the Revision Division

AN OLDTIME STRONGMAN’S 15-Minute Morning Routine. I particularly like the bit on an inexpensive and effective way to develop a powerful grip:

Take in each hand a corner of an ordinary sheet of newspaper (any kind of soft paper will do) and crumple it up until the four corners are brought into the palms of your hands, forming paper balls. Avoid assisting in the process by pressing the hands against the body. The result is surprising. Every muscle will be brought into sympathy with the muscles of the forearm in the effort to secure the last corner (to completely hide the sheets in your hands). . . .

Using these paper balls in the same manner as a grip-machine, by grasping them as tightly as you can and then releasing the grip without opening the fingers entirely, repeating this about seventy-five times a minute, will insure a powerful grip. Simple as this paper grip-machine seems, it is superior in many ways to any manufactured device. The writer has carried one in his coat pocket in cold weather to keep his hands warm by exercise and has repeatedly illustrated the strength of his fingers by tearing a corner off a full deck of cards, lifting with one finger a good-sized man by the belt, etc., feats that anyone can perform after persistent exercise.

So it turns out that newspapers are good for something other than lining bird cages.

RUSSIA bans cussing in films, books, music.

IMRAN FIRASAT: Spain submits to Islamic rule.

I live in a modern society where everyone is free to express what he feels and thinks. In this Christian country I have seen Jesus Christ portrayed as gay and roasted in an oven. His mother Mary has been shown as a prostitute. The Bible has been torn to pieces in public. But that is all considered legal under the freedom of expression.

But when I made a film portraying Muhammed as the man I think he was, I was prosecuted for hate crime, declared a threat to national security, had my asylum status revoked and threatened with expulsion. Why? . . .

Is criticizing Islam really a matter of national security? No, it is not. The politicians refer to national security in order to manipulate the nation. Terrorism is a threat to national security, speaking against terrorism cannot be. How can I be a threat to national security when there has been no attack on Spain due to my films for the past two years? How can I be a threat to national security when I was acquitted of hate crime against Muslims by the Spanish judiciary?

Background: Spain to Deport Christian Refugee over Mohammed Film.

PROGRESS: Many College Grads Now Unemployable.

Advice from the comments: “What anyone needs to do FIRST is look for a job WITHOUT the degree. If you cannot find a job doing what you are going to major in listed anywhere and can’t even network for one, then don’t get that degree. Because I can guarantee you in four years that market isn’t going to change either. I tell this to young people all of the time and they look at me like I’m crazy.”

MISOGYNY Among the Fairer Sex.

After poring over “131,000 cases of ‘slut’ and ‘whore’ used in English”—imagine the fun!—they reached the following conclusion:

Women are almost as likely as men to use the terms ‘slut’ and ‘whore’ on Twitter. Not only are women using these words, they are directing them at each other, both casually and offensively; women are increasingly more inclined to engage in discourses using the same language that has been, and continues to be, used as derogatory against them.

This seemed to come as a surprise to everyone but me. I assume it would not have been very surprising to Henry Louis Mencken, either. He famously described a “misogynist” as a “man who hates women as much as women hate one another.”

RELIGION OF PIECES: “Think Obama will say anything like: ‘Well Muslims do like to cling to their Korans and guns’ or, ‘The future cannot belong to those that slaughter Christians and take them as slaves’ or anything like that? Didn’t think so.”

BOOK REVIEW: Cheating: An Insider’s Report on the Use of Race in Admissions at UCLA, by Tim Groseclose.

The main contribution of his book, I believe, is his insight into the minds of the professors and university administrators. As Groseclose discusses, they have an extremely intense desire for racial diversity. How intense? Groseclose says some even lie and break the law to achieve it. The lies, in their eyes, are “noble lies.” The law-breaking becomes, to them, an act of “civil disobedience.” But as Groseclose discusses, sometimes — in order to cover up the original noble lie — the professors and administrators have to tell more noble lies. When the lies become a habit, the result is a culture of corruption and dishonesty.

Groseclose’s book, I suggest, is one of the world’s best case studies of that culture.

UK: Muslim convicted of jihad terror offenses worked as “racial harassment caseworker”.

