Homosexuality a disease....caused by a virus?

So speculates a prominent scientist and professor at the University of Utah, Gregory Cochran.  I love contrarians....and this guy's a pretty smart one.

Forget the "gay gene" - it doesn't exist.  Start looking for the "gay virus!"  Then we can start working on some sort of chemical treatment like they're doing with Narcolepsy, which Cochran sees as the best analog for homosexuality.  It has been discovered that narcolepsy is caused by the lack of a neurochemical called hypocretin, but it is still not known how the loss is caused.  An autoimmune system attack (possibly by a virus) is a possible suspect.

"How could a serious disease be common, if evolution is always optimizing everything?   Well, if it hit you at age 85, selection wouldn't be very good at filtering it away.   People have already had their children by then ...  So this optimizing process works less well at advanced ages.   Which is the basic explanation for aging.

But how could a serious disease be common in early life?   And think of it as we do - how could a condition that reduces or eliminates reproduction be common in early life?

Most common and serious diseases that have been around a long time and hit in early life are caused by germs - bacteria, viruses, parasitic worms, etc. Evolution doesn't necessarily make them rare, because evolution is playing on both sides in this struggle: they're evolving too.    In much the same way, evolution doesn't just make zebras faster, it makes the lions faster too.   Lions can continue to be a major problem for zebras over millions of years - and in the same way, malaria can continue to be a problem for humans indefinitely....

So if a disease is common (> a tenth of one percent), hits in early life, has been around a long time (so we know it's not caused by some new industrial chemical or whatever), and it's not restricted to people from the malaria zone - it's probably caused by some bug. 

But what about homosexuality?   Well, from this biological perspective, it's surely a disease. Disinterest in the opposite sex reduces reproduction quite a bit - around 80% in American conditions. Does it hit in early life?    Sure. Has it been around a long time?    Certainly.   Do you find it in non-African populations, people who never lived with malaria?   Yes.

So it's a bug....."

Adrew Wilkow's Site Added to Favorites

A second non-blog has been found insensitive enough to merit inclusion:  The Wilkow Majority.

Andrew Wilkow hosts the "Wilkow Majority" radio show on Sirius XM satellite radio.  His show airs from 11AM to 2PM central and is reason enough to get a subscription.

Wilkow once said:  "Perez Hilton is a vile sodomite."  And he has subsequently repeated it on multiple occasions.  That ALONE is enough to get him in the Insensitivity Hall of Fame....but believe me, the rest of his show qualifies as well.  He focusses on economics and does so in a straightforward, unafraid-to-offend way.  He's unique in TalkRadio land.

Illegal Immigrant, Illegal Immigrant, Illegal Immigrant............NA NA NA NA NA NA!

The Speech Police at an outfit calling itself the Society for Professional Journalists are calling for an end to the use of the term "Illegal Immigrant."  They say journalists should use the term "undocumented worker" instead.

One wag commenter at Newsbusters astutely questions whether that means we shoud call suspected rapists "urequested sex partners."

Alleged journalists acting as Thoughtcrime Prosecutors.  This is how far the left has come.

Illegal Immigrant.

Illegal Immigrant

Illegal Immigrant

Illegal Immigrant

Screw you, Society for Professional Nags.

Psssst! Buddy....do you know where I can score a lightbulb?

"Smuggling bootleg light bulbs into California would be a piece of cake. Just stuff them in bales of marijuana."

American thinker asks whether we should give California back to Spain or just let it go dark.  The state's ban on incadescent light bulbs goes into effect on January 1st, you see.

Reminds me of that old Monty Python skit with a game show called "Prejudice" that had a contest to come up with a derogatory name for the Belgians.   One of the contestants submitted an entry I'd submit for a similar contest about Californians:  "Let's not call them anything.  Let's just ignore them."

The Great Murray Rothbard Utters the Unutterable

Sigh.  I rarely experience the emotion of jealousy, but every time I read or listen to Rothbard I envy his incredible intellect.  In this video he talks about "America's Two Just Wars" with his typical crystalline logic and good humor.

If you haven't seen it, or don't know anything about Rothbard, there's something of a "plot twist" if you wait for it.  Gotta go through 3 or 4 of the 5-part video got get it though!

