarital affair resulting in the birth of Hank's half-brother. Despite being a crippled, beady-eyed misogynist, when age starts to take its toll on his first wife's appearance, Cotton leaves her for a hottie who is the same age as his son, Hank, is. He's an animated John McCain.

Married men get it once a week on average

2009-09-24T18:27:00.000-07:00

++Addition++In the comments, Roissy writes:

There is likely a significant cohort of married men not getting any nookie at
all and a smaller minority of rabid sex fiends banging their hot wives four
times a day. Skew happens.

He asserts that the GSS should be "taken with a grain of salt" when it comes to human sexual behavior. That's his prerogative, but for those who put more stake in large scale data than in anecdote, fewer than 1% of married men aged 22-36 report being in sexless marriages (no activity over the last year). Roissy's probably correct in assuming that the married man who has sex nearly 30 times a week (4 times a day) is even rarer than that. The best we can do with the GSS is observe that one in ten (9.6%) report having sex four or more times per week.

---

Recently, Roissy wrote:

Married! This is what an equalist concept of relationships earns a man — crossed arms and clamped pussies.

In aggregate, of course, married men get more sex than unmarried men do. But that's because the latter category is dragged down by men who are unattractive or uninterested in women.

What about those guys who are able to successfully play the field? In addition to variety, do they also enjoy greater frequency? Among those aged 22-36, sexual frequency* for married men (4.15) is marginally higher than it is for unmarried men who have racked up double-digit counts (4.10).

Getting married will tend to net you about the same amount of snatch time as a go getter gets. The treasure chest won't be clamped shut, though your prize won't glitter as much.

GSS variables used: YEAR(2000-2008), AGE(22-36), SEX(1), MARITAL(1)(2-5), NUMWOMEN(10-250)

* Responses are by range for sexual activity over the past 12 months, from no sex at all on the low end (corresponding to a 0), to 4+ times per week on the high end (corresponding to a 6).

Where to get the most bang for your buck (updated)

2009-09-20T18:42:00.000-07:00

Three years ago, I presented a listing of countries by how much purchasing power an American would have in each of them if he liquidated his domestic assets and made the new place home. It remains one of the top posts for bringing people in from search engines and I have received frequent email requests for it to be updated. It's worthy enough an endeavor since, uh, something or another went down between 2006 and 2009 (or, more accurately, between 2005 and 2008, the years in which the respective data sets were gathered).

The methodology is simple. At the official exchange rate with the US, each country's GDP is compared to the CIA's best estimate of each country's respective GDP in terms of purchasing power parity. Currency fluctuations, regional differences within nations, and the inherent problems in creating a (sometimes hypothetical) basket of items to be purchased comparatively (postnatal infant care in Angola is cheap, but there are obviously qualititative differences to the caliber of care available in Singapore), do not lead to exact cost-of-living comparisons, but they do provide a nice way to compare generally how far your dollars will go in different parts of the world.

The greater the exchange rate (all data is in US dollars at the GDP level) compared to purchasing power parity, the more stuff you'll be able to buy with the dollars exchanged in the foreign country under examination. Conceptually, imagine you can get $10 Eagle for $1 US. In Eagleland, a skip sandwich only costs $2 Eagle. It costs $1 US at home. So for your US dollar, you can buy one skip sandwich in the US (costing $1 US), or you can exchange your US dollar for $10 Eagle and buy five skip sandwiches (costing $2 Eagle a piece) in Eagleland. Sweet! Except Eagleland probably trades what it offers in cheap goods (and services) with things like rampant poverty, political instability, and underdevelopment.

The ideal runaway spot is a place that is simultaneously modern and allows you to live like a king. What follows is a rank order listing of countries by exchange rate-PPP ratio as a percentile for which 2008 data and estimates are available. A value over 100% means your dollars will go further than they will in the US; a value under 100% means they won't go as far they will at home.

