Steve Sailer highlights an interesting new paper on “cognitive ability” and genetic ancestry (which, in an effort to forestall criticism, perhaps, Sailer calls a “scientific paper”). It’s “Linear and partially linear models of behavioural trait variation using admixture regression” Bryan Pesta and Gregory Connor.
We’ll ignore here the models the authors use, except to warn that all signals diminish—uncertainty increases—when using real-life predictive methods, and not old-school parameter-based methods. Here’s a whole post on the over-certainty of polygenic scores.
Basically (read Sailer or the paper for all the caveats, which are not our main interest), nearly 11,000 9-10 year olds were sampled, DNA was taken, and all were given scored tests, while also asking them their Self-Identified Race and Ethnicity, or SIRE. Now that’s a great pun, but it could get them cancelled if critics figure it out. Connor’s SIRE, Sailer informs us, is black, so they might get away with it.
The list of SIREs is long, so they compressed it into other, black, Hispanic, and white, and used the DNA to calculate a measure of genetic mix of European ancestry. Here’s the main result.
I remind us the “g-factor” is a linear combination of normalized (also a linear transformation) test scores. Change the test type, or test questions, change the “g-factor”. Here’s a whole post on the over-certainty and usefulness of IQ scores. Higher “g” means better test scores; lower worse.
Because of the normalization and obscure math, we can think of the units as standard deviations if we want to use normal distributions to quantify our uncertainty in score (a.k.a. g-factor) knowing only a person’s SIRE or percent European ancestry. We don’t need any models, I remind us, if we’re talking about these kids, because we are 100% certain what they scored. We only need models if we want to talk about other kids not in this sample, but who we assume are like these causally.
Whew. Okay, now that that’s out of the way, draw a line at 2. Grab all the kids over this score and put them in a room. Only a few will be black. Do the same for -2, or even -4. Most will be black. Conclusion: blacks didn’t score as well as others. If we repeated the experiment with a new batch of kids, the results would be much the same, but almost certainly not as extreme.
Poring through the data, Sailer tells us “Africans of 100% black ancestry in the U.S. tend to be somewhat smarter than less purely black people of African-descent.” This is a true observation, and while it does not tell us with certainty of the cause of differences in scores, it hints at it. Full African blacks do better, perhaps, because they have not yet been taught to be American blacks.
In any case, it’s clear from this, and from many, many other similar measurements, blacks don’t score as well on these tests on average; and at the extreme best scores there are always few blacks, while at the extreme worst scores there are always many blacks.
Before we get to the acrimony and angst, which are the main point of this post, here’s another current headline “Indigenous people in the Philippines have the highest level of DNA from our ancient ancestors the Denisovans” (CNN agrees). Key line: “Researchers in Sweden have found that the Philippine Negrito ethnic group known as the Ayta Magbukon have the highest level of Denisovan ancestry today.”
We’ll take all this as a given, and from that, plus all human history, we conclude that peoples are different.
This would be without controversy except for the theory, held and promulgated by many Experts, that all peoples are the same biologically but different culturally. This theory (called Equality) goes against all observational evidence, as we have just seen, and have always seen and admitted until recently.
So why do these Experts insist on biological sameness? Which is the equivalent question to, why are the consistent differences in test scores blamed on whites (who can only be defined culturally not biologically)?
Because the test questions measure the sort of tasks Experts value above all other things. That’s it, and nothing more. Experts say intelligence is the highest good, and these test scores are indicators of intelligence. See the IQ post above for Experts’ limited understanding of intelligence: what they mean by it is incomplete and far less than it is. But here we use their understanding of its definition.
They have before them, then, a clear choice if they accept (their definition of) intelligence as the highest, and indeed only, good. Admit race, and work to promote just those races that test scores say are intelligent, with all that that implies. Or, because of those implications, deny race and insist on Equality, with all that that implies.
If you are a godless Expert in thrall to intelligence, and you admit race, you either bloodlessly implement the implications (or see to it they are implemented), or you shudder and say to yourself it’s better to say race is a fiction. Of course, there are always a handful of true believers; those who, amazingly, do hold with Equality. Despite their small numbers, it is these less intelligent folks who hold sway in our Expertocracy and produce the party line. This paradox, however, has an easy explanation.
