How did we ever get along without foreign scientists?

Following are two lists from Wikipedia, the first being scientists for whom non-SI units of measurement were named, and the second a list of scientists for whom SI units were named. Note that all of them are either European or American, and with the exception of Nicola Tesla (Serbian-American) and Loránd Eötvös (Hungarian), the Europeans are all from north and western Europe. (The three Italians on the lists, Volta, Torricelli, and Galileo, were all from northern or central Italy.)

The lists remarkably confirm Charles Murray's contention in Human Accomplishment that 80% of all significant figures (including in the arts) came from a "European core", as shown here outlined in red:

Europeans and Americans did all of this without the importation of all those smart risk-takers from China and India. If it is objected that other Europeans and Americans named the units, hence compromising its objectivity, in reply it can be said that it could be no other way. Europeans and Americans invented the sciences in which these measurements are used. Also, as far as I know, none of the scientists on these lists were Jewish.

Name[1][2]	Life	Nationality	Quantity	Unit[3]
William Gilbert	1544-1603	British	Magnetomotive force	gilbert (Gi)
John Napier	1550-1617	British (Scottish)	Magnitude (ln )	neper[4] (Np)
Evangelista Torricelli	1608-1647	Italian	Pressure	torr (Torr)
Galileo Galilei	1564-1642	Italian	Acceleration	gal (Gal)
René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur	1683-1757	French	Temperature	degree Reaumur (°R)
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit	1686-1736	Polish-Dutch	Temperature	degree Fahrenheit (°F)
Johann Heinrich Lambert	1728-1777	German	Luminance	lambert (L)
John Dalton	1766-1844	British	Mass (atomic)	dalton (Da, amu)
Hans Christian Ørsted	1777-1851	Danish	Magnetic field	oersted (Oe)
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss	1777-1855	German	Magnetic flux density	gauss (G)
Jean Louis Marie Poiseuille	1797-1869	French	Dynamic viscosity	poise (P)
George Stokes	1818-1903	British	Kinematic viscosity	stokes (St)
William John Macquorn Rankine	1820-1872	American	Thermodynamic temperature	degree Rankine (°Ra )
James Clerk Maxwell	1831-1879	British (Scottish)	Magnetic flux	maxwell (Mx)
Samuel Pierpont Langley	1834-1906	American	Energy intensity	langley (Ly)
Lord Rayleigh	1842-1919	British	Acoustic impedance	rayl
Wilhelm Röntgen	1845-1923	German	Ionizing radiation	röntgen (R)
Alexander Graham Bell	1847-1922	British (Scottish)- American	Magnitude (log10)	bel (B)
Loránd Eötvös	1848-1919	Hungarian	Gravitational gradient	eotvos (E)
Heinrich Kayser	1853-1940	German	Wavenumber	kayser
Joseph John Thomson	1856-1940	British	Mass to charge ratio	thomson (Th)
Pierre Curie Marie Curie	1859-1906 1867-1934	French Polish-French	Radioactivity	curie (Ci)
Peter Debye	1884-1966	Dutch	Electric dipole moment	debye (D)

Name [2],[3]	Life	Nationality	Quantity	SI unit[4]
André-Marie Ampère	1775–1836	French	Electric current	ampere (A)
William Thomson (Lord Kelvin)	1824–1907	British	Temperature	kelvin (K)
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz	1857–1894	German	Frequency	hertz (Hz)
Isaac Newton	1643–1727	British	Force	newton (N)
Blaise Pascal	1623–1662	French	Pressure	pascal (Pa)
James Prescott Joule	1818–1889	British	Energy	joule (J)
James Watt	1736–1819	British	Power	watt (W)
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb	1736–1806	French	Electric charge	coulomb (C)
Alessandro Volta	1745–1827	Italian	Electric potential	volt (V)
Michael Faraday	1791–1867	British	Capacitance	farad (F)
Joseph Henry	1797–1878	American	Inductance	henry (H)
Georg Simon Ohm	1789–1855	German	Electrical resistance	ohm (Ω)
Ernst Werner von Siemens	1816–1892	German	Conductance	siemens (S)
Wilhelm Eduard Weber	1804–1891	German	Magnetic flux	weber (Wb)
Nikola Tesla	1856–1943	Serbian[5]-American	Magnetic flux density	tesla (T)
Anders Celsius	1701–1744	Swedish	Temperature	degree Celsius ( 0C)
Antoine Henri Becquerel	1852–1908	French	Radioactivity	becquerel (Bq)
Louis Harold Gray	1905–1965	British	Absorbed dose	gray (Gy)
Rolf Maximilian Sievert	1896–1966	Swedish	Dose equivalent	sievert (Sv)

White Nationalism

Peter Brimelow writes:

And the only evidence of that cited by Maloy is that “by its editor’s own admission”, VDARE.COM publishes “white nationalists”.

I have dealt with this accusation many times, for example here. VDARE.COM is a coalition and publishes immigration critics from across the political (and racial) specrum. That absolutely includes individuals who are “white nationalists” in the sense that they aim explicitly at defending white American interests. This seems to me to be at least as legitimate as Black Nationalism, La Raza-type Hispanic nationalism, or Zionism.

Brimelow's definition of white nationalists as those who "aim explicitly at defending white American interests" seems rather broad to me, although maybe that "explicitly" excludes those like the Tea Party or anti-immigration forces that argue for white interests implicitly. Still, "nationalism" means that one either supports or desires a nation, and a nation is a state centered on an ethnic group, regardless of the presence of minority ethnic groups. So, all other things equal, one who explicitly defends white interests is not in my opinion a white nationalist.

Perhaps one is splitting hairs here, but since I've been accused - or praised for - being a white nationalist, this is of some interest to me, because to my mind I am not. To the extent that I have a comprehensive political program - which is to say, very little extent - I think of it as fairly traditionalist, that is, nothing that would be out of place when whites comprised 90% of the population and confidently controlled the nation. Nevertheless, that position has come to be thought so radical, so archaic and racist, that maybe the old America was white nationalist. Furthermore, the practicality of a return to the old America is very much in doubt, to say the least, and others with similar ideas just go ahead and call themselves white nationalists. Of note in Brimelow's passage above is that he considers white nationalism to be "at least as legitimate as Black Nationalism, La Raza-type Hispanic nationalism, or Zionism." However, the legitimacy of black and La Raza-type nationalism is not exactly apparent to me (Zionism concerns another nation, so that's not relevant here), so comparing the white version to those isn't quite a ringing endorsement.

