Category Archives: Reviews

Coming Apart, The State of White America 1960-2010

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Charles Murray has written this book to describe the formation of American classes that represent a remarkable societal change during the last fifty years. I found the book to be difficult to read despite the fact that I was interested in the overall subject. I sometimes wished for more analysis and less raw data.

The author writes that November 22, 1963 “…became the symbolic first day of what would be known as the Sixties and the cultural transformation…” That was the day after the ashen-faced Walter Cronkite announced that President Kennedy had been assassinated.

The discussion of the early sixties is very interesting. There were limited choices in television stations, and you either saw a movie in the theatre or never saw it (absent DVDs and TiVo). People drove cars made in America, and there were few places where you could go out to a meal with ethnic food. Movies and television were carefully watched to eliminate any hints of racy themes or profanity. Marriage was nearly universal, and divorces were rare. A federal court had declared that the book Fanny Hill couldn’t be sent through the mail despite the fact it was well-written. The court wrote that “…filth, even if wrapped in the finest packaging, is still filth.” The North and South were both segregated, although laws allowing segregation in the North were gone. Most women were expected to stay in the home, and those who wanted to work did so as secretaries or teachers. There were few illegal drugs. Twenty percent of the country fell below the poverty line, but, the statistic I found most startling, was that 95 percent of Americans called themselves working or middle class. That means that most poor people did not believe they were “lower class.”

The author writes “This book is about an evolution in American society that has taken place since November 21, 1963, leading to the formation of classes that are different in kind and in their degree of separation from anything that the nation has ever know. I will argue that the divergence into these separate classes, if it continues, will end what has made America America.”  He often refers to the “American Project” in which he describes that people left free to live their lives as they see fit was the basis for what made the nation such a powerful force in the world. He fears that “…America is coming apart at the seams—not seams of race and ethnicity, but of class”

Part 1 is titled “The Formation of a New Upper Class.” He defines the “Narrow Elite” as those who wield political and economic power. They are the owners and top executives of companies, news media, lawyers and physicians, college executives, and city officials. The children in the families of the new upper class have so many activities outside of school that they don’t have time to be children. The new upper class has become separated from the rest of society, and has become dominantly liberal. The people from the upper class neighborhoods of the four largest cities voted 64% strict liberal and 3% leaning liberal 2002 to 2008.

The new upper class is almost exclusively college educated. The lower end of wages for the top percent of taxpayers was in the $200,000 into the early 1990s, but that number had escalated to $441,000 by 2010. The people of this class are effectively segregated from the rest of the country. They tend to be isolated into what the author describes as “Super Zips,” or zip codes where the very wealthy are congregated. Some of these people have been called overeducated elitist snobs, or OES. They make decisions affecting the lives of everyone else, but increasingly don’t know much about how everybody else lives.

Blacks and Latinos constitute only 3 percent of the Super Zip population, but there is a higher percentage of Asians than what would be expected for their share of the population. On the issue of race, the author predicts that whites will be the minority by midcentury or sooner.

The book analyzes neighborhoods called Belmont (upper class) and Fishtown (working class) to discuss what has happened to marriage, industriousness, honesty, and religiosity. Most people of Belmont (just about 90%) are married, the family is intact, the unemployment rate is low, and few have become criminals. In Fishtown the marriage rate has dropped to below 60%, over 20% of the children live in a single parent home, unemployment is more than the national average, and criminal convictions have increased markedly. The only graph that looks similar for the two towns is the one that shows how many “nonbelievers” there are (about 20% in both towns). Self-reported happiness has declined to about 40% in Belmont and a disturbing 20% in Fishtown.

Despite the fact that the subtitle of the book is “The State of White America 1960-2010,” the author reveals that “Expanding the data to all Americans makes hardly any difference at all.” “Coming Apart” may have told the story of white America, but its message is about all of America. It is predicted that we are on the path to no longer being a “super power,”, and unless things change everything that has made the country exceptional will disappear. This is happening because we are handing over the meeting of human needs “…to bureaucracies—the bluntest, clumsiest of all tools for giving people the kind of help they need.”  We seem to want to mimic Europe where “The purpose of life is to while away the time between birth and death as pleasantly as possible.” He observes that the more we pass laws and regulations, the closer we move to the European welfare state, and the American Project will be dead.

