"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.

SOURCE  

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.”

SOURCE

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"

Source

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."

SOURCE

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."

Source

Warmer, wetter climate would impair California grasslands, 17-year experiment finds

The Greenies love this claim.  It overturns just about everything we know about plant growth.  There have been any number of experiments showing that CO2 makes plants grow bigger and we know why.  And greenhouse owners routinely add CO2 to their greenhouses to improve growth of their crops.  So what happened on the occasion below?  Apparently the soil in the area was phosphorous deficient and that stopped the plants from taking advantage of the other growth factors. See here


Grassland at Stanford University's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. An examination of 17 years of experimental data from the preserve is helping scientists from Rice University, Stanford and the Carnegie Institution for Science better …more
Results from one of the longest-running and most extensive experiments to examine how climate change will affect agricultural productivity show that California grasslands will become less productive if the temperature or precipitation increases substantially above average conditions from the past 40 years.

That's one conclusion from a new study in this week's Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers from Rice University, Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science. The research team analyzed data from the Jasper Ridge Global Change Experiment, which has run continuously since 1998. The experiment simulates the effect of warmer temperatures, increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, increased nitrogen pollution and increased rainfall on a 1.8-acre tract at Stanford's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve.

"There's been some hope that changing climate conditions would lead to increased productivity of grasses and other plants that draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere," said study lead author Kai Zhu, a global ecologist and data scientist at Rice "In northern California, it was hypothesized that net grassland productivity might increase under the warmer, wetter conditions that are predicted by most long-term climate models. Our evidence disproves that idea."

The Jasper Ridge experiment involves 136 test plots where scientists can study how grass will grow under conditions that are predicted to occur later this century due to climate change. The experiment allows scientists to test four variables: higher temperatures, increased precipitation, increased atmospheric CO2 levels and increased nitrogen levels. The plots are configured in such a way that scientists can test each of the variables independently and in combination.

"Global change is quite complicated," said Zhu, who spent almost two years analyzing Jasper Ridge data during a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford and the Carnegie Institution for Science from 2014 to 2016. "It does not just mean change in temperature. There are also changes in rainfall, atmospheric CO2, nitrogen and many other things. If we want to get a comprehensive understanding of everything, it is important to have experiments like Jasper Ridge, which manipulate more than one variable, both singly and in combination."

One clear finding from the data is that increased levels of CO2 did not increase grass production. Instead, the amount of grass grown at sites with elevated CO2 remained flat, even at CO2 levels almost twice the present atmospheric concentration.
"The nonresponse to CO2 is as important as any of our other findings," Zhu said. "That finding may surprise people because a lot have said that if you have more CO2 in the atmosphere, you'll get better growth because CO2 is a resource for plants. That's a popular hypothesis."

By examining data from all the test plots, including those where CO2 increased in conjunction with higher temperature, rainfall and nitrogen levels, and incorporating more than 40 years of climate records from the Jasper Ridge site, Zhu was able to deduce the optimal temperature and moisture levels for production under all conditions. His analysis showed that average conditions from the past 40 years are near optimal for grass production, and any significant deviation toward warmer or wetter conditions will cause the land to be less productive.

"Experiments like Jasper Ridge are designed to examine the interactive and unexpected effects that are likely to arise from global environmental change," said study co-author Chris Field, the founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology and the Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford University. "The nonlinear, interactive effects of temperature and precipitation on grassland primary production revealed by this analysis highlight the value of this experimental approach and suggest that it could be useful in studying how global change will affect other types of ecosystems."

SOURCE

Topless bike ride does not end well



For reasons unclear the semi-nude cyclist is pedalling along the road with her female friend, who also rides bra-less.  A man on a motorcycle films the daring rider in what is thought to be a street in Italy.

He focuses in on the nearly naked riders, but they don’t seem to mind. The cyclist at the front even throws her arms in the air and shakes around to show off her slender figure.

But getting a little too into her showboating she veers off the road and onto the dirt verge.  Unable to control her ride the woman is flung head over heels and face plants the tarmac.

Instead of stopping and making himself the saviour of the fallen woman, the rider appears to simply drive off.  One user wrote: 'Definitely no gentleman.'"

Source

Warmer, wetter climate would impair California grasslands, 17-year experiment finds

The Greenies love this claim.  It overturns just about everything we know about plant growth.  There have been any number of experiments showing that CO2 makes plants grow bigger and we know why.  And greenhouse owners routinely add CO2 to their greenhouses to improve growth of their crops.  So what happened on the occasion below?  Apparently the soil in the area was phosphorous deficient and that stopped the plants from taking advantage of the other growth factors. See here


Grassland at Stanford University's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. An examination of 17 years of experimental data from the preserve is helping scientists from Rice University, Stanford and the Carnegie Institution for Science better …more
Results from one of the longest-running and most extensive experiments to examine how climate change will affect agricultural productivity show that California grasslands will become less productive if the temperature or precipitation increases substantially above average conditions from the past 40 years.

