Whites are 75% of US Iraq deaths
Percentages by ethnic group: White: 75 percent; Hispanic or Latino: 11 percent; Black or African American: 9 percent; Asian: 2 percent; multiple races, pending, or unknown: 1 percent; American Indian or Alaska Native: 1 percent; Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander: 1 percent
[ So much for the myth that poor minorities are dying for whitey. ]
news on 03.25.08 @ 09:44 PM CST [more..]
Liberal media bias
A survey conducted late last year and released Monday, by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, confirmed the obvious -- that compared to the views of the public, conservatives are under-represented in national journalism while liberals are over-represented.
Only six percent said they considered themselves conservatives and only two percent said they were very conservative. This compares with 36 percent of the overall population that describes itself as conservative. Most journalists, 53 percent, said they're moderate. 24 percent said they were liberal and eight percent very liberal.
Only 19 percent of the public consider themselves liberal. And it's not much of a leap to presume many of the 53 percent who describe themselves as “moderate” are really quite liberal.
[ Not a shock, but it's more crowd-pleasing than a clear-minded liberalism, and even that is dangerously close to crowd-pleasing, a lot like our demagogue "conservatives." ]
news on 03.25.08 @ 09:38 PM CST [more..]
Welfare produces parasites
Known as the "Shameless" family among horrified neighbours, the McFaddens "boast" three generations of adults who are not working.
All ten members of the clan share a council house and live off benefits amounting to around £32,000 a year. And very happy they are, too.
But the really disturbing aspect of the McFaddens' lifestyle is that they are far from alone. Six million Britons are living in homes where no one has a job and "benefits are a way of life", according to a report by MPs. Shock figures also revealed that 20,000 households in Britain are pocketing more than £30,000 a year in state benefits.
[ The liberal state produces a bumper crop of parasites by encouraging pointless inactivity. ]
news on 03.25.08 @ 06:27 PM CST [more..]
Anti-Semitism flap for Obama advisor
The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) called on Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) Tuesday to remove military adviser and national campaign co-chairman Gen. Tony McPeak from his team, citing past statements McPeak has made about the Middle East that the RJC finds troubling.
“Gen. McPeak resorted to old stereotypes and unfortunate language by blaming the lack of progress with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process on the undue political influence of American Jewry. The problem, said McPeak, is ‘New York City. Miami. We have a large vote ... here in favor of Israel. And no politician wants to run against it.’ ”
[ Racism from all angles! ]
news on 03.25.08 @ 06:19 PM CST [more..]
Social decay brought by immigration
In June, 2007 a solid eighty percent of the American people let Congress know they wanted the government to put the brakes on illegal immigration; they turned thumbs down on the President's guest worker amnesty plan; and they wanted tax-paid services to illegals stopped.
The annual cost for uncompensated emergency care to Mexican Border States ( California , New Mexico, Arizona and Texas ) is $200 million. California taxpayers paid $79 million for illegal alien health care. Four major Los Angeles hospitals were bankrupted and shut down in 2004. Texas paid $74 million. Georgia ran a $63 million deficit for 64,000 unpaid doctor visits in 2002. Cochise County , Arizona spent 30% of its annual budget on uncompensated care to illegal aliens. University Medical Care in Tucson , Arizona spent $10 million on uncompensated care to illegal aliens. 77 hospitals in the four Border States now face financial emergencies.
Over 300,000 pregnant women enter the nation illegally every year. Taxpayers pay for food, housing medical care and school. The average annual cost per child for education is $7,161, totaling $109 billion to educate illegal aliens annually. The average cost of bilingual education is $1,200 per illegal student. U.S. schools annually educate 1.1 million illegal children. Schools have become over crowded and unruly. Teacher shortages (especially those who speak Spanish) are a growing problem for local school districts.
[ This money could have gone to solving social problems, not making more of them. ]
admin on 03.25.08 @ 04:53 PM CST [more..]
Nationalists win in Taiwan
Ma Ying-jeou of the Nationalist party, or Kuomintang (KMT), won by a landslide in presidential elections in Taiwan on Saturday March 22nd.
Taiwanese turned out in high numbers.about 200,000 alone poured back from mainland China to vote. They gave Mr Ma over 58% of the vote, a 17-point lead over his rival, Frank Hsieh of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), and returned to power through the ballot box a party that had once ruled Taiwan by force.
[ Worldwide, people are recognizing the value of the organic state. ]
admin on 03.25.08 @ 04:48 PM CST [more..]
Income disparity increasing not decreasing
New government research has found "large and growing" disparities in life expectancy for richer and poorer Americans, paralleling the growth of income inequality in the last two decades.
One of the researchers, Gopal K. Singh, a demographer at the Department of Health and Human Services, said "the growing inequalities in life expectancy" mirrored trends in infant mortality and in death from heart disease and certain cancers.
[ The end result of capitalism, freedom, democracy, tolerance... is wage slavery? LOL, how easy it is to fool you people! ]
admin on 03.25.08 @ 04:47 PM CST [more..]
Education should return to teaching, play
Schools should return to an early 1980s style of liberal education with more time for play and less rigid methods of teaching children to read, according to the largest teachers' union.
Citing mounting evidence of a crisis in children's happiness and mental health, the National Union of Teachers will today debate calls to scrap the most restrictive elements of the national curriculum and reverse a government order that literacy be taught through phonics.
[ Why not teach unpoliticized education to those who can learn, and let the others go where they're going anyway? Take care of those with potential FIRST. ]
admin on 03.25.08 @ 04:43 PM CST [more..]
Simple pollution as bad as the complicated stuff
Soot produced by burning coal, diesel, wood and dung causes significantly more damage to the environment than previously thought, according to research published today. So-called "black carbon" could cause up to 60% of the current warming effect of carbon dioxide, according to the US researchers, making it an important target for efforts to slow global warming.
Around 400,000 people are estimated to die each year due to inhaling soot particles, particularly because of indoor cooking on wood and dung stoves in developing countries. These deaths are mainly among women and children.
[ What kind of pollution is "good," again? ]
admin on 03.25.08 @ 04:38 PM CST [more..]
Climate change will bring ethnic warfare
According to the climate change scientist James Lovelock, this is the beginning of the end of a peaceful phase in evolution.
By 2040, the world population of more than six billion will have been culled by floods, drought and famine.
The people of Southern Europe, as well as South-East Asia, will be fighting their way into countries such as Canada, Australia and Britain.
We will, he says, have to set up encampments in this country, like those established for the hundreds of thousands of refugees displaced by the conflict in East Africa.
Lovelock believes the subsequent ethnic tensions could lead to civil war.
[ Hitler was worried about this. ]
admin on 03.25.08 @ 04:30 PM CST [more..]
The "news" is an illusion
When I joined CNN in 1989, I was ecstatic. To be part of an organization that could spend 24 hours a day covering important issues around the world was a dream come true. While the vision didn't always comport with reality, it matched up much of the time.
As time went by and competition emerged, we all know what happened. Ratings began to drive agendas and heat over light became the norm. In recent years, the lip gloss quotient (it works for both genders) has become more important than IQ. The definition of fair and balanced has nothing to do with truth and is satisfied if voices from the far left and right are encouraged to spew their dogma in angry debate.
The anchors are there to simply fuel the fire with no duty to steer guests to substantive conversation, much less to insist on facts over fatuous rhetoric.
[ Couldn't say it better ourselves. ]
admin on 03.25.08 @ 04:26 PM CST [more..]
Blacks were not injected with Syphilis
One peculiar footnote of the Jeremiah Wright controversy has been the repetition -- by educated black men on national television -- of a stubborn myth. That the U.S. government "injected black men with
syphilis."
Rev. Wright said from the pulpit, in a video clip shown on Fox News: "The government lied about the Tuskegee experiment! They purposely infected African-American men with syphilis!"
In the "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male," federal researchers refused to treat a group of black men who already had syphilis, long after a cure had been found.
[ Just a little reality in the midst of the rhetoric. ]
admin on 03.25.08 @ 04:22 PM CST [more..]
Liberalism is the West's death urge
The strength of the West measured in terms of freedom -- of Prometheus unbound and its creative spirit unleashed soaring upwards despite risks -- resides in its assimilative capacity and openness to share its freedom with those beyond its cultural boundaries seeking the same.
Muggeridge again: "Previous civilizations have been overthrown from without by the incursion of barbarian hordes; ours has dreamed up its own dissolution in the minds of its own intellectual elite."
In every culture there are to be found some dissidents or skeptics questioning its legitimacy and moral authority as those in the former Soviet Union -- Andrei Sakharov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and others not as well known -- did. They exposed the lies of a system that rationalized the organized effort of tyranny to extinguish freedom, and their sacrifice eventually contributed to its demise.
But the oddity about skeptics in the West, as Muggeridge wrote about them and their liberalism, is the death wish to undo a culture where freedom, having sunk deep roots, thrives. They would replace this culture with a pale shadow of one negating all that is noble, life affirming, uplifting and founded on the values celebrated by the Christian church.
[ Liberalism is a death wish. Let's stop growing, compliment ourselves, and make ourselves feel better for being nice to the less fortunate. But whatever we do, let us not strive for grand goals; they might inconvenience us. ]
admin on 03.25.08 @ 04:16 PM CST [more..]
The racial pacification bargain
But whatever [Geraldine Ferraro’s] motives, she was right: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position.” Barack Obama is, of course, a very talented politician with a first-rate political organization at his back. But it does not detract from his merit to say that his race is also a large part of his prominence. And it is undeniable that something extremely powerful in the body politic, a force quite apart from the man himself, has pulled Obama forward. This force is about race and nothing else.
How to turn one’s blackness to advantage?
The answer is that one “bargains.” Bargaining is a mask that blacks can wear in the American mainstream, one that enables them to put whites at their ease. This mask diffuses the anxiety that goes along with being white in a multiracial society. Bargainers make the subliminal promise to whites not to shame them with America’s history of racism, on the condition that they will not hold the bargainer’s race against him. And whites love this bargain—and feel affection for the bargainer—because it gives them racial innocence in a society where whites live under constant threat of being stigmatized as racist. So the bargainer presents himself as an opportunity for whites to experience racial innocence.
[ Whites are trying to buy off blacks with guilt, and that's why Obama is popular. ]
admin on 03.25.08 @ 04:11 PM CST [more..]
Martin Luther King, Jr. wanted ethnonationalism
Dr. King’s death also stopped him from carrying through on a plan that would have charted a new and highly controversial course for the civil rights movement, according to Mr. Watkins. In his book, he wrote that Dr. King shared his frustrations about the economic inequities blacks faced in America over dinner at a hotel after his speech. He then whispered to Mr. Watkins what he hoped to eventually do, something the former Augustan decided not to put in his book.
But after 40 years of secrecy, and initially saying he would probably take it to his grave, he revealed what it was: Dr. King was going to propose a separate state for blacks so they could eventually achieve economic parity that he believed wouldn’t happen on its own in America.
“It nearly scared me to death,” Mr. Watkins wrote of the idea.
[ Anyone who looks at this issue with honesty will come to this conclusion: ethnic groups need self-rule and their own culture and people surrounding them. ]
admin on 03.25.08 @ 04:00 PM CST [more..]
I thought we had been talking about race
Thank God for Barack Obama. For until his “More Perfect Union” speech last Tuesday, it seems it never occurred to anyone that America needed to talk about race.
Here I’d been under the impression that every major university (and minor one for that matter) in the country already had boatloads of courses—often entire majors—dedicated to race in America...Were all of the corporate diversity consultants and racial sensitivity seminars mere apparitions in a dream?
In fact, doesn’t it seem like the majority of people begging for a “new conversation” on race are the same folks who shout “racist!” at anyone who disagrees with them?
This sort of disconnect between rhetoric and reality is the kind of thing one finds in novels by Alexander Solzhenitsyn or Milan Kundera.
[ People like illusions, and passive activities that make them feel better without solving problems. ]
admin on 03.25.08 @ 03:57 PM CST [more..]
Immigrants needed to suppress the wages of skilled workers
Many in Congress -- including allegedly labor-friendly Democrats -- are pushing to increase the importation of foreign labor just as the USA slips into what may be its worst recession in decades.
Why? Because the greed of a handful of multinationals is demanding more and more access to "skilled" foreign labor.
Sure, we hear bogus "studies" that claim garden-variety foreign programmers will save the U.S. economy. But former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan recently admitted the real agenda:
"Significantly opening up immigration to skilled workers . would compete with high-income people, driving more income equality."
In 2007, he further opined that, "Our skilled wages are higher than anywhere in the world. If we open up a significant window for skilled (foreign) workers, that would suppress the skilled-wage level and end the concentration of income."
Since 1990, Congress has allowed U.S. and multinational businesses to use foreign "nonimmigrant" visa programs to drive down wages and displace American workers. What began as a short-term fix for a supposed "short-term" shortage of programmers has turned into another elitist feeding frenzy for greedy people at the top of the food chain.
[ Clearly this is putting the state's agenda above the (charade of the) democratic wish of the people - and the state is run by an elite that sees people as merely a resource for their own globalist money-making and power. National socialism eschews democracy and runs the state entirely for the benefit of the folk. ]
nationalist on 03.25.08 @ 02:39 PM CST [more..]
Raising a child costs middle income families $204,060
Middle-income families can expect to spend $204,060 on feeding, housing and schooling a child born in 2007 until his or her 18th birthday, the U.S. government reported on Monday.
Child care and education costs will represent a larger share of costs for raising the '07 baby through adulthood than they have in the past, the Agriculture Department said in an annual study on child-rearing costs.
[ This is one reason why the middle class has fewer children and can't compete with the over-fecundity of typically impoverished people: it costs a fortune to raise kids well. ]
nationalist on 03.25.08 @ 02:26 PM CST [more..]
Swedish feminists discover neoconservatism
The modern feminist movement has clear left wing tendencies, with many feminists assuming that market economies are built upon structures that oppress women.
But is this necessarily true? One could make the argument that market economies actually create opportunities for women, while public monopolies within welfare systems limit women's careers.
