THE NEW PHRENOLOGY: Neuroscientist concludes he’s a psychopath based on brain scans and genetic markers . . . despite not being a psychopath.
FOR THE LADIES: Learning domesticity in a post-feminist world.
“WOMEN SAID THEY WANTED EQUAL RIGHTS and now they are complaining about it. Men have experienced this system for years.”
Families were told to pay £5 per child for the Explore Islam trip next Wednesday to Staffordshire University, which would involve Year 4 and Year 6 children being shown Islamic artefacts. . . .
Mothers and fathers were warned: ‘Refusal to allow your child to attend will result in a Racial Discrimination note being attached to your child’s education record, which will remain on this file throughout their school career.
‘All absences on this day will be investigated for their credibility and will only be sanctioned with a GP sick note.’
CULTURAL ENRICHMENT: 36% of unemployed in Germany of foreign origin. “They are thus significantly overrepresented among those without a job as, according to the Federal Statistics Office, their share of the overall population is only 20 per cent.”
AMERICAN COLLEGE OF PEDIATRICIANS: The Condom Myth.
The unrelenting exponential rise in sexually transmitted infections in nations like Spain, which has among the highest adolescent condom use rates, proves that condoms do not reduce risk of STI spread nearly enough. We know from studies in Britain that free oral contraception and free emergency contraception, let alone distribution of condoms, do not lower teen pregnancy rates. . . .
Sexual debut during adolescence has been conclusively established as an independent risk factor for depression as well as suicidal ideation among teens. Promiscuous sexual activity has grave consequences.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Want to report a case of plagiarism? Here’s how.
UK: Sham debate seeks ban on therapy for unwanted same sex attraction. “All MPs who spoke during the debate condemned the practice, even though no evidence was cited which shows the supposed harm that the therapy causes.”
Earlier: When Government Keeps Teens from Seeing the Therapist.
DON BOUDREAUX: The Awful State of Pop Economic History. “The list of egregiously mistaken yet most widely held beliefs about economic history is long. And one of the worst offenders on this list is the notion that labor unions created the American middle class – the myth that workers’ ability to bargain for higher wages and fringe benefits is chiefly a consequence of their heroically organizing with similar workers to collectively demand from employers this higher pay. (Remember, workers at Ford Motor Co. were not unionized until 1941, but twenty-seven years earlier Henry Ford more than doubled his workers’ pay. And he did so not chiefly out of any ‘personal concern’ for his workers; rather, he did so because, by lowering worker turnover and reducing worker absenteeism, this higher pay for workers would result in higher profits for Ford.)”
“I AM THE LIVING MAN, PROTECTED BY NATURAL LAW.”
Ernie Tertelgte, 52, represented himself in court against misdemeanor charges of obstructing a peace officer and resisting arrest relating to an Aug. 31 incident where he was cited for fishing without a license, according to KBZK. He argued that “universal law” allows him to hunt for food to feed himself.
However, the bearded man, adorned with a three corner hat, was forced by the judge to watch his trial from another room after he objected multiple times to the court proceedings.
At the outset of the trial, Tertelgte objected to being referred to by his legal name, instead demanding the court recognize him as “the living man.”
BOOK REVIEW, PLUS THOUGHTS ON WRITING POPULAR HISTORY: Henchmen of Ares: Warriors and Warfare in Ancient Greece.
The book, which is a reworked and revised version of the author’s Ph.D. thesis, is an attempt to seriously combine all kinds of evidence, both the written sources and the archaeological finds, to reconstruct the way the Greeks fought their wars in the Mycenaean and Archaic Ages. I learned a lot from it. . . .
The ugly end notes and foot notes have been replaced by a chapter in which the sources are mentioned for every subject. This is a quite novel way of presenting the information: the reader can use it as a ladder and can ignore it, but he will never have a dull text. This system will not be useful for all books, but it may be a way to serve an increasingly fragmented audience.
JAMES M. KUSHINER: You Might Talk Openly About the Family in Moscow, But Not in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. “Obviously no one has an absolute right to hold a meeting in the US Senate Office Buildings, but the World Congress of Families had received sponsorship from Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) to hold a conference on the family. The Human Rights Campaign, it is reported, pressured Kirk to cancel the meeting, which he did.”
