January 26, 2010

LA Times' Homicide Report is back

The LA Times has relaunched their Homicide Report map and database of all homicides in Los Angeles County since 2007, listing by neighborhood the names of all victims and some facts about their deaths, including descriptions of suspects.

One thing I noticed is that gunshot homicides predominate in gang war neighborhoods, such as Compton. In contrast, the tonier the neighborhood, the lower the proportions of gunshots and the higher the proportion of "stabbing" and "blunt force" homicides. At the highest levels of society, "other" is the homicide method a la mode. For example, please check out the homicide log for the Beverly Crest neighborhood (the part of Los Angeles in the Hollywood Hills above Beverly Hills).

The LA Times and Jill Leovy should be congratulated for providing this useful information. From the FAQ:

The website was created in January 2007 by Jill Leovy, a veteran Times’ writer, as a reported blog. Leovy, the author of nearly all the unsigned posts from 2007, launched the report as a way to balance the crime coverage of the Los Angeles Times. As a practical necessity, printed editions of The Times, like those of other metropolitan newspapers, give the most attention to the most unusual, and thus statistically marginal, homicide cases.

It is our goal to give readers a complete picture of who dies in homicides, where, and why -- thus conveying both the personal story and the statistical story with greater accuracy and providing a forum for readers to remember victims and discuss violence. ...

The new version of the report, which launched Jan. 26, 2010, merges the blog posts with a searchable database and interactive maps. The maps break down homicides by various categories, including race/ethnicity, age, neighborhood/city, gender, method of death and more. Readers can link to the original Homicide Report to read archived comments and the original posts. In some cases the content has been edited to fit into the new style and format....

Why does the Homicide Report give the race of victims and suspects?

The Homicide Report includes information on race or ethnicity of each homicide victim, as well as the name, gender and age and the time, place and manner of death. A number of readers have asked why race is included. Some have criticized the practice.

Racial information was once routinely included in news stories about crimes, but in recent decades, newspapers and other media outlets stopped mentioning suspects' or victims' race or ethnicity because of public criticism. Newspapers came to embrace the idea that such information is irrelevant to the reporting of crimes and may unfairly stigmatize racial groups.

The Homicide Report departs from this rule in the interest of presenting the most complete and accurate demographic picture of who is dying in homicides in Los Angeles County.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

61 comments:

Anonymous said...

For about half a second I was like "wow, same name as..." and then realized exactly who it was.

Steve Sailer said...

The only other victim whose name I recognized was the Beverly Hills brother of actor Mark Ruffalo.

Chicago Correspondent said...

Interesting. The people in the tonier neighborhoods prefer a more "hands on" approach in dealing with those who vex them. Seems like a couple grant proposals to study the issue could be made.

Anonymous said...

Actually,stabbing or bludgeoning someone to death requires a lot more of a person, in terms of anger or hate, than shooting them. This seems to indicate that the crimes in tonier neighborhoods are more of the crimes of passion variety whereas the murders in gangland neighborhoods are more of the "dog bite man", business as usual homicides of the drug trade and robbery/theft. btw, are you preparing a response to Unz's article. It seems to ignore that lack of upward social mobility of 2nd generation hispanics. The second generation, I believe, is where the problems arise.

Anonymous said...

Why don't you respond this article in the American Conservative?

http://amconmag.com/article/2010/mar/01/00022/

Young male Hispanics actually have a slightly lower violent crime rate than white males.

Kylie said...

Chicago Correspondent said: "Interesting. The people in the tonier neighborhoods prefer a more 'hands on' approach in dealing with those who vex them."

I think in the less tony neighborhoods, guns are closer to hand and more readily snatched up when people are vexed by others. So it's not as if the people in tonier areas are more brutal, they're simply less prepared with a handy arsenal for lethal encounters.

jody said...

the LA murder map returns.

Bob said...

Well I will respond to Unz's article, whose basic thesis is that young mestizo males are not more criminally violent than young white males.

First, if this is true, then

How is it that mestizo countries much more violent than white countries?

How is it that within the USA mestizo neighborhoods are more violent than white neighborhoods?

How could this be the case given that U.S. mestizos are much less educated, poorer, have lower IQs, engage in more substance abuse, are more likely to suffer from mental disorders, and more likely to be from fatherless homes?

