I don’t think the efficiency of the market is relevant here. The sheer size of it thanks to the growth in global trade is. As the value of deals become worth more, those working on them will demand big pay packets regardless of whether their work genuinely adds value.

The key insight of Bogle and co. is that the majority of fund managers will – after charges and taxes – deliver a poorer return than what you could get by buying an index fund with ultra-low charges. There will be a few outliers who by skill or by luck will beat the marker but it’s impossible to predict who they’ll be.

As for hedge funds, I don’t know if any large studies have been done but I’d be surprised if their performance differed from managers of regular investment entities. A few big successes like Buffett and Lynch and a lot of poor performers. And performance you could beat long-term by sticking to index funds.

Harvard and Yale’s endowments have done very well because their managers recognised that stock-picking doesn’t matter but asset allocation does. Swensen at Yale diversified endowment holdings into a mixture of domestic and foreign stock, REITs and bonds.

I love Buffett and have read every speech he’s done since ’95. But even he, Charlie Munger, Benjamin Graham and Peter Lynch recommend low-cost indexing as the best way for regular people to invest in the market. Buffett’s correct in pointing out that the efficient market hypothesis isn’t iron-clad and the market does go through periods of irrational instability which the savvy investor can profit from. But I don’t see that as being a refutation of EMH. It’s more of a refinement. Having a long-term, asset-diversified indexing strategy while keeping an eye on stocks that seem to be dramatically underpriced due to market psychology would combine the best of both worlds.

One thing I will say is that I see too many people quoting Buffett and thereby thinking that they can do better than passive strategies simply by buying businesses they “understand”. They don’t consider how much they know about the beverages industry or consumer products when they’re buying Coke and Gillette, or how much of a margin of safety they’re getting with the stock price, only that Buffett bought them and got rich and thus so will they. Another thing they ignore is that Berkshire Hathaway has done very well by buying whole enterprises which tend to have simple business models and very competent and dedicated management. Management that Buffett and Munger wisely leave alone. They also don’t consider that Buffett and Munger are both superbly talented, highly diligent and very focused investors with serious brainpower at their disposal.

Yeah, market-cap weighting gives you a portfolio that’s overweight in certain stocks but I don’t know if the extra turnover and charges required by other strategies offers a better trade-off. You won’t get optimal portfolios but you will slowly add rising companies and slowly dispose of losers at minimal cost. And in the end, it’s all about cost.

The bulk of “active” managers out there are closet indexers because funds are all sold to retail investors on how many basis points they beat the S&P 500 by in a particular year.

As for Swensen he does place funds with active managers, but he has the resources to fully vet them. For the average investor he recommends low-cost ETFs and other index funds.

I’d recommend going to efficientfrontier.com and reading some of the articles there. They converted me into an index evangelist. The math is pretty convincing.

I don’t know about predictions but I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of economists hadn’t already noted the tendency for stupid money to chase the hot new thing on Wall Street.

Hedge funds themselves have already been around for a long time. It’s a bit odd there isn’t more discussion of LTCM whenever the subject of hedge funds comes up.

Dave,

Saying the market is always efficient is frankly wrong and if that’s what finance academics have been saying they’re being rightly criticised. But I think the evidence for it being mostly efficient, and thus favouring indexing, is pretty robust.

I got these Buffett quotes from ifa.com:

“
1. Most investors, both institutional and individual, will find that the best way to own common stocks is through an index fund that charges minimal fees.
– Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. 1996 Shareholder Letter

2. Additionally, those index funds that are very low-cost (such as Vanguard’s) are investor-friendly by definition and are the best selection for most of those who wish to own equities.

– see page 10 of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. 2003 Annual Report

3. Over the 35 years, American business has delivered terrific results. It should therefore have been easy for investors to earn juicy returns: All they had to do was piggyback Corporate America in a diversified, low-expense way. An index fund that they never touched would have done the job. Instead many investors have had experiences ranging from mediocre to disastrous.”

I’d agree with you on investing in Berkshire Hathaway. Unfortunately I’m still in my 20s and BuffettMunger aren’t spring chickens.

I’d also agree that placing funds with the excellent active managers who follow Graham-Dodd strategies is wise. But like I said before, it’s a little hard to tell whose stellar performance is going to last unless you have the kind of resources that Swensen and co. can call upon.

You need to inspect managers who’ve had consistent success over a long number of years and who’ve survived different market conditions. By the time they’ve done that though, they’re usually ready to retire.

Putting maybe half to 80% of your funds in indexed money and using the rest to buy up gifts from Mr Market seems to be the way to go.

In Bruges – excellent performances all-round
Seven Psychopaths – Had its moments but Sam Rockwell is no Brendon Gleeson
The Guard – pretty damned good
Calvary – will be watching imminently

I’m hoping the Guard and Calvary give the other brother an incentive to up his game.

