American English Teacher Abuses and Assaults Koreans

By popular demand, here's the viral video of a black American abusing and assaulting a Korean couple - in Korea. In the tradition of BBB, the shocking thing here isn't the behavior of the black man, but the fact that he didn't get jumped and beaten to a pulp by the Korean men on the bus. What, no solidarity? This guy could cause a diplomatic incident.

Gucci Little Piggy has also posted on this. Some explanatory commentary can be found here and here. It's also amazing how many commenters at the last two links attempt to play the race card and excuse his actions.

Beauty and Intelligence

An economics prof writing in the NY Times wants to make discrimination against the ugly an actionable matter.

In addition to whatever personal pleasure it gives you, being attractive also helps you earn more money, find a higher-earning spouse (and one who looks better, too!) and get better deals on mortgages. Each of these facts has been demonstrated over the past 20 years by many economists and other researchers. The effects are not small: one study showed that an American worker who was among the bottom one-seventh in looks, as assessed by randomly chosen observers, earned 10 to 15 percent less per year than a similar worker whose looks were assessed in the top one-third — a lifetime difference, in a typical case, of about $230,000.

Beauty is as much an issue for men as for women. While extensive research shows that women’s looks have bigger impacts in the market for mates, another large group of studies demonstrates that men’s looks have bigger impacts on the job.

In an effort to do away with any last vestige of discrimination in society, his remedy:

A more radical solution may be needed: why not offer legal protections to the ugly, as we do with racial, ethnic and religious minorities, women and handicapped individuals?

The problem here when it comes to employment is that good-looking people are more intelligent. As usual, this consideration, that people differ in their underlying abilities and that these differences result in different outcomes, such as higher income, is one that otherwise intelligent people refuse to consider. The only reason that ugly people earn less money must be irrational discrimination.

The New Landlord

A Huge Housing Bargain - But Not for You:

The largest transfer of wealth from the public to private sector is about to begin. The federal government will be bulk-selling the massive portfolio of foreclosed homes now owned by HUD, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to private investors -- vulture funds.

These homes, which are now the property of the U.S. government, the U.S. taxpayer, U.S. citizens collectively, are going to be sold to private investor conglomerates at extraordinarily large discounts to real value.

You and I will not be allowed to participate. These investors will come from the private-equity and hedge-fund community, Goldman Sachs(GS_) and its derivatives, as well as foreign sovereign wealth funds that can bring a billion dollars or more to each transaction.

In the process, these investors will instantaneously become the largest improved real estate owners and landlords in the world. The U.S. taxpayer will get pennies on the dollar for these homes and then be allowed to rent them back at market rates.

Great, so now, Goldman Sachs and others will become our landlords. Of course, you can't expect these investors to turn down an offer like this; the problem lies in our government, which in a sense has been captured by Wall Street and the big banks. Ever since Hank Paulson, the Treasury Secretary and former head of Goldman Sachs, started to pick and choose who would survive and who would go down during the financial crisis, we've had government collusion with the banks. Now the banks look set to become collectively the biggest landlords in the country, which doesn't bode well for an alleged democracy.

Love Who You Are

Unamusement Park has posted several images like the one above that are intended to be used in a flyer campaign. They were created by a reader of his who believes that the great mass of white people need something a bit easier on the psyche to counter "sixty years of 24/7/365 propaganda by the mightiest mind-control machine ever created"; easier, that is, than blogs like this one or any number of related ones. I particularly like the above image for its aesthetic qualities.

That said, I feel agnostic as to its value, since I don't feel that I have a good grasp on how the ordinary white person views issues of white identity. Therefore I thought it might be useful to get opinions from readers. What do you think? I do like the prominent expression of "love", obviously opposed to "hate"; on the other hand, that "whites have a right to exist" seems rather weak beer - of course we do.

Update: The people (commenters) have spoken, and given the image an overwhelming thumbs down, mainly because of its allegedly, uh, fascist overtones. That was certainly the last thing on my mind when I put it up, and the last thing that I want on my site, so I've taken it down. You can of course still see it at UP, along with the others.

Ron Paul

A commenter suggested that I don't write about Ron Paul because either I dislike him for some reason or I'm not terribly well-informed. While I don't dislike him, I'll confess to being beyond the stage, rightly or wrongly, where I think a certain politician can save us. Most of Paul's supporters, as far as I can tell, support him with a messianic fervor, which to someone like me is a distinct turn-off, plus he appears to have a few goofy supporters, such as some Truthers.