Mencius Moldbug has called Lawrence Auster a white nationalist (a suggestion not likely to find much agreement in these parts), which illustrates this tension between being traditional - or conservative or reactionary - and white nationalism. America once was a white state, albeit with a significant minority group, so any type of real conservatism must somehow deal with that fact.

But the term "white nationalism" somehow brings to my own mind all the wrong images. Perhaps I've unconsciously imbibed too much liberal propaganda. "Citizenism" attempts to grapple with the seemingly permanent change in the country that would prevent, absent violent revolutionary upheaval, a return to a 90% white population. While the idea of rejecting labels is usually puerile - if the shoe fits, and all - in a very real sense, conservatism involves the rejection of labels, as well as a rejection of dogma.

So, for myself I reject the label for now and continue to muddle through.

Germany's Birth Rate Hits Historic Low

From Time, Baby Gap: Germany's Birth Rate Hits Historic Low:

Germany is shrinking — fast. New figures released on May 17 show the birth rate in Europe's biggest economy has plummeted to a historic low, dropping to a level not seen since 1946. As demographers warn of the consequences of not making enough babies to replace and support an aging population, the latest figures have triggered a bout of national soul-searching and cast a harsh light on Chancellor Angela Merkel's family policies.

According to a preliminary analysis by the Federal Statistics Office, 651,000 children were born in Germany in 2009 — 30,000 fewer than in 2008, a dip of 3.6%. In 1990, German mothers were having on average 1.5 children each; today that average is down to 1.38 children per mother. With a shortfall of 190,000 between the number of people who died and the number of children who were born, Germany's birth rate is well below the level required to keep the population stable. (See why the recession is causing women to have fewer kids.)

"The German birth rate has remained remarkably flat over the past few years while it has increased in other low-fertility countries, like Italy and the Czech Republic," Joshua Goldstein, executive director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, tells TIME. "Women are continuing to postpone motherhood to an older age and this process of postponement is temporarily lowering the birth rate." According to Goldstein's research, Germany has the longest history of low fertility in Europe.

To explain Germany's low reproduction rate, Steffen Kröhnert, a social scientist at the Berlin Institute for Population Development, points to a number of factors. Many German women decide not to have children because of poor state-run child-care facilities.

It's funny how governments have screwed everything up so badly and then deleterious social consequences are blamed on the government not doing enough. More state-run child-care centers, that's the ticket. Back when there was no such thing, Germans had no trouble producing enough babies. Feminism too is not just a free-floating phenomenon, but these days is actively supported and promoted by governments.

Welfare states are their own worst enemies. Generally, not only do most people, especially women, want children, but they'll feel the need to do so absent a social safety net. In the U.S., Social Security has almost certainly caused a drop in the birthrate as people come to see taking care of the elderly as society's job, not their own.

Then, of course, immigration lowers wages and displaces workers, in turn causing more women to feel the need to enter the work force instead of staying home with the kids.

About Germany in particular, Germans have been guilt-tripped for decades now into thinking that they as a people are no good. In a healthy society, people think of having children as contributing to the nation or society at large (unsourced assertion), so if they're made to feel that the nation doesn't deserve to be strong, they'll have fewer children.

Update: Statsaholic reports that Russia's fertility rate increased by nearly 5% in 2009. So whatever they're having, the West should have some.

Did women really choose their mates?

Satoshi Kanazawa, in the course of explaining why more intelligent men and women are more likely to cheat, reiterates a notion that's become basic to evolutionary psychology.

If sex and mating were an entirely or mostly male choice, and it happened whenever and with whomever men wanted, then it would be reasonable to conclude that more intelligent men, who value sexual exclusivity more than less intelligent men, may be less likely to be sexually unfaithful than less intelligent men.  However, as I have explained again and again, sex and mating among most mammalian species, including humans, are an entirely female choice.  It happens whenever and with whomever women want.

It's a truism that men are much more inclined to have sex with whomever offers it, including with other men in conditions of scarcity such as in prison. Women are much more choosy. But whether historically women have really been the choosers seems to me doubtful.

Currently, with so few constraints on sexuality, women would certainly seem to be the bottleneck. Even perhaps starting in early modern Europe, where arranged marriages have been less common than in other parts of the world, women have chosen their husbands but almost always the woman's birth family has had some sort of veto power, or at the least very strong influence on the choice of husband.

In other times and places, the woman's father and/or other male relatives chose for her, such as is the case in much of today's Muslim world or India, and as would have been the case in ancient societies. In the period of evolutionary adaptation, in which humans lived in fairly egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies, women may have made more choice in the matter than subsequently, but they still lived under the protection of men and of the clan, who would have had substantial influence on mate choice.

So Kanazawa's statement that sex and mating "happens whenever and with whomever women want" is doubtful.

Perhaps that doesn't change our views of male and female psyches much, as if men choose for the woman, many of the same qualities classically considered desirable in men, such as wealth and status, would still be chosen. But it's only now, when financially independent women truly choose on their own that other qualities in men, such as looks or bad-boy image, come to be seen as desirable.

Aging: A Quasi-Program

"Aging and Immortality: Quasi-Programmed Senescence and Its Pharmacologic Inhibition", a review paper by Mikhail Blagosklonny, discusses what we know about aging and what to do about it. The paper is long, but very worthwhile for those interested in this topic. Following are my notes on it.

Why does an organism whose development and physiology are so intricately programmed and balanced age and die? Why can't an organism perform the much simpler task of merely maintaining what is already there?

Mainly because natural selection has not worked on it. In the wild, virtually all animals die from causes other than senescence. "But where longevity is necessary, nature finds a way to extend lifespan. Both parasitic nematodes and queen honeybee have life spans that are 100-fold longer than life span of soil nematodes and non-queen bees, respectively."

