Links - 1st February 2018 (2)

Arming the Donkeys: The Search for Psychopaths - "A lot of people talk about psychopaths as CEOs of companies and things like that. Those people are not really psychopaths. They have psychopathic traits... maybe some of them sure but almost none of them are above thirty... For the general population it's around four. For women maybe a little less. Average in the medium security prison is going to be around twenty two, twenty three. So thirty is one standard deviation above the median for medium security prisons...
When pedophiles come into the prisons it's often the psychopaths who kill them and when you ask them like why did you do that they say because what that person did was disgusting. That was horrible..
'Hervey correctly said they know the words but not the music and another analogy which is often drawn - Keele draws this analogy in his book the Psychopath Whisperer, that it's kind of like an equation. Does E equal mc squared?... Now explain what that means. I'm not even sure what it means. Why is the speed of light squared? I never did understand that. Well if you don't understand it how can you really believe it? You can say it, you can give an answer on a test but there's a level at which you don't really believe it at all because you don't even know what you are saying.'
'So most of us are physics psychopaths?'...
[On not blaming psychopaths] Not shorter prison sentences because they are going to get out and they are going to hurt people. But we shouldn't view them as responsible for what they do. I think we should view them more as like someone who has untreateable tuberculosis - we can't let them out into the general population because it's going to be too dangerous but we don't have to view it as their fault in order to say that we need to keep them locked up...
Less than one percent of the population has this condition... They commit over thirty percent of the violent crime and if we can understand the condition, if we can diagnose it accurately right now they get out on parole earlier and more often than other people and I think we have to stop that because they get out and hurt people"

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Risk of Revictimization of Intimate Partner Violence: The Role of Attachment, Anger and Violent Behavior of the Victim - "Results lend further support to the mutual IPV perspective, since our final prediction model indicates that victim-perpetrated IPV is an important risk factor for physical and psychological IPV revictimization. An avoidant attachment style shows to be a strong predictor as well, in particular for victims with high and average anger levels"

When Criminals and Victims Meet, Both Parties Can Benefit - "About a quarter of the victims who went through the criminal justice system showed clinical symptoms of post-traumatic stress, but only 12 percent of the group who also had restorative justice conferences had symptoms... offenders who participated in the conferences committed fewer subsequent crimes and that the method was also cost-effective."

How Merkel’s Green Energy Policy Has Fueled Demand for Coal - "While Merkel aims to wean the country from nuclear power and boost renewable energy, the shift has been slow—Germany’s 140-plus coal-fired plants last year supplied 40 percent of the country’s electricity... subsidies have done little to rein in carbon emissions while forcing German companies to abandon valuable equipment... Germany has the European Union’s second-highest rates for electricity after Denmark"

Germany Has Some Revolutionary Ideas, and They're Working - "Germany is the world’s leading producer of lignite. It emits even more CO₂ than hard coal, but it’s the cheapest fossil fuel—cheaper than hard coal, which is cheaper than natural gas. Ideally, to reduce emissions, Germany should replace lignite with gas. But as renewables have flooded the grid, something else has happened: On the wholesale market where contracts to deliver electricity are bought and sold, the price of electricity has plummeted, such that gas-fired power plants and sometimes even plants burning hard coal are priced out of the market. Old lignite-fired power plants are rattling along at full steam, 24/7, while modern gas-fired plants with half the emissions are standing idle... Curtailing its use is made harder by the fact that Germany’s big utilities have been losing money lately—because of the energiewende, they say; because of their failure to adapt to the energiewende, say their critics... “We have to face some kind of a market cleaning,” Adermann said. But lignite shouldn’t be the one to go, he insisted: It’s the “reliable and flexible partner” when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Adermann, who’s from the region and worked for its lignite mines before they belonged to Vattenfall, sees them continuing to 2050—and maybe beyond."

Germany's long goodbye to coal despite Merkel's green push - "“(Coal) makes a big contribution to German and European energy supply security and this will remain the case for a long time to come,” the chairman of the coal importers’ lobby VDKi, Wolfgang Cieslik told reporters last week. He also stressed it was crucial for steel manufacturing in Germany, the seventh biggest producer in the world, that use a quarter of the country’s coal imports. Critics point to the irony in Merkel’s tacit support for coal given that she criticized U.S. President Donald Trump for ditching the Paris climate accord after pledging to voters he would lift environmental rules and revive coal-mining jobs... Huge vested interests are stifling debate, whether it is potential job losses that alarm powerful unions or the effect on industrial companies relying on a stable power supply. Industry figures show renewables accounted for 29 percent of power output in both 2015 and 2016, up from 7 percent in 2000. But plants burning imported hard coal still make up 17 percent and brown coal from domestic mines 23 percent of power output. Cheap coal lets them run at full tilt when necessary while the weather dictates if wind and solar produce anything at all...VDKi warns that nuclear energy, accounting for 14 percent of power, will remove even more of the round-the-clock supply when it is phased out by 2022. Wind and solar cannot even fill current gaps and a system run mainly on green power would fail to provide guaranteed supply over a winter fortnight, it says. Power grid operator Amprion has said German networks came close to blackouts during settled and overcast conditions in January when renewable plants produced almost nothing"
Funny, I thought base load was a myth