That being said, in my view Paul is the one candidate who would shake things up in the needed direction. He is against American imperialism, against American insolvency, and says some pretty strong things against the invasion of America.

A nation without borders is no nation at all. After decades of misguided policies America has now become a free-for-all. Our leaders betrayed the middle class which is forced to compete with welfare-receiving illegal immigrants who will work for almost anything, just because the standards in their home countries are even lower.

If these policies are not reversed, the future is grim. A poor, dependent and divided population is much easier to rule than a nation of self-confident individuals who can make a living on their own and who share the traditions and values that this country was founded upon.

Paul is against amnesty and birthright citizenship and, while he appears to say little about legal immigration, his position on illegal immigration is stronger and more forthright than any other candidate of either major party.

The usual suspects, namely the elites and our so-called free press, hate him; others on the right also hate him because he believes that America's foreign policy shouldn't be so focused on Israel and the Middle East. Those are indications that Paul is doing something right, in my estimation.

Paul has made a name for himself in his calls for sound money and his desire to abolish the Federal Reserve - which some see as "coded anti-Semitism". (That's probably why constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein just joined his campaign.) While sound money is indeed very important, to my mind the national question is the big issue. Paul comes close but isn't quite there. Nonetheless he looks promising on that issue.

Libya, Venezuela, and Peak Gold

Did the West attempt to overthrow Gaddafi to get its hands on Libya's gold? If it didn't, Hugo Chavez's recent demand for the return of Venezuela's gold makes the securing of Libya's gold another compelling advantage for doing so.

Libya's central bank holds around 144 tons of gold. Gold is the key to financing Gaddafi's struggle. That 144 tons of gold, at today's price of $1830/oz., is worth over $8 billion. (I'm assuming a "ton" in this case is a metric ton. If not, subtract 10% from the total.)

What does this have to do with Chavez and Venezuela? Chavez wants his gold in Venezuelan hands; it's currently being held by the Bank of England. In turn, the BOE has probably leased out much or all of this gold, some of it said to be used to back the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD).

Much or most of the world's gold, except that in strong private hands, is leased out. Since gold has no associated cash flow, central banks and bullion banks like to lease it, thus gaining an income from it. As a consequence, gold trades on a fractional-reserve basis, i.e. the vast majority of the "gold" traded is paper, at 100 to 1 basis: 100 ounces of paper gold are traded for every ounce of gold in the vaults.

What Chavez has done by calling for the repatriation of Venezuela's gold has the potential to start a run on the gold banks. It's the equivalent of a large depositor showing up at a bank and demanding his money, when in reality it's been loaned out. The bank, in this case the Bank of England and other holders of the gold, among them perhaps J.P Morgan and HSBC, need to come up with the gold. That could be very difficult.

Besides that, gold held by the U.S. hasn't been audited since the Eisenhower years. The suspicion is that most of it has been leased out, either to save the backsides of the bullion banks, to suppress the price, or both. Even were all the gold to physically be present, it may have multiple paper claims on it.

If the U.S. government and its allies could get its hands on Libya's gold, that could go a long way toward making up a critical shortfall. Despite the fact that gold trades freely on various exchanges, and that gold may be readily purchased in relatively small amounts - increments of a few hundred ounces - gold in size cannot be so easily bought on the open market. FOFOA has claimed that in the world of central banks, gold already trades at a price much higher than that quoted for small amounts, the central bank price being on the order of tens of thousands per ounce. In other words, if one wants to buy one hundred tons, you cannot get it at the quoted exchange price.

Early Sexual Maturity and Dads vs. Cads

Boys Reaching Sexual Maturity Earlier Than Ever (via hbd chick).

Boys may be reaching sexual maturity earlier than ever, according to a new study that uses mortality data to estimate a young man's peak testosterone-driven phase of risky behavior.

According to this estimate, boys have been maturing about 2.5 months earlier per decade since at least the 1700s.

The result, study author Joshua Goldstein said in a statement, is that "being 18 today is like being 22 in 1800."

The method by which the age of sexual maturity was measured was pretty ingenious, at least I'd never heard of this before: by finding out at which age young men have the highest death rates, higher testosterone causing an increase in risky behavior.