Unz is a great guy, it is odd he is writing stuff like this for an audience that I assume knows better.

The Ghost of Steve's Past said...

"It seems to ignore that lack of upward social mobility of 2nd generation hispanics. The second generation, I believe, is where the problems arise."

Unz's article was only about crime rates.

He claims that the crime rates for Hispanics (especially Mexicans, if you look at his graphs by geography closely) are not as high as the Vdare crowd would like you to believe.

However, he did not say anything really about "upward mobility."

He is NOT claiming that Mexicans are Jewish nuclear scientists.

So, stop jumping to conclusions about what he meant.

Anonymous said...

IMO the murder map of LA County gives a false sense of security to outsiders. A lot of neighborhoods without any recent murders are still dangerous places where rapes and beatings occur often. And remember that a lot of crap occurs that never gets reported to police.

I, for one, would like to see an equivalent "beaten within an inch of their life" map.

A rape map would be a political impossibility. So many women are raped all over town every single day that it would definitely impact the Chamber of Commerce to actually map out the incidents. And unreported rape is epidemic.

But murder is still fairly rare in most of America's concrete jungles. But beatings happen a lot more often. Let's see a map that includes severe beatings or stabbings that don't necessarily end in death of the victim. Yunno, the victim ends up in a wheelchair or as a vegetable.

And don't forget to add all those unreported beat downs that take place.

green mamba said...

The Homicide Report departs from this rule in the interest of presenting the most complete and accurate demographic picture of who is dying in homicides in Los Angeles County.

Note the spin. "Who is dying" - not "who is killing".

Big Bill said...

green mamba,that killing versus dying distinction is necessary to get the column back in the LAT.

Only by maintaining at least a superficial leftism can the truth be published.

Dahinda said...

One thing that gun control advocates. and the people in other countries that are critical of our gun policy, ignore is that most shootings in this country are a result of the huge gang war that has been going on in our country. They always focus on kids who, while playing, pick up their dad's gun and kill each other or the nut who goes into a college algebra class and kills a bunch of people but these are very uncommon. Guns were much more a part of the lives of Americans a hundred years ago but there were much less murders. Although we are made out to be out of control gun nuts, the average American just does not ever shoot anybody even while in a rage.

Usually Lurking said...

Note the spin. "Who is dying" - not "who is killing".

The local paper here in Philadelphia will do the same thing. A few years ago I saw a homicide map in the local paper that only showed a map of those who were killed and the race of the victims. There was no map of those who were doing the killing and the race of the killers (in closed homicide cases).

Anonymous said...

>The people in the tonier neighborhoods prefer a more "hands on" approach in dealing with those who vex them.<

Or a quieter approach. Gunshots draw attention. Gunshots are also so "bad neighborhoodish." Tony people are discreet!

>stabbing or bludgeoning someone to death requires a lot more of a person, in terms of anger or hate, than shooting them. This seems to indicate that the crimes in tonier neighborhoods are more of the crimes of passion variety<

Not buying this. Shooting someone is usually easier, but we can't say what emotions are being experienced. If you pump someone full of bullets, can't you be angry - intensely angry/jealous/enraged? If you push your husband and he falls through the glass door to the patio and dies, are you angrier than the shooter? Maybe, maybe not.

Anonymous said...

green mamba said

>"The Homicide Report departs from this rule in the interest of presenting the most complete and accurate demographic picture of who is dying in homicides in Los Angeles County."

> Note the spin. "Who is dying" - not "who is killing".<

Give 'em a break. Their publishing of the available truth is a heroic act, a blow against the modern Dark Ages. "Accurate demographic picture" - a laudable thing. You go, LAT!!!

Polistra said...

Genuinely amazing! A newspaper decides to start printing news, and correctly acknowledges why it hasn't been printing news!

I hope this spreads to other papers. This radical notion of "reporting what happened" could lead to a rebirth of journalism, though it may be incomprehensible to most journalists.

Anonymous said...

When I first looked at the stats, I thought, forty murders in just over a year, that's not bad.

When I looked more carefully I realised it was for barely a month!!

Richard..London

Anonymous said...

If you look a t the 'white' murder victim category you will find Jesus, Angel etc.

