The Long Life

Posted on April 12, 2016 by Luke Ford

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* Mexicans live a long time.

Isn’t that because they’re shorter on average? Short people’s hearts don’t have to work as hard as tall people’s. Gravity is relentless.

Oh, and a lot a black folks are huge, both vertically and horizontally.

The less there is of someone, the less there is to go wrong.

* Cocaine is “cracked” from its base (cocaine HCL) to yield crack cocaine, which vaporizes at a low temperature and is much more readily absorbed by the lungs and mucosa, therefore giving its inhaler a very direct dose to the brain via the pulmonary veins and carotid artery. It’s a much quicker and more efficient delivery system, so you get a much bigger bang for your buck.

People say it’s discriminatory to distinguish between crack and powder cocaine, but we distinguish distilled from non-distilled beverages. We also distinguish between 50cc scooters and superbikes. Frankly put, one is more dangerous than the other.

Personally, I don’t think cocaine would be a big deal if people only chewed it like the Andean Indians, but I guess that isn’t good enough for some of us.

But I’m sure you’re right about the bankers. You can’t exactly function as a rational decision maker when you’re a cokehead. If bankers abused any drug, it would most likely be alcohol to dial down the pressure at the end of the day. Cocaine is really a pretty worthless drug for creativity and focus. If anything, in small doses it might have some beneficial effect on physical performance, i.e. staying alert and invigorated during a forced march or grueling ball game. But like most drugs, its cognitive benefits are dubious at best.

* Germans and their predilection for nudism. They quoted one older Eastern German woman who’d been baring it all for decades. She said something to the effect that Communism was better because since reunification there were so many fat people it wasn’t fun to get naked any more.

* The quality of your health care system is only the third most important factor in longevity. The first is public health systems, like water and sanitation (that’s the big one). The second is the habits of the populace, i.e. what they eat and how much activity they get. Only after that comes the health care system.

We’re paying for heart surgeries on people who should have gone another twenty years before they had problems because they have bad habits. If the Mexicans had clean air and water they’d probably live longer than we do.

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Hospitals Held Hostage

Posted on April 12, 2016 by Luke Ford

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* I’m actually not surprised that healthcare access matters less for the poor. For life-threatening matters, they get access to an emergency room, regardless of whether they “have access to healthcare” in the sense of insurance coverage.

My wife is a nurse and she regales me daily with stories of non-English speakers going to the ER because of very mild fevers or injuries (their pain level is always “diez”), the drug seekers that know that complaining of abdominal pain guarantees Dilaudid, the diabetics that are back in the hospital shortly after having their feet amputated because they’re still not following an appropriate diet, and patients that don’t even pretend to listen while they’re being given instructions about how to use meds, make lifestyle changes, etc to keep them from being back in the hospital.

The hospitals are essentially held hostage by them because they are required to report patient feedback, and if satisfaction scores are poor enough they risk losing federal funding. The “patients” treat nurses like room service – “Nurse, could you get my guests some refreshments?” is an actual quote from a drug seeker that was faking to get opiates – and don’t make any effort to take care of themselves.

These are exactly the kind of people that need social pressure to not be obese, or a drug addict or commit whatever other form of slow suicide.

* A white guy I know in Manhattan is very bright, in his mid-60s, has a lot of physical and psychological challenges (translation: he takes about 15 prescription drugs a day), and hasn’t made a penny of income in nearly 20 years. Yet he gets by. Rent stabilization keeps his apartment (which he’s had since the 1970s) cheap; a disability check gives him enough to pay for the internet and keep him in Subway sandwiches, about all he’s interested in eating; and city medical services pay for most of his doctor appointments and drugs.

It isn’t an enviable life — a new set of underpants or a new shirt is a major expense for him — and he doesn’t even take much advantage of the free cultural life the city offers. But he’s living in his own place in a non-scuzzy Manhattan neighborhood, he’s feeding himself adequately, he’s horsing around on the web, he’s getting his medical needs looked after, and he’s doing it all on basically zero income.

A factor I don’t think I’ve seen anyone raise about life in NYC: you don’t need a car to live decently. That’s a huge chunk of change saved. And it probably doesn’t hurt to be doing more routine walking than most Americans do either.

I sometimes wonder why my acquaintance doesn’t move someplace more friendly and less overwhelming than NYC, but he loves the city, and — who knows — maybe he wouldn’t be able to do as well for himself elsewhere.

(Milking the city’s social system for all it’s worth is something that thousands of New Yorkers are devoted to and often very accomplished at, but that’s another story.)