One of the harshest statements the author makes is how the members of the new upper class won’t use derogatory labels for anyone, including criminals. “When you get down to it, it is not acceptable in the new upper class to use derogatory labels for anyone, with three exceptions: people with differing political views, fundamentalist Christians, and rural working-class whites.”

The book does leave hope that a new awakening will overtake the country. This could be based on the “…most lovable of exceptional American qualities: our tradition of insisting that we are part of the middle class even if we aren’t, and of interacting with our fellow citizens as if we were all middle class.” That will require that the American new upper class “…must once again fall in love with what makes America different.”

The Nurture Assumption, Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do

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This book by Judith Rich Harris presents some radical ideas that peer groups have much more influence on children than parents. I know that the information is radical, because people I’ve told about the theme are universally skeptical. However, I will say that the evidence presented in the book is quite compelling. The author wrote in 1995, “Do parents have any important long-term effects on the development of their child’s personality? This article…concludes that the answer is no.” She expected the academic world that universally believed nurturing to be crucial would be angry, but she reports instead that they were mostly curious.

The skepticism of others is addressed by the author. She expects that people will have difficulty believing what she wrote. Behavioral geneticists continue to search for the key to why parents are more important. “It’s got to be in there somewhere! Everybody knows parents make a difference! Fifty thousand psychologists couldn’t possibly be wrong!” However, she presents very personal information to validate, at least in her personal experience, why her ideas are correct. Her family moved to an area where the school had “snooty” children who would not play or talk to her. She became inhibited and read a lot. The family moved again in the eighth grade, the new group of kids designated her as a “brain,” and she made a few friends on that basis. However, she remained inhibited. The snooty kids had succeeded at changing her personality.

The first paragraph of the book discusses how the author as a teenager would respond to her parents yelling at her that “…if they didn’t like the way I was turning out they had no one to blame but themselves: they had provided both my heredity and my environment.” What eventually changed her mind was what she considers to be compelling evidence that parents have little to do with the environmental part of the equation. The peer group of the child provides nearly everything of importance. The power of the peer group is reinforced by the demand at home that children not behave like their parents. They can’t drive cars, light matches, boss people around, come and go as they please, and in general not do “…lots of things that look like fun…” Kids quickly learn that what they learn at home about expected behavior will be “…cast off when they step outside as easily as they shed the dorky sweater their mother made them wear.”

One example of information that validates the author’s theories is that many people struggle with why children raised in the same home do not turn out the same. Behavioral geneticists found that growing up in the same home with the same parents “…had little or no effect on the adult personalities of siblings.” There is even a comment that children with homosexual parents have no increase in being homosexuals. Another example is that children living homes where a language other than English is spoken learn to speak English without an accent. An example given late in the book is about a child in a Chinese-speaking home who asks for milk by saying “nai, nai” at home and “ba ba” at daycare. Sons of upper class English families who are raised by nannies until they go to exclusive schools and seldom have any contact with their fathers grow up to be just like their fathers. Both of them were molded by the environment at the schools with no impact from their family life, or lack of a family life. The peer group is demanding, and children work hard to fit in. They know that there will be penalties for behaving differently than expected. The adage, “The nail that sticks up is hammered down” applies.

I had several surprises from the book. One was that studies have not found any consistent differences between only children and children with siblings. Minor differences “…sometimes favor the only child, sometimes the child with the siblings.” Another surprise is that birth order doesn’t make a difference in the way children turn out.

One study that impressively validates the author’s idea included twenty boys selected for an experiment based on their similarities. They were randomly divided into two groups in a camp area and not told about the other group. They named themselves the “Rattlers” and “Eagles,” and in true Lord of the Flies tradition became bitter enemies. They were soon gathering sticks and stones to do battle with the other group.

