Category Archives: News and Notes

Updates, new commentary, announcements, and more. Enjoy!

An Armed Society is Also a Better Educated Society

10 Thursday Aug 2017

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Professors like this guy will be leaving the schools eventually now that they know some people are packing heat.

A Texas professor is making waves on social media after protesting the state’s campus carry law by wearing protective combat gear to class.

San Antonio College geography instructor Charles K. Smith went to his class last week sporting a camouflaged bulletproof vest and helmet. He said he wore it because he doesn’t feel safe.

“It definitely makes me feel uneasy that there are more firearms on campus than there should be,” Smith told mySA.com. “[Dressing this way] was just a statement on how I felt.”

Campus Carry, which was signed into state law in 2015 and officially implemented into Texas community colleges on Aug. 1, allows individuals with a conceal license to carry a handgun on college premises. The law went into effect at 4-year institutions in 2016.

A photo of Smith wearing the combat gear was shared on Facebook, which generated a flurry of comments in favor of and against the professor.

“I realize students were carrying guns on campus illegally, but now it’s legal to do so. It increases the chances of something happening,” said Smith, who also acknowledged that no one had pulled a gun on him in his 10 years at the college.

“Used to, when they got mad at me, they had to go home to get the gun and had time to cool off. Now they will have it with them,” he added.

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This weirdo gotta go-go. James Velten/Fox.

Campus carry makes schools safer. And it has the side benefit of running off nutjobs. This maniac will soon tire of wearing 40 pounds of body armor (though he admittedly looks more robust than the average SJW). And when nothing bad happens as he fears, he way be shamed.

Sgt. Rhetoric has no dialectic examples to display (not that he would). The best-known school shooting from his state’s history came courtesy from government agents, not students.

His teaching is likely as unsound as his fear of weapons (hoplophobia in action here). The school and the kids would be better off without his paranoia.

This is further examples of guns doing good things without even being fired. A polite society and free of wackos. A twofer!

Cometh the Correction

09 Wednesday Aug 2017

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The stock market, all 22,000+ of it, is but one of many bubbles a bubblin’ away under the economy.

Major U.S. stock-market indexes are trading near record levels, but does that statistic simply mask an ominous picture that’s being painted behind the scenes?

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“The good performance of these large companies is masking the fact that many stocks, including REITs and those in the retail sector, have already entered bear-market territory,” Lamensdorf wrote, referring to real estate investment trusts.

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Separately, a read on market supply and demand from Ned Davis Research has shown weakening demand for stocks, despite major indexes continuing to grind higher, while the supply metric has started to rise. Rising supply and lower demand could indicate waning enthusiasm for equities at current levels.

There have been other signs of worsening technicals. Currently, 60.4% of S&P 500 components are above their 50-day moving average, considered a positive sign for short-term momentum. In mid-July, nearly 75% were, according to StockCharts. For the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +0.16% only 47.3% of components are above their 50-day, compared with 67% in late July, a dramatic swing lower.

Recently, nearly 6% of New York Stock Exchange- and Nasdaq-listed securities hit a 52-week low on a day when the S&P 500 ended at a record, according to data from Sentimentrader that was cited by Lamensdorf, who called this “an alarming percentage.”

He added that it was the second-highest level going back as far as 1965, and that “Similar spikes occurred in 1973 and 1999, both directly preceding significant corrections.”

History. Read it.

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Market Watch.

All That Tolerance

08 Tuesday Aug 2017

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Speak your mind, speak the truth, at Google and they exact a price:

The internet giant Google has fired the male engineer at the center of an uproar in Silicon Valley over the past week after he authored an internal memo asserting there are biological causes behind gender inequality in the tech industry.

James Damore, the engineer who wrote the memo, confirmed his dismissal, saying in an email to Reuters on Monday that he had been fired for “perpetuating gender stereotypes.”

Damore said that he was exploring all possible legal remedies and that before being fired he had submitted a charge to the US National Labor Relations Board accusing Google upper management of trying to shame him into silence.

“It’s illegal to retaliate against an NLRB charge,” he wrote in the email.

