RebelMan

iCloud, iOS5 and the iRabbi

2011-11-19T10:54:00.001Z

An odd snippet: opening calendar on the iPad (original) sometimes produces an empty month view for the current month. It's not that there aren't any appointments, just that the iPad doesn't remember them. Tapping calendars and re-syncing doesn't help either. But changing to another month does; then all the appointments return!

Another odd snippet: I think I've now got iMessage coordinated across my iPad and iPhone. Previously the devices were using different Apple IDs (I have two, like most Apple devotees) so there was no coordination between the two loves of my life. Logging out of my iTunes ID on my iPhone and logging back in using my me.com ID in the message settings pane seemed to work.

Most people I know who have moved to iOS5 have had problems. Some so bad they're cursing Apple publicly. This isn't the Apple we used to know that's done this, that has abused its 'It just works' philosophy. Something has changed. And not for the better.

I say bring back Steve Jobs, never mind the wrath of the Rabbi: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/steve-jobs/8899737/Chief-Rabbi-blames-Apple-for-helping-create-selfish-society.html.

Paying for nothing

2011-11-09T10:42:00.001Z

Internet service outage again today. Branson's name means nothing to this customer any more. I wonder if a business school thesis has yet been written about the brand value ups and downs of a now elderly Virgin.

I also wonder why an Internet provider has not arisen that stops charging its customers when its service fails? With only one realistic provider to my house, the one with a fibre optic cable to the door has an effective monopoly, capitalism can't really be expected to work, I suppose.

Is Merv in charge of the NHS, too?

2011-11-08T09:41:00.001Z

Doctors appointment this morning. A Text arrived at 4pm yesterday confirming it. Wow! The NHS is arriving in the twenty first century, thought I.

I was wrong, of course.

This morning the receptionist told me they'd been trying to contact me all yesterday to say the appointment was cancelled.

Err, No, says I. You confirmed the appointment by SMS late yesterday afternoon.

They squeezed me in, I'm glad to say, but the learning point was missed: confidence in their systems had taken another little knock.

In a complex society, if people don't have confidence in the mechanisms that keep it going - monetary systems, justice systems, health systems, taxation systems, defence systems etc. - then they won't abide by those mechanisms, and those who do will quickly become disadvantaged.

It's like with money, Merv. If you just print it whenever it suits you then people will lose confidence in it. It will become increasingly worthless.

Confidence. It matters. It really matters.

iCloud conversion

2011-11-07T17:04:00.001Z

Yes it's in Beta, yes it's a risk, but I jumped into iCloud over the weekend. And without suitable wet weather gear, it turned out.

It meant purchasing OSX Lion for an old MBP, a RAM upgrade to cope (well done, Crucial) and transferring HMRC's Basic PAYE onto a Windows 7 PC, but otherwise it went ok. Not the smooth transition Apple's prices should facilitate, but better than the average Windows upgrade.

The main problem? Intermittent calendar entries on my iPad. Sometimes ok, sometimes nothing. WTF?

Google: no help.
Apple website: no help.

The reason I eventually sussed: my iTunes account is not my MobileMe account. The emails IDs they use are different.

Apple says this is ok, but doesn't explain what might happen. In my case my iPad had set up its iCloud account (in Settings) with my iTunes account email, rather than my MobileMe account. It recognised my MobileMe account, though, via my email settings, and this was also set to sync calendar items. This was probably the cause of the iPad calendar app behaving erratically.

The solution? Delete the 'iTunes' iCloud account in the iPad's 'Settings' and create a new one with my MobileMe email address.

I can't be the only person this has happened to. Can I?

Illegally debasing Sterling

2011-10-20T09:03:00.001+01:00

The Bank of England's primary monetary objective is to maintain price stability. This is clearly stated in the Bank of England Act 1998.

Money is one of humankind's great inventions, but it relies crucially on confidence. History - across civilisations, across the ages and across the globe - has confirmed time and again that printing money undermines price stability. However spun, printing money destroys confidence and discourages universally beneficial behaviours; behaviours such as deferring satisfaction and planning for the future. It also steals from people who have been prudent, not least pensioners who are ill equipped to defend themselves. "Inflation violates contracts and property rights; it creates uncertainty and mistrust. Its costs – economic as well as moral – are far greater than its benefits" (http://www.cityam.com/news-and-analysis/allister-heath/inflation-undemocratic-stealth-tax).

Following the Bank of England's printing of £200bn in 2009 inflation rose and Sterling depreciated. Inflation over the two years between July 2009 and July 2011, as measured for example by the RPI, has averaged about 4.9%pa, nearly two and a half times the BoE's 2%pa target.

Despite it's own explanation of 'Quantitive Easing' (http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/education/inflation/qe/video.htm) the BoE has not, since 2009, taken the steps necessary to meet its price stability objective.

The law is very clear: the BoE's primary focus must be price stability. Economic policy is the responsibility of politicians, people who are accountable to the electorate. The BoE is not democratically accountable. The law does not permit it to put price stability second to any other consideration.

Inflation is still rising fast but the BoE decided in October 2011 to print yet more money, another £75bn, ostensibly for economic policy purposes; to encourage economic growth. This, despite the 1998 Act specifically prohibiting the BoE from putting economic policy ahead of monetary stability.

Parliament must bring the Governor of the Bank of England to account for his organisation's failure to meet its primary monetary objective and, unless he and the MPC recommit publicly to carrying out their statutory duty, they must be replaced by people who will.

Mervyn Nutkin learns QE

2011-09-22T15:44:00.001+01:00

Early autumn:
Worker Nutkin: I'm hungry, I need more acorns.
Guru Nutkin: There's another oak tree shedding acorns over there, look.
WN: That's too far and, anyway, Safety Elf says there might be foxes about.
Parliament Nutkin: Vote for me and I'll make sure there are enough acorns here.
GN: (frowns) That would be a good trick, if you could do it.
PN: I CAN do it (stamps foot). Mervyn, tell them.
Mervyn Nutkin: First, Parliament makes everyone give TheTreasury Nutkin half of all their acorns. Because TheTreasury then has lots of acorns he can give one to anyone who is hungry.
WN: (cheerfully) So I don't have to collect any, I just go to TheTreasury?
MN: (doubtfully) Well, yes, but you must resume collecting when you're feeling better.
WN: Oh yes, I'll definitely do that (trying to remember what 'resume' means and uncrossing his paws in order to vote for PN).