WHAT GROWING KIDS NEED: MORE MASS-PRODUCED PASTA. USDA Delays Whole Grain Requirement For School Lunches.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a two-year delay to a rule that would force schools to provide whole grain-rich products, citing difficulty in mass producing certain food items in school cafeterias. . . .

The USDA’s decision is a response to feedback the agency received from educators, who have said that whole grain-rich pastas are not holding up well under mass production.

TOM JAMES: Parental & Third Party Rights in the 20th Century.

DOG BITES MAN: Mother Jones Caught Lying – Airport Spitting Incident Was a Hoax.

WHAT’S REALLY IMPORTANT: RI middle school cancels Honors Night tradition due to its “exclusive nature.” But “varsity athletes will get medals and trophies at an after school ceremony.”

A CASE STUDY in bias through framing. “Make him white and especially right-wing, and make his line of argument right-wing anti-establishmentarian, ceteris paribus, and this very same newspaper wouldn’t be casting this story as a ‘clash of cultures.’ It would be nothing but scorn and vitriol against the person in question.”

From the article, titled “St. Charles arrest spurs a clash of cultures, law,” dated April 14:

Yahudah Ben, 28, claims he was improperly detained for 91 days. The United Nation of YisraEL is an organization of African-Americans who contend their descent from slavery grants them status as a sovereign state along with exemption from specific regulatory laws.

“We are claiming our heritage was stolen from us because we were brought here against our will. We have a right to self-determination and to declare our own destiny,” said St. Louis County resident Hadurah Baht Yacob YisraEL.

YisraEL members trace their roots in the ancient Hebrew-Israeli tribes that once roamed Africa.

The belief system growing out of that heritage clashed with 21st century secular law on the morning of Dec. 31.

A commenter points to another article from the same newspaper, titled “‘Sovereign citizen’ tax schemes land true believers in prison,” dated May 4:

Marcotte, 48, of Belleville, faced up to 20 years in prison on tax charges related to his beliefs associated with the “sovereign citizen” movement.

It’s a group bound by a denial of the government’s legitimacy, and includes people who challenge everything from municipal traffic laws to federal tax regulations. . . .

Fueled by distrust, sovereign beliefs have lured people from all walks of life . . . said JJ MacNab, who has researched the movement for more than a decade, testified before Congress and is working on a book about sovereigns. . . .

Most experts trace the roots of modern day sovereigns to the white supremacist Posse Comitatus movement of the 1970s, which recognized no government higher than the county and believed that the county sheriff had ultimate authority. . . .

MacNab said that although sovereigns believe in a “thousand different myths,” the circumstances that push them into the movement are very real.

See how the first article grants legitimacy to the movement in question, referring to a “clash of . . . law” as if adherents are actually members of a separate, sovereign nation whose borders cover the entire world and override those of actual nations. The other article puts scare quotes on a name given to the movement in question, refers to its tax “scheme,” and calls its adherents “true believers” — all in the headline.

Moreover, the first article draws quotations about the movement from a fellow adherent, whereas the second article draws from a critic, whose remarks are attributed to “most experts.” Nope, no bias here.

GOVERNMENT SCHOOL: DC: $29,349 Per Pupil, 83% Not Proficient in Reading. It makes sense once you realize that government schools aren’t about education.

MARK KRIKORIAN: Debating Open Borders at Reason. On Bryan Caplan: “His argument was that treating foreigners in any way differently from Americans was invidious discrimination, morally identical to ‘mandatory discrimination against blacks, women, or Jews.’ He seemed to confine his comments to employment, but if not allowing a foreigner to take a job in the United States is morally impermissible, then isn’t denying him the vote also impermissible? If welfare programs exist, how can he be barred merely because he came here last week?”

This sounds like a good debate tactic for use against Caplan and those who agree with him — good ol’ reductio ad absurdum.

WISCONSIN: Dept. of Public Instruction and UW System Spent More than $20,000 on White Privilege Conference.

CULTURAL ENRICHMENT: Oxford sex gang: Scores more victims identified. First two paragraphs:

Police in Oxford say 50 to 60 young women have been identified as potential victims of a paedophile ring operating for eight years in the city.

