The Left's Strange New Respect for Religion

Not for these guys any talk of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, because that sort of thing is aimed solely against white Christians of the West: London School of Economics brings back blasphemy

The London School of Economics Students' Union (LSESU) has effectively made blasphemy an offence following protests from Muslim students about a Jesus and Mo cartoon posted on the LSE Atheist Secular Humanist (ASH) student group's Facebook page.

At an Emergency General Meeting the LSESU proposed 'That Islamophobia is a form of anti-Islamic racism'. The motion passed by 339 votes to 179. The winning voting bloc contained people from Far Left groups as well as Muslims. The Union resolved:

- To define Islamophobia as "a form of racism expressed through the hatred or fear of Islam, Muslims, or Islamic culture, and the stereotyping, demonisation or harassment of Muslims, including but not limited to portraying Muslims as barbarians or terrorists, or attacking the Qur'an as a manual of hatred",

- To take a firm stance against all Islamophobic incidents at LSE and conduct internal investigations if and when they occur.

No doubt they wouldn't be passing resolutions for a mere Jesus cartoon, but add Mohammed to it and you've now got an offense against modern liberal sensibility. The Bible may be mercilessly satirized and mocked, but the Koran draws out an atavistic respect for religion.

Also funny - in a sick sort of way - is this bastion of free thought, the same bastion that censured Kanazawa for politically incorrect speech, declaring any attitude of less than complete respect for Muslims to be "Islamophobia" and "a form of racism". Guess these guys and gals haven't heard that Islam isn't a race, but they can perhaps be forgiven for their assertion, since "racism" now means "anything the left doesn't want said".

Murray's Class Quiz

I had a look at Charles Murray's quiz that is meant to delineate one's class status, specifically whether one lives in an upper-middle or upper class bubble, versus being one of the people, i.e. more ordinary Americans. I won't bore you with my score or how I answered each individual question, but a few things jumped out at me.

One is that certain things I took almost for granted appear to be somewhat unusual. For example, I have not only walked on a factory floor (question number 5), but have worked on several. In his explanation, Murray explains that he has actually visited a factory only once in his entire life; I'm wondering whether that makes him part of the upper class bubble, or whether it's an indication of how much America has changed. Even though Murray is significantly older than me, I was still able to experience the America of yore in which people worked in factories. In any case, I found it downright weird that Murray would consider this a class marker, but perhaps I shouldn't have.

I have also held a job that made something hurt at the end of the day, and while I've never been to a union meeting, I have belonged to three of them, including the Teamsters. I most definitely have lived in neighborhoods where most of my neighbors didn't have college degrees, and in a town of under 50,000 people. And I've had a close friend who could barely get C's in high school. Several close friends, in fact.

But on the other hand, my father was a professional (question 2). This illustrates the other thing I noticed, and that is Murray's idea of increasing stratification of society by IQ. We lived in an ordinary middle-class neighborhood in a small town, I hung around with normal middle-class kids. According to Murray, this is becoming more unusual. I would guess especially that most upper-middle type parents would be horrified if their children associated with other children whose best efforts brought C grades in school.

But not only has social stratification increased, the country as a whole has changed. Even growing up in a blue-collar family, it would be difficult to get a job in a factory now. Flipping burgers might be more like it. Or a "service" job.

A Little Pushback from Oz

Remember that ridiculous "study" that "showed" that Australians who flew their flag on Australia Day were "racist"? It was conducted by one Farida Fozdar, who, it will not come as a surprise to anyone with half a brain, is a Muslim immigrant from Brunei who has an animus against white Australians.

Professor Fozdar said 35 per cent of those with flags felt people had to be born in Australia to be truly Australian, while 23 per cent believed that true Australians had to be Christian, compared with 22 per cent and 18 per cent respectively for the non-flag group.

"Very clear statistical differences in attitudes to diversity between those who fly car flags and those who don't, show that flag waving − while not inherently exclusionary – is linked in this instance to negative attitudes about those who do not fit the 'mainstream' stereotype'," she said.

Basically the professor thinks that a healthy expression of patriotism, nationalism, and pride in one's own ethnic group is racist, i.e. evil. (The fact that surveys like this are not done, or at least not given such wide publicity, in non-white world lends credence to the statement that anti-racist means anti-white.)

