Category: Uncategorized

180 seconds

That’s all the time you have, gentlemen. So, figuring out how to make the optimal impression in that time is the only place your efforts should be concentrated if you are seeking to meet women:

They say you should never judge a book by its cover. But when it comes to the opposite sex, it seems that’s exactly what women do. It takes a woman just three minutes to make up her mind about whether she likes a man or not, a study has revealed.

The average female spends the time sizing up looks, physique and dress-sense as well as taking in scent, accent and eloquence of a potential suitor. Women also quickly judge how he interacts with her friends and whether he is successful or ambitious. It also emerged most women believe 180 seconds is long enough to gauge whether or not he is Mr Right, or Mr Wrong.

The study also found women rarely change their mind about a man after their initial reaction – and believe they are ‘always right’ in their assumptions and judgments.

It would appear that women become emotionally invested in their decisions about whether a man is attractive or not, which means that in most cases, a man will have no need to worry about keeping up whatever false front he projects in order to win the 180-second window.

How you apply this is up to you. I suspect overly outrageous exaggeration will backfire, unless utilized with irony. The important thing to keep in mind that if an attribute isn’t going to come across in less than 180 seconds, it may as well not exist. The second thing to conclude from this is that if you haven’t lit a spark in those first three minutes, the marginal return on your time investment will drop off a cliff. This means a man should never give any woman more than five minutes of his time unless she provides him with a definite indication of interest.

It is perhaps useful to keep in mind that women are usually less interested in those who openly express interest in them.

“Women who believed the men liked them a lot were more attracted to the men than women who thought the men liked them only an average amount. However, the women who found the men most attractive were the ones who weren’t sure whether those men were into them or not.”

Neocons aren’t conservatives

Glenn Beck belatedly notices:

Fox News’s Glenn Beck lashed out at Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol on his radio show this morning, accusing Kristol of betraying conservatism and missing the significance of what Beck sees as an alliance between Islamism and socialism.

“I don’t even know if you understand what conservatives are anymore, Billy,” Beck said in his extended, sarcastic attack on Kristol. “People like Bill Kristol, I don’t think they stand for anything any more. All they stand for is power. They’ll do anything to keep their little fiefdom together, and they’ll do anything to keep the Republican power entrenched.”

The pragmatic set will always sell out their professed principles. This should never come as a surprise, after all, their lack of attachment to principle is precisely why they describe themselves as pragmatists in the first place. It’s not as if Bill Kristol has changed because people like him never stand for anything but power. And they’ll be screeching like banshees about the need for American military intervention once the Caliphate that they claim doesn’t exist begins to turn its attention towards Jerusalem again.

Where Beck is wrong is to think that beginning by confronting the ur-caliphate in the Middle East is the right strategy. The strategically correct place to begin is removing its footholds in the West.

Somalia, Minnesota

The Somali community wants its youth to look beyond gangs. The non-Somali community, on the other hand, would like the Somalis to go back to, you know, Somalia:

The enterprise described in a federal indictment has shocked members of Minnesota’s Somali community, the largest in the United States. And it suggests that gangs known in recent years for armed robberies, burglaries and even killings of fellow East Africans have evolved into more lucrative activities, and are taking their crimes from Twin Cities to other parts of the country.

“It’s clear the life of the gang in the community is getting much more complicated,” said Omar Jamal, an advocate for the Somali community in Minneapolis. “It’s one thing to go out and have a random action. It’s something quite new to the community to have an organized sex trafficking.”

There are seven Somali gangs in Minneapolis, and about 200 documented Somali gang members and associates, she said — about 10 percent of the roughly 2,100 documented active gang members in the Minneapolis Police Department’s system. The gang members are a small fraction of the Somali population: The U.S. Census says roughly 25,000 Somalis live in Minnesota, though local advocates say the number is much higher.

More immigrants doing the jobs Americans won’t do. Fortunately, the police liason officer to the Somali community has a wonderful plan. Instead of being left to get involved in gang activity, Somali teenagers are being encouraged to turn to a mosque where they can learn, among other things, the martial arts.

That’s going to turn out well….

Notice that at no point has anyone even attempted to try arguing that Somali immigration has been of any actual benefit to Minnesotans.

Monday column

Ending the Multicultural Experiment

In September, a member of board of the Bundesbank, the German equivalent of the Federal Reserve, published a book titled “Germany is Abolishing Itself.” The reaction to Thilo Sarrazin’s thesis, which is that Muslim immigration not only threatens the existence of Germany, but of every country in which it is permitted, was mixed. While the pushers of multiculturalism and diversity exploded in outrage and Sarrazin was encouraged to resign from the Bundesbank board, the book became an immediate best-seller.

Unlike past sinners against diversity dogma, Sarrazin has neither apologized nor backed down. Various opinion polls have demonstrated that the majority of Germans agree with him despite the fact that the political elite in both major parties are still frightened to death at the thought of being forced to address the very large elephant in the Bundesrepublik’s living room.

