Lions, swarming migrants, and offensive tweets

The latest target of the internet shaming machine is a hunter who killed an African lion. Don't these people realize that if the lion lived, it would have hunted and killed other animals?

Or that tourism, including hunting trips, is a major incentive for countries like Zimbabwe to preserve lions?

Reuters reports that no one in Zimbabwe even cared about that lion. "Are you saying that all this noise is about a dead lion? Lions are killed all the time in this country."

Here in California, we have too many mountain lions as a result of anti-hunting prejudices. The more lion hunting, the better.

Also offending people was this:

A human rights group has condemned David Cameron's description of "swarms" of migrants, calling his language "irresponsible, dehumanising" and "extremely inflammatory" as desperate migrants continue to attempt the dangerous journey across the Channel to the UK.

The Prime Minister, speaking from Vietnam as part of his tour of South East Asian nations, said migrants illegally entering the UK would not be offered a "safe haven" and reassured British holiday-makers that authorities would ensure they had a “safe and secure holiday”.

But his comments were condemned by the Refugee Council, who criticised the PM's "irresponsible, dehumanising" language as "extremely inflammatory".

Cameron will reveal himself to be a cuckservative if he apologizes and allows name-calling to intimidate him into making UK a safe haven for the migrants.

There was just a TED Talk on internet shaming:

Twitter gives a voice to the voiceless, a way to speak up and hit back at perceived injustice. But sometimes, says Jon Ronson, things go too far. In a jaw-dropping story of how one un-funny tweet ruined a woman's life and career, Ronson shows how online commenters can end up behaving like a baying mob — and says it's time to rethink how we interact online.

He described IAC firing Justine Sacco, but gave only the weakest defense of her. In essence, he argued that the humiliation of her for an un-funny tweet was excessive.

No, her tweet was funny. And it was clearly meant as a joke. It included "just kidding". She should be congratulated. Twitter is intended for clever jokes like hers.

Pseudoscience philosopher Massimo Pigliucci defends Islam and Communism:

all we need to do is to look at the relatively recent comparative history of Islam and other Abrahamic religions to be convinced that there isn’t anything especially pernicious, in the long run, with the former when compared to the latter [11]. ...

It would seem, then, that Maher & co. simply haven’t bothered to study history, and that it is a combination of social, economic and political factors that is creating a special problem for Islam in the contemporary world ...

Take, for instance, the rise of “communist” countries during the 20th century, particularly Stalin’s Soviet Union and Mao’s China. Unlike, say, nazism and fascism — which I think truly are irredeemably bad ideas — communism as developed by Marx and Engels [12] is not even close to being in the same ballpark. It may be unworkable, and even undesirable, but it isn’t intrinsically evil.

He has a lot of leftist opinions, and badmouths everyone else as being ignorant or worse. I have occasionally commented on his site, but nearly always either blocks my comment or denounces me as being ignorant or wrong. Here was my last blocked comment, and I am posting it here because because he does not allow this sort of criticism on his site:

Yes, Islam and Communism are intrinsically evil, as much as nazism and fascism. You found something that Sam Harris is right about. Just look at the history of countries dominated by those beliefs. Tell me if you would want to live in any of them.

MacDonald and Ayme explain some of the problems with Islam. None of that applies to Christianity, as Labnut explains well. Alex tries to rebut that by saying that Jesus cursed a fig tree! Just compare the Jesus and Mohammed stories and you will see that one of them was a monster.

Saying "the quotation game can easily be played" is just a way of denying the established meanings of the Bible and Koran. Just look at how those books are taught. Christians are taught to love their enemies. Moslems are taught that suicide bombers get a free ticket to heaven.

I don't know how someone can be a philosopher and be so hostile to other views.

When Algorithms Discriminate

A NY Times article says:

But can computer programs be discriminatory?

There is a widespread belief that software and algorithms that rely on data are objective.

Another says:

“Algorithms aren’t subjective,” he said. “Bias comes from people.”

Somehow Google has been the big beneficiary of such thinking. People widely believe that Google searches are objective algorithms, and therefore not subject to human second-guessing.

Of course Google employs a couple thousand engineers who hand-tune search tables so that result will align with its business purposes.

Yes, algorithms discriminate. That is their purpose. Even if they are just trying to discriminate in favor of people willing to spend more money online, that will be correlated with all sorts of other discriminators.

