Category Archives: Social Commentary

Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

What Makes Us Fat

2 Comments

Here’s a radical idea: Let’s do some actual scientific research:

…much of what we think we know about nutrition is based on observational studies, a mainstay of major research initiatives like the Nurses’ Health Study, which followed more than 120,000 women across the US for three decades. Such studies look for associations between the foods that subjects claim to eat and the diseases they later develop. The problem, as Taubes sees it, is that observational studies may show a link between a food or nutrient and a disease but tell us nothing about whether the food or nutrient is actually causing the disease. It’s a classic blunder of confusing correlation with causation—and failing to test conclusions with controlled experiments. “Good scientists will approach new results like they’re buying a used car,” he says. “When the salesman tells you it’s a great car, you don’t take his word for it. You get it checked out.”

NuSI’s starting assumption, in other words, is that bad science got us into the state of confusion and ignorance we’re in. Now Taubes and Attia want to see if good science can get us out.

What a concept.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

“Fear Of Being Thought Racist”

44 Comments

Old Blighty is suffering a real blight:

In August 2013, four women launched legal action against Rotherham council over ‘systematic failures’ to protect them from ‘sexual abuse by predatory men when they were children’ according to their lawyers.

One girl, known only as ‘Jessica’ claims she was abused daily as a 14-year-old by a 24-year-old man after social services failed to accept that she was a victim grooming.

On one occasion married father-of-two Arshid Hussain was even caught with the half naked schoolgirl under his bed but documents revealed that police arrested her – and let him go.

These are the wages of multi-culturalism. And they’re being paid by the innocent.

[Update Thursday morning]

An interesting take from Richard Fernandez:

Doubtless there’s nothing in his religion that explicitly instructs it believers to act thus, but there’s something in the atmosphere. The BBC reports that investigators have only now just discovered “child sexual exploitation is happening in a ‘number of towns’ in different parts of the country”. Rotherham might just be the tip of the iceberg.

But Muhbeen Hussain is at least fighting his side, arguing his cause. Our problem, as Hussain notes, is that the Western elites have quit fighting theirs. If the British authorities really wanted peace with the “Asians”, they should have as he suggests, arrested them. Assent is consent, or may be perceived as such.

You may disagree with Hussein. You may hate what you think is his side. But at least he’s no traitor, not to his side at least. Not like those mealy mouthed politicians in Rotherham. As Daniel Hannan notes “interesting to see whether people in Rotherham keep voting for Labour councils. On the evidence so far, they will.” Because the arrangement is the “Asians” will vote for Labour and in return Labour will let them practice their traditions unhindered under the color of diversity and tolerance. Expect Labour to dominate in Rotherham until the day the Democratic Party loses Detroit.

The role of radical Islam in Britain is as the proxy Brownshirt wing of the Left. The Left knows that if it can terrorize a town into surrendering — and indeed a nation — into surrendering their children with their proxy thugs, then the door is open to everything. Rotherham is not about racism. It is about fascism: about aspiring tyrants with impeccable double-barreled Anglo-Saxon names, wearing fashionable dress nightly luring a passive population into the chute of slavery with dulcet tones over national TV. And if you don’t listen to them, then you’ll heed the boys with the funny hats.

Yup.

[Update a while later]
More thoughts from Ann Althouse:

I’d like to see more detail about this “fear of being thought as racist.” It sounds like a confession of deliberate law enforcement paralysis, a choice to permit thousands of children to be raped for decades on end, because of befuddlement about how on earth to begin to do anything without looking bad or because of a sense that your community is already hopelessly overwhelmed by evil forces that will only become more aggressive and violent if opposed.

That’s pretty much the point.

[Update a few more minutes later]

Muslim gang rapists: Why can’t we be honest about it?

…only a racist would believe this is a “Pakistani” problem. It isn’t. It’s a cultural phenomenon unique to Muslim communities, as suggested by the prevalence of father-son combinations in so many of the gangs, wherever in the world they appear. And here’s another clue it’s not just about brown-on-white crime: Britain’s Sikh community has been complaining for years that its young girls are being targeted by Muslim rapists.

But good luck figuring out the complicated racial and religious dimensions to these crimes if you’re getting your news from the Guardian. That newspaper, together with some parts of the BBC, is committing the same error in judgment that the police and council in Rotherham did over all those years. They are turning a blind eye to obviously pertinent facts of the case for political reasons.

There are complex religious and cultural reasons why Muslim men are drawn to rape in gangs, often in family units, with fathers, sons and uncles all raping the same women. But how will we ever know why this is so, and begin to tackle it, until we are honest about what’s happening?