I searched the book for information that could be used by parents who want to validate that their parenting efforts will make a difference in the outcome of raising their kids. Asian-American parents are likely to be quite authoritarian, and their children are the most likely to turn out competent and successful. The author writes that home life usually has some small influence, but there are exceptions. “It is time to admit that I have been misleading you: the correlation between behavior at home and behavior outside the home may be low, but it is not zero.” “Parents influence the way their children behave at home. They also supply knowledge and training that their children can take with them…” The author also notes that children conceived by donor insemination and raised by lesbians or by single or married heterosexuals turned out “well adjusted and well-behaved.” I infer from this information that children are positively influenced by parents who want them.

There was also an example of identical twins adopted to different families. One piano-teacher mother offered lessons, but did not insist. The non-musical mother insisted the other twin take lessons and practice. The child raised with the non-demanding musical mother grew up unable to play a note. The other child became a concert pianist. That seems to be solid evidence that dedicated parenting can make a difference. Another was the story of The Ditchdigger’s Daughters. The laborer father and chambermaid mother had five daughters, and the man’s fellow workers teased him about being unable to father sons. He responded by insisting his daughters would be women of accomplishment. He told them they were going to grow up to be doctors, and he established that the peer group would be the five girls. Two of the daughters indeed became physicians, one an oral surgeon, on a lawyer, and one a court stenographer.

As a final observation, the author notes that children of two smart people are smarter in part because of heredity. Those parents often do a good job of raising their kids because they enjoy parenting smart kids. They usually work hard to get their kids into good schools with good teachers, where the peer groups in that atmosphere is much more likely to provide a positive influence. However, it needs to be understood that the world outside the home is tough. Parents at home might tell a child that something they did made the parent feel bad. On the playground they are told “You shithead!”

I believe the most important advice to parents is that they should understand the influence the peer group. The author advises, “At least in the early years, they can determine who the child’s peers are.” The author closes with, “As for what’s wrong with you” don’t blame your parents.”

Night of the Silver Stars: The Battle of Lang Vei

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This book by William R. Phillips is an account of battle which began February 6, 1968 at a U.S. Special Forces Camp in Vietnam. This “review” is a departure from what is usually posted, because it is based partly on the book, partly on historical information, and partly on information presented at a recent military reunion by one of the men who was in the battle.

The battle was part of the Khe Sahn campaign by the North Vietnamese. That campaign began with an attack on a Laotian outpost called Ban Huoei Sane manned by 700 Laotian soldiers. Tanks were used in that attack, and the surprised Laotians retreated toward Lang Vei after three hours of battle. The North Vietnamese soldiers and tanks followed to attack Lang Vei where there was a small contingent of U.S. Special Forces and a large number of Laotian and South Vietnamese soldiers. Reinforcements were requested from the Marines at nearby Khe Sahn, but that base refused to believe the reports and send reinforcements. They were skeptical that the report was some sort of ploy to set up an ambush for reinforcements. They did provide artillery support and there was air support.

Three of the North Vietnamese tanks attacking Lang Vei were destroyed by the camp’s one 106mm recoilless rifle operated by Sergeant First Class James W. Holt. However, other tanks quickly penetrated the camp and destroyed several bunkers with their guns. Light anti-tank weapons (LAWs) either malfunctioned or failed to knock out the tanks. One of my favorite comments in the book was by a soldier who observed that the tanks must be “medium tanks,” because the “light anti-tank weapons” (which refers to the portability and not the strength of the weapon) were ineffective.

The command bunker was the only position that held until the morning of February 7. South Vietnamese soldiers in the bunker responded to an order to surrender and were killed when they exited via the stairway. Wikipedia lists that there were a total of 316 camp defenders killed, 75 wounded, and 253 captured.