Therefore in theory aging is not at all necessary or inevitable.

Damage theories cannot explain aging, neither can telomere shortening. Aging cannot be a program because there are no selective advantages to it, therefore it could not have evolved.

Aging is a quasi-program, the flip side of growth. Virtually all the diseases of aging, whether cancer, heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, and many others, are caused by hypertrophy, that is, continued cellular growth. No diseases of aging are caused primarily by loss of function. That diseases of aging are caused by a quasi-program linked to growth and development can be seen by the fact that calorie restriction and inhibition of growth hormone/IGF-1 pathways promote longevity.

The main cellular mechanism of growth is mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin), a nutrient-sensing pathway connected to the insulin receptor. The basic mechanism has been conserved in all eukaryotic cells, from yeast to humans. Calorie restriction works on this pathway, and this is why CR has been successful in virtually every organism on which it has been tried.

Since mTOR is the mechanism behind the program of development, and since most animals die before old age, its continuous function has never been selected against.

Antibiotics are compounds elaborated by fungi to kill bacteria; rapamycin is the mirror image, elaborated by bacteria to kill fungi. The mechanism is very specific: it inhibits mTOR. Therefore as an anti-aging drug, it ought to have few side effects. Rapamycin prevents and cures cancer, and looks like it prevents heart disease. "Thus, direct and indirect data suggest that rapamycin could be used for prevention or therapy of atherosclerosis, hypertension and hyper-coagulation (and thus, prevention of infarct and stroke), cancer, autoimmune diseases and arthritis, obesity, type II diabetes, nephropathy, macular degeneration, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, psoriasis, osteoporosis, viral and fungal infections."

Rapamycin is a true anti-aging drug.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

All of this suggests reasons for both the efficacy and limitations of low-carb / paleo/ primal diets. They are efficacious at least in part because they lower insulin levels and therefore the activity of the insulin receptor and mTOR. This causes a decrease in the rate of aging and/or a return to a more youthful state of the organism.

Their limitations derive from the fact that aging has not been the object of natural selection. A good deal of evidence, for instance, points to methionine restriction as an important component of the effects of calorie restriction. In evolutionary terms, this doesn't look like it makes much sense, because restricting methionine intake requires restricting protein intake, and humans in the state of evolutionary adaptation presumably would not have done this except in times of starvation.

A proponent of paleo eating whom I know of suggested that it was preposterous that methionine restriction could promote longevity, because evolution has adapted us to eating large amounts of protein. That may be so, but natural selection has not prevented aging; therefore the conditions of the adaptive environment do not apply if we want to slow aging; we'll need to hack evolution.

What Russia Knows That We Don't

Russia's central bank continues to add to its gold reserves, which now total 668 metric tonnes. They had about half that amount just five years ago. (Source.) Russia now ranks tenth on the list of countries by gold reserves, yet only about 5% of its foreign exchange reserves consist of gold. In other words, Russia will very likely keep buying.

The U.S. allegedly has over 8,000 tonnes of gold reserves, making it number one on the list, but U.S. gold reserves haven't been audited since the Eisenhower administration, and as a consequence a lot of people don't believe that its all really there.

Meanwhile, New York billionaire hedge fund manager Thomas Kaplan says, "The only asset I have confidence in is gold." He's put virtually his entire net worth into gold and mining stocks.

Russia and other countries like China and India are jockeying for position in the new global order that is sure to come. Gold will ensure strong currencies and hence one of the supports of power. The U.S. just doesn't get it though.

We do have lots of Federal Reserve Notes, however.

Ethnic Solidarity for Me but Not for Thee

The Jewish Telegraph Agency reports that the National Jewish Democratic Council is pushing Creators Syndicate to drop Pat Buchanan's columns. Here's the entire piece.

Jewish Dems petition: Drop Buchanan as columnist

May 18, 2010

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Jewish Democrats launched a petition calling on a columnist syndicate to drop Pat Buchanan.

The National Jewish Democratic Council said a recent column by the three-time presidential candidate questioning President Obama's pick of Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court was intolerant because it made an issue of her Jewish faith.

"If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats," Buchanan wrote in a column titled "Are liberals anti-WASP?" an outdated formulation for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.

The NJDC launched a petition Monday asking the Creators Syndicate to drop Buchanan.

"Last week, you allowed him yet again to continue his fixation with Jews," the NJDC petition said, referring to Buchanan's oft-stated charge that U.S. Jews have outsized influence, "this time criticizing President Obama's pick for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, simply because she's Jewish."

Buchanan, a former official of the Nixon and Reagan administrations, ran in the Republican Party primaries in 1992 and 1996 and as a Reform Party candidate in 2000.

The NJDC claims to be "the voice of Jewish Democrats", but other than that I've no idea how important it is, as I've never heard of it before.

They deride Buchanan's "intolerance", because they say he "made an issue of her Jewish faith". And Kagan's "Jewish faith" is just something you're not supposed to notice. Intolerance would now seem to mean that one notices something one shouldn't, and then draws certain inferences from it, in this case for example that the founding stock of the U.S. will no longer have a member of its ethnic-religious group on the nation's highest court. Even more intolerant must be concern expressed about this.

WASP is "an outdated formulation": now that is an interesting statement. Apparently the ethnic group that as recently as the 1960s basically ran all of the country's important institutions now is the group that dare not speak its name. What name would they prefer be used? Gentiles? Faceless drones? Weird.

Creators Syndicate "allowed him yet again to continue his fixation with Jews" - see, only Jews are allowed to be fixated with Jews, the very existence of the NJDC resulting from a certain fixation with them. In other words, ethnic solidarity for me but not for thee.

Of note, the NJDC's "Stop the Smears" page is almost entirely devoted to issues surrounding a certain foreign country and its founding ethnic group. Yet they want Buchanan silenced for his concern that the founding ethnic group of his own nation - one that he is only peripherally a member of - is losing its grip on power and its people being displaced.

It's been said that anti-Semitism has been crucial for Jewish solidarity through the ages; the rising tide of sentiment of the kind expressed by the NJDC will likely do more for white racial consciousness than anything else has done so far. So I guess we should thank them.