Since all Experts aren’t stupid, they know that differences in intelligence have causes. It they can’t admit race, they have to say, they are forced to say, “racism” (or money, or whatever). Equality is thus a theorem and is not axiomatic. It is deduced from the premise that (their definition of) intelligence is the highest (by far, or only) good, and the premise that the implications of intelligence being the highest good are unkind.
The only other choice is to admit intelligence is not the highest, or really only, good. Yet if Experts admit that, then they have to admit their own value is not as high as they esteem it. This is, as you might well imagine, unthinkable in an Expertocracy.
This, at any rate, explains the other paradox of how Experts can say biological whites are innately evil while simultaneously saying race doesn’t exist.
Something, eventually, will have to give.
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“Something, eventually, will have to give.”
Well, I would say it has already given – and we are on our way down and out.
But it is no accident that the first politically correct witch hunts were directed against IQ experts who insisted that there were hereditary and significant racial differences – Jensen in the USA, then Eysenck in the UK.
Post 60s New Leftism is *rooted* in the denial of socio-economically significant hereditary differences in aptitude and personality; so They had to lie about this reality, and have continued to lie.
https://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2008/05/james-watson-affair.html
Bruce,
Yep:
California educators battle over woke math
As US Schools Prioritize Diversity Over Merit, China Is Becoming the World’s STEM Leader
Intelligence (IQ) is real.
Race is real.
Everyone is different.
Good is the greatest good. However, as all of history has shown, it takes a certain level of intelligence to actively be good, because good is difficult, and requires much thought. Evil is easy, and requires no thought.
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Why are so many of the “other” marked at about 50% European ancestry?
It took centuries of effort by the Church to turn the savages (many of our ancestors) at the edges of what had been the Roman empire in Europe into solid Christians, i.e. into the men that built Christendom.
Transformation of a culture takes a lot of grace, time, and effort. It only happens with conversion. And the after effects are extremely strong. That’s why places like England have been able to run on fumes basically for centuries after their elite rebelled against God and dragged everyone with them.
For the Africans brought here, there had been some progress. Patchy, very imperfect. But that’s been systematically dismantled. Individuals and families can through their effort set a different path, but the culture has been deliberately poisoned by our so-called-elites.
The wake up call in this is that the heirs of Christendom are FAR down the the same path of degeneracy at this point. It isn’t like our heirs are going to be somehow immune to where this all inevitably goes if not turned around.
Just tried to find “The intelligence of Nations” by Richard Lynn & David Becker, 2019, on amazon.com
I failed, probably due to a lack of intelligence and not because Bezos canceled it
I’m curious about that one dot that identified as white but had close to 0% European ancestry
Briggs: ”…intelligence is not the highest, or really only, good.”
That came to you while out in the canoe casting for walleye, right?
It is a sound insight. Absent firm grounding in the Moral Law intelligence turns destructive, creating more intelligent ways to sin and more clever rationalizations for wickedness. Intelligence absent humility leads to pride. Intelligence is not wisdom. Intelligence is not virtue. Intelligence is not reverence. It is a tool that may be used for good or for ill; one such illness being the perverse obsession with intelligence among the intelligent. Intelligence misused is stupidity. Intelligence is like a powerful, expensive car — if you drive it like a total jerk running over the neighborhood dogs it would be better if you had no car at all.
It takes a man standing on the firm ground of the Moral Law, humble under God, before wisdom and virtue may guide him in using the tool of intelligence for the benefit of man and the glory of God. Given that, then it can be a fine and wondrous thing.
There is an easy, but speculative, explanation for the finding that American blacks generally test dumber than Africans – and no, this is not racist.
Johnson’s “war on poverty” provided strong financial incentives for black women to have and raise babies outside marriage. One result of this was to reduce the attractiveness of middle class working blacks while increasing that of black athletes like football and basketball players – many of whom were great at ball games, but basically both stupid and violence prone. This changed the American gene pool then and affects test results and cultural norms now.
“Something, eventually, will have to give.”