Super Bowl Sunday

This is your open Super Bowl thread. I expect to see the Packers by 10. The Steelers are banged up, Troy Polamalu is less than 100 percent, and if the Packers can keep Rodgers in the game, he should be able to pick apart the Steeler’s secondary on turf. If the Steel Curtain knocks Rodgers out of the game, they will probably win, but I don’t think they’ll be able to do it.

And E-Trade for the best commercial.

Incompetent teachers resist oversight

It is clear that science teachers are completely missing the point of testing standards. They don’t appear to understand that it isn’t what they find valuable that actually matters:

The Obama administration has urged broadening the subjects tested under the law — possibly including science. But some teachers say they are already burdened by state requirements to teach a wide range of facts — say, the parts of a cell — which prevents them from devoting class time to research projects.

“I have so many state standards I have to teach concept-wise, it takes time away from what I find most valuable, which is to have them inquire about the world,” said Amanda Alonzo, a science teacher at Lynbrook High School in San Jose, Calif.

Alonzo has it all wrong. It is absolutely worthless to anyone but the teacher for high school students to “inquire about the world” at school. Intelligent inquiry requires information and teenagers simply don’t possess enough of it for them to ask anything but stupid and ignorant questions. Although it is to the detriment of the student’s education both students and teachers prefer self-centered “inquiry” to objective standards because the former is subjective and avoids the accountability of the latter. This does not mean that all standards are intrinsically desirable, only that some form of standards testing is the most reliable means that parents have of determining if their children have actually learned anything or not.

The uncomfortable truth that so many teachers are desperate to avoid is this: a properly instructed student should be able to pass the basic standards tests with ease regardless of the particular form his instruction took. If the standards are too difficult, then obviously they should be adjusted. But it makes absolutely no sense to assert that students will learn better if they are a) educated according to the individual whims of their teacher, and b) never tested by an unbiased third party on their knowledge at all.

Mailvox: the Fed evades

JH asks a Federal Reserve official about the decline in private borrowing:

I solicited advice from you quite a while ago on a debt deflation question to ask a Fed Reserve speaker at a work function, and as you predicted, he pretty much dismissed drawing any conclusions from the Fed Z1 report which showed that without government debt growth the US was in severe debt contraction. The speaker said the contraction was a temporary result of there not being enough good people or businesses worth investing in presently. On some level this may be true, but he still completely avoided discussing the implications of continued credit contraction to the overall economy.

It’s a pity JH wasn’t allowed a follow-up question, as the obvious one was as follows: how do you explain this “temporary result of there not being enough good people or businesses worth investing in presently” in light of the fact that a) there are more people in the USA than ever before, and b) the fact that there has NEVER been a comparable contraction in private credit in the post-war era.

The other question I would have liked to ask the Fed official is this. How long do you think government sector credit can continue to expand and prevent Z1 from falling if the household and financial sectors continue to decline?

A bold irrelevancy

The British Prime Minister addresses a symptom, not the disease:

David Cameron has criticised “state multiculturalism” in his first speech as prime minister on radicalisation and the causes of terrorism. At a security conference in Germany, he argued the UK needed a stronger national identity to prevent people turning to all kinds of extremism. He also signalled a tougher stance on groups promoting Islamist extremism.

“Let’s properly judge these organisations: Do they believe in universal human rights – including for women and people of other faiths? Do they believe in equality of all before the law? Do they believe in democracy and the right of people to elect their own government? Do they encourage integration or separatism?

Secularism is a societal non-starter. Cameron is trying to tread a fine line that doesn’t actually exist. Universalist liberalism is no substitute for multiculturalism because it was the genesis of multiculturalism.

All are fallible

Even intellectual giants.

“As the idea of contract enters the Law of Marriage, it breaks the rule of the male, and makes the wife a partner with equal rights. From a one-sided relationship resting on force, marriage thus becomes a mutual agreement.”
– Ludwig von Mises, Socialism

Yeah, that really hasn’t worked out so well in either practical demographic or theoretical libertarian terms.

Feminism is good for children

Assuming, that is, that you want them to be fat little bastards:

American researchers found that children in the sixth grade – aged 11 or 12 – whose mothers who were employed either full or part-time were six times more likely to be overweight…. According to the latest figures one in three children is now overweight by the time they leave primary school, aged 11. A fifth are classified as clinically obese, so fat that their health is at risk.

This isn’t surprising when you think aboout it. I’d noticed that kids with working moms didn’t tend to be as involved with sports, although I can’t say that I ever realized that they were so prone to being overweight. This means that in addition to reducing average wages, lowering the marriage and birth rates, and increasing the divorce and illegitimacy rates, feminism is also creating an obese population. Regardless of whether you are a man or a woman, with 40 years of its observable effects now recorded by history, you have to be almost willfully stupid to still support feminism in any way.