Saturday, March 31, 2007

Happy Feet

There are some interesting issues in the movie happy feet, bounced off of March of the Penguins.

Sexual Selection:
The main character in the movie is born into a group of penguins that use singing to attract mates. That sounds pretty absurd, until we think about what the singing represents: fitness. Just as insecure men buy status symbols to attract gold diggers and inflate their importance in modern society, emperor penguins display their fitness through singing. It is a great indicator. Someone can only sing if they already have enough energy from food to expend on a useless activity. That's the essence of a fitness indicator-it is a USELESS display of excess survival value.

“Why should a man give a women a useless diamond ring, when he could buy her a nice big potato, which she could at least eat?...The handicap principle suggests that prodigious waste is a necessary feature of sexual courtship.”


There is also another interesting issue that the movie brings up: runaway sexual selection. The main character gets lost and ends up in a different tribe, where they use stone collecting to attract mates (another fitness indicator-obviously a male must be in good shape to be able to waste time collecting stones. The alpha male of the tribe had a gigantic pile and also a crowd of women penguins fawning after him.)
Anyway, this demonstrates that within the same species, even slightly disparate enivronment (here, access to land) can radically change a group's tendencies, due to polygynous matting patterns that exaggerate sexual preferences.


Another issue. The penguin was ostracised because the village elders believed his heretical dancing scared the fish away and caused a famine, displeasing the penguin God. Sound similiar to religion? The more we learn about the world, the less we need religion to explain life's mysteries.


And finally, we have the issue of predators. How we sympathize with the prey in movie after movie, yet we still continue to eat meat? How long will it take for our society to progress to the next level? Not while we think the concept of human is sacred, and begin to accept all living beings as having value. Just because we believe dogs have a right to live doesn't mean that they live at the same standard as humans. What it does mean, is that a dog should consume the level of satisfaction he creates in society. If the dog makes a rich guy so happy that he is willing to spend 1,000 a month on him, great.

But no animal should be a slave. No living being should exist whose life is not an end in itself. Conscious creatures matter.

And of course this movie has to deal with environmental destruction. What I think, personally, is that all humans with an IQ above 90 should eventually either live in small communities built through skyscrapers, or leave the planet and live on the moon. If all the humans on the planet had an IQ average of less than 90, then eventually technology will collapse and society will resort to its stone age conditions, and life will go on on earth. No more endangered species or global warming. And we will advance as a species.

The most interesting scene in the movie was when the pengiun banged his beak against the wall of the zoo enclosure. It kept zooming out until the earth was a speck.

Just keep that in mind. A speck-that's all human history. Can we change that?

Friday, March 30, 2007

Some issues on HBD blindness

All right. There are some issues that I have to bring up after reading US News

US News had an article on practices of other countries and how they are superior to the United States.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070318/26intro.htm

"We have the biggest GDP, the finest universities, the highest ownership of color TVs, and the greatest number of Nobel Prize winners. So how come the Danes are the happiest people in the world?"

What they do is take the best things of a country and show how we are totally lacking in it. There are some fair criticisms of the United States, and some that are left field and not fair.

1) "On Handford Road in Ipswich, England, there are no stop signs, no posted speed limits, no lane lines, and hardly any traffic lights. Yet drivers politely edge aside to make room for other drivers, they slow down, and they yield to bikers and pedestrians."

What this system does is rely on trust in place of law. So I wish it were in the United States. Introduce several groups of minorities, and I would be curious to see if the calmness was maintained. Racial diversity makes people trust each other less. It's genetic. If people of different races had different attitudes towards driving aggressiveness, then a system without rules will lead to chaos. In racially homogenous Ipswitch, I doubt there are the same issues.

I have always complained about how New Yorkers are unfriendly and self-obsessed. But it makes sense, just as it does in LA. In such a racially diverse city, with so many different things going on, its impossible to be open to everyone and everything without going crazy. I do it to. I look around and see the incredible diversity. The lack of friendliness is a fair trade off for the opportunity to be successful. People can always worry about finding a warm and fuzzy home later.

2) "The people of France are generally considered to be the world's best conversationalists largely because of their monarchical tradition, in which the court gathered all the brightest minds of the realm. In the famous 18th-century salons, nobles and artists came together for the sole purpose of talking. "Conversation was considered one aspect of civility," says author Philippe Meyer, a raconteur in the best French tradition. French civility forbids asking how much money one makes."

