THE PEACENIKS JUST FEEL SUPERIOR

A reader writes:

If the UN okayed it and if Clinton ran it, they would probably support the war as 'humanitarian' (as in Serbia, Somalia, E Timor). This seems to me to be a very shallow and superficial basis for rejection of the present war. It is almost if the only good wars are the ones where there is no national interest at stake.

I know you think that they are just anti-American but I think that they are a bit like the ancient Greeks: They didn't like technology or even experimentation, as that was 'hands on' i.e. slave work. It is as if we now have a social class who believe that the marketplace and national interest are menial work best delegated to a lower order to do all the work, pay the taxes and take the risks. The Leftist protestors will just air their superiority from the sidelines and claim the lion’s share of the rewards.

When those who carry the burden protest, the Leftists accuse them of selfishness, bigotry etc!

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DISEASE AND DISASTERS IGNORED BY GREENS

A reader writes:

Ron Bailey makes the point that we may be facing a "tragedy of the commons" with disease. In the long run, this is probably a bigger threat to globalization than terrorism. There have certainly been examples in history where expanding international trade and cooperation, and the population growth it sustains, was brought to a halt by plague.

It is fascinating that disease, a threat that has been shown time and time again to endanger the lives of millions draws less concern than the more nebulous and much less certain threats of climate change, something that is not inherently lethal. Many climate activists do of course argue that changing climate may induce the spread of tropical diseases. Their solution is to throw money at schemes like the Kyoto Accords which even to it's advocates can merely delay the feared warming for a few years. This is a pretty roundabout way of dealing with a problem. Why not just invest in fighting the disease?

Similarly the threat of asteroid impact. This is 'new' but planetary scientists have proven that impacts are common in the solar system and have happened many times on Earth. We even witnessed the Shoemaker-Levy 9 impact on Jupiter. The risk is small but the consequences dwarf climatic change, something the Earth and even man has seen and survived many times.

See this article by Richerson (PDF file) for a detailed background on paleolithic man's experience with 'natural' climate change.

It is fascinating that many greens are quite hostile to the idea of taking the impact threat seriously. Maybe this reveals their anti-technology bias. This site has some discussion attempting to assess the actuarial risk of impacts and tries to guess what premium we should pay to prevent impacts.

That item from Richerson is quite interesting. He argues that climatic change was so common and extreme the Paleolithic (approx 1.5m to 10,000 before present) that agriculture was nearly impossible. Then in the Holocene (10,000bp to now) we had a period of benign climatic stability.

What is the 'norm'? Sometimes I think the Holocene stable patch may be "gamblers luck in a climatic casino": Just as "the gamblers fallacy" is to assume that past results (good or bad) will determine future results. Maybe we assume that past climates (as determined over a small baseline of a few thousand years) are normal and natural and any variation must be abnormal, unnatural and artificial (ie human induced). But the big picture says change is the norm, with or without human or industrial influences.

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INTELLIGENCE IN THE FORMER EAST GERMANY

Some excellent data here on the general usefulness and heritability of high intelligence from the former East Germany -- a country with the usual Commuinist devotion to “equality”. Definitely not a nasty capitalist plot:

From 1963 to 1971 about 2.8 million East German school children participated in nine nationwide mathematical competitions. The 1329 most successful participants were selected for further study. In 1970/71 and in two follow-ups in 1983 and 1993, data on 23,000 relatives of these children were gathered. The data indicated the existence of a strong relationship between mathematical-technical giftedness in school and achievement in life. There was evidence from the distribution of high professional achievement among the relatives that such achievement needs not only nurture but also an appropriate genetic background, which seems to be transmitted as a simple Mendelian trait, now open to investigation by molecular genetics.

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ELSEWHERE

Fun! I have just received another email from the Marxist who wrote to me previously claiming that Stalin was not a Leftist! He has now accused ME of being a liberal! He also says that Bill Clinton is a war criminal -- presumably because Bill rescued the admittedly rather undeserving Kosovars. Here we see once again an almost total loss of reality contact in a Leftist. In psychiatry, of course, loss of reality contact is the prime symptom of psychosis. You can read the email in full here.

Ex-Iraqi and Assyrian Christian, Sam Shalalo writes about how the Iraqi people have had "enough of Saddam and people like him" and why the war is "just and legal". See his piece here

Michael Darby has a letter from a group of Zimbabwean women that should stir sincere feminists to anger and protest. But will it? I think we know the answer.

Chris Brand has some thoughts on the psychology of ageing.

In this academic paper from my past I argue that the decline in homebirths has improved the intelligence of the population.