UK: Serial false rape accuser jailed after crying rape against her brothers.
But even when police realised that her claims were just a pack of lies and charged her with perverting the course of justice – she pleaded not guilty.
She claimed she had thrown away her underwear which would have supported her claims – sparking off another fruitless search by police.
The trial date was set – in which both brothers would have faced being accused of rape in the witness box – but she changed her mind and admitted she had been lying.
Richard Ashley, defending, said doctors had diagnosed Read as suffering from a paranoid personality disorder which resulted in her craving attention.
Ah yes, the “I’m a woman” defense.
Earlier: After killing two with her car, defendant found “not guilty of dangerous driving causing death.”
AUSTIN RUSE: The Real Lives of Gay Men.
In his excellent manuscript, The Gaying of America: How Rationalizing Homosexual Behavior Is Changing Everything to be published next March by Ignatius Press, Robert Reilly lays out the horrific numbers. Keep in mind that even repeating these numbers opens you up to a torrent of vitriol. You will see in the inevitable comments below that even mentioning them is hate speech, no more than lies, myths on par with the oversexed black man. Other than invective and charges that the studies and their authors have been “discredited,” the numbers are unassailable. And they are supremely important for a young man considering taking a peak outside the closet door.
This is the door he is about to walk through. . . .
Some have said gays act out promiscuously because they have internalized homophobia, that they were “forced to look for love in dimly lit bars, bathhouses, and public parks for fear of harassment at the hands of the homophobic mainstream.” Lee answers, “But 35 years have passed since the infamous Stonewall riots of 1969 in New York…. During that time, homosexuals have carved out for themselves public spaces in every major American city, and many of the minor ones as well. They have had the chance to create whatever they wanted in those spaces, and what have they created? New spaces for locating sexual partners.”
THE BIGGER THE GOVERNMENT, the more to fight over.
The more the government does things that grieve us, by intruding into our lives and limiting our liberties, the more we will petition, lobby, and generally raise hell with the government and with our political opponents.
If you try to tell me how much soda I can buy at a pop, or how capacious my ammo mags must be, or how I must speak to assuage the tender sensitivities of the Pee Cee, or if you try to stop me from home-schooling my kids, or force me to buy health insurance, then you are spoiling for a fight and you will get it.
WESLEY J. SMITH: Eugenic Pre-Natal Cleansing Spreads to Autism. And since males are more likely to have autism than females, that means dumping male embryos. So both the eugenicists and the feminists are happy. Everyone wins!
WHEN “DISSENT” means putting your fingers in your ears. Why take on college debt if all you learn is to shout down or walk away from people with whom you disagree?
ARS TECHNICA: Winamp lovers beg AOL to open source code.
“Winamp.com and associated Web services will no longer be available past December 20, 2013. Additionally, Winamp Media players will no longer be available for download. Please download the latest version before that date,” AOL announced.
But fans of the venerable software have launched a “Save Winamp” website and petition asking AOL either to keep Winamp alive or to open source its code.
CULTURAL ENRICHMENT: Children being trafficked as slaves to help illegals gain entry to Europe by pretending to be their parents. “‘There was behaviour that made the social workers supicious because the supposed parents didn’t not take care of their children,’ explains Carlos Montero, director of CETI where around 1000 immigrants are currently being housed, double its capacity. The tests were negative. They were not their children.”
J. WARNER WALLACE: A Brief Sample of Old Testament Archaeological Corroboration.
ABORTION CLINIC OWNER: “I feel like God wants me to do this job.”
Related: Abortion Activist Compares Pushing Population Control to the 10 Commandments.
HARVARD PROFESSOR: “If you are a white male, you don’t deserve to live. You are a cancer, you’re a disease, white males have never contributed anything positive to the world! They only murder, exploit and oppress non-whites!” Evidently, however, he has gone decades without making an example of himself.
ROBERT OSCAR LOPEZ: Pro-surrogacy propaganda. “We are turning birth certificates into meaningless sheets of nothingness.”
DIVERSITY OR COMMUNITY: Choose one. The published article can be found here [PDF].
