Attention teen protestors: YOUR texting and driving kills 269 times as many people as school shootings!
Wikipedia has this comprehensive, well documented article called “List of school shootings in the United States.”
School shootings are so rare and infrequent that it wouldn’t be good to just look at any one year, so I’m going to look at all the school shootings from January 1, 1999 (the year of the Columbine massacre, which is often cited as the beginning of the “modern” era of school shootings) and go up until March 20, 2018, which is the most recent school shooting (Great Mills, Maryland) on the chart.
From January 1, 1999 until March 20, 2018 is a time period of 7019 days.
During those 7019 days, a total of 286 people were killed in school shootings.
That works out to 0.0408 people killed per day in school shootings.
Meanwhile, according to the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety, texting and driving kills an average of 11 teenagers every day.
This means that your texting and driving kills 269 times as many people as school shootings.
In just three minutes, Jordan Peterson gives the most accurate description of 21st century Marxists that I’ve ever heard
In this three minute video, Jordan Peterson says that is is morally reprehensible for anyone who knows anything about 20th century history to support Marxism in the 21st century.
I’ve never heard a better criticism of 21st century Marxists than what’s in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p2QfjaSIUo
Here is the text of his speech:
The fact that the post-modernists dare to be Marxists is also something that I find I would say not so much intellectually reprehensible as morally repugnant. And one of the things that the post-modern neo-Marxists continually claim is that they have nothing but compassion for the downtrodden.
And I would say that anybody with more than a cursory knowledge of 20th century history who dares to claim simultaneously that they have compassion for the downtrodden and that they’re Marxists, are revealing either their ignorance of history that is so astounding that it’s actually a form of miracle, or a kind of malevolence that’s so reprehensible that it’s almost unspeakable, because we already ran the equity experiment over the course of the 20th century, and we already know what the Marxist doctrines have done for oppressed people all over the world. And the answer to that mostly was imprison them, enslave them, work them to death, or execute them.
And as far as I can tell that’s not precisely commensurate with any message of compassion. And so I don’t that think the post-modern neo-Marxists have a leg to stand on ethically, or intellectually, or emotionally. And I think that they should be gone after as hard as possible from an intellectual perspective – an informed intellectual perspective. And this is fundamentally a war of ideas.
And that’s the level of analysis that it should be fought upon. And not only is it a war of ideas, I think it’s one that can be won, because I think that especially the French intellectual post-modernists are a pack of – what would you call them? Well we could start with charlatans – that’s a good one. Pseudo-intellectual would be good. Resentful would be another.
And then I would also consider them highly – they’re highly deceptive in their intellectual strategies because almost all of them are Marxist student intellectuals and they knew by the time the gulag archipelago came out, and even before that, that the nightmares of the Soviet Union and Maoist China were of such magnitude that they had completely invalidated any claim to ethical justification that the fundamental Marxist doctrines had ever managed to manifest. And so, it’s a no go zone as far as I’m concerned.
Intellectually, the game’s over. We’ve already figured out that there are finite constraints on interpretation. And we also understand why those exist, and how they evolved, and from the perspective of political argumentation, there’s absolutely no excuse whatsoever in the 21st century to put forth Marxist doctrines as if they are the balm that is administered by the compassionate to the downtrodden.
Sorry.
Tried that.
Didn’t work.
We’ve got a hundred million corpses to prove it. And that’s plenty for me. And if it’s not enough for you, then you should do some serious thinking – either about your historical knowledge, or about your moral character.
Shame on the mainstream media for ignoring government tampering with global temperature data!
Real Climate Science just posted this article, which claims that the NOAA has been tampering with its global temperature data.
The article links to government data to support its claims that the government has been tampering with the data.
This is the first chart shown in the article:
The article includes these links to government websites to verify that the government really has been tampering with global temperature data:
Raw NOAA Data:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2.5/ushcn.tavg.latest.raw.tar.gz
Adjusted NOAA Data:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2.5/ushcn.tavg.latest.FLs.52j.tar.gz
Unfortunately, the mainstream media is not reporting on this government manipulation of global temperature data. Shame on them!
By threatening to disrupt classes, Black Lives Matter unintentionally proves that professor who criticized affirmative action is correct
Amy Wax, a professor who teaches at University of Pennsylvania law school, said the school has lower admission standards for blacks than for whites.
Her claim is backed up by this New York Times article:
A 2009 Princeton study showed Asian-Americans had to score 140 points higher on their SATs than whites, 270 points higher than Hispanics and 450 points higher than blacks to have the same chance of admission to leading universities.
Since University of Pennsylvania is an Ivy League school, if falls under that category of “leading universities.” The SAT (for admission to undergraduate school) is not the same as the LSAT (for admission to law school), but the basic principle of having different admission standards for different races is the same.