That's one conclusion from a new study in this week's Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers from Rice University, Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science. The research team analyzed data from the Jasper Ridge Global Change Experiment, which has run continuously since 1998. The experiment simulates the effect of warmer temperatures, increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, increased nitrogen pollution and increased rainfall on a 1.8-acre tract at Stanford's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve.

"There's been some hope that changing climate conditions would lead to increased productivity of grasses and other plants that draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere," said study lead author Kai Zhu, a global ecologist and data scientist at Rice "In northern California, it was hypothesized that net grassland productivity might increase under the warmer, wetter conditions that are predicted by most long-term climate models. Our evidence disproves that idea."

The Jasper Ridge experiment involves 136 test plots where scientists can study how grass will grow under conditions that are predicted to occur later this century due to climate change. The experiment allows scientists to test four variables: higher temperatures, increased precipitation, increased atmospheric CO2 levels and increased nitrogen levels. The plots are configured in such a way that scientists can test each of the variables independently and in combination.

"Global change is quite complicated," said Zhu, who spent almost two years analyzing Jasper Ridge data during a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford and the Carnegie Institution for Science from 2014 to 2016. "It does not just mean change in temperature. There are also changes in rainfall, atmospheric CO2, nitrogen and many other things. If we want to get a comprehensive understanding of everything, it is important to have experiments like Jasper Ridge, which manipulate more than one variable, both singly and in combination."

One clear finding from the data is that increased levels of CO2 did not increase grass production. Instead, the amount of grass grown at sites with elevated CO2 remained flat, even at CO2 levels almost twice the present atmospheric concentration.
"The nonresponse to CO2 is as important as any of our other findings," Zhu said. "That finding may surprise people because a lot have said that if you have more CO2 in the atmosphere, you'll get better growth because CO2 is a resource for plants. That's a popular hypothesis."

By examining data from all the test plots, including those where CO2 increased in conjunction with higher temperature, rainfall and nitrogen levels, and incorporating more than 40 years of climate records from the Jasper Ridge site, Zhu was able to deduce the optimal temperature and moisture levels for production under all conditions. His analysis showed that average conditions from the past 40 years are near optimal for grass production, and any significant deviation toward warmer or wetter conditions will cause the land to be less productive.

"Experiments like Jasper Ridge are designed to examine the interactive and unexpected effects that are likely to arise from global environmental change," said study co-author Chris Field, the founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology and the Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford University. "The nonlinear, interactive effects of temperature and precipitation on grassland primary production revealed by this analysis highlight the value of this experimental approach and suggest that it could be useful in studying how global change will affect other types of ecosystems."

SOURCE

Teacher, 34, 'flashed boys and performed sex act on 15-year-old at bar mitzvah'



An Arizona yoga instructor accused of flashing young boys at a bar mitzvah before performing sexual acts with a 15-year-old claims she was drugged and even raped by the teens.

Lindsey Ann Radomski, 34, of Scottsdale, was arrested last year after she allegedly allowed several boys - some as young as 11 - to fondle and lick her newly enhanced breasts at the March 22, 2015, celebration.

The court heard she also performed oral sex on one of the boys, then aged 15, after the others left the room.

On Tuesday, Radomski's lawyer, Jocquese Blackwell, claimed his client had been intentionally drugged with GHB by an 18-year-old at the party, NY Daily News reports.

He insisted that his client was also a victim in the incident and that she had been 'raped' by the minors.  'A woman that's incapacitated can't consent to any sexual contact, any sexual assault,' Blackwell said last year.

According to court records, in the early hours of March 22, while most of the bar mitzvah guests were asleep or had gone home, Radomski allegedly invited seven boys, aged 11 to 15, into a bedroom and let them fondle her surgically augmented breasts.

The victim's parents learned of the encounter and went to the police.

Radomski, who teaches yoga in the Scottsdale area, was interviewed two days later. She told authorities that she had been too drunk to remember the incident but did admit to flashing party guests.

She later said she was slipped a date rape drug which was why she cannot recall the incident.

'Ms. Radomski has no memory of what happened in that room and because she has no memory, from her perspective and from my perspective as her attorney, it didn't happen and we'll see what happens in court,' Blackwell told KPNX last year.

Her attorney told a court at a previous hearing that he had a hair test which proves his client was drugged with GHB.

But on Tuesday, the prosecution disagreed, saying that the levels of GHB found in her blood stream were no higher than what would naturally occur in a person's body after analyzing a set of newly obtained blood tests.

Radomski's lawyer, Jocquese Blackwell, claimed his client (left and right) had been intentionally drugged with GHB by an 18-year-old at the party

Prosecutors also claimed that Radomski had changed her story only when it came apparent she would be charged.

Radomski was initially charged with 21 felony counts, including sexual conduct with a minor, sexual abuse and indecent exposure, but in June last year, a grand jury declined to indict her citing a lack of evidence.

