Testosterone Rex

Here is a NY Times book review of a feminist book denying differences between men and women:

TESTOSTERONE REX
Myths of Sex, Science, and Society
By Cordelia Fine ...

She dissects as she goes, bringing a probing intelligence not only to what we believe about gender, and why it’s often wrong, but also to the history of how we came to think it was so. ...

Again and again, Fine questions the way we think of biological sex “as a fundamental force in development that creates not just two kinds of reproductive system, but two kinds of people.” (Or as she quotes yet another academic: “Psychologically, men and women are almost a different species.”) ...

When she told her young son — who, she notes, “has a strange, unchildlike interest in taxidermy” — that it was time to get the family dog neutered, he excitedly suggested turning the testicles into a key ring.

Is that what happens when a gender-equality pseudo-science academic tries to raise a boy? He celebrates castration? Weird.

Scientifically, the book is nonsense. Sex differences in humans are real. See Cochrane or Coyne for details.

Trump right about Jewish false flag

An Alt-Right (and Nazi troll) site says:

Quick recap:

The Jews began receiving hoax bomb threats in their “Jewish Centers” (which is apparently the same thing as a synagogue) back in January. These continued until earlier this month.
This was connected to ADL and SPLC reports claiming that “hate crimes” were on the rise, due to the candidacy and subsequent election of President Trump.
Also, some cemeteries were vandalized, with no one ever getting caught (one instance was later attributed to the wind).
The media made it a headline story for literally months that a crisis was taking place in America, with white Trump supporters getting ready to begin gassing Jews.
The ADL made all sorts of demands on President Trump, berating and attacking him, claiming he wasn’t doing enough to address the “hate crimes”
The Daily Stormer and David Duke made it clear that we believed that there was almost certainly a Jew behind the attacks. My own reasoning is that you would have to be very smart to make calls untraced for this long, and anyone smart enough to do that would know it would only be good for the Jews. I also reasoned that it confirmed the claims being made by the ADL and the SPLC in a way that was very convenient.
We were attacked by the media and the ADL for this, saying it was despicable that anyone would ever suggest that Jews would hoax hate crimes against themselves.
A black man was arrested for making seven or eight of the calls, and it was determined he was trying to frame his ex-girlfriend as responsible.
Donald Trump, when confronted about the prank calls, asserted that they were probably a false flag.
Donald Trump was attacked by the entire Jewish media and the Jew ADL and SPLC as a pure anti-Semite hater for having dared to suggest that Jews would do a false flag to gain sympathy.
Jews demanded the government give them billions of dollars and create a special taskforce on anti-Semitism.

And then, yesterday, the FBI, having traveled to Israel, caught the perpetrator. An Israeli Jew.

So the Jewish political activists still complain about anti-Semitism:

These were acts of anti-Semitism. ...

On March 1, I penned a column excoriating Donald Trump and other mainstream conservatives for suggesting attacks on Jewish sites — bomb threats, vandalism, and otherwise — were false flag attacks designed to discredit the right. ...

The man who did this was anti-Semitic.

Okay, so the rise in anti-Semitism consists of Jews complaining about what other Jews are doing.

Europe committing slow suicide

Backward switches down under

I just learned an amazing fact. In Australia and New Zealand, in the southern hemisphere, light switches are wired so that UP = OFF and DOWN = ON!

This is opposite the USA if you consider the orientation relative to gravity, but the directions are consistent if you think of them as being on the opposite side of the world.

I found this explanation:

The direction which represents "on" also varies by country. In the USA and Canada and Mexico and the rest of North America, it is usual for the "on" position of a toggle switch to be "up", whereas in many other countries such as the UK, Ireland, Australia, and in New Zealand it is "down." ... In countries prone to earthquakes, such as Japan, most switches are positioned sideways to prevent the switch from inadvertently being turned on or off by falling objects.

The UK also drives on the wrong side of the road. The explanation for Japan is even weirder. Only the Japanese would have such a goofy and far-fetched concern.

Think about it -- when you turn on your eyesight, do you raise or lower your eyelids? Maybe those Australians think of themselves as walking around upside-down.

Professor is disoriented by Trump

From a kooky leftist psycho analysis professor in a NY Times op-ed:

Now many of us throughout American society at large, after an interminable electoral campaign and transitional phase into the presidency of Donald J. Trump, have experienced a form of disorientation and anxiety ...

