Radio Reinvented

KGO, one of the nation's most successful talk radio stations has just changed its format to all news. Just what we need: yet another news outlet.

I believe the era of traditional talk radio, with expensive headquarters and expensive talk show hosts is obsolete. The question is: What should replace it?

If I were starting a radio station, I'd crowdsource my programming: Each day, I'd search the podcasting world and broadcast and podcast the very best shows I could find. It would seem that such curated crowdsourced radio would offer fresher, better content, far less expensively than any one station's set of talk show hosts could provide.

Of course, changing programs every day will lose listeners who tune-in specifically because they like a specific show or host. But net, I think it would improve radio and allow it to survive in a world of too many new outlets for interactivity, for example, online forums, Amazon and Yelp reviews, and, of course, Facebook.

What do you think?

It's Time to Hold Colleges Accountable

The Occupy Wall Streeters are certainly justified in railing against their student loans. College recruitment efforts manipulate students into thinking for the enormous time and money, they'll learn a lot and be professionally employable. The truth is far different.

Perhaps most insulting, the powerful higher education lobby has pressured the government to make student loans the ONLY loan that cannot be discharged through bankruptcy. Indeed it is time to rage against the higher education machine.

My latest Washington Post Big Idea column argues that we must shine a light on what colleges actually do: that is, to prominently post a Report Card with such items as:

• What percent of freshmen graduate in four years, broken down by high school record?
• What percent of graduates are, within six months of graduation, professionally employed, broken down by major and high school record?
• How much do students grow in critical thinking from freshman to senior year, disaggregated by high school record?

Not only would that inform consumers, it would likely finally pressure colleges into spending less on ego-driven new buildings, fat administrations, and silly-research-focused professors and more on transformational undergraduate instructors, mentoring, and a career center that actually is helpful. It might even push colleges to replace lackluster lectures with courses taught on video by a dream team of the world's most transformational instructors.

Direct Evidence that Intelligence is Half Genetic: New Hope for Closing the Achievement Gap?

Many people believe that intelligence, like most human characteristics, is affected both by genes and environment.

Indeed, studies of fraternal and identical twins, especially those of identical twins raised apart, summarized in the chart above and, for example, THIS, provide strong evidence that intelligence is roughly half genetic. A survey of 661 experts on intelligence found that the large majority believe intelligence has a significant genetic component.

But there hasn't yet been an analysis of actual genomes to prove that...until now.

THIS study of 3,511 people's genomes was published on the prestigious Nature.com last month but remains largely unreported by the media. The abstract reports, "Our results unequivocally confirm that a substantial proportion of individual differences in human intelligence is due to genetic variation."

What are the implications?

The bad news

This has to be a blow to educators and social policymakers, who, for a half century now, have been betting billions of tax and charity dollars that the achievement gap could be significantly reduced or eliminated by redistributing resources to improve the environments of low-achieving children and adults by more spending on education, job training programs, self-esteem programs, etc. But just as in a long-distance car race, tuning-up a VW Bug that's running miles behind a Porsche doesn't make it likely to catch up, it appears ever less likely that tuning-up low achievers' environment will close the achievement gap to the extent we all hope it will.

Indeed, that study may help explain why, despite massive expenditures on the widest range of such programs, from Head Start (which, in the definitive metaevaluation, alas has been found to have no impact on the achievement gap) to Stop Drop, the achievement gap remains as wide as ever.

Especially in this era of massive federal, state, and local deficits, we might want to ask ourselves how wise is it to continue to reallocate billions of dollars from gifted education to special education, from regular education to compensatory education. Indeed, our core federal education mandate, No Child Left Behind, and other major programs such as Title I, plus much nonprofit funding do that.

The good news

The good news is that the Nature study would seem to point to a new direction and new hope for reducing that achievement gap. In light of that study, the next steps would seem to be to discover the specific genes responsible for intelligence (something China is already doing) to develop a safe and ethical way to replace defective genes and then making available, on a purely voluntary basis, the option to have that gene therapy so prospective parents could help ensure that their kids don't start life with a genetic strike or two against them.

To ensure that option doesn't exacerbate the gap between rich and poor, it should, like most medical services, be fully covered under MediCal (the free health care program for the poor,) and under ObamaCare. In addition, special outreach to low-income communities should be provided, emphasizing both the therapy's availability and its being completely optional.

I would imagine that the therapy would most benefit families of multigenerational low achievement. If my parents were low achievers, I were a low achiever, and now I heard that intelligence was half genetic and there was a free, safe, and effective therapy that would improve my children's chances of having high intelligence and, in turn, be more likely to be successful in school and in career, I'd sign right up.

Here is the study's abstract.

Genome-wide association studies establish that human intelligence is highly heritable and polygenic

G Davies, A Tenesa, A Payton, J Yang, S E Harris, D Liewald, X Ke, S Le Hellard, A Christoforou, M Luciano, K McGhee, L Lopez, A J Gow, J Corley, P Redmond, H C Fox, P Haggarty, L J Whalley, G McNeill, M E Goddard, T Espeseth, A J Lundervold, I Reinvang, A Pickles, V M Steen, W Ollier, D J Porteous, M Horan, J M Starr, N Pendleton, P M Visscher and I J Deary

Abstract

General intelligence is an important human quantitative trait that accounts for much of the variation in diverse cognitive abilities. Individual differences in intelligence are strongly associated with many important life outcomes, including educational and occupational attainments, income, health and lifespan. Data from twin and family studies are consistent with a high heritability of intelligence, but this inference has been controversial. We conducted a genome-wide analysis of 3511 unrelated adults with data on 549 692 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and detailed phenotypes on cognitive traits. We estimate that 40% of the variation in crystallized-type intelligence and 51% of the variation in fluid-type intelligence between individuals is accounted for by linkage disequilibrium between genotyped common SNP markers and unknown causal variants. These estimates provide lower bounds for the narrow-sense heritability of the traits. We partitioned genetic variation on individual chromosomes and found that, on average, longer chromosomes explain more variation. Finally, using just SNP data we predicted ~1% of the variance of crystallized and fluid cognitive phenotypes in an independent sample (P=0.009 and 0.028, respectively). Our results unequivocally confirm that a substantial proportion of individual differences in human intelligence is due to genetic variation, and are consistent with many genes of small effects underlying the additive genetic influences on intelligence.