¿Quién es más macho?

Lawrence Auster had this photo today of Michelle Obama at last night's state dinner for Mexican President Calderón. I thought it would be interesting to compare her with Calderón's wife, Margarita Zavala de Calderón.

In terms of power and prestige, Barack Obama has got it all over Calderón, but I doubt if too many people envy him his wife, who looks like if you ticked her off, she would break your spine in three places and beat you into a jelly. (As Roderick Spode would do.)

I don't know if Barack married for political or racial reasons, but there's a saying that men who marry for money earn it, and the same goes for men who marry for other reasons. Assuming that one reason Barack married Michelle was because she's black, in contrast Señora Zavala de Calderón doesn't even look Mexican. (Not that there's anything wrong with looking Mexican.) She also is rather more fetching than Michelle.

Shortness Linked to Criminality

NY Times:

Poverty, greed, anger, jealousy, pride, revenge. These are the usual suspects when it comes to discussing the causes of crime. In recent years, however, economists have started to investigate a different explanation for criminal activity: physical attributes.

A small band of economists has been studying how height, weight and beauty affect the likelihood of committing — or being convicted of — a crime. Looking at records from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, they have found evidence that shorter men are 20 to 30 percent more likely to end up in prison than their taller counterparts, and that obesity and physical attractiveness are linked to crime.

The article goes into a number of theories economists have come up with to explain the heightened propensity of shorter people to be criminals. No doubt complex forces are at work, but one factor gets short shrift, merely hinted at.

Since biologists believe that 80 percent of height is determined by genetics and 20 percent by environmental conditions, height — and sometimes weight — can be an index of childhood nutrition, health care and exposure to disease. Thus smaller stature may be a sign of an impoverished upbringing.

So, "80% of height is determined by genetics", yet height is an indication of nutrition, health care, and disease exposure?

Criminals have lower IQs, with studies placing the average IQ of the "offender population at between 91 and 93". Height positively correlates with intelligence. There's the shortness-criminality connection.

Attractive people are more intelligent, which might explain the association between unattractiveness and crime.

Obesity rates are highest among the poor and uneducated, providing another link between intelligence and criminality.

Seems to me that one way to test this would be to determine whether the height-criminality link holds true for women also. If it does, then certain environmental explanations for heightened criminality, such as shorter men having lower status and income due to their height, would be questionable, because women don't suffer from loss of status due to shortness, at least not as much.

Sure enough, at least attractiveness had the same effect in both sexes:

According to their study, both men and women who were rated unattractive (as rated on a five-point scale) in high school were more likely to commit — or at least more likely to be caught while committing — one of seven crimes, including burglary and selling drugs, than those rated average or attractive.

Meltup

This approximately 50-minute video is well worth your time, and even those who are fairly sophisticated about financial matters and our current, almost theater-of-the-absurd situation will learn something from it. The key idea: the U.S., as well as much of the rest of the world, is so indebted that it cannot possibly ever get out from under it. The only solution, per the film: hyperinflation. American leaders who got us into this mess have been criminally imprudent.

Toward the end of the film, we're treated to a possible solution, namely a sort of "buy local" campaign that perhaps 20% of the American public will support, an allegedly high enough fraction to make a difference. This part of the film's message certainly did not resonate with me. Perhaps the main reason that we've accumulated so much debt is because the American people have by and large wanted it. No one complained when the housing bubble was in full bloom, nor about cheap Chinese imports.

A huge fraction of Americans suck at the government teat, and they like it just fine, so not only will these people be unmotivated to change, they will resist it.

Half Sigma on Kagan

Half Sigma has been beating the drum for Elena Kagan, saying for example that conservatives shouldn't oppose her nomination, or that since Jews are so intelligent, it's only natural that there be so many of them on the Supreme Court.

I left a comment on one of HS's posts the other day that he declined to publish. See if you think this is offensive or violates his comment policy.

HS and TUJ [The Undiscovered Jew] don't support Kagan out of ethnic solidarity, do they?

While one would have to be pretty touchy to consider this a personal attack, I've seen several comments over there lately that say that Steve Sailer and myself are "Jew haters". Apparently that's OK by HS.

Anyway, it's fine if HS wants to root for his ethnic group, though it's rather odd that a generally conservative HBD exponent like HS overlooks or understates Kagan's leftism. What I think is reprehensible is characterizing white Americans who express concern over the loss of Protestants on the Supreme Court as anti-Semites. He writes:

It’s funny how the anti-Semites of the blogosphere are getting all riled up that Obama has appointed a third Jew to the Supreme Court. There must be a Jewish conspiracy, they say, and Obama must be secretly controlled by the Jews.

Since he neither names nor quotes directly those he considers anti-Semites, it could be interpreted to mean that he thinks anyone who deplores the race-based Obama coalition that's determined to block WASPs from political power, as exemplified by Kagan's nomination, is an anti-Semite. Furthermore, he neither cites nor quotes anyone who says that it's a "Jewish conspiracy", and frankly I've not read that anywhere.

HS believes, as I noted, that the presence of three Jews on the Supreme Court can be explained by their intelligence and a reference to the bell curve, which of course no one but HS seems to understand. The problem here is that nominations to the Supreme Court are political, not based on the best talent, at least not exclusively. I'm sure that Obama could find much smarter people than Elena Kagan.

To someone like myself, it just looks obvious that HS is cheerleading for one of his own, or at least praising her with faint damns - though as with Auster, I can't see into his soul so I could be wrong.

And about his regular commenter TUJ, just this morning he said that my assertion that Haim Saban isn't acting in my interests is "an anti-Semitic canard". People like him seem to have no other argument - one size fits all.

I'm sure that despite this post containing no criticism whatsoever of Jews as a group, I'll be called a Jew hater for it. One just isn't supposed to notice anything.

Who will buy us some influence?

Steve Sailer mentioned, in the course of a discussion of Israeli-American tycoon Haim Saban, that Saban had come by his influence on the cheap, spending around $25 million with apparently great results. By contrast, according to Sailer, T. Boone Pickens gave $165 million to the Oklahoma State athletics department.

