Serj Tankian review up at antiMusic

Here is my take on "Elect the Dead."

Main point:

Though most musicians see a solo album as a chance to experiment, Serj Tankian has used Elect the Dead to get back to the basic System of a Down sound. Fans who complained about guitarist Daron Malakian stealing Tankian's vocal spotlight on recent records will love it.

All the trademark ingredients show up – the tense, minor key melodies; the abrupt changes in dynamics, feel and mood; the quirky, spastic outbursts; the punky, breakneck tempos. Tankian's unique voice, bizarre personality and leftist views hold it all together.

What stands out most about Elect the Dead is its remarkable consistency in every sense of the term; virtually every track impeccably showcases the aforementioned strengths. Beautiful melodies, clean guitars and piano backgrounds run headlong into zany blasts of distortion and crazy lyricism everywhere – but this is especially true on "Money," the best composition here.

Welcome postgraduate degree holders!

According to The Blog Readability Test, that's what you have to be to understand this page. Kinda funny, because that means I'm writing at an education level I haven't myself achieved. If you only have an undergraduate degree (like I do), you might find Rob Zombie reviews a little difficult, apparently.

That makes you guys about as smart as Jeremy Lott's readers -- a smarter audience than The Corner and George Borjas get, but not quite as bright as Daniel Larison's readership.

McDonald's to wage coffee war on Starbucks?

I share Neuromarketing's skepticism: When I stop at a Starbucks, it's usually to kill some time and read. Mickey D's just doesn't have the same atmosphere, so the upscale coffee-shop clientele won't go for it. Fifty cents isn't much of a price difference for an extended visit, either.

The blog suggests that McDonald's change its atmosphere, which could work to increase coffee sales -- but it might decrease sales of the standard food items, which may benefit from the utilitarian, no-frills presentation.

I think the bottom line is that McDonald's and Starbucks serve distinct niches, and neither is well-advised to try to capture the other's. The fast-food joint might sell enough coffee beverages to turn a profit, and might even steal a few Starbucks customers who get their drinks to go, but significantly cutting into the coffee giant's market share is unlikely.

Zombie Live review up at antiMusic

Here it is.

Main point:

Rob Zombie's studio recordings depend on production trickery – movie dialogue excerpts, techno flourishes and guitars processed to sound far bigger than they could naturally. And his live shows earned their notoriety for shock theatrics. So it should surprise no one that Zombie Live captures the best aspects of neither.

 

It's actually quite stunning how the simple requirement of live performance can suck the life out of these tracks. The crowd seems to be enjoying itself, and the stage explosion pictured on the cover looks pretty cool, but a few microphones just can't take in the energy. Even if, for a live album, the sound quality is quite good.

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That isn't to say it's all bad. A full 18 tracks make the CD, giving fans a decent value for their money. Also, the old White Zombie material always had more of a live feel, as did Zombie's last solo release, Educated Horses.

IQ and race again

Another quick note on William Saletan's IQ series. He points out how the debate in general has shifted rightward over the last few decades or so -- before, those on the right blamed black culture for the IQ gap, and those on the left blamed racism. Now, those on the right speculate some combination of culture and genes, where those on the left blame culture alone.

But what strikes me is how, over the last few years, many on the right have come back toward agnosticism on the question. "Wait 10 or 15 years for the genetic information" has become the mantra. Even Charles Murray switched from "innate" to "intractable."

What got left behind is the skull measurement study finding racial differences in brain size that correspond to IQ gaps. I myself had read about it before (in fact, it was one of the first Steve Sailer posts I ever saw) but basically joined the "hold on a minute" chorus as it faded from memory. As I said yesterday, there's still some wiggle room, but perhaps Saletan's biggest contribution is pushing this fact front and center again. It really drives home his point that we probably have to get ready for some uncomfortable findings.

Slate.com's belated James Watson support

William Saletan has a rather rigorous defense of James Watson. It gets into some research I hadn't thought about in awhile:

How could genes cause an IQ advantage? The simplest pathway is head size. I thought head measurement had been discredited as Eurocentric pseudoscience. I was wrong. In fact, it's been bolstered by MRI. On average, Asian-American kids have bigger brains than white American kids, who in turn have bigger brains than black American kids. This is true even though the order of body size and weight runs in the other direction. The pattern holds true throughout the world and persists at death, as measured by brain weight.

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Scientists have already identified genes that influence brain size and vary by continent. Whether these play a role in racial IQ gaps, nobody knows.

I would urge caution on this because there's a lot more to IQ than brain size, especially when you're talking about genetic group differences -- for example, men tend to have bigger brains than women, but do not have a higher mean IQ. The difference in body size might explain this, and the same explanation wouldn't work for the racial gap (men are bigger than women and have bigger brains, while blacks are bigger than whites and have smaller brains), but as Saletan points out, there's still a lot to be uncovered.

Saletan also uses twin studies to argue that individual differences in IQ are mostly genetic (identical twins reared apart have more similar IQs than fraternal twins reared together), an analysis I've expressed skepticism in thusly:

[As James Flynn has argued, heritability estimates based on twin studies] ignore the "multiplier" effect -- if one fraternal twin has a slight advantage in a given skill early in life, he tends to work on it intensely. For example, if he's a little taller, he'll not only be naturally better at basketball, but he'll spend more time playing basketball because he's better and likes to win. This makes fraternal twins have very different skills, and researchers wrongly conclude that their genes, not the different environments they created for themselves even though they were reared together, caused the gap.

If individual IQ differences are far less genetic than we'd thought, it's very possible that racial IQ differences aren't genetic at all.

Saletan's going to follow up with some points against a genetic basis for the gap.

Warrantless searches!!!

The Drudge headline "Boston police look to search homes without a warrant" drew me to this story. It's a misleading link if I ever saw one -- by "without a warrant" he means "with the consent of the homeowner."

Apparently there's a new program where the cops try to search kids' bedrooms for guns by asking the parents for permission. Now, if I wanted my kid's room searched for guns, I'd do it myself, and if the police had no evidence my child had a gun (in other words, no warrant), there's no way I'd let them in. But this does not raise a constitutional issue.