Wednesday, October 31st
Processed meat causes more cancer than smoking
The World Cancer Research Fund study found strong evidence that eating red meat and processed meats such as pastrami, salami, and frankfurters can cause bowel cancer.
It also found a direct link between obesity and alcohol intake and the likelihood of falling victim to cancer.
"With smoking, we know that if you smoke you increase your risk, but most smokers in the end don't get cancer, so it's not a one-to-one relation," study author Sir Michael Marmot explained.
[ But processed, anti-biotic stuffed, hormone-fed, prion-nourished meat is cheaper and so makes higher profits. We don't want enough, we want more, when earning money's the issue. ]
news on 10.31.07 @ 11:44 PM CST [more..]
"News" is often paid advertising
The Toronto Star ran a huge advertising section promoting "anti-counterfeiting legislation" that attacks Canada's generic drugs and serves as a back door for DRM laws and Draconian copyright penalties -- but they ran it as news, even though they were "sponsored" by the Canadian Anti-Counterfeiting Network.The claims in the "article" were one-sided and ignored the rebuttals that the paper's own Michael Geist had published.
[ The mainstream media is a giant advertising funnel that labels itself "news entertainment" and has no real pretense of being serious news, except for its underpaid underlings, who justify being underpaid nobodies with the illusion that they're doing "serious journalism." Corporate bosses nod and smile, light another Cuban cigar. ]
news on 10.31.07 @ 11:42 PM CST [more..]
Moderate KKK rising in influence
Ken Mier, who described himself as an investigator for the Alabama Ku Klux Klan and the national office of the Ku Klux Klan LLC, said in an e-mail to The Cullman Times that his group is against the tactics of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which held an anti-immigration protest last month in Athens.
"We are opposed to the ignorance and stupidity as displayed by the individuals that thumbed their nose at the area churches by continuing to use racial slurs, threats and avoided Christian deportment," he said.
[ Most people who take what they're doing seriously are sick of the hatred, bigotry, racial slurs and roadhouse behavior. We want people who have a whole plan, not just a hankerin' for racial warfare. We don't want to hurt anyone, but we know that unfettered liberalism, capitalism and multiculturalism/globalism will destroy us. These violent, slur-tossing bigots just get in the way and convince most people there's no hope down the path of nationalism. ]
news on 10.31.07 @ 11:40 PM CST [more..]
Insane paranoia normal in American society
About 40 million Americans suffer from anxiety disorders, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. A Harvard Medical School study estimated the annual cost to the U.S. economy in 1999 at roughly $42 billion.
[ What a comforting, sane, balanced society this must be! ROFL ]
news on 10.31.07 @ 11:37 PM CST [more..]
The sexual revolution, tolerance brought us AIDS
The AIDS virus invaded the United States in about 1969 from Haiti, carried most likely by a single infected immigrant who set the stage for it to sweep the world in a tragic epidemic, scientists said on Monday.
They found that HIV was brought to Haiti by an infected person from central Africa in about 1966, which matches earlier estimates, and then came to the United States in about 1969.
[ Awesome import. ]
news on 10.31.07 @ 11:36 PM CST [more..]
China buys top-secret US tech, courts won't prosecute
The Justice Department has dropped all criminal charges against a Chinese national accused of selling technology made by his Silicon Valley employer to a Chinese cruise missile laboratory, court records show.
Data Physics in May settled civil charges brought by the Commerce Department that it sold technology to China for military purposes, agreeing to pay a $55,000 fine and adhere to a five-year ban on exporting to China.
[ In the new global economy, we don't have enemies until they use our technology against us. The Chinese have their act together: keep capitalism out as much as possible, keep culture from getting corrupt, encourage national identity and bide their time until the West collapses. ]
news on 10.31.07 @ 11:34 PM CST [more..]
Mercury poisoning rampant in industrialized world
As many as 600,000 babies may be born in the USA each year with irreversible brain damage because pregnant mothers ate mercury-contaminated fish, the Environmental Protection Agency says. Medical researchers are just beginning to explore such mercury exposure in adults, which can leave some people struggling through life in a disorienting "fish fog." Nationwide, more than 8,000 lakes, rivers and bays are compromised by mercury's toxic effects.
A partial answer can be found in the nearly 500 coal-burning power plants that supply half the nation's electricity. The $298-billion-a-year electric utility industry is the nation's largest source of mercury air emissions and the latest target of federal and state clean-air regulations.
[ That sounds like terrible government to me, that allows this! Maybe the "fish fog" got them first? ]
news on 10.31.07 @ 11:31 PM CST [more..]
Exercise makes healthy brains
A new study reports that children who play vigorously for 20 to 40 minutes a day may be better able to organize schoolwork, do class projects and learn mathematics.
[ Our non-news news rediscovers the obvious. ]
news on 10.31.07 @ 11:30 PM CST [more..]
Capitalist competition prevents good inventions
Goodwin's experiments point to a radically cleaner and cheaper future for the American car. The numbers are simple: With a $5,000 bolt-on kit he co-engineered--the poor man's version of a Goodwin conversion--he can immediately transform any diesel vehicle to burn 50% less fuel and produce 80% fewer emissions.
[ Some random guy can do this, and Detroit couldn't? What gives with that? I thought capitalism and capitalist competition ensured us the best products ever! ]
news on 10.31.07 @ 11:28 PM CST [more..]
Pranks prohibited by PC, fear of terrorism
For better or worse, the days of prank-first, question-later are gone. In an open letter to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology student body, which, like Caltech, has a longstanding history of pranks, Chancellor Phillip Clay wrote earlier this month, "We cannot deny the fact that what was tolerated in the past, and may even have been celebrated, is now viewed differently."
In the mid-'80s, for example, MIT students hacked the elevator system in a campus building. When passengers pushed a button, the car delivered them to a random floor. While the prank, or hack, as they're called at MIT, has attained legendary status, Kirk Kolenbrander, vice president for institute affairs, says that now such a stunt would likely make waves.
"That's clever, but at the same time our society today would say that there are real safety issues if that elevator is needed in an emergency," says Mr. Kolenbrander. "Our world has a different patience for those issues than it once did."
[ In the name of good things, our society has not only become unfun but downright WIMPY. Come on people, back to reality. ]
news on 10.31.07 @ 11:25 PM CST [more..]
University forces students to agree that "all whites are racist"
A mandatory University of Delaware program requires residence hall students to acknowledge that "all whites are racist" and offers them "treatment" for any incorrect attitudes regarding class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality they might hold upon entering the school, according to a civil rights group.
"A RACIST: A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. 'The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality. By this definition, people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples within the U.S. system, they do not have the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities, or acts of discrimination..'"
[ We see anti-racism for what it is: revenge against those who have anything more than the bearded, basement-dwelling, toenail-recycling leftist "activist." Hate disguised as love - what a novel concept! 
]
news on 10.31.07 @ 11:23 PM CST [more..]
People are neurotic and overburdened
Almost everybody I know -- whether they're wealthy or struggling to make ends meet, whether they're bachelor girls or celebrating their 25th anniversary, whether their kids are grown or toddlers or nonexistent --everyone seems to be suffering from some sort of culturally induced ADD. Our brains are swamped and our bodies are tired. Blood pressures are up, serotonin levels are down, tempers are short, to-do lists are long, and nerves are shot.
[ This humor column is surprisingly accurate. ]
news on 10.31.07 @ 11:21 PM CST [more..]
A SCHOOL was yesterday accused of MAKING teachers dress up as Asians for a day—to celebrate a Muslim festival.
Yesterday a relative of one of the 39 others said: “Staff have got to go along with it—or let’s face it, they would be branded racist. Who would put their job on the line? They have been told they have to embrace the day to show their diversity."
“It’s all part of a diversity project to promote multi-culturalism.”
[ Multiculturalism is the doctrine whereby puny people get to pretend they are kings, and can give away an empire magnimoniously, oblivious to how much this impacts others and themselves. ]
news on 10.31.07 @ 10:00 PM CST [more..]
Monoculturalism goes left
[M]ono-culturalism is swinging left. Having decisively vanquished traditional Christians in the culture wars, feminists, gay activists and other progressives are no longer willing to risk their winnings by pledging multicultural solidarity with traditional Muslims, Hasidic Jews and other socially conservative immigrant groups.
This is a new phenomenon in Canada, but it’s been going on for years in Europe. The old face of nativism used to be Jean-Marie Le Pen, a right-wing Gaullist and old-school bigot who complains crankily about Jews and Blacks. Le Pen is still around. (His National Front party got 10% of the vote in this year’s French presidential election.) But today’s young voters are drawn more to those cast in the mold of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn.
When Fortuyn was assassinated in 2002, he was described in the Western media as a “right-wing” politician because of his scathing remarks about Muslims. But the label never fit: Fortuyn was a lusty, openly gay populist who championed euthanasia, liberal drug policies and same-sex marriage. He opposed traditional Muslim culture precisely because it conflicted with the Netherlands’ any-thing-goes ethos.
In other words, muscular monoculturalism is no longer the purview of the right. Having been liberated from the odour of racism, it’s becoming a mainstream ideology, even a fashionable one, on the left.