Feminist intellectuals in Sweden have become rather influential. Their ideas are supported by the state and incorporated within all levels of public education and research. However, although suggestions such as a "man tax" have been brought forward, feminist ideas have in many cases not been translated into public policy.
[ It's no surprise if careerists prefer the free market to socialism. ]
nationalist on 03.25.08 @ 02:15 PM CST [more..]
British Councillor calls for compulsory sterilisation for parents on benefits.
A Tory councillor has sparked outrage by claiming parents on benefits should be sterilised to stop them having more than one child.
Cllr John Ward, of Medway Council in Kent, has faced a rash of calls to resign after making the comments in a discussion about the hunt for missing schoolgirl Shannon Matthews.
Mr Ward said Shannon's family - which includes seven children fathered by five men - was an example of "Breakdown Britain"
Writing on his personal website, the councillor said: "I think there is an increasingly strong case for compulsory sterilisation of all those who have had a second child - or third, or whatever - while living off
state handouts.
"It would clearly take a lot of social pressures off all concerned, thus protecting the youngsters themselves to some degree, and remove the incentive to breed for greed, ie for more public subsidy."
[ People who can't manage their own lives should probably not be breeding, or we'll get more of them. ]
nationalist on 03.25.08 @ 01:59 PM CST [more..]
All Revisionism is Labeled "Distortion"
Baker will restate, sardonically, facts that are already powerfully implicit in his anecdotes: "Twelve million people still held to Franklin Roosevelt's basic principle of civilization: that no man should be
punished for the deed of another. Franklin D. Roosevelt was not one of them."
He'll steer the reader toward certainty about hugely controversial historical points (e.g., that America baited Japan into attacking; that Churchill's aggression made Hitler's violence worse; that a workable peace might have been had, at several points, in lieu of total victory; that pacifism was the best response), all of which his unorthodox method, by its very nature, can't honestly support, given that it denies all the traditional hallmarks of historical argument: direct comment, abstract analysis, deep engagement with the existing scholarship.
And so Baker sometimes lapses into the crime he means to correct: He simplifies the narrative he's trying to complicate, distorting the truth as badly as any pious acolyte of the Greatest Generation myth.
[ The victors write history; that doesn't mean they're right. The problem is that badly researched and biased revisionism discredits itself. ]
nationalist on 03.25.08 @ 01:23 PM CST [more..]
Sunday, March 23rd
Multiculturalism feminizing black men
Griff's most famous role in that long career is minister of communications for Public Enemy, the pioneering hip-hop revolutionaries fronted by his childhood friend, Chuck D. But Griff (born Richard Griffin) has made his own name in the world as well, separate from but always in pursuit of the same agenda that drove Public Enemy: empowering black people, countering media dissembling, fighting the powers that be.
Artvoice: How did you become involved with Turn Off Channel Zero?
Griff: Opio Sokoni was at the Black Holocaust Conference in D.C., and listening to all the speakers speak, it came to him that in order for us to balance this all out and to produce the next group of black leaders that are going to come up and speak on behalf of black people, young black students need to see strong black men.
And we're just not seeing this. When we went to go find them, the majority of them had been bought off by this government, co-opted. They don't really speak black, they don't speak for black people. This is a problem, because we don't see ourselves in the educational system. I mean, when you start talking about Little Black Sambo and Ten Little Niggers—these were books that were being used to educate black people. It's not healthy. We could not find a strong black man.
And then the whole aspect of the effeminization of the African male. It's ridiculous: Every strong black male figure that goes to Hollywood has to put on a dress, with the exception of Dave Chappelle and Denzel Washington. Dave Chappelle turned down $50 million, just to say, "No, I'm not doing it," and we don't know what Denzel Washington turned down. But you can't find too many black men in Hollywood that didn't put on the dress.
[ Sensible speech from this ethnonationalist activist. Black and white solidarity to remove multiculturalism is a must. ]
news on 03.23.08 @ 09:56 AM CST [more..]
Ethnic DNA differences greater than expected
"Until recently, scientific dogma told us that genetic similarity between two unrelated healthy individuals was about 99.9 per cent," says Dr Charles Lee at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. "The 0.1 per cent of known genetic differences were primarily in the form of SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) – single base-pair changes in the DNA."
The International HapMap Project, for example, has found millions of SNPs in the genomes of 270 people from four populations: the Yoruba people of Nigeria, Japanese, Han Chinese and people of northern and western European ancestry living in Utah.
At the other end of the scale, very big changes in the genome are rare, but relatively easy to detect as they can be seen under a microscope. But what of intermediate-sized variations – deletions or duplications of pieces of DNA ranging in size from 1000 bases of DNA to tens of thousands of bases? The frequency of such structural changes to the genome, and their importance in normal human variation, was largely unknown.
The new map of these variants, produced by the Structural Genomic Variation Consortium (a collaboration between the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and 12 other centres) not only shows that the variants are frequent and widespread, but also indicates key roles in human diversity, health and disease.
"One can no longer consider human traits as resulting primarily from single base-pair changes or influenced only by SNPs," said Professor Lupski. "With all due respect to Watson and Crick, many Mendelian and complex traits, as well as sporadic diseases, may indeed result from structural variation of the genome."
[ LNSG has endorsed this concept for ten years. Genes are computer code, and so small changes can result in different functions to large blocks of the code. Our previous attitude was like looking at the code for a database and a word processor, and assuming they were basically the same. ]
news on 03.23.08 @ 09:53 AM CST [more..]
Puberty hitting faster
A study in the April 1997 journal Pediatrics found that among 17,000 girls in North Carolina, almost half of blacks and 15 percent of whites had begun breast development by age 8. Until that study, puberty at age 8 was considered an abnormal event that should be investigated by an endocrinologist.
Today, the medically suggested definition for abnormally early breast development is, according to experts, 7 for white girls and 6 for black girls.
The average age in the United States for beginning menstruation is now 12.5 for white girls, 12.06 for black girls and 12.09 for Latinas.
Puberty starts with the development of breasts, leading to growth of pubic hair and then menstruation. Black girls are experiencing these signs on average one year earlier than their ethnic counterparts and are the reason for the change in age of what is considered abnormal, Cesario said. A lower socioeconomic status could be the blame, since malnutrition during pregnancy can lead to premature babies, who often later mature sexually quicker, she said. Physiological differences and the use of human-placenta-based black hair products are also being considered as factors for the discrepancy.
[ Read the whole article; a number of factors are mentioned, none of them good. ]
news on 03.23.08 @ 09:50 AM CST [more..]
Judge OKs law dismantling Affirmative Action
A federal Judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit challenging Proposal 2, a state law that bans preferential treatment based on race or gender in government hiring and university admissions.
In dismissing the suit, Lawson said the plaintiffs failed to prove that the amendment was created to target minorities.
"This is racially targeted legislation of the worst kind," said George Washington, an attorney for BAMN who has argued that the measure was designed to exclude black, Latino and Native American students from higher educational opportunities.
[ An honest meritocracy is seen as unfair. What's wrong with this picture? With entitlement, guilt, revenge and other parasitic emotions waiting in the wings. ]
news on 03.23.08 @ 09:45 AM CST [more..]
White people romanticize and falsify the black experience
The appeal of Seltzer's work lay in the way she positioned herself between America's two races, black and white: She claimed to be a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up poor in a dysfunctional black world. In fact, she is the daughter of a white, upper-middle-class California family. And her story is only the most recent in a long line of literary narratives, entertainments and ethnologies in which white people put on blackface to act as messengers to their white brethren, telling them what life is or was like in the 'hood or on the plantation. The messages they bring back are of black dysfunction, crime and violence, but also of black sexuality, athleticism and soulful musicality. These stories may then reaffirm white audiences' perception of black dysfunction and allow them to use blacks as a negative counterpoint for their own images of normalcy and to affirm their sense of superiority.
Stories written by blacks about blacks, on the other hand, don't seem to offer the vast white reading public that same sense of well-being. Like Seltzer, I write about dysfunction. My own memoir, "That Mean Old Yesterday," actually mirrors some scenes that Seltzer described in her bogus book -- being sexually and physically abused, carrying my possessions in trash bags from foster home to foster home, enduring painful hair-braiding rituals, handling illegal guns.
[ What sells is what's important. Truth? Would be nice, if it paid the bills. So we get a romantic vision of African-Americans, like the "noble savage" vision of American Indians, and truth is far far away. ]
news on 03.23.08 @ 09:43 AM CST [more..]
Liberal revolution has failed
Some, who once dreamed of a better future, have simply given up. Others espouse a bitter maxim: unless you relearn you won't earn. The French intelligentsia, which had from the Enlightenment onwards made Paris the political workshop of the world, today leads the way with retreats on every front. Renegades occupy posts in every west European government defending exploitation, wars, state terror and neocolonial occupations; others now retired from the academy specialise in producing reactionary dross on the blogosphere, displaying the same zeal with which they once excoriated factional rivals on the far left.
[ The liberal revolution failed because it did not address the right question, and so came up with the response of humanism, which exacerbated the condition. Now people are running from it as they see it has become a disaster that empowers parasites to obligate the rest of us to take care of idiots. ]
news on 03.23.08 @ 09:41 AM CST [more..]
Multicultural state destroys families
The Hispanic family is changing. In the past ten years the birth rate among unmarried Latinas has risen from 89 to 100 per 1,000. It is now much higher than the rate among black or white women (see below). Late last year came a significant but little-noticed announcement: probably for the first time, half of all Hispanic children in America were born out of wedlock.
[ Under multiculturalism, every culture is a fish out of water. ]
news on 03.23.08 @ 09:37 AM CST [more..]
"Typical white person" not offensive, "typical black person" is
Obama said: "The point I was making was not that my grandmother...is a typical white person who, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, there's a reaction...that sometimes come out in the wrong way, and that's just the nature of race in our society."
"We doubt this story will have legs, but wonder if Hillary Clinton referred to a 'typical black person,' would we ever hear the end of it?" Dan Gross of the Philadelphia Daily News wrote on his PhillyGossip blog.
"Seriously, Barack Obama basically called all white people racist. ... Is this guy kidding?" wrote Taylor Marsh on Huffington Post in midafternoon.
[ Race is a one-way street: white people bad, anyone else good. It's the revenge of alienated white people and minorities who resent what others (normal, healthy white people) made for themselves, and they want some justification for a free piece of the pie. ]
news on 03.23.08 @ 09:34 AM CST [more..]
Whole families benefit children
"What troubles me is that children today are being raised in an era of increasingly flexible definitions of parenthood, definitions that often serve the interests of adults without regard for children.”
Marquardt has solicited the views of donor children from across the world. These “babies” are now grown up (one of the most vocal voices is pushing 70) and many are very unhappy. “They tell me that their early attempts to make sense of their origins were made more painful by the people around them who insisted that it shouldn’t matter,” Marquardt reports. “That they should be glad to be alive. That they shouldn’t torment the parents who raised them. That they are silly and deluded for thinking that some guy who went into a little room with a dirty magazine holds a key to their identity.”
But where is Marquardt coming from? The child of a broken home, she has argued in a previous book (Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce) that Western society underplays the effect of divorce. She claims to feel kinship with the offspring of donor conception who, similarly, are “not supposed to have a story” because it might conflict with the reproductive “rights” of the individual: “This debate is dominated by adults’ rights: the rights of same-sex couples, the rights of infertile adults, the rights of singles. But we also have to hear and respond to children’s pain when they lose the ability to grow up with their own mom and dad, whether it’s due to donor conception, or parental abandonment, or divorce.”
[ You mean in this, as in everything, nature did it best, first? You don't say! ]
news on 03.23.08 @ 09:11 AM CST [more..]
What motivates evolution?
There is general agreement that Homo erectus, the precursor to modern humans, evolved in Africa and gradually expanded to Eurasia beginning about 1.7 million years ago. Anatomically modern humans—humans that more or less looked like us—arose in Africa at least 130,000 years ago.
By 100,000 years ago, several species of hominids populated the Earth. H. sapiens—us—lived in Africa, H. erectus in Southeast Asia and China, and Neandertals in Europe. Around 50,000 years ago, there was a sudden explosion [sic] of human migration out of Africa [by some estimates, numbering only in the hundreds], and by about 30,000 years ago, we were the last ones standing.
One school of thought argues that Homo sapiens emerged with the abilities needed to be modern, and it simply took 70,000 years to hone the technological and social skills needed before they could successfully venture out and populate the rest of the world.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0220_030220_humanorigins2_2.html
Researchers have found evidence which suggests that evolution drives animals to become increasingly more complex.
"If you start with the simplest possible animal body, then there's only one direction to evolve in . you have to become more complex," said Dr Matthew Wills from the Department of Biology & Biochemistry at the University of Bath who worked with colleagues Sarah Adamowicz from from the University of Waterloo (Canada) and Andy Purvis from Imperial College London.
"Sooner or later, however, you reach a level of complexity where it's possible to go backwards and become simpler again."
"What's astonishing is that hardly any crustaceans have taken this backwards route. Instead, almost all branches have evolved in the same direction, becoming more complex in parallel."
"This is the nearest thing to a pervasive evolutionary rule that's been found."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080317171027.htm
news on 03.23.08 @ 09:07 AM CST [link]
Socialism opposes organic principle of family
According to UN projections, Latvia will lose 44 percent of its population by 2050 as a result of demographic trends. In Estonia, the population is expected to shrink by 52 percent, in Bulgaria 36 percent, in Ukraine 35 percent, and in Russia 30 percent. In comparison with these figures, the projected population decline in Italy (22 percent), the Czech Republic (17 percent), Poland (15 percent) or Slovakia (8 percent) looks like a small decrease. France and Germany will lose relatively little population, and the population of the United Kingdom will even see a slight growth -- thanks to immigrants.
