Tag: media

Of cause and effect

It’s remarkable to me that so many sports commentators completely lack the ability to understand the consequences of changes in the leagues they are covering, oftentimes of changes they themselves recommended.

Consider how Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk has no idea why viewership for the Major League Baseball All-Star game is down.

Tuesday’s Major League Baseball All-Star Game garnered an all-time low 8.7 million viewers, continuing a downward trend in that game’s popularity. In the 1970s the MLB All-Star game routinely topped 30 million viewers, and until 1996 it had never dropped below 20 million. Now the MLB All-Star Game has had fewer than 12 million viewers for six consecutive years.

Florio thinks it is due to cable and satellite TV packages allowing people to watch whatever teams they want. That may be part of it, but I assume the much more significant factor is this:

For the first time in Major League Baseball history, teams from the American League and National League competed in regular season, head-to-head competition during the 1997 campaign.

What happened is that MLB considerably reduced the distinction between the American League and the National League. So it should not be surprising that far fewer people care anymore about a competition between them as a result. There is no longer anything special about interleague play, it’s just part of the normal game now.

There is an important lesson in this for those NFL cretins who stupidly bemoan the fact that an 11-5 team in a strong division might miss the playoffs or be forced to play on the road against an 8-8 division winner. The more that differences between the eight divisions are enhanced, the more significance to a division title there is, leading to more interest in the playoffs and the playoff stretch run. It would make absolutely no sense for the NFL to go the way of the NBA, where divisions are irrelevant and it is only a team’s win-loss rank in the conference that matters.

Fortunately, the NFL seems to understand this, as in the last three years they’ve modified their scheduling to ensure that the last two weeks of the season are loaded with intra-divisional competitions that are, more often than not, significant.

Scientific skepticism

And scientists wonder why we’re every bit as skeptical as everything they report as “the current scientific consensus”. This is a fairly typical “scientific” rebuttal to a science news report that happens to be outside of the current mainstream of accepted thought:

Let’s start with a quick talk about aliens. In an infinite universe, it seems foolhardy— even arrogant— to completely dismiss the idea of extraterrestrial life. There are so many galaxies, so many planets, so many suns; across the neverending expanse of space, one suspects that there must be another group of intelligent beings somewhere.

But suspect is the key word there. We have no credible evidence for the existence of alien civilizations. As Carl Sagan said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” And claiming that the Paracas skulls are possibly alien is certainly extraordinary. So let’s look at the evidence— does it measure up?

Well, the short answer is no. First, consider the source: the preliminary results of genetic testing were announced by Brien Foerster, who is the assistant director of the Paracas History Museum.

That’s a pretty impressive title, and I’ll admit that it threw me. That title implies formal archaeological, curatorial, or history credentials, maybe a body of peer-reviewed research projects. That title implies that he has serious academic credibility, and that we should listen to his announcements about his areas of expertise.

None of this is true. Some pretty basic Google research turns up some facts about Foerster that cast his announcement in an entirely different light.

First, his academic credentials: by cobbling information together from the webpage of his company Hidden Inca Tours and his official Facebook page, it appears that he has a Bachelor of Science from the University of Victoria, in British Columbia, Canada. Foerster doesn’t offer any further information about his educational background, including his exact field of undergraduate study. I was unable to find any evidence of an advanced degree.

Foerster’s company, Hidden Inca Tours, is a travel agency that specializes in taking travelers on paranormal tours around the world, but focuses on Peru and the surrounding region. Foerster has also written a number of books on archaeology, including one called “The Enigma of Cranial Deformation: Elongated Skulls of the Ancients,” which he wrote with David Hatcher Childress. Vanderbilt University archaeologist Charles E. Orser once called Childress “one of the most flagrant violators of basic archaeological reasoning.”

So what about his role as assistant director at the Paracas History Museum? How did a paranormal tour operator get that job?

Well, first, the Paracas History Museum is a private museum. It’s owned by one Juan Navarro, who is also its director. Navarro is also listed on the Hidden Inca Tours webpage as a member of “Our Team of Experts.” I was unable to find any mention of academic credentials earned by Navarro, either.