CATO: DOJ Still Fighting School Choice in Louisiana. “The DOJ is still seeking the legal authority to prevent low-income kids from escaping failing public schools if the feds say they have the wrong skin color.”
AARON CLAREY: A Tactic That Works Against Liberals.
“Yes, not worth working any more. You see how much free shit Obama is giving away? To hell with work. It’s for suckers.”
She got pissed. ROYALLY pissed. She wouldn’t talk to me. You could see it in her face. She was angry that somebody might take advantage of the situation.
And then I realized something – I finally figured out how to convince liberals they’re wrong.
It wasn’t through charts. It wasn’t through logic. It wasn’t through reason. And it wasn’t through statistics or facts.
It would be by agreeing with them to the full logical conclusion of socialism and acting like you were completely abusing their charity naivety.
ENDA means unlimited government expansion. “It claims to prohibit hiring and employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. But it would more likely result in massive expansion of government power by opening up a huge can of legal worms most directly related to ‘gender identity.’ Gender identity is an ambiguous term that relates to people’s perceptions and feelings. By adding it to the list of categories in anti-discrimination law, ENDA combines threat of punishment with vague language that is wide open to interpretation. This is a classic recipe for tyranny.”
Also: “Any law that’s set up to protect or punish perceptions is suspect and very conducive to abuse.”
UNFORTUNATE: Internet Archive building damaged by fire. “Thanks to the fire, the scanning centre in San Francisco will need to be either heavily repaired or rebuilt, Mr Kahle said.
“WHAT IS SEA LEVEL?” answered in about three minutes.
STEWART BAKER: Understanding the Enemy.
The latest Snowden leak story is in the Huffington Post. It says that NSA thought about exposing the hypocrisy of Islamic extremist recruiters by revealing their financial greed or predatory sexual habits. I’m quoted in support of considering such tactics, but the backstory of the interview may be more interesting.
When one of the authors, Ryan Grim, called me for comment, he said that while Glenn Greenwald was transitioning to his new Omidyar-funded venture he was temporarily publishing his Snowden leaks with HuffPo. So when he asked for my take on the NSA story, pretty much the first words out of my mouth were, “Why wouldn’t we consider doing to Islamic extremists what Glenn Greenwald does routinely to Republicans?” The story quotes practically everything I said to Grim except that remark, even though I returned to the point a couple of times and emphasized that it summed up my view. . . .
Grim and Greenwald very likely cut the quote because it would have undermined the narrative of the piece, which combines solicitude for the poor Islamists whose sexual and financial hypocrisy might be exposed with outrage at the NSA for even considering such a tactic. The quote would have made them look like, well, hypocrites.
The incident makes me wonder what else Greenwald leaves out of his stories.
ADVENTURES IN EUPHEMISM: My College Betrayed By ObamaCare ‘Marketing Slogans’. “Mike Convente, a left-wing Daily Kos diarist and a representative on the University of Pennsylvania health care committee, took to the pages of Kos to complain about the ‘law of unintended consequences’ of ObamaCare. Convente is also upset that Obama’s ‘marketing slogans … turned out to be not so correct.'”
THEODORE DALRYMPLE: Some to Misery Are Born.
This is a world which is quite extensive in England, where it is normal for a woman’s grandchildren to be older than her children, where uncles and aunts are often younger than their nieces and nephews, where practically all siblings are half-siblings and have different surnames, where when you try to understand the family relationships of the children it makes you dizzy, and where there are no husbands and wives, only baby-mothers and baby-fathers.
There is no new thing under the sun, and no doubt there are historical precedents for all this. Yet the sheer extent of this world in England is new, if by “new” we mean something that has happened in the last half-century at the most. It has been created with the blessing of intellectuals who saw the destruction of conventions as a blow against hypocrisy and with the encouragement of politicians who saw in social breakdown an opportunity to remain permanently important.
IF I HAD A SON, he would look like Jayvon. More here.
INNOCENT MAN IMPRISONED FOR DECADES; DA who withheld exculpatory evidence sentenced to ten days. “As part of the deal signed off on by District Judge Kelly Moore, Anderson pleaded no contest to a 1987 criminal contempt of court charge for lying about evidence that could have cleared Morton. He’s ordered to serve 10 days in jail, pay a $500 fine and complete 500 hours of community service over the next five years.”