Actually, it's worse than that. Just this past February, Pickens pledged another $100 million to Oklahoma State, and by the time of his death, when the rest of his donations are left to the university, he will have given them almost $500 million. Pickens has given about $656 million to charity since 2003.

So, why is Saban savvy, politically aware, and committed enough to Israel to spend what amounts to chicken feed compared to his fortune - successfully achieving his goal of defending Israel - while Pickens, a child of the depression from a conservative state, a wealthy businessman, and apparently Scotch-Irish, is so seemingly clueless about his own country? I mean, hundreds of millions of dollars for Oklahoma State football?

Pickens has been a supporter of George W. Bush, and supported Giuliani (sic) for president in 2007, and has given around $5 million to mostly Republican candidates and causes. But his support has been directed at the most mainstream of politicians, the sort of neoconservatives who not only don't oppose the Mexican invasion, but welcome it.

A man like Pickens could help Arizona-like laws pass in many states. He could back a Tancredo for president. So the question is, is he clueless, or does he not give a damn about what's going on? Unfortunately, my guess would be the latter.

If we had just one man of the wealth and caliber of Pickens on our side, we could work miracles. Alas, men like him seem far more interested in games than in the reality of their country's dissolution.

Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence

A commenter recently criticized something I had written by saying that it was "anecdotal", a common expression when one wants to dismiss claims of others that are based on a story, or on one datum. However, the plural of anecdote just might be data.

And absence of evidence is evidence of absence. The expression "correlation is not causation" leaves much to be desired as well.

Seth Roberts mentions these three instances of what he calls "preventive stupidity" - incidentally using the same concept from 1984 that Steve Sailer recently used.

These three expressions appear to be heuristics or filters. When someone makes (excessive) claims based on an anecdote, the natural response is the retort that it doesn't prove anything. However, proof isn't usually relevant in science; probabilities are, and an anecdote does make a claim more likely, whether infinitesimally or greatly. But as Seth points out, these expressions can be a positive hindrance to thinking and reasoning.

Henry Cabot Lodge on the Formation of the American People

Henry Cabot Lodge, the great American statesman, historian, and first Senate majority leader, was vitally concerned about the immigration issue. In his speech, The Restriction of Immigration, he detailed what he saw as the roots of the American people as a distinct "race". Lodge believed that the fact that the origins of the American race lay in numerous European peoples, including not only the Anglo-Saxons, but Swedish, Dutch, German, Irish, and French, was not germane to the reality of Americans as a people, because aside from differences in language, these European ethnic groups all ultimately derived from a common root.

Whether "race" in Lodge's terms is as crucial as he thought seems doubtful. He was concerned about masses of "Russians, Hungarians, Poles, Bohemians, Italians, Greeks, and even Asiatics", whereas to my mind these peoples have shown their capability of joining the American race. Whether the changes wrought by these groups has been a net benefit can be debated endlessly, but that they have become a part of the American people can scarcely be doubted.

Lodge, like most of his contemporaries, intuitively understood human biodiversity without a knowledge of genetics or even a belief in evolution, before belief in it had been proscribed in our modern enlightenment. He realized that different ethnic groups would necessarily affect American civilization, and that the groups that originally constituted the American people had qualities that made America what it was.

At the period of these two English settlements, and just about at the same time, the Dutch settled at the mouth of the Hudson and the Swedes upon the Delaware. Both, be it remembered, were of the same original race stock as the English settlers of Virginia and New England, who were destined to be so predominant in the North American colonies. At the close of the seventeenth century and during the eighteenth there came to America three other migrations of people sufficiently numerous to be considered in estimating the races from which the colonists were derived. These were the Scotch-Irish, the Germans, and the French Huguenots. The Scotch-Irish, as they are commonly called with us, were immigrants from the north of Ireland. They were chiefly descendants of Cromwell's soldiers, who had been settled in Ulster, and of the Lowland Scotch, who had come to the same region. They were the men who made the famous defense of Londonderry against James II, and differed in no essential respect either of race or language from the English who had preceded them in America. Some of them settled in New Hampshire, but most of them in the western part of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. They were found in all the colonies in a greater or less degree, and were a vigorous body of men, who have contributed very largely to the upbuilding of the United States and played a great part in our history. The German immigrants were the Protestants of the Palatinate, and they settled in large numbers in western Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. The Huguenots, although not very numerous, were a singularly fine body of people. They had shown the highest moral qualities in their long struggle for religious freedom. They had faced war, massacre, and persecution for nearly two centuries, and had never wavered in their constancy to the creed in which they believed. Harried and driven out of France by Louis XIV, they had sought refuge in Holland, in England, and in the New World. They were to be found in this country in all our colonies, and everywhere they became a most valuable addition to our population.

Such, then, briefly were the people composing the colonies when we faced England in the war for independence. It will be observed that, with the exception of the Huguenot French, who formed but a small percentage of the total population, the people of the thirteen colonies were all of the same original race stocks. The Dutch, the Swedes, and the Germans simply blended again with the English-speaking people, who like them were descended from the Germanic tribes whom Caesar fought and Tacitus described.

During the present century, down to 1875, there have been three large migrations to this country in addition to the always steady stream from Great Britain; one came from Ireland about the middle of the century, and somewhat later one from Germany and one from Scandinavia, in which is included Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. The Irish, although of a different race stock originally, have been closely associated with the English-speaking people for nearly a thousand years. They speak the same language, and during that long period the two races have lived side by side, and to some extent intermarried. The Germans and Scandinavians are again people of the same race stock as the English who founded and built up the colonies. During this century, down to 1875, then, as in the two which preceded it, there had been scarcely any immigration to this country except from kindred or allied races, and no other which was sufficiently numerous to have produced any effect on the national characteristics, or to be taken into account here. Since 1875, however, there has been a great change. While the people who for two hundred and fifty years have been migrating to America have continued to furnish large numbers of immigrants to the United States, other races of totally different race origin, with whom the English-speaking people have never hitherto been assimilated or brought in contact, have suddenly begun to immigrate to the United States in large numbers. Russians, Hungarians, Poles, Bohemians, Italians, Greeks, and even Asiatics, whose immigration to America was almost unknown twenty years ago, have during the last twenty years poured in in steadily increasing numbers, until now they nearly equal the immigration of those races kindred in blood or speech, or both, by whom the United States has hitherto been built up and the American people formed.

