Two women 'had sex with a 15-year-old boy at a pizza party after asking him if he's ever had a threesome'





Two Pennsylvania women have been charged with having sex with a 15-year-old boy during a pizza party where alcohol was served.

Tonia Simms, 37, and Melissa Weaver, 26, were arraigned Tuesday on multiple counts of statutory sexual assault, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, corruption of minors and indecent assault.

According to a probable cause affidavit, the sexual encounter between Simms, Weaver and the teenage boy took place on July 8 at the older woman's apartment at the Holiday Acres housing complex in Derry Township.

The document, obtained by TribLive.com, states that the 15-year-old and Melissa Weaver arrived at Simms' residence for dinner, which featured pizza and some alcoholic beverages.

After they ate and drank, Simms went upstairs to put her children to bed, while Weaver and the boy stayed downstairs.

Having tucked her kids in for the night, Simms then allegedly invited her guests to her bedroom, where according to the affidavit, the trio got undressed.

'After they were all naked, the child victim said that Melissa looked at him and said, "What, you've never had a threesome before?”' State Trooper John Zalich wrote in the affidavit.

The document states that the two women then proceeded to have sexual intercourse with the boy and with one another.

Confession: Simms reportedly told police she and the teen had sex on more than one occasion. she called what happened between them a 'big mistake'

When the teen went to police about the incident, he reportedly showed a text message exchange between himself and Simms in which the two allegedly discussed his age.

When interviewed by police, Zalich wrote that both Simms and Weaver admitted to the sexual encounter with the minor.

‘Tonia said that it started out as innocent flirting and turned into a big mistake because they all had a moment of weakness,’ Zalich said in the affidavit.

Simms also revealed that she and the 15-year-old had sex on more than one occasion.

PennLive.com reported that Weaver was released Wednesday on $10,000 unsecured bail, while Simms remains jailed in Westmoreland County Prison on $20,000 cash bail. Both suspects are due back in court for plea hearings on November 16.

According to information available on social media sites, Simms is a stay-at-home mom to her two sons, one of whom is a special-needs boy who was born with a congenital heart defect and is in need of a kidney transplant.

SOURCE  

Tradesman gets bitten on his penis by a spider for the second time

A 21-YEAR-OLD tradie has been branded “the unluckiest man in the world” after he was bitten on the penis by a spider for a second time.  The apprentice, known only as Jordan, was bitten on his old fella by a redback spider on a worksite in Sydney’s south back in April.  

Yesterday, almost five months later exactly, his tackle was bitten again in a portaloo on a worksite. “This is the first time I’ve used one [portaloo] since then,” Jordan revealed to Kyle and Jackie O on KIIS FM this morning.  

The tradie claims he did try to check the toilet seat before he sat down to use it but didn’t notice the spider. Jordan said the spider bit him in “pretty much the same spot” as last time, although he’s not sure what type of spider it was on this occasion. 

“This is one is a bit sorer,” Jordan said, “it seems like it got a better shot at it this time”.  The tradie was released from hospital last night and will return to work tomorrow once the swelling has gone down.

Source

Boston Latin needs more diversity?

Boston Latin High School is prestigious because of only one thing.  The quality of its students. It no longer requires the study of Latin but it does filter out applicants by ability.  You have to be smart to be admitted.  But, as the certainties of black educational achievement will tell you, that means that the school should almost all be white.  There are very few top educational achievers among blacks.

But Leftists hate that "unequal" reality and will always strive to destroy anything selective.  And they have already undermined Boston Latin.  They have subverted the admission procedures to the point where blacks are an absurd 20% of the student body.  Many of those blacks should not be there -- mixing with elite whites.

Nobody likes dummies so it is a considerable tribute to the white students that for 99% of the time they do or say nothing adverse to the dummies amongst them.  Schoolchildren are however hard on one another generally.  The elite cliques that form among the "cool" students are well-known.  And those excluded by such cliques are mostly white.  So superior attitudes towards blacks can be expected not because of race but because of "coolness", however coolness is defined in that time and place.  But in the perfervidly race-conscious environment of Left-dominated American education today, normal adolescent aloofness will be characterized as racism.

There is NO racism at Boston Latin.  Blacks just don't like the way whites look past them.  Even the author below admits that the complaints are nebulous.  They are more than nebulous.  They are mistaken.  The smart white kids of Boston Latin know what terrors would descend upon them if they did or said anything racist.  So they don't do it.

So the prescription below is exactly the reverse of what is needed.  Bending the rules to let more blacks in would only sharpen racial divisions.  What is needed is strict enforcement of the rules so that the whites and blacks who are admitted are intellectually equal.  THAT is how the black students would get respect.  Respect cannot be forced.  It has to be earned.


US ATTORNEY Carmen M. Ortiz announced the findings of a civil rights investigation into Boston Latin School on Monday, but they were shockingly unrevealing. Ortiz found that there was a climate of racial discrimination and harassment at the school, and that BLS staff failed to adequately handle student complaints.

But we already knew that, primarily from Boston Public Schools’ own investigation into the incidents. What’s new is that, in one instance, Ortiz found the school in violation of the federal Civil Rights Act. As a result, the district agreed to a three-year period of oversight under the Department of Justice. During that time, BPS will be monitored to make sure the school carries out mandatory training for students, faculty, and staff on racial harassment policies; designs a restorative justice system; hires a diversity officer; and conducts an annual survey of the school’s racial climate. In fact, some of those measures had already been implemented at the school, such as the hiring of Albert Holland, in March, as special assistant to the superintendent, to help with racial tensions. He’s now been appointed as the diversity officer at Boston Latin.

Hopefully, such remedies will result in a better school environment. But Ortiz ignored the elephant in the room. The racial harassment that resulted in the civil rights violation probably wouldn’t have happened if the school were more diverse in the first place. “We know the harm racial isolation causes,” says Matt Cregor, of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice. “When you’re made to be the only person in the room of a certain color of skin or national origin, that’s a tremendous burden.”

Indeed, the racial demographics at Boston Latin School diverge sharply from the district’s. Black and Latino students constitute 74 percent of the city’s school population yet account for only 20 percent of Boston Latin’s student body. To be fair, the district is boosting efforts to diversify the pool of candidates seeking admission to the city’s three exam schools, including Boston Latin. But in looking for long-term strategies to tackle racial tensions at the school — approaches that go beyond a survey or a training session here and there — the admissions policy must be on the table.

School officials had been already doing that. But they got off on the wrong foot when it was reported, in early July, that there was an under-the-radar advisory group examining entry requirements at Boston Latin and the city’s two other exam schools. Alumni and parents understandably cried foul, concerned about stealth efforts to change policy. It’s incumbent on Boston Public Schools to reexamine a process that shortchanges the majority of the city’s student body. But such conversations need to be conducted publicly.

Students are currently admitted to BLS based just on grade averages and test scores. A quota system once reserved 35 percent of seats for black and Latino students, but that system ended after a 1995 lawsuit in which a white student claimed reverse discrimination. Since then, minority representation has lagged.

Boston Latin is an exclusive school by nature. But application criteria have changed over time, and could change again; maintaining academic excellence is perfectly compatible with the goal of reducing racial isolation.

The use of test scores and grades as admission criteria carries an inherent disadvantage. It favors the families who can afford to pay hundreds of dollars for a test preparation course. The old quota system may have been an unacceptably blunt tool to diversify the student body, but there are legal race-conscious approaches that the district could consider, such as assigning more weight to applications from kids living in certain zip codes.

This summer’s US Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action signals that higher-education institutions have some discretion factoring race in the admissions process. That message should ring loud and clear in elementary and secondary school systems as well. To address the root of tensions Ortiz and others have identified, the district needs to look hard at the way students are admitted to BLS, the district’s “crown jewel.”

SOURCE

Greenie bank tottering

Germans are the original environmentalists.  They have been walking around naked in their forests -- and feeling good about it -- for over 100 years.  Even Hitler adopted Greenie ultimate goals of primitive bliss.  So modern environmentalism could well be said to be a German invention.