...Later that same year:
WN: I'm hungry again, I want more acorns but Parliament's silly rules say I can't have any more. I shan't be voting for him again.
PN: (whispering menacingly to MN) Remind me, who appoints you?
MN: (thinking fast) If Worker gets hungry then Recession Fox might start sniffing around and we'll all be eaten, so Parliament must relax his rules.
GN: Didn't this happen before with disastrous.... (BBC Nutkin, frightened by PN's menace, starts making a lot of noise, drowning out the rest).
TN: (vaguely remembering a history lesson) If we give out more acorns now, will we have enough left for winter?
MN: If we don't give out more acorns now then Worker will be too hungry to collect any more. But if he's well fed now then he'll collect lots more and we'll all be happy for ever and ever
(MN knows he's too old to be doing with crossing and uncrossing paws. Meanwhile, WN coughs nervously wondering whether he should mention that keeping his Furrybook account up to date prevents him from collecting many nuts these days)
BBC Nutkin: (now sitting on GN) So, eating more nuts now is really investing in the future, easing this 'nut quantity dilemma'?
MN: Exactly! 'Quantitive Easing.' TheTreasury, can we give BBC that nut we held back from her, for being so clever?
TN: (handing over the extra nut) QE it is, then. What clever nutkins we all are!

The next spring...
Chinese Squirrel Wun: Nice little plot those UK squirrels had here.
Chinese Squirrel Tuw: That local fox is far too fat to catch us.

Oh No! It's the Ninkey Nonk.

2011-09-05T11:19:00.001+01:00

"Oh No! It's the Ninkey Nonk" is a phrase (from Treehousetv.com, I think) that I find appealing. I wanted to shout it at the top of my voice this morning. You see, to me, the Ninkey Nonk isn't a train, it's a tactic whereby the truth is distorted to suit someone else's ego.

It's an understandable tactic, of course, and it can be quite useful in the short term. But it hits me hard. It makes me feel like I've been knocked to the floor. It winds me for an hour or two.

My sort of Ninkey Nonk requires at least 3 people: the Provider, the person trying to protect the subject's ego; the Object, the person being asked to confirm the Provider's untruth; and the Subject, the person who's ego is being protected.

Today, the Ninkey Nonk in question was being asked to confirm that it was quicker, overall, to drive 30 minutes in the wrong direction to catch a train for what was originally a 20 minute journey. This was because the driver, the subject of this particular Ninkey Nonk, is too timid to drive to unfamiliar places.

I'd rather the three of us all just admitted that, the timid thing. I'm not averse to timidity, in fact it's rather attractive in the right sort of person. But a timid person who pretends they aren't? No, I'm not in favour of the Ninkey Nonk being used to cover up that truth, however well meant.

The Ninkey Nonk is fine for young children, but it really isn't suitable for adults.

Another feminist fantasy

2008-04-12T09:20:00.004+01:00

The Liz Library website sports a section clearly intended to counter Western society's growing re-discovery that children need fathers in their lives: http://www.thelizlibrary.org/fatherless/research-fatherless-children.html

It does this by citing some dubious stories about eminent people who lost their fathers in childhood, in one way or another.

Dubious? Well, take the very first entry by way of example. Read it and you'll find it cites one Alexander Hamilton as a man who turned a debt-ridden, wounded collection of thirteen bickering colonies into a world-class economic power inside three years. A neat trick, huh?

The important point, though, is that none of the people Liz's Library refers to grew up in societies that endorsed or encouraged fatherlessness. Unlike the society currently being built by feminists.

Peer-reviewed studies show children want and need both parents. No studies show sole parenting by a mother serves children's best interests. Every credible sociological study on record demonstrates without ambiguity that if there is a single sure indicator for success in adulthood, it is the presence of a father in a child’s life from the time he or she is old enough to negotiate a path through the world. If there is a sure indicator of failure – dropping out, drugs, promiscuity, crime – it is not poverty, it is fatherlessness.

Highlighting (with bias) some exceptions does not disprove this persistent tendency, it just evidences a deep misunderstanding of natural variety.

Gender equality

2008-01-28T13:28:00.001Z

Gender equality is a recent concept. 250 years ago (i.e. less than 10% of documented history ago) the idea would have been thought ridiculous by almost everyone. Universally, human civilisation has been built on sexual specialisation, not on gender equality. The first question to ask about gender equality, therefore, is: how did it evolve? Some imply that gender equality is the natural outcome of a culture of a species of intelligent beings - yet for 90%+ of their known existence it hasn't been and even today many human societies do not embrace the concept - so how can that assertion be justified?

The gender equality the Developed West talks about is a vague concept, and probably deliberately so. Is it equality before the law, equality in productive endeavour, equality in reproductive endeavour, equality in bodily rights, equality in life quality, equality in family life? In practice, in the Developed West, its closest meaning is probably equality in certain (female favoured) productive endeavours because it is evident that inequalities (usually favouring women) in treatment by the law, in reproductive rights, in bodily rights, in life quality and in family rights are rampant.

One of the main officially unrecognised problems the Developed West faces is a consequence of the adoption of gender equality: lack of reproduction. Indigenous birth rates are now well below replacement levels, particularly so if all culturally distinct immigrant populations are excluded. Most Westerners don't seem to be exercised by this and prefer to worry about the growth in the world's total population. In doing so they give reproductive way to the world's other cultures. Whether they are right or wrong to take this view, the net result will be that the culture that gave birth to the gender equality concept will expire in a few hundred years. It will take gender equality with it, as the concept has no grounding in the sexual reality of our species - sexual specialisation is built deep into biology.

