In the 1970s and 1980s, Bill James put a lot of effort into predicting how well young players would do. In 1988, he summed up 15 things he’d learned, and three of them related to forecasting young players’ development:

• Minor league batting statistics will predict major league batting performance with essentially the same reliability as previous major league statistics.
• Players taken in the June draft coming out of college (or with at least two years of college) perform dramatically better than players drafted out of high school.
• The chance of getting a good player with a high draft pick is substantial enough that it is clearly a disastrous strategy to give up a first round draft choice to sign a mediocre free agent.

James essentially found, unsurprisingly, that the closer players got to the majors, the easier it is to predict their major league performance. Minor league hitters can be predicted reasonably well from statistics alone. Drafting college players was usually safer than drafting high school players. High draft pick high school pitchers, I believe, were especially likely to flame out. (more…)

When young Somali immigrants aren’t pursuing jihad in the dear homeland, some of the tribe think it’s a big yuck to assault people and put it on YouTube. Several self-appointed “stars” recently mugged it up with their real names, then knocked down old people and children–the Somali Tubers were too cowardly to pick victims strong enough to fight back.

Even the normally diversity-enthralled Star Tribune reported the story with a degree of disapproval: Police on the trail of attackers shown in YouTube video.

A YouTube video of eight young men terrorizing bicyclists and pedestrians — including children and older people — in what appear to be Minneapolis and St. Paul has triggered an investigation by police in both cities.

Edited and set to music, the video shows the group of what appear to be teenagers or young men taking turns saying, “Watch this,” before knocking down victims and running away, laughing.

Somebody has put up the original Tube (HERE) that was pulled, plus a little commentary tacked on; there’s no reason to think that version won’t be pulled too. But it is available for viewing now, if you don’t mind subjecting yourself to some seriously repulsive stupid.

The good news is that the feeble-mindedness of the criminals made finding them easy for law enforcement: Police arrest 4 in videotaped assaults posted on YouTube (KARE-11 TV, Nov 19).

Also on Wednesday, one of the alleged victims came forward to report what he says happened to him.

Paul Dickinson, 71, of St. Paul said he was on his evening stroll along Grand Avenue near Avon Avenue in St. Paul when a man ran at him from behind and tackled him.

“I had no advanced warning at all, so I just fell like a stone.  I did a faceplant on the sidewalk,” Dickinson said.

Dickinson also spotted the young man running away and laughing after the attack.  It was a scene he didn’t expect to see again — until he learned of the now infamous video.  Dickinson believes his attack was one of those included in the video.

“I  think what did they do, was that on their list, they had to go tackle an old man,” he said.

Just think, we would have missed all this enriching diversity without multicultural immigration.

In the New York Times here.

You’ve already seen Malcolm Gladwell’s letter, with his ad hominem attack on me as a crimethinker. I’d half-assumed that the NYT would cut that part out in the interests of saving space, but they left it in.

From the NYT:

Steven Pinker replies:

What Malcolm Gladwell calls a “lonely ice floe” is what psychologists call “the mainstream.” In a 1997 editorial in the journal Intelligence, 52 signatories wrote, “I.Q. is strongly related, probably more so than any other single measurable human trait, to many important educational, occupational, economic and social outcomes.” Similar conclusions were affirmed in a unanimous blue-ribbon report by the American Psychological Association, and in recent studies (some focusing on outliers) by Dean Simonton, David Lubinski and others.

Gladwell is right, of course, to privilege peer-reviewed articles over blogs. But sports is a topic in which any academic must answer to an army of statistics-savvy amateurs, and in this instance, I judged, the bloggers were correct. They noted, among other things, that Berri and Simmons weakened their “weak correlation” (Gladwell described it in the New Yorker essay reprinted in “What the Dog Saw” as “no connection”) by omitting the lower-drafted quarterbacks who, unsurprisingly, turned out not to merit many plays. In any case, the relevance to teacher selection (the focus of the essay) remains tenuous.

As a commenter pointed out, this debate over NFL quarterbacks is really a stalking horse for the debate over IQ and race, which, in turn, influences practically every other concept about how the world works. (more…)

Liberal-ish libertarian blogger Megan McArdle doesn’t really like Sarah Palin but

“Y’all well know that I really don’t like Sarah Palin.  In fact, more than one of you has yelled at me about this.  And I find the whole schtick about how the media is just a bunch of elitist hooligans who are out to get her really grating.

