ELSEWHERE

Lord love us! What has the world come to? In The Guardian, of all places, we find an article reporting that there is such a thing as general mental ability (popularly known as IQ) and that it is highly hereditary! I guess that after around 100 years of scientific evidence to that effect, the truth is getting just too hard to ignore. Excerpt: "Researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry are trying to unravel how much genes, rather than environmental factors, affect a child's academic prowess. By analysing the test results of 6,000 twins, they were able to see clear genetic factors emerging for both numerical skills and reading ability. They compared test results for seven-year-old identical twins, who share the same DNA, with the results from non-identical twins, who only share 50 per cent of their DNA, to assess how much was down to genes. Yulia Kovas, who led the investigation, said: 'Our work shows that there is a substantial genetic overlap between maths and reading, but also between maths and general intelligence. 'It seems that there is a group of "general" genes that govern our achievements at school."

Further to my comments yesterday about Bruce Kovner, a regular reader who was once himself a NYC financial trader writes: "I knew him when I worked at CS in the early 90's. He was/ is everything he is described and even more. He was also fair in his dealings with banks when other hedge fund operators were complete shitheads. We sat down once for a conversation about markets. That conversation taught me a few things about trading which I haven't forgotten".

Blair gets a deserved boot up the backside: "Two of Britain's closest allies in the war on terrorism made scathing criticisms of the Government yesterday for being soft and indecisive in dealing with Muslim extremists at home. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, both countries that co-operate closely with Britain against al-Qaeda, said that Tony Blair's Government had consistently failed to tackle Islamic militancy. In a farewell interview with The Times, Prince Turki al-Faisal, the outgoing Saudi Ambassador to London, said that he had been "going around in circles" during his 2«-year posting in a failed attempt to make Britain understand the danger posed by Saudi dissidents in London linked to al-Qaeda".

U.N. corruption: "A federal prosecutor investigating corruption in the $64 billion oil-for-food program issued the case's first criminal charges against a U.N. official, accusing a former Russian procurement officer of receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from companies doing business with the United Nations. Alexander Yakovlev, 52, pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering, said David N. Kelley, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. The charges could carry a penalty of up to 60 years in prison. The case against Yakovlev grew out of the United Nations' own investigation of its marred oil-for-food program, and it came on a day when a U.N.-appointed panel accused Benon V. Sevan, the program's former director, of receiving nearly $150,000 in kickbacks from a company run by relatives of former U.N. secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali"

There is an amazing post up on Strange Justice that shows what a huge problem are wrongful convictions in the USA and why so few get reversed.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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The anti-business policies and practically all economic policies advocated by the Left are impoverishing. They waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so make the country poorer. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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