Most of them do not look like Andy Garcia or Penelope Cruz.

SF said...

The link to the AMCon article doesn't work. If I could find it, my first question would be, does the author really have statistics for non-hispanic white crime, since most hispanics are also identified as white.

Curvaceous Carbon-based Life Form said...

"For about half a second I was like "wow, same name as..." and then realized exactly who it was."

Fascinating, isn't it? Even at the hoity-toitiest of levels, like Beverly Crest, the homicide death rate for Black men exceeds Whites'. (One black man. Zero whites.)

Stir the Pot said...

A quick look at the list of white victims' names shows that most are either Hispanic or of Southwest Asian origin.

http://projects.latimes.com/homicide/race/white/

The Ghost of Steve's Past said...

"Well I will respond to Unz's article, whose basic thesis is that young mestizo males are not more criminally violent than young white males."

Unz does not claim this. He said only in certain geographic areas that this is true.

He does concede that Hispanics have a higher crime rates, but that that rate is not that much higher (unlike the black crime rate) than the white crime rate.


Side Note:

Did "The American Conservative" go out of business?

The website name now links to godaddy.com and shows that it was bought by a domain name company.

I had heard that AmCon was going out of business, so I guess this is not surprizing.

I wonder if Unz's article was specifically chosen as the last AmCon cover for a reason?

Maybe as a mea culpa?

greenrivervalleyman said...

Racial information was once routinely included in news stories about crimes, but in recent decades, newspapers and other media outlets stopped mentioning suspects' or victims' race or ethnicity because of public criticism. Newspapers came to embrace the idea that such information is irrelevant to the reporting of crimes and may unfairly stigmatize racial groups.

The Homicide Report departs from this rule in the interest of presenting the most complete and accurate demographic picture of who is dying in homicides in Los Angeles County.


This is the essence of the liberal double (but really single) standard. Race does not matter when consciousness of it could contribute to negative perceptions of minorities (e.g. NAMs killing NAMs in South Central LA), but race certainly does matter when whites can be construed as oppressing minorities.
For example, several trials for spectacularly horrific murders have been underway (c.f. the Knoxville Atrocity) which have received exactly 0 national coverage because the victims are white and the defendants black. Yet accuse a bunch of white lacrosse players of sexually assaulting a black stripper and you'll have a U.N. expeditionary force beating down your door.

And of course when minority misbehavior is too egregious to cover up you always have Auster's First Law to fall back on. NAMs killing NAMs in South Central LA? Why, it's all because of our racist social system which denies minorities opportunities for advancement even as it funnels CIA-procured heroin into their neighborhoods.

Cordelia said...

From the article: "...in recent decades, newspapers and other media outlets stopped mentioning suspects' or victims' race or ethnicity because of public criticism."

I call b*llsh*t! More like 'cause of the political correctness of the MSM. :-/

Dutch Boy said...

Plenty of the murder victims seem notably clueless: to wit, standing on street corners or in front of houses at 2 a.m. in Compton or South LA - suicidal behavior!

keypusher said...

OT, but Wilson's story has been published in the New Yorker. I don't know if you can call it fiction. But it's interesting.

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/01/25/100125fi_fiction_wilson

keypusher said...

A few years ago I saw a homicide map in the local paper that only showed a map of those who were killed and the race of the victims.

Perhaps Steve or a reader will remember the details, but I believe a Philly newspaper got in big trouble for posting the local "most wanted" pictures on its front page. They were all black.

Svigor said...

Cordelia, the MSM is leftist so it willingly caves to pressure, but the pressure is there. It's win-win; they get to act on their leftist impulses and avoid bad publicity. Same thing goes on with advertisers. They get a warm fuzzy feeling from telling "white lies," and get to avoid lawsuits and bad press.

From what I understand, Unz "controlled" for immigration violations. I.e., he didn't count border-jumping as a crime for the purposes of the analysis.

Anonymous said...

Did "The American Conservative" go out of business?

ACK!!!

I hope Steve has good archives of his work.

I know there is a copy of The Baby Gap at iSteve.

Anonymous said...

OT: Recent polling shows that Prez Obama continues to maintain solid support among blacks & hispanics.

