Inter alia the article claims that the American Psychiatric Association is discussing classifying ‘racism’ as a mental disorder. Anyone know about this?

In a recent post Razib raised the puzzle that minority languages (such as Latvian) often survive despite political and economic domination by other ethnic groups.

Here I want to consider the opposite case, where one language is replaced by another without any political and economic domination to explain the change.

So… why do the Scots speak English?

The puzzle is that the majority of the population of Scotland (i.e. the inhabitants of the Lowlands) spoke English already by the end of the 15th century. This is long before the political union of England and Scotland (early C18), or the personal union of the Crowns under King James (early C17). And until the C18 there wasn’t even a great deal of trade between the two countries.

Scotland was never conquered by England, there was no mass migration of English-speaking people into Scotland, and even after the Union the English did not interfere with Scottish law, education, and religion.

So how did a mainly Gaelic-speaking population come to speak a form of English?

By ‘a form of English’, I mean the traditional language of the Scottish Lowlands, which evolved from the northern dialects of Old English (Anglo-Saxon). In the earliest accounts (C12- C13) the Scots described this Lowlands language as Inglis, to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, but, significantly, by the end of the C15 it is known as Scottis, to distinguish it from English as spoken in England. Other terms for the language are Scots, Old Scots, Broad Scots, Lowland Scots, and Lallans.

From the C17 onwards educated Scottish speech and writing became Anglicised. Modern Scottish Standard English is essentially the same as the Standard English of England, except for accent. There is no great mystery about this process of Anglicisation. The other main languages of Western Europe (French, German, Italian, Spanish) have all become standardised on the basis of their most prestigious dialect (e.g. Tuscan in Italy), and dialects like Provencal and Plattdeutsch have declined. This process has accelerated since the C19, when public education and mass media favoured the use of a uniform national language.

What is more puzzling is the spread of Inglis way back in the middle ages. I have read (or browsed!) quite a few books on Scottish history, but most of them are curiously brief and vague in their treatment of this major event (see e.g. the large New Penguin History of Scotland).

The broad chronology of the process is reasonably clear. In the early middle ages (C6 to C11) there were five main language groups in Scotland. In the east (north of the Forth) the original language was Pictish, a notoriously little-understood language that was probably P-Celtic. In the south-west (e.g. Galloway) the language was originally British (P-Celtic, as in neighbouring Cumbria). In the south-east (Lothian), the language was a form of Old English, and the region was itself part of the Northumbrian kingdom (later earldom) of Bernicia until it was ceded to Scotland in the early C11. In the west (north of the Clyde) the language was Gaelic (Q-Celtic) closely related to Irish Gaelic, as the dominant ethnic group, the Scots, came from Ireland. From the C8 onwards the coastal fringes and islands were heavily settled by Vikings, and in some areas Norse became the main language (in Shetland down to the C17).

Apart from the intrusion of the Vikings, the main development in this period was the spread of Gaelic at the expense of Pictish and British. This followed the union of the Pictish and Scottish monarchies, with the Scots as the dominant partners. The timing of the process is unclear, but it is generally supposed that the Pictish and British languages were both extinct by the end of the C11, and that Gaelic was then spoken throughout the Lowlands, except for Lothian, where the Northumbrian form of Old English still prevailed.

But almost as soon as it reached its peak, Gaelic began to give way to Inglis. The process was already well-advanced by the end of the C13. By the end of the C14 the use of Gaelic was considered old-fashioned, and a distinction had emerged between the English-speaking Lowlands and the ‘backward’ Gaelic Highlands.

The problem is to explain this rapid transition. Most books on Scottish history pass over this major event in virtual silence. The only substantial discussion I have found is an essay by D. D. Murison: ‘Linguistic relationships in medieval Scotland’, in The Scottish Tradition (ed. G. W. S. Barrow, 1974). To summarise Murison’s account, following the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, the Scottish monarchy intermarried with the exiled Anglo-Saxon monarchy. The political centre of gravity of the Scottish state shifted away from the Gaelic areas towards the eastern Lowlands, where Old English was the dominant language. Edinburgh, in English-speaking Lothian, eventually replaced Perth as the capital city. Old English (evolving into Middle English) became the main working language of politics and administration. In the C12 and C13 (before the wars with England over the Scottish crown) the monarchy actively encouraged Anglo-Norman influences. Anglo-Norman barons were granted fiefdoms over much of the Lowlands. Chartered towns (burghs) were set up along the lines of English boroughs. Anglo-Norman influence was also strong in the church. Although some of the barons and prelates would have been French speakers, many of their followers were English, and a form of English became (ironically) the ‘lingua franca’ throughout the Lowlands. By the C15 the use of Gaelic was considered uncouth and old-fashioned, and Inglis (now significantly called Scottis) was recognised as the national language of Scotland.