To estimate puberty onset indirectly, Goldstein, a demographer at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, turned to mortality data. Across cultures, researchers have found a point at the end of male adolescence when mortality suddenly shoots up. This peak, called the "accident hump," correlates with the time of peak testosterone production in men. With high testosterone, young men are more likely to engage in risky shows of machismo and recklessness, increasing their death rate noticeably. [10 Most Destructive Human Behaviors]

Using detailed mortality data from Sweden, Denmark, the United Kingdom and Italy, Goldstein and his colleagues tracked the accident hump as far back as 1751. They found that this high-risk period (and, presumably, peak testosterone production) has been steadily shifting downward by about 2.5 months per decade. Other studies suggest puberty for girls has been arriving about 3.6 months earlier per decade since the 1800s.

Anyway, it's been known - or thought at least - that the age of puberty has been undergoing a secular decline, and the reasons given have usually been better nutrition and fewer childhood diseases. While these seem plausible enough and probably do play a role, another cause can perhaps be found in a certain breeding pattern, namely "dads vs. cads".

It's known that girls whose parents have divorced experience puberty earlier than those whose parents have remained together. (This is discussed in Miller and Kanazawa's book, Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters.) It shouldn't be surprising that the age of puberty is subject to both genetic and environmental influences, the best guesstimate being about half for each. Two theories on on why the girls of divorced parents have earlier puberty focus on 1) the environment, namely the absence of the father, and 2) genetics, namely that parents who get divorced are more likely to be more promiscuous and pass the genes that make them so on to their children.

As for earlier puberty among boys, it seems that the same sort of dynamic could be at work. If lower IQ people and those with lower conscientiousness are having more (surviving) children than those with higher IQ and conscientiousness, as may have been the case since the start of the Industrial Revolution, then whatever genes that might predispose to these traits would be increasing in the population. If that is the case, it makes evolutionary sense for boys to mature earlier, so they can get on with the business of reproduction.

That's my theory anyway.

Black vs. Yellow

Both the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal have stories about the recent basketball brawl between Georgetown and a Chinese team playing in China. In all of their semi-learned analysis of the fight, the words "race", "black", and "African-American" make no appearance whatsoever. (Though obviously, "Chinese" does.) Take a look at the photo above, and tell yourself that the races of the participants aren't relevant to a story about a fight between two sports teams. That the words I noted aren't mentioned is testimony to the Orwellian unreality that the media tries to pass off as truth.

The media is only interested in race when it can blame white people for something, and in this case that wasn't possible. If the team opposing Georgetown had been all or mainly white, you can bet that charges of racism against that team would be flying. Regardless of who threw the first punch - a commenter on this blog thought it was a Georgetown player, but I couldn't see that on the video - it isn't terribly hard to imagine that the Chinese were more than happy to fight a black team, and in fact since PC has very little purchase in China, they would have had less incentive to pull their punches than a white team would. But the media won't say that. Only whites can be racist.

Besides all that, college sports have corrupted higher education through their lowering of standards, addiction to the money they bring in, and the diversion from the real purpose of universities.

Roundup

Buy some cheap foreign land in a sunny Mediterranean country, visit from time to time with your fellow middle-aged woman-friend, have your 17-year-old daughter hook up with one of the locals... then have you and your friend get murdered by the daughter's boyfriend. Wait, aren't women supposed to be able to go anywhere these days? One love, and all.

Jobs Americans won't do, part 13: Suspected members of an Iraqi drug-trafficking organization are arrested:

By Robert J. Lopez and Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times

August 19, 2011
Sixty reputed members of an Iraqi drug-trafficking organization in El Cajon have been arrested and authorities seized more than $630,000 in cash, 3,500 pounds of marijuana, dozens of high-powered firearms and several explosive devices, law enforcement officials said Thursday.

The organization was run out of a social club and has suspected links to the ruthless Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico and an Iraqi organized crime syndicate in Detroit, according to law enforcement officials.

The social club, located on East Main Street, has been a "hub of criminal activity conducted by Iraqi organized crime," El Cajon police Chief Pat Sprecco said.

According to authorities, over the last decade the club has been the center of other investigations for alleged drug sales, gambling, car theft and gun smuggling. [...]

Over the years, thousands of Chaldean Christians fled Iraq and arrived in the United States to start new lives in cities such as Detroit and El Cajon, where about one-quarter of the roughly 96,000 residents have Iraqi ancestry.

Mother fearing eviction chooses £1m council house over son accused of looting as he is remanded rather than bailed to her home. The headline pretty much says it all.

Dream Act students won't be deportation targets, officials say. More treason from the third Bush Administration. (Maybe it's the fourth, if you count elections.)

The in-flight magazine of Davos-Man has a conniption over immigration enforcement in several red states.

Israel is winning the birth race. (HT: Israeli Water Engineer.)