It is therefore no surprise that a major German bank, Deutsche Bank,  has been active in promoting environmentalism. They frequently proclaim the truth of Warmism, for instance.  And their investments must be "ecologically responsible", of course.  No building of dams to benefit poor people in India and Africa. Below is an excerpt from the front page blurb on their site:

Environmental and climate protection are among the most pressing global challenges of our time. We take these concerns into account in all aspects of our business, including minimising our own ecological footprint. Using our expertise in the areas of energy and climate change, we support the development of a more sustainable world economy

Pretty clear.  But it is an an old adage that if your theories are wrong, you won't get the results you expect.  And that seems to have happened to this group of cabbage-heads. We read:

"Deutsche Bank shares have finally climbed today after falling to a historic low amid mounting fears for the future of Germany's top bank.

Companies in the FTSE 100 index saw £23billion wiped off their value yesterday as investors dumped financial stocks.

The sell-off was triggered by reports that German Chancellor Angela Merkel had ruled out a government rescue of troubled lender Deutsche Bank.

The bank has lost more than half its value in the past year as it struggles to cope with low interest rates and sluggish growth.

Deutsche Bank shares fell another 7.5 per cent to a record low yesterday, dragging other finance stocks down with it.

This morning they fell to €10.25 amid warnings that a dip below €10 per share would take the bank into the realm of a risky investment. However, by this afternoon, shares had risen to €10.63 before the market closed at €10.51 - down 0.4%.

The FTSE 100 Index was down 10.37 points to 6,807.67, as London-listed lenders were dragged lower by the negative sentiment surrounding the German bank"

Instead of lending money to foster "Green" projects, they should have lent to the most promising commercial projects.  And instead of worrying about the environment, they should have been worrying about cyclic downturns in the economy.  But they did not do that so they got results they did not expect.  Their theories about what was important were wrong.

Deutsche could have learned from Australian banks. Australian banks are the world's soundest banks.  In 2008 when banks worldwide were falling over and being rescued by their governments, Australian banks just kept on making profits as usual.  I know.  I had and have shares in most of them.

So how did the Oz banks do it?  By sticking to their knitting.  They just concentrated on lending to people who were most likely to pay it back.  No political lending. No Greenie activism.  Pretty simple!

Hillary insults white people

American whites have been kicked in the teeth so often by the Left that there has been little reaction to this so far.  Hillary  thinks she can persuade white people not to be racist, thus assuming that they are.  She is blaming a shooting of a black man by a panicky female cop (who happens to be white.  Black cops also shoot and kill troublesome black men) on white people generally.  It's an extraordinary generalization of exactly the sort that the Left are always warning us against. For instance, no matter what individual Muslims do, you can't say anything about Muslims generally. She is an utter racist. Race, race, race.  That's all the Left talk about. It's the Left who are the ultimate racists

On Tuesday's episode of "The Steve Harvey Morning Show,"  Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton stated:

"This horrible shooting again. How many times do we have to see this in our country?...And maybe I can, by speaking directly to white people, say, ‘Look, this is not who we are’…We have got to do everything possible to improve policing, to go right at implicit bias"

She was referring to the police shooting of Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Ok.—a recent killing of a black man by the hands of police that has caused widespread outrage.

Clinton, who recently criticized Donald Trump for jumping to conclusions regarding the NYC bombing, saying, “I think it’s also wiser to wait until you have information before making conclusions, because we are just in the beginning stages of trying to determine what happened,” seems to have chosen a different method when discussing the possibility of police officers making fatal mistakes.

This is not the first time Clinton has deemed white people responsible for the deaths of black men by police. In an interview with CNN back in July, Clinton discussed the Dallas shooting of five police officers saying, “I’m going to be talking to white people, we’re the ones who have to start listening to the legitimate cries coming from our African-American fellow citizens.”

At the 107th NAACP convention this year, she stated, “We white Americans need to do a better job of listening when African-Americans talk about the seen and unseen barriers you face every day. We need to recognize our privilege and practice humility, rather than assume our experiences are everyone’s experiences.”

SOURCE

Girlfriend gets revenge on 'cheating boyfriend' by tasering him in the crotch



A girlfriend got revenge on her 'cheating boyfriend' - by tasering him in the crotch. Mandie Pistol, from Las Vegas, was filmed walking in on her boyfriend with another woman before using the taser gun on him.

A video, which has been viewed over two million times, shows her claiming that she knows her boyfriend has been cheating on her for 'quite some time'.  'What he doesn't seem to remember is that he got me this taser for Christmas. F*** him.'

After seeing her boyfriend on the sofa with another woman, she shouts: 'Who the f*** is she?' Her boyfriend replies: 'That's not my girl. That's not my girl!' Ignoring her boyfriend's protestations, Mandie tasers him in the groin"

Source

Why correlations of CO2 and Temperature over ice age cycles don’t define climate sensitivity

This paper from a great headquarters of Warmism is something of a mess.  Its conclusion -- that there are so many unknowns in the paleoclimate record that it should not be used as a basis for generalizations -- most skeptics would wildly applaud.  The authors  limit themselves to talking about only one type of generalization but the same considerations surely throw all paleoclimate generalizations into doubt.

The other thing of interest is their comment on the long-term correlation beteween CO2 levels and temperature.  Skeptics have never questioned that.  Instead they point to the time lag involved:  Temperature rises PRECEDED CO2 rises -- exactly the opposite of what Warmist theory prescribes but fully understandable as warming oceans outgassing CO2 -- a normal physical effect


We’ve all seen how well temperature proxies and CO2 concentrations are correlated in the Antarctic ice cores – this has been known since the early 1990’s and has featured in many high-profile discussions of climate change.

For obvious reasons, we are interested in how the climate system will respond to an increase in CO2 and that depends on time-scale and what feedbacks we consider:

The “Charney” sensitivity is generally thought of as the medium-term response of the system, including all the fast feedbacks and some of the longer term ones (like the ocean). This is usually what is meant by climate sensitivity in normal conversation. On longer (multi-millennial) timescales we expect changes in vegetation and ice-sheets to occur and alter the response and that sensitivity is often described as the Earth System Sensitivity (ESS).

But let’s go back to the correlation from EPICA Dome C:

Using local temperatures, the straight line regression is ~3.9 ºC/(W/m2). Assuming that global temperature changes on these timescales are roughly half as large, that implies ~2 ºC/(W/m2) at the global scale, and given that 2xCO2 forcing is about 4 W/m2, that means a ‘sensitivity’ of ~8ºC for a doubling of CO2. This is very much larger than any of the standard numbers that are usually discussed. So what is going on?

The first point to recognize is that the ice age/interglacial variations are being driven by Milankovitch forcings (“orbital wobbles”). These have an almost zero effect in the global mean radiative forcing but make huge differences to the seasonal and regional solar fluxes. This makes these drivers almost uniquely effective at impacting ice sheets, hence temperature, the circulation, the biosphere, and therefore the carbon cycle. Notably, these drivers don’t fit neatly into a global forcing/global response paradigm.

Second, the relationship we are seeing in the ice cores is made up of two independent factors: the sensitivity of the CO2 to temperature over the ice age cycle – roughly ~100 ppmv/4ºC or ~25 ppmv/ºC – and the sensitivity of the climate to CO2, which we’d like to know.

The problem is perhaps made clearer with two thought experiments. Imagine a world where the sensitivity of the climate system to carbon dioxide was zero (note this is not Planet Earth!). Then the records discussed above would show a reduced amplitude cycle, but a strong correlation between CO2 radiative forcing and temperature. This relationship would be exactly the T to CO2 function. To take another extreme case, assume that that carbon cycle was insensitive to climate, but climate still responded to CO22, then we’d see no CO2 change and zero regression. In neither case would the raw T/CO2 regression tell you what the sensitivity to CO2 alone was.

Instead, to constrain the Charney sensitivity from the ice age cycle you need to specifically extract out those long term changes (in ice sheets, vegetation, sea level etc.) and then estimate the total radiative forcing including these changes as forcing, not responses. In most assessments of this, you end up with 2.5ºC to 3ºC in response to 2xCO2. To estimate the ESS from these cycles you’d need to know what the separate impacts the CO2 and the orbital forcing had on the ice sheets, and that is not possible just from these data. Constraints on ESS have thus come from the Pliocene (3 million years ago) or even longer Cenezoic time scales – giving a range roughly 4.5ºC to 6ºC. Lunt et al (2010) and Hansen et al (2008) have good discussions of this and we discussed it here too.

The bottom line is that you can’t estimate Earth System Sensitivity solely from correlations over ice age cycles, no matter how well put together the temperature data set is.