[ Common sense knows neither right nor left. The left is destructive mainly because they have no goal, so focus on tearing up what we've got and redistributing it in an effort to be noble through egalitarianism -- essentially, trying to become a pseudo-aristocracy like the Kennedys. ]
news on 10.31.07 @ 09:58 PM CST [more..]
Monday, October 29th
BadScience.net commits bad science
Oliver has perhaps not been to Brazil, where black African, white European, and Amerindian have lived side by side and bred together for many centuries. The Brazilians have not gone coffee coloured, they in fact still show a wide range of skin pigmentation, from black to tan. This is because skin pigmentation seems to be coded for by a fairly small number of genes and probably doesn.t blend and even out as Oliver - a political theorist, not a scientist - suggests.
http://www.badscience.net/?p=316
Skin reflectance was measured on the inner upper arm and forehead of a sample of 209 Mestizos ranging in age from 2 to 64 years living in the town of Lamas in the Eastern Peruvian Lowlands. The sample consisted of 43 father-son, 42 father-daughter, 62 mother-son, and 70 mother-daughter pairs. The sample also consisted of 57 brother-brother, 60 sister-sister and 139 brother-sister pairs. The reflectance measurements were made with a Photovolt Reflection Meter, model 670. Stepwise polynomial regression techniques were used to derive standardized residual values. Then using these residual values parent-offspring, sibling intraclass correlations and components of the phenotypic expression of skin reflectance were calculated. The study indicates that 1) the parent-offspring and sibling correlation coefficients conformed with the theoretical correlations expected assuming polygenic inheritance; 2) the husband-wife correlations indicate a high degree of assortative mating for skin color, but despite this effect the parent-offspring and sibling correlation coefficients are lower than the values expected under the influence of autosomal genes; 3) estimates of heritability and components of phenotypic expression indicate that about 55% of the total variability in skin reflectance could be attributed to the influence of additive genetic factors; and 4) there is no evidence of X-linkage in the inheritance of skin color.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/110483224/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
[ Skin color is mostly determined by degree of mixture, in contrast to what the bad science guy says. Further, the bad science guy's assumption is that ethnic mixing was mathematically uniform, for which there's no evidence and plenty of counter-evidence, given the "racism" (preference for breeding among one's genetic proximates) we hear decried in Brazil. ]
news on 10.29.07 @ 10:04 PM CST [link]
Humans may have evolved longer ago than thought
An extraordinary advance in human origins research reveals evidence of the emergence of the upright human body plan over 15 million years earlier than most experts have believed. More dramatically, the study confirms preliminary evidence that many early hominoid apes were most likely upright bipedal walkers sharing the basic body form of modern humans.
A bizarre birth defect in what may have been the first direct human ancestor led to the "transposition" of the septum to a position behind the spinal cord in the lumbar region. Oddly enough, this configuration is more typical of invertebrates.
The mechanical effect of the transposition was to make horizontal or quadrupedal stance inefficient. "Any mammal with this set of changes would only be comfortable standing upright. I would envision this malformed young hominiform – the first true ancestral human – as standing upright from a young age while its siblings walked around on all fours."
The earliest example of the transformed hominiform type of lumbar spine is found in Morotopithecus bishopi an extinct hominoid species that lived in Uganda more than 21 million years ago. "From a number of points of view," Filler says, "humanity can be redefined as having its origin with Morotopithecus. This greatly demotes the importance of the bipedalism of Australopithecus species such as Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis) since we now know of four upright bipedal species that precede her, found from various time periods on out to Morotopithecus in the Early Miocene."
[ The plot thickens regarding human origins. ]
news on 10.29.07 @ 10:00 PM CST [more..]
Promiscuity is de-evolutionary
In a theoretical study published in the October 17, 2007 issue of Nature they demonstrate that sexual conflict can establish novel sex-determining genes and sex chromosomes. The proposed mechanism extends the established theory on the origin of sex chromosomes, and it explains how sex determination can move from an ancestral sex chromosome to an autosome, a non-sex-chromosome, that then invades to become a new sex chromosome.
The mechanism suggested by these authors begins with an autosome that carries two genes with particular features. One of these two genes is under sexually antagonistic selection. This means that some versions of the gene (alleles) are more beneficial in males than in females, while other alleles are more beneficial for females.
[ What made apes into humans? We were more sexually selective, which forced faster evolution. Promiscuity has the opposite effect and increases devolution.
news on 10.29.07 @ 09:42 PM CST [more..]
Tough immigration law goes into force in Oklahoma
One of the toughest state laws targeting illegal immigrants takes effect Thursday in Oklahoma, prompting efforts by immigrants trying to block it and work by state agencies to comply.
The law makes it a felony to transport or shelter illegal immigrants. Businesses, which are barred by federal law from hiring illegal immigrants, can be sued by a legal worker who is displaced by an illegal one.
[ They got away with it, that is, making profit off cheap immigrant labor and passing the cost on to you. But that's changing as people realize what mass immigration is going to mean for their futures, and those of their children. ]
news on 10.29.07 @ 09:31 PM CST [more..]
Truth of immigration hidden by democratic politics
Mass immigration is another case in point. The British people have never been consulted and, more importantly, have frequently been deliberately misled about the massive demographic change of the past ten years.
For example, when Poland and other Eastern European states joined the EU three years ago, ministers blithely said that the impact of immigration from these new member states on this country would merely amount to somewhere between 5,000 and 13,000 people a year.
For good measure, they denounced as racist those who warned that this was an absurd underestimate.
Of course, as is now well-known, the numbers arriving here from Poland alone has amounted to at least 150,000 a year, and the true figure is probably far bigger. Yet we have yet to receive an apology for this egregious act of public deception.
[ Our leaders are liars. Great. I think that needs fixing, if anyone with a functional brain is still listening. ]
news on 10.29.07 @ 09:29 PM CST [more..]
Doom imminent, official sources now agree
The United Nations Environment Program has released the Global Environment Outlook: environment for development (GEO-4) report, and it doesn't make for happy reading.
The seas, studies show, are rapidly being depleted of fish stocks by overfishing. At the same time, warming temperatures are eradicating the coral reefs, sources of massive biodiversity, and agricultural run-off is creating enormous dead zones of deoxygenated water, devoid of life. Consumption of sea food tripled in the 40 years following 1961, and subsidies for fishing fleets have created a huge excess capacity. Many fish stocks have been depleted to the point where they will never recover.
The oceans aren't our only water problem. Fresh water, an absolute necessity, is also in trouble. Water supplies are increasingly polluted; contaminated water is the leading cause of death worldwide. The report points out that 70 percent of all fresh water is used for irrigation, but meeting the food needs of our ever expanding global population would require doubling current output over the next five decades. With precipitation changes already being seen thanks to climate change, that's a bleak prospect. Industrial pollutants, from heavy metals to organic compounds, abound in the biosphere, and that means they abound in our food supply. While all of these problems disproportionately affect the poorer regions of the planet, the industrialized world is hardly exempt.
According to studies, our use of natural resources is unsustainable. We currently use a third more than the planet has to offer, and that's with less than a 6th of the global population living in industrialized countries. Despite the rapid development of China and India, the resources simply do not exist to allow their billions of citizens to enjoy the same lifestyles seen in the US or Europe.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071027-new-un-environmental-report-paints-a-very-bleak-future-for-humanity.html
Oil supplies peaked in 2006, say analysts, furthermore future shortages could mean mass unrest around the globe
http://environment.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19626273.900&feedId=online-news_rss20
[ It doesn't look like anything resembling a "plan" has occurred here. Humanity is out of control. ]
news on 10.29.07 @ 09:27 PM CST [more..]
If we sent illegals home, what would happen?
But what would happen if all 20 million or more vacated America?
* In California, if 3.5 million illegal aliens moved back to Mexico, it would leave an extra $10.2 billion to spend on overloaded school systems, bankrupted hospitals and overrun prisons. It would leave highways cleaner, safer and less congested. Everyone could understand one another as English became the dominate language again.
* In Colorado, 500,000 illegal migrants, plus their 300,000 kids and grand-kids—would move back “home,” mostly to Mexico. That would save Coloradans an estimated $2 billion (other experts say $7 BIL) annually in taxes that pay for schooling, medical, social-services and incarceration costs. It means 12,000 gang members would vanish out of Denver alone.
* Colorado would save more than $20 million in prison costs, and the terror that those 7,300 alien criminals set upon local citizens. Denver Officer Don Young and hundreds of Colorado victims would not have suffered death, accidents, rapes and other crimes by illegals.
* Denver Public Schools would not suffer a 67 percent drop out/flunk out rate via thousands of illegal alien students speaking 41 different languages. At least 200,000 vehicles would vanish from our gridlocked cities in Colorado. Denver’s four percent unemployment rate would vanish as our working poor would gain jobs at a living wage.
[ We might also add: the Mexican economy and national spirit would improve, and we would be closer to being a nation of consensus again. ]
news on 10.29.07 @ 09:25 PM CST [more..]
Homosexuality is genetic
Using genetic manipulation, U.S. scientists altered the brains of nematode worms, causing them to become attracted to wrigglers of the same sex.
[ Excluding child abuse cases, who often become bisexual, homosexuals are created by nature. This is yet another "issue" that has sidetracked conservatism and has nothing to do with the major issues that face us. ]
news on 10.29.07 @ 09:23 PM CST [more..]