EDWARD ARCHER: An Indictment of Federally-Funded Nutrition Research.
Recently, I was the lead author on a paper demonstrating that about 40 years and many millions of dollars of US nutritional surveillance data were fatally flawed. . . . There is a large body of evidence demonstrating that the systematic misreporting of energy and macronutrient intake renders the results and conclusions of the vast majority of federally funded nutrition studies invalid. . . .
The responsibility for this unfortunate state of affairs rests squarely on the leaders of nutrition research. Rather than training graduate students in the scientific method, and allowing their research to serve the needs of society, the field’s leaders choose to train their mentees to serve only their own professional needs—namely, to obtain grant funding and publish their research. I have experienced these practices myself as I transitioned from student to graduate research assistant to research fellow, and colleagues continue to emphasize that this is how it must be, lest they fail to get funding and ‘feed’ their graduate students and families. But by not training mentees in the basics of science and skepticism, the nutrition field has fostered the use of measures that are so profoundly dissonant with scientific principles that they will never yield a definitive conclusion. As such, we now have multiple generations of nutrition researchers who dominate federal nutrition research and the peer review of that work, but lack the critical thinking skills necessary to critique or conduct sound scientific research.
DALROCK: The whispers.
Our culture is . . . always whispering in women’s ears that they deserve better, and mercilessly amplifying every potential doubt. We saw this with EPL, and How Stella Got Her Groove Back.
My wife has witnessed this throughout her life.
From her devout Catholic maid of honor (now still unmarried at 37) when helping my wife put on her wedding dress 1 hour before the wedding (prompting her to throw her out of the room):
What if you meet a better man in two weeks?
From the girls in the 7th grade class she taught, asking the only girl with a boyfriend why he hadn’t spent more than $50 on her for her birthday (he had saved all of his own birthday money to do so). Why didn’t he spend $100 on her if he really cared? The girl took the bait and was upset until my wife took her aside and talked it through with her.
NOT THAT THERE’S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT: Gay teen activist honored by Obama charged with sex crimes against a 14-yr-old boy.
Caleb Laieski, now 18, was 17 at the time of the alleged abuse. His alleged victim, a close friend he met on TrevorSpace (a social media site for children and young adults aged 13-24 who have an interest in homosexuality), was only 14 at the time. . . .
At least some of the charges stem from a three-way sexual encounter the boys had with 43-year-old Chris Wilson, an openly homosexual Phoenix police officer who was arrested more than a year ago and is now in jail awaiting trial for his role in the abuse of both children. . . .
The alleged sex between the three occurred late in 2012 at Laieski’s apartment, where the 14-year-old was also staying. (Laieski told investigators that the younger boy’s mother wanted them to “be together as a couple” and would often drop her son off for “weeks at a time” at his apartment, where he lived alone.) . . .
Police records show that Laieski actively pressured his young friend not to tell anyone about the abuse in order to protect his rising star from being tarnished, even after the younger boy became suicidal. . . .
When the younger boy begged Laieski to go with him to the police, Laieski told him no. He said he was negotiating with Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius over a possible White House job, and he worried that if anyone found out he’d been involved in a crime, he’d lose the opportunity.
THE US WELFARE STATE AT WORK. Or, rather, not at work. Work is for chumps! “Lucy is 32 with three kids. She is on welfare just like her parents and admits her kids will do the same. She says taxpayers are the fools…she gets to lay up all day and smoke weed while you go to work.”
I transcribed a bit from the end of the recording:
That’s my whole point. If I was in a position where I had to work, I mean, that might be a different story. But not only do I not have to work, they’re always — when you’re in these programs, they’re always coming to you and offering you more programs, and a lot of times, shoot, they’ll even pay you to go to these programs, y’know, these, like, y’know, “Hey, we’ll give you some money, we’ll give you this, we’ll give you that.” Y’know. And, uh, so, they encourage you to stay on the programs, and then if you do try to get off of ’em, they penalize you anyway. Well, if you go out and make ten dollars, they gonna deduct twenty dollars for you making that ten. So, you really can’t get off of it. And then they see someone like me who wants to go to work. Well, then if I went to work, every dime that I would make will go to child care anyway, so why work?
