Blog — February, 2009

A Slovenian TV programme that tried to prove top models were brainless bimbos was scrapped after a beauty queen turned out to have a higher IQ than a nuclear physicist.

Iris Mulej, a former Miss Universe contestant, was found to have an IQ of 156 by scientists working for the programme makers.

Iris, who previously admitted one of her ambitions was to have sex with one guy and three other girls, was Slovenia's Miss Universe contestant in 2002.

Well, you gotta have goals. (I'm assuming she's already had sex with one guy and two other girls, and this is just a logical ... erm, "extension" ... of her worldview, via the dictum [sorry] that "more is better.")

Tell me again how life is fair. I mean sure, for that one guy it is; but for who else?

Bernie Planck:

What are Europeans to do if they cannot criticize Muslims (because that's hate speech) when they see their culture and way of life slowly being destroyed? Take as example, the problem of a typical Dutchman who plainly sees that Muslim immigrants are not assimilating into Dutch culture, are draining the resources of his nation, and are destroying the Dutch identity but who cannot discuss these facts publicly for fear of being threatened with death by Muslims, banned from entering other countries, or prosecuted for making anti-Islamic statements.

Faced with these obstacles many Dutch are now leaving their home country. When asked why they are leaving they are obviously afraid to say Muslims are driving them out of their own country since that would be politically incorrect hate speech. So the phrase they use is that they are seeking a better "social climate"....

Eventually there will be no indigenous European ethnic peoples in Europe and the Muslims there will have to tax each other to keep themselves on welfare.

See, that's what happens when you're "tolerant" of people who don't return the same tolerance to you. They infest and destroy the civilization you've built, and you just end up running away from the bullies to some other place which they haven't managed to completely shit up yet.

More reasonably, "Fuck the UN, and fuck Islamists and their fucking enablers."

On a related note:

When Mandela took over in South Africa, courtesy Bill Clinton, he instituted a so-called "reconstruction and development" programme. Most whites were scratching their heads. The only infrastructure which needed reconstruction was that which his ANC thugs had destroyed during their orgies of violence in the townships. And the development levels under the Apartheid government were much higher than anything in Africa and anything which the ANC has come up with since then.

After a while I realised this was a similar wording to the post WWII Reconstruction and Development programmes such as the Marshall Fund. The idea was to act as if those evil Boers had just destroyed the country in a huge racial war, and now the savoir Mandela (another "Messiah") would come in and heal the land.

However, the only thing which has happened in the past decade, leaving aside the hideous crime and corruption wave, is that infrastructure development has been below replacement levels. That's why they have frequent power cuts and the next looming crisis is the water supply (One reason for this is that the ANC discontinued the grand Lesotho Highlands water supply scheme initiated under Apartheid). Essentially the ANC are living off the structures implemented under Apartheid, albeit in a rundown state. I guess the money needed to finance their lavish lifestyles just precludes taking care of infrastructure essentials.

Yep, just like I was saying:

[T]he joke on all those dismal savages is that, even if they manage to drive whitey out of these once-great cities (as they've managed in large parts of Detroit), us whiteys and Jews have the brains to re-create civilization wherever we end up. The niggers, wetbacks and goat-fuckers don't have that culture or intelligence—all they can do is use the science and technology that whites, Jews and Asians have created, without understanding where it comes from or how to build more of it—but we do.

P.S. Mocons ... and more.

[Stan] Rogers died of smoke inhalation on June 2, 1983, while travelling on Air Canada Flight 797 (a McDonnell Douglas DC-9). The airliner was flying from Dallas, Texas to Toronto and Montreal when an in-flight fire forced it to make an emergency landing at the Greater Cincinnati Airport. It was rumoured, though not confirmed, that Rogers survived and escaped the crash, only to perish after returning to save those still trapped inside. (Wikipedia)

If you ever need a concrete example of how genes for unconditional altruism would select themselves out of a population.... (Rogers wasn't saving parents, siblings, or cousins; he died trying to save total strangers.)

Well, this is interesting:

Last Friday the SF Weekly broke a story that Assemblyman Tom Ammiano will announce legislation today to legalize marijuana and earn perhaps $1 billion annually by taxing it.

In addition, legalizing marijuana would save the state hundreds of millions of dollars wasted on enforcing stupid drug laws and in trials, transport and housing of drug offenders.

A Rasmussen Reports poll released this week shows that 40% of Americans favor making marijuana legal. What is interesting is not that 60% are opposed it's that only 46% disagree and 14% are not sure, so we're close to the tipping point. If California passes the pro-pot legislation and other states see how much money is saved on prisons and how much is gained in taxes, the rest of the nation will quickly follow suit. If pot is legalized nationwide then this economic crisis will have been worth it. Talk about a silver lining.

This, exactly:

[N]o matter how much of the blame blacks are willing to accept for their own misery, there will always be the "first cause." That first cause is white racism, period.

It's like many fundamentalist Christians and evolution—they're willing to tinker at the very edges with the story of the creation, but ultimately God was always controlling its direction.

In the same manner, whites are the first cause; the first movers; God, in effect. Blacks were in an idyllic Eden before the white man came and viciously tore them from it, and in the sweat of their faces shall they eat bread.

In the Eden before the white man came, time did not exist. Evil did not exist. Misery did not exist. Whites then came and tore them from Eden, and the world is a fallen place. And it's all because of whites. And whites, unless we do exactly what blacks say, will frustrate every attempt to restore blacks to their Eden.

The truth is all the opposite of course. Black misery? Whites are certainly responsible—but only at the very margins; it is effect, not cause. Discrimination certainly happens—but discrimination is a result of black misbehavior. It is a minor contributor to overall disparity. It comes after, not before, the high school delinquency, the crime, the single parenthood, and the on-the-job misbehavior.

Aside from that, you cannot have a conversation with these people not because they're uncomfortable with the facts but because even accepted facts pop into and out of existence like some hypthetical particle. Higher crime rates? Prove it. Lower educational attainment? Prove it. Even race only exists until it doesn't—at which point you want to ask what the hell is even being argued about. Race of course cannot exist because it implies that people inherit not only skin color from their parents but a vast suite of genes that can effect behavior, intelligence, economic performance and everything else. But if race doesn't exist, then what's the point of diversity, you're forced to ask. If the only difference between the different "races" is skin color then bringing in people of different skin colors contributes almost nothing to diversity.

We can have this conversation [on race in America], maybe. But I would not do so until a set of givens were agreed upon—not causes, just facts. Are higher crime rates real and deserved? Is lower educational attainment real? Is African misery on the table, too—that is, can we point to nations where blacks run the show but are far worse off than they are in America?

And I didn't know this:

Lincoln wanted to send the slaves back to Africa after the war was over, but never got the chance.

See, that's exactly the heretical, racist thought I had been thinking lately: that it was too bad they couldn't have freed the slaves, with the government providing humane transportation for them back to Africa or the Caribbean, etc. ... both in the interests of "fairness" (such as it is), and for the long-term good of the USA.