Most students cheat
Recent survey results from the Educational Testing Service and the Ad Council suggest that 75 percent to 98 percent of students cheat in high school, compared to just 20 percent of students during the 1940s. Indications are that just as many students cheat in college and graduate school too.
[ Over-competitive impulses, and constant crops of new clueless people, provide firm ground for cheating. What kind of dishonest generations are we raising? ]
news on 10.29.07 @ 09:22 PM CST [more..]
Saturday, October 27th
Water for most US states threatened
The government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages within five years because of a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess.
"Unfortunately, there's just not going to be any more cheap water," said Randy Brown, Pompano Beach's utilities director.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations network of scientists, said this year that by 2050 up to 2 billion people worldwide could be facing major water shortages.
[ More quality "thinking ahead" from our witless society. ]
news on 10.27.07 @ 05:07 PM CST [more..]
Maine makes public documents English-only
The state of Maine announced on Wednesday that testing materials for anyone seeking a driver's license would only be provided in English.
Census Bureau statistics show that about 64,000 Maine residents speak French as their primary language and 10,000 speak Spanish.
[ The French do not appear to be complaining. ]
news on 10.27.07 @ 02:28 PM CST [more..]
Commerce creating split in human species
The human race will one day split into two separate species, an attractive, intelligent ruling elite and an underclass of dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creatures, according to a top scientist.
100,000 years into the future, sexual selection will mean that two distinct breeds of human will have developed.
The alarming prediction comes from evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry from the London School of Economics, who says that the human race will have reached its physical peak by the year 3000.
[ The vicious elites will be descendants of greedy businessmen and their stripper wives, and the rest will be anyone who wasn't cruel enough and fixated on money enough to get rich. This is what will replace an aristocracy of geniuses. Good "thinking"! ]
news on 10.27.07 @ 01:03 PM CST [more..]
Anti-Nazi laws provide for universal gov't eavesdropping
On November 9th, the German parliament will most likely vote in favour of a law which will make logging of all connections, be they over Internet, landline or cellular phone, mandatory (German source). As an added bonus, the Cybercrime Convention of the European Union will ensure that a total of 52 countries will have access to this data without review by a judge, restriction of commensurability or even a mandatory expiration date for the prosecution of any and all actions that are against the law in the requesting country. This list includes countries with long-standing records in human rights like Azerbaijan, Russia or Moldova.
[ No one will say this, but this law is enacted to help them crack down on "extremist groups." So in the name of a few Muslim terrorists and white neo-Nazis, everyone gets observed by the Stalinist Nanny State. Good thinking! ]
news on 10.27.07 @ 01:00 PM CST [more..]
Humans fail sustainability audit
With its Geo-4 report, the United Nations tells us that most aspects of the Earth's natural environment are in decline; and that the decline will affect us, the planet's human inhabitants, in some pretty important ways.
From over-fishing and pollution in the oceans to climate-changing emissions in the atmosphere, it concludes that pretty much everything is going downhill.
More greenhouse gases, more widespread pollution, declining availability of fresh water, deforestation, degradation of farmland, ocean acidification - it is hard to come up with a more comprehensive and, frankly, a more depressing list.
Yet humans are living longer; and in most parts of the world, living standards are higher. Unep calculates that per-capita GDP has gone up from close to $6,000 to just over $8,000 over the last 20 years.
Humans might be living longer and richer lives now, this implies; but environmental degradation must at some point curb or even reverse the trend.
[ It's been unpopular for years to think about this, so we haven't. Now we see that we are living beyond our means, and a balancing is coming. If there are too many humans, that balancing means unnecessary death and suffering, which we created in the name of ending death and suffering. Very smart, these simians. ]
news on 10.27.07 @ 12:58 PM CST [more..]
Media expert suggests anti-consumerist values
"Why wouldn't a personal paradise become addictive?" he asked the audience, but pointed out that he was old enough to remember similar worries over movies, video games, and the web. Though just about any human activity can give rise to addictive behavior, Puttnam doesn't see why virtual worlds would prove to be any more harmful than other forms of media, but he wants to see more research done in this area.
"Do we really want them to think of themselves as not that much more than consumers?" His alternative was using virtual worlds to "encourage [kids] to exercise those same values and skills we wish to see them exercise in the real world."
[ We're training kids to become obedient little conquerors or slaves, all for money. Does this select the best? Evidence says no. Yet we persist, because it's easy and just maybe we'll get really rich from it, or the lottery. ]
news on 10.27.07 @ 12:56 PM CST [more..]
Outsiders, uncommercialized, represent last truthful art
Outsider art is art that sits outside any known idiom. It is art created from an entirely new language. It is not for sale. And it is marked by obsession.
To some who are weary of the increasing commercialisation of art, outsider works are unpolished jewels, and the people who make them are the purest artists of all.
[ I don't know if this newspaper reporter noticed and couldn't talk about it, but the "art" our society endorses sucks. It's either populist trash from Hollywood, or weird and useless art objects from a snooty and detached art community. Die Hard 4, or Piss Christ? Outsider art doesn't bow to commercial or populist demands. ]
news on 10.27.07 @ 12:53 PM CST [more..]
US steps up border enforcement in Texas
The U.S. Border Patrol plans to announce today a "zero tolerance" operation to prosecute, jail and deport all illegal immigrants caught in the bustling Laredo area, marking a significant tightening of immigration enforcement along a key U.S. border corridor.
This stepped-up effort is an expansion of the Border Patrol's "Operation Streamline" project in the Del Rio and Yuma, Ariz., sectors, which sharply reduced illegal entries. That is being expanded to the sprawling Laredo sector beginning Wednesday, officials confirmed.
[ Responding belatedly to the wishes of those who give this country direction, but still responding: thumbs up. ]
news on 10.27.07 @ 12:50 PM CST [more..]
Americans are religiously delusional
About eight-in-ten Americans say that they have no doubt that God exists, that prayer is an important part of their lives, and that "we will all be called before God at the Judgment Day to answer for our sins." But the intensity of agreement with these indicators of religiosity has shown a modest decline in recent years, after increasing through much of the 1990s. While overall agreement with the three statements has remained fairly stable, the number of people who completely agree with each statement rose during the 1990s and has declined more recently. For example, the percentage completely agreeing that "we will all be called before God at the Judgment Day" rose from 52% in 1987 to more than 60% in the 1990s. It now stands at 54%, down 7 points from 1999 and five points from 2003.
[ This isn't an anti-religion rant. God wants you to do good things in this world and treat this world, his gift to you, as you would treat your own home. God may or may not exist, but if he does exist, he doesn't intervene in this world, so we're in the driver's seat and it's up to us to make sense of it. People can get religious about Jesus, science, politics, civil rights, or many other things. Being religious in this sense means putting your total trust in it like a neo-Stalinist pact, and figuring that if you just keep bleating the liberal/conservative/white supremacist dogma, EveryThing Will Turn Out Just Fine. That's a crock of lies. We have to make our own path and the universe and God will still be smiling if we exterminate ourselves. Back to reality, kids. ]
news on 10.27.07 @ 12:46 PM CST [more..]
Parasites act like single organism
That view has been receding under the weight of results that suggest that bacteria can act as a multicellular collective, organizing biofilms and identifying the number of fellow species-members through quorum-sensing signaling molecules. A paper in Science takes this sort of behavior to the next level, suggesting that bacteria can coordinate cellular suicide.
So, not only do bacteria engage in cell suicide, but they do so on the basis of signals from their fellow bacteria.it all sounds suspiciously like a multicellular organism, as the authors themselves note. The logic behind it also seems very similar to that which explains altruistic behavior in multicellular animals. In a dense, rapidly growing culture, most of the bacteria would be expected to be genetically related. When a source of stress, such as a virus or antibiotic, starts harming cells, the most efficient way to preserve their shared inheritance may be for some of the cells to sacrifice themselves.
[ Sounds a lot like how human populations interact. But wait, the free will myth is our founding precept... OMG we'll have to go into denial, because denial's where the money's at. ]
news on 10.27.07 @ 12:43 PM CST [more..]
People seek balanced minds, society seeks distraction
Psychiatrists may need to approach the treatment of psychiatric patients from a new direction -- by understanding that such individuals' behavior and decision-making are based on an attempt to reach an inner equilibrium. A brain in balance, rather than the promise of pain or pleasure, may form basis of decision-making for psychiatric patients.
[ But our genius society motivates people through reward and punishment, so this means we're... on the wrong track, but it's not profitable to say that, so back to work plz! ]
news on 10.27.07 @ 12:41 PM CST [more..]
Most Virginians see illegal immigration as an urgent local problem
Three-quarters of likely voters in Virginia said immigration is important to their votes in the election for state and local offices, while just a year ago, immigration ranked seventh of 10 listed issues in a Post poll before the U.S. Senate race. Since then, the percentage of Virginia voters calling immigration “extremely” or “very” important to their vote has jumped 15 points.
A majority of Virginians, 53 percent, said they want state and local governments to do “a lot” to deal with illegal immigration; an additional third said they want “some” action.
Nearly seven in 10 Virginians polled said the federal government has not done enough to deal with the issue. But many also see illegal immigration as a state and local issue—and not one that the federal government alone should address.
Fifty-one percent of those surveyed said illegal immigration is a problem where they live, including 20 percent who said it is a “very serious problem.”
