Innocent Bystanders

Reducing Homicides of African-Americans September 29, 2016

A coupla charts from US News & World Report that saved me from having to plot them up myself:

There are some easy conclusions to be drawn from these charts. One is: despite their much lower population, blacks kill as many or more people than whites. A second is: blacks kill more than twice as many whites as whites kill blacks. The last is: if blacks killed other blacks at the same rate as whites kill other whites, it would reduce the number of murders by about 1900, which dwarfs the ~225 black victims of whites.

Similarly, if black killings of whites could be reduced to the rate at which whites kill blacks (based on the killers’ racial identity), the number of whites killed by blacks would be about 50, rather than 500. That saves twice as many lives as if whites’ killings of blacks were completely eliminated.

The elephant in the room. I’m not the first person to call it that, probably by 40 years. But while everybody acknowledges it, and at a meta-level acknowledges that they acknowledge it, they always turn their policy recommendations toward the politically correct issue(?) of black victims of white violence.

Viewing Recommendation September 27, 2016

Unlike IB, where posts are hard to come by these days, Veeshir of DoublePlusUndead has been on fire of late. Y’all ought to head over and enjoy the last few weeks of posts.

YouTube-Viewing Bleg September 25, 2016

Here’s the deal. One of the guys who translates a Chinese Light Novel series says he’ll translate an extra chapter for every 100,000 views of the Crayon Pop video below. So if you’re in the mood for disco K-pop (Korean pop) featuring a quintet of identically-clothed girls (refreshingly relatively conservatively clothed, BTW), then have a listen.

If not, then you’ll have to live with the guilt of depriving me of reading material like:

Between the representatives of the Desolate race and the Blood Moon, one was the Desolate race’s new Desolate Queen, while the other was a mysterious Reincarnator. For the two women to meet in the Soul Tomb, there was no point speaking further, they could only battle.

Yeah, baby.

Editorial Guidance for Reuters September 25, 2016

Ummm… It’s not a “freak accident” if you’re trying to take a selfie with a python:

RAJASTHAN (REUTERS) – In a freak accident, a python attacked a man as a group of people tried to click a selfie with it in the Sirohi district of India’s northwestern Rajasthan state on Friday (September 23).

Freak accident? More like begging for it.

Updated the Link to xBradTC’s Site September 24, 2016

I knew he had run afoul of WordPress for some of his outstanding “Load Heat” images, but didn’t realize he had moved his site to Typepad. In any case, the old name, “Bring the Heat, Bring the Stupid,” has apparently been truncated to “Bring the Heat.” But being a traditionalist, I’m refusing to update the blog name in the sidebar.

But now clicking the link takes you his excellent* site.

*Note grudging admission.

Man Mounts Manatee, Makes Meddlers Mad September 24, 2016

What kind of country do we live in, where a man can’t saddle up a manatee and take a spin around a lagoon?

A Florida man was arrested for allegedly attempting to ride the back of a manatee in the Florida Keys, police say.

Police charged 47-year-old James Massengale Jr. with annoying, molesting, harassing, or disturbing a manatee after a witness saw the man “touching and laying” on top of two adult manatees and their calves at Islamorada Library Beach, NBC 6 reported.

If being a manatee cowboy is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

I leave you with the world’s greatest manatee song, which is probably also the world’s worst manatee song and most mediocre manatee song:

Ping Pong Mania September 24, 2016

President Obama’s Subtle Plan to Increase Global Warming September 23, 2016

“Want to Slow Climate Change? Stop Having Babies”

…shrieks a Bloomberg headline. Which is kind of racist, because in this country it is Hispanics who have the highest birth rate by far. Non-Hispanic whites and African-Americans are already well below the replacement rate. So, reading between the lines, he’s basically saying that Hispanics are responsible for stopping climate change in this country. And that, to me, is more racist than anything Donald Trump has said to date.

But it occurs to me that there’s another easy way to slow climate change.

Stop immigration.

After all, the US has the highest per capita CO2 emissions in the world (among larger countries), so allowing large-scale immigration means taking people who were creating less CO2 and incorporating them into a society where they make more CO2.

So every person allowed into the country is basically a CO2 bomb waiting to happen.

And it’s not just CO2, of course. Our citizens have been nagged for decades about our excessive energy consumption, excessive waste creation, excessive blah, blah, blah…

So stopping immigration would be good for the world. Good for the would-be immigrant, too, because we don’t want to burden him/her with the moral guilt and reprehensible consumption habits of a typical US citizen. It’s like we’re corrupting them and inducting into our eeevil capitalist system, which is devoted to the destruction of the planet.

So for the good of the immigrants themselves and the good of the global environment, President Obama’s policy of rampant immigration should stopped immediately.

YOU ARE IN A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE* September 23, 2016

I’ve been known to relentlessly express concerns over China’s geopolitical ambitions and military buildup, but now I’m forced to report that the Chinese are also leaving us behind in urban design:

That’s a new pedestrian bridge in Hunan Province, built to resemble Chinese knots (whatever those are). There are a lot more pictures at the link, and they’re all pretty cool.

*Extra Credit to anyone who remembers that reference w/o Googling.

The Prodigal Anti-Vaxer September 22, 2016

Always nice to see someone grab a clue:

I was an anti-vax crackpot…

On the Occasion of the Charlotte Riots September 22, 2016

Sometimes (and much more often of late) it seems like the world is falling apart. From the tepid economy, race riots, terrorist acts, and spate of ridiculously awful crimes in the United States, to the tepid economy, global unrest*, and re-arming of unfriendly countries abroad, the prospects for a nice, quiet, decent lifestyle seem to be dimming.

Compound that with the ridiculous social justice movements**, political correctitude***, assaults on the Constitution****, weakened military*****, and a presidential race that makes one weep, and it’s easy to fall into despair. Inevitable, really.

I don’t have an answer for any of this, other than to dig a hole and pull it in after myself. Or, as Mr. Matamoros is fond of saying, “Climb a tree, cut the soles off my shoes, and learn to play the flute.”

Just thought I’d kvetch.

*****************************************************

*Note to President Obama and his Secretaries of State: Massive numbers of refugees are one of the seven warning signs that your foreign policy has tanked. So every time you decide to admit more refugees, it’s an indictment of your policies.

**Notes to SJWs: Your gender identity should not be your defining feature in life. Your willingness to adhere to the SJW code does not make you virtuous. Joining an internet stampede to vilify somebody who happened to misphrase something does not make you a defender of justice.

***Regarding gender pronouns: Everybody’s got a kink, so by PC standards, everybody should get their own pronoun. That’s ridiculous and unworkable, so you’ve got two choices: leave it the way it’s been for all of recorded history, or give everybody the same pronoun.

****They love saying the the Constitution is outdated and irrelevant, but what they mean is that it’s in the way of what they want. It’s just greed and selfishness rationalized by invalidating the Constitution.

*****Note to President Obama and all the other military reformists: The military has one job. One job. That job is to maintain a defensive posture per the National Military Strategy and prevail in any conflicts designated by the US Congress. It’s a tough job, requiring focus, intensity, competence, and courage. It is not police force and it is not a testing ground for social policy. Let the military decide what it needs to do its one job, and get out of its way.