That’s why I really wish the media wouldn’t act like, well, a bunch of elitist hooligans who are out to get her.  I’ve coined a new phrase to cover the situation: Palinoia.  It’s when you think people are out to get you, and then they do their best to justify your erroneous belief.” [Palinoia]

It was never erroneous, of course. Megan makes a point we’ve made here:

“Then there’s the Associated Press, putting 11 reporters on the task of “fact checking” her book.  I put the words in quotes because the CJR notes that much of this herculean feat is not checking facts, but quibbling with interpretations or sentimental boilerplate about the hearts and minds of Alaskans.  But the deeper question is how come Palin’s book gets a team of fact checkers, when books by other politicians get the standard gloss?”

Steve Sailer is one still of the few pundits who’ve read Dreams From My Father, and he was condemned in the Washington Monthly for doing so. Megan says that “There seems to be an unhealthy obsession with tearing her down.”

Which brings us straight to Andrew Sullivan.Michelle Malkin has the details on that case:It’s official: Atlantic magazine blogger suffers Palin-Induced Psychosis.

Robert De Brus writes:

Wall Street Journal writer James Taranto, who contributes the paper’s excellent “Best of the Web” blog, is upset that a friend and colleague, Tunku Varadarajan, has been taken to task for not taking the politically correct line on Maj. Nidal Hasan’s mass murder at Fort Hood.

A business professor at New York University, Varadarajan wrote piece for Forbes.com called “Going Muslim,” observing that political correctness, the fear of offending Muslims, may have led the Army to ignore the warning signs of Hasan’s impending attack.

“We are a civilized society. One of our cardinal rules of coexistence is that we (try always to) judge people only by their actions and not by their identity, whether racial, religious or sexual. This is our great strength as a society, and also, in the present circumstances, our great weakness: How to address the threat posed by the fact that, of the hundreds of thousands of Muslims in our midst, there are a few (perhaps many more than a few) who are so radicalized that they would kill their fellow Americans? Must we continue to be neutral in handling all people from different groups even though we know that there are differential risks posed by people of one group? The problem here is a heightened version of the airport security problem, where we check all people–including Chinese grandmothers–regardless of risk profiles. But can we afford that on a grand, national scale? (And I mean that question not merely in a financial sense, but also in terms of the price we’d pay in failing to detect a threat in time.)”

Varadarajan’s observation is, of course, correct. But at the end of his column, he did the smart thing and wrote that Army must be lookout for all kinds of extremists, not just Muslims. But that caveat wasn’t enough.

The diversicrats at NYU flew into a rage. A rabbi at the school’s Jewish center has ramped up a “Campaign Against Hate.” You’d think a rabbi would have better sense given what Muslims typically want to do to the Jews, but let’s leave that aside.

The president of the school joined in:

“A journalist and NYU clinical faculty member has written a piece for Forbes that many Muslims find offensive. I understand how they feel–I found it offensive, too. I am teaching Muslim students now, and I have taught them in the past; the portrayal of Muslims in the Forbes piece bears no resemblance to my experience; I disagree with the Forbes piece and think it is wrong.”

But Mr. Taranto can’t figure out why the diversicrats are upset, at least if I’m reading him correctly:

“How’s that for diversity? NYU’s Jews and Muslims are ganging up on a Hindu and accusing him of promoting “hate” — an inflammatory charge anywhere, but especially on a university campus. Yet it’s clear that Rabbi Sarna knows the charge is unjustified, since his actual criticism of Varadarajan’s work–it “does not deal sensitively enough” — is so tepid.”

Perhaps Mr. Taranto might check and rethink his support for his own paper’s editorials. The Journal is nothing if not the nation’s leading editorial page cheering immigration, and by extension, the leftist anti-West hatred that travels under the name “diversity” now appears to have victimized his friend for telling the truth — or at least trying to.

Note to Mr. Taranto: Read Ann Coulter’s latest column: Diversity is the problem.

Usually the cliche is “Women and Minorities Hardest Hit” but this story is about African-American men, who are hard hit by a recession that’s crashed construction, among other things.But African-Americans are just a special case of American worker displacement, tracked by VDARE.com every month on VDARE.com’s American Worker Displacement Index.

And the cause of American Worker Displacement is immigration.

Black Males Hit Extra Hard By Unemployment

by Cheryl Corley

African-American Male Unemployment

The unemployment rate for all African-Americans is about 50 percent higher than the nation as a whole — and even higher for African-American males.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Credit: Nelson Hsu/NPR

text sizeAAA

November 19, 2009

The country’s spiraling unemployment rate is taking a particular toll on men as the recession continues to roil male-dominated industries, such as manufacturing and construction.