In any case, some of our Australian friends aren't too happy with Professor Fozdar.

A PERTH professor whose study found people who fly Australian flags on their cars are more racist than those who don't, says she has received over 70 critical emails which include demands that she go back to her "own country".

Brunei-born University of WA Professor Farida Fozdar, who moved to Australia when she was seven, said she was shocked by the national reaction to her study which also spread as far India and the United States.

Hard to see on what grounds this ingrate can be "shocked"; she comes to a country, makes a good living there, and then rhetorically shits all over its people. She clearly belongs back in a less racist country like her native Brunei.

Liberals Rediscover IQ

Whenever the subject of intelligence testing comes up, especially in the context of racial and ethnic differences in intelligence, or disparate outcomes in education, liberals can always be counted upon for their skepticism towards the entire subject of IQ testing. They will usually claim that the tests are either biased or don't measure anything real - as in "IQ measures the ability to take an IQ test". This is of course ironic, since individual differences in intelligence as measured by IQ testing is the most established and robust finding of modern psychometrics, and liberals constantly proclaim their devotion to science, only inbred conservatives being opposed to scientific findings.

But liberals become IQ believers when something like this happens: Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice.

Some of the quotes from the article show how a study like this operates. For instance:

Social conservatives were defined as people who agreed with a laundry list of statements such as "Family life suffers if mum is working full-time," and "Schools should teach children to obey authority."

I guess smart liberals believe that a mother working outside the home full-time couldn't possibly have any downside for family life, and that their indoctrination of schoolkids in things like environmentalism, global warming, and the essential evilness of America's past don't constitute teaching children to obey their authority.

The essential point to make here is that the average Democratic Party member is very likely not as intelligent as the average Republican, since the Democratic Party contains more minorities, who on average score lower on IQ tests than whites. But once you point out something like that, liberals go into IQ denial.

Supply and Demand, II

The Feds Had Better Stop Alabama…Before Everyone There Has a Job!

Oh no! It’s happened again. Alabama’s unemployment rate continues to plummet.

Ever since Alabama began implementing its immigration enforcement law, H.B. 56, in late September, the state’s unemployment rate has been dropping like a stone. In just the first month the law was in effect, unemployment in Alabama shrank from 9.8 percent of the workforce to 9.3 percent. And now the latest figures are in…and the news couldn’t be worse (for the Obama administration, the illegal alien lobby, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that is): Alabama’s unemployment rate checked in at 8.1 percent in December. That’s more than a 17 percent reduction since September.

This shows just how easy it could be to put a major dent in the country's unemployment problem. But the current administration appears to be much more interested in race-replacing native-born Americans than in actually doing something about jobs.

Obama's egregiously ridiculous veto of the Keystone pipeline - at the behest of George Soros and Warren Buffett, perhaps - also shows that jobs just aren't very important to our elite. Right now the lowest unemployment rate in the country is had by North Dakota, due to the oil and gas drilling that that benighted state has encouraged.

Supply and Demand

The inimitable Thomas Friedman has the number one most read article at the NY Times today, Average Is Over; in it he discusses some structural reasons for high unemployment. Such reasons include cheap, hardworking Chinese tech labor, as well as ever-increasing automation and advances in technology. At the end, he pushes the solution he always gravitates toward, more education.

In a world where average is officially over, there are many things we need to do to buttress employment, but nothing would be more important than passing some kind of G.I. Bill for the 21st century that ensures that every American has access to post-high school education.

"Nothing would be more important" than sending every American, qualified or not, to college, in a never-ending arms race of more education, with Americans scurrying along to compete against the Chinese and each other.

Oh, and with around 1 million legal immigrants a year, and plenty of illegal immigrants too. It's almost as if Friedman and other allegedly economically literate folks have never heard of supply and... what's the other one?.. yes, that's it, demand! (Thanks to Martin B. for that idea.)

But, no, mustn't ever mention the immigration-driven unemployment of Americans. That would be to, I don't know, question diversity, or worse, to question whether immigration could possibly have any downside whatsoever. I mean, immigration can't possibly have any opportunity cost, any impact of social trust or the welfare rolls, or the current record-high unemployment rate. No, immigration is a pure, unalloyed good, which is why Friedman can so easily forgo any mention of it in a discussion of factors that affect unemployment.