Of course, we in Canada would have still been stuck with the shitty results of the Underground Railroad regardless ... not that there wouldn't have been some natural selection process going on there, where only the "smartest" (such as they are) blacks would, on average, have managed to escape.

And this:

According to conventional wisdom, the only reason why blacks have higher rates of crime is because many are from the lower class. (Many people where I work assume that criminal justice system bias produces the disparity. The self-report data presented here show these guys are full of it.) The social status of black and white students at the same college is similar, but black criminality is half a standard deviation higher.

Like many West African immigrants in New York's Park Hill neighborhood, Liberian Jacob Massaquoi has a story about bringing bushmeat into the United State—in his case, three dried monkey carcasses.

Massaquoi listed "bushmeat" on his customs declaration form when entering JFK Airport around 2001. The meat was confiscated and Massaquoi, the head of an African community organization, was fined $250.

"It's like telling an Englishman, you can't have your baked beans," Massaquoi said. "Bushmeat is an integral part of our culture and something that we cherish"....

So what? Fuck your "culture." Bloody savages. If you don't like it, get the hell out of my civilized country/continent, and go back to the shithole you came from. Bloody savages.

New York's state legislature may increase the penalties for smuggling, although immigrants say the dangers are overblown and the crackdown smacks of anti-African prejudice....

Aww, poor tar-babies. You want some bushcheese with your bushwhine?

"It just takes one piece of meat that's infected with Ebola virus for us to have a major disaster on our hands," said Pascal Imperato, a former New York City Health Commissioner and the former director of an immunization drive in West Africa.

Just like "baked beans," eh? But try explaining that to pre-rational people who (seriously) think that illness is caused by the malevolent spirits of disrespected ancestors ... and that cures for AIDS are revealed to them in dreams by the same ancestors when they're kept happy. What can you be but a "racist"?

Bloody savages.

Funny thing: A few years ago, when Toronto was bidding for the 2008 Olympics, our "colorful" mayor at the time, Mel Lastman, on his way to Kenya, made some "racist" crack about winding up "in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me."

For months after that, there was story after story (on Yahoo! News) about people being boiled and eaten in Africa, as part of one or another ritual. That wasn't just "confirmation bias" on my part, either; at most it was that reporters and news services temporarily got into the (good) habit of reporting that savagery. (They have since stopped, perhaps for not wanting to be accused of "racism" in simply telling the truth.)

"There are definitely people making money out of smuggling bushmeat into the United States and selling it to their friends and their contacts and colleagues who want that taste of home," said Crawford Allan, director of the World Wildlife Fund's traffic program. (more)

Say it with me now: "Multiculturalism."

Or something about animals, living-room carpets, and shit.

Speaking of which:

The UN estimates that 5,000 Muslim women are Honor-killed each year, so when we look at 1.5 billion (not 1.8) Muslims then one can mistakenly believe that Honor-killings are a rare phenomena indeed. However, it should be noted that since daughters and wives are the victims we should be looking at only half the Muslim population, the women. So now we're looking at 750 million women. But wait! How many of those women have dishonored her family by adopting Western ways, or by refusing to wear the hijab, or have run off with a non-Muslim boy? Certainly not 750 million.

Unfortunately it is difficult [to] find out how many Muslim women are defying their husbands, fathers, brothers, uncles, in-laws. It could be as many as 100,000 a year with most of them murdered. I'll tell you why.

And also:

What Africa needs desperately is to be colonized again, but by America. In order for the Western world to invest in Africa there has to be political stability, decent roads, schools that educate not inculcate subservience to Allah, and reliable sources of water and electricity. Two of the greatest successes of the modern world occurred with the American Colonial occupation of Germany and Japan. [Japan was a nation-wide feudal cult with a "Divine Emperor" until the very end of WWII—they even tried to make it a condition of their surrender that they would get to keep their Emperor-guru.] Who would not invest in those countries when America was dictating the social and economic policies of those nations?

If Nigeria were controlled by America it would not have squandered the $400 billion it received in oil revenues since 1970 with almost all of it going to fund local wars or into private bank accounts outside of Nigeria.

Unfortunately, even being "colonized" again wouldn't do anything for the significant genetic component of the low IQs in Africa (average ~68 in the most primitive, sub-Saharan region). So all they'd be able to do, even in the best of circumstances, is grow their own food, and sell off their natural resources until there's nothing left of the latter ... being even less able to see that utterly predictable end coming than we in the developed and educated world are (cf. the dead Maritime cod-fishing industry). And then, after that end, get used to living permanently in the small-scale agrarian poverty which is their birthright, and which is (from their literally retarded average intelligence) precisely what they deserve.

Seriously, the only way to get such people out of poverty is to give them money they haven't earned, and which they literally don't have the brains to earn, even when they try their hardest. It's called "spreading the wealth around," or making things "fair" for everyone, so they can piss away their newfound wealth on the pre-industrial equivalent of shiny, spinning rims to show their Big Man status, and then sink back into ineradicable poverty when that bubble collapses.

Certainly the problems in Iraq are precisely because we tried to let Iraqis govern themselves. We should have done for Iraq what we did during the half century of occupation in Germany and Japan: let two generations grow up under American-style democracy. Sadly, we are a bully that could have made the world into a peaceful, productive place; instead, we try to please everyone and show how sensitive and caring we are.

I agree completely: Giving the gift of democracy to a bunch of cult followers (whether Muslims or Catholics) just allows them to "elect a theocracy" which will hardly be an improvement over their previous tyrants. D'uh.

Observe:

It's been a strange week for Obama.

If by chance, you had listened to Fox News, then you would have realized that Obama's presidency is in danger.

Yup, that's what we said.

If however, you are on this planet, then you would realize that maybe just maybe a Harvard educated president knows what he is doing.

Of course, following that logic through, the (now-former) president of Harvard might "maybe just maybe" equally know what he was talking about when discussing the reasons (incl. cognitive/genetic ones) for why women are underrepresented in the hard sciences (i.e., why they don't do as well in those, regardless of what perks or advantages you give them) as men do ... tee-hee-hee!

P.S. Discovered the Ladies of the Canyon, Mediaeval Baebes and Joanna Papaj today. Cor....

P.P.S. Which phrase do you find more offensive: "Titty-fucking Jesus" or "Nigger Jesus"? I ask because I just watched Matt Stone and Trey Parker's Team America recently, and they use the former phrase, while I've used the latter in HLM. By all rights, blaspheming the Son of God should be a worse offense than using a word which simply means "black," shouldn't it?

So I guess Parker and Stone are even more "intolerant" than I am, huh? (Except, of course, that dissing whites, males, and Christianity, doesn't count in the game of intolerance-card-playing, does it?)