SOURCE (See the original for links and graphics)

The pill and Massey Ferguson

The great moral questioning of the '60s is normally attributed to the contraceptive pill, which became generally available at that time.  The pill did what conventional morality had long done: remove the risk of ex-nuptial births.  So conventional morality lost its authority among the young.  Whether any sexual restraint of any kind was warranted became questionable.  So sexual promiscuity probably reached its peak at that time.  I was there and was a cautious participant in the mood of the times.

And ALL morality, not only sexual morality, came into question at that time.  There was a collapse of values and standards across the board at that time.  If sexual restraint had become irrelevant, might not all forms of restraint be old-fashioned and irrelevant?  So practices that had evolved over millennia for the guidance of society lost their authority and there was nothing to replace them.  People were cast adrift from all guidance and had to figure out entirely from new how to live the good life.  Nobody knew any longer what was wise.

Fortunately, however, Christians in particular kept the old moral thinking alive and showed by results that it gave a better balanced life.  I was myself a fundamentalist Protestant throughout my teens (late '50's to early '60s) and that gave me a great set of rules to live by.  I did not have to invent my own rules. I had the wisdom of the ages on my side.

So I got though my teens with no trauma at all and much happiness.  I took no mind altering substances so was not damaged by them.  I did not drink alcohol so avoided all the risks associated with that.  I had friends who drank who died while drunk driving but I did not.  I was celibate so avoided some nasty diseases. I kept clear of crime.  So I arrived undamaged at adulthood and mental maturity.

And at around age 20 (1963) I became an atheist.  But my teen-aged experience of a very puritanical lifestyle gave me strong habits of restraint so I participated in the sexual revolution from that time on only as part of affectionate relationships. A lot of my old Christian values stay with me to this day and even in the '60s casual sex had no attractions for me.

So I saw it all in the '60s and was sober enough to remember what I saw.  Many of the people who glorify the life they had in the '60s can't actually remember much detail of what they did. They can't remember what they saw through a blur of drugs and alcohol.

So what I have given so far is a conventional explanation of the great break of the '60s.  But the pill is in fact only half the story.  It's not the whole explanation for that break.  The other half is the Massey Ferguson tractor!  How's that for a strange proposition?  To understand that proposition we have to go back to what was behind the conventional morality of the pre-1960 era.

Conventional morality was heavily influenced by a shortage of food.  In our present era of cheap and abundant food, we find it hard to comprehend that for most of human history, it was a struggle for most families to put enough bread on the table for their children.  Most people were poor and the money often did not stretch far enough to buy all the food that the family wanted.  They often had to make do with the cheapest possible food in order to eat at all.  Oaten porridge was a lifesaver.

So in those circumstances men wanted to be absolutely certain that the children they were feeding were their own. "Cuckoos" were regarded as robbing the man's natural children of what was rightfully theirs.  But the problem was how to tell who was the father of the various children.  Women mostly had a pretty good idea of it but the men did not.  And there is no doubt that both men and women sometimes "stray".  In a moment of passion a woman might easily sleep with someone other than her husband and produce a child from that union.

So there was only one way a man could ensure that his scarce resources were spent on his own children:  He had to convince his wife to sleep only with him.  And all the persuasive resources of society were brought to bear on that need.  Sexual restraint became the highest morality, with everything from ostracism to hellfire deployed to produce it.

And the pill did little to reduce that need.  Sex became less perilous but the man still needed to know which children were his.  So how come a highly functional morality broke down?  Why did not the pill simply drive promiscuity underground?

And that's where we come to Massey Ferguson.  The Massey Ferguson tractor was only one part of a broader phenonenon but it was a very visible one.  The Massey Ferguson was a small, cheap tractor  that was a remarkably tough machine.  I remember seeing lots of them in Australia and I gather that they were equally popular in Britain.  Massey Ferguson have made tractors of all shapes and sizes over the years but those small post-war models had a big impact.



With a Massey Ferguson farmers could pull bigger implements than a horse team could, could pull them for longer and could pull them more cheaply.  A horse team was not cheap to maintain.  You had farrier's bills, veterinary bills and feed bills.  And a  team of big working horses can go though a phenomenal amount of feed every day. For his Massey Ferguson the farmer just had to keep a drum of fuel handy.

So a farmer's productivity was at least doubled when he bought a Massey Ferguson. And what does a farmer's productivity add up to?  Food.  Along with other agricultural advances of the postwar era, the Massey Ferguson steadily drove down the price of food.  In t
he USA it was probably John Deere who provided most of the tractors but the result was the same.

So by the time the '60s hit, feeding your family was a difficulty only for the very unfortunate.  So it was no longer a tragedy if a man fed a child who was not his own.  His other children were not deprived thereby.  So the great need for the sexual control of women largely fell away.  Conventional morality had lost its main function.

So the Massey Ferguson is at least as important as the pill as an explanation of the '60s moral revolution -- JR

Men and women should wear the same sort of clothes (?)



FANS are up in arms over the first pictures to emerge from the new Jumanji reboot, starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Jack Black, Karen Gillan and Kevin Hart, with many branding the movie “sexist”.

Hart took to Instagram to rave about how great the chemistry is between the stars in the remake of Robin Williams’ 1995 original movie, but ended up attracting major backlash over the difference between the men’s outfits and Gillan’s.

In the on-set picture, the males are seen in commando-style outdoor wear, while Gillan is wearing wildly impractical short-shorts, a crop top, and knee-high boots — hardly sensible for running through the jungle.

Johnson quickly jumped into the commentary underneath Hart’s picture, explaining that it’s not how it looks. “Her jungle wardrobe will make sense when you know the plot,” he wrote. “Trust me.”

But fans were still up in arms, with some even threatening to boycott the movie.

“All the guys are dressed for the jungle,” one person commented. “Except the girl who’s dressed like she’s in the beginning of an adult film. If the girl’s going to dress like that, pass. I have two young girls.”

SOURCE

Note that the black guy is also wearing shorts.  Doesn't he count?

Racism and freedom of thought

I am a racist -- as the Left define that term.  I think that there are different races and that some (not all) of the differences between those races matter.  Aside from the fanatic Left, most people would concede that there are differences between people and that some of those differences can matter so why deny that groups of people can be different too?  I suppose an answer to that is possible but I have yet to hear one.

The reason the Left get such a charge out of the "racist" accusation is that it puts people in mind of the deeds of the unforgotten Uncle Adolf.  Adolf was for a time seen as a kindly uncle by most Germans.  So Leftists exploit that memory to imply that anybody who mentions race at all must be only a hairsbreadth away from being a genocidal maniac.  I suppose most people can see that such an inference is too sweeping but I want to show that it is very sweeping indeed.

And I intend to use myself to show how incorrect that inference is.  Although I am a racist, one of the people I most admire is David P.  To my mind he is worth more to humanity than a whole skyscraper full of bureaucrats.  David runs a small cafe where I often have brunch.  He takes orders, he makes coffees, he delivers orders to the tables, he clears away dirty dishes and wipes down tables.  And he has got a ready smile for everyone all the time.

And all those things are needed. They are things that people voluntarily seek out and pay money for.  And the benefit of them is totally clear and uncontrovertible -- unlike the dubious "services" provided by bureaucrats in skyscrapers.  I certainly enjoy my excellent brunches from David but when has any bureaucrat given me pleasure?  If a skyscraper full of bureaucrats vanished overnight, few people would notice.  But if David did not come in one morning, there would be a lot of people milling around and feeling very deprived.

David is Vietnamese.  He grew up in Australia but his parents  were "boat people": People who fled Communism in small boats to get to a safer place.  So what sort of racist am I when I admire immensely a brownish man of unambiguously Asian appearance?  I will tell you what sort I am.  I think the Vietnamese are a fine race who pull their weight more than most.  I am racially pro-Vietnamese.  Not all of them are as good as David but Vietnamese have been in Australia for a long time now and I have been observing them for a long time.  And a lot of them are as good as David P.

I could go on with other examples of people I admire.  I could mention Pavan, who is Indian and also the most good humoured man I know.  I could mention Les, who is one of the manliest men I know but who, like a lot of Kiwis, has both English and Maori ancestors.  And so on.  And more broadly, I could mention how much I admire the Japanese and Chinese for their unusual intelligence.  I am in fact a Sinophile of sorts.  I admire the Han.