London seems to be attracting a lot of productions – Fast and the Furious, Star Wars and the last 24 were all done here. There’s a lot of talent around on both the cast and crew side. The FX for Gravity were all done by a London company and actors are high quality and cheap. Very strong stage tradition and the money offered for commercial TV does not compare to anything the domestic production houses can offer unless they get an American co-producer on board. There are large spaces available for big action productions and plenty of tony, high-end streets in central London for those shooting rom-coms. Added to that is a pretty generous tax incentive program for movies that’s recently been extended to TV and video game production.

I’d predict John Boyega and Michael B Jordan to do well. Boyega was cast in the new Star Wars and was the the breakout star of Attack The Block, a really fun alien invasion movie that came out a few years ago. Most of the quality UK black acting talent seems to be African-descended rather than Caribbean-descended which is the same for most professional circles.

It was much better than expected, nice to see a genuinely well-written and engaging big-budget flick. The one negative was a fairly one-note villain which is typical of all the Marvel movies, Loki aside. Marvel’s best villians (Dark Phoenix, Magneto, Dr Doom, the Green Goblin, Galactus, Dr Octopus) are all licensed to Fox and Sony leaving them a little short on star talent. That’s why they’re having to rely on Thanos as their Big Bad, a character best described as Darkseid’s much less successful younger brother.

Of all the wrestlers out there, I’m surprised Chris Jericho ddn’t make more of an effort into breaking into movies. He has a natural charisma that translates well on onscreen. But he always seemed more interesting in spending time with his metal band.

Soccer measures everything in yards, at least in Europe. I didn’t realise yard, feet, inches etc. are called English units in the US. Over here in he UK they’re called imperial units.

Ruchir Sharma is with Morgan Stanley not JP Morgan.

Brazil’s relative lassitude is probably down to the same causes as why South America has been a huge also-ran compared to North America. It was colonised by an aristocratic, agrarian culture where the climate (weather\political\religious\economic) wasn’t geared to encourage the hustling, industrious middle class of colder regions. It’s the same reason the USA south was a backwater up until after WW2 when air-conditioning encouraged mid-Westerners to move down to the Sunbelt.

It woul be an interesting exercise to see how much economic growth is contributed by air-conditioning.

He wrote a book on soccer – Football: In Sun and Shadow – I really liked.

“I would be willing to bet that most, if not all of those Pakistani Muslims involved in these crimes had heard Maududi’s teachings (& many others) in one form or another. Even if they weren’t aware of Maududi in some way, there are plenty of other prominent and influential Muslim religious leader who proclaim something similar like the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheik Abdul-Aziz ibn Abdullah Al-ash Shayekh who believes that marrying and then having sex with 10 year olds is acceptable in Islam….10 year olds, Dude…Of course, there’s also prominent Saudi scholar Saleh Al-Fawzan who has declared that slavery is very much a part of Islam and those who proclaim otherwise really have no basis for their claims.”

Being from near that part of the UK, that is very doubtful. The men perpetrating this would be the typical thugs with low IQs and minimal life prospects who would go to a mosque very infrequently. The concept of them being familiar with the pronouncements of Saudi Islamic scholars is laughable. They would struggle to read the back of cereal packets.

I quite liked it. Affleck did a great job. He’s become one of the rare Hollywood talents you can count on to always deliver quality entertainment.

Most of the high-IQ achievers from India originate from south India where the Aryan invasions didn’t penetrate – their heaviest presence was in northern provinces like Punjab, Kashmir and Haryana etc. India was already populated when they showed up and there’s nothing to suggest their arrival coincided with the existing inhabitants being wiped out.

I reckon areas with strong winters were helpful in developing populations which adopted the bourgeoisie values of thrift, self-reliance, sobriety and hard work. If climate was the sole factor in raising IQs you’d expect Norway and Finland to score a lot higher on international rankings.

@ Simon in London

I would be interested to see your source for claim that India’s population is mostly descended from the an influx of 10,000 years ago. That seems far too recent and the study I am aware of posits the population was formed from groups coming into the sub-continent between 45,000 and 60,000 years ago.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Aryan-Dravidian-divide-a-myth-Study/articleshow/5053274.cms

There are doubts that an Indo-Aryan invasion even occurred or that had any impact on India’s genetic mix.

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/indians-are-not-descendants-of-aryans-study/1/163645.html

The formation of the cognitive elite seems based largely on assortative mating by the swordpoint.

It is what the future of Western societies looks like in the reckoning of Charles Murray.

“Simon, Regional accents by RADA trained actors like Bean and Spall are for-TV accents. ”

Having lived in Yorkshire for years, Sean Bean’s accent sounds pretty genuine to me.