This is a pretty fair criticism. In general, when people have conversations here, it usually seems to be about one person talking about themselves, and others pretending to listen while trying to think of something in their own lives that is relevant to the conversation. I do the same. How much more informed will out people be if they actually talked about the world, instead of themselves? What seems odd, though, is that most women are not turned on by intellectual conversation. If trying to get a woman into bed, the worst thing you can do is bring up politics and science. Talk about drama instead. How the hell are we supposed to have a free exchange of ideas when it is at odds with procreation?

Anyway, I am sure that there are racial disparities in the ideas-self combo in conversation.

3)" Every 10th trip in Berlin is made by bike. With more than 500 miles of bike lanes and paths, rush hour in this German city of 3.4 million can be a blur of two-wheeled commuters, from suited businessmen to mothers hauling toddlers in specially designed trailers."

I'm all for taxing gas into oblivion. President Bush should be much more ambitious in his fuel-efficiency standards.

4)
"Time is money. But for drivers who try to save time by speeding through the streets of Finland, the money they'll owe can be staggering.

Case in point: In 2004 the heir to a family sausage fortune was caught driving 50 miles per hour in a 25 mph zone in Helsinki. His fine was 170,000 euros, then worth about $204,000.

The reason for such astronomical fines lies in Finland's lofty ideals of egalitarianism. The nation imposes graduated traffic fines based on the wealth of the lawbreaker as well as the severity of the offense."

We have to look at whether the objective of fines is whether to discourage speeding or compensate society for the costs of someone speeding.

I think it is a mix. Sure, everyone should follow the same laws. But, if a rich guy has a million dollar meeting that day, then I think he should speed, and should pay the 1,000. Its better for the economy. He should not have to pay 200,000 to go to the meeting. At the same time, though, rich people can't just flaunt the law and pay it off. Especially if they are rich because of genetically endowed intelligence.

5) "Being a generous host in Afghanistan is akin to a sacred duty-an obligation of honor, even of life and death. A host must provide food, shelter, and protection for a guest, whether friend or stranger. "Not to do so would be dishonorable," says Fawzia Etemadi, an Afghan author who's writing a book on her nation's codes."

Well, what about being good hosts to terrorists like Bin Laden? I think cultures that place too much value on "personal honor," tend to go a little overboard and lose their power of reasoning along the way.

6) "Along with soybeans, fish, and seaweed, the Japanese diet offers one health benefit that nutritionists say outweighs all the others: small portions.

Even American companies selling food in Japan shrink their portions to conform to the local norms: A large order of McDonald's french fries in Japan adds up to 529 calories; in the United States, it's 570."

Are you kidding me? If you compare obesity rates in Japan with those of Asian-Americans, that's a fair study. If companies race norm tests to find the best (comparing blacks with other blacks and hiring the best blacks to meet the quota) why can't we race norm when comparing the US with other countries? I mean, seriously. Look at the eating habits of African Americans. Do you really honestly think that any comparison between them and the Japanese will yield any productive information about the US?

7)
"Vanessa Acosta Ruiz had lived in several European countries by the time her family moved to Sweden when she was 12. A veteran at adapting to new schools, she was nevertheless surprised at Sweden's frank approach to sex education. "In every other school I had attended, it was very taboo to talk about sex," she recalls. Now here was the teacher talking condoms and penises."

We really have to become more frank about sex these days. Get rid of religion's influence on morality. A slutty vegetarian is much more moral than a prudish meat eater, in my opinion. That doesn't mean people shouldn't use protection and birth control, though.

8)
"Thirty years ago, there were an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 heroin addicts in the Netherlands. Since then, the country's total population has grown by 6 percent. But the number of junkies has remained the same. Few new users have joined their ranks, and theirs is an aging cohort. There's a popular misconception in the United States that Holland has a permissive attitude toward drugs. It doesn't. Instead, the country has adopted a more pragmatic approach to drug abuse. It still vigorously prosecutes large-scale drug trafficking. But it considers drug users a public-health problem, not a criminal one. Addicts caught stealing or breaking other laws are prosecuted, but they aren't arrested for possession."

Yeah, lets see if they can get the same results if they have minorities in their population. They're lucky that the Muslims in their country aren't into drugs (but aren't into women's rights, either).