So, we must continue to blow up the education bubble, which has the added bonus of higher employment for the diversitycrats and all those others who take Thomas Friedman seriously.

Would That Be So Bad?

In The New Republic, Robert Kagan writes on "the myth of American decline". The myth of decline, according to Kagan, rests on two pillars; one is the wake of the financial crisis, which has left the U.S. in an enduring economic rut, and the other is an alleged decrease in military power relative to the rest of the world. Kagan avers that both of these are mistaken.

In economic terms, and even despite the current years of recession and slow growth, America’s position in the world has not changed. Its share of the world’s GDP has held remarkably steady, not only over the past decade but over the past four decades. In 1969, the United States produced roughly a quarter of the world’s economic output. Today it still produces roughly a quarter, and it remains not only the largest but also the richest economy in the world. [...]

Here [in "military hegemony"] the United States remains unmatched. It is far and away the most powerful nation the world has ever known, and there has been no decline in America’s relative military capacity—at least not yet. Americans currently spend less than $600 billion a year on defense, more than the rest of the other great powers combined. (This figure does not include the deployment in Iraq, which is ending, or the combat forces in Afghanistan, which are likely to diminish steadily over the next couple of years.) They do so, moreover, while consuming a little less than 4 percent of GDP annually—a higher percentage than the other great powers, but in historical terms lower than the 10 percent of GDP that the United States spent on defense in the mid-1950s and the 7 percent it spent in the late 1980s. The superior expenditures underestimate America’s actual superiority in military capability. American land and air forces are equipped with the most advanced weaponry, and are the most experienced in actual combat. They would defeat any competitor in a head-to-head battle. American naval power remains predominant in every region of the world.

With regard to the ongoing economic / financial crisis, many economic critics claim - and I agree - that FedGov is playing a game of "extend and pretend" by printing money, that many of our biggest banks, as well as those in Europe, are for all intents and purposes insolvent, and that all this will not end well. Nevertheless, Kagan's point that relatively we are still on top, and my point that economic forecasting is notoriously difficult - not even economists can do it consistently right - are worth keeping in mind. The future isn't certain, at least in the short term.

Kagan also argues that the U.S. is not "overstretched" militarily, and that we can easily afford our military expenses. Here lies Kagan's real concern: the projection of power abroad. He takes it as a given that this is necessary.

But here's why Kagan doesn't wish Americans to take seriously the idea of decline:

BUT THERE IS a danger. It is that in the meantime, while the nation continues to struggle, Americans may convince themselves that decline is indeed inevitable, or that the United States can take a time-out from its global responsibilities while it gets its own house in order. To many Americans, accepting decline may provide a welcome escape from the moral and material burdens that have weighed on them since World War II. Many may unconsciously yearn to return to the way things were in 1900, when the United States was rich, powerful, and not responsible for world order. [emphasis added]

See, the funny thing is, is that a nation should be run for the benefit of its citizens. So, at least, one would think. Would it really be so bad if we ceased to be the world's policeman, i.e. we had "a welcome escape from our [alleged] moral and material burdens"? For whose benefit are these burdens anyway? More Americans are cottoning to the notion that, insofar as it affects them, they carry all the burden while the elite who run the country gain the benefits.

Would it be so bad if we returned to a situation in which "the United States was rich, powerful, and not responsible for world order"? But to do that would mean abandoning much of the elite project, that is, halting quasi-genocidal levels of immigration, halting the export of the manufacturing base as well as other jobs, and putting an end to the endless, purposeless, foreign wars. It would mean a nation whose purpose was aligned with its people.

The Great Class Divide

Charles Murray has an article in the WSJ called The New American Divide, which outlines the theme of an emergent cultural shift among white Americans, from his much-discussed new book. After an exposition of the characteristics of the new divide, such as in rates of marriage, illegitimacy, workforce participation, and crime, Murray elaborates on some of the reasons for its emergence.

Why have these new lower and upper classes emerged? For explaining the formation of the new lower class, the easy explanations from the left don't withstand scrutiny. It's not that white working class males can no longer make a "family wage" that enables them to marry. The average male employed in a working-class occupation earned as much in 2010 as he did in 1960. It's not that a bad job market led discouraged men to drop out of the labor force. Labor-force dropout increased just as fast during the boom years of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s as it did during bad years.