As to the implication that gender equality is a natural outcome for a sexual species - however intelligent: I ask that the concept is firstly properly defined and then its benefits and longevity explained by reference to established evolutionary principles. Who has seen such a definition and justification? Most people I talk to about this just accept the argument that it 'feels right and fair' and 'everyone around me believes it, so it must be true'. Such reasoning has failed more than a few times in the past, sometimes with very unpleasant consequences.

Me? I'm far from convinced by it

Feelings of Importance

2006-04-21T16:19:00.000+01:00

At http://bobstruth.blogspot.com/2006/04/has-any-female-ever-been-hurt-by-rape.html Bob states that he has never met or known any woman who was hurt by rape other than a few hurt feelings which would go away quickly, and asks whether any woman has ever really been hurt by a rape.

Even tongue in cheek, this question should not be easily dismissed. Particularly if, as is likely, the feelings Bob refers to are telling us something important about our future.

Those men who follow the reasoning of Aristotle, Ockham (aka Occam), Darwin and Dawkins but, like Bob above, have real trouble understanding women's abhorrence to rape, might find it helpful to look at the issue this way:

We, all of us, exist because of the success of our genes. These genes themselves exist only because they replicate through people who procreate successfully. To mature successfully human children need substantial maternal nurture such that mother and child need support from an external source. To be reliable over long periods of time this source needs to have a genetic interest in providing the support. Over hundreds of thousands of generations in the ancestral environment men whose genes encourage within them emotions to support their own offspring have out-reproduced other men. This fatherly support is known to scientists as 'paternal investment'. The extent to which it is directed to a man's own offspring is referred to as his 'paternal certainty'. Both of these factors manifest themselves in men through strong motivating emotions. To put it another way, the genes of men who don't feel the need to support their children don't replicate well, and the genes of men who are not instinctively careful about whether the children they support are their own genetic offspring don't replicate well either. An essential part of being an evolutionarily successful man (i.e. a man who maximises the chance of his genes replicating) is to feel these emotions strongly and to act upon them.

These straightforward facts explain the strength of many men's feelings about both their partner's sexual fidelity and their child's well-being. Fecking important issues, most men would say. They'd have no trouble agreeing with that. Not because threats to either are physically damaging to the man himself, but because such threats are so devastating to his ultimate evolutionary purpose, the replication of his genes. Should Bob have contended that, e.g., paternity deception only results in a 'few hurt feelings' and so should be ignored he would be summarily dismissed by most men, and quite rightly. After all the men who don't dismiss such ideas are unlikely to be contributing much to future generations. They exist, for sure, but they are an evolutionary dead end. They are not the future.

Now what has all this to do with how women feel about rape? Well, in all probability, the feelings that women experience about rape have similar evolutionary causes to those that men feel about being cuckolded. The ultimate purpose of both types of feelings are similar and it is likely, therefore, that the strength of the associated emotions are similar, too. To have the best chance of replicating her genes successfully a woman needs to be able to choose her mate well. She needs to be sure about his fitness; i.e. his attractiveness, his capability and his willingness to invest in her and her child. While a woman does not share a man's concerns about parental certainty - if the baby comes out of her it is hers - her equivalent concern is about its father's fitness. Rape undermines her ability to determine this as best she can, to choose her mate. It is likely that most women have as strong an emotional aversion to rape as most men do to being cuckolded.

The fitness of humans in the natural world depends on these emotions. They are much more important to our species and to our society’s longevity than 'a few hurt feelings'.

The ABC of an MRA

2006-03-09T12:10:00.000Z

A: Advertising and media portrayal - no more the dumb man.
B: Boyhood genital mutilation - must be made illegal.
C: Child custody - must be equalized.
D: DNA - paternity deception must be stopped for every father and baby.
E: Employment - men must not suffer worse conditions or higher death rates.
F: False allegations - must be prosecuted.
G: Grievous bodily harm - men must not suffer more violence.
H: Homelessness - men must not suffer more.
I: Incarceration - must be equalized and men must be protected in jail from e.g. rape.
J: Judicial prejudice against men in family law and sentencing length must be stopped.
K: Killed - more men are murdered. This must stop.
L: Longevity - women live 5-7 years longer. Health spending by sex and life expectancy must be equalized.
M: Marital rights - men don’t have any while women are legally provided for.
N: Net income - even up discretionary spend on and by men, equalize retail floor space.
O: Options - life options must be equalized, not just to work but to raise a family, to care, to feel and to shop.
P: Paternity fraud - this appalling evil must be redefined as a heinous crime.
Q: Qualifications - men’s educational disadvantages must be corrected.
R: Reproductive rights - men must be given the same rights as women.
S: Suicide - men’s greater prevalence means they need more help. This must be provided.
T: Threat of conscription and front line action must be shared between men and women.
U: Undefended - men must be offered equal refuge from e.g. DV.
V: Voting influence must be equated so that politicians address men’s issues properly.
W: Women and children first - this mindset must end.
X: X-dressing - men should have the same dress freedom as women.
Y: Y - why is men’s quality of life not monitored and improved?
Z: Zzzzz - female dominated society must wake up to men’s suffering.

Falconer’s Law:

2006-03-01T22:54:00.000Z

I propose a new law, to be called Falconer's Law. It states:
"as a political discussion progresses the probability of reference to an absolute and unchanging measure of good behaviour approaches 1. When this happens the discussion must be terminated and whoever alluded to this fictional concept of absolute goodness has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress."

The law is named after the English Lord Chancellor who deployed the technique in a Channel 4 documentary (Dispatches: Stealing Freedom). In essence his message was “if you are good you have nothing to fear from the government.” How scary was that?

Chastity; an objective virtue?

2006-02-16T11:52:00.000Z

21st century western mores promote sexual freedom. Lust is no longer a sin, chastity no virtue. Prudentius pointed out the contrary nature of chastity and lust over 1500 years ago in his epic poem Psychomachia.