Posted in Health, Medicine, New York | Comments Off on Hospitals Held Hostage

Study Reveals NFL Players with Low Wonderlic (IQ) Scores More Likely to Be Arrested

Posted on April 12, 2016 by Luke Ford

This is no surprise to anyone acquainted with IQ’s predictive ability.

REPORT: In a new NFL draft-related study released Tuesday, it was revealed there may be a correlation between players scoring poorly on the Wonderlic test and running into off-field issues that result in an arrest.

According to ESPN.com’s Kevin Seifert, a group of college professors studied draft data from 2002 to 2003 and found that those who score below the mean on the Wonderlic are twice as likely to get arrested as those who score above it.

Per Seifert, University of Georgia associate professor Brian Hoffman believes there is some credence to the findings, but he also feels as though teams must do their due diligence on every prospect regardless:

The effects are relatively small. But it’s important here because when making multimillion-dollar decisions, a small effect can be very meaningful. A player’s getting a four-game suspension can be a big deal, competitively and financially.

[…]

If I were a decision-maker, I wouldn’t view getting into trouble as a zero-sum game. You check off that they’ve been in trouble and know what that has meant for others on a percentage basis. And then there’s a factor that would make the likelihood a little worse: If they score lower on the Wonderlic. Really, that tells you there’s even more work to do there.

ESPN analyst and former Philadelphia Eagles director of pro personnel Louis Riddick also chimed in on the results and opined that numbers cannot accurately predict whether a player will run into off-field problems, according to Seifert:

Everyone is looking for ways to predict future performance, whether it is through three-cone tests, shuttle drills or anything else. Then they assume that these guys have it figured out once you get them, and they don’t. That’s where the focus should be, helping them be better people and players, rather than hiring a psychologist to tell you which players are more or less likely to get arrested.

Because the reality is, you just don’t know, and you can’t know when it comes to human nature. It’s so hard. You can talk to everyone, from the friends to the coaches to the gas-station attendants, and so many times you’re literally just holding on and hoping you’ve done your best evaluation. Human development off the field is something that is lagging in this league and has to be ramped up and taken more seriously.

While the sample size is small and the study focuses solely on arrests and not other potential character issues, it could prove to be of some use to NFL teams.

Early-round draft picks require massive financial commitments from franchises, so it is paramount they work out since mistakes can set teams back for years.

Off-field failures are a surefire way to derail a promising career, and while some prospects enter the league with a history of such issues, teams are often willing to take a chance on their talent alone.

The Wonderlic study isn’t likely to change that approach, but with teams obsessing over athletic data compiled at the NFL Scouting Combine, it isn’t unreasonable to think that data predicting the likelihood of character shortcomings could become commonplace moving forward.

Posted in Crime, IQ | Comments Off on Study Reveals NFL Players with Low Wonderlic (IQ) Scores More Likely to Be Arrested

Is Trump Scots-Irish?

Posted on April 12, 2016 by Luke Ford

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* Trump’s people have a lot in common with the FDR coalition and more generally with the old Democratic party, he gets urban ethnics, backwoods folk and Southerners on the same page.

* But what did FDR ever win?

* Does southeast England have a 5-10 IQ point advantage over the rest of England? The prosperity of southeast England and New England would support this.

* Anyone in the UK, who has both talent and ambition, knows that moving to London & the Southeast corner of the UK is a good move because that is where,
(a), the HQs of most big companies /organisations are
(b) that’s where the money is because that is where the large Government budgets are distributed .
( c) A disproportionate volume of trade is centred on London/Southeast because it’s only a short (20 miles) trip across the English Channel to the large European markets.
Thus, this corner of the UK has a huge natural advantage and, yes, it will accrue a higher than average IQ pool, not from its own populace but by talented people moving there.
A similar effect happened to Edinburgh after 1999. The the Scottish Parliament was re-established … and with its own Budget, companies and lobbyists flocked there because they wanted a piece of the government pie.
House & office prices soared as more talented and high IQ folk moved there from other places.

* How many smart people have ever gone to Cambridge University?

* So, Trump’s granny was a Wee Free? That’s hilarious – they’re the least Trumpish people on the planet.

One of Thatcher’s Lord Chancellors was a Wee Free – Lord McKay. He used to shave on a Saturday night to avoid breaking the Sabbath. IIRC he was eventually excommunicated for attending the funeral of a Roman Catholic friend.

* Trump’s just a New Yorker, I don’t think it is more complicated than that.

* Trump will have a serious problem with Upper Midwestern Scandi/German types. His personalty will grate them to no end, easily to the point of them not listening to his ideas. His personality is everything that they despise, especially from East Coasters.