The school punished professor Wax for her statement by banning her from teaching first year classes, but the school has refused to provide any proof that her statement was false.
Black Lives Matter said they will start disrupting classes if the school does not fire her. In my opinion, a much better response would have been for Black Lives Matter to challenge professor Wax to a debate on the subject.
In fact, by threatening to disrupt classes instead of challenging professor Wax to a debate, Black Lives Matter has just proved that professor Wax’s claim is correct. Anyone who is truly qualified to get into an Ivy League law school would rather participate in a debate than disrupt classes.
Black Lives Matter has unintentionally confirmed that professor Wax’s statement is true.
Uber should release its camera footage of its fatal crash to the public
Two days ago, a self driving Uber car crashed into and killed a woman in Arizona. The car had a backup human driver behind the wheel who had the ability to take control at any time. The woman who got killed was walking in the street but was not in a crosswalk.
In my opinion, the government should get a warrant from a judge to require Uber to release its camera footage of the collision to the public. As long as we don’t get to see the footage, we can only speculate as to who was at fault.
If it was in fact Uber’s fault, then the public has a right to know, and Uber should be required to pay $10 million to the family of the victim. (I also believe that anyone who fakes such an accident in order to commit insurance fraud should get 10 years in jail for insurance fraud, in addition to whatever punishment they get for killing someone.)
If it’s the pedestrian’s fault, then knowing this information would prevent people form mistakenly thinking that self driving cars are more dangerous than they actually are.
So far, Uber’s self driving cars have a death rate of one death per approximately 2 million miles. By comparison, human driven cars have one death for approximately every 100 million miles. These are just rough numbers – they are not exact. And the sample size for Uber’s self driving cars is too small. However, from what we know, so far, Uber’s self driving cars have a death rate per mile which is approximately 50 times that of human driven cars. If this death was the fault of the pedestrian, then it doesn’t give any reason to be afraid of self driving cars. But if the death is Uber’s fault, then it’s a sign that something is seriously wrong with Uber’s self driving cars, even though the sample size is small. In cases of life and death, even one death is too many when only 2 million miles have been driven. The sample size is small, but that doesn’t change the fact that a person is dead.
Miami bridge that collapsed lifted into place without suspension cables, support tower
Miami bridge that collapsed lifted into place without suspension cables, support tower
March 16, 2018
The pedestrian bridge that collapsed in Miami was designed as a suspension bridge, but the central tower typical of such a structure wasn’t in place when the main span was lifted into place Saturday.
Florida International University posted pictures of the bridge as envisioned, with a tall central column and cables stretching down to hold the bridge, shaped like a sailboat. The design is called a cable-stayed bridge, which is a type of suspension bridge.
Cable-stayed bridges have cables attached directly from the column to the span, while suspension bridges string cables between towers and have other cables descend to the span.
#DidYouKnow the new pedestrian bridge that will connect our FIU and the @CitySweetwater is the first in the world to be constructed entirely of self-cleaning concrete? #WorldsAheadpic.twitter.com/lQVJh09Pv2
— FIU News (@FIUnews) March 10, 2018
Amjad Aref, a professor at University of Buffalo’s Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering, said a suspended bridge is typically built gradually, with the center tower or towers erected early.
Pictures from the scene of the collapse don’t show a central tower.
“Whoever is going to investigate, they will ask the fundamental question: shouldn’t the tower be there, and the cables ready to connect to the structure, when you lift it?” Aref said. “That’s a question for them to answer.”
Andrew Hermann, past president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, said cable-stayed bridges are built in stages, with pieces of roadbed placed on piers before the cables are attached. At each phase in the project, the supports such as piers are designed to hold the entire weight placed on them, he said.
“When you’re doing staged construction like this, what you have to make sure is that at each stage that the structure is strong enough for the loads that are on the bridge,” Hermann said. “The engineering, both design and the construction engineering, should have taken that into account with the bridge in that condition.”
National Transportation Safety Board chairman Robert Sumwalt led a team of investigators Thursday to determine what went wrong and what could prevent similar collapses in the future.
“That’s part of our investigation,” Sumwalt said of the lack of central column.
Suspension bridges are popular across the country — from the George Washington Bridge in New York to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco— because the way they are built allows for construction across rivers.
The Kosciuszko Bridge, which carries Interstate 278 called the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway over Newtown Creek in New York City is a cable-stayed bridge. So is the John James Audubon Bridge across the Mississippi River in Louisiana and the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa.
Those bridges are much longer and heavier than the bridge at Florida International University, which was built to only handle pedestrians, not cars and trucks.
“I wish I would be on that kind of investigation, to be honest with you, because in this country we build so many cable-stay bridges for carrying trucks, not pedestrians, and all of them work fine,” Aref said. “The spans, from one end to the other, is much larger than that.”