That Which Must Not Be Named

Over at the financial site Jim Sinclair's MineSet, we get an excerpt from a report on globalization and global chaos. As an exercise for the reader, see if you can figure out the important element omitted from this report. First paragraph:

As social and political upheaval and civil unrest have spread across the globe, it has become clear that the problems facing Western countries are neither transient nor temporary. Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States share a common set of problems over and above economic decline and sovereign debt issues linked to problems of the global financial system. The issues surrounding civil unrest comprise a lack of economic opportunity, political disenfranchisement,erosion of individual rights, a systematic lack of accountability from local authorities to national leaders, deteriorating credibility of political and financial leaders and disintegrating national government legitimacy. The reason that the above problems are common to Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States is that they are all linked to globalization.

Since this is a really tough question, so tough that apparently even astute financial analysts whose job it is to help people make money have missed it, I'll supply the answer. The governments of Europe, the UK, and the US, as part of the globalization campaign, are engaged in a so-far successful attempt to replace the native populations of their nations. And, not only are they replacing the native peoples with foreign colonists, but most of the colonists are not, to put it mildly, up to the intellectual, law-abiding, cooperative, and productive caliber of the natives.

Since it's scarcely credible that analysts who make their living by trying to be smarter than the average bear could miss something so obvious to even the most casual of observers, we're left with a couple of conclusions as to the reasons for the missing information. One, that mentioning race and/or immigration is so out of bounds, so much a manifestation of thoughtcrime, that they dare not do so, even if they claim to be offering solutions pursuant to their diagnosis of the problem. Two, that they themselves are part of the problem; that they approve of mass immigration and that the refusal to mention any of its problems means that they are arguing in very bad faith.

Probably it's a combination of both. They approve of the globalization campaign of the Davos-men, including the immigration part. After all, money is to be made! But to openly admit that white countries might be better off if they remained white - or Christian, Christian - is a thought that they realize that they must not utter.

Also, no one can understand the global economy without a knowledge of human biodiversity. One would think that with such phenomena as African underdevelopment or the economic growth of China or the continual "achievement gap" in the US staring them in the face, financial analysts and economists would actually, you know, notice something. Apparently not.

Volatility Only Matters to the Downside

With the Dow Jones Industrials down 468 points as I write, take a look at a news item from this morning: NYSE braces for volatile open:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Stock Exchange and NYSE Amex Cash Markets on Thursday invoked a rule to smooth trading at the market open, as futures pointed to a sharp drop in the major indexes.

Rule 48 allows the exchange to suspend price indications that help determine the floor price at the open during regular sessions. Bypassing the requirement helps speed the beginning of trading.

Among the triggers for invoking the rule are "substantial activity in the futures market before the open," according to the exchange's website.

U.S. stock index futures pointed to a sharply lower open as a report that regulators were intensifying their review of European banks' U.S. units shook up investors.

Funny, when the market does 400 points to the upside, no one ever seems to worry about "volatility", though by definition that's just as volatile. TPTB only want stocks to go up, and they'll put roadblocks in the way of those wishing to sell. They're desperate for assets to keep rising in value so that the global Ponzi scheme doesn't unravel. Another recent pice of news is that several European nations are banning short-selling. Strange that no one ever bans buying.

Luckiest Generation

Economist Mark Perry has a post on his Carpe Diem blog to the effect that young Americans are the "luckiest generation in history" on the grounds that their minimum wage summer jobs can buy more high tech goodies than ever, and especially compared with a couple of generations ago. The list of cheap goodies - computers, iPods, Kindles, and the like - is indeed impressive, and they are cheap. For the purposes of this post, I'll leave aside the issue of whether a relatively high level of material prosperity signifies good fortune in the absence of other values and non-material things; one is free to take or leave the frankly amazing products of capitalism, and one ought to be glad that they're available.

But, for what does the young person of today have to pay much more? This is where reality sets in. Education: college tuition and other expenses have climbed over the past few decades at a rate much higher than inflation and now constitute a very significant expense. Many graduates end up with huge debts. Since the Supreme Court ruled in the Griggs v. Duke Power case that IQ tests are basically verboten (because of disparate impact), most young people who want a shot at a middle-class job must attend college.

Health care. While health care isn't usually a high priority for young people, when they need it they have to pay much more for it. Granted again, the care they receive is likely to be much better, but that isn't much of a consolation if you can't afford it.

Housing. We're still dealing with the effects of the housing bubble, caused by the government's insane push to give mortgages to people who shouldn't have had them, plus the government's consequent and also insane money printing and ultra-low interest rates.