Either way, if I ever take up DJ'ing (which I won't), I've got a stage name for myself: DJ White Nigger. They couldn't even print it without being "racist," could they? ("Who the hell is 'Dee-jay White N-Word'?") You could be "DJ Titty-Fucking Jesus" and no one would bat an eye, but offend the "people of N," and you're in Shit City.

Only takes one itchy trigger
One more widow, one less white nigger

—Elvis Costello, "Oliver's Army"

Oh-oh: Hate-crime alert!

P.P.P.S. If you want a lesson in how not to design a web page, check this out. Are you feeling dizzy yet?

Hmm, more intolerance from Bernie Planck. Tsk tsk:

New York Post cartoon (18 Feb 2009) associating President Obama's futile stimulus plan to a vicious chimpanzee drew criticism in the blogosphere and from race-baiter Al Sharpton. We need to stop this over-sensitivity right now. Otherwise anytime someone makes a statement such as, "This issue is not as black and white as some in Congress see it," we will have all the so-called black leaders coming out huffing and puffing about some racial slight.

Here's a hint Reverend (and I use the word Reverend loosely): THE PRESIDENT DOES NOT WRITE BILLS. Congress does. This cartoon referred to the monkey morons managing money in Congress.

That's it—get over it. Stop whipping up stuff from past centuries. Ooops are you going to complain about the "whipping" remark?

And, from Sailer's Flip-Flop On Feminism—Is Race Next?

Clinton's survival, which depended significantly on his near-unanimous support from hypocritical feminists, ended the era in which intelligent people took feminism seriously.

What I'm secretly hoping is that Obama's thin-skinned presidency will be a similar death-knell to intelligent people taking PC race-card-playing seriously. The idiotic, Sharpton-led protests against the "racist" chimp cartoon are a start.

In the end, all you really have to do to prove these people (feminists, black leaders, etc.) to be complete fools is to let them speak their minds. So, viva la freedom of speech.

And, did'ja know:

Nearly half of the [American] nation's children under 5 are racial or ethnic minorities, and the percentage is increasing mainly because the Hispanic population is growing so rapidly, according to a census report released today [May 10, 2006]....

[T]he growth trend among the youngest Hispanics "is only going to accelerate under almost any scenario you can think about, even without immigration," said demographer Jeffrey S. Passel of the Pew Hispanic Center. "As the children age, they are the ones who in 20 years will be having children."

Short of profound breakthroughs in genetic/neural-implant engineering ... or a good eugenics program ... civilization really is doomed:

It's important to realize that for evaluating the likelihood of Idiocracy ... it doesn't particularly matter whether nature or nurture is the driving force in molding the next generation.

If dim people are having more babies than smart people, the average American in the next generation will end up with a relatively worse upbringing or worse genes or both....

[T]here are three trends that will lower the national average IQ:

1. The number of black children born to women with IQs below the black mean

2. Faster growth for racial/ethnic groups with lower average IQs

3. Shorter generation times for lower IQ mothers

P.S. Welcome to Iowa, Ontario, Baracky-boy. The "Tall Corn State," we are. Yee-haw!!

This is why I don't worry too much about being "tolerant" of our world's Muslims:

Geert Wilders reminds us that Winston Churchill himself compared the Quran to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. If Mr. Churchill had said that today, in the misguided notion of tolerance that is practiced now, he would be banned from the UK.

Sadly, justified intolerance is not tolerated by the modern, multiculturalist European. There's an irony there somewhere....

Intolerance of Muslims is not bigotry; it is precaution.

To a lesser extent, a comparable intolerance of any group that threatens Western civilization and freedom of speech is equally a necessary precaution. It's a continuum, not merely black-or-white, right?

So you need not wonder why I have so little use for the idea of "tolerance" for our world's racist shit-niggers, totalitarian thought-police dumbcunt Steinem-esque feminists, and homophobic, pedophilic, woman-hating, "honor"-killing goat-fuckers.

After all, if it wasn't for the political correctness, faux victimization, word-blacklists and other shithead ideas about superficial "tolerance" that the civil-rights and feminist movements have pushed through, we'd find it much easier to recognize and stand up to Muslim bullying, and "call a spade a spade" there, wouldn't we? Rather than, you know, politely excusing it as being part of "their culture" and supposedly being an understandable response to them being a (ha!) "persecuted minority," victimized by the same hegemonic, patriarchal white males who are to blame for everything else that's wrong with the world. ("Some leftists have also argued that France has caused her own intifada by continuing to hold 'racist' views of their Muslim immigrant population." Well, then viva la France!)

In a twisted way, though, it's actually good that those Islamic animals show their true colors in things like their violent protests against the Danish cartoons, and the recent (non-newsworthy!) beheading in Buffalo. (Where, "miracle of miracles," even the National Organization for Women started to take notice!) We need to widely understand what savages are in our midst while their numbers are still manageable, and before granting them Sharia Law for their communities in our own civilized countries.

Not to be excessively cruel, but it would do our world's idiot, whining ("Mein Cramps") feminists good to experience life under Sharia for themselves, for awhile. Might cure them of a few of their stupider ideas about the world, and about how "all persecuted minorities are in it together."

P.S. Ali Baba Bunny.

Also, from the Lizard King at LGF:

If you argue that it’s vitally necessary to deport the entire Muslim population of the United States, you are ADVOCATING MASS MURDER....

There is no way in hell that you can uproot millions of people, most of whom have done nothing wrong, and throw them all out of the country, without committing mass violence. People will resist this with all their hearts.

No decent American would stand for it. It's an un-American, evil idea to its very core.

As one of the few non-knee-jerk-supporting commentators there observed, however:

The problem, it seems to me, is that we need to cull those who mean us harm from those that do not. The problem with criminal law in doing this is that it requires both bad intent and a bad act. By the time a jihadi performs a bad act, it is too late.

If a person does not desire to harm me, feel free to call America home. If you do desire my harm, we need to take you out. We need a system to accomplish this.

Well, there's always the Sailer Scheme, of simply paying them to leave. That is if, you know, there's any money left over from that big Obamaporkulus bill....

If you doubt what random mutations and selection can accomplish, even in the realm of computer programming, consider this (from Steven Johnson's Emergence):

For years, number sorting has served as one of the benchmark tests for ingenious programmers, like chess-playing applications. Throw a hundred random numbers at a program and see how many steps it takes to sort the digits into the correct order. Using traditional programming techniques, the record for number sorting stood at sixty steps when Hillis decided to try his hand. But Hillis didn't just sit down to write a number-sorting application. What Hillis created was a recipe for learning, a program for creating another program. In other words, he didn't teach the computer how to sort numbers. He taught the computer to figure out how to sort numbers on its own.

