Child Labor, Price Gouging, Ticket Scalping, Organ Sales, Insider Trading, and Other Examples of Legalizing "Sin"

Overly simple explanations, but worth thinking about.

London Takes a Break After 4 Days and Nights of Festivities

Image Source
London multiculturalists decided to take a relative break from their festivities Wednesday night, generally satisfied with the quality of celebration. London police take a "live and let live" attitude toward the multicultural activities of the week, but the ugly face of vigilantism may be peeking round the corner.

After four nights of violence, many are saying enough is enough and they will stop the looters themselves if the authorities cannot.

Police have warned that vigilantes are putting their own safety at risk and could make matters worse. The risks were highlighted by the death of three Muslim men run over by a car while protecting their area in the central English city of Birmingham on Tuesday. _NP

The police are clearly taking the high road here, and if the rest of Britain would only follow the lead of UK police forces, the multiculturalists will eventually tire of partying and wind down their celebrations in good time.

Some outsiders are trying to paint this multicultural holiday as some sort of "failure of multiculturalism," but it certainly seems that the multiculturalists are having it mostly all their own way. What are these critics on about?

The death of multicultural society and the economic crisis are to blame for the riots that have convulsed London and other British cities this week, head of the Russian upper house's international affairs committee Mikhail Margelov said on Wednesday.

"I think the events occurring in the English cities have at least two reasons. One is fundamental: it's the death of multiculturalism, a eulogy which the heads of Germany, France and Great Britain have recently delivered. The value of tolerance, or in other words the value of difference, has been accepted neither by 'indigenous' Europeans nor by immigrants," Margelov said. "The two sides merely tolerate each other. And patience is the kind of thing that runs out from time to time." _rianru

Crazy Ivan clearly doesn't know what he is talking about. There is very little standing in the way of similar multicultural celebrations due to take place across European cities generally. Multiculturalism is far from dead, despite what those crazy Russkies may say.

Australians are similarly critical:

AT the risk of being politically incorrect, is it possible that the current rioting in England is a result of embracing a multicultural society at a rate faster than the Anglo-Saxon community can cope with? If this is the case, are there lessons here for Australia? _TheAustralian

No, John, there are no lessons for you there in Australia. Just relax and enjoy. Multiculturalism is already there and growing larger and more festive every night while you are sleeping. Resisting only makes you look like an old fogie who is unable to change with the times.

PM Cameron has pulled thousands of extra UK Police to London from other areas, to observe the multicultural festivities from a distance. These extra police may have convinced many multicultural celebrants to relax and perhaps take a night off. Others may decide to take their celebrations to other UK cities, outside of London.

No one knows what is in store for the happy multiculturalists of the UK in the coming days and weeks. But we can be fairly sure that these celebrations will continue to pop up in cities wherever multiculturalists take their light-hearted approach to living seriously. In fact, excitable UK multiculturalists of the muslim persuasion are hoping to revitalise the celebrations, and spice them up with something really crazy. Those wild and crazy guys!

Keep your eyes open. Your home town may be the next to play host to this growing global phenomenon. Better stock up on party favours!

Excerpted from an earlier posting on abu al-fin

Emptying the Bottle: Mid-June '11 Links

Here is a list of the worthwhile sites I've Bookmarked recently:

• Digital factories behind real prison bars (earlier).
• The Post Office is going bankrupt and here's a great solution.
• Judges are more likely to grant parole after lunch.
• Many reasons why I can't wait for driverless cars (earlier).
• Try and spot the fake smile [videos].
• Economics of Fashion Property rights [video] (hat tip to Justin Scott).
• Why you shouldn't talk about movies on the first date (and maybe ever).
• Justin Wehr on why trying to impress others isn't so bad (part II).
• Really good put downs shouldn't feel really good [chart].
• A funny reimagining of what happened to George Lucas.
• The best advice is advice not seen as advice [video] (earlier).
• Why the South still celebrates the Civil War.

As always, feel free to email me anything interesting you come across.