As I've argued in much of my previous work, I think that the reforms of the 1960s jump-started the deterioration. Changes in social policy during the 1960s made it economically more feasible to have a child without having a husband if you were a woman or to get along without a job if you were a man; safer to commit crimes without suffering consequences; and easier to let the government deal with problems in your community that you and your neighbors formerly had to take care of.

But, for practical purposes, understanding why the new lower class got started isn't especially important. Once the deterioration was under way, a self-reinforcing loop took hold as traditionally powerful social norms broke down. Because the process has become self-reinforcing, repealing the reforms of the 1960s (something that's not going to happen) would change the trends slowly at best.

Meanwhile, the formation of the new upper class has been driven by forces that are nobody's fault and resist manipulation. The economic value of brains in the marketplace will continue to increase no matter what, and the most successful of each generation will tend to marry each other no matter what. As a result, the most successful Americans will continue to trend toward consolidation and isolation as a class. Changes in marginal tax rates on the wealthy won't make a difference. Increasing scholarships for working-class children won't make a difference.

It's all a matter of incentives. While lower class people may have - on average! - lower IQs, higher time preference, greater impulsivity, and the like, they, like people everywhere, act in their own self-interest. If it's just as easy to remain outside the workforce as inside it, or as easy to have a child without a pesky husband around, then people will do these things.

One area where I would disagree with Murray is when he writes that the "average male employed in a working-class occupation earned as much in 2010 as he did in 1960." While from a strictly numbers-based standpoint that may be true (I haven't looked up the figures), reality says otherwise. The "reforms" of the 1960s included immigration "reform", and besides that we've had massive illegal immigration as well. Before the 60s, a working-class salary would have sufficed for one to raise a family in a low-crime, white neighborhood with good public schools. Today, not so much. The numbers don't properly reflect the reality.

Another aspect of work now is its uncertainty. Whereas the working stiff pre-60s could reasonably expect to work nearly a lifetime at a decent, possibly union, job, today that worker faces a shifting work environment that could result in a layoff at any time. This will also cause men to be wary of launching into the enterprise of starting a family and working hard toward it.

And then there's no-fault divorce. The upper classes don't worry as much about this because upper-class women are more inclined to have the sort of values that make them stick around and care for their families. Even if awareness of divorce theft is only now dawning on the average man, subconsciously many men must realize that the odds of keeping one's family intact have dropped considerably. That's another impact on incentives.

I'm old enough to remember when cohabitation was very much frowned upon, and I still have the attitude that it's something a decent person - especially a woman - doesn't do. But there don't seem to be too many like me left. Even people older than myself accept it. This touches upon another reason for the social changes Murray describes: the older generation has abdicated some of their moral responsibility, and society as a whole no longer believes in expressing disapproval or shaming the objects of that disapproval.

Hollywood Wants to Kill the Internet

It's been widely thought that Congress wanted to enact the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in a fit of absence of mind. Supposedly, the "moronic" Congress didn't really know what it was doing until the various online strikes, such as by Wikipedia, forcibly brought the seriousness of the matter to its attention. But it appears that Hollywood, i.e. money, has been behind much of the impetus toward passing the legislation. Big Hollywood:

But Hollywood moguls … took this as a declaration of war. “We just feel very let down by the administration and Obama for not supporting us,” one chief explained to me. “At least let him remain neutral and not go against it until we can get the legislation right. But Obama went against it. I’m personally not going to support him anymore and not give a dime anymore,” one movie mogul who’s also a well-known Obama supporter told me this week….

Several moguls have informed Obama’s newly anointed Hollywood re-election liason to the entertainment community Nicole Avant and her husband who is helping her, Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos, that they are pulling out of major fundraisers planned over the next few days and won’t participate in any more headed by Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (whom they see as in the pocket of the Internet giants like Google).

Hollywood wants to kill the internet, or at least to kill any website that doesn't meet with its full approval.

As usual, this isn't a case of stupidity or cluelessness, but of Who? Whom? A group of moguls with money are trying to kill the internet. While that attempt seems thwarted for now, we won't be hearing the last from them or from others with vested interests.