While in broad outline this process seems well-established, many of the details remain obscure. Notably, it is unclear how much actual migration took place from England to Scotland. There was evidently no mass migration, in the sense of a volkswanderung, but cumulatively the numbers may have been substantial. G. W. S. Barrow’s book The Anglo-Norman Era in Scottish History (1980) shows that people from many parts of England settled in Scotland throughout the C12-13, and he concludes ‘I would argue strongly for the probability that Anglo-Norman settlement greatly reinforced the Middle English elements in Scots speech and culture, and had a decisive effect upon the texture of Scottish society as a whole’.

But I think these accounts may omit another significant factor. The areas of Scotland that switched from Gaelic to English were principally the areas that had previously spoken Pictish or British, and had only adopted Gaelic comparatively recently (within the period of ‘folk memory’) under the dominance of the (Irish) Scots. The adoption of Gaelic culture in these areas may have been relatively superficial and perhaps unpopular. The Lowlanders presumably remembered that they had, in effect, been conquered by the Highlanders. It may be significant that while in the C15 Inglis becomes Scottis, Gaelic becomes known as Irish or Erse. In rejecting Gaelic language, were the Lowlanders also rejecting the political and cultural domination of the Irish Scots?

Well, I don’t know, but I hope to provoke any lurking experts on Scottish language and history to respond.

As for the ‘Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled…’, it’s worth recalling that ‘Wallace’ is a Scottish English name for a Welshman (i.e. probably someone of Galloway or Cumbrian British origin). Could it get more confusing?

“In several respects, displaying the Darwin fish is the symbolic equivalent of capturing and desecrating an enemy’s flag, an act of ritual aggression,” says Tom Lessl, an associate professor of speech communication at UGA who studies the rhetoric of science. “The Darwin symbol’s obvious emulation of a religious symbol gives it unique power to express ridicule in a vivid and symbolically pointed fashion.”

No Dr. Lessl, this is desecration:

Su-jin Kim, a Christian, breaks into Wonmyong Sonwon (Zen Center) in Cheju Island, decapitates 750 granite Buddha statues and destroys a gilt bronze Buddha triad, gold-plated jade Buddha and many other Buddhist items. He is caught by people at the temple while breaking windows of the living quarters. Kim confesses at the police that he destroyed Buddha statues in order to convert the temple to a church.

This is desecration:

Bamiyan Buddha (remnants)

This is desecration:

Via Chris Mooney.

A few years ago 60 Minutes profiled the Kingdom of Bhutan’s policy of keeping a high wall between it and the rest of the world. In keeping with this Bhutan regulates tourism and extracts a high price from those who wish to visit. Take a look at health conditions in this “authentic” Buddhist nation. Because of its “go slow” approach to modern amenities the Land of the Thunder Dragon can still be termed a “living eden”.

But all is not well in paradise. Attached is an article on the plight of refugees expelled from Bhutan. My general point-the destruction wrought by modernity on organically developed indigenous cultures is quite often a good thing.

In limbo
Oct 23rd 2003
From The Economist print edition
Is there a solution in sight for the Bhutanese refugees?
AP

Just another forgotten cause

MANGALA SHARMA is among the lucky ones, considering. Although her family had been living in the small kingdom of Bhutan for generations, she fled her native country in 1992, fearing for her life, and spent the next eight years in a refugee camp in Nepal. She has now found political asylum in the United States. But her grandmother, who had never left her village before being walked into exile, died in the camp still dreaming of going back. Most of her family is still stranded in Nepal, together with another 100,000 refugees, largely forgotten by the rest of the world for the past 13 years. And this week’s agreement between the Nepalese and Bhutanese governments—following a decade of bilateral negotiations—is unlikely to reassure them.

The refugees are of ethnic Nepali origin, some of whom have been in southern Bhutan for generations. Others migrated in the 1960s, attracted by the prospect of a better life (Bhutan has sound economic policies and one of South Asia’s highest GDPs per head). In the late 1980s, the government, worried by what it considered a dilution of Bhutanese traditions, tightened citizenship rules and launched a cultural offensive. Southerners had to produce obscure documentation—such as land-tax receipts from 1958—to retain their nationality and were forced to wear traditional northern Bhutanese dress. Those who protested against the brutal census were jailed. Expulsion orders were issued to some, while others were harassed out of Bhutan.

