Half Sigma

HBD has no future?

Sid wrote an excellent comment which deserves a wider audience:

I believe that the taboo against HBD will last indefinitely. As the scientific evidence mounts ever more so in favor of HBD, the taboos against speaking about it only seem to grow stronger. In 1994, the Bell Curve was published and generated massive coverage in the media. Now, if it were published today, it would be blacklisted and left unmentioned. I remember first becoming aware of HBD in 2005, when Cochran, Harpending, etc. published their article about Azhkenazi intelligence, and I read about it in an online news piece. Steven Pinker seemed to have taken note of it, and later said that the most dangerous idea in science was that ethnicities differ in talent and temperament because of their genes. I seriously doubt anyone would mention such an explosive piece of writing in today's news media. Ever since James Watson talked about racial differences in intelligence, and he lost his job, it has been clear that even mentioning HBD will cost you your career - even if you helped discover DNA.

Different HBD writers have discussed when and under what conditions HBD will be commonly accepted by Americans. At this point, I don't think Americans will change on their own. While truths last forever, taboos against them can last for centuries. As America and Europe become less white, there is less and less chance that whites in those places will talk about non-whites are different from them. I think America and Europe will be in an Orwellian state of denial about HBD onward and onward, and they won't change that on their own.

But, Chinese scientists don't grow up in a culture which forbids HBD research. If anything, the Han would love to prove their superiority. The question is: will Chinese elites adopt Western attitudes towards race and racism? If they do, they too may forbid their scientists from researching HBD, because doing as much will make them appear parochial and uncouth to the greater world community.

If they don't, and instead embrace their ethnic heritage, then I see no reason for them to back off from HBD, and every reason for them to talk about how Chinese have bigger brains than whites, are more cooperative and are all together less animalistic than whites are, for all the reasons Rushton laid out.

In short, it boils down to this: will Chinese elites seek to become part of the greater global community and line their pockets, or will they cling tightly to their parochial identity and rage against all who oppose their path to power? That may yet be the great matter of the 21st century, much the way it was with how Germany had to confront that dilemma a century ago.

I quit HBD blogging

I quit.

The HBD year in review

I probably missed something, so remind me of important stuff I should have mentioned here in the comments.

GUNS

Earlier in this year, a prole Hispanic, George Zimmerman, shot and killed a black youth, Trayvon Martin, who was beating him up. Now George Zimmerman is under house arrest, after spending time in jail, and there’s a good chance he’s going to be found guilty of murder and spend a lot more time in jail.

And it was also a year with two really dramatic mass shooters, James Holmes and Adam Lanza.

Reasonable restrictions on the guns most commonly used to commit crimes (handguns) or guns perceived as most dangerous (assault rifles) seem reasonable to me, but we have crazy gun-nuts who think it’s some communist plot to confiscate every gun and turn the United States into communist Russia.

Using a gun in self defense is rather pyrrhic anyway, because you could wind up in prison, as George Zimmerman may. As good as it may feel, emotionally, to dish out vigilante justice, it’s more practical to run and hide.

DERB’S FIRING

John Derbyshire was fired from the National Review for a column he wrote advising white people to avoid blacks because they are dangerous. It’s too bad for George Zimmerman that he didn’t follow Derb’s advice. (Link to the infamous column)

NEWT GINRGICH

I used to think Newt was a hero of conservatism but I finally became aware that the guy is a slimeball.

Callista bought $500,000 of jewlry from Tiffanys
Pat Buchanan disses Newt

THE STUPID PALIN FAMILY

Even commenters at the National Review got sick of Sarah Palin.

And will any of Sarah Palin’s kids graduate from college? This is new material I never blogged about before. Willow Plain joins her older siblings in not being college material.

Somehow, I am sure that Obama’s daughters will both go to college.

MITT ROMNEY

Mitt Romney was the smartest Republican nominee since Richard Nixon. But the stupid elements in the Republican Party, many of whom, unfortunately, comment on this blog, couldn’t stand the idea of someone smart leading the country. Would they rather have a moron like Sarah Palin as president? Or a slimeball like Newt?