Top Contributors to Romney and Paul - updated

Via OpenSecrets.org, here are the top financial contributors to the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney. (In the interest of brevity, I list only the top ten. OpenSecrets emphasizes that these contributions are not from the organizations themselves, but from employees, their family members, and the organizations' PACs - though why the last one doesn't count as coming from the organizations themselves is beyond me.)

Goldman Sachs	$367,200
Credit Suisse Group	$203,750
Morgan Stanley	$199,800
HIG Capital	$186,500
Barclays	$157,750
Kirkland & Ellis	$132,100
Bank of America	$126,500
PriceWaterhouseCoopers	$118,250
EMC Corp	$117,300
JPMorgan Chase & Co	$112,250

So, Romney's contributors come from the usual suspects, namely those people and groups that would like to hold on to the American financial status quo. I think that these contributors are wholly correct that Romney would be their best president, although Obama might be even better.

Out of curiosity, I looked at the contributor list for Ron Paul. Here's the top ten.

US Army	$24,503
US Air Force	$23,335
US Navy	$17,432
Mason Capital Management	$14,000
Microsoft Corp	$13,398
Boeing Co	$10,620
Google Inc	$10,390
Overland Sheepskin	$10,350
IBM Corp	$8,294
US Government	$7,756

PS: Here's something also worth noting: in Iowa and New Hampshire, half of the votes cast by those under 30 years of age went to Ron Paul. Half. Normally I wouldn't put much emphasis on votes from the young and callow, but I think it shows that younger people have little interest in keeping things the way they are. They know that Social Security is a gigantic Ponzi scheme which they're unlikely to collect on - but will pay for - and probably don't see endless foreign wars to be in their own interest. Among other things.

Fear and Loathing in San Clemente

Whenever we're treated to reports of racist hate crimes directed against whites, the media still likes to caution that a "backlash" may be coming, as if the worst thing about whites getting killed or getting the sh*t kicked out of them is that some other whites might react. (They never do.) That mindset is hard at work in San Clemente, California: Brutal Attack Spurs Worries of Racial Backlash:

Amid rumblings of possible racial overtones to a Jan. 6 street brawl that left two men injured and one in a coma, a county group is urging calm and unity.

"This is not a brown-white issue," said Rusty Kennedy, executive director of OC Human Relations, which works to prevent racial violence and foster ethnic understanding and tolerance. "It's an issue of violent gangsters."

Three Hispanic men -- including two allegedly affiliated with the Varrio Chico criminal gang in San Clemente -- have been charged with attempted murder and assault for allegedly beating three white men, one of whom was fighting for his life late Tuesday after being bashed in the head with a brick.

The motives behind the attack remain unclear, but racially charged rumblings in some parts of the white community have already begun in comments posted on Patch and other media outlets. Some in the city's Hispanic community--many of whom are proud of their civic involvement and efforts to stop gang crime over the last few years--fear a possible backlash.

It's too bad that those members of "the city's Hispanic community" aren't a little more concerned with stopping brutal gang violence emanating from said community. As it stands, the city's white community is getting a warning here: don't you dare even think about doing anything, just sit back and take it like you always do.

Interestingly, some comments at the original article reporting the attack display a working knowledge of the concept of anarcho-tyranny. To wit:

The cops are out busting tourist for letting their parking meters run out and harassing locals for posting garage sale signs while gangs beat up our children, illegals loiter rite aid with not an inkling of fear and jerks rob our banks. Good job guys!

One might also say that the warning against a "backlash" illustrates the dictum that anti-racist means anti-white. Since the alleged concern in the article and among the Hispanic community is to "foster ethnic understanding", that is, anti-racism, but only whites are being both attacked and warned against a backlash, the whole setup is objectively anti-white.

To make my own position clear, I'm not calling for a backlash; what I'm calling for is for the police to do their job, and for the government to enforce the immigration laws. But I fear it's too late for San Clemente.

And by the way, San Clemente is a surfing mecca and an idyllic beach city. Or at least it was.

Path to National Suicide

Whatever that path might be and whoever is taking it, at least in one respect Israel is not: Israel upholds citizenship bar for Palestinian spouses (link thanks to eh):

Israel's Supreme Court has upheld a law banning Palestinians who marry Israelis from gaining Israeli citizenship.