British public schools like Harrow and St Paul’s generate an increasing amount of creative talent because they offer top-notch classes in music and theatre which regular state schools don’t because of the expense. What’s also important is the parents of those trying to break in can generally afford to subsidise them (letting them live for free at home etc.) while they get their careers off the ground. That’s especially important if they live near London which is the centre of the British creative world.

So you get a crop of highly intelligent, hard-working and fantastically trained young talent who are exceptionally hard to compete against.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/10565842/Hollywood-beckons-for-former-public-school-pupils.html

For example Tom Hiddleston (Loki in the Marvel movies) went to the Dragon School in Oxford, Eton and Cambridge where he graduated with a double First in Classics (magna cum lauda in a joint degree) and went on to RADA. So by the time he finished his education he’d basically spent half his life acting.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/10561842/Tom-Hiddleston-interview-from-Thor-to-a-sell-out-Coriolanus.html

We always used to read the Times in our family – this is going back to after Murdoch had bought it in the 80s.

I still read the Sunday Times but the daily paper just bores me – it’s just anodyne, grey and utterly lacking in personality.

I’m starting to read the Telegraph more although the target audience appears to be middle-aged NIMBY estate agents living in Surrey.

Loved Interstellar but I’ve been a sci-fi nut for years and a lot of the concepts were pretty familiar going in. Civilian opinion seems to run much more in favour of Inception. This did pack a real emotional punch and I nearly welled up during the final scene between Coop and his daughter – which has never happened before.

The Starks defeated the Warg King at some point in their past, killing his sons and taking his daughters as prizes. That’s likely where the warging ability comes from.

Show is worth watching.

Seems like when there’s a significant number of Targs around, a civil war breaks out e.g. the Dance of the Dragons and Blackfyre rebellion.

I don’t know if the cultural and technological stasis is that out of the ordinary, plenty of regions outside of Western Europe e.g. imperial China went through long stretches where Not Much Changed.

Conversion to Islam is very simple, you simply need to say there is no God but God and Muhammad is his last prophet.

Houellebecq is a high IQ individual who seems to have been very neglected by his parents during childhood which explains a lot.

This is from an earlier interview on Paris Review which gives a bit more background on earlier controversies:

“In 2001, Houellebecq published Platform, about a travel agency that decides to aggressively promote sexual tourism in Thailand. In the novel this leads to a terrorist attack by Muslim extremists. Some views expressed by his main character (“Every time I heard that a Palestinian terrorist, or a Palestinian child or a pregnant Palestinian woman, had been gunned down in the Gaza Strip, I felt a quiver of enthusiasm at the thought of one less Muslim”) led to charges of misogyny and racism, which Houellebecq has yet to live down, to his evident dismay. “How do you have the nerve to write some of the things you do?” I asked him. “Oh, it’s easy. I just pretend that I’m already dead.”

During an interview while promoting Platform, Houellebecq made his now notorious statement: “Et la religion la plus con, c’est quand même l’Islam.” (An unsatisfying mild translation is “Islam is the stupidest religion.”) He was sued by a civil-rights group for hate speech and won on the grounds of freedom of expression. “I didn’t think Muslims had become a group that took offense at everything,” he explains. “I knew that about the Jews, who are always ready to find a strain of anti-Semitism somewhere, but with the Muslims, honestly, I wasn’t up to speed.”

Razib I think is echoing what Naipaul wrote in Among The Believers.

I can’t say the Meccan pilgrimage theory sounds convincing to me, I’ve known a few people who developed Islamist tendencies (one of whom was the subject of fairly well-publicised legal proceedings) and going on pilgrimage to Mecca was incidental to the route they followed.

If you grow up as a Muslim in the West, you become quite aware of your outsider status (only being able to eat halal meat etc., pork being banned) and being part of a highly secular culture that promotes things you are not supposed to partake in or discourage e.g. drinking, pre-marital sex, no stigma to bastardy and highly individualised existences, with religion taking a minor role at best in public life.

Becoming more radical is basically a way to join a new gang which shares your status and gives you no shortage of convenient targets to hate.

Ehhh, Birdman was the first movie I’d seen since maybe Pulp Fiction that had me raving about it to everyone I know. Michael Keaton ought to be me in a lot more movies. JK Simmons is a solid pro, good to see him being recognised.

I’m not sure a Hero\Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon interest someone like me, a guy who has not ever seen a Broadway\West End show. Something by the likes of Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer) definitely. A good blend of action and comedy would have appeal, a decent alternative to most female-targeted shows which all seem to feature love stories gone wrong.

One suggestion. RECRUIT GARY BRECHER NOW.

I remember reading Muggeridge’s “The Great Liberal Death Wish” essay and liking it. Haven’t come across much else by him though.