My preoccupation with academic credentials is not meant to downplay the immense wisdom and experience possessed by many people who do not have undergraduate or post-grad degrees. Being smart does not require a college degree. Heck, it doesn’t require any kind of education at all; it’s an innate quality.

However, scientific expertise is not an innate quality. It is something that is gained through years of study and research, both of which are usually completed in an institution that awards successful students degrees upon graduation.

To be fair, I don’t have any special academic credentials that make me an expert in archaeology or genetics. But I’m not arguing that the data is flawed— we haven’t seen the full data, and I’m not qualified to speak on that— but I am arguing that a number of features of the announcement should warn us not to take Foerster’s announcement at face value.

That brings us to the strange nature of the announcement. Foerster announced the results personally, via internet, rather than through a scientifically reputable source.

There are a number of problems with the way he announced the preliminary results. Speaking to Discovery.com, science promoter and skeptic Sharon Hill said “This is an unconventional way of making ‘groundbreaking’ claims.”

Hill added “It’s not supported by a university, but by private funding. The initial findings were released in this unprofessional way (via Facebook, websites and an Internet radio interview) obviously because Foerster and the other researchers think this is very exciting news.”

Exciting news is one thing, but scientific credibility is another. “[S]cience doesn’t work by social media,” said Hill. “Peer review is a critical part of science and the Paracas skulls proponents have taken a shortcut that completely undermines their credibility. Appealing to the public’s interest in this cultural practice we see as bizarre — skull deformation —instead of publishing the data for peer-review examination is not going to be acceptable to the scientific community.”

There’s also the matter of the testing itself. According to Foerster, the geneticist who discovered the allegedly never-before-seen DNA, wants to remain anonymous. If that’s not a red flag for the credibility of your research, I don’t know what is.

The final nail in this story’s coffin, for me, was the revelation that Foerster had appeared on the popular History Channel program “Ancient Aliens” multiple times. In yesterday’s article, I said that the scientific and archaeological communities generally regard “Ancient Aliens” as inaccurate.

Now let’s consider the various bases for why we are supposed to dismiss the announced findings of genetic anomalies in the highly unusual Paracas skulls, which reportedly do not fit within the parameters of human skull variations.

  1. We have no credible evidence for the existence of alien civilizations? That’s a stupid statement, considering these skulls may be such evidence. There is no credible evidence for anything the first time it is discovered.
  2. The Carl Sagan quote is stupid and incorrect, for reasons that a) should be obvious and b) have been covered previously. It’s cheap sciencistic rhetoric.
  3. The title doesn’t imply anything. As for the lack of credentials, well, given the amount of known fraud and statistical error being committed by impeccably credentialed scientists, that is hardly a disqualifier.
  4. Guilt-by-association. I wrote a book with Bruce Bethke, but that doesn’t make me one of the world’s experts on supercomputers.
  5. (laughs) The writer has no credentials either. By her own logic, should we not dismiss everything she is saying? In any event, her preoccupation with academic credentials is not exactly hard to explain; she is a woman. That’s why women now so outnumber men in the university enrollments.
  6. The fact that Foerster elected to bypass the gatekeepers says literally nothing about whether the reported news is accurate or not.
  7. The geneticist’s preference to remain anonymous is not a red flag but rather an indication of the corrupt nature of science and science journalism. He knew his credibility would be attacked and adroitly avoided it by permitting the evidence to stand on its own.
  8. An appearance on a television show that is generally regarded as inaccurate by the very communities whose consensus and competence is being challenged by these reports says absolutely nothing about whether they are true or not.

Now, none of this means that Foerster is not a con artist and the reports of the genetic anomalies in the skulls are not fiction. But the correct response is for other geneticists to test the samples and either confirm or contradict the report; that is scientody. This sort of blanket assertion isn’t founded in science, it’s not even based on good logic.