9)
"When Singapore residents call their hometown a "fine city," they're not bragging about their looks. But the fines they mean-big-dollar punishments for "antisocial behavior" like spitting-can make the city look finer, too. Drop trash on the ground in this Southeast Asian city, and you'll pay $1,000. You'll also get a "community work order," forced labor designed to shame people the government deems litterbugs. The result: Trash's life span is short."

Yeah, well do you want to turn the US into a dictatorship?

10) "In England, as in the United States, people may fear getting sick-but it's only the illness that worries them, not how to pay for the treatment. Like all other western European countries, Britain has a taxpayer-funded health system. The National Health Service is hardly perfect; patients can't see a specialist on their own, and trying to find a dentist can give them a headache to go with their toothache. But, by and large, the NHS delivers what it's supposed to: free healthcare coverage for all."

Again, its a racial diversity/trust issue. They don't have the massive amount of low income Hispanic immigrants, nor resentful asians and jews. Honestly, I don't want to pay for the health care of some fat black woman who has a heart attack. If people want government to take better care of them, they have to acknowledge that serious disparities in behavior between races will create uneven levels of benefit disbursement.

11) "If Americans want better schools and smarter students, they should think F-for Finland.

Finnish 15-year-olds score at or near the top in reading, math, and science in the prestigious Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, offered every three years by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In 2003 (2006 results aren't yet available), Finland ranked first among 40 industrialized nations in reading literacy, first (with Japan) in science, and second in math. The United States ranked 18th, 22nd, and 28th in those subjects, respectively. Finland also boasts the smallest gap between its best and weakest students, and the second-smallest difference among individual schools' performances."

This is just funny. Compare finnish americans with finnish, they'll probably be similiar. Comparing racially diverse America with huge IQ disparities with racially homogenous Finland? Come on.



I really wonder at how much anti-HBD attitudes have permeated everything. So many basic assumptions that even I have are probably colored by non HBD assumptions that have been drilled into my head. Just in class the other day, my economics professor was perplexed as to why East Asia, while following the same inefficient import substuting development strategy as Latin America and India (who stagnated), was able to pull far ahead.

Yeah, the answer is simple. Stop scratching your heads and denying the truth that is right in front of you. Yeah, Jeffey Sachs. If you get rid of malaria, Africa will still be a shithole.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Ape Morality and the Descent of Man

In an article dated March 20, 2007 in the New York Times, Nicholas Wade details the increasing understanding we have of animal behavior, and the ability of chimps to apply moral reasoning. For example, they will not push a button to receive food if it shocks a companion. They will drown in water to save a friend. after fights between two combatants, other chimpanzees would console the loser. What we have here is the precursor of a spectrum.

Because there are many traits that, psychologically, animals share with humans, it is increasingly difficult to argue that homo sapiens, themselves, constitute a uniform and distinct being that is capable of higher thought that animals aren't. Instead, we must realize that if animals are capable of some human behavioral qualities, and that there is variation between animals, then there is significant overlap between human and animal behavior. If human behavior also takes on the same variation, then some humans must have more “animalistic,” brain structures than other humans. We must realize that there are many people who are not capable of the higher thought usually associated with all humans. Homo Sapiens is not uniform.

And to respond to the previous comment,

I am racist. I acknowledge biological differences between the races. I think that race realism, along with principles of liberal democracy, can lead to more justice and fairness in the world than the illusions of social engineering.

Look at the harm that has been done by the engineers: they believe Africa can govern itself, and have ended up with genocide after genocide. They believe that African sexual behavior is the same as our: we end up with AIDS. They assume that African kids are capable of learning the same material as whites: we end up with a generation of high school dropouts that go into crime instead of trade. They assume a black leader will run a black dominated city correctly. We end up with the shithole of Washington, DC. They assume that blacks can use voting devices at the same level as whites. We end up with the 2004 election, where black votes are discounted at a much higher level than whites, tilting the election to the worst president in the last 50 years. The list goes on.