To put it straightforwardly, and perhaps a little cynically, in the past children used to be regarded as investments that provided their parents with means of subsistence in old age. In Czech the word "vejminek" (a place in a farmhouse reserved for the farmer's old parents) is actually derived from a verb meaning "to stipulate": in the deed of transfer, the old farmer stipulated the conditions on which the farm was to be transferred to his son. Instead of an "intergenerational" policy, there used to be direct dependence of parents on their children. This meant that people had immediate economic motivation to have a sufficiently numerous and well-bred offspring - whereas today's anonymous system makes all workers pay for the pensions of all retirees in an utterly depersonalized manner.
This system enables huge numbers of "free riders" to receive more than what would correspond to their overall contribution in their productive life. Those with incomes way above the average, on the contrary, are penalized, as the system gives them less money than they contributed to it. This is referred to as the "solidarity principle".
[ Actually, the reason there are fewer children is that your society is falling apart, not that we lack a way to financially motivate parents, but this is a great criticism of socialism. National Socialism fixed these problems and problems in capitalism, but it's taboo to mention that we want working solutions. ]
news on 03.23.08 @ 09:02 AM CST [more..]
Obama's holy "race" speech: entitlement part II
Obama's purpose in the speech was to put Wright's outrages in context. By context, Obama means history. And by history, he means the history of white racism. Obama says, "We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country," and then he proceeds to do precisely that. What lies at the end of his recital of the long train of white racial assaults from slavery to employment discrimination? Jeremiah Wright, of course.
This contextual analysis of Wright's venom, this extenuation of black hate speech as a product of white racism, is not new. It's the Jesse Jackson politics of racial grievance, expressed in Ivy League diction and Harvard Law nuance. That's why the speech made so many liberal commentators swoon: It bathed them in racial guilt while flattering their intellectual pretensions. An unbeatable combination.
But Obama was supposed to be new. He flatters himself as a man of the future transcending the anger of the past as represented by his beloved pastor. Obama then waxes rhapsodic about the hope brought by the new consciousness of the young people in his campaign. Then answer this, Senator: If Wright is a man of the past, why would you expose your children to his vitriolic divisiveness? This is a man who curses America and who proclaimed moral satisfaction in the deaths of 3,000 innocents at a time when their bodies were still being sought at Ground Zero. It is not just the older congregants who stand and cheer and roar in wild approval of Wright's rants, but young people as well. Why did you give $22,500 just two years ago to a church run by a man of the past who infects the younger generation with precisely the racial attitudes and animus you say you have come unto us to transcend?
[ Krauthammer is a neo-con of Jewish heritage, so he sees this different from conservation third fronters like the LNSG. Our view: Obama is a con man, of course, but the racial problem has no solution, because race is inherent to humanity while all this feel-good "justice" rhetoric is just advertising for the new world order of capitalist liberal democracy with a powerful media. And that will never work, if by work we mean "not destroy the best of humanity." ]
news on 03.23.08 @ 08:54 AM CST [more..]
Friday, March 21st
English only signs OK in the USA
The owner of a famous cheesesteak shop did not discriminate when he posted signs asking customers to speak English, a city panel ruled yesterday.
In a 2-1 vote, a Commission on Human Relations panel found that two signs at Geno's Steaks telling customers, “This is America: WHEN ORDERING 'PLEASE SPEAK ENGLISH,' ” do not violate the city's Fair Practices Ordinance.
[ People who've made this country do not want to pander to people who come for to profit off the wealth it now has. ]
news on 03.21.08 @ 09:25 AM CST [more..]
Abstract belief makes people happier
People who believe in God are happier than agnostics or atheists, researchers claimed yesterday.
A report found that religious people were better able to cope with disappointments such as unemployment or divorce than non-believers.
The research, presented at the Royal Economic Society's annual conference, echoes academic studies that have found religion can improve people's sense of wellbeing.
[ It's not religion, per se: it's believing in something that doesn't directly benefit you and is a process of life in which you have a place. Originally, we called that Tradition. Religion is what we have left of it. ]
news on 03.21.08 @ 09:11 AM CST [more..]
"Offensive" sign removed by Nanny State
A sign most people find offensive is finally off the wall of a Jacksonville laundromat after 30 years.
The sign that reads "Unattended Children Will Be Sold As Slaves" has hung on the wall of the business for decades until Wednesday. The owner of Soap Opera Coin and Laundry said it was there when he bought the place and he just never took it down.
[ No evidence is presented to say that most people find it offensive, and contrary evidence suggests that no one complained until recently. This is more of the pretense of people who want to consider themselves entitled. Good unbiased reporting there, WFTV. ]
news on 03.21.08 @ 08:50 AM CST [more..]
"Green" lightbulbs are toxic waste producers
Compact fluorescent light bulbs, long touted by environmentalists as a more efficient and longer-lasting alternative to the incandescent bulbs that have lighted homes for more than a century, are running into resistance from waste industry officials and some environmental scientists, who warn that the bulbs’ poisonous innards pose a bigger threat to health and the environment than previously thought.
All CFLs contain mercury, a neurotoxin that can cause kidney and brain damage. As long as the mercury is contained in the bulb, CFLs are perfectly safe. But eventually, any bulbs — even CFLs — break or burn out, and most consumers simply throw them out in the trash, said Ellen Silbergeld, a professor of environmental health sciences at Johns Hopkins University and editor of the journal Environmental Research.
“This is an enormous amount of mercury that’s going to enter the waste stream at present with no preparation for it,” she said.
The amount is tiny — about 5 milligrams, or barely enough to cover the tip of a pen — but that is enough to contaminate up to 6,000 gallons of water beyond safe drinking levels, extrapolated from Stanford University research on mercury. Even the latest lamps promoted as “low-mercury” can contaminate more than 1,000 gallons of water beyond safe levels.
[ We're in such a hurry to sell "green" products, so we can buy new things and not change our lifestyles or tell people to stop breeding, that we are willing to unleash toxins upon our world en masse. Good thinking! ]
news on 03.21.08 @ 08:47 AM CST [more..]
Illegal immigrant labor more likely to spread fecal bacteria
Americans are eating more leafy greens than ever. Consumption rose 9 percent between 1996 and 2005, according to a report issued this week by the Centers for Disease Control. But the bad news is that leafy-green-associated outbreaks of foodborne illnesses went up much more: 39 percent since 1996.
Researchers say they are not sure exactly why the rate of illness has increased more than consumption, but they do note that many foodborne disease outbreaks can be traced to a local food preparation source. Of course, in outbreaks that were widespread, the contamination was likely to have originated at the farm or in the processing plant. (Think of the 2006 recall of spinach due to E. coli contamination that was traced back to the farms where it was grown.)
[ So since 1996 and 2005, what group of workers displaced those who previously did these jobs, to the point where they are almost exclusively the labor force that does this work? Maybe there is some wisdom to domestic labor which is not desperate for income to send back across a border and living in perpetual hiatus. ]
news on 03.21.08 @ 08:39 AM CST [more..]
Many news reports are paid infomercials
A VNR is a short clip of marketing propaganda produced in the language and style of real news. P.R. firms send news stations thousands of such videos every year, the most sophisticated of which are virtually indistinguishable from honest news, featuring interviews with (paid) experts and voice-overs by (fake) reporters who subtly pitch products during their narratives. Surprisingly often, news channels broadcast these videos as real news; many times, CMD has found, the only edits that a station will make to a paid clip is to cut off the disclosure noting that the video was sponsored by a corporation.
VNRs first gained notoriety early in 2005, when the New York Times reported that many local stations aired prepackaged segments produced by federal agencies under the Bush administration. The VNRs cheered the war in Iraq, the Bush Medicare plan and various small-time programs. But Diane Farsetta, a researcher at CMD, says that private VNRs far outnumber federal videos -- and once you start looking for them, they seem to pop up everywhere.
On CMD's Web site, you can watch dozens of local news segments lifted directly from VNRs. The effect would be comical -- four stations ran a piece on how to incorporate Bisquick into your plans for National Pancake Week, to take one example -- if the lying weren't so determined.
[ The news isn't fake because it's a conspiracy. It's fake because it's for sale to the highest bidders. ]
news on 03.21.08 @ 08:32 AM CST [more..]
Europeans flee to last open frontiers
If, in Britain, you are struggling to afford your lifestyle; sick of our dank, wet winter; dismayed by urban squalor and creaking public services; if you want to become part of a society that is more interested in where it is going than in looking back over its shoulder, then Australia has a huge amount to offer.
But there is little sign that Rudd has credible ideas about how to rescue the country's 455,000 "indigenous people" from their tragic cycle of poverty, drunkenness, disease, illiteracy and dependency.
The unhappy truth is that the Aborigines are less victims of wilful white Australian brutality, than of finding themselves flotsam on the beach of a ruthlessly advancing civilisation.
[ Advancing toward the same ruin as others, but perhaps there's time it will avoid it. The UK should pay attention to what has gone wrong: unlike Australia, it is obsessed with trying to make failing multiculturalism work. ]
news on 03.21.08 @ 08:28 AM CST [more..]
Sunday, March 9th
Whites flee multicultural schools in Australia
WHITE students are fleeing public schools, leaving behind those of Aboriginal and Middle Eastern origin, a secret report by high school principals reveals.
The NSW Secondary Principals Council conducted a confidential survey which raises serious concerns about "white flight" undermining the public education system and threatening social cohesion. Some teachers and principals have described it as "de facto apartheid".
[ Everyone wants schooling with their own kind. ]
news on 03.09.08 @ 08:36 PM CST [more..]
Affirmative action ban heads for ballot in 5 states
Ballot initiatives have been proposed in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma that would give voters the chance to decide whether they want to do away with affirmative action in government-funded projects and public schools.
Ward Connerly, who heads the American Civil Rights Coalition -- a nonprofit organization working to end racial and gender preferences -- and the main backer of the ballot initiatives, says the 37 word initiative would read: "The state shall not discriminate against or grant preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting."
[ Either we live in a multiculture, where meritocracy rules, or we live in a state where whites subsidize everyone else. Many of them think enough is enough. ]
news on 03.09.08 @ 08:31 PM CST [more..]
Weird drugs floating in your water
A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found [in trace amounts] in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.
But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.
[ It's almost certainly not good for you. ]
news on 03.09.08 @ 06:43 PM CST [more..]
Voters support candidate from their own culture
Moreover, some analysts think it's possible Obama's heavy black support is nudging some working-class white Democrats into Clinton's camp. If true, it could be an important factor in a contest that remains remarkably tight after a year of campaigning.
"This is a racially sensitive group," he said, referring specifically to whites who earn less than $50,000 a year and did not attend college.
"They are the quintessential Reagan Democrats," he said. "They feel they've been left" and their resentment can have social and racial overtones.
Bositis said it was unclear whether Obama's black support is driving some working-class whites into Clinton's corner, but he noted the steep drop in Obama's share of the white vote in Ohio compared to Wisconsin.
[ We all want someone like us. That's why most people elect fools. ]
news on 03.09.08 @ 06:40 PM CST [more..]
Media failed to investigate Obama
Stories like that led to the Center for Media and Public Affairs finding that from mid-December through mid-February, Sen. Obama had coverage that was positive 84 percent of the time (while Hillary Clinton had positive coverage 53 percent of the time).
Dana Milbank of the Post wrote, "It took many months and the mockery of 'Saturday Night Live' to make it happen, but the lumbering beast that is the press corps finally roused itself from its slumber Monday and greeted Barack Obama with a menacing growl."
Mr. Milbank writes the media didn't do this until the day before the Ohio/Texas primaries, when the outcome of the nominating process had almost been decided.
And now, let me introduce Sen. Obama when he is confronted with hard questions instead of adoration. This description is in the words of the Washington Post, a leading member of the mainstream media journalism known best for bias and dishonesty in reporting: "The day before the primaries in Ohio and Texas that could effectively seal the Democratic presidential nomination for him, a smiling Obama strode into a news conference at a veterans facility here. But the grin was quickly replaced by the surprised look of a man bitten by his own dog." That's because for the first time he actually got a few tough questions.
That is the view of the others at that press conference. Sen. Obama, when faced with tough questions, lost that cool of his victory speeches and pep talks on hope and change, and acted like a man bitten by his own dog.
The senator took eight questions and handled them as follows, according to Mr. Milbank: "Obama responded with the classic phrases of a politician in trouble. 'That was the information that I had at the time. ... Those charges are completely unrelated to me. ... I have said that was a mistake. The fact pattern remains unchanged.'"
And what did Senator Cool do when the questions kept coming? He ran away. This is the senator whose television ads tout his courage and who claims he is willing to negotiate and stand up to the dictators of the world. When confronted with a few tough questions, he does what he wants us to do in Iraq: Admit defeat, retreat and cut and run. Senator Courage is the man of retreat and defeat when the questions get tough, and he even wants defeat and retreat in Iraq when we're actually winning the war. This man of courage surrenders even before defeat.
Mr. Milbank writes when Sen. Obama's responses weren't working, he tried another tactic: "'We're running late,' the candidate said, and then he disappeared behind a curtain."
[ We all want the magic image. Not reality. So we gussy up one candidate to appear the shining saviour from all the others, yet everyone has a hand in the game of evading reality. ]
news on 03.09.08 @ 01:12 PM CST [more..]
"Muslims about to take over Europe"
Islam could soon be the dominant force in a Europe which, in the name of political correctness, has abdicated the battle for cultural and religious control, Prof. Bernard Lewis, the world-renowned Middle Eastern and Islamic scholar, said on Sunday...
Lewis, whose numerous books include the recent What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East, and The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, would set no timetable for this drastic shift in Europe, instead focusing on the process, which he said would be assisted by "immigration and democracy." Instead of fighting the threat, he elaborated, Europeans had given up.
"Europeans are losing their own loyalties and their own self-confidence," he said. "They have no respect for their own culture." Europeans had "surrendered" on every issue with regard to Islam in a mood of "self-abasement," "political correctness" and "multi-culturalism," said Lewis, who was born in London to middle-class Jewish parents but has long lived in the United States.
[ He's got that right. Anytime a culture stops believing in itself, like when a person stops believing in themselves, it dies. Luckily, most sane Europeans do not feel this way. It's just those who felt they've lost out who are supporting the leftist revolution, and as things get more difficult, these people are going to fall by the wayside. ]
news on 03.09.08 @ 12:04 PM CST [more..]
