Category: Uncategorized

Ivy League inbreeding

Needless to say, this example of Ivy League inbreeding is going to be brought up every time someone from New York City tries to rag on Southerners, rednecks, or hillbillies for their supposed predilection for overly close families:

A Columbia University professor has been arrested on charges of having sexual relations with his daughter, officials said on Friday. David Epstein, 46, a political science professor at the Ivy League school, faces one count of incest in the third degree, according to a complaint filed by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. He had relations with his daughter, now 24, from 2006 through 2009, the complaint said. Epstein was released on his own recognizance after appearing before a judge on Thursday.

Given the spurious rationales that various judiciaries have used to legalize homosexuality and homogamy, it’s only a matter of time before relationships like the Epsteins are deemed to be legal as well, assuming that one in fact existed. Once traditional mores have been thrown out the window, it is very difficult to rationally declare “thus far and no farther” since every single argument made in support of those legal abominations can just as easily be utilized in this case. If the professor chooses to vigorously defend himself on those terms, he should have a pretty good chance of being exonerated even if he is guilty. It should be interesting to see what folks like John Scalzi and other outspoken supporters of state-sanctioned homogamy have to say about this case.

Of course, if he is exonerated and Epstein v. New York becomes the incestuous version of Lawrence v. Texas, one will be forced to conclude that the Other McCain has summarized the national prospects well: “Tomorrow’s forecast: Widely scattered fire with a 60% chance of afternoon and evening brimstone.”

Honesty in pseudo-science

Professional anthropologists have finally admitted they just don’t do science. So it’s only a matter of time before the sociologists and evolutionary biologists admit that they don’t either. And even the ghost of Keynes would have to admit that whatever economists are doing these days, it can’t reasonably be described as science:

Anthropologists have been thrown into turmoil about the nature and future of their profession after a decision by the American Anthropological Association at its recent annual meeting to strip the word “science” from a statement of its long-range plan.

The decision has reopened a long-simmering tension between researchers in science-based anthropological disciplines — including archaeologists, physical anthropologists and some cultural anthropologists — and members of the profession who study race, ethnicity and gender and see themselves as advocates for native peoples or human rights.

I don’t quite agree with the NYT’s characterization of this debate between “science-based” anthropologists and ideological anthropologists. Neither side are actually engaged in doing any science per se due to the historical nature of their discipline; “study” is not synonymous with “scientific experiment”. Neither history nor logic are scientody, although both are often utilized by scientists engaged in it.

But this does underline the importance of properly defining what the various aspects of science are and are not. So long as scientists and other ideologists are determined to pronounce judgment on what is and is not science and attempt using “science” as an excuse to interfere in the political arena, non-scientists have a responsibility to force them to strictly abide by consistent definitions. This is why it is always important to determine whether someone us bandying about the term “science” in the sense of scientage, scientody, or scientistry.

Mr. Sailer has his own take on the situation.

Not so much, mate

I completely agree with OneSTDV’s criticism of Half-Sigma’s support for the ridiculous and would-be offensive Christmas billboard erected by American Atheists this year, but I would be remiss if I failed to take exception to one of his statements:

HS likely doesn’t spend a lot of time on organized atheist websites or he wouldn’t naively presume the actual intention comports with the publicly expressed reasoning. Sure the atheist community has individuals like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris who can articulate impassioned but logically sound arguments against religious superstition. And surely given the high rate of disbelief amongst scientists, atheism is often a position resulting from reason.

OneSTDV is almost surely right about the probable difference between the stated and actual intentions. However, in like manner, one can only assume OneSTDV has not read deeply in the New Atheist literature or he would realize that while the arguments presented by Dawkins and Harris are impassioned, they are most certainly not logically sound by any measure. If, on the other hand, he has read Dawkins or Harris and genuinely believes they both have presented logically sound arguments against religion, I should very much like to know specifically which of those arguments he means since I am familiar with all of them and “logically sound” is among the very last means I would use to describe most of them, along with “factually accurate”. Is he impressed by Sam Harris’s Extinction Equation or by Sam’s creative resolution of the Is/Ought Problem presented in The Moral Landscape? Does he buy into Dawkins’s philosophical magnum opus of the Ultimate 747 argument or is was he convinced that sexual abuse is indeed less harmful to a child than a religious upbringing? I’m not just being sarcastic here, I would definitely like to know!