So, you see, it is possible to be a racist without thinking ill of people, let alone wishing to harm them.

But I don't think highly of all people I meet and I don't think highly of all human groups that I encounter.  It could hardly be clearer that people of Sub-Saharan African ancestry are in general dangerous people to have around and I understand well the "white flight" to the suburbs whereby mainstream Americans seek to avoid them.  Their problem is not their skin color but their aggressive behavior.

And it is that aggressive behaviour that should in my view be focused on, not their racial origin.  As I have long argued, I think it is crazy to catch malefactors and then let them go.  Once someone has been found guilty of some foul deed, it seems crazy to let them go so that they can re-offend.  So how to improve that situation?  We once did deal with it well. Up until the early 19th century, murderers and other grave offenders in England were hanged at Tyburn and similar places.  There was a zero rate of re-offending for them.

There are so many people who commit crimes these days that we can hardly hang them all.  Even in the early 19th century, the British didn't hang everybody.  Petty criminals were, for instance, banished to Australia.  I am descended from two such petty criminals.

It seems to me, however, that recidivists (repeat offenders) are a special case.  It is often said that anybody can make a mistake and that people should be given an opportunity to learn from their mistakes. So a first-offender should be punished but after that let go in the hope that he will not re-offend.  But what if he does reoffend?  I think that shows him as a seriously deficient person who is unlikely to change in response to mercy and forgiveness.

That doesn't mean that we have to hang him but it does mean that he has to be kept permanently out of circulation in the law-abiding community.  Low-cost permanent detention would be one possibility.  Only about 2% of the population commit crimes and only about half of them re-offend so the numbers to be accommodated might not be impossibly costly -- particularly if bare-bones accommodation only were provided.

And a traditional method could be used too:  Exile. Exile goes back to ancient Greek and Roman times and probably earlier.  As a descendant of exiled people, I think it could almost be called humane.  There is no doubt that some poor countries could be paid a small sum to take in exiled Western criminals.  Africa might be particularly receptive.  Afro-Americans would not seem too different from the local population and criminals of Caucasian origin would usually seem positively law-abiding compared to the African locals.

And then there are the Jihadis.  There is no doubt that they are a problem group at the moment. To deal with them I think we have to deny Muslims not only freedom of speech but even freedom of thought.  That is an extraordinary thing to propose but the only other way I can see of protecting ourselves from the insane minority of Muslims is to repatriate all Muslims to their ancestral lands.

So what do I mean by freedom of thought?  I mean that any evidence of Jihadi sympathies among Muslims has to be made illegal so that the person concerned can be caught before he carries out Jihadi deeds. He is then exiled to his ancestral country.

The cooperation of the Muslim population at large would be needed for that to be done effectively but if it is put strongly to them that their permission to stay in Western countries is at stake, I have no doubt that co-operation would be forthcoming.  Very quietly, a lot of co-operation at preventing terrorist acts is already given. There have even been instances of Muslim parents incriminating their radicalized children.

But what about the First Amendment, Americans will say?  I hate to state the obvious here but the First Amendment protects speech only, not thought!  I think a court could find the two to be separable.

So I don't want to harm anyone on the basis of their race but I do believe that we need to use firmer measures to protect ourselves from crime.  And noting the differences between different groups of people can aid that.  The characteristic crimes of each group may benefit from solutions "tailor-made" for that group:   Jihadis need thought monitoring, Africans need Africa.

British students have uninhibited beginning to university life



Thousands of teenage students took to the streets of Portsmouth as they celebrated the start of their university careers during Fresher's Week. Drunken revellers were photographed lying on the pavement, while scantily-clad girls marched through the city centre.

Some of the youngsters, living away from home for just a few days can be seen vomiting, screaming and collapsing on the street. One group of girls were spotted wearing a figure-hugging leotard printed with the legend: 'Don't Tell Daddy.'

The remains of kebabs were seen smeared all over the side of the pavement as the streets were strewn with rubbish generated during the debaucherous night out.

Security guards, bouncers and police tried to keep the teenagers safe after many over-indulged the special offers available during their first week in college.

Source

New study undercuts favorite climate myth ‘more CO2 is good for plants’(?)

I have commented on this before but now that The Grauniad has got hold of it, I think I should note it again.  The grasses in the Stanford experiment showed little response to enhanced CO2 because the soil in the area was phosphorous deficient -- and that stopped the plants from taking much advantage of the other growth factors. See here.  There is nothing in the experiment to upset the thousands of studies that show high levels of CO2 enhancing growth.

And the authors below are confused.  In their desperation to show corroboration for the badly implemented Stanford study, they quote a study of corn growth in France.  But that study showed an adverse effect of high temperature, not high levels of CO2.  So it corroborates nothing.  All plants do have a temperature range within which they function best so it is no surprise that the corn cultivars mostly used in France were adversely affected by unusually high temperatures.  Corn grows in a lot of quite warm areas in Latin America and India so it is just a matter of choosing the right cultivar for the climate.  In some places the optimum temperature for maize (corn) germination is given as 33 degrees C!  Toasty!

And the prophecy about wheat yields is just modelling, and we know how good Warmist models are. But wheat cultivars vary too so again the only potential challenge posed by a temperature change as small as one degree would be to choose the right cultivar

And in the grand tradition of Green/Left cherry picking, the crooks below ignore the other effects that a temperature rise would bring -- in particular the larger area that would become available for cropping. Canadian wheat farmers are enormously productive despite farming right up to where the cold limits them.  A temperature rise would open up vast new areas of croplands for them -- leading to glut rather than any shortage of grain crops


A new study by scientists at Stanford University, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, tested whether hotter temperatures and higher carbon dioxide levels that we’ll see post-2050 will benefit the kinds of plants that live in California grasslands. They found that carbon dioxide at higher levels than today (400 ppm) did not significantly change plant growth, while higher temperatures had a negative effect.

The oversimplified myth of ‘CO2 is plant food’
Those who benefit from the status quo of burning copious amounts of fossil fuels love to argue that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit plant life. It’s a favorite claim of climate contrarians like Matt Ridley and Rupert Murdoch.

It seems like a great counter-argument to the fact that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant – a fact that contrarians often dispute. However, reality is far more complicated than the oversimplification of ‘CO2 is plant food.’ Unlike in the controlled environment of a greenhouse, the increasing greenhouse effect on Earth causes temperatures to rise and the climate to change in various ways that can be bad for plant life. We can’t control all the other variables the way we can in a greenhouse.

So far, as contrarians like Rupert Murdoch love to point out, the plant food effect has won out. Earth has become greener in recent decades (although that trend may now be reversing). The situation is not unlike a human diet – at relatively low calorie levels, more food is beneficial. But as calorie intake continues to rise, at a certain point it’s no longer benefiting the human body. More food is good, but only up to a certain point, as the global obesity epidemic makes clear.

The experiment

The Stanford scientists set up 132 plots of flowers and grass in California and introduced varying levels of carbon dioxide, temperature, water, and nitrogen. The scientists conducted the experiments over 16 growing seasons between 1998 and 2014. They found that only higher nitrogen levels resulted in higher plant productivity, while higher temperatures caused it to decline.

While this experiment was specific to California grasslands, other studies have similarly undermined the ‘more CO2 is great’ myth. For example, a 2012 paper found that higher temperatures are detrimental to French corn yields. While French corn production has increased steadily in recent decades due to a combination of technological improvements and CO2 fertilization (the former far more than the latter), yields have leveled off in recent years, and were particularly low when struck by heat waves.

Another study published in Nature Climate Change last week concluded that higher temperatures will cause wheat production to decline. Just a 1°C rise in global temperature will decrease wheat yields by about 5% (approximately 35 million tons). Climate change is bad news for several of our staple crops.

SOURCE  

Arty-farty nitwit



Celebrity photographer Tyler Shields has set fire to a $15,000 Louis Vuitton suitcase for his latest artistic project. Shields, 34, broke the hearts of millions of women around the world when he torched the vintage case in the name of art.

He described the shoot - for his 'Provocateur' series - as being a 'crazy' experience. He added: 'This is one of the last shots I did for my new book. It took me a few years to find the trunk as they are rare and not cheap.'

