Gay Patriot Tackles A Killer in the Gay Community ~ Moral Equivalency

Since marriage is no longer about creating a stable environment for children, and has become (and this mainly the fault of heterosexual liberals [e.g., liberalism]) about personal fulfillment, validation, and access to social benefits, there literally is no constraint on how much more broadly it can be redefined. ~ Gay Patriot

Gay Patriot bravely steps out on this subject and accepts the challenge… as any rational thinking conservatarian would:

The New York Times has noticed that bareback sex is a thing gay people are doing, which is breaking news from about the mid-1990′s when (according to Wikipedia) gay publications like The Advocate first took note of the phenomenon of gay men having unprotected sex and, in some cases, deliberately seeking HIV infection.

Anyway, the Times, perhaps after failing to find a celebrity to comment on the issue, goes to the next best source for information on epidemiology and behavioral psychology… an English professor from SUNY-Buffalo. Who provides this analysis:

What I learned in my research is that gay men are pursuing bareback sex not just for the thrill of it, but also as a way to experience intimacy, vulnerability and connection. Emotional connection may be symbolized in the idea that something tangible is being exchanged. A desire for connection outweighs adherence to the rules of disease prevention.

And some guys are apparently getting intimate, tangible, emotional connections 10-20 times a night in bathhouses.

It also seems that the readers of the NY Times, based on the comments, are in complete denial that this phenomenon exists, and think the author is just making it up to attack the gay community. Liberals choose to blame the recent dramatic increases in HIV infection rates on “the stigma attached to HIV.” Um, excuse me, but don’t stigmas usually make people avoid those things to which stigmas are attached?

In the real world, stigmatizing a behavior results in less of it: Which is why people don’t use the N-word in public any more and smoking has declined as a social activity. When the social stigma is removed … as with HIV infection and teenage pregnancy … you get more of those things.

…read more…

Bravo. I just wish to mention that this area of the body is not made for sex. And many will read the following and think that this is an attack on the humanity of the gay lifestyle/choice. It is not, it is a cry for gay men to become monogamous and cease having relations with the people they purport to love in that area. It is out of compassion, not hatred the following is pointed out:

Homosexuals also continue to contract and spread other diseases at rates significantly higher that the community at large. These include syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes, hepatitis A and B, a variety of intestinal parasites including amebiases and giardiasis, and even typhoid fever (David G. Ostrow, Terry Alan Sandholzer, and Yehudi M. Felman, eds., Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Homosexual Men; see also, Sevgi O. Aral and King K. Holmes, “Sexually Transmitted Diseases in the AIDS Era,” Scientific American). This is because rectal intercourse or sodomy, typically practiced by homosexuals, is one of the most efficient methods of transmitting disease. Why? Because nature designed the human rectum for a single purpose: expelling waste from the body. It is built of a thin layer of columnar cells, different in structure than the plate cells that line the female reproductive tract. Because the wall of the rectum is so thin, it is easily ruptured during intercourse, allowing semen, blood, feces, and saliva to directly enter the bloodstream. The chances for infection increases further when multiple partners are involved, as is frequently the case: Surveys indicate that American male homosexuals average between 10 and 110 sex partners per year (L. Corey and K. K. Holmes, “Sexual Transmission of Hepatitis A in Homosexual Men,” New England Journal of Medicine; and, Paul Cameron et al., “Sexual Orientation and Sexually Transmitted Disease,” Nebraska Medical Journal).

Not surprisingly, these diseases shorten life expectancy. Social psychologist Paul Cameron compared over 6,200 obituaries from homosexual magazines and tabloids to a comparable number of obituaries from major American Newspapers. He found that while the median age of death of married American males was 75, for sexually active homosexual American males it is 42. For homosexual males infected with the AIDS virus, it was 39. While 80 percent of married American men lived to 65 or older, less than two percent of the homosexual men covered in the survey lived as long

…read more…

…these problems don’t remain personal and private. The drive, especially since this issue is associated with the word “gay rights,” is to make sure your worldview reflects theirs. To counter this effort, we must demand that the medical and psychiatric community take off their PC blinders and treat these people responsibly.  If we don’t, the next thing you know, your child will be taking a “tolerance” class explaining how “transexuality” is just another “lifestyle choice”…. After all, it is the only way malignant narcissists will ever feel normal, healthy, and acceptable: by remaking society – children – in their image

Tammy Bruce, The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values (Roseville: Prima, 2003), 92, 206.

In the black community, for example, one of the major factors in the degradation of that sub-culture is fatherlessness. In order to stop the devolving of young men into criminals, the black community would have to step up to the plate and accept responsibility for their own actions and change behavior… not blaming outside forces. Similarly, the gay community will have to battle their demons as well to help their subculture. See my Cumulative Case for some ideas of what these demons are.

