The paper was of course zealous to rule out genetic differences but that does rather leave them without an explanation for Chinese excellence in mathematics. Regardless of the country in which they reside, Chinese tend to be prominent among leading mathematicians — and China itself is a major centre of mathematical excellence. Yet China is still in many ways a very traditional society in which the very notion of gender equality would normally be scoffed at. The way they abort girl babies is surely enough evidence of that.

Anyway, the paper more or less assumes what it has to prove. In a rather self-contradictory way, the authors seem to assume that educational performance fully indexes innate ability. The paper draws its “evidence” not from IQ tests but from various international measures of educational attainment. And educational attainment is the product of many things other than IQ. Hard work anyone? Social pressures anyone? So I partially agree with the first line of their “Conclusions”:

In summary, we conclude that gender equity and other sociocultural factors, not national income, school type, or religion per se, are the primary determinants of mathematics performance at all levels for both boys and girls

You note that they skate entirely over IQ.

They go on to argue that eliminating gender “inequities” is needed to lift female mathematical achievements. After decades of feminism and affirmative action it is hard to imagine how more might be done on that front in the USA other than by procrustean quota systems so the recommendation is as vacuous as it is irrelevant.

Women will always be up against their lower level of mathematical ability that IQ tests reveal so clearly. In recent years women have been pushed into mathematics to satisfy feminist dogma but few will rise to the heights.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

President Barack Obama is racking up an impressive losing streak when it comes to energy.

Under pressure from Republicans, he embraced offshore drilling — just weeks before the BP oil spill. He offered support for nuclear power, only to watch a disaster unfold in Japan. Gas price hikes in the spring disrupted his economic message. Feeling the heat from Republicans again, he infuriated his green base by bailing out on a long-promised ozone standard.

And a real leader would have stated that these were isolated incidents, that Things Happen, and we can work towards minimizing these kinds of events without raising costs and while increasing output. Instead, he simply did what he always does: lead from behind.

And then came Solyndra — the California solar company startup Obama touted as a green jobs success story even as it bled money and ultimately collapsed amid political scandal.

“The guy got dealt a bad hand,” said a top environmental consultant. “But he’s played a bad hand very badly.”

Got “dealt a bad hand”? Welcome to life, pal. The mark of a true leader and great president is how they respond. Obama responds like the complete ideologue and incompetent he is.

It’s an emerging consensus coming from the left and the right: While Obama was once viewed as a victim of things he can’t control — faulty blowout preventers, a tsunami, gas prices, the tea party — critics on both sides of the aisle say his administration has made matters worse.

“If you’ve got an agenda bouncing along with no vision and things happen, you look reactive, and they are,” said Doug Holtz-Eakin, a former economic adviser to John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Oh, he has a vision: it’s just that it is one based on politics, not reality, and the two do not work real well together out in the Real World. Obama thinks that these “green jobs” will stimulate the economy. Yet, unemployment is still above 9%, companies given Stimulus money are dying like baby seals during a cull, and enviroweenies are actually blocking the construction of alternative energy projects. And let’s not forget that the Obama administration is pushing to spend $9.2 billion more on green projects, and is trying to quickly push the loans through before September 30th. What could possibly go wrong?

Oh, and another favorite Obama company, Johnson Controls, which he visited last summer, is under investigation in China for possibly causing lead poisoning in children. They make batteries for hybrids. But, in China. So there are jobs. In China. Ones that cause lead poisoning. In China. After being given a $229 million grant from the Stimulus. To make lithium-ion batteries for hybrids. In China.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

In the name of fighting pollution, China has sent the price of compact fluorescent light bulbs soaring in the United States.

By closing or nationalizing dozens of the producers of rare earth metals — which are used in energy-efficient bulbs and many other green-energy products — China is temporarily shutting down most of the industry and crimping the global supply of the vital resources.