Paternal certainty was an important motivation in the development of western civilisation and pre-marital chastity was one of women's primary contributions to this. Dr Amneus sets this out cogently at: www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Library/Amneus/garbage/

Chastity's virtue was and is widely recognised across cultures, e.g. "In the 1930s [a cross-generational mating study found that] men valued chastity as close to indispensable" (Buss 1994, p67). Going deeper into the anthropological reasons for this, and paraphrasing Buss: "Concealed ovulation gave ancestral men a unique paternal certainty problem... Marriage provided one solution... Fidelity was enforced by family members... A man who did not obtain a chaste mate risked becoming involved with a woman who would cuckold him... Men who were indifferent to the potential sexual contact of their partners would not have been successful at passing on their genes."

In other words there are good reasons to suppose that men instinctively value chastity because those that didn't simply didn't get to pass on their indifferent gene so reliably.

The bottom line, though, is what works. If chastity is an essential component of motivating men's commitment to developing a society - and if a society developed in this way is more successful at maintaining and growing itself than another that doesn't value chastity - then chastity is an objective virtue, whatever 20th century feminists would prefer to believe.

I happen to suspect this might be the case - despite the awkward implications to the satisfaction of my own lust.

Not a popular view, I know. But then I'm not convinced popularity is an objective virtue!

Are modern men disgusting?

2006-02-14T11:10:00.000Z

Societies succeed if they continue. This means successful societies are ones that prioritise the protection and nurture of the scarce resources involved in producing and raising the next generation; eggs, wombs and breasts.

Women choose the men they reproduce with and, through what Jonathan Haidt calls The Social Intuitionist process, determine social mores and mould the next generation's attitudes and behaviours pretty effectively.

For these reasons successful societies tend to reflect women's priorities - and always have. When the environment requires a fierce fight for survival they choose tough, resourceful, resilient men because their priority is protection. When life is easier they choose more compliant, subservient men. This latter environment suits women better because it provides them with more control over their lives, so the tendency is to choose it whether or not it is appropriate. The only thing that will change this is a reversion to a tough environment. This will happen, nature's variety ensures that, but no-one knows when. Then the issue will be whether there is enough resilience left in the men for the society to survive.

One way out of this cycle is the development of cloning and ex-vitro gestation. This would free men from women's control over their (and everyone's) primary objective; reproduction. However it is unlikely that any existing society would allow this to happen as women would try to prevent such a loss of control.

Real reproductive freedom for men is still a very long way off but understanding the dynamics - understanding that it is women collectively who determine these issues and that men are largely pawns in the process - might help us men feel a little less disgusted with ourselves, even if it does nothing for our feelings of self-worth!

Womenfirstism

2005-10-28T12:16:00.000+01:00

The people who value men as highly as women are nobody's ancestors. That's a natural, biological, reproductive truth. Eggs, wombs and breasts are rare in comparison to sperm, which is plentiful. The consequence pervades all our inherited instincts: womenfirstism is necessary for survival.

However, this fact leads to a cognitive dissonance in men who believe in gender-equality. How can the genders be equal if all our primary instincts are based on womanfirstism? They can’t, of course. That women seldom seem to suffer this dissonance is interesting and should be researched. Perhaps it is a feature of the female mind.

But which is it to be, gender equality or women first?

Whether we like it or not, womanfirstism is well founded in nature. Rather, we need to challenge the other side of the dissonant equation, those who profess gender-equality.

Gender equality is an unnatural and distorted instinct. In fact it is a deception on an astonishing scale, just look at any quality of life measure if you doubt that. But the West is riddled with it and no-one of standing dares to seriously question it because women are the oxygen of the extended economy. Without their hyper-consumptive demands Western economies would slow down dramatically. This might save the planet, but it won't save a politician at the next election or a CEO at the next AGM.

While women cast the majority of votes and wield substantial consumptive power so it will remain - at least until nature steps in.

The Inequality Taboo Squared

2005-09-24T14:28:00.000+01:00

Until the perfect society is developed, social axioms will inevitably contain their own contradictions. Taboos are one of the most effective mechanisms our imperfect societies can deploy to suppress these contradictions.

Gender equality is a recent social axiom. As technological developments improved capital rewards, reduced the need for domestic labour and reduced the physical demands of productive labour the communities that successfully deployed capital and technology and successfully redeployed women grew wealthier. The most convenient social mantra that supported this change succeeded by success (to paraphrase the evolutionary process). Feminism and its instinctively more attractive partner, gender equality, were part of this. Becoming wealthier and stronger, the successful communities had a disproportionately influential effect on culture-wide communication channels. Other communities could not avoid the impact. They either changed or suffered crippling defections, wealth imbalances and in some cases defeat. This is far from the first time such shifts have occurred, of course. To survive, human communities have to be adept at adopting new axioms, new paradigms. But they have to do it quickly and without too much dissent. That means running roughshod over conservative resistence. That's an instinct in many, too.

However, as with all imperfect social axioms, gender equality does not conform to real life, to nature as opposed to dogma, even though the technological changes are real - if not all equally sustainable. Wherever natural reality butts up against idealised social construction the contradictions stand out. The sexes are different, less so now in production but still as different in reproduction and instinct as ever. Different isn't equal. It might be possible to concoct a notion of equality that only refers to social constructions and to make the sexes equal in these respects, but no-one is likely to be much interested because these aspects cannot include the real-world sex differences that make our lives so interesting; reproduction and all its ramifications being at the core of nearly everything worthwhile in most of our lives.

And so along with every imperfect axiom comes its taboo. The facts and evidence that contradict the axiom. The facts that demonstrate the reality, the sexes are different.

The Inequality Taboo

2005-09-16T13:50:00.000+01:00

Charles Murray writes a compelling article about the inequality taboo at: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/production/files/murray0905.html

I have (a few) issues with his arguments but, before discussing these, let’s get the main problem out of the way. It is well known that Charles Murray is [insert the derogatory personal characteristic of your choice here] and so anyone who considers his arguments seriously is [insert a another derogatory personal characteristic of your choice here] and must be ostracised. (Those struggling to come up with two different and original derogatory characteristics can seek appropriate advice and guidance at alt.feminism where an ‘ism’ or ‘ist’ can be selected from the many on offer. Irrational hate and ostracism are, after all, most rewarding when practiced as a group.)