Many years ago, Tammy Bruce reemphasized this dangerous, self-destructive notion and action:

….What a difference treatment makes! As researchers succeeded in developing ever more effective drugs, AIDS became—like gonorrhea, syphilis, and hepatitis B before it—what many if consider to be a simple “chronic disease.” And many of the gay men who had heeded the initial warning went right back to having promiscuous unprotected sex here is now even a movement—the “bareback” movement—that encourages sex  without condoms. The infamous bathhouses are opening up again; drug use, sex parties, and hundreds of sex partners a year are all once again a feature of the “gay lifestyle.” In fact, “sexual liberation” has simply become a code phrase for the abandonment of personal responsibility, respect, and integrity.

In his column for Salon.com, David Horowitz discussed gay radicals like the writer Edmund White. During the 1960s and beyond, White addressed audiences in the New York gay community on the subject of sexual liberation. He told one such audience that “gay men should wear their sexually transmitted diseases like red badges of courage in a war against a  sex-negative society.” And did they ever. Then, getting gonorrhea was the so-called courageous act. Today, the stakes are much higher. That red badge is now one of AIDS suffering and death, and not just for gay men themselves. In their effort to transform society, the perpetrators are taking women and children and straight men with them.

Even Camille Paglia, a woman whom I do not often praise, astutely commented some years ago, “Everyone who preached  free love in the Sixties is responsible for AIDS. This idea that it was somehow an accident, a microbe that sort of fell from  heaven—absurd. We must face what we did.”

The moral vacuum did rear its ugly head during the 1960s with the blurring of the lines of right and wrong (remember “situational ethics”?),  the sexual revolution, and the consequent emergence of the feminist and gay civil-rights movements. It’s not the original ideas of these movements, mind you, that caused and have perpetuated the problems we’re discussing. It was and remains the few in power who project their destructive sense of themselves onto the innocent landscape, all  the while influencing and conditioning others. Today, not only is the blight not being faced, but in our Looking-Glass world, AIDS is romanticized and sought after….

Tammy Bruce, The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values (Roseville: Prima, 2003), 96-97.

And take note I talk about the nihilistic culture in the gay community [infected by liberalism] in a more philosophical and religious sense than most places, from my chapter in my book:


…Foucault looked at truth as an object to be constructed by those whom wielded the power to define facts.  “Madness, abnormal sex, and criminality were not objective categories but rather social constructs.”[73] He embraced what mainstream society had rejected, which was sadomasochism and drug use. In 1984 Foucault died from contracting AIDS.  One should take note that Foucault so enjoyed his hope of dying “of an overdose of pleasure” that he frequented gay bathhouses and sex clubs even after knowing of his communicable disease.  Many people were infected because of Foucault and Foucault’s post-modern views.[74]  On a lighter note, Dinesh D’Souza tells of a contest about the time Foucault was dying.  The story is fitting for those who view hell as a real option:

People were debating whether AIDS victims should be quarantined as syphilis victims had been in the past.  [William F.] Buckley said no. The solution was to have a small tattoo on their rear ends to warn potential partners.  Buckley’s suggestion caused a bit of a public stir, but the folks at National Review were animated by a different question: What should the tattoo say?  A contest was held, and when the entries were reviewed, the winner by unanimous consent was Hart.[75]  He [Hart] suggested the lines emblazoned on the gates to Dante’s Inferno: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”[76]

You see, in order to have one’s alternative lifestyle accepted, one must attack “what truth is” in its absolute (Judeo-Christian) sense.  Truth is whatever the powerful decided it was, or so Foucault proposed.  This is the attack.  “We are subjected to the production of truth through power and we cannot exercise power except through the production of truth.”[77]  Foucault, sadly, never repented from violating God’s natural order and truth.  He was a living example in his death of what Paul said was naturally to follow in their rejection of God’s gracious revelation of Himself to humanity,[78] Romans 1:26-32 reads:

Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how to be human either—women didn’t know how to be women, men didn’t know how to be men. Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men—all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it—emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches.… And it’s not as if they don’t know better. They know perfectly well they’re spitting in God’s face. And they don’t care—worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best! [79]

Foucault said that “sex was worth dying for,”[80] but is it?…


Notes:
[73] Ibid.
[74] Ibid.
[75] Jeffrey Hart, a professor many years ago at Dartmouth Univ.
[76] Dinesh D’ Souza, Letters to a Young Conservative: The Art of Mentoring (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 20.
[77] Flynn, 235-237.
[78] Walter A Elwell, Evangelical Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996), Romans 1:21
[79] Eugene H Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2002), Romans 1:26-27, 30-32.
[80] Ibid., 235.


 

The President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Calls for Islamic Reformation!

The President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, made a surprise visit St. Mark’ Cathedral on the Nativity Feast. WOW.

New Hope For Egypt’s Copts?