But in an important sense, anti-fact campaigns, such as the effort led by archconservatives like the Koch brothers to discredit scientific research on climate change, remained within the register of truth. They were forced to act as if facts and reality were still in place, even if only to subvert them. For example, when they attempted to undermine the findings of legitimate scientists, they often utilized rational arguments concerning certainty, probability and proof. ...

But Donald Trump and his operatives are up to something qualitatively different. Armed with the weaponized resources of social media, Trump has radicalized this strategy in a way that aims to subvert our relation to reality in general. ...

As long as Steve Bannon and his colleagues continue to destabilize our sense of reality, and their opponents fail to recognize how these techniques work, those who oppose him will continue to stumble. ...

On the hopeful side, there has recently been a robust and energetic attempt not only by members of the press, but also of the legal profession and by average citizens to call out and counter Trumpism’s attack on reality. ...

Joel Whitebook is the director of the Psychoanalytic Studies Program at Columbia University. His latest book is “Freud: An Intellectual Biography.”

The Koch brothers are neither archconservatives nor Trump supporters. They are libertarians.

Apparently it really annoys Prof. Whitebook that his political enemies use rational arguments and facts.

You might expect ivy league professors to believe in facts, but Freudian psychoanalysts have their own "relation to reality", and they get very annoyed when anyone subverts it. For Freud, dealing with reality was the exception, as his famous quote "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" indicates.

At least he admits that Trump-haters like himself are suffering "disorientation and anxiety".

White hatred on CNN

From a CNN broadcast:

CUOMO: You're entitled to your opinion about all these things obviously. I want to go back at this one more time because it's that Important. A Muslim American, an Italian American, A Christian American, Jewish American, you do realize that they are all equal, all the same thing. We don't need babies from one of those groups more than we need them from another of those groups. Do you agree with me? ...

CUOMO: There are a lot of people teaching hatred in their families who are white, Irish, Italian, who are Muslim. A lot of people preach hate. There's hate in a lot of different groups. I get you have Muslim extremism that there's a concern in this country about it. But I asked you something else. These people are either all equal or they are not in your view. A Muslim American, an Italian American, German American like you and your blood, your roots. They are either all equal or they are not in your mind. What is the answer?

No, they are not "the same thing". No one in any of those groups would say that he is the same as the other groups.

We have different words because they are different. As Cuomo acknowledges, there are different hatreds in different groups.

CUOMO: If you want to apply that kind of thinking to America, it seems like a complete contradiction of what we're all about. This is the melting pot. We are known by those countries as the bastion of diversity. It's an unqualified strength for us.

No, race-mixing and refusing to recognize differences is not what America is about.

Diversity is not an unqualified strength. Ethnic diversity has some advantages, but it also has disadvantages. When he mentions hatreds, he shows that he is not completely blind to those disadvantages. Maybe Cuomo is Nazi.

The gatekeepers are censors

Here is a misguided leftist fool:

Sunday was the 28th anniversary of the day that 33-year-old Tim Berners-Lee submitted his proposal for the World Wide Web -- and the father of the web published a new letter today about "how the web has evolved, and what we must do to ensure it fulfills his vision of an equalizing platform that benefits all of humanity." ...

Tim Berners-Lee writes: ... We must push back against misinformation by encouraging gatekeepers such as Google and Facebook to continue their efforts to combat the problem, while avoiding the creation of any central bodies to decide what is "true" or not.

No, encouraging gatekeepers means creating central bodies to decide what is true. He contradicts himself.

Irregardless of other people's judgement

The London Daily Mail reports:

Revealed: The five genuine signs of intelligence that people can't fake - so how many do YOU possess? ...

1. You learn from your mistakes ...

5. You don't care what others think

Seriously intelligent people don't consider other people when making decisions.

They don't think about how others will feel as a result of their own actions and do things irregardless of other people's judgement.

Before you tell me that intelligent ppl would know that "irregardless" is not in the dictionary, look it up. Smart ppl do not worry about such trivialities. My dictionary says The Cubs Won the World Series, and 'Irregardless' Is a Word.