The Proposition Nation Is No Nation

Nationalism arose from the belief that a major ethnic group should have its own state. In the era before the rise of nationalism, many ethnic groups had little unity; they were collections of related peoples and cultures. In France, for example, the people within its borders spoke different but related languages, and the same holds for most other modern European nations, including the collection of nations now known as the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, and so on. Standardization of language was thus one of the first steps toward nationalism, Martin Luther's German Bible translation being perhaps the best example.

Why did ethnic groups need their own states? Mainly because the ethnic group that captures the state favors its own and disfavors others, even if the state's rhetoric declares the theoretical equality under the law of all ethnic groups. That an ethnic group that captures the state will favor its own seems blatantly obvious, but is worth emphasizing in this age of phony equality.

The classic example of a multi-ethnic state run by one ethnic group that favored itself is Austria-Hungary. It is no accident that nationalist agitators were prominent in this state. The Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, etc., saw themselves as discriminated against by the ruling German-speakers, their languages relegated to second- or third-class status, and state positions reserved for the ruling ethnic group. Zionism arose in Austria-Hungary as well, with rising nationalist sentiment convincing Herzl that the solution to the "Jewish problem" lay in statehood, so that the Jews could become a nation like any other.

Besides ethnic groups favoring their own through the machinery of the state, some groups will almost always prosper more than others; here again Austria-Hungary exemplifies this, as the Germans were arguably smarter and harder working than most of the other ethnic groups in the empire, another factor in their domination. Human biodiversity, along with geography and demography, predict that this will happen. For these reasons, it would have been impossible for, say, the Croatians ever to dominate Austria-Hungary.

The idea of a proposition nation, namely that a people or peoples will be unified in a nation without regard to ethnicity, using either a shared history, or geography, or adherence to some abstract principle, turns the notion of a traditional nation-state on its head. Real nationalism arose out of historical circumstances and was based on the historical experience of clashing ethnic groups, whereas propositional nationalism shares more in common with doctrines like socialism or fascism, in which some abstract principle, whether state ownership of "the means of production" (a quaint relic from the age of factories) or corporatism are given excessive importance, to the exclusion of all other social factors.

The proposition nation is no nation at all. Since nationalism is based on a common ethnicity and/or language, and propositional nationalism aims to dispense with these, the latter is not even a nationalism, and the basis for binding people together using an abstract principle is a weak one indeed.

All of this is why the notion of the United States as a proposition nation is unsustainable, and if not stopped, will turn out badly. This is why Arizona is so important.

No Stopping Gold

Gold hit an all-time high yesterday, and another one again today. As the chart shows, gold is in a ten-year bull market that shows no signs of stopping. The world just witnessed another massive bailout, this time in Europe, with around one trillion dollars conjured out of thin air, and so long as the governments of the world keep debasing their currency, gold will be a safe haven. Since politicians and governments are not known for their willingness to do the right thing regardless of short-term pain, it's a safe bet that your dollars - or euros, as the case may be - will stay on the path of debasement.

The Cost to California of Illegals in Prison

Clusterstock believes that there are at least 16 reasons why California is the next Greece. One of the items cited is "California spends $859 million per year on imprisoned illegal immigrants", citing the LA Times. The actual cost was $970 million in 2009, but the federal government paid for $111 million, leaving California with the rest.

However, that seems to understate the true cost. The Public Policy Institute of California states that 38% of the entire prison population is Latino. Absent illegal immigration over the past several decades, California would have a much smaller Hispanic population.

The New York Times reports that California spends $8 billion annually on prisons, and a total of 167,000 prisoners. That works out to almost $50,000 per prisoner per year. So the state spends about $3 billion just on Hispanic prisoners. If the Hispanic population were say a third of the current number, savings would be $2 billion annually.

Also noteworthy, blacks were imprisoned at a per capita rate more than 6.5 times that of whites.

Papers, Please

Abraham Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, says that the new Arizona law "endangers America's immigrant heritage". It will also come as no surprise that Foxman uses the N-word:

In the past, as now, nativism, bigotry and fear of competition from foreign workers dulled the collective American memory of its own immigrant history and democratic ideals. Then, as now, the drums of anti-foreigner slogans are beat in an effort to make the case for a restrictive immigration policy. [...]

Of course, the Arizona law was not enacted in a vacuum. The immigration debate has become a flashpoint for racists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other extremists who blame immigrants for all of our nation's problems. It is a very short distance from that sort of rhetoric to vigilantism. When mainstream figures start expressing the same bigotry, filling the airwaves and the Internet with hateful and incendiary talk, an atmosphere is created for incivility and pernicious legislation is not far behind.

Foxman is himself an immigrant and so, aside from his obvious animus toward the American people, he may be suffering from availability bias. (Or would it be hindsight bias?) But regarding his animus - face it, he hates white Americans unless they fully support America's going out of business sale and give in to a total makeover of what used to be their country.

The evidence for his hatred lies in his characterization of the vast majority of the American people who support the law as "racists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis". As perhaps the most prominent figure of organized Judaism in the country, I doubt that he's doing his fellow Jews any favors.

We've examined the issue of Jewish support for immigration at some length lately, and while on the surface it wouldn't appear that mass immigration of non-whites is "good for the Jews", evidently Foxman and others like him think that it is. They view us with fear and loathing and yearn for nothing less than our replacement. The ADL's official mission is the combating of anti-Semitism, a fringe outlook in American society. Ironically, nothing could cause more anti-Semitism than seeing official Jewish groups oppose American nationhood.

The ADL recently hosted not only Attorney General Eric "Honkies Are Cowards" Holder, but also Janet Murguia, President of the National Council of La Raza:

"I have serious concerns about the law and its effect on the people of Arizona -- citizens and noncitizens alike," Mr. Holder told an audience of 350 ADL leaders from across the country.

"I know that, over the past few days, many of you have been encouraging your elected officials to reform our flawed immigration system – and I commend you for this work. Quite simply, our immigration system must be fixed." [...]