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A POLITICALLY INCORRECT WAR?

A U.S. reader writes:

My mother (who wishes to remain anonymous because she fears for her job) just returned home from work at Home Depot in Waltham, MA. She called me with disturbing news. The employees' lunch room has a television. It previously had been tuned to the news to allow employees to follow the war. Today, all day, the television was tuned to "Home Depot TV". Additional, there was a metal bar locked across the television in order to prevent the channel from being changed. When my mother inquired about the situation, she was told that a Muslim employee had complained to HR that he was offended by the war coverage. This is a complete outrage.

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DOWN WITH THE EU -- UP WITH THE ANGLOSPHERE!

There is a great article by David Frum in today's UK Daily Telegraph (Requires free registration) headed Blair must find the courage to turn his back on the EU which argues that Britain should move away from the EU and build closer ties with the USA instead. Some excerpts:

After the war, Mr Blair's prestige will if possible rise even higher in America..... Instead of using his transatlantic clout to help others, Mr Blair could use it for the benefit of Britain..... After five decades of European integration, Britain still wields more military power than all the rest of Europe combined.... Britain continues to prove itself the most dynamic large economy in the continent.... Britain doesn't need the EU to be powerful. The EU does need Britain. Doesn't that suggest that it is France and Germany that should be left to mend the fences - while Britain seeks instead to institutionalise its renewed military alliance with America? .... The great geopolitical lesson of the Iraq war is that America, despite its strength, does not wish to be a unilateral power...... Britain should work to develop and renovate institutions that offer the Anglo-American alliance multilateral legitimation .... America is often glibly accused of imperialism. The accusation is not very convincing: would the Romans ever have permitted the Gauls or the Cappodocians to do to them what the French and the Turks have done scot-free to the United States?.... America craves partners - and of all potential partners, Britain is both the most capable and the most reliable.

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SCOTS = JEWS?

The book The Mirth of Nations by Christie Davies has been reviewed a few times since its release (See for example the review by "Theodore Dalrymple") and its salient point that the Scots and the Jews make an interesting comparison has generally been picked up.

A point that I found most interesting, however, was that both the Jews and the Scots have historically been very prone to theological divisions. They have both had numerous sects of their religions (Judaism and Protestantism) in nitpicking and verbally fierce dispute with one-another:

"It is the questioning, disputing, argumentative quality of Judaism and of the Christian religion in Scotland and the corresponding requirements of literacy and study that have led both to the secular intellectual achievements of the Scots and the Jews."

And as Arthur Herman in his book How the Scots Invented the Modern World points out, the intellectual achievements of the Scots have indeed been great. I do not think the Davies thesis explains all about either the Jews or the Scots but I find it of some personal relevance. I have always been rather philo-Semitic and I did also have a lot of Scots Presbyterian influences in my upbringing.


(Crossposted on Israpundit)



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THE MEIN KAMPF OF AL QAEDA

There is here a lengthy summary of Al Qaeda's "Mein Kampf" and it's author Sayyid Qutb. It takes the view that Qutb is a powerful intellectual with a valid criticism of the emptiness of modern Western civilization. He says we have disconnected God from our daily lives. The article concludes that we need to wage a propaganda war to assert our democratic and tolerant values in the Arab world as a counterweight to that critique. I would however have thought that any exposure to Western media would have given Muslims some message along those lines. They can certainly see that our civilization works a lot better than theirs does.

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MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL

My mirror site for this blog seems to be working out well. It is definitely not as pretty but seems to load more quickly and more reliably than this blogspot site. I have therefore adopted the practice of posting my stuff on the mirror site first (up to an hour before I post here) so I would recommend in general that people make my mirror-site their first port of call rather than this site. Now that I have said that, I suppose the mirror site too will develop bugs .... I hope not. I have kept it simple to limit the scope for bugs as much as possible.

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ELSEWHERE

Michael Darby looks at who supports the USA in its Iraq policy and looks at a probable aftermath of the war.

The Wicked one has a good peacenik joke.

Chris Brand looks at the possibility and the morality of psycho-social engineering.

A paper here (Post of 22nd) from my archives of academic writing looks at an unusual finding to the effect that a program of training designed to ward off heart disease also reduces racism. A simple explanation for the finding is suggested.

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ANTI-WAR ATTITUDES: MENTALLY ILL?