Still blaming Ferguson Mo

The NY Times is still printing stories blaming white ppl for Ferguson Mo, and here is the latest:

Instead, Mr. Pollock believes that the new video shows Mr. Brown giving a small bag of marijuana to store employees and receiving cigarillos in return as part of a negotiated deal. Mr. Pollock said Mr. Brown left the cigarillos behind the counter for safekeeping. ...

But Jay Kanzler, a lawyer for the convenience store and its employees, strongly disputes that version of events, and said the new footage is unrelated to Mr. Brown’s later visit to the store.

“There was no transaction,” Mr. Kanzler said. “There was no understanding. No agreement. Those folks didn’t sell him cigarillos for pot. The reason he gave it back is he was walking out the door with unpaid merchandise and they wanted it back.”

Dozens of witnesses, recording, and autopsies proved that Brown was a criminal who tried to kill a cop. Any defense of Brown is just an endorsement of black ppl killing white cops.

Even if Brown were some sort of low-level marijuana dealer, how does that help his case? He robbed a store and tried to kill a cop!

The NY Times and the Obama administration used this story endlessly to incite anti-white-police hatred for its ideological purposes.

Amazon now bans books

Amazon used to carry all books, but not anymore:

The online retailer Amazon has stopped selling three Holocaust-denial books after Jewish groups voiced growing frustration that the website was giving a platform to antisemites.

Amazon has been criticised for years over the revisionist titles for sale on its website, but the recent upsurge in antisemitism across America promoted Robert Rozett, a senior official at Yad Vashem, to write to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos last month calling for immediate action.

On Wednesday morning, the three titles that Mr Rozett had complained about were unavailable for purchase. ...

The titles in question were: Holocaust: The Greatest Lie Ever Told, by Eleanor Wittakers; The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry, by Arthur R Butz and Did Six Million Really Die? by Richard Harwood.

Amazon has also banned The Bad War: The Truth NEVER Taught About World War II.

I assume that you will still be able to get public domain books like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf.

Maybe Bezos is a Nazi. I very much doubt that he thinks that these books are dangerous. Banning them just sends a message that Jews have the desire and the power to control what you learn and think.

Voltaire is credited (incorrectly) for saying: "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize".

Current knowledge about human evolution

Razib Khan posts

10 things about human evolution (genetics) you should know (simpler)

1) Modern humans stayed in Africa for tens of thousands years of before expanding beyond it. Most of the ancestors of non-African humanity seem to have started expanding rapidly from a small founder group of less than 1,000 people, starting around 50-75 thousand years years ago. African humanity has a more complex pattern. Some groups diverged as early as 200,000 years ago, then mixed back together.

2) Don't think of humanity as a branching tree. Rather think of humanity as groups of streams. Some streams end, many fold back on one another, and some suddenly have massive expansions. Surprisingly, all major human population groups we know today seem to be the product of relatively recent fusions. Even Africa, the source of modern humanity, has seen streams flow back from Eurasia.

3) Many of the characteristics people focus on today are of recent origin. At least as measured in thousands or tens of thousands of years. 8,000 years ago parts of Europe were populated by brown skinned hunter gatherers with blue eyes. Whiter skin is a (relatively) recent development. And the thick straight hair now common among East Asians is recent as well.

4) The genetic variant which helps Tibetans tolerate very high altitudes comes from a human lineage as divergent from modern humans as Neanderthals are. The Denisovans. This illustrates a general trend: we have adaptations from other very diverged human lineages in our genes today. Even if the genetic percentage is small.

5) The transition to agriculture and complex civilization seems correlated with the explosive growth of a few select male Y chromosomes. Think Genghis Khan.

6) It seems unlikely there is one genetic change which made humans humans. This is less certain than 1-5, but I'm pretty sure it's true. Researchers have been looking for this for years and haven't turned up anything definitive. I think the reason is simple enough: many genetic changes came together to make us distinctive.

7) A lot of variation between human groups is not due to novel genes. Rather it comes from increasing the popularity of pre-existing genetic variants. For example, the lightening of skin across parts of Eurasia is due to an increase of genetic variants which are common to many human populations. Height is another example.

8) Cultural flexibility does not means humans are not evolving. On the contrary, strong shifts in cultural norms seem to drive human evolution. Lactase persistence (the ability to drink milk as an adult) is a clear case. But even genetic tolerance to malaria was ultimately driven by human created environmental changes.