More and more our lives are determined by algorithms, and they can be doing good or evil.

An artificial intelligence site argues:

These four claims form the core of the argument that artificial intelligence is important: there is such a thing as general reasoning ability; if we build general reasoners, they could be far smarter than humans; if they are far smarter than humans, they could have an immense impact; and that impact will not be beneficial by default.

The Less Wrong folks have similar concerns.

Their arguments are fairly convincing. And opinions will vary about what is beneficial. But I cannot endorse this open letter against autonomous weapons, signed by many famous experts and intellectuals. These weapons are coming, just like self-driving cars, and good engineering can make them useful.

Lesbian against gay men as parents

Julie Bindel writes in the (conservative) Weekly Standard:

The huge rise in the incidence of gay men becoming fathers via surrogacy is largely seen as positive by those fighting inequality. ...

But there is a dark side to surrogacy. Its accelerating use by gay couples is no victory for freedom or emancipation. ...

As a lesbian feminist, I campaigned for years for gays and lesbians to be allowed to adopt children, not only because of our human right to have families but also because of the need to give secure, loving homes to vulnerable children. Now the rise of IVF surrogate parenthood is in danger of making the acceptance of gay adoption look like a hollow success.

Her complaints are a little strange. She does not appear to have any concerns about kids being reared without a mom, or the cultural implications of gay men with their own babies. Instead she focuses on some side issues.

Baby farming has become a significant international business. There is no law against surrogacy in Britain, but it is illegal for surrogates personally to advertise their services, as they do in the United States and elsewhere. Nor are private surrogacy agreements enforceable in British courts, which means, for example, that a surrogate mother cannot be forced to hand over the baby if she changes her mind. But legal niceties pose fewer barriers in less developed countries.

This is contradictory. Yes, there are laws against surrogacy in Britain, as the above paragraph mentions a couple: the parties cannot advertise, and the contracts cannot be enforced. Those are enuf to drive parents overseas.

Most less developed countries have laws against it also.

In the United States, IVF plus surrogacy usually carries a price tag of around $100,000; in India it can cost as little as $24,000, and regulation is far lighter.

The same could be said of other medical services, or just about any other monetary expenditure. India is cheaper than the USA.

Sometimes there is criminality. In February 2011, police in Thailand disrupted a Taiwanese-run ring that forced Vietnamese women to have babies for sale. Though illegal, this baby farm, Baby 101, advertised its services. Evidence gathered by police and Thai officials showed that some of the pregnant women had been tricked or forced into service and raped.

Sometimes there is criminality is just about anything. It is almost impossible to spend money without some risk that some of it might be going to help illegally exploit someone.

Enthusiasts of surrogacy like its efficiency. “Truth is, surrogacy is usually quicker than adoption and means you avoid going through the hoops with social workers, having to persuade them that you would be suitable parents,” says one dad who used a surrogate. They also value it because, as this father said, it “enables you to be a genetic parent.” ...

Indeed, it is difficult to understand why couples would strive to create babies using such harmful, expensive, and morally dubious methods when foster and adoptive parents are desperately needed. In the United Kingdom, there is a shortage of 60,000 foster homes and at least 4,000 children are waiting for adoption; a staggering 100,000 children in the United States are eligible for adoption. Where are the parents who will choose these children and give them a chance at a decent life?

She answers her own question. Couples use Assisted reproductive technology (ART) because it is superior to foster and adoption alternatives.

First of all, there are not many kids available for adoption in the USA. When you hear of a couple adopting a kid from Russia, China, or Guatemala, it is usually because they could not find a child in the USA.

Second, adoption is much more morally dubious. Often these kids are adopted against the wishes of a good dad, such as recently authorized by a new California law, or even against the wishes of both parents. The federal government pays local Child Protective Service (CPS) agencies about $10k per child for forcibly taking him from his parents and putting him up for adoption within a year. ART is based on the voluntary informed consent of all parties.

Also, there are many more stories of criminal and unethical behavior involved kids to be adopted. And of course marriage and baby-making the old-fashioned way is also subject to stories of fraud, deception, abuse, exploitation, and other problems.

