PN:
Joe’s Comment – ( )
Math Potential
Last rant Helmuth Nyberg educated Joe and I with information from his research. Among other claims, he collated IQ with brain volume and genetics.
For this and similar data he discovered, he was hounded out of his position for presenting such an obviously eugenic viewpoint, for EVERYONE KNOWS all humans are equal and it is only the social influences that give advantage to the “lucky ones”. Or some such trope which carries no water but is so very politically correct. What a crock!
Research at the Stanford Medical Center points at brain volume and pertinent connectivity measurable by scanning as predictors of math skills in 8 year old children – more accurately than testing.
This indicates the old chestnut “environment”, lauded as the nurturer of IQ, is being displaced slowly and surely by science.
PragerU
Finally!
It all seems clear now…..
Higher Learning
Joe and I have been mightily amused at the frolicking good times being had on university and college campuses throughout the Western world.
Just when you think things can’t get more silly, more silly turns up the volume.
There is a movement afoot (#rhodesmustfall) to remove the statue of Sir Cecil Rhodes from the campus of Oxford.
Despite the immense amount of bird crap on his shoulders, Joe says let him stay. A man of few words is Joe…..
However, a more gifted orator has penned a response to those who would obliterate history for political correctness.
It is a masterly bit of prose that cuts the whiny little shits off at the knees. In it’s entirety –
“Dear Scrotty Students,
Cecil Rhodes’s generous bequest has contributed greatly to the comfort and well being of many generations of Oxford students – a good many of them, dare we say it, better, brighter and more deserving than you.
This does not necessarily mean we approve of everything Rhodes did in his lifetime – but then we don’t have to. Cecil Rhodes died over a century ago. Autres temps, autres moeurs. If you don’t understand what this means – and it would not remotely surprise us if that were the case – then we really think you should ask yourself the question: “Why am I at Oxford?”
Oxford, let us remind you, is the world’s second oldest extant university. Scholars have been studying here since at least the 11th century. We’ve played a major part in the invention of Western civilisation, from the 12th century intellectual renaissance through the Enlightenment and beyond. Our alumni include William of Ockham, Roger Bacon, William Tyndale, John Donne, Sir Walter Raleigh, Erasmus, Sir Christopher Wren, William Penn, Samuel Johnson, Robert Hooke, William Morris, Oscar Wilde, Emily Davison, Cardinal Newman. We’re a big deal. And most of the people privileged to come and study here are conscious of what a big deal we are. Oxford is their alma mater – their dear mother – and they respect and revere her accordingly.
And what were your ancestors doing in that period? Living in mud huts, mainly. Sure we’ll concede you the short lived Southern African civilisation of Great Zimbabwe. But let’s be brutally honest here. The contribution of the Bantu tribes to modern civilisation has been as near as damn it to zilch.
You’ll probably say that’s “racist”. But it’s what we here at Oxford prefer to call “true.” Perhaps the rules are different at other universities. In fact, we know things are different at other universities. We’ve watched with horror at what has been happening across the pond from the University of Missouri to the University of Virginia and even to revered institutions like Harvard and Yale: the “safe spaces”; the #blacklivesmatter; the creeping cultural relativism; the stifling political correctness; what Allan Bloom rightly called “the closing of the American mind”. At Oxford however, we will always prefer facts and free, open debate to petty grievance-mongering, identity politics and empty sloganeering. The day we cease to do so is the day we lose the right to call ourselves the world’s greatest university.
Of course, you are perfectly within your rights to squander your time at Oxford on silly, vexatious, single-issue political campaigns. (Though it does make us wonder how stringent the vetting procedure is these days for Rhodes scholarships and even more so, for Mandela Rhodes scholarships) We are well used to seeing undergraduates – or, in your case – postgraduates, making idiots of themselves. Just don’t expect us to indulge your idiocy, let alone genuflect before it. You may be black – “BME” as the grisly modern terminology has it – but we are colour blind. We have been educating gifted undergraduates from our former colonies, our Empire, our Commonwealth and beyond for many generations. We do not discriminate over sex, race, colour or creed. We do, however, discriminate according to intellect.
That means, inter alia, that when our undergrads or postgrads come up with fatuous ideas, we don’t pat them on the back, give them a red rosette and say: “Ooh, you’re black and you come from South Africa. What a clever chap you are!” No. We prefer to see the quality of those ideas tested in the crucible of public debate. That’s another key part of the Oxford intellectual tradition you see: you can argue any damn thing you like but you need to be able to justify it with facts and logic – otherwise your idea is worthless.
This ludicrous notion you have that a bronze statue of Cecil Rhodes should be removed from Oriel College, because it’s symbolic of “institutional racism” and “white slavery”. Well even if it is – which we dispute – so bloody what? Any undergraduate so feeble-minded that they can’t pass a bronze statue without having their “safe space” violated really does not deserve to be here. And besides, if we were to remove Rhodes’s statue on the premise that his life wasn’t blemish-free, where would we stop? As one of our alumni Dan Hannan has pointed out, Oriel’s other benefactors include two kings so awful – Edward II and Charles I – that their subjects had them killed. The college opposite – Christ Church – was built by a murderous, thieving bully who bumped off two of his wives. Thomas Jefferson kept slaves: does that invalidate the US Constitution? Winston Churchill had unenlightened views about Muslims and India: was he then the wrong man to lead Britain in the war?”