Exactly a year ago, seven men were convicted of raping and trafficking six girls aged from 11 to 15 between 2004 and 2012.

The important information is in the last five paragraphs, however:

Last year’s trial at the Old Bailey heard how six girls were plied with alcohol and drugs before being forced to perform sex acts. Some were beaten and burned.

The court heard how the men – two of east African origin and five of Pakistani origin – identified vulnerable girls for abuse and then groomed each one of them until they were under the control of the gang.

They were then each either abused by the men themselves, given to the men’s friends or offered at a price to others who were not on trial.

(Maybe they should stop letting in foreigners who think that sex slavery is OK.)

The girls were mostly chosen because their unsettled or troubled lives made them easier to manipulate.

After the case concluded, social services and the police apologised for not acting sooner.

What does “unsettled or troubled lives” mean? That they lack fathers to protect them? It seems that social services and police aren’t adequate replacements.

RELIGION OF PIECES: Muslim Persecution of Christians, January 2014.

TRUTH IN ADVERTISING: A Belgium euthanasia doctor is holding an ‘instructional tour’ at Auschwitz. What is he thinking? “In dealing with the problems of life, one is constantly confronted with existential pain, questions about the meaning of life, self-reflection, reliance, self-determination, finiteness and especially with (in)dignity. Therefore, it seemed a logical step to us to plan the next study trip to the place that is the eminent symbol of an unworthy end-of-life being Oświęcim, better known as Auschwitz, the extermination camp of the Nazis in Poland. This site is an inspiring venue for organizing a seminar and reflecting on these issues so that we can consider and clarify confusions.”

“Inspiring.” That’s a word for it, I suppose.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Net Worth Of College Grads With Student Debt Is 20% Less Than High School Grads With No Debt.

GOVERNMENT IS JUST A WORD FOR THE THINGS WE DO TOGETHER: CDC: 10,000 Toddlers Aged 2-3 Medicated For ADD, ADHD. “The report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also found ‘that toddlers covered by Medicaid are particularly prone to be put on medication such as Ritalin and Adderall.'”

ILYA SOMIN: A resurgence of eminent domain abuse. “Politically connected casinos, developers, and other interest groups are taking advantage of the situation to lobby for takings that benefit themselves at the expense of the poor and politically weak, and to undermine post-Kelo reforms. Indeed, public ignorance helped ensure that many of the new laws enacted in the wake of Kelo were unlikely to ever be effective in the first place. Dubious takings that destroy more value than they create were common before Kelo, and never came close to completely disappearing.”

COOL: A skeleton clue to early American ancestry.

Chatters and colleagues report the discovery of a near-complete Late Pleistocene-age human skeleton. It was hidden deep in a submerged chamber in the Sac Actun cave system on Mexico’s Eastern Yucatán Peninsula. . . .

Despite differences in craniofacial form, this early American woman was related to modern Native Americans; the differences in craniofacial form are probably best explained as evolutionary changes that happened after the divergence of Beringians from their Siberian ancestors, the authors say.

Their work suggests that America was not colonized by separate migration events from different parts of Eurasia. Rather, the earliest Americans represent an early population expansion out of Beringia. This aligns with the hypothesis that both Paleoamericans and Native Americans derive from a single source population.

FEMALE POST-SEX REGRET claims another victim.

During initial police interviews, the claimant stated she felt uncomfortable when Lanning began to pat her back. After he began rubbing her entire back, the claimant said she squeezed his knee “as a way to tell Mr. Lanning to stop.”

Evidently, he didn’t get the message. So she then let him into her hotel room, presumably as a way to tell him to go away and never come back. But that didn’t work, either! Why couldn’t he understand her future rationalizations?

The next morning, the claimant said she awoke naked and found Lanning’s glasses in her room, which she later threw away. She told police she does not remember anything after her conversation with Murray and Guerra, but “she had a feeling that Mr. Lanning had been in her hotel room” and she may have told him to leave, “but that it may have been a dream and that she did not remember for sure what took place in her hotel room.” During a different interview with police, when asked if she had consented to intercourse, the claimant replied, “Not that I know of. If there was, I have no recollection of that room other than the feeling he was there.” . . .