Third, the argument that creating babies is harmful is based on the notion that pregnancy is harmful. Yes, pregnancy has its risks, but it is also an essential part of humanity. Most women regard pregnancy as a good and worthwhile thing. Yes, pregnant women are told not to take dangerous drugs, but again, most women agree with such advice.

Fourth, the number of people using these technologies is small and insignificant, and not enuf to be a public concern even if it were harmful.

So why is a neo-conservative magazine hiring a lesbian feminist to make these silly arguments? My guess is that there is an unspoken agenda here. Maybe the neo-conservatives believe that ART for gay men is anti-family, and the lesbian feminists are annoyed that gay men do not need them.

The WSJ newspaper (archived here) and NPR Radio have put some ethical, economic, and legal ART issues back in the news:

How much is a human egg worth? The question is at the heart of a federal lawsuit brought by two women who provided eggs to couples struggling with infertility.

The women claim the price guidelines adopted by fertility clinics nationwide have artificially suppressed the amount they can get for their eggs, in violation of federal antitrust laws.

The industry groups behind the price guidance—which discourages payments above $10,000 per egg-donation cycle—say caps are needed to prevent coercion and exploitation in the egg-donation process.

But the plaintiffs say the guidelines amount to an illegal conspiracy to set prices in violation of antitrust laws. The conspiracy, they argue in court papers, has deprived women nationwide a free market in which to sell their eggs, and enabled fertility clinics to “reap anticompetitive profits for themselves.”

“It’s naked, illegal price-fixing,” said Michael McLellan, a lawyer for the women.

The lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of California, could go to trial next year. In February, Chief Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero allowed the suit, first filed in 2011, to move forward on behalf of women who have donated eggs in recent years. Later this summer, Judge Spero will consider whether to broaden the case to include women who plan to donate eggs in the future and want to eliminate the caps entirely. If successful, it could upend the industry of egg donation, which has increasingly become an important option for women who have trouble conceiving because of advanced age or other problems.

This does appear to be illegal price-fixing to me, but not a significant one. There is an open market for the eggs, and the price is usually a lot less than $10k. I do not think that it is hard for a woman to charge more than $10k if she can find a buyer.

Even if the clinic advertises that it follows the price-capping guidelines, a couple can pay extra money to a donor privately.

The price caps might also guard against worries that women might pay more for eggs from mothers of certain ethnic or racial backgrounds, or with such traits as physical beauty or high intelligence. Such a market exists, largely through a small number of agencies that cater to couples willing to pay a premium.

“It’s a concern about eugenics, that women will pay more for eggs from an Ivy League grad,” said John Robertson, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Texas.

Professors of law and bioethics say the most foolish things. Any time there is a market for goods or services, some people will pay more for what is in greater demand. Yes, women usually want eggs from women similar to themselves, and hence prefer their own ethnic and racial groups. They usually do not seek Ivy League grads unless they are Ivy League grads themselves. If they do want to pay more, why is it the business of anyone else?

Meanwhile, compare this to the adoption business. It is illegal to pay anything for a baby to be adopted. Except that it is commonplace to pay around $30k. They circumvent the law by going thru lawyers who launder the money and disguise it as expenses, as it is legal to pay lawyer fees and mothering expenses.

Turing movie was propaganda

I posted complaints about the Alan Turing movie, but did not realize that there was a Jewish angle to this.

Brenton Sanderson writes:

One Jewish source notes that, despite Benedict Cumberbatch being “so gentile it’s almost shocking,” the film has “significant Jewish angles” while being about “a non-Jewish mathematical genius from Cambridge University, Alan Turing, and his efforts to crack Nazi codes in the bucolic British countryside.” It admits that, given the Jewish domination of Hollywood, “perhaps it’s not shocking that the film’s producers are Jews (the clues are there in ‘film’ and ‘producers’)” — these producers being Ido Ostrowsky, Nora Grossman, and Teddy Schwarzman (the son of billionaire Jewish financier Stephen Schwarzman) who “were drawn to Turing’s story as a tale of a brilliant outsider forced to work with others to win the war against German evil.” Ah, the venerable heroic Jew as outsider theme.

He goes on to give an explanation of Jews making a movie like this. I don't know if this really explains the many strange distortions, but I pass it along, as I have not seen a better explanation. The movie would have been much better if it told Turing's story instead of ideological propaganda.