The League leaders also heard from Janet Murguia, President and CEO of the National Council of La Raza, who briefed them on the potentially damaging consequences of the Arizona immigration law, which she called a "travesty of a bill" that could lead to racial and ethnic profiling.

"This new bill, passed and signed by the governor just a couple of weeks ago, is perhaps the harshest, most anti-immigrant piece of legislation we have yet to see," Ms. Murguia said. "It puts fully one-third -- 30 percent -- of Arizona's population at risk of being harassed, detained or abused by law enforcement. This bill codifies racial profiling."

In addition, the ADL conference heard speakers expressing, in contrast to their feelings about the U.S., the most tender concern for a foreign country, Israel. More irony: after Foxman has called white Americans who support Arizona neo-Nazis, he has the chutzpah to call for restoring "civility" to political debate.

Mr. Foxman said the Internet plays a role in fueling extremist rhetoric and pushing it from the fringes into the mainstream. "We always knew that there were bigoted people and bigoted expressions and bigoted institutions. But it never really made it into the mainstream," Mr. Foxman said. "Now, with the communication revolution, much of that bigotry is finding a new highway of legitimacy and much of those bigoted views are coming into the mainstream."

Priceless, coming from a bigot.

The Revealed Slow Aging Hypothesis

A paper by Mikhail Blagosklonny, Why human lifespan is rapidly increasing: solving "longevity riddle" with "revealed-slow-aging" hypothesis, attempts to account for human longevity increasing faster than would be expected from conventional explanations. According to the author,

In the countries with the highest life expectancies, the long term increase in life expectancy proceeds at a pace of 2.5 years per 10 years, or six hours per day [4].

Blagosklonny postulates that decreases in childhood mortality have "revealed" slower aging individuals. It works like this.

Aging, contrary to current conventional wisdom, does not consist in accumulated damage to the organism. Rather, aging causes this damage. Aging is the flip side of growth; the same physiological pathways responsible for growth also cause aging, specifically the mTOR pathway (mammalian target of rapamycin), which senses nutrients.

The forces of evolution can be expected to exert pressure on the rate of aging of organisms. Slower aging organisms will have longer reproductive periods, while faster aging organisms also mature faster. In humans, those who age faster will better withstand adverse events in childhood, including infections and trauma, the two leading causes of death before the modern era. Therefore, before public health measures and antibiotics were invented or became common, faster aging individuals would better survive childhood, but precisely because they age faster, would experience aging earlier and die younger.

If two aging phenotypes exist in humans, slower vs. faster aging, in premodern times the population of adults would consist of a greater fraction of the faster aging, these having survived childhood at a greater rate than the slower aging. However, now, in the developed nations in modern times, with very little infant and childhood mortality, the slower aging individuals make up a larger fraction of the adult population. Hence, increasing longevity and the "revealed slow aging hypothesis".

It appears that, contrary to the belief that humans are bumping up against the upper limits of lifespan, maximum lifespan is increasing due to revealed slow aging. Blagosklonny emphasizes that this is not due to evolution.

Importantly, current increase in healthy lifespan (increased longevity with late onset of age-related diseases) is not caused by natural selection. It happens in the same generation. Slow aging was not selected but was simply revealed (Figure 2 B). Until recently, most slow-aging individuals died prematurely. They (we) did not necessarily die young but nevertheless died not from aging. For example, at the same chronological age when fast-aging individuals died from heart attack, healthy slow-aging individuals died from malnutrition and infections, for instance. Elimination of premature death greatly enriched chronologically old population with slow-aging (biologically young) individuals (Figure 2).

To be possibly correct, the hypothesis requires a high proportion of slow-aging individuals at birth (Figure 2). Otherwise, there would be too few slow-aging individuals to make a difference later (Figure 2 A vs B). Why was not slow aging selected out? Slow aging must be beneficial for women, by increasing their reproductive period. In fact, female's fertility is decreasing early in life (starting from late twenties, long before menopause). This reproductive aging is one of the earliest manifestations of aging in females. So slow aging benefits females. Also, as I will discuss elsewhere, women do not need to be as robust as men, so can afford to age slower (see forthcoming article "Why men age faster but reproduce longer: mTOR perspective"). In turn, males inherit genes for longevity too, explaining a high proportion of slow-aging individuals at birth.

The revealed-slow-aging hypothesis predicts that certain very harsh conditions may result in a decrease in healthy lifespan decades later. For example, perhaps it is robust (and therefore fast-aging later) young men who predominantly survived wars, camps and orphanages. (If so, the death of weak slow-aging young men during 1940th-1950th might explain a drop in healthy lifespan of Russian men 50 years later.) Also, the hypothesis explains data on early-age mortality and subsequent mortality in the same cohorts. Thus Finch and Crimmins showed that increasing longevity and declining mortality in the elderly occurred among the same birth cohorts that experienced a reduction in mortality at younger ages [29,30]. The revealed-slow-aging hypothesis suggests that high levels of infection early in life eliminate young individuals with a ‘weak' mTOR (slow-aging individuals, who otherwise would live longer).

The author goes on to discuss the anti-aging drug rapamycin, already proven to increase maximum longevity in mice, as a solution to the health care crisis. Since aging causes damage, rather than damage causing aging, slowing the aging process will result in a lower burden of disease.

The Victim Card

The New York Times columnist Roger Cohen recently wrote on "The Banality of Good", about daily life in Nazi Germany.

What was it like? I would ask myself, the years I lived in Berlin. What was it like in the leafy Grunewald neighborhood to watch your Jewish neighbors — lawyers, businessmen, dentists — trooping head bowed to the nearby train station for transport eastward to extinction?

With what measure of fear, denial, calculation, conscience and contempt did neighbors who had proved their Aryan stock to Hitler’s butchers make their accommodations with this Jewish exodus? How good did the schnapps taste and how effectively did it wash down the shame?

In our modern era, the evil of Nazi Germany has become the theme for our times, the very representation of man's inhumanity, the unspeakable state to which we must never return and which we must never forget. It's entirely understandable that Jews obsess over the Nazis, and through the Jewish presence in academia, politics, and the media, they have ensured that the Nazis have become something of an obsession to the rest of us.