Hillis pulled off this sleight of hand by connecting the formidable powers of natural selection to a massively parallel supercomputer—the Connection Machine that he himself had helped design. Instead of authoring a number-sorting program himself—writing lines of code and debugging—Hillis instructed the computer to generate thousands of miniprograms, each composed of random combinations of instructions, creating a kind of digital gene pool. Each program was confronted with a disorderly sequence of numbers, and each tried its hand at putting them in the correct order. The first batch of programs were, as you might imagine, utterly inept at number sorting. (In fact, the overwhelming majority of the programs were good for nothing at all.) But some programs were better than others, and because Hillis had established a quantifiable goal for the experiment—numbers arranged in the correct order—the computer could select the few programs that were in the ballpark. Those programs became the basis for the next iteration, only Hillis would also mutate their code slightly and crossbreed them with the other promising programs. And then the whole process would repeat itself: the most successful programs of the new generation would be chosen, then subjected to the same transformations. Mix, mutate, evaluate, repeat.

After only a few minutes—and thousands of cycles—this evolutionary process resulted in a powerful number-sorting program, capable of arranging a string of random numbers in seventy-five steps. Not a record breaker, by any means, but impressive nonetheless. The problem, though, was that the digital gene pool was maxing out at the seventy-five-step mark. Each time Hillis ran the sequence, the computer would quickly evolve a powerful and efficient number sorter, but it would run out of steam at around seventy-five steps. After enough experimentation, Hillis recognized that his system had encountered a hurdle often discussed by evolutionary theorists: the software had stumbled across a local maximum in the fitness landscape.

Imagine the space of all possible number-sorting programs spread out like a physical landscape, with more successful programs residing at higher elevations, and less successful programs lurking in the valleys. Evolutionary software is a way of blindly probing that space, looking for gradients that lead to higher elevations. Think of an early stage in Hillis's cycle: one evolved routine sorts a few steps faster than its "parent" and so it survives into the next round. That survival is the equivalent of climbing up one notch on the fitness landscape. If its "descendant" sorts even more efficiently, its "genes" are passed on to the next generation, and it climbs another notch higher.

The problem with this approach is that there are false peaks in the fitness landscape. There are countless ways to program a computer to sort numbers with tolerable efficiency, but only a few ways to sort numbers if you're intent on setting a world record. And those different programs vary dramatically in the way they tackle the problem. Think of those different approaches as peaks on the fitness landscape: there are thousands of small ridges, but only a few isolated Everests. If a program evolves using one approach, its descendants may never find their way to another approach—because Hillis's system only rewarded generations that improved on the work done by their ancestors. Once the software climbs all the way to the top of a ridge, there's no reward in descending and looking for another, higher peak, because a less successful program—one that drops down a notch on the fitness landscape—would instantly be eliminated from the gene pool. Hillis's software was settling in at the seventy-five-step ridges because the penalty for searching out the higher points was too severe.

Hillis's stroke of genius was to force his miniprograms out of the ridges by introducing predators into the mix. Just as in real-world ecosystems, predators effectively raised the bar for evolved programs that became lazy because of their success. Before the introduction of predators, a miniprogram that had reached a seventy-five-step ridge knew that its offspring had a chance of surviving if it stayed at that local maximum, but faced almost certain death if it descended to search out higher ground. But the predators changed all that. They hunted down ridge dwellers and forced them to improvise: if a miniprogram settled into the seventy-five-step range, it could be destroyed by predator programs. Once the predators appeared on the scene, it became more productive to descend to lower altitudes to search out a new peak than to stay put at a local maximum.

Hillis structured the predator-prey relationship as an arms race: the higher the sorting programs climbed, the more challenging the predators became. If the system stumbled across a seventy-step peak, then predators were introduced that hunted down seventy-step programs. Anytime the software climbers decided to rest on their laurels, a predator appeared to scatter them off to find higher elevations.

After only thirty minutes of this new system, the computer had evolved a batch of programs that could sort numbers in sixty-two steps, just two shy of the all-time record. Hillis's system functioned, in biological terms, more like an environment than an organism: it created a space where intelligent programs could grow and adapt, exceeding the capacities of all but the most brilliant flesh-and-blood programmers. "One of the interesting things about the sorting programs that evolved in my experiment is that I do not understand how they work," Hillis writes in his book The Pattern on the Stone. "I have carefully examined their instruction sequences, but I do not understand them: I have no simpler explanation of how the programs work than the instruction sequences themselves. It may be that the programs are not understandable."

And you thought that for "dirt to get up and start sorting numbers" would require Eros in the Kosmos, eh?

P.S. The Most Disturbing Animals on Earth: Part 1, Part 2:

When it comes time for the female [Emerald Cockroach Wasp ] to lay her eggs, she finds a roach and stings it in a precise spot in the ganglia to reversibly paralyze its front legs, then stings it in a different spot to disable the escape reflex. She then chews off half the roach's antennae, and uses the stubs to lead the zombified roach around like a dog on a leash until they reach her burrow where she lays her eggs in its stomach, and buries it alive. The lobotomized roach then rests quietly while the baby inside of it hatches, and proceeds to systematically eat the roach's internal organs in a specific order that keeps it alive until the very end, at which point the new wasp finishes hollowing out the shell and emerges.

And all of that (i.e., the order in which the organs are eaten) is obviously purely innate, i.e., genetically programmed, with no "cultural" or teaching component. Makes you wonder how much of our own behaviors are similarly innate/genetic, dunnit?

My guess? A lot.

I watched the movie Idiocracy (torrent) yesterday—by Mike Judge, the (conservative) guy who co-created King of the Hill.

It's positively brilliant ... and quite nicely summarizes my own (relative) experiences in dealing with the low-IQ, homophobic goat-fuckers and dumbfuck racist blacks infesting this city—people who are simply Too Fucking Stupid to realize how Absolutely Fucking Stupid they are ... and who thus consider themselves to be superior to people (like me) who "talk faggy," with big words and all.

Like our pig-fucking rednecks, they've got the whole world explained on the basis of their two-digit IQ view of it. And because they already "have all the answers," they truly believe that anyone who actually tries to see all sides of an issue and think it through, without having all the "obvious" answers up front, must be "dumb."

It's also remarkably similar to trying to reason with cult-followers and Wilberites—people who are far too clueless and (unfoundedly) confident to even know what's best for them. And if you make the "mistake" of trying to point out to them how they're being deceived, and how nothing of what they cherish most makes sense, they will truly "turn again, and rend you." (Obviously, those are not low-IQ people; but they might as well be, for how their beliefs sabotage their ability to think critically and rationally. Likewise, Ken Wilber is not literally a moron; but he might as well be, if one were to judge him merely on his "professional" work.)

It really is all relative: an average, 100 IQ looks just as stupid from an Einsteinian perspective, as a literal imbecile looks to someone of average-white intelligence.

And with the stupidest underclass people (Mexicans, Muslims, blacks, and white trailer trash) breeding like rabbits, and supported in that by the welfare state in the Western world, it's only going to get worse.

But in the end, high-IQ wins, simply because you can't solve the problems of any reasonably complex society without it.