Germany’s High-Priced Renewable Energy Revolution - "When the wind is blowing particularly hard or the sun is shining especially brightly, Scheibner and his colleagues have to compensate to ensure the frequency in the system never wavers much from the namesake 50 hertz... It can order conventional-power producers to reduce their production—something that hurts the profitability of those coal, gas, or nuclear plants. But sometimes that’s not enough. In those cases, 50Hertz tells wind and solar operators to stop feeding their electricity into the grid—even though the law forces 50Hertz to pay those renewable producers anyway for the juice they produced.In engineering-speak, this is called congestion management. In plain terms, it’s a waste of money. In 2015, 50Hertz spent 351 million euros on such measures. And because the German government assures grid operators a minimum return on their outlays, it is German consumers who ultimately bankroll the millions that 50Hertz and other grid operators spend adapting to renewable energy’s rise and fall."

Mike Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) | Twitter - "8. Basic physics predicts low energy density fuels like sunlight & wind would need far larger quantities of land, materials, mining & waste.
16. Solar/wind require far, far more *non-renewable inputs* than nuclear or fossil, making them *less renewable* than nuclear or fossil!
8. Wind turbine expansion represents, in fact, one of greatest threats to migratory bird and bat populations in the US.
9. If you are calling for ~5x total wind capacity in N. America that means means deciding to kill ~1,000,000 more birds.
12. Nuclear cost estimates *must* include safety, environmental protection, long-term waste storage & decommissioning — wind doesn't.
18. Why so little awareness of solar/wind's necessarily large ecological impact? Ideology & money are obviously major factors.
19. But solar/wind were <1% energy for so long, impacts unevenly felt. After deployment rose, so too did eco-impacts, awareness & opposition 20. When bird-lovers like novelist Jonathan Franzen speak out against bird-killing "renewables" they're shouted down by dogma cops eg @drvox Are we headed for a solar waste crisis? — Environmental Progress - "Solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than do nuclear power plants."

Technology, Innovation & Economics — Environmental Progress - "In countries like Germany and Sweden governments are openly closing economical nuclear plants. In the US, economical nuclear plants are being closed or threatened 10, 20 — even 40 years before a full life. Nuclear plants are being closed off prematurely both because they are excluded from federal and state clean energy policies and the fracking boom. Solar and wind receive many times more in subsidies than nuclear... Renewables and fossil fuels received 114 and 7 times more than nuclear, respectively, per terawatt-hour of generation in 2016... Intermittent power has to be backed up by an equivalent capacity of dispatchable power, and that usually means fast-ramping gas plants that can rapidly adjust to chaotic surges and slumps of wind and solar power. As wind and solar capacity swells without displacing conventional capacity, the grid enters a spiral of persistent and rising overcapacity that lowers prices even further as more gigawatts fight for market share... According to a review of the evidence, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says nuclear is two to four times less carbon-intensive than solar... large amounts of energy are lost converting electricity to batteries and back again. For this reason, the grid will always be more efficient than any system heavily reliant on storage...
Construction delays are a key driver of higher [nuclear] costs. Construction delays result from regulatory ratcheting, anti-nuclear advocacy and building first-of-a-kind designs... “The French have two kinds of reactors and hundreds of kinds of cheese, whereas in the United States the figures are reversed”... “Contrary to other energy technologies, innovation leads to construction costs increases”... The energy density of the fuel determines its environmental impact. With higher energy densities, fewer natural resources are used, requiring less mining, materials, waste, pollution and land."
Voodoo logic will be: nuclear, fossil fuels and renewables all get subsidies, so it's fair

Launderette in Johor adopts Muslims-only policy - "The 40-year-old operator, who was interviewed by a Chinese daily on Saturday (Sept 23), said he was just carrying out his duty as a Muslim. He said he welcomed Chinese and Indian Muslims to his launderette and that non-Muslims could visit other nearby launderettes. He, however, declined to comment on whether he had imposed the rules as he worried that there might be "unclean" elements such as dog fur on the clothes non-Muslims brought to his launderette. The operator also did not allow the Chinese daily reporter to take his photo. Meanwhile, a Malay daily reported Johor mufti Datuk Mohd Tahrir Samsudin as saying that the launderette's move was commendable as cleanliness is a priority for Muslims. "This should not be turned into an issue as it only encourages negative perception from non-Muslims towards Muslims. "I think it is a good move as Muslims will no longer be doubtful when using the self-service launderette," the daily quoted him as saying."