China produces nearly 95 percent of the world’s rare earth materials, and it is taking the steps to improve pollution controls in a notoriously toxic mining and processing industry. But the moves also have potential international trade implications and have started yet another round of price increases for rare earths, which are vital for green-energy products including giant wind turbines, hybrid gasoline-electric cars and compact fluorescent bulbs.

As Junk Science points out, this has caused a 37% spike in the price of CFLs this year alone. And these price increases won’t stop, and will drive up the cost of CFLs more, not to mention driving the price of wind turbines and hybrids, already high to begin with, up even more.

Meanwhile, as the Usual Climate Alarmists tell us that China is super awesome in pushing for more “green” energy, China is, in fact, using even more coal, and barely using any alternatives. Furthermore

China’s ambition to build a harmonious clean-tech economy lost some of its sheen on Sunday after a violent confrontation over pollution from a solar panel factory.

Riot police broke up a four-day protest by several hundred villagers in Haining, Zhejiang province, who overturned cars and stormed the compound of a photovoltaic manufacturer that is accused of releasing toxins into a local river.

Who would have thought that creating such “clean green” technology could be so dirty?

We are faced with a difficult dilemma concerning Vice President Joe Biden’s outrageous comments about China’s one-child policy delivered in China this week.

On one hand we must either believe Joe Biden is a compete idiot, or on the other understand that he is OK with the fact that Chinese officials forced women to late term abortions and in many cases actually murdered already born babies to satisfy the one child per couple rule that the communist oppressors put into place years ago to curb the country’s population size.

Neither prospect is very auspicious for Biden or Obama.

While visiting Chinese students in southwest China, Biden raised the one-child issue

But as I was talking to some of your leaders, you share a similar concern here in China. You have no safety net. Your policy has been one which I fully understand – I’m not second-guessing – of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable.

For decades China’s violent and controversial one-child policy has been the root of the murders of many millions of Chinese babies, many of them actually born alive. For Vice resident Biden to strain to tell his communist audience that he wasn’t “second guessing” this murderous policy is appalling.

This policy is responsible for the outright murder of many babies born alive in China. After authorities found that women gave birth in violation of the policy, these babies were killed in front of distraught parents. But this policy is also responsible for millions of selective-sex abortions where Chinese culturally favor boys instead of girls and aborted babies thought to be female. Chinese authorities also engaged in a whole raft of human rights violations such as forced abortions and forced sterilizations.

So, what is Biden saying here? Are we to assume he is too stupid to know of the murderous history of China’s one-child policy? And if we assume he must know this history, then we are forced to understand that he has no problem at all with these human rights violations.

In fact, this whole thing argues against the whole claim that Democrats are “pro-choice.” Yes, they often choose abortion, like the Chinese are, but the “choice” could also include keeping the baby. You see, there is a choice here. But by agreeing with China’s one-child policy, he’s agreed with taking away the “choice” in the matter because Chinese women have no choice! It is an authoritarian policy thrust upon them regardless of their needs and desires. Biden appears totally OK with that.

Of course, back here at home, his office tried to skitter out from under this major gaffe — a full time job for his office, to say the least. Biden’s office issued this statement:

The Obama Administration strongly opposes all aspects of China’s coercive birth limitation policies, including forced abortion and sterilization. The Vice President believes such practices are repugnant. He also pointed out, in China, that the policy is, as a practical matter, unsustainable. He was arguing against the One Child Policy to a Chinese audience.

Unfortunately for Obama and Biden’s office, this does not square at all with what he actually said. Biden said he wasn’t judging the policy and only thought it was bad for economic reasons.

GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney wasted no time condemning Biden’s foolish comments.

China’s one-child policy is gruesome and barbaric. Instead of condoning the policy, Vice President Biden should have condemned it in the strongest possible terms. There can be no defense of a government that engages in compulsory sterilization and forced abortions in the name of population control.

Another GOP hopeful, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, also condemned Biden’s comments.

China’s one child policy has led to the great human tragedy of forced abortions throughout China, and Vice President Biden’s refusal to ’second-guess’ this horrendous policy demonstrates great moral indifference on the part of the Obama Administration. Americans value life, and we deserve leaders who will stand up against such inhumanity, not cast a blind eye.