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi visited the main Coptic Christian cathedral Tuesday during its Christmas Eve mass (Coptic Christians celebrated Christmas yesterday), “the first such visit by an Egyptian president in history” according to First Things writer Mark Movsesian. “It’s important for the world to see this scene, which reflects true Egyptian unity, and to confirm that we’re all Egyptians, first and foremost. We truly love each other without discrimination, because this is the Egyptian truth,” Sisi told service attenders.

Coptic Pop al-Tawadri thanked Sisi for his visit, calling it “a pleasant surprise and a humanitarian gesture.”

It isn’t the first such gesture that Sisi has made—in a speech celebrating the birth of Mohammed on New Year’s Day, he called on Muslim religious leaders to help fight against extremism: ”I say and repeat, again, that we are in need of a religious revolution,” he said, according to CNN. ”You imams are responsible before Allah. The entire world is waiting on you. … We need a revolution of the self, a revolution of consciousness and ethics to rebuild the Egyptian person—a person that our country will need in the near future.”…

(The American Conservative)

Huge news via Breitbart! On the one hand you have people on Bill O’Reilly defending the Muslim Brotherhood, but the inserted leader of Egypt may be the beginning of what we should hear from leaders in Islamic countries. Again, this is the first leader of an Islamic country who has said publicly that Islam needs to reforms:

One of the most controversial, and yet indisputable, observations that can be made about the current state of global affairs is that Islam has problems with violence and aggression.  (That’s not redundant – cultural and political aggression without physical violence are possible, and troublesome.)

This observation does not imply that all Muslims are universally violent or aggressive –  that’s the straw-man argument apologists for Islam and critics of the West would rather deal with.  But there are aspects of Islamic practice that make it useful to those who would pursue the path of violent domination.  It doesn’t take much effort to find passages in the Koran that can serve as signposts along that path.

Contrary to the endless harangues of their domestic critics, people in the West are not comfortable with the notion of a “bad religion.”  Religious tolerance is an important value across the European diaspora, and it was written into the ideological DNA of the United States.  Granted, this ideal of tolerance has not always been observed with the greatest fidelity, but everyone gets the general idea that their neighbors should be respectfully allowed to pursue whatever religious faith they choose.  Criticism of any faith from the outside is uncomfortable.

But here we are, looking back over quite a bit of Islamic violence around the world, unable to find parallel behavior in any other contemporary religious practice.  (It’s telling that the nearly universal responses to a discussion of Islamic violence are What about the Crusades? or What about the Inquisition?  Whatever else one can say about those chapters of history, they indisputably took place a long time ago.)  Something is different with Islam, and not in a good way.  It’s so obvious, and yet so politically incorrect to point it out, that it has reached elephant-in-the-room status.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is willing to talk about the elephant in the room, and he didn’t mince words when he spoke on the topic of Islamic violence in Cairo on New Year’s Day:

It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire Islamic world to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world.  Impossible!

That thinking – I am not saying “religion” but “thinking” – that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the centuries, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world.  It’s antagonizing the entire world!

Is it possible that 1.6 billion people should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants – that is 7 billion – so that they themselves may live? Impossible!

This is all the more remarkable because al-Sisi was addressing a gathering of Islamic scholars and clerics.  He went on to tell them a “religious revolution” was needed, and “the entire world” was waiting for it…

[….]

It is nevertheless remarkable to hear a leader of al-Sisi’s prominence and devout religious background to call for a worldwide Islamic reformation. Note that he’s not using the “hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists” dodge, or saying that violent jihadists are aberrations bound to wither away on the “wrong side of history.” He’s calling for revolutionary action across the Muslim world, and calling out fundamentalists who believe Islamic law and tradition were chiseled in stone centuries ago…

…read more…

President Bush “A Class Act” ~ According to the New York Times

This is the shorter description of why the Bush admin didn’t take the offensive during all the scurrilous attacks against it on WMDs. The longer reading by Larry Elder of the NYT’s article can be found at my YouTube channel, HERE. My VERY in-depth discussion of WMD’s (or AMDs if you wish) is HERE.


For more clear thinking like this from Larry Elder… I invite you to visit: http://www.larryelder.com/ ~AND~ http://www.elderstatement.com/

Qatar Gives 14.8 Million To The Brooking’s Institute (Dem Influence)

How Peace Negotiator Martin Indyk Cashed a Big, Fat $14.8 Million Check From Qatar:

The New York Times recently published a long investigative report by Eric Lipton, Brooke Williams, and Nicholas Confessore on how foreign countries buy political influence through Washington think tanks. Judging from Twitter and other leading journalistic indicators, the paper’s original reporting appears to have gone almost entirely unread by human beings anywhere on the planet. In part, that’s because the Times’ editors decided to gift their big investigative scoop with the dry-as-dust title “Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks,” which sounds like the headline for an article in a D.C. version of The Onion. There is also the fact that the first 10 paragraphs of the Times piece are devoted to that highly controversial global actor, Norway, and its attempts to purchase the favors of The Center for Global Development, which I confess I’d never heard of before, although I live in Washington and attend think-tank events once or twice a week.