Imaginary Friends May Make Children More Moral

It's obvious that we are less likely to cheat when people are watching. But it's also true if false eyes are watching:

conducted a field experiment demonstrating that merely hanging up posters of staring human eyes is enough to significantly change people’s behavior. Over the course of 32 days, the scientists spent many hours recording customer’s “littering behavior” in their university’s main cafeteria, counting the number of people that cleaned up after themselves after they had finished their meals. In their study, the researchers determined the effect of the eyes on individual behavior by controlling for several conditions (e.g. posters with a corresponding verbal text, without any text, male versus female faces, posters of something unrelated like flowers, etc). The posters were hung at eye-level and every day the location of each poster was randomly determined. The researchers found that during periods when the posters of eyes, instead of flowers, overlooked the diners, twice as many people cleaned up after themselves.

Similarly, in children, it works if invisible eyes are watching:

Two child groups (5–6 and 8–9 years of age) participated in a challenging rule-following task while they were (a) told that they were in the presence of a watchful invisible person (“Princess Alice”), (b) observed by a real adult, or (c) unsupervised. Children were covertly videotaped performing the task in the experimenter’s absence. Older children had an easier time at following the rules but engaged in equal levels of purposeful cheating as the younger children. Importantly, children’s expressed belief in the invisible person significantly determined their cheating latency, and this was true even after controlling for individual differences in temperament.

How Hurricane Katrina Helped Ex-cons

They were forced to leave "home":

Ex-prisoners tend to be geographically concentrated in a relatively small number of neighborhoods within the most resource deprived sections of metropolitan areas. Furthermore, many prisoners return “home” to the same criminogenic environment with the same criminal opportunities and criminal peers that proved so detrimental prior to incarceration. Yet estimating the causal impact of place of residence on the likelihood of recidivism is complicated by the issue of selection bias. In this study, I use a natural experiment as a means of addressing the selection issue and examine whether the migration of ex-prisoners away from their former place of residence will lead to lower levels of recidivism. In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Louisiana Gulf Coast, damaging many of the neighborhoods where ex-prisoners typically reside. The residential destruction resulting from Hurricane Katrina is an exogenous source of variation that influences where a parolee will reside upon release from prison. Findings reveal that moving away from former geographic areas substantially lowers a parolee's likelihood of re-incarceration.

Yet many states force prisoners to stay.

A Simple Morality Test

If we are more likely to choose the moral choice if the framework is simple, then here's the best tool I've ever heard. From economist and author Steve Levitt: "How would I feel if my daughter were engaged in that activity?" I don't have a daughter, but I bet little sister is a comparable substitute. I can honestly say I wouldn't mind my sisters working at Walmart, playing online poker, marrying interracially, not voting, buying from China, refusing panhandlers, speculating on oil, or smoking legalized pot.

Why Fire and Brimstone Works

Here's the study:

People’s desires to see themselves as moral actors can contribute to their striving for and achievement of a sense of self-completeness. The authors use self-completion theory to predict (and show) that recalling one’s own (im)moral behavior leads to compensatory rather than consistent moral action as a way of completing the moral self. In three studies, people who recalled their immoral behavior reported greater participation in moral activities (Study 1), reported stronger prosocial intentions (Study 2), and showed less cheating (Study 3) than people who recalled their moral behavior.

It recalibrates our moral math.

Crime and Immigrant Welfare by Region

Intentional homicide rates per 100,000 population by region and subregion, 2004[6]	Rate
Southern Africa	37.3
Central America	29.3
South America	25.9
West and Central Africa	21.6
East Africa	20.8
Africa	20
Caribbean	18.1
Americas	16.2
East Europe	15.7
North Africa	7.6
World	7.6
North America	6.5
Central Asia and Transcaucasian countries	6.6
Europe	5.4
Near and Middle East/South-west Asia	4.4
Oceania	4
South Asia	3.4
Asia	3.2
South-east Europe	3.2
East and South-east Asia	2.8
West and Central Europe	1.5

Table from Wikipedia

An Audacious Epigone
Welfare use by immigrants from particular countries and regions.

International Homicide Rates Neglecting Subsaharan Africa and South America

World IQ Map via Wikipedia
If one were designing a rational immigration policy in a time of massive national debt and prolonged economic downturn, one would tend to favour immigrants who were more likely to contribute positively to national productivity and achievement. In general, one would not favour immigrants from nations with high crime rates, low average IQ, or nations whose previous immigrants had high rates of welfare dependency.

Unfortunately for the US, current immigration policies are leading to a high influx from just such regions. How stupid is that? Welcome to the coming Idiocracy.

Who is John Galt?