This is not the first time Shields has destroyed a luxury item for a photo shoot.In 2012, he burned a $100,000 crocodile skin Hermes Birkin along with then girlfriend Francesca Eastwood, daughter of the famous actor and film director Clint Eastwood. He has also wrecked a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes and a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow for his work.

Sourcfe

Fascism in the open



The stranglehold that the Left have on American education strives to ensure that no part of history that might embarrass the Left becomes generally known.  The slogan in the graphic above would never have been used except that a knowledge of Benito Mussolini has been thoroughly anaesthetized.  Mussolini invented the word Fascism to convey exactly what Mrs Clinton is conveying.  He was a scholarly man who knew his history and he knew that the symbol of authority in ancient Rome was a bundle of rods called a Fasces borne by the lictors.  The image was that the bundle was much stronger than any single rod it contains. In historical terms, then, Mrs Clinton is quite explicitly a Fascist. She has chosen as her theme the central message of Italian Fascism.

And in their intolerance of dissent, the Left are getting close to another great Fascist slogan:  Mussolini ha sempre ragione (Mussolini is always right).

Denver mother, 33, is accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy and having two children with him  



A mother of two has been arrested after being accused of sexually assaulting an underage boy and having two children with him.

Alicia Hernandez, 33, from Denver has been charged with sex assault on a child and sex assault after police received a report of an inappropriate relationship from Denver Department of Human Services.

According to court documents, the victim, who is now 18, began the relationship with Hernandez four years ago when he was just 14. Hernandez was 29 at the time, making her 15 years older than him.

According to NBC11, the victim told police he met the 33-year-old at Garfield Park in Denver, and told her he was 18.

After a year of dating, police believe the couple began to have sex, with Hernandez becoming pregnant and giving birth to their first child in June 2013.

Court records also show that Hernandez became pregnant again and their second child was born in January 2015.

Police say she admitted that she did meet the victim at the park and officers believe she conceived their first child in 2012.

The Denver District Attorney confirmed that Hernandez has been released from custody and is on a $50,000 bond.

She's scheduled to appear back in court on October 18. It is unknown who is currently caring for the two children, who are aged one and three.

SOURCE  

Britain's chief Leftist nut does it again



Jeremy Corbyn has been ridiculed for saying he doesn't eat biscuits because he is 'anti-sugar' - even though he is famous for his love of jam.

The Labour leader ended up in a tangle after decrying biscuits on 'health grounds' during a question and answer session on Mumsnet.  Mr Corbyn wrote today: 'I'm totally anti-sugar on health grounds, so eat very few biscuits, but if forced to accept one, it's always a pleasure to have a shortbread.'

But users quickly pointed out that his hatred of sugar seemed to contradict his jam-making hobby. The veteran left-winger apparently could not be reached by aides recently during the 'traingate' row because he was busy making jam.

"Ethical Socialism"

I owe the excerpt from Oswald Spengler below to statistician Briggs.  It is indeed interesting.  Spengler was a popular German thinker of the early 20th century.  He thought that European civilization had just about reached its limit and was bound to fall while some other civilization arose.  The gutless reaction to Islamic hostility in the Western world today certainly does bring Spengler to mind.

And it is notable that Spengler identifies socialism as the power-hungry but ultimately nihilistic force that is destroying the countries it dominates.  His diagnosis of socialism as inherently totalitarian has certainly been borne out by subsequent events in Russia and Germany.

But in an indirect way, Spengler was responsible for the rise of Nazism.  He never was a Nazi and rejected its antisemitism but his diagnosis of his own society  as dying from its own weakness and lack of self-confidence did plant in people's minds  the hope that a strong leader would emerge who would restore the national will and self-confidence  -- make it great again --  and thus rescue European civilization from its decline.  And we all know who came along in Germany to offer just that.

Hitler was of course an idol who had feet of clay but it is not unreasonable to hope that a new leader with fewer flaws could arise.  And that seems to be where we are now.  No matter how often Muslim terrorists murder us, our Left-dominated leaders refuse to do anything about it.  And the rise of Trump has exposed the great discontent among the people about the lack of reaction to Islamic supremacism.

Trump is also far from a perfect saviour but he seems to be the only saviour we've got.  A successful American businessman and an undistinguished Austrian artist are very different people so very different things are to be expected from them.  What we get may not be ideal but it may include what we need.

But the rescue we need is NOT from Islam.  As Spengler foresaw, it is from the ever more powerful Left.  There is no lack of  patriotic pride and civilizational confidence among ordinary Americans.  It is the Left who are keeping a lid on it rather than proclaiming and defending it.  There is nothing wrong with America and Americans.  It is only the Leftist and Left-dominated parasites riding on its back that are the problem.  Reagan neutered them for a while but they have regrouped.  Trump is our best hope of purging their influence and hitting back at Islam


In spite of its foreground appearances, ethical Socialism is not a system of compassion, humanity, peace and kindly care, but one of will-to-power. Any other reading of it is illusory. The Stoic takes the world as he finds it, but the Socialist wants to organize and recast it in form and substance, to fill it with his own spirit. The Stoic adapts himself, the Socialist commands. He would have the whole would take the shape he desires, thus transferring the idea of the Critique of Pure Reason into the ethical field.

This is the ultimate meaning of the Categorical Imperative, which he brings to bear in political, social and economic matters alike—act as thought the maxims that you practise were to become by your will the law for all. And this tyrannical tendency is not absent from even the shallowest phenomena of the time. It is not attitude and mien, but activity that is to be given form. As in China and Egypt, life only counts insofar as it is deed. And it is mechanicalizing of the organic concept of Deed that leads to the concept of work as commonly understood, the civilized form of Faustian effecting.

Apollian man looked back to a Golden Age; this relieved him of the trouble of thinking upon what was still to come. The Socialist feels the Future as his task and aim, and accounts the happiness of the moment as worthless in comparison. The Classical spirit, with its oracles and its omens, wants only to know the future, but the Westerner would shape it. The Third Kingdom is the Germanic ideal. From Joachim of Floris to Nietzsche and Ibsen—arrows of yearning to the other bank, as the Zarathustra says—every great man has linked his life to an eternal morning.

And here Socialism becomes tragic. It is of the deepest significance that Nietzsche, so completely clear and sure in dealing with what should be destroyed, what transvalued, loses himself in nebulous generalities as soon as he comes to discuss the Whither, the Aim. His criticism of decadence is unanswerable, but his theory of the Superman is a castle in the air.

And therein lies a deep necessity; for, from Rousseau onwards, Faustian man has nothing more to hope for in anything pertaining to the grand style of Life. Something has come to an end. The Northern soul has exhausted its inner possibilities, and of the dynamic force and insistence that had exposed itself in world-historical visions of the future—visions of a millennial scope—nothing remains but the mere pressure, the passionate desire to create, the form without the content.

The soul was Will and nothing but Will. It needed an aim for its Columbus-longing; it had to give its inherent activity at least the illusion of a meaning and an object. And so the keener critic will find a trace of Hjalmar Ekdal in all modernity, even its highest phenomena. Ibsen called it the lie of life.

For deep down beneath it all is the gloomy feeling, not to be repressed, that all this hectic zeal is the despairing self-deception of a soul that may not and cannot rest. This is the tragic situation—the inversion of the Hamlet motive—and a thread of it runs through the entire fabric of Socialism, political, economic and ethical, which forces itself to ignore the annihilating seriousness of its own final implications, so as to keep alive the illusion of the historical necessity of its own existence.

Married middle school teacher, 30, arrested after sex with boy, 14



A teacher in Fresno, California was arrested last week and charged with multiple sex crimes after authorities learned that she was having an inappropriate relationship with one of her students.

Justine Nelson, 30, was booked and released on Thursday, and will be facing one count of oral copulation with a minor and two counts of possession of child pornography.

ABC 30 reports that Nelson, who is married, confessed to the police that she and the boy had a relationship after her arrest.

Nelson's relationship with the teenager began last spring while he was a student in her class according to investigators with the Fresno Police Department.

The two allegedly engaged in sexual activity at Tenaya Middle School, where Nelson is a part-time teacher.

She performed a sex act on the boy three times according to police.  Nelson is then accused of sending the boy nude photos over the summer.

The victim is now in high school and no longer attends Tenaya Middle School, where as of now Nelson still has a job.

He posted the photos online, and some of his fellow students saw the naked pictures sent by Nelson, prompting the vice principal of the school to call police.

