lswarts

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So far lswarts has created 30 blog entries.

There’s No Correlation Between Gun Ownership, Mass Shootings, and Murder Rates

By Ryan McMaken
Courtesy of Mises Institute

While I was fact checking today’s Mises Daily article, I checked some correlation coefficients of my own so I didn’t have to rely on Volokh’s numbers as my only source.

I approached the data a little differently than Volokh did and instead of using a subjective ranking by an organization like the Brady organization, I just looked at the rate of gun ownership in the state. After all, the argument is often that more guns and more gun owners leads to more violence.

So, I looked at the correlation between the gun ownership rate (a percentage on the x axis) and the murder rate (n per 100,000 on the y axis) in each state. The visual result is this:

murder.png

As you can see, there is no correlation. In fact, if you run the numbers, the correlations coefficient is 0.1, which suggests a negligible correlation, or none at all. The murder data is 2012 data from the Justice Department. The gun ownership rate data is from a 2015 report called “Gun ownership and social gun culture.”

Just for good measure, I also went in and looked for a […]

2019-08-12T19:38:21+00:00August 12th, 2019|Mises Institute|0 Comments

Don’t Let Google Get Away With Censorship

Big tech companies enjoy legal immunity premised on the assumption they’ll respect free speech.

By Dennis Prager
Courtesy of Wall Street Journal

There is an understandable reluctance among conservatives to allow the government to pass any laws governing big technology companies as a result of their hostility to conservative voices. These conservatives, citing the fundamental American belief in limited government, argue that whatever the big tech companies do, they are not the government. Constitutional guarantees of free speech do not apply to private companies.

This is correct.

But the issue is much more complex. I was asked to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on this matter for two reasons. One is the size of my website, Prager University, which gets a billion views a year, the majority of which come from viewers under 35. The more important reason is that YouTube, which is owned by Google, has at various times placed about 100 of our videos on its restricted list. That means any home, institution or individual using a filter to block pornography and violence cannot see those videos. Nor can any school or library.

PragerU releases a five-minute video every week. As of this writing, 56 of its 320 videos […]

2019-08-09T18:33:39+00:00August 6th, 2019|Wall Street Journal|1 Comment

Yale’s Gelernter: To Challenge Darwinism Is to “Take Your Life in Your Hands”

By David Klinghoffer
Courtesy of Evolution News

At The College Fix, editor Jennifer Kabbany takes note of Yale polymath David Gelernter’s interview with Peter Robinson, in which Stephen Meyer and David Berlinski also participated. The conversation followed Gelernter’s public admission of having rejected Darwinian theory. Kabbany highlights what Gelernter had to say about academic freedom. Good. College students need to understand this.

“An Ideological Bent”

From “Famed Yale computer science professor quits believing Darwin’s theories”:

Gelernter said an ideological bent has taken over the field of science. There are good scientists doing good work, “but we have a cautionary tale in what happened to our English departments and our history departments could happen to us, God forbid,” he said.

Gelernter said he likes many of his colleagues at Yale, that they are his friends, but when he looks at “their intellectual behavior, what they have published — and much more importantly what they tell their students — Darwinism has indeed passed beyond a scientific argument as far as they are concerned. You take your life in your hands to challenge it intellectually. They will destroy you if you challenge it.”

“Now, I haven’t been destroyed, I am not a biologist, and I […]

2019-08-09T18:35:24+00:00August 5th, 2019|Evolution News|0 Comments

The Fire at Notre-Dame

By Hamish Robertson
Courtesy of Rod of Iron Ministries

The fire at Notre-Dame, 15th April, was the most shocking event to happen to France since the French government surrendered to Hitler and the evil, boastful power of Nazi Germany in 1940. General De Gaulle fled to London and raised the flag for Free France, France libre. He was not smiling, but he promised that France would become free again.

This time, as President Emmanuel Macron walked with his prime-minister, Edouard Philippe, towards the frightful conflagration, they were caught on video-film, smirking. The video can be seen on internet. The prime-minister was saying something behind his hand. The president was finding it difficult to suppress his smile. Macron, a while later, took on the role of saviour of France, and said that he would restore Notre Dame in five years. The French minister of the interior, Christophe Castanaer, explained that “Notre-Dame n’est pas une cathédrale, c’est notre commun,” “Notre-Dame is not a cathedral, it is our common (asset).”

The first part of Castanaer’s comment sounds ridiculous, but it is true. Notre-Dame does not belong to the Catholic Church. It has belonged to the French state since 1905, like other French cathedrals. […]

2019-08-08T07:03:32+00:00May 1st, 2019|Rod of Iron Ministries|0 Comments

Of the 27 Deadliest Mass Shooters, 26 of Them Had One Thing in Common

By Mark Meckler
Courtesy of Patheos

Suzanne Venker’s recent opinion piece on FoxNews is very, very important, because she points out that almost all of the most recent deadly mass shooters have one thing in common: fatherlessness.

She begins by pointing out a tweet after the terrible shooting in Florida last week. Actor and comedian Michael Ian Black began a series of tweets in this way, “Deeper even than the gun problem is this: boys are broken.”

Venker goes on to describe how his “tweet storm” strayed from the truth:

Unfortunately, Black quickly veered off course. “Men don’t have the language to understand masculinity as anything other than some version of a caveman because no language exists…The language of masculinity is hopelessly entwined with sexuality, and the language of sexuality in hopelessly entwined with power, agency, and self-worth…To step outside those norms is to take a risk most of us are afraid to take. As a result, a lot of guys spend their lives terrified…We’re terrified of being viewed as something other than men. We know ourselves to be men, but don’t know how to be our whole selves. A lot of us (me included) either shut off […]

2019-08-09T18:37:03+00:00February 20th, 2019|Patheos|0 Comments

Beyond Brexit: The EU’s Military Union

By Marie Koh
Courtesy of Rod of Iron Ministries

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.

