Israel to crack down on illegal migrant workers

Benjamin Netanyahu is my kind of guy: Israel to crack down on illegal migrant workers:

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel approved a plan on Sunday to hold and deport thousands of illegal migrant workers whom Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as a "threat to the character of the country".

In remarks to the cabinet, Netanyahu said thousands of migrants who have entered Israel mainly through Egypt in past years would be housed at a special holding facility, due to built in Israel's southern Negev desert.

"We must stop the mass entry of illegal migrant workers because of the very serious threat to the character and future to the state of Israel," he said, adding Israelis who gave them work would face severe fines to make their employment unviable.

Hard to imagine an American politician saying something so refreshing as illegal immigration being "a threat to the character of the country", mainly because, in the minds of most of our so-called leaders, the only character America has is that of taking in foreigners and actively dissolving its native people. Israel's leaders appear to actually care about its people and want to ensure continuity of same.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government is suing the state of Arizona for trying to stop things like this:

Obama to Freeze Pay for Federal Workers - at an All-Time High

NY Times:

WASHINGTON — President Obama plans to announce a two-year pay freeze for civilian federal workers on Monday in his latest move intended to demonstrate concern over sky-high deficit spending.

The president’s proposal will effectively wipe out plans for a 1.4 percent across-the-board raise in 2011 for 2.1 million civilian federal government employees, including those working at the Defense Department, but the freeze would not affect the nation’s uniformed military personnel. The president has frozen the salaries of his own top White House staff members since taking office 22 months ago.

“Clearly this is a difficult decision,” said Jeffrey Zients, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget and the government’s chief performance officer. “Federal workers are hard-working and dedicated.” But given the deficit, Mr. Zients added, “we believe this is the first of many difficult steps ahead.”

"Hard-working and dedicated": thanks for the laugh.

The following chart from Zero Hedge tells the true story: pay for federal government drones has skyrocketed. USA Today estimates that federal workers make double the pay of their private counterparts.

Instead of a pay freeze, how about mass layoffs? We can start with the TSA.

Columbus, Polish Prince

So says historian Manuel Rosa of Duke University. The Telegraph:

A Portuguese historian believes he has solved the 500 year-old mystery of the adventurer's true identity after a thorough investigation of medieval documents and chronicles.

The origins of the man who discovered the Americas has long been a subject of speculation.

Contemporary accounts named his birth place as the Italian port of Genoa to a family of wool weavers but over the centuries it has been claimed that he was a native of Greece, Spain, France, Portugal and even Scotland.

Others claimed his origins were hidden because he was Jewish or secretly working as a double agent for the Portuguese royal family.

But the latest theory suggests that the great navigator, who died in 1506 after four voyages to the New World, was in fact of royal blood: the son of King Vladislav III who was supposedly slain in the Battle of Varna in 1444.

In his third book on the subject Manuel Rosa, who has spent 20 years researching the life of Columbus, suggests that Vladislav III survived the battle with the Ottomans, fled to live in exile on the island of Madeira where he was known as "Henry the German" and married a Portuguese noblewoman.

Mr Rosa believes a conspiracy was agreed to hide Columbus' true origins and to protect the identity of his father. "The courts of Europe knew who he was and kept his secret for their own reasons," the researcher at Duke University, North Carolina said.

Some of the reasoning behind this strikes me as similar to the reasoning behind the doubts as to Shakespeare's identity: that someone so ordinary could have produced such incredible literature, in Shakespeare's case, and that the son of a Genoese cheesemonger could discover America.

Obviously, the cases are vastly different. What seems more compelling to me is that Columbus had access to several royal courts in Europe, and that he married into the Portuguese nobility. Those things would normally have been beyond the reach of a commoner, much less an itinerant Italian would-be explorer.

The Knights of Columbus probably won't take this story very well.

The part of the story that for me exemplifies some of the strange byways of history is the fact, if it is a fact, that an exiled Polish king lived on Madeira in the 15th century. Reminds me of the story of Charles XII of Sweden, who escaped from Ottoman captivity and rode across Europe, incognito, in 15 days.