Today, an estimated one in seven Bhutanese is a refugee. More than 100,000 people are languishing in camps in Nepal, while another 20,000 are thought to be in India. Two years ago, the Nepalese and Bhutanese authorities agreed on a joint screening system to determine who would eventually be allowed to go back. So far, only 12,000 refugees or so have been processed, and fewer than 3% of them are considered bona fide Bhutanese who were forced to leave. Those deemed to have left of their own accord will have to re-apply for Bhutanese citizenship or, if they choose to stay, may become Nepalese. Refugees categorised as “criminals”—reportedly including some children—will go through Bhutanese courts, while those considered non-Bhutanese will not be allowed to return. The first returnees are supposed to go by February. Refugee and human-rights groups are incensed by what they consider a thoroughly flawed verification process.

Refugees insist they want to go back to Bhutan. But they want to go back to their own land and houses, and with some assurance of safety. They would like the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), together with that of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, to be involved. “We’re not asking for the sky,” says Ratan Gazmere of the Association of Human Rights Activists, based in Nepal.

These conditions are unlikely to be met, however. A study conducted by the Habitat International Coalition in 2001 found that the Bhutanese government had been resettling northerners on the refugees’ property. According to the study, some of the land has been given to army and police officers or their relatives. The UN refugee agency has been left out of the bilateral talks and the verification process. It is running the refugee camps in Nepal, but is not allowed in Bhutan.

Shock therapy

At the end of September, a frustrated Ruud Lubbers, the head of UNHCR, announced that since the agency cannot monitor the return of refugees, it would not promote repatriation but help refugees settle in Nepal or in other countries, while gradually phasing out its direct involvement in the camps. This announcement shocked the refugees, and the policy change has been criticised by humanitarian and human rights organisations. A UNHCR spokesman says it was meant as a wake-up call. Repatriation, he adds, is the preferred option, but not if refugees cannot be guaranteed to return in dignity and safety.

Refugees have been repeatedly calling for the outside world to do more. Earlier this month, several refugee and human-rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, urged donors to put pressure on Bhutan. But the key probably lies with India, whose attitude they describe as “unhelpful”. Besides overseeing Bhutan’s foreign policy and supporting its army, India is the kingdom’s largest financial benefactor.

So here comes The New York Times with an article titled An Unlikely Promoter of an Islamic Reformation. The individual in question is a lesbian. Let me repeat, a lesbian. As the probability approaches zero, we might change unlikely to impossible. In an age where being black, lesbian and a quadriplegic can give you a leg up in a literary or artistic career, it makes sense that a publisher is open to a Muslim version of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses from someone who is totally marginal in relation to the mainstream of her community. But where being a member of a small ignored (reviled?) minority is a bonus in getting a book published, it detracts from the project of moving the discussion forward and affecting genuine change. Traditional Muslims are going to be angry about the book, but they’ll be more enraged by the homosexual provocateur who is trying to be honest about the faults of their religion[1].

I’ll be candid myself and admit that getting published in Frontpage & The American Conservative had in large part to do with my background as an apostate Muslim. But because I’m an apostate, an atheist, I’m not going to lecture Muslims about the details of their religion or how they should change-I’m hopeful that the religious tradition can evolve-but my primary focus is on alerting Westerners to possible erosions of the liberal status quo that might occur because of accommodation with Islamic illiberalism. Islam is going to change from within, perhaps due to prodding from non-Muslims, but all we as Westerners can do is wait & watch and be steadfast in maintaining our own liberal values[2].

Update: She’s got a website (thanks Diana).

Update II: Interesting site titled Apostates of Islam.

fn1. I agree with the distillation of her substance as presented by The Times-but I assume she’ll be ignored and discounted just because of her background, in addition to the revisionism of her beliefs.

fn2. Yes, the standard objection is that there is no conflict between being Muslim and Western, but I don’t buy that this is a normative mode of thinking in immigrant Muslim communities. Perhaps it will be in the future, but it isn’t now.

First off, since my own social views are usually closer to grumpy old fart than most, I actually have a great deal of sympathy for what Islam says is the proper role of a woman, and the whole porno chic thing combined with my growing disgust at the commodification of what should be an act of commitment between two people leads me to further sympathize with Muslims who find what goes on here in the House of War to be disgusting. Of course, as I am a man, it is much, much easier for me to say that Islam has the right idea, since even under a sha’ria regime I would not be subject to social control by the male members of my family and subject to beatings and death in the event of an infraction of my honor. So it is, then, that I must in fact take issue with our Islamic friends.

As I say, to get an idea of how a society works, note how they treat (control?) their women.

In comments on a previous post, I mentioned that I had seen a study of the IQ of immigrants to the Netherlands.