P.S. At the end of that movie, after it worked to put toilet water on the crops, the rabble also thought that they might be able to fix a leaking nuclear reactor ... by putting toilet water on it. That's pretty much the mentality that shamanistic and agrarian religion grew out of, in the paleolithic and neolithic eras: people trying desperately to figure out causes and effects in the world around them, without any notion of how to isolate independent variables, and thus of how the world actually works, in its laws of physics, chemistry, biology, etc.

Further, postulated cause-effect chains where the cause resembles the effect are easier to remember, repeat, and transmit (especially in early societies without writing) than are ones where the cause and effect are dissimilar. (Relate that to memes, if you wish.)

So you can easily see, from that, why sympathetic magic would predominate in those early societies. There's simply less items of information to have to remember, when the cause reminds you of the effect. (Cf. voodoo, where inserting pins into a doll that resembles the target would supposedly cause similar pains in the living person associated with the doll.)

So, those kind of explanations will be the ones that will naturally propagate or reproduce themselves throughout any population. Not just on our planet, but anywhere that intelligent life may exist: you can't get rid of sympathetic-magical thinking, simply because its notions replicate more easily through a population than do real causes with dissimilar effects, in legitimate scientific explanations of the world around us.

You can't get rid of primitive, shamanistic religions, for exactly the same reasons. For example, early humans (like ourselves) would feel better after vomiting out, say, a poisonous plant they had previous ingested (i.e., taken into their mouths, and swallowed). That is, the act of vomiting, after eating, seemed to "heal" them from their discomfort. From that, they evolved whole "healing" rituals based on the idea of sucking out—i.e., taking into their mouths—the unseen, illness-producing spirits from others, and either catching those in "darts" in their mouths that (by sympathetic magic) "resembled" the spirits, or vomiting them out afterwards:

In The Way of the Shaman, Michael Harner gives the basics of the "sucking" technique. After locating the place on the client's body where the intrusive spirit is, the practitioner proceeds to physically suck the skin (pulling open clothing at that spot)—pulling out the spirit, being careful to dry-vomit after each bout of sucking. Harner recommends that one should dry-vomit the intrusive spirit into a container of some kind, for later disposal.

And so goes the "toilet water" that is religion. (On a personal note, I have been regularly reminded of how much better one feels after vomiting ... whenever I've made the mistake of drinking more than three pints in an evening. If you wonder where my ideas on the origins of religion come from ... kneeling at the throne of the Porcelain God has not been irrelevant.)

You read it here first. Literally: I've looked for explanations of why sympathetic-magical thinking would be so widespread both among primitive societies and even today, or of what its evolutionary basis would be, and no one has even tried to figure it out. So I had to figure it out. Same thing for the sucking-and-vomiting ritual: Everyone who's written on shamanism knows about it, but I've never seen an explanation for why they'd be doing it.

I still have a book to write about all that, don't I?

I've put up the PDF of Hip Like Me for download. It's the least I could do to allow "Mark Twain" (Shania's nigger-loving brother?) to inform himself....

In other news, Ezra Levant (who went to a Jewish day school in his formative years) shows, once again, how clueless the freedom-of-speechers are as soon as religion gets stirred into the mix: Brave atheists tackle the peril of... Canadian Christianity. Carping about the use of "probably," and how the atheist spokesman "hardly seemed the role model of a devil-may-care lifestyle" (as if rejecting the existence of fairy-tale beliefs would equate to being James Bond!). Gimme a friggin' break.

But the ads' message isn't really atheist as much as it is hedonist. Atheism simply means denying God. It doesn't mean renouncing a code of moral living, even a very strict or ascetic code. It doesn't mean renouncing shame or embarrassment or self-control or personal responsibility. Those can exist without belief in God. In fact, that's one of the central arguments atheists make: that they have their own rationale for behaving well, based on reason, not on faith. These ads really aren't a plug for renouncing God. They're a plug for renouncing self-control.

Because, you see, encouraging people to enjoy their lives rather than worrying (about hellfire and Judgment Day, or their non-Christian equivalents, obviously) is really giving them license to "renounce their code of moral living," along with any sense of shame, embarrassment, self-control and personal responsibility. Didn't you realize that? No? Silly you. Because that's what "not worrying" and "enjoying life" obviously mean!

We could actually use a few good atheists these days, just [??] to keep things in balance. But these ones are so proud of the Maginot Line they've built, they don't even realize that they're attacking a make-believe threat, while ignoring a perilous one.

"Attacking a make-believe threat." Uh-huh. Not to in any way compare the subdued tyranny of secularized Christians today (these many centuries away from the Inquisition and witch-hunts, etc.) to the severe threat of Islam, but: Tell that crap about the "make-believe threat" to "Judith Iscariot." Or isn't the (Catholic-driven) banning of The Life of Brian up to the present day in regions of Britain (the country where the "atheist ad" campaign got started, y'know), a "free-speech issue"?

You would think that someone like Levant, who has made his name on precisely that topic, would have more of a clue, wouldn't you?

Does he not even get that, far from being merely "designed to prick at Christians," the non-existence of the Muslim God is just as likely, to any atheist, as the fairy-tale nature of the Christian God, and that both are covered by exactly the same word, in the ad? (What's the literal translation of "Allah," again? Oh yeah: "God." Saying "God" thus covers them both; saying "Allah" wouldn't.)

Sure, creating an "Allah probably doesn't exist" ad would indeed result in all of the "cartoonish" violence that Levant predicts. But given the fact that an openly atheist politician still couldn't get elected in the U.S. or in Canada, and that atheists are the most explicit disapproved-of "out-group" in North America, the current advertising campaign is edgy and "offensive" enough.

That's not enough for Levant, though: He wants everyone to fight his specific battles, on top of whatever the actual mandates of the groups themselves may be.

What's next? Bashing PETA not merely for their scantily-clad girls and (at least implicit) opposition to bestiality, but for them not specifically targeting the "goat-fucking" of our world's ... well, goat-fuckers?

There's a reason why people like Levant and Kathy Shaidle are politicians and activists, rather than philosophers—that is, rather than thinkers.

And then there's this, from a feminist perspective on racial disparities:

According to data from a National Crime Victimization Survey, published by the U.S. Department of Justice, only 2,336 whites were charged with anti-black hate crimes in 1997, while 718 blacks were charged with anti-white crimes.

Adjusting for the fact that African-Americans make up just 13 percent of the population, they are statistically twice as likely as whites to face prosecution for hate crimes.

Not only are these anti-discrimination laws often used as a weapon against the very people they were designed to protect, many times they are ... just ridiculous.

Yeah, that must be evidence of "discrimination" or retribution/blowback on the part of Whitey and His Oppressive Court System, 'cause there's no way blacks hate whites twice as much as whites hate blacks, and violently act that hatred out, is there? D'uh. (I actually agree with most of what that hot, Catholic lesbian writes; but most often when she gets into the oppression-of-minorities and glass-ceiling stuff, she just ends up showing how skewed her view of the world is, in those regards. And if even the smart, mostly-sane feminists like herself and Ophelia Benson can't get such simple things right ... what do you expect from the professional-victim "Steinems" of the world?)

