Tag Archives: society

Guns in School: a Mark of Civilized Society

18 Thursday Jul 2019

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Dr. Walter Williams and many others have written about this very subject before. It bears repeating.

Here’s a suggestion. How about setting up some high school rifle clubs? Students would bring their own rifles to school, store them with the team coach and, after classes, collect them for practice. You say: “Williams, you must be crazy! To prevent gun violence, we must do all we can to keep guns out of the hands of kids.”

There’s a problem with this reasoning. Prior to the 1960s, many public high schools had shooting clubs. In New York City, shooting clubs were started at Boys, Curtis, Commercial, Manual Training and Stuyvesant high schools. Students carried their rifles to school on the subway and turned them over to their homeroom or gym teacher. Rifles were retrieved after school for target practice. In some rural areas across the nation, there was a long tradition of high school students hunting before classes and storing their rifles in the trunks of their cars, parked on school grounds, during the school day.

High school rifles: more elegant weapons from a more civilized age. No changes whatsoever…

The “Persuasive Design” Against Children and Humanity

29 Saturday Jun 2019

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The screens are zombifying the people.

These parents have no idea that lurking behind their kids’ screens and phones are a multitude of psychologists, neuroscientists, and social science experts who use their knowledge of psychological vulnerabilities to devise products that capture kids’ attention for the sake of industry profit. What these parents and most of the world have yet to grasp is that psychology — a discipline that we associate with healing — is now being used as a weapon against children.

“Machines Designed to Change Humans”

Nestled in an unremarkable building on the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto, California, is the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, founded in 1998. The lab’s creator, Dr. B.J. Fogg, is a psychologist and the father of persuasive technology, a discipline in which digital machines and apps — including smartphones, social media, and video games — are configured to alter human thoughts and behaviors. As the lab’s website boldly proclaims: “Machines designed to change humans.”

Fogg speaks openly of the ability to use smartphones and other digital devices to change our ideas and actions: “We can now create machines that can change what people think and what people do, and the machines can do that autonomously.”

Called “the millionaire maker,” Fogg has groomed former students who have used his methods to develop technologies that now consume kids’ lives. As he recently touted on his personal website, “My students often do groundbreaking projects, and they continue having impact in the real world after they leave Stanford… For example, Instagram has influenced the behavior of over 800 million people. The co-founder was a student of mine.”

Intriguingly, there are signs that Fogg is feeling the heat from recent scrutiny of the use of digital devices to alter behavior. His boast about Instagram, which was present on his website as late as January of 2018, has been removed. Fogg’s website also has lately undergone a substantial makeover, as he now seems to go out of his way to suggest his work has benevolent aims, commenting, “I teach good people how behavior works so they can create products & services that benefit everyday people around the world.” Likewise, the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab website optimistically claims, “Persuasive technologies can bring about positive changes in many domains, including health, business, safety, and education. We also believe that new advances in technology can help promote world peace in 30 years.”

While Fogg emphasizes persuasive design’s sunny future, he is quite indifferent to the disturbing reality now: that hidden influence techniques are being used by the tech industry to hook and exploit users for profit. His enthusiastic vision also conveniently neglects to include how this generation of children and teens, with their highly malleable minds, is being manipulated and hurt by forces unseen.

Weaponizing Persuasion

If you haven’t heard of persuasive technology, that’s no accident — tech corporations would prefer it to remain in the shadows, as most of us don’t want to be controlled and have a special aversion to kids being manipulated for profit.

Read the whole article – one of the most damning I’ve read in a long time.

And, this is nothing new. Hellywood has used similar techniques for decades to manipulate the populace.

Try the following one weekend or a vacation day: Remove yourself from all screens for 24 hours. No TV, movies, phones, tablets, PCs (not even for this blog!), or car consoles. If you can do it, even just somewhat happily, then you are immune to the brainwashing. If you can’t, and I suspect that 90% can’t, then you are addicted. It’s a literal digital drug. Like heroin but worse.