Isn't that funny? After a long succession of miserable political failures this guy Obama still gets an "A" report card from blacks & hispanics.

jody said...

now that the united states celebrates "hispanic heritage month", i make it a point during this holiday to start a thread on the various forums and boards that i visit, providing the link to the FBI's ten most wanted list, to show that "hispanics" have indeed arrived in america.

last year on the FBI list, i believe mestizo fugitives outnumbered europeans and africans combined. they might be down to 3 or 4 of the top 10 this year though.

naturally, my threads are quickly removed from those boards and forums. we wouldn't want the reality of "hispanic heritage" getting in the way of a good liberal holiday, now would we?

TGGP said...

When I try to read Larison's blog, I just get the AmConMag front page. Same is true of the TAC blog. However, the articles are still accessible.

I'm glad to see others are pushing Steve to respond. This sort of thing is his forte!

In reply to above commenters: Unz actually did find Hispanic neighborhoods less violent/criminal than white neighborhoods. A possible explanation for why mestizo countries are more violent is that they are living under different governments.

jody said...

i read the ron unz article. i also read the new rushton article on vdare. first of all, and i repeat myself, no serious research can be done using the american english definition of "hispanic". there is no such thing as a "hispanic" person, not using the american english definiton. it's a made up term that is not connected to reality. it confounds any social science research right off the bat, since it is not connected to genes.

actual hispanics are genetically spanish - they're european. hispanic means "of spain". this is no different than actual anglo-saxons being actual anglo-saxons, actual scandinavians being actual scandinavians, actual slavs being actual slavs. pau gasol, the tall white guy on the lakers, is an actual hispanic. the short, fat, brown guys who rioted outside of the staples center when the lakers beat the magic 4-1 in the 2009 NBA finals, are not hispanic. they're mestizo. and these guys are not the same as david ortiz on the red sox, or any other africans from the caribbean, like pierre garcon on the indianapolis colts. putting all these humans into one group makes no sense and immediately breaks the validity of social science statistics.

having said that, i'm not buying that mestizos have a violent crime rate equal to europeans. the only place i'm buying this is in texas, where a huge segment of the mestizo population have been there for hundreds of years, are completely integrated, and where everybody is armed, making everybody rather polite.

across the US, the unreported crime rate of mestizos has to be somewhat high, due to the illegal alien effect: not wanting to report crimes due to fear of being deported. this is why so many american mayors operate sanctuary cities. to keep the crime rate at least manageable, by trying to encourage the MILLIONS of illegal aliens to seek police assistance without fear of arrest.

of course the crime rate alone does not take into account that border jumpers just plain make america more dangerous, especially on the road. i personally was almost killed when illegal aliens crashed into me in nevada. and of course, i got the ticket and the increased car insurance rate, because that is police procedure and insurance company procedure in an nation with 20 million illegal aliens. they know who i am. they know i will pay. they know i won't flee the country or ignore the law.

also, yes, mestizos have lower testosterone than europeans. they're also shorter, weaker, less athletic, they run slower, and jump lower (no negative athletic stereotypes about them, strangely). they're less intelligent, less creative, less scientifically inclined, less musically inclined: they're simply mediocre from an HBD perspective. and they break rushton's "humans on a sliding scale model", which was the first evidence i considered 15 years ago when contemplating rushton's ideas.

Anonymous said...

The spin about who is dying rather than doing the killing is simply to continue the narrative of minorities being victims. Victimology is the correct line to take, as handed down by the MSM to us peons. Every year we get treated to the legend of Emmett Till, a case over a half century old by now. Guy makes a move on another man's wife, gets killed in retaliation. This is an everyday story that gets played out on the streets of every black neighborhood, nothing unusual. That this case involved whites makes it exploitable. Look up how Saint Emmett's father died. Did that family ever apologize or try to make amends for the rape and murder of an Italian girl? Nope, don't even mention it, it's irrelevant to the St. Emmett morality play.

albertosaurus said...

I stopped having newspapers delivered to my house maybe ten years ago. Today I noticed that even with donating all my fiction books to the local hospital I am still buried under a mountain of once read books.

So this morning I resolved to solve this "too much paper problem" also. I resolved to finally stop procrastinating and buy a Kindle.