GOP House Speaker John Boehner chimed in, as well.

I’m deeply troubled by the comments reportedly made by the Vice President yesterday regarding China’s reprehensible one-child policy, which has resulted in forced sterilizations and coerced abortions and should not be condoned by any American official. No government on Earth has the authority to place quotas on the value of innocent human life, or to treat life as an economic commodity that can be regulated and taken away on a whim by the state.

Romney and Boehner had it exactly right. China’s one-child policy is a barbaric, disgusting, condemnable policy that no freedom-loving American should condone in any way whatever.

Reporting from Beijing— While the Obama administration struggles to jump-start the stalled U.S. recovery, policymakers in Beijing have an opposite but equally formidable task: putting the brakes on China’s speeding economy without triggering a slump.

How well they succeed holds enormous consequences for the world economy, where China has emerged as one of the few reliable engines of growth.

How great is their economy?

The government announced this week that China’s economy expanded at an annualized rate of 9.5% in the second quarter from a year earlier. That’s slightly slower than the first quarter, thanks largely to efforts by authorities to cut bank lending and hike interest rates. Their hope is to tame inflation that’s angering the nation’s consumers, and to let some air out of a worrisome real estate bubble that many fear could burst.

Compare that with the estimated 1.8% for the United States per the Commerce Department (official numbers will be released on July 29th). I believe it was Rush who stated yesterday that can you imagine a time when economists would envy the economy of a communist country? Of course, that was before a think skinned and petulant 5 year old bought the Presidency and sent the United States on the road to Greece.

Of course, not everything is lollipops and unicorns

Although China’s gross domestic product growth is the envy of slow-growing industrialized nations, cracks are emerging in its economic model. China leaned heavily on housing construction, public works — and billions in government borrowing — to power through the global slowdown. You can see it in empty highways paid for with public debt, in vacant new apartment blocks in Chinese cities and in the faces of grumpy shoppers in the produce aisles where prices for basics are soaring beyond the reach of average households.

The worry is that this kind of stimulus has artificially juiced China’s economy, making it vulnerable to a hard landing. How severe the challenges are is open to debate. Many analysts are confident that China can slow growth without derailing its economy. But what’s acknowledged by experts both inside and outside of China is that the nation’s current path is unsustainable.

Hmm, does that sound like what Obama and the Democrats attempted? Of course, it appears as if China has leaders who know what they are doing, as it seemed to work for them (there are a lot more factors involved that just government stimulus, of course), unlike the sheer incompetence of Team Obama, who couldn’t even make Big Government give aways they love work. But, then, they’ve never been able to get their costly BG programs to work – unless the point was to keep people in poverty with a promise of more aid. Then they worked great.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

The starchy cassava root has long been an important ingredient in everything from tapioca pudding and ice cream to paper and animal feed.

But last year, 98 percent of cassava chips exported from Thailand, the world’s largest cassava exporter, went to just one place and almost all for one purpose: to China to make biofuel. Driven by new demand, Thai exports of cassava chips have increased nearly fourfold since 2008, and the price of cassava has roughly doubled.

Each year, an ever larger portion of the world’s crops — cassava and corn, sugar and palm oil — is being diverted for biofuels as developed countries pass laws mandating greater use of nonfossil fuels and as emerging powerhouses like China seek new sources of energy to keep their cars and industries running. Cassava is a relatively new entrant in the biofuel stream.

And for fuels that aren’t as powerful as petroleum based fuels, not too mention that a good chunk of food based biofuels use vast amounts of water to produce, tend to put out vast amounts of CO2 (in some cases, more than gasoline), cause vast forest and wildlife destruction (particularly in the case of palm oil), and, oh, here we go

But with food prices rising sharply in recent months, many experts are calling on countries to scale back their headlong rush into green fuel development, arguing that the combination of ambitious biofuel targets and mediocre harvests of some crucial crops is contributing to high prices, hunger and political instability.

