Monday, December 09, 2013



Nelson Mandela

The mainstream media treat Mandela as a saint.  The conservative blogosphere is much less impressed.  See here for example.  Mandela was a Communist and a terrorist in his youth but was aged 72 at the time of his release  from prison, by which time the normal mellowing with age had set in -- and he behaved in an exemplary way from that point on.  What he is credited for largely consists of his being old and grandfatherly at the time of his re-entry into public life.






IQ tests don't test your intelligence. They test your patience (?)

There is a lightweight article below by historian Tim Stanley which I am reluctant to dignify with comment but it could mislead so I will say something.  He is right in pointing out that the questions "failed" by Boris Johnson were trick questions, not IQ questions.  But he goes on to mention more such trick questions so could leave the reader confused.  For the record he gives NO examples of questions from any IQ test.  And his claim that IQ tests  measure patience is simply wrong.  When people are given unlimited time to do a test, their scores rise very little.  That his own score was low probably reflected an unserious approach to the test

So, it turns out that I’m stupid. All those A-levels were for nought: my entire career at Cambridge was the result of a clerical error. Because, according to the IQ tests, I have the intelligence of a goldfish with learning difficulties. I’d probably get lost trying to find my way around the glass bowl.
It was Boris Johnson who put the IQ test back in the news after he declared that the intelligent tend to rise to the top. Having met plenty of MPs, I’d dispute that assertion, but someone else came up with a smart way of putting it to the test – they asked the Mayor a couple of IQ questions live on air. And he got both of them wrong…

Is Boris just a dim blond? Certainly not, or minime vero as he’d put it in Latin. He’s a brilliant classicist who was the victim of some pretty odd questions. The first was: “A man builds a house with four sides of rectangular construction each side with southern exposure. A big bear comes along. What is the colour of the bear?” Sorry?! What? How on earth should I know? Boris said: “the bear is brown”, perhaps because he instantly thought of Paddington Bear. But the correct answer is “white”. Apparently, a house can only have four southern exposures at the North Pole. Ergo, it’s a white polar bear knocking at the door.

Question two is just as weird. “Take two apples from three apples and what do you have?” The answer is two (read it again carefully: “Take two apples…”) but Boris said “one” – and that’s understandable. School has trained us so that whenever we hear a question about the number of apples we instinctively turn it into a subtraction, and go straight for “three minus two equals one”. These IQ questions are all about catching us out.

It’s as if they were written by a swot who compensates for his diminished height and body odour by making other people feel idiotic. Question: “You take the 8.15 train to Edinburgh travelling at 85mph and you arrive one hour late. Why?” Answer: “Because you should’ve caught an earlier train, you goon!” Or: “If a 10-ton elephant grew wings and flew into the air at a rate of two feet per second, how long before it gets a mile high?” Answer: “Never: it’s an elephant! Whoever heard of an elephant growing wings you moron?! Do you have any formal education or were you raised by feral dogs?”

Don’t be embarrassed, Boris – no one normal can answer these questions. Even the supposedly straightforward ones are often so complicated (“Square, circle, triangle, square – what comes next?”) that they quickly become boring and you decide that you won’t play along (“A cat with a lollipop?”).

In short, IQ tests are a test of patience, not wit. When I finally tried one, I came out with a score that puts me in the category of the educationally subnormal. And I’m happy about that. I’m an idiot with better things to do…

SOURCE






British Labour leader  accused of contempt for voters after his polling guru said their anti-immigration views made him 'depressed'

Ed Miliband was last night accused of displaying contempt for voters after his polling guru said their anti-immigration views made him ‘depressed’.

James Morris made a series of scornful remarks after holding a focus group meeting intended to help  the party devise Election-winning policies on the issue.

Mr Morris, a key member of the Labour leader’s strategy unit, dismissed the views of those present  as ‘fill jobs with Brits’.

His outburst reflects tensions among Mr Miliband’s team over immigration. The party is haunted by claims that the last Labour Government  was responsible for mass immigration from Eastern Europe – and divided over whether Mr Miliband should take a stronger line.

Mr Morris, a former No 10 adviser to Tony Blair at the time of the ‘open-door’ policy, used the social-networking website Twitter to announce on Monday evening: ‘Recipe for a miserable evening:  off to do focus groups on immigration.’

And afterwards, he wrote, in a line dripping with sarcasm: ‘Tonight’s focus groups as progressive as  I hoped,’ adding: ‘Their plan: end migration and fill jobs with Brits who have to take job.’

He declared that it had left him ‘depressed, as you might imagine’.

The liberal views on immigration of many of Labour’s frontbenchers are not shared by most voters.  In a recent opinion poll,  72 per cent of respondents favoured slamming the door on unskilled immigrants, while 59 per cent thought we should allow fewer relatives of people already living in Britain into the country to join them.

The findings forced Mr Miliband to announce that, if he wins the next Election, he will introduce measures to help British workers.

