Toadfish Monastery

I have to say, I think this is a rather sinister way of looking at things.  Almost Social Darwinistic, in a sense, and certainly not scientific.

Intelligence is not genetically determined.  At all.  Sorry.  The "Flynn effect" discovered in psychometric testing should have put an end to this nonsense.  Furthermore, the fallout from Flynn's criticisms suggest that, if anything, society is becoming more intelligent over time, and that this could be measured, if not for the inanity of the majority of the intelligence testing community.

Now, religion and large families can be linked, but typically atheists only score about, oh, 6 points higher than theists on IQ tests.  More stupid people can be easily entrapped by religion, its true.  But the reason most religions encourage large families is because so many people turn away from them.  By pumping out as many people as possible and indoctrinating them from birth - whilst also placing large emphasis on conversion and witnessing - they can make up for the vast amounts of people who realize that said religion is a heap of crap and so leave it.

Robert Altermeyer, the noted authoritarianism expert in Canada, has a lot of information on the interplay of religion, authoritarianism and conversion.  His book is available online freely, if you want it.

The best way to stop idiocy is to fund schools well, and promote a culture of intellectual inquiry.  Simple as that.  Demographic panics have to be one of the ugliest and nastiest ways to try and justify something I can think of.

No doubt everyone and their dog has seen the Cabinet's expenses forms by now.

So, instead, I shall post links to the Shadow Cabinet, to prove both sides are useless money vaccuums:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/10/mps-expenses-conservative-party-general-election

Quote• Michael Gove, the shadow schools secretary and a member of Cameron's inner circle, spent more than £7,000 furnishing a London property in 2006 before "flipping" the second home designation to a new one in his Surrey Heath constituency.

• Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, spent thousands of pounds renovating a thatched Tudor country cottage before selling it. He then moved the second designation to a London flat.

• Alan Duncan, the shadow leader of the Commons who chairs the Commons audit committee which oversees MPs' expenses, had a claim for £3,194 ­gardening expenses declined in March 2007. He says this hapened after he raised the matter with the Commons authorities.

• Francis Maude, the shadow cabinet office minister who is leading the Tories' preparations for government, tried to claim mortgage interest on his family home in Sussex. This was declined by the Commons fees office.

• Chris Grayling, the shadow home ­secretary and another member of the Cameron circle, claimed for the ­renovation of a London flat which is 17 miles from his family home.

• Cheryl Gillan, the shadow Welsh ­secretary, claimed for dog food. She has agreed to repay the claim.

• Oliver Letwin, who is in charge of the Tories' general election manifesto, charged £2,000 to replace a leaking pipe under a tennis court. The pipe was not related to the court and Letwin was obliged to mend the pipe after an order from the local water authority.

• David Willetts, the shadow ­universities secretary, claimed more than £100 for workmen to replace 25 lightbulbs at his home.

Technically, if he volunteers, its a contract between self-autonomous and rational individuals and the state has no right in getting involved.  Gay marriage, on the other hand...

/sarcasm

Depending how alien the alien is, all concepts we take for granted might be difficult. Xenopsychology is one of those things few Sci-fi writers have ever touched upon convincingly, IMO, reducing other species to either cookie-cutter reflections of their culture with little to no variations, or either essentially human, with a different trait or two.

This may be because the vast majority of Sci-Fi writers are nothing but hacks.

John Frusciante - Today

Empyrean is possibly even better than To Listen to Only Water for 10 Days.

Yeah, Refused and the International Noise Conspiracy have the same guy.  Though IMO it would be nicer if at times the INC sounded like it a little more.  Their edgier and harder rock songs are good, but Refused simply outclass everything they have done to date.

Thanks!  Yours isn't bad either.  Is that a new one from Sage Francis?  The album name isn't ringing any bells, and I seem to have bits and pieces from nearly all of his earlier albums.

The Clash - Train in Vain

I got up to page thirty without seeing my site profile.  Interestingly, googling my real name also leads to none of my social networking sites or anything else I own.

Which is just as well, as that is one of the reason I use several web pseudonyms.