The title of the book reflects the extraordinary number of Silver Stars awarded for valor in combat. There were twenty-four Americans at the battle, and there was one posthumous Medal of Honor awarded to Sgt. Eugene Ashley, Jr., one Distinguished Service Cross, nineteen Silver Stars, and three Bronze Stars awarded. One reference lists that all of the Americans were either killed (3), wounded (11), or listed as missing or captured (10). Wikipedia gives different numbers, but I am inclined to believe this reference.

The book is full of details about weapons, vehicles, and tactics. Phillips gives an engaging account of the battle, what went well, and what went wrong. Despite all that went wrong a few U.S. Special Forces personnel were eventually able to fight their way out and escape from the camp to be evacuated by Marine helicopters.

I will briefly summarize the personal experience of Paul Longgrear who was an American officer at the battle, although I know I won’t do his account justice. He was one of the men trapped in the command bunker. The NVA attempted unsuccessfully to collapse the bunker with the weight of their tanks and began dropping fragmentation and tear gas (CS) grenades into vents. The tear gas caused the occupants to press their faces into corners of the bunker in a desperate attempt to find some kind of fresh air. They finally decided to make a break, obviously knowing what had happened to the South Vietnamese who had attempted to surrender. Lt. Longgrear ordered that no one was to stop for anyone else if they went down. They had practically no ammunition, but charged up the stairwell and into the open while firing what few rounds they had remaining.

Lt. Longgrear fired his weapon until it jammed, and then began running. His ankle gave out, and he did a complete flip. He was left by the other escaping soldiers as he had ordered. He said he was challenged by God as he lay in a heap “What are you going to do NOW?” He ran to the top of a rise where he was seen by the other soldiers who had thought the reason he went down so dramatically was that he had been hit. He made it out of the compound and was evacuated. He was awarded a Silver Star for his actions in the battle.

Killing for Coal, America’s Deadliest Labor War

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This book by Thomas G. Andrews begins with a description of the United Mine Worker strike in Colorado in 1913  that lasted several months. Violence could finally no longer be contained, and on April 20, 1914 open warfare broke out between the Colorado state militia and “…hundreds of striking coal miners of more than a dozen nationalities.” The canvas tents at Ludlow where the miners and their families were living caught fire, and two women and eleven children were asphyxiated in their cellar hideout. The book does not speculate on which side fired the first shot, but both sides blamed the other. There were many killed by the time the “Ten Days War” ended when President Woodrow Wilson sent in federal troops. The author says that a key premise of current politics continues to be that fairness and justice for working people must be achieved “…through intervention of national unions, the Democratic Party, and the federal government.”

I highly recommend the book. It is well and fairly written, and has fascinating history about the history of Colorado, the land, the environment, the people, and the conflicts between coal miners and mine owners.

The origin of opening the coal mines of Colorado is traced to William Jackson Palmer who had his apprenticeship studying the coal mining industries of England, and he was appalled at some of the working conditions he observed in those mines. “Mine work seemed to turn boys into drones, women into men, and manly laborers into ‘an inferior class of beings’.” Palmer didn’t immediate building a coal mining empire. He organized a Union light cavalry unit to fight in the Civil War. He was a brevet general by the end of the war and thus was the highest ranking Quaker on either side of the conflict. The end of the war freed Palmer to begin building an empire seeking to extract coal, or “buried sunshine” and begin powering the transformation of Colorado. Industry (mostly blast furnaces and smelters), trains, and homes were fueled. Farming prospered because there was energy to pump irritation water out of the Ogallala aquifer. Of course the air smelled of smoke from the burned coal. A Denver Post cartoon celebrated the end of a strike in 1899 and “…depicted the welcome return of inky black billows to the urban skyline above a caption that said…Prosperity.”  Beneath “…the glitter of gold and silver (of Colorado mining) lay the grime of coal.”

Palmer stated that he intended to pay workers enough to have some left for saving and investing. He also gave them the opportunities for stock options and profit sharing. Coal barons who followed were less interested in the welfare of the miners.