Citizenship. What's the value of being a citizen of the U.S.? I should say it's worth a lot less now than in the recent past - say, when I was young. Once our birthright, it is now given away freely to anyone who can manage to get here, analogous to a corporation that constantly dilutes its shareholders, making the shares less valuable. (Especially if the new shareholders vote themselves goodies from the corporate treasury.)

I suppose that Mr. Perry might reply that the things just mentioned show that the government manages to mess up practically everything it touches, while the profit motive produces ever more advanced products and services that people really want. For the most part I would agree. But when the government has managed to screw up the good thing that used to be the U.S., referring to today's young people as the luckiest generation seems a stretch.

Random Thought: More Crime and Enforcement

Some time ago I wrote that the government, as agent of the people, doesn't have the same motivations to fight crime as the people themselves do. My reading of the situation is that the people want much more enforcement of crime than is actually the case, but that due to the principal-agent problem, they get less than they want.

It's been brought up here many times by commenters that the average ne'er-do-well criminal or aspiring criminal probably doesn't view, say, a one-year jail sentence as being all that bad. Therefore the usual punishments deter criminals and would-be criminals less than they do your ordinary law-abiding citizen, for whom a one-year jail sentence would be devastating, to family, career, finances, and one's own psychological well-being. It would seem that a remedy for that would be to match the punishment to the psychological profile of the criminal. (Not that this will ever happen; just sayin'.) One would have to enact objectively more severe punishments on, say, career criminals. This actually does happen to a limited extent, as one's criminal history can be used to prescribe heavier sentences.

I've read that in certain European countries, fines for traffic violations vary according to the net worth or perhaps income of the perp; one example from Finland comes to mind, in which a wealthy speeder received an enormous fine for speeding, something on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is justified on the same grounds I outlined above: a mere $200 or so fine is nothing to a centimillionaire. So, "equal" punishment demands a heavier fine. (Progressive income taxes are justified similarly.) In a sense we already have a system like the one mentioned, in which punishments (and taxes) vary according to the net worth (or social status) of the offender. But this system assumes a low "base" level, so that effectively only the wealthier are subject to the vagaries of this system.

Career criminals and other riffraff shrug off sentences at which the normal citizen is horrified. Drunk drivers routinely disregard their fines and punishments and offend over and over. A new science of deterrence is needed. Perhaps more to the point: what does equal protection under the law mean? Sentencing, say, a white-collar criminal to 5 years in the slammer is arguably a much harsher punishment than it looks like on the surface, since it will be much more devastating to his overall well-being than the same sentence would be to a career criminal.

Whites "Easy Targets"

At VDare, "Anonymous Attorney" has a post on potential hate crime charges in Wisconsin against members of a huge black mob that specifically targeted whites, Whites “Easy Targets”–Tell Me About It. In it, he concludes:

I had to chuckle at the succinct accuracy of the black teenager’s assessment of whites. They really are “easy targets”, and not just while wandering around munching on corn dogs at the county fair. They’re easy targets of immigration hucksters, legislative strong-arming by other racial and ethnic groups, other hate crimes, you name it. They’re easy targets of media cover-ups and media smears. They’re easy targets of the notion that they’ve got no group interests, basically.

I agree with "Anonymous Attorney", but if he reads this, I have a question for him: other than writing pseudonymous blog posts, what the f*ck are you doing about it? Other than cowering, that is? You complain that your fellow whites are "easy targets", meaning that they lack the intestinal fortitude to, say, ensure that perpetrators of mob violence against them are properly prosecuted; but unless you're doing something about it, you're guilty of gross hypocrisy.

Elsewhere, Edmund Connelly asks "what it will take" for white people to "wake up to the clear and present danger" facing them. He recounts a couple of stories, one of a beating, another of a murder, both against whites and clearly racially motivated, and the members of his own family who wrung their hands and refused to mention the unmentionable truths about these cases. Question for Mr. Connelly: they're your relatives, so did you say anything to them? The passive way you describe the situation makes it seem as if you did not.

See the problem here? We have cowards going around accusing other whites of being cowards. We have people who say that they'd be fired or expelled or whatever complaining about inaction on the part of others. Look, if it's true that they'd be fired - for the most part doubtful, in my view - then they are acting no different from the legions of internet commentators who constantly urge others to action.

"Lucky" Lottery Winner a Stanford Statistics Ph.D.

