Why Can’t a Woman be More Like a Man? By Toby Young.

A fascinating paper about sex differences in the human brain was published last week in the scientific journal Cerebral Cortex. It’s the largest single-sample study of structural and functional sex differences in the human brain ever undertaken, involving over 5,000 participants (2,466 male and 2,750 female). …

For those who believe that gender is a social construct, and there are no differences between men and women’s brains, this paper is something of a reality check. The team of researchers from Edinburgh University, led by Stuart Ritchie, author of “Intelligence: All That Matters,” found that men’s brains are generally larger in volume and surface area, while women’s brains, on average, have thicker cortices. ‘The differences were substantial: in some cases, such as total brain volume, more than a standard deviation,’ they write. This is not a new finding — it has been known for some time that the total volume of men’s brains is, in general, larger than that of women’s, even when adjusted for men’s larger average body size — but all the studies before now have involved much smaller sample sizes.

Does this paper have any implications when it comes to men and women’s intellectual abilities? The answer is yes, but they’re not clear cut.

On the one hand, feminists won’t like this confirmation that men, on average, have bigger brains than women because there’s a well-established connection between total brain volume and IQ. …

There’s some evidence linking intelligence with the thickness of the cerebral cortex. … However, this finding is less robust than the link between total brain volume and IQ, with some studies failing to replicate it and others both replicating it and seeming to contradict it at the same time. …

Oops, now the big one that the PC mob simply will not countenance:

Back in 2017, before his paper had been peer-reviewed, Ritchie was keener to talk about another of his team’s findings, namely, that the male brains they studied were, on most measures, more variable than the female ones. He was excited about the fact that this discovery complemented a 2008 study of male-female IQ differences, also carried out by a team from Edinburgh, which found only negligible differences in the mean scores of men and women on intelligence tests, but that men outnumbered women at either end of the cognitive bell curve. So greater variability among men when it comes to cognitive ability. That was also the conclusion of a 2007 paper which found that among those scoring in the top two per cent of the Armed Forces Qualification Test, men outnumbered women by a ratio of 2:1.

Ritchie and his co-authors note that this finding has been replicated many times — ‘almost universally’ is the phrase they use — but that doesn’t mean it’s universally accepted. Far from it. When Lawrence Summers, then the President of Harvard, suggested that the higher preponderance of men on the right-hand tail of the IQ distribution curve might help to explain why there are more male than female professors in the maths and sciences at top universities, he was rounded on by almost the entire liberal establishment. Distinguished Harvard alumni withheld donations, the university’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences passed a motion of no confidence in him and he was forced to apologise – over and over again – like a supplicant at a Chinese show trial. In the end, he had no choice but to tender his resignation. This controversy is thought to be the reason he didn’t get the job of Treasury Secretary in the first Obama administration. …

He wasn’t claiming that all men are cleverer than women, or that the average man is brighter than the average woman, or that the most able women aren’t as intelligent as the most gifted men — although many of his critics understood him to be saying those things, or at least pretended to so they could justify how outraged they were. All he was saying is that the greater variability of men’s IQ — at both tails of the distribution curve — might be rooted in genetic differences between the sexes. …

Reality blows up a whole ideology:

If you allow that genetic differences may be a factor, then parity between men and women when it comes to intellectual eminence won’t easily be achieved. Just levelling the playing field — eliminating gender stereotypes, sexual discrimination, implicit bias, and so on — won’t be enough. …

The difficulty this evidence presents is not for believers in equality of opportunity, but equality of outcome. The differences between men and women are such that gender parity in STEM fields, particularly at the top of those professions, is unlikely to be achieved without some highly intrusive state interventions.

Recap:

The distributions look about the same, but if you inspect closely you find that only 37% of humans with IQs over 120 (the bottom of managerial level) are female. So when feminists claim that 50% of managerial jobs should be theirs, they are scientifically incorrect. And as the threshold IQ moves up, the male-female numbers gap only grows larger.

The standard solution to this reality throughout the PC West when white men dominate on merit has been to dilute the effect of merit down and down until ideological outcomes are achieved. Then they wonder why nobody seems to be as competent as they used to be — for example, NASA got to the moon on slide rule technology and white men, but now does not even have any rockets and goes nowhere.