Kotkin's California Not Doing Well, Despite Record Population

Joel Kotkin believes that California may be committing suicide:

In the future, historians may likely mark the 2010 midterm elections as the end of the California era and the beginning of the Texas one. In one stunning stroke, amid a national conservative tide, California voters essentially ratified a political and regulatory regime that has left much of the state unemployed and many others looking for the exits.

California has drifted far away from the place that John Gunther described in 1946 as “the most spectacular and most diversified American state … so ripe, golden.” Instead of a role model, California has become a cautionary tale of mismanagement of what by all rights should be the country’s most prosperous big state. Its poverty rate is at least two points above the national average; its unemployment rate nearly three points above the national average. On Friday Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was forced yet again to call an emergency session in order to deal with the state’s enormous budget problems.

I'm a little confused here: Kotkin says that California endorsed the same old tax-and-spend policies that are leading to its bankruptcy despite "a national conservative tide". I had no idea that Kotkin was any kind of conservative, but perhaps this is a case of wanting to distance oneself from losers.

Lost amid all Kotkin's theorizing as to the sources of California's decline are the sources of California's former prosperity and what did it in. Kotkin mentions the entertainment industry, Silicon Valley, and other STEM-related industry and employment, but doesn't seem to figure out that as the state's Hispanic share of the population grew to nearly half, the new immigrants added virtually nothing but fruit-picking and lawn-mowing to California's employment figures.

California has the highest population of illegal aliens in the country, at nearly 7% of its population. They're bankrupting hospitals. Note that most of California's Hispanic population is legal, but that the average immigrant household generates a fiscal deficit of around $20,000 a year.

Kotkin seems not to realize that the California situation represents a strong argument against the thesis of his latest book.

In stark contrast to the rest of the world’s advanced nations, the United States is growing at a record rate and, according to census projections, will be home to four hundred million Americans by 2050. This projected rise in population is the strongest indicator of our long-term economic strength, Joel Kotkin believes, and will make us more diverse and more competitive than any nation on earth.

Uh-huh, as if "more diverse and more competitive" even belong in the same sentence.

Like I said, the stupid are in charge.

Point, Sputter

Tory peer claims welfare changes encourage poor to 'breed'
A new Conservative peer has claimed that Coalition changes to the welfare system will encourage “breeding” among those on benefits.

Howard Flight, a former Tory MP, made the comments just days after being given a peerage by David Cameron. Downing Street moved swiftly to distance itself from the remarks.

Mr Flight, who has yet to be ennobled, was asked in an interview about changes to the child benefit system which will see top rate taxpayers no longer receiving the state-hand-out.

The father of three told the Evening Standard: “We're going to have a system where the middle classes are discouraged from breeding because it's jolly expensive.

"But for those on benefits, there is every incentive. Well, that's not very sensible." [...]

Reaction was swift:

"Instead of dithering for hours, as he did with Lord Young, David Cameron should take swift action and make Howard Flight apologise."

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "Howard Flight has shown himself to be an insensitive throwback to the worst of 1980s politics within days of being made a peer by the Prime Minister.

"This is exactly the kind of remark that leads to political parties being thought of as nasty, and shows just how shockingly out of touch with the lives of ordinary low and middle-income people some supporters of this Government can be."

Look, either it's true or false that Britain's new welfare rules will encourage the poor to have more children, and discourage the middle classes from having them. If Howard Flight's statement is false, then it ought to be a matter of data or logic to show that it is. But the dysgenic trends in Western society would seem to be an open secret; everyone knows at least through anecdotes that, as Flight says, it's "jolly expensive" to have middle-class children, while those on welfare appear either to have no such constraints or don't care about them.

The reaction to Flight's statement is just another example of the extreme mendacity prevalent in politics and public life generally. We are talked to as if we were children ourselves.

Extinguishing the Nation

The Center for Immigration Studies has a new report, Immigration and Economic Stagnation: An Examination of Trends 2000 to 2010, whose major finding is this:

New Census Bureau data collected in March of this year show that 13.1 million immigrants (legal and illegal) arrived in the previous 10 years, even though there was a net decline of a million jobs during the decade. In contrast, during the 1990s there was a net growth of 21 million jobs and 12.1 million new immigrants arrived. Despite fundamentally different economic conditions, the level of immigration was remarkably similar for both 10-year periods.