If convicted, the yoga teacher could face more than six months in jail and three years of probation. Her trial is expected to finish next week.

SOURCE

Russian women strip to their underwear and beg people for money to buy clothes... in bizarre bid to find themselves a HUSBAND



These Russian girls had an unusual way of raising cash to go on a shopping exhibition - by stripping down to their underwear and asking motorists to give them money to buy clothes.

It was all part of a locally organised workshop teaching young women about how to find a husband in which apparently stripping naked and asking for cash for clothing was one of the lessons.

The bizarre incident took place at night in the city of Kazan in central Russia's Republic of Tatarstan. One of the half-naked women said on the camera: 'Do you have 100 roubles for a T-shirt. We are going to Nizhniy Novgorod. This is a quest. Please help us.'

Global warming is causing Europe's glaciers to retreat by hundreds of feet a year (?)

The article below is a bit of a mish-mash.  It reports glacier retreat from 1850 and then skips to the year 2015.  It is true that there has been some warming since 1850 so some retreat due to that might be expected.  And it is true that 2015 was an anomalously hot year.  

But other details are omitted.  The fact that Hannibal walked elephants over the Alps in the Roman warm period -- where glaciers are now -- suggests that glacial fluctuations are a natural phenomenon and that warming does not have to be anthropogenic.

And something that is admitted below is not properly confronted.  It is admitted that glacial retreat is partly due to reduced precipitation.  In fact, the global temperature changes have been so  small that precipitation has to bear the main burden of explanation.

But what does reduced precipitation imply?  COOLING.  A warmer world would evaporate more water off the oceans, which would come down again as rain/snow.  So it is clearly regional COOLING that lies behind shrinkage of Alpine glaciers.  The authors have just not thought through the cause of the reduced precipitation that they admit.  To get reduced precipitation during warming would be anomalous


It is the longest glacier in the Eastern Alps, weaving through the scoured valley beneath Austria's highest mountain. But the Pasterze glacier, near Heiligenblut at the Grossglockner in Austria's High Tauern mountain range, is a shadow of its former self, having diminished by half in the past 150 years.

The retreat of this once mighty glacier is being repeated across Europe where the vast majority have lost approximately two thirds of their volume since 1850.

Scientists blame rising temperatures due to global warming for the increased melting of these rivers of frozen water that have helped to grind out the Alps' dramatic landscape since the last ice age.

In Austria glaciers retreated an average of 72 feet in 2015 – more than twice the rate of the previous year – with 96 per cent of the country's 92 major glaciers receding.

The Austrian Alpine Association's annual glacier survey showed that three of the country's glaciers retreated by more than 320 feet.

Warm summer temperatures have been compounded by poor winter snowfall in recent years.

According to the survey the Pasterz retreated by 177 feet in 2015 while the Hornkees in the Zillertal Alps retreated by 446 feet last year.

The Mittlerer Guslarferner in the Otztal Alps of Austria has shown a particularly rapid disintegration into four parts since 2003.

Dr Andrea Fischer, a glaciologist and head of the Aplenverein-Glacier Monitoring Service, said: 'Summer 2015 was warmer by more than 2°C above the long term average.

'Long lasting anticyclones and the lack of summer snowfall, these are the ingredients for a much too warm measuring year and therefore reason for the current glaciers declines.'

SOURCE

Can racial discrimination be harmless?

The Left clearly think so.  Affirmative action is nothing if not racially discriminatory.  And even racial pride is fine, as long as it is black pride.

The Left are in fact obsessed by race.  It is on their agenda all the time.  The destruction aimed at is more subtle but they are just as obsessed with race as Hitler was.  New socialists and old socialists are not much different.

But are there other forms of racism that should get a pass?  He  is all but forgotten now but the leading racial theorist of C20 was Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who was admired not only by Hitler but also by Kaiser Bill, the nominal German leader of WWI. Chamberlain was a liberal, a passionate Greenie and a virulent antisemite.  So let me make clear at this point that I am not defending him or his doctrines.  The only thing we have in common is an admiration for the people of India.

And that is my first point.  Chamberlain was in his way positive  in what he said about race.  His antisemitism, although relentless, was incidental to his main racial theme:  That Aryans were a superior people.  And he enthusiastically included Hindu Indians among the Aryan race.  He even learned Sanskrit to study their early writings. It was probably the writings of Chamberlain that influenced the admiration of Democrat U.S. President Woodrow Wilson for Aryans.

So Chamberlain was primarily concerned not to attack "inferior" races but to build up respect and esteem for Aryans, among whom Germans were the leading lights.  He in fact saw the Prussians, the skilled warriors of Northeastern Germany as approaching an  ideal type of human being.  But he also believed that others could aspire to reach the Prussian ideal.  You did not have to be born a Prussian to be an exemplary Aryan.

So the leading theorist from the days of racial theory had primarily positive aims. He was there to praise much more that he was there to condemn.