Civil rights groups had petitioned the court to overturn the law, saying it was unconstitutional.

"Human rights do not prescribe national suicide," Judge Asher Grunis wrote in the judgement. [emphasis added]

Note that, considering this issue, Judge Grunis appears to be sound on what exactly constitutes a nation, that is, it consists of a people, not anyone who can manage to get to a physical location.

In other developments, Israel is pulling out all the stops in its effort to deport illegal immigrants. The efforts include what we here stateside might call racial profiling. Prime Minister Netanyahu supports the new laws, and he's characterized the influx of non-Jewish immigrants as an existential threat to Israel. He's an intelligent man - supposedly with an IQ of 180, making him perhaps the smartest world leader since Frederick the Great - but the key point is that he appears to be allowed to say things like that because of the absence of certain restraints. While there are indeed people in Israel who want the country to refrain from expelling the illegals, another, perhaps widespread attitude is the following:

"Go to south Tel Aviv and you'll see people there living in fear," Cohen said. "Anyone who wants to steal a wallet from a person, or a box of goods from a store or a bike from a private garden just does whatever he wants. If we don't put an end to this, the issue will not stop."

One wonders also whether Israel got serious on this issue because the new arrivals are Africans.

The mainstream media in the US doesn't even consider the maintenance of our historical population a fit topic for national discussion, yet in Israel they're not only discussing it but doing something about it.

(PS: Comments will be moderated for awhile.)
(PPS: That's over. Comment at will.)

Buchanan Off MSNBC

Patrick Cleburne asks whether Pat Buchanan has been "cornered at last", having gone missing from his regular MSNBC post as a commentator and being dissed by the head of that network.

“During the period of the book tour I asked him not to be on,” Mr. Griffin said. “Since then the issue has become the nature of some of the statements in the book.”
Mr. Buchanan argues in “Suicide of a Superpower” — which has the subtitle “Will America Survive to 2025?” — that the “European and Christian core of our country is shrinking,” which is damaging the nation “ethnically, culturally, morally, politically.” The book also contains a chapter titled, “The End of White America.”

Mr. Griffin said, “The ideas he put forth aren’t really appropriate for national dialogue, much less the dialogue on MSNBC.”

I'm afraid that Mr. Griffin is correct; this particular instance isn't a matter of this network, which after all bills itself as liberal, not wanting Buchanan's commentary, but a matter of PC becoming so intense that views that were mainstream not so long ago are now no longer a matter for discussion and are considered hateful. As evidence for that assertion, I adduce the fact that no other network appears to want Buchanan - though that may change of course. Buchanan is a former, fairly successful presidential candidate, former White House staffer and speechwriter, so one might think off the top of one's head that he might be in demand on television. In other words he's not just another bloviator, of which TV has more than its share these days. (Actually, since I don't watch it, that could be incorrect, but last I checked that was true and one of the reasons I don't watch it.)

So, being concerned about "the European and Christian core" of the USA is off the table as a matter for debate. Seems as if none of the presidential candidates will mention this either; most of them don't even dare to say much about immigration.

Did Fukushima Cause American Deaths?

A paper (pdf), An Unexpected Mortality Increase in the United States Follows Arrival of the Radioactive Plume from Fukushima: Is There a Correlation?, argues that there have been "excess deaths" in the U.S. that may have been caused by the nuclear accident in Japan. The abstract:

The multiple nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima plants beginning on
March 11, 2011, are releasing large amounts of airborne radioactivity that has
spread throughout Japan and to other nations; thus, studies of contamination
and health hazards are merited. In the United States, Fukushima fallout
arrived just six days after the earthquake, tsunami, and meltdowns. Some
samples of radioactivity in precipitation, air, water, and milk, taken by the
U.S. government, showed levels hundreds of times above normal; however,
the small number of samples prohibits any credible analysis of temporal
trends and spatial comparisons. U.S. health officials report weekly deaths by
age in 122 cities, about 25 to 35 percent of the national total. Deaths rose
4.46 percent from 2010 to 2011 in the 14 weeks after the arrival of Japanese
fallout, compared with a 2.34 percent increase in the prior 14 weeks. The
number of infant deaths after Fukushima rose 1.80 percent, compared
with a previous 8.37 percent decrease. Projecting these figures for the entire
United States yields 13,983 total deaths and 822 infant deaths in excess of
the expected. These preliminary data need to be followed up, especially in the
light of similar preliminary U.S. mortality findings for the four months after
Chernobyl fallout arrived in 1986, which approximated final figures.