Narrative collapse

John Derbyshire contemplates the way in which the media is no longer able to reliably sustain their chosen Narrative following a nationally-covered incident

The specter of Narrative Collapse hovers over all these kinds of incidents now. The Narrative favored and promoted by black race activists and Main Stream Media Goodwhites is of heartless white authority figures doing violence against helpless, harmless blacks. The MSM do everything they can to reinforce that narrative. That’s why the most-publicized photograph of Trayvon Martin, who was 17 years old when George Zimmerman shot him in 2012, was one taken when he was twelve years old.

In all too many cases, that initial MSM Narrative collapses when all the details come in.

Of the three dead black guys here, two were clearly not harmless. Delrawn Small had a long rap sheet listing 19 arrests. He served three prison terms between 1996 and 2010, for attempted robbery, attempted drug sale to an undercover cop, and a stabbing. Not harmless.

Alton Sterling likewise had a rap sheet showing felony arrests. His court-appearance history across the last 21 years includes battery both simple and aggravated, public intimidation, carnal knowledge of a juvenile, domestic violence, burglary, receiving stolen goods, robbery, theft, drug possession, resisting arrest, possession of stolen firearm, sound reproduction without consent, and failure to register as a sex offender.

The third shootee, Philando Castile, may have been harmless: His only criminal offenses have been low-level traffic misdemeanors. Of all three cases, this is the one you’d have to say is least likely to suffer Narrative Collapse, although on the knowledge we have so far, it’s not impossible the shooting was justified.

The underlying issue here: the very high levels of violence and criminality among blacks.

The differences are really enormous. But government and the MSM do their best to play them down, for fear we Badwhite peasants will march on the ghetto with pitchforks and flaming brands. So ordinary citizens are startled, even disbelieving, when you show them the numbers.

My colleague Edwin S. Rubinstein has crunched those numbers, with references to official sources, in his booklet The Color of Crime. Here’s a couple at random:

  • In 2013, a black was six times more likely than a non-black to commit murder
  • A black person was 27 times more likely to attack a white person than vice versa.

 Etc. If you remove Hispanics from the non-black category—which is hard to do, as the authorities would prefer you didn’t—the differences for homicide are even greater.

In a society where blacks are living among non-blacks, it’s natural and reasonable for blacks to be regarded by the rest of us as dangerous. This isn’t as much a factor for us middle-class types moving among well-socialized middle-class blacks. But for cops, who have to deal with the underclass, it’s got to be on their minds in every encounter. No wonder they’re on a hair-trigger in arrest and traffic stop situations.

There isn’t much to be done about this.

Derb is correct. Contra the decades of denial and equalitarian propaganda pushed by the blank-slate Left, the core problem is not one of poverty, racism, government destruction of the family, or any of the other excuses offered for uncivilized African behavior. The problem is simply that Africans are not yet, on average, entirely civilized.

This is not their fault nor should it surprise anyone with even a modicum of historical knowledge, as they simply haven’t had enough time to work through the thousand-year process of systematically having their uncivilized members removed from the breeding pool as the formerly-uncivilized Germans and and French and English and Scandinavians did. No people can accomplish in 400 years what took everyone else 700 to one thousand, especially when their incentives have been dyscivic for much of that time.

Before you start shrieking “racist” at me, note that the same thing is more or less true for the American Indian, although the Indians were at a higher level of pre-civilization, the Indian genetic makeup and behavioral proclivities are different, most of the Indian population was genocided, and many of those that remain are safely segregated on reservations, so the Indian lack of full civilization is less apparent to most white observers.

To understand how Indian sub-civilization tends to manifest, look south of the border.

It’s so cute

It’s always rather charming when New York Times reporters attempt to pose as political independents and pretend that they are somewhere in the middle between Republicans and Democrats:

In barely two weeks, Republicans will converge in Cleveland for the Trumpocalypse, a fact-free and hate-filled gathering likely to be as scary as it will be entertaining. A week later the Democrats will assemble in Philadelphia in a focus-group-tested pander fest, as tightly scripted as the visualize-world-peace answers at a Miss Universe contest.

If you feel left out, you have plenty of company. You can search across the fruited plain and nowhere will you find a political convention for the affiliation that more Americans identify with than any other — independents. According to Pew Research, the share of indies now stands at its highest point in more than 75 years of polling: 39 percent. And although other surveys slightly disagree, the point is the same: a plurality of voters has no place to call political home.