Rationally, certainly, we would believe that to be true. When it comes to mechanical, physical, real-world things this is absolutely true. You can’t pour two gallons of gin into a 1 gallon pitcher. You can’t snarf down cookies (what happened to all the cookies!?) if none have ever been baked. Logical impossibilities are — in the real world — not just logically but ACTUALLY impossible. If I’m 6′ tall I can’t also be 4′ tall. If I am born in Iowa, I can’t also be born in California.
Opposing assertions can’t both be true simultaneously.
But when it comes to what the Progressive Mind (and I use that word loosely) can contain, is there actually any logical limit to any contradiction therein held? Race doesn’t exist….AND….the White Race is inherently Privileged (in a very evil way). “Yes!”, they say, “That’s true!”
The Progressive believes absolutely that everyone is equal in all ways always. So equally they believe that any disparate impact by demographic category can ONLY be the result of discrimination & bias. UNLESS, it’s a outcome imbalance they like (think NBA…think NFL….think Rap & HipHop) in which case it’s the result of talent and ability and hard work! This yields another Progressively Logical ‘finding’: Disparate impact always indicates racism unless it doesn’t (and we always make the call). Racial imbalance is always bad unless it’s good.
This then leads to Kendi’s double-think formulation of an “anti-racist” as one who never BAD discriminates on the basis of race (against Blacks) but always GOOD discriminates on the basis of race (against Whites and Asians). Discrimination, to the Kendi-Progressive is not discrimination unless it results in an outcome undesired. Equally desired outcomes produced by discriminatory behavior are not discriminatory.
In Progressive Kendi-land the only thing that actually gives is the dictionary (which gives constantly).
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
?“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
?“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
Here is the path to failure that I see for university math:
-Complaints raised about the wrong demographics doing too poorly in remedial courses. This is declared to be the result of racism, meaning that remedial courses are racist. Expect to see a lot of talk about “certain populations struggle to graduate in six years, which is often due to retaking remedial math courses.”
-From this point there are three possibilities, though the end result is the same. Either the remedial courses are waived as prerequisites for the next level of math and science courses, or they are forced to enact quotas (though they won’t be called that) until the passing rates are acceptable, or they will be stuffed with “anti-racist social consciousness” material. Whatever happens, the result is the same: freshmen level math and science courses are now stuffed with students who don’t know a damn thing about mathematics (including white students who coasted along on the lowered standards.)
-Teachers of freshmen level STEM classes will of course try to maintain some level of quality, leading to even more massive failures among students in certain populations. Thus the argument for remedial classes is repeated, but in a faster tempo. The exact mechanics will vary, but inevitably the courses will have their standards lowered, be stuffed with irrelevant social justice material, and the students will move on to the next level.
-Good luck teaching things like complex analysis, quantum mechanics, signal analysis, etc. at this point! These classes will be full of students who can’t even pass remedial algebra, and likely are confused about the concept of a fraction. But the standard will already be set that students cannot be failed based on their lack of academic competence. Some old school teachers will say “I’m going to pass everyone and teach those of you who actually want to learn something” but most will eagerly accept the social justice material, if only to have something in the class that students can actually “pass” and thus “justify” the grades. The STEM content will largely consist of talking about what science has done in the past (with the constant reiteration that white men really stole the credit from everyone else) and a smattering of plugging numbers into computer programs without understanding what is going on.
A hodge-podge of thoughts come to mind. (I was only able to take a mental vacation, albeit from Reality.)
First, that scattergram is pretty misleading. With 10k+ points to plot, a connect-the-dots chart would have been unreadable. But the eye is still drawn to the larger areas of color, equating area with quantity. For example, the salmon-colored dots draw the eye as much or more as the orchid-colored dots, even though there are many more orchid-colored dots. One approach I have used for scattergrams like this with a moderately large number of datapoints is to change the dots to hollow circles with a minimum-width outline. (I once read an interesting book on the techniques used in charts to convey information, or to deceive, if that is your goal. I think the book was “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” by Edward Tufte.)
Second, the scattergram appears to be another example where the most useful information is in the outliers. In particular, the outliers on the high end: it’s easy to imagine that the few dots above g=3 correspond to people who will have an outsized impact on society. With this in mind, it appears than the sample size is way too small to make any sort of statement about these outliers on the high side. With a sample size of 100k or 1M, would the Thomas Sowells and Antonin Scalias of the future start to show up? (This, of course, assume that g actually correlates with something important.)