So, with the bigoted now clicking elsewhere, we can get back to the topic at hand. On this, Murray writes:
Quote:
Elites throughout the West are living a lie, basing the futures of their societies on the assumption that all groups of people are equal in all respects. Lie is a strong word, but justified. It is a lie because so many elite politicians who profess to believe it in public do not believe it in private. It is a lie because so many elite scholars choose to ignore what is already known and choose not to inquire into what they suspect. We enable ourselves to continue to live the lie by establishing a taboo against discussion of group differences.
The taboo arises from an admirable idealism about human equality. If it did no harm, or if the harm it did were minor, there would be no need to write about it. But taboos have consequences.
:EndQuote

I see nothing admirable about an ideal of human equality, other than men’s equality before the law. At its most essential it is difference that makes the universe, equality is non-existence. If everything is equal then nothing discernable exists. Equality is the philosophical mantra of nihilism. Murray’s notes illustrate the nonsense of applying this notion of equality to human gender:
Quote:
… try a thought experiment: Suppose that a pill exists that, if all women took it, would give them exactly the same mean and variance on every dimension of human functioning as men—including all the ways in which women now surpass men. How many women would want all women to take it? … To ask such questions is to answer them: hardly anybody. Few want to trade off the unique virtues of their own group for the advantages that another group may enjoy….. A Thai friend gave me an insight into this human characteristic many years ago when I remarked that Thais were completely undefensive about Westerners despite the economic backwardness of Thailand in those days. My friend explained why. America has wealth and technology that Thailand does not have, he acknowledged, just as the elephant is stronger than a human. “But,” he said with a shrug, “who wants to be an elephant?”
:EndQuote

There is nothing admirable about a lie. I regret that, on this point, Murray has fallen into the PC trap he is usually so careful to avoid.

Murray also writes:
Quote:
But if we do not need to change our politics, talking about group differences obligates all of us to renew our commitment to the ideal of equality that Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he wrote as a self-evident truth that all men are created equal. Steven Pinker put that ideal in today’s language in The Blank Slate, writing that “Equality is not the empirical claim that all groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle that individuals should not be judged or constrained by the average properties of their group.”
:EndQuote

It wasn’t even that of course. It was the old tenet of men’s equality before the law that governed them. When the American constitution was written no-one imagined that it would be so distorted as to justify total equality between men and women, in every walk of life.

As far as individuals being constrained by average properties, we all are. Its part of being a functioning group. We rail against the poverty divide and demand that the average constrains the extreme in that respect. And there are natural realities, such as the benefits of specialisation and the law of comparative advantage, that need to be considered dispassionately in this context too. If a community benefits overwhelmingly from specialisation then that fact needs to be recognised if the community is to be as successful as it can be. We all cope with our own natural strengths and weaknesses, and gain strength from each other’s, what crippling immaturity does society suffer that it can not cope with difference’s broader consequences? The confusion of better/worse with good/bad reflects the mindset of a child. A mindset that any caring parent works to correct, not reinforce.

Finally what Murray does not discuss at all are the forces that gave rise to the deeply unnatural western social philosophies of the second half of the 20th century. We need to understand these better so that we can recognise and avoid them in the future. Many will blame feminism, there is such an obvious correlation. Are they right to do so? If yes, what does that imply about the role of women in the political life of a community? What must we do differently in the future? We need to discuss this subject objectively too.

No-one’s ancestor

2005-09-15T12:22:00.000+01:00

Carey Roberts, in her article about Ellen Sauerbrey’s UN speech, ‘Freeing Women from Exploitation and Despair’
(http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2005/roberts091505.htm), asks:

“What moral code says we should deplore the rape of women and ignore the killings of men?”

The answer: ‘Nature, evolution and, as a result, most human instincts’.

Reproductive reality dictates that a community that loses most of its men can quickly re-generate. Sperm is plentiful. A community that loses most of its reproductive women is not so robust. Evolution and nature combine against it. The people who valued men’s lives as equal to or greater than women’s are nobodies ancestors.

Every moral code that survives states that we should deplore the rape of women and, in times of crisis, overlook the killings of men. To feel or think otherwise is to be committed to your own genetic extinction. The bear stalking the room, the point Roberts has missed, the fatal error in western social philosophy, is that of gender equality. Unfortunately it didn’t work, it doesn’t work, it won’t work, it can’t work. Not in this universe.

Women's bodies are more valuable to a community than men's. Unless and until we have cheap and reliable artificial wombs this is an unavoidable fact. The consequences of it are everywhere you look; in the military, religion, medicine, law and commerce; indeed in almost every facet of human existence.

Gender equality is a fiction. A false icon. It must be recognised and rooted out before its consequences become irreversible. But, first, the people who promote it need to be confronted and exposed as modern day sirens, drawing western society to the rocks of genetic extinction.

Her higher value, naturally.

2005-09-01T15:31:00.000+01:00

Think of the thousands of generations when people lived in extended families or small tribes. If all but a small number of the males were wiped out the clan could survive and make a rapid comeback given sufficient numbers of fertile females. The situation would be quite different if all but a small number of the females were wiped out, no matter how many males there were. The fundamental difference is that, in nature, sperm is plentiful while eggs and wombs are not, so the clans that tended to survive were the ones whose instincts protected the female at the expense of the male. As this natural force operated and its effects accumulated over long periods of time the successful human genome became progressively more feminacentric: female wellbeing took, and takes, instinctive precedence over male wellbeing. One might say that those whose instincts promoted male wellbeing as equivalent to or above female wellbeing are nobody's ancestors.

The net result is a bias in the psychology of modern humans towards instincts that look after the well-being of women more than men. This is so built into our tribal brains that to be a non-conformist and to not operate in accordance with its dictates will quickly get you outcast and hated. In fact people's built-in detectors are calibrated very sensitively on this sort of issue, always on the look-out for defectors even though many no longer live in a clan-based society.
Moreover, people feel a strong compulsion to intervene and enforce the status quo. At a subconscious level they become disturbed and unhappy if they perceive this instinct being ignored. After all the psychological bias toward feminacentrism would mean little if there were no built-in automatic corrective mechanisms to go with the deviance detection mechanism. The clans that survived better were the ones that enforced feminacentrism by making sure that any individuals that didn't feel it strongly were cast out. There are many similar instincts in the human psyche.
[Thanks for much of the above goes to http://www.martianbachelor.com/Science/, a highly recommended site.]