Here is the full reference:

Jan te Nijenhuis and Henk van der Flier: ‘Group differences in mean intelligence for the Dutch and Third World immigrants’, Journal of Biosocial Science, 33 (2001), 469-475.

The authors’ Summary is as follows:

“Evidence from eleven samples indicates that the mean IQ of third world immigrants in the Netherlands is lower than the Dutch mean by approximately one standard deviation for Surinamese and Antillians, and by approximately one and a half standard deviations for Turks and Moroccans. Since IQ tests provide the best prediction of success in school and organizations, it could be that the immigrants’ lower mean IQ is an important factor in their low status on the Dutch labour market. The IQs of second-generation immigrants are rising.”

For more details……

The article is a review of Dutch studies of immigrant IQs. It is stated that ‘only studies of acceptable methodological quality were included in the review’. Unfortunately not much is said about the tests used, which are identified by their (Dutch?) acronyms, such as ‘RAKIT’, ‘GATB’, or ‘DAT’. If any Dutch readers know what these are, please tell!

The four immigrant groups studied are Turks, Moroccans, Surinamese, and Antillians. You all know who Turks and Moroccans are, but Surinamese are from the South American former Dutch colony of Surinam (Dutch Guiana), and Antillians are from the Dutch Antilles islands in the Caribbean. The Surinamese and Antillians are predominantly black, with maybe a touch of white and Amerindian ancestry.

It is not explictly stated whether mixed-race individuals are excluded from the studies. Clearly it would be misleading to describe them simply as ‘Turkish’, etc., if they are Turkish-Dutch. If anyone has access to the original Dutch studies maybe they could check?

The data from the various studies are given in a table. There are a few studies of adults, and more of children. The children’s studies are classified as ‘1st generation’, ‘2nd generation’, or ‘Mixed generations’.

I give the key results below. A = Antillians, S = Surinamese, T = Turkish, M = Moroccan. In some of the studies Surinamese and Antillians are grouped together, and in some Turks and Moroccans are grouped together. I have omitted two studies which cover ‘various’ immigrant groups. [For those who consult the original table, I have assumed that the study by van der Vijver covers Surinamese and Antillians, like the one immediately above it in the list.]

You can all group and average the data however you wish. I have calculated averages for Surinamese and Antillians together, and for Turks and Moroccans together, if only because many of the raw data are grouped in this way. For children, I have averaged 2nd generation and mixed generations combined, as there are so few studies which distinguish 2nd generation as such.

So here are the data. The mean IQ of the samples is stated in standard deviations below the Dutch mean:

Adults
Surinamese and Antillians
S: 1.05, 1.08. A: 1.17. Average: 1.1
Turks and Moroccans
T: 1.43 M: 1.86 Average: 1.5

Children (1st generation)
Surinamese and Antillians
S: 0.93, S & A: 1.09 Average: 1.01
Turks and Moroccans
T: 1.45. M: 1.70. T & M: 1.13. Average: 1.43

Children (2nd generation and mixed generations)
Surinamese and Antillians
S & A: 0.77 (2nd gen.), 0.81 (2nd gen.), 0.22 (mix), 0.67 (mix), S: 0.70 (mix),
A: 0.21 (mix) Average: 0.56
Turks and Moroccans
T: 1.20 (2nd gen.), 1.16 (mix), 1.47 (mix), 0.60 (mix) M: 1.43 (2nd gen.), 0.82 (mix), 1.38 (mix), 0.79 (mix). T & M: 0.89 (mix) Average: 1.08.

It will be seen that Turks and Moroccans perform considerably worse than Surinamese and Antillians. Presumably no-one will argue from this that Turks and Moroccans are innately less intelligent than Surinamese and Antillians. The obvious fact is that Surinam and the Antilles are former Dutch colonies, and their people presumably speak reasonable Dutch, while the Turks and Moroccans wouldn’t know Dutch from douche. Both groups perform better after the first generation, as the authors point out.

It is odd that the studies do not cover people of Indonesian origin. As anyone familiar with the Netherlands will know, there is a large Dutch Indonesian community, especially from the Moluccas. Te Nijenhuis and van der Flier say that data on the IQs of various generations of Moluccans are not available. This is surprising.

University administrators said Wu’s visa applications were denied four times by U.S. consular officials in Beijing this summer because officials thought Wu, 20, who comes from a working-class family, would illegally stay in the U.S. after completing her education at Princeton.