For no other reason that this sort of story warms my heart: 'Lucky' woman who won lottery four times outed as Stanford University statistics PhD:

She was called the luckiest woman in the world.

But now that luck is being called into question by some who think that winning the lottery four times is more than just a coincidental spell of good fortune.

Joan R. Ginther, 63, from Texas, won multiple million dollar payouts each time.
Lady luck? Joan Ginther has won the Texas lottery four times, but is it remarkable good fortune or beating the system?

First, she won $5.4 million, then a decade later, she won $2million, then two years later $3million and in the summer of 2010, she hit a $10million jackpot.

The odds of this has been calculated at one in eighteen septillion and luck like this could only come once every quadrillion years.

Harper's reporter Nathanial Rich recently wrote an article about Ms Ginther, which calls the the validity of her 'luck' into question.

First, he points out, Ms Ginther is a former math professor with a PhD from Stanford University specialising in statistics.

A professor at the Institute for the Study of Gambling & Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada, Reno, told Mr Rich: 'When something this unlikely happens in a casino, you arrest ‘em first and ask questions later.'

Although Ms Ginther now lives in Las Vegas, she won all four of her lotteries in Texas.

Three of her wins, all in two-year intervals, were by scratch-off tickets bought at the same mini mart in the town of Bishop.

Mr Rich details the myriad ways in which Ms Ginther could have gamed the system - including the fact that she may have figured out the algorithm that determines where a winner is placed in each run of scratch-off tickets.

He believes that after Ms Ginther figured out the algorithm, it wouldn’t be difficult to determine where the tickets would be shipped, as the shipping schedule is apparently fixed, and there were a few sources she could have found it out from.

According to Forbes, the residents of Bishop, Texas, seem to believe God was behind it all.

The Texas Lottery Commission told Mr Rich that Ms Ginther must have been 'born under a lucky star', and that they don’t suspect foul play.

Couple of things: the article quotes someone as saying, "When something this unlikely happens in a casino, you arrest ‘em first and ask questions later." But unless some pertinent information has been omitted, the "lucky" winner is guilty only of being very smart, plus having the right tools in her kit to know how to crack the lottery.

Also, lotteries have often been called a tax on stupidity. With the winner of so many millions now being shown to be extremely smart, this makes the remark about stupidity all the more true, since all those lottery ticket buyers have funded the smart chick's winnings.

Ginther follows in the tradition of Ed Thorp, the UC Irvine math professor who discovered the card counting method for winning at blackjack, and wrote the book "Beat the Dealer". After sweeping up piles of money in Las Vegas, Thorp then realized where the real money was to be made, Wall Street, and over the course of a couple of decades of running an investment fund, made several hundred millions of dollars.

Nature and Nurture

Genome-wide association studies establish that human intelligence is highly heritable and polygenic. This is a new paper from Ian Deary et al. As Deary is one of the world's leading IQ scientists, attention must be paid. The abstract:

General intelligence is an important human quantitative trait that accounts for much of the variation in diverse cognitive abilities. Individual differences in intelligence are strongly associated with many important life outcomes, including educational and occupational attainments, income, health and lifespan. Data from twin and family studies are consistent with a high heritability of intelligence, but this inference has been controversial. We conducted a genome-wide analysis of 3511 unrelated adults with data on 549 692 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and detailed phenotypes on cognitive traits. We estimate that 40% of the variation in crystallized-type intelligence and 51% of the variation in fluid-type intelligence between individuals is accounted for by linkage disequilibrium between genotyped common SNP markers and unknown causal variants. These estimates provide lower bounds for the narrow-sense heritability of the traits. We partitioned genetic variation on individual chromosomes and found that, on average, longer chromosomes explain more variation. Finally, using just SNP data we predicted ~1% of the variance of crystallized and fluid cognitive phenotypes in an independent sample (P=0.009 and 0.028, respectively). Our results unequivocally confirm that a substantial proportion of individual differences in human intelligence is due to genetic variation, and are consistent with many genes of small effects underlying the additive genetic influences on intelligence.

Naturally, this paper will have the effect of silencing all objections to the heritability of intelligence. On forums and blogs all across the land, all will concede that not only are IQ tests valid and measure something real, but that intelligence is highly heritable. Efforts to close the achievement gap in schools will now cease. The NY Times will weigh in, declaring that all the money thrown at Head Start and No Child Left Behind has been in vain.