Except, buried deep in the Times’ epic snoozer was a world-class scoop related to one of the world’s biggest and most controversial stories—something so startling, and frankly so grotesque, that I have to bring it up again here: Martin Indyk, the man who ran John Kerry’s Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, whose failure in turn set off this summer’s bloody Gaza War, cashed a $14.8 million check from Qatar. Yes, you heard that right: In his capacity as vice president and director of the Foreign Policy Program at the prestigious Brookings Institution, Martin Indyk took an enormous sum of money from a foreign government that, in addition to its well-documented role as a funder of Sunni terror outfits throughout the Middle East, is the main patron of Hamas—which happens to be the mortal enemy of both the State of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party.

But far from trumpeting its big scoop, the Times seems to have missed it entirely, even allowing Indyk to opine that the best way for foreign governments to shape policy is “scholarly, independent research, based on objective criteria.” Really? It is pretty hard to imagine what the words “independent” and “objective” mean coming from a man who while going from Brookings to public service and back to Brookings again pocketed $14.8 million in Qatari cash. At least the Times might have asked Indyk a few follow-up questions, like: Did he cash the check from Qatar before signing on to lead the peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians? Did the check clear while he was in Jerusalem, or Ramallah? Or did the Qatari money land in the Brookings account only after Indyk gave interviews and speeches blaming the Israelis for his failure? We’ll never know now. But whichever way it happened looks pretty awful.

Or maybe the editors decided that it was all on the level, and the money influenced neither Indyk’s government work on the peace process nor Brookings’ analysis of the Middle East. Or maybe journalists just don’t think it’s worth making a big fuss out of obvious conflicts of interest that may affect American foreign policy. Maybe Qatar’s $14.8 million doesn’t affect Brookings’ research projects or what the think tank’s scholars tell the media, including the New York Times, about subjects like Qatar, Hamas, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other related areas in which Qatar has key interests at stake. Maybe the think tank’s vaunted objectivity, and Indyk’s personal integrity and his pride in his career as a public servant, trump the large piles of vulgar Qatari natural gas money that keep the lights on and furnish the offices of Brookings scholars and pay their cell-phone bills and foreign travel.

But people in the Middle East may be a little less blasé about this kind of behavior than we are. Officials in the Netanyahu government, likely including the prime minister himself, say they’ll never trust Indyk again, in part due to the article by Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea in which an unnamed U.S. official with intimate knowledge of the talks, believed to be Indyk, blamed Israel for the failure of the peace talks….

…read it ALL…

The Obama State Dept. Infuriates Lt. Col Ralph Peters (UPDATED)

Via Gateway Pundit:

Really!? Even the NYT’s is saying he was a deserter, he wrote a note for God sake!

…Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl left behind a note in his tent saying he had become disillusioned with the Army, did not support the American mission in Afghanistan and was leaving to start a new life. He slipped off the remote military outpost in Paktika Province on the border with Pakistan and took with him a soft backpack, water, knives, a notebook and writing materials, but left behind his body armor and weapons — startling, given the hostile environment around his outpost…

Jihad Watch adds some interesting points… with a response from Bowe father in those emails shortly before he deserted:

….Even more disturbing, however, are the questions swirling around Bowe Bergdahl himself. Former infantry officer Nathan Bradley Bethea, who served with Bowe Bergdahl, wrote in the Daily Beast on Monday that “Bergdahl was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down.” Refuting reports that Bergdahl got separated from his unit while on patrol, Bethea declared: “Make no mistake: Bergdahl did not ‘lag behind on a patrol,’ as was cited in news reports at the time. There was no patrol that night. Bergdahl was relieved from guard duty, and instead of going to sleep, he fled the outpost on foot. He deserted. I’ve talked to members of Bergdahl’s platoon—including the last Americans to see him before his capture. I’ve reviewed the relevant documents. That’s what happened.”

Corroborating this was an Associated Press report that was also published on Monday, stating that “a Pentagon investigation concluded in 2010 that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl walked away from his unit, and after an initial flurry of searching the military decided not to exert extraordinary efforts to rescue him, according to a former senior defense official who was involved in the matter.” This official said that the evidence that Bergdahl had deserted was “incontrovertible.”