The Black Plague and Nazi Holocaust

When the Black Death hit Europe in 1348-50, killing between one third and one half of the population, its cause was unknown. Many contemporaries blamed the Jews. Cities all over Germany witnessed mass killings of their Jewish population. At the same time, numerous Jewish communities were spared these horrors. We use plague pogroms as an indicator for medieval anti-Semitism. Pogroms during the Black Death are a strong and robust predictor of violence against Jews in the 1920s, and of votes for the Nazi Party. In addition, cities that saw medieval anti-Semitic violence also had higher deportation rates for Jews after 1933, were more likely to see synagogues damaged or destroyed in the Night of Broken Glass in 1938, and their inhabitants wrote more anti-Jewish letters to the editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer.

Via The Browser.

Emptying the Bottle: Late-April '11 Links

Here is a list of the worthwhile sites I've Bookmarked recently:

• Doing improv for more than just the laughs.
• Drug prohibition increases the homicide rate (earlier).
• Playing music only helps you learn if it's music you like (earlier).
• The BEST thing I've read on future budget and election issues.
• Half of all U.S. health care is already paid for by the government (earlier).
• Cooking today compared to the hassle from past generations (earlier).
• The one time America paid off it's debt (earlier) [audio].
• Even knowing our irrationalities (earlier), it's hard to nudge us successfully (earlier).
• Harsher prison conditions lead to more post-release crime (earlier).
• Tornados were mostly an American phenomenon [map].
• Our empathy affects our expectations for empathy, changing our interaction (earlier).
• You need 8 hours of sleep and worse, you aren't aware of it's terrible effects (earlier).

As always, feel free to email me anything interesting you come across.

Economics of Polygamy

Polygamy acted as husbandly insurance against an individual wife’s barrenness, as well as high child mortality rates, and made ill or aging wives less burdensome. If it was taboo to have sex with pregnant and lactating women (which increased a nursing child’s chances of survival), new fathers suffered neither sexual privation nor a waiting period to produce another child. And with so many children, polygamists had plenty of sons to work the land or contribute to their commercial ventures; in militaristic societies, these sons were prized as military recruits. Daughters, less valued, were still useful for domestic work, or to be advantageously married off to polygamous men.

That's from a wonderful article on the possibility of legalizing polygamy in Canada. A concern this article raised, but didn't answer, is how the culture of polygamy, like illegal drugs, might change if it was raised out of the legal shadows.

Legalize Drugs: The Dealer

You heard my reasons based on good facts and a good story. Now here it from the main character, "Freeway" Ricky Ross, one of the biggest crack dealers in LA in the 1980s and '90s. His personal history is almost as interesting as his perspective on drug legalization. I highly recommended this Planet Money interview:

(Belated) Birthday Wishes for Empathy

A dangerous coping mechanism I learned early in life was to not need people. If you don't need others, they can't let you down. Not only was this self-destructive, I began to assume that because I seemingly didn't need people, others didn't need me. This lack of empathy had me at times wonder if I had psychopathic (abnormal lack of empathy) tendencies. Even today, I have to make a conscious effort to not fall back on that. Birthdays are one of those times. It's the one time a year where everyone is culturally obligated to celebrate you. So when my birthday came last Friday, I was reminded of my uneasy expectations. This is one of the reasons why I don't have a Facebook wall. Why I don't advertise my birthday. And why I'm infamously bad at others' birthdays. I want this to change.

This year, I was flooded by appreciation from those around me. My AP US History class threw a little surprise party (complete with "Brookie's Cookie Cake" and presidential finger puppets). My sister and her husband surprised me with a visit. And my wife surprised me by telling stories at my weekly improv show, Mister Diplomat, followed by an after party at the theater. As much as I try to remind myself how important social praise is, I was still taken back at how much these surprises meant to me. Even after my history class, I noticed a change in my attitude. I was more appreciative of the good interactions and more able to deal with the bad interactions.