Those who promote first world liberal principles such as gender equality are seldom aware that they and their community labour under the influence of a deep instinct that fatally undermines this moral framework. You'll never be equal with your neighbour if, instinctively and unconsciously, both you and she value her more. My 'Prove it!' post (below) demonstrates just how strong and unconscious this instinct still is in western civilisation.

Intelligent men?

2005-08-13T15:59:00.000+01:00

The Introduction to the Everyman Manifesto, a journal of men's issues and interests at www.everyman.org, states: “The 1st duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious. …. In the past, most prejudices favoured men over women.”

Think about that:
“In the past most prejudices favoured men over women.”
How could this be, exactly? What maintained these ‘prejudices’ these ‘favours’? If the maintaining force was some kind of natural law would that be ‘prejudice’ or ‘favour’? No, in that case it would be reality, by definition that would not be a ‘prejudice’ or ‘favour’. And if it wasn’t a natural law then what was it and how could it persist so universally for hundreds of thousands of years across thousands of cultures and billions of people?

What the writer means, of course, is something quite different. He means that seeing the world through the eyes of a Westerner around the turn of the 21st century, sex roles have changed recently. Domestic work has been largely automated, medical advances have offset much of women’s reproductive burden, technical and institutional developments have fuelled an extended economy that has all but eliminated poverty and danger in significant parts of the world. These developments have allowed women to participate more extensively in the economy, traditionally men’s area of concern, and this has encouraged a notion of economic equality to develop. Although in all probability these developments have reached a point, in just a few decades, where the host cultures’ consumption has become unsustainable in the longer term the notion of equality has taken such firm root that most people assume it is and always was a universal value. This is despite the fact that the notion is not, as it is mistakenly portrayed, ‘gender equality’ or anything that could be considered a tenable morality, however recent an invention and however careless of the laws of nature, the wisdom of the centuries and the divergence between peoples such a notion may be. There has been no meaningful encouragement of men’s equality in women’s concerns (other than in the slog) as, for example, in life quality measures ranging from longevity to incarceration (my Prove it! post has a fuller list if you are doubtful)

So why doesn’t he put things this way, our Everyman, having committed in the same paragraph to ‘restate the obvious’? Because he believes that historical reality is not a natural and understandable progression of developments but that the reason things were not, then, as he has fooled himself into believing they are now is ‘all his fault’. His species’ success has been facilitated by a tendency to emotionally adopt issues in this way in order to solve them so why stop now? The misunderstood equality concept has a deep resonance with his (and, perhaps more so, her) ancestral tribal instincts, before property rights promoted the concept of ownership and allowed him to develop all that he has now. So he buys hook, line and sinker into the ‘equality’ concept with all its guilty historical implications. A tremendous civilising effort, by men in the building and by women in the motivating of men through their sexual commitment to one man, that made everyone’s lives more comfortable, particularly women’s, is thus turned – in his own mind - into man’s failure, prejudice, chauvinism and wilful exploitation of his helpless and vulnerable victim, woman.

By so misunderstanding his past he threatens his own future. By forgetting the genesis of his success he allows the apple seed of destructive consumption to spread unhindered. Others knew this aeons ago and made sure to warn their successors. But wise as they were they would have known that men can become too conceited to listen. There was only so much they could do.

And so we discover, as they would have known, that the real problem lies somewhat earlier in the paragraph: with the phrase ‘intelligent men’. Not here, not anymore.

Work, damn you!

2005-07-23T17:17:00.000+01:00

‘Work damn you’ says Jane Shilling in her article in The Times of 22nd July 2005. “What I can’t understand is why no one seems able to make a computer that you can take out of its box, plug in and use” she whines.
One day I hope the attitude behind this sort of article will be understood for what it is; a cry of unearned entitlement. “Its someone else’s job to do what I want”.
When you hear women say they’ll put in all the hard yakka to sort a problem rather than just whine about it then you’ll know we’ve reached some sort of gender equality. Unfortunately, you’ll also know there isn’t a man left standing on the planet for them to whine at.

Like an old fool

2005-07-20T00:01:00.000+01:00

There was a letter recently in the Sunday Times from an 80 year old woman complaining that the 5 year guaranteed equity bond she purchased at the height of the stock market had only paid out what she put in.
Her letter appealed, pleading age and gender, for her to be given the inflated profits she had been promised by the original salesman and to receive interest income for the few days her matured capital would take to clear the banking system.
The fact that there are stupid people out there, old women amongst them, is nothing remarkable. What is remarkable is the newspaper’s decision to print the letter without adding that she should be rejoicing at her good fortune and explaining that cleared funds are not the same thing as interest earning funds.
But no, by publishing her letter they present her case as if it was justified. Is this because the editors are fools or because they have a deceitful agenda?
If it is the latter it is also the former too, of course. The consequences of endorsing this old fool’s entitlement psychology is the eventual removal of freedom of choice from all.

Prove it!

2005-06-29T14:22:00.000+01:00

Some facts for you. Take them on trust - none are seriously disputed - or research them yourself:

- Women live significantly longer than men.
- Men commit suicide more.
- Men die in combat more.
- Women are not drafted and do not have to register. Society never demands their sacrifice.
- Men are disabled by, and die in, employment more.
- Men are the majority of victims of violence.
- Men suffer longer prison sentences for the same crime.
- Little is done to stop male rape, even for men in state care.
- Men are the majority of the homeless.
- Men are the majority of state incarcerations.
- Most Western education systems now serve women significantly better than they do men.
- Women have control over all significant reproductive, marital and custody options.
- Women commit paternity fraud on something between 5-30% of all children, although it causes great suffering and is a significant factor in domestic violence this is the one fraud the state does not define as a crime.
- Women are seldom sanctioned for false rape allegations.
- Men suffer domestic violence but have little support or refuge.
- Women are legally protected from childhood genital mutilation, men are not.
- Women have more votes and exercise more voting power in all western democracies.
- This has been the case for over 75 years.
- Women have more disposable purchasing influence, an ultimate factor in economic influence.
- Women have substantially more state expenditure dedicated to their health & issues.