'The whole thing is sad. Just what she did, totally sad. That victim will be impacted for a long time, it's just ridiculous,' said Lieutenant Joe Gomez of the Fresno Police Department.

Nelson was filmed as she left the police station on Thursday and got into a waiting car that was being drive by an unknown man.

She looked stoic and did not speak as she made her way into the vehicle.

When a reporter approached her asking if she had any comment, the man screamed out the window: 'Maybe get your story right. Get your story right!'  The reporter than asked what the real story was, to which the man again screamed: 'Get your story right!'

The two then drove off from the jail.

Lieutenant Gomez said the department is still investigating to see if there may be moire victims.

The Fresno Unified School District released a statement last week, saying: 'Allegations of this nature are extremely disturbing and do not reflect the high professional standards the district expects from staff.

'In the event these allegations are proven factual, the district will take swift and appropriate action.'

SOURCE  

Plus-size model comes in second in Miss Italy contest - despite cruel trolls who said she's 'too fat' to be a beauty queen



A fashion model launched a body shamming assault on a Miss Italy contestant who came second claiming she is 'too fat' to be a beauty queen.

Contestant Paola Torrente, who is a size 14 wowed fans with her ample figure when she came in second to Rachele Risaliti during the Miss Italy 2016 in Angri, Salerno. The 22-year-old engineering student, who measures up at 5 foot 9 inches, was a hugely popular choice with the audience and fans and was met with thousands of comments of support.

But Croatian model Nina Moric, 40, launched a body shaming assault on her Instagram account claiming Miss Torrente was only chosen because of 'political correctness' and was joined by other online trolls.

Source

Children born with big heads have higher IQs and thus a better chance of a successful future

The connection between larger head size and higher IQ is well-known but is usually given as a correlation around .3.  But in this very careful research it came out at .5, which is a major effect.  Interestingly, autistic people tend to have big heads too, and they often have quite extraordinary abilities in some field.  The study mentioned below was not confined to head size.  It looked at many physical attributes -- and many were intertwined with IQ and achievement.  IQ is a physical reality and an important one.  All men are not equal

Babies with big heads are more likely to be clever and have successful futures, a study has shown. Research carried out by UK Biobank has strongly linked higher intelligence with large head circumferences and brain volume.

Half a million Brits are being monitored by the charity to discover the connection between their genes, their physical and mental health and their path through life.

The latest evidence is the first finding to emerge from the study that aims to break down the relationship between brain function and DNA.

Researchers in a paper published by the Molecular Psychiatry journal said: 'Highly significant associations were observed between the cognitive test scores in the UK Biobank sample and many polygenic profile scores, including . . . intracranial volume, infant head circumference and childhood cognitive ability.'

Professor Ian Deary, of Edinburgh University, who is leading the research, said gene variants were also strongly associated with intelligence, according to The Times.

The new evidence is so accurate that experts claim it could even predict how likely it was that a baby would go to university based on their DNA.

SOURCE

Rare 1st century gold coin bearing the image of Roman Emperor Nero is found in Jerusalem



Archaeologists in Jerusalem have uncovered a rare gold coin bearing the image of the Roman Emperor Nero. Coins of this type are extremely rare, and are usually only found in private collections where the origin is unknown.

The image of Nero is significant because it shows the presence of the Romans in the area, 14 years before they destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD. Nero was born in 37 AD, and became emperor of the Roman Empire after the death of his adoptive father, the Emperor Claudius, in 54 AD.

The coin was discovered by researchers from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, who were excavating on Mount Zion in Jerusalem"

Source

An Australian Mona Lisa?



The picture above is of Nikki Gogan being told by the man she loves, that he loves another.

I very rarely watch TV and I certainly did not watch the show from which the above photo came, but it popped up so often in my news feed in recent days that I began to take notice of it.  And something that seems striking about it is that that photo is far more beautiful than any other photo of her.  She is undoubtedly a very attractive woman but in that photo there is an enigmatic beauty about her that is akin to that of the Mona Lisa.

We normally find a smiling face most attractive yet that is essentially an immobile face.  It is not a sad face or a relaxed face.  To me it is a face in waiting:  Hoping for the best but prepared for the worst.  That is probably a rather unusual state to be in so is that why it makes such a strong impression?  That it has made a strong impression is shown by the number of times people have put it up.  I am clearly not alone in finding it a fascinating face.

Another grab of the photo here.  There is also a video of the episode here, which shows her as very gracious even in disappointment.  He missed out on a quality lady there -- as most of Australia seems to think.

Guggenheim’s 18-karat GOLD toilet set to open to the public



Lucky visitors to the Guggenheim in New York will be able to use a toilet that's created from 18-karat gold from Friday.  While many people will work their entire lives and never see a gold fixture, the museum will allow people to 'interact' with the toilet for the price of the entrance feel, which is currently free to its members.

The facilities are made available to members of the public as part of an exhibit by Italian artist and sculptor Maurizio Cattelan and are expected to be at the museum for an indefinite period.

It's currently installed in one of the Guggenheim's one-person unisex bathrooms and according to the New Yorker, it's an exact replica of the facilities that had previously been installed in the cubicle"

Source

No logic in claim that Arctic sea ice shows global warming

Doesn't the fact that 2016 levels of Arctic ice are HIGHER than in 2012 indicate RECOVERY from melting?  And doesn't the fact that 2016 levels were the same as 2007 simply indicate erratic natural fluctuations from year to year?  It certainly does not indicate a steady warming trend

Paul Homewood additionally notes:  "2016 ice was the earliest minimum since 1997;  This year's extent was 22% above 2012, despite two massive storms; Thickness is way up on 2010 and 2011;  We are looking at one of the fastest ice growths in September on record".  That too certainly does not indicate a steady warming trend


Arctic sea ice this summer shrank to its second lowest level since scientists started to monitor it by satellite, with scientists saying it is another ominous signal of global warming.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado said the sea ice reached its summer low point on Saturday, extending 1.6 million square miles (4.14 million square kilometers).

That's behind only the mark set in 2012, 1.31 million square miles (3.39 million square kilometers).

Center director Mark Serreze said this year's level technically was 3,800 square miles (10,000 square kilometers) less than 2007, but that's so close the two years are essentially tied.

Even though this year didn't set a record, 'we have reinforced the overall downward trend. There is no evidence of recovery here,' Serreze said.

Serreze said he wouldn't be surprised if the Arctic was essentially ice free in the summer by 2030, something that will affect international security.

SOURCE  

Australia: A mother has been jailed for performing sex acts on a 14-year-old schoolboy after she initially spotted him playing football.

The 39-year-old woman, from Victoria, has been sentenced to two years behind bars, with a minimum of 10 months after abusing the boy who went to the same school as her daughter.

The sentencing comes after she pleaded guilty in a Victorian court to two counts of sexual penetration of a child under the age of 16.  The boy was just 14 years old when the then 36-year-old woman engaged in sex acts with him on two separate occasions at her home.

The woman initially denied the abuse when interviewed by police in 2015 before telling them 'something that lasted five seconds can ruin my life forever', the prosecution told a plea hearing last week.

The woman told police the sex acts were consensual. 'It's not just me - he has been part of this as well,' she said in a record of the interview.

The sentencing judge on Friday described these remarks as 'wrong and misguided'.

The woman flirted with the boy, instigated the sexual contact and had asked the boy if she could touch his genitals, according to the prosecution summary.

After he was abused, the teenage boy became depressed, underperformed at school, and tried to numb his feelings with alcohol.

His parents did not understand the changes in their son until the offending was exposed.

He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and despite having treatment, was still struggling with what happened, his mother said in a victim impact statement.

In sentencing, the judge noted the woman had been sexually abused by her stepfather between the ages of 10 and 18.

Her stepfather was later jailed for abusing her and the woman never received treatment for the long-term stress and trauma the abuse caused.

The judge described the woman's offending as 'opportunistic' rather than predatory.  'You are not a sexual predator and do not suffer from any sexual deviancy,' he said.

But she had exploited the circumstances and ignored her responsibility as an adult to protect children, he said.

Defence had earlier asked the judge not to jail the mother and instead sentence her to a community corrections order, but the judge said he could not ignore the harm caused to the victim.

She will remain on the sex offenders register for life.

