Sunday, December 25, 2011

Merry Christmas, 2011



Linus said it best (Luke 2.14) in A Charlie Brown Christmas:

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Merry Christmas!

We had wonderful weather yesterday in Eugene. After arriving home from the airport I was able to take the kids to the park, wearing shorts in the warm sunshine. Best wishes to everyone!

9 comments:

Yan Shen said...

And a merry Christmas to you as well Steve! It's been a pleasure reading your blog for the past couple of years.

And of course, how could we possibly forget the many white nationalists from various blogs such as iSteve, Mangans, Stormfront, etc who flood the comments section here at Infoproc every single week. Thank you all for making this blog as great as it is, because without your persistent whini... insightful commentary, this blog would surely be much worse off.

So to all of the David Versaces, Kevin Roses, Matthew Carnegies, Sineruses, Law Students, TheGuyFromEarliers, Thrasymachus' and Steve Sailers of the world, happy holidays! I want to dedicate a very special song to all of you(YouTube link below) and wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new years! May all your wishes come true in 2012!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJSUT8Inl14

X12 said...

LOL, only Yan Shen would see a completely non-political "Merry Christmas" blog post as the perfect opportunity to complain about white nationalists.

RKU1 said...

Well, with some slight concern for similarly putting a "political" spin on a non-political Holiday posting, a rather ironic matter comes to mind...

It's very well known that the American elites and their MSM are extremely hostile to traditional Christianity, especially of the strongly Evangelical variety, and endlessly denigrate the intellectual ability of that population group, not entirely without justification.  

Now it also so happens that for various reasons white American Christians are enormously under-represented in the student bodies of academically elite institutions, with religiously zealous Evangelical white Christians being virtually absent.  Meanwhile, East Asians are massively over-represented in these same institutions, and although my impression is that most younger East Asians are not enormously religious these days, a substantial slice does seem to be zealously Christian, having been imprinted with the religious views of their parents and local community members.  The combination of these two factors means that a very substantial fraction of campus Christian-activist groups might tend to be East Asian, and I've occasionally heard exactly that claim made.

Given these facts, I've sometimes joked with friends of mine that it's quite possible that the highest-ability religious segment on most Ivy League campuses today (based on college grades and test scores) might be Evangelical Christians, considerably outdistancing agnostics/atheists, Jews, Mainline Christians, New Agers, etc.  Furthermore, if the existing racial-quota system were ever dramatically relaxed, zealous Christianity might soon regain the sort of central position in Ivy League student life it had had a century or more ago, since even non-religious Asians tend to be neutral rather than militantly anti-Christian.

I've never bothered trying to look up the relevent numbers and my impression might be incorrect or out of date, but the whole analysis seems a pretty amusing one to me.

Yan Shen said...

"The combination of these two factors means that a very substantial
fraction of campus Christian-activist groups might tend to be East Asian"

Correction. A very substantial fraction of these groups are Korean American. Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans are far less religious than Korean Americans. China and Japan are also far more secular than South Korea.

RKU1 said...

Yes, my strong impression is that very few younger Japanese tend to be religious and almost never strongly Christian, but I also think Japanese are among the least numerous EAs on elite campuses (partly because their youth cohort is so tiny).  It's certainly true that Koreans are by far the most zealously Christian EAs, but I'd also thought that a pretty good slice of Chinese fell into that category as well, though my impression might easily be wrong or dated.  I'm sure other commenters will be able to provide their own, possibly much more recent and accurate impressions.

Although I hate to tread on possibly sensitive toes, there's an important empirical fact I noticed in school and also afterward.  Among virtually all groups I encountered, there seemed a pretty strong negative correlation between religious commitment and intellectual ability.  The sole exception was EAs, among whom there seemed either no correlation or perhaps even a slight positive one.  I strongly suspect this is linked to EA conformist tendencies, which obviously much reduce the likelihood of rebellion against parental/family belief-systems.

Since people contain such a massively developed processing system, that system is easily prone to capture by various symbiotic, neutral, or parasitic memes, which certainly evolve and replicate on time-scales vastly shorter than those of genetic evolution.  Therefore, it's hardly surprising that endless historical battles occur between conflicting genetic and memetic forces, each seeking to propagate themselves at the possible expense of their opponents, an obvious fact which is sometimes ignored by the more narrowly focused "genetic-determinists."

ytrewq123 said...

I think Dr. Hsu would be better off focusing on the SAT penalty that Asians pay than getting into HBD-related arguments anywhere. It'll make the blog more palatable to the MSM and at the same time keep away the WN crowd (I don't think all of the people you mentioned above are WNs). Happy Kwanzaa everyone. 

Ju Hyung Ahn said...

Well saying China is secular is kind of like saying North Koreans are largely secular.  According to Wikipedia, 81.3% of Taiwanese population identify themselves as being religious compare to 53.5% in South Korea.  Admitting that large number of people believe in Buddhism and Taoism in Taiwan as opposed to Buddhism and Christianity in South Korea, I don't know how one could claim intellectual/spiritual edge by worshiping Guan Yu or believing in reincarnation than worshiping Yahweh. 

Check
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Taiwan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_South_Korea

Even Japan has a long history of religious persecution.  During Imperial Japanese era (pre 1945), Japanese citizens were forced to adopt state Shintoism in favor of their own beliefs.

Another thing you fail to note is that demographics of Asian Americans differ from the demographics of their respective countries.  The % of Christians among Japanese and Chinese Americans are much higher than that of Japan and China.  Even assuming that the % of Korean American Christians is higher, it cannot be concluded that most of East Asian Christian activists are Korean since Chinese Americans outnumber Korean Americans in campus life by at least 2 to 1.

"Chinese Americans distinctly out-perform Korean Americans and other
ethnic groups academically. Hence that statement may be incorrect, since
the vast majority of Chinese Americans are non-religious"

I wouldn't be surprised if Chinese Americans exhibited immigration pattern a la Indian Americans compare to Korean Americans.  Apparently, Korean Americans have lower average income than even Vietnamese or Filipino Americans that I have to conclude the general populace of Korean Americans is more akin to its native population.

From PISA, or past IMO, IPhO, or IChO results, I don't see the kind of performance disparity between heavily Han populated states and Koreans to claim any bit of relative inherent ("racial") advantage; thus, if you think the Chinese are the new "Jews", you may want to note that 1 in 5 of earth's population are Hans.  I don't think anyone disputed they weren't numerous.

ben_g said...

Charles M. Schulz (the creator of peanuts) came around to secular humanism later in his life: 


"I do not go to church anymore... I guess you might say I've come around to secular humanism, an obligation I believe all humans have to others and the world we live in."

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