Third, an engineer looking at the scattergram would say “Your process is not under control, why are you plotting the small trends in the means? You’ve got much bigger fish to fry.” In non-engineer-speak: “with this much variation in the population, talking about small correlations between race and g-factor is pointless”. (Ok, one exception to this might be with actuaries, who care naught about individuals, but only about differences between large groups, since those even small differences can equate to significant payouts.)
Finally, not long after I got out of school, the large company I worked for announced the results of an internal study that showed a low correlation between GPA and success at the company. I graduated with a respectable GPA, so I took this as a bad omen. But in hindsight it makes perfect sense, as “people-persons” were well-represented in management. At the time, I would get annoyed when a salesperson or a manager tried to BS their way through a lack of technical knowledge. But over the years I have come to appreciate those people, as they are a good match to the customer base, and without them I wouldn’t have a job. Dilbert truly is a documentary.
Since someone brought up Dilbert:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SKeJtiCxJo
You keep on making this claim, but that’s not what equality means:
“Africans of 100% black ancestry in the U.S. tend to be somewhat smarter than less purely black people of African-descent.”
Perhaps it should be “Blacks of 100% African ancestry,” i.e. recent African immigrants or their first generation offspring. As 9-10 year olds, I assume the latter. These Africans would be self-selected for high(er) intelligence, as their parents had the wherewithal–resourcefulness in smarts and money–to escape Africa. Whether these children retain their advantage as adults, rather than assimilate to ghetto culture, is another matter.
“6Now when Jesus was in Bethany, at the home of Simon the leper, 7a woman came to Him with an alabaster vial of very costly perfume, and she poured it on His head as He reclined at the table. 8But the disciples were indignant when they saw this, and said, “Why this waste? 9“For this perfume might have been sold for a high price and the money given to the poor.” 10But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why do you bother the woman? For she has done a good deed to Me. 11“For you always have the poor with you; but you do not always have Me. 12“For when she poured this perfume on My body, she did it to prepare Me for burial. 13“Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be spoken of in memory of her.”” Matthew 26.
Jesus said the above, and it always will be, true, and we are to do all God calls us to do, to help others. We are equally God’s creation. Some receive and fulfill God’s requirements to be His adopted children and some purposely refuse Him and His gifts.
Far better to spend one’s time, given one by God our Father, in witnessing to His Son Jesus and His salvation, with trust in Him to provide for one’s needs. Even His own have very difficult times, but trust and faith in God, sees each one through, His way. He allows earthly riches to some and not to others, but to all He offers His Son, the richest of all gifts.
Equality is only found in the Love from God to us. Start there. Receive Him and His Love. Give to Him all that one has. Use that which He gives, to His glory.
Hagfish Bagpipe said it well! Thank you!!
God bless, C-Marie
swordfishtrombone keeps missing the joke, and the gulf between what exists on paper and what happens in actual practice. He misses the fact that his lefty buddies routinely violate Human Rights and Equality while virtue signalling about how they uphold them.
Nice feelings about equality mean nothing when it comes to real world performance. Hence the desperate cries for not ‘Equality’ as in fairness for all, but for ‘Equality of outcome’ which is demonstrably unfair and discriminatory.
“Experts say intelligence is the highest good, and these test scores are indicators of intelligence. ”
Perhaps because the traits measured by IQ scores are highly predictive of success in a Western modernized society?
“Equality” of any type is already old hat. It’s all about “equity” now. Equality, even “equality of outcome” was getting to be a bit too well defined and thus could actually restrict the leftists into being required to provide some good. “Equity” is still fresh enough that it can mean literally anything.
The supporters of “equality” will be the most surprised when their allies put them up against the wall first.
Intelligence (shall we say, “mental alacrity”) is no more a disposition to to wisdom and virtue than is physical prowess.
As I like to say “one can’t be really, idiotically wrong without a good dose of “smarts” (mental alacrity)” or, as Confucius succinctly put it “a fast runner can go a long way on the wrong road”.
I am genetically related to some very smart blood relatives, and also to some moron blood relatives. So that shoots the DNA-IQ connection in the foot. My genius is not necessarily genetic, more of a gift from God. My brother, however, is gifted in other areas. We all get gifts. What we do with them is what counts.
