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Let that be a lesson to us all.

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Borders are in the news as never before. After millions of young, Muslim, and mostly male refugees flooded into the European Union last year from the war-torn Middle East, a popular revolt arose against the so-called Schengen Area agreements, which give free rights of movement within Europe. The concurrent suspension of most E.U. external controls on immigration and asylum rendered the open-borders pact suddenly unworkable. The European masses are not racists, but they now apparently wish to accept Middle Eastern immigrants only to the degree that these newcomers arrive legally and promise to become European in values and outlook—protocols that the E.U. essentially discarded decades ago as intolerant. Europeans are relearning that the continent’s external borders mark off very different approaches to culture and society from what prevails in North Africa or the Middle East.

…

Borders—and the fights to keep or change them—are as old as agricultural civilization. In ancient Greece, most wars broke out over border scrubland. The contested upland eschatia offered little profit for farming but possessed enormous symbolic value for a city-state to define where its own culture began and ended. The self-acclaimed “citizen of the cosmos” Socrates nonetheless fought his greatest battle as a parochial Athenian hoplite in the ranks of the phalanx at the Battle of Delium—waged over the contested borderlands between Athens and Thebes. Fifth-century Athenians such as Socrates envisioned Attica as a distinct cultural, political, and linguistic entity, within which its tenets of radical democracy and maritime-based imperialism could function quite differently from the neighboring oligarchical agrarianism at Thebes. Attica in the fourth century BC built a system of border forts to protect its northern boundary.

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From the late 1940s to the mid-1950s, black youth unemployment was slightly less than or equal to white youth unemployment. Today, black youth unemployment is at least double that of white youth unemployment. Would anyone try to explain the difference with the argument that there was less racial discrimination during the ’40s and ’50s than today?

Some argue that it is the “legacy of slavery” and societal racism that now explain the social pathology in many black neighborhoods. Today’s black illegitimacy rate is about 73 percent. When I was a youngster, during the 1940s, illegitimacy was around 15 percent.

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What is going on here? Put simply, what’s happened is that the official unemployment number has grown increasingly useless as a reliable economic indicator, for the simple reason that millions of people have simply quit looking for a job. Since the unemployment rate is based only on those who are actively looking for work, the more people who drop out of the labor force, the lower the unemployment rate becomes.

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We all know that there are plenty of U.S. weapons the Chinese military would like to get its hands on. The Arsenal of Democracy churns out some of the best, most technologically advanced and versatile weapons in service anywhere. China is willing to steal American military technology to help advance its own military research and development programs.

The United States on the other hand…well, there is probably not a single Chinese weapon that, in a direct comparison, is better than its American equivalent and that probably won’t change for another twenty years. So if we want to talk about Chinese weapons for the American military, we have to think about holes in current American capabilities. There aren’t many, but here are Chinese weapons that might make the American military a little better.

What do they know that you don’t know?

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History is apparently subject to revision without notice and without basis at the Associated Press.

In an outrageous report primarily dedicated to the notion that Donald Trump’s concerns about the November general elections possibly being rigged thanks to potential voter fraud “challenges (the) U.S. Democratic system” — but a whole host of leftist-inspired rigging efforts apparently don’t — Vivian Salama at the Associated Press informed readers in a later paragraph that Al Gore, according to “several post-mortem reviews,” “would have won” the 2000 presidential election if “undervotes” had all been counted.

Then maybe he’d not have gotten fat and would have stayed poor in the White House (like the Clintons) and not made hundreds of millions of dollars in ‘green energy’ scams.

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Lion of the Blogosphere explains it all to you.

Thorstein Veblen explained that the more prestigious classes manipulate people while the less prestigious classes manipulate things. Thorstein Veblen called the prestigious class the “leisure class” because they didn’t have to do any unprestigious work. They are very similar to what I would call the value transference class, as the leisure class let other people do the boring value creation work, and transferred the wealth created to themselves so they could do more prestigious stuff with their lives.

In modern society, there are now three levels of prestige….

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There would be much rejoicing. Just sayin’.

Steve Sailer looks at the Trump phenomenon.

We live in an era when billionaires seem compelled to buy artworks that few would like unless they had been apprised of the theory. Tom Wolfe pointed out in his 1975 history of modern art, The Painted Word, that the great creative talents of the New York art world were less the painters of the era—Pollock, de Kooning, and Warhol—than the critics—Greenberg, Rosenberg, and Steinberg—who had come up with the verbal justifications for why the paintings were worth a lot of money.