I know these people. They are good, trusting and industrious; however, they hate (and I mean deep-in-their bones hate) cocky arrogance, at least from other whites. They can tolerate quiet confidence – very quiet – but anything beyond that steams them. (A business professor of mine once told me that the Japanese and Minnesotans liked doing business with one another because they had similar ideas on personal manners, i.e. their great fear was offending each other.)

Also, most of these people live in very white areas so they’ll still vote on obsolete Left-Right politics, which means that not only will Trump’s personality offend them, his very moderate political ideas will make him not a true “conservative.” They haven’t gotten the Lee Kuan Yew’s message yet.

* If this election were in a Troloppe novel, it would have all been planned long in advance in someone’s Scottish estate. Oh wait, it was.

* If there’s anyone who’s an expert on Appalachian life, it would be Yoni Applebaum.

This is just a way of tarring Trump by association with toothless hillbillies and KKK’ism:

“[Trump is like] other politicians who have projected dominance, flaunted intolerance, promised pugilism, and fanned racial and ethnic resentments.” [I think that pretty well describes Obama but I don’t think that’s who he has in mind.]

It’s really not worth giving pieces like this serious consideration. They might as well just skip all the pseudo-sophisticated analysis and just type over and over “Warning: Trump is a bad man. Trump is a bad man.” This is like the mirror image of the puff pieces written about Obama 8 years ago, which would start from the conclusion that Obama was the Bringer of Hope and Change and work backward to explain why that was. Not very far under the paper thin layer of intellectual filigree is a very simple black and white view of the world.

* If you can’t trust a man called Yoni Applebaum to tell the truth about a White man who doesn’t bend over for the Narrative Gatekeepers, who can you trust?

* The accusations of “Nazi” sympathies in Trump shows how illiterate our media and left wing political class has become. The word “Nazi” has become like the word “fascist”, and they both mean the same thing in modern discourse: “something someone on the left does not like”. But that is why I always enjoy calling someone on the Left, “fascist” or even “Nazi”. It confuses them and even renders them speechless at times. Calling them “Stalinist” might be considered a compliment, so I avoid that one.

Whatever his background, I see Trump as a pre-1965 American who simply looked around and said: “What the hell is going on here … in immigration, in defense spending, in trade” whatever, all things no one ever truly debates. And those are questions the political class, the media industrial complex, the foreign policy institutions, the bureaucratic class do not want asked. Even to raise these questions is to invite accusations of “nazi” sympathies or even insanity. Why is that? That is another question no one asks. Why is a debate on NATO somehow the equivalent of calling for the abolition of the First Amendment? Does no one find this odd?

Posted in America | Comments Off on Is Trump Scots-Irish?

TEL AVIV DIARY: APARTHEID IN THE MATERNITY ROOM

Posted on April 12, 2016 by Luke Ford

I don’t care if this sounds awful, it makes sense to me. When a woman is giving birth, she probably doesn’t want to be cared for by out-groups. Why shouldn’t any mother be able to seek out the care she wants? Whatever happened to freedom of association?

Israel shows us the way forward. It is proud country run for the benefit of its majority. The West can learn from that.

Newsweek: It started on Tuesday morning, April 5, with an investigative report on Israeli radio news. Israeli hospitals were accommodating Jewish mothers who wished to give birth in separate rooms, rooms without any Israeli Arabs.

This was taking place even though it violated the official policy of the Ministry of Health and the officially stated policy of the administrations of each of the hospitals.

The evidence was undeniable. Tapes were recorded of women calling the hospitals in question to ask whether it would be possible for them to not be placed in rooms with non-Jews. In all but two cases, the women were answered in the affirmative.

A public storm ensued. To date, Israeli hospitals have been one of the central institutions known for their integration, where a large number of Arab-Israeli doctors and nurses serve together with their Jewish-Israeli counterparts—and where no one questions the fact that Arab and Jewish Israelis are treated and served equally.

This public controversy might have been a five-minute story had it not been for a Knesset member from the right-wing Bayit Yehudi party. Bezalel Smotrich was unable to contain himself. He tweeted that after giving birth, his wife wanted quiet and did not want to be in a noisy room where Arab parents might hold a hafla (a rowdy party of celebration).

Not to be outdone, his wife gave a radio interview and said she does not want her newborn Jewish infant touched by non-Jewish hands. Then, Smotrich, not wanting to be outdone himself, stated that he does not want his newborn baby to be in the same room with an Arab infant who a few years from now will try to kill his child.

Posted in Israel | Comments Off on TEL AVIV DIARY: APARTHEID IN THE MATERNITY ROOM