This large island of independents is a habitat of shruggers, doubters and contrarians. There’s room for nuance in their thinking. Millions of these middle-grounders are actually leaners who sorta, kinda, maybe like most of what one party stands for — and then find out that they share a label with Sarah Palin.

As someone who thinks Democrats are ossified on education and afraid to speak out against the P.C. censors in their midst, and who finds Republicans horrific on science, guns and nearly everything else, I went online looking for a party hookup. In one quiz, after answering a dozen questions, I was found to be a moderate Democrat.

A pox on both their houses! But mostly on the one that is horrific about everything and is nominating the younger son of Satan himself.

I don’t know about you, but I’m totally convinced that Tim Egan is just another “political orphan” who has no idea whether he’ll vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump at this early stage of the campaign. “We political orphans”. Oh, Timmy, what a scamp! Don’t you just want to pinch his cheeks?

“I just can’t decide who I like better. On the one hand, Trumpzilla the Thrice-Damned, who is stupid, smells bad, and raped his own daughter, whose tiny hands are dripping red with the blood of slaughtered women, children, and immigrants, isn’t afraid to speak his mind. On the other, St. Hillary the Pure-in-Heart is a brilliant and beautiful woman who has an amazing grasp on exactly what this country needs in order to move ahead, but I’m concerned that her ideas about charter schools on Indian reservations might be a little dated. Like every other political orphan out there, I’m still trying to make up my mind!”

I wonder which way he’ll lean in the end?

The first black woman on the Court

In other news:

Investigation Into Clinton’s Email Is Over, Lynch Says

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR 7:43 PM ET
In a statement, Attorney General Loretta Lynch accepted the F.B.I.’s recommendation against charges for Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state.

In other Justice Department news, Attorney General Lynch announced that Bill Clinton has asked her to stay on as Attorney General, while also being the next nominee for the Supreme Court, and that she signed a ten year contract with the Clinton Foundation with unspecified duties and an unlimited expense account. Her favorite niece will become ambassador to Monaco, her favorite nephew an astronaut, and Ms. Lynch will serve with Mrs. and Mr. Clinton on a new Semi-Unofficial Committee of Three that will oversee the FBI, NSA, and Navy Seals and choose targets of drone strikes (each member gets “one free one per year, no questions asked”). Also, the highest priority legislation of the New Clinton Administration will be “Shoulders & Up Only” hate crime legislation making it illegal to tweet a full body photo of a clothed female federal official.

Actually, I think we all know who would win if the media would give the lower body of Ms Clinton McCankles a miss. And that would be America.

Black Iron Girl

I actually rather enjoy it when white SJWs attempt to write diversity of one sort or another. It’s reliably hilarious how they believe they’re totally pulling it off when they are doing nothing more than writing men with tits, married suburban housewives with penises, or white people with dark skin.

There’s a new Iron Man. Well, Iron Man for now. She’s still working on the name. The events at the end of the comic-book event series Civil War II will result in Tony Stark stepping out of the Iron Man suit and a new character, Riri Williams, taking over, Marvel tells TIME. (Note: Tony’s departure doesn’t mean you know the end to Civil War II yet.)

Riri is a science genius who enrolls in MIT at the age of 15. She comes to the attention of Tony when she builds her own Iron Man suit in her dorm. Creator and Iron Man writer Brian Michael Bendis spoke exclusively to TIME about the creation of Riri Williams with comic-book artist Stefano Caselli and Marvel’s increasingly diverse cast of characters.

How did you come up with the character of Riri Williams?

One of the things that stuck with me when I was working in Chicago a couple of years ago on a TV show that didn’t end up airing was the amount of chaos and violence. And this story of this brilliant, young woman whose life was marred by tragedy that could have easily ended her life — just random street violence — and went off to college was very inspiring to me. I thought that was the most modern version of a superhero or superheroine story I had ever heard. And I sat with it for awhile until I had the right character and the right place.

