Author: smartistone

Brain development parameters and intelligence in Chileanhigh school graduates This is one of the best HBD studies have have found, linking brain volume and head circumference to IQ, while controlling for socioeconomic status. The macroscopic differences between the brain of someone with a high IQ vs. a low IQ are manifestly obvious (although this is… Continue reading Brain Volume Strongly Correlated with IQ

How CNN Created Faux Rage When I Said Boobs On Friday afternoon I went on CNN and said the only two things that had never let me down were the first amendment and boobs. It’s a statement I’ve made hundreds of times, either in written or spoken form. Including on CNN’s Headline News, also to… Continue reading The Puritanical-Left

People are worried about the fed having to wind-down their balance sheet: The Fed, a Decade After the Crisis, Is About to Embark on the Great Unwinding The central bank is likely to announce Wednesday it will start slowly shrinking its $4.2 trillion portfolio of mortgage and Treasury bonds purchased during and after the financial… Continue reading Not Worried About the Fed Balance Sheet Unwind

Charlie Munger devised what he calls ‘mental models‘. These are a prescriptive set of guidelines/heuristics for being more rational. I, on the other hand, devised the ‘simple systems’ model, which is more descriptive than prescriptive, and posits that the world is composed of competing ‘systems’ that seek to optimize capital, given all possible alternatives. From… Continue reading “Simple Systems”

This article was going viral: Why American Workers Pay Twice as Much in Taxes as Wealthy Investors Americans in the top 1 percent, and especially the top 0.1 percent, have seen their wealth and income multiply in recent decades as the rest of the country’s share of the economic pie shrank. Since 2000, a recent… Continue reading Grey notes: The Triumph of Capital

Republicans think Trump is going soft on immigration. They will devour him Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ hats burned over Daca deal Trump reneging on his campaign promises and rhetoric? I could have told you that 10 months ago. I think Trump is doing a good job–good as in carrying out the perfunctory duties of… Continue reading Daca Disappointment

The revelation that Equifax hired a ‘music major’ as their “chief security officer,” keeps blowing up, having now made the news everywhere: This story originally was broken by Reddit a week ago (as I reported), but has since been picked up by major media publications such as The Guardian, Chicago Tribune, and Market Watch. But… Continue reading Is ‘musicgate’ payback for ‘memo/Google-gate’?

Kevin D. Williamson is a magnet for controversy. His articles provoke paroxysms of outrage, both from the ‘left’ and the ‘right’, whether it’s about ‘”towns deserving to die‘ or Trump supporters being ‘lazy and selfish‘. Yet there is a method to his madness (there is a skill to pissing off everyone who reads your columns… Continue reading Based Kevin D. Williamson