The descriptions of the broad diversity of the nationalities of the coal miners, or colliers, who were lured to Colorado from far reaches of the world by the promise of well-paying jobs, is an interesting component of the book. Agents developed credit systems for destitute people who wanted to immigrate and the transportation lines profited as the number of immigrants swelled. The harsh conditions made me wonder why someone would travel across the planet to work in the mines. One mine inspector wrote that “…it seems that death lurks…” Electrification brought exposed wires, cages carrying the workers to the depths sometimes smashed, and power drills created clouds of choking dust. These hazards were added to the risk of death from explosion, cave in, carbon monoxide and other toxins in addition to  the physical problems from working deep underground in heat with poor lighting and performing back-breaking labor. George Orwell once wrote, “Watching coal-miners work you realize momentarily what different universes different people inhabit.” There were 1,708 Colorado mine deaths between 1884 and 1912.

There are some descriptions of the mines that are on the light-hearted side. The mines were often inhabited by large numbers of mice, and the men welcomed and fed and even named them. The men found the playful and harmless creatures a welcome distraction from the long hours working under dangerous conditions. The mice were also the miners “canaries,” since they were very susceptible to very small amounts of carbon monoxide and were vibrations that warned of a roof cracking overhead. The miners watched the mice closely and responded if one keeled over or scurried away. Mules were a different story. The animals were bred to be either quite large or small, to match the height of the mines. However, almost all of the mules contributed to earning the description “stubborn as a mule.”

The men were paid by the tons of coal they mined and not for “dead work” involving activities such as building supporting timbers. They would gamble with their lives by skimping on erecting support structures to maximize the time they could be mining coal. The toiling men and animals depleted oxygen by breathing heavily from their labors, and made them, among other symptoms, indifferent, because of the low oxygen content of the mine air. There were atmospheric conditions the miners called “stinkdamp” (hydrogen sulfide), “blackdamp” (carbon monoxide mixed with other noxious vapors), “afterdamp” (heavy concentrations of carbon monoxide), and “firedamp” (methane).

The latter part of the book describes how the union grew stronger as the resentment for the working conditions and pay of the miners increased. The story is told with significant human interest insights. As an example, it is told how an African American working with an Italian immigrant enjoyed pointing out that at the end of the shift they were both black. But there was little if any humor in the dealings of the companies with the union, and labor relations worsened steadily. The union made seven demands when they went on strike in 1912. The first demand was that the union be recognized. The other six demanded better pay, better working conditions, and ending the “company town” practice. Colorado Governor Ammons initially chose not to intervene. He was warned of the volatility in the Ludlow camp, and relented to send state militiamen after there had been several gun battles.

Ammons summoned three Union officials and three key company executives to his office for a marathon negotiation to settle the strike. The company officials announced they were ready to agree to all of the union demands with the exception of recognizing the union. The union men held fast to that being the most important demand. They said “…that only through a union could they educate green men, settle grievances, and uphold the miners’ self-determined laws of safety and mutualism.” The meeting therefore failed to reach an agreement, and outrageous behavior continued on both sides while the people of Colorado worried about a “coal famine.”

President Wilson responded to the escalating violence by sending in federal troops, and the strike zone was declared “silent.” The costly fifteen-month struggle was ended by a unanimous vote by the miners.

My favorite line in the book is in the Acknowledgments, where the author describes the struggles at researching the complex history and writing the book. He writes, “History isn’t Rocket Science—it’s harder.”

General Sherman’s Christmas, Savannah, 1864

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My brother sent me this book, and he knew I would be interested in the content. It describes the march across Georgia after Atlanta fell to Sherman’s army. I should mention there is family interest before I book. Elijah Tilton was married to one of a Brooke sister who was an aunt of our grandmother. Elijah was a member of the 92nd Illinois mounted infantry and part of Sherman’s army when it was advancing on Atlanta. Two of his sons, George William and Cornelius (or Commodore) and two other Tiltons, Orrin and Alfonso, were also part of the unit. The unit was assigned to the reckless and not very admirable General Kilpatrick on May 7, 1864 (according to Elijah Tilton’s diary for that year), and “Lil Kil” is a central figure of the book. I don’t recall any of the incidents mentioning Kilpatrick that were complimentary. Elijah never mentions weapons except for hearing cannons fire, but his unit was one of those issued the Spencer rifles, which are mentioned in the book.