As luck would have it today Steve Jobs announces his "Kindle killer" the iPad. It's not just keeping up that's hard. It's hard now it seems to even fall behind.

All this blather is actually on topic. The LA Times apparently will be saved from extinction - the futurists tell us - by eBooks like the Kindle - err I mean iPad.

My speculation is that articles like this one on homicide by race will be potentiated by electronic news delivery. In the old days of a decade or so ago when you picked up a newspaper you read a story and ingested with it the slant of the editors and publishers. If you were somehow discontented with the paper's approach you would need to go to the newsstand and look for another newspaper. This meant the editors of your home delivered newspaper had first crack at your attention.

However with an electronic newsreader it is trivial to Google other points of view. It seems to me that the the Mainstream Media lose their information hegemony with the iPad or Kindle.

The iSteve Blog should prosper along with the iPad. iSteve for your iPad - has a ring to it.

Steve Sailer said...

I keep waiting for an offer from Steve Jobs so he doesn't have to share the moniker "iSteve" with me.

Make me an offer, Steve!

Anonymous said...

Dennis Dale says TAC has been hacked by a Palestinian. Maybe he got TAC confused with TAS.
http://dennisdale.blogspot.com/2010/01/it-appears-amcon-blog-has-been-hacked.html

Anonymous said...

having said that, i'm not buying that mestizos have a violent crime rate equal to europeans. the only place i'm buying this is in texas, where a huge segment of the mestizo population have been there for hundreds of years, are completely integrated, and where everybody is armed, making everybody rather polite.-jody

I think TX is the only state where
you're allowed to shoot someone breaking into your (unoccupied) motor vehicle. And recall the elderly white guy who shot and killed two Hispanic burglars fleeing his neighbor's property? Weren't the charges dropped?

jody said...

speaking of things like kindle, and of the newspaper model of news delivery from yesteryear, have you guys seen google fastflip?

http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/

this lets you scan the covers of every magazine and newspaper, then click on one that looks interesting. you can scan every available publication in america in only a minute or two.

seeing something like this in operation, where the combined outputs of every american newspaper and magazine, is reduced into a quickly digestible survey, makes me think it might be true what i read about the entire internet only being 20 terabytes in size.

none of the above said...

In our wars, we've seen an interesting effect of better medical technology and armor: lots of wounds that would have been lethal before instead just leave you crippled. I wonder if some similar effect happens in the US. That would cause the murder rate to fall relative to the rate of other crimes--you can't have a murder case if the victim survived!

TGGP said...

Thanks for the statsoholic link. In return, here's a piece of Sailer-bait:
http://volokh.com/2010/01/25/30-asian-students-beaten-at-south-philadelphia-high-school/

We could also consider it free advertising for Catholic schools.

Whiskey said...

FWIW, most of the gang homicides are drive by or walk by shootings. Involving shooters who don't even know the victim. One man, a law abiding Joe Average citizen (Black) was shot at a taco stand by a 14 year old gang member, who picked him out because he had blue pants on (his Autozone working clothes, he was on lunch break).

This according to an LAT article on the South Central Homicide Div. detectives, who work hard but are overwhelmed.

The gang member did not express anger or remorse over the shooting, again he did not know the victim or care much one way or another. From the article (which ran IIRC around 2005 ???) it would appear that guns are fairly easy to get for Gang members.

There was IIRC a gang shooting of some rapper at the Beverly Center, a fatal one.

There seems to be ample archealogical and anthropological evidence that humans are inherently violent. Keeley's "War Before Civilization" and Wade's "Before the Dawn" cover the graves of pre-contact Eskimos, and neolithic Europeans, many of the bodies showing violent trauma such as the "Iceman" found in the glacier in the Alps from the early Bronze Age. Yes Europeans slaughtered each other individually with men, women, and children the victims.

It seems that restricting the murder rate requires considerable social control, as weapons are always close to hand and human passions run reliably hot.

stari_momak said...

Note the spin. "Who is dying" - not "who is killing".

They'll put in the perp's or suspect's race if they have it. The whole project, especially at first, is great. Basic, meat and potatoes Journalism like it should be done -- heck, whatever happened to the police blotter

Toadal said...

albertosaurus said It seems to me that the the Mainstream Media lose their information hegemony with the iPad or Kindle.