At this point, if facts hold any sway with you, you might be having trouble breathing. Take it slowly.

Having regained their breath women often say ‘Well its all men’s own fault and men are in charge so men should correct it’. This is a common fallacy. Men do not act like women. Men are always in competition with each other for resources and ultimately sex. The fact that a relatively few men hold many of the top public and private posts does not mean, as it would perhaps if they were women, that they look out for their gender. In fact the reverse is true. Men’s instinct is to act against other men to protect women. This is obvious when you look at other primate societies, or the data on human society, but very few women have shown a willingness to understand this difference in behaviour. In amongst the vast collection of badly integrated mental tools that is the human brain is this bit missing in the female, after all would there ever have been a need for it in the ancestral environment? The best way for women to prove it isn’t missing, of course, is to wake up to the situation and help do something about it

Women decide elections – there are more of them – and women have controlled democracies for a very long time now. Every significant political party in the West thoroughly researches women’s intentions and targets women’s votes. Every political manifesto addresses women’s perceived requirements. Every major corporation researches women’s buying preferences and adjusts their products and services accordingly.

Women have substantial political, social and economic power and are capable of influencing these issues but are choosing not to do so. Instead they are increasingly focussing on the minutiae of their own condition. That makes women just as responsible as men, more so being in the democratic majority. That’s part of what it means to be the majority. A society is judged by its treatment of its minorities and women are failing in their duty. They can no longer pretend they didn’t know and that it isn’t their fault. Wake up, and wake up your sisters! Prove women are up to the job they have demanded.

Respect?

2005-06-28T15:31:00.000+01:00

Whatever occupation any significant quantity of women pursue will never have the prestige and respect that they really seek. This is because, by definition, such an occupation has to be rare, difficult and dangerous so that only a few people can or want to do it and, bearing in mind the statistical distribution of most skills and talents by gender, these people will mostly be men.

In a century’s time the average doctor, lawyer and accountant are likely to be much more poorly rewarded, if only through a surplus of supply.

Will plumbing, construction work and soccer become the new aspiration for young girls and what laws will then be needed to ensure the rainbow’s end of women’s equality?

Motivating Civilisation

2005-06-28T15:13:00.000+01:00

Have we forgotten a significant force in creating and maintaining civilisation: the inclusion and motivation of men?

Historically this was achieved through many inter-related structures, an important one of which was confidence in paternity. Without this fatherhood process, and without some system that rewards men in the short term for their contribution to society, a substantial proportion of men become feral. At a certain tipping point civilized development then becomes impossible. There are many countries in the third world and communities (or more accurately ghettoes) in the first where this process can be seen in action.

Societies in which women, voluntarily or involuntarily, exchanged their natural desire for total reproductive choice for men’s commitment were the ones that civilized and succeeded. Societies like this are known as patriarchies. They usually include some specialization (or ‘liberty stomping’ as it is now known); the women towards the family, the men towards work.

When society becomes obsessed with women’s workplace equality does it unwittingly create the seeds of its own destruction through its aversion to risk, its problems motivating men and/or the number of feral men that result?

Shame!

2005-06-24T12:20:00.000+01:00

You probably read the story of the lawyer who spilt ketchup over a clerk’s trousers and then tried to deflect the request to pay the dry cleaning bill by telling a story of family tragedy. How the community ostracised the lawyer when the clerk decided to email the story to the world in an deliberate effort to shame the lawyer.

Oh no, wait, I think I got that wrong. The clerk was married to a millionaire and the lawyer was in the middle of a ruinous divorce, in fact hadn’t he just been evicted from the family home?

Or was it all the other way round? Oh dear, I seem to have got rather confused.

One thing is for certain, though. The idea of anyone paying for deliberately ruining something (trousers, career, whatever) of someone else’s is shameful, isn’t it?

Lock up the incompetent

2005-05-31T16:31:00.000+01:00

A contributor to the London Times reports today that one of the two key ideas taught at the school of military intelligence (yes, I know!) was that 'Locks stop only honest people'. That should be 'honest or incompetent people'.

Another contributor reports the delight of a seasoned criminal at the idea of ID cards. What a bonanza for the professional criminal and well funded terrorist!

But never mind, nanny will feel so much better if she's got a new card to show that nice policeman.

Alice in GordonLand

2005-05-27T18:53:00.000+01:00

I can immediately think of a lot of things a pretty, bespectacled girl called Alice might be good for. I like the name. It has nice associations. One of the things includes writing articles in girls’ magazines. But when Alice writes in a respected national newspaper about improvements in the bureaucracy of tax returns, whilst admitting she can’t handle complicated things like that, well my patience runs thin.

My patience is runny these days.

Well Alice admits she isn’t good at tax, or even at sums, because when she wanted to pay a nanny she worked out Nanny took home to the nursery 3p for every pound Alice had to earn to pay for her.

Now she knows she’s not good at sums because that can’t be right, can it? And of course it isn’t. But it got me thinking. How much does Mean Gordon take from us? The simplest measure is the Tax Take as a percentage of National Income. This is usually quoted at about 37% currently, rising to over 40% shortly now that we’ve re-elected the little ray of sunshine to No 11. But this doesn’t really tell the important story. The story of motivation.

Little Alice, remember, isn’t only pretty, she also writes quite prettily (despite having no idea what she’s talking about, or perhaps because of it, I can’t say), and nowadays these attributes mean she makes a very good income thank you.

So I got thinking about an illustration. Something that Alice might be able to understand. Imagine then, mighty Alice, that you do proper work; dig coal out of the ground, say, then sell it to people to cook with. Something your mother set up before she handed the company on to you. Being equally muscular and industrious and experienced and worldly and dusty (gotcha - you’d never catch Alice dusty, but this is fantasy, remember) Alice makes a decent living at this. Suppose then that she takes a moment to decide whether or not to do a little late digging one night, to dig out another £100 worth of coal, retail value. How much is the government’s tax take on that? How much of that money would be Alice’s to spend?

