Recent Links

"Dems want Networks to Manipulate Climate Change Coverage Like the BBC" http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/011514-686516-bbc-covers-up-secret-green-propaganda-training.htm?p=full

Isn't that nice. US politicians acknowledging Britain's media is a corrupt fascist propaganda instrument and complaining their's are aren't.
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Chinese scientists report they've cultivated a high-yield, salt-resistant rice variety that boosts output to almost 2 1/2 tons per acre....

Researchers inserted a salt-resistant gene from a wild plant into a normal rice variety six years ago, and after years of screening obtained the 18 salt-resistant varieties. ....More than one-quarter of the world's land is saline-alkali soil and another 20 percent of farmland is at risk of salination, Wang Cailin, chief scientist of the rice-breeding program, said. More beneficial to humanity than all the political "achievements" of western politicians and eco-fascists put together.
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Theoretically this scientific news from China is even more beneficial to the progress of the  human race but I find it chilling.

BGI (used to be Beijing Genomics Institute) expect that within a decade their research into intelligence genes will be used to screen embryos during in vitro fertilization, boosting the IQ of unborn children by up to 20 points. Based on studies of twins, siblings, and adoption, contemporary estimates put the heritability of IQ at 50 to 80 percent, and recent studies that measure the genetic similarity of unrelated people seem to have pushed the estimate to the high end of that range.
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Party Before Country is an interesting attempt to arrange vote swapping between constituencies where the Conservatives are ahead and those where UKIP is. I will be interested to see how this develops. It would certainly be incompatible with any claim that Britain is a democracy if Labour got a majority on 30% of the vote. There is also the possibility that if they fell slightly short of a majority but made it up with the LibDems they could get a majority on under 40% for the 2 parties.

Theoretically the LDs, being committed to proportional representation and having said at the last election that they would feel constitutionally bound to seek a coalition with the largest first, could never do this. In practice....
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Everybody should read Booker's article about how the recent floods are not only not blameable on "climate change" but are directly caused by our eco-fascist politicians and their refusal to maintain dredging of watercourses.
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Dan Hannan blogs on how the world is getting better - correctly. I commented:

100%. Technology is improving at a rate never seen in human history. Moore's Law has speeded so that the doubling time of computer capacity is 18 months. The era of cheap energy (less than 10% current UK prices) is being held back purely by our parasitic political class. The resources available from commercial development of space can make every human as wealthy as billionaires today and it can be done as soon as it is allowed. A recent breakthrough with mice suggests aging can be reversed.

The only problem we have is the parasitic political class (& beeboid journalists) who use what they know to be false scare stories to frighten us into obedience, more regulation, more tax, & more government parasites. And we can get rid of these scum any time we decide to. And even if WE don't a number of countries around the world are doing so, thus we will always have the example of successful nations to follow (Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan are all wealthier than us though starting with almost nothing)
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Conservativehome polls party members to find what they choose as the most popular party policy. Turns out it is the EU referendum - something their own party were previously opposed to and only UKIP supported.

I have little doubt that the large majority of Tories would much prefer most UKIP policies to "their own".
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A massive solar storm that narrowly missed Earth last year should open the eyes of policymakers to the threat of severe space weather, a U.S. scientist says.

The coronal mass ejection traveling at more than 7 million miles per hour was likely more powerful than the famous Carrington storm of 1859 that blasted Earth's atmosphere so hard it kit up they skies with auroras from the North Pole to Central America
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"Researchers compared reaction times - a reliable indicator of general intelligence – since the late 1800s to the present day and found our fleetness of mind is diminishing.

They claim our slowing reflexes suggest we are less smart than our ancestors, with a loss of 1.23 IQ points per decade or 14 IQ points since Victorian times.
While an average man in 1889 had a reaction time of 183 milliseconds, this has slowed to 253ms in 2004.  "

I very much doubt this. Any sort of evolutionary effect this large would take centuries at least. Either it isn't true or it is because modern lifestyles don't involve the sort of muscular work Victorians did.

But just because I don't believe it is no reason for it not to be thoroughly researched. Unfortunately the fear that it is true is probably enough to prevent anybody getting a grant.