And you, I ask: why would a just and caring God create races that are so disparate in their abilities, setting up the world for slavery? I'd say he either was a sick God, or a God that doesn't exist.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Saturday

I went skiing this Saturday. It was pretty enjoyable. I came away with some random observations:

- The difference between skiing and snowboarding. Snowboarders are cooler than skiiers, lets admit that first. I'm an ardent skiier. The first time I tried snowboarding, I woke up the next day with my body totally aching. So, never learned. What I wondered, was why do people try to do snowboarding if it is harder? The answer: status. Because snowboarding has attained the image of being more rebellious and less traditional, it is the people who want to act cool who end up snowboarding. Honestly, look at the people snowboarding and skiing. There is a pretty clear difference in the personalities (as a whole. Obviously stereotypes aren't true for everyone, but are true 90% of the time.) The average snowboarder is more rebellious and poser than the average skiier. Anyway, this is true for all impression seeking behavior. People grow their hair long not because of trying to "express themselves," but because they want to be known as rebels. Women don't wear jewelry because they want to be magnetic. It's because they want to show the world that someone cares enough about them to buy them jewelry.
So, the snowboarding industry has crafted the image of the rebel and has marketed itself to those who want to be rebels. Because everyone wants to gain status by appearing as a rebel, the industry has managed to mass market snowboarding to millions of people while simultaneously allowing them to indulge themselves into thinking that they are not conforming. Brilliant. How else can you make anti-conformists conform?

But skiing in general:
Beyond the thrill of speeding down the mountain, could the act of skiing itself be a status symbol? That at the ski resort, it is no longer the rich who gain status, but the best skiiers?
I wonder because after I returned to my apartment I forgot to remove my ski tag and was on my way out to party that night when a friend made fun of me for not removing my tag. He though i was trying to act cool by showing off the fact that I went skiing. I didn't remove it because I was in a rush. But of all the people who did leave it on, it is not by accident. It is a calculated effort to demonstrate higher value and status by showing the world that they ski. Skiing is expensive, and it takes some physical fitness and some minimum courage to face a steep hill. I chickened out an slid down the black diamond.

I really think that the more we look into sexual selection, the more we will see how much of what we do in life is driven by the desire to project an appearance of status in order to attract a mate. Everything is a conscious or subconscious calculation designed to maximize the impression one gives off to the world. That's why I believe in stereotyping people based on how they act and dress.

Saw few blacks and hispanics there. Because they don't have the money, or are uncomfortable in overwhelmingly white ski resort? Any possibility that african americans lack the cognitive skills necessary to understand the physics of skiing and the visuospatial ability to navigate? That the same goes for hispanics? That it is connected to the paucity of oppressed minorities with solid math skills?


Unrelated note:

So why is KFC so popular to african americans, and why do they offer macaroni and cheese in a mainly meat eating establishment?

The food is comfort food. It is food that we liked as children, before our tastes became sophisticated and I started liking green curry and hummus. I think there is a physiological change that takes place in us, genetically endowed, that makes us appreciate different foods as we grow older. It's an extension of the milk-gerber-spagetti-pasta primavera dynamic. Kids just like some foods more than others.

Anyway, what is IQ?

It's original intent was to measure mental age, that a 8 year old child with the mental age of a 10 year old had an 10/8 = 125% mental age (don't know how to convert that into IQ scores). Well guess what? The average IQ of African Americans is 85, which would put them at a lower mental age than most americans. So, with a lower mental age means that they will prefer food that kids will. This is because because the average african american has a genetically endowed intelligence that prevents them from acting more sophisticated than a 14 year old. All those thugs, drug dealers, janitors, and cashiers? They are just kids with the body, hormones, and faces of adults. And we ask ourselves why people chop off arms in Rwanda, cut off the women's clitoris in sub-saharan africa, fail to oust 80,000 whites land in a Zimbabwe of 12 million blacks, riot in New Orleans after Katrina, and throw a baby out the window in Brooklyn?

Because you're giving kids the power of adults.

But, they will still eat like kids even if they put on the show of being adults. Some things show through despite the social engineering.

Friday, March 9, 2007

300

I don't wonder why 300 was sold out today. It was a great movie (ending a little eh) and fun entertainment. What set this movie out from the recent rest was its embrace of pure masculinity. It worshipped the strong male fighter and a society devoted to war. It embraced what has been supressed by the feministas and male supplication industry.

We were made to respect Spartan society, to root for it against the hordes of Persia.

What we also rooted for was a society that practised a mild form of eugenics and that accepted the creed that all men are NOT created equal.

And a society that produced an army of 300 that made Xerses bleed.

What the left truly must explain is the true problem with eugenics. I think we all realize, intuitively, that eugenics can lead to a better population. That we can promote the well being of our society by preventing the worst aspects from procreating.

But no. The left insists on arguing that the environment matters, that our genes do not determine who we are. I think the left is digging itself a grave by arguing that, because the evidence is coming in about the effect of genes not only on superficial characteristics, but also our intelligence, personality, disease tendencies, sexual orientation, etc. In fact, the left rejects the environmentalism explanation for homosexuality. The grave goes deeper.