But in Chamberlain's case, praise for one group went with denigration for another group:  Jews.  So is that generally so?   Can one think well of one's own group without denigrating other groups?  There is much evidence that you can.

It was a topic I looked at several times when I was doing survey research among the general population.  And I repeatedly found that a person's patriotism and national pride gave no prediction of one's attitude to ethnic outgroups.  You could for instance be a proud American and at the same time have no animus against Jews.  All combinations were roughly equally probable:  Some patriots tended to be favourably disposed to Jews while others tended to be critical of Jews, with neither type of attitude being strongly felt.  And there were roughly equal numbers in both "camps".

Examples of my research findings on the matter can be found here, here, here and here.  And simliar conclusions have been arrived at by others -- e.g. Cashdan

So I think it is clear that it is not only on the Left that racial sentiment can pass muster.  There can be favourable views of other groups with no vicious implications.

I for instance am firmly of the view that the Han Chinese are in many ways a superior group.  I think that in most ways they will in time surpass my own Anglo-Saxon group.  In some ways they already have.  They appreciate Western classical music much more than Westerners do.  Classical music has a following in the USA of only about 2% of the population, whereas in China and Japan the figure is about 6%. And the best interpreter of much of Western piano music is in my view Yuja Wang, from Beijing.


Yuja Wang

And the rise of China has already been greatly beneficial to us all.  Almost all our electrical goods are now made there very cheaply.  And the ubiquitous presence of Chinese names in the author lists of most academic journal articles in all scientific disciplines has to be seen to be believed.

But will the Chinese rise always be benevolent?  One might think not if one knows Chinese attitudes.  Most Han Chinese see the Han as a superior race. So will that lead to aggression against other races?  The whole point of this essay is to argue that it will not.  Thinking highly of your own group does NOT automatically  imply hostility to other groups.

And there are practical reasons why we do not have to fear war with China.  For a start, why would they want to start a war with their biggest customers?

More importantly, however, the People's Liberation Army is now so large, so well-equipped and trained that any war against it would be unthinkable.  Any war between China and anyone else would have to go nuclear almost immediately.  And the Chinese know as well as anybody that there would be no winners from such a war.  Life on earth could in fact be entirely wiped out, something only Greenies would celebrate.  So there will be no war with China. Nuclear deterrence kept the Soviets at bay and it will keep China at bay.

But what about current tensions in the East China sea?  With its very large population, China has a great need for resources and it is common for nations to seek such resources from under their nearby seas.  The USA does it; The UK does it and Israel does it.  The difference on this occasion, of course, is that there are other claimants on control of the areas at issue.

But China now has firm control of the places concerned and because of that, I also think that China has now established a clearly superior legal claim on the areas concerned.  By building up the various shoals and islets into substantial bases with extensive facilities and a population, China has simply acquired those places by right of conquest.  They took over empty territory and thus have an arguably better claim on the territories concerned than the USA has on its territory.  The USA acquired already occupied territory by right of conquest.  China acquired empty territory by right of conquest.

So for a variety of reasons, I don't think the rise of China is to be feared or denigrated -- JR.

Car rolls into water after spider scares teen driver while parked at a boat ramp



The 18-year-old woman had just pulled up at the Bayview Boat Ramp, on the northern beaches, when a large huntsman spider dropped out from under the visor.  The girl leapt out of the car "and started doing a spider dance” to try and get the arachnid off her, witnesses said.

As she was shooing it off her legs, however, her Volkswagen sedan gently rolled towards the water. With the car in neutral and the handbrake only half on, it was floating within 30 seconds of her getting out. "The car just started to roll in. The spider didn’t bite her.”

He said the girl stood there in complete shock until others came over to help her.  By the time police divers arrived on the scene, the car had already sunk. The vehicle was 25m from the beach and so needed to be towed back in"

Source

Huntsman spiders are actually harmless

Rebel Chinese movement promotes ‘Australian values’

Australians were long accustomed to immigrants fitting in well with us.  But that was when most of our immigrants came from the very similar cultures of Britain and Northern Europe. Only minor changes of expectations rendered such people completely compatible with traditional Australian practices.  

More recent immigrant flows, however, have presented greater challenges of adjustment and we now know that people can come here and want to live here and yet have no respect for the foundation population of this society or their ways.  And that ingratitude and disrespect can have serious behavioural consequences on occasions.

So it is heartening to read below of a group who have encountered a large cultural transition and arrived at a real appreciation of the wisdom and kindness of their generous hosts


A new "pro-Australia" movement, and a leader, have emerged out of controversies swirling around Australia’s Chinese community of almost a million people.

The new Embracing Australian Values Alliance is in most ways the antithesis of the Australian Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China that has emerged as the common denominator between major ­Chinese donors to politicians and parties in Australia.

John Hu, founder of the ­alliance, which is being registered officially, said that recently publicised donors to Australian parties and politicians appeared to have two main aims.