Superannuation is not one of Keating’s crowning achievements, by Judith Sloan.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that Australia’s system of compulsory superannuation is essen­tially a giant con. It forces workers to forgo current consumption to create a ­financial nest egg for retirement that in many cases simply knocks off their entitlement to the Age Pension and the various associated benefits. …

Across time, several rationales were invented to support the system, including the need to supplant, or at least supplement, the Age Pension and the need to boost national saving. This latter reason was quickly dismissed and is now rarely mentioned. …

Kelty understood that superannuation was an alternative means of securing money and power for trade unions in the context of falling membership, a trend he regarded as inevitable. …

In the meantime, one effect of superannuation has been to drive up house prices …

When it comes to the dependence on the Age Pension, it has to be said that superannuation has been a failure. The proportion of old people on the Age Pension has barely shifted (about 80 per cent) and the projections into the future point to little change to this figure. …

Note also that the government gives up considerable tax revenue on an annual basis by virtue of the concessional taxation of super­annuation.

The big winner is the finance industry. The great increase in funds under management generates a corresponding increase in fees.

Hangers-on, by Mark Latham.

It goes by the name of elitism. Having formed a new ruling class in Australia, Lefties quite like the idea of hooking up with the best of British pomposity. …

Dennis Altman from La Trobe University has also come out of the closet (so to speak). He’s a four-decade doyen of the Australian gay-Left community. I was stunned to read of his constitutional conversion – fluidity at work, I suppose.

Altman now sees ‘our constitutional arrangements… (as) a check on the egomania of politicians who are not sheltered from the real world to the same extent as are royalty’. Yes, you read that right. This long-term Leftist academic regards remoteness from the people as a democratic virtue. The best form of government is to avoid the voters.

This tells you everything you need to know on where these people have got to in their thinking. ‘Progressivism’ is now as elitist as any of the feudal and monarchical systems it sought to replace.

In his ending to Animal Farm, George Orwell described how the pigs stood upright and moved into the farmhouse. In the book’s last line he wrote of how, ‘The creatures outside (the house) looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again, but already it was impossible to say which was which.’

This is a familiar pattern with the Left. In the old Soviet Union, which Orwell was critiquing, the workers’ revolution created a new totalitarian state. The current era of political correctness has also been dominated by Leftist repression.

Instead of socialising the means of production, cultural Marxists are trying to socialise the means of personal expression and belief. Through language control, they want everyone else to speak and think like them.

Over time, the Left has become comfortable with the elitism to which they once objected. Lifelong republicans have become monarchists. Intellectual snobs like Altman and Watson have embraced the snobbery of the British class system.

Having grown arrogant and out-of-touch with suburban and regional Australia, ‘progressives’ now find themselves cheering on a system of hereditary entitlement. The oppressed have become the oppressors.

New boss, same as the old boss.

hat-tip Stephen Neil

The BBC gave Steve Bannon a platform – and it was fascinating, by Freddy Gray.

Credit to [the interviewer] Maitlis, she let him talk. She didn’t have a Cathy Newman-style meltdown. …

Bannon trotted out his loyal lines about what a great job Trump is doing. But his deeper point about Trump — the one his acolytes often make — is that economic nationalism is bigger than the Trump administration, and he’s not wrong. The 2016 Republican victory was about the country not the candidate. Economic nationalism is truly international now, roiling politics all over the world. His assessment on the incoming alt-left-hard-right government in Italy was far more revealing than most of the rubbish you’ll read about Italian populism in the Guardian. …

There was a curious irony in Bannon telling Maitlis that white nationalist figures such as Richard Spencer and David Duke are cranks and shouldn’t be given air time. Two years ago, Newsnight would probably have thought the same about Steve Bannon. The times are a’ changing.

hat-tip Stephen Neil

Orwell’s Nightmare: Articles About Tommy Robinson’s Arrest Rapidly Scrubbed From the Internet, by Cassandra Fairbanks.

Articles about the arrest and subsequent imprisonment of independent journalist and activist Tommy Robinson are being rapidly scrubbed from the internet after the British government put restrictions in place banning any reporting on the matter.

Robinson, 35, was arrested on Friday for suspicion of ‘breaching the peace’ while livestreaming to report on the trial of a child grooming gang. He will now have to serve a prior 13 month suspended sentence for a similar offense.