[ Our culture and society are being converted into cultureless status. Yep, that's a problem. ]
news on 10.27.07 @ 12:34 PM CST [more..]
Americans moving closer to forests, litter proliferates
Americans are moving farther and farther away from city centers and closer and closer to national forests. As a result, housing density is increasing on more than one-half million acres of land adjacent to over 10 national forests according to a recent study.
[ Our cities are nightmares. Let's consume the rest of nature. Burp! ]
news on 10.27.07 @ 12:31 PM CST [more..]
Caring for people requires ethnic nationalism
Altruistic and warlike aspects of human nature may have a common origin. Altruism--benefiting fellow group members at a cost to oneself--and parochialism--hostility toward individuals not of one's own ethnic, racial, or other group--are common to human nature, but we don't immediately think of them as working together hand in hand. In fact the unexpected combination of these two behaviors may have enabled the survival of each trait according to new research.
[ Atomized modern people have nothing in common. Under a nationalist society, everyone is an extended family, so cooperation can occur. ]
news on 10.27.07 @ 12:29 PM CST [more..]
Friday, October 26th
Given a choice, people prefer real culture
The classical music industry, struggling prior to 2000, is now on a huge rebound due largely to the Internet. Classical music labels are seeing record sales this year, now that the Internet allows music buyers access to their complete libraries of music, which would be completely impractical in a brick-and-mortar store. Classical music benefits more from the "long tail" since not only are there centuries of music from which to draw -- each piece is likely to have multiple recordings, resulting in a vast catalog.
[ Ordinary people can appreciate good music, too. The music industry has focused for so long on destroying culture so it can sell you junk that it forgot that people have brains. ]
news on 10.26.07 @ 12:06 AM CST [more..]
Giant raft of plastic waste blots oceans, kills wildlife
The so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch - a heap of debris floating in the Pacific that's twice the size of Texas, consists of 80 percent plastics and weighs some 3.5 million tons, say oceanographers. It floats where few people ever travel, in a no-man's land between San Francisco and Hawaii.
Sea turtles mistake clear plastic bags for jellyfish. Birds swoop down and swallow indigestible shards of plastic. The petroleum-based plastics take decades to break down, and as long as they float on the ocean's surface, they can appear as feeding grounds.
The Greenpeace report found that at least 267 marine species had suffered from some kind of ingestion or entanglement with marine debris.
[ What kind of emotionally unstable species allows this to happen? ]
news on 10.26.07 @ 12:05 AM CST [more..]
Processed food will make you ill
A few years ago, an obesity researcher at the University of Washington named Adam Drewnowski ventured into the supermarket to solve a mystery. He wanted to figure out why it is that the most reliable predictor of obesity in America today is a person?s wealth. For most of history, after all, the poor have typically suffered from a shortage of calories, not a surfeit. So how is it that today the people with the least amount of money to spend on food are the ones most likely to be overweight?
Drewnowski gave himself a hypothetical dollar to spend, using it to purchase as many calories as he possibly could. He discovered that he could buy the most calories per dollar in the middle aisles of the supermarket, among the towering canyons of processed food and soft drink. (In the typical American supermarket, the fresh foods ? dairy, meat, fish and produce ? line the perimeter walls, while the imperishable packaged goods dominate the center.) Drewnowski found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of cookies or potato chips but only 250 calories of carrots. Looking for something to wash down those chips, he discovered that his dollar bought 875 calories of soda but only 170 calories of orange juice.
[ What kind of a sick society lets this stuff be sold? We're all about helping the poor, unless there's profit to be made from their misery. ]
news on 10.26.07 @ 12:01 AM CST [more..]
Thursday, October 25th
Nooses keep appearing in humorous places
The Tupac Amaru Shakur Center for the Arts in Georgia has been vandalized and a noose found tied around the neck of a statue of the slain rap idol.
Early Saturday morning, vandals defaced the building and left a noose around the neck of the bronze statue of Shakur located in the center's peace garden.
Later in the weekend, the statue was plastered with handbills covered in rants including references to Sept. 11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina, as well as vague threats against various record companies and rappers, the foundation said.
[ Most people who were hung, or enslaved, were white. Whites are getting sick of the guilt and being lied to with media circuses like the Jena 6. ]
news on 10.25.07 @ 11:59 PM CST [more..]
Peak oil has arrived, says study
The world has reached the point of maximum oil output and production levels will halve by 2030 -- a situation that will eventually lead to war and disaster, a report claims.
The German-based Energy Watch Group released a report Tuesday saying the world's oil production peaked in 2006 and from now on will drop by around 3 percent a year. It says that by as early as 2030, the global availability of oil will be half of what it was at its peak.
"It's a very serious result," said Hans-Josef Fell, a German lawmaker from the environmentalist Green Party who commissioned the report. "I fear the world will come into a big economic crisis in the coming years."
[ Bad economy, declining energy, rising disease and environmental toxicity, climate out of control, political instability... yep, modern society's doing a great job... if it works for Satan! (or religious bad guy of your choice, my preference is Silver Surfer)
news on 10.25.07 @ 11:57 PM CST [more..]
US censorware helps Burma censor its internet
During Burma's short-lived uprising late last month, young dissidents risked their lives to smuggle news of their peaceful protest to the outside world. They may have been up against Internet censorship software designed in America, if a connection found to exist in 2005 still holds.
[ We're inventing censorware? But we're "free," we don't need that... except to censor the enemies of "freedom"! ]
news on 10.25.07 @ 11:55 PM CST [more..]
America's marriage crisis
Various studies show that at least half of all marriages in the United States will end in divorce, and if you remarry, those figures grow exponentially. For some reason, Americans are either getting married for the wrong reasons or are not making the effort to spend more time working on their marriages to save them, and instead, run to divorce court at the first sign of trouble.
[ Perceptive African-American columnist gets it right. Failed marriages means failed homes means alienated, angry, dumb kids. ]
news on 10.25.07 @ 11:53 PM CST [more..]
Fiery apocalypse forces transcendental introspection
In nearby Escondido, Susan Healey returned after two days with friends to a house unscathed except for heavy soot in the swimming pool.
"I don't think after something like this you're ever not different," the middle-school teacher said. "I had two days to think about, what are the most important things in my house? And they all fit in my car. I realize now how much junk I have."
[ This is why national socialism emphasizes struggle. It's not the stuff you own, but the state of your soul and what you accomplish in life that's real. Most of what we do in our society is push paper around and buy stuff. ]
news on 10.25.07 @ 11:52 PM CST [more..]
Modern culture is garbage, slavery to billionaires
"New York is a city for the rich by the rich, and all of us work at the mercy of rich people and their projects," says Choire Sicha, Gawker's top editor.
"If you work at any publication in this town, you work for a millionaire or billionaire. In some ways, that.s functional, and it works as a feudal society. But what's happened now, related to that, is that culture has dried up and blown away: The Weimar-resurgence baloney is hideous; the rock-band scene is completely unexciting; the young artists have a little more juice, but they're just bleak intellectual kids; and I am really dissatisfied with young fiction writers."
It's an inevitable consequence of living in today's New York: Youthful anxiety and generational angst about having been completely cheated out of ownership of Manhattan, and only sporadically gaining it in Brooklyn and Queens, has fostered a bloodlust for the heads of the douchebags who stole the city. It's that old story of haves and have-nots, rewritten once again.
[ But I thought civil rights got us "freedom" and solved that, but instead it empowered it. Wait, what? ]
news on 10.25.07 @ 11:46 PM CST [more..]
Lower calories leads to a longer life
Severely restricting calories leads to a longer life, scientists have proved. New research now has shown for the first time that such a diet also can maintain physical fitness into advanced age, slowing the seemingly inevitable progression to physical disability and loss of independence.
[ Remember all that garbage they told you about how people in ancient times were starving and died young? Lies: those who were from decent stock lived long, productive lives. ]
news on 10.25.07 @ 11:43 PM CST [more..]
One third of Americans stressed, smoky, fat
Worries about work and money are causing one-third of Americans to suffer from extreme stress, driving them to overeat, drink, and smoke.
[ But we're "free"! Better get two jobs so you can afford "freedom" and not end up in the ghetto! ]
news on 10.25.07 @ 11:42 PM CST [more..]
Environmental toxins change the DNA of embryos
Changes in gene expression patterns in zebrafish embryos resulting from exposure to environmental toxins can identify the individual toxins at work, according to new research. The genetic response of zebrafish to each toxin can be read like a barcode, offering researchers a potential method for identifying the effects of the toxin on developing vertebrate embryos.
[ Same is true of humans. All those exhaust pipes, decaying plastics, and intense factories are making your children mutant idiot criminals. Awesome. ]
news on 10.25.07 @ 11:40 PM CST [more..]
Industrial poisons may make us insane criminals
Even low levels of lead can cause brain damage, increasing the likelihood of behavioral and cognitive traits such as impulsivity, aggressiveness, and low IQ that are strongly linked with criminal behavior. The NYTimes has a story on how the phasing out of leaded gasoline starting with the Clean Air Act in 1973 may have led to a 56% drop in violent crime in the US in the 1990s. An economics professor at Amherst College, Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, discovered the connection and wrote a paper comparing the reduction of lead from gasoline between states (PDF) and the reduction of violent crime. She constructed a table linking crime rates in every state to childhood lead exposure in that state 20 or 30 years earlier.