Last night, Conservative MP Nadhim Zahawi said of Mr Morris’s remarks: ‘This shows the contempt Labour and Ed Miliband have for the public. They don’t want to hear people’s views about immigration.

'Instead they want to censor and shut down any sensible and rational debate on an extremely important subject.  ‘It’s the same old Labour. Anyone who doesn’t share their world view is mocked and attacked.’

A spokesman for Ed Miliband declined to comment.

SOURCE






Liberals Talk Race and Crime - And Hilarity Ensues!

Ann Coulter

On a break from pretending to believe they live in a country bristling with violent white racists, the Non-Fox Media have been trying to debunk stories about the "Knockout Game," in which young black males approach random strangers and try to knock them out with one punch.

The left's leading line of defense against the Knockout Game is to argue that young black males have always been violent, so, hey, this is nothing new.

You're welcome, black America!

In Slate, Emma Roller wearily recounted other episodes of black-on-white violence in order to announce: "The 'Knockout Game' is a myth."

Reminiscing about the flash mobs that shook many parts of the country a few years ago, Roller wrote: "I remember the summer of 2011, a story about a crowd of (black) teenagers at the Wisconsin State Fair randomly attacking fairgoers went viral as a sign of a burgeoning race war."

So you see, stupid right-wingers, young black males have always been violent, so what's the big deal about the Knockout Game? Your honor, my client's not a killer; he's a serial killer.

MSNBC's Chris Hayes reached for a different example of monstrous black-on-white violence in order to dispute that the Knockout Game is anything new.

Looking like a translator for the deaf with all the air quotes he had to make for "supposed" "trend" and "Knockout Game," Hayes compared it to what he called the fake trend of "wilding" after a mob of black youths violently attacked and raped a white woman jogging in New York's Central Park in 1989. According to Hayes, "there never was such a thing" as wilding.

Whether the boys who were convicted of the crime did it or, as liberals now claim, a man already sentenced to life in prison did it, the Central Park jogger was brutally raped and nearly murdered by either one or several young black men. (They all did it -- see Chapter 13 of my book "Demonic.")

The following year, 1990, blacks committed 57 percent of all the violent crime against whites, while whites committed only 2 percent of the violent crime against blacks, according to the Department of Justice's annual Victimization Report.

Thanks for the memories, Chris!

Oh, and contrary to Hayes' proclamation, black men raping white women is something of a "trend" -- at least according to FBI crime statistics. At least since 1997 (I got bored and stopped looking any farther back) blacks have raped several thousand white women every year, while white-on-black rapes have numbered between "0.0" and "Sample based on 10 or fewer." (See Chapter 11 of "Mugged.")

In a particularly incomprehensible defense of black America in Mediaite, Tommy Christopher denounced the "sketchy" news reports of "the so-called 'Knockout Game'" by citing the video of a group of black teenagers walking past teacher Jim Addlespurger, when one of the black teens steps from the group and knocks the teacher out cold, and then they all laugh about the assault as they continue walking.

But Christopher helpfully notes that a cop said this "was just a random act of violence." So don't worry about the Knockout Game, white people -- this is mostly just ordinary, everyday black-on-white violence.

Flash mobs, wilding, day-to-day black violence -- talk about damning with faint praise!

Liberals have to work so hard to avoid noticing the astronomical crime rate among young black males that their brains freeze.

Roller attributed public interest in a story about mobs of young black males attacking families at a state fair to white people's need to validate their "fear" that black people are dangerous. (Milwaukeeans hardly even notice when mobs of whites surround their families at a state fair, punch them, kick them and smash their cars, while shouting racial slurs.)

But Roller implied that blacks engaging in violence is wildly unusual: "When a few YouTube videos are able to convince terrified white folks that young black people are dangerous, they may as well assume that all cats can play the keyboard."

Is a disproportionate amount of keyboard playing in the country being done by cats?

According to the FBI, between 1976 and 2005, blacks, who are about 12 percent of the population, committed 53 percent of all felony murders and 56 percent of non-felony murders. The Centers for Disease Control recently reported that young black men are 14 times more likely to commit murder than young white men.

White liberals know this. Blacks certainly know it. Despite the hoo-ha over George Zimmerman shooting Trayvon Martin, most black people's experience is not that white vigilantes are shooting them. For every one of those, there are 1,000 black teens killing other black people.

But if liberals took the first step toward sanity and admitted that young black men commit an awful lot of violent crime, they might have to ask why that is.

That's a dangerous question for people who refuse to acknowledge the devastation of fatherless boys caused by liberal welfare policies. (See Chapter 6 of "Never Trust a Liberal Over 3" to see how the British welfare system has created the same social disaster among hordes of white people.)

Unable to consider the obvious explanation -- single-motherhood -- liberals are left with nothing but genetic determinism.

So liberals defend young black males from the charge of playing a Knockout Game by telling us young black men are always violent.

Don't worry, black America. White liberals have your back.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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