…

Today, Trump doesn’t bother to read up on the intricate reasons he ought to buy, say, Damien Hirst’s diamond-encrusted skull sculpture For the Love of God for $100 million like an ordinary, decent plutocrat would who respects the values of his age.

Trump instead would rather buy an ocean-cliff golf course because it’s beautiful. He’d tell you that Hirst’s skullpture is ugly.

And he’d be right. Per Cochrane:

You adopt political ideas that are obviously stupid—because only a truly refined person can understand their subtle justifications…. Any lout might think that race exists and partly explains what people are like—only a sophisticate could steadfastly deny his lying eyes.

Joe Bob Briggs takes on the election.

Morning resolve! Before they’ve even microwaved their second Jimmy Dean Sausage Sandwich, they know that this will be the day of reckoning. They will fire up the Kia Sedona and take the long way to work, giving them more time to think about the epic 1,500 words that will make the difference between chaos and civilization.

Yes, they tell their wives, It’s time for my “Donald Trump is a Dickwad” column.

…

\I’m talking about the guy who enrolled at McNeese State in the nineties and fell into deep reverence for Professor Rusty Naugahyde, the legendary teacher whose Newswriting 312 workshop was almost as inspirational as Lou “The News Is Sacred” Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Read it. And watch the video.

For sure, Hamburger U. will give you more usable job skills than a Gender Studies major.

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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Campaign appearances by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump have incited violence, flag burnings, and rage-fueled debates, yet at a Trump pit stop at a Colorado campus on Friday protesters and Trump fans found something they could agree on — a dislike of Hillary Clinton.

As chants of “Lock Her Up” were repeated by a row of Trump supporters outside the event – many anti-Trump protesters joined in.

It’s a Consensus[tm]! The science is settled!

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When I was thinking about these Wet Smelly Dog Days yesterday afternoon, a phrase popped into my head: “Running with the hare and hunting with the hounds”. I believe it’s a British expression, and it refers to someone who wants two opposite things at the same time. An American equivalent is probably “To have your cake and eat it too.”

It came to mind again when I was moderating comments on the post with two videos about three leftist women in Germany who had been raped and/or groped by “refugees”. These women are devotees of the “Welcome Refugees” movement, and loathe “right-wing extremists” who want to curtail immigration. Yet they are feminists, too, and dedicated Social Justice Warriors against Germany’s “rape culture.” The two different zealotries clash when their adherents experience the seamier side of cultural enrichment, driving them into a state of cognitive dissonance.

And yet so many on the Left do this compulsively. Hollywood stars who jet off on their Gulfstreams to conferences on climate change, people who protest for ‘affordable housing’ — somewhere else, there are innumerable examples; Portland, Oregan, ‘the whitest town in America‘, is a prime example.

Steve Sailer is not afraid to ask the easy questions.

Hawaii is a reliably Democratic state in Presidential elections so it is seldom exposed to the kind of media criticism given Republican states, such as in Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas.

But, wow, in the 21st Century, Hawaii sure is an underachiever, especially compared to the high hopes invested in it in the 1950s and 1960s. For example, in the Urban Institute’s study of federal NAEP test scores by state shown below, Hawaii’s students do worst of all 50 states when adjusted for demographics. Hawaii’s racial mix isn’t that different, as first glance, from Silicon Valley’s, but they don’t test like Silicon Valley kids.

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This imbalance of campaign cash—Trump’s shoestring campaign struggling to subsist on less than half of Clinton’s vast fortune—is precisely the sort of “inequality” that Democrats and even the occasional misguided Republican often propose to deal with by means of government redistribution of wealth. A 2013 New York Times editorial about the New York State campaign finance system, for example, said “the most crucial reform of all” is “public financing of elections, which is essential to encouraging competition for legislative offices and reducing the influence of big money on the state’s politics.”

The usual voices supporting taxpayer-funded political campaigns as a way to get special interest money out of the system have fallen strangely silent now that Donald Trump is the one who is getting outspent, and now that Hillary Clinton is the one being aided by “the influence of big money.”

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Trump’s campaign is actually an excellent counter-example to the famous myth ‘whoever has the most money wins the election’, which ought to have been buried when Michael Huffington ran for the Senate in California in 1994.

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Europe is not where most people would search for the common ancestor of chimpanzees, gorillas and humans. But that’s exactly where one team of anthropologists thinks the grandfather of the African apes came from.

Jim Goad speaks for me.

