[Quartz] If you get a weak handshake from a millennial, don't blame him or her. It could be a generational thing.
Researchers from the Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina found that men and women under 30 have weaker grip strength than they did back in 1985. Their work was published (paywall) in the Journal of Hand Therapy.
The researchers asked almost 240 men and women under 30--most 20 to 24 years old--to exert as much force as they could on a hand dynamometer, which measures grip force in pounds. On average, men’s hand strength decreased by 20 pounds, and women’s hand strength decreased by 10 pounds.
#7
These kids of the West will meet ISIS,
Each seeking their own paradises:
Soft hands, in both houses,
From fondling their mouses...
Er, make that their pointing devices.
#10
Learned years ago: when shaking a lot of hands--from doing stand-ups at public venues--make sure you cup your hand like you're trying to hold water in it, before you extend your hand.
You don't get the painful crunch from strong handshakes that you get when your palm is flat.
And, my old golf buddy had terrible arthritis in his hands, so, my current default is very light pressure when shaking hands. And, the adoption of the fist bump removes a lot of hand shaking. And a lot less chance to get serious stranger goo on your hands.
.
#12
I shook Cam Neely's hand in a comedy club about twenty years ago; he damn near crushed my hand, and I'm not exactly a wallflower. Now that's a strong grip!
[Breitbart] The people of Britain should vote to leave the European Union tomorrow to "take back control" of their country and immigration system, UKIP leader Nigel Farage has said.
Speaking exclusively to Breitbart London, Mr Farage explained to American viewers that the European Union is not a free trade area like NAFTA but a political project.
"For your American viewers who don’t understand what the EU really is, don’t worry because nor does Obama. He doesn’t get it at all," Mr Farage said.
"We are part of a political union ‐ it has a flag, it has an anthem, it’s got a police force, it’s building an army, and its courts overrule the British parliament and overrule the British Supreme Court, so we’ve effectively become a satellite state of this European project."
"What tomorrow is about is taking back our country and becoming an independent, normal nation. [Americans] have Independence Day, a big, big thing in the USA every year and 183 countries in the world have an independence day ‐ I was us tomorrow to become the 184th."
Mr Farage also said the Establishment had gone out of its way to play down issues of sovereignty and national independence.
#1
I never understood why so many European countries willingly gave up their sovereignty. I understand the Germans wracked with guilt as they are doing so, but the British and French. Then again that's what the Liberals in the US are trying to do with the UN so I shouldn't be surprised.
#3
Hope GB withdraws from the EU so the Brits can recapture control of culture, dignity, and country. Moreover, they need to figuratively poke a stick in the eye of the likes of multiculturalists, open borders supporters like George Soros. Please jam it up his butt Brits. We need to do the same in the U.S. We don't need another layer of unelected corrupt bureaucracy such as the EU or UN between the voters and our elected leaders.
[Bloomberg] Rebounding after a two-year collapse, it's only this month that oil prices have pushed up past $50 a barrel, but Raymond James & Associates says this is just the beginning for higher prices.
In a note to clients, analysts led by J. Marshall Adkins say West Texas Intermediate will average $80 per barrel by the end of next year -- that's higher than all but one of the 31 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
"Over the past few months, we've gained even more confidence that tightening global oil supply/demand dynamics will support a much higher level of oil prices in 2017," the team says. "We continue to believe that 2017 WTI oil prices will average about $30/barrel higher than current futures strip prices would indicate ."
The team went on to lay out three reasons for their bullish call, all of which are tied to global supply -- the primary factor that precipitated crude's massive decline.
Here's how the rebalancing of the global oil market will be expedited from the supply side, according to the analysts:
First, the analysts see production outside the U.S. being curbed by more than they had previously anticipated, which constitutes 400,000 fewer barrels of oil per day being produced in 2017 relative to their January estimate. In particular, they cite organic declines in China, Columbia, Angola, and Mexico as prompting this downward revision.
As long as it's much cheaper to generate electricity with NG, oil demand will continue to decline. And with fracking that will be everywhere in the not too distant future.
Electric cars are just an inefficient variant of a natural gas powered car.
#6
Don't forget the other end of the equation.The Fed is still printing (or technically keying) money without value backing. It's not that the price of oil is going up as much as the value of the dollar is going down.
[BBC] The two most surprising political phenomena of this year have been the rise of Donald Trump and the success of the Leave Europe camp in Britain's referendum on Brexit.
Few pundits saw either coming (and full disclosure, I include myself here, particularly on Trump) - but we should have and now would be a good chance to make up for past oversight by looking at how the two are linked.
This week, polls suggest, Britain may pull out of the European Union. Opinion polls currently have the 23 June referendum too close to call but the Brexit camp (those in favour of the UK splitting from the EU) has been inching ahead in recent weeks.
Later this year, Americans will decide whether to elect Donald Trump as the 45th US President, or Hillary Clinton.
#1
Brits, don't miss the opportunity for Magna Carta 2.0! Perhaps, the U.S. will also rediscover the Constitution, call it Constitution 2.0. I'm convinced the politicos, Partys, MSM, and Hollywood don't understand the breadth and disenchantment of the populace in these grass roots movements such as represented by Trump, Sanders, and Brexit.
[DAWN] THE recent clash between the Kalash community and their more numerous Moslem neighbours, caused by a girl’s change of faith, appears to have been amicably resolved. However, denial ain't just a river in Egypt... the incident should awaken the government and the people both to their duty to save the tiny Kalash minority from extinction.