9) There are no "most ancient" human group. By definition, we are all equally separated in time from our common ancestors.

10) There are hints of possible new discoveries coming from ancient human DNA. For example there is evidence of humans leaving Africa ~100,000 years ago into Eurasia in both genetic and fossil data. These earlier humans may have been overrun by a later group. But this is hard to determine with the current data. The DNA of current and ancient humans still has many stories to tell.

This may all be consistent with known info, but some of it is phrased strangely.

Sure all humans are equally evolved, if you define the terms so that it has to be that way. Not, if you use some other definition. Eg, some have evolved lactase persistence, and some have not.

Saying "Modern humans stayed in Africa" is contradicted by other items, including (2) recent fusion, (3) recent origin, (4) adaptations from other lineages, etc. The current evidence is that modern humans developed outside of Africa.

Neanderthal ancestors (and hence human ancestors) left Africa a lot more than 100k years ago.

Court destroys jury secrecy

The NY Times reports:

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that courts must make an exception to the usual rule that jury deliberations are secret when evidence emerges that those discussions were marred by racial or ethnic bias.

“Racial bias implicates unique historical, constitutional and institutional concerns,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority in the 5-to-3 decision.

The case arose from statements made during jury deliberations in a 2010 sexual assault trial. “I think he did it because he’s Mexican, and Mexican men take whatever they want,” a juror said of the defendant, according to sworn statements from other jurors submitted by defense lawyers after the trial was over.

The juror, identified in court papers as H.C., was a former law enforcement officer.

Maybe Kennedy is a Nazi.

It appears that Kennedy thinks that all Mexicans are rapists, and only govt regulation of private thoughts will allowing the continued importation of Mexican labor to displace Americans. And the so0called liberals on the court agree.

If you are ever on a jury, and you disagree with what the other jurors are doing, just go tell the judge that you think that some of them are racists. Then the judge will have to declare a mistrial, based on this supreme court decision.

If you argue for the guilt of the defendant, don't give any reasons except to parrot what the prosecutor said. Anything else could be considered racist.

No man would ever babysit

An Australian newspaper op-ed explains:

When our first daughter was born my husband and I made a family rule: no man would ever babysit our children. No exceptions. This includes male relatives and friends and even extracurricular and holiday programs, such as basketball camp, where men can have unrestricted and unsupervised access to children.

Eight years, and another daughter later, we have not wavered on this decision. ...

The blanket rule against allowing our daughters to be in the care of lone male adults means that we do not have to make a moral assessment of every man. My husband and I do not want to delve into the characters of every man that we know and assess whether or not they are potential sexual predators, so we apply our rule to all men to avoid casting aspersions on people. ...

In this context, potentially hurting peoples' feelings is the price my husband and I are prepared to pay.

Kasey Edwards' new book Guilt Trip: My Quest To Leave The Baggage Behind will be released in May 2017.

This is genius. When Pres. Trump announced his travel ban, he should have just announced he was banning all Moslems "to avoid casting aspersions on people."

Maybe school segregationists should have explained that they don't want to assess the character of black ppl, so it would be better to separate them all to avoid casting aspersions.

Sometimes I see arguments that we must submit to the demands of some group, or they will turn into crazy killer. Here is a variant:

Actor Riz Ahmed has warned that a lack of diversity on TV is alienating young people.

Actor and rapper Riz Ahmed has warned that the enduring failure to champion diversity on TV is alienating young people, driving them towards extremism and into the arms of Isis. ...

Ahmed called on the government to act, particularly to overturn the unconscious bias in hiring that was preventing talented people from black, Asian and minority backgrounds rising up the ranks. He said public money should be tied to representation targets for broadcasters to break the cycle of top jobs going mainly to white men.

I thought that the top jobs already went to minorities, namely, Jews. If anything, we should have more top jobs for white Christians and Republicans.

If the Moslems are just one TV show away from joining ISIS, then maybe they are too unstable for top jobs anyway.

Marriage is Dead

Marriage is dead if no one believes in it anymore, and I am afraid the following beliefs may be typical.