"One is for personal gain. But often they show a communist way of thinking, that if for ­instance as a real estate developer you donate to the top person, whatever you want to do in Australia will be fine," Mr Hu said.  "It doesn’t work that way … If, for instance, they bribe a mayor, she or he only has one vote in a meeting.  "They don’t understand how democracy works."

The second thrust of donations, he said, was "to please ­people back in their old country. So they may donate on behalf of the Chinese government to influence Australian politics, to penetrate and control positions, for example, on the South China Sea — and some of the money may actually be coming from China. In China, business and government work extremely closely".

Some donate, he believed, "to get favours when they do business in China. A lot depend on wealth brought from China, or on their Chinese businesses to generate income to spend in ­Australia".

Mr Hu believes — from his ­experience on the Parramatta City Council "watching how they conduct business" — that many Chinese real estate developers are not making money in Australia.

The events that provoked members of the Chinese community to set up the new alliance were the concerts planned to celebrate Mao Zedong in Sydney and Melbourne town halls, in the days around the 40th anniversary of Mao’s death on Friday. They succeeded in forcing the cancellation of the concerts, as organisers and city councils feared the fallout from the conflict they were arousing.

Supporters are now meeting in Sydney to decide on the next steps for the alliance, which has attracted followers in Melbourne as well.  There was strong agreement, Mr Hu said, that the cause required both long-term and broad-based efforts.

"The Chinese community is divided by their political opinions and many other matters but we believe if you live here, you should agree to the values of Australia — and if you don’t like this country’s values, and think ­constantly of another place as your country, then go back there," he said.

The values the alliance ­espouses are based on the government’s Australian value state­ment for immigrants. Mr Hu summarised them as freedom, democracy, equality and ­tolerance.

He stressed the ­alliance had no ­allegiance to any political party.

SOURCE

Australia: Female child protection unit worker, 50, charged with sex with boy -- offences that were first reported 21 YEARS ago

A child protection officer in Victoria has been charged with two sex offences which took place more than two decades ago while she was worked as a youth detention officer.

The 50-year-old woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, worked for the child protection division at the Department of Health and Human Services, reported The Age.

The woman allegedly molested a 16-year-old boy in 1995 who was in custody at the Melbourne Juvenile Justice Centre.

The allegations were first reported in 1996 by a unit manager at the centre, who submitted a complaint to the then-secretary of the DHHS.

The complaint was accompanied by signed witness statements from the alleged victim, other youth officers and a YMCA employee.

An investigation in the same year reportedly found the woman had engaged in inappropriate conduct, but the department decided not to take any action.

The allegations were reported to Victoria Police in 2015, after the same whistleblower in the DHHS who reported the incident in 1996, passed on the evidence to the royal commission into child sex abuse.

The unit manager was not interviewed by police regarding the incident until 2015.

The woman has been charged with sexual penetration of a child 16 or 17 years old under her care, supervision or authority, and committing an indecent act with a child 16 or 17 years old under her care, supervision or authority.

She has now also been stood down from her job.

While working as a youth detention officer, the woman allegedly initiated the sexual contact with the 16-year-old. She is said to have visited his room at night and performed sex acts on him in the toilets. After he was released from juvenile detention the conduct allegedly escalated.

On Friday the Victorian Government ordered an independent investigation on the department, which has been accused of covering up the alleged abuse.

The Minister for Families and Children Jenny Mikakos has appointed former Supreme Court judge Frank Vincent to oversee the investigation.

Because the disclosure was made before Victoria passed its whistleblower protection legislation, the unit manager who initially reported the abuse in 1996, and again in 2015, alleged his job was threatened and was transferred despite protest.

A DHHS spokeswoman said the department was unable to comment further because the matter was before the courts.

SOURCE  

Did Jesus really speak in the mystical manner portrayed in John 14?

I must say initially that I am not challenging Christian faith here.  Christians believe that God used men to express divine truths in their own way so the narratives from Apostle John can be seen as just another way of conveying important truths.

But most of John 14 is rather a gabble.  Christ constantly speaks of being IN the Father and the Father also being IN him.  He is quite repetitious about it.  He also however speaks of the disciples being in him and he being in them so an allusion to the Trinity doctrine cannot be read into it.  If there were any doubt about that, verse 28 puts it as rest.

As far as we can tell Jesus was a popular preacher so it seems unlikely to me that he spoke in a gabble that would do a French philosopher proud.  So it seems unlikely that John was trying to present the actual words of Jesus.  My view is that he was trying to present very emphatically something that Jesus taught.  And what that is is fairly clear.  He was trying to emphasize a unity of belief and purpose between himself and the Father.  He felt that he was so close to the Father that to see him was to see the Father.

So the passage is sensible enough if you allow for John's Gnostic way of writing. And from the opening verses of John's Gospel we have it made clear that John likes to present truths in that way.

Jesus also emphasises in the passage the importance of keeping his commandments -- so he was emphasizing the importance of his  commandments by saying that they were also the commandments of the Father.