Articles from the Daily Record, Birmingham Live, The Mirror, RT and even Breitbart News were all taken offline in the hours following his detention.

The leaked gag-order to the press states that it “appears to be necessary for avoiding a substantial risk of prejudice to the administration of justice in these proceedings.” The order prohibits “any report of these proceedings.” …

The trial he was attempting to cover was that of Tamin Rahani, 37, Shershah Muslimyar, 20, Rafiullah Hamidy, 24, and an unnamed teenager who are all charged with three counts of raping a teenager

Covering for Muslim rapists. The leftist establishment made a dreadful mistake on immigration and is suppressing any criticism or awareness. I wonder if it will be the same the same with global warming (book soon)?

hat-tip Scott of the Pacific

CIA or CNN? Will the media ever be held accountable for conspiring against America? By Daniel Greenfield.

Spygate began with the Clinton campaign. It ended with informants and eavesdropping on the Trump campaign. Clinton opposition research morphed into an endless investigation of her opponent. …

Echo chambers blow up stories by spreading a single narrative into a broad stream of integrated loops that appear diverse when they’re actually the same. (That’s none too coincidentally how the left operates. Its diversity is just a series of front groups controlled by a small number of ideological bosses.) What ordinary people see are a lot of experts, organizations and agencies all saying the same thing. …

Media smears are nothing new. Media coups are a whole other thing.

James Clapper, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, allegedly coordinated with CNN. And then took a job at CNN. Clapper isn’t alone. Obama’s CIA boss, John Brennan, is over at NBC News. Josh Campbell, Comey’s assistant, is at CNN. The three arms of the Deep State offer interchangeable employment. Much as Fusion GPS was paying the wife of a top DOJ official to investigate Trump.

This is what organizational integration looks like. And that’s what a Deep State looks like.

CIA or CNN? Who can tell the difference? …

Spygate depended on close coordination between Clinton’s people, the media and Obama’s intel folks. But it was the media that lubricated the alliance of the Democrat Deep State behind the coup. …

The intel and investigatory side had vast powers that were used to do what none of the other players could. But the only way to mask the police state abuses involved in spying on the political opposition was to have some padding between Clinton campaign operatives and Clinton allies in the DOJ. The media was the peanut butter and jelly in a Clinton scandal sandwich. …

The media Deep State enjoys the highest level of legal protection and the lowest level of accountability. That exposed it to the least risk in a conspiracy against America. It was not the most powerful player in Spygate. But it had the most range and the fewest limitations. FBI officials and Clinton campaign officials might face legal sanction, but the media figures that made the conspiracy possible never will.

Spygate is the biggest scandal in US history, perhaps in western democratic history. The danger is, due to media dominance by leftist allied to a globalist deep-staters, it is a semi-inevitable outcome of the current structure — so it will be repeated in other western democracies and gain in the US until that situation changes.

This is the latest on this important, precedent-setting issue:

A Democrat Watergate is unfolding, and the media are trying desperately to hide it.

hat-tip Scott of the Pacific

Reason 7,483 Why I’ll Never Allow Alexa in My Home, by Jennifer Van Laar.

Every room in their home was connected to Alexa, from which the couple controlled the home’s lights, heat, and security system. Danielle told the news station:

“‘My husband and I would randomly joke and say, I’d bet these devices are listening to what we’re saying.’

“But…two weeks ago their love for Alexa changed with an alarming phone call. ‘The person on the other line said, ‘unplug your Alexa devices right now,’ she said. ‘You’re being hacked.’

Whoops.

“That person was one of her husband’s employees, calling from Seattle.

“‘We unplugged all of them and he proceeded to tell us that he had received audio files of recordings from inside our house,’ she said. ‘At first, my husband was, like, ‘no you didn’t!’ And she said ,’You sat there talking about hardwood floors.’ And we said, ‘oh gosh, you really did hear us.’

“The employee, 176 miles away, received the recording out of the blue.”

That could have been extremely awkward, depending on what activities the couple were undertaking at the time. …

People across the political spectrum vigorously fight for their privacy in the face of laws like the Patriot Act, yet willingly invite a device they know is listening to every word (how else does it know when to turn on?) into their home, sometimes into each room of their home. How gullible are we?