Those who want to destroy our nation are not letting up, and the hour is getting late. How many more reports like this do we need to turn the tide? It seems as if nothing will do that. Kevin MacDonald says it well: The “Right to Migrate” Trumps All. I urge you to read his post in full.

As I said yesterday, what more can one say? We can talk ourselves blue in the face, but the nation-destroyers keep marching on. Only white nations are subject to their wrath, in part because by and large only white nations are decent enough places to attract migrants, and in part because white nations have attracted the envy and hatred of the global elite.

Stupidity

Surfing the net looking for something interesting to write about, I conclude that stupidity is just too prevalent for anyone to even take it all in. Fighting stupidity is the equivalent of the task of Sisyphus: it can fill one's days and at times give one the illusion that one is accomplishing something worthwhile, but in the end the stone rolls back down the hill and the world is stupider than before. The task becomes more Sisyphean and more futile when you realize that the stupid are in charge.

An Excellent Observation on the TSA Gropers and Irradiators

One STDV quotes the head of the TSA:

We all wish we lived in a world where security procedures at airports weren't necessary, but that just isn't the case.

and then makes the following excellent observation:

Obviously, we should simply profile Muslim and Middle Eastern looking individuals. (Did I really have to even say that?) But look at how political correctness so completely restrains the conversation from considering the most obvious and easiest of solutions. "We live in a world", as if America has no autonomy in making decisions. "We live in a world", as if America is but a passive bystander with other entities dictating her behavior. "We live in a world" where the implicit constructs of PC stand as the most sacrosanct of values.

The sad thing is that Mr. Pistole, the TSA chief, along with all the other PC liberals, probably really believe in their own "we live in a world" rhetoric. PC just overcomes the world like a thick fog, and our job is to navigate through it, says that rhetoric. Anyway, that's what they want us to believe.

Intellectual Curiosity, Openness to Experience, and Reading

Inductivist writes on religiosity, the Big 5, and jail time, finding that religiosity and conscientiousness were highly and significantly negatively correlated with having ever been in jail, while openness to experience was significantly and highly positively correlated to having ever been in jail.

I recently stated that I thought that intellectual curiosity was an unmistakable sign of high intelligence (and that since Obama appears to lack intellectual curiosity, he's not highly intelligent). A correspondent of mine who is in a position to know these things told me that openness to experience is only mildly correlated with IQ, therefore implying that intellectual curiosity is perhaps not a very good indication of high intelligence. Since my assertion is based in part on my subjective experience, I should also note that several commenters said that they had known many highly intelligent people who had little curiosity at all.

But if Inductivist's claim that openness to experience is highly and positively correlated to having ever been in jail, we must be discussing something different from openness when we discuss intellectual curiosity, since high IQ is negatively correlated with having been in jail. Herrnstein and Murray had the average IQ of those who had ever been interviewed in jail as 90.

So, what is intellectual curiosity and is it correlated with intelligence? Again subjectively, I would say that intellectual curiosity is marked by reading, as this is the most direct way that someone can access great minds who have explored the world. Those who read, at least read books of some intellectual difficulty, are intellectually curious, and those who don't are not - though I don't know how I'd prove this, it seems one of those obvious facts about the world that don't need much proving. Openness to experience taken as a whole would seem to include things like taking drugs or seeking thrills in such things as extreme sports; while Kanazawa says that intelligent people take drugs more, I doubt that this could be called intellectual curiosity.

The Talent Debate

The Talent Debate, by this writer, at Alternative Right.

In response to a commenter who said that Bobby Fischer would have had an encyclopedic knowledge of chess opening theory, I replied:

What I was getting at with chess is that the rules are quite simple, and once learned, a great intellect will be able to see the implications of those rules. Whereas becoming, say, a world-class historian or biochemist will take many years of study to master the facts one needs to know. This is why child prodigies are often found in areas like math or chess or musical performance: the body of knowledge necessary doesn't require decades to learn, while early talent will be apparent.

One can imagine that a fictional, computer-like mind would instantly see all possible moves in chess once the rules are known. A 12-year-old, say, could be a prodigy at chess and beat much older, experienced players, whereas a 12-year-old will never become a great historian or biochemist.

It's That Time Again: Free Pollard!