That's rather an insightful observation albertosaurus and I appreciate your comments. Today, I seem to be witnessing the rapid evolution and consolidation of powerful niche players in the news, entertainment and sports industries. Narrowcasting is beginning to suppliant broadcasting as editors and publishers design policy and products for their favored groups while ignoring those out of favor. For example, The San Francisco Chronicle appears to want to become Americas LGBT Newspaper, while the New Republic's editors quietly worship Barrack Obama.

With Steve Jobs introduction today of the iPad, its use along with the ubiquitous PC, roku, iphone, and ipod touch; the necessary hardware for home and mobile narrowcasting is now in place.

What's needed now is a powerful, yet simple news\web\media aggregator to pull it all together. Frankly, the possibility of never having to watch CBS, NBC, or ABC non-factual news again, is something I would be willing to pay for.

ExtraMedium said...

off topic. total fertility rate versus gdp: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TFR_vs_PPP_2009.svg

Anonymous said...

Dahinda said: "Guns were much more a part of the lives of Americans a hundred years ago but there were much less murders."

"Albion's Seed" said that in Colonial era Massachusetts, men were required by law to come to church armed. (p. 120) How cool is that?

Of course, they didn't have the benefits of diversity back then.

The Ghost of Steve's Past said...

"After all, most often an Illegal Immigrant will only be taken into custody by the Feds because he committed a Violent or Drug Related Crime, as opposed to being taken in by the Feds just because he was in the Country illegally.

So guess what Unz does in his study?

He deliberately excludes people incarcerated for Crimes they were convicted of in Federal Court, instead only looking at people incarcerated for Crimes they were convicted of in State Courts."


Unz did this so as to not count border crossing as a crime since anytime the feds take someone into custody for immigration violations, they are taken to the fed courts (and is it really a "crime"?).

Also, drug runners from Mexico and other Central American countries are taken into custody by the feds since a lot of them are caught on or near the US-Mexico border.

These people aren't "immigrants" since they only cross the border to drop off their shipments and return back across the border to bring in more.

Counting them would inflate the Hispanic crime rate in this country since they are NOT immigrants.

That is why he had to exclude the Fed data.

Virtually all violent crimes done by illegal immigrants or American-born Hispanics go to the STATE COURTS.

Kylie said...

Curvaceous Carbon-Based Life Form said: "Even at the hoity-toitiest of levels, like Beverly Crest, the homicide death rate for Black men exceeds Whites'."

And it was a black on black crime, too.

Anonymous said...

I wonder how much the homicide rate is being impacted by improvements in medical technology and science? What if we had TODAY the same level of medical care and knowledge that we had in say, 1950? To what extent has the homicide rate been affected or declined because of this?

Laban said...

Re homicide rates and medical advances - this New England Journal of Medicine piece looks at military survival rates (30% of WW2 wounded die as against 10% Iraq wounded).

And this Wayback-retrieved Canberra Times article quotes a British Medical Journal piece (it gives the reference) :

"The latest British Medical Journal draws a different link between medicine and murder, arguing medical advances mask an epedemic of violence by cutting the homicide rate. In the September issue Roger Dodson says murder rates would be up to five times higher without medical developments during the past 40 years"

Medical advances mask epidemic of violence by cutting murder rate

Roger Dobson

BMJ September 2002; 325: 615.

dearieme said...

""Albion's Seed" said that in Colonial era Massachusetts, men were required by law to come to church armed."

Wouldn't you want to be armed, with all those witches about?.

Anonymous said...

>the St. Emmett morality play<

The latest chapter involved his original casket being desecrated in the Chicago Cemetery Scandal.

The propagandists didn't make much of this chapter, though.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

There seems to be ample archealogical and anthropological evidence that humans are inherently violent. Keeley's "War Before Civilization" and Wade's "Before the Dawn" cover the graves of pre-contact Eskimos, and neolithic Europeans, many of the bodies showing violent trauma such as the "Iceman" found in the glacier in the Alps from the early Bronze Age. Yes Europeans slaughtered each other individually with men, women, and children the victims.