Both Mack and Murray recall the claimant telling them the following day that she had let Lanning into her room.

WHY ATHLETES are more likely to need pacemakers in old age.

Dr Alicia D’Souza, from The University of Manchester and first author on the paper, said: “The heart rate is set by the heart’s pacemaker, but this is controlled by the nervous system. The ‘vagal’ nerves lower the heart rate and therefore it was assumed the low heart rate of athletes is the result of over activity of the vagal nerves.

“But our research shows this is not the case. Actually the heart’s pacemaker changes in response to training and in particular there is a decrease in an important pacemaker protein, known as HCN4, and this is responsible for the low heart rate.”

The researchers say these molecular changes in the sinus node – the cardiac structure responsible for generating heart rhythm – may help us to understand the more frequent occurrence of heart rhythm disturbances or even loss of consciousness in athletes.

SURVEY: 74% Of Obamacare Sign-Ups Were Previously Insured.

As Warren Meyer wrote last year, “Millions of middle class people who were independent and paid for their own health insurance will soon be wards of the state.”

THIS ACTUALLY MAKES A LOT OF SENSE: Obama’s Alliance with Boko Haram.

Obama and Boko Haram want to bring down the Nigerian government and replace it with a leadership that is more amenable to appeasement. It’s the same thing that is happening in Israel and Egypt.

State Department officials responded to Boko Haram attacks over the years with the same litany of statistics about unemployment in the Muslim north and the 92 percent of children there who do not attend school. When Hillary Clinton was asked about the kidnappings by ABC News, she blamed Nigeria for not “ensuring that every child has the right and opportunity to go to school.”

Clinton acted as if she were unaware that Boko Haram opposes Muslim children going to school or that it would take the very same measures that her State Department has repeatedly opposed to make it possible for them to go to school. This is a familiar Catch 22 in which the authorities are blamed for not fixing the socioeconomic problems in terrorist regions that are impossible to fix without defeating the terrorists and blamed for violating the human rights of the terrorists when they try to defeat them.

UK: Nanny manhandles baby for an hour on camera, admits to it, and is found not guilty of child cruelty. “She acknowledged that she had lost her temper, and treated Olly in a way she shouldn’t have. She was, she said, under a great deal of stress at the time because her mother was ill.” Ah yes, the “I’m a woman” defense.

CULTURAL ENRICHMENT: Italian police crack human smuggling ring.

CHATEAU HEARTISTE: The Misery Of The Househusband.

We were left with explicit instructions to not reveal the source of the study or the precise study results. But this was too juicy to pass up, so an attempt will be made to paraphrase the important findings without risking confidentiality.

1. A woman’s sexual attraction and general satisfaction increases when her man does “masculine” chores like DIY projects or car repair. Her sexual attraction doesn’t budge when he does “feminine” household chores.

2. Households where men do most of the chores were those most likely to argue frequently about sex.

The list goes on.

The source explains why this study has yet to be published: . . .

They fear that releasing such findings might create negative press for us instead of positive media attention. . . .

The marketing head isn’t very comfortable with the findings I gave her. She thinks it isn’t a story at all and doesn’t know how to market it. . . . She says I have to “soften” it.

AT LEAST HE’S HONEST: MSNBC’s Capehart: Tolerance ‘Should Not Be a Two-Way Street’. A commenter sums up the media’s general attitude by reference to two specific athletes:

Tim Tebow- Keep your personal life private and people should not agree with it.

Michael Sam- Keep your personal life public and force everyone to agree with it.

THEY’RE GOOD AT THAT: A Feminist Defends Narcissism. “A normal human being in full possession of his cognitive faculties would reason as follows: ‘If the tenets of feminism entail that the vice of narcissism is in fact a virtue, then there is something wrong with feminism.’ Lunbeck takes the opposite approach, in effect saying ‘Since feminism and its tenets entail that narcissism is a virtue, narcissism must in fact be a virtue.'”