The major puzzle in chapter 14, it seems to me, is what we are to make of the Paraclete (helper) that Jesus will send when he is gone. Again I think we have to look for a figurative meaning rather than accept some sort of "Holy Ghost" story.  And I think that the Paraclete must be the whole body of his teaching which will live on in the disciples.  That Christian teachings can indeed be very sustaining, we now know.  The way the Bible Students (Ernste Bibel Forscher) went to their deaths for refusing to bow the knee to Hitler is just one example of that strength.

Norwegian man gets a TESTICLE caught in an Ikea stool



Claus Jørstad, 45, of Alta in the country's north, had bought the Marius chair for showering because he had a knee injury but the testicle became trapped this week after falling into a hole in the stool and swelling in the hot conditions.

Speaking to MailOnline from Norway tonight, Mr Jørstad said he was trapped sitting under the shower for so long that the water turned cold and he began to freeze. That’s when I realised the nut has got loose from the squirrel stool,' he said. He believes the cold water made his testicle shrink, allowing it to pop back through the hole.

Showing he was a fast learner, Mr Jørstad later posted a picture of the stool in the shower again - but this time covered with a wash cloth so his testicles could not get stuck again"

Source

Whom to believe?

Some interesting excerpts below from a long article that spends a lot of time looking at old philosophical questions.  The author does make the point that decisions on some matters of alleged truth are easier to arrive at than others. And I think global warming is an example of that. Philosophical enquiries about "what is truth?" are largely irrelevant to assessing it.  Why?  Because it is a prophecy, not a fact.  There is no proof available about the future of the climate.  All we know is that sometimes it gets hotter and sometimes it gets colder. No other facts are available. So, from a philosophical viewpoint, it should not be seen as any kind of fact.  It is outside the purview of science

There are some areas of science that CAN produce accurate prophecies.  The orbits of the inner planets can, for instance, be predicted with great accuracy.  But they can be predicted because they show great regularity. The fact involved in the prediction is that great regularity. There are facts involved  there. But there is nothing like that regularity in global climate processes and, largely for that reason, all attempted predictions have so far been well out of synchrony with reality.

In a March 2015 article in National Geographic, Joel Achenbach lamented the supposed rise of science skepticism in American culture. “Empowered by their own sources of information and their own interpretations of research,” he writes somewhat dramatically, “doubters have declared war on the consensus of experts.”

A few months later, Lee McIntyre of Boston University offered a similar analysis in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Explaining what he sees as a growing disrespect for truth in American culture, McIntyre points to the Internet as a likely culprit. After all, he argues, “outright lies can survive on the Internet. Worse, those who embrace willful ignorance are now much more likely to find an electronic home where their marginal views are embraced.”

Complaints of this kind are not without merit. Consider a recent survey from the Pew Research Center’s Initiative on Science and Society showing a significant gap between the views of laypeople and those of scientists (a sample from the American Association for the Advancement of Science) on a wide range of scientific issues. To take one notable example, 88 percent of the polled AAAS scientists believe genetically modified foods to be safe, compared to only 37 percent of the respondents from the general public.

But as worthwhile as such research may be, it has little to say about a closely related question: What ought we to believe? How should non-experts go about seeking reliable knowledge about complex matters? Absent a granular understanding of the theories underpinning a given area of knowledge, how should laypeople weigh rival claims, choose between conflicting interpretations, and sort the dependable expert positions from the dubious or controversial ones? This is not a new question, of course, but it has become more urgent thanks to our glut of instant information, not to mention the proliferation of expert opinion.

The closest thing to an answer one hears is simply to trust the experts. And, indeed, when it comes to the charge of the electron or the oral-health benefits of fluoride, this response is hard to quarrel with. The wisdom of trusting experts is also a primary assumption behind the work of scholars like Kahan. But once we dispense with the easy cases, a reflexive trust in specialist judgment doesn’t get us very far.

On all manner of consequential questions an average citizen faces — including whether to support a hike in the minimum wage or a new health regulation — expert opinion is often conflicting, speculative, and difficult to decipher. What then? In so many cases, laypeople are left to choose for themselves which views to accept — precisely the kind of haphazard process that the critics of “willful ignorance” condemn and that leaves us subject to our own whims. The concern is that, if we doubt the experts, many people will draw on cherry-picked facts and self-serving anecdotes to furnish their own versions of reality.

This is certainly the case. But, in fixating on this danger, we neglect an important truth: it is simply not feasible to outsource to experts all of our epistemological work — nor would it be desirable. We frequently have no alternative but to choose for ourselves which beliefs to accept. The failure to come to grips with this fact has left us without the kinds of strategies and tools that would enable non-experts to make more effective use of the increasingly opaque theories that explain our world. We need, in other words, something more to appeal to once disagreements reach the “my-source-versus-your-source” phase.

Developing approaches that fit this description will require an examination of our everyday assumptions about knowledge — that is, about which beliefs are worth adopting and why. Not surprisingly, those assumptions have been significantly shaped by our era’s information and communication technologies, and not always for the better.