The Effects of (Really) Counting the SAT and ACT

26 Wednesday Jun 2019

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Steve Sailer opts for a potential “take it if you can” approach towards the end of a very good article on some new (if unsurprising) research about elite college admissions.

We live in an era in which we are constantly lectured that white males are always ruining everything for everybody else by their feelings of entitlement and privilege. But when it comes to fancy colleges, the opposite is true. At any above-average test score, 18-year-old white guys are less likely to attend a prestige college and more likely to enlist in the military, enter a trade, or go to a local non-elite Directional State college.

And, there’s still the Asians v. Harvard case. Me, I’m not so sure about the idea of reclaiming the Ivy League. He’s probably right – for now. Whether it will matter in the future, as with all the rest of these thorny issues, remains to be seen.

Disposable People on Disposable Ships

23 Sunday Jun 2019

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UPDATE: the following, original focuses on the “smart” littoral combat ships of the US Navy. An example of how well they work, with their smart new crews, was displayed Monday when one collided with a freighter parked in Montreal harbor. Why does the smart new Navy keep driving ships into freighters?

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The Atlantic examines the Navy’s “smart” ships, the LCSs and extrapolates to the wider, modern workforce.

And he discovered another correlation in his test: The people who did best tended to score high on “openness to new experience”—a personality trait that is normally not a major job-performance predictor and that, in certain contexts, roughly translates to “distractibility.” To borrow the management expert Peter Drucker’s formulation, people with this trait are less focused on doing things right, and more likely to wonder whether they’re doing the right things.

High in fluid intelligence, low in experience, not terribly conscientious, open to potential distraction—this is not the classic profile of a winning job candidate. But what if it is the profile of the winning job candidate of the future? If that’s the case, some important implications would arise.

One concerns “grit”—a mind-set, much vaunted these days in educational and professional circles, that allows people to commit tenaciously to doing one thing well. Angela Duckworth, a University of Pennsylvania psychology professor, has written powerfully about the value of grit—putting your head down, blocking out distractions, committing over a course of many years to a chosen path. Her writing traces an intellectual lineage that can also be found in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, which explains extraordinary success as a function of endless, dedicated practice—10,000 hours or more. These ideas are inherently appealing; they suggest that dedication can be more important than raw talent, that the dogged and conscientious will be rewarded in the end.

These trends are more prevalent in certain fields and in certain locations. I think they have the potential to change, for the better, how people are employed – giving more power to the employee. However, I don’t think that’s the future. Human (herd) nature will intervene, and there’s the robotic/AI/civilizational collapse think, proceeding unopposed. In the end, like the LCS sailors, most folks will have to abandon ship.

Lessons, if heeded, for far-distant generations.

Nuclear “Strategic Stability”

21 Friday Jun 2019

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If achieved, will rapidly give way to logistical collapse. Someone at the Pentagram knows this, paying attention to the alarming (if predictable) results of the analysis of Civil War 2.0 fallout. But the DOD still hosts a large cadre of idiots.

NUCLEAR weapons could still create “decisive results” and break stalemates during a war, Pentagon top brass have claimed.

The ominous new document – since deleted – is called ‘Nuclear Operations’ and suggests military chiefs could once again use the weapons of mass destruction to “restore strategic stability.”

Arms control experts say the doctrine marks a dangerous shift towards the idea of actually fighting and winning a full-scale nuclear conflict.

“Using nuclear weapons could create conditions for decisive results and the restoration of strategic stability,” the joint chiefs’ document states.

“Specifically, the use of a nuclear weapon will fundamentally change the scope of a battle and create conditions that affect how commanders will prevail in conflict.”

Whose commanders?

The odds of a meltdown, collapse, or terminal domestic war, the remains of America, are a near mathematical certainty. I think the odds of heavy bombing and/or artillery barrages hovers north of 50%. Can we add the odds of nuk-u-lar weapons to the mix? 10%? 20%? Let’s hope the rumors about tritium scarcity are true.

When it comes, the primary death toll culprits will probably be disease and starvation, rather than Mark 83s. However it happens, it will cut into these newly released population estimates.

