The Russian Orthodox Church will never recognize same sex marriage.
Talk about a worthy civilizational alternative.
If only other such examples of memetic sovereignty were coming to life.
There may yet be a chance to preserve and evolve the Russian national spirit.
A lot of planes have been crashing this year, a massive amount. See here.
What exactly is going on?
I’m not certain.
Is there actually an increased number of crashes this year? It sure seems that way. If we tally up the numbers in North America alone the numbers are impressive.
Travel by plane is not typically dangerous, so what’s going on? Also, there are repeated reports of engine failure in otherwise well maintained planes.
And what about the strange multitude of power outages in large airports, like the ones Belgium saw just recently?
It’s hard to say. My guess, from the reports, would be some kind of electrical change in the atmosphere that is messing with sensitive electronics.
There is no doubt that there are major changes in the atmosphere in the last few decades. One need only see the multitude of contrails which show that temperatures at the different heights have changed.
One could also look at the multitude of meteorites breaching the atmosphere. In a future post I will give examples of these, they have increased dramatically.
Something big, something natural, is going on. And I’d bet that’s the cause of these plane engine malfunctions.
At this stage it’s all speculation. Still, that’s my prediction.
Jim over at Jim’s blog had some comments on psychopathy. Curious comments. Not even wrong comments.
And rather than comment back, I figured I’d honor him with a little post. Let’s dive in and tear it apart.
The definition of psychopathy combines traits that are unlikely to be correlated, for example
1: the ability to endure stress and danger calmly, and the propensity to lie casually without regard to the long term consequences.
2: the propensity to act vigorously and competently in pursuit of goals and the lack of realistic, long-term goals
Mistakes. Misunderstandings. Everywhere.
Psychopaths don’t endure stress or danger calmly. Rather they’re incapable of processing it the same way. They completely lack specific faculties normal human beings take for granted, like a wide range of emotions and the ability to foresee future events and their logical consequences.
Psychopaths can’t feel those future results before they happen, so solipsistic are they, that they have no fear of things that should be feared. Calmness is an illusion. In them is only emptiness.
Second, psychopaths don’t act vigorously. They act parasitically. And outside of human hunting and manipulation they generally lack competencies as a population entirely. They literally don’t produce anything. They live to feed off others.
Thumotic doesn’t understand what psychopathy is Jim, don’t parrot him.
There is a connection to masculinity though.
Psychopaths are caricatures of healthy, masculine individuals.
That’s why they are so similar. On the outside, the fearlessness and confidence seems the same, the calmness and quick decision making, the natural social competence. But it’s a veil.
The masculine man has real substance. His confidence is like a firm rock, built by the turbulence of emotions, careful forethought, and difficult experiences.
The psychopath is empty. He doesn’t even have a conception of his emptiness. He is purely shallow. He mimics the masculine man but always breaks under pressure and fails his duties.
They are completely different creatures. A psychopath is almost a sub-human in terms of quality of experience. They are not to be admired, but rejected for the creatures they are: Parasites.
Years ago someone laid a challenge. They laid it at my feet, right in front of me. It looked me in the eye. The challenge: Research tobacco and prove that it was the greatest public ill of our age or forever hold my tongue. I rose to the challenge.
And I lost.
I was so certain that Tobacco was the devil’s weed, and I was wrong. I sunk dozens of hours into learning statistics. I sunk hundreds more mulling over WHO studies, EPA reports and academic articles. And you know what I learned?
Tobacco’s no devil. In fact, she’s a powerful partner for the virtuous man, a loyal friend to be counted upon. Even on the Lung Cancer question, it seems more likely that Tobacco saves lives, and improves quality of life.
I learned this through copious research and it would not be easy for me to explain how others might get there.
Luckily Robert A. Levy and Rosalind B. Marimont at the CATO Institute have created an incredible starting point. If you seek the truth on tobacco, I link you their .pdf here although the SOTT article linked above provides worthy commentary.
Some short excerpts to whet your appetite:
What should have mattered most to government officials, the health community and concerned parents is the following pronouncement from the WHO study: After examining 650 lung cancer patients and 1,500 healthy adults in seven European countries, WHO concluded that the “results indicate no association between childhood exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and lung cancer risk.”
And another:
Another example of anti-tobacco misinformation is the landmark 1993 report in which the Environmental Protection Agency declared that environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is a dangerous carcinogen that kills three thousand Americans yearly. Five years later, in July 1998, federal judge William L. Osteen lambasted the EPA for “cherry picking” the data, excluding studies that “demonstrated no association between ETS and cancer,” and withholding “significant portions of its findings and reasoning in striving to confirm its a priori hypothesis.” Both “the record and EPA’s explanation,” concluded the court, “make it clear that using standard methodology, EPA could not produce statistically significant results.” A more damning assessment is difficult to imagine, but here are the court’s conclusions at greater length, in its own words.