Tablet runs another in a continuing series of articles: Free Pollard!

Naturally, Pollard is being kept in prison because of anti-Semitism, and those who wanted him released are only campaigning out of humanitarian reasons.

How Smart Is Obama?

A supposed former White House insider had this to say about Obama and his alleged intelligence:

Well, he takes his meetings just like any other president would, though even then, he seems to lack a certain focus and on a few occasions, actually leaves with the directive that be given a summary of the meeting at a later date. I hear he plays a lot of golf, and watches a lot of television – ESPN mainly. I’ll tell you this – if you want to see President Obama get excited about a conversation, turn it to sports. That gets him interested. You start talking about Congress, or some policy, and he just kinda turns off. It’s really very strange. I mean, we were all led to believe that this guy was some kind of intellectual giant, right? Ivy League and all that. Well, that is not what I saw. Barack Obama doesn’t have a whole lot of intellectual curiosity. When he is off script, he is what I call a real “slow talker”. Lots of ummms, and lots of time in between answers where you can almost see the little wheel in his head turning very slowly. I am not going to say the president is a dumb man, because he is not, but yeah, there was a definite letdown when you actually hear him talking without the script.

I have no difficulty believing this. Obama has hardly had much in the way of a real job, yet he's been constantly promoted above his competence, the most recent promotion being the presidency. He's had a lot riding on being a reasonably smart, articulate, and unaccented black man, so much riding on it that it got him into trouble. Got us into trouble too. I wonder why they won't release any of his grades or test scores?

The mark of a truly intelligent person is, in my estimation, intellectual curiosity, and according to our source, Obama has none. He's wild about sports though. He listens to rap music on his iPod too.

The Shadow Scholar

A fascinating article written by a man who helps students cheat on term papers, The Shadow Scholar, shows that education is truly in a bubble.

I've written toward a master's degree in cognitive psychology, a Ph.D. in sociology, and a handful of postgraduate credits in international diplomacy. I've worked on bachelor's degrees in hospitality, business administration, and accounting. I've written for courses in history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. I've attended three dozen online universities. I've completed 12 graduate theses of 50 pages or more. All for someone else.

He goes on to say that, while writing these treatises in all manner of subjects, he has not once set foot in a library. He has researched everything by Googling. And apparently he gives satisfaction, as most of his customers are quite pleased, and many of them become repeat customers.

So what does this say? For one thing, getting an education in all of the disciplines he's listed doesn't require going to university. Or at least we could say that many universities have such low standards that a reasonably smart person with no previous knowledge of the subject matter can become reasonably proficient in it. Or perhaps we could say - and these statements aren't necessarily incompatible with each other - that a whole hell of a lot of students should not be attending a university.

Or could we say that a multitude of professors are so clueless, overworked, or otherwise hors de combat that they can't tell when a student is cheating, when a formerly dull student start turning in more than adequately written papers? How many of the students in question are there because of AA and diversity programs?

As we can see, the article raises a number of issues, most of which are not even up for discussion in the public arena. Charles Murray has enunciated four simple truths about education:

• Ability varies
• Half the children are below average
• Too many people are going to college
• America's future depends on how we educate the academically gifted

I doubt that Murray's four points have even barely penetrated public consciousness. Instead, all we hear is about closing racial gaps and throwing more and more of our money at education. The article by the paid cheater is more evidence that that's the last thing we need to do.

Irish Young Are Fleeing

From The Guardian, Ireland's young flee abroad as economic meltdown looms. Quote:

Mark Ward, president of Tallaght's student union, says that 1,250 students are leaving Ireland every month. One in five graduates is seeking work outside the country. The Union of Students in Ireland believes that 150,000 students will emigrate in the next five years.

Wait a minute, just a few years ago, Malcolm Gladwell, who in many ways is just a more sophisticated Thomas Friedman, was telling us that Ireland's economic success was all about its dependency ratio. (Wikipedia on the definition of the dependency ratio.) Somehow I doubt that the ratio has changed much since 2006, when Gladwell wrote that piece. If anything, due to massive immigration into Ireland, the dependency ratio should have decreased.

Instead, Ireland's economic miracle is imploding. The whole thing appears to have been based on unsustainable borrowing and perhaps subsidies from the European Union.