[ Other factors are important as well, but we'd be idiots to discount the influence of toxic substances. ]
news on 10.25.07 @ 11:39 PM CST [more..]
Children detach from natural world to explore virtual ones
“I’d rather be at the mall because you can enjoy yourself walking around looking at stuff as opposed to the woods,” Nguyen said from the comfort of the Westfield San Francisco Centre mall.
In Yosemite and other parks, he said, furrowing his brow to emphasize the absurdly lopsided comparison, “the only thing you look at is the trees, grass and sky.”
The notion of going on a hike, camping, fishing or backpacking is foreign to a growing number of young people in cities and suburbs around the nation, according to several polls and studies.
The lack of outdoor activity is more pronounced in California’s minority and lower-income communities. Latino parents, for example, were twice as likely as white parents to say their child never participated in an outdoor nature activity and three times more likely to say their child did not go to a park, playground or beach this past summer, according to the Public Policy Institute poll.
[ Without culture to bind us to nature, we become lost servants of technocrats and insane religiously-interpreted dogmas. ]
news on 10.25.07 @ 11:37 PM CST [more..]
NPR discusses racial differences
DNA pioneer James Watson caused a furor recently after saying Africans were intellectually inferior to Westerners. Farai Chideya talks about why the conversation of race and intelligence persists with Phil Rushton, a professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario.
Like Watson, Rushton says people of African descent have a lower IQ and smaller brain size, which he says is "50 percent genetic and 50 percent cultural."
[ I never thought I'd see this notoriously leftist-biased radio program cover this topic in my lifetime. ]
news on 10.25.07 @ 11:35 PM CST [more..]
Mainstream media "falsified" Jena 6 story
There’s just one problem: The media got most of the basics wrong. In fact, I have never before witnessed such a disgrace in professional journalism. Myths replaced facts, and journalists abdicated their solemn duty to investigate every claim because they were seduced by a powerfully appealing but false narrative of racial injustice.
I should know. I live in Jena. My wife has taught at Jena High School for many years. And most important, I am probably the only reporter who has covered these events from the very beginning.
Myth 2: Nooses a Signal to Black Students. An investigation by school officials, police, and an FBI agent revealed the true motivation behind the placing of two nooses in the tree the day after the assembly. According to the expulsion committee, the crudely constructed nooses were not aimed at black students. Instead, they were understood to be a prank by three white students aimed at their fellow white friends, members of the school rodeo team. (The students apparently got the idea from watching episodes of “Lonesome Dove.”
[ Read on for the debunking of the rest of this Hollywood fantasy. ]
news on 10.25.07 @ 11:34 PM CST [more..]
Small town thwarts multiculturalism and thrives
Nine months ago, when this tiny village in central Quebec adopted a code of conduct that banned the stoning of women and informed newcomers “at the end of every year we decorate a tree with balls and tinsel and some lights,” there were snickers from some quarters.
“They don’t laugh anymore,” Herouxville resident Bernard Thompson said yesterday.
Mr. Dumont was the first to tap into Quebec’s identity crisis last year when he suggested public authorities were going too far in accommodating religious minorities. While Mr. Charest and then-PQ leader Andre Boisclair downplayed the Herouxville initiative, Mr. Dumont called it “a heartfelt cry” and made the issue central to his election campaign. More recently he has said Quebec needs to cap its immigration levels because it is not successfully integrating new arrivals.
[ Multiculturalism doesn't work. It makes society paranoid. End multiculturalism, end most of that problem and motivate people toward culture. ]
news on 10.25.07 @ 11:33 PM CST [more..]
Liberal democracies become hopelessly corrupt
Elected officials are sent to Washington to govern but not to rule. This may sound like a question of semantics or at best a fine distinction. But rulership isn't a legitimate part of democracy. When a governing class develops in a democratic society, it loses contact with the people who elect it. In many ways America is burdened with such a class, which has amassed power over the past fifty years, until it arrived at a place where its right to rule goes almost unchallenged.
Who belongs to the ruling class? One might start with the wealthy lawyers who form an inordinate percentage of senators and congressmen, then move on to the corporations whose lobbyists write the very laws that are supposed to regulate corporations. Working hand in hand, these two blocs form a privileged class that feels free to ignore what the American people actually want.
An unexpected benefit of the Bush years is that the ruling class may have gone too far. A culture of corruption binds Congress and lobbyists to an unheard of degree. Bill after bill, earmark after earmark, has blatantly served special interests. Both parties are guilty of kowtowing to money and the corporations that dispense it with shameless abandon -- the buying and selling of political favors has never been so outrageous. Influence peddling, once a crime, has become the norm.
[ When all you have to do is convince people that you mean to give them the world, but the world you give is imaginary, you can swindle the voter and take power as people from both parties have done. Surprised? They belong to the same elites. ]
news on 10.25.07 @ 11:30 PM CST [more..]
Why technology is addictive and misleading
Microsoft may be suffering from engineers' syndrome, something you run into all the time. This is quite amusing, even to engineers, who see it occurring in other engineers but never see it in themselves.
The idea is that once you learn engineering disciplines, you project them onto endeavors other than engineering, since everything you ever do in life is actually some sort of engineering. While there is some modicum of truth to this notion, it's the leap of faith that pushes the idea into the absurd. What happens with engineers' syndrome is this: You start believing that since you're an excellent engineer in one specialty, then you're a friggin' genius in everything you do, because it's all the same, really.
[ This describes our approach to problems. We can never look at our internal deficiencies and fix them because we're used to manipulating external resources. ]
news on 10.25.07 @ 11:28 PM CST [more..]
Author says women don't belong in military
Kingsley Browne, law professor at Wayne State University in Michigan, is used to being called a male chauvinist. In a previous book he argued that biological differences between the sexes—rather than injustice—explain the existence of the glass ceiling. His new book, "Co-Ed Combat: The New Evidence That Women Shouldn't Fight the Nation's Wars," due out Nov. 8, argues that women are not physically and psychologically suited for combat. His contention: their presence on the front lines even endangers the military itself. Browne explained his views to NEWSWEEK's Martha Brant.
[ I'd rather go to fight so they women I know don't have to. Same way I go to a job every day so they don't have to. Homemaking is more important than some stupid job, and any of the stupid wars we've fought. I think men are biologically unsuitable for it as well. What's so hard about complementary gender roles? ]
news on 10.25.07 @ 11:26 PM CST [more..]
Nigerian echoes Watson's sentiments
Since then, some of us cannot hear anything else but the outrage of black people who feel demeaned by what Watson has said. So many people have called the man names. To be expected, some have said he is a racist.
Why are we blacks becoming so reactive, so sensitive to any remarks, no matter how well-meaning, about our failure as a race? Why are we becoming like the Jews who see every accusation as a manifestation of anti-Semitism? I do not know what constitutes intelligence. I leave that to our so-called scholars. But I do know that in terms of organising society for the benefit of the people living in it, we blacks have not shown any intelligence in that direction at all. I am so ashamed of this and sometimes feel that I ought to have belonged to another race.
[ The problem in Africa is the same as elsewhere: the smart people like this guy aren't in control because what they're saying isn't popular. The LNSG believes in nationalism not out of a desire to style blacks as inferior, but because we want to live according to European standards and heritage for the sake of completing what our ancestors started. It's a different way of doing things, and vive le difference! Scorn and racism are not nationalism. ]
news on 10.25.07 @ 11:22 PM CST [more..]
Monday, October 22nd
Modern products poison us from within
Most Americans haven't heard of body burden testing, but it's a hot topic among environmentalists and public health experts who warn that the industrial chemicals we come into contact with every day are accumulating in our bodies and endangering our health in ways we have yet to understand.
Michelle Hammond and Jeremiah Holland took part in a cutting-edge study to measure the industrial chemicals in their bodies. Tests revealed that their children -- Rowan, then 18 months, and Mikaela, then 5 -- had chemical exposure levels up to seven times those of their parents.
"[Rowan's] been on this planet for 18 months, and he's loaded with a chemical I've never heard of," Holland said. "He had two to three times the level of flame retardants in his body that's been known to cause thyroid dysfunction in lab rats."
[ Again, this was obvious to National Socialists, but the rest of the world is in denial. Why? ]
news on 10.22.07 @ 07:56 PM CST [more..]
Pollution accumulates faster than thought
Nitrogen oxides, the noxious byproduct of burning fossil fuels that can return to Earth in rain and snow as harmful nitrate, could taint urban water supplies and roadside waterways more than scientists and regulators realize, according to new research in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.
[ The timid scientists are finally getting brave enough to state some of the obvious. Good work! ]
news on 10.22.07 @ 07:54 PM CST [more..]
Drought dooms humans after reckless growth
A report by the National Academies on the Colorado River basin had recently concluded that the combination of limited Colorado River water supplies, increasing demands, warmer temperatures and the prospect of recurrent droughts "point to a future in which the potential for conflict" among those who use the river will be ever-present.
Over the past few decades, the driest states in the United States have become some of our fastest-growing; meanwhile, an ongoing drought has brought the flow of the Colorado to its lowest levels since measurements at Lee.s Ferry began 85 years ago. At the Senate hearing, Udall stated that the Colorado River basin is already two degrees warmer than it was in 1976 and that it is foolhardy to imagine that the next 50 years will resemble the last 50.