This got me thinking what inspires people to do such nice things. Part of it is obligation, but to go above and beyond requires something more. That extra something is empathy. So I decided to find a way to measure my own empathy and came across this test. It gives 60 statements and asks how strongly you agree or disagree with it. Here's the scale:

0 -32 = low (people with Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism score about 20)
33-52 = average (most women score about 47 and most men score about 42)
53-63 is above average
64-80 is very high

I scored a 19. Well below average and within the "disorder" category. I was especially alarmed when I read this article trying to redefine evil as a lack of empathy. The article discusses several facets I'd never considered. Like how more testosterone (even in the womb), usually results in less empathy. This may help explain why women are commonly regarded as more caring. However, a person's environment also matters. Children who have insecure attachment to their caretakers (abusive households, foster children, etc) often has less empathy. For me this shows how empathy multiplies empathy, especially for young people. Which shows me my role, as a teacher, in the cycle of empathy. It's even got me thinking of ways to directly focus on growing in our sensitivity to others (through public schools, through improv, through personal relationships).

The problem of empathy is bigger than just face to face interactions. There has been a fairly agreed upon assumption that empathy levels have decreased in America. I'm skeptical, but some blame this on conservatives. This could explain why political conservatives are seen as less willing to pay for the poor or why they focus more on security (from other less empathetic people). Either way I think this character trait is important for our political leaders. Perhaps an empathy test could be added to economist Alex Tabarrok's So You Think You Can Be President? game show idea.

So I am empathy deficient and it's clearly important. What I am to do? First, I need to learn from my ultra-sensitive wife, who scored a 56 on the empathy test. Part of marriage is carrying around another perspective of life. I can already see how her thoughts have improved mine. I also need to remember that even though it's difficult to change your own empathy, it's not impossible. Even knowing that I err on the side of less empathetic can help me override my default.

And finally, I think we should all have the goal of expanding our empathy circle. There's no reason not to include people in other cities, states, or countries. It certainly means putting more burden on you, but giving as much as we can to others may be what separates humans from animals. A main source of conflict is a lack on empathy. If we could implant a chip in our brain that made us feel others' pain as much as we feel ours, the world would be a much nicer place to live (though perhaps not a happier place). Until then, read the personal stories of others who lack empathy, have pity on us, and love us. You can start by commenting on this post.

Legalize Giving Bribes

In many parts of the world, political machines still wield huge political influence through a system of underground deals. Here's one solution, legalize it:

In theory, once a demand for a bribe has been satisfied—and the service received, one presumes—the bribe giver may be interested in cooperating in getting the bribe taker caught, knowing that he or she will not face any punishment. That possibility could deter the bribe taker from taking a bribe in the first place. Right now, the interests of both converge, since both payer and taker face punishment if caught, and so the payer has a reduced interest in uncovering bribery.

To see just how bad the situation is, check out ipaidabribe.com.

The End Goal and Jury Nullification

Here's the Wikipedia article:

Jury nullification occurs in a trial when a jury reaches a verdict contrary to the weight of the evidence and contrary to the letter of the law (an official rule, and especially a legislative enactment). A jury exercising its power of nullification need not disagree with the judge's instructions themselves—which concern what the law is—but may rule contrary to the instruction in light of the actual evidence admitted in the case.

Here's a practical application of the idea from the writers of The Wire:

If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun's manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.

Although I know where I stand on illegal drugs, I'm not completely sure where I stand on taking the court system into my own hands. It's like trying to reach a goal, which in this case the goal is to treat citizens fairly, by ignoring the rules originally set in place to reach that goal. Here's the Economonomics blog ("putting the econo back in economics"):

You've probably heard this one before: The principal has some complicated objective he wants the agent to pursue, but he can't get the agent to care about this objective directly. Instead, he can only create a bunch of rules that approximately incentivize the right behavior [...] 

The thing is that objectives are rarely simple, but rules generally need to be. Simple to communicate, simple to follow, simple to measure whether people are violating the rules or not. Therefore rules are biased towards being simple, whether the objective that generated them is complicated or not.

So do are we more likely to have a fairer society if juries ignore what they perceive to be unjust laws. I just don't know.

Cheaters Overestimate Their Intelligence

One thing that never ceases to amaze me about typical high school students is their incredible ability to deceive themselves. Here's an example that I'm sure happens in my own classroom:

...asked 76 students to take a maths test, half of whom could see an answer key at the bottom of their sheets. Afterwards, they had to predict their scores on a second longer test. Even though they knew that they wouldn’t be able to see the answers this time round, they imagined higher scores for themselves (81%) if they had the answers on the first test than if they hadn’t (72%). They might have deliberately cheated, or they might have told themselves that they were only looking to “check” the answers they knew all along. Either way, they had fooled themselves into thinking that their strong performance reflected their own intellect, rather than the presence of the answers.