By the way, in a smart move, Ireland abolished anchor baby citizenship.

Second, over the period 2003 to 2005, Ireland's citizenship laws were fundamentally changed to eliminate an Irish-born child's automatic right to citizenship when the parents are not Irish nationals.

So what good has all that immigration done for Ireland? It seems more than likely that those Irish students planning to leave and those who've already left are actual Irish; the refugees and asylum seekers from Nigeria and Zimbabwe surely aren't going home. The result will be a nation that is less Irish, more poor, and less educated, as those with talent and smarts seek opportunity abroad.

Immigration and debt: a combination that does more than you wished for.

Soros the Puppet Master?

This seemed to me a bit overwrought, though not without merit. Beck shows his true neocon colors by disparaging Soros for being insufficiently supportive of Israel. I've no idea about the truth of some of the charges, for instance that he profited from Nazi-confiscated Jewish land in Hungary. That he "broke the Bank of England" was undoubtedly not a mere currency play, as he and his partners had determined beforehand that they had more money than the Bank had foreign currency reserves, thus they were able to smash the pound at least partly because they had more staying power.

That Soros wants world government, funds groups working toward it, and dislikes the U.S. as currently constituted is true enough, but whether he's quite as powerful as Beck has it is debatable. Furthermore, he deserves credit for helping fund anti-Communist movements, while Beck seems to disparage him for doing so.

Robert Wenzel refers to this as "The war of the oligarchs", the war being fought between Soros on the one hand and the Koch brothers and Murdoch on the other. Can't we have a choice of some different oligarchs?

Summa Paleolithica

Paul Jaminet, who blogs at the terrific Perfect Health Diet, and his wife Shou-Ching Jaminet, have written a book of the same name, Perfect Health Diet. I got my copy a couple of days ago and have hardly been able to put it down.

The Jaminet's perfect diet is - no surprise here - a low- to moderate-carb, high-fat, Paleo diet. The book is divided into four broad sections: Optimize Macronutrition; Eat Paleo, Not Toxic; Be Well Nourished; and Heal and Prevent Disease.

The first section recommends a diet of 20% carbohydrates, 65% fat, and 15% protein by calories, with variations depending on what exactly one is trying to achieve, from athletics to weight loss to curing disease; the second section discusses the toxicity of common Western foods, namely wheat and other cereal grains, vegetable oils, and fructose; the third section deals with common deficiencies in Western diets and how to overcome them; and the final sections discusses ways to heal disease, including with various kinds of supplementation, short or long and/or ketogenic fasting, and recommendations for healthy weight loss.

The book's main strength is its meticulous scientific documentation. References to the literature are on virtually every page, and the Jaminets never assert anything unconditionally; every claim is backed by scientific evidence. I consider myself fairly well-versed in the science in this area, and I've learned loads of new and important information from this book, and I plan to incorporate it into my dietary and supplementation routine. It's by far the best book on this topic I've ever read.

I can't recommend this book highly enough.

That Swedish Video

Richard Spencer takes note of that repugnant Swedish race propaganda video - which you've no doubt seen already - calling it an example of STIHIE: So This Is How It Ends.

Maybe this is how it begins - the reaction, that is. The video was produced by Swedish State Television - talk about our enemy, the state. If the choice of a spouse or partner is an individual, intensely private one in which no one has any business interfering, which is what liberals have been telling us for years - and to which, for the record, I generally agree - why is the state promoting this? Because they want whites to get on with disappearing, that's why.

The video looks like the Frankfurt School updated for MTV and combined with hip-hop: whites are portrayed as endlessly uptight, but if they were only willing to jettison their staid, backward culture and embrace the gyrating hips of semi-naked colored people, liberation can be theirs, a new world waiting to be born. It's Herbert Marcuse meets 50 Cent.

As Spencer writes, it's difficult to see how anyone could find this video a turn-on. The people who made and underwrote this need to be driven back to the sewers from which they came. C'mon, Sweden, what are you waiting for?