Who could have predicted that? Weird, eh?

To be sure, many factors help drive up the price of food, including bad weather that ruins crop yields and high oil prices that make transportation costly.

Wait, they’re using oil based fuels to transport the food based fuels?

Mr. Timmer said that the recent rise in oil prices was likely to increase the demand for biofuels.

Anyone else begging for biofuels? Granted, I would prefer a fuel source that is cleaner (and, again, I’m not referring to CO2 output, but actual pollutants), but, most are not ready for primetime. The gas station closest to me, which is on the way to work, uses up to 10% ethanol. I notice I get less MPG for the same money as a station near work, which doesn’t blend.

UCLA has a large number of Asian students, mostly Han Chinese. And although I myself think very highly of the Han, it is true that they come from a different culture with a different conception of manners. The differences are probably traceable to the more crowded situation in which they normally live in China.

And the UCLA girl (Alexandra Wallace) not only noticed these differences but complained about them on YouTube! Basically, her complaint was that the Chinese were too loud in the library and thus distracted her from her reading and study. She was probably making an accurate observation but you are not of course allowed to say anything derogatory about any ethnic group in an American university!

So now the sensitive and humane Left are making death threats against her! So who are the thugs now? The KKK always were Leftists and it is those making the death threats who are the lineal descendants of the KKK now, not the foolishly outspoken woman.

It is my observation that the Han try quite hard not to cause any offense to the majority culture in which they live, so it is regrettable that ethnic criticism is censored. It would in general be a help to Han people to know of ways in which they were unwittingly offending.

The video of Ms Wallace and details of the story here.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

According to a recent article written by Ben Aris and obtained by our good friend, Robert Felix, at www.IceAgeNow.com, a continuous series of violent eruptions in the past several months along eastern Russia’s ‘volcanic belt’ has adversely affected global weather patterns.

Food and energy prices, along with cotton and the precious metals, have soared to record or near-record levels. Civil unrest in the Mideast and elsewhere has added fuels to the inflationary fires of fear and greed.

Volcanoes on Russia’s Kamchatka seaboard have been “unusually active” in the last six months, says Aris. He adds, “the clouds of dust and ash have been thrown up into the higher altitudes.” This has diverted the frigid Arctic winds, pushing extremely cold air and moderate to heavy snows deep into the U.S., Europe and parts of Asia, including winter-weary China. Edmonton, Alberta, reported a record low on March 8 of minus-26 degrees. It was an even colder minus-31 degrees at Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.

Just this past week, unusually cold air spilled into north-central China, Mongolia and parts of Russia that resulted in widespread winterkill in many winter wheat regions devoid of snowcover. This will only add to the global shortages of the golden grains in the next several months.

Obviously, these volcanoes must be caused by someone turning the heat on at home to fight off the greenhouse gas induced cold weather, causing land rebound or something.

But, back in Reality Land, the Earth will do what the Earth will do. Hot, cold, wet, dry, the natural forces of the Earth make things happen which can threaten “food security”, and grains will be hardest hit during the cold. Wonder why potatoes are so popular? Go back to the Little Ice Age, when the King of France worked his tail off to get the peasants to eat them, so they wouldn’t starve to death. Potatoes had been considered as food too low even for the peasants.

The Epoch Times has a stunner of a story for January 22. Unbeknownst to most Americans, China insulted the United States right in front of Obama and the world by having its nationalist pianist, Lang Lang, play a Chinese propaganda song that called Americans “jackals” during the Chinese sponsored concert during the recent state dinner in Washington D.C. Chinese nationalists have been hailing this stick in the eye of the U.S. since it occurred at the state dinner on January 19.

There is little doubt that Obama knew this was going to happen, but that he had no problem with it fits neatly with his world apology tour, his three years of apologizing for the United States in foreign lands, his bowing and scraping (literally) before kings and tyrants the world over, and his constant need to punish this country.