One consequence of this view of knowledge is that it has become largely unnecessary to consider how a given piece of information was discovered when determining its trustworthiness. The research, experiments, mathematical models, or — in the case of Google — algorithms that went into establishing a given fact are invisible. Ask scientists why their enterprise produces reliable knowledge and you will likely be told “the scientific method.” And this is correct — more or less. But it is rare that one gets anything but a crude schematic of what this process entails. How is it, a reasonable person might ask, that a single method involving hypothesis, prediction, experimentation, and revision is applied to fields as disparate as theoretical physics, geology, and evolutionary biology — or, for that matter, social-scientific disciplines such as economics and sociology?

Even among practitioners this question is rarely asked in earnest. Science writer and former Nature editorial staffer Philip Ball has condemned “the simplistic view of the fictitious ‘scientific method’ that many scientists hold, in which they simply test their theories to destruction against the unrelenting candor of experiment. Needless to say, that’s rarely how it really works.”

Like the algorithms behind Google’s proposed “truth” rankings, the processes that go into establishing a given empirical finding are often out of view. All the lay reader gets is conclusions such as “the universe is fundamentally composed of vibrating strings of energy,” or “eye color is an inherited trait.” By failing to explain — or sometimes even to acknowledge — how, exactly, “the scientific method” generates reliable knowledge about the world in various domains, scientists and science communicators are asking laypeople to accept the supremacy of science on authority.

Far from bolstering the status of experts who engage in rigorous scientific inquiry, this way of thinking actually gives them short shrift. Science, broadly construed, is not a fact-generating machine. It is an activity carried out by people and requiring the very human capacities of reason, intuition, and creativity. Scientific explanations are not the inevitable result of a purely mechanical process called “the scientific method” but the product of imaginative attempts to make empirical data more intelligible and coherent, and to make accurate predictions. Put another way, science doesn’t tell us anything; scientists do.

Failure to recognize the processes involved in adding to our stores of knowledge creates a problem for those of us genuinely interested in getting our beliefs right, as it denies us relevant information for understanding why a given finding deserves our acceptance. If the results of a single, unreplicated neuroscience study are to be considered just as much an instance of good science as the rigorously tested Standard Model of particle physics, then we laypeople have little choice but to give them equal weight. But, as any scientist will tell you, not all findings deserve the same credibility; determining which ones merit attention requires at least a basic grasp of methodology.

To understand the potential costs of failing to engage at the level of method, consider the Innocence Project’s recent investigation of 268 criminal trials in which evidence from hair analysis had been used to convict defendants. In 257 of those cases, the organization found forensic testimony by FBI scientists to be flawed — a conclusion the FBI does not dispute. What is more, each inaccurate analysis overstated the strength of hair evidence in favor of the prosecution. Thirty-two defendants in those cases were eventually sentenced to death, of whom fourteen have either died in prison or have been executed. This is an extreme example of how straightforwardly deferring to expert opinion — without considering how those opinions were arrived at — is not only an inadequate truth-seeking strategy, but a potentially harmful one.

Reacting to the discoveries of forensic malpractice at the FBI, the co-chairman of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, biologist Eric S. Lander, suggested a single rule that would make such lapses far less common. As he wrote in the New York Times, “No expert should be permitted to testify without showing three things: a public database of patterns from many representative samples; precise and objective criteria for declaring matches; and peer-reviewed published studies that validate the methods.”

Lander’s suggestion amounts to the demand that forensic experts “show their work,” so to speak, instead of handing down their conclusions from on high. And it is an institutional arrangement that could, with a few adjustments, be applied to other instances where expert analyses carry significant weight. It might be too optimistic to assume that such information will be widely used by the average person on the street. But, at least in theory, efforts to make the method by which certain facts are established more available and better understood will leave each of us more able to decide which claims to believe. And these sorts of procedural norms would help create the expectation that, when choosing what to believe, we laypeople have responsibilities extending beyond just trusting the most credentialed person in the room.

Research from psychologist Philip Tetlock and colleagues lends support to this idea. Tetlock is co-creator of The Good Judgment Project, an initiative that won a multi-year forecasting tournament conducted by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, a U.S. government research agency. Beginning in 2011, participants in the competition were asked a range of specific questions regarding future geopolitical events, such as, “Will the United Nations General Assembly recognize a Palestinian state by Sept. 30, 2011?,” or “Before March 1, 2014, will North Korea conduct another successful nuclear detonation?” Tetlock’s forecasters, mind you, were not career analysts, but volunteers from various backgrounds. In fact, a pharmacist and a retired irrigation specialist were among the top performers — so-called “superforecasters.”

In analyzing the results of the tournament, researchers at the Good Judgment Project found a number of characteristics common to the best forecasters. For instance, these individuals “had more open-minded cognitive styles” and “spent more time deliberating and updating their forecasts.” In a January 2015 article in the Washington Post, two of the researchers further explained that the best forecasters showed “the tendency to look for information that goes against one’s favored views,” and they “viewed forecasting not as an innate ability, but rather as a skill that required deliberate practice, sustained effort and constant monitoring of current affairs.”