Affordable Family Formation

Steve Sailer writes:

In other words, the historic Republican House advances of 2010 occurred largely in the less densely populated parts of the country. This was as predicted by my theory of Affordable Family Formation. Back in the 1750s, Benjamin Franklin pointed out that the less crowded the country, the lower the land prices and the higher the wages. That means that more people can afford, and at younger ages, to get married and have children. The 21st Century partisan corollary to Franklin’s insight: "The party of family values" thrives most where and when family formation is most affordable. The political implication: urbanizing more and more of the country through mass immigration is bad for Republicans. But Republican politicians have been remarkably slow to grasp that concept.

But doesn't the difference between urban and suburban / small town / rural voters owe something to self-selection? Urban residents will be those most likely to have more education and greater earning power, and thus will be comprised of people who have moved to the cities for the greater opportunities, or will be comprised of their descendants. The converse holds for small town / rural residents. Since political orientations are somewhat heritable, the division of political viewpoints as reflected in blue vs. red state voters would seem a result of natural divisions of people, not the result, or not completely the result of land values and affordability.

Urban residents have a higher opportunity cost of having children not only because of the higher expenses of cities, but because they earn more. It wouldn't seem to follow that if an urban resident was transported to a place with lower land values that he would decide to have more children and change his political orientation to the party of family values. In other words, correlation does not mean causation.

The red/blue state division owes more to the fact that small town / rural residents are more traditional by definition, since they haven't left for the city for the greater opportunities.

America Is Bankrupt

Why did Ben Bernanke decide to print $600 billion (or $900 billion, depending on how you count) into circulation?

The short answer: he had no choice. America is bankrupt. Economist Lawrence Kotlikoff has calculated that the fiscal gap between receipts and debt, factoring in the unfunded future liabilities of Social Security and Medicare is $202 trillion.

The big banks are bankrupt, carrying assets on their books at values the marketplace laughs at, all with the blessing of the Fed and the government. The banks are currently engaged in a giant Ponzi scheme, borrowing money from the Fed at essentially zero interest rates, and turning around and buying Treasury bonds paying up to 4%, generating profits at taxpayer expense.

Shockingly, U.S. banks are again set to pay record bonuses this year. Also shockingly, the big banks may start to pay dividends again.

Meanwhile, blogger Eric de Groot determined that, according to Google search rank, Americans are about 4 to 8 times more concerned about the reintroduction of McDonald's McRib sandwiches than they are about the Federal Reserve, and about 20 times more concerned with McRibs than they are about the price of gold, which hit another record high yesterday of nearly $1400.

Most Americans appear oblivious to what's going on. Whatever wealth they have left is in process of being confiscated. The wealthy elite is the beneficiary, the middle class the loser.

The Knives Are Out

In an unguarded moment, Tim Wise reveals what he really thinks of whites. It's not about helping minorities, or diminishing fictional "white privilege"; no, this is pure hate.

For all y’all rich folks, enjoy that champagne, or whatever fancy ass Scotch you drink.

And for y’all a bit lower on the economic scale, enjoy your Pabst Blue Ribbon, or whatever shitty ass beer you favor.

Whatever the case, and whatever your economic station, know this…

You need to drink up.

And quickly.

And heavily.

Because your time is limited.

Real damned limited.

So party while you can, but mind the increasingly loud clock ticking away in the corners of your consciousness.

The clock that reminds you how little time you and yours have left.

Not much more now.

Wise gloats at the extinction of white America, exults in the rise of the non-white fraction of the population and the decline of the white. He accuses present-day whites of being of the same mind as those who wanted to keep blacks enslaved and keep children working "mines and factories". He revels in our demographic decline.

And in the pantheon of American history, old white people have pretty much always been the bad guys, the keepers of the hegemonic and reactionary flame, the folks unwilling to share the category of American with others on equal terms.

Fine, keep it up. It doesn't matter.

Because you’re on the endangered list.

And unlike, say, the bald eagle or some exotic species of muskrat, you are not worth saving.

In forty years or so, maybe fewer, there won’t be any more white people around who actually remember that Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, Opie-Taylor-Down-at-the-Fishing Hole cornpone bullshit that you hold so near and dear to your heart.

There won’t be any more white folks around who think the 1950s were the good old days, because there won’t be any more white folks around who actually remember them, and so therefore, we’ll be able to teach about them accurately and honestly, without hurting your precious feelings, or those of the so-called “greatest generation” -- a bunch whose white members were by and large a gaggle of miscreants who helped save the world from fascism only to return home and oppose the ending of it here, by doing nothing to lift a finger on behalf of the civil rights struggle.