I would advise against anyone having this technology in their home. I’m even thinking of asking each person whose home I visit if they use Alexa or similar devices. There’s no way I will have conversations in such an environment.

hat-tip Scott of the Pacific

Time Is Nearly up for Britain’s Useless, Anti-Brexit Prime Minister, by James Delingpole.

Every now and then, I find myself having to explain to Americans what has become of the amazing Brexit revolution, which they heard about a lot at the time (the vote was in June 2016) because in many ways it was the precursor to the Trump revolution.

When I tell them that virtually nothing has been achieved in the two years since, that the Remainer establishment has been doing everything in its powers to frustrate the democratic will of 17.4 million Leave voters, they’re astonished.

“How can this be?” they want to know.

Well, the number one reason, I’d say, is Theresa May. She’s a Remainer by inclination and by public record. She’s utterly in thrall to the Remainer-dominated Civil Service. She lacks the imagination or ideological backbone to make a persuasive case for a fairer, freer, friendlier Britain outside the shackles of the European Union. …

Daniel Kawczynski said Theresa May was not an “authentic Brexiteer” and could renege on her promise that Britain will exit the customs union, leaving Britain in “dangerous, unchartered territory”.

The MP for Shrewsbury and Atcham in Shropshire warned that if she did, UKIP would “come back like a phoenix” and “destabilise” the Conservatives “like you’ve never seen before”. …

Also, she’s not a conservative. Just an authoritarian social democrat who drifted into the party because we don’t have an Authoritarian Social Democrats party.

Up till now, Conservatives – especially those in the government – have been cautious about trying to defenestrate May. The received wisdom – complete rubbish, I’ve always thought, but still – has been that it’s just too risky a move with the socialist Jeremy Corbyn lurking in the wings, itching to turn Britain into the next Venezuela.

But I think now everyone has had enough. Here are some encouraging signs that she won’t be around for much longer.

hat-tip Scott of the Pacific

Ireland tipped to repeal abortion ban by a landslide, by Robin Millard.

Ireland voted overwhelmingly to liberalise some of the strictest abortion laws in Europe on Friday, according to exit polls in a historic referendum in the traditionally Catholic country.

The vote to repeal a constitutional ban on terminations except in cases where the mother’s life is in danger was predicted to win by a two-thirds majority.

In the Name of Convenience: U2 and the Irish Referendum, by Mark Hemingway.

Being occasionally insufferable rock stars engaged in liberal activism didn’t make U2 unique. The band’s musical gifts notwithstanding, their political posturing was more tolerable than most because of a saving grace: The band is explicitly Christian (bass player Adam Clayton excepted). They’d spent time at a Christian commune early in their careers and very nearly gave up their rock star ambitions as a result. They’ve never been a full-on Christian rock band (thank God) but even after 30 years, it’s still refreshing to hear songs such as “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “Pride (In the Name of Love)” on the radio for no other reason than that Bono is explicitly singing about Jesus.

So you can begin to fathom the anguish legions of U2’s Christian fans have experienced this month, with messages all over social media about ripped up tickets for the band’s summer tour. No one doubted that U2 was liberal, but the group was also for years a harbor in a culture that too often mocks and assails Christian values. And for millions of devout Christians, there’s no value more sacred than the right to life.

The band for its part seems half-ashamed of the stand it’s taken. Bono, who typically indulges his trademark logorrhea at the drop of a hat, is nowhere to be found on this issue. It was the normally taciturn guitarist/sonic engineer David Evans, aka “The Edge,” who was trotted out to meekly explain their stance to the Irish Independent.

“I think that we acknowledged that we have very strong feelings on both sides,” he said, adding, “I personally am in favour of repealing, but I do understand why people might have a problem with that. The important thing is to vote.” …

The band publicly retains its Christian identity is no act. Bono at least gave a startling interview to Irish broadcaster RTÉ a few years back in which he quite dramatically affirmed his belief in Jesus as the literal, miracle-performing son of God.

hat-tip Stephen Neil

Handcuffed Harvey Weinstein faces rape charge in #MeToo reckoning, by AP.

His face pulled in a strained smile and his hands locked behind his back, the once-powerful Hollywood figure emerged from a police station Friday facing rape and criminal sex act charges, a searing reckoning for the man who became a symbol of a worldwide outcry over sexual misconduct.