[ No intelligent leaders pointed out that we were overburdening the land? Some people did, but they weren't popular enough to become leaders. ]
news on 10.22.07 @ 07:53 PM CST [more..]
Russia a decaying criminal state that hates the West
Russian hackers became something akin to national heroes last spring when a wave of Internet attacks was launched from Russia against Web sites in Estonia, the former Soviet republic. The incidents began after the Estonians angered the Kremlin by moving a Soviet-era war monument.
VeriSign, the Internet services company, considers Russian hackers to be the worst, in part because they tend to have ties to organized crime outfits that embezzle money with stolen bank and credit card information.
This penchant has not stayed rooted to Russian soil. In the United States, a center for health care fraud is Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, which has one of the nation's largest concentrations of Russian immigrants.
Russia has only 28 million Internet users, according to rough estimates, compared with 210 million in the United States and 150 million in China, meaning that Russia has a higher percentage of scammers.
On a Livejournal Russian forum last week, The New York Times asked participants why Russians have a reputation for Internet crime.
"As for the West? - You are getting what you deserve," said one by the name of Lightwatch.
[ They hate you, Western man. ]
news on 10.22.07 @ 07:52 PM CST [more..]
Understanding white people
It's hard to grasp the intricacies of white culture when your only contact with white people is what you see on TV and when they wait on you at a department store or restaurant.
Because I was sent to mostly white private schools starting in the fifth grade, I learned early how to cope. How to deal with being a minority of one or two. How to parry prejudices of others without drowning in frustration.
It took me months to realize white folks would agree to do things they absolutely detested just to be polite.
[ He's got us nailed. It's part of the impulse to higher civilization, but it has misfired somewhat. ]
news on 10.22.07 @ 07:47 PM CST [more..]
White men are abandoning liberalism
Ignore the fact that white men are demographic losers, composing just 33-36% of the US electorate, and quickly being overtaken by the burgeoning population of college-educated single women and people of color, both groups that prefer the Democratic party. To Kuhn, the white man is the “standard” American voter; or, as he put it in the Politico last week: “White men matter most.”
Once upon a time, Kuhn writes in his new book, The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma, white men voted for Democrats because they understood the importance of progressive economic policies. But since 1980 no more than 38% of white males have voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. The problem? As civil rights and women’s liberation became part of the Democratic platform in the 1960s and 1970s, white men, “Like the rejected husband … walked out on liberalism for good.” The suggestion is that uppity women and minorities drove their white male providers away.
[ Liberalism wants to replace leaders with followers. Leaders want to do something else instead. Not news. ]
news on 10.22.07 @ 07:44 PM CST [more..]
Difference in racial attitudes toward happiness
University of Virginia psychology professor Shigehiro Oishi and colleagues at three other institutions found that, on average, European-Americans claim to be happy in general—more happy than Asian-Americans or Koreans or Japanese—but are more easily made less happy by negative events, and recover at a slower rate from negative events, than their counterparts in Asia or with an Asian ancestry. On the other hand, Koreans, Japanese, and to a lesser extent, Asian-Americans, are less happy in general, but recover their emotional equilibrium more readily after a setback than European-Americans.
[ Differences are profound, and you can see why: these different approaches guarantee that someone will succeed when humanity faces obstacles. ]
news on 10.22.07 @ 07:43 PM CST [more..]
Lack of intermarriage in Iraq war confuses mass media
What's striking about this conflict is not that Americans and Iraqis have met on the battlefield and fallen in love and married. It's that so few have.
State Department records show that after more than four years of occupation, only about 2,400 visas have been granted to Iraqi spouses and fiancées. Many of those may be marriages to Iraqi-Americans. (Neither the State Department nor the Pentagon breaks down the figures in detail.)
[ Ethnic consciousness is at an all-time high as America fragments. ]
news on 10.22.07 @ 07:41 PM CST [more..]
Sunday, October 21st
Halloween costumes for kids getting sluttier
The traditional Halloween scare fare is taking a back seat to the ever burgeoning array of ultra-sexy styles -- and not for adults only. Teens and even younger girls are buying into sexy, from belly-baring pirates, cheerleaders and divas, to sultry angels, flirty devils and racy witches. There's even a naughty Hermione, Harry Potter's sidekick.
The costume trend has gone from scary to "skanky," says Halloween guru Kurt Perron, and it's definitely creeped down to the tween and teen set.
[ And we wonder why they are so many pedophiles. ]
news on 10.21.07 @ 05:51 PM CST [more..]
Modern humans were smart long before thought
In one of the earliest hints of "modern" living, humans 164,000 years ago put on primitive makeup and hit the seashore for steaming mussels, new archaeological finds show.
Instead of undergoing a revolution into modern living about 40,000 to 70,000 years ago, as commonly thought, man may have become modern in stuttering fits and starts, or through a long slow march that began even earlier. At least that's the case being made in a study appearing in the journal Nature on Thursday.
[ Science is too heavily politicized to make sense of this. ]
news on 10.21.07 @ 05:33 PM CST [more..]
Soy food sterilizes men
Just half a serving of soya products a day dramatically reduced men's sperm counts in a new fertility study - contradicting previous findings.
[ But I thought it was healthy. That's what the TV, newspaper and magazines said. ]
news on 10.21.07 @ 05:31 PM CST [more..]
Mice races exterminated by human expansion
Biologists report a rapid change of morphology and mitochondrial genes in a mouse common to a Chicago-area conservation area, with an older, established genotype of the mouse being pushed out by another type over a recent five-year period as nearby human suburban development progressed.
[ Silent genocide. Could happen to whites, blacks and Asians if we're all bred into one Grey Race that has no culture or heritage except what it gets from its televisions. ]
news on 10.21.07 @ 05:28 PM CST [more..]
Brazilians desire authoritarian police force
The film "BOPE: Tropa de Elite" is rocking Brazil right now. Despite leaking to the internet and (more importantly) to Brazil's vast network of street DVD dealers weeks before, it hit theaters nationwide this past weekend and is breaking records.
The film's explosive success and the way it resonates with practically everybody in all corners of Brazilian society make it certain to have a profound influence on the subject it tackles: society's response to corruption, crime, and drug use.
Since BOPE's protagonists are elite Rio police who shoot drug dealers, kill for revenge, summarily execute corrupt police and freely use torture--sometimes on children--this is a very scary possibility.
[ People are tired of disorder. Anarchy leads to Democracy leads to Oligarchy which leads to Authoritarianism which leads to Anarchy, an eternal cycle. ]
news on 10.21.07 @ 05:24 PM CST [more..]
Trying to protect all children makes life unfun
We pamper our kids, over-schedule them, overemphasize fairness in competition (the score ends in a tie ... again!) and keep them indoors too much, to the point that we're doing them a huge disservice. Kids aren't learning how to get hurt, lose, fend for themselves, find their balance and discover minor dangers on their own - all important parts of growing up.
"Parents and children must not be frightened about venturing outside," he told the London Times in a June article. "When children spend time in the great outdoors, getting muddy, getting wet, getting stung by nettles, they learn important lessons - what hurts, what is slippery, what you can trip over or fall from. We need to try to break down the perceived safety barriers to playing outside."
[ The mentality of equality tries to prevent idiots from getting hurt, so makes all of us behave like sheep. ]
news on 10.21.07 @ 05:14 PM CST [more..]
American news stories are bribed
One of the reasons mainstream tech magazines like PC Magazine are so boring is because they're completely dependent on early access to new hardware and software, so companies like Microsoft and Apple use this carrot to keep them from being too critical. They've become product catalogs, which is one reason people look to blogs for a more candid and free-wheeling assessment of new products. While magazines were running cover after cover singing the praises of Windows Vista earlier this year, bloggers were putting up danger signs about upgrading to the new OS on existing PCs.
[ Same is true of mainstream media: no positive story, no interview in the future. ]
news on 10.21.07 @ 05:11 PM CST [more..]
American journalists jailed for reporting on gov't
The leaders of an alternative newspaper chain were arrested after running a story about grand jury subpoenas they received seeking reporters' notes and information on who visits their Phoenix weekly's Web site.
The subpoenas also seek online profiles of anyone who read four specific articles about Arpaio and profiles of anyone who visited the paper's Web site since Jan. 1, 2004. Also sought was information on what Web users did while on the site, the story said.
[ "Freedom." LOL ]
news on 10.21.07 @ 05:07 PM CST [more..]
Liberal president botched US-Russian relations
In some respects, the current crisis in Russian-U.S. relations is reminiscent of the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the Soviet Union had deployed nuclear-tipped missiles in the immediate proximity of the U.S. borders.
[ After the Soviet Union fell, a strong leader could have stepped in and ensured that Russia's future was decided correctly. Instead, the American President Bill Clinton blew it off and allowed this mess to fester. ]
news on 10.21.07 @ 05:01 PM CST [more..]
Multiculturalism threatens liberal democracy, rabbi warns
Multiculturalism promotes segregation, stifles free speech and threatens liberal democracy, Britain's top Jewish official warned in extracts from his book published Saturday.