As for the scientists, I note that it is incorrect to assume that a preponderance of atheism among scientists should be taken as evidence to indicate that atheism is often a position resulting from reason. It is a non sequitur; consider the implications in light of similarly strong predilections for sporting beards, wearing glasses, or voting Democrat.

As for the billboard itself, it is nothing more than the usual atheist obnoxiousness and Half-Sigma is simply revealing his own inability to reason correctly. He is too intelligent to not be disingenuous when he states: “I would not characterize the billboard as being anti-Christian. It’s pro-reason.”

Half-Sigma has it precisely backward. The billboard is anti-Christian because it is specifically attacking the Christian belief in the historical existence of Jesus Christ by declaring it a myth during the very time that Christians are celebrating the birth of Man’s Lord and Savior. The billboard is not pro-reason either despite the statement “This season celebrate reason”. The billboard is actually anti-reason due to the way in which the preceding statement “You know it’s a myth” is intrinsically illogical. Not only do the passers-by not necessarily know that the Christmas story is a myth, but American Atheists cannot reasonably claim to know it is a myth and unless they are claiming to be mind-readers, they cannot possibly know what the passers-by know or do not know either.

I don’t mind such billboards in the least. It’s mere public trollery and accomplishes little more than highlight the deeply unattractive social autism of outspoken atheists. To the extent they have any effect at all, I suspect they encourage more atheists to identify themselves as agnostics rather than the opposite. It’s rather like seeing a vegetarian try to argue about the evils of eating meat by farting at the Christmas dinner table; no one is going to be convinced that the baked ham is any less delectable, it’s only going to make them want to send Mr. Stinky outside to eat in the snow.

More protecting and serving

Once more, a reminder that the police are just as likely to be the enemy as not:

On Dec. 2, Jeremy Marks, a Verdugo Hills High School special education student, was offered a new plea offer by the L.A. County District Attorney: If he pled guilty to charges of obstructing an officer, resisting arrest, criminal threats and “attempted lynching,” he’d serve only 32 months in prison. That actually was an improvement from the previous offer made to the young, black high schooler — seven years in prison….

The first thing to understand is that Jeremy Marks touched no one during his “attempted lynching” of LAUSD campus police officer Erin Robles. The second is that Marks’ weapon was the camera in his cell phone.

The police are simply out of control all around the nation. They clearly believe they are above the law because they are so seldom held accountable for their actions. It is obviously necessary to pass laws in every state making it perfectly clear that recording video and audio of police actions is not only legal, but any attempt by police to resist such recordings being made will be prosecuted.

“[T]he Los Angeles School Police Department’s internal affairs division ‘sat on 16 investigations of police wrongdoing for so long that the officers can’t be punished, even though all were ultimately found guilty of misconduct.'”

The distant sound of slithering

Peggy Noonan reaches a conclusion:

The Democrats’ problem is that most of them know that the person who would emerge, who would challenge Mr. Obama from the left, would never, could never, win the 2012 general election. He’d lose badly and take the party with him. Democratic professionals know the mood of the country. Challenging Mr. Obama from the left would mean definitely losing the presidency, as opposed to probably losing the presidency. There is only one Democrat who could possibly challenge Mr. Obama for the nomination successfully and win the general election, and that is Hillary Clinton. Who insists she doesn’t want to.

Of course, it strikes one that Clintons are almost as famous for their honesty as for their lack of ambition.

Hypergamy and marriage rates

It is not hard to explain why the highly educated are somewhat more disposed to be married than the less educated:

Adults in First Marriages. Figure 3 indicates that the percentage of moderately educated working-age adults who were in first marriages fell 28 percentage points, from 73 percent in the 1970s to 45 percent in the 2000s. This compares to a 17-point drop among highly educated adults and a 28-point drop among the least-educated adults over this same time period. What is particularly striking about Figure 3 is that moderately and highly educated Americans were both just as likely to be married in the 1970s; now, when it comes to their odds of being in an intact marriage, Middle Americans are more likely to resemble the least educated.

Here is my theory. Women are hypergamous and women of the 1990s are just as likely to have college degrees as men. Since they don’t like to marry down, highly educated women will marry highly educated men and less educated women will also marry less well educated men. Highly educated men will also marry less educated women, but highly educated women will NOT marry less educated men. Therefore, we can expect marriage rates to drop as a function of the rate at which women pursue higher education.