There’s no Islamic restrictions on non-Muslims handling or preparing halal food. Plenty of national chains in the UK (Dominos, KFC, Pizza Express, Nandos etc.) have halal items on their menus while the food prep is done by whoever they hire.

What’s wrong with headscarves? Don’t nuns wear headscarves?

An exceptionally erudite article. Excellent work, Steve.

That’s not a particularly accurate picture of what London’s like (maybe Bradford and Birmingham would be better examples). Is this Lot guy even from London? The city has a huge number of people from different countries and Muslims are just one of them. Also you could get a similar picture of Carnaby Street now although half the white girls would be from France, Italy, Spain, Poland etc.

There was a gay Labour candidate (Wes Streeting) who beat a Jewish Tory candidate in a London constituency – Ilford North -with a 21% Muslim population. I called this as being another 1992 last week and the exit poll was great news. The angst on the liberal left has been awesome to see.

Cameron is a strong unionist and deeply committed to keeping Scotland in the UK as are the bulk of the Tories. The official name of the party is the Conservative and Unionist Party. If Scotland had voted to secede, he would have been expected to resign.

The disparaging remarks attributed to Churchill re Attlee are fictional, he respected Attlee’s business-like and straight forward attitude. Even Thatcher admired Attlee, calling him all substance and no show.

Ed Balls had a constituency in Morley, only some one with no knowledge of the UK would confuse it with Leeds.
Wd Ed

I saw this when it came out in the UK in January. Quite good, the crowd really appreciated a decent sci-fi movie that was not a blockbuster or a comic book sequel.

http://makezine.com/2015/09/16/this-is-ahmed-mohameds-clock/

Not sure why this would be confused for a briefcase bomb. As previous posts mention, per the image in the article above, it was the size of a pencil case or a netbook. The size of the plug in comparison to the case demonstrates that.

The thought of this gentle, brown nerd having to spend time in a juvenile detention centre with the NAM criminal hordes of Texas makes me shudder.

Twin Towers seems to be named after the Twin Towers in Dallas like a lot of businesses there.

“The black actor with the complicated African name that I can’t spell plays NASA’s #2. He says in the movie that his father was Hindu and his mother Baptist. Presumably he’s supposed to be a Trinidadian like Nikki Minaj. He has a large but not very interesting role. The best thing I’ve seen him in was the bad guy in the sci-fi movie Serenity, so I’m not particularly a fan.”

That’s Chiwetel Ejiofor, the Nigerian son of a pharmacist and a doctor. He went to Dulwich College, the old school of Raymond Chandler, PG Wodehouse and the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton.

He was in 12 Years A Slave and Serenity, not seen the former and was bored by the latter. I did like his lead role in Redbelt, the David Mamet MMA noir drama that I remember enjoying.

Aziz Sancar (originally of Turkey, now of UNC) won the 2015 Nobel prize in Chemistry earlier this month, being the second Muslim to do so and the first Turkish scientific laureate.

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/headlines/20151011-utd-alum-shares-nobel-prize-in-chemistry.ece

That is big news, Bake Off was also a big event though of less import. The final had the highest TV ratings of any non-sporting event in the UK this year.

I lived in Pakistan for ten years and go back semi-frequently for visits. IMO the poll results overestimate the proportion of Pakistan who really want shariah\death for apostates.

In Pakistan to be considered a good, observant and socially acceptable Muslim you’re supposed to say you want shariah since it is the legal system God has ordained for Muslims.

There’s not much of a constituency for actually wanting it in practice which is why the old legal system inherited from the British continues to be used. It’s also why overtly Islamic political parties have never come close to being serious electoral forces compared to the Pakistan People’s Party, the Muslim League, MQM, Awami National Party etc.

From personal observation, I’d say Islam is a positive force in Pakistani daily life. It’s an extremely Darwinian society and Islam is about the only force encouraging charity, egalitarianism, justice and morality and not completely shitting over your fellow man etc.

“America has traditionally been a lot nicer place than China or the Philippines. We Americans like to dream up self-congratulatory reasons for this. Some of them might even be true. But a big reason is simply that America is less crowded—and thus less competitive.

Back in 1751, the highest achiever of all Americans, Benjamin Franklin, explained the greater happiness of life in America: because a middle-class life is more affordable for the average person in empty America than elsewhere.”

I don’t know about that, given the amount of space available in the US it’s very far from being crowded. Prices for goods such as g, groceries, restaurant food etc. are far lower than Europe. Outside NYC\SF\DC\Nor. VA, real estate prices in lots of decent neighbourhoods seem quite affordable for middle class couples and you get much more space for your money.

The two biggest obstacles for a comfortable middle class life are healthcare costs and college expenses. Healthcare costs seem to be high because health insurance companies are unable to operate across the bulk of state lines and take advantage of economies of scale. College costs are high because colleges seem more intent on ratcheting up tuition costs and spending ungodly amounts on needless infrastructure and administrators rather than expanding student bodies to meet demand.