PS — In Shakespeare’s King Henry VI Dick the Butcher, a revolutionary, states “First we’ll kill all the lawyers.” That’s because there were no social scientists in Elizabethan England.
I’m curious about that one dot that identified as white but had close to 0% European ancestry
“white” as an ancestral quality doesn’t necessarily mean European.
In the 18th century those from the Caucasus area (Caucasia?) were also considered “white”
hence the term “Caucasian”.
“white” as a skin color is also meaningless.
Except for albinos, no one is “white” but some shade of brown.
When you think about it “brown” isn’t a distinct color.
There is no way to make it with RGB except by varying the saturation.
It’s really dark orange.
As far as I can tell, there is an ideological tribe who are similarly melanin deficient as the Europeans but they like to distance themselves from Christendom and are, therefore, only pale skinned but not “white”.
Curious! You might try asking B’nai B’rith for an explanation but don’t hold your breath waiting for a reply.
I have no experience with King Henry VI, so am reading it online. Thank you, Uncle Mike!
Think Tower of Babel. Read what God actually did to the people and why He did it. He may well have changed skin and more as well as language at that time, His purpose being that never again would humankind, except in and therough His Son Jesus Christ, have the unity which they had up to then. The unity which they had when building the Tower of Babel, excluded God as God. They made themselves, their ideas and their ways, their god.
God bless, C-Marie
Rudolph Harrier,
Yes, Briggs should have used the word “equity”, not “equality”. This is why the gulf between Left and Right keeps growing wider: each side takes the most extreme ideas from the other side and presents it as if the majority accept it. I’m pretty sure the majority on both sides support the idea of a fair society.
C-Marie,
That prediction didn’t pan out.
So let’s not bother trying to make things fairer? At least, that’s the implication of your comment, and Jesus’s rather unhelpful statement.
Well now, Mr Noisyfish, why don’t you have a rest from Christian bashing (heckling from the back of the room) and put forward your plans for the “evolutionary progress” of humanity? Would it include some form of eugenics in which an elite of “chosen” dominate the “profane” or goyim (for their own good, of course)?
Actually, all of Christianity is still talking about what she did, and the appearance is, that you are, too,
It would be good, that sooner rather than later, people open their hearts and minds to God. But then it is a choice, with serious ramifications, whether belief and faith are activated, or not. Again, it is free will with which one chooses to believe in The salvation wrought only through Jesus Christ, or one chooses to not be saved unto Eternal Life with God our Father.
It is a good to realize that one is daily choosing to believe or not. Time is going by and one day it will stop for each of us. When my time stops, I am going to Heaven with maybe a stop at Purgatory. Hope to see each of us there.
God bless, C-Marie
C-Marie,
Nice try, but clearly not true. We’re not even told this woman’s name!
Sigh. We can’t choose our beliefs. I can’t choose to believe I’m ten years younger, and I’m sure you can’t either. You could choose to *act* as if you believe it, but you’d be lying to yourself. Similarly, I can’t choose to believe God exists when it seems absolutely clear to me that he doesn’t. I could choose to act as if I believe he exists (as many supposed Christians clearly do – including people like priests, btw), but surely God (if he existed) wouldn’t be fooled by people merely pretending to believe in him?
Oldavid,
No.
[quote=Noisyfish] No. [/quote]
Please explain!
You never give any reason or justification for your heckling. Tell us how and why eugenics and the elitist domination of men and women are not consistent with the assumed dialectic of materialistic “progress” from nothing from nowhere to an everything from nothing.
@C-Marie, I recently opined elsewhere that the reason we will always have the poor with us is so that we may love them (agape/caritas), i.e. do good for them, as a gift. Jesus doesn’t let us have the excuse that there are so few poor that we, his followers, don’t need to get involved, or can assign our responsibility to care for the poor to others, such as the government.
@SwordfishTrombone: Jesus didn’t say we’d know the name of the lady who anointed his feet. He said we’d know she did it. And, as far as I know, not even Thomas “I’ll edit out all the miracles” Jefferson cut that bit from the Gospels.