If this is the case, then highly educated men should have higher marriage rates than less educated men while less educated women should have higher marriage rates than highly educated women. As it happens, that’s what the statistics indicate. According to a 2003 study, the peak “ever-married” rate for women between the ages of 40 to 44 in 2000 was 90.5% at 12 years of education while for men it was 89.3% at 19 years of education. Which, you will note, indicates that men tend to prefer women with a high school education whereas women prefer men to have as much education as possible.

The $52 trillion question

This is a graph of the four primary debt sectors from 2008 through Q3 2010, which between them account for 90% of the total credit market debt outstanding in the USA.  The red line represents the total of federal debt plus state and local debt; $9 trillion belongs to the federal government while $2.4 trillion is owed by the state and local governments.

So, while Z1 reports a quarterly increase of 0.43% in overall credit, the first increase after five straight negative quarters, this meager increase almost entirely consists of swapping financial sector debt for federal government sector debt.  This is consistent with what I described was likely to happen in The Return of the Great Depression and is also consistent with the Misean definition of inflation that includes credit as opposed to the Friedmanite one that does not.  The $52 trillion question is how long this debt transference process can be maintained.  If it can go on indefinitely, then there will eventually be hyperinflation.  If it cannot, there will be deflation.  High metal prices notwithstanding, I still maintain that it cannot go on indefinitely, and the fact that the Fed and the Treasury are limiting their credit expansion to approximately the level of the private sector credit contraction tends to suggest that this is the case.  Three years is impressive, but it is neither infinite nor conclusive.

I don’t deny that we have seen what looks like inflation due to the steady increase in M1 and M2.  But keep in mind that we know beyond any shadow of a doubt that the mortgage banks have not been accurately accounting for the bad debts being incurred by defaulting homeowners and that they may not even hold title to many of the homes that supposedly back  those home loans.  This means that the yellow line should be declining more rapidly than it is.  Also, we know that the insolvent nature of many of the large financial institutions means that the light blue line is going to decline dramatically once the first one fails and sets off the chain reaction that the Fed has been so desperately attempting to forestall.  Those debts are not going to be inflated away, they are going to be deleveraged through default as has been happening on a smaller $3.1 trillion scale since the 4th quarter of 2008.

Since the government now accounts for 21.8% of all debt, up from 14.6% in only 27 months, the government looks to be facing a choice between assuming ownership of all debts owed in the economy within two decades or to stop fighting the deflationary process that Austrian theory dictates is not only necessary, but inevitable.  Those looking to the historical example of the Great Depression should keep in mind that the federal government had a good deal more leeway at that time because it was not already saddled with one-fifth of the debt in the economy.  And don’t forget, this accounting doesn’t include the very large debts imposed by off-budget pension plans at the state and local level and entitlements at the federal level.

The Wikileaks rape-criers

In Male Fide posts the pictures and identities of Julian Assange’s two accusers, Anna Ardin and Sofia Wilén.

A few people have sent me the home addresses and phone numbers of Julian Assange’s lying rape accusers. My traffic has ballooned from Googlers seeking info and pictures of Anna Ardin and Sofia Wilén in the past 48 hours, and my posts are being linked all over the place from sites as diverse as Indymedia and Democratic Underground to Pajamas Media and Stormfront….

These two women are accessories to a great evil, an evil that will continue to perpetuate unless someone stands up and does something. They are arguably evil themselves for trying to destroy a man’s life over their feeeeelings. If there’s a part of me that would feel bad for releasing the info, there’s another part of me that would feel bad for not using my power to fight this evil when I am uniquely positioned to do so.

So, guilt or not, I’m posting the info.

I don’t see why Ferdinand should feel any guilt over making available information that should be available given the criminal accusations. Anyone who accuses someone of rape should be considered a public figure in precisely the same manner that the accused rapist is. Crime is a matter of public record, so if you are not willing to go public when pressing charges you should not be permitted to participate in the judicial system. It is a fundamental aspect of justice that it not be hidden in any way. This is why it is important that women who claim to have been raped are not permitted to hide behind the so-called “rape shield” laws because it is readily apparent they find it far too easy to use it to get away with making false criminal accusations without being held accountable for them in any way.