Elijah died of dysentery on October 6, 1864 (more soldiers died of disease than from combat) but his sons and the other relatives were there for the fall of Atlanta. We lose the family connection with the book when the surviving Tiltons were assigned to the forces heading for Tennessee when General Sherman prepares to begin his march across Georgia. They were therefore part of the army commanded by George H Thomas that defeated John Bell Hood at Nashville December 15-18, 1864. It was undoubtedly chance that sent those ancestors into Tennnessee instead of into Georgia and eventually South Carolina. However, that might make the book easier to accept by our son and his family who live in Fort Mill, South Carolina and his in-laws who live in Columbia. Sherman quite unpopular in South Carolina.

I’ll begin my review after that lengthy introduction. The book by Stanley Weintraub provides details of Sherman’s army marching across Georgia to Savannah in late 1864. The destination was a secret when the march began, but it wasn’t a particularly well-kept secret. The plan was to make “Georgia howl,” by destroying anything that could support the Confederate war effort. Railroads were ripped up and the rails twisted around trees in “Sherman’s bowties.” Most of the livestock was taken along with the stores of food necessary to feed 60,000 marching soldiers. Baled cotton and mills were burned along with homes of those who dared to show open allegiance to the Confederacy or their revulsion toward the Union. One woman who unwisely spit at a soldier had her home burned. One woman told a captain “Our men will fight you as long as they live and then these boys (her sons) will fight you when they grow up.” A man was quoted as saying war wouldn’t end until all the men and women were killed, and “…it won’t be ended then, for we’ll come back as ghosts to haunt you.”

There were many accusations that Sherman’s “bummers” were harsh to the citizens they encountered. There is no doubt there was significant thievery, because the route of march became littered with all manner of abandoned loot. There were accusations of rape and murder, although the author believes there were more accusations than actual outrages. Sherman’s men came across emaciated men dressed in rags from the Andersonville prison, and that undoubtedly gave some of them reason to behave in anger. The army came across an abandoned prisoner of war site at Millen that had no shelters and no water. There were burrows where the prisoners had lived and a large burial ground. One officer wrote that what he saw gave him a “…renewed feeling of hardness toward the Confederacy.”

Sherman and his troops marched 300 miles in twenty-four days. Most of the casualties were in a single a battle at Fort McCallister, There were more than two hundred listed as missing and presumed dead. Most of those were “bummers” who did the foraging.

Sherman would write about the accusations issued against his men that they had been, “A little loose in foraging, they did some things they ought not to have done, yet on the whole they have supplied the wants of the army with as little violence as could be expected…”  An order was issued ordering that anyone pillaging or burning a home without being ordered to do so would be shot, but none of the soldiers were charged with those crimes.

One controversial event was that Sherman ordered prisoners of war to move in front of the column with shovels searching for “torpedos” (mines) after one exploded and tore the right foot off an officer.

With a few exceptions the army did not meet much organized resistance. They seldom came across a farm, plantation, or town that hadn’t been deserted by men. They were greeted as liberators by blacks, and thousands of the freed slaves joined in the march. Sherman was said to not think highly of blacks, and tried on several occasions to convince the followers to go back. The author observes that they required rations and slowed the movement of the army. One sad event was that the army pulled the pontoon bridge from a river they had crossed, which stranded the thousands of blacks. Some tried to swim the river despite the fact they couldn’t swim. Some union soldiers tried to push logs to them for rescue, and many were disturbed by what happened. Most of the blacks were left to be recaptured by Confederate soldiers and a very uncertain fate.

There were also acts of kindness. Two girls estimated to be three and five were found in an abandoned home dressed in burlap bags with holes cut for their heads and arms. They were fed, bathed, clothed, and taken along by the army. They eventually found their way to homes in the North after being transported there by soldiers who had been released from duty after their enlistments had ended. Women often welcomed officers into their homes, because they had undoubtedly heard the stories about what had happened to others earlier in the march.