Anyway, the comments to that post (on private property vs. legislated equal rights) are rather good:

Well, see there's the problem: if we suddenly start respecting private property rights again, then people might be able to limit access to their clubs/restaurants/what-have-you to specific genders, races, religions, primary sexual orientation or other "protected" classes. They could say "I'm going to have a cigar lounge and you, the state, can fark straight off because it's private property and you have no legitimate interest here." They could do the same for a lesbian bar or a whites-only club.

How can we both enforce equality and private property rights? I submit that we cannot have it both ways. Personally, I think private property is the right which should be enforced. If people want to maintain misguided racist, sexist, classist or other beliefs and to have establishments for the same, well, then that's what freedom of expression is all about. They can have their beliefs and other people can tell them that they believe it to be wrong....

If you allow NO MALE MARINES or NO MALE signs at your "lesbian club" shall I encourage my local racist publican to put up a sign in front of his Honky Tonk such as:

EVERYONE WELCOME

EXCEPT
LESBIANS
POLOCKS
FAGGOTS
SCOTS
NIGGERS
JEWS
IRISH
WETBACKS
AND SANDNIGGERS

Now that's intolerant! But fair too, no?

And it appears that Ann Coulter has finally really stepped in it. (Or not.) But on the other hand:

The immigration restriction movement contains some "white supremacists" The immigration restriction movement also contains some evangelical christians that are strongly pro israel. The immigration restriction movement also contains some jews.

For the immigration restriction movement to prevail, it will need to make itself inclusive.

If you are a jew who believes that the most important thing for the future of America is restricting the immigration of muslims, you need to hold your nose and make common cause with the "white supremacists."

My message to the white supremacists is, why not tone down your anti jewish rhetoric for a while (as the BNP has done) just in order to win the immigration battle? Once the immigration battle is won, then you can cross that off your list of priorities and go back to jew-baiting.

My message to jews is to ignore the past anti semitic work of the white supremacists. Focus on what they are doing now. Once the immigration battle is won, then go back to battling the white supremacists.

If you want to build the immigration restriction coalition, you will all have to walk on eggshells a little.

Those are exactly my sentiments, too, even though that type of thing is all lost on the none-too-stable control freak (see comments) Charles Johnson at LGF.

If I have to, I can be "practical," and compromise, you know? I hate it, but I can do it.

I have no intention of getting distracted into trying to reason with our world's PC idiots ... but I saw that someone left a comment on amazon.com regarding the Midwest Book Review review there, and my curiosity got the better of me.

This is what "Mark Twat" ... I mean, Twain ... had to say about me and my writings, with the expected cowardly anonymity:

You mean like the N-word he continually uses on his blog, including his Jan. 20 reference to Obama's inauguration as an "innigeration"? Real concerned about tolerance, this guy. Search for it yourself--I won't be arsed to type a link to his site--you'll also find a recent reference to "one of the many disciplines to which blacks have contributed less than nothing in the entire miserable, savage history of their prejudiced, dumbf*ck-filled race." Hey, let's all take this guy real seriously!

My reply:

You needn't search for yourself, here's the link to the foremost-offending blog entry: http://www.geoffreyfalk.com/blog/January2009.asp#29 . For the "innigeration" of the first half-white POTUS, see http://www.geoffreyfalk.com/blog/January2009.asp#20 . For the great contributions *falsely* claimed by racist (Nation of Islam) blacks to the intellectual and scientific world, see http://www.geoffreyfalk.com/blog/November2008.asp#3 . And for the literally savage history of the black race (in Africa), see http://www.geoffreyfalk.com/blog/February2008.asp#12 .

As always, the CONTEXT matters: No one should feel bad about using one or another "blacklisted" (har!) word against our world's liars, cretins and bullies (who won't let a white man walk down the street without harassing him, even in Toronto) ... especially when expressing "tolerance" toward their BLACK-RACIST behaviors/crimes *only encourages them*. And yes, any group where half the people are below 85 IQ is indeed dumbf*ck-filled, just as surely as white-redneck society (which you can still look down on without being a "racist," thankfully) is thus filled. But of course, that's all lost on the limp-wristed, effete, PC Leftards, arsed or not....

And no, I'm truly not concerned in the least with braindead PC "tolerance" (as opposed to fairness, and "live and let live"): I believe deeply in preserving Western, European, Enlightenment-based *civilization* against the low-IQ, thin-skinned, bullying horde of savages who most threaten it, by whatever means are necessary. Starting with freezing the North American borders to immigration for at least the next two decades.

(Is the "Twain" handle meant ironically? You know, with "N-word Jim" and the ensuing attempts by concerned "adults" to ban HUCKLEBERRY FINN from schools, etc.?)

BTW, I also use the "N-word" several times in HIP LIKE ME. And if you don't find the phrase "[N-word] Jesus" (in response to laughable Afrocentric claims that Jesus was black) offensive ... well then, I must still not be trying hard enough to offend.

I promise to try harder in the future, okay, anonymous-coward-"Mark"? Even harder than this: http://www.geoffreyfalk.com/blog/December2008.asp#19 .

HARDER.

I've gone through the same garbage with all the idiots who trashed me for STG and NE, of course, who even accused me of being racist for supposedly just exposing Eastern (brown) gurus, there (even though 45% of the figures covered at any depth in STG are Western). This is just a different "cult." (Seriously: multicultural [in-group/out-group] ideology, in practice, produces very cult-like behaviors among its adherents; as does feminism. I've given all the references for that already in HLM.)

"Arsed" would have to be British (or Brit-colonial) ... so this is just another damned pasty, liberal fool who can't wait to see Western (i.e., Enlightenment-based) civilization overrun by people who want nothing more than to destroy it, along with the whiteys who are "to blame for all of their problems" and who deserve whatever they (minorities) can dish out. Dumbfuck doesn't even realize that these bullies (nigga, wetback, and goat-fucking) don't bother to discriminate between honkeys/Jews who are "on their side," and Awful Racist People like me.

I know that too well, simply because I used to be "on their side," as much as any gullible hippie ever has been. Unfortunately, that hasn't stopped the same shit-skinned savages from trying to push me around, just because they can. Mark Twat's solution, I'm sure, would be to just let them keep pushing ... or maybe to give them all our lunch/stimulus money, in the hope that that will finally make them stop.

IT WON'T MAKE THEM STOP. On the contrary, like with all shit-for-brains bullies, the only way to make them stop is to PUSH BACK HARDER. Because, like all bullies, deep down they're pathetic cowards. (They wouldn't yap in Afrikangibberish if they were anything but that; they'd dis whitey/me in English if they were even men, rather than retarded boys.)