Jonathan Sacks, Britain's chief rabbi, defined multiculturalism as an attempt to affirm Britain's diverse communities and make ethnic and religious minorities more appreciated and respected. But in his book, "The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society," he said the movement had run its course.
[ He's right. Multiculturalism doesn't work. It promotes alienation and creates a slave-caste of mixed-heritage people without culture, except their TVs of course. ]
news on 10.21.07 @ 04:51 PM CST [more..]
Monogamous males live longer
Scientists compared monogamous species with polygynous species, in which each male mates with many females. Males in monogamous species, such as the barnacle goose or the dwarf mongoose, naturally compete less over females than ones in polygynous species, such as the red-winged blackbird or the savannah baboon.
After investigating about 20 different vertebrate species, researchers Tim Clutton-Brock and Kavita Isvaran at the University of Cambridge in England found the more polygynous a species was, the more likely their males were to age faster and die earlier than females.
[ It's easy to be a slut. Be monogamous, and you prosper for being more selective. Young slutty white men and women should pay attention. ]
news on 10.21.07 @ 04:49 PM CST [more..]
African-American humorist urges black renovation
Cosby's new book, "Come on People," co-authored by Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Alvin Poussaint, has already been featured on Oprah, Larry King and an extraordinary full hour on NBC's "Meet the Press." It's destined for a slot on the best seller lists.
"A house without a father is a challenge. A neighborhood without fathers is a catastrophe, and that's just about what we have today," write Cosby and Poussaint, citing startling statistics:
Of about 16,000 murders in this country each year, more than half are committed by black men.
Young black men are twice as likely to be unemployed as other American men.
Although black people are just 12% of the general population, they are some 44% of prison inmates.
Cosby's path through this jungle of endless debate is to encourage individuals to build up themselves and their families - not as a substitute for political activity, but as the glue that creates politically powerful communities.
[ These same rules apply to any community. Build yourselves up, weed out the bad behavior and promote those who behave well. That's natural selection, human style. White people should listen to him as well. ]
news on 10.21.07 @ 04:48 PM CST [more..]
Black police chief calls for stopping more blacks
Keith Jarrett, outgoing president of the National Black Police Association (NBPA), is expected to press for police to use a stop and search approach with people from black communities in a speech at the NBPA's annual conference in Bristol this Wednesday.
Though Mr Jarrett's remarks are opposed to the NBPA's official stance, he said: "The black community is telling me we have to… look at this", reports the Observer.
[ Multiculturalism fails black people too, and they're tired of living in violent ghettoes where once nice neighborhoods stood. ]
news on 10.21.07 @ 04:45 PM CST [more..]
National Socialism spreading worldwide
Neo-Nazi activity is rising around the world, as incidents in September and early October were reported in Europe, Southeast Asia and the U.S.
[ People are realizing that multiculturalism doesn't work and our current type of civilization is failing us. Let's celebrate that people are finally waking up! ]
news on 10.21.07 @ 04:44 PM CST [more..]
150,000 Jews served under Hitler
Cambridge University researcher Bryan Rigg has traced the Jewish ancestry of more than 1,200 of Hitler's soldiers, including two field marshals and fifteen generals (two full generals, eight lieutenant generals, five major generals), "men commanding up to 100,000 troops."
Jews also served in the Nazi police and security forces as ghetto police (Ordnungdienst) and concentration camp guards (kapos).
Rigg demonstrates that the actual number was much higher than previously thought--perhaps as many as 150,000 men, including decorated veterans and high-ranking officers, even generals and admirals.
Numerous "exemptions" were made in order to allow a soldier to stay within the ranks or to spare a soldier's parent, spouse, or other relative from incarceration or far worse. (Hitler's own signature can be found on many of these "exemption" orders.)
[ Hitler wasn't a kneejerk moron. He knew that many people who were Jewish were fine people, and would support his Germany, so he welcomed them into the effort. His goal was a healthy Germany.
Many Jews also supported him because they supported German values. They wanted to keep being Jews, but they saw in the Jewish establishment something that had gone off-track from what it was to be Jewish, or German. They loved their adopted land and wanted to fight for it -- and they did fight and die for it.
The removal of Jews was mostly a removal of criminals who were also Jewish. They, by the values they had demonstrated, were corrupt and sick and needed to be banished. It wasn't a witch-hunt per se. ]
news on 10.21.07 @ 04:43 PM CST [more..]
Respect scientist points out racial differences, provokes furor
The Nobel Prize-winning DNA pioneer James Watson has been suspended by his research institution in the US.
"Skin colour as a surrogate for race is a social concept not a scientific one," Dr Venter said. "There is no basis in scientific fact or in the human genetic code for the notion that skin colour will be predictive of intelligence."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7052416.stm
[ Venter sidesteps the issue. Skin color isn't race, nor did Watson claim it was. He did claim that African races were not as smart as Europeans. ]
Meanwhile, in an article for The Independent newspaper, Watson writes: "We do not yet adequately understand the way in which the different environments in the world have selected over time the genes which determine our capacity to do different things. The overwhelming desire of society today is to assume that equal powers of reason are a universal heritage of humanity.
"It may well be. But simply wanting this to be the case is not enough. This is not science. To question this is not to give in to racism. This is not a discussion about superiority or inferiority, it is about seeking to understand differences, about why some of us are great musicians and others great engineers."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/19/watson_suspended/
[ He is correct: science has no taboos. But our science is politicized, so we are prohibited from exploring certain things that may be true. Truth is not the goal of modern science. ]
Comedy aside, a comment by Oxford University's Dr Jan Schnupp concisely sums up the facts: "Watson's comments make it very clear that he is an expert on genetics, NOT on intelligence". IQ tests, as a rule, don't just measure a person's innate intelligence; indeed, intelligence researchers don't have a clear idea what that means. Rather, the tests are skewed by a person's socio-economic status, whether they were malnourished as a child, the quality of their education, whether they perceive the test as a threat, and how much experience they have of similar tests.
Black people, even in western countries, tend to be less well-off than white people. It's therefore not surprising that, as a group, they do worse on these tests. If you take these confounding factors into account, the differences in IQ shrink to insignificance.
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/2007/10/james-watson-master-of-scientific-gaffe.html
[ These new scientist answers aren't very scientific. First, they sidestep the issue - "IQ tests, as a rule, don't just measure a person's innate intelligence; indeed, intelligence researchers don't have a clear idea what that means." - if researchers don't know what intelligence is, they also cannot say that IQ tests do not measure it. They have opted out of a politically-sensitive subject. No one has yet come forward to claim that people who score 105 on an IQ test are routinely smarter than those who score 120 on the same test, nor have they shown us what "bias" is inherent in the test other than lack of knowledge of some common words. The IQ test samples response time, memory, and spatial logic, and the only time socioeconomic factors come into play is in reading the instructions. Those who have trouble with that are unable to read a newspaper, which with the free public education in this country, just about anyone can. ]
news on 10.21.07 @ 04:33 PM CST [link]
Wednesday, October 17th
37% of older Germans say NSDAP had good points
A quarter of Germans believe there were at least some positive aspects to Nazi rule, a poll showed today.
Germans were asked whether National Socialism had some “good sides (such as) the construction of the highway system, the elimination of unemployment, the low criminality rate (and) the encouragement of the family”.
A quarter of those who responded said “yes” – but 70% said “no”.
[ Among those 60 and older, 37% answered yes, with the highest percentage answering no being the generation born directly after the war. Those who lived under it knew its benefits, but those who came later know only the TV propaganda. ]
news on 10.17.07 @ 10:55 PM CST [more..]
People's Encyclopedia in decline
Since early this year, and for the first extended period in Wikipedia's history, the activity rate of the Wikipedia community has been declining. This can be seen in the rate of editing articles (-17%), the rate of new account registration (-25%), blocks (-30%), protections (-30%), uploads (-10%), article deletions (-25%), etc. Some exceptions are the article creation rate (+25%) and image deletions (+80%), but overall the community appears to be doing less now than it was 6 months ago.
[ 5% of their audience did all the work and then saw it get edited by fools. So it declines, because it was a terrible idea in the first place. ]
news on 10.17.07 @ 10:32 PM CST [more..]
Genetic breakdown causes more social behavior
Wired: In Musicophilia, you describe a camp for children with a genetic disorder called Williams syndrome. Many of the kids there have impaired intellectual skills, but they're also extremely chatty and social, and have heightened musical abilities. Is this correspondence of social and musical abilities just a coincidence?
Sacks: People with Williams are helplessly empathic . they starve if they don't get both human and musical contact. The emotional parts of their brains, like the amygdala, may be unusually large, as well as areas in the temporal lobes concerned with hearing, speech, and music. For people with Williams, the human, musical, and conversational abilities all seem to go together.
[ We see the same thing in communities that have declined. The smart people go away, replaced by the socially savvy people. They don't compose great symphonies. They make "unique" rock music and chat a lot, and do nothing of consequence. ]
news on 10.17.07 @ 10:30 PM CST [more..]
A wealthy elite controls the world
These 9.6 million families, comprising 0.7 percent of world's households, now control some $33.2 trillion, the BCG study found. About half are located in the United States and Canada, a quarter in Europe and a fifth in the Asia-Pacific region, it said.
[ And what about the good people in the middle? They get to become labor while the elites inbreed into oblivion. ]
news on 10.17.07 @ 10:29 PM CST [more..]