And since female activists have successfully lobbied to impose some form of restriction of public information regarding activity within the judicial systems of many countries, they leave the public with no choice but to identify secret accusers outside the justice system in order to prevent miscarriages of justice from taking place within it.

Misplaced faith in reason

Scott Atran scientifically demolishes a cherished atheist belief in his new book Talking to the Enemy: Violent Extremism, Sacred Values, and What It Means to Be Human:

Seeing humans as essentially driven by their passions, Hobbes cherished little hope that they would ever be guided by reason. Still, he never doubted that if people were more rational they would be less prone to violence. How could any sane person not seek peace? After all, everyone wants to go on living – or so Hobbes wanted to believe.

Something like Hobbes’s analysis (though without his refreshing pessimism or his wonderfully terse prose style) has resurfaced today in regard to suicide bombing. If you read evangelical atheists like Richard Dawkins, you will be told that suicide bombers are driven by their irrational religious beliefs. ‘Suicide bombers do what they do’, writes Dawkins in a passage cited by Scott Atran, ‘because they really believe what they were taught in their religious schools; that duty to God exceeds all other priorities, and that martyrdom in his service will be rewarded in the gardens of Paradise.’ What is striking about claims of this kind is that they are rarely accompanied by evidence. They are asserted as self-evident truths – in other words, articles of faith. In fact, as Atran writes, religion is not particularly prominent in the formation of jihadi groups….

Unlike Dawkins’s assertions, Atran’s account of violent jihadism is based on extensive empirical research. An anthropologist who has spent many years studying and talking to terrorists in Indonesia, Afghanistan, Gaza and Europe, Atran believes that what motivates them to go willingly to their deaths is not so much the cause they espouse – rationally or otherwise – but the relationships they form with each other. Terrorists kill and die ‘for their group, whose cause makes their imagined family of genetic strangers – their brotherhood, fatherland, motherland, homeland, totem or tribe’. In this terrorists are no different from other human beings. They may justify their actions by reference to religion, but many do not. The techniques of suicide bombing were first developed by the Tamil Tigers, a Marxist-Leninist group hostile to all religions, while suicide bombers in Lebanon in the 1980s included many secular leftists. The Japanese Aum cult, which recruited biologists and geneticists and experimented with anthrax as a weapon of mass destruction, cobbled together its grotesque system of beliefs from many sources, including science fiction. Terrorists have held to many views of the world, including some – like Marxism-Leninism – that claim to be grounded in ‘scientific atheism’. If religion is a factor in terrorism, it is only one among many.

This is precisely what I pointed out in TIA when criticizing Sam Harris’s error-filled The End of Faith, although I didn’t need to perform any extensive empirical research as a basic knowledge of military history was sufficient. But it is satisfying to see that more and more atheists are beginning to see what I explained two years ago: the New Atheists have not utilized any science in their ideological campaign against religion in general and Christianity in particular, they are nothing more than ideological propagandists attempting to further a specific and virulent form of secularist philosophy. And while they do utilize a good deal of reason – the cases they present are uniformly philosophical cases rather than scientific ones – the more important point is that they seldom utilize it correctly.

Anyone conversant with military history knows that suicide bombing is a fairly conventional weapon of the desperate and the weak. And it’s a remarkably ineffective weapon at that; even if suicide bombing could be reasonably connected to religion, it would make for a strong argument that religion is not only seldom a cause of war, it also happens to be almost completely useless in practicing war.

Rethinking feminism

“I was informed that there would be no work in this career.”

It goes without saying, although it sometimes seems we are expressly forbidden to say it, that having a rich husband would provide that option. When I go to pick up Nancy from school, there are three ­distinct camps of women at the gates: the frazzled working mums like myself, rushing up at the last minute.

Then there are the childminders of those women still at work. Then there are the stay-at-home mothers — and if you imagine the latter group to be tubby drudges in unflattering tracksuits with fuzzy, unkempt hair, think again.

Today’s breed of stay-at-home mother is impeccably turned out — after all, they’re the only ones rich enough to be able to not work. Mostly in their late 20s, they’re clad in designer gear and have the time to have their hair styled weekly at an upmarket salon.

Unsurprisingly, female envy proves convincing where logic and reason fail. Of course, it’s not that any man will do, only a rich man.