If you link to essays like this then Jewish organizations call you anti-Semitic, such as the ADL attacking an essay by Roosh V. on The Damaging Effects Of Jewish Intellectualism And Activism On Western Culture which says “The bulk of what I crit­i­cize about West­ern cul­ture was in fact ush­ered in by intel­lec­tual Jew­ish movements.”

The ADL does not attempt to rebut anything in the essay, and just resorts to name-calling. It calls Roosh "a misog­y­nist who rails against fem­i­nism." Yes, he rails against feminism, but that does not make him a misogynist. It appears to me that he loves women. The ADL seems to be endorsing the factual accuracy of the essay when it posts this sort of complaint. It would probably be calling him a white supremacist, except that I Roosh is Armenian or Persian American.

So I guess people were afraid to criticize the Turing movie out of fear of being called anti-Semitic.

Gawker is a leftist hate site

The trashy popular gossip site Gawker got into trouble recently because it posted a story outing a gay man, and then retracting it:

David Geithner, chief financial officer at Conde Nast and brother of former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, allegedly contracted with a male escort to meet in Chicago. The plan went south when the escort/porn star—identified by the Daily Caller as Leif Derek Truitt—discovered Geithner’s pedigree and supposedly requested that the CFO use his Washington connections to help with an eviction complaint in Texas. When Geithner allegedly refused and called off the date, Truitt escalated the intensity of his requests, finally going to Gawker.

I guess Gawker decided that it was bad for business to be participating in gay blackmail. It is a leftist hate site that will post all sort of other nasty attacks. Here is another one:

The Sad Puppies are also closely associated with neoreactionary, Gamergater, and notorious white supremacist Vox Day (he says he’s not a white supremacist, but he also says “Racism is neither a sin nor is it a societal evil. Race-based self-segregation is not only the observably preferred human norm for all races throughout the entirety of recorded human history, it is inevitable,” so go ahead and draw your own conclusions) who both played a part in picking the Sad Puppies nominees and started his own Rabid Puppies slate.

No, it is not white supremacist to make an observation about human history. The phrase usually means a belief that the white race should have control over the other races.

I guess one could argue that any observation about racial behavior is racist, but then Gawker is surely a vile racist site, as it posts disgusting racist rants all the time.

Speaking of racism:

Dylann Roof, the man suspected of killing nine people at a historically black church in Charleston, S.C., last month was indicted on Wednesday on federal hate crime and other charges, including some that carry the federal death penalty, two law enforcement officials said on Wednesday.

Mr. Roof, 21, already faces nine counts of murder in state court and could face the death penalty there. But Justice Department and F.B.I. officials have said the Charleston shooting was so horrific and racially motivated that the federal government must address it.

He was also charged with killing someone while obstructing religious freedom, which is eligible for the death penalty.

So he is only being charged because he is white and the Obama administration wants to make a black-white racial statement, right?

I am all in favor of prosecuting and executing Roof for his murders. But filing federal charges for the same crime seems like double jeopardy to me, and piling on. (Yes, I know that there are precedents for such prosecutions, but I do not agree with them either.)

Update: The head of Gawker is a gay man who says that he is married to another man, and that the notorious white hater Ta-Nehisi Coates would be his dream Gawker executive editor.

Blaming the legacy of lynching

NY Times columnist David Brooks writes:

Dear Ta-Nehisi Coates,

The last year has been an education for white people. There has been a depth, power and richness to the African-American conversation about Ferguson, Baltimore, Charleston and the other killings that has been humbling and instructive.

Yes, these events were educational to me. I did not know how much black people think that it is acceptable to try to kill white cops, and how much white liberals tolerate such views.

I did not know how much liberals want to censor others, such as by banning private sales of confederate battle flags on EBay.

Your ancestors came in chains. In your book the dream of the comfortable suburban life is a “fairy tale.” For you, slavery is the original American sin, from which there is no redemption. America is Egypt without the possibility of the Exodus.

Brooks is Jewish. He married a non-Jewish wife who then converted to Judaism, and they visit Israel regularly. So I guess they are big believers in the Exodus myth. But there is no historical record of the Jews ever being slaves in Egypt, or of causing plagues on Egyptians to get their freedom.