Americans will pay more to reduce global climate change
Nearly three-quarters of Americans are willing to pay more in taxes and other expenses to support local government-led initiatives designed to reduce global warming, according to a first-of-its kind survey. Seventy-two percent said they would support local subsidies encouraging homeowners to install electricity-generating solar panels on existing homes, even if it would cost households an extra $5 per month in increased property taxes, because of the potential savings in energy and money on utility bills.
[ Survival: it's an important instinct. ]
news on 10.17.07 @ 10:28 PM CST [more..]
Small genetic variances more important than thought
A study by Yale researchers offers a new view of what causes the greatest genetic variability among individuals -- suggesting that it is due less to single point mutations than to the presence of structural changes that cause extended segments of the human genome to be missing, rearranged, or present in extra copies.
[ And races are 10% different. ]
news on 10.17.07 @ 10:27 PM CST [more..]
How fast do species grow?
Harvard University scientists have identified a virtual "speed limit" on the rate of molecular evolution in organisms, and the magic number appears to be 6 mutations per genome per generation -- a level beyond which species run the strong risk of extinction as their genomes lose stability.
[ It took a long time to get human groups this distinct. ]
news on 10.17.07 @ 10:26 PM CST [more..]
How Hitler reformed an economy
Or so it seemed. Hitler and the National Socialists, who came to power in 1933, thwarted the international banking cartel by issuing their own money. In this they took their cue from Abraham Lincoln, who funded the American Civil War with government-issued paper money called "Greenbacks." Hitler began his national credit program by devising a plan of public works.
news on 10.17.07 @ 10:24 PM CST [more..]
USA announces official corruption prices
On the heels of media reports that required funding for presidential candidates would top $3 billion dollars this year, a sum inaccessible to anyone resembling the "common man," the United States dropped its pretense and issued official lobbying and corruption prices to the world at large.
news on 10.17.07 @ 10:23 PM CST [more..]
"Green construction" is a corrupt racket
The electrician installs this stuff, the inspector signs off on it, and then the electrician swaps it all out for the stuff the homeowner wanted to begin with.
Who do you think makes money off these "green" devices that end up in the garbage?
Is the green movement really the greed movement in disguise?
And finally, are we going green or just faking it?
[ Image over reality, to please the proles, part 4,832,941. ]
news on 10.17.07 @ 10:19 PM CST [more..]
USA too weak to manufacture own toys
That's because 80% of all toys sold in the USA are made in China. Some internal toy-industry estimates show only about 10% are actually made here.
[ Not signs of a healthy country. ]
news on 10.17.07 @ 10:19 PM CST [more..]
Jobs make teenagers smoke
Fourteen to 18-year-old adolescents are at an increased risk to initiate smoking when they start to work, according to researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Investigators found that adolescents who worked more than 10 hours per week also started smoking at an earlier age than their peers.
[ People hate jobs. Adolf Hitler hated smoking. ]
news on 10.17.07 @ 10:18 PM CST [more..]
Basque nationalists rounded up and arrested
Spanish police have arrested 23 leaders of an outlawed Basque pro-independence party on suspicion of aiding the armed separatist group ETA, a judicial source told CNN.
[ Nationalism is the one true threat to the profit-based state. ]
news on 10.17.07 @ 10:16 PM CST [more..]
Feds fail to enforce immigration, so local gov't steps in
Local and state law enforcement agencies throughout the country are taking unprecedented steps to police illegal immigration, a responsibility historically reserved for the federal government.
Meanwhile, the void of immigration reform in Washington, D.C., has prompted eight states to enact a dozen laws relating to immigration enforcement this year. The laws were among the 182 immigration-related bills passed in 43 states, more than double the number enacted in 2006.
''It is definitely a trend, and the major reason is the obvious one — federal inaction on the issue," said Ann Morse, director of the immigration policy project at the National Council of State Legislatures.
[ The responsible people in America are realizing that multiculturalism is destructive. The government, paid for by lobbyists and people with easy jobs and broken hearts, is ignoring them. ]
news on 10.17.07 @ 10:15 PM CST [more..]
Black leader's speech cancelled for Israeli fear
A speech by Archbishop Desmond Tutu was canceled after local Jews expressed concern about his views on Israel.
The spring visit to Minnesota's University of St. Thomas was canceled because local Jewish groups were upset by comparisons Tutu had made between Israel and Hitler, according to a report in City Pages, a Minneapolis alternative weekly.
[ Multiculturalism is comedy of failure, as usual. ]
news on 10.17.07 @ 10:07 PM CST [more..]
Modern people are insane solipsists
One reason for this is that we tend to misinterpret positive e-mail messages as more neutral, and neutral ones as more negative, than the sender intended. Even jokes are rated as less funny by recipients than by senders.
We fail to realize this largely because of egocentricity, according to a 2005 article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
[ When society rewards egomania, people become locked in themselves and cannot appreciate anything that requires them to read context. Are we become nations of autistic people? ]
news on 10.17.07 @ 10:06 PM CST [more..]
Government approves dangerous poisons for cash
Methyl iodide, also known as iodomethane, will be allowed to control soil pests "under highly restrictive provisions governing its use," the EPA said in a statement.
Last week, however, a group of 54 scientists, including six Nobel Prize winners, sent a letter to EPA urging that the pesticide not be registered for use because of the potential danger to pregnant women and children, the elderly and farmworkers.
news on 10.17.07 @ 10:04 PM CST [more..]
Cosmetics poison our women
THE average woman absorbs two kilograms of chemicals from cosmetics a year - from cancer-causing compounds in face cream to arsenic in eyeshadow.
[ Image over reality, causes slow death. How about that. ]
news on 10.17.07 @ 10:03 PM CST [more..]
Belgium rejects nation-state, goes nationalist
Nearly four months after holding general elections, Belgium's squabbling political parties still have not put a government together due to a deadlock over demands for more self-rule in Dutch-speaking Flanders and Francophone Wallonia.
The political stalemate has led to media and public speculation that Belgium might be better off breaking up, prompting Foreign Minister Karel de Gucht to offer "useful talking points" to embassy staffs meant to reassure Belgium's political and business partners worldwide.
[ Some quality thinking going on over there. Nation-states represent Commerce and Control, not the People -- or nature. ]
news on 10.17.07 @ 10:02 PM CST [more..]
Humanity outpaces earth's supplies
Reuters report that the world moved into "ecological overdraft" on Saturday, the point at which human consumption exceeds the ability of the earth to sustain it in any year and goes into the red, the New Economics Foundation think-tank said. Seen on Educated World."
[ That's totally apocalyptic... why didn't I hear much of this in our "free" media? It was as if it was unimportant compared to the civil rights struggle in Jena, Britney Spears's new tattoo, the war in Iraq, and Hilary Clinton's haircut. You'd think it would be more important. Sure is odd. ]
news on 10.17.07 @ 10:01 PM CST [more..]
White-black cancer differences due to patient behavior
A new study finds that white women more frequently take more of the life-prolonging supplemental therapies used to treat breast cancer than African-American women. African-Americans whose cancer had spread to the lymph nodes were less likely to have adjuvant cancer therapy than white women, the study showed. Adjuvant therapy is treatment given to kill remaining cancer cells, in addition to the primary therapy. Studies suggest adjuvant therapy may increase the chances of long-term survival.
[ White people seek therapy more. This explains better results, and less susceptibility to certain cancers. The disparity was not caused by racism. ]
news on 10.17.07 @ 10:00 PM CST [more..]
The masses as authors are a failure
But here's a contrasting viewpoint. Novelist William Burroughs met playwright Samuel Beckett, and after some small talk, Beckett looked directly at Burroughs and said, propitiously, "You're a writer." Burroughs instantly understood that Beckett was welcoming him into a very tiny and exclusive club . that there are only a few writers alive at any one time in human history. Beckett was saying that Burroughs was one of them. Everybody writes. Not everybody is a writer. Or at least, that's what some of us think...
Now the web . and its democratizing impact . has spread for over a decade. Over a billion people can deliver their text to a very broad public. It's a fantastic thing which gives a global voice to dissidents in various regions, makes people less lonely by connecting other people with similar interests and problems, ad infinitum.
[ Not everyone can be a writer. I am incompetent at hockey, pastry cooking, French grammar, driving and probably home repair. But those who are good at those things can rarely write. We each have specialties and to try to make the Crowd into an author of repute gets you millions of pages of uninspired, unexceptional, irrelevant blather, not millions of quality authors. You can't train people to be talened! ]
news on 10.17.07 @ 09:58 PM CST [more..]
Pollution kills, maims, study proves
Canadians are awash in toxic chemicals -- and it is costing our health care system up to $9.1 billion and 1.5 million hospital days annually, according to a new study. The research is the first to measure the magnitude of adverse health effects caused by exposure to environmental hazards such as air pollution, pesticides, dioxins, heavy metals, flame retardants and other persistent organic pollutants (POPs) for Canada. The study estimates that environmental pollutants cause as many as 25,000 deaths, 24,000 new cases of cancer and 2,500 low birth-weight babies in Canada every year.
[ But it's more profitable to cut necessary costs. Oh wait... then we collectively doom ourselves. Not smart. And pollution is just getting worse, year after year. ]
news on 10.17.07