Don't Eat Anything That Doesn't Rot
Michael Pollan argues that what most Americans are consuming today is not food but "edible foodlike substances." His previous book, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, was named one of 2006's ten best books by the New York Times and the Washington Post. His latest book is called In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto.
"Food's under attack from two quarters. It's under attack from the food industry, which is taking, you know, perfectly good whole foods and tricking them up into highly processed edible foodlike substances, and from nutritional science, which has over the years convinced us that we shouldn't be paying attention to food, it's really the nutrients that matter. And they're trying to replace foods with antioxidants, you know, cholesterol, saturated fat, omega-3s, and that whole way of looking at food as a collection of nutrients, I think, is very destructive."
"[Y]ou can't really make money selling things like, oh, oatmeal, you know, plain rolled oats. And if you go to the store, you can buy a pound of oats, organic oats, for 79 cents. There's no money in that, because it doesn't have any brand identification. It's a commodity, and the prices of commodity are constantly falling over time. So you take those oats, and you turn them into Cheerios, and then you can charge four bucks for that 79 cents -- and actually even less than that, a few pennies of oats."
[ Commerce eats away at all foundations of sanity, including the food we eat. ]
news on 03.09.08 @ 07:57 AM CST [more..]
Saturday, March 8th
Take money from successful schools, transfer to failing
For the first time, the Houston school district expects that it will have to pay several million dollars to the state under the controversial Robin Hood funding system.
The oddity involving the state's largest district is prompting renewed calls for changes to Texas' complex school funding laws, which require property-wealthy districts to share money with poorer ones.
[ If it takes $5,000 per student to do a good job of educating them, and it cannot be raised through local taxes, the people in that area do not value education much or can't afford it. Robin Hood programs give both rich and poor districts $2,500 per pupil, which means neither can be effectively educated. It's a recipe for failure. ]
news on 03.08.08 @ 10:07 AM CST [more..]
British ethnic cooking being replaced by imports
Traditional British dishes such as toad in the hole and spotted dick could disappear from dining tables by 2021 as households increasingly turn to foreign cuisine, it has been claimed.
New research shows that Britons rarely make dishes such as steak and kidney pie or jam roly-poly from scratch any more, and are far more likely to cook curries and pasta meals from recipes.
The survey by Tesco found that only five per cent of 18-40-year-olds had cooked a spotted dick, compared to 14 per cent of 41-55-year-olds. 71 per cent and 62 per cent of under-40s had made spaghetti bolognese or curry, respectively.
[ Although much of English cooking is disgusting, not all of it is, and they're losing out on knowledge passed on between generations that gives them a path through life instead of a random, baffling array of meaningless choices. This is not to say that we are against curry or spaghetti bolognese, but that these "convenience recipes" are replacing real family structures, real culture, real knowledge and real interaction with other human beings. ]
news on 03.08.08 @ 09:57 AM CST [more..]
Sexual degeneracy of European women
French women are becoming increasingly assertive in their sexual habits, while one-in-five younger French men "has no interest in sex", according to one of the most comprehensive surveys of the nation's love lives.
Women now have more than twice as many partners as they did in the 1970s, according to the study by the French Aids research agency, which is backed by the government.
The proportion of French women who claim to have had only one partner has dropped from 68 per cent in 1970, to 43 per cent in 1992 and 34 per cent in 2006. A woman's average number of partners has risen from under two in 1970 to over five today, while a man's has remained the same for four decades, almost 13.
[ Soon the thought of any sacralization of the choice of partner, and love and trust expressed in rearing a healthy family, will be endangered. Still, those who don't have their heads stuck in delusion are aware that this is illusion and are living healthier lives, and don't care what "the majority" (who are idiots) are doing. ]
news on 03.08.08 @ 09:45 AM CST [more..]
Dictionary of Forbidden German Words released
Dozens of words in the German language, from "degenerate" to "final solution," have become taboo because of their use by the Nazis.
The "Wörterbuch der 'Vergangenheitsbewältigung'" ("Dictionary of 'Coming to Terms with the Past'") examines around 1,000 words and phrases -- everything from "Anschluss," used to refer to the 1938 "annexation" of Austria, to "Wehrmacht," the name of the Nazi-era armed forces -- looking at how the meaning and usage of the terms have developed since the end of World War II.
Another reason for avoiding Nazi terms in public discourse is the fact that the speaker runs the risk of being accused of harboring Nazi sympathies. Often such a usage is enough to land the speaker on the
front pages of Germany's newspapers. Often such a usage is enough to land the speaker on the
front pages of Germany's newspapers.
The late head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Paul Spiegel, courted controversy in 2005 when he criticized German policy on which Jews were allowed to immigrate from the former Soviet Union by saying that Russian Jews were being "selected."
[ You mean that more censorship came AFTER the Nazis than DURING their reign? Amusing. ]
news on 03.08.08 @ 09:39 AM CST [more..]
Iron cross may return to German military
A leader of German military reservists has called for the reintroduction of the Iron Cross, a centuries-old soldier's honor marred by the Nazis.
Back when it was introduced in the 1800s, the Iron Cross was meant to reward soldiers for heroism on the field of battle. It was a medal not much different from the Congressional Medal of Honor awarded to US soldiers.
Now, though, a representative of German soldiers wants to bring back the Iron Cross. At a meeting of an association of German reservists in Berlin on Tuesday, the group's president, Ernst-Reinhard Beck -- also a member of Germany's parliament, the Bundestag -- suggested that the medal be reintroduced for those who show "extraordinary courage or bravery."
[ Spinach? The Nazis liked Spinach... oh no Holocaust Genocide Inhumanity Brutality Horror Fear! We must ban Spinach. ]
news on 03.08.08 @ 09:34 AM CST [more..]
Traits of successful minorities: The Jews
[ As a population dwelling among others, Jews have been massively successful in each host country. We should study how they've done it and emulate it. ]
* Jews attach great importance to seeking knowledge and highly value education and science. Their pursuit of education leads them to higher occupational status, better vocabulary scores, and more vociferous newspaper reading. It also influences many attitudes and values, which, in America, tend to become more liberal with higher education.
* Jews take a nonpunitive approach to child-raising, disapproving of corporal punishment and valuing children who "think for themselves."
* Jews value individual freedom and choice. On many issues where Jews differ most markedly from non-Jews -- on support for abortion rights, civil liberties, sexual freedom, and allowing euthanasia -- Jews favor moral autonomy over government regulation or societal conformity.
[ These are good things for any ethnic group to do. On the first point, make yourselves more competitive. Who cares who won that football game? The nerd who studied got ahead. White people have drugged themselves with football, dance competitions, church groups and nasty suburban politics for years. On the second point, children who are not drones are a good thing and encourage intelligence. On the the third, "government regulation or societal conformity" are codewords for the kind of collective punishment that requires the intelligent to subsidize the parasitic. Jews hate parasites, and it's only Christian values and pretense that keeps Western humanity adopting every hopeless parasite it finds. ]
* Jews identify themselves as liberal more than do others, and this is reflected in their political affiliation and voting patterns, their egalitarian views on gender roles, and their support for policiesp romiting integration and racial equality.
* Jews display an urban orientation, reflecting their high concentration in large metropolitan areas. This translates into support for greater spending for the cities and for mass transportation, and an aversion to owning guns and hunting.
* Jews are skeptical about the military, and favor cuts in defense spending.
[ Liberalism is stupid -- you need leaders. Urban orientation and scorn for the rural areas is also stupid. One can afford to be skeptical about the military only if one has no enemies. Jews in Israel are more realistic on these points and consequently, are more conservative and militaristic, although still urban. ]
news on 03.08.08 @ 09:02 AM CST [more..]
Blue-eyed people share common ancestor
Researchers at Copenhagen University in Denmark conclude that everyone with blue eyes descends from a single "founder," an ancestor whose genes mutated 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, reports USA Today. Until then, everyone had brown eyes.
Led by geneticist Hans Eiberg, the study began in 1973 when he researched a Danish father with 17 children who carried the gene for both blue and brown eyes. Eventually, Eiberg was able to trace the trait for blue eyes to a specific area near the gene OCA2. Next, the Copenhagen team tested 155 people from Scandinavia, Turkey, Jordan and India, all of whom had blue eyes, to see if they had similar DNA sequences in that gene. They weren't just similar; they were identical.
[ Welcome to the family and remember that even if you have brown eyes, you may have a blue-eyed ancestor as well. ]
news on 03.08.08 @ 08:44 AM CST [more..]
How different are human races?
Race deniers are likely to answer back that the comparison is not apt because there are greater genetic differences among dogs than among humans. However, I discovered today from John Goodrum’s useful and amply footnoted Race FAQ that this is untrue. In fact, human beings are substantially more genetically diverse than dogs are.
Geneticists measure genetic diversity within a species by determining the average heterozygosity of the species’ genome, or the likelihood of its having more than one variant of any given gene. Humans have an average heterozygosity of around 0.7, whereas dogs’ is about 0.4. It’s quite reasonable to argue that whites and blacks are behaviorally more different from each other than Chihuahuas and Collies.
[ We want there to always be collies, because we know there have always been mutts, but we don't want the whole world to be the exact same kind of mutt as multiculturalists/globalists do. ]
news on 03.08.08 @ 08:08 AM CST [more..]
Friday, March 7th
Barack Obama supports black nationalism
Historically, African-Americans have turned inward and towards black nationalism whenever they have a sense, as we do now, that the mainstream has rebuffed us, and that white Americans couldn't care less about the profound problems African-Americans facing.
[ He's right: each race benefits best from its own self-rule. ]
news on 03.07.08 @ 07:58 PM CST [more..]
Barack Obama may be anti-Zionist
Nonetheless, there is a sense among the Jewish establishment that all is not as it seems—and if the view has not yet crystallized that Obama has a less Israelocentric perception of the Middle East than any major party nominee since Eisenhower, there is foreboding that the times are a-changin’.
That Obama has an Israel issue is not only being stressed by smear artists anonymously circulating emails that the senator is a “secret Muslim.” It’s also a worry percolating at the highest levels of the Jewish establishment. Listen to Malcolm Hoenlein, head of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, at a press conference last month in Jerusalem: “All the talk about change, but without defining what the change should be, is an opening for all kinds of mischief.” It’s not Obama himself, Hoenlein assured. He has plenty of Jewish supporters and advisers.
But, he added, “there is legitimate concern about the zeitgeist of the campaign.” Obama, he worried, had criticized Hillary for putting Iran’s Revolutionary Guard on the list of terrorist organizations. Overall support for Israel is broad yet thin, he warned, adding that an increasing number of Americans see the Jewish state as a “dark and militaristic place.”
[ Interesting. ]
news on 03.07.08 @ 07:53 PM CST [more..]
Eurasian immigrants cause crime wave in Norway
Oslo had the highest rate per person in Scandinavia in terms of reported crimes, with 90 reported crimes per 1,000. This means there were four times as many reported crimes per person in Oslo as in New York.
The Oslo police are blaming the increase on an influx of East Europeans, and Minister of Justice Knut Storberget is reportedly partly in agreement.
However, Storberget said it is necessary to be careful drawing parallels with such statistics. "But regardless, we can say the crime figures in Oslo are too high," he was reported to have said.
[ Multiculturalism doesn't work! ]
news on 03.07.08 @ 07:46 PM CST [more..]
Humanity has wrecked climate, payback to follow
The world must respond to climate change and other environmental challenges now while the cost is low or else pay a stiffer price later for its indecision, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Wednesday.
A new report by 30-nation organization looks at "red light issues" in the environment, including global warming, water shortages, energy, biodiversity loss, transportation, agriculture and fisheries.
"Without more ambitious policies, increasing pressures on the environment could cause irreversible damage within the next few decades," said the summary, which was released in advance of the report.
[ The consequences of loss of tradition, and its replacement with internationalist/globalist liberal democracy, are now plain to see. Can we destroy the cause while we're busy destroying the symptoms? ]
news on 03.07.08 @ 07:36 PM CST [more..]
Democracies are bad for quality
Says Palo Alto venture capitalist Jean-Louis Gasse, a former Apple executive who once worked with Jobs: "Democracies don't make great products. You need a competent tyrant."
[ Government isn't that different from software... ]
news on 03.07.08 @ 07:20 PM CST [more..]
Incompetence costs you: the cost of bad driving
Traffic crashes cost American motorists more than $160 billion a year while inflicting a staggering per-person toll on small cities such as Little Rock, Arkansas, Columbia, South Carolina, and Pensacola, Florida,
according to a AAA research report.
Maryland-based Cambridge Systematics Inc., which conducted the research for the automobile association, found that crashes cost U.S. motorists $164.2 billion a year, or about $1,051 per person. That's more than double the $67.6 billion in annual costs from congestion, which works out to about $430 per person.
[ Not everyone should drive, obviously. ]
news on 03.07.08 @ 06:36 PM CST [more..]
Spanish act against open immigration
A steady influx of immigrants helped turn Spain into Europe’s miracle economy. Now, with economic angst rising, immigration is turning into a hot-button political issue in Spain—and across Europe.
As Sunday’s election approaches, Spain’s Popular Party is challenging the generous immigration policies of the Socialist government, which over the past four years has welcomed a flood of immigrants from Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe.
Now that Spain’s decade-long housing boom—the country’s primary economic-growth and job-creation engine—is coming to an end, however, the tables are turning.
The conservative party is proposing a crackdown, including a contract committing immigrants to learn the Spanish language and customs.
[ There's nothing wrong with saying a country is for the descendants of the people who founded it. Most countries fail; be proud of the few that don't! -- and preserve them. ]
news on 03.07.08 @ 06:23 PM CST [more..]
An analysis of fear of anti-Semitism
In my culture, and of course I can't speak for all Jews, we flip out when there is any perception of anti-semitism and we attack people in a very aggressive, intimidating way but we don't mind when other cultures or people are insulted. This is very much part of our culture and I understand it because we have been victims in the past and often victims will overcompensate by being bullies but actually it stems from fear and insecurity.