Why might Bergdahl have deserted? A clue may lie in the fact that the Taliban claimed in 2010 that Bergdahl had converted to Islam and was teaching bomb-making to its jihadists. His father, Robert Bergdahl, appears to be a convert to Islam, as during the ceremony with Obama in the Rose Garden announcing the exchange, he proclaimed: “Bismillah al-rahman al-rahim” – the phrase, “In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful,” which is the heading of 113 of the Qur’an’s 114 chapters. (Journalist Neil Munro noted in the Daily Caller that “although Bergdahl quoted the Quran verse, the White House transcript did not translate it or even include the Islamic prayer. Instead, the transcript simply said Bergdahl spoke in the Pasho language, which is the language of the Pushtun tribe, which forms the vast majority of the Taliban force. In fact, ‘Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim’ is Arabic.” The lavishly-bearded Robert Bergdahl has also called for the release of the jihadists in Guantanamo and has implied that American troops are killing Afghan children in a tweet he concluded with “ameen,” the Arabic form of “amen.”)

What’s more, it was also revealed Monday that in an email to his father just days before he deserted, Bergdahl wrote: “I am sorry for everything here. These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid.” He thundered: “I am ashamed to be an American. And the title of US soldier is just the lie of fools. I am sorry for everything. The horror that is America is disgusting.”

His father thundered back: “OBEY YOUR CONSCIENCE!”

….read more….

NYTs Editor: `Most Secretive White House`

This comes to us via NewsBusters:

Top NY Times Editor: Obama Administration ‘Most Secretive White House’ She’s Dealt With

In an interview set to air Sunday on al-Jazeera America, New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson told the Arab network’s John Seigenthaler than the Obama adminisistration “is the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering, and that includes — I spent 22 years of my career in Washington and covered presidents from President Reagan on up through now, and I was Washington bureau chief of the Times during George W. Bush’s first term.”

She complained “The Obama administration has had seven criminal leak investigations. That is more than twice the number of any previous administration in our history. It’s on a scale never seen before.”…

Male/Female Differences (updated)

These Physiological and Chemical Differences are Real!

(NYTs) In a female mouse’s brain, a left-to-right pattern in the silencing of the X chromosome. These patterns may influence how individual brains function…. In some brains, for example, a mother’s X chromosome was seen dominating the left side, while the father’s dominated the right. Entire organs can be skewed toward one parent. Dr. Nathans and his colleagues found that in some mice, one eye was dominated by the father and the other by the mother. The diversity even extended to the entire mouse. In some animals, almost all the X chromosomes from one parent were shut; in others, the opposite was true…. Dr. Nathans speculates that using chromosomes from both parents is especially useful in the nervous system. It could create more ways to process information. “Diversity in the brain is the name of the game,” he said. ~ h/t UNCOMMON DESIGN

(Video Description) Are there physiological differences between the sexes that would naturally (or by design) cause one sex to excel in one aspect and not in another? In this short presentation, one lie of 12, you will see an exposing of how politically-correct feminists have undermined what otherwise is common sense.For more information on this topic as well as others, see “The 12 Biggest Lies.” (Used by permission and when embedded please connect to their website). They are also on Facebook: facebook.com/12biggestlies

Are there physiological differences between the sexes that would naturally (or by design) cause one sex to excel in one aspect and not in another? In this short presentation, one lie of 12, you will see an exposing of how politically-correct feminists have undermined what otherwise is common sense.

For more information on this topic as well as others, they are on FaceBook.

Neural Wiring

The participants were split into three age groups, aged eight to 13, 13 and four months to 16, and 17 to 22. The youngest group’s brains showed far less difference than those of the older two.


In one of the largest studies looking at the “connectomes” of the sexes, Ragini Verma, PhD, an associate professor in the department of Radiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues found greater neural connectivity from front to back and within one hemisphere in males, suggesting their brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action. In contrast, in females, the wiring goes between the left and right hemispheres, suggesting that they facilitate communication between the analytical and intuition.

“These maps show us a stark difference–and complementarity–in the architecture of the human brain that helps provide a potential neural basis as to why men excel at certain tasks, and women at others,” said Verma.

For instance, on average, men are more likely better at learning and performing a single task at hand, like cycling or navigating directions, whereas women have superior memory and social cognition skills, making them more equipped for multitasking and creating solutions that work for a group. They have a mentalistic approach, so to speak.

Past studies have shown sex differences in the brain, but the neural wiring connecting regions across the whole brain that have been tied to such cognitive skills has never been fully shown in a large population.

PENN STATE

Dennis Prager point out that “many in the university are not even intellectually open in the natural sciences if an idea may clash with Left-wing opinion.” He continues,

In a talk before fellow economists, the same Lawrence Summers, when he was president of Harvard University (he had been secretary of the Treasury under President Bill Clinton), addressed the issue of why there were so many fewer women than men in some areas of science, in math, and in engineering. He suggested that among other reasons, one might be that women’s brains are less suited to these subjects than men’s brains. More than one hundred Harvard professors signed a petition against President Summers, Left-wing alumni threatened not to give any more money to Harvard, and the vast majority of Harvard’s professors kept a cowardly silence while their colleagues sought to suppress completely respectable intellectual inquiry. Consequently, President Summers felt forced to apologize. In the year 2005, nearly four centuries after Galileo was forced by the then-dominant Catholic Church to recant observable scientific facts about our solar system, the president of Harvard University, an institution whose motto is Veritas (“Truth”), was forced by the now-dominant Left to recant observable facts about men and women.

Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph (New York, NY: Broadside Books, 2012), 102-103.

The ATLANTIC MONTHLY adds their thoughts on the matter:

Like religious fundamentalists seeking to stamp out the teaching of evolution, feminists stomped Harvard University President Lawrence Summers for mentioning at a January 14 academic conference the entirely reasonable theory that innate male-female differences might possibly help explain why so many mathematics, engineering, and hard-science faculties remain so heavily male.

Unlike most religious fundamentalists, these feminists were pursuing a careerist, self-serving agenda. This cause can put money in their pockets.

Summers’s suggestion—now ignominiously retracted, with groveling, Soviet-show-trial-style apologies—was that sex discrimination and the reluctance of mothers to work 80 hours a week are not the only possible explanations for gender imbalances in the math-science area. He noted that high school boys have many more of the highest math scores than girls, and suggested that this might reflect genetic differences. He also stressed the need for further research into all three possible explanations.

The foul brute may as well have rapped that women are “hos,” or declared that they should be kept barefoot and pregnant. The most remarkable feminist exercise in self-parody was that of MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins, who famously told reporters that she “felt I was going to be sick,” that “my heart was pounding and my breath was shallow,” that “I just couldn’t breathe, because this kind of bias makes me physically ill,” and that she had to flee the room because otherwise “I would’ve either blacked out or thrown up.”

Such fatuous feminist fulminations have been good fun, as have the eviscerations of Hopkins as a latter-day “Victorian maiden exposed to male coarseness, [who] suffers the vapors and collapses on the drawing room carpet in a heap of crinolines,” in the words of George Will. (More on Hopkins below.) But most of the commentary has glossed over one important point:

For all its foolishness and irrationality, the feminist hysteria about Summers furthers the career agendas of feminists who seek thinly veiled job preferences or quotas for themselves and their friends. Such preferences are most easily justified as a remedy for male bias. And bias can more easily be blamed for gender imbalances if the possibility that more men than women are gifted with math-science brilliance is banished from public discourse.

This feminist-careerist agenda is conveniently ignored by the less hysterical critics of Summers, who make no claim that he said anything inaccurate but nonetheless reproach him for what a Los Angeles Times editorial portrayed as a gratuitous and insensitive ego trip. To the contrary, until his disgraceful capitulation to the power of political correctness, Summers was making a much-needed effort to break the self-serving feminist-careerist stranglehold on honest discussion of gender imbalances….

(ATLANTIC MONTHLY)

(Video Description) Oprah recently mentioned an incident that happened in Europe. It looks like — more and more — that this incident was fictitious… but nonetheless, it offers a great opportunity for discussion of the differences in the male/female brain. This is true whether you ascribe it to eons of evolution or creation ex-nihilo.

WebMD comments on the science involved:

Recent studies highlight a long-held suspicion about the brains of males and females. They’re not the same. So how does the brain of a female look and function differently from a male’s brain, and what accounts for these differences?

Disparities Start Early in Life

Scientists now know that sex hormones begin to exert their influence during development of the fetus. A recent study by Israeli researchers that examined male and female brains found distinct differences in the developing fetus at just 26 weeks of pregnancy. The disparities could be seen when using an ultrasound scanner. The corpus callosum — the bridge of nerve tissue that connects the right and left sides of the brain — had a thicker measurement in female fetuses than in male fetuses.

Observations of adult brains show that this area may remain stronger in females. “Females seem to have language functioning in both sides of the brain,” says Martha Bridge Denckla, PhD, a research scientist at Kennedy Krieger Institute.

Consider these recent findings. Researchers, using brain imaging technology that captures blood flow to “working” parts of the brain, analyzed how men and women process language. All subjects listened to a novel. When males listened, only the left hemisphere of their brains was activated. The brains of female subjects, however, showed activity on both the left and right hemispheres.

This activity across both hemispheres of the brain may result in the strong language skills typically displayed by females. “If there’s more area dedicated to a set of skills, it follows that the skills will be more refined,” says David Geary, PhD, professor of psychological sciences at the University of Missouri.

As a whole, girls outperform boys in the use of language and fine motor skills until puberty, notes Denckla. Boys also fall prey to learning disabilities more frequently than girls. “Clinics see a preponderance of boys with dyslexia,” Denckla tells WebMD. ADHD also strikes more boys than girls. The symptoms displayed by girls and boys with ADHD differ, too. Girls with ADHD usually exhibit inattention, while affected boys are prone to lack of impulse control. But not all differences favor girls.