Point being, you have to go back thousands of years to see when Europeans engaged in daily, casual brutality, whereas large segments of African and Meso-American populations still exist in what is practically a state of nature. You say this is all a matter of culture, but that just kicks the can down the road. Why is it only certain population groups develop and maintain high-trust, non-violent cultures and others do not?

I think you resist the obvious, because otherwise you have to accept that the natives in the Middle East can't be Occidentalized, no matter how many buildings we flatten or public schools we build. Which means the jig is up for a certain unsinkable aircraft carrier.

Anonymous said...

You guys have a Hispanic Heritage Month?!

They should have a day and think themselves bloody lucky!

Gene Berman said...

albertosaurus (Toadal note also):

"ingested with it the slant of the editors and the publishers"

On the mark! But you're not so well served by a different paper with merely a different slant; what is wanted is not one without any slant whatsoever but one which organizes the conveyance of facts and significances w/o intention of propagandizing any viewpoint, most especially political. By no means an easy bill to fill.

In my own case, a desire not to have my psyche catheterized thru the entertainment tubule led me to quit fiction entirely at age 12 (now 73); but, because of belief in "news" as "factual," neglected to shitcan such--for another 32 years!! (Since 1980, been "clean and sober"--haven't looked at a single newspaper or newsmagazine. Ditto for TV news (since 1990-- except C-Span a few years, then Fox (left-biased but "balanced" to recognize "bottom line" importance of the largest audience possible.

The problem, (as far as importance
of an informed citizenry) might be concerned, is that bias (nearly exclusively left) is substantially more ingrained than formerly as is also true of almost all education.
We deal today not with outright liars convinced of serving mankind's greater good through their efforts--but with their already-convinced intellectual offspring (comprising elites at all levels) for 3 generations! The pernicious effects of such instruction are not confined merely to a nation's economic performance but instrumental in uniting disparate elements into the cohesive force necessary to support (and wage) aggressive war.

Mises (whose economic doctrine I follow) observed many years ago that, the more polyglot (diverse) a country became, the greater also would control of the public educational curriculum come to be considered the greatest of prizes. (What more effective way to oppress and repress your ethnic opponents than to propagandize and organize their own children against their parents' particular interests?) His conclusion was that (and especially from their mothers' viewpoint) illiterate kids were more to be desired than dead ones. He was writing of Eastern Europe, of course--but we can see it happen here, as well.

josh said...

sorry, a bit OT but Re Whiskey:"seems ample evidence..humans inherently violent." It seems the beloved radical feminist Mary Daly has left us. The old girl passed away Jan 3rd. Her lifes work,pretending that there was some kind of kooky Ancient Matriarchy that was evilly overturned by the Patriarchy,and that we need somehow to get back to that old Archy,is a giant lump of horseshit fervently believed by many a feminist just as the crazy stories of Black History are accepted by many of them. I wonder if the DL sent His sympathies??

Anonymous said...

Looking at the two Beverly Hills homicides since Jan. 1, 2007, it seems there is more than one way to play russian roulette.

Anonymous said...

I am not sure I understand the Russian Roulette comment.

Is the point of this comment that

(1) short bald fat wealthy American men in Beverly Hills sometimes meet tall attractive young Russian women and marry them, and then the Russian women wind up killing them? The implication being that marrying a tall attractive Russian woman is a form a "Russian Roulette"

OR

(2) American men in Beverly Hills sometimes do business with Russians, and then the Russians wind up killing them? That would imply that doing business with Russians is a form of "Russian Roulette"

Please clarify

Anthony said...

Race of victim is pretty relevant, as most people are more likely to be murder victims than murderers.

By looking at data on the victims, you notice things. In Oakland, you find that being white, not involved in the drug trade, and not married to a filesystem developer, makes you essentially immune to murder.

Anonymous said...

I am not sure I understand the Russian Roulette comment.

Is the point of this comment that

(1) short bald fat wealthy American men in Beverly Hills sometimes meet tall attractive young Russian women and marry them, and then the Russian women wind up killing them? The implication being that marrying a tall attractive Russian woman is a form a "Russian Roulette"

OR

(2) American men in Beverly Hills sometimes do business with Russians, and then the Russians wind up killing them? That would imply that doing business with Russians is a form of "Russian Roulette"

Please clarify


Answer on the facts is (1).
This does not preclude (2) in a different situation.