Sensible reform could probably fix both of these. Making the first undergraduate degree three years long like it is in the UK rather than four years would be a start.

The Pakistani deep state does not like to be messed with. The doctor who helped the CIA locate Bin Laden has been slung in jail for twenty years. He is having trouble finding legal representation after his last lawyer was shot to death.

That tends to happen to a lot of people the deep state finds inconvenient esp. anyone questioning how they are handling the insurgency in Baluchistan like the blogger and social activist Sabeen Mahmud.

She is spelling the name wrong which is why she’s not getting results. It’s Tafsheen not Tashfeen. Another common name for women is Afsheen which is what she might be confusing it with.

Malik means “village chief\elder” not king, there are plenty of Pakistanis with that surname.

Has this Posner person not heard of the KGB, communism, the Cold War, Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs? Islamist radical terrorists can easily be beaten if enough of them can be shot, they are not an existential threat to any nation around with the possible exception of Afghanistan.

A quick Google would have debunked this. If this was actually written by an Israeli academic it makes me wonder at the state of their human capital.

Japan doesn’t believe in unskilled immigration which saves it from a lot of social problems.

They also take a pretty limited role in military operations in Muslim countries. That puts them far down the list of countries who are potential targets of revenge attacks by radicalised Muslims.

Princess Diana and Jemima Goldsmith would likely disagree.

I am guessing Victorianism was rooted in the growth of the British empire. If you are going to be the administrators of most of the globe, your upper middle-class needs to be sober and hard-working. Attitudes filtered down from there and to some extent up to the aristocracy, encouraged by Victoria and her husband Albert. Victorianism faded as the empire did.

This emphasis on the First Amendment is overrated. Government censorship here in the UK is non-existent. Attempts at honest discourse in America on immigration and race make you a target for social tarring and feathering. It is what you can freely discuss in open society without angry mobs barracking you fhat really counts. All the nonsense on safe spaces and white privilege which is all the rage in American colleges have made little impact here despite the efforts of local third rate academics.

I guess the Sailer-identified protective power of country music is not working for these folks .

He was in a series called The Knick recently which got good reviews.

Cruz has a real shot. Hillary is going to be looking really old and tired by Nov 2016 and voters are going to ask if she could realistically go the distance for 8 years.

Maybe Chinese billionaires should be given incentives to invest in real estate in Detroit, Oakland, South Central LA, New Mexico, East St Louis and Mississippi.

In any case this isn’t going to stop until enough white homeowners have cashed out their equity.

I’d be interested to know how much Vancouver has raked in property and capitals gains taxes since its real estate became the asset du jour.

I wasn’t inclined to vote for Zac Goldsmith since I am in favour of Heathrow airport’s expansion (he “worked” as an environmentalist and is strongly opposed to this) and he had a very weak, low-energy CV.

Wasn’t in favour of Sadiq Khan either as he seemed like another Labour mediocrity, would have voted for Tessa Jowell instead if she had been nominated.

I would vote for Sadiq now, the Tories have run a quite disgusting, blundering, race-baiting campaign on behalf of a candidate who is simply not fit for purpose. It is hilarious they claim Sadiq associated with pro-IS elements when Zac’s former brother in law Imran Khan (former cricket star and now Pakistani politician who came by to campaign for him) is one of the biggest apologists for the Taliban on the domestic scene.

As far as the Deobandi Wahabbist element goes, that element was long ago cheesed off by Sadiq’s rebranding to make himself more appealing to a non-Muslim electorate I.e. they reckon he was completely unhelpful in the Babar Ahmed extradition case. There was a fair proportion of the Muslim vote who were open to voting for Zac out of disenchantment with Labour machine politics, that is extremely unlikely to happen now.

Sadiq was referring to the Quilliam Foundation as being uncle Toms, that is a widely shared perception. They only keep going because of government funding. Their head is a former radical Islamist and long-standing idiot. He was caught getting ejected from a strip club during Ramadan for being drunk and harassing lap-dancers on his stag night by the Daily Mail.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Merkel’s boner turns out to have been the deciding event of the campaign.

Boris Johnson is a remarkable politician.

He’s gone from being a journalist to member of parliament, to twice mayor of highly europhilic London to convincing nearly every provincial region of England and Wales to vote to leave the EU and thus defenestrating the most successful Tory prime minister since Margaret Thatcher.

Also successfully hung onto his wife despite having a four year affair with one employee from 2000 to 2004 (resulting in two abortions) on the Spectator and fathering another child in 2009 with an arts consultant.

It was a fine thing to say if he was angling for the white nationalist vote. A dumb one if he was looking to cast the Democrats as the black party and the GOP as the non-black party.

https://www.vdare.com/articles/sailer-strategy-supplement-rebrand-democrats-as-the-black-party

I have been here a while.