I can't remember exactly what Regan said but I think she said something about how she thought Jews had too much power in her industry and she compared what they were doing to her with the Nazis or something crazy like that. I don't think it was really anti-semitism but more about a "everyone is out to get me, they all hate me, I've been persucted like slaves in Africa and Jews during the Holocaust and everything is all about me" woman who has to be dramatic and make herself more of a victim than she is. That isn't anti-semitism. It's something but not that.
[ Honest nationalism turns that defensive reactionary behavior into a healthy, self-affirming, positive outlook. Nazis should realize Zionists are brothers and help them realize this goal. ]
news on 03.07.08 @ 06:13 PM CST [more..]
Consumerism is anti-green
When renowned environmentalist Paul Hawken is asked to comment on the new green consumer, he says, dryly, "The phrase itself is an oxymoron."
They subscribe, in other words, to a destiny laid out by economist Victor Lebow, writing in 1955: "Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction . . . in consumption. . . . We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate."
Really going green, Hawken says, "means having less. It does mean less. Everyone is saying, 'You don't have to change your lifestyle.' Well, yes, actually, you do."
But, but, but -- buying green feels so guilt less...
[ Excellent article, with one crucial omission: population times minimum resources = environmental damage, so even all of the first world actually going green (living in mud huts without fires) will not offset the third world's rise to industrialization. ]
news on 03.07.08 @ 06:04 PM CST [more..]
Chinese hack Pentagon
New details on the attack itself have become available in the months since it occurred. According to Dennis Clem, CIO of the Pentagon and the OSD, the intrusion was first detected during an IT restructuring that was underway at the time. By the time it was detected, malicious code had been in the system for at least two months, and was propagating via a known Windows exploit. The bug spread itself by e-mailing malicious payloads from one system on the network to another. The messages themselves were spoofed and appeared to be legitimate missives from other employees. Once the recipient opened an infected e-mail, the worm sent that person's password and other login credentials back to home base.
The government isn't saying what, exactly, got stolen. There's no evidence to contradict Secretary Gates' claim that the classified e-mail system remained unaffected, but data that Clem describes as "sensitive" was accessed and encrypted before being transmitted to the hackers' location. As for where that location might be, unconfirmed reports point towards China's People's Liberation Army. China, of course, has vehemently denied any knowledge or responsibility. The Pentagon has stepped up its network protection since the intrusion, and added additional protection in the form of smart cards and digital signatures. Such security measures are the ultimate example of closing the barn door after the horse is gone, but should at least make further intrusions more difficult.
[ We're all friends, until we need to make war. ]
news on 03.07.08 @ 05:58 PM CST [more..]
Thursday, March 6th
Anti-racists make fake "racist" events
“Not only is Canadian Senator Anne Cools a Negro, she is also an immigrant! And she is also one helluva preachy c*nt. She does NOT belong in my Canada. My Anglo-Germanic people were here before there was a Canada and her kind have jumped in, polluted our race, and forced their bullsh*t down our throats. Time to go back to when the women *** imports knew their place … And that place was NOT in public!”
Horrible, shocking stuff. But even more shocking is the identity of the fellow whose electronic fingerprints were all over the message: famed Canadian human-rights lawyer Richard Warman.
Warman is a legend in anti-racism circles. A former member of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, he’s launched countless complaints against right-wing extremists, and won almost all of them. But during proceedings surrounding one of Warman’s 2003-era complaints against freedomsite, the respondents turned the tables. A computer expert named Bernard Klatt did some digging under freedomsite’s back office, and determined that the Cools posting had been made from a computer bearing the IP address 66.185.84.204, the very same address from which Warman had admitted to visiting freedomsite using a different alias.
Other technical details – such as the operating system and Web browser being used – also provided an exact match to Warman. Based on this evidence, Klatt concluded in a recently publicized affidavit, “Richard Warman was the poster of the message headed ‘Cools don’t belong in our Senate.’ ”
[ We make it too easy for people to play victim, on many levels. ]
news on 03.06.08 @ 07:32 PM CST [more..]
Third world is hopelessly self-destructive
While millions of Haitians go hungry, containers full of food are stacking up in the nation's ports because of government red tape — leaving tons of beans, rice and other staples to rot under a sweltering sun or be devoured by vermin.
A government attempt to clean up a corrupt port system that has helped make Haiti a major conduit for Colombian cocaine has added new layers of bureaucracy — and led to backlogs so severe they are being felt 600 miles away in Miami, where cargo shipments to Haiti have ground almost to a standstill.
"So many times, by the time (the food) gets out of customs it's expired and we're forced to burn it," said Susie Scott Krabacher, whose Colorado-based Mercy and Sharing Foundation has worked in Haiti for 14 years. "The food is there. It is available. It just can't get to the people."
[ More un-PC truths: most poor people and poor nations are that way because they're disorganized. In them, people cannot see the need for longer-term sanity over the immediate gratification they want right now. Corruption is rife, and the self-defeating nation never rises above its third world status. ]
news on 03.06.08 @ 07:29 PM CST [more..]
Norway demands 40% women executives, fires men
This month, Norway set a new global record. It now has, at 40%, the highest proportion of female non-executive directors in the world, an achievement engineered by the introduction of a compulsory quota. Two years ago, after several years of voluntary compliance had failed to lead to a sufficient number of female board members, 463 "ASAs" - publicly listed companies over a certain size - were told to change the composition of their boards or risk dissolution.
"A woman comes in, a man goes out. That's how the quota works; that's the law," says Kjell Erik Øie, deputy minister of children and equality, in the centre-left "Red-Green" coalition government in Oslo. "Very seldom do men let go of power easily. But when you start using the half of the talent you have previously ignored, then everybody gains."
In 2002, only 7.1% of non-executive directors of ASAs were female. When they introduced the 40% quota, the government had expected a widespread rebellion, but by the final deadline for compliance - February 22 this year - only a handful of companies had failed to meet it.
[ Meritocracy is replaced by political correctness. Again, it's not tolerance, it's the appearance of tolerance by fighting back against the naturally successful and replacing them with those who might not even want to be there. ]
news on 03.06.08 @ 06:46 PM CST [more..]
Cyborg insect spies
Scientists are creating real-life "flies-on-the-walls" by fitting insects with special implants that enable them to be used as spies.
The creatures are being installed with special electrodes, batteries and even video cameras that enable them to be remote-controlled and used for surveillance.
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is currently experimenting by inserting tiny brain probes into insects such as moths and beetles whilst they are still in the pupa stage.
As the creature develops, the implants are naturally incorporated into their body enabling them to send back information to a central computer.
[ Yeah, Big Brother sucks, and is a byproduct of people not admitting the need for social consensus, but we ran this article just because it's cool. Cyborg insect spies. Repeat after me... ]
news on 03.06.08 @ 06:44 PM CST [more..]
Women and men biologically different in language use
Although researchers have long agreed that girls have superior language abilities than boys, until now no
one has clearly provided a biological basis that may account for their differences.
For the first time -- and in unambiguous findings -- researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Haifa show both that areas of the brain associated with language work harder in girls than
in boys during language tasks, and that boys and girls rely on different parts of the brain when performing these tasks.
"Our findings -- which suggest that language processing is more sensory in boys and more abstract in girls -- could have major implications for teaching children and even provide support for advocates of single sex classrooms," said Douglas D. Burman, research associate in Northwestern's Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders.
[ Nothing is equal. Equality is boredom, false safety and a lack of options. Inequality means wide open spaces and frontiers to explore. ]
news on 03.06.08 @ 06:17 PM CST [more..]
Texas Secessionist comes in third in primary
Larry Kilgore, a candidate for Texas Independence, scored a big count of 225,258 votes in the March 4 Texas GOP Primary. That represents 18.5 per cent of the total vote, significantly better than Ron Paul, who tallied only 1 per cent.
Eighteen per cent of the total Texas population represents 1,305,000 people, a solid hard core from which to work for a Texas secessionist movement.
[ USA isn't working for anyone. It's too broad. ]
news on 03.06.08 @ 06:54 AM CST [more..]
Domestic violence afflicts a quarter of US women
About a quarter of U.S. women suffer domestic violence, U.S. health officials reported on Thursday, with ongoing health problems that one activist likened to the effects of living in a war zone.
The CDC estimates that 1,200 women are killed and 2 million injured in domestic violence annually.
Many of these women have other long-term health risks and problems, the CDC said.
Black women were more likely to report domestic violence than whites or Hispanics, but it was most frequent among multiracial, American Indian and Alaska native women.
Women of all income and education levels suffer such abuse, although it was more frequent among the poorest and those who attended but did not graduate from college.
[ We must be completely civilized and moral to allow this to go on. ]
news on 03.06.08 @ 06:50 AM CST [more..]
Immigration crackdown drives Mexicans from county
Prince William County police interviewed four people in its first day of a crackdown against illegal immigrants Monday, but found no violations of U.S. immigration laws and made no arrests, police said last night.
“I fear that one of my friends will be detained,” said Paula Perez, a Texas-born U.S. citizen who lives in Woodbridge and has seen many immigrants already leave the county. “One of my friends said she is not shopping, she is not going to movies, she is not going out to eat. Life has changed 360 degrees.”
[ Multiculturalism: it never works, and it leaves behind heartbreak. ]
news on 03.06.08 @ 06:46 AM CST [more..]
Cold war heating up with bombers buzzing carrier group again
A Russian bomber aircraft approached a U.S. aircraft carrier off the Korean coast on Wednesday and was intercepted by American fighter jets -- the second such incident in less than a month, U.S. defense officials said.
According to the U.S. officials, a Russian bomber came within three to five nautical miles and flew 2,000 feet (610 meters) above the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and its accompanying ships.
[ Dear USA and Europe: they still hate you and want to dominate you. If only someone had thought about a solution to this problem around 1939 or so... ]
news on 03.06.08 @ 06:44 AM CST [more..]
Non-millionaires realize UK is descending into third world
The white working class are far more pessimistic about Britain's future than their middle-class counterparts, a survey reveals today.
More than half said no one represented their views and that their quality of life had got worse over the past decade.
Some 71 per cent of those polled also said they thought crime rates had gone up in the past ten years, compared with 66 per cent of the middle class.
The poll also suggested that opinion is divided about immigration, with 52 per cent of the white working class believing it is "a bad thing for the country", compared with just 33 per cent of the white middle class.
[ We just can't admit these things in public because reality is impolite. ]
news on 03.06.08 @ 06:39 AM CST [more..]
Society's "entertainment" destroys your hearing
A study by the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) found the first symptoms of damage - dull or fuzzy hearing, tinnitus or hyperacusis (over-sensitivity to certain sounds) - in 90% of young people who had spent the night at a club, gig or loud bar.
The charity concedes that most young people are reluctant to wear earplugs because of their "medicinal" appearance and because they think they will block out the music. The plugs are worn by just 3% of young people on nights out.
"We think young people should be able to make informed choices about the exposure to loud noise," said Harrison. "If you use condoms, slather on suncream or wear a bike helmet when you cycle, why not wear earplugs to protect your ears from the risk of permanent damage?"
[ Why not just wear a space suit, 24-7, because your society is toxic in all ways you can imagine? ]
news on 03.06.08 @ 06:34 AM CST [more..]
Violence against women comes with Westernization
THE state of Iraqi women has become a "national crisis" since the March 2003 US-led invasion, a report released by an international women's group said.
"Present day Iraq is plagued by insecurity, a lack of infrastructure and controversial leadership, transforming the situation for women from one of relative autonomy and security before the war into a national crisis," said the report by the US-based Women For Women International.
According to the report, issued ahead of International Women's Day on March 8, 64 percent of the women surveyed said violence against them had increased.
"When asked why, respondents most commonly said that there is less respect for women's rights than before, that women are thought of as possessions, and that the economy has gotten worse," it said.
[ You've come a long way, baby -- now you're a product too! Do you want to spread those legs for cash, prestige, notoriety or to avoid a good macing? ]
news on 03.06.08 @ 06:14 AM CST [more..]
Men who do housework may have more sex
American men still don't pull their weight when it comes to housework and child care, but collectively they're not the slackers they used to be. The average dad has gradually been getting better about picking himself up off the sofa and pitching in, according to a new report in which a psychologist suggests the payoff for doing more chores could be more sex.
[ After a day at a tedious American job, housework might be relaxing. The correlation is probably the result of men who have the wit to help out their wives being in general more emotionally connected to them. This moronic article tried to phrase it like a business contract. ]
news on 03.06.08 @ 06:12 AM CST [more..]
Whites and Asians look at world differently
New brain research is adding high-tech evidence to what lower-tech psychology experiments have found for years: Culture can affect not just language and custom, but how people experience the world at stunningly basic levels—what they see when they look at a city street, for example, or even how they perceive a simple line in a square.
Western culture, they have found, conditions people to think of themselves as highly independent entities. And when looking at scenes, Westerners tend to focus on central objects more than on their surroundings.
In contrast, East Asian cultures stress interdependence. When Easterners take in a scene, they tend to focus more on the context as well as the object: the whole block, say, rather than the BMW parked in the foreground.
[ We need both approaches. Mixing destroys that balance. ]
news on 03.06.08 @ 05:55 AM CST [more..]
Wednesday, March 5th
World's IQ declines as "Flynn effect" reverses
Dysgenic fertility means that there is a negative correlation between intelligence and number of children. Its presence during the last century has been demonstrated in several countries. We show here that there is dysgenic fertility in the world population quantified by a correlation of − 0.73 between IQ and fertility across nations.
It is estimated that the effect of this has been a decline in the world's genotypic IQ of 0.86 IQ points for the years 1950–2000. A further decline of 1.28 IQ points in the world's genotypic IQ is projected for the years 2000–2050.
In the period 1950–2000 this decline has been compensated for by a rise in phenotypic intelligence known as the Flynn Effect, but recent studies in four economically developed countries have found that this has now ceased or gone into reverse.