Two entries for the blogroll

It's going to take a very special site to be politically incorrect enough to make my blogroll.  I'm pleased to announce though, that I've found my first solid entry:  Bare Naked Islam.  The site's tagline is:  "It isn't Islamophobia when they really ARE trying to kill you."  That sentiment is so beautiful it makes me want to cry.

On the BNI site right now you can find: 

• Islam's Rules For Having Sex With Animals
• A video entitled "Why You Must Hate Islam"
• A photo essay (WARNING: GRAPHIC) entitled "12 Year Old Taliban Boy's First Beheading"

And while it isn't a blog, I also have my first entry under Favorite Sites:  NARTH.  NARTH is a site dedicated to curing homosexuality.  The fact that they even exist, much less that they ARE successful in curing people of this affliction, infuriates leftists no end!  GO NARTH!

Great IBD Editorial and New Term: "Warm-Mongers"

Investors Business Daily consistently has the best, most devastatingly written editorials in the country.  IBD mercilessly and with clinical precision skewers the left's sacred cows with a glee I can relate to.  Gotta love their term for adherents of the religion of GlobalWarmingism:  "Warm-Mongers."

BEAUTIFUL!! 

I hereby put IBD on notice that I am stealing that.

Even better is this from IBD's editorial of 12/22 entitled "The Abiding Faith of Warm-Mongers:"

"Prognosticators who wrote the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, global warming report in 2007 predicted an inevitable, century-long rise in global temperatures of two degrees or more. Only higher temperatures were foreseen. Moderate or even lower temperatures, as we're experiencing now, weren't even listed as a possibility.

Since at least 1998, however, no significant warming trend has been noticeable. Unfortunately, none of the 24 models used by the IPCC views that as possible. They are at odds with reality.

Karl Popper, the late, great philosopher of science, noted that for something to be called scientific, it must be, as he put it, 'falsifiable.' That is, for something to be scientifically true, you must be able to test it to see if it's false. That's what scientific experimentation and observation do. That's the essence of the scientific method.

Unfortunately, the prophets of climate doom violate this idea. No matter what happens, it always confirms their basic premise that the world is getting hotter. The weather turns cold and wet? It's global warming, they say. Weather turns hot? Global warming. No change? Global warming. More hurricanes? Global warming. No hurricanes? You guessed it."

Three Cheers for Sharia Law! (This time)

An Iraqi man named Al Najem Ambagui hung his 19 year old daughter when he found out she had joined Al Queda and was planning a suicide bombing.

Maybe this isn't technically Sharia Law, but close enough.  I say we make Mr. Ambagui a U.S. Citizen, give him a ticker tape parade and set him up with a job in the State Department!

The Anti-Bullying Bullies

A busybody named Maureen Costello from the Southern Poverty Law Center - a world leader in the grievance industry - is all worked up about various schools not doing enough about anti-homosexual harassment. In typical nanny-state nagspeak, she cites example after example of homosexual kids becoming despondent or committing suicide over angst related to their treatment at the hands of schoolmates.

So I have to wonder: is this really a problem on the rise? It's hard to imagine that kids are less tolerant of the homosexual mental disorder than they were ten, twenty or a hundred years ago. It's a matter of pride with an unfortunate number of them, in fact, just how tolerant they are. One wonders why there isn't a similar concern with tolerance for schizophrenia, manic depression or agoraphobia...but I digress.

Why are we suddenly being harangued about this? Hey, it's an unfortunate fact that teens tend to be unstable. Lots of them commit suicide every year and have done so forever. What would a kid who commits suicide in 2010 over being teased about his pink hair have done though in, say 1950. Or 1850 for that matter?

I think that professional nags like Costello don't really want to delve into that too deeply because the answer is pretty self-evident. The kids wouldn't have died their hair pink or "come out of the closet," wouldn't have been teased, and wouldn't have committed suicide. I suspect that pondering that too deeply would lead Ms. Costello down paths she doesn't want to explore.

Can't you hear the outrage already? How DARE I suggest these poor kids should stay in the closet! How intolerant!

Yawn. My way they're alive. Your way they're dead.

Next phony crisis, please.