Vox Day has more on the horrible, terrible, and shameful thought crimes that kicked this off. And the attack on the reasonable dissent. And the descent…

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ISIS Down Under but Not Out

06 Sunday Aug 2017

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Bombing airliners is so 1980’s. Still they try:

Australia was terrifyingly close to witnessing the nation’s worst ever terror atrocity, with hundreds of people blown out of the sky on a routine Saturday flight to the Middle East, it emerged today.

If the alleged ISIS-led plot had been successful, the Etihad jet would have been downed by a bomb unwittingly carried on board by one of the suspect’s brothers.

With full details of the plot yet to emerge – and others shrouded in secrecy for legal reasons – the Australian public have only been fed titbits of information this week.

But at a press conference this morning, an hour before two of the suspected ringleaders appeared in court, the chilling allegations were laid out to a shocked media.

In essence, a bomb was allegedly carried into Sydney Airport on July 15 to be detonated aboard flight EY451. It never made it aboard. Hundreds of lives were spared.

But once these details had been digested, one terrifying question lingered: How did nobody in Australia know about a plot that had been ordered in Syria and involved parts being sent from Turkey to Sydney in international air cargo?

 

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AAIP / Daily Mail.

They knew. Someone knew, British or American intel at the least. Remember Perrin’s First Law: the suspects are always known in advance.

 

Fred on the Lilliputian War Mongers

05 Saturday Aug 2017

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Some people never learn. Fred recounts:

When you have militarily stupid politicians listening to pathologically confident soldiers, trouble is likely. All of these people might reflect how seldom wars turn out as those starting them expect. Wars are always going to be quick and easy. Generals not infrequently advise against a war but, once it begins, they bark in unison. They seldom know what they are getting into. Note:

The American Civil War was expected to be over in an afternoon at First Manassas. Wrong, by four years and some 650,000 dead.

Germans thought that World War I would be be a quick war of movement, over in a few weeks. Wrong by four years and fantastic slaughter, and was an entirely unexpected trench war of attrition ending in unconditional surrender. Not in the Powerpoint presentation.

When the Japanese Army urged attacking Pearl Harbor, their war aims did not include two cities in radioactive rubble and GIs in the bars of Tokyo. That is what they got.

When the Wehrmacht invaded Poland, having GIs and the Red Army in Berlin must have been an undocumented feature. Very undocumented.

When the French re-invaded Vietnam after WWII, they did not expect les jaunes to crush them at Dien Bien Phu, end of war. Les Jaunes did.

When the Americans invaded Vietnam, having seen what had happened to the French, the thought did not occur that it might happen to them too. It did.

When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, having seen what happened to the US in a war against peasants, they did not expect to lose. They did.

When the Americans attacked Afghanistan, having seen what happened to the Soviets there, they did not expect to be fought to a slowly losing draw. They were.

When the Americans attacked Iraq, they did not expect to be bogged down in an interminable conflagration in the whole region. They are.

Is there a pattern here?

Pattern, schmattern.

Import Them to the U.S.

03 Thursday Aug 2017

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The Ninth Circus and some smart lawyers and SJWs can undoubtedly tell us about the benefits of these 173:

A SINISTER list of 173 ISIS assassins poised to strike in Europe has been discovered in the terror group’s former stronghold of Mosul.

The document was found in the ruins of the Iraqi city and includes names, photos and country of origin of the fanatics, according to German media.

Most fighters on the terror list, 132, come from Iraq, reports German newspaper Die Welt.

There are also Tunisians, Moroccans and Jordanians as well as jihadists from Tajikistan and Saudi Arabia.

But six of the terrorists are Europeans.

They are from Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Germany.

Die Welt said Iraqi special forces apparently discovered the dossier in an ISIS hideout.

American intelligence services have evaluated the papers and sent them to global police authority Interpol.

No reason to waste all this talent on Europe.

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Today in Detroit. No reason all of America can’t look as good.

The U.S. Doesn’t Do 4GW

02 Wednesday Aug 2017

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The President held a Come-to-Jesus meeting with generals last month over American strategy (or lack thereof) in Afghanistan.

“We aren’t winning,” Trump complained, according to these officials. “We are losing.”