Jim Ryan at Philosoblog (post of March 22nd) has become so despairing of the anti-war attitudes in Canada that he thinks that the antiwar people must be suffering from a mass mental illness. Loss of reality contact is of course the prime symptom of psychosis and the thought that ANYONE could oppose the removal of one of the bloodiest butchers in history does make you wonder whether the antiwar people just cannot get in touch with that reality. The alternative is to believe that they SUPPORT Saddam’s evils. So we are left with mass psychosis or mass sadism to explain the mass antiwar sentiments around us. Not a happy choice.

The third reason why widespread “peace” protests continue, however, is clearly the most influential: Mass hatred of America. Given the world’s long history of hatred towards other nations, that must be recognized as a powerful influence too. Even being the kindest, most ethical and and most generous nation in history (which America is) cannot deflect ancient hatreds like that. It is just lucky for Americans that they are big enough and strong enough to stand up to all that hatred directed against them.

Anyone who has read Helmut Schoeck’s book on envy will understand very well why America is hated. Paradoxically, their kindness probably gets them hated even more than they otherwise would be: Because it too shows them up as being so much better than most other people. Quite simply, those with weak egos need to pull down America and American power in order to make themselves feel better. And similar protestors in America itself need to feel that they are wiser and better than those who lead America.

And let us not forget that some of the protesters are simply naive emptyheads who just want to do something to make themselves feel good. The story told by one of the returning “human shields” here spells that out loud and clear.

Reference:
Schoeck, H. (1969) Envy: A theory of social behaviour London: Martin Secker & Warburg.

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AN EMAIL FROM DUBAI

Shishir Yerramilli writes:

HAR HAR MAHADEV!
That’s the battle cry of Vedic Hindu soldiers before they enter battle and it worked for them so far. Mahadev is none other than Shiva, the Hindu god of war and death. I invoke this battle cry on behalf of the U.S soldiers whenever I see them storming across Iraq. BRAVO, BRAVO!

I am ashamed of the Indian government. They are bunch of f*****g eunuchs. Don’t be fooled though! The average Hindu very much supports the American chutzpah. Remember that the Indian elites are Western (i.e. Leftist) educated and are uncomfortable with conflicts of any sort -- hence the sorry situation in Kashmir.

I would recommend that American soldiers take Richard III's advice and hang Saddam and his clones' genitals from a tree! LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR!

I got into a minor altercation here in Dubai with a fellow student when he noticed my screensaver was that of George Patton saluting with the U.S flag in the backdrop. Well, actually it was George C. Scott as Patton, but it was still provocative. I would soon like to put a picture of George W. Bush in a heroic, stoic posture (such as is hard to come by in the Leftist media). That would be something!

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CRIMINALS ARE BORN THAT WAY

Those Leftists who think that all violent adult behaviour is just the result of an unfortunate upbringing and not the result of heredity should read this article. It waffles a lot but in the end cannot get past the fact that a violent adulthood can be predicted from behaviour in infancy:

Research released last month from the Australian Temperament Project claims that it is possible to pick up early warning signs that children may be heading for delinquency, drug-taking and criminal behaviour. Some experts claim children who go on to develop delinquent behaviour are different from their peers from as early as two years of age. The Australian Temperament Project has followed 2443 Victorian children and their parents from infancy in 1982 to adulthood.

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ELSEWHERE

Best laugh of the war so far: Some nitwit Kiwi said that damage to the sand-dunes by tanks was a good reason to oppose the war.

This paper from my archives of academic writing shows that personal authoritarianism (aggressive dominance) is NOT associated with racism -- except in one country -- Germany. But Germany has such a strong anti-racist ideoilogy these days (understandable in view of the disaster that racism brought them in their recent history) that it is perhaps only the most assertive Germans today who feel able to admit to racial dislikes.

Michael Darby thinks that the Northern Iraq oilwells are pretty safe and that the French and Russians will lose out big on contracts they had signed to take oil from there.

The Wicked one says that bright people are better off WITHOUT spellcheckers and grammar checkers.

Chris Brand tells of how he first encountered the data on inherited racial differences in IQ

The latest postings on PC Watch include reference to the weird editorial processes at the New York Times and the de-emphasis on books in British libraries.

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MESSAGE TO THE “ASHAMED” LIBERALS

One of my U.S. readers (a Southern belle) writes:

Are you ASHAMED to be an American today?

Well let me tell you why you should be PROUD to be an American today. Today we have made history - and changed the future.

We are one of the world's youngest countries. We have become the greatest power.
France, Germany and Russia have been sent a message, it's two words... and it ends with You.

We must protect ourselves and our world from people who would do either one harm. I've heard people say, " Does the US think it can police the world?" Well someones got to, and after 9/11 and the chemical and biological scares, I think that is