It’s not that hard to spell his surname right.

The liberal establishment is going crazy over him because he rather visibly undercuts Trump’s contention that all Muslim immigrants to the US are basically paedophile terrorists with no loyalty to the country.

In any case I hope whoever the next president keeps the US firmly out of foreign conflicts. The Obama years have been a welcome respite from the endless drama that preceded it, even if he gave the country a terrible healthcare system.

Airbnb is amazing. I convinced my wife to use it when she was working in Germany for a couple of weeks. She loved being able to cook her own food and live in an actual home as opposed to staying in an antiseptic hotel.

We also used it for our vacation in Venice and basically had an entire house to ourselves in a central location for a third of the cost of a hotel room. The host even did our laundry for free. We only use hotels now for stays of one night.

Well, she is one step closer to that after that terrible performance by Trump. Shows what happens when you have never answered to a boss in your life.

That is all besides the point, publicly calling a South American woman fat whatever her past is not likely to go over well with the soccer moms of Wisconsin or Catholics. Machado is blaming Trump’s treatment of her for all her subsequent poor life choices which appeals to a society which fetishises victims.

Makes you wonder what October surprises the Clinton campaign has lined up.

Well, from reading Steve’s posts from since the isteve.blogspot days I don’t think he believes the US needs any immigration whether illegal day labourers or highly qualified Europeans and Asians.

The former are a huge drain on public services, destroy the quality of public schools, enable Hollywood to produce 7 Fast Furious movies and depress wages for low-skilled American citizens. The latter compete for college places, elite jobs and great real estate with middle and upper middle class Americans amd particularly in the case of Asians and Jewish Americans are far more clannish than is healthy for the USA.

Maybe he thinks the US could do with a Canadian style points system with a really high bar or maybe the US should have banned all immigration shortly before Benjamin Franklin complained about too many Germans entering the country. I am not exactly sure what he thinks is the ideal immigration setup.

I am not sure the male half of America would strenuously object to the importation of former Miss Universes.

Trump rather undercut himself by saying Hillary was a hateful person and also promising to sling her in jail once he got elected.

Wonder what surprises Hillary has in store for Julian Assange once she wins.

Trump blew it. The debates were his opportunity to substantively destroy Hillary on policy grounds and show he could be a good President. Unfortunately his ego, indiscipline and deformed personality kept getting in the way.

All the debate chatter has been about him insulting Miss Universe, boasting about sexual assault and refusing to accept the election result. It’s been very painful to watch all the own goals.

Congrats to Donald Trump for his part in raising previously anaemic Hispanic voting rates. He’s been God’s greatest gift to the Democrat party.

OT but Dublin’s a really nice, walkable city that is well worth a short visit. The obscene hotel prices likely deter a lot of tourism though.

Dresden, Edinburgh and Prague.

Trump didn’t do as well as he could have with college educated whites because apart from the perceived sexism\racism he seemed very clueless about the actual issues he was likely to face as President. It was like the PJ O Rourke joke about Republicans saying government doesn’t work and then getting elected and proving it. That is why plenty would have voted for Clinton, not voted at all or plumped for the Libertarians as a protest vote.

If Trump executes well over the next four years, he could bring a lot more over to him and form a strong paleo coalition.

Anyway if he makes an actual serious effort to deport the millions of llegals and build a wall that should secure whites as the majority ethny in the US. Maybe Ivanka’s paid parental leave could be the start of a policy effort to encourage white natalism a la Israel.

Frankly I’d really like to see a compendium of movie reviews. Those are what I most look forward to. Would maybe be a good idea to leave out all the ones accusing the Wiliams twins of doping for now.

They know sci fi will automatically appeal to males. Therefore having a female lead can make it a plausible date movie choice when the content is unlikely to appeal to the boom boom crowd a la Gravity, Interstellar and Contact

I thought Scott Walker of Wisconsin would have been that candidate for the GOP but I can’t even remember if he ran for the nomination.

Best of luck with the new ventures.

I am surprised to see Ireland doing better than Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. I don’t think that tracks with the IQ estimates by Lynn where Germany had an estimate of 99 and Ireland of 92. Turkish IQ was estimated to be 90 and they do far worse here in PISA than black Americans.

Bannon accepted royalties from Seinfeld syndication in lieu of payment for advisory fees. More accurately, Seinfeld bankrolled Breitbart and his Sarah Palin and Phil Robertson documentaries.

I am not convinced the Sailer thesis on visiting Mecca = radicalisation of the tourists holds water.