It seems probable that this “negative Flynn Effect” will spread to economically developing countries and the whole world will move into a period of declining genotypic and phenotypic intelligence. It is possible that “the new eugenics” of biotechnology may evolve to counteract dysgenic fertility.
[ The "Flynn effect" was an artifact of measurement and did not reflect actual increasing intelligence. Instead, intelligence is decreasing. ]
news on 03.05.08 @ 03:16 AM CST [more..]
Smarter people breed less
Recent data on post-war birth cohorts in the U.S.A. show a negative relationship between IQ and fertility, both actual and expected.
The membership of Mensa may not be a representative sample of the high-IQ population as a whole, as it seems to attract a disproportionate number of low procreators even for this population. However, there is no reason to believe that changes in fertility rates across cohorts within Mensa, relative to changes in the national fertility rates, do not reliably reflect changes in fertility rates across cohorts within the high-IQ population of the U.S.A. as a whole, again relative to those of the nation, though these rates may be fluctuating around different means.
[ Same is true of smarter nations: they are outbred by others, but don't face the third world problems created by too many stupid people, or at least, face them only when their own stupidity stock rises. ]
news on 03.05.08 @ 03:10 AM CST [more..]
Tiny genetic differences have huge consequences
A study led by McGill University researchers has demonstrated that small differences between individuals at the DNA level can lead to dramatic differences in the way genes produce proteins. These, in turn, are responsible for the vast array of differences in physical characteristics between individuals.
The study, part of the Genome Regulators in Disease (GRID) Project funded by Genome Canada and Genome Quebec, was led by Dr. Jacek Majewski of McGill University's Department of Human Genetics and the McGill University and Genome Quebec Innovation Centre, and first-authored by his research associate Dr. Tony Kwan. It was published January 13 in the journal Nature Genetics.
The study was originally initiated by Dr. Tom Hudson, former director of the McGill University and Genome Quebec Innovation Centre, and drew upon the data collected by the vast HapMap (Haplotype Map) Project, a global comparative map of the human genome, which Hudson and his colleagues were instrumental in completing.
This study solves in part the mystery of how a relatively small number of differences within DNA protein coding sequences could be responsible for the enormous variety of phenotypic differences between individuals. It had previously been shown that individual differences reside in simple, relatively small variations in the DNA sequence called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, often pronounced "snips"), which exist primarily in the "junk code" of the DNA not previously known to have any profound genetic effect.
[ No surprise here, except to people who bought the "we're 99% alike" dogma that ex-President Clinton used in his speeches. ]
news on 03.05.08 @ 03:06 AM CST [more..]
Immigration creates population explosion
The number of international migrants is at an all-time high. There were 191 million migrants in 2005, which means that 3 percent of the world's people left their country of birth or citizenship for a year
or more. The number of international migrants in industrialized countries more than doubled between 1985 and 2005, from almost 55 million to 120 million.
http://www.prb.org/bulletins/63.1migration.pdf
The world’s population reached 1 billion for the first time in 1830. It took 120 years to double to 2 billion, and just 30 years to reach 3 billion. The world’s population is now over 6 billion people.
Most of the 80 million extra each year are born in developing countries least able to support the added population. The demographic divide between the rich developed countries and the poor developing countries is reflected in vast disparities of living standards, health, and economic prospects.
http://growthmadness.org/2008/01/05/global-warming-and-malthusianism/
[ Industrialized nations have reigned in their populations, even while they were developing. New nations grow recklessly. They send immigrants to industrialized nations, which means they have no incentive to stop growing. The consequence of overpopulation is environmental destruction. When does the madness end? ]
news on 03.05.08 @ 03:01 AM CST [link]
Inflation much higher than reported
A 15-cent movie ticket in 1933, adjusted for inflation, should cost only $2.40 now. Tell us again how everything's okay?
[ The Great Depression was the last time our oversold economy corrected itself. Now prices are sky-high because we hand huge profits to jerks, and pay for millions of useless people. ]
news on 03.05.08 @ 02:56 AM CST [more..]
Surgery for profit
Too Many Hysterectomies? One-third of all women get a hysterectomy before they turn 60. Some experts think two-thirds of them don't need it.
[ The doctor is two payments behind on his luxury yacht? More likely, he's making up the gap caused by treating welfare recipients at low cost and getting bilked by HMOs. ]
news on 03.05.08 @ 02:42 AM CST [more..]
Childhood destroyed by commercial and media pressures
Childhood is over by the tender age of 11, research published today suggests.
Parents admit giving in to "pester pressure" and allowing their children an array of grown-up privileges.
Increasingly, youngsters can stay out late, drink alcohol, have sex and watch inappropriate films.
Little girls in particular are growing up faster than ever.
They abandon playing with dolls past the age of six and go on to pierce their ears, dye their hair and wear make-up.
Researchers for Random House publishers who surveyed 1,170 parents with children under 18 found that 55 per cent believed children were "young adults" by 11.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=524171&in_page_id=1770
Thong panties for 7-year olds and padded bras for girls as young as nine are among the items many parents are purchasing at local stores.
The sexualization of girls is blamed mainly on media; music videos, magazine covers and the like. But researchers and psychologists say it's the culture inside the home, a parents influence, that truly makes the difference.
"There is something to letting kids sleep in warm flannel pajamas instead of sexy nighties. It's about being a little girl and not a little girl being a woman," Dr. Anthony Brailow, a clinical psychologist
with the Desert Behavioral Health in Apple Valley.
http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/girls_5235___article.html/parents_brailow.html
[ Liberation -- allowing people to pursue what they think they want, instead of what multiple generations of experience suggest is best -- makes them follow blindly what others do, and what they see on their televisions. The long-term results are bad, but in the meantime, someone made good profit out of destroying the lives of others. ]
news on 03.05.08 @ 02:38 AM CST [link]
Internet primary news source for most Americans
While most people think journalism is important to the quality of life, 64 percent are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism in their communities, a We Media/Zogby Interactive online poll showed.
Nearly half of the 1,979 people who responded to the survey said their primary source of news and information is the Internet, up from 40 percent just a year ago. Less than one third use television to get their news, while 11 percent turn to radio and 10 percent to newspapers.
[ The business of telling people innocuous half-truths while selling advertising has been replaced by a more granular model in which people literally choose what they want to believe is true. ]
news on 03.05.08 @ 02:34 AM CST [more..]
Work takes up too much time
The survey of 1,000 people found participants average six hours and 40 minutes of sleep a night on weeknights, even though they estimated they'd need roughly another 40 minutes of sleep to be at their best.
It seems people are also trying to squeeze in more time for themselves and their families, even if it means less sleep. The average wake up is at 5:35 a.m. and it's followed by about two hours and 15 minutes at home before heading out to work, according to the survey. Average bedtime is 10:53.
[ I thought we were "free"? ]
news on 03.05.08 @ 02:31 AM CST [more..]
Democracies intolerant of dissent
The Bush administration, caught out by the rise of Hamas, embarked on a secret project for the armed overthrow of the Islamist government in Gaza, it emerged yesterday.
[ Hamas was elected democratically. That's still not acceptable. Democracy means "the right to agree with the propaganda of the dominant power," and calling it freedom is a total illusion. ]
news on 03.05.08 @ 02:29 AM CST [more..]
Equality-based socialism encourages anti-social behavior
The authors of Plan B found that almost 19 percent of Swedes confessed to having gained access to healthcare, either for themselves or a relative, by using personal contacts rather than going
through regular administrative channels.
At the same time, 15 percent of those surveyed said that they had spent time taking care of a person close to them for an illness that should have been dealt with by the public healthcare sector.
What we are seeing, Bergström explains, is a long term adaptation to Sweden's existing political systems. The relationship between the individual and the system has changed over time:
"Since the expansion of taxes and welfare services in the 70s, Swedes have progressively altered their attitude towards social systems. An increasing number of Swedes are today willing to break or bend the rules in order to benefit themselves. This kind of behaviour has over time become quite acceptable among many Swedes."
[ National Socialism is a good idea. A blind idiot Nanny State that defends the weak rapidly clogs itself, penalizing those who can take care of themselves to provide for the useless. Consequently, people both cheat it and cheat themselves avoiding it, as we saw in the Soviet Union and we see with welfare cheats in the USA. ]
news on 03.05.08 @ 02:26 AM CST [more..]
Happiness is genetic, may be racist
Happiness in life is as much down to having the right genetic mix as it is to personal circumstances according to a recent study. Happiness is partly determined by personality traits and that both personality and happiness are largely hereditary.
[ What do we do if not every race, class, gender, orientation, local group, cline, tribe and coffee klatch is not equally disposed to happiness? Equalize with Zoloft? ]
news on 03.05.08 @ 02:22 AM CST [more..]
Sunday, March 2nd
Top Five Countries Producing Immigrants Are African
#1 Burundi: 568,000
#2 Sudan: 491,000
#3 Angola: 433,000
#4 Sierra Leone: 401,000
#5 Eritrea: 377,000
[ Poorer countries send to richer countries. Does it help either? ]
news on 03.02.08 @ 03:03 PM CST [more..]
Racial harmony propaganda on TV subsidized by state
The Dutch government spent more than 11.8 million euros subsidizing public and commercial TV programming in the last two years for, among other things, showing black and white people getting along with one another.
It distributed 610,500 euros to commercial broadcaster SBS6 for programs in which immigrants were shown in a positive context. A weather program on the same channel got 12,500 euros because it was filmed at a tennis club "where there is good integration between people of different cultures."
In 2006, the government subsidized a total of 75 co-productions with a total of 5,180,208 euros. In 2007, the government accepted 43 applications, for 4,350,419 euros. Additionally, 793,295 euros was spent in 2006 and 1,496,335 euros in 2007 from the foreign ministry's Europa fund on TV programs in praise of the environment, development aid and European cooperation.
Two members of parliament are demanding an explanation of the program. Said one: "This is propaganda, the neutrality of the state is put in doubt." Another said: "These are Soviet practices. Broadcasters serving as state television. Absolutely revolting."
[ When culture fails, government steps in to take control and becomes powerful. You don't want that, do you? ]
news on 03.02.08 @ 02:00 PM CST [more..]
Asian invasion: How to lose to the Mongols
The unified Horde moved South, into China, and then west, through India, Central Asia and the Middle East. The Turks, threatened, made a hasty alliance with some of the major Russian cities. Russia’s disunity, again, served the country poorly. The alliance did not wait for the Kievan reinforcements in 1224, the divided Russian principalities could not decide on a proper chain of command, and the results are known to all.
The reasons for the defeat of Russia are many. The Mongols had a huge advantage in numbers. Various estimates of Mongol troop strength hover between 300,000 and up. These forces were massive for the time. The Mongol horsemen were completely unified under the Khan, and operated as a single unit. Russia herself was the polar opposite, ruled by jealous princes, divided and as concerned about precedent as about military victory.
Fifth, there was some limited intermarriage between Russians and Mongols, showing that race was not a factor in Russian elite marriage choices, but political expediency and class might well have been at the center.
[ As Asia, Eurasia (Russia and Eastern Europe) and Western Europe/USA heat up for another cold war, it's important to remember these lessons: individualistic, disunified, disorganized countries lose to Asian invaders. ]
news on 03.02.08 @ 01:58 PM CST [more..]
Genetics tests track racial ancestry
DNA analysis has given back to Sullivan and other blacks around the country what the Middle Passage and slavery took from them: information about their African ancestors.
In a recent phone interview, Gates described the series as "Roots for the 21st Century." He said it will change the country's perspective of the American black experience and race itself, especially since testing has shown that 35 percent of African- Americans' paternal lines are traced to a white male and 68 percent of black Americans have at least 12.5 percent European ancestry.
African Ancestry Inc., the leading black-owned DNA testing company, conducted the DNA analysis for the PBS series and local residents.
[ Genetics determines physical traits including appearance and abilities, and we can track ancestry through the centuries using it. ]
news on 03.02.08 @ 01:48 PM CST [more..]
Cold weather helps natural selection
The theory that natural selection has conserved mechanisms by which women subjected to environmental stressors abort frail male fetuses implies that climate change may affect sex ratio at birth and male longevity.
Using time series methods, we find that cold ambient temperatures during gestation predict lower secondary sex ratios and longer life span of males in annual birth cohorts composed of Danes, Finns,
Norwegians, and Swedes born between 1878 (earliest year with complete life tables) and 1914 (last birth cohort for which male life span can be estimated).
We conclude that ambient temperature affects the characteristics of human populations by influencing who survives gestation, a heretofore unrecognized effect of climate on humanity.
[ Greater environmental stress means a higher filter for the infants. This coupled with high investment in infants creates evolution. We do well to remember this in a time of SUV-driving morons breeding moronic crotchfruit who watch TV constantly. ]
news on 03.02.08 @ 01:39 PM CST [more..]
Political orientation may be in the genes as well
Research by Rice University professor of political science John Alford indicates that what is on one's mind about politics may be influenced by how people are wired genetically.
Alford, who has researched this topic for a number of years, and his team analyzed data from political opinions of more than 12,000 twins in the United States and supplemented it with findings from twins in Australia. Alford found that identical twins were more likely to agree on political issues than were fraternal twins.
"Individual genes for behaviors do not exist and no one denies that humans have the capacity to act against genetic predispositions. But predictably dissimilar correlations of social and political attitudes among people with greater and lesser shared genotypes suggest that behaviors are often shaped by forces of which the person themselves are not consciously aware."
"It has been proven that genetics plays a role in a myriad of different human interaction and makeup," said Alford. "Why should we exclude political beliefs and attitudes?"
[ Why indeed? ]
news on 03.02.08 @ 01:36 PM CST [more..]
UK recycling thrown into landfills with trash
HUNDREDS of thousands of tons of material dutifully put out for recycling is being secretly dumped in landfill sites by councils in Britain.
Shocking new figures reveal that while some householders face stiff fines for breaching recycling laws, many councils are simply dumping huge quantities of the paper, glass and plastic they collect.
In some areas one item in every eight put out for recycling ends up being sent for landfill or incinerated.
