Back When America Made Stuff . . .

Ernest Scheller Jr., 1952 Georgia Tech graduate, recently donated $50M to the Management School, endowing chairs and fellowships.  The alumni magazine recently did a first-person profile on him:

My dad had a lot of courage to start the business. He worked for Reynolds Metals Company and left right at the end of the war. His expertise was in foil and he wanted to get in the foil business. Those days it took a million dollars of capital to set up a foil mill, and he couldn’t raise the million dollars. But it only took $100,000 to get into the pigment business, and he was able to raise it.

The big producers were Alcoa, Alcan and Reynolds Metals Company. They all made about the same thing. My father’s philosophy was that we couldn’t afford to be market leaders as far as new products was concerned—we didn’t have the muscle or the dollars to do it. But the one thing we sold back in the very early days was uniformity from batch to batch. If you bought some paint today and you wanted to match it a year or two years later, it would match. That wasn’t true of our big competitors. We were selling the consistency of product. We also undersold the big guys by a few cents a pound.

We had quality control. That was my first job in high school, when the company was very young. It was just my father, a part-time secretary, one production employee and me doing some quality-control work. That was the job I had all through my senior year of high school, before going to college.

Foil scrap was our basic raw material. We did some atomization of aluminum—I still have the scars on my arm. We’d shatter a stream of aluminum with a continuous air blast and that would make these tiny aluminum droplets, atomized powder. If you get any moisture on the scrap when you’re charging it, it’ll pop—the moisture turns to steam and pops the metal up. I got a few residual scars going back to when I was 15 or 16 years old. I guess I started in April or May of 1945. I worked that summer and the following summer and then went down to Tech, then worked there [during the] summers after I went to Tech.

Read the whole thing.

Also, for those of you keeping score at home, here is a link to the Scheller’s other charitable work.

Asian Vote Redux (UPDATED)

Razib (via Half Sigma, natch’) tries to explain the Asian vote:

In short, it’s religion. Barry Kosmin has documented that between 1990 and 2010 Asian Americans have become far less Christian, on average. Meanwhile, the Republican party has become far more Christian in terms of its identity. Do you really require more than two sentences to infer from this what the outcome will be in terms of how Asian Americans will vote?

From Razib’s own numbers:

	R	D	I	Affiliation
Evangelical	56.0%	28.0%	16.0%	14.0%*
Mainline	37.0%	44.0%	18.0%	14.0%*
Catholics	42.0%	41.0%	17.0%	14.0%*
Buddhists	27.0%	56.0%	17.0%	14.0%
Hindus	9.0%	72.0%	19.0%	10.0%
Unaffiliated	21.0%	63.0%	16.0%	26.0%

 

Let’s predict the vote by weighting these affiliations:

	Wt. R	Wt. D	Wt. I
Evangelical	7.8%	3.9%	2.2%
Mainline	5.2%	6.2%	2.5%
Catholics	5.9%	5.7%	2.4%
Buddhists	3.8%	7.8%	2.4%
Hindus	0.9%	7.2%	1.9%
Unaffiliated	5.5%	16.4%	4.2%
Weighted Average	29.0%	47.2%	15.6%
Two-Party Vote	38.1%	61.9%

 

That’s not a bad prediction of the 2008 results.  But as it happened, Obama received 73% of the two-party vote in 2012, vs. Romney’s 26%.  So, no, Razib and HS, you haven’t actually accounted for the 2012 Asian wipeout.

But let’s stipulate for the time being that religious affiliation alone predicts a 3/2 advantage for Democrats among Asians.  Razib’s and Half Sigma’s solution to this problem is the make Republicans “less Christian”.  How to go about that?

Well, I suppose one way would be for all the Christians to stop voting for Republican candidates.  Now there’s  a winning solution . . . .

Or maybe, the Christians could throw their support to a candidate from a religious background they virtually all believe to be heretical at best, and a cult at worst!  Oh, yeah, we just did that.

Or maybe the Republicans could run a campaign with fewer religious themes than any campaign since Nixon’s!

No, seriously, Razib is normally a serious thinker, so perhaps he has some conversation starters here that I don’t know about.  Half Sigma, on the other hand, proposes that the Republicans demonstrate their repudiation of the Founders’ religion by dropping their quadrennial and increasingly tepid lip-service to maybe someday getting around to doing something about abortion.

Here’s my prediction:  the day that happens, 25% of the party walks.  Goodbye.  I do not predict this from among that 25%:  I have already abandoned Republican candidates who only promise to surrender my country to its enemies marginally more slowly than the Democrats.  I would, with some sadness, support a pro-abortion candidate that credibly promised an immigration moratorium and repatriation of illegals.  But so far, that candidate exists only as a figment of Half Sigma’s imagination. 

In the meantime, the churches are full of voters for whom opposition to abortion is the only motivation they have.  So, Half Sigma, what, exactly is your plan to make up this 25% with an increased share of Asians and single-mothers-on-welfare?  The world wonders . . . .

* I arbitrarily divided Asian Christians equally among evangelicals, mainline protestants, and Roman Catholics.

UPDATE: Razib replies:

[I]t's not my solution, and i've said it elsewhere.

my 'solution' is that the repubs are the white xtian party and the dems are the 'others.' i've stated this elsewhere. i see no better optimum equib. for repubs (or dems) than that right now.

Homeland, Season 1

I watched Season 1 of the Showtime series Homeland on DVD.