Finally, what’s called “faith” is perhaps equally well translated as “trust.” I trust the historical record of the Gospels, where Jesus not only clearly claimed to be God, but was also threatened with death for doing so, and that for proof, he not only performed numerous other signs, but also died and brought about his own resurrection.
Even so, with all of this haggling, when one’s time is done, the choice time of free will is over.
Obstinate intransigence is a useless stand in the matters of faith in God.
Try Him. You will love being fathered by Him. God loves you!
From the site listed below:
“Many believers today often confuse having faith in God with trusting in God. Faith is a noun. It is something you have or possess, a “substance” or “evidence” of things both hoped for and not seen (Hebrews 11:1). Faith in God is the confident belief that He is the sovereign Creator of all things and that He can and will do what He claims. Trust, on the other hand, is a verb. It is something you do or act upon. Faith always comes first, but trust is never guaranteed. It is a willful choice, a deliberate action, and can only grow out of your faith.”
https://www.icr.org/article/faith-vs-trust/
God bless, C-Marie
Oldavid,
It’s an outright lie to say that I never give any reason or justification for my point of view, as anyone can confirm by reading a few of my comments. The reason I answered your question with just “no” was that you didn’t give any “reason or justification” why I should be in favour of eugenics. It was a “when did you stop beating your wife” type of question, so “no” was all the answer it deserved.
The fact that action X is “consistent with” belief Y doesn’t mean that belief Y necessitates action X, or that a believer in Y automatically advocates for X. By analogy, not working on Sunday is “consistent with” Christianity, but that doesn’t mean that you, as a Christian, are automatically in favour of all the staff walking out of hospitals, police stations, and nuclear power stations on Sundays.
That you haven’t a clue what keeping holy the Sabbath by abstaining from unnecessary servile work means doesn’t stop you from gibes and heckling.
It doesn’t mean you have to leave your donkey to drown because it fell down a well on the Sabbath as Christ Himself alluded, nor does it mean that you shouldn’t get out of bed, or eat, or feed your family, or leave the sick or wounded unattended or in peril etc. on the Sabbath because it might be construed as “work” by some pompous arseoles.
Now then, I was only interested in how you might attempt to side-step the dogmas of “Evolution” in regard to the “survival of the fittest” paradigm without the obvious necessity of eliminating the “unfittest”.
I didn’t come down in the last shower, Mr brassiest and fishiest, I well know that consistent (as in the scientific rules of logic) reason is not a governing principle in the endlessly “becoming” version of “reality” so much loved by all who would narcissistically usurp a Creator and purpose to their own ephemeral fancies. You’ve turned the whole concept of reality upside down; “reality” is a construct of your mind that is the ideological premise against which everything is judged or interpreted. That is, the Gnostic does not start with an observation of what is apparent (obvious) to just about every sane person (commonsense) but they assume that there is a “higher” kind of “primordial” reality that is so far beyond ordinary people’s perception that it renders observable reality irrelevant. As far as I know, the likes of Rene Guenon, Helena Blavatsky, Ananda Coomeraswamy, are significant proponents of this fantasy in the relatively recent past.
Anyhow, Mr Noisyfish, please explain how your “non-repudiation” of eugenics is an endorsement of the “Darwinist principle” of “natural selection” that is promoted as the “cause” of what is, what we have and what we will have.
Oldavid,
This was an analogy about consistency, not an argument in itself about Sunday working. Sigh. But since you’re labouring the point, I could ask why God wasn’t capable of clearly explaining what can be done on the Sabbath in the Old Testament?
This is an appeal to nature fallacy: The fact that we have evolved doesn’t mean that we should adopt the way evolution works as a moral code. It’s also an example of the is/ought problem: How can you get from the “is” of evolution, to the “ought” that we ought to act the same way that evolution works?
But in any case, “survival of the fittest” doesn’t mean survival of the strongest, fastest, or largest, it means survival of that which is best fitted to survive in a particular environment. Human beings aren’t the strongest, fastest, or largest animal, but we are (probably) the most intelligent, and one of the most sociable. In that sense, if we behave in moral ways which enhance our ability to cooperate, then we are, in fact, being “consistent with” our evolutionary heritage.
Sorry, but you’ve lost me. Are you sure you haven’t been at the hooch?