Right. The new discourse on "achievement" will likely emphasize the fact that, now that we know that around 50% heritability of intelligence is a lower bound to the actual figure, the environment accounts for the other half (at a maximum), so we'll have to double down on efforts to change environments. The problem here is that most of the environmental influence comes from the non-shared environment, i.e. it doesn't have much to do with the family and in fact no one seems to have a good handle on what it consists of. Probably nutrition is important, but since Americans are bigger and have longer life expectancy than ever, the limits of nutrition in regard to brain development may be approaching a limit.

Welcome to the Apocalypse

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost 1333 points over the past 5 trading days, a drop of around 11%. Standard and Poor's has downgraded the creditworthiness of the U.S. government. A race riot continues in London, and black flash mobs have become all the rage in this country. (In the understatement of the year, "Home Secretary Theresa May has condemned the riots as 'sheer criminality'".) Could it get worse?

Walter Russell Mead, a respected, ultra-sober columnist, thinks so. (American Tinderbox. Thanks to Severn (I think it was)). Mead calmly notes the flash mob problem as well as the game of "knockout king", and also says,

The national media are doing their best to avoid looking too closely at this disturbing phenomenon, and perhaps for good reason. What the United States doesn’t need is a media firestorm that triggers copycat violence.

I think he gives the media too much credit here. They're not covering the flash mobs because they don't want to give figurative ammunition to the Right.

Mead also notes that there's neither the will nor money for more social programs, and they don't work anyway.

Traditional liberals come in at this point to argue for spending more money on the traditional social intervention programs in the inner city. This is unlikely to happen; there is not much evidence that these programs accomplish very much — and there isn’t any money. Even taxing “millionaires and billionaires” to the eyeballs won’t manage out of control entitlements — much less inaugurate yet another “Marshall Plan for the cities”.

The United States badly needs a workable and affordable post-Great Society approach to the inner cities. Unfortunately, we don’t have this yet and it is quite possible that we will face some testing times as a result.

But there is another trend that bears watching. There are a great many angry and frustrated people in this country who have lost faith in their national leaders and they aren’t Black. They are, in fact, white. [Here Mead has an excursus on why he capitalizes black but not white, and while he seems sincere, his method strikes me as another way of saying that there's no such thing as an American ethnic group.]

Here's the good part - maybe he's been reading the Alt Right:

Nevertheless, in the short to medium term there is the potential for trouble. Whites as well as Blacks have lost faith in the government and the intellectual and cultural elites. Some whites resent what they see as excessive privilege for Blacks reflected in affirmative action. Many believe that the federal government and the (largely white) upper middle class establishment wants to marginalize the traditional white majority in the US through a combination of deliberate immigration policy aimed at reducing white preponderance in the population and by favoring immigrants and non-whites for education and employment.

For people who feel this way, the reluctance of the mainstream media to cover racial flash mobs is sinister and disturbing. If there were no racial dimension to these mobs they would surely receive much greater publicity and there would be much stroking of chins and learned talk about what the phenomenon meant. Even if there weren’t many examples, our naturally sensationalist media would hype the story to make it big. Youth, violence, Facebook and YouTube: this is an explosive combination and it is exactly the kind of story circulation chasing news outlets would feature.

Given America’s history and the lurid attraction race still holds for the public mind, the racial dimension of (many but not all of) these incidents makes this an even more compelling story. Certainly if random mobs of white kids were attacking peaceful Blacks going about their daily business the media and the commentariat would be deeply engaged. The articles I’ve linked to have been carefully couched and worded in ways that downplay the drama and the human interest. It is understandable and even meritorious that this is so; as I suggested at the beginning of this post no sane person would want to increase the chance that what is still a marginal and occasional pattern of behavior would go viral and enter the mainstream — and to vary the metaphor still further, mainstream media attention is like oxygen for this kind of potential firestorm.

But to a significant number of Americans out there, this restraint looks like just another case of an anti-white elitist media bending over backward to hide the real truth from the American people. Should this phenomenon grow and should the media continue to downplay both the extent and the racial nature of the violence, look for a deep and angry response. Many American whites are young, angry, poorly educated and male. So are many Spanish speaking immigrants. These guys also know how to organize a mob on Facebook.

Should the economy and stocks keep tanking, expect more white people to see this, and more of the "vulnerable" to take out their frustrations via riots and mobs.

PS: Here's another article on the same topic that has appeared in a mainstream conservative site, The American Thinker: The Taboo on Mentioning Black Mob Violence.

Vibrancy in the UK

(Photo from Mail Online.)