The graying of America continues.

The national median age rose to 38.2 years last year, according to newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau. That suggests half of the U.S. population is more than 38-years-old and half is younger. By gender, the median for woman is 39.5 while for men its 36.9 years.

The aging of America is widespread with 49 of 50 states showing an uptick in older residents. North Dakota was the only state to see a decline in its median age, from 37 years in 2010 to 35.2 in 2018.

“This aging (phenomenon) is driven in large part by baby boomers crossing over the 65-year-old mark,” said Luke Rogers, the Chief of the Population Estimates Branch at the Census Bureau.

A decline in birth rates is another reason. The number of U.S. births fell to lowest level in 32 years in 2018.

There were less than 3.9 million babies under age 1 as of July 1, 2018. This represents the smallest age cohort until age 64. The largest age cohort is 27-year-olds, making up 4.8 million of the population.

Bombs for boomers? That might be a strategy.

The College Basket Case

17 Monday Jun 2019

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As I’ve pointed out a few times before, the American education system is, by and large, broken, from kindergarten to graduate school. A new survey reveals the magnitude of the underlying issues facing the modern college student.

A 2018 survey at 140 educational institutions asked almost 90,000 college students about their health over the past 12 months. The survey found that more than three in five (63%) respondents reported experiencing “overwhelming anxiety” in the past year, while two in five (42%) reported feeling “so depressed that it was difficult to function.” Students also reported that anxiety (27%), sleep difficulties (22%) and depression (19%) had adversely affected their academic performance.

In the same survey, 12% of college students reported having “seriously considered suicide.” Another study, which looked at college students with depression, anxiety and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) who had been referred by college counseling centers for psychopharmacological evaluation, found that the same proportion—12%—had actually made at least one suicide attempt. Half of the students in the latter study had previously received a prescription for medication, most often antidepressants.

Colleges are feeling the squeeze, with demand growing nationally for campus mental health services. A study by Penn State’s Center for Collegiate Mental Health reported an average 30% to 40% increase in students’ use of counseling centers between 2009 and 2015 at a time when enrollment grew by just 5%. According to Penn State’s report, the “increase in demand is primarily characterized by a growing frequency of students with a lifetime prevalence of threat-to-self indicators.”

This is a system terminally out of control. The schools and their students are mirrors, reflecting a changed, fractured, and fragmented culture and society. Our enemies have done their jobs well, over many decades. None of this will be fixed soon nor easily.

Indelible Evidence

08 Saturday Jun 2019

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As the IQs fall and other dsygenic markers manifest, we see signs. Some are literally tattooed on people. I marked this story but forgot about it: U. Miami study links tattoos to mental issues.

People with tattoo are more likely to be diagnosed with mental health issues and suffer from sleep problems, findings of new research have revealed.

In a survey-based study published in International Journal of Dermatology on Jan. 24, Karoline Mortensen, from the University of Miami, and colleagues investigated a potential association between tattoo and negative health-related outcomes and risky behaviors.

They found that having tattoos was not significantly related to overall health status. Nonetheless, their survey, which involved more than 2,000 adults in the United States, found that people who have inked skin were more likely to suffer from mental health issues and sleep problems.

Compared with their non-tattooed counterparts, people with tattoos were also more likely to have a higher number of sex partners in the past year. They also tend to be smokers, and likely to have spent time in jail.

Brain scanning might help explain the correlation. Then again, was a study really needed to reach this conclusion?

Yes, yes, pedants, I’m sure yours is special…

Tear Down the Statue, Rename the Streets

26 Sunday May 2019

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For a few years now, ever since Confederate greats like Robert E. Lee, Stephen Lee, Jeff Davis, the unknown infantryman, and Thomas Jefferson, came under the hateful fire of the left, I warned that, if our statues are taken down, then no-one’s statues are safe. So,

In accordance with the mandates of #metoo and the SJW narrative, it is official: MLK has got to go!

 

Screenshot 2019-05-26 at 12.19.08 PM - Edited

Release the files!