I've no idea whether or how to argue with this; for instance, do death rates normally fluctuate by that degree? Is it plausible that the amount of radiation seen in the U.S. following the accident could cause these excess deaths? The excess deaths were allegedly mainly due to influenza and pneumonia in infants, and one wonders whether airborne radiation could cause this.

The authors appear to be activists of some sort, which doesn't make them wrong of course; here is the press release about their study put out by their organization.

Also, that radiation is associated with hormesis could mean potential healthful effects of the radiation, which might have happened in Chernobyl. But again, that would depend on the dose of radiation.

Forgetting Human Nature

Several examples of various scientific and scholarly findings which I've come across today strike me as being statements of the obvious. Now, one realizes that most people probably think that their own opinions are merely statements of the obvious that everyone should agree upon, but let's take a look at a few of them to see whether we can make anything else out of it.

Men and women really do have large personality differences. (Courtesy of Malcolm Pollack. Here's the original study: The Distance Between Mars and Venus: Measuring Global Sex Differences in Personality.)

If men and women at times seem to be from different planets, it may be because there are large differences in their personalities, a new study suggests.

The results show that about 18 percent of women share similar personalities with men, and 18 percent of men share similar personalities with women. But the majority of women have personality traits that are quite distinct from those of men, and vice versa, the researchers say.

Men tend to be more dominant (forceful and aggressive) and emotionally stable, while women tend to be more sensitive, warm (attentive to others) and apprehensive, the study found.

"Psychologically, men and women are almost a different species," said study researcher Paul Irwing, of the University of Manchester, in the United Kingdom.

Bet you didn't see that one coming. Nevertheless, the article quotes a couple of "researchers", one of whom is a professor of a pseudo-discipline known as "women's studies", to the effect that the results are mistaken. As I understand it, the two who dispute the findings are committing a sort of sexual Lewontin's Fallacy by insisting that average differences aren't so great, i.e. that there's more variation within sexes than between.

Bryan Caplan on Daniel Kahneman: people who care less about money actually... earn less money! Caplan (and Kahneman) of course do not claim that that is the entire story behind income inequality, nor do they specify an effect size, but my (wild, speculative) guess is that the effect is very large.

Megan McArdle wonders what we really know about losing weight. One of the points she makes is about obviousness: everyone who is of normal weight thinks it's just obvious what one needs to do to be that way. But look at an example from an extended quote:

The Bridges will occasionally share a dessert, or eat an individual portion of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, so they know exactly how many calories they are ingesting.

The Bridges are an obese couple struggling to keep some weight off. That they would occasionally - or more than occasionally - eat ice cream makes about as much sense as an alcoholic having an occasional drink, or a lung cancer patient an occasional smoke. The "obvious" point here is weakness of will, or lack of future time orientation, or just not giving a sh*t, however you want to put it.

All of these are examples of human nature which we have either deliberately forgotten or conned into thinking were wrong. That the sexes have different personality traits, that some people have greater avidity for money and thus devote more of their lives to earning it, and that gluttony is a factor in being overweight are all things that everyone used to know. But the insistence that human beings are all the same has led to an abandonment of common sense. Of course, the insistence that we're the same must be seen in the light of Who? Whom?

It's not that the studies and articles above shouldn't have been done, but not too many years ago, most people probably would not have seen the need.

McCain Endorses Romney; Will Paul Be "Allowed" to Win?

Read all about it. If I had any doubt before, I now know for sure that I won't be voting for Romney.

I wonder how Romney feels about getting the endorsement of a petulant, globalist, pseudo-patriotic traitor. Like one himself?

Another thing that I'm seeing a lot of on blogs and sites that support Ron Paul: the notion that Paul will not be "allowed" to win, the idea being that TPTB have already ordained who is acceptable and who is not. And Paul is not. He threatens lots of interests, including the money interest, the war machine, the bureaucracy, the diversity racket, and probably lots more.