My TVTropes userpage, also under the name Kaliayev, is the 6th result on Google, and a couple of other places I used the name cropped up, but that's all.

Super lightweight, waterproof, khaki coloured trousers, and a black t-shirt.

I like simplicity.  And it doesn't get much more simple, or multipurpose, than this.

Applied for three jobs.

Started the final stage of getting my dual citizenship.

Got up before 8am (the toughest one)

There is that, too.  Nick Griffin is a fuckwit, and in America you have some attempted, wannabe leaders (Don Black, the Aryan Nations guy, etc) but no-one who combines charisma, presence and control in the way Mussolini or Hitler could.

Equally, because of the embedded liberalism within the British and American systems (well, more or less, despite the numerous attacks made on them), people belonging to fascist groups often appear in highly antigovernmental circles, which some would consider odd due to the fascist obsession with power (though not so odd when you remember the above and factor in envy).

This is why I like the concept of proto-fascism, it clears up a lot of the hazy ground between right populism and outright fascism.

I tend to think the Neo-Cons are more like the Prussian aristocrats and Italian corporate owners - that is to say, the people who felt they could use fascism as a tool, and then got burned for their efforts.  Von Papen and Hindenburg thought they could use the Brownshirts to smash the KPD and the socialists - and they did - but they didn't realize the same would happen to them soon after.  Even their adulation of Victorian Britain suggests, to me, an imperialist as opposed to fascist mindset.

The populist/proto-fascist stab in the back fortunately hasn't happened so far in this case, but when you see the kind of people who were lining up behind Palin, and the current GOP purge (which is removing every single moderating influence, and may have to try and pick up Constitution Party supporters to make up for loss of numbers) then you have a scary scenario.

The BNP over here are far less powerful, but they still move in the same circles of suspicious connections, attempted terrorism, paranoia and thuggery that are so common to the ideology.  What's worse is how our government attempts to pander to their supporters with xenophobic and bigoted statements, hoping to steal their votes away.  I do wonder how a Tory win will impact on the BNP though.  Usually such parties do better when left-wing groups are in power, but New Labour isn't very leftwing, and David Cameron seems to be genuinely striving for the right of centre quite hard.  Disaffected Tories and Labour supporters seem to make up a fair bit of the BNP base, though one can never discount the possibility that they are lying, as part of their Gramscian meta-political strategy to make their views more publically acceptable.

It gives sociologists with political ambitions (Anthony Giddens) and Thomas Friedman something to do in their spare time which earns them cash.  Plus the end of the Cold War sent some people kinda crazy.  Plus alot of the talk on globalization basically amounts to fellating and water-carrying for international business leaders, and they always like that.

Actually, if we look at certain factors, for instance global trade, which was much higher a century or so ago then it is now, you could argue the trends are reversing.  I just think the effect of technology makes the outcomes of living in a global world more obvious.

Quote from: Swatopluk on April 29, 2009, 08:39:20 AM

Quote from: Kaliayev on April 28, 2009, 05:50:16 PM
Niewert is fantastic.  Do you read his blog, Orcinus?  Alot of the material cited in that helped form my end of year terrorism paper on the "Patriot movement" in the US (in the context of "new terrorism").

I regularly read the blog. The posting frequency has become a bit erratic though since he and Sara Robinson write and work also for other sites.

Well, to be fair, they are the only two people in America with job security currently (in the words of Sadly, No!), so they're probably getting a lot of requests for articles and so on.

I do like the site a lot though.  In my third year at Uni I elected to do a module on political ideology and philosophy and I chose to focus on Fascism, mainly because it aligned with elements of my terrorism research (Italian neofascist movements - now there is a rabbit hole that goes into some very deep and frightening places).  When Googling around I found the site and have followed it ever since.  I've sometimes considered doing something similar for Europe, though I'd need to bone up on Eurofascist parties somewhat.  I have all the material, its just finding the time to read, analyze, digest and follow these people.

I really, really hate Fascism, and its the only political ideology whose adherents actually scare me, so I like to know as much as possible about them.