People like Mark Twat are the representatives and defenders of "tolerance" in this world—where we show our tolerance by voluntarily censoring ourselves from using ANY AND ALL words (even "niggardly"!) which our whining "victims" find offensive, even while they're under no obligation to show the same "tolerance" toward their "oppressors," and indeed they consistently don't behave in the same noble way as they demand from others. So you can see why I'd far rather be explicitly called a "racist" than have their shit-for-brains approval ... even while immensely admiring the truly valuable work of courageous, intelligent African-American individuals like Ward Connerly, John McWhorter, Thomas Sowell and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Of course, those black Americans (except Hirsi Ali) aren't really "African-American," they're just American. Or am I "Russian-Canadian" just because my grandparents came from the Caucasus Mountains, fleeing from there during the Russian Revolution? I don't think so. (I am, however, the descendant of penniless immigrants. So you see, I'm an "oppressed victim" too!! Even though my great-grandmother on my father's side literally grew up in the Caucasus. You can't get much more Caucasian than that!)

Or, if we're allowed to go back indefinitely in our family trees ... then we're all African-Americans, African-Canadians, etc. 'Cause, you know, "Out of Africa," etc.

Why, I wonder, does "Mark" fail to mention that my "continual" use of the verboten N-word (gasp!) here is equally "continually" being done in response to being harassed, without provocation, by one or another worthless black racist? Could his apparent wish to take that usage out of context (for maximum damning value) possibly be related to his failure to be "arsed" enough to actually provide a link to the specific blog items he's carping about, which would provide exactly such a mollifying context? I think it was, and I think his actions there prove him to be an intellectually dishonest ... ooh, I almost said "nigger lover." 'Cause he knows that most people simply won't make the effort to search for that context, instead just taking his out-of-context quotes at face value.

Does he even realize that my take on Obama's "innigeration" was, among other things, a jab at The One (and his lackeys in the media) playing up the race card every chance they get, when Baracky is genetically just as white as he is black? It's not that they were installing a "nigger" in the White House—a "White House Nigger," as it were—it's rather that the whole thing was part of the process of the half-white Obama trying to prove himself to be "black enough" ... and trading on affirmative action and white guilt every step of the way, to get there. That's why the reference is to him being half-white, rather than half-black (which would have been a lesser "insult," in this context), or to the "innigeration" of the first "nigger" president of the United States ... which is precisely what BHO is not: he's at best a "half-nigger," trying to pretend he's a full one! Was that not obvious?

And notice he takes my use of the (gasp! gasp!!) N-word here as counting against the "humorous look at discrimination in its many forms" that MBR (after having read the book) credits HLM with being, and as showing that I'm not "real concerned about tolerance." Yet, Chris Rock uses the same word. Rather "continually," actually ... at least when he's not being a race-baiting idiot. Is he then also, like me, not "concerned about tolerance" (even beyond its mindless PC incarnation)? Or are there possibly contexts in which one could use that word, and still claim to have insight about "discrimination in its many forms"? (No, it's not up to blacks to unilaterally dictate as to who can or can't use that word "for a good reason" ... or even for bad reasons. You don't—or at least shouldn't—get to dictate to the world how it's allowed to behave, just because you're a whining dumbfuck in a "minority" group of comparable idiots.)

At least Mr. Twat's spelling and grammar are impeccable. So he's an educated fool, to be sure.

The worst kind. Not to mention that, if he's going to contribute comments on a page specifically dedicated to my book, he might have considered, you know, actually reading the damn the thing first. Stupid git. Does he even realize that the people at MBR did read the (whole) book before reviewing it, whereas he hasn't? And unlike him, they didn't utterly miss the points which it (and my blog) are intended to make. (Not to mention that, what kind of idiot turns a book review into a "blog review"?)

'Cause really, if the worst criticisms you can come up with are that I've used the N-word here (in response to being crapped on by various worthless shit-skins), and that I recognize that there are many high-IQ fields that blacks, as a simple statement of fact, have not made (and will not make) significant contributions to ... well, shite, am I really supposed to feel bad about that? It's almost like the line in Woody Allen's Love and Death, where Allen's character tells the Napoleon double that he's a tyrant and a dictator and he starts wars, and the Napoleon double looks at Diane Keaton's character and says, "Why is he reciting my good points?"

So yeah, you should "all take [me] real seriously": I have the guts to face (and speak out about) realities which 99% of people are either too stupid or too chickenshit to face. Especially lilywhite, anonymous cowards like "Mark Twain."

P.S. My line about blacks having "contributed less than nothing" to numerous disciplines was obvious hyperbole: You can't contribute less than nothing ... well, except maybe if your bullying behaviors were preventing other people from working (like, y'know, when niggers hassle me utterly out of the blue, for no reason at all except for the color of my skin, when I'm on my way to work). The exaggeration is justified, simply because it's still less than the positive (lying) claims made by Nation of Islam proselytizers about the contributions supposedly made by blacks to science and technology.

Nevertheless, your turn: Name a few accomplished blacks in stringent intellectual fields like physics, mathematics, computer science or, oh I don't know, moral philosophy maybe. Name even one Nobel Prize-winner in Science or Medicine (not Literature or "Peace") who was black. Take your time, make sure the list is complete; no rush. I'll still be here when you're done.

The fact is that, with 115+ IQ blacks being as rare as Mensa-caliber whites, and with any field of serious intellectual study requiring at least a 120 IQ in order for one to even be minimally competent in it, not only will there not be a proportional representation of blacks in any field that requires keen (e.g., Mensa-level) intelligence, they won't even show up at the high end of it, relative to Asians, whites, and Jews. You don't even need to know the details; all you need to know is that the average black IQ in North America is 85, with a standard deviation of 15 in a bell distribution, and then have some idea of what phenomenal amount of intelligence is required to even be competent in the sciences, and of what easier (and much better paying) options are open, in life, to people with good verbal/improvisational skills. Beyond that, it's just how the numbers crunch; it has nothing to do with "whitey keeping them down"; and it doesn't even matter what part of the IQ difference is genetic and what percentage is cultural (it's the same end result either way). And while Mark Twat won't like it, there's nothing anyone can do about it (you're not allowed to advocate that blacks give up their "culture" and behave "like whites," that's "racist"), any more than you could expect a proportional representation of short, squat Eskimos or Mexicans in the NBA—a field to which (I would assume) they've made "less than no" contribution.

If you're very smart, and want to hang out someplace with no blacks around, try Mensa. It's a Nigger-Free Zone, and that's not for any "discrimination" on the part of the Asians, whites and Jews there; it's rather just simple meritocracy.