And another:
To be blunt, there is no credible evidence that 400,000 deaths per year – or any number remotely close to 400,000 – are caused by tobacco. Nor has that estimate been adjusted for the positive effects of smoking – less obesity, colitis, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and, for some women, a lower incidence of breast cancer. The actual damage from smoking is neither known nor knowable with precision. Responsible statisticians agree that it is impossible to attribute causation to a single variable, like tobacco, when there are multiple causal factors that are correlated with one another. The damage from cigarettes is far less than it is made out to be.
It’s beautiful, I know. Savor the experience. Free yourself from the 400,000 death lie and light up today.
Popularizing good work is important. Sharing makes the world go round and takes us all closer to where we want to be.
So here is Tobaccotruth. They produce some interesting comments.
Do I entirely agree with them? Not really. But I think they’re going in the right direction.
They are right that tobacco has major benefits.
They are also right Snus and heart attack survival rates have a curious relationship.
I know I’ll read more of them this weekend.
I know I do. But here’s something. I made a prediction on the fall of Poroshenko this spring to Kolomoisky and the Banderistas.
And guess what. Those of you who thought the opposite were right. You were right.
It all seemed so clear, so obvious, from a distance. Poroshenko has a tenuous grip on power. Kolomoisky had a strong grip in his area. The Banderistas were better armed than they’ve ever been.
But the analysis was missing a key ingredient: Divide and conquer.
America is the heir to the British Empire. Anglo dominance didn’t disappear after WW1. It migrated from London to Washington.
The Americans are students of British policy, they always have been. The Hamiltonian school understands this best of all. The top is a precarious place to be.
So you make allies. Weak allies. Weak allies are easier to control, easier to manipulate. And a host of weak allies can eliminate a strong competitor. Then when your weak allies become strong, replace them.
Both Poroshenko and the Banderistas are American allies. But Poroshenko is the weaker. His real power is limited. His wealth may grow, but the Ukrainian army is not loyal to him. The Banderistas are loyal to their goals. They have the guns, the aggression, and the numbers to create enormous changes in the Ukraine and they fully intend to do so.
Compared to Poroshenko, the Banderistas are strong. The Americans turned on them and Kolomoisky. Ally with the weaker against the stronger.
This has been a key feature in Anglo foreign policy. Americans allied with the weaker shias in Iraq. With the Sunnis in Syria. With the Benghazis in Libya. With the Chechnyans in Russia. With the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. With the Maidanites in the Ukraine. With Taiwan against China. With Pakistan against India. With Iraq against Iran.
You could continue forever. Yet I missed it, and you were right.
When making analysis it’s critical to keep such tendencies in mind.
We’re a half century into the anti-Tobacco crusade. The previous decades have been a time of slow loss. Tobacco slipped from mainstream consumption. Smoking became stigmatized and routinely shamed in the West.
Now the crusade is entering the next phase. Under the guise of ‘public heath’ smoking bans are expanding across North America. Consider Seattle parks going smoke free. Or San Mateo county banning smoking on private property.
Guise is the right word to describe their reasoning. The state and shadow-state non-profits claim they are concerned for the health of the people. But that’s a blatant lie.
If they were truly concerned, why would the same institutions not target known detriments to public health? Grains cause enormous damage to modern society, as does dairy and allergenic legumes. Yet few words are spoken of these They ravage the immune system and encourage mental disease, to say nothing of cancer.
But no. Only tobacco is victimized with a crusader mentality.
And unlike the case of dairy and grains the Tobacco question is hardly settled. Studies of tobacco as a whole, even of the lowest quality cigarettes, are full of anomalies. This is to say nothing of nicotine itself, proven time and time again to be a wonder drug.
The real reason tobacco is demonized is not public health concern, but public order concerns. The West is going totalitarian. This has become blatantly obvious since 9/11, although there were countless signs previous to it.
Tobacco is a known cognitive enhancer and ancient medicinal tool. If totalitarianism is to be encouraged then the influence of the general citizenry must be reduced. What better way to do that then by destroying the minds and health of the population in question? Modern day America is the perfect example.
America has immense resource wealth and the most advanced technology in the world. Yet their people are the pinnacle of sloth and decadence. America pioneered cognitive enhancers like nootropics, yet there is no attempt to increase the intelligence of population and many overt ways to show its destruction.
Nootropics will never be popular in the totalitarian-leaning America. And neither will tobacco or generally correct dietary guidelines. There’s too much at stake to allow self improvement into the general population.
All enhancing substances will remain marginalized and hidden, used by a very quiet elect to the detriment of others.
That’s the real reason for the anti-Tobacco Crusade, the same as all the others: Power and control.
