The culture war rages on

Watch this video and then take your best stab at what religious tradition these guys hail from: Yep, that's their idea of shaking things up. Still unsure? A few hints: They are less likely to see the US as "structurally unjust" than other Americans are, they express high levels of contentment with the communities they live in; their younger members are actually more politically...

Most people know blacks more violent than non-blacks

The GSS is a gift that keeps on giving. I was unaware of a series of questions the survey put to respondents in 1990 and again in 2000 about the perceived proneness to violence among members of different racial groups. Inexcusable on my part, really, as that sort of thing is this blog's bread and butter. Better late than never, though. For contemporary relevance and because...

Slippery soaps and slippery slopes

It was only a matter of time before those arguing that expanding the definition of marriage to include members of the same sex would merely be the first of many assaults on the institution's integrity rather than a one-time update would be proven correct. Despite the shrill cries of harpies and their eunuch hangers-on that such a faux argument was nothing more than a thin veil disguising the blatant homophobia of those holding traditional...

Give me the republic or give me death

Watching the two-season HBO series Rome was an enjoyable experience for this amateur interested in the history of the republic and later empire. The juxtaposition of stoicism and epicureanism in the two historically insignificant protagonists, the skillful crafting of a narrative in a world that is in some ways strikingly similar to our own but in others utterly alien to it, the immensely satisfying casting--combine for one hell of a historically...

Calling Caspar and co.

A quick cameo of Nathan William Epigone before he gets back to the business, between naps, of taking fluids in one orifice and pushing them out a couple of others:...

Knockout game knocks out a litany of leftist lies in one fell swoop, er, punch

The knockout game phenomenon really, really makes the Establishment uncomfortable. Although it took several years, the seemingly senseless savagery it displayed finally forced the knockout game from being a subject covered almost exclusively by the alternative right to something the mainstream media found increasingly difficult to ignore. Sure, Fox News still does ten minute...

From PISA, some gaps more equal than others

A few leftover observations from the 2012 PISA results that I haven't seen widely remarked upon elsewhere follow.- Excluding DC's affluent white minority, according to NAEP testing results, Massachusetts boasts the most intelligent kids in the United States. That holds among states' entire public student body and also for states' non-Hispanic white student populations. It's...

Facebook and Twitter, lion and leopard

Find them on Facebook and Twitter!--as if these two are the Coke and the Pepsi of the social networking world. More like the Coke and the 7UP, actually. Google trends on searches for the terms "facebook" and "twitter", respectively, with "youtube" added in for additional perspective:Over half of all US adults have Facebook accounts. By contrast, just 1-in-9 use Twitter.Perhaps...

White flight from the white robe?

Taking note of Alfred Clark's observations about the 'ghettoization' of Christianity, the Derb recently wrote a piece for VDare exploring the phenomenon of white flight from the religion, an abandonment distinct from the general trend towards secularization in that it appears to be occurring more rapidly among whites than among NAMs.The GSS has data on religious self-identification...

Sharing is caring?

Heartiste from a few years ago:The verdict is in: Women want men to cheat on them. Oh sure, they don’t *consciously* want their men to cheat, but unbeknownst to all but the most self aware women, their ginas tingle uncontrollably for men who can — and do — score some poon on the side.In the vast majority (though likely not all, female sexual variation being what it is) of cases, there's no question that the first part of the assertion--that women...

Poor people's poor sense

Cross-posted at HuffPoThis post will appear lacking in systematic structure because poor people tend to be fatalistic. Low future time orientation and few social obligations combine to create an existence that seems impulsive and chaotic from vantage points higher up the ladder. We look at the poverty and pretend to wonder why. We know the what and the how, we can see all the decisions and behaviors that precede the seemingly intractable problems,...

Standing as one

A friendly gadfly notes the seemingly out-of-character failure to break down the results on preferred methods of raising a family by race. It wasn't included for a few reasons; as someone with an inclination towards citizenism, there are times when capturing the entire American flavor sounds more appetizing than unnecessarily compartmentalizing the palates (although that's admittedly an approach that doesn't tell the whole story--further drilling...

