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Jul 24, 2015:

"The last great medieval discipline"

Psychology is not science. It is a belief system, a balkanized discipline of unconnected observations, descriptions and fiefdoms whose researchers and practitioners only sometimes use scientific methods -- but frequently do not -- and frequently do not even understand scientific fundamentals such as falsifiability. Via arachnoid.com:

"Cargo Cult Science": In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to imitate things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas -- he's the controller -- and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land. -- Richard Feynman, 1974
Using scientific methods of observation (where those even are adhered to within the field) does not make psychology a science. Isaac Newton spent years of his life "scientifically" researching alchemy.
"[U]nlike scientific fields, psychology has no central theory to unite and define it... the absence of a central theory prevents meaningful, coherent scientific work. This is why, in spite of much individual scientific work within the field, psychology isn't a science...

Wile E. Coyote "I close this article in the most constructive possible way -- by warning lay readers that psychologists aren't scientists. If psychologists were scientists, they would move beyond individual studies -- they would shape and then test general principles and theories about the human mind, about psychology itself, with the intent to place the field on a solid scientific foundation... But I know psychologists won't do either of these things, which explains why psychology remains the last great medieval discipline, reliant as much on magic as reason." -- Paul Lutus, Building Science.

Comments and responses at arachnoid.com.

"If psychologists didn't operate clinics and regularly tell the public how mentally sick they are, I wouldn't bother with this, because there are plenty of equally pseudoscientific fields that don't pretend to be a branch of medicine. But a field that presumes to treat the public's real and imagined ills, that regularly announces how many people are sick and need treatment, and that the public believes is grounded in science, must be driven by scientific evidence. Psychology cannot meet this requirement."
More: The Trouble With Psychology.



Jul 18, 2015:

What is a "woman"?

Gestational Surrogacy and other Logical Fallacies and Legal Fictions NOTE TO MEN IN DRAG:

Some individuals with particular chromosome or hormone abnormalities may want to choose which (if either) "sex" they will present as.

But for the XYs among you without AIS, whether you claim to be a transvestite, female impersonator, "transgender", "transsexual", "queer", or any other innovative "identity" -- and especially if you have lived during your formative years (let alone reproduced!) in a male body with its physical advantages and social privileges -- be advised:

You can do make-believe and decorate (or mutilate) yourself as you wish. But if you insist that this makes you female, then you have some kind of cognitive disorder or emotional issues.

Being a woman is not about having a "feminine" name, is not about wearing skirts, lipstick and high heels, is not about having extra flesh to stuff into a bra, is not about rearranging your body with surgery (no matter how much, and no matter how ridiculous and pathetically extreme some real women have become in this regard), and is not about any other superficial and frivolous artifice. In fact, your "identity politics" show an ignorant lack of respect and appreciation for women, especially we mothers (what some who coopt woman's experiences and lives now derogatorily call "breeders"). Your mockery of so much that women's activists once fought for -- to not be defined by how we look, or think, or act, or to be perceived as merely "feminine" fluff in bangles and bows -- will not be "respected" here by referring to you as female or with female pronouns if that just doesn't seem apt. You are not a woman.

You are not entitled to demand that others go along with your woman-insulting charade.

        P.S. Language has "gender". People do not. They are one or the other sex (with normal attribute variations and blends in sexuality and physicality), or else intersexed (a relatively rare biological anomality.)

        P.P.S. [Below video was removed from youtube] Ben Shapiro is physically threatened by ideologically confused reporter, helicopter pilot, divorced father, and (apparently still) tough guy Zoey fka Robert Tur (in drag) for telling it like it is.



Jul 12, 2015:

Trump Appeal

Doug Giles couldn't have put it better:

...a refreshing, equal opportunity offender who has perfected and joyfully given the middle finger to the media and the appropriate political hacks both on the Left and the supposed Right...

Would I vote for him if it boiled down to him versus Hillary? Uh, duh. For that matter, I'd vote for Donald Trump's turd before I would vote for that nasty, vile, corrupt-to-the-core, long-toothed, lardy hagfish otherwise known as Hillary Rodham Clinton.

To answer the question if I know in July of 2015 if Donald will get the GOP nod and knock out Hillary or whomever in the forthcoming general election: no... I do not know. My crystal ball ain't that clear, Queequeg.

I would have never thought that a junior state senator from Illinois whose only accomplishment was writing two books about himself and being a community organizer for a non-profit group that was cool with giving home loans for whorehouses for underage sex-slaves from El Salvador would've ever gotten to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but he did.

What I do know is, amidst the field of GOP pretenders and snoozers, he and Ted Cruz are the only ones that make me stop packing all my earthly crap and moving to Chile...



Jul 11, 2015:

"Never had a Subpoena". Hillary Clinton just lies and lies.

In other news, apparently it was the Obama administration's own fault that Dylann Roof got a weapon and murdered nine people in Charleston...

And... Ann Coulter on "immigration".