Boys generally demonstrate superiority over female peers in areas of the brain involved in math and geometry. These areas of the brain mature about four years earlier in boys than in girls, according to a recent study that measured brain development in more than 500 children. Researchers concluded that when it comes to math, the brain of a 12-year-old girl resembles that of an 8-year-old boy. Conversely, the same researchers found that areas of the brain involved in language and fine motor skills (such as handwriting) mature about six years earlier in girls than in boys…

[….]

Geary suggests that women use language skills to their advantage. “Females use language more when they compete. They gossip, manipulate information,” he says. Geary suggests that this behavior, referred to as relational aggression, may have given females a survival advantage long ago. “If the ability to use language to organize relationships was of benefit during evolutionary history, and used more frequently by women, we would expect language differences to become exaggerated,” he tells WebMD. Women also use language to build relationships, theorizes Geary. “Women pause more, allow the other friend to speak more, offer facilitative gestures,” he says.

When it comes to performing activities that require spatial skills, like navigating directions, men generally do better. “Women use the cerebral cortex for solving problems that require navigational skills. Men use an entirely different area, mainly the left hippocampus — a nucleus deep inside the brain that’s not activated in the women’s brains during navigational tasks,” Geary tells WebMD. The hippocampus, he explains, automatically codes where you are in space. As a result, Geary says: “Women are more likely to rely on landmark cues: they might suggest you turn at the 7-11 and make a right at the church, whereas men are more likely to navigate via depth reckoning — go east, then west, etc.”….

(WEB-MD)

(Video Description) While on the show, Dennis Prager brings up a previous call to Adam Carolla where a college student, Erin, from Wellesley College called into Prager’s “Male-Female Hour.” She believes that our nature is totally by convention, that society brings out what we see in the male and female differences. After Adam Carolla gives his “patented” input, I then include the actual call. It is sad that all this money is flushed down the proverbial toilet in this girl’s life… but life tends to carry a big swat board. One hopes she reads books like: “The Myth of Male Power” or, “The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men.”

Another brain website comments:

The female and male brain is different and the two brains process information differently. The good news is that with some conscious effort communication can be enhanced between the brains and frustrations lowered.

In general, female brains tend to employ both sides of their brain to process information while male brains tend to rely primarily on their dominant or language side to process. As the dominant hemisphere tends to be analytic, problem solving, task oriented, detailed, and verbal this helps to explain male behavior. A female brain can also process in this manner, but the non-dominant hemisphere that can process emotion, meaning without words, empathy, tone, and disposition is also engaged by the female.

Perhaps this helps to explain why females enjoy shopping while most men view it as a chore, women vote differently than males, men and women struggle communicating with each other, and men do not understand psychotherapy. Men tend to be more isolative, less talkative, and focused on solution. Women tend to be more group oriented, more talkative, and focused on the means and not necessarily the ends. This gets played out in the U.S. at this time as women and men tend to view the same debate between candidates differently (men tend to focus on content and women both content and style)…

(FIT BRAINS)

Unanimity: `Media Leans Left,` Journalists from the NYT’s, NBC News, and CNN Agree

NewsBusters reports on unanimity of viewpoint that the unanimity of viewpoints are liberal:

“Top journalists from The New York Times, NBC News and CNN acknowledged Wednesday that, generally speaking, the national media has a liberal bias,” Politico’s media reporter Dylan Byers noted in a December 18 post recapping a Politico Playbook breakfast discussion held earlier on Wednesday morning.

More than one panelist opined that it’s not just that journalists tend to be liberal on policy questions but that they live and work in environments which are socially liberal. “I live in northwest Washington, none of my neighbors are evangelical Christians [and] I don’t know a lot of people in my kid’s preschool who are pro-life,” New York Times writer Mark Leibovich noted. Fellow Washington, D.C.-based journalist Jake Tapper picked up on that thread:

A certain type of person becomes a reporter, and generally speaking… the kind of person who is a reporter in Washington, D.C., or New York City has never worked a minimum-wage job outside of high-school… has never experienced poverty, is not an evangelical Christian, like much of the country is.

There are a lot of experiences that the kinds of people who are reporters, editors, producers, etc., in Washington, D.C., and New York City have not had.

…read more…

Marc Morano of Climate Depot Slices and Dices AGW Apologist

The gentleman Mr. Morano was responding to in the video below is the Director of the Sierra Club, Michael Brune. Brune made the point that receiving money from oil and gas was bad. Morano turned the tables not by arguing that oil and gas do not in fact give monies to these groups… instead he used the premise Brune put forward to his advantage:

Implied premise by Brune: “It is bad to receive money from oil/gas”;
Morano’s implied premise: “Okay, fine, if bad for ‘a,’ why not ‘b’.”