As we’ve been slowly and hopefully very organically adding all these new characters to the Marvel Universe, it just seemed that sort of violence inspiring a young hero to rise up and act, and using her science acumen, her natural-born abilities that are still raw but so ahead of where even Tony Stark was at that age, was very exciting to me.

One presumes RihannaRiri – even the name comes from the writer’s extensive knowledge of African-American culture; I’m only surprised it wasn’t Beyonce –  must be exceptionally intelligent, considering that she’s been able to fund her technologically advanced R&D with an EBT card.

I’m looking forward to the plot twist when, like her real-world predecessor, Riri drops out of both MIT and the Avengers in order to work as a stripper.

From Twitter:

Supreme Dark Lord @voxday
If the comics imitated life, Riri aka Black Iron Girl would drop out of both MIT and the Avengers to work as a stripper in Atlanta. #IronMan

A ‏@atmaybury
If @voxday was a halfway competent author, he wouldn’t have to run his own vanity press.

Supreme Dark Lord @voxday
That “vanity press” is on track to become the largest publisher in science fiction. The Hugos were just a warning shot.

We are going to have some very interesting announcements around the end of the month. And I have no doubt that when Castalia passes up the twitching corpse of Tor Books, the event will serve as a tribute to what can be described, at the very least, my competence as well as my vanity.

The media comes after the Alt-Right

As I mentioned a few days ago, it’s a big mistake for anyone on the Right to talk to the mainstream media. As I was explaining to one of the Dread Ilk yesterday, only a complete amateur believes he can somehow spin media coverage to his advantage, and only a complete innocent believes the media is genuinely interested in his story, giving him the chance to set the record straight, or wants to present both sides of the situation.

When a journalist contacts you, he already has the story outlined, the narrative is already established, and often, it has already been approved by an editor. Unbeknownst to you, your role has already been established, and if you are on the Right, you are almost certainly playing the role of the villain of the piece. The reason they are calling you, and will spend up to six hours talking to you, is to glean that single sentence or two they can use to put you on stage in your appointed character as Richard III or Iago.

You’re not going to play them. The average journalist has successfully played hundreds of people and is an expert at pretending to be a new and sympathetic friend before ritually sacrificing you before the public. They don’t hesitate to edit and elide, to insert nonexistent dialogue and false reaction faces, in order to present an intentionally false version of events. They are more cunning and insidious than you suspect. Consider that despite my customary caution, Amy Wallace of Wired managed to disarm my defenses by first interviewing Larry Correia and Brad Torgerson in an entirely friendly manner, then reading the pre-release version of SJWAL before interviewing me.

She then spent three freaking hours talking to me about the Hugos and science fiction, when all she was really after was a means of character-assassination required to support the SF-SJW Narrative of racist Puppies. She didn’t care about Correia or Torgerson or the Hugo Awards, I was the target all along. The only reason she failed was due to her being a parochial American; she didn’t realize the kill-quote that sounded so horrendously racist to Americans was, in fact, an accurate reference to a genuine and widespread problem in Europe, an issue that soon after broke into the English-language media via the UK.

Anyhow, several major news organization are now working on a stories about the Alt Right and connecting it to the rise of Trump. All of us have refused to talk to them, which means that they will have to make do with putting on their Kabuki play without an on-screen villain, or at best, a foolish lesser player or two dressed up in the villain’s clothes.

As Cernovich rightly points out, they need us more than we need them. We can help them sell their Narrative if we are foolish enough to play along, but we have no need of their exposure or their false promises of presenting our side of the story to the public. We will do that ourselves, and we will ultimately replace them as people increasingly turn to us for the simple reason that we tell the truth exactly as we see it, we do not knowingly push false narratives on the public and pretend that they are true.

My media policy is fairly straightforward. I will only do recorded radio or podcast interviews with Alt Right-friendly parties who are not part of any mainstream organization. Any interview with a newspaper or a blog must be written; no telephone or Skype interviews. No television period. No radio unless it is live and the purpose of the interview is clearly provided beforehand.

UPDATE: One of the organizations has asked me if I am willing to respond in writing to their written questions. While I’m not quite certain how that will work in a broadcast environment, I have agreed to do so, partly as an experiment, but mostly because I would prefer to provide the quotes being utilized rather than have them resort to cherry-picking them from my various writings.