Jul 04, 2015:

Kate Smith introduces God Bless America



Jul 02, 2015:

Must-see interview: Katie Couric and Ted Cruz

The video interview is here: Katie Couric Ask Ted Cruz Gotcha Question After Gotcha Question And He Takes Her To School.



Jun 29, 2015:

The Tyranny of Niceness



Jun 22, 2015:

Tenspot

This child was born into poverty to an unwed mother who was a servant on a sugar plantation in the Caribbean. His father was a shiftless trader from Scotland who abandoned the mother at a time when this was a scandalous and irreversible blight. She taught the child how to read, write, and do math. The child was left alone much of the time. She died when the child was thirteen, leaving him and his older brother orphans.

The child, somewhat small and runty -- he never grew beyond a slight 5'7" as an adult -- went to work as a clerk for a large and wealthy sugar- and slave-trading and importing company. His talent for math and writing and his conscientiousness soon enamored him of his bosses. By the age of 14, he was left for periods of time in charge of the entire company. By the time he was 17, his acumen had so spread around the island that locals took up a charity collection to send him to college. Thus, he went to New York, to King's College (later known as Columbia University.)

Having witnessed the horrors of slavery and discrimination, the child in his later life became the first of his kind to speak out vehemently and publicly against these abominations. He also spoke and wrote against aristocracies in favor of meritocracy. His lack of having grown up in a real family did not impede him at all from having a successful marriage to the woman he loved, including having eight children whom he adored.

Notwithstanding that he had no real prior experience in another field of work -- or his slight stature -- in his early 20s, he convinced the man who was then his boss to give him a chance to form and lead a new division in his company. His ideas and almost maniacal commitment and enthusiasm for his new task literally caused jaws to drop. He led his division in the Battle of Yorktown, a resounding success, and the turning point of the Revolutionary War.

Fatherless Children History Series He was the author of the Federalist Papers, the first treasury secretary of the United States, and without question, singlehandedly, the creator of the economic system of the United States. After the War, his leadership and his unique ideas and future vision turned a debt-ridden, wounded collection of thirteen bickering colonies into a world-class economic power in three years.

Alexander Hamilton, a boy from a "fatherless home".



Jun 15, 2015:

Thank you, Rachel Dolezal

The idiocy of identity politics could not have been better illustrated had this been deliberate performance art. May we now get rid of the out-of-control nonsense of "diversity" worship, the race-baiting, the multiple standards, and "affirmative action", and stop giving people jobs, college admissions, money (including with government funds) and accolades based on who they "are" -- and get back with the original program, which was supposed to be a striving for equal opportunity (not equality of outcome), and a system of reward based on achievement, merit and character.



Jun 09, 2015:

Vaccines -- Honesty vs Policy

           



Jun 06, 2015:

D-Day was 71 years ago today.
Are you worth the sacrifices these boys made?

Already the sea runs red. Even among some of the lightly wounded who jumped into shallow water the hits prove fatal. Knocked down by a bullet in the arm or weakened by fear and shock, they are unable to rise again and are drowned by the onrushing tide. Other wounded men drag themselves ashore and, on finding the sands, lie quiet from total exhaustion, only to be overtaken and killed by the water. A few move safely through the bullet swarm to the beach, then find that they cannot hold there. They return to the water to use it for body cover. Faces turned upward, so that their nostrils are out of water, they creep toward the land at the same rate as the tide. That is how most of the survivors make it. The less rugged or less clever seek the cover of enemy obstacles moored along the upper half of the beach and are knocked off by machine-gun fire.

Within seven minutes after the ramps drop, Able Company is inert and leaderless. At Boat No. 2, Lieutenant Tidrick takes a bullet through the throat as he jumps from the ramp into the water. He staggers onto the sand and flops down ten feet from Private First Class Leo J. Nash. Nash sees the blood spurting and hears the strangled words gasped by Tidrick: "Advance with the wire cutters!" It's futile; Nash has no cutters. To give the order, Tidrick has raised himself up on his hands and made himself a target for an instant. Nash, burrowing into the sand, sees machine gun bullets rip Tidrick from crown to pelvis. From the cliff above, the German gunners are shooting into the survivors as from a roof top.

Captain Taylor N. Fellers and Lieutenant Benjamin R. Kearfoot never make it. They had loaded with a section of thirty men in Boat No. 6 (Landing Craft, Assault, No. 1015). But exactly what happened to this boat and its human cargo was never to be known. No one saw the craft go down. How each man aboard it met death remains unreported. Half of the drowned bodies were later found along the beach. It is supposed that the others were claimed by the sea.

from First Wave at Omaha Beach, by S. L. A. Marshall.



May 30, 2015:

Should America be the world's policeman?



May 25, 2015:

Memorial Day.

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty." -- John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address delivered January 20, 1961



May 23, 2015:

Time out for priorities -- a speech by Martin Dempsey.
(Kudos to a certain very very very special USNA grad too!)

West Point Graduations



May 21, 2015:

Cruz on media bias / gay marriage questions:



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