Even in the bullshit field of law, Barack Obama, who went to Harvard (matriculated in 1988), makes no mention in his writings of having received an offer from Yale. But any reasonably smart black man going into law would absolutely apply to and receive offers from both universities ... and surely wouldn't neglect to mention having been at the center of a "bidding war" between them, as such a valuable minority for their quotas ... er, I mean, their "diversity." The obvious conclusion is that Obama, even with affirmative-action admissions in place at Harvard Law School to help him, was barely smart enough to get into Harvard, and not smart enough to be worth Yale's time. Which actually makes him, logically, a pretty dumb individual. (Harvard isn't done screwing with their admissions process yet, to favor "under-represented minorities" who don't have the brains to be there in the first place. It's not enough that universities "buy off" blacks and women, by creating fluffy African Studies and Women's Studies programs that don't even require a three-digit IQ to graduate from or teach in; it's never enough.)

Also, as I go into explicitly in HLM, I have no problem at all with skilled (i.e., high-IQ) immigration, from whatever countries, and of whatever races and creeds (except Muslims, where even the smart ones too often use "hate crime" legislation as a means of suppressing "Islamophobia," e.g., of silencing anyone who dares to speak the truth about their Pedophile Prophet; not to mention their savage "honor killings"). It's just that the more practical thing (and the only thing which won't result in disproportionate "discrimination" against blacks ... sorry, I mean niggers ... and wetbacks) is to completely stop it all. At the very least, put a stop to the "chain immigration" that occurs when one reasonably smart person gets in ... and then all his dumbfuck, regressed-toward-the-mean relatives follow.

What with the respective (higher) birth rates of goat-fuckers, tacos, and Afrikkkan savages, as compared to educated whites and Jews, that will still only delay the inevitable turning of the USA and Canada into Third-World countries, burdened irrevocably by the crippling weight of their low-IQ, welfare-state, "victimized," dumbfuck underclass. But it's better than doing nothing at all.

Oh, and the "by whatever means [are] necessary" phrase is a quote from Malcolm X. Another unapologetic, worthless black racist shit, who's given respect only because he has the "right" color of skin.

So what do you think he meant by that phrase, hmmm? And how would that relate to, say, a moral philosophy in which you're justified at pre-emptively striking out at a person or group which has already threatened you, and which intends to carry out their threats?

And yes, blacks on average are indeed far more prejudiced, than whites. That would follow even just from their culturally tribal mentality, if nothing else: psychologically, you can't identify so strongly with the (in-group) color of your own skin as blacks generally do, without simultaneously taking all other skin colors as being (out-group) necessarily inferior.

So what exactly is it in the phrase, "one of the many disciplines to which blacks have contributed less than nothing in the entire miserable, savage history of their prejudiced, dumbf*ck-filled race," that you can argue with?

If your economy needs stimulating, Bernie Planck links to this:

Oh, and the former near-alcoholic Kathy Shaidle weighs her lumpy butt in on drug use:

Pot makes you stupid, kids.

Yeah, psychedelics too, I'll bet. But try and tell that to the founders of the personal computer movement:

[T]here are a number of rather distinguished, very happy scientists who were involved in our studies. One became a vice president of Hewlett-Packard, another has won every major scientific award that the computer world offers....

If you were to go to a conference that featured the "breakthrough" computer minds from the first wave of computer companies, nearly all of them were deeply affected by psychedelics.

And if they were dropping acid, they were smoking pot too. D'uh. It was the sixties, maaan.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s [Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous] volunteered to become a research subject for Sidney Cohen, a physician on the faculty of the UCLA School of Medicine, and one of the world's leading medical psychedelic researchers. After several profound and transformative LSD experiences facilitated by Cohen and his research psychologist, Betty Eisner, Wilson proposed to the Board of Directors of Alcoholics Anonymous that the psychedelic treatment model be incorporated into the AA approach.... [H]e asserted that psychedelics offered a safe and efficacious pathway to recovery from alcohol addiction.

Religion addicts never want merely to be "left alone to practice their faith"—it's only when their numbers have dwindled so much that they no longer have the power to poke their noses into the lives of others, and dictate their skewed version of morality to the world (esp. with regard to drugs and sex), that they start pleading that false claim.

Even otherwise-sensible classical liberals, as soon as they stir religion into the mix, end up protesting entirely sensible restrictions on the involvement of state (and state money) in church activities, and vice versa.

And in case you missed it, months ago (near the time that I stopped reading her blog), the Catho-holic Shaidle spouted that "Science is mostly [i.e., over 50%] crap." Because tests for Down Syndrome can result in miscarriage. Meaning that she doesn't even understand the difference between science and technology. (Not to mention this pathetic straw man. No scientist has ever claimed that human and chimps were "genetically identical"! If they were, they'd be the same friggin' species! Idiot.)

Their entire view of life and reproductive choice is warped by the idea that an egg is "human" (and possesses a "soul") as soon as it's fertilized, and they just won't shut the fuck up long enough to even minimally think the whole thing through.

You truly can't get much more clueless than these scientifically illiterate "believers," who think they can fake their way through science in the same way that they common-sense their way through politics and economics. They take a fairy-tale religion (of which less than 5% of the claims are true) as the guiding force in their lives, and then imagine that science has less to say about reality than do their utterly childish beliefs in 4000-year-old, Mesopotamian death-and-resurrection fertility myths. Pathetic.

P.S. I just stumbled on this: Marijuana May Disrupt Brain Development. Well, maybe it does; but religion is still far worse than drugs for "making you stupid." (I'm absolutely serious about that.)

Holy moly! Midwest Book Review just reviewed Hip Like Me: Years in the Life of a "Person of Hair" ... and gave it five stars!

Get a haircut is almost his N-word. "Hip Like Me: Years in the Life of a "Person of Hair"" tells Geoffrey Falk's story of being a long haired gentlemen, and the discrimination he faces for his choice of hairstyle. Ludicrous in concept, Falk realizes this well and good, and discusses a wide range fo [sic] subjects discussing discrimination in America today, be it for race, gender, or creed. "Hip Like Me" is a humorous look at discrimination in its many forms.

MBR favors self-published books, so that's probably why they chose it for review—I'm not aware of anywhere else that's done so.

The thing is, I know I'm a damned good writer (hence the five-star review!), and anyone who himself knows how to write will easily recognize that. Conversely, anyone who can slog through, say, Tom Wolfe's annoyingly idiosyncratic punctuation and colorless prose (I hated The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) just to get to his impressive sociological insights, should by all rights really get what I've written in HLM ... which is why it surprised me to not have received any feedback from Steve Sailer or Jeff Goldstein, after I managed to get them initially interested in HLM, to the point of them agreeing to have me send them each a copy. (I contributed most of the proofreading corrections for Sailer's America's Half-Blood Prince.)

Hip Like Me is indeed "ludicrous in concept." But no more so than the bulk of today's feminism, civil-rights movement vestiges, and race-card playing. That's actually exactly the point.

P.S. I'll be getting “Norman Einstein”: The Dis-Integration of Ken Wilber into hardcover too.

P.P.S. I just looked at the Midwest Book Review profile on amazon ... and it appears (from a quick glance) that all of their reviews are five-star ones.

Well, I still say I'm a damned fine writer....

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