The figures showed that 240,000 tons of material put out for recycling last year ended up being dumped or burned.
[ People pay lip service to "being green" by doing ineffectual things. The real problem is overpopulation and waste dumping by corporations. ]
news on 03.02.08 @ 01:19 PM CST [more..]
Smart people flee dying multicultural society
There are now 3.247 million British-born people living abroad, of whom more than 1.1 million are highly-skilled university graduates, say the researchers.
Britain has a shortage of graduates in many of these fields and universities have long warned that some of the brightest hopes are being lost to higher salaries abroad.
The study found that foreign-born people make up 8.3 per cent of Britain's population. The emigration was leading to a rapid change in British society as large numbers of highly-skilled immigrants moved to this country to replace those leaving, he said.
[ Multiculturalism ruins the best and brightest first, so they leave. Who's going to clean up when you've replaced smart with food service workers? Durrr, we didn't think of that. Durrrrrrr.... ]
news on 03.02.08 @ 11:09 AM CST [more..]
The Rise of Corporate Intellectual Imperialism
From agriculture came the recognition of the value of seeds, and it wasn't long before power-hungry men began patenting the seeds they discovered in nature. Corporations like Monsanto even began performing dark experiments on those seeds, inserting "Terminator" genes that caused second-generation seeds to self-destruct, thereby ensuring their continued ownership and control over those seeds. Now, as the U.S. patent office has allowed corporations to patent life forms and human gene sequences, we are entering a new age where human beings no longer control their own genes.
Corporations currently own 20 percent of the human genome, and in the near future, couples who wish to reproduce may be forced to pay intellectual property royalties to wealthy corporations in exchange for the "rights" to copy their own genes through sexual reproduction. This is not some distant dystopian future I'm describing, by the way: This is present-day reality. Corporations are attempting to exert control over every thing of value that can possibly be patented, from natural botanical medicines invented by Mother Nature to the very seeds of life found in human DNA. The goal in all this? Complete ownership over the human race and every thing of value on the planet.
[ You're born owing society everything, and only through time can you pay off enough of your debt to escape and enjoy 20 years of playing golf and watching TV before you croak. What a brilliant design! ]
news on 03.02.08 @ 10:58 AM CST [more..]
Gayness is as natural as heterosexual monogamy
[W]hy does homosexuality persist in the world? It seems to make little evolutionary sense.
By that logic gays, who reproduce little, shouldn’t exist. Yet they do, along with some evidence their tendencies may have a genetic component. What gives?
The explanation, many scientists argue, could be that the childless gays put extra efforts into helping raise nephews and nieces. That would boost the children’s chances of survival, and someday reproduction. These youths, even if not gay, might share with their aunt or uncle a few genes promoting homosexuality—ensuring a clutch of “gay genes” in every generation.
By studying people who they said live closer to the ways of humanity’s “ancestral” past, the researchers said they hoped to assess possible evolutionary functions for homosexuality and the roles of other gender-blurring behaviors.
The idea about gays helping their kin, called the kin-selection hypothesis, might have failed past tests because these were done in modernized Western societies, the researchers said.
[T]he researchers concluded that [homosexuals] put “significantly” more effort into raising nephews and nieces. The childcare activities that saw stronger input from fa’afines included babysitting, buying toys, tutoring, exposing the children to art and music, and contributing to day-care, medical and education expenses, the surveys indicated.
[ Gayness is natural. Gay rights, or promoting gayness at the expense of all other groups, is as destructive as other single-issue groups like feminists or manufacturing lobbyists. Gays have always existed, but with industrialization, perverts are often hiding in their midst. Suburban gays deserve a place in this world but perverts of either stripe need elimination therapy. ]
news on 03.02.08 @ 10:33 AM CST [more..]
Smarter groups breed less
Many studies have found a small to moderate negative correlation between IQ and fertility rates. However, these studies have been limited to the United States and some European countries. The present study was a between-nation study using national IQ scores and national fertility rates. There were strong negative correlations found between national IQ and three national indicators of fertility.
[ Smarter groups got that way by having fewer kids, having stable marriages, and investing highly in the intelligence and moral character of their kids. Dumber groups got that way by being disorganized, having many kids out of wedlock, and letting them wend their way through life like autonomous sperm. ]
news on 03.02.08 @ 10:28 AM CST [more..]
Minority groups seek their own
This paper presents an economic analysis of the intergenerational transmission of ethnic and religious traits through family socialization and marital segregation decisions. Frequency of intragroup marriage (homogamy), as well as socialization rates of religious and ethnic groups, depend on the group's share of the population: minority groups search more intensely for homogamous mates, and spend more resources to socialize their offspring. This pattern generally induces a dynamics of the distribution of ethnic and religious traits which converges to a culturally heterogeneous stationary population. Existing empirical evidence bearing directly and indirectly on the implications of the model is discussed.
[ Minority groups are defined as not being the Other. This helps them form around the basis of distinct cultural values. Europeans can learn from the example of the Jews here, who go too far in defining the Other but as a result have preserved themselves through millennia. ]
news on 03.02.08 @ 10:26 AM CST [more..]
Americans afraid to discuss race and immigration
Are too many Third World, non-English-speaking immigrants destroying our national identity?
For some Americans, even asking such questions is racist.
At some level, most of us cherish our legacy as a nation of immigrants. But are all immigrants really equally likely to make good Americans? Are we, as Samuel Huntington warns, in danger of losing our core values and devolving "into a loose confederation of ethnic, racial, cultural and political groups, with little or nothing in common apart from their location in the territory of what had been the United States of America"?
Around the world today, nations face violence and instability as a result of their increasing pluralism and diversity. Across Europe, immigration has resulted in unassimilated, largely Muslim enclaves that are hotbeds of unrest and even terrorism.
The greatest empire in history, ancient Rome, collapsed when its cultural and political glue dissolved, and people who had long thought of themselves as Romans turned against the empire. In part, this fragmentation occurred because of a massive influx of immigrants from a very different culture. The "barbarians" who sacked Rome were Germanic immigrants who never fully assimilated.
America's glue can be subverted by too much tolerance. Immigration advocates are too often guilty of an uncritical political correctness that avoids hard questions about national identity and imposes no obligations on immigrants. For these well-meaning idealists, there is no such thing as too much diversity.
[ Excellent article, with one failing: the balkanization she fears has already occurred and is as natural as the sun rising. It's more progressive for us now to decide how we're going to divide up this nation, which has almost nothing in common among its members, politically or ethnically. ]
news on 03.02.08 @ 10:24 AM CST [more..]
Industrialization lowers fertility
One of the benefits of postindustrial life is that it is largely free of the fear of early mortality. However, a curious side-effect of this confidence seems to be a dramatic reduction in birthrates. Writing in the journal Science, Professor Ruth Mace (UCL Anthropology) draws a clear correlation between increased life expectancy and lower fertility in cities.
[ We want to blame increased life expectancy, but that's a big jump not borne out by the data. In fact, it's a blind assumption. It's more sensible to state that industrialized nations have lower fertility. There are many factors: some are biological, others have to do with the lazy directionless modern lifestyle, and still others, the necessity of laboring in soul-crushing jobs for enough money to escape the other morons. But Ruth Mace would like you to make a nice easy simplistic conclusion. ]
news on 03.02.08 @ 10:20 AM CST [more..]
Ringing in the Asian century
We are entering a new era of world history: the end of Western domination and the arrival of the Asian century. The question is: Will Washington wake up to this reality? When the new president meets with schedulers in January, will he or she say, "Cut down on the visits to Europe. Send me across the Pacific, not the Atlantic. The G-8 represents a sunset process. Let us focus on the new sunrise organizations in Asia."
If such a shift seems inconceivable, it shows how much old mental maps continue to cloud the vision of leading Americans. The West has so dominated world history for the last 200 years that we forget that from the year 1 to the year 1820, the two largest economies in the world (as demonstrated by British economic historian Angus Maddison) were China and India. A study by Goldman Sachs in 2003 confidently predicted that by 2050, the four largest economies in the world will be China, the U.S., India and Japan, in that order. A more recent evaluation by Goldman Sachs showed that this could happen sooner and that the Indian economy could surpass that of the U.S. by 2043.
The changes will be dramatic and happen quickly. Economist and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers put it this way: During the Industrial Revolution, the standard of living rose at a rate of maybe 50% during a person's life span. Asia's current growth rate represents an unprecedented 100-fold (that is, 10,000%) rise in standards of living during one lifetime.
[ Nothing's so for sure, but the West needs to resurrect its breeding and values. History shows us many such vicissitudes of fortune, most notably the Mongol invasion of Eastern Europe. ]
news on 03.02.08 @ 10:12 AM CST [more..]
Diversity equals indecision where religion is concerned
More than a quarter of adult Americans have left the faith of their childhood to join another religion or no religion, according to a new survey of religious affiliation by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
The report, titled “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey,” depicts a highly fluid and diverse national religious life. If shifts among Protestant denominations are included, then it appears that 44 percent of Americans have switched religious affiliations.
The survey also indicates that the group that had the greatest net gain was the unaffiliated. More than 16 percent of American adults say they are not part of any organized faith, which makes the unaffiliated the country’s fourth largest “religious group.”
[ People have allegiance to nothing but money and popularity. Religion is a casualty of this. ]
news on 03.02.08 @ 10:10 AM CST [more..]
Many African-Americans oppose interracial relationships
The latest GMI Poll, powered by global market intelligence solutions provider GMI (Global Market Insite, Inc.), reveals that even though most African-Americans know an interracial couple, less than half (49 percent) said they would consider marrying someone outside of their race.
[ We should partner with other people who understand the reality of racial preservation, whatever their ethnic origins. ]
news on 03.02.08 @ 07:56 AM CST [more..]
Ethnic nationalism is the future of politics
Samuel Huntington said it first:
It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19930601faessay5188/samuel-p-huntington/the-clash-of-civilizations.html
Now Pat Buchanan chimes in:
According to a compelling lead article in the new Foreign Affairs, "Us and Them: The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism," we may be witnessing in the Third World a re-enactment of the ethnic wars that tore Europe to pieces in the 20th century.
"Ethnonationalism," writes history professor Jerry Z. Muller of Catholic University, "has played a more profound role in modern history than is commonly understood, and the processes that led to the dominance of the ethnonational state and the separation of ethnic groups in Europe are likely to recur elsewhere."
"A familiar and influential narrative of 20th-century European history argues that nationalism twice led to war, in 1914 and then again in 1939. Thereafter, the story goes, Europeans concluded that nationalism was a danger and gradually abandoned it. In the postwar decades, Western Europeans enmeshed themselves in a web of transnational institutions, culminating in the European Union."
Muller contends that this is a myth, that peace came to the Old Continent only after the triumph of ethnonationalism, after the peoples of Europe had sorted themselves out and each achieved its own home.
Western Man has mis-taught himself his own history.
http://www.vdare.com/buchanan/080225_nationalism.htm
[ Our view: ethnic nationalism has always been the only organic political system, and the only one that works. The nation-state is a convenient financial grouping, and an easy way to achieve political control, but is fundamentally an illusion, and one that destroys itself as it fails - and takes you with it. ]
news on 03.02.08 @ 07:53 AM CST [link]
Indian outsourcing no longer economically viable
[W]ages are rising in India. The cost advantage for offshoring to India used to be at least 1:6. Today, it is at best 1:3.
India's tech industry is a "services" industry. The Indians don’t do the thinking. The customers do. India executes. As a result, India has not learned to invent technology products of its own.
As the 1:3 cost structure becomes 1:1.5, it will soon become inefficient to use Indian labor. Why not Oklahoma or British Columbia? For many Europeans, Eastern Europe has already become more compelling than India.
[ Multiculturalism didn't work here either. Oh sorry, I meant Globalism, because that's what we call it in mixed company. India got used for cheap labor, but then as industrialization took over and first world lifestyles became common, that cheap labor was nowhere to be found. So now India gets overlooked for the next hot new unexploited resource. ]
news on 03.02.08 @ 07:08 AM CST [more..]
Appeals court denies injunction against anti-illegals law
A federal appeals court Thursday refused to block a controversial Arizona law that shuts down businesses for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.
Passed by the Arizona Legislature, the law places on probation any company found to have knowingly hired an illegal immigrant.
If the company is found in violation of the law again, its business license is automatically revoked, ending its ability to operate in the state.
At least four other states are working on bills modeled after the Arizona law.
[ The average American can cut his own lawn, clean his own house, and make his own burgers, now that he or she sees the cost of adopting a new population in our midst. Multiculturalism doesn't work - it's just euphemism for third world exploitation and first world population replacement. ]
news on 03.02.08 @ 07:02 AM CST [more..]
Saturday, March 1st
Largest unaltered redwood grove attacked by loggers
In Northern California, a grove of ancient redwood trees, some measuring 42 feet around, are part of a 250-acre logging plan in the Nanning Creek area by Maxxam Corporation's Pacific Lumber Company. Pacific Lumber (PL) has been clearcutting thousands of acres of old growth forests at
'liquidation logging' speed for the past 20 years, since Maxxam made a hostile takeover of the family-owned timber company. Civil disobedience, lawsuits, offers by well-funded conservation groups, and international attention have consistently aimed at protecting and bringing attention
to the importance of the forests and communities affected by Maxxam/PL's destructive practices. Now, PL is on its 5th day of cutting what is known to be the largest, contiguous tract of ancient redwood forest remaining in the world. "This logging is not just a local tragedy— it is a global travesty," says Earth First! activist, Kim Starr, who, over the years, has spent months at a time in jail for non-violent protests of Maxxam's Pacific Lumber.
[ Imagine a devil on one shoulder, and an angel on another: "But it's profitable!" / "But it's evil!" -- do we really need a society that tolerates the devil? ]
news on 03.01.08 @ 11:01 AM CST [more..]