There are problems with the current student visa system, but are we really terrified if the first female winner of the Singapore Math Olympiad decides to stay in the United States? Pencil pushers & politicians will be the death of the United States yet….
(via zizka)

Year…………………………..1981…………..1991………….2001
Ethnic group: [in thousands]
White………………………..44,682…….44,848………44,925
Black……………………………707………….917………..1,286
South Asian…………………1,031……….1,487………..2,102
Chinese & other Asian………414…………..626…………..825

The article points out that ethnic minorities as a whole have grown by 40% per decade, while the white population had barely changed. The British-born white population has in fact fallen, but this was offset by substantial white European immigration. The increase in ethnic minorities is due to a combination of continuing immigration (mainly ‘families joining earlier immigrants’ – hmm, does this include brides imported from South Asia?), younger age structure, and higher birth rates.

The figures seem broadly correct, but there is one statistical booby-trap: the author appears to have counted ‘mixed race’ in with ‘black’, which will tend to shift the black growth-rate upward and the white growth-rate downward.

The most interesting point (to me, anyway) was the large amount of white European immigration, which I have suspected on the basis of personal observation but seldom seen referred to in print. This prompted me to look up the 2001 Census Report. For further fascinating info….

The 2001 Census Report for England and Wales is available free online from the Office of National Statistics. The main page on the Census is here, and downloads are available here. The main Report is in four PDF files totalling about 4Mb.

Table S015 gives the population of England and Wales broken down by country of birth. Key figures, in thousands, are:

All origins………..52,042
Europe……………48,898
of which…
UK…………………..47,406
Ireland…………………472
Other West Eur………750
East Eur……………….240

Asia………………….1,594
of which….
Mid East……………….217
Far East……………….372
South Asia…………1,005
of which….
India…………………..456
Pakistan………………308
Bangladesh…………..153

Africa………………….809
Caribbean…………….253

USA…………………….144
Canada………………….62
Australia…………………99
New Zealand……………54.
Table S101 contains data on ethnicity (NB: the answer ‘English’, as distinct from ‘British’, was not available). I will give the main groups in percentages:

White:
White British……………………..87.5
White Irish………………………….1.2
White Other………………………..2.6

Mixed:
White/Black Caribbean………..0.5
White/Black African…………….0.15
White/Asian………………………0.36
Other mixed……………………..0.3

Asian or Asian British:
Indian……………………………..2.0
Pakistani………………………….1.4
Bangladeshi………………………0.5
Chinese……………………………0.4
Other………………………………0.5

Black or Black British:
Black Caribbean………………..1.1
Black African…………………….0.9.

No huge surprises here, except perhaps the large number of ‘White Other’, which includes West and East Europeans, US and Canada, Australia and NZ, and a few other odds and ends.

The number of people born in Ireland and/or classifying themselves as Irish has declined substantially since the 1970s, due to improved economic conditions and a lower birth rate in Ireland, and a consequent reduction in the ‘supply’ of Irish migrants.

Of course, all this assumes that the Census data are accurate. There is bound to be some general under-reporting, which the ONS have adjusted for, based on sample surveys. But there will also be more specific under-reporting of certain categories of people, such as the homeless, and illegal immigrants. Probably at least 50,000 should be added to the African and Asian totals to allow for this.

DAVID BURBRIDGE

We now try to cover up the nature of the retarded by saying that they are “special.” Sadly, though, all that this misplaced sensitivity will do is ruin the use of the word special throughout the English language until it comes to be applied solely to the feeble-minded. There is, after all, precedent for such. In old English, the word “sæl” originally meant “time,” “season,” “occasion,” or “prosperity.” Thus, if someone or something was “sælig,” it was timely or fortuitous. Eventually, “sælig” came to signify more than simple good fortune and came to take on the meaning of “blessed.” It is not much of a jump then, to see that, eventually, the term “sælig” was eventually applied to children who were less than bright. In the same way that we hear “Timmy is the ‘special’ child,” and immediately understand without the need to resort to terms that hurt the feelings, so too would English people refer to a child with intellectual impairments as “blessed.”[2] From there, it was not much further until “saelig” came to mean “simple minded” exclusively, and, as you have probably figured out, “sælig” shifted to “sely” in Middle English, which then, in modern English became “silly.” That “silly” has its roots in “blessed” should indicate to us that no matter what term we will apply to the low-IQ, it will always be a term meaning, to be blunt, stupid. There’s a lesson in here about deep structure[3], but I really haven’t the time to go into it.