VOX DAY on how the press carries water for leftist candidates. “Clinton wasn’t just ‘talking in the context of mental health’, she was talking about the expansion of concealed carry laws. While she did begin her answer in response to a question about suicide, her answer was a more broadly expansive one. But you can bet that we’re going to here the false ‘context’ excuse when she gets nailed with her own words on the campaign trail.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Is it a Good Idea to Cook With Olive Oil? A Critical Look.

Quality extra virgin olive oil is a super healthy fat that retains its beneficial qualities during cooking.

The main reason you may not want to use it, is that heating it too much can have adverse effects on the flavor.

The belief that olive oil oxidizes and goes rancid during cooking is a harmful myth that scares people from using this incredibly healthy fat.

DALROCK on how women don’t need men until they do.

She is married to the president. Her best chance to help the kidnapped girls is to privately bring her concerns to her husband, wait for him to devise a plan, and then publicly support his efforts.

But supporting her husband in his efforts has a number of drawbacks. It requires submission as well as a degree of accountability. If she supports her husband and his plan fails, she is associated with that failure. This way she can take credit for any success and avoid accountability for failure. If someone (someone with a penis) tries and fails, she can point out that of course that plan wasn’t the plan she had in mind all along. If someone (with a penis) tries and succeeds, she and all of the other women in the campaign can take credit for the success.

MICHAEL J. TOTTEN: The Last Communist City: A visit to the dystopian Havana that tourists never see. “Neill Blomkamp’s 2013 science-fiction film Elysium, starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, takes place in Los Angeles, circa 2154. The wealthy have moved into an orbiting luxury satellite—the Elysium of the title—while the wretched majority of humans remain in squalor on Earth. . . . Some critics panned the film for pushing a socialist message. Elysium’s dystopian world, however, is a near-perfect metaphor for an actually existing socialist nation just 90 miles from Florida.”

FEMINIST FABLES: How do they survive?

The big question is how and why such obviously false and contrived feminist fables survive in the marketplace of ideas? I think the ironic answer is good old fashioned sexism. Feminists have successfully harnessed our sexist tendencies to protect women, both physically and intellectually. Therefore, public discourse fails to hold women to the same intellectual standards we expect of men, so we get endless nonsense about the wage gap, domestic violence, the campus rape culture, etc.

What is the concept of rape culture but a damsel’s cry of distress to which men come running? Intellectually, the idea is bankrupt, but the story moves many, many people, and particularly men. In the presence of such a damsel, men magically become “white knights” to save her. Therefore, for decades now we’ve had overwhelmingly male legislatures passing the most questionable laws to save those damsels. Let feminists cry “harassment!” “domestic violence!” and lawmakers from far and wide come running, eager to pass more laws, provide more funding.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Like mother, like daughter: Women are more likely to cheat on their husbands if their mothers were unfaithful too.

CONFESSIONS of a public defender who identifies as a “liberal.”

As a public defender, I have learned many things about people. One is that defendants do not have fathers. If a black even knows the name of his father, he knows of him only as a shadowy person with whom he has absolutely no ties. When a client is sentenced, I often beg for mercy on the grounds that the defendant did not have a father and never had a chance in life. I have often tracked down the man’s father–in jail–and have brought him to the sentencing hearing to testify that he never knew his son and never lifted a finger to help him. Often, this is the first time my client has ever met his father. These meetings are utterly unemotional.

Many black defendants don’t even have mothers who care about them. Many are raised by grandmothers after the state removes the children from an incompetent teenaged mother. Many of these mothers and grandmothers are mentally unstable, and are completely disconnected from the realities they face in court and in life. A 47-year-old grandmother will deny that her grandson has gang ties even though his forehead is tattooed with a gang sign or slogan. When I point this out in as kind and understanding way as I can, she screams at me. When black women start screaming, they invoke the name of Jesus and shout swear words in the same breath.

Black women have great faith in God, but they have a twisted understanding of His role. They do not pray for strength or courage. They pray for results: the satisfaction of immediate needs. One of my clients was a black woman who prayed in a circle with her accomplices for God’s protection from the police before they would set out to commit a robbery.

GREAT TROLL: “Chris Sevier, a man from Florida, believes he should be allowed to wed his Macbook.”

SWEDEN, the most feminine country in the world.