This “he-cession,” as it’s sometimes called, has hit African-American men especially hard, increasing their unemployment rate to more than 17 percent last month.[MORE]

To summarize the situation, Hyatt housekeepers were forced to train their foreign replacements. A union called “Unite Here“ offered to help these workers by organizing protests and boycotts.

Unite Here comes up with all sorts of reasons the Hyatt 100 lost their job, but immigration isn’t one of them. Notice how they mention outsourcing but conveniently ignored the fact that the replacement workers used by the bodyshop are immigrants.

Hyatt fired 100 housekeepers from its three Boston-area hotels after asking the workers to train their replacements from an outsourcing agency.

The union is correct that the economy is being used an excuse by Hyatt, but the reason they can actually do what they are doing is IMMIGRATION.

Hyatt is using the economy as an excuse to dramatically lower the living standards of hotel workers in other cities as well.

The same thing is happening to Hyatt workers in San Francisco and Chicago. Not surprisingly Unite Here and the AFL-CIO are claiming to do something about the problem while ignoring the real issue: IMMIGRATION.

The unions decided to protest the Boston situation by encouraging participants to chant things like “Sí, se puede”. That Spanish expression is used by the pro-amnesty crowds and Obama followers, who are often one and the same. Not a word was said about the reason Hyatt was able to replace American workers who are perceived to be more expensive — IMMIGRATION!

In the previous blog I wrote: “the immigration angle of this story is being swept under the rug by the mainstream media”, which is just what happened. Local media like the Boston Globe dropped any connections that the Hyatt story had with immigration by simply failing to mention it was ever an issue. In contrast, their early articles on Hyatt did mention immigration without giving specifics.

So, how did things work out for those housekeepers that were replaced by cheap foreign laborers?

The Hyatt offered some of them jobs back but the terms were terrible. So far only 6 of 98 housekeepers have gone for the deal. I don’t mean to seem callous, but it’s actually kind of funny that Hyatt offered to hire the workers back but only if they agree to work for an outsourcing company called United Service Companies. How ironic is that?

The union and the ex-workers of Hyatt could make immigration an issue, which might lead to a different outcome than the miserable one they are getting now, but of course they won’t because probably none of them understand how Einstein’s famous statement about repeating errors and getting the same result applies to their failure to mention immigration. The unions would rather lose than be politically incorrect, and Hyatt management will be more than happy to accommodate them. Those Hyatt workers are more alone than they realize because even their “friends” aren’t going to help to solve the real problem.

Political correctness kills.

Now we are learning that Dr. Hasan, the murderer of Fort Hood, was cut enormously more slack than any non-Muslim would have received. He retained his position only because of his minority status.

“Two years ago, a top psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was so concerned about what he saw as Nidal Hasan’s incompetence and reckless behavior that he put those concerns in writing. NPR has obtained a copy of the memo, the first evaluation that has surfaced from Hasan’s file.

Officials at Walter Reed sent that memo to Fort Hood this year when Hasan was transferred there.

Nevertheless, commanders still assigned Hasan — accused of killing 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood on Nov. 5 — to work with some of the Army’s most troubled and vulnerable soldiers.

The Damning Memo

On May 17, 2007, Hasan’s supervisor at Walter Reed sent the memo to the Walter Reed credentials committee. It reads, “Memorandum for: Credentials Committee. Subject: CPT Nidal Hasan.” More than a page long, the document warns that: “The Faculty has serious concerns about CPT Hasan’s professionalism and work ethic. … He demonstrates a pattern of poor judgment and a lack of professionalism.” It is signed by the chief of psychiatric residents at Walter Reed, Maj. Scott Moran.

(more…)

Ann Coulter:

It cannot be said often enough that the chief of staff of the United States Army, Gen. George Casey, responded to a massacre of 13 Americans in which the suspect is a Muslim by saying: “Our diversity … is a strength.”

As long as the general has brought it up: Never in recorded history has diversity been anything but a problem. Look at Ireland with its Protestant and Catholic populations, Canada with its French and English populations, Israel with its Jewish and Palestinian populations.

Or consider the warring factions in India, Sri Lanka, China, Iraq, Czechoslovakia (until it happily split up), the Balkans and Chechnya. Also look at the festering hotbeds of tribal warfare — I mean the beautiful mosaics — in Third World hellholes like Afghanistan, Rwanda and South Central, L.A.

“Diversity” is a difficulty to be overcome, not an advantage to be sought. True, America does a better job than most at accommodating a diverse population. We also do a better job at curing cancer and containing pollution. But no one goes around mindlessly exclaiming: “Cancer is a strength!” “Pollution is our greatest asset!”

Yes, America clearly needs a close analysis of the President of the United States’ first book. But who could possibly know where to find such a thing?