On another etymological note, for thousands of years, the accepted etymology of “Cyclops” was that it came from “wheel-eye,” i.e. from the Greek words “kyklos” (from which we get “cycle”) and from the root “op–”. It has lately, though, been suggested that the original etymology may have been closer to “cattle rustler,” coming from a combination of the Indo-European word that eventually came to be “Kuh” in German and “cow” in English. The second half of the word came from the root “klep–” from which Greek “kleptes” meaning “thief” come. [4] This of course would seem to make more sense, since the “wheel eye” etymologies have a sense of back-constructed etymologies of the pre-modern world which find their best expression in the wild and zany writings of Isidore of Seville. Moreoever, if one looks at the lifestyle of the Cyclopses, one notes that they are pastoralists, “having neither laws nor assemblies,” and who “do not raise plants nor plow.” (Homer’s Odyssey, Book IX, lines 108-112) Such imagery comes from the dark times of the Greek “Age of Heroes,” and indicates the cyclopses seem to be more of a representation of the barbaric pastoralist outsiders than Star Trek monster which it rather later became. Thus it is that your Greek in the ninth-millenium B.C. would more be thinking of a cattle rustling nomad that raids your crops than an exotic monster.

[1]“Retarded.” The Oxford English Dictionary. http://www.oed.com

[2]As a brief digression, there was more to the apellation of “blessed” for simple-minded than desire to offend. There were also theological implications, as St. Paul says in the 1st Chapter of Corinthians that the wisdom of the World is foolishness before God and the foolishness of the world is wisdom before God. Such thinking eventually leads to the idea of the holy fool, which IMHO survives in disguised form in most cinematic representations of the retarded, who are portrayed as simple, and yet somehow more saintly and blessed. Such nonsense eventually results in things like the Supreme Court ruling that the retarded cannot be executed.

[3]Noam Chomsky was a brilliant linguist back before the brain eater got him, and we would do well to remember the words of Frodo concerning the fallen Sauraman: “Even now I will not wish him harmed, for he was once of so great an order that none of us would have dared raise a hand against him.” (quoted from memory)

[4] I do not have a cite on this, though, as it merely came up in a conversation with a friend of mine who is an Indo-Europeanist and I really don’t feel like doing a journal crawl to find the cites, so sorry.

Posted by razib at 05:26 PM

Shit dog, check this out, yo:

One billion strong, all year long,
Prayers to Allah even in Hong Kong
Can never be wrong if we read the Qur’an
Cause it’s never been changed since day one.
Others may brag, say that we lag,
But they don’t know all the power we had
The power we had, the power we have
So Muslimoon don’t you ever be sad
Take many looks, go read their books,
You’ll see all the facts that your friends overlook,
So always be proud, you can say it out loud
I am proud to be down with the Muslim crowd!

M-U-S-L-I-M
I’m so blessed to be with them…
M-U-S-L-I-M
I’m so blessed to be with them…

They look at me strangely
Like I emit some type of energy
That draws Kafirs – disbelievers towards me.
Thinking to themselves what makes him different from me.
Is it the hair, the clothes or maybe the food he eats,
What could it be, that make thug cats, stand at attention,
His demeanor’s peaceful but on his face it’s clearly written that,
This aint the sorta brother caught up in this and that
Running streets carrying heat yo he aint into that.
This brother must live by some type of criteria,
To make it to the average cat quite superior
So maybe one of these days I get near enough
Play like Nancy Drew on this mystery and clear it up.
So listen up if you think this is strange,
Cause these the type of thoughts that use to run through a new Shahada’s brains
and I bear witness to the one with 99 names, InshAllah I will always remain.

M-U-S-L-I-M
I’m so blessed to be with them…
M-U-S-L-I-M
I’m so blessed to be with them…

Don’t know about you, I know about me,
I’m proud because I’m rolling Islamically
Everywhere I see, even on TV,
People talking trash about the way I be.
But what they all hate, is if we get great
Cause we’re the only ones with our heads on straight
Don’t ever frown, or your head looking down,
If you read the Qur’an you’re the best in the town.
Y’all have doubt say- we have no clout
But-within-a-few years see how we’ve come about.
Were back on the scene, The number-one deen,
I’m proud to be down with the Muslimeen!

Posted by: Chris Wat August 30, 2003 08:27 PM

there’s an extremely strange development in the muslim world … Shiites are displaying photos of imam ali like as if he was jesus christ… considering that idolatory is banned in islam… and images of the top guys are banned… this seems to be some kind of cataclysmic shift in attitude… http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq.html

Posted by: turkey time gobble gobbleat August 31, 2003 06:56 AM

not that cataclysmic, don’t confuse wahabbis with everyone else. turkish and persian versions of islam have always been more photogenic.

Posted by: razib at August 31, 2003 04:52 PM

Godless comments:

I tossed in a few comments that readers/co-bloggers may be interested in.

Keira Knightly….

Kate Beckinsale….