The song was titled “My Homeland” and is famous for appearing in the Chinese propaganda movie Battle on Shangganling Mountain, a film about the Korean War. In the song, American troops are called “jackals” that are “greeted” by Chinese “hunting rifles.”

The report says that there is no way to know if adding the song to the playlist was pianist Lang Lang’s own idea — and he claims it was — but it is impossible to believe that he just added it by himself with the Chinese government unaware of his plan. The propaganda song certainly serves China’s purpose, to be sure.

Lang Lang has been chortling about his propaganda coup for several days saying that playing the song would “help us, as Chinese people, feel extremely proud of ourselves.”

The Epoch Times played it diplomatically and did not speculate on whether the Obama Administration knew that Lang Lang was going to play the anti-American tune, but there is little doubt that it was known. Does anyone believe that the Obama administration would have been so slipshod as to not have known? Who believes that the Obama administration would not have been aware of every song being played that night?

Commies throughout China have been playing this as a wonderful success.

The phrase “right place, right time, right song” echoes Chinese propaganda and is a declaration of victory over the United States. Chinese have been taught that the United States lost the Korean War. A U.S. general is quoted in the propaganda as describing the Korean War as being “the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place with the wrong enemy,” which is taken as an admission of defeat. In fact, the quote is from Gen. Omar N. Bradley testifying to Congress as to why the United States should not extend the Korean War into China.

This sort of underhanded, hateful behavior is precisely why President George W. Bush did not invite the red Chinese to any state dinners or big functions during his administration. Bush knew that the Chinese will take every opportunity to insult the U.S. and he didn’t want to give them that platform.

The fact is that the Chinese are not America’s friend. They aren’t even a friendly rival. They consider themselves to be an open enemy of America. They have said so repeatedly. Sadly Obama has allowed this dangerous enemy to walk all over us yet again.

But with Obama’s contempt for the United States often on public view, it is not surprising that he had played his part in facilitating this Chinese propaganda victory.

From overpopulation as the elephant in the room, to the idea that less sex and more TV might be the answer to India’s growing birth rate, overpopulation isn’t exactly a taboo subject here on TreeHugger—but it doesn’t get anywhere near the attention of, say, wind energy, electric cars, or the amazing biodiversity of compost. All that has to change, says Peter Preston over at The Guardian, if we are to have any hope of tackling the threat of climate change.

In an article on why the human numbers don’t add up on climate change, Preston first notes that saving the planet feels a little bit like last year’s news these days. With students rioting in the streets over tuition fees, and the latest climate talks barely warranting a mention in the media, he does have a point. But the problem is deeper than just a lack of attention or interest in the topic, argues Preston, it is also the fact that the debate over climate change focuses on energy, but does not register when it comes to some of the most important societal debates of our time. Take the UK’s struggle over child benefits, for example:

The article then goes on to describe how the welfare system that Democrats/liberals created, which gives money to people who have babies, is Very Bad. And how discussing China’s one child only policy should not be considered a human rights violation, but wise policy, and ends with

As a relatively new green dad, I am by no means anti-baby. I love my beautiful little carbon footprint as much as the next parent. And I fully understand that rich, fossil-fuel addicted Westerners have precious little moral high ground from which to lecture the rest of the world. But the idea that discussing how the number of babies we all have impacts our environment, and our society, should somehow be off limits seems like a dangerous concept to me.

It’s good to see someone saying what needs to be said.

Back before the issue of anthropogenic global warming became a big subject, in the mid-1990’s, people who said this would be shunned as wackos and unfit for interaction in society. They’d be the fringe, and even their parents would “forget” to invite them to family get-togethers. Now, they actually have the audacity to write for a major environmental site owned by The Discovery Channel.

Oh, look, they said that the Midwest would have a wicked hot winter. How’d that work out?

Looking pretty sharp so far! Only off by fifteen degrees or so, but they can forecast one hundred years from now to within one tenth of a degree.

Harbor Seals are being seen more and more off Long Island, as the waters get colder further south from Arctic melting due to global warming.(?)