London just saw some of its worst violence in years and, strangely enough, many or most of the reports I've seen honestly describe or at least allude to the fact that this was a race riot. (The LA Times being a notable exception, describing the rioters as "Londoners".) Even the NY Times reported,

The riot escalated into a pitched battle between lines of riot police officers, some on horses, and hundreds of mostly young black men, in small gangs of four or five, many with hooded sweatshirts pulled over their heads and bandannas over their faces. The young men arrived in clumps, on foot, by bicycle or on mopeds. Tottenham is an area of mostly poor minorities; a significant portion of the population is black. “How many black people have to die around here?” asked one of the youths, referring to Mr. Duggan. He gave his name as Pablo. “I hate the police,” he said.

The news media probably feel that the cat is out of the bag and that they can't hide the reality here, as they're trying to do in the case of black flash mobs in the U.S.

So, how's all that vibrancy working out in the UK? The pro-immigration forces constantly tell us how immigrants are needed, but whatever the need, their children only seem to feel the need for handouts and criminal activity. Importing "Afro-Caribbean" people ranks right up there with importing Pakistanis as one of the biggest mistakes Britain has ever made.

Mob Attacks Whites in Milwaukee

Scare at State Fair: witnesses describe mobs, some people claim racially-charged attacks. This is just a continuation of the low-level war being waged against whites by mobs of young blacks, the series of which has been ably covered by a number of other bloggers. What is new and different here is the frank reporting in the article, which quotes a number of witnesses to the effect that the mob specifically targeted whites, and thus the article acknowledges the racial nature of the attacks. If not a first, this must be one of the few times in the media when this issue has been openly and honestly stated.

Much to my surprise, I find no mention of this in the NY Times. At the times of both the Duke rape hoax and the Tawana Brawley kidnap hoax, crimes that would have been left to local media were splashed all over the front pages of the mainstream for months on end, the reason of course being that they were alleged evidence for racist acts perpetrated by whites. But the black flash mobs are somehow flying under the radar of our august media institutions.

Here's the first part of the article:

Zimbabwe Needs Food

UN: More than $480 million needed for Zimbabwe aid:

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — The United Nations says the southern African country of Zimbabwe needs more than $480 million this year in food, health and humanitarian aid.

Alain Noudehou, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in the capital, Harare, said Tuesday an estimated 1.4 million people still need food handouts because of crop failures, erratic rain and other economic pressures affecting daily incomes.

In a midyear aid review, Noudehou said international donor funding was also needed to help tens of thousands of Zimbabweans facing expulsion from neighboring South Africa. Many Zimbabweans settled in South Africa illegally after fleeing years of political violence and economic meltdown at home.

Critics blame longtime ruler President Robert Mugabe for years of political violence and economic ruin.

During all the years of white rule, and even later before white farmers had been driven from their farms through murder and intimidation, Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) never had "crop failures, erratic rain, and other economic pressures" that caused a drop in agricultural production. The climate always cooperated with Ian Smith. Mugabe has had a run of bad luck, and now Western governments - not China or Saudi Arabia, of course, they can't be expected to help - need to pony up once again.

Meanwhile in Somalia, another famine is brewing. Somalia, land of pirates and warlords, is "suffering its worst drought in 60 years". Some heartless people - probably racist- appear to believe that sending money and food to Africa does more harm than good. Because Africa's population has increased five-fold since 1950, it's hard to see how it could get by without substantial foreign help.

Obama Administration Goes After Alabama

Justice Dept. challenges tough Ala immigration law:

By BOB JOHNSON, Associated Press

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The Obama administration is challenging Alabama's new law that would let police detain those stopped for traffic offenses who they suspect are in the country illegally, a statute described as one of the toughest immigration regulations nationwide.

In a complaint Monday, the U.S. Justice Department said Alabama's law conflicts with federal law and undermines federal immigration priorities.

I think we can stop reading right there. The Justice Department argues that Alabama's tough new law against illegal immigration and related crimes "undermines federal immigration priorities". What exactly are those priorities? For one, allowing the maximum number of illegal immigrants to enter and remain in the country, and two, to prevent ordinary Americans from doing anything about it.

Meanwhile, the Seattle Times has an article about massive gang activity in central Washington state, all of the members of said gangs being Mexicans or Mexican-Americans. (RKU would tell us that it's nothing to worry about and a complete exaggeration.) It's probably a safe bet that 30 years ago, hardly any Hispanics lived in Washington. As more and more of this kind of thing becomes evident, such as the Mexican drug lords incursions into Arizona, people are going to demand more action. Arizona and Alabama are only the start.