Black Caps vs. Australia, Champions Trophy Pool Match Preview

Trent Boult demolished the Australian lower order the last time these two sides met in an ODI, taking 6-33. The Black Caps will need something similar to concede less than 350 against this strong Australian side

The Black Caps had mixed fortunes in the Champions Trophy warm-up matches, but that will all be forgotten when their first pool match starts, against World Cup final opponents Australia, this Friday at 9:30p.m. (NZT).

Australia is a solid favourite on BetFair to win this encounter in Birmingham. They are only paying $1.53 compared to $2.84 for the Black Caps.

The main reason for this is their superb bowling. Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood are both ranked in the top 5 of ODI bowlers at the moment, and they will have both Pat Cummins and James Pattinson backing them up.

Because Starc is capable of batting 8, Australia might be tempted to go with all four of them in the same side – which would make for an exceptionally fearsome ODI pace battery, one of the strongest ever. There would be no respite.

The Black Caps may have three of their best ever ODI batsmen in the top 4 – Martin Guptill, captain Kane Williamson and Ross Taylor, but question marks remain over Guptill’s opening partner and the middle order.

A number of players were tried in these positions in the warm-up matches and in the preceding tri-series against Ireland and Bangladesh. The difficulty is that there were no performances that will have forced the hand of the selectors.

Guptill will open with either Luke Ronchi or Tom Latham. The desire from the brains trust might be to favour the big-hitting Ronchi, because English surfaces in recent years have tended towards very big scores.

A variety of players have been recently tried in the Black Caps middle order. Neil Broom, Corey Anderson, Jimmy Neesham, Mitchell Santner and Colin de Grandhomme are all possibilities for the middle order and allrounder slots.

The Black Caps bowling unit, however, is easy to select. The tried and true combination of Trent Boult (ranked 6th in the world for ODIs) and Tim Southee will no doubt share the new ball, and it’s likely that Mitchell McClenaghan will be in as third seamer.

McClenaghan’s T20 experience will help to lend him skills that are useful in death bowling, and he has been talked about in that role in particular. This should see him take the spot ahead of Adam Milne, who is improving rapidly but still lacks the knockout punch of the more established seamers.

The three seamers will be complimented by Mitchell Santner, whose relentless accuracy and subtle variations have seen him rise into the top 10 of ODI bowlers for the first time.

The Black Caps bowling strategy will be to take two or three poles early with the moving ball, and then to at least restrict the scoring in the middle overs with Santner and the variations of either McClenaghan or Milne.

This will lessen the potential impact of the Australians’ big middle order hitters like Chris Lynn, Travis Head, Glenn Maxwell, Marcus Stoinis and Matthew Wade.

The Australian batting lineup appears to be following the general ODI zeitgeist at the moment by being packed with hitters. Any of David Warner, Aaron Finch, Lynn, Head, Maxwell or Stoinis is capable of striking at well over 100 for as long as they can stay in.

Their strategy will probably be to use Steve Smith at 3 as the fulcrum around which the other batsmen can hit. If Smith can stay in long enough then the others around him can throw the bat and Australia will post a colossal score.

Considering that 300 has been a par score in England recently even for average sides, this match between the two World Cup finalists has the potential to see 700+ runs scored.

The winner of it will have the box seat in qualifying from this group, as they will probably then only have to beat Bangladesh in order to advance to the semifinals.

Toxic Femininity

Feminazis and cucks are always screaming about toxic masculinity. The concept, according to Wikipedia, “describes standards of behavior among men in contemporary American and European society that encourage domination and control of others while being opposed to intellectualism and emotional sensitivity.”

It’s apparent to any reasonable person who reads this that the concept is fundamentally dishonest, because nothing about the behaviours described above are exclusive to either men or to Westerners.

The concept is fundamentally dishonest because it is not intended to describe any part of reality in a scientific sense. The intent of the concept is to advance the political goals of the person advocating it, not to contribute to the sum total of human knowledge through intellectual inquiry.

However, as above, so below: the concept of toxic masculinity, valid or otherwise, has a mirror image in toxic femininity.