 Jeremiah 17:9-10

What is really going on with Brexit? What is the big deal with Theresa May’s Brexit plan, or better still, is there even one to begin with?

Her government likes to throw out words like, ‘a deep and special partnership’, ‘cooperation’ and ‘relationship’. Feeling warm and cozy yet? The question is, ‘a special partnership’ with whom or what exactly?

According to a 5 year research report produced by David Ellis and his team from the Strategic Defense Initiative, members of the Royal Marines, veterans and UK Column reporters; what we are really dealing with here is something called Military Union, European Military Unification into a Military Union. A long-term plan designed to bind all operational budgets, capital budgets, policy, industry, officer training and all other public services such as the police, security, intelligence and so on under a European Union umbrella.

This is important to the European […]

2019-08-08T06:47:38+00:00January 28th, 2019|Rod of Iron Ministries|0 Comments

The EU’s War Against the Christian UK

By Marie Koh
Courtesy of Rod of Iron Ministries

And the keeper of the prison told this saying to Paul,
“The magistrates have sent to tell you to go:
now therefore depart, and go in peace.”
But Paul said unto them. They have beaten us openly uncondemned, being Romans,
and have cast us into prison; and now do they thrust us privily?
nay verily; but let they come thrust and fetch us out!”
And the sergeants told these words unto the magistrates; and they feared,
when they heard that they were Romans.
And they came and besought them, and brought them out,
and desired them to depart out of the city.

– Acts 16:36-39

Acts 16:36-39 tells the story of how Paul and Silas were beaten with wooden rods and stripped naked on the street and later thrown into the inner dungeons of the prison; their feet chained and clamped to the wall so that they could not escape.

Around midnight, while they were singing hymns to God, a massive earthquake occurred and the door of their cell opened, and the chains of every prisoner fell off.

The Roman soldier began to fear for his life thinking that the prisoners had escaped, he drew out his sword preferring to kill himself […]

2019-08-08T06:44:44+00:00December 12th, 2018|Rod of Iron Ministries|0 Comments

Britain in Revolt

By Marie Koh
Courtesy of Rod of Iron Ministries

As Great Britain battles for independence from the European Union, which plunged the UK into endless covert wars in the Middle East after 9-11, thousands of soldiers are left destitute upon returning home from war.

The rising number of unusual deaths in the British Armed Forces and the Navy is astounding. It is believed that 49 servicemen and women have committed suicide this year.

The Ministry of Defense (MoD) reveals a staggering 4oo ex-military personnel suicides between 1995 and 2014, and from 1998 – 2017, 309 suicides occurred among UK regular Armed Forces personnel, 292 among men and 17 among women.

The British Government has not been consistent in recording the deaths of ex-servicemen and women once they leave the Army so the numbers could in fact be a great deal higher.

Ex-Staff Sergeant Trevor Coult, who won the Military Cross while serving with the Royal Irish Regiment in Iraq was quoted in the Daily Star:

“When you have a service member dying by his own hand every 10 days you’ve got a problem. The MoD needs to conduct a detailed investigation to try and find out why troops suffering from PTSD are taking […]

2019-08-08T06:50:02+00:00November 7th, 2018|Rod of Iron Ministries|0 Comments

Transhumanism and Immortality

By Marie Koh
Courtesy of Rod of Iron Ministries

Whether we like it or not, the hybrid age is already here. From genetic manipulation, to AI technology, to nano-technology, robotics, 3D printing, brain mapping, super computing, the list is literally endless. Futurists and Transhumanist philosophers believe that science and technology are limitless, and that humanity’s current cultural traditions and mindset are the mechanisms in place that prohibit human development.

Mankind has experienced formidable technological growth in the past from the early ancestors to the Agrarian Age, the Industrial Age in the 18th century, and the Information Age in the 1970s, from their point of view, we are simply going through another revolutionary leap into what they call, the Hybrid Age.

The Transhumanist Movement, also known as H+ is an intellectual, cultural and political movement that supports technological enhancements in the human body through the use of genetics, robotics, synthetic biology, AI technology among others to modify the physiology, psyche, memory and progeny of a human being and ultimately achieve immortality on earth, (a procedure they believe can be reached within the next decade) whereby human consciousness can be uploaded into a robot, cyborg or possibly, a human clone. The sci-fi […]

2019-08-08T06:53:09+00:00September 17th, 2018|Rod of Iron Ministries|0 Comments

Breach of the First Amendment Right

By Marie Koh
Courtesy of Rod of Iron Ministries

The Bill of Rights, ratified 15th of December 1791, is the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution.

This is what the First Amendment says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

In our predominantly high tech society, expression of thought, ideas and business interactions has become fundamental for progress and development. So why is it that many online consumers today experience interferences with their freedom of speech?

This article is based on Mike Adam’s excellent report: The Censorship Master Plan Decoded, which can be downloaded or printed out for your convenience at www.infowars.com/emergency-report-the-censorship-master-plan-decoded/.

He breaks down the systematic way the tech companies are censoring consumers who have a different political view from the mostly Left-wing online platforms.

Part One:

The First Amendment is being assaulted by a “triple threat” tag-team:

1) Tech giants – They carry out the censorship, shadow banning, “doubt interruptions” demonetization, “deplatforming,” black box algorithms and email interference.

2) Establishment media – They create hysteria and […]

2019-08-08T06:58:04+00:00July 27th, 2018|Rod of Iron Ministries|0 Comments