“This defendant used his position, money and power to lure young women into situations where he was able to violate them sexually,” Manhattan Assistant Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon said later, in words that brought raised eyebrows from the otherwise stony-faced Weinstein. …

Police went out of the way to humiliate him by making him do a handcuffed perp walk in front of cameras.

Weinstein has consistently denied any allegations of nonconsensual sex. …

And he began to take aim at the accusations and accusers, noting that the alleged attacks weren’t reported to police when they happened and suggesting potential jurors wouldn’t believe the women. …

Asked about the raft of other allegations against Weinstein, [his lawyer] said the case was a question of crime, not bad behavior.

“Mr. Weinstein did not invent the casting couch in Hollywood,” the attorney said. …

“You sorry, Harvey?” came a shout from a throng of media as the once powerful movie mogul was led into a lower Manhattan courthouse.

Asked “what can you say?” Weinstein mildly shook his head and softly said “no.” …

The top charges against him carry the potential for up to 25 years in prison. He’s accused of confining a woman in a Manhattan hotel room and raping her in 2013, according to a court complaint. The criminal sex act charge stems from a 2004 encounter between Weinstein and Lucia Evans, a then-aspiring actress who told The New Yorker magazine he forced her to perform oral sex during a daytime meeting in his office. …

More than 75 women have accused Weinstein of wrongdoing, and authorities in California and London are also investigating assault allegations.

Hollywood and the left have blown their moral authority, again. Said authority is all a bluff, only sustainable because they own the media.

North Korea still wants talks, by Catherine Lucey.

President Donald Trump on Thursday abruptly canceled his summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, blaming “tremendous anger and open hostility” by Pyongyang — a decision North Korea called “regrettable” while still holding out hope for “peace and stability.” …

North Korea issued a statement Friday saying it is still “willing to give the U.S. time and opportunities” to reconsider talks “at any time, at any format.” …

The senior U.S. official said the North violated a pledge to allow international inspectors to monitor the supposed implosion of the site Thursday. International journalists were present, but the U.S. government can’t verify the site’s destruction. …

Russian President Vladimir Putin, a staunch Kim ally, said the North Korean leader had in fact done “everything that he had promised in advance, even blowing up the tunnels and shafts” of his country’s nuclear testing site. …

[Trump’s] letter could make the situation worse in a society where saving face can be pivotal. Kim might well take offense at the hardnosed U.S. approach after he released American detainees and destroyed a nuclear site. …

Pompeo, testifying on Capitol Hill, said North Korea had not responded to repeated requests from U.S. officials to discuss logistics for the summit. … “We got a lot of dial tones, Senator,” he told committee chairman Bob Corker. …

“North Korea has a long history of demanding concessions merely to negotiate. While past administrations of both parties have fallen for this ruse, I commend the president for seeing through Kim Jong Un’s fraud,” said Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.

Greg Hunter comments:

Trump canceled the June 12^th summit with Kim Jong Un, and the North Korean leader is back within hours wanting to continue the talks.  What gives?  Why so crazy?

North Korea is China’s crown jewel of crazy, and it is not going to give that up without getting major concessions from Trump on trade and the South China Sea.  Anyone thinking the U.S. is negotiating with North Korea is nuts.  The U.S., in reality, is in negotiations with China, and that is why this is going to be drawn out.

One third of Australia wants public ABC spending cut, by Joanne Nova.

New essential poll today shows 35% of respondents support cutting spending on the ABC.

The ABC once had a hallowed status, but those days are over. One in three Australians are not enthused with non-stop naked Green-Labor advertising combined with derision and scorn for the deplorable half of the population.

We pay 14 cents a day for the ABC and it’s not worth it.

ABC ratings plummet 13% in the last year

Showing that this survey is not an abberation, the whole nation is voting with the remote control:

Last week ABC News attracted about 660,000 viewers in the mainland capital cities. This compares with about 760,000 viewers a year ago.

That’s a trend line headed for zero by 2025.

Most Australians don’t watch the prime time 7pm news service they are forced to pay for. Apparently the ABC is a subsidy package for poor inner city elites who can afford to live in Darlinghurst but not to pay for their own news service.