Actually, we’ll go further than that. Your Rhodes Must Fall campaign is not merely fatuous but ugly, vandalistic and dangerous. We agree with Oxford historian RW Johnson that what you are trying to do here is no different from what ISIS and the Al-Qaeda have been doing to artefacts in places like Mali and Syria. You are murdering history.
And who are you, anyway, to be lecturing Oxford University on how it should order its affairs? Your #rhodesmustfall campaign, we understand, originates in South Africa and was initiated by a black activist who told one of his lecturers “whites have to be killed”. One of you – Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh – is the privileged son of a rich politician and a member of a party whose slogan is “Kill the Boer; Kill the Farmer”; another of you, Ntokozo Qwabe, who is only in Oxford as a beneficiary of a Rhodes scholarship, has boasted about the need for “socially conscious black students” to “dominate white universities, and do so ruthlessly and decisively!
Great. That’s just what Oxford University needs. Some cultural enrichment from the land of Winnie Mandela, burning tyre necklaces, an AIDS epidemic almost entirely the result of government indifference and ignorance, one of the world’s highest per capita murder rates, institutionalised corruption, tribal politics, anti-white racism and a collapsing economy. Please name which of the above items you think will enhance the lives of the 22,000 students studying here at Oxford.
And then please explain what it is that makes your attention grabbing campaign to remove a listed statue from an Oxford college more urgent, more deserving than the desire of probably at least 20,000 of those 22,000 students to enjoy their time here unencumbered by the irritation of spoilt, ungrateful little tossers on scholarships they clearly don’t merit using racial politics and cheap guilt-tripping to ruin the life and fabric of our beloved university.
Understand us and understand this clearly: you have everything to learn from us; we have nothing to learn from you.
Yours,”
Joe is still snickering. Murdering history, indeed!
Woman, the Destroyer
Joe and I watched this video with interest and unrest.
This might be a verboten subject.
We have wondered some of these subjects and trains of thought over the years.
United States of America
There are sound bites of American citizens so upset at the thought of Donald Trump becoming the president that they have sworn to move to Canada if such an atrocity should become fact.
Here is Gavin McInnes to explain the options of migrating to Canada:
Meanwhile, back at Intellectual Froglegs, Joe Dan Gorman presents the case for The Donald in the Trump voter handbook, part 2:
Esemplastics
There are special people in the world that have that most desirable ability to “cut to the chase”, or as the word is defined: Esemplastic – (adjective) – “having the ability to shape diverse elements or concepts into a unified whole”.
On the other side of this coin, or if you prefer, the other end of this continuum, are the short bus special people who see the most obvious simple uncomplicated array as an incredibly complicated diversity that will never be fully understood. These folks are legion. The same people who panicked in the ’70’s about global cooling, the end of petroleum, food shortages, DDT, are now the same ninny-neck pants fillers who are militant about global warming, GMO food, free speech, multiculturalism, diversity.
The world will never be free of those who consider science a real party pooper. Those who would rather scream obscenities, suppress debate, and resort to violence to make their point..
Here are two men who exhibit the desirable trait of being esemplastic:
POLITICS, POLITICIANS, WACKJOBBERY, HUMOROUS, STUPID
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, GOOD STUFF
Conception
The moment of conception is a light show.
Here is a picture of the light released when a sperm attaches to an egg –
“The bright flash occurs because when sperm enters an egg it leads to a surge of calcium which triggers the release of zinc from the egg. As the zinc shoots out, it binds to small molecules which emit a fluorescence which can be picked up by camera microscopes.” The rest of the article here.
GUNS, GUNNERS, GUNNERY
THE RELIGION OF PEACE (ALL OVER US)
The ranks of brave women who have faced up to the political system called Islam has a strong outspoken member in Dr. Wafa Sultan. She is, without a doubt, filled with passion and righteous indignation, fully justified. Joe absolutely loves this woman. Watch how she takes it to the “talking heads” representing Islam:
And again, with the strength of all her convictions, she puts an imam and a talking head in their place. Strong women will shape the future:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ftb6pA6OlJI
Hats off to Ms. Sultan. Both of these videos are several years old now. A brief history of her early life here.
SUNDAY SERMON
What is your impression of behaviour on college / university campuses in the West?
Three free speech advocates, Milo Yiannopoulos, Stephen Crowder, and Christina Hoff Sommers attempt to reach the crowd at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.
This is recent – 25th April, 2016.
The event is raucous, sporadic, pointed, and a slap in the face to political correctness.
The hecklers, the “social justice warriors”, the absolute lunatics, all do their very best to disrupt the event.
Unfortunately for them all, this terrific trio handles them with ease.
A wonderful way to spend an hour and a half.
Grab your favorite libation, relax, take a deep breath. Here is “The Triggering: Has Political Correctness Gone Too Far?”:
WEATHER (OR NOT)
This week in Vernon was fantastic. Cool clear nights. Only two overcast days with the rest warm clear and sunny.
The chance of continued warm sunny days is very high.
I don’t know what we did to deserve such a wonderful Spring.
My suspicion is it has nothing to do with the humans.
Joe (Grinning) Mekanic
p.s. Ramirez hits it out of the park again, from Investor’s Business Daily –