I probably have ancestors who came to America as Indentured servants. That is about as relevant today as slavery. I have also had cops and other officials harass me as much as the blacks were in the widely publicized examples.

Your definition of “white” is complicated. But you write “‘White America’ is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our bodies. Sometimes this power is direct (lynching), and sometimes it is insidious (redlining).”

I have never met any white people who want to control black bodies. Complaints about lynching and redlining are nearly always about events before I was born. Even the most racist white people just want black people to obey the law and behave like responsible citizens.

But I have to ask, Am I displaying my privilege if I disagree? Is my job just to respect your experience and accept your conclusions? Does a white person have standing to respond?

If I do have standing, I find the causation between the legacy of lynching and some guy’s decision to commit a crime inadequate to the complexity of most individual choices.

Brooks wants permission to criticize criminal behavior?

The legacy of lynching is that a century ago, vigilantes in the South might have hanged a black man for raping a white girl. Does this make blacks more likely to commit crimes today? Is that what someone is saying? Is it because the punishment is not swift enuf today?

Airline blocks ginger for being too pale

While racism has been in the news a lot, the NY Daily News reports that a ginger was kicked off an Arab airline for being too pale:

A pale, red-headed teenager was stopped from getting on a plane because staff mistook her coloring for being ill.

Grace Wain was trying to board an Etihad flight from Manchester, England, to the Maldives in the Indian Ocean on July 6, reports the Mirror.

But staff checking the 14-year-old and her family onto the flight were convinced she was sick.

They even refused to back down after a check-up by an airport paramedic.

Only after Grace produced written confirmation from her doctor back home in Scotland was she allowed to fly.

That confirmation was emailed to the airport.

Her dad, Paul, said: "I told them, 'We live in Scotland,' she is a redhead and has a pale complexion. That's just the way she is."

Grace was reduced to tears by the incident.

I wonder what would happen if a European airline kicked off an African girl for looking too black.

Ignore advice and eat more fat

The NY Times has an article on govt agencies giving bad diet advice:

But nutrition, like any scientific field, has advanced quickly, and by 2000, the benefits of very-low-fat diets had come into question. Increasingly, the 30 percent cap on dietary fat appeared arbitrary and possibly harmful. Following an Institute of Medicine report, the 2005 Dietary Guidelines quietly began to reverse the government’s campaign against dietary fat, increasing the upper limit to 35 percent — and also, for the first time, recommending a lower limit of 20 percent.

Yet, this major change went largely unnoticed by federal food policy makers. The Nutrition Facts panel on all packaged foods continued to use, and still uses today, the older 30 percent limit on total fat. And the Food and Drug Administration continues to regulate health claims based on total fat, regardless of the food source. In March, the F.D.A. formally warned the manufacturer of Kind snack bars to stop marketing their products as “healthy” when they exceeded decades-old limits on total and saturated fat — even though the fats in these products mainly come from nuts and healthy vegetable sources.

The “We Can!” program, run by the National Institutes of Health, recommends that kids “eat almost anytime” fat-free salad dressing, ketchup, diet soda and trimmed beef, but only “eat sometimes or less often” all vegetables with added fat, nuts, peanut butter, tuna canned in oil and olive oil. Astoundingly, the National School Lunch Program bans whole milk, but allows sugar-sweetened skim milk. ...

Recent research has established the futility of focusing on low-fat foods. Confirming many other observations, large randomized trials in 2006 and 2013 showed that a low-fat diet had no significant benefits for heart disease, stroke, diabetes or cancer risks, while a high-fat, Mediterranean-style diet rich in nuts or extra-virgin olive oil — exceeding 40 percent of calories in total fat — significantly reduced cardiovascular disease, diabetes and long-term weight gain. Other studies have shown that high-fat diets are similar to, or better than, low-fat diets for short-term weight loss, and that types of foods, rather than fat content, relate to long-term weight gain.

This is right, except for "like any scientific field". I cannot think of any other science that go around telling people wrong stuff as the field of nutrition does.

FBI wants your crypto keys

FBI Director James Comey writes:

But my job is to try to keep people safe. In universal strong encryption, I see something that is with us already and growing every day that will inexorably affect my ability to do that job. It may be that, as a people, we decide the benefits here outweigh the costs and that there is no sensible, technically feasible way to optimize privacy and safety in this particular context, or that public safety folks will be able to do their job well enough in the world of universal strong encryption. Those are decisions Americans should make, but I think part of my job is make sure the debate is informed by a reasonable understanding of the costs.

