THE RETURN OF THE ARCHIVES

All those who have had a close encounter with Blogspot's archiving system and lived to tell the tale know how erratic and mysterious in its workings it is. In the case of this blog, I seem to have done something that offended it mightily as it stopped offering access to most of my archives altogether.

Being the cautious academic type, I keep backups of whatever I write (Yes. And offsite backups too), so I did not suffer the grief that the good Gareth Parker and others have sometimes displayed over such losses, but it was still mildly annoying. Worst of all was that everything I have posted on this blog still seemed actually to be there somewhere, lurking in the depths of the Blogspot servers.

With the help of some canny advice from the good Michael Jennings, however, I have prevailed! I have managed to "republish" my archives. I have induced Blogspot to give them back. Just click on "Archives" (top left of this page) and you will now be able to access the full extent of my blogwisdom. Trawling through the archives of past blog entries is undoubtedly a rare and strange pursuit so I doubt that anybody ever noticed their absence but I feel rather pleased to have them back anyway.

Before Michael's sage intervention, my response was simply to re-post everything written on this blog prior to November 1, 2002 on a separate site: here. I guess I should now take all that down but I will leave it there just in case. I put it there mainly to make sure that Google do not lose it but if anybody wants to go there and mull over my earlier words of wisdom, who am I to object? I have a permanent link to it in the column over on the left of this page.

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THE GENETICS OF IQ

There is a report of some recent genetic research at Gene Expression which seems to me to be overinterpreted. Unless I am missing something, all it seems to show is that memory and IQ have different genetic determinants. Anybody who knows about idiot savants will not be surprised by that.

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ELSEWHERE

Even President Bush seems to think that "diversity" is a good thing. Why? It escapes me. I would much prefer excellence. It seems to me that diversity is what you seek when you don't know what you want. If you don't eat steak, you need a menu, as it were. But this book apparently says that the whole idea is confused anyway. Via Critical Mass

It really is strange that we now have Leftists calling for military conscription. As Dean's World says, have Left and Right switched sides when we were not looking recently? What on earth would the 60s peaceniks make of it?

Jennie T notes signs of reason about Iraq emanating from Canadian Prime Minster Chretien, no less.

Unlikely though it seems, The Spectator believes that Tony Blair's principled stand is on the verge of making Britain a great power once again. One of the Chicago boys goes even further -- saying Britain is still as great as it ever was (pity he can’t spell “cricket”, though).

As the Wall St Journal says: The "antiwar" Left seems to stand only for the proposition that the enemy of my country is my friend

This clinical description of "pathological Narcissism" sounds a lot like Leftist behaviour to me.

Gareth Parker points out some wisdom about Iraq from a political centrist.

Self-defence is now illegal in New Zealand. You are supposed to let yourself get killed. Don’t believe me? Read for yourself. I think most sane New Zealanders have emigrated to Australia by now.

As Razib says in his post of 27th: The mildly genocidal Milosevic is hauled before the War Crimes Tribunal, while the maniacal Mugabe is invited by the government of France to come to a conference. Ah, but he is black....

"Envy used to be just a human failing, but today it is a major industry. Politicians, journalists and academics are all part of that industry, which some call 'social justice'." --Thomas Sowell. Via The Federalist

Iraq to chair Conference on Disarmament. Coming on top of this: "Libya Elected to Chair U.N. Human Rights Body" I have to say that only a Leftist could take the UN seriously.

Chris Brand notes some progress towards realism over asylum-seekers in Britain.

The Wicked one is being facetious at the moment.

Michael Darby blogs about the benefits of genetically modified food and the latest Libyan idiocy at the UN.