OBAMACARE PREVIEW: Email reveals how Wyo. VA workers were taught to manipulate records.

The June email signed by an employee named David Newman, a Telehealth coordinator at the Cheyenne center, describes to the workers methods they can use to manipulate records in the patient appointment system to comply with a VA policy that requires patients be seen within 14 days of their desired date of appointment.

“Yes, it is gaming the system a bit,” the email reads. “But you have to know the rules of the game you are playing, and when we exceed the 14-day measure, the front office gets very upset.”

MARK PERRY: California vs. Texas in one chart.

GOOD QUESTION: Why Did Kidnapping Girls, but Not Burning Boys Alive, Wake Media Up to Boko Haram?

Earlier: Boko Haram Muslims murder 59 unarmed Christian students in Nigeria.

SMART MOVE: Migrants in Italy Send a Message: “Don’t Come”.

Immigrants living in Italy have released a series of videos in a campaign to tell people thinking about making the same migration not to come due to the country’s economic problems.

The video campaign – which features five immigrants from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Angola and North Africa – was ironically launched by the anti-immigration right-wing Northern League politician and European Parliament election candidate Angelo Ciocca.

How’s that ironic? It makes perfect sense.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Proven Health Benefits of Eggs.

The studies clearly show that eating up to 3 whole eggs per day is perfectly safe.

There is no evidence that going beyond that is harmful, it is just “uncharted territory” as it hasn’t been studied.

“IN A NUTSHELL, the dull have delusions of adequacy.” “The correlations between the actual IQ measure and the self rating are pretty pathetic at very roughly .20 which suggests general inability to self-assess intellectual ability. Figure 2 shows what the problem is: Dull people over-rate their intelligence. This is interesting, and begins to explain a few things. Dunning Kruger were on to this, but it is nice to see it confirmed for intelligence self-estimation. Brighter people somewhat under-estimate their intelligence, but to a much lesser extent.”

The abstract of the article in question, “Intelligence, gender [sic], and assessment method affect the accuracy of self-estimated intelligence,” can be found here.

AARON CLAREY: New Addition to “Words That Prove You Have a Worthless (and Likely Leftist) Job”: Advocate.

Earlier: Words That Prove You Have a Worthless (and Likely Leftist) Job.

TEACHER BANS Bible-reading in class. I usually assume that these stories are result of miscommunication, but this account differs in quoting what is reportedly a voicemail from the teacher to the student’s father: “‘Good morning, Mr. Rubeo,’ says a woman. ‘Giovanni called you because I asked him to. I noticed that he had a book, a religious book, in the classroom. He’s not permitted to read those books in my classroom. He said if I told him to put it away, you said not to do that. So please give me a call. I need to have some understanding on direction to him about the book he’s reading opposed to the curriculum for public school. Ms. S. Thomas. Thank you. Have a wonderful day. Bye, bye.'”

PROMOTING THE DEATH INSTINCT: Vox’s Report on Herpes Wasn’t About Herpes.

ESQUIRE jumped on this for Vox’s manipulation of data to include simplex 1 (common cold sores) with simplex 2 (the sex sores) in order to boost numbers while crafting the post to imply it’s all sex sores, so don’t bother testing or worrying. Some others jumped on Vox for discussing STDs as if they are risk free and consequence free, when in reality there are a host of physical side effects and possible pathogen mind and behavioral alterations. Missing from this valid criticism is the awareness that this is part of a wider campaign to diminish the negatives of STDs, push STD acceptance and if it relates to s3x, it must be good. . . .

Does it seem like the media has been pushing STDs, because it has. Slate argued that Canada’s new law requiring HIV+ people to inform potential lovers they are HIV+ is bad. This is a death sentence. Not three years like the ’80s and early ’90s, but still dead after twenty. Slate thinks that is bad. There have been articles on HIV+ being a turn on for gays (bugchasing). Gay men looking at HIV like it is a creation outside of conception that heteros do. We read in these outlets that we should not discriminate with our choices of partners versus those with STDs. This is once again dragging people down to the level of those who spread, infect, et cetera whom we might say are easy, loose or oh no, I’m slut shaming. Trans* is not the only new frontier in pushing sex boundaries.