1. East Timor -- 505.0%
2. Kiribati -- 423.0%
3. Burundi -- 282.2%
4. Gambia -- 281.2%
5. Malawi -- 276.7%
6. Egypt -- 273.6%
7. Bangaldesh -- 273.4%
8. India -- 272.5%
9. Uganda -- 271.0%
10. Vietnam -- 269.1%
11. Ethiopia -- 268.0%
12. Eritrea -- 266.7%
13. Laos -- 265.8%
14. Nicaragua -- 264.4%
15. Guyana -- 262.5%
16. Bhutan -- 257.6%
17. Uzbekistan -- 256.7%
18. Tajikistan -- 256.3%
19. Pakistan -- 255.0%
20. Cambodia -- 249.9%
21. Bolivia -- 248.5%
22. Nepal -- 244.7%
23. Iran -- 244.1%
24. Honduras -- 238.6%
25. Guinea -- 233.4%
26. Sri Lanka -- 232.0%
27. Kyrgyzstan -- 229.9%
28. Solomon Islands -- 227.9%
29. Burkina Faso -- 219.9%
30. Sierra Leone -- 219.2%
31. Tanzania -- 218.4%
32. Rwanda -- 217.7%
33. Madagascar -- 217.5%
34. Tonga -- 212.8%
35. Somalia -- 212.5%
36. Ghana -- 212.2%
37. Seychelles -- 205.6%
38. Ecuador -- 204.9%
39. Yemen -- 203.6%
40. Kenya -- 203.4%
41. Lesotho -- 203.3%
42. Burma -- 202.8%
43. Tunisia -- 202.5%
44. Botswana -- 201.0%
45. Swaziland -- 200.6%
46. Thailand -- 200.4%
47. Mauritania -- 199.6%
48. Cuba -- 197.8%
49. Dominica -- 197.7%
50. El Salvador -- 197.2%
51. Macedonia -- 196.3%
52. Mozambique -- 196.2%
53. Guinea-Bissau -- 196.1%
54. Samoa -- 195.3%
55. Peru -- 193.8%
56. Djibouti -- 192.0%
57. Belarus -- 189.3%
58. Ukraine -- 189.1%
59. Chad -- 189.0%
60. Philippines -- 188.3%
61. Niger -- 186.7%
62. Benin -- 184.9%
63. Afghanistan -- 184.7%
64. Cameroon -- 184.0%
65. Belize -- 183.6%
66. Liberia -- 182.5%
67. Grenada -- 181.7%
68. Taiwan -- 181.4%
69. China -- 181.1%
70. Paraguay -- 180.4%
71. Syria -- 180.3%
72. Bulgaria -- 180.3%
73. Mongolia -- 180.2%
74. Indonesia -- 178.7%
75. Dem. Rep. of the Congo -- 178.1%
76. Saint Vincent and Grenadines -- 178.0%
77. South Africa -- 177.1%
78. Togo -- 177.1%
79. Guatemala -- 176.0%
80. Argentina -- 175.8%
81. Mauritius -- 174.8%
82. Moldova -- 174.2%
83. Saint Lucia -- 173.5%
84. Malaysia -- 173.0%
85. Vanuatu -- 172.5%
86. Dominican Republic -- 171.1%
87. Albania -- 168.3%
88. Panama -- 168.2%
89. Azerbaijan -- 167.3%
90. Georgia -- 167.1%
91. Mali -- 166.1%
92. Haiti -- 165.4%
93. Senegal -- 164.6%
94. Colombia -- 164.3%
95. Papua New Guina -- 163.2%
96. Costa Rica -- 162.0%
97. Bosnia -- 160.8%
98. Serbia -- 160.5%
99. Central African Republic -- 160.1%
100. Morocco -- 158.1%
101. Jordan -- 157.8%
102. Armenia -- 157.3%
103. Sao Tome -- 157.1%
104. Nambia -- 156.7%
105. Nigeria -- 156.4%
106. Lebanon -- 152.2%
107. Sudan -- 152.1%
108. Barbados -- 147.3%
109. Algeria -- 145.8%
110. Gabon -- 145.4%
111. Jamaica -- 145.2%
112. Chile -- 144.2%
113. Cote d'Ivoire -- 144.0%
114. Mexico -- 143.7%
115. Suriname -- 142.6%
116. Rep. of the Congo --142.5%
117. Hong Kong -- 142.2%
118. Montenegro -- 142.2%
119. Comoros -- 141.2%
120. South Korea -- 141.0%
121. Brunei -- 139.2%
122. Maldives -- 136.3%
123. Romania -- 135.9%
124. Russia -- 135.1%
125. Lithuania -- 133.9%
126. Uruguay -- 133.8%
127. Kazakhstan -- 133.0%
128. Angola -- 132.3%
129. Singapore -- 130.5%
130. Slovenia -- 130.0%
131. Oman -- 127.4%
132. Poland -- 127.0%
133. Brazil -- 126.7%
134. Bahrain -- 126.3%
135. Hungary -- 125.8%
136. Slovakia -- 125.3%
137. Equatorial Guinea -- 123.9%
138. Turkey -- 123.8%
139. Zambia -- 122.2%
140. Czech Republic -- 122.2%
141. Bahamas -- 121.8%
142. Saudi Arabia -- 119.7%
143. Malta -- 119.5%
144. Croatia -- 118.8%
145. Estonia -- 118.0%
146. Trinidad and Tobago -- 116.9%
147. Iraq -- 114.3%
148. Latvia -- 114.1%
149. Venezuela -- 111.9%
150. Turkmenistan -- 100.6%
151. Israel -- 99.8%
152. Fiji -- 99.7%
153. Portugal -- 96.7%
154. Greece -- 95.9%
155. Cape Verde -- 94.4%
156. Kuwait -- 94.3%
157. Cyprus -- 91.0%
158. New Zealand -- 90.8%
159. Qatar -- 89.3%
160. Libya -- 88.7%
161. Japan -- 87.9%
162. Spain -- 87.0%
163. Canada -- 86.0%
164. Liechtenstein -- 83.3%
165. Great Britain -- 83.2%
166. Marshall Islands -- 82.6%
167. Macau -- 82.3%
168. Germany -- 79.6%
169. Austria -- 79.3%
170. Australia -- 79.1%
171. Italy -- 78.8%
172. The Netherlands -- 77.3%
173. Belgium -- 76.9%
174. France -- 74.2%
175. Iceland -- 72.4%
176. Luxembourg -- 71.6%
177. Sweden -- 71.0%
178. United Arab Emirates -- 70.9%
179. Finland -- 70.6%
180. Ireland -- 68.9%
181. Switzerland -- 64.3%
182. Norway -- 60.4%
183. Denmark -- 59.4%
184. Zimbabwe -- 18.2% [!]