Seneca Sailer

Okay, he doesn't differentiate between genotype and phenotype, and he's unaware of epigenetics, but this isn't bad for a contemporary of the emperor Nero (and a Stoic to boot!):No amount of wisdom, as I said before, ever banishes these things; otherwise--if she eradicated every weakness--wisdom would have dominion over the world of nature. One's physical make-up and the attributes that were one's lot at birth remain settled no matter how much or...

They aren't meant to pee standing up

++Addition++Staffan points out that, according to Google's Ngram viewer, the concept of feminism as an organizing principle is in decline:How much of that is due to realization of biological differences and how much is due to female concerns being superseded by the concerns of 'victim' classes like blacks and gays who higher up on the victimology pyramid?---Gavin McInnes went...

Nope, not in the NBA, heh heh ugh

This weekend I was in conversation at a wedding with the 6'9'' groom about how dealing with unending comments about his height when out in public must be wearisome. I wonder if after the transgender crusades burn themselves out, heightism won't be the next monster to seek out and destroy. It's about the only attribute remaining that is socially acceptable to comment upon despite the fact that the recipients of said comments don't ever want to hear...

Professional journalism

On display in that oh-so venerable rag, the New York Times, in an article referenced recently by Steve Sailer. Excerpt worthy of special derision, my emphasis:In a photograph taken not long after the assassination, my grandmother smiles a porcelain smile, poised and lovely in psychedelic purple Pucci, coiffure stacked high in what can only be described as a hairway to heaven. Only? It can only be described using a cute phrase that doesn't even...

NFL post-season correlations between wins and various stats

++Addition++Steve Sailer comments:Regarding turnovers, another way to look at them is to separate interceptions and fumbles, and then look at total fumbles versus fumbles lost. It seems pretty likely that once the ball goes on the ground, it's sheer luck who winds up with it. (Both teams grapple like mad to get the ball.) So, the number of fumbles in a game is a measure of skill, but the percentage of fumbles lost is the most obvious and perhaps...

Virginia tells

As one of the most demographically representative states in the country, and one with an enormous amount of American history packed into it to boot, the gubernatorial results out of Virginia this week are worth examining as a way of better understanding America's contemporary social landscape.- Cuccinelli, the Republican, won among whites by a margin (56%-36%) nearly identical...

Total fertility rate

It seems to be a widely accepted fact among demographers--professionals and amateurs alike (and of amateurs taking an interest in demography, too)--that, assuming net migration of zero, a TFR of 2.1 is the threshold a society must reach if it is to maintain its current population size going into the future. A TFR lower than that portends a numerically attenuated future; a TFR higher than that a correspondingly accentuated posterity. Since first seriously...

Fighting the good fight

Photo diary of a loyal soldier in Agnostic's legion:This is only the avuncular role. Just wait until it's the paternal o...

Liberty and equality, stoics and epicureans

Just as there is an enormous amount of tension between the consular ideals of liberty and equality, so too is there in aspiring to provide the best health care available while simultaneously striving to make health care ubiquitous and universally accessible. Anti-Gnostic does a great job succinctly articulating as much, with the following excerpt of demonstrating particular perspicacity:The whole point is that *old people are going to die* with probability...

Boudica

Professional podcaster Jamie Jeffers, in a review of the History Channel's Vikings (which I've never seen), comments approvingly on the show's depiction of Lagertha*:I really like the fact that they have a tough-as-nails warrior woman and they don't treat it like it's strange... they did an excellent job demonstrating that there were warrior women and warrior women were very effective. It does a good job dispelling a lot of the innate sexism that...

If everyone is a part of everything, nothing means much of anything

Listening to a story on NPR's The World about the US citizenship exam got me wondering on what things involving human membership is the left more discriminating (in the older sense of the word) than the right is:One of the more obscure questions, she said, includes questions like “Who wrote the Federalist Papers?” “Most Americans could not answer the question, so I'm not sure why it's on the test,” she says.   Winke has found...