We won’t.

[Bumped]

[Update a few minutes later]

This is a tale of apologists, misogyny and double standards.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Public Schools As Child Abuse

37 Comments

Example #1,456,382:

To be thorough, they should have searched the neighbor’s yard for a dead Triceratops, too. Everyone involved in this tragedy should be flogged naked through the streets, then put in the stocks wearing a dunce cap.

Hey, the kid deserved it! He’s probably also a young-earth creationist, what with his apparent belief in the coexistence of humans and dinosaurs.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Real Villain Of Ferguson

51 Comments

It’s LBJ’s (not so) Great Society.

Yes. It’s been a half-century of social disaster for blacks.

[Wednesday-morning update]

Jason Riley tells some hard truths:

Once upon a time, Eric Holder called for us to engage in a conversation about race. If that conversation were to be frank, it would have to start with the brute and ugly fact pointed out by Jason Riley. I do not doubt that racial prejudice still exists, but it does not constitute a serious obstacle to African-American advancement. The most grievous problems that African-Americans face today have little or nothing to do with the conduct of ordinary white people. Of course, they may well have something to do with white conduct in the past, which has a lingering effect. But nothing can be done about that. Long before they encountered George Zimmerman and Darren Wilson, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown were on the downward path. Given their taste for dope, their instinct for defiance, and their predilection for violence, they were both likely to end up as killers or as killed.

If Barack Obama and Eric Holder were actually interested in the welfare of the likes of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, they would level with their fellow African-Americans. They would initiate a genuinely frank conversation about race aimed at altering African-American conduct. As things stand, they are only interested in manipulating African-American fear and anger for short-term political gain — and the same can be said for the scoundrels (largely white) who manage CNN, NBC, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, Pravda-on-the-Hudson, and Pravda-on-the-Potomac and who treat the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown as national news.

Yup. When it comes to discussing race, it’s not we who are the cowards. It’s the race hustlers like Al Sharpton. And Eric Holder.

[Bumped]

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Social Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Against Editors

4 Comments

A writer’s rant:

Here is the traditional career track for someone employed in journalism: first, you are a writer. If you hang on, and don’t wash out, and manage not to get laid off, and don’t alienate too many people, at some point you will be promoted to an editor position. It is really a two-step career journey, in the writing world. Writing, then editing. You don’t have to accept a promotion to an editing position of course. You don’t have to send your kids to college and pay a mortgage, necessarily. If you want to get regular promotions and raises, you will, for the most part, accept the fact that your path takes you away from writing and into editing, in some form. The number of pure writing positions that offer salaries as high as top editing positions is vanishingly small. Most well-paid writers are celebrities in the writing world. That is how few of them there are.

Here is the problem with this career path: writing and editing are two completely different skills. There are good writers who are terrible editors. (Indeed, some of the worst editors are good writers!) There are good editors who lack the creativity and antisocial personality disorders that would make them great writers. This is okay. This is natural. It is thoroughly unremarkable for an industry to have different positions that require different skill sets. The problem in the writing world is that, in order to move up, the writer must stop doing what he did well in the first place and transition into an editing job that he may or may not have any aptitude for.

Engineering has a similar problem, in that if you want to advance, you often have to go into management, even though a lot of good engineers are terrible managers.

Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society, Weird

Misandry

20 Comments

Speaking of modest proposals, check out this totalitarian feminist:

I believe we must remove men from the community and place them in their own specific sections of society, akin to subsidised or state-funded reservations, so they can be redefined. We can make not only men safer, but women as well. By subsidising said reservations through the state we can provide men with activities, healthcare, entertainment, shelter, protection, and everything that one could ever require in life. This will remove conventional inequality from society. By reducing the number of men to 10 percent of the total population, their socio-biovalue will be raised. They will live out their lives happily and safely, and male disposability will be a thing of the past.

I can’t wait.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

Those Evil Jews

17 Comments

Lileks has a modest proposal:

The people who want the grocery store to stop stocking Israeli products should sign waivers indicating that they do not wish to be treated with any medicine or device or course of treatment that is the result of Israeli research. This could be entered into their National Health Service database, along the lines of a “Do not Resuscitate” order, and possibly having the same effect.

Then everyone’s happy. But it’s only a start. I think there enough Israeli telecommunications patents to make the protestors think twice about using their mobiles, and it is time for the serious-minded in their midst to foreswear these tainted technologies. Going Jew-free isn’t as easy as it might look, but c’mon, you can still keep in touch. There’s always the mail. It’s not like every stamp has Disraeli on it.

In many ways, I feel like we’re reliving the thirties.