Unfortunately, Romney lost. Remember that I predicted in 2008 that Obama would be a two term president. And I never said otherwise in 2012, I only said that Romney had the best chance of defeating him. And it was a very close election. But not for the following, maybe Romney would have won:

(1) Brutal attacks by slimeball Newt Gingrich during the primaries.
(2) Hurricane Sandy which allowed Obama to look presidential and pick up what seemed like an endorsement from Governor Christie who seemed to be trying to suck up to him to get more hurricane relief aid.

OBAMACARE

The Supreme Court did not find it unconstitutional, which is as I predicted because the Supreme Court has not found any economic legislation unconstitutional since the 1930s.

I suggest that you all learn to like it. People who think that the pre-Obama-care healthcare system makes any sense are just blindly repeating Republican talking points.

I am looking forward to being able to retire early and obtain cheap health insurance.

TAXES

I supported the Buffett Rule which is that people making more than a million dollars a year should pay at least 30% income tax.

Buffet Rule opponents say that higher taxes for the rich would kill the economy. Funny how out of one side of their mouth they say the tax won’t raise much revenue, but then on the other side they say this tiny increase in taxes will utterly kill the economy. It’s nonsense. A 30% tax rate isn’t that high, and as a tax on income, it doesn’t discourage rich people from starting businesses which generally don’t pay taxes in their startup phase because startups usually don’t have profits.

Earlier this year, I discovered that as many as TWO-THIRDS of the super-rich supported Obama in 2008. Remember that this is a group that doesn’t show up in regular surveys. The super rich want higher taxes.

The Republican super rich who support Republicans tend to be proles like David Siegel.

Exit polls suggested to me that the Republican insistence on shielding the rich from taxation (which the rich, themselves, want) hurt Mitt Romney in the election.

WHITES TO NO LONGER BE THE MAJORITY

From now on, white babies are no longer the majority of births. Combined with continued immigration, the coming of the non-white majority is inevitable.

And I should point out as “liberal” as Romney supposedly was, there was no supposedly more “conservative” running against him with an anti-immigration message. Newt was pro-amnesty.

After Romney lost the election, the mainstream Republicans became convinced they must reach out to Hispanics (but not Asians because Republicans imagine that Hispanics will vote Republican because they are Catholic), and probably we will see some sort of amnesty which will create more Hispanic citizens and more Democratic voters.

MULTI-RACIAL ACTRESSES

The trend of seeing multiracial actresses everywhere, usually part-black, continues. I discussed Megalyn Echikunwoke in Damsels in Distress, and just this week, Samantha Barks in Les Miserables.

The HBO series girls was considered racist because all of the girls were white (even though it’s pretty realistic that four white girls would live in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and be friends). Prediction for 2013: a new multi-racial female character.

APPLE

Half Sigma purchased Apple products for the first time in 2012. And he actually likes the iOS devices.

Les Miserables 2012

It was pretty surprising to see such an unabashedly Christian-themed movie in this day and age. Even though it was released on Christmas Day and all, still a surprise.

It's also weird to see a movie that's like a modernized English-language opera, with disconcertingly high tech digitally-created backgrounds.

I couldn’t help but notice that Samantha Barks, the actress who played Eponine, the daughter of the innkeepers, looks ever-so-slightly multi-racial (one-quarter black?) and that just didn’t belong in the movie. I think that when a movie depicts people who are supposed to be related to each other, the actors and actresses should at least all be the same race. Especially if the movie takes place in a time and place when everyone was white.

Only watch if you can sit through more than two and a half hours of singing, and that's heavy singing of the sort I wouldn't want to listen to again on my iPod, not the lighthearted catchy tunes of the typical Broadway musical.

* * *

Before leaving a negative comment, please read my previous post Acting and race. Especially this statement: "Once upon a time, it would have been considered an insult to point out someone’s non-white ancestry. But nowadays, it’s a huge compliment. Mixed-race people are considered the coolest people Everyone wants to be like Tiger Woods, Barack Obama, Vin Diesel or Mariah Carey. Pure white people are boring and lacking in vibrancy."