See this SciAm article for background.

Some prominent cryptologists have written an essay on The Risks of Mandating Backdoors in Encryption Products. They say that the govt plan cannot work, and and the NY Times says that a previous Clinton administration plan was shown to not work either.

I am inclined to agree that giving the Obama administration everything they want would infringe our civil liberties, but the cryptologist argument is nonsense. The Clinton administration plan was defeated politically, not by technical weaknesses.

Every other country spies on its citizens, and does it without any statutory limitation or due process. Apple, Google, credit bureaus, Obamacare, and others collect vast amounts of privacy invading data on us, and we have very few protections. The main forces against encryption are businesses who profit from selling our private data.

It would be possible to give the feds what they ask, and give citizens better protections than they have today. There are no technical barriers to this.

These cryptologists are saying something that is popular with civil libertarians, and with big data companies who would like to keep spying on us. But those big data companies are eager to give the false impression that all of your data can be trusted with them, and that the FBI is the real threat to your privacy.

Here is a bigger threat, from a Latina political appointment in the Obama administration:

Katherine Archuleta, the director of the Office of Personnel Management, resigned under pressure on Friday, one day after the government revealed that two sweeping cyberintrusions at the agency had resulted in the theft of the personal information of more than 22 million people, including those who had applied for sensitive security clearances.

I think that it is just a matter of time before massive files on everyone get put on the web, with Social Security numbers, addresses, and health info. Once that happens, people will see little point in making that info secret anymore.

Update: James Baker says that he convinced the NY Times to issue a correction about the supposed technical weaknesses of the Clinton administration plan.

While I was on the opposite side of Baker in the 1990s crypto wars, I agree with him that the press has fallen for lame arguments from cryptologists.

The Truth is Out There

Wikipedia describes the TV show The X-Files:

The main story arc involves the agents' efforts to uncover a government conspiracy to hide the existence of extraterrestrials on Earth and their sinister collaboration with those governments. Mysterious men comprising a shadow element within the U.S. government, known as "The Syndicate", are the major villains in the series; late in the series it is revealed that The Syndicate acts as the only liaison between mankind and a group of extraterrestrials that intends to destroy the human species. They are usually represented by The Smoking Man (William B. Davis), a ruthless killer and a masterful politician and negotiator and the series' principal antagonist.[

This TV show was surprisingly popular in the 1990s. It had a couple of spin-off movies, and is soon returning to TV. See also Mythology of The X-Files:

The overarching story, which spans events as early as the 1940s, is built around a government conspiracy to hide the truth about alien existence and their doomsday plan. Not all episodes advanced the mythology plot, but the ones that did were often set up by Mulder via an opening monologue.

Most mythological elements in The X-Files relate to extraterrestrial beings, referred to by the writers as "Colonists," whose primary goal is to colonize Earth. Late in the series, this was revealed to have been planned for the year 2012.

But why would such a wacky show be popular? My theory is the aliens were a metaphor.

A famous example of such a metaphor is Godzilla:

With the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Lucky Dragon 5 incident still fresh in the Japanese consciousness, Godzilla was conceived as a metaphor for nuclear weapons.[16] As the film series expanded, some stories took on less serious undertones portraying Godzilla as a hero while other plots still portrayed Godzilla as a destructive monster; sometimes the lesser of two threats who plays the defender by default but is still a danger to humanity.

The idea is that Japanese pride had difficulty directly addressing the concept that American nuclear technology had both conquered them and saved them. So they invented Godzilla.

What conspiracy could be so compelling and so terrible to get the attention of world leaders, but have to be kept secret? In the X-Files, the presumption is that the world leaders have sold out the human race for some short term gain. Cooperating with the space aliens is yielding some tangible benefits, but ultimately the aliens will invade Earth and have no use for humans. The conspiracy always kicks in to keep this secret, because the public would never accept such a sellout, and revolt. Occasionally some info leaks out, but the truth is too terrible to be believed.

So if this is a metaphor, what is the real conspiracy? The obvious choice is promoting illegal aliens and immigration, because of the word "alien". I think the conspiracy must run deeper than that, and be something that no one dares mention.