Euro 2016 Brits attacked in Calais

In the lead-up to the #Brexit vote, the BBC is caught suppressing news of attacks on British motorists by migrants in Calais:

Social media reports suggest that there is serious violence going on in Calais with the BBC suppressing the news to help Remain as it struggles in the polls before the Brexit vote:

David Vance ‏@DVATW
Sources tell me serious disorder in Calais right now . Being reported by BBC as “power cut “. Violence against uk motorists and police


 upNORTHandGRIM @UpNorthandGRIM
They’ve been attacking UK registered cars. British cars being attacked in #Calais is of no interest to @SkyNews @BBCNews #Brexit

CALAIS AT WAR: Port road SHUT as migrants chanting ‘f*** the UK’ hurl rocks at Brit cars

French police battled around 300 migrants in the lawless port town this afternoon after huge mobs targeted England and Wales fans returning across the Channel after cheering on their teams at Euro 2016 and motoring enthusiasts driving back from the Le Mans rally event.

Gangs of migrants ran out onto the motorway and brought traffic to a standstill outside the port, so that they could break into lorries and stow away in an attempt to sneak across the Channel.

A British football fan caught up in the chaos reported that gangs of migrants were shouting “f*** the UK” as they hurled rocks at his car, posting photos on social media of clouds of tear gas fired by embattled police.

I suppose it is good news the Remain-supporting elite is reduced to such desperate tactics. It certainly doesn’t smack of confidence on their part.

The case for a populist conservatism

Breitbart’s new columnist, Scott Morefield, explains:

For their own survival, it’s time for conservatives to become populists.

By making immigration his central campaign issue early on, Donald Trump did just that, speaking to something that hits home for many if not most Americans. We wonder why our betters insist on bringing in two immigrants for every job created when American wages have been stagnant for decades. We ask why it’s so imperative that masses of unassimilable and unscreened Muslims be brought to our shores from regions which we’ve helped destabilize in the first place. Why must our border with Mexico be a sieve that allows anyone and everyone to enter, while Americans who marry foreigners and try to get them a legal permanent resident card face so much red tape?

The burden illegal immigration from the Third World imposes on American society is a steep one, yet one that only ordinary Americans unable to afford high fences and Gulfstream jets have to pay. We know that 25 percent of Federal prisons are filled with illegal aliens, and we know about high-profile cases like the tragic murder of Kate Steinle (often thanks to Donald Trump), but actual figures for illegal alien crime are hard to find because, as a 2015 FoxNews.com story laments, “the government agencies that crunch crime numbers are utterly unable — or unwilling — to pinpoint for the public how many illegal immigrants are arrested within U.S. borders each year.”

According to the FoxNews.com story, which examined data from several unaffiliated sources to come up with the numbers the government doesn’t want to give, the nation’s approximately 11.7 million illegal immigrants are responsible for 12 percent of all murder sentences, 20 percent of all kidnapping sentences, 16 percent of all drug trafficking sentences, and 13.6 percent of ALL sentenced offenders in the U.S.

Additionally, according to the Heritage Foundation, American taxpayers are on the hook to the tune of almost $20,000 for every low-skilled immigrant household, which pays roughly $10,000 in taxes while using $30,000 in government services. In fact, 57 percent of all immigrant household with children use at least one welfare program.

22 million Americans are currently looking for full-time work while at least 8 million full-time jobs are held by illegal immigrants. But but but… our elites tell us we must bring in more, and in ever increasing numbers, yet ordinary Americans wonder why … and side with Donald Trump.

It’s a good column, but it is not a sufficient one, because the primary problem is not the burden that illegal immigration imposes; that is the secondary problem. The primary problem it is the burden that legal immigration imposes on Americans.

The article’s focus on illegal immigration always signifies a conservative who still shies away from addressing the problem directly. But it really doesn’t matter if an immigrant comes illegally or not, the problem is that he is in the USA, and not in his native land.

Conservatives cannot successfully address populist concerns while they insist on focusing on side issues rather than the main problems.