“….he’s [Brune] mentioning funding by the way which I think is funny. The Sierra Club took 26 million from natural gas and Michael has the audacity to try to imply that skeptics are fossil fuel funded.”

Oooops!

See Climate Depot

Here is the New York Times on the issue of the Sierra Club taking “dirty” money (see also Time Magazine’s revelation on the matter):

The recent disclosure of the Sierra Club’s secret acceptance of $26 million in donations from people associated with a natural gas company has revived an uncomfortable debate among environmental groups about corporate donations and transparency.

The gifts from the company, Chesapeake Energy, have drawn criticism from some environmentalists. “Sleeping with the enemy” was a comment much forwarded on Twitter posts about the undisclosed arrangement.

“Runners shouldn’t smoke, priests shouldn’t touch the kids, and environmentalists should never take money from polluters,” John Passacantando, a former director of Greenpeace who is now an environmental consultant, said in an interview.

Yet the donations to the Sierra Club, reported by Time magazine’s Ecocentric blog and a blog called Corporate Crime Reporter, have plenty of precedents. Between 2004 and 2006, the National Audubon Society accepted $2.1 million from the chemical giant Monsanto to find a strategy for ensuring the safety of waterfowl near industrial farms using pesticides, for example.

The Environmental Defense Fund was an early adopter of the partnership model, working two decades ago with McDonald’s to stop using polystyrene clamshells for packaging, thus eliminating tens of thousands of tons of waste. Later it teamed with Fedex to reduce the emissions of its truck fleet. But it accepts no donations from corporate partners, its leadership says.

…read more…

Two Steps Back, One Step Forward

(Via Common Sense Evaluation) Electric cars might pollute much more than petrol or diesel-powered cars, according to new research.

The Norwegian University of Science and Technology study found greenhouse gas emissions rose dramatically if coal was used to produce the electricity.

Electric car factories also emitted more toxic waste than conventional car factories, their report in the Journal of Industrial Ecology said.

“The production phase of electric vehicles proved substantially more environmentally intensive,” the report said, comparing it to how petrol and diesel cars are made.

“The global warming potential from electric vehicle production is about twice that of conventional vehicles.”…..

Here is a past encounter (January 2013) between Morano and Brune, Via Climate Depot:

 


 

PIERS MORGAN, HOST:

President Obama is making the fight against extreme weather part of his second term agenda. He believes that science proves it has a human cause. With me now is Marc Morano, editor in chief of ClimateDepot.com, and Michael Brune. He’s the executive director of the Sierra Club.

Welcome to you both. Michael — Marc, I’ll start with you. When I last spoke to you about this, we had a pretty fiery debate about it. And you were impeccably opposed to any suggestion that there’s any real science to confirm global warming or genuine climate change. So rather than me get involved with this, I’m going to rest my weary voice box and let Michael tell you why there is science.

Michael, over to you.

MICHAEL BRUNE, THE SIERRA CLUB:

Sure, well, actually I don’t want to waste any time on this. The science is settled. We noticed that last year we had record numbers of wildfires throughout the Mountain West, as you cited; 61 percent of the country suffered a crippling drought. We had Superstorm Sandy with 1,000-mile diameter storm hitting the east coast, flooded my parents house, caused billions of dollars worth of damage.

The reality is that extreme weather is here. Our climate has begun to be destabilized. The good news is that we can do something about it. We have solutions to the cause of climate change. And those solutions will both help keep our families safe and help our economy grow at the same time.

MORGAN:

OK. Marc, there you have it. What do you say to that?

MARC MORANO, CLIMATEDEPOT.COM:

I say you look at the peer reviewed literature. We now know a study in journal “Nature” show that there’s 60 years, no trend in droughts. In fact, there was a decline in droughts in the U.S., except the most recent one in 2012, which wasn’t even as big as the one in the 1950s or the 1930s.

In terms of flood, 80 to 117 [correction 127] years, there’s no trend in floods. Big tornadoes are down dramatically since the 1950s — F3 or larger. And hurricanes, eight years now — the longest period without a major land falling category 3 or larger hurricane. Eight years, the longest stetch since 1900. So if you start looking at these measures —

 

MORGAN:

Answer me this point. You wouldn’t dispute there’s been increased acceleration in CO2, right?

MORANO:

No, CO2 is rising. Global temperature has now stalled for 15 or 16 years. And that is — now James Hanson of NASA has admitted at least decade of no warming, or as he said flat lining temperatures. This is an embarrassment right now.

So the whole movement has shifted to extreme storms. That’s what they’re trying to focus on now. Evidence is everywhere when you look for extremes. But the bottom line is we have always had extreme weather. In the 1970s, the CIA report and “Newsweek” and all the people worried about a coming Ice Age blamed extreme weather, droughts and bad weather and crop failure on global cooling. Now they have reversed and they are blaming the same phenomenon on global warming. It’s very convenient.