Sherman’s army did begin to run low on provisions as they approached Savannah, and there was concern that the only path to the city was on narrow causeways through the swamps. However, the confederates decided not to defend the city and pulled out during the night over a makeshift bridge. The action is said to have kept Savannah “…relatively safe from the destruction wreaked upon other cities visited by Sherman’s marchers through Georgia.” Sherman telegraphed, “To His Excellency President Lincoln, Washington, D.C.: I beg to present you as a Christmas-gift the city of Savannah…”

Superfreakonomics, Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance

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Some of our Grandchildren are occasional or even frequent readers of this web site, and this book contains heavily mature information. I don’t want them to read this book.

I reviewed Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner last week, was absolutely fascinated with most of that book, and highly recommend it (even to the grandkids, despite some “mature language”).  I wasn’t as fascinated with Superfreakonomics, but it has some great information.

You will know if you read my blog postings that one of my favorite subjects is global warming and what I believe to be the lack of solid scientific basis for most if not all of the dire predictions. I recommend that everyone should read Chapter 5, which is titled “What do Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo Have In Common?” It describes how the New York Times published an article quoting climate researchers who argued “this climatic change poses a threat to the people of the world.” Newsweek “…cited a National Academy of Sciences report…that climate change ‘would force economic and social adjustment on a worldwide scale’.” Both articles were published in the mid-1970s and were predicting the effects of global cooling. Average temperatures had fallen 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit from 1945 to 1968 and Newsweek declared that the decline “…had taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average.” I won’t be surprised if the global warming predictions turn out to be just as inaccurate as the global cooling predictions being hyped in the media in the 70’s.

On the subject of predicting climate change, Superfreakonomics observes, “…even the most sophisticated climate models don’t do a very good job of representing…variables, and that obviously makes predicting the climatic future very difficult.” The predictions have obviously been that temperatures will continue to rise with increasing levels of carbon dioxide. However, temperatures have actually been mostly dropping the last few years. That insult imposed on the models by Mother Nature was termed a “travesty” by one of the prominent advocates of global warming.

I will summarize some fascinating information you will find in the book:

*  Drunk walking is proven to be much more dangerous than drunk driving (“…friends don’t let friends walk drunk”)

*  “Smile Train” began saving girls in India with cleft deformities by offering $10 for those delivered to the hospital to offset the $2.50 paid to midwifes to smother them

*  Many (60%) Indian men have penises too small to fit commercial condoms (Marketing suggestion: make a smaller condom and list it as “…tight to enhance sensitivity…”)

*  Horses in the 1900s caused a higher rate of deaths compared to autos today and caused immense health issues because of the huge amounts of manure

*  The media has “…never met an apocalypse it didn’t like…”

*  There were “…chilling tales of rampant shark carnage…” that resulted in the title “Summer of the Shark” in 2001 despite the fact there were an average number of attacks (68 with 4 fatalities)

*  Between the thirteenth and nineteenth century there were as many as a million European women executed for witchcraft after being blamed for bad weather that caused crop failures

*  Realtors take a 5 percent commission to sell a home while FSBMadison.com charges $150 to list a home

*  A Chicago prostitute is more likely to have sex with a cop than to be arrested by one

*  School children are currently likely to be taught by the college graduates with the lowest academic achievement since higher performing women are now becoming doctors, lawyers, etc. instead of teachers

*  Muslim women who become pregnant during Ramadan are more likely to have a baby with disabilities because they fast from food and drink during the day during that entire month

*  Terrorists are likely to be better educated and come from families who aren’t poor

*  There were 1000 extra traffic deaths after 9/11 because people drove instead of flying

*  Increased border security after 9/11 reduced foreign imports of marijuana to California and resulted in a boon to local growers

There are many more interesting facts, so you’ll have to read the rest of the book after you read the fun chapter on global warming.