BET lets Jena Six defendants present award?

I've said before that the Jena school handled racism poorly, and that attempted murder charges against the Jena Six were a bit much. But that certainly doesn't mean the six kids who ganged up on one, knocking him unconscious, are civil rights models.

BET disagrees:

As Jones and Purvis walked onto the stage at the Atlanta Civic Center, where the awards show was filmed on Saturday, they were greeted by a standing ovation.

"They don't look so tough, do they?" [Katt Williams, the comedian who introduced them] joked as the teens stepped up to the podium.

I wish I had something incisive to say about what this means for racism and anti-racism in our country, but I'm just flabbergasted. This cannot help their cause -- if anything, it promotes the O.J. trial notion that the black community will stand by its members even when they're guilty.

Williams offered this as a disclaimer:

By no means are we condoning a six-on-one beat-down.

By giving two of the kids who administered said beat-down a platform? By enabling them to meet and give an award to Kanye West, one of the biggest names in hip-hop? Yes you are.

On universal health care done right

Someone from a Republican campaign, please read this Ronald Bailey article. Please.

The newest (old) non-racism story

The New York Times reports:

Home buyers in predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods in New York City were more likely to get their mortgages last year from a subprime lender than home buyers in white neighborhoods with similar income levels, according to a new analysis of home loan data by researchers at New York University.

...

The analysis showed that even when median income levels were comparable, home buyers in minority neighborhoods were more likely to get a loan from a subprime lender.

But oh, wait:

The data does not include details on borrowers' assets, down payments or debt loads, all key factors in mortgage lending. And comparing neighborhoods is inexact; the typical borrower in one may differ from a typical borrower in another.

What exactly is the point of such a study, if not to push a political agenda in the media? Data has shown time and again that blacks and whites of the same income levels differ in other indicators of credit-worthiness. Thomas Sowell called this an old story two years ago.

Kudos to the NYT, though, for at least pointing out the severe flaw. Even if the paper headlined the story "Study Finds Disparities in Mortgages by Race."

Hat tip Steve Sailer.

Ministry review up at antiMusic

antiMusic has my review of Ministry's latest.

Main point:

Ministry managed to create an entirely engrossing body of work with a perfectly lifeless rhythm section. The computer-generated drums are never meant to sound anything but. The guitars, always recorded through a ridiculously brittle distortion, hammer their repetitive riffs home with metronomic precision. With every track, Ministry sticks a finger in the eye of the basic, sloppy, improvisational rock 'n' roll ethic.

...

All told, after a few listens, Ministry's music is quite innovative and even catchy. So it's a little disappointing that their new release, The Last Sucker, is their last - the record's an hour-long blast of furious, Bush-hating energy that showcases all the above strengths.

A fast-track take on Coulter

I haven't said much yet about Ann Coulter's shocking belief that her religion is the right one, so in a perfect world other people would convert to it. By this point other people have basically explained my thoughts, so I'll quote them.

From the Spectator:

In fact, the only one exposing blind spots in his education was the host. If he does not know that Christians believe Jews are lacking something by not accepting Jesus as a savior, if he does not know that Jews believe Christians are to one degree or another in error by believing Jesus can save them, he is ignorant of the most basic facts of religious life.

It's funny to me how tolerant-of-all-religions secularists are, until someone actually believes the basic tenets of her faith. If you don't think your religion is the right one, why would you invest so much time in it? And if you had that belief and cared about other people, why wouldn't you want them to convert? I'm not religious, but that doesn't make any sense to me.

And David Bernstein on why this isn't offensive to Jews:

In any event, my understanding is that the official position of the Catholic Church until Vatican II was that to be "saved" Jews needed to convert to Christianity, and that this remains the official position of some, but not all, Protestant denominations. As a Jew, this doesn't bother me in the least, so long as my non-Christian status doesn't lead to discrimination, but is merely a matter of theological dispute. If Christianity is a proselytizing religion that believes that all people should become Christians because that's what God wants, and that Jews are not exempted from that general principle, why should I care? Christians don't have to think my religious tradition is valid, just so long as they don't make me wear a yellow star or ban me from owning land (common medieval restrictions on Jews resulting from religious discrimination).

Explaining the Africa-U.S. AIDS discrepancy

For awhile I've been kind of confused about the differences in AIDS between America and Africa. Here, victims are primarily homosexual males, but in Africa there's a heterosexual epidemic.

Finally, an explanation:

Epstein's view is that the cause of the AIDS crisis in Africa is what has now become known in AIDS jargon as "concurrent" relationships. Africans have about the same number of sexual partners as anyone else; they are just more likely to have more than one long-term partner at a time. Crucially, both men and women have multiple partners, in contrast to other poor societies where men may often stray but women's monogamy is jealously guarded.

...

For many reasons, concurrent, long-term sexual relationships are much more dangerous for the spread of AIDS than serial monogamy. When both men and women have concurrent relationships, they are part of a huge web of sexual partners by which the HIV virus moves through the population. Long-term relationships are much more likely to spread AIDS than one-night stands because of the low probability of a single sex act spreading the virus.

...

Her explanation based on concurrent relationships has gained broad acceptance and has been confirmed by mathematical modeling and by surveys of sexual habits in various countries; but one still wishes the evidence was a little more extensive for such a critical issue.

Not sure I understand the writer's skepticism -- it sounds like there's quite a bit of evidence for this theory indeed -- but there you have it.

Hat tip Steve Sailer.