BY THEIR FRUITS ye shall know them. “Listen to lefties, and you’ll continuously hear references to intention. Fortunately, as we’re seeing with the reaction to the Obamacare rollout, most people stop caring quite so much about how much you care for them once it’s been shown to them that you’re driving them straight to hell.”
MICHELLE MALKIN: Colorado’s next gun-rights recall.
“I just want to say, statistics are not on your side, even if you had had a gun… Chances are that if you had had a gun, then he would have been able to get than from you and possibly use it against you,” Hudak lectured. But even the liberal Denver Post pointed out that the old statistics Hudak cited from a liberal anti-gun group applied only to women with guns who were attacked by “intimate acquaintances,” not strangers, as was the case with Collins.
Hudak’s dishonest defense of disarming and disempowering women sent a chilling message from government to constituents: About to be raped, assaulted or murdered? The odds are against you. Don’t bother to fight back.
Recall Hudak organizers are trying to gather at least 25,000 signatures by early December.
MR. SHULER has what some people may refer to as “BALL”. “I demand that this phrase be immortalized.”
DOG BITES MAN: Abortion Practitioners Fail to Report Abortions on Raped Girls Under 14-Years-Old.
State law requires such reports three days following the abortion to protect girls from sexual abuse and victimization, but the report by the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel newspaper makes it clear there is a massive abuse of the system taking place as abortion clinics cover up rape to make money from abortions. . . .
Doctors in the state have reported at least 12 abortions to girls under 14 since July 2011, records show. But in seven of those cases, the doctors did not file reports until several weeks — in one incident, it was six months — after the procedure. In two other cases, it was unclear when the reports were filed because state records are incomplete.
Related: ‘Good Morning, I’m A Rapist; Can You Help Me Out Here?’ “How easy is it for a 33 year old man to buy Plan B for his 15 year old ‘girlfriend?’ Not too hard at all.”
“UNFIREABLE” FEMALE FIREMAN FINALLY QUITS after failing timed running test for the sixth time.
She was assigned to Engine No. 316 in East Elmhurst, Queens, but never worked a shift. After recovering from a foot injury, she went on light duty and continued training for the run. She failed it five times, last on Halloween, clocking 12 minutes 23 seconds.
Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano, at the behest of United Women Firefighters, a group of active and retired FDNY women, gave Tapia another chance to pass the test on Dec. 2. But on the heels of a Post article on her special treatment, Tapia tried again early, and then threw in the towel.
“It’s really not about her, it’s about preferential treatment,” said Paul Mannix, president of Merit Matters, a firefighter group that opposes hiring quotas. “People are encouraged that she won’t be fighting fires, not because she’s a woman, but because she couldn’t meet the standards.”
Related: Swedish Equalism Endangering Lives. “Since the late 90s, Sweden has mandated equality in firefighting jobs, which has required a severe lowering of physical standards to bring women into the force. According to Dispatch International, a Swedish magazine, female firefighters take more than ten times as long to open reinforced doors, which would leave most people dead if they were trapped in a burning apartment for that long.”
ANN COULTER TO CONSERVATIVES: Ease up on Alec Baldwin.
Conservatives attacking Baldwin for his latest fit of (justified) anger are being small-time and shortsighted. You think this sets liberals back? They don’t care about Baldwin. You’re just reinforcing their worldview, where careers are ended over a word.
Liberals don’t mind abortion, sexual promiscuity, adultery, lying or criminal behavior. They save all their moral indignation for people who use politically incorrect words. Instead of simply filing this one away under “Liberal Hypocrisy” for future use, conservatives are validating the left’s next attack on a conservative.
THE DUAL ANCESTRY of the American Indians. “While the land bridge still formed the gateway to America, the study now portrays Native Americans as a group derived from the meeting of two different populations, one ancestral to East Asians and the other related to western Eurasians, explained Willerslev, whose research was published in the November 20 edition of the journal Nature.”