Alice would get £33.87. That’s how much. Out of the £100 the old age pensioner pays her for that coal Gordon Brown would take home £66.13 through VAT, Income Tax, National Insurance, excise duty, community charge and all the other excuses he has for stealing from her. Tax might average 40% across the whole economy but because Alice is making a marginal decision at the top of the tax scale (and that’s not far off the ground) on this lump of coal it works out that Gordon gets £66.13 if all taxes are taken into account.

And what does Alice get for all the £66.13s Gordon takes? Very little indeed if she is typical of a moderately high earner. The roads she uses, her rubbish collection and a notional police presence. That and a simplified tax return of course.

So after the flush of community spirit has worn off and her back and lungs ache from years of bone crunching effort, she decides to pack in early.

That’s what’s called the enterprise economy.

Feminist Bigots

2005-05-25T15:47:00.000+01:00

Take a look, if you will, at Jonathan Gornall’s article on Oona King in Monday’s London Times, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,170-1620810,00.html.

We learn that Oona King (ex MP) stereotypes men at work as ‘slimy bum-pinchers’ and that she claimed in the Daily Mirror that George Galloway MP had sexually harassed her. A claim she was forced to withdraw and for which, after legal writs flew, she paid damages and legal costs and had to apologise publicly.

This is that same woman who has refused to name the MEP she claims offered her £10,000 for sex some years ago, a fact she hadn’t mentioned in the intervening 13 years. So we don’t know if this MEP was the same person she accused of being an ‘average mediocre white man who couldn’t do the job’? No question of stereotyping bigotry there, then.

On King’s last accusation JG says ‘lets not even go into the questionable nature of that ‘white man’ comment. Why not JG? Is it because, if you did, you’d never get anything published ever again by the feminist controlled media?

But if you are Sue Tibballs of the Fawcett Society you can accuse parliament of suffering from PMS – by which she means being Pale Male and Stale – in the Times letters page with nary a qualm.

ROTFL chaps, as least until the revolution.
At which point neither woman’s names should be forgotten.

Rape is....

2005-05-23T20:53:00.000+01:00

…complicated. A simple issue wouldn’t need to be so misrepresented, would it?

Take the production, "Rape is..." for example (http://www.cambridgedocumentaryfilms.org).
30% of the film’s discussion guide is about prostitution and the sex trade.

Not ‘prostitution and rape’ but ‘prostitution and the sex trade’. So what is the link to rape you ask? Well, the guide makes only two links:
1. Vednita Carter’s “perspective” we are told “is that prostitution and rape are profoundly related. She thinks prostitution contributes to a climate in which rape is tolerated”.
2. “In Nevada, where prostitution has been legalized, the rape rates are the 4th highest in the country”.

We are offered nothing more in support of Vednita’s contention than anecdotes. She has worked with lots of prostitutes. We also gather that she was a prostitute herself once, forced into it by being driven to distant bars and given no money to get home, apparently. Would you trust someone who told you that story, and nothing else, to be a reliable source of behavioural science theory? You would? You are over 16 aren’t you? I know a really great bar we could go to, it’s only a few minutes drive from here.

But hold on, what’s going on in Nevada? That looks like evidence, doesn’t it? Well no, probably not.

For starters three other states, where prostitution is illegal, have a higher rate of rape. That needs an explanation, but gets none.

Prostitution has always been legal in Nevada, not in all counties all the time but in many counties most of the time. Now the rate of forcible rape in Nevada was very similar to that in the rest of the USA until 1970. Within 5 years it then rose to over 70% more than the USA average. While the average in the USA in 1975 was 26.3 forcible rapes per 100,000 of the population, in Nevada it had become 47.1 (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs). Since 1975 this rate has fallen 10% in Nevada to 42.7 in 2002 while overall in the USA on average it has risen by 25% to 33.0.

Nevada’s other violent crime rate rose by 67% in the 5 years between 1970 and 1975. So it isn’t hard to see that something else went on over these 5 years. Who knows what it is? But it is clear that the idea that a straightforward link between prostitution and rape is established by these two factlets, an idea the film makers appear to want us to adopt, is plainly absurd. In truth the only connection most could draw from this guide is that the film makers think they are appealing to some seriously gullible people.

Rape is… complicated, if you look at it from all sides. Simplistic workshops that misrepresent the facts will be as likely to make the problem worse than better. Rape won’t be resolved until we start being rational and objective and truthful about sex and start treating the problem with a mindset free from political correctness in order to give it the depth of objective enquiry it deserves.

Understanding a complex issue rather than simply demonising men might also mean that we find ways to reduce the impact of rape. But maybe some influential people don’t really want that to happen at all.

A chicken or an omelette?

2005-05-22T14:45:00.000+01:00

The front of a Christian Aid pamphlet asks "Would you give Judith a chicken or an omelette?". From her picture Judith is, at most, 11 years old. We are told she lives in the Congo. If you haven't seen the pamphlet, and even if you have, think about the question for a moment. Decide your answer.

Did you come up with 'neither' or, maybe, 'what she really needs is a culture that is capable of nourishing the congolese in ways that are appropriate to their environment'? The answer isn't a chicken. In fact no-one has any no idea what the practical answer is. We have not a smidgeon of a jot of a Mus Minutoides of an inkling. To imagine that we have is to demonstrate an Argentinosaurus of a conceit. To pretend that carrying on 'doing something' is better than doing nothing when we know that it makes things worse is selfish conscience salving.

Would you give Judith a Sony Memory Stick or an Amazon voucher?

Equality?

2005-05-22T11:28:00.000+01:00

"HALF of all girls born in Britain this year, and many of their brothers, will live to see the 22nd century." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,2770-1621874,00.html
Where is the uproar about men's health and longevity?

Child rapist weds victim: "Fualaau was only 12 at the time. Letourneau was arrested in 1997.... a night of [rape] that “didn’t stop".... and, after six months in jail, was freed on probation..." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1622518,00.html
Where is the uproar about unequal treatment?