My theory is that there is a vast global conspiracy to exterminate those who created Western Civilization. That is, white males, Christian patriarchy, nuclear family, and republican government.

If there were such a conspiracy, what would be the effects?

Social policies would discourage births in the white populations of N. America and Europe, until the rate drops far below replacement. Aid would be given to Third World countries, so that they can have unrestrained population growth. Barriers to immigration would be removed, so that N. America and Europe can be resettled by non-whites and non-Christians.

Anyone who shows pride in white people or Christian ideals would be mocked and shamed, while the opposite is praised. All of the world's evils would be attributed to white Christian men. Tolerance would be required of evils from other groups.

White males would still be needed to create the technologies that enable basic necessities for the rest of the world. But once those are in place, they will be the slaves, and only kept in sufficient numbers to maintain the system.

If someone like Donald Trump gets invited into the conspiracy and then leaks what is really going on with immigration, he will be shunned in the harshest terms. No one will debate him on the merits of what he says. Those who are in on the conspiracy must somehow suppress the truth, because the public would not accept what our overlords are really doing.

If the conspirators infiltrated the Vatican, the Pope would issue an encyclical denouncing the major accomplishments of Western Civilization, including energy, wealth, food, and water, and say that we must all cut back in order to support Third World development, population growth, and migration into developed countries.

ISIS flags would be readily available on Ebay, while any flag symbolizing white pride would be banned.

Of course, there could never be such a conspiracy. Popes do not take orders from Marxist nihilists, as far as I know. But it is amusing to speculate about how the world might be different if there were such a conspiracy. If you can think of some disproof of such a conspiracy, please put it in the comments.

H1N1 flu vaccine causes permanent narcolepsy

California has passed an extreme vaccination mandate, but ExtremeTech reports:

These days, it’s easy to be dismissive of anti-vaccine headlines. Long content to be headed by Jenny McCarthy and disgraced researchers, the so-called “anti-vaxxers” have produced so much nonsense in their ill-advised quest to end routine vaccination that many are quick to jump to an equally reflexive conclusion: all vaccines are inherently safe. But the reality is that vaccines are medicines like any other, foreign substances introduced into the body specifically because the body will react powerfully to them. Many vaccines are thrown out during testing because they turn out to do more harm than we can abide. Even so, the screening process isn’t perfect, and clinical trials don’t necessarily capture every single low-probability reaction. This week, a major study in Science Transitional Medicine shows how a vaccine called Pandemrix really may cause narcolepsy. This report is different from an earlier 2013 study on Pandemrix (published in the same journal) that claimed to find a link between the vaccine and narcolepsy, but was retracted a short time after publication. ...

This week’s study changes that. The seeming cause is not mercury poisoning, or any of the other thoroughly discredited “links” between childhood vaccines and autism, but rather goes back to the very mechanism of any vaccine’s useful function: immune response. Vaccines stimulate antibodies and essentially prime the immune system to deal with a later viral invasion, but clinical testing may have underestimated the intensity of Pandemrix’s cross-reaction with a totally unintended natural antibody. Pandemrix may contain a protein that is too similar to a natural brain protein. In some people, this similarity may stimulate the release of an antibody. The study argues that this antibody may be killing off certain cells in the brain’s hypothalamus that are associated with the sleep-wake cycle. ...

Narcolepsy induced in this way is a permanent malady, since the cells that produce the much-needed sleep regulation protein are now simply gone, and do not regrow.

Other vaccines have been pulled from the market because of safety problems. Do not let anyone convince you that all vaccines are safe.

Trying to censor white nationalism

The NY Times reports:

White Supremacists Extend Their Reach Through Websites ...

But the manifesto attributed to Mr. Roof included a chilling complaint about the movement’s disavowal of violence. “We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the Internet,” the paper read. “Well, someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.”

So these web sites do not advocate or facilitate violence.

I had never heard of some of these sites, but on a quick glance, I do not see where any of them advocate white supremacy. They have news and opinion about racial matters, but do not seem to have any interest in one race having control over other races.

The web sites are not hotlinked, so I put them here: The Daily Stormer, National Policy Institute, Stormfront, Council of Conservative Citizens, American Renaissance, League of the South. The Occidental Quarterly.