I recommend this series, but I want to join Megan’s complaint about how poorly the series corresponds to reality in several salient respects.  Megan focused on its representation of the physical geography of D.C., a subject on which I know little.  But I do know a little about how the intelligence community operates, and this isn’t it.  I was appalled to see CIA intelligence officers waltzing around secure facilities with cell phones, turning their living room walls into pin boards for classified documents, and having sensitive counterintelligence discussions in bars.  In reality, we aren’t allowed to have cell phones even in the lobby of where we work.  Classified material is handled freely in secure areas, but never outside them.  And we never talk about, or even around, our work anyplace except at work.  And that’s just the stuff I know about.

The stuff I don’t know about is what the CIA does specifically, but I’m pretty sure it’s foreign intelligence.  Counterintelligence is the FBI’s mission, yet here the FBI is treated as the half-witted brother of the CIA, which seems practically unrestricted in its domestic activities short of making arrests.  That’s either poor screenwriting, or a pretty scary commentary on the CIA’s respect for the law.

One more thing.  Carrie, the central character, suffers from bipolar disorder, for which she takes the anti-psychotic drug Clozapine.  Improbably, however, Carrie is also something of a lush, even though alcohol consumption is not recommended for people with mental disorders, and is specifically contraindicated with Clozapine. Did the writers not think anybody would know this?

But all this notwithstanding, Homeland is one of the more straightforwardly patriotic TV shows I’ve seen.  It has no truck with the usual neo-Nazi tropes or other figments of the liberal imagination; it’s villains are exclusively Arabic Muslims and their American converts.  Yes, there is a “good” Muslim working for the CIA, but there are also plenty of terrorist sympathizers.  The CIA, and Carrie in particular, are prepared to play as rough as necessary to get the job done; this is presented with only a nod at moral equivocation.

Government Religion: Not the Onion

From the Colorado Springs Gazette (via Military.com):

An Air Force Academy program to teach cadets to respect the religious beliefs of comrades will soon go to all Air Force bases and schools, if academy chaplains have their way.

While a target date has not been set for the program's expansion, chaplains hope to transition the Religious Respect Training Program throughout the Air Force as soon as possible, chaplain Maj. Shawn Menchion said Wednesday at the conclusion of the academy's Religious Respect Conference . . . .

Last year, the academy and its partners, including the Anti-Defamation League, developed three additional lessons that will be taught at other times: one-hour lessons during sophomore and junior years, and a two-hour lesson during senior year, Menchion said.

The training teaches cadets "to become allies to other cadets when they witness respect infractions," he said. "We're giving them avenues to address those issues. We emphasize addressing those issues at the lowest level."

The program was a major topic of discussion at the third biannual conference, held Tuesday and Wednesday at the academy.

Military and civilian attendees representing groups such as the ACLU, Buddhist Churches of America and Islamic Society of Colorado offered feedback on the program, which consists of lectures and discussions based on scenarios . . . .

David Oringderff, executive director of the Sacred Well Congregation, an international Wiccan fellowship, said he had high hopes for the program.

Retired Air Force Col. Frank Clawson, director of military relations for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also said he was pleasantly surprised by the difference the program made in the academy's culture in two years.

Happy Thanksgiving

Inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as he has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience.

Now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November 29th, of the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty-three and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings.

William Bradford

Ye Governor of Ye Colony

1623

An Officer and a Lady . . .

From the Fayetteville Observer (via Military.com):

AF General Touts Women's Role in the Military

Let’s assume for a moment that the “touting” herein is in good faith.  The problem I have with these kinds of speeches and the reporting of them is that the first sentence reporting a contrariwise speech – “AF General Criticizes Women’s Role in the Military” – inevitably says that the general was relieved of command by the end of the day.  So notwithstanding their knowledge of the truth of the matter, what else is an AF general likely to say about women in the military except to “tout” it?

[AFMC commander Janet C.] Wolfenbarger, the U.S. Air Force's first female four-star general, spoke about the advancement of women in the military Monday night as part of the Fayetteville State University's Chancellor's Distinguished Speaker Series.

To the best of my recollection, I have never heard a female cleric speak on any subject that wasn’t a variant of, “Look at me!  I’m a woman preaching!”  That may not be strictly true in the case of female generals, but it’s pretty close.

Wolfenbarger was among the more than 150 women who entered the Air Force Academy in June 1976, the first time women were allowed in the U.S. service academies.

Several male cadets were concerned about the admission of women into the academy, Wolfenbarger said.

"Their fear was that standards would somehow be lowered as a result of women being a part of the student body and that consequently their experience would some how be diminished," she said. "I, along with my female classmates, spent the next four years proving that the standards did not have to be lowered . . . ."

Um . . .  yes they were.  And there are no end to the USAFA alumni who assess the current kinder ‘n’ gentler regimen as being much easier than it was.  These changes are advertised as making the training environment more “professional”.  Maybe, but if a general is saying it then I assume it’s a lie.

Army ROTC cadet Tara Jaime, a junior majoring in sociology, said the general's comments about the advancement of women in the military were profound.

Yup, sociology.  Just the sort of education the future leaders of our high-tech military need.

Strikebreaking via Multiculturalism

From the Wikipedia article on the Ludlow Massacre, the 1914 deaths of striking coal miners at the hands of agents of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company:

To break or prevent strikes, the coal companies hired strike breakers, mainly from Mexico and southern and eastern Europe. CF&I's management mixed immigrants of different nationalities in the mines, a practice which discouraged communication that might lead to organization.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.