I was in Mecca for a religious pilgrimage last December. There is little opportunity for radicalisation since you are usually too busy either getting the rituals done, praying or negotiating the crush of pilgrims. Secondly the bulk of the clergy there only speak Arabic. The vast majority of non-Arab Muslims don’t speak or understand Arabic. You would learn how to read Arabic script sufficient to read the Qur’an and pray but few would be taught what the words actually mean. Non-Arab Muslims wanting to know what the Qur’an says would read a translation.

Finally going on a religious pilgrimage to Mecca is really expensive. For most Muslims this is likely to be one of the few foreign trips they make in their lives. You are not going to spend more time on pilgrimage than absolutely necessary.

Saudi Wahabbi Islam has a lot of push behind it because of oil money, hopefully shale and solar will put an end to their influence.

This isn’t 1860 or 1920 anymore, American firms have a vice like hold on the global economy now and service more and more of it. I doubt Microsoft, Goldman, Disney, Skadden Arps etc. would care to be hit by retaliatory tariffs to protect ball bearings manufacturers in Michigan.

The bulk of the spending is likely to be for make-work public sector jobs to keep the natives busy.

Well, the most consistent anti-Russian voice in recent years has been John McCain. I have no doubt he would have put ground troops into Ukraine, Georgia and Syria if he had been president.

Islam spread quickly because the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Sassanid dynasty had bled each other dry in the prior decades and were exhausted. I doubt either empire could be described as being mostly peaceful\Christian\pagan etc.

Anjem Choudhary was admitted to study medicine (tho he failed his first year courses probably because he was partying too much) and later qualified as a lawyer, studying at respectable UK universities. There is no affirmative action at UK universities and his family was rather poor, so he likely accomplished what he did academically through an above average IQ and\or conscientiousness compared to the UK average.

In any case the strongest First World results here would argue that northern European countries like finance centre Luxembourg and Switzerland would be better off banning immigration from comparatively low IQ Catholic southern Europe, which is not an especially prevalent argument I have seen online.

The author seems more concerned with gleefully pointing out the imported wogs and darkies are “biologically incompatible” with Western civilisation when there is little presented here to support that.

If the OECD average shows a less than 1 point average IQ drop as a result of immigration then either

1) the data analysis has been done incompetently
2) immigration has had minimal discernible impact on average IQ across the OECD
3) more detailed, granular work on immigration impact needs to be done at a county\country level than what is presented here

Putin looks like he was on the receiving end of many wedgies.

Roti Chai is decent for lunch, Dishoom is OK but pretty overpriced for what it offers. £3.50 for a roti is obscene.

Other options for higher end food are Gymkhana in Mayfair and Trishna in Marylebone. If you can stand the diversity, Tayyabs and Lahore Kebab House in Whitechapel offer good food and generous portions for a third of the price of the above.

London’s newer architecture could be more ambitious, Rotterdam does far better on that score.

It’s not that common to see niqabis in central London unless you go to Edgware Road or see the wives of rich Arabs on shopping trips in Belgravia. To hit peak niqabi you have to go to the upper reaches of Zone 2 and Zone 3 (Tooting etc.), Zone 1 and most of Zone 2 are pretty gentrified. Pubs on Friday evenings here are crammed full of white Brits and Europeans.

Because of the boom in house prices, more and more white Londoners have moved to places which were beyond the pale such as Brixton, Walthamstow, Acton and Leytonstone.

If you not been then Tate Britain, the Maritime Museum and Royal Naval College at Greenwich, the viewing deck from the Shard and the Wallace Collecton are all worth seeing.

I don’t think SJWism is that prevalent here, there has been little to no noise over transgender rights and the local chapter of Black Lives Matter has done nothing apart from one protest at an airport. America seems to have a much larger proportion of silly, subsidised academics who want to destroy society to work out whatever grievances they have.

What we do have is a business establishment that believes they have a sacrosanct right to unlimited, cheap imported labour from now to Judgement Day.

LK,

I am not arguing for southern European migration to be banned, my point was the IQ values extrapolated here from PISA and the estimated impact on destination countries looks pretty unreliable.

The Lynn figure of 102 for Italy IQ is 5 points higher than the 97 here. Since the bulk of Italian emigration would have been to northern Europe, how can the impact analysis here be given credence.

It would have been a contender 15 years ago, now you are better off going to Burger King.

This would likely make more money if it starred Margot Robbie, the current star du jour.

Emma Stone is OK but not someone to change the channel for.

It would be good to have your thoughts on the below:

https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2016/11/03/northsouth-differences-in-italian-iq-is-richard-lynn-right-part-ii/

I quite liked Rogue One, it was far better than the Force Awakens which was yet another mediocre rehash by the awful J J Abrams. In the words of Johnson what was good was not original and what was original was not good. Not content by making completely forgettable Star Trek movies, Abrams had to do the same to Star Wars.