Hillary Clinton is precisely the kind of woman I hate. Yea, she is the word “cunt” made flesh. I despise her not because “society” has indoctrinated me into hating any woman who isn’t barefoot and pregnant. Our society isn’t that way, anyway—quite the opposite, in fact. It’s a sick joke to think that modern popular culture is anything short of worshipful toward women and disparaging toward men. No, my reasons for secretly wishing that Hillary Clinton gets bitten by a tsetse fly is because she reminds me of all the truly awful women I’ve known in my life.

And that about sums it up.

Read it.

Environmentalism is a religion. Here’s the proof.

Read it.

I can vouch for #3 and #7.

I found #8, on the other hand, a piece of cake.

And I disagree entirely with #25.

Don Boudreaux, a Real Economist, speaks truth to stupid.

Here’s a comment, in full, from one “Bob” on this Marginal Revolution post by Tyler Cowen on Tyler’s receipt of Joel Mokyr’s new book, A Culture of Growth:

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

Bob likely believes that, with this single pointed sentence, he makes a profound point – a point that causes all but the most philistine of readers to pause and say “Omigosh!  Bob is so insightful!  Economic growth is cancerous.  We mindlessly bow to it – accept it – demand it even! – unaware that it will eventually destroy us.”

In fact, Bob is painfully sophomoric.  The reason is that the case for economic growth is not and never has been “growth for the sake of growth” (although misinformed best-selling authors such as Douglas Rushkoff continue to insist otherwise).  Instead, the case for growth is this: growth for the sake of human betterment.  The case for economic growth is founded on the fact that it improves human lives, and especially the lives of those who are currently worse off.

Read it.

The poll looks at the upcoming race to replace retiring Democrat Barbara Boxer in the United States Senate. Because of this top-two primary system, voters are left with two Democrats, Attorney General Kamala Harris and Rep. Loretta Sanchez.

Harris is better looking. We’ve already got enough ugly Senators. (Yeah, Mitch McConnell, I’m lookin’ at YOU.)

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So who cares?

We often hear that science has proved that race does not exist. But I alway ask, Don’t the same arguments about blurry boundaries and the like also apply to the proposition that species does not exist?

Ah.

Then I cite confusing cases regarding species that have big money implications under the Endangered Species Act.

Aha.

Are dogs, coyotes, and wolves one species or separate species? What about red wolves?

‘Dog lives matter?’

Read it.

In Dances With Wolves, the teepee scene where the Lakota are discussing what to do about Kevin Costner (not the first such discussion, I’m sure) is one of the most entertaining I’ve ever seen, and almost makes up for the rest of that wretched movie.

Steve Sailer looks at crime, unlike most at the DNC.

Trump’s carefully documented Republican convention speech came as an unwelcome intrusion into this new elite consensus against law and order, which helps explain the agonized yelps in response to Trump’s “dystopian” picture.

The ThoughtCrime of ‘noticing’.

During the mayoral terms of the liberal Republican social justice warrior John Lindsay (1966–73), the body count soared to 986 in 1968. As the WASP mayor fought for the rights of blacks and Puerto Ricans against the largely Irish NYPD, the cops retreated to the doughnut shop.

It would be nice if policemen didn’t tend to be divas who sulk and slack off when political leaders demonize cops as racist murderers and encourage black rage, but that’s the way they are.

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Day one of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia was all about healing, but the patients in need of therapy seemed to prefer their condition to treatment. The procedural portion of the day was devoted to an airing of grievances among Sanders supporters while the night was designed to provide them with catharsis and a means by which they could reconcile their remaining objections to Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. To facilitate that purification process, Clinton brought in the biggest progressive guns she could: Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders himself. Their performance was, to say the least, underwhelming, and it underscores the extent to which their reputations are utterly undeserved.

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There were numerous reports last night that it was impossible to find any American flags displayed in the Democratic convention hall, even though Michelle Obama conspiciously reversed her 2008 position that she was proud of her country for the first time, to saying now that America was always great. (Or maybe the text said she thought America was always grate?) Anyway, while the American flag was missing, apparently the Palestinian flag showed up….

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If you are watching the Democratic National Convention at home, you may notice that most any time a new speaker talks about why we should unify behind Hillary Clinton, or merely say her name out loud, there is a minority chorus of boos emanating from the side of the stage. That’s about 30 percent of the California delegation, and I just spent an hour sitting next to them, and boy do some of them despise Hillary Clinton.

Who could hate Hillary Clinton? She’s America’s sweetheart!

“I was lucky a couple of weeks ago: I shot a squirrel to bring home for meat,” said Brian Seligman, a former Marine on Social Security disability from a car wreck, who recently moved from the Los Angeles area to Victorville. Seligman says his wife can’t find a job, and when the food stamps run out at the end of the month he needs to find creative way to feed his children.