United States vs. United Kingdom and guns

Commenters cited the United Kingdom as some sort of evidence that gun control doesn’t work. As you may or may not know, the United Kingdom has strict left-wing gun control laws.

The United States has an annual murder rate of 4.2 (per 100,000), vs only 1.2 for the United Kingdom. Pretty big difference. (Source: Wikiepedia )

The difference in the firearm-related death rate is even more stark: 10.2 for the United States vs. 0.25 for the United Kingdom.

So yes, less guns means less people getting killed by guns. This is a huge duh!!!

But what about the rates for other crimes? It may appear that gun control doesn’t prevent other crimes from occurring. (But why should it? The purpose of gun control is to prevent violent gun deaths, not to be a panacea for everything that’s wrong with society.) However it’s important to note the different incarceration rates between the United States and the United Kingdom: 730 per 100,000 vs. only 154 for England and Wales. That’s a huge difference. Because the United States is much stricter at keeping the criminal element behind bars, there is somewhat lower non-gun crime in the United States.

Another post about the Second Amendment

The people who wrote the Constitution thought that Americans should have the right to bear arms. They successfully used arms to revolt against the king of England, and they wanted to preserve the right of the people to defend themselves not only against Indians and other dangers of the frontier, but also against their own government.

Modern liberal interpretation that the Second Amendment is only about militias is, to put it bluntly, a lot of bullshit. Justice Scalia spent a lot of effort explaining why it’s bullshit in District of Columbia v. Heller.

There’s also a creative liberal argument that the Second Amendment should only apply to the types of guns available in 1791 (the year of the ratification of the Bill of Rights), which were muzzle-loaded single-shot flintlock guns. But I don’t think so. If the purpose of the Second Amendment was, in part, to allow revolution against oppressive government, then the people should have the same kind of weapons as the government troops.

The problem with the Second Amendment is that the founders had little foresight with respect to what the future would hold for weaponry. They certainly didn’t imagine nuclear bombs, nor did they imagine military aircraft and tanks, and in fact it’s doubtful they even imagined that handheld weapons would be able to shoot dozens of bullets before needing to being reloaded.

And as this is an HBD blog, I also need to point out that they also didn’t imagine that the right to bear arms would be applied to negros.

And I also need to point out that the Bill of Rights was only intended to apply to the federal government. The “incorporation” concept wasn’t invented by the Supreme Court until more than a hundred years later. I’m sure they figured that the states would pass laws to prevent negros and other undesirables from owning guns.

Thus we need to think about whether the Second Amendment makes any sense in the 21st Century. Once again, because this is an HBD blog,I know that most of the arguments of the pro-gun nuts are just as much bullshit as the liberal arguments about the meaninglessness of the Second Amendment. Gun nuts say stuff like “if someone really wants to buy a gun they will be able to, so therefore gun control doesn’t work.” But in fact, the vast majority of violent crimes are committed by people with low IQ and low future-time orientation. They would NOT be able to muster the planning needed to acquire guns in a milieu of tight gun control. Killers with high IQ and who are methodical like James Holmes are a very rare exception. Even Adam Lanza was no James Holmes. Lanza was socially dysfunctional and would not have been capable of obtaining a gun from a hypothetical post-gun-control black market.

It’s really simple common sense that fewer guns would mean less gun violence. Duh!

And no, guns are not like drugs (for which there does exist a thriving black market). Guns are much harder to smuggle, and people are not addicted to them the way they are addicted to drugs. Guns don’t make you feel high. When guns are illegal, then you can’t do anything with them besides shoot someone, and unless done with a high degree of planning to avoid getting caught (which is beyond the ability of most criminals who have low IQ and low future-time orientation), you will most likely end up in jail. So in all likelihood, there will not be a black market for guns the way there is for drugs.

Now let’s talk about the argument that we need guns to have a revolution against the government. The problem with this is that the government has tanks and attack helicopters, and against that firepower your guns are useless. The Palestinian terrorists living in the West Bank and Gaza have guns, and little good it does them against the IDF when they decide to sweep in and neutralize them. Palestinians are only able to kill Israelis by smuggling bombs into the country and blowing themselves up along with the bomb.