So to hell with you and all who revere you.

By then, half the country will be black or brown. And there is nothing you can do about it. [...]

Do you hear it?

The sound of your empire dying? Your nation, as you knew it, ending, permanently?

Because I do, and the sound of its demise is beautiful. [Emphasis added.]

You need to read the whole thing to get the flavor of what people like Tim Wise feel and want, which is our destruction. Wise isn't talking about any sort of fringe, he's talking about all whites. He hates us.

Blog Deletion Watch

Thursday: where did he go?

HBD skeptic and undercover brother Obsidian got himself deleted. This business of blog hosting sites deleting blogs for "terms of service" violations is ridiculous. What it means is "we don't like what you said, we're going to delete your blog, and we're not going to so much as do you the courtesy of telling you why."

Interview, Part 2

Robert Stark's second interview with me on the Voice of Reason will be broadcast tonight at 6 P.M. Pacific Time, and will then be available for download. As I write, the link isn't posted, but you ought to be able to find it here when it is. This time we covered men's issues, the current sociosexual landscape, and how these relate to evolutionary psychology.

The Elections: They Said It

John Stewart and Stephen Colbert just spent the weekend calling for civility and mocking fear.

Well, let's see. At the same time, some Muslims were putting bombs on planes in a failed attack, low-IQ immigrants are breeding anchor babies like rabbits and creating the foundation of a permanent Democratic majority, the middle class is being slowly ground down, and nobody seems to get it except a small, powerless fringe on the right - or if they do, they would prefer to go down to permanent defeat than be called "racists."

So, yeah, I'm scared. To the Fear Bunker! *slam*

From The Cold Equations. The left likes to smear Tea Party types as "whites motivated by fear", and white men in particular have been characterized by both the left and feminists as being afraid. But fear is a natural reaction to the realization that one's ethnic group is on the way to becoming a minority in one's own country. Anyone not afraid under such circumstances could be said to be suffering from paranoid delusional optimism. Our side won't get anywhere until many more Americans get scared - which seems to be happening.

One STDV argues that this election is unlike past midterms in which a reigning party was swept out: this time it's different.

This election season was special because so many conservatives were willing to define the "other" - epitomized by the birther and Ground Zero mosque controversies earlier this year.

While PC-addled talking heads will either conveniently shirk this distinction or use it as justification for smear campaigns, the intellectually honest could view this election as not just a referendum on economics. For once, it seems that the public is slowly understanding the confluence of social values, elite academic ideology, and government intrusion.[Emphasis in original.] 

Along with the realization that one's group is becoming a minority is the realization of who the majority will be. The Obama Administration has given us the merest taste of what will happen when whites are a minority arithmetically but still the most productive segment of the population: they'll be see as ripe for the picking.

Marshmallow Skepticism and the Reigning Ideology

John Carney of CNBC is suspicious of the explanation for the results of the Stanford marshmallow experiment - which is also getting some play today by Joe Wiesenthal at Business Insider. Here's Carney - who, by the way, once worked on one of Pat Buchanan's presidential campaigns:

Economists tend to see this as a measure of time preference. Some say it is an indicator of general intelligence. I’ve heard investors talk about this as a test of whether someone has the character to be an investor for the long-term. Even short-term traders have told me it is a good test of the ability to see a strategy through.

I’m not convinced. The first thing that raises a red flag with me is that the marshmallow test better predicts SAT scores than IQ tests. Now, SATs are basically IQ tests. But IQ tests are actually better predictors of general intelligence than SAT scores. This means that both the marshmallow test and the SAT are testing for something in addition to intelligence.

What is it that they are testing? I think it’s compliance with rules set by authorities. The kids who do not eat the marshmallow are not exercising "self-control." They are submitting to outside control. Similarly, I suspect that those who follow instructions carefully probably are able to outperform their IQs on the SATs.

It actually makes sense for the SAT to test for compliant personalities. The SAT is supposed to test for college aptitude, not just general intelligence. Following rules and obeying authority is a critical skill for success not just in educational settings, but in our increasingly rigid society. Conformity to the rules set by authorities and trust that promised rewards will be delivered are probably very important to success.