…or, a more typically Germanic actress, Naomi Watts:

Ain’t diversity great?

Here is a real German, Eva Habermann:

Ok, more Keira….

Here something that I am surprised that Wade included in the article:

Not everything is roses in evolution’s garden. Ronald Fisher, the British biologist, pointed out in 1930 that the genes for mental ability tend to move upward through the social classes but that fertility is higher in the lower social classes. He concluded that selection constantly opposes genes that favor creativity and intelligence.Fisher’s idea has not been proven wrong in theory, although many biologists, besides detesting it for the support it gave to eugenic policies, believe it has proven false in practice. “It hasn’t been formally refuted in the sense that we could never test it,” Dr. Pagel said. Though people with fewer resources tend to have more children, that may be for lack of education, not intelligence. “Education is the best contraceptive. If you brought these people up in the middle class they would have fewer children,” Dr. Pagel said. “Fisher’s empirical observation is correct, that the lower orders have more babies, but that doesn’t mean their genotypes are inferior.”

Does anyone really buy this? Yes, the Flynn Effect is undeniable, but assuming the premises, that intelligence is heritable to some extent, that socioeconomic status (SES) has some relationship to innate intellectual capacities and low SES status has a positive correlation with fecundity-it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to connect the dots. Oh, and by the way, I have heard several liberal friends who are in graduate studies in the biological sciences who express concern with the the dysgenic trends of our species, so it isn’t only people “on the street” that wonder about this, when you get biologists off the record I suspect you hear a different tune…. (The collected papers of eminent evolutionary biologist W.D. Hamilton for instance is a case in point-there is quite a bit of embarrassing material for potentional pangyrists & friends)

Here is the website for the American Queer Muslim organization. Check out their personals section. Halal sodomy?

BTW, I just had a phone conversation with someone who lives in NYC, and apparently he had a big falling out with a friend who is a lawyer at the SEC. My friend noted that we should be concerned about the hostility toward the West that pervades the world-view of a substantial portion of the Ummah, and, their predeliction to resort to violent means. This elicited an angry outburst that “one should not generalize” aboout people in such a manner, and that my friend “needs to get educated.” There is a rot in the mental foundations of the West-perhaps all good things must come to an end?

Robert Cringely has two articles related to I.T. outsourcing. The first is titled Body Count: Why Moving to India Won’t Really Help IT and the second is called May the Source Be With You: IT Productivity Doesn’t Have to Be an Oxymoron, but Outsourcing Isn’t the Way to Achieve It. The underlying problem has to do with bureaucratic inefficiency (a conflict between the proximate incentive of division managers & the ultimate goal of a given company). I have excerpted some interesting parts below, you should read both columns in full, Cringely is all about hyperbole, he’s a tech columnist after all, and he has his biases, but he’s always entertaining….

Update: I have to include the sequal to Foreign Customer Service SUCKS!…. There were a few things I left out. Not only does DELL’s customer service suck, their automated touch-tone system sucks. For instance:

• Tech Support guy tells me he can’t track my order, but he’ll forward me to the automated service tracker
• Automated service tracker wants my service tag, I enter it
• Automated service tracker forwards me to another set of touch-tone options, another one among these is listed as automated service tracker, so I select it
• Automated service tracker #2, which has a malesque voice instead of a female one, asks me to enter the service tag, I do, and I’m forwarded too….tech support guy!

Something is really wack at DELL. On the other hand, a shitty automated help system is CHEAP compared to people, and shitty foreign customer service is CHEAP compared to native English speaking customer service, so profits are probably going up. Should I even add that I asked them to look at my modem because it was acting up *twice* and the form that shows what the technician tested indicates that the modem wasn’t examined?

From article one:There is somewhere in almost every company a spreadsheet showing a cost-benefit analysis for every worker. It all comes down to a single lifetime number that is the difference between the expected earnings to the corporation that are made possible by the direct labor of that employee, and the total cost of that employee to the company in current wages and future benefits. Nobody admits the existence of this spreadsheet, which is probably illegal, but it is there. And at some point, it indicates in many cases that a worker has reached a condition where they are likely to cost the company more in future benefits than they will earn the company through future labor. At that moment, that employee becomes expendable….
….
Big IT companies think in terms of billable hours, and the way to maximize billable hours is by having lots of workers. Headcount is everything. It not only determines potential revenue, it also determines political power. If my division is bigger (has more people) than your division, I am more powerful you, you worm.