Large groups need strong leadership, internet simulation proves
For most of [its] 13 years, Ebay has been run largely as a self-policed island, a place where order was preserved less by real world laws than by norms and customs and expectations and reputations that were almost entirely virtual. Ebayers governed themselves by rating each transaction using the site's "feedback" system, where they could report crooks, not to the state but to each other. The theory was that, as in a medieval souk in which everyone knew everyone, everyone on Ebay would know who the crooks were by reading their feedback. Now the company has basically admitted that the cybersouk model does not work: buyers did not tell the truth about sellers, and sellers did not tell the truth about buyers. And in a market where traders lie, the trust that is so central to online commerce cannot flourish.
This isn't unusual. It follows a common pattern that we've seen play out in other "social production" sites like Digg and Wikipedia. (Disclosure: I'm on the editorial advisory board of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.) As these sites grow, keeping them in line requires more rules and regulations, greater exercise of central control. The digital world, it seems, is not so different from the real world.
In a new post about how "bottom-up" communities need "top-down" controls to work successfully, Kevin Kelly notes that "the supposed paragon of adhocracy - the Wikipedia itself - is itself far from strictly bottom-up. In fact a close inspection of Wikipedia's process reveals that it has an elite at its center (and that it does have an elite center is news to most). Turns out there is far more deliberate top-down design management going on than first appears."
[ If you don't lead, no one leads, and he's an aimless, wasteful, pollution-intensive, directionless leader. You cannot fight the need for power. All you can do is make sure the power has good values. ]
news on 03.01.08 @ 10:39 AM CST [more..]
"Hate crime" faked to avoid plagiarism charges
The plagiarism probe was already under way last year when a 4-foot twine noose was discovered on the door of psychology and education professor Madonna Constantine's office, officials at the university's Teachers College said.
They cited two dozen instances of plagiarism over the past five years that were substantiated in an 18-month investigation by a Manhattan law firm.
In a statement e-mailed to Bloomberg News Service yesterday, Constantine said she was the victim of a racist conspiracy.
[ No one wins here. But it does make us wonder how many of these "hate crimes" are really hate crimes. Most white people seem to express themselves with words, concepts, blogs (haha) and political organizations on this topic. ]
news on 03.01.08 @ 10:33 AM CST [more..]
Don't suppress anger, say scientists
The results were startlingly clear: individuals who had trouble controlling expressions of anger were four times likelier to need more than four days for their wounds to heal, compared with counterparts who could master their anger.
But the researchers were also surprised to find that anger has its nuances, too.
Subjects described as showing "anger out" (regular outbursts of aggression or hostility) or "anger in" (repressed rage) healed almost as quickly as individuals who ranked low on all anger scales.
[ If you can get over your anger, or rationalize it, you'll be healthy; if you try to deny your anger, either through pacificism or resentment, you become unhealthy. Makes sense. ]
news on 03.01.08 @ 10:27 AM CST [more..]
Natural selection acts on cultures as well as individuals
The process of natural selection can act on human culture as well as on genes, a new study finds. Scientists at Stanford University have shown for the first time that cultural traits affecting survival and reproduction evolve at a different rate than other cultural attributes. Speeded or slowed rates of evolution typically indicate the action of natural selection in analyses of the human genome.
They also evaluated 38 decorative or symbolic features (such as the types of carved or painted designs). They analyzed mathematically the rates of change for the two groups of canoe design traits from island group to island group. Statistical test results showed clearly that the functional canoe design elements changed more slowly over time, indicating that natural selection could be weeding out inferior new designs. This cultural analysis is similar to analyses of the human genome that have been successful in finding which genes are under selection.
"Unfortunately, people have learned how to avoid natural selection in the short term through unsustainable approaches such as inequity and excess consumption. But this is not going to work in the long term," she said. "We need to begin aligning our culture with the powerful forces of nature and natural selection instead of against them."
"If the leadership necessary to undertake critically needed cultural evolution in these areas can't be found, our civilization may find itself weeded out by natural selection, just like a bad canoe design."
[ This is why we need actual leadership, and to pick a sensible direction and pursue it. Most idiots want to believe that they can do whatever they want, thoughtlessly, and we'll be OK, but that's disingenuous. Natural selection still rules us. ]
news on 03.01.08 @ 10:17 AM CST [more..]
Europeans not reproducing enough
Europe is a dying continent. I say this not as a criticism, but rather as a statement of fact. In Europe, an acute failure to produce the next generation has created a looming demographic crisis.
According to research by both the CIA and the U.N., every single member of the European Union has a birthrate significantly below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman. In the CIA World Factbook, Germany had a birthrate of 1.36 children per woman in 2007, and Spain and Italy had birthrates of 1.29. At such low levels of fertility, within 100 years, those three nations would have populations 80 percent lower than they are today. {snip}
Even if one ignores the statistical noise presented by the inclusion of millions of outliers, Europe faces a serious problem. Without a major shift in the current fertility trends, industrialized Europe will see its native population decline by about three-fourths over the 21st century. No civilization has ever recovered from such a population decline, and never before has such a decline been entirely voluntary.
Europeans are not becoming less fertile as a consequence of war, or famine, or disease, but rather as a consequence of their Western, consumerist lifestyles.
[ We probably do not need our full populations in numbers; what we need is for enough good people to breed to outnumber the criminals, parasites, middle managers, morons, whores, SUV-driving obliviots, etc. ]
news on 03.01.08 @ 10:12 AM CST [more..]
Small ice age may be headed our way
Last month, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, shrugged off manmade climate change as "a drop in the bucket." Showing that solar activity has entered an inactive phase, Prof. Sorokhtin advised people to "stock up on fur coats."
He is not alone. Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.
The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.
The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."
China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.
There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.
In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.
And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.
[ Trade ceased? If it also takes out the TV stations, it might be a gift from the gods! ]
news on 03.01.08 @ 09:58 AM CST [more..]
Most people avoid taboo information because of inconvenience
What the government cares about is making the quest for information just enough of a nuisance that people generally won't bother. Most Chinese people, like most Americans, are interested mainly in their own country. All around them is more information about China and things Chinese than they could possibly take in. The newsstands are bulging with papers and countless glossy magazines. The bookstores are big, well stocked, and full of patrons, and so are the public libraries. Video stores, with pirated versions of anything. Lots of TV channels. And of course the Internet, where sites in Chinese and about China constantly proliferate. When this much is available inside the Great Firewall, why go to the expense and bother, or incur the possible risk, of trying to look outside?
[ You get ahead in your society by following the prevailing dogma. Only ideologues, and a host of parasites, do otherwise. This story is about China but it might as well be about the USA, except that the editors of this magazine would find themselves jobless if they did that. ]
news on 03.01.08 @ 09:38 AM CST [more..]
How are Europeans genetically different from other groups?
In India, members of higher ranking castes are genetically more similar to Europeans, while lower castes are more similar to Asians, according to a study published in this month.s issue of Genome Research.
Maternally inherited DNA in Indian populations was overall more similar to Asians than to Europeans, though similarity to Europeans increased with rank. Paternally inherited DNA, on the other hand, was overall more similar to Europeans than to Asians. These results support the notion that the West Eurasian immigrants mixing with native populations were mostly male, and that they tended to insert themselves into high ranking positions in the developing Hindu Indian caste system.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/05/010515080044.htm
In a study, published in the journal 'PNAS', the team shows that the gene that controls our ability to digest milk was missing from Neolithic skeletons dating to between 5840 and 5000 BC. However, through exposure to milk, lactose tolerance evolved extremely rapidly, in evolutionary terms. Today, it is present in over ninety per cent of the population of northern Europe and is also found in some African and Middle Eastern populations but is missing from the majority of the adult population globally.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070227105530.htm
Finally, the occurrence of SNPs in large blocks was seen in northern European populations but not seen in the Nigerian populations, suggesting that something happened in the population history of the northern Europeans.a recent bottleneck that shaped the genetic history of this population. Scientists speculate that this bottleneck could be related to the founding of Europe or the migration of a small population out of Africa as recently as 50,000 years ago.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/05/010511073639.htm
[ Africans moved north to become something like Berbers, those then moved north to become something like Armenids, those then moved West to become something like Basques, those then moved to Scandinavia and became Nordids. We're all somewhere on the scale, and we can do better than its greatest heights so far, so we should stop bickering over our denial that the scale exists, and find a way to raise ourselves up! ]
"What we may be seeing is a 'population genetic echo' of the founding of Europe," said Carlos Bustamante, assistant professor of biological statistics and computational biology at Cornell and senior co-author with Andrew Clark, a professor of molecular biology and genetics.
"Since we tend to think of European populations as quite large, we did not expect to see a significant difference in the distribution of neutral and deleterious variation between the two populations," said Bustamante. "It was quite surprising, but when we cross-checked our results to data sets gathered by other groups, we found the same trend."
The researchers focused on single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), where a single DNA base pair (the smallest structural unit) in a gene's sequence had been altered. Genetic variations were classified as to whether a SNP was found in one or both populations. Some of these genetic changes led to amino acid changes in the proteins that the genes express, while others had no effect.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080220132608.htm
[ Europeans are not only physically different, but genetically different, than other groups, which makes sense since genetics controls physical appearance and abilities. ]
news on 03.01.08 @ 09:22 AM CST [link]
Russia following the Platonic pattern
According to research by the Russian Academy of Sciences, three quarters of senior politicians have a background in the security forces and Russia's largest companies are now headed by former KGB men with personal ties to Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin argues this is a good thing - that Russia needs a strong hand to restore order.
[ They're not fooled by democracy. They know that it's an end-stage before oligarchy and disaster, so want to go directly to authoritarian government to restart the cycle. ]
"That question, I said, is easily answered: the four governments of which I spoke, so far as they have distinct names, are, first, those of Crete and Sparta, which are generally applauded; what is termed oligarchy comes next; this is not equally approved, and is a form of government which teems with evils: thirdly, democracy, which naturally follows oligarchy, although very different: and lastly comes tyranny, great and famous, which differs from them all, and is the fourth and worst disorder of a State. I do not know, do you? of any other constitution which can be said to have a distinct character. There are lordships and principalities which are bought and sold, and some other intermediate forms of government. But these are nondescripts and may be found equally among Hellenes and among barbarians."
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.9.viii.html
news on 03.01.08 @ 08:49 AM CST [more..]
Governments rule by fear of minor not major threats
World governments focus too much on fighting terrorism while obesity and other "lifestyle diseases" are killing millions more people, an international conference heard Monday.
Global terrorism was a real threat but posed far less risk than obesity, diabetes and smoking-related illnesses, prominent US professor of health law Lawrence Gostin said at the Oxford Health Alliance Summit here.
"There's a political paralysis in dealing with the issue," said Gostin, an adviser to the US government and a professor at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins universities.
[ Governments rule by fear of symbols, not reality. So they want something that'll scare you. Obesity and smoking we view as being individual choice, so oh well if they die - until we see the bill passed on to all of the rest of us. ]
news on 03.01.08 @ 08:40 AM CST [more..]
Medicine forces scientific recognition of race
Researchers have found the behaviour of immune system genes varies from race to race - potentially affecting how they respond to infection.
The Chicago University team looked at over 9,000 genes in 180 people, half Caucasian and half from Nigeria.
They found differences between the two races in 5% of key genes.
The American Journal of Human Genetics study may help explain why some groups are more vulnerable to disease, and aid development of more tailored treatment.
[The recognition of race is getting more mainstream. Good!]
news on 03.01.08 @ 08:31 AM CST [more..]
The real cost of crime and law enforcement
For the first time in U.S. history, more than one of every 100 adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report documenting America’s rank as the world’s No. 1 incarcerator. It urges states to curtail corrections spending by placing fewer low-risk offenders behind bars.
Using state-by-state data, the report says 2,319,258 Americans were in jail or prison at the start of 2008 — one out of every 99.1 adults. Whether per capita or in raw numbers, it’s more than any other nation.
The report, released Thursday by the Pew Center on the States, said the 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier. The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending, the report said.
[ Instead of spending our effort, time and money to make life better, we're spending our time taking care of parasites and losers. Kick them out of the country if they can't figure it out. Stop trying to save idiots from killing themselves with drugs - just eject them! ]
news on 03.01.08 @ 08:20 AM CST [more..]
Italy shuts down anti-Zionist blog
Italian Interior Minister Giuliano Amato ordered Friday the closure of a blog on Internet that listed the names of 162 Jewish University professors whore are accused of “lobbying in favor of the Zionists.”
The blog explained that most of the 162 professors “belong to La Sapienza University of Rome, have a Jewish last name and publicly support Israeli politics”.
The professors are accused of serving the cause of Israel and not the interest of Italy, are indicated as spying inside the Italian system and accused of giving to Israel all kinds of scientific info (thesis, data, researches and everything carried out in universities) and “that would explain why Israel is so avant-garde.”
[ Mussolini would have supported Zionism if it were outside of Europe. ]
news on 03.01.08 @ 07:53 AM CST [more..]
Human rights difficult to define
The German government follows a so-called "four-pillar" strategy against right-wing extremism that was agreed in 2002. It seeks to educate on human rights, strengthen civil society and promote civil courage, help integrate foreigners and target suspected far-right extremists.
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssConsumerGoodsAndRetailNews/idUSL2817646220080228
Article 19 of the Universal declaration on human rights:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
[ Seems we've confused "human rights" with "control of that which opposes control by mass opinion." ]
news on 03.01.08 @ 07:49 AM CST [link]
Russians cheerfully rig voting
The Kremlin is planning to falsify the results of this Sunday's presidential election in Russia by compelling millions of public sector workers to vote and by fraudulently boosting the official turnout after polls close, the Guardian has learned.
Governors, regional officials, and even headteachers have been instructed to deliver a landslide majority for Dmitry Medvedev - Russia's first deputy prime minister, whom President Vladimir Putin has endorsed to be his successor.
Officials have been told they need to secure a 68% to 70% turnout in this weekend's poll - with around 72% casting votes for Medvedev. However, independent analysts believe the real turnout will be much lower - with between 25% and 50% of the electorate taking part.
[ At least someone is not fooled by the public illusion of democracy. ]
news on 03.01.08 @ 07:43 AM CST [more..]