Between the Lines About Between the Sheets

20 Monday May 2019

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This story from the Guardian says much, though maybe not as Rose George meant to say it; even more lurks by implication, starting with the title picture.

We owe a lot to the sex lives of Greeks. Ancient Greece gave us the origins of the names and concepts for homosexuality, homophobia and nymphomania, as well as narcissism and pederasty. The Romans talked freely to each other in toilets and were equally community-minded when it came to sex, with a reputation for lasciviousness and orgies. Georgians, we believe, were smutty, and Victorians were prudes and hypocrites. (All of these are partial truths.) We like to use sex as a mirror of an era, and to make judgments accordingly. What then, are we to make of us right now?

This is the most sex-positive age ever, right? We are liberal and comfortable with sex like no other people have ever been. Our magazines publish articles on how to get on better with your clitoris. Porn is freely available (and accessed by teenagers). Erotic books are bestsellers, however badly written. TV broadcasts shows in which the contestants are naked, or have sex in a box, or make a sex tape on camera. If sexual choice were a shop, it would be a hypermarket, with dizzyingly long aisles of every possibility: straight, gay, bi, trans, poly, fluid, each with its own culture and each widely accepted.

In this sex-positive version of reality, we have been unleashed from the bonds of church and religion, and suffocating family expectation; we are free, and we’re enjoying being easy. …

She goes on to admit, without seeming to understand the connections, that all of this liberalism just ain’t that sexy. Maybe, just maybe, the libertine isn’t of liberty. Maybe there really was something to social, religious, and family constraint. Maybe waiting until the well’s almost dry to have a family, just in time to care for elderly boomer parents who spent all the money, while working two or four jobs just isn’t natural. It would be called the “Dys-Gen Hypermarket, where Civilization ENDS!”

And hold on Rose; though we seem to be catching them, there were once twin kingdoms which outpaced our depravity – until one night around 1,700 BC.

A Prescription for Societal Disaster

08 Wednesday May 2019

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Amerikans must be the healthiest people in history as they take an insane amount of medication.

Nearly half of our citizens (residents, whatever) are on at least one type of legal dope. Most of it is for nebulous pain, mental illness, and fat-related lifestyle choices.

But, even if you have a doctor’s note, be very careful at Disney:

Disney World may be the most magical place on Earth, but it turned into a legal nightmare for a great-grandmother with arthritis.

A 69-year-old woman was arrested at a Disney World checkpoint when an Orange County Deputy found CBD oil in her purse. She then spent 12 hours behind bars before being released on a $2,000 bond.

Hester Jordan Burkhalter, a great-grandmother from North Carolina, began using CBD oil for her arthritis after her doctor recommended it, Fox 35 in Orlando reported. She even had a note from the medical professional in her purse at the time of arrest, but it didn’t matter.

In my book, Disney is always a nightmare, best avoided entirely. Better avoid the cops too. In turn, the cops should probably avoid the peeps, given the rapid rise of medieval diseases.

The LAPD released the following statement Tuesday:

“The health, safety, and well-being of our Los Angeles Police Department officers is critical and we are ensuring the officers exposed to this disease are cared for. First responders throughout the region and especially here in Los Angeles are constantly responding to incidents that put them at risk of potential exposure to various diseases, and that’s why the Department takes this incident very seriously. All of the work areas that may have been exposed have been disinfected.”

Steve Gordon of the L.A. Police Protective League confirmed to CBSLA that it was a homeless transient who came into contact with officers at the station.

Gordon was blunt when asked about the problems officers face when dealing with the homeless population.

“Our officers are being put in very hazardous conditions, with the addiction to drugs, the homeless encampments, the feces, the needles, everything throughout these encampments,” said Gordon. “There’s only one thing that these cameras can’t catch and that is the smell and the vile conditions in which some of these addicted people live in.”

That’s the smell and condition of a society disintegrating.

And, all of this comes during, what we’re told night and day, are the best economic times in human history. There’s a sickness, more than one kind, out there.