SOURCE  

I'm not drunk, it's just the way I walk!



EU chief Jean-Claude Juncker has dismissed rumours he is an alcoholic, claiming he appears drunk when walking because of injuries sustained in a car accident.

Mr Juncker, who is also a heavy smoker, said whispers about him having a drinking problem had begun after he staggered at a meeting of EU ministers. ‘I have a balance problem with my left leg that requires me to grab the rail when on a staircase'.

French journalist Jean Quatremer, who conducted the interview, said Mr Juncker glugged four glasses of champagne during the course of their light lunch. He recalled how during a previous meeting when Mr Juncker was prime minister of Luxembourg, he had drunk three straight glasses of cognac at the end of a meal where he had enjoyed many glasses of white wine.

Source

The relationship between conservatism and racism

The nature and extent of the relationship is contested but the Left are quite convinced that it is conservatives who are racist.  That conservatives are generally OPPOSED to the blatant racism that is affirmative action never quite gets into their heads.  Leftists are OBSESSED with race.  They look for racial implications in everything.  "Racist" is their big swear sword. Conservatives just wish they would stop.

What Leftists do to support their suspicion of conservatives is to do survey research in which they ask one series of questions that identifies conservatism and then another that identifies racism.  That such opinion surveys don't predict racial behaviour has been known since the 1930s but let that pass.

They then ask who agrees most with the statements that express conservastism and then ask are they the same people who agree most with statements expressing racism.  And they do generally find some overlap.

An unusually sophisticated study in that mould has just come out that has some interesting results, however.  The new study looked at the social context in which the statements were made.  What do people say when most people around them are conservative and does that differ from when most people around them are Leftish?  And they found that context made a big difference.

What they found was that in a generally conservative society, conservatives were NOT racist.  It was only among Leftists that conservatives agreed with some racist statements.  So Leftism provokes racism.  Who'd a thunk it?  The Leftist obsession with race makes conservatives a bit racist too.  I find that a big laugh.  It certainly torpedoes the conventional Leftist view of conservatives.

In summary:  In a conservative environment, where little is heard of the constant Leftist yammering about race, "negative outgroup attitudes" are rare and likely to come from both Right and Left.  But a Leftist environment is polarizing.  The constant Leftist yammering about the evils of whites and the innocence of minorities causes conservatives to react  against that and make them more likely to express attitudes that are critical of "outgroups".  So it is actually Leftism that causes "negative outgroup attitudes" to be expressed by conservatives.
 
The journal abstract is below. For the statistically-minded, note that restriction of range effects were allowed for:

The Mobilizing Effect of Right-Wing Ideological Climates:  Cross-Level Interaction Effects on Different Types of Outgroup Attitudes

Jasper Van Assche et al.

The present research investigated a multilevel person-context interactionist framework for the relationship between right-wing ideologies and prejudice across two large, representative samples (Study 1: European Social Survey: N 5 56,752; Study 2: World Values Survey: N 5 74,042). Across three different operationalizations of right-wing ideology, two contextual levels (regional and national) of right-wing climate, and three types of outgroup attitudes (i.e., age-, ethnicity-, and gender-based), the analyses consistently revealed cross-level interactions, showing a strong association between right-wing attitudes and negative outgroup attitudes at the individual level in contexts with a low right-wing climate, whereas this relationship is weaker and often even absent in contexts with a high right-wing climate. These cross-level interactions remained significant after controlling for statistical artefacts (i.e., restriction of range and outliers). The authors propose norm setting as the mobilizing mechanism through which a right-wing climate develops and curbs the influence of individual right-wing social-ideological attitudes on outgroup attitudes.

Political Psychology, 2016. doi: 10.1111/pops.12359

Controversial Knickers



Residents in a sleepy village have become embroiled in a bizarre row - over a pair of frilly knickers. The inoffensive underwear was hung out to dry on a washing line by grandmother Rozamund Perrin, 65, who lives opposite a primary school in Stokeinteignhead, Devon. But the pair were promptly whipped off the line by the unnamed resident who then posted them back through her letterbox with an angry, handwritten note.

The knicker nicker, wrote: 'It is total inapropiate (sic) for this type of garment to be displayed opposite the village primary school. 'There are members of this community that would welcome a halting of this.'

An image of the offending knickers - and the accompanying letter - were posted by Ms Perrin's daughter Charlotte Wilkinson on Facebook. In the post a shocked Ms Wilkinson labelled the as-yet unnamed villager a 'prude.'"

Source

Is Hillary epileptic?



Those strange blue "sunglasses" Hillary has been wearing lately have now been identified as Zeiss f133 glasses, designed to prevent epileptic seizures.  Can America afford an epileptic as Commander in Chief?  Others are writing a lot on this (e.g. here) but you can be sure that vast efforts are being made to prevent any hard information getting out.

Even so, I think Hillary is finished.  Her age has caught up with her. Those old bones can't hack it anymore -- unless she has a body double of course.

China completes the 'world's highest bridge' standing 1,850 feet above the ground



Chinese engineers have completed an impressive mountain overpass branded as the highest bridge in the world. The enormous Beipanjiang Bridge, which is built at over 1,850 feet high, links two of China most remote provinces, Yunnan and Guizhou, according to People's Daily Online.

Engineers joined the last set of decks on September 10, marking the completion of the structure which has cost three years and 780 million RMB (£88 million) to build. Beipanjiang Bridge stands at a whopping 565 metres above the ground (1,854 feet), which is nearly twice the height of the 95-storey skyscraper, The Shard in London.

Named after Beipan River, the waterway it crosses, the incredible structure has a 720-metre-wide span (2,363 feet) and is a part of the Hangrui Highway, a 3,405-kilometre-long (2,115 miles) national motorway linking Hangzhou city in southern China with Ruili city on the China-Myanmar border"

Source

Another false prophecy

The excerpt below is from a 2007 article.  It correctly predicts that global CO2 levels will hit 400 ppm by 2015.  Unlike temperature, CO2 has been rising fairly steadily so that was easy.  What is amusing is what was predicted to happen when we got to 400ppm.  Southern Spain was to be emptied out by the extreme heat, for instance.  Someone tell the Gibraltarians!  

Warmists are very attached to their prophecies.  It's a good thing. The failure of a prediction is the normal scientific criterion for the theory that generated it being wrong.  In that way, Warmist theories have repeatedly been shown as wrong.  So a continued belief in anthropogenic global warming is a rejection  of science.

One failed prediction might be just an aberration but the slew of uniformly wrong predictions we have seen from Warmists would be enough to kill any other theory stone dead. Warmist models have zero predictive skill, meaning that a rational person would ignore them


Environmentalist writer Mark Lynas’ new book about global warming takes for its metaphor Dante’s descent through the circles of hell. But while Dante was guided by the poetics of Virgil, Lynas follows the research findings of scientists; and while Dante plotted a route down through the unbaptised, gluttonous, slothful and treacherous, Lynas descends through one, two, three or even six degrees rise in global warming (we’re spared Dante’s final three circles of hell because the Intergovernmental Planet on Climate Change (IPCC) only estimated a rise in temperature of up to six degrees).

Dante dealt in moral failings such as betrayal and faithlessness; Lynas deals with the more anodyne stuff of car journeys to work and buying tropical fruit at the supermarket. Regardless, we will be visited with the results of our sinful actions, as daily energy usage is repaid in the rising of the planet’s mercury. The events described in the book will be our future, says Lynas, unless we ‘repent’ and cut back on energy consumption. His predictions go like this:

At one degree rise in temperature, the western USA is wracked by droughts: powerful dust and sandstorms ‘turn day into night across thousands of miles of former prairie’, while ‘farmsteads, roads and even entire towns will find themselves engulfed by blowing sand’. At two degrees, southern Spain will empty, with a ‘mass scramble to abandon barely habitable temperatures, as Saharan heatwaves sweep across the Med’. At three degrees, Texas is hit by ‘Super-Hurricane’ Odessa: ‘the winds from the storm’s eyewall slam into Houston, the gleaming towers of the central business district begin to sway ominously’. Four and five degrees are worse still. Then at six degrees there will be mass extinction, something approaching ‘global apocalypse and doom’ (it is ‘unlikely’ that humanity will be wiped out completely, but there will not be many of us left).