To put it slightly differently, the SAT seems to be prejudiced against high IQ non-conformists and those skeptical of authority—the kids who didn’t wait for the marshamallow.

Since the marshmallow experiment gave children a choice as to whether to eat the marshmallow soon or late, it would seem that whether to obey authority or not doesn't enter into it. Of course, the experimenter could have given off subtle clues and hints that told the child that he wanted him to refrain from eating the marshmallow, but we don't know that.

The SAT can be studied for, while IQ tests cannot; therefore, the other main quality which the SAT probably determines is precisely what the marshmallow experiment purportedly measures, i.e. time preference and (lack of) impulsivity. Both are correlated with IQ but separate from it, which would explain why the marshmallow experiment is even more correlated with SAT results than IQ tests are.

But, whether the test measures impulsivity, obedience to authority, IQ, or some combination thereof, the important takeaway here is that a test given to four-year-olds can more or less accurately predict future success - or lack of it. The reigning ideology has it that people, and especially children, are well nigh infinitely malleable - Head Start! Improve our schools! Leave no child behind! - yet the experiment shows that notion to be seriously flawed at best, totally invalid at worst. (My bet is on "totally invalid".)

In his book, We Are Doomed, (which you should buy and read, it's excellent), John Derbyshire quotes Deborah Solomon of the NY Times, who in the course of an interview with Charles Murray, said, "I believe that given the opportunity, most people could do most anything." (To which Murray replied, "You're out of touch with reality in that regard.")

Solomon couldn't have given a better precis of the reigning ideology in education. The significance of the Stanford marshmallow experiment is that it shows how profoundly wrong and damaging that ideology is.

Resveratrol: Cure All?

Therapeutic potential of resveratrol: the in vivo evidence is a paper by Baur and Sinclair, the latter being the discoverer of resveratrol's effects on longevity and one of the leading researchers in the field. That they discuss the in vivo evidence is important because the in vitro experiments, as they note in the paper, "have met with almost universal success" in terms of favorable outcomes, but resveratrol is rapidly metabolized and eliminated in living organisms, so it's not clear how test tube results will translate into real life.

That being said, the in vivo evidence is remarkable: resveratrol "inhibits carcinogenesis at multiple stages"; it has "cardioprotective effects" through decrease of platelet aggregation and increase in vasodilation; it decreases inflammation, which is a central component of diseases of aging and civilization; and increases longevity in a number of species apparently acting as a calorie restriction mimetic. Other researchers have found antiviral and antibacterial effects.

So, why would resveratrol be such a potent antidote against virtually everything that ails you? In the Aristotelian sense of final cause, one explanation has been that of xenohormesis. Resveratrol is elaborated by certain plants as they undergo stress, and the idea behind xenohormesis is that other organisms have evolved the capability of detecting that a plant is experiencing stressful conditions; therefore the organism prepares itself for bad times to come.

In the sense of what causes resveratrol's effects, this would seem to be related to Mikhail Blagosklonny's theory that aging is a quasi-program. By modulating the aging process, resveratrol also modulates diseases and conditions of aging, including cancer, heart disease, poor immune function, etc.

I've read a number of proponents of the paleo diet scoff at resveratrol as a plant-based supplement we don't need. But the fact is that the biochemical pathways affected by resveratrol are highly conserved: from yeast to humans, the cells of virtually all organisms are affected by resveratrol in the same way, through the same pathways.

One... Million... Visits

Sometime today, the odometer on the ol' Sitemeter will turn over and show one million total visits since this blog's inception. It's taken awhile, over six years. And, as Dr. Evil discovered, one million ain't what it used to be. The number of pageviews is closer to two million, but I've always thought of that metric as somewhat padded, so I'm sticking with the visits.

Over the past couple of years, readership has risen to around 1500 a day, and while I've always had a gathering of regulars here, over these last few years these have increased and the blog has begun to feel, at least for me, like something interesting and perhaps important is going on here. Hopefully it isn't important enough to attract the attention of the FBI, ADL, $PLC, SEIU, CHP, or WCTU, but just shy of that.

Thanks to all of you who read and comment; you're what makes writing this blog worthwhile.