I would shake my head at the overwrought, vehement criticism of the prequels, they mostly seemed to be made by emotionally unstable man-children. The originals were hardly masterpieces just good B-movies for kids. Personally I enjoyed all the prequels, the last half of Revenge of the Sith was probably peak Star Wars for me. Surprisingly Camille Paglia agrees with me on this,

Despotic governments like stupid, expensive projects even more than democratic ones.

RIP, I loved that book. My childhood copy is falling apart but I have still have it safe. Probably has the best villain in children’s literature. Hazel was my favourite character.

I drive a Lexus. When it gets really old, I replace it with another Lexus. Apart from the rare flat tyre I never have any car-related issues.

Hmm, that is not a surprise. My wife did her Econ PhD from there and is a yuge Hillary fan. I have learned not to call her the Hildebeast for the sake of marital harmony.

It was a good series, loved Caesar’s reaction when he found out Pompey had been killed.

That was a rather belligerent inauguration speech, I was expecting something a little more sunnier and Reaganesque.

It annoys me a lot to see the bone-headed, reflexive leftism regurgitated by Muslims in the media.

I spent 10 years growing up in Pakistan, if Ms Kanji and the other useless, whinging, parasites of her ilk spent extended time there it would give them some valuable perspective.

It’s a really weird decision. If he wanted to make a statement Trump could have easily just banned Syrian refugees. Right now it seems like he figures Saudi Arabians killed 3,500 New Yorkers a while ago but they haven’t done anything too terroristy since then so they are Good People. I can’t think of any terrorist acts committed by Iranians against the US and ISIS reckon Shia Muslims are Ok to kill on sight so what purpose a ban on Iran serves escapes me. I guess Israel being at odds with them is reason enough.

According to the Daily Mail and N.Y. Post he is a 27 year old pol sci student who still lives with his parents and is pro-Trump, pro-Israel, anti-immigration and anti-women’s rights.

He appears to have been an unpopular nerd in high school per those who knew him and based on his photos was probably not a hit with the ladies.

I would not be surprised if he was the one responsible for the stunt of leaving the pig’s head at the mosque last year and he decided to be a little bolder this time.

Unfortunately Canada abolished the death penalty in the 70s so the little shit won’t get what he deserves.

Wow, that would be a fantastic move if the bill got approved and signed. H1-B should have moved to an auction system long ago, an outright raising would be fine.

Good article:

“Such a change would hit the outsourcing firms hard. The top 10 recipients of H-1B visas in 2015 were all outsourcing firms, according to government data compiled by the IEEE. Tata Consultancy Services topped the list by securing 8,333 H-1B visas.

Amazon, by contrast, ranked number 12 and was awarded just 826 H-1B visas. Google and Microsoft ranked No. 14 and 15, with Facebook at No. 24 and Apple at No. 34.”

I heard an interview with a British scientist who said the biggest correlation was with not breast-feeding.

Gorsuch probably doesn’t have much of a paper trail on abortion or gay marriage because he felt like getting on to the Supreme Court.

Have to say this is a much better pick than the hapless Harriet Miers.

Rome fell because the Romans were more interested in spending the bounty of military contest on triumphs, temples and land than advancing scientific knowledge. Their track record compared to the Greeks was abysmal, it would be hard to think of a single Roman mathematician, natural philosopher or scientist of note (with the possible exceptions of Galen and Ptolemy) and certainly none that compared to the likes of Pythagoras, Euclid or Archimedes. If they had been of that vein, they could have conquered the world and mankind may have reached the moon by 969, not 1969. Hard to blame them for that given the link between pure scientific inquiry and technological development was not really developed by the Greeks. And they were undoubtedly among the best engineers the world has seen.

By not innovating and allowing German auxillarires into the army, they eventually lost their military edge and were overwhelmed by the superior numbers of multiple non-existent Roman foes. See Leonard Mlodinow’s book Euclid’s Window for more on this.

His predictions of doom are a bit overwrought but I can understand his frustrations. He regularly gets nominated for acting awards in the US and UK and would rather like a spell of being able to live and work in his own country. The best non-white British actors like Chiwetel Eifojor, Idris Elba, Marianne Baptiste, Archie Panjabi and Riz are objectively better actors than a lot of white TV regulars here, but it is hard to cast them in the latest Jane Austen adaptation or Agatha Christie whodunit.

For tjose who have not seen it, I would recommend his breakout role in Four Lions, a comedy about four would-be suicide bombers who are undone by their own incompetence.

The Washington Post has taken a massive downgrade catering to useless, parasitic SJWs since arch-fiend Jeff Bezos bought it. Doubtless he’s outsourced as much of the journalism he can to witless, underpaid, perpetually outraged morons. I’m a little surprised there is no American equivalent to the Daily Mail, one of the most popular papers on the UK. It would be a smash hit outside the liberal enclaves.