Furthermore, the Second Amendment has been a victim of the success of the United States. Since the end of the Civil War 147 years ago (which was a losing fight, by the way), our government has been so stable that today no one can even imagine taking up arms against it. The tiny minority who think about it are dumb proles who bitterly cling to their guns and religion because they aren’t smart enough to succeed in the 21st century economy.

Ross Douthat

He writes in an op-ed in today’s NY Times:

Unfortunately for our country, the Bloomberg versus LaPierre contrast is basically all of American politics today. Our society is divided between an ascendant center-left that’s far too confident in its own rigor and righteousness and a conservatism that’s marched into an ideological cul-de-sac and is currently battering its head against the wall.

The right-wing view is embittered, paranoid and confused. It opposes anything the establishment supports but doesn’t know what it wants to do instead. (Defund government or protect Medicare? Break up the banks or deregulate them? Send more troops to Libya or don’t get involved? Protect our liberties or put our schools on lockdown?)

So long as Ross is not denying the truth of HBD or being blind to the absurdity of a smart guy like him believing in the unscientific two-thousand-year-old superstition of Christianity, he’s almost always on target.

NRA proposes armed police in every school

A week ago I predicted that because of the massacre, “there will be new momentum to get gun control legislation passed.”

This prediction was obvious, and it appears to be coming true. Today’s announcement from the NRA that we need armed police in every school and fewer violent video games and movies is only going to rile up the pro-gun-control crowd.

The NRA refuses to get into a conversation about what guns people need for whatever people do with guns (hunt?).

* * *

Lawrence Auster, who is a hardcore conservative, writes:

I do not understand why civilians should be able to own weapons capable of firing scores of bullets in rapid fire. The primary reason for firearm ownership, the reason why the right of gun ownership is absolutely essential, is self-defense. How does self-defense require a weapon—such as the weapon used by the Newtown mass killer—with a magazine containing thirty or fifty bullets?

By the way, just as I was writing the above, I finally understood the meaning of the imprecise and much maligned phrase “assault weapon.” They are called assault weapons because they are weapons designed to kill the maximum number of people. They are not weapons designed for self defense.

So, I would like knowledgeable gun owners, of whom many post at VFR, to explain why they oppose any legal restriction on the number of bullets that can be fired by a semi-automatic rifle without changing the magazine. I also would like them to explain why they oppose mandatory background checks in private, one-on-one firearms sales.

Taxes are going up; should you worry?

Because of the breakdown in the “fiscal cliff” talks (what a dumb name), everyone’s taxes might go up. Should you be worried?

The general answer is no, in the long run this won’t hurt your standard of living. And that’s because, after necessities like basic food, shelter and healthcare (which will soon be provided by Obamacare), all of our wants are positional wants rather than absolute wants. Everything we think we want is based on what others have and want, and furthermore the costs of many positional goods, including the cost of housing in a neighborhood safe from NAMs and low proles, are based on what people can afford to spend rather than some absolute value.

Of course all changes in policy will benefit some people and adversely impact others. I would say that tax increases hurt homeowners and benefit renters. They benefit people who have a secure job and hurt the unemployed and those who might be fired because of the temporary reduction in economic activity which follows tax hikes. The especially significant increase in estate taxes will hurt the heirs of people with a net worth of more than $1 million who failed to engage in good pre-tax-increase estate planning.

Why couldn’t Adam Lanza cook?

The NY Post reports:

Nancy Lanza often took mini-vacations by herself, friends said. She trusted leaving Adam alone, but didn't want him cooking, so she always prepared all his meals before her trips.

Was cooking dangerous for Adam because he had congenital analgesia and could accidentally burn himself without knowing it?

I don’t see why Asperger’s Syndrome would prevent a person from being able to cook. Asperger’s Syndrome affects social skills, and not the physical manipulation of objects which is what cooking is about.

* * *

The MSM is a complete waste. This shooting happened nearly a week ago, and the MSM still can't confirm basic facts like whether Adam had congenital analgesia.