So...how else can the left argue against eugenics? Can they really argue that it is unjust to condemn someone because of the genes he/she possesses? That is unjust not to give them a chance? I don't know.

But, we must realize the fact that a eugenic society produced the 300.

And if 300 could do such wonders, imagine the potential of a eugenic society of 300 MILLION.

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

I shake my head

---
Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former chief of staff to Dick Cheney, the vice-president of the United States, was accused of lying and obstructing the investigation into the 2003 leak of Valerie Plame's identity to reporters. Her husband is a prominent Iraq war critic.

THE CIA leak case erupted after Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador was sent to Niger to investigate claims of purchases of "yellowcake" uranium concentrates by Iraq for use in the manufacture of WMDs.

Four months after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Mr Wilson published an article in the New York Times, denying any such purchases by Saddam Hussein and accusing the Bush administration of twisting intelligence about Iraqi WMDs

His wife, Valerie Plame, was subsequently identified in the US media as an undercover CIA agent. Mr Wilson claims this was done in retaliation for his attack on the White House. No-one has been charged with intentionally identifying Ms Plame, a more serious offence than those Libby has been found guilty of.
---

And now Libby is convicted of lying by covering up his role in spreading Plame's name. I honestly don't know what to say. The whole time I've known in the back of my head that WMD was bogus and the war was, frankly, bullshit.

I have vivid images in my head of visiting Ground Zero on 9/11/06 (five year anniversary) and hearing half of the attending crowd shout that 9/11 was an inside job three days after Dick Cheney said on Meet the Press that he would have invaded Iraq knowing there were no WMD.

I love America. I know the army doesn't intend to kill civilians on bombing raids. I know the vast majority of American troops want to come home and don't want to mess up Iraq. I believe that George Bush believes he is doing the right thing.

But the fact is, we were wrong.
The Islamic world, which is host to genocidal Sudan, repressive Saudi Arabia, Civil War Torn Lebanon, tribal gang raping Pakistan, and Bali bombed Indonesia, is able to play a moral card on the United States. That is a serious problem. We are a superior culture, but the West is not playing our role.
It is Iraqis that are butchering each other, and that dragged the bodies of Americans throught Baghdad. Iraqis kill children on purpose. Keep in mind that distinction between us and them.

George Bush will go down as the worst president since Nixon not because of his invasion of Iraq, but because of his blurring of a clear moral decision. It was clear after 9/11 what was at stake. Now, Europe doesn't even realize the threat that it is under because it hates the United States too much. That is absolutely absurd.

Democracy did not fail in Iraq because it was our fault. Not because of imperialism, or, in feminist/islamist circles, femperialism.
It failed because a muslim cannot accept the idea of a legitimate belief outside of his own faith. Because the Koran cannot separate church and state. Because the majority of Muslims in Great Britain want sharia law.
There are also IQ issues, but states with lower IQ's have been able to build functioning governments.

It frustrates me so much that the International Socialist Organization, partnered with campus Muslim groups, can sound legitimate. How could our administration bungle such a clear choice between freedom and the abyss of ideology?

Saturday, March 3, 2007

Random

Check out this news story about a man in an accident who becomes obsessed with sex
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2007/03/02/nbiker02.xml

And another story about cigarettes and brain damage
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/26/science/26brain.html?ex=1173070800&en=be3bc4c275c96ca6&ei=5070

What do these point to? Biological determinants of personality. This is presisely the issue that prevents me from accepting either traditional liberal or conservative arguments.

Conservatives believe in total free will. Those who are gay, poor, or immoral are so because they are bad people and choose to be bad.

Liberals say that those who are not upstanding citizens are so because of poor early environments, racism, and oppression.

I say that it's genetic. That the solution lies neither in social engineering or "law and order," policies but instead a greater understanding of the human mind. Genetic engineering, psychotropic drugs, and whatnot are needed. We must play God, and we must acknowledge that eugenics is necessary. We must reject marxism and religious fundamentalism.

As I posted about the growth of China, there is a small issue that has been ignored. China has minimal qualms about biologically engineering human beings, due to a lack of western religious influence. In addition to their high IQ and population, they will also fully utilize posthuman technologies. God help Western Civilization, because it seems as if no one in politics these days thinks in terms of the evolving future.