One official said Trump pointed to maps showing the Taliban gaining ground, and that Mattis responded to the president by saying the U.S. is losing because it doesn’t have the strategy it needs.

The White House declined to comment on internal deliberations.

The President says we are losing and the SecDef admits it is so – because strategy.

Lindsey Graham says Trump needs to listen to the generals “who have been in the fight” or else “Afghanistan is going to collapse.” I think he means listen to the same guys with(out) the strategy which has led to our losing which is kind of like a collapse. Of course, with Graham it’s hard to tell what the hell he’s talking about or thinking on anything.

We’re closing in on 16 years in Afghanistan. Four times as long as it took to beat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan concurrently. Those countries had real militaries that fought back viciously. That’s also four times as long as it took Lincoln to defeat the Constitution CSA.

At this point the neo-Confederates have got to be liking their chances. So must the CALEXITers, Vermont Republicans, and anyone really looking forward to 2033.

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Dave Granlund.

Amazingly, some in New York and DC still want a war with Russia, or China, or Iran, or North Korea, or all of them (plus maybe a few more) at the same time. A strategy (or lack thereof) that can’t beat the Taliban in a decade and a half has no hope whatsoever against Russia.

A better strategy for Asia and elsewhere might be to hang it up and start minding our own business. The troops might serve better at home rounding up central bankers, Senators, SJWs, MS-13, ISIS, and other criminals.

Maestro Sees a Bubble

01 Tuesday Aug 2017

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He may be a little older and maybe a little out of touch but that doesn’t mean he’s not right. Alan Greenspan sees a bubble in the bond market (with broader ramifications):

“By any measure, real long-term interest rates are much too low and therefore unsustainable,” the former Federal Reserve chairman, 91, said in an interview. “When they move higher they are likely to move reasonably fast. We are experiencing a bubble, not in stock prices but in bond prices. This is not discounted in the marketplace.”

While the consensus of Wall Street forecasters is still for low rates to persist, Greenspan isn’t alone in warning they will break higher quickly as the era of global central-bank monetary accommodation ends. Deutsche Bank AG’s Binky Chadha says real Treasury yields sit far below where actual growth levels suggest they should be. Tom Porcelli, chief U.S. economist at RBC Capital Markets, says it’s only a matter of time before inflationary pressures hit the bond market.

“The real problem is that when the bond-market bubble collapses, long-term interest rates will rise,” Greenspan said. “We are moving into a different phase of the economy — to a stagflation not seen since the 1970s. That is not good for asset prices.”

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Bloomberg.

Of course, what’s the worry? We have the same central bank that Greenspan used to Chair in firm control. They’ve never been wrong about anything nor caused anything but growth and prosperity. Bubble, schubble…

Containing Skynet

31 Monday Jul 2017

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The other day and out of the blue my daughter rattled off some stats about how soon the robots and AI will rise to power. I was impressed someone other than me was interested. Then again, she’s my daughter. (It’s soon, by the way).

And it could always happen even sooner. The machines are evolving.

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Cameron/Orion.

A Facebook AI experiment almost got away from the experimenters.

Facebook has recently developed a new artificial intelligence (AI), and it has since created its own language using code words to communicate more efficiently. Researchers promptly shut the system down over concerns that they might lose control over the A.I.

This isn’t the first time AIs have diverged from their training in the English language to develop their own, more efficient language. While the resulting phrases from this condensed method of communication sound like gibberish to the human ear, they do in fact make semantic sense when interpreted by AI agents.

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If AI continue to create their own languages, developers may have problems creating and adopting new neural networks, but it’s unclear whether this would allow machines to actually overrule their operators.

These new developments, however, allow AI to work more efficiently, and can benefit research teams in the long run if they put in the work to learn the new AI-created shorthand and stay up to date with this new method of communication.

Conclusion

What are your thoughts on this? Have we gone too far? Is a Terminator scenario just around the corner? Or is the advancement of technology in this manner just a natural part of our evolution as humans on this planet?

Around the corner? No. It seems the scenario is already in the lab waiting on us to fall asleep. And considering what Facebook and the other tech giants are up to, they may make the least competent defenders in this war.