The nature of the masculine is to go outwards and into the material world. Naturally this manifests as a desire to put the material world to order. This is not the same thing as trying to control the outside world, although the two do overlap.

The characteristic emotion of masculinity, then, is anger, and this manifests as physical violence, which basically everyone recognises as bad.

The nature of the feminine is to go inwards and into the mental world. The characteristic emotion of femininity, then, is fear, and this manifests as emotional violence, which very few recognise as bad.

Where a man is more likely to hit someone in order to control them, a woman is more likely to psychologically abuse someone in order to control them.

This emotional abuse takes different forms to physical abuse. The emotional abuser prefers to lay a guilt or shame trip on their victim, coercing them into the desired behaviour by stoking fears of social rejection. The abuser will detail disappointment, shame or embarrassment that they attribute not to their desire to control, but on the actions of their victim.

Another source of emotional violence is dishonesty. After all, to lie to someone is to do them a psychological violence (this is routinely denied by the liars themselves).

The major source of dishonesty in the world is politics, or, more precisely, the desire of certain humans to remake the entire world in their own image (which is all politics is). Because this desire naturally brings egotistical people into direct conflict with others who want to remake the world in their image, a lot of lying about it has sprung up.

For example, the feminazis who shriek about things like toxic masculinity will never admit that they are doing so for political reasons. In particular, they are trying to shift the balance of the culture towards the feminine, for the sake of their own gratification, not that of the wider society.

Claiming that being “opposed to emotional sensitivity” is necessarily “toxic” is a value judgment, not a scientific description of reality. It is a political statement, not a psychological or sociological one.

After all, there are plenty of reasons why emotional sensitivity might be discouraged. It’s not just a simple matter of hardening up for the rigours of a battlefield. Emotional sensitivity is the opposite of emotional stability, and emotional stability is desired by all because it keeps things in good order.

It is not a coincidence that being emotionally sensitive will also leave a person more vulnerable to strategies of emotional coercion and abuse.

This tendency to conflate emotional stability with patriarchal oppressive male domination brings us close to a definition of toxic femininity.

Some have described the pattern of toxic femininity, perhaps without being aware that they had done so, as “feels over reals”. Extrapolating this with what we know about the association between femininity and dishonesty, we can define toxic femininity thusly:

“A specific model of womanhood, geared towards dominance and control. It’s a womanhood that views men and boys as inferior, sees conversation not as an act not of affection but domination, and which valorises emotional violence as the way to set the world to order.”

In other words, females are equally capable of being toxic as males, and for the same reasons. The only difference is that females tend to use indirect methods.

As described above, toxic females are more than happy to use emotional abuse as a method to impose control and to remake the world in their image.

Their conceit is that this emotional abuse is either 1) not really abuse because it is non-physical, or, 2) causes categorically less suffering than the physical abuse preferred by males and is therefore categorically less blameworthy.

As any reasonable person will have concluded by now, this is utter bullshit.

Leaving aside the politics and related bullshit for a second, it’s possible that the concepts of toxic personality types have some use.

The important thing is to first and foremost learn to identify toxic individuals, because toxic individuals are capable of expressing their nature in either masculine or feminine ways, regardless of whether that person is male or female.

An understanding of toxic femininity might make this easier to do, because if only masculine behaviours are considered toxic a person leaves themselves wide open to abuse by feminine methods.

Understanding New Zealand: Demographics of Pacific Islanders

What is already known about Pacific Islander New Zealanders is that they fall inbetween Europeans and Asians in terms of how established they are in the country, and that on many sociodemographic measurements they are like Maoris (who are also Pacific Islanders in a manner of speaking).

Indeed, Pacific Islanders tend to live in the same kind of areas as Maoris, but unlike Maoris they seldom share a neighbourhood with Kiwis of European descent. The correlation between being a Pacific Islander and being Maori was 0.05, and because these statistics are calculated on the basis of which electorate a person lives in, this tells us that Pacific Islanders and Maoris often share the same neighbourhoods.

There was a very strong negative correlation of -0.80 between being a Pacific Islander and being a Kiwi of European descent, which is reflective of how seldom the two ethnicities share a neighbourhood. For one thing, the South Island has a large number of Kiwis of European descent and very few Pacific Islanders, and for another, many Pacific Islanders move to Auckland specifically.