Deathbed Courage

May deathbed courage yield a 10.3.

And a tsunami.

***************

Note: No, I'm not dying.

The Holiday Season is the BEST Time to Find a Job

Many job seekers make the mistake of stopping their job search during the holidays. There are terrific opportunities that could get you a job offer as a Holiday present:

I'm not social and so I avoid parties but if I were looking for a job, I'd make myself go to as many Holiday parties and fundraisers as possible.

There, I'd introduce myself to the people most likely to help me, and be my most engaging self: asking about them, listening well, asking follow-ups and talking about myself just enough that it doesn't seem like I'm interrogating them. My rule of thumb: talk 25-40% of the conversation.

Before asking for a job lead, I'd try to find an opportunity to help the person, for example, volunteer to help them with something, introduce them to someone they might like to meet, or even just give them some information they'd like to know. For example, if they love Thai food, I'd tell them about my favorite Thai restaurant.

That said, I would mention that I was looking for work. I'd keep it brief and positive, for example, "I'm looking for my next job. This time, I'm going after what I really want." (insert target work.)

If appropriate, at the end of a conversation, I'd hand the person an understated business card. VistaPrint offers great cards and THIS special discount link to VistaPrint offers unbelievable prices.

A day or two later, I'd send a hand-written note card to people with whom I've had a good conversation.

Send Holiday cards. Non-religious, peace-and-good-will-types are safe. If you insert a Holiday letter, mention your job-seeking only briefly and positively, per the above. Mail or email your cards early so people receive them in time to invite you to Holiday parties.

Volunteer. There are many opportunities during the Holiday season. It's a great way to meet other charitable folks as well as to make career connections.

The day after Thanksgiving and during the few days before Christmas right up to Christmas Eve afternoon, contact prospective employers. They're less likely to be busy and more likely to be in the Holiday spirit.

Is it Too Risky to Advocate for Men and Boys?

I have written much on the terribly unfair--relative to their merit-- treatment of white men and boys.

Just one example: the longevity gap between men and women has increased from just one year in 1920 to 5.2 years now. Yet 95+% of the gender-specific medical research over the last 60 years has been on women's health. There's a federal agency and 39 state agencies on women's health, none on men's.

The Obama Administration has created a powerful White House Council on Women and Girls but rejected our compelling proposal for a White House Council on Boys and Men. Forbes recently did a long article on it.

Perhaps even more frightening are the distortions on race and gender issues. For example, the media and even the president continue to promulgate the misleading statistic that women earn 77 cents on the dollar, when there is solid evidence, for example, THIS, that for the same quantity and quality of work, women earn--depending on the study--only slightly less or slightly more than men. And that when women earn less, while there of course are a few Neanderthal sexists out there, the main reason is not prejudice but the choices women make. For example, see THIS National Academy of Sciences study about why women scientists are "underrepresented."

An easy way to access some of my writings on race and gender is to click on "men's issues" and "race" in the label cloud on the right side of this blog.

The unfairnesses to men and boys are terrible not just for them but for society. My most deeply held belief is that meritocracy is more likely than egalitarianism to yield the greatest long-term good.

But we must know which battles are worth fighting lest we squander the precious little time we are given. As the Serenity Prayer wisely says, "Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

Alas, after fighting this fight for two decades now, I'm forced to conclude that the net impact of my efforts to bring merit-based fairness to men and boys has been negative. I have written perhaps 100 articles, op-eds, letters to the editor, and a book, The Silenced Majority, submitting each to 10 or more media outlets and they're almost always rejected. HERE is one reject that particularly disappointed me. Perhaps their being rejected is simply because my work is inferior, although somehow when I write about politically correct matters, my work is routinely published. I'll leave you to judge my work's quality, but certainly my long-sustained efforts seem not to have helped the situation at all. Indeed, white men and boys are, net, treated more unfairly than when I began writing and speaking on the topic. The main effect of my efforts seems to be damage to my career.

So I've concluded, subject to revision, that this is the wrong era to write honestly about race and gender. It seems that today, we can hear only that women and minorities are victims or heroes. And in my judgment, that is unlikely to change for the foreseeable future.

So if you notice that my future writings discuss such issues less or not at all, that's why.

Reinventing Federal Taxation

HERE is the link to my latest Washington Post "What's the Big Idea" column. It proposes replacing the federal income tax with a progressive national sales tax. It would likely end up being only around 10% because I would legalize and tax prostitution and would tax internet sales--it's unfair that local retailers must charge tax while corporations like Amazon needn't.

On this blog, I mentioned that the Post had only committed to my writing five columns, but now, they've extended it to being an ongoing column. My next one will advocate requiring all colleges to post an externally audited, substantive report card on themselves, including student growth, graduation rates, employment of graduates by major, etc. That would both help students pick a college wisely and embarrass colleges into reallocating resources from fancy new buildings and fancy-salaried administrators to better teaching, mentoring, and career services.

The column after that, unless something more news-pegged emerges, will be on reinventing our system of criminal justice.