How Jews feel left out at Christmas

This is something that a lot of the gentiles reading this blog refuse to get, but Jews feel very unhappy and left out during Christmas, especially children. For example:

Christmas was one of the most difficult times of year for me as a child. From age 9 on, my brothers and I were the only Jews in a rural Ohio school system. Pastors led us in prayer at annual Christmas assemblies, and my peers and I sang about our love of Jesus in school Christmas concerts. I never knew how to respond when strangers asked me, “What do you want for Christmas?” or even “Are you done with your Christmas shopping?” I wished that I could just play along and make up answers. But Christmas put me on edge, making me feel even more different and angry.

And I think that’s pretty typical, even for Jews who live in the New York City area.

And here’s a much more emotionally wrenching story that’s a must-read:

My muscular grandfather walks into the living room. “What did you do?” he rages at my mother. She shrinks before him like a child. My beautiful Nana hides behind her, wringing her hands, muttering in Yiddish. Poppop puffs up with rage.

“It was a Chanukah bush. We did it for Ellen,” my mother whispers. “She was jealous of the other children. I hated to see her suffer, so…”

“She’s jealous? She’s suffering? There’s no such thing as a Chanukah bush. You just confuse the child. She’s a Jew and Jews don’t have Christmas. Make her Chanukah like a real Jewish mother, and she won’t be jealous.”

8-year-old kid wants in-app purchases for Hanukkah

I missed this in the NY Times last week. Parent agonizes over whether she should buy her son what he wants for Hanukkah, which are in-app purchases allowing him to get ahead faster in his favorite iPod games.

She called up a “professor of health promotion and behavioral science” to ask if in-app purchases are good for a child or if they are like cheating (do normal parents to that to help with these sorts of parenting issues?) and the professor responded Socratically:

If you are struggling with math and your parent gets a math tutor and he or she teaches you shortcuts, is that the same as an in-app purchase?

Good question.

Nancy was trying to have Adam committed

And here a Fox News exclusive. Nancy was taking steps to have Adam involuntarily committed, and that’s is a possible motive for why he snapped and killed his mother and a bunch of teachers and children.

And the motive for killing the teachers and children is jealousy that the mother was volunteering at the school. And I think this made sense to Adam because with both Asperger's Syndrome and congenital analgesia, he had complete lack of empathy for both the emotional and physical pain that this would cause others.

I think this casts Nancy in a different light. People are blaming her for some reason, but this new evidence shows that she realized he needed to be committed to a mental hospital, but the system prevented this from happening quickly enough. Because from a legal perspective, Adam was an adult whom Nancy had no legal control over.

More congenital analgesia evidence

From a NY Post article published yesterday:

At home, Adam often stayed in his room, said family friend Ellen Adriani. Nancy would plan his vegan meals days in advance and was teaching him to cook.

“His house was a safe place for him,” Adriani added.

The shooter, she said, had a medical condition in which he couldn’t feel pain.

“Nancy was teaching him to cut up fruit. Because he couldn’t feel any pain, he had to be careful with the knife,” she said.

And from the Daily News, a bar friend of Nancy said:

“Nancy told me he was burning himself with a lighter. In the ankles or arms or something,” he recalled of a conversation they had about a year ago. “It was like he was trying to feel something.”

This pain thing sounds like congenital analgesia, or congenital insensitivity to pain, and not like any sort of symptom of autism spectrum disorder.

The MSM has not connected the dots on this yet.

Powerful corporation controlled by liberals

As reported by Infowars:

Facebook is suspending user accounts that question the official narrative behind the Sandy Hook school massacre, following a warning by Connecticut State Police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance that “misinformation” posted on social media sites could result in prosecution.

1. Big powerful corporations like FaceBook and Google are controlled by leftists. As you may remember, Google banned my blog from AdSense, presumably because of the politically incorrect content that they would probably call “racist,” but they gave me no explanation and would not respond to my protest.

2. It’s scary that we have a police spokesman threatening prosecution for people who engage in free speech. And Infowars correctly points out how badly the MSM mangled the facts and reported false information as it if were Truth.