Marvel, DC Comics Writers Plan to Harass Conservatives at Comic-Con - "To make matters worse and more embarrassing for the SJW crowd of comic book writers, a secret Facebook page was revealed where writers plotted to target Meyer with harassment meant to incite violence... "The industry is hiring completely unqualified people based on diversity," Meyers said "Heather Antos didn't know when her own book came out. They don't do basic editing. The spelling is atrocious and the term 'fake geek girl' really upsets them because it's true. They aren't real fans. They know nothing about the characters or their stories and their whole purpose is to rewrite them in their own image — strident, angry, anti-male, transgendered — until they are unrecognizable." Meyer believes that the shift from the classic comics to the ultra-political began around 2015 — and fans have had enough. "'Black Panther and the Crew' was a segregationist comic about white genocide!" he told PJM. "Who are they writing these comics for?" he asked. "Crest sells toothpaste to murderers on death row because it's a business. They'll sell to anybody," he continued. "The comic industry doesn't seem to want their fans to buy their product unless they are in the extreme left wing. Comic book shops are full of basically middle-aged white guys and Marvel seemed to be embarrassed of them and so they threw them away for the rainbow hair crowd that doesn't actually read comic books." Carol Danvers, or Captain Marvel, is becoming transgendered. Comic book fans have taken to calling her "Carl Manvers." "We're watching her boobs disappear in every issue," said Meyers. "Marvel has killed all the heterosexual romances in the stories and replaced them with gay relationships. Gay relationships are depicted as idyllic and heterosexual romances are shown as problematic. Comic book shops are suffering because they can't sell these books. No one wants them.""

Officially fired by Marvel, Indonesian artist Ardian Syaf says, ‘When Jews are offended, there is no mercy’ - "Ardian has consistently defended his inclusion of the references to the 212 anti-Ahok rally, which he had attended in Jakarta on December, as well as Al-Maidah 51, the Quranic verse which Muslim hardliners in Indonesia interpret to mean that Muslims cannot vote for leaders from other religions (an interpretation disputed by many in and outside of Indonesia), calling them numbers of “justice” and “love”. Many called the references Ardian included in the X-Men Comic anti-Christian and anti-semitic, a charge the artist denied, saying in one conversation he posted to his Facebook page (now deleted) “I don’t hate Jew or Christian, I worked with them in 10 years… a lot of good friends, too.”... After making the anti-Semitic remark, Ardian reiterated to the interviewer that he was not anti-Semitic or anti-Christian because, if he was, he wouldn’t have worked for a foreign publisher. In the same interview, he dismissed concerns that his actions might hurt other Indonesian artists, saying that as long as they didn’t make mistakes like he did Marvel couldn’t fire them (never mind the doubts all comic book companies are going to have in the future about hiring Indonesian or Muslim artists because of him)."

Marvel executive says emphasis on diversity may have alienated readers - "Marvel’s vice president of sales has blamed declining comic-book sales on the studio’s efforts to increase diversity and female characters, saying that readers “were turning their noses up” at diversity and “didn’t want female characters out there”... “I don’t know that that’s really true, but that’s what we saw in sales … Any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up.”
Of course the messenger got shot and the message got denied - and the prescription was to double down on the SJWing. Though CBR admits that "it is true that “diverse” series have sold slightly worse than those fronted by white male superheroes"

iPhone 8 release day draws no crowds, little enthusiasm in China - "Previous releases of Apple's iconic smartphone reliably drew massive crowds, frenzied enthusiasm and even scalper fights, but this time, the reaction was a bit more, shall we say muted?... In other Apple Store locations on Friday, employees reportedly outnumbered customers at the beginning of the day."

When all you have is postcolonial theory everything is about the white man - "I read a piece, Confronting White Supremacy in Christianity as a Christian South Asian, which is interesting from an anthropological perspective... A much deeper and richer story was being erased so as to serve up another illustration of the primacy of white supremacy... Christians are nearly 20% of the population of Kerala, and most are St. Thomas Christians, whose origins predate European contact with India by many centuries. Originally part of the territory of the Persian Church of the East, modern St. Thomas Christians have splintered into numerous groups with varied affiliations, in part due to the trauma of contact with Portuguese Catholicism. But through it all they maintain an indigenous Christian identity which is distinct from any colonial imprint. Second, large numbers of India’s Christians are converts from Dalit populations, or, tribal peoples in the Northeast who are racially and culturally distinct from other South Asians. The framing in the piece is that South Asian Christianity has to bear the cross of colonialism, but a good argument can be made that for Dalit converts and tribal groups in the Northeast Christianity is the vehicle for resistance to oppression, assimilation, and colonialism on the part of the dominant South Asian cultural matrix."