Indeed, the correlation between being a Pacific Islander and living on the South Island was -0.29, which was significantly negative, but probably not as much so as most have expected. Pacific Islanders have been in New Zealand long enough to become established, and in practical terms this means growing up here and feeling free to move anywhere in the country to seek work or study opportunities.

The correlation between being a Pacific Islander and median personal income was -0.29. This was significantly negative, but not as strong as the corresponding correlation with being Maori (-0.48). Also, the correlation between being a Pacific Islander and turnout rate in 2014 was -0.44, compared to the corresponding -0.75 for being Maori and turnout rate in 2014.

Applying the General Disenfranchisement Rule to the correlations above, we can surmise that Pacific Islanders are generally doing better than Maoris by most demographic measures.

The majority of this difference can be explained by the fact that, although immigration restrictions towards Pacific Islanders are understandably lax, the average person who gets it together enough to become an immigrant in the first place is usually a cut above what is otherwise average for their demographic.

Perhaps the profoundest illustration of this is the correlation between being a Pacific Islander and being a regular smoker – this was only 0.14, compared to 0.92 for being Maori and being a regular smoker.

Also, Pacific Islanders didn’t have quite as strong of a male death bias as Maoris. The correlation between being a Pacific Islander and being female was 0.16, which was not significant.

Perhaps the largest statistical difference between Pacific Islanders and Maoris when it comes to measures of well-being is that, although the average Pacific Islander income is greater than that of the average Maori, it is so by a much smaller margin in the medium income bands than in the lower ones.

Consequently, there are few Pacific Islanders who are desperately broke. For instance, the correlation between being a Pacific Islander and being in the $10-15K income bracket was negative, at -0.16.

In fact, the correlation between being a Pacific Islander and being in the $10-15K income bracket was even more negative than the correlation between being a Kiwi of European descent and being in this income bracket.

Again, this is probably a result of the fact that the human capital of the average immigrant usually has to be above a certain minimum level for immigration to even be possible, and because Pacific Island immigration is fairly recent, they have not had the time to sink into the true underclass to the degree that Maoris and Kiwis of European descent have.

Being a Pacific Islander, however, was significantly negatively correlated with being in every income bracket above $50K. This tells us that the distribution of incomes within the Pacific Islander population is nowhere near as wide as the distribution of incomes within the Maori population.

The only occupation that had a significant positive correlation with being a Pacific Islander were machinery operators and drivers (0.31). Related to this is the fact that the only industry with a significant positive correlation with being a Pacific Islander was transport, postal and warehousing (0.50).

The profoundest difference between the Pacific Islander and the Maori populations is, of course, the correlations with being born overseas. With being Maori this is obviously very strong, at -0.67, but with being a Pacific Islander the positive correlation is only 0.38.

This tells us that, although the perception is of the Pacific Islander community in New Zealand as an immigrant one, they are much better established here than many realise.

They were, however, the least likely of any ethnic group to live on freehold land, although only just. The correlation between being a Pacific Islander and living on freehold land was -0.56, even more strongly negative than for Maoris. This is probably a consequence of fewer Pacific Islanders having inherited land from parents who died in New Zealand.

Another strong difference between Pacific Islanders and Maoris is that Pacific Islanders are very, very unlikely to be in part-time work – the correlation between the two was -0.82. The reason for this is that, even though the average Pacific Islander in New Zealand is older than the average Maori, their relatively recent immigration means that they comprise a smaller proportion of the old people who themselves comprise the bulk of the part-time workforce.

Statistically, this apparent paradox can be seen in two correlations: that between median age and being a Pacific Islander (-0.45, compared to -0.63 for Maoris), and that between being on the pension and being a Pacific Islander (-0.49, compared to -0.20 for Maoris).

This tells us that, much like income, the distribution of the ages of Pacific Islanders in New Zealand is much narrower than those of Maoris or Kiwis of European descent.

*

This article is an excerpt from Understanding New Zealand, by Dan McGlashan, published by VJM Publishing in the winter of 2017.