“This isn’t just my family,” he said, voice welling with emotion, tears beginning to pool in his eyes. “There are 15,300,000 children STARVING in this country, and this woman wears a jacket worth more than I get in a year, while she goes out talking about how she’s going to blow up other people’s children for another trillion dollars. My kids are dying and she wants to murder other people’s kids with my money!”

This is a Democrat? He sure sounds like a Republican to me.

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Tell the truth: Who hasn’t wanted to do that? Although I would have thought it more proper to pull the gun on the parent.

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Jim Goad does a reality check.

If you were to note every manmade item within your field of vision, chances are that nearly every last gadget and trinket was invented by a white man. According to Charles Murray’s book Human Accomplishment, whites have historically dominated the fields of physics, math, chemistry, medicine, biology, and technology.

What’s grossly ironic is the specter of people using white computers hooked up to white electricity sent across white power grids to criticize the very white people who made their whining possible. Even worse is the ubiquity of white people pejoratively using the word “white people” as if it somehow doesn’t apply to them. That right there is a collective mental illness for the ages.

White technology has doubled lifespans across the globe and yanked several human subgroups out of the Stone Age. This makes certain white people feel guilty. It also apparently makes lots of nonwhite people resentful.

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A ringing endorsement. What else do you need?

Can’t say that I blame him God knows I wouldn’t vote for my brother for President, the communist….

Read it.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it. And watch the video.

Making students learn to execute similar operations using three different kinds of notation – as in the case of exponents, logarithms and roots – is a bit like asking them to learn to say the same thing in three different languages for no good reason. With such counterintuitive and redundant standardised notation systems, it’s easy to understand why many students become overwhelmed by mathematics and choose to pursue fields where complex calculations aren’t necessary. This video by Grant Sanderson, who makes films under the moniker 3Blue1Brown, looks at how expressing exponents, logarithms and roots could be made simpler by using one elegant notation system, and makes a broader case for how maths could be made more accessible by developing cleaner – and perhaps even artful – notation.

An interesting notion.

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When Trump, Sr. speaks unscripted and un-telepromptered at his campaign rallies, he speaks the way that blue-collar white concrete pourers and sheetrock hangers would talk to each other on their lunch break. And this is why the elites hate Donald Trump, Sr., because the elites hate white proles. The adjectives they assign to Trump, Sr. like “racist,” “misogynist,” “xenophobic,” “narcissistic,” “autocratic,” are politically correct ways that the elites slam prole-white speaking patterns. But when prole whites see Trump speak, instead of seeing the evil that elites see, they merely see someone who sounds just like themselves, someone they can relate to. Unfortunately for elites, the proles far outnumber the elites at the voting booths. As Trump, Sr. might say, it’s not even close.

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Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

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Recently, economists at Purdue and the University of Copenhagen made a clever attempt to clear up the question. They looked at Danish manufacturing companies where overseas sales increased unexpectedly because of changes in foreign demand or transportation costs between 1996 and 2006. These constituted a set of natural experiments. At firms where exports spiked, there was suddenly a lot more work to do, a lot more things to sell. This put the squeeze on employees, who became measurably more productive — but also started to have more health problems.

“The medical literature typically finds that people who work longer hours have worse health outcomes — but we try to distinguish between causality and correlation,” said Chong Xiang, an economics professor at Purdue and co-author on the paper, along with David Hummels and Jakob Munch. A draft was released this week by the National Bureau for Economic Research.

So come be a slacker and vote for Hillary, who will give you free stuff and tax those assholes who expect you to work for a living.

This kind of study could only be done in a place such as Denmark, where the single-payer health care system keeps track of everyone’s doctor’s visits and drug purchases.

One of the best arguments against single-payer health care systems I’ve ever seen.

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The proponents of the War on Sugar – those fighting to eliminate —  or at least sharply reduce the amount of – sugar from the American diet have painted sugar as bad – have made sugar into a villain – because it is  too popular – people like it and, in the opinion of the anti-sugar advocates,  eat too much of it. We should additionally note that sugars are one of the carbohydrates that the body breaks down into glucose – also known as blood sugar. This illogic – sugar is bad because we eat too much of it —  is then used to vilify food producers who use sugar in their products – positioned as unnecessary, too much, wrong kind – an endless attack on a substance that is not only innocent, but is a necessary part of the human diet and the main source of quick energy for most higher life forms on earth.