This month’s attack on the Kalash again brought out their tradition of tolerance. Reena, a 14-year-old Kalash girl, was reported to have converted to Islam and chosen to stay with a Moslem family. Then she went back to her parents’ home and complained of having been forcibly converted. This enraged the Moslem neighbours and they attacked Kalash homes. The authorities intervened and the parties agreed to respect the girl’s wishes. The matter ended when the girl deposed before a magistrate that she had adopted Islam of her own free will, and her family accepted her choice.
The affair highlighted the Kalash tradition of treating change of religion as something normal. Reena’s own uncle and aunt had embraced Islam before her. For some time, however, the Kalash have been showing signs of anxiety at the rate of conversions. In January this year, 12 Kalashas were reported to have converted to Islam within a month. According to a front man of the Kalash People’s Development Network, about 100 Kalashas embraced Islam over the past few years.
Once a large community that ruled the Chitral region, the Kalash population has shrunk to about 3,000 heads. They are also reported to have lost control of a large part of their lands through sale to Moslems or otherwise. In this situation their fears of extinction cannot be summarily dismissed.
The matter of conversion is not as simple as it is sometimes made out to be, especially by some Moslemholy mans who run conversion services. One of them once declared that the Kalash girls were turning to Islam as they had become aware of the difference between right and wrong. Another view is that educated Kalash girls change their faith to improve their marital prospects. Such statements cannot conceal the fact that members of religious minorities are under economic and social pressure to give up their status as second- or third-class citizens and join the privileged Moslem community.
Thus while one has no quarrel with voluntary conversions, the state must ensure that minorities are not driven to give up their faith by denial of their rights or unbearable discrimination in social and economic terms. Such conversions are perhaps not welcome in Islam either. Besides, the question whether minors should be considered competent to change their religion needs to be resolved.
Unfortunately, there have been reasons to discount the narrative of all conversions to Islam being free and voluntary. Two years ago, the Supreme Court took suo motu ...a legal term, from the Latin. Roughly translated it means I saw what you did, you bastard... action on reports of threats to the Kalash to convert to Islam or face death. The court accepted the explanation of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... government that the threat mentioned in news reports was not new and that an old story had been "picked up by some sections of media for vested interests [sic]".
All this was based on a report from the Malakand commissioner who had gone to a Kalash village and was able to report that "the representatives of the Kalash minority expressed complete satisfaction over the response of the administration and they were satisfied with the security arrangements in the valleys".
The commissioner’s report, as reproduced in the Supreme Court’s landmark judgment of June 2014, devotes more space to the deployment of security forces near the Kalash villages and along the border with Afghanistan than to the question of conversions or the Kalash people’s rights in general. These security arrangements are important because the danger of incursions by zealots from across the border cannot be ignored.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2016 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] EVERY conflict introduces new innovative techniques and targets. While murderous Moslems have always considered improvised bombs (IEDs) a handy option, the frequency of IED attacks has increased since 9/11.
IEDs, also known as homemade bombs, may be time- or remote-triggered, and are usually planted along the roadside and detonated when their targets pass through in their vehicles. They are attractive to Lions of Islam in Pakistain, Afghanistan and Iraq because they are cheap, easy to make and minimise their own casualties as compared to suicide kaboom.
While technology has undoubtedly accelerated its use, some form of IED has been in use in warfare for centuries. The use of the term ’improvised’ is suggestive of its makeshift nature -- used by insurgencies with a lack of access to superior weaponry but the desire to inflict maximum damage.
In Pakistain, Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... , Fata and KP are the worst IED-affected areas. In Afghanistan, Kandahar and Helmand ...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan... are particularly affected. The proliferation of IEDs is more dangerous than that of arms and ammunition. Over the past decade, casualties of IED attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistain amount to more than any other form of Death Eater violence.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2016 00:00 ||
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"The same hatred as from Nazis is coming from Islamists and their politically correct allies. We do not even have a vague idea of how much Western culture we have surrendered to Islam.
Democracies are, or at least should be, custodians of a perishable treasury: freedom of expression. This is the biggest difference between Paris and Havana, London and Riyadh, Berlin and Tehran, Rome and Beirut. Freedom of expression is what gives us the best of the Western culture.
It is self-defeating to quibble about the beauty of cartoons, poems or paintings. In the West, we have paid a high price for the freedom to do so. We should all therefore protest when a German judge bans "offensive" verses of a poem, when a French publisher fires an "Islamophobic" editor or when a music festival bans a politically incorrect band."
Posted by: Vast Right Wing Conspiracy ||
06/23/2016 00:00 ||
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#2
Every concession, every minute of discussion, every conversation is a waste of good productive time. They have no place in America's society.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
06/23/2016 9:09 Comments ||
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#3
Way too much of our culture is being surrendered to the IslamoNazis. It's suicidal and lemming like. Hard to figure why the leftist dhimmis are so eager to put their necks under the knife other than because of the WH.
#4
Repeating the same bad idea over, and over, and over ingrains it into the lexicon and forms an accommodation mindset.
"Just say NO", was not specific enough to be assimilated.
"No Smoking", was successful as it formed 'Us vs. Them' associations reinforcing fight or flight impulse behavior.
"Mothers against drunk drivers", vocalized but not successful because Mothers are always angry.
"Don't drink and derive", very successful, but with limited acceptance except among mathematicians.
"Bad Cop, no donuts", sarcastically targeted behavior of a small already tightly integrated social grouping.
"Where's the beef?", offended Hindus everywhere.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
I blame man buns and expanders. 
[Bloomberg] Rebounding after a two-year collapse, it's only this month that oil prices have pushed up past $50 a barrel, but Raymond James & Associates says this is just the beginning for higher prices.
"The same hatred as from Nazis is coming from Islamists and their politically correct allies. We do not even have a vague idea of how much Western culture we have surrendered to Islam.