You can read my own attempts to remind myself I'm regularly wrong in my short series against self-verification.

What Compelled 20+ Black Men to Rape One 11 year old Girl?

Gang Rape Suspects
The gang rape allegedly occurred months ago, but is just now hitting the news more widely, due to attempts by NY Times reporters and black activists to make the accused into victims, and the 11 yo victim into the perpetrator.

Steve Sailer takes the NYTimes to task for its one-sided coverage of the story. And for good reason. More from Jezebel.com, which does a better job of covering the story than the NYTimes!

In December, police learned of the assault when an elementary school student told a teacher about a cellphone video featuring one of her classmates. Authorities say that on November 28, the girl was offered a ride by a 19-year-old who took her to his house, then ordered her to take her clothes off, saying she's be beaten if she didn't. She was raped by several men and boys, then moved to the trailer where more assaults occurred as the attackers took cellphone videos and photographs.

The New York Times published a story today about how the case has torn apart the town, and the paper chooses to focus on the plight of the accused men. The author says the town is wondering "how could their young men have been drawn into such an act?" as if they were tricked into gang raping a child. Then there's this quote:

"It's just destroyed our community," said Sheila Harrison, 48, a hospital worker who says she knows several of the defendants. "These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives."

Though, of course, the accused are innocent until proven guilty, it's hard to believe that anyone's first concern would be about how the men will live with what they did. It's even more incredible that the Times decided to include the quote in the story, but it doesn't end there. _Jezebel

Black men commit far more violent crime than men of other races, although the reasons for this difference are not entirely clear. Some attribute the differences to hormonal levels, other focus on low intelligence levels. Al Fin sociologists feel that "a culture of resentment" running rampant inside black communities and cultures is at least partially responsible for high crime rates among black men.

One additional factor which must be discussed is the issue of "impulse control", one part of pre-frontal lobe "executive function." Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi published a detailed look at the relationship between impulse control and crime. It should be noted that executive function -- like IQ -- is highly heritable. It should also be noted that the developmental window for optimising executive function through training, is open between the ages of roughly 4 to 8 years of age. In communities where the illegitimacy rate is roughly 70%, early childhood training is likely to be poor to non-existent.

Here's a quick look at one particular hormone, testosterone:

Take testosterone in a prison. Dabbs' team found that criminal violence and aggressive dominance among women in prison is linked to higher levels of testosterone. An earlier study of male inmates found testosterone levels to be highest among male inmates convicted of violent crimes such as rape, murder and assault. Variables such as age, social factors and other hormones were seen as important in these studies.

Take testosterone and 'delinquency'. Comparing college students with men and women of similar age in a "delinquent urban subculture" (identified as skinheads, bouncers, bartenders, strippers), "delinquents" had higher testosterone levels than college students. (Personally, boxing the range of research subjects into a "delinquent urban subculture" sounds questionable, but anyway...)

Take testosterone in the workplace. Dabbs' team examined the salivary testosterone in seven vocation groups of men, as well as an unemployed group. They found that actors and footy players had higher levels than religious ministers. Dabbs related testosterone to dominance and antisocial tendencies, which in turn, he suggests, effect vocational preferences in subtle ways. Other studies reveal traditional 'white collar' workers possess lower testosterone than traditional 'blue collar' workers. _abc.net

Many more factors are involved, and free testosterone is not the only androgenic hormone in circulation. In addition, androgenic receptors come in different types, and different receptor types may influence behavioural reaction to any given testosterone level differently.

We know from examples such as the Wichita Massacre and the Knoxville Horror, that there is almost certainly an element of racial hatred involved when such gang rapes are combined with murder. Young women students who are raped and murdered on and near college campuses in American cities are often the victim of whatever combination of racial hatred, hormonal imbalance, low impulse control, and low intelligence which may drive young black male crime.

In the case of the young Texas girl, at least she was not murdered. I am personally more concerned about her future welfare than that of the rapists. It is true, however that society is going to have to live with these bad boys for many years. So it would be best for society to stop covering up this type of crime, stop making excuses for the perpetrators, and get to the bottom of what is driving this all-too-common type of interracial crime.

More: Here is the NYTimes story about the gang rape, published about 3 months after the assault, written more like a PC cover-up than a belated news report. Contrast this excuse-making "coverage" with the unrelenting attacks by the NYT against the Duke lacrosse team players who were later found innocent of all charges against them.