More HERE

  Woman, 36, who had a two-year affair with her stepson admits incest and has now given birth to their child  

A Victorian woman who had an affair with her teenage stepson, with whom she now has a child, has been convicted of two counts of incest.

The 36-year-old, who can't be named for legal reasons, began a sexual relationship with her then-husband's child in 2012 when he was 18 and still living at the family home in Canberra.

The affair lasted two years before the woman left her husband and came to Victoria to be with his son.

After formally divorcing her stepson's father, she became pregnant and gave birth to the younger man's baby.

The pair are still together.

Police charged the woman with two counts of incest and on Friday she was sentenced by Victorian County Court Judge David Parsons who said he was sentencing on matters of law, not morals.

'I am not here to effect a family reunion,' Judge Parson warned, saying there had been some strong emotions expressed in victim impact statements tendered after the woman pleaded guilty.

Judge Parsons allowed the woman to step out of the dock and sit next to her new partner for the hearing.

He sentenced her to serve a community corrections order for one year and said it was not necessary to add her to the sex offenders registry.

A psychological report tendered to the court said the stepson is a mature, independent young man with no indication of mental illness. '(He) has made an informed and independent decision to continue in a relationship with his father's former wife,' the report said.

Judge Parsons said it was clear all involved in the matter had been deeply affected and probably would be for some time but hoped the relationships could be mended for the sake of the children involved.

SOURCE  

Goldman Sach & HSBC Recently Bought 7.1 Tons Of Physical Gold Bullion!

This is a straw in the wind.  The banks clearly expect a collapse in the value of the Greenback and want a better store of value.  They are probably right.  With all the new money Obama has printed, there has got to be a big drop in the purchasing power of the dollar soon. I do have a small amount of gold but I am mainly into blue chip shares and real estate.  They should be pretty protective in an economic crisis too

Mind you, being in Australia has extra advantages.  Our government has spent beyond its means too but has financed that through borrowing (denominated in U.S. dollars), not running the printing presses hard at the mint.  And if the U.S. dollar collapses, Australia will be able to get a heap of U.S. dollars very cheaply and thus retire a big lot of its debts very easily.

A wise American would put a lot of his funds into the banks of any major country with a well managed economy.  Canada would be a bad bet there now it is the hands of Pretty Boy.  There is no doubt he will manage the Canadian economy badly


On August 6, 2015, Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and HSBC (NYSE:HSBC) took delivery of a sum total of 7.1 tons of physical gold. No, I have not made any typographical errors. And no, I am not talking about electronic paper claims. I am talking about shiny yellow metal stuff that you can touch and feel.

The gold bars were not purchased for bank clients. They were purchased for the banks themselves. How do I know this? They are designated by the exchange as being for delivery to the bank's "house" accounts at COMEX, not to client accounts.

Goldman Sachs, alone, took 3.2 tons worth of physical gold bars. Yet, even as the firm builds its stockpile, Goldman tells clients not to do it. According to Goldman's Jeffrey Currie, the long-term outlook for gold is bleak.

They bought 3.9 metric tons at COMEX, no doubt at rock bottom prices, and it was just delivered into the bank's house account. Note that we are NOT talking about paper-gold. Both bought physical gold bars! Apparently, top Goldman and HSBC executives are "gold bugs." They do not, apparently, believe in the promises made by the gold trust (NYSEARCA:GLD), or at least they are not willing to use the trust's shares as a substitute for hard metal bars.

Physical gold is a long-term investment, everywhere and always. They are not particularly hard to sell, especially now, but short-term trading would be much easier with paper-gold products like GLD or gold futures. Remember, vaults cost money, as do big men with big guns and the knowledge of how to use them. The banks are choosing to accumulate and hoard physical gold bars for a reason.

SOURCE

Note.  Most new money is created via the banks.  Printing it is mainly a metaphor.

Some Warmist hate mail

Steven Craig Jones wants to save the planet.  He has a site that says so here: pulsar774.tripod.com

So how does he deal with skeptics?  He sent Marc Morano the following message:

"you are dead wrong on climate change.  it is the number one international security issue on planet earth in 2016. you climate deniers need to be put in prison"

He's all charm, isn't he?  He makes no attempt to dispute any point ever made by any skeptic and makes no attempt to present any fact. Since he believes in anti-gravity that is perhaps just as well.  All he can resort to is Stalinism:  Imprison your opponents. A dismal soul, indeed. He is completely dogmatic, with a completely closed mind.  It might not be good to see him coming towards you on a dark night if you disagree with him.

The fantasy of being able to save the planet must generate such a warm glow inside.  No wonder he hates any threat to that.  How awful to find that you are in fact completely irrelevant and that your crusade has been a complete waste of time!  The poor dupe.

His email is calisunnerz@gmail.com