But we hear little about Communism, that ideology which killed 100 million people over the course of the 20th century. Reminding us of the horrors of Communism has been mainly the work of a fringe group of right-wingers. Why is that?

One reason may be Jewish involvement in communism, particularly in the USSR and Eastern Europe. This Jewish involvement is one of the themes of Yuri Slezkine's book The Jewish Century, a tour de force on the central role played by Jews in the 20th century. (The book's title is somewhat misleading, as the vast majority of its pages are devoted to the experience of Jews in Russia and the USSR.)

Jews were greatly over-represented among the early revolutionaries and later among the leaders of the Soviet Union, including the various incarnations of the secret police. The statistics that Slezkine presents are startling. Here are some of them.

"... at least 99 (62.3 percent) of the 159 political emigres who returned to Russia through Germany in 1917 in "sealed trains" were Jews. The first group of 29 that arrived with Lenin included 17 Jews (58.6 percent)." [p. 152; Jews were about 5% of the Russian population at the time.]

"At the first All-Russian Congress of Soviets in June 1917, at least 31 percent of Bolshevik delegates (and 37 percent of Unified Social Democrats) were Jews." [p. 175]

"The Jewish share of the Party's Central Committee in 1919-21 remained steady at about one-fourth." [p. 176]

"In 1923, at the time of the creation of the OGPU (the Cheka's successor), Jews made up 15.5 percent of all 'leading' officials and 50 percent of the top brass (4 out of 8 members of the Collegium's Secretariat). 'Socially alien' Jews were well represented among the Cheka-OGPU prisoners, too, but Leonard Schapiro is probably justified in generalizing (especially about the territory of the former Pale) that 'anyone who had the misfortune to fall into the hands of the Cheka stood a very good chance of finding himself confronted with and possibly shot by a Jewish investigator.'" [p. 177]

The book contains much more in a similar vein, and while for the most part we are spared gruesome depictions of the reality of the early to middle Soviet Union, anyone who has read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago will be able to put two and two together. For instance, in the White Sea Canal project, one of the most notorious of Soviet crimes, in which some 100,000 forced laborers died, "[a]ll the top leadership positions were held by Jews" [p. 199].

In considering the above, it's important to note that most Soviet communists were Russians, and that most Jews were not communists. However, given the relative proportions of the population that were Russian and Jewish, that would almost necessarily be true. But in general communism was seen as being "good for the Jews", and that accounts for the large number of Jews who advanced to leadership positions within the Party.

Is it any wonder that we don't hear much about these things? None of this means that we shouldn't hear about Nazi brutality and evil, nor does it mean that contemporary Jews bear guilt for the deeds of some of their fellows. (But strangely the zeal for hunting down Nazi war criminals was never matched by one hunting down Communist mass murderers.) However, it puts a crimp in the Jewish notion that they have been unique victims, and in the notion that Germans have been uniquely evil.

The American Jewish organizations that seem so opposed to white American nationhood, that so strongly promote the idea of the United States as a proposition nation - an error even the generally fair Slezkine falls into - link this argument to the Jewish experience under Nazism. Granted, the link is more often left unsaid than openly stated, but the designation by groups like the ADL of anti-immigration sentiment as "hate" makes the connection clear. The current "show me your papers" trope, used by pro-immigration forces, also less than subtly tars white Americans, the majority of whom want immigration laws enforced, as crypto-Nazis.

So, much of the anti-immigration and proposition nation rhetoric of Jewish organizations depends overtly or covertly on the identification of Jews as victims of historical persecutions. Much of the moral authority of these groups would be lost, in my estimation, if Jewish involvement in spreading the pernicious ideology of communism were better known.

Also, to those both on this blog and elsewhere who have chastised me for "singling out Jews", I would say the following: I make it clear that I discuss Jewish organizations and not "the Jews", most of whom seem to have far more sensible views than the groups who speak in their name. I do however think that the many non-Jewish groups that promote the dissolution of the American nation have followed the Jewish lead and use many of the same notions of white guilt to justify their views, though that's a topic in itself and I admit I could be wrong on that.

If white Americans are supposed to be somehow guilty because of the actions of some whites from the 17th to 20th centuries - a ridiculous idea, but one taken seriously by many - this notion of collective guilt can also be applied to the actions of other groups.

Two Immigration Pushers

Frank Rich's latest column, If Only Arizona Were the Real Problem, starts predictably:

DON’T blame it all on Arizona. The Grand Canyon State simply happened to be in the right place at the right time to tilt over to the dark side. Its hysteria is but another symptom of a political virus that can’t be quarantined and whose cure is as yet unknown.

If many of Arizona’s defenders and critics hold one belief in common, it’s that the new “show me your papers” law is sui generis: it’s seen as one angry border state’s response to its outsized share of America’s illegal immigration crisis. But to label this development “Arizona’s folly” trivializes its import and reach. The more you examine the law’s provisions and proponents, the more you realize that it’s the latest and (so far) most vicious battle in a far broader movement that is not just about illegal immigrants — and that is steadily increasing its annexation of one of America’s two major political parties.

The rest is as argument-free and as invective-filled as the beginning. Opinionators like Rich don't bother to offer reasons, they simply denounce, the "point-and-sputter" method of debate. Which I'm sure goes down well with the average Times reader.

The closest anyone on the other side of the debate ever offers as an argument is that we need "immigration reform"; Rich mentions this in his column. But reform in this context just restates opposition without offering anything substantial, because "reform" means amnesty and more legal immigration.

Take a look at an article by Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Immigration: The Great Race for Brains, and what comes up? "Reform".

America can attract the best global minds as students, but to keep them here and reap the benefits of our investment in their education and productivity, we need to reform our immigration law.

Furchtgott-Roth produces some arguments - not that I agree with them - but if she proves anything with them, it's that we need to be cracking down on uneducated, illegal aliens.

Like Rich, she believes that America is nothing but a proposition nation, as she thinks that our universities and our job market ought to be open to more educated foreigners, regardless of what that means for American citizens who get pushed out or replaced.