Since the start of the PC revolution, Information Technology has come to pervade the enterprise. Every desk has a computer, and every computer has a technician. A few years ago, experts started noticing that the productivity gains we expected for our MULTI TRILLION DOLLAR investment weren’t coming through. “Next year,” said the Chief Information Officer on his way to hiring a bunch of new people. “Next year.” Only next year never comes.
…
Which brings us back to India and offshoring. So IBM and a number of other companies will send jobs to India. Profits will rise, but no head counts will drop. Head count will rise, in fact, because the heads are so much cheaper. Productivity for these offshoring companies will not rise. It will fall. It will fall simply because of the added overhead to support those longer information supply lines. And service to customers will not improve at all.
…
Just as an example, there are programmers who are a hundred or a thousand times more productive than their coworkers, and every Silicon Valley startup is constantly on the lookout for that kind of genius. Those people work in big companies, too, but their impact is muted. What manager at any big company would trade 100 workers for one, no matter how smart the one? No manager would do that, and yet they should. Power and efficiency are in conflict here. And that’s why we can scale up the software and the hardware, gaining efficiencies along the way, but we don’t do that with people. It’s not that we can’t, we just don’t. It is a disservice to customers and a drag on earnings. There is no rational justification at all for this headcount mentality, yet it still exists.

From article two:
Now another question: Why are Linux computers gaining in popularity with large organizations while Macs, which are based after all on BSD Unix, aren’t? While there is certainly a lot to be said for Linux in competition with various flavors of Windows (Linux is faster, more memory-efficient, more secure, has more sources of supply, supports many more simultaneous users per box in a server environment, and is clearly cheaper to buy), the advantage over Macintosh computers is less clear.

Again, it comes down to the IT Department Full Employment Act. Adopting Linux allows organizations to increase their IT efficiency without requiring the IT department to increase ITS efficiency. It takes just as many nerds to support 100 Linux boxes as 100 Windows boxes, yet Linux boxes are cheaper and can support more users. The organization is better off while the IT department is unscathed and unchallenged.

I am not claiming that every organization should throw out its PCs and replace them with Macs, but the numbers are pretty clear, and the fact that more Macs don’t make it into server racks has to be based on something, and I think that something is CIO self-interest.

Macs reduce IT head count while Linux probably increases IT head count, simple as that.
…
What’s ironic in this IT outsourcing is that the end game has not the big U.S. companies winning, but their Indian subcontractors. This isn’t rocket science, and the Indians are going to quickly see that they can cut out their U.S. employers and go directly to the customers. It won’t happen immediately, but eventually every U.S. outsourcing vendor will try to bring the work back in-house for this very reason. And we’ll be paying for it all.

Godless comments:

Cringely is often smart, but he’s being dumb in these articles. He’s correct that outsourcing is partly a legal way to get around anti-age discrimination laws in the US. But it’s more than that – it’s about getting competent programmers at much lower prices than in the US. Part of that is because of US regulations (like hiring & firing restrictions, etc.) and part of that is because of purchasing-power-parity considerations. That is, the “anti-age discrimination” laws are just one of many hiring & firing regulations that drive up the price of skilled labor.

All the rest about “selfish IT departments” is foolish. If the IT departments were so selfish and non-productive, at least a few companies would start to pare them down as the reductions would positively impact the bottom line. That’s capitalism at work. Oh yeah, and as for the bit about why people don’t use Macs on the server side? It’s because they suck (expensive + limited software).

Outsourcing’s success or failure will also be capitalism at work. Maybe these Indian & Chinese programmers really are as uncreative and foolish as the guys at Zazona and VDare think. If so, the product will suck, and we’ll see a return to US programmers, as it will negatively impact the bottom line.

Personally, I consider such objections (often filled with cultural ad-hominems against “suttee”, etc.) to be the wishful thinking of displaced nativists. This kind of economic nationalism was encountered and defeated in the 80′s when union workers tried to prevent foreign competition from Japan. It’s rearing its head again in response to skilled outsourcing and “trade deficits”, as populists like Buchanan jump on the bandwagon. The fact is that free trade boosts the standard of living of the consumer, and those who’re rendered obsolete need to just suck it up and retrain. Tariffs and protectionism hurt everyone, as the recent steel tariffs fiasco shows:

Before the tariff, 5 percent of the steel used in the United States was imported. Because of the new 30 percent tariff, the other 95 percent also has risen in cost, said Alexander. This means that many automotive parts can no longer be bought at a reasonable price. If the steel tariffs continue, there will be a wave of plant closings, predicts Alexander.” What we did in trying to save steel jobs is destroyed a lot of steel-consuming jobs,” he said.

Buchanan’s philosophy is just nationalism plus socialism. Like its economic handmaiden (autarky), we need not be reminded of the long list of failures such an ideology has occasioned.