Philip Greenspun's Weblog writes:

A middle-aged married father of two, in between his ecstatic praise of Barack Obama and enthusiastic expressions of support of Hillary Clinton, often mentions his passion for gay marriage. Another subject of which this Bay Area dweller is fond is the pernicious influence of Christianity and Judaism on American society. The other day he said that he couldn’t stand conservative Christians for suggesting that Americans were descending into anarchy due to an abandonment of Christian values.

I asked “Without Christian values or similar cultural ones, wouldn’t a man be free to abandon his middle-aged wife and young children in favor of a childless 25-year-old woman?” He replied “If he needs to do that I wouldn’t judge him.” What about the woman who leaves her husband and kids to travel the world in an Eat, Pray, Love-style journey of self-discovery? It turned out that was okay as well.

The conversation reminded me of one that I had recently with a college student (and, of course, therefore at least a moderately outspoken advocate for LGBTQIA rights). His non-working mom, attractive at nearly 50, had sued his high-income father and used the resulting cash to enjoy a sex-and-travel relationship with a man just over 30. The student acknowledged that the divorce had a devastating effect on him and his sibling, ruining their teenage years. However, he said that he thought that his mother was right to break up their home because “people shouldn’t stay married if there is no passion.” I asked “So if a guy is married to a woman who is exhausted from running after kids and thus tends to collapse at night before the question of passion becomes relevant, he should feel free to seek passion with a 22-year-old off craigslist?” The answer turned out to be basically “yes” because in deciding whether or not to stay married there were no important considerations other than the passion currently experienced by one of the married adults.

I’m wondering if the whole gay marriage debate among heterosexuals was the result of the two sides misunderstanding each other’s concept of “marriage.” Marriage under the law of a typical U.S. state is a temporary financial arrangement that can be terminated by either party for any reason (“no fault”; see Real World Divorce). But citizens often invest the term with additional meaning. Perhaps the hetero anti-gay-marriage folks dragged in concepts from religion and ideas that marriage might involve a personal sacrifice? While the hetero pro-gay-marriage folks added in stuff about passion and personal satisfaction? So they ended up talking past each other and, though using the same word, were talking about two different things.

A comment says:

What marriage means to supporters of the right of gays to marry is irrelevant. What matters is what marriage means to the gay people who until recently were prevented by the government from marrying, for no reasons other than religiously motivated ones.

No, it is not irrelevant. The supporters of gay marriage have bullied everyone into abandoning marriage as it has been understood for centuries.

We used to have non-religious advocates of marriage. I happen to think that the best arguments against same-sex marriage were non-religious. But even if marriage is a religiously motivated concept, that does not make it harmful.

It is possible that most of reasons for same-sex marriage and other anti-marriage laws are also religiously motivated. That is, ppl want to strike a blow against Christianity and other traditional religions. How else can you explain so much interest in an issue that affects less than 1% of the population.

My opinions on marriage do not matter. If the dominant opinions in our society favor the view of gays, Eat-Pray-Love, and online arrangement of extramarital affairs or prostitution, then marriage is dead. See this poem, if you are wondering about the Eat-Pray-Love view of marriage.

Leftists who hate statistical sciences

Jerry Coyne reports:

At any rate, despite his immense contributions in many areas, Galton’s forays into eugenics have led to his current demonization. According to the Evening Standard and the Telegraph, University College students have started a “Galton must fall” campaign, apeing the “Rhodes must fall” campaign at Oxford. Presumably, if examination of Galton’s legacy shows him to have pernicious and influential ideas about selective breeding of humans, his legacy should be effaced. As two students wrote on the UCL History blog:

Francis Galton was beyond any doubt tremendously innovative. Some of his scientific output, especially in the fields of meteorology and statistics, is still valid today. Yet Galton’s legacy can be open to question and debate. His endorsement of selective breeding can arguably be construed as paving the way for the ideology of racial hygiene in Nazi Germany. His pivotal role in the eugenic movement, though firmly rooted in the broader assumptions of his age, shocks many of our contemporaries. Whether or not Galton must fall, we are in no position to judge. But it is our belief that this debate needs to be informed by historical research.

Here is the Cntl-Left at work. If Galton were wrong, they would be content to publish his errors. No, they must censor and ostracize him.

Galton was a scientist. I don't know about his politics, but apparently he had some ideas for improving the human condition. He was scientific and honest and sincere, as far as I know. Blaming him for the Nazis is like blaming Einstein for the Nazis.