Each of these outcomes corresponds to a carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions scenario. A two degrees rise corresponds to a CO2 concentration of 400 parts per million, which means peaking global emissions by 2015 – eight years’ time – and cutting emissions to 90 per cent by 2050. A three degrees rise corresponds to peaking global emissions by 2030; four degrees to peaking by 2050. But in actual fact, says Lynas, if we want to avoid global apocalypse and doom we would have to keep within the ‘magic two-degree threshold’.

This is because environmental feedback systems will mean that the temperature will tip upwards, irrespective of our carbon dioxide outputs. As temperature rises, says Lynas, some ecosystems increasingly stop absorbing CO2 and they start to release it (or other greenhouse gases) instead. At three degrees, says Lynas, there is the collapse of the Amazon ecosystem, and soils start to release stored CO2; at four degrees, there is the release of methane from Siberia. ‘If we reach three degrees, therefore, that leads inexorably to four degrees, which leads inexorably to five.’ And at five there is an even more powerful feedback mechanism, the release of methane hydrate from the sea. The result is ‘runaway global warming’, against which ‘humanity would be powerless to intervene’. So it’s two degrees – 90 per cent cuts in carbon emissions by 2050 – or it’s apocalypse.

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A self-inflating stunt by a white black man

Aborigines are black.  Does the guy below look black to you?  He is a white man but under Australia's crazy rules he is allowed to call himself Aboriginal or indigenous if he has any trace of Aboriginal ancestry that he knows about.

So he did something no black Aborigine would do.  Aborigines are quiet, shy, camplaisant people most of the time.  Publically insulting two old ladies over their private conversation would not remotely be on their agenda.  But this guy did it -- enabling him to portray himself as a battler against racism -- and he got the applause that often flows from that.

But, as I see it, the whole thing was just an ego boost for himself.  He is basically one of that sad band of insecure people who create so much nuisance:  An attention seeker.  He or someone with him deliberately photographed and circulated the docket given to the ladies.  How is that NOT publicity hunger?

And we have no assurance that the ladies were in any way racist.  The only quotation from them given is the word "assimilation".  But assimilation into white society does occur and is usually beneficial.

Respect for his intellectual acuity is not aided by his use of English.  He says that the conversation he criticized was "less than distasteful ".  So it was tasteful?  Very confused




AN INDIGENOUS man has come up with the perfect response to racism.

Perth man Jarred Wall was having lunch with a friend in Fremantle when he heard two elderly ladies talking about Aboriginal people.

“The conversation was less than distasteful with words like assimilation being thrown around willy nilly,” he wrote in a Facebook post. “I could have unleashed a tirade of abuse but that wouldn’t have helped.”

Instead, he decided to buy them a pot of tea — leaving a handwritten note on the receipt that said: “Enjoy the tea! Compliments of the 2 Aboriginals sitting next to you on table 26.”

“Maybe these ladies will be a little wiser and think before they speak,” he wrote in the post, adding the hashtags #blacklivesmatter and #englishbreakfasttea.

“Hopefully there won’t be a next time!”
Mr Wall and his friend were having lunch when they overheard two ladies making racist remarks.

Mr Wall and his friend were having lunch when they overheard two ladies making racist remarks.Source:Facebook

The post was shared on Facebook, attracting more than 13,000 reactions, 1500 shares and 1200 comments, the overwhelming majority of which have been positive.

“Being kind often does help. It sometimes shames people into looking at their behaviour. It makes them feel guilty for being d*ckheads,” one user wrote.

“If I was there I would have given you a standing ovation with lots of clapping and cheering,” wrote another. “Hope the ladies have learned some serious lessons from this incident because in this time and age there is no room at all for these kind of remarks.”

His mother, Trish Hill Wall, wrote: “I’m so proud my son that you rose above the hurtful rants of others. Kindness goes a long way, and you all walked away after with your heads held high.”

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Doggy beer



For a mere $6.50, dogs can lap at the new specially-created craft beer, made exclusively for canines, or sip on a cool beer with their owners in the afternoon sun. And while the new doggy beer is strictly non-alcoholic, it is perfectly safe for animals, as it is made from a beef extract-based brew.

Sold in a glass screw-top bottle, or stubbie, the 'Beer Dog Bitter' is designed to let pups lap up as much as they want from a nearby bowl supplied by the bar. The screw-top feature on the 'Beer Dog Bitter' also cleverly allows owners to take the rest of their pint home in a doggy bag if they think their pet would like leftovers later on.

The 'Beer Dog Bitter' has been a hit both on social media and at Dogs Bar since it launched in Melbourne on Saturday"

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The Marmot thinks more money would fix Aboriginal health


Is that you, Sir Michael?

The Marmot has been peddling nonsense for a long time.  He has the typical Leftist's lack of imagination:  Government spending fixes everything.  That more money given to blacks would mostly  lead them to piss it up against a wall, he does not confront.

We see here that he knows that low IQs are strongly associated with poorer health  -- but no mention of that below, of course.

He says that treating black children better would fix their problems.  So how are you going to do that?  How are you to get them to attend school?  Send the police after them every day?  But wouldn't that be too "authoritarian"?  Perhaps take them away from their families and give them to whites to bring up?  Hasn't he heard of the "stolen generation"?  The Marmot is just a blow-in Pommy Leftist who hasn't got a blind clue about Aborigines.  No wonder the ABC has treated him as an honoured guest


If Australia wants to close the gap between the health of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, the traditional approach of treating disease will not do it, epidemiologist Sir Michael Marmot says.

Indigenous life expectancy is 10 years lower than that of the general population. Rates of diabetes are more than three times higher.

An Aboriginal Australian is 19 times more likely to die of acute rheumatic fever or chronic rheumatic heart disease.

The rate of suicide for Indigenous boys aged 15 to 19 is four times higher than for their non-Indigenous counterparts; among girls, the rate is six times higher.

In 2016, the prime minister's Closing the Gap update found that while there had been improvement in some areas, other targets are unlikely to be met.

"In my view, the reason why Aboriginal Australians have worse health than the non-Indigenous population is because of inequality," Sir Michael, president of the World Medical Association and director of the Institute of Health Equity, says in his second ABC Boyer Lecture.

He argues the best way to deal with that inequality is investment in early childhood development.

"What happens to children in the early years has a profound effect on their life chances and hence their health as adults," he said.

"A poor start in life, of course, affects everything that happens subsequently, the kind of job you do, the amount of money you earn and these, in their turn will affect health.

"More adverse conditions in early childhood, fewer educational opportunities, fewer opportunities for good and meaningful work, low income, worse environments, and high rates of smoking, poor diet, alcohol and drugs.

"People are not responsible for the social forces on their life. Get the social conditions right, ensure optimal early child development, and then, of course, people can be expected to take responsibility for their own health."

Sir Michael's research in the UK suggests that good child development is less common among the socio-economically disadvantaged.

However, he points to Hackney in East London as an example of how it need not be so.

There, investment in teachers and pre-school services closed the performance gap between children who were eligible for school lunches — a marker of disadvantage — and those who were not.

On a larger scale, Sir Michael pointed to the correlation between taxation and social welfare policies and child poverty in the United States and Australia.

Before taxes and transfers, 25 per cent of US children are classed as being in poverty — defined as having a family income that is less than 50 per cent of the median — while in Australia the figure is 28 per cent of children.

But after tax and transfer payments, poverty drops to 11 per cent in Australia. In the US it remains as high as 25 per cent.

This has led Sir Michael to an inescapably political conclusion: if Australia is serious about the health and wellbeing of its citizens, it must get serious about inequality.

"Social injustice is killing on a grand scale," he said.

"The social injustice of condemning some children to a poor start in life should not be tolerated."

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Mother wants her daughter's dangly bits cut off



A woman who thought her 15-year-old daughter's vagina was untidy fought with doctors so she could have surgery. Alana, whose name has been changed for legal reasons, shrugged and agreed when doctors asked her if she wanted to have plastic surgery on her genitals as her mother had demanded.

The mother had told doctors that the girl's genitals were not as neat as that of other women, according to News.com. 'She will never be able to have sex looking like that,' the mother said.

Alana did not need the surgery for health reasons, and even when a doctor assured her mother that labia come in all shapes and sizes she pushed on. 'Having your mum say a man wouldn't want to make love with you because you're untidy is not particularly helpful parenting,' Prof Robson said."

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