Here is what Dylann Roof actually says in his manifesto:

The event that truly awakened me was the Trayvon Martin case. I kept hearing and seeing his name, and eventually I decided to look him up. I read the Wikipedia article and right away I was unable to understand what the big deal was. It was obvious that Zimmerman was in the right.

That's right, a Wikipedia article presenting facts about a news event that had been grossly misrepresented by Pres. Barack Obama and the mainstream news media.

After 6 years of crying racism, the Obama administration finally has an example of a racist crime against innocent people, and is disappointed at not being able to spread the blame beyond one lone kook:

Federal and local authorities have found that the man charged in the shooting deaths of nine black people in a South Carolina church last month had been in contact with white supremacists online, although it does not appear they encouraged him to carry out the massacre, according to law enforcement officials.

Investigators uncovered that information as they have pieced together where the gunman, Dylann Roof, 21, received his inspiration, and whether anyone else should face charges in connection with the murders. ...

So far, the authorities have determined that people around Mr. Roof were aware that he held some racist beliefs. ...

Senior officials at the Justice Department said that the shooting was such an extraordinary event that the department must bring hate crime charges to send a larger message about it.

Some day it will be a federal hate crime to be aware of a fellow citizen holding some racists beliefs, and not reporting them. No one will dare defend the Confederate Battle Flag or anything like that.

Update: It is okay to attack whites of course, such as this:

An Illinois college professor suggested on Twitter last month that because white persons owned slaves over a century ago, white persons today “are complicit in it.”

Adam Kotsko, a professor of humanities at Shimer College in Chicago, tweeted out the following on June 25: “Whether or not your individual ancestors owned slaves, you as a white person have benefited from slavery and are complicit it it. Sorry.” One person responded, “What follows from this?” to which Kotsko answered: “We should commit mass suicide.”

NY Times complains about sites with racial views

The NY Times reports:

White Supremacists Extend Their Reach Through Websites ...

But the manifesto attributed to Mr. Roof included a chilling complaint about the movement’s disavowal of violence. “We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the Internet,” the paper read. “Well, someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.”

So these web sites do not advocate or facilitate violence.

I had never heard of some of these sites, but on a quick glance, I do not see where any of them advocate white supremacy. They have news and opinion about racial matters, but do not seem to have any interest in one race having control over other races.

The web sites are not hotlinked, so I put them here: The Daily Stormer, National Policy Institute, Stormfront, Council of Conservative Citizens, American Renaissance, League of the South. The Occidental Quarterly.

Here is what Dylann Roof actually says in his manifesto:

The event that truly awakened me was the Trayvon Martin case. I kept hearing and seeing his name, and eventually I decided to look him up. I read the Wikipedia article and right away I was unable to understand what the big deal was. It was obvious that Zimmerman was in the right.

That's right, a Wikipedia article presenting facts about a news event that had been grossly misrepresented by Pres. Barack Obama and the mainstream news media.

Our society is of course filled with web sites, newspapers, professors, and others that blame white people for all sorts of things. Stormfront is just a bunch of public forums, and I believe it lets users express whatever views they want. I do not see how these sites are any more to blame than Wikipedia.

Geneticists do not want you to know your DNA

Here are some geneticists who do not really believe in genetics. NPR radio reports:

You can now order genetic tests off the Internet and get your child's genome sequenced for less than the cost of a new car. The question is, should you?

Almost certainly not, according to the American Society for Human Genetics, which released a position paper Thursday intended to give parents some help navigating the dizzying world of genetic tests.

"This is something that we don't think is ready for prime time for kids," says Dr. Jeffrey Botkin, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah and lead author of the paper.

Here is the abstract, and statement. The full article is behind a paywall, and the web site is full of broken links anyway.

What I get out of this is that the experts are afraid that they will lose control of the genetic testing process, if healthy people just go get whole genome sequencing by themselves.

I do not see how knowledge of your own health data can be unethical.

People get spooked by genetic info, and these geneticists are not helping. They want to create a mystique about this info being dangerous.

The DNA technology is such that there is no need to get repeated DNA tests in response to potential health questions. You can just get the sequence data at birth, and evaluate portions of it as needed. Even if Chinese hackers steal your data and post it on the web, it is unlikely that you will be damaged, unless you are a wanted rapist or something like that.