Update -- 14March2011 -- Meanwhile in Sweden: 20 Muslim Immigrants Gang Rape 11 yo Swedish Girl and Gang Rape and Genocide in Cote d'Ivoire and on it goes in ghetto after township after shanty town

Giving Life from Death Row

Written by a death row inmate:

There is no way to atone for my crimes, but I believe that a profound benefit to society can come from my circumstances. I have asked to end my remaining appeals, and then donate my organs after my execution to those who need them. But my request has been rejected by the prison authorities.

According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, there are more than 110,000 Americans on organ waiting lists. Around 19 of them die each day. There are more than 3,000 prisoners on death row in the United States, and just one inmate could save up to eight lives by donating a healthy heart, lungs, kidneys, liver and other transplantable tissues.

Or we could just print organs.

Effectiveness of Surveillance Cameras

More than I thought:

Her team of researchers looked at two high-crime neighborhoods on Chicago's West Side, Humboldt Park and West Garfield Park. In Humboldt Park, she told me, they found "a significant decrease in total monthly crime numbers," including property crime and violent crime. They found no evidence that the cameras merely pushed crime into other areas. In West Garfield Park, on the other hand, they saw "no impact," possibly because there were fewer cameras.

On the cost-effectiveness test, though, La Vigne says the cameras were a solid success. For every $1 of costs, they yielded $4 of societal benefits (reduced crime, savings in courts and corrections, less suffering for victims), despite their failure in West Garfield Park.

In Baltimore, where cameras are concentrated in downtown and monitored actively 24 hours a day (as distinct from the more passive approach in Chicago), La Vigne found the impact on violent crime was even greater — and the benefits exceeded the costs by 50 percent.

It makes sense that there is a diminishing effect of cameras. The most cost effective action may be to put a few in high crime areas and use them post-crime. I have very little opposition to this on privacy grounds. Must be because I'm an amoral libertarian.

Sociopathology in the American Black Community: STDs

As America celebrates Black History Month, it is good to keep in mind the ongoing severe social problems which originate from within the community itself. These are the kinds of problems which cannot be solved by legislation, sermons from the pulpit, lectures in the classroom, or fine televised speeches by fuzzy-minded politicians. These problems -- of rampant violence, resentment, and dysfunction -- have to be solved within the population. But before they can be solved, they must be faced.

African Americans commit several times more violent crime, have a 70% illegitimacy rate, and suffer much higher rates of many lifestyle diseases -- including sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). From deadly HIV to Herpes to Gonorrhea to Syphilis to Chlamydia, American Blacks acquire these lifestyle diseases at far higher rates than other groups.

The human genitals are a teeming evolutionary laboratory of microbes of several kinds, from viruses, to fungi, to protozoa, to bacteria of many kinds. STDs of various types can cause anything from sterility to insanity to death, as well as congenital diseases which curse the next generation. STD microbes can learn and adapt -- often making them difficult targets for human medicine to control.

Now we are learning that at least one STD -- Gonorrhea -- can pick up human DNA and incorporate it into the bacterial genome.

Northwestern Medicine researchers have discovered the first evidence of a human DNA fragment in a bacterial genome — in this case, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bacterium that causes gonorrhea. Further research showed the gene transfer appears to be a recent evolutionary event.

The discovery offers insight into evolution as well as gonorrhea’s nimble ability to continually adapt and survive in its human hosts. Gonorrhea, which is transmitted through sexual contact, is one of the oldest recorded diseases and one of a few exclusive to humans.

... It’s known that gene transfer occurs between different bacteria and even between bacteria and yeast cells. “But human DNA to a bacterium is a very large jump,” said lead author Mark Anderson, a postdoctoral fellow in microbiology. “This bacterium had to overcome several obstacles in order to acquire this DNA sequence.”

The paper will be published Feb. 14 in the online journal mBio._SB

The high rates of sociopathology and consequent increased suffering among black populations in the US is not particularly unusual. In Haiti and SubSaharan Africa, similar high rates of violent crime and lifestyle diseases prevail. The tendency among the politically correct cultures is to blame all these problems on outside groups. This popular PC tendency helps prevent any genuine improvement from ever taking place.

The first step is to admit the problem(s).