Psychiatry is Just Rehashed Four Temperaments Theory

It’s so difficult to know who’s sane and who isn’t these days. In the Post-Truth Age, anyone can simply assert anything, no matter how ridiculous, and be taken seriously by hordes of morons. The only reasonable approach seems to be to declare yourself perfectly mentally healthy and everyone else variably so – depending on their relationship to you.

What a lot of people don’t realise is that, aside from the technology of pharmaceutical drugs, mental healthcare hasn’t advanced in 3,000 years, and in significant area has in fact gone backwards, as genuine wisdom inherited from previous ages is forgotten.

Because the wide world all fits into categories of earth, water, air and fire – and always has done – it is possible to fit all of the human personality types into these categories as well.

With regards to mental healthcare, one can simply do this by declaring oneself to be the fulcrum of sanity around which the world rotates, and then applying the four temperaments theory to everyone else.

So “modern” mental healthcare is mostly a matter of dressing up four temperaments theory in a cover of psychiatric jargon.

For example, patients who are sad no longer get diagnosed with melancholia, but with depression. The melancholic personality type, which is associated with a tendency to depression, is now called avoidant personality disorder.

Fittingly for melancholia, which is represented by earth and is consequently the most feminine of all of the conditions, avoidant personality disorder is characterised by feelings of inadequacy and a hypersensitivity to criticism.

Diagnosing someone as depressed and prescribing anti-depressants today is not significantly different from diagnosing someone as melancholic 3,000 years ago and prescribing them cannabis sativa.

The dependent personality, characterised by clinging and submissiveness, also falls into this category.

Marginally more warm-blooded people fall into the phlegmatic category of person. These usually end up getting diagnosed as schizoid or schizotypal, because their phlegmatic nature makes them broadly indifferent to social contact.

Some phlegmatic people are nonetheless capable of extracting small amounts of pleasant feelings from hoarding things. So if you meet a person who appears indifferent to much of the outside world, don’t be surprised if you end up finding out that they hoard newspapers.

Even more warm-blooded people – those who used to be called sanguine – lead us into the domain of the borderline and the histrionic personality disorders.

Unlike people in the previous two categories, these types are much more outgoing – indeed, one of the major distinctions relates to whether the condition causes problems for the person who has it or for other people, and the more warm-blooded a person is the more likely they are to cause problems for other people.

Borderline personality disorder is characterised by instability and impulsiveness, and a person is more likely to be impulsive the more warm-blooded they are.

Histrionic personality disorder, likewise, is too noisy and dramatic to fall into the categories of melancholic or phlegmatic disorders.

These two conditions have the common factor of both being primarily socially orientated. In much the same way that a mentally healthy sanguine person might be described by friends as easy-going, witty and spontaneous, a mentally unhealthy sanguine person would be like a reflection of this in a dark mirror.

Instead of wit there comes verbal abuse and manipulation, and instead of spontaneity there comes a puppet-like mindless lurching from one impulse to another.

The most hot-blooded kind of person was referred to as a choleric personality in ancient times. In modern times, a person like this causes problems because of being too aggressive or domineering.

Consequently, cholerics are often narcissists, possessing a grandiose desire for the admiration of others. This becomes unhealthy when the desire for this gets out of control and they try to force or bully others into showing admiration against their will.

At the most extreme, the choleric personality manifests as antisocial personality disorder, characterised by a pattern of disregard for the rights of others. In particular, the antisocial personality does not recognise rights as anything more than the ability to enforce them.

This is why the antisocial personality so frequently commits murder – if it has the capacity to kill it considers itself to have the right to do so, for if it did not it would not have the capacity.

Antisocial personality disorder could be considered a way of having an excess of masculinity, in the sense that the desire of a person with it is to impose a degree of order upon the world that inevitably brings them into conflict with other people.

Alchemically speaking, it is possible to see this four temperaments theory as representing the spectrum of personality from unhealthy feminine at the melancholic end, to unhealthy masculine at the choleric end.

Correspondingly, the melancholic personality at the feminine end is, at its least healthy, at risk of killing itself, and the choleric personality at the masculine end is, at its least healthy, at risk of killing another.