The thing is, despite we on the alt-right being of an unusually cynical nature, last I checked, the U.S. was still a democracy and each registered voter gets one vote each. What's behind the idea that Paul won't be allowed to win is that those in charge will pull out all the stops to prevent it. The media will intensify its attacks on him, and... what else? It all depends on the media being successful in its attacks, and from what I can see, they aren't working so well at the moment.

National Crisis: Adderall Shortage

It seems that the scourge of ADHD, hitherto confined mainly to young boys who refused to sit still in boring, feminized classrooms, has been spreading like wildfire through America's fruited plains and SWPLized farmers markets. Major metropolitan centers too. Adderall shortage:

A shortage of Adderall, which is used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, shows little sign of easing as manufacturers struggle to get enough active ingredient to make the drug and demand climbs.

Adderall, a stimulant, is a controlled substance, meaning it is addictive and has the potential to be abused. The Drug Enforcement Administration tightly regulates how much of the drug's active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) can be distributed to manufacturers each year.

The system is designed to prevent the creation of stockpiles that could be diverted for inappropriate use. Adderall and other stimulants are popular with students who may not have ADHD but are seeking to improve their test scores.

The DEA authorizes a certain amount of the API in Adderall - mixed amphetamine salts - to be released to drugmakers each year based on what the agency considers to be the country's legitimate medical need.

Increasingly that estimate is coming into conflict with what companies themselves say they need to meet demand for the drug, which is reaching all-time highs. In 2010, more than 18 million prescriptions were written for Adderall, up 13.4 percent from 2009, according to IMS Health, which tracks prescription data.

Just to demonstrate how serious this development is, the New York Times most emailed list now contains "F.D.A. Finds Short Supply of Attention Deficit Drugs".

The number of adult, middle-class (probably mainly white) people, who have no discernible mental illness, yet who wrangle prescriptions for drugs like Adderall or Ritalin is an open secret, according to weighty anecdotal evidence collected by this blogger. Although he has a small social circle, he knows several people of both middle age and middle class who have complained to their respective doctors about their inability to focus their minds, and have been rewarded with prescriptions to what were formerly known as mother's little helpers. It appears that many physicians have little hesitancy in prescribing them; they are, after all, legal, and perhaps more importantly, it's a lot easier than arguing with demanding patients.

In a similar development a few years ago, after major league baseball banned stimulant use except for medical exceptions, the number of baseball players unfortunately diagnosed with ADHD skyrocketed. Presumably many of them suddenly found that they couldn't focus on fielding the ball without chemical assistance.

Nature conducted a survey a few years ago and found that

One in five Nature readers -- mostly scientists -- say they up their mental performance with drugs such as Ritalin, Provigil, and Inderal. [...]

While only a fifth of the poll's 1,400 respondents admitted to drug use to improve concentration, nearly two-thirds said they knew of a colleague who did. And if there were "a normal risk of mild side effects," nearly 70% of the scientists said they'd boost their brain power by taking a "cognitive-enhancing drug."

New Year's Resolutions

Weakness is the only failing we cannot put right.

- La Rochefoucauld, Maxims

The purpose of new year's resolutions seems to be an artificial way of overcoming our weaknesses. For we already know what we need to do, but have been too weak of will to do so. By wiping the slate figuratively clean, that is, by acknowledging that the past (year) is gone, we try to give our will a boost. While resolutions can be of value, this is probably the wrong way to go about it. What is needed is training; like weightlifting, if we train ourselves in small things we can eventually strengthen ourselves for larger things.

Thus, William James had a more hopeful view of our weaknesses than did La Rochefoucauld.

Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.

The contrast betweem James and La Rochefoucauld may be likened to that between optimism and pessimism; but it should be noted that James's optimism is quite restrained, requires real effort, and therefore is much more realistic than the generic optimism which our uplifters of today urge us to adopt. James uses the word "asceticism" in the passage above, wholly appropriately, as the root of the word is askesis, "training".

New year's resolutions are an almost proverbial exercise in futility, easily made and quickly broken. But if they can give one a needed start toward the kind of training that James advocated, perhaps they're worthwhile.