Typically on such bridges, the central tower or towers are erected first, Aref said. Then slabs of pavement are lifted into place, alternated from each end and connected to the shortest cables closest to the span connected to the main tower, he said.
“When they cross rivers, you don’t have the luxury of having a big bridge in one piece and moving it in place like this,” Aref said.
Robert Bea, a professor of engineering and construction management at the University of California, Berkeley, told the Associated Press that without knowing precisely what happened, the “innovative installation” was risky because the bridge spanned a heavily traveled thoroughfare.
“Innovations take a design firm into an area where they don’t have applicable experience, and then we have another unexpected failure on our hands,” Bea said after reviewing the bridge’s design and photos of the collapse.
The $14.2 million FIU bridge was designed under a process called “accelerated bridge construction” that allowed for larger sections to be built and then lifted into place. A 174-foot section weighing 950 tons was hoisted and rotated into place across the six-lane road Saturday. When finished, the bridge would have been 289 feet long and 109 feet tall.
Aref said he was unaware of such a large section of bridge being put in place without supporting cables.
“I don’t want to speculate. From a structural-engineering point of view, the forensic engineers won’t take long to figure out what happened,” Aref said. “I think it is not a long investigation. There are glaring things.”
Munilla Construction Management, a Miami-based construction management firm, won the bridge contract with FIGG Bridge Engineers of Tallahassee. Munilla said it would cooperate with the investigation. FIGG said in a statement “in our 40-year history, nothing like this has ever happened before.”
But FIGG was fined in 2012 after a 90-ton section of bridge collapsed on railroad tracks in Virginia. Munilla was accused of substandard work in a lawsuit filed this month after a makeshift bridge collapsed at Fort Lauderdale International Airport.
Occupational Safety Health Administration records show fines totaling more than $50,000 against Munilla for 11 safety violations in the past five years for complaints about unsafe trenches, cement dust and other problems.
R.I.P. Stephen Hawking
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43396008
Stephen Hawking dies aged 76
March 14, 2018
World renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76.
He died peacefully at his home in Cambridge in the early hours of Wednesday, his family said.
The Briton was known for his work with black holes and relativity, and wrote several popular science books including A Brief History of Time.
At the age of 22 Prof Hawking was given only a few years to live after being diagnosed with a rare form of motor neurone disease.
The illness left him in a wheelchair and largely unable to speak except through a voice synthesiser.
In a statement his children, Lucy, Robert and Tim, said: “We are deeply saddened that our beloved father passed away today.
“He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years.”
They praised his “courage and persistence” and said his “brilliance and humour” inspired people across the world.
“He once said, ‘It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.’ We will miss him forever.”
A book of condolence is due to be opened at Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge, where Prof Hawking was a fellow.
Prof Hawking was the first to set out a theory of cosmology as a union of relativity and quantum mechanics.
He also discovered that black holes leak energy and fade to nothing – a phenomenon that would later become known as Hawking radiation.
Through his work with mathematician Sir Roger Penrose he demonstrated that Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity implies space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes.
The scientist gained popularity outside the academic world and appeared in several TV shows including The Simpsons, Red Dwarf and The Big Bang Theory.
He was portrayed in both TV and film – recently by Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything, which charted his rise to fame and relationship with his first wife, Jane.
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web, was one of the first people to pay tribute to Prof Hawking.
“We have lost a colossal mind and a wonderful spirit. Rest in peace, Stephen Hawking,” he said.
The vice chancellor of the University of Cambridge – where Prof Hawking had studied and worked – Professor Stephen Toope, said he was a “unique individual” who would be remembered with “warmth and affection”.
He added: “His exceptional contributions to scientific knowledge and the popularisation of science and mathematics have left an indelible legacy. His character was an inspiration to millions.”
Prof James Hartle, who worked with him to create the Hartle-Hawking wavefunction to explain the Big Bang, said Prof Hawking had a “unique” ability to “see through all the clutter in physics” and get to the point.
He told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme: “My memory of him would be… first our work together as scientists and, second, as a human being whose whole story is a triumph over adversity [and] who inspired a lot of people, including me.”
American astrophysicist Prof George Smoot, who knew and worked with Prof Hawking, described him as “very competitive”.
He told Today: “Whenever I did something, he wanted to do it better.
“The one thing he was jealous of was I got the Nobel Prize before he did.”
Prof Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, who was at university with Prof Hawking when he was diagnosed, said his friend had “amazing willpower and determination”.
“Even mere survival would have been a medical marvel, but of course he didn’t just survive,” he said. “He became one of the most famous scientists in the world.”
British astronaut Tim Peake said Prof Hawking “inspired generations to look beyond our own blue planet and expand our understanding of the universe”.
He added: “His personality and genius will be sorely missed. My thoughts are with his family.”
Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood said Prof Hawking was “an inspiration to us all, whatever our station in life, to reach for the stars”.
He tweeted: “RIP Sir. You epitomised true courage over adversity as you explained the wonders of the universe to the world. Your achievements symbolise the pwr (sic) of the human mind.”
Local government minister Sajid Javid said: “One of most inspirational people throughout my life. A brief history on earth, an eternity in the stars.”
Labour’s Chuka Umunna tweeted: “What a wonderful and extraordinary man. A huge loss for the world, not just our country. Thinking of his family today.”
Apple’s co-founder Steve Wozniak said: “Stephen Hawking’s integrity and scientific dedication placed him above pure brilliance,”
Satya Nadella, Microsoft chief executive, said: “We lost a great one today. Stephen Hawking will be remembered for his incredible contributions to science – making complex theories and concepts more accessible to the masses.
“He’ll also be remembered for his spirit and unbounded pursuit to gain a complete understanding of the universe, despite the obstacles he faced.”
In his 2013 memoir he described how he felt when first diagnosed with motor neurone disease.
“I felt it was very unfair – why should this happen to me,” he wrote.
“At the time, I thought my life was over and that I would never realise the potential I felt I had. But now, 50 years later, I can be quietly satisfied with my life.”
Speaking to the BBC in 2002, his mother, Isobelle, described him as a “very normal young man”.
She said: “He liked parties. He liked pretty girls – only pretty ones. He liked adventure and he did, to some extent, like work.”
Hillary Clinton is still seriously ill
This is new footage of Hillary Clinton in India. When she falls for the second time, she has two people supporting her, and yet she still can’t stay up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rbp3yne4h_4
This footage from June 2016 shows her possibly having a seizure. After the alleged seizure, she seems to deliberately have a second one to try to cover up the real one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtU5nMbEsQ4
In this footage from September 2016, some people say she “fainted,” while others claim she was fully conscious, but the nerves that send signals from her brain to her muscles were not working properly. Her body seems rigid, not at all like someone who has fainted. The secret service agents don’t seem surprised by this – it seems as if they were accustomed to it happening. Clinton herself said she had seasonal allergies, but later said it was pneumonia, but then an hour later she went to play with her grandchildren, which no one who truly had pneumonia would ever do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnbDZXoA78k
And then two hours later, in this video, she looked completely “recovered” from “pneumonia,” which is not possible. So it wasn’t really pneumonia that caused her to collapse. It was something else – possibly a neurological disorder.
Also, some people have said the blue lenses on her glasses are anti-seizure lenses.
And no one who truly has “pneumonia” would play with their grandchildren.
Skip to 0:18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kTVmbDUNW8
Washington Post opinion columnist Elizabeth Bruenig wants the U.S. to adopt the same policies that are currently causing Venezuelans to starve to death
Washington Post writer Elizabeth Bruenig recently wrote this opinion column.
She writes,
“I think the problem lies at the root of the thing, with capitalism itself.”
Capitalism merely means that property is privately owned. So she has a problem with private ownership of property.
She writes,
“Americans appear to be isolated, viciously competitive, suspicious of one another and spiritually shallow; and that we are anxiously looking for some kind of attachment to something real and profound in an age of decreasing trust and regard — seem to be emblematic of capitalism.”
I think these are things of human nature, and would exist regardless of the kind of economic system that we had.
She says that capitalism
“… encourages and requires fierce individualism, self-interested disregard for the other.”
I wonder how many repeat customers a business would have if the business owner had “disregard” for those customers.
She writes,
“As a business-savvy friend once remarked: Nobody gets rich off of bilateral transactions where everybody knows what they’re doing.”
When I buy a loaf of bread at the supermarket, it’s a win-win situation. There are no losers. And the owner of the supermarket is rich.
She said she supports
“decommodifying labor”
So she would let herself be operated on by a surgeon who gets paid no more than a janitor who dropped out of high school?
She said she supports
“reducing the vast inequality brought about by capitalism.”
In the capitalist U.S., where inequality is huge, poor people make $15,000 a year, while rich people make $15 million a year.
In Cuba, where there is equality, all government employees make $20 a month.
Bruenig wants the U.S. to adopt the same policies that are currently causing Venezuelans to starve to death. Everything that Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro have done was done because they hate capitalism just as much as Bruenig does. There is no basic difference between her views and theirs.
The idiots in South Africa‘s parliament just voted to seize land from farmers
The Independent has just reported that South Africa‘s parliament just voted to seize privately owned land from farmers.
In the past, government seizure of privately owned farmland has always resulted in huge reductions in food production, whether it be in the Soviet Union, China, Zimbabwe, or, most recently, in Venezuela, where the recent government seizure of farmland was followed by most adults losing an average of 43 pounds in two years.
Why do the members of South Africa‘s parliament think the results will be any different this time?
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 