When I did the same analysis three years ago, Zimbabwe came out as the second best spot to stretch US dollars to their purchasing power limits. Using CIA statistics this time around places it at the very bottom, beating out places like Denmark, Norway, and Switzerland for the most prohibitively expensive place to move to. After suffering tragically absurd levels--midway through 2008, $25 billion would buy you an orange--of inflation for most of its post-independence history, Zimbabwe indefinitely suspended its currency. Foreign currencies are now used in its stead. The CIA factbook noted the following in reporting Zimbabwean GDP at the US exchange rate in 2008:

Hyperinflation and the plunging value of the Zimbabwean dollar makes Zimbabwe's GDP at the official exchange rate a highly inaccurate statistic.

It is the only country for which such a disclaimer is added, and as such, Zimbabwe's placement in this list should be disregarded entirely.

One thing that jumps out immediately in comparing the updated list to that of three years ago is how far the purchasing power of the US economy has fallen relative to that of the rest of the world. The average country dropped 92 percentage points from then to now--that is, for a country where the purchasing power of a US dollar was 300% of the US dollar's official exchange rate with that country three years ago, it is now only 208% (no population adjustments made, but the trend is obvious even without doing so).

Money from America isn't going nearly as far as it did even three years ago. We are experiencing an adjustment in our standard of living that is placing the US more in line with other 'developed' nations given the realities of our demographic composition. A couple of quiz questions for perspective: Which company has the highest market cap in the world? It's not Exxon-Mobil, Microsoft, Walmart, or GE. It's PetroChina. Which union has the largest economy in the world? Before the recession, it was the US, but today that honor goes to the EU.

Kiribati is the only "country"--it's composed of 33 separate islands--among the top 25 that I am fancifully able to consider as a prospective home*. Keep toiling away in the salt mines for another decade and then settle on one of the atolls, find work in the local service industry to keep my hands from idling, and soak up the South Pacific sun. Paradise. It's a self-sustaining plan for the future, if nothing else. But what suppine slothfulness, quitting life in your thirties! If peak oil pessimism, an inverted age pyramid, and demographic decay cause the US economy to implode, it's something I could do with a pretty clear conscience.

Although it has become more costly with the recession, Taiwan remains the first-world's least expensive destination (Hong Kong, the next cheapest, is probably more holistically attractive, since it's easier to function as an Anglophone there than in Taiwan). Among Western European nations, Malta is the best deal. Portugal is the runner-up, but even the Iberian Peninsula will set an American back monetarily--in every country in Western Europe save Malta, exchanging your dollars for Euros (or kronas or pounds or whatever) will result in diminished purchasing power relative to what is enjoyed stateside.

For the obscure avatar in Earthbound who asserted that if he found a $1 million diamond, he'd sell it and then go live the high life in Japan, he'll be able to buy $16,000 more worth of stuff as a reward for sitting on the gem over the last three years. Unlike most of Western Europe, which has become even more expensive than before, Japan is marginally more affordable than it had been.

* Unless I follow the dreamy aspiration of working for a sub-Sahara African government's anti-poaching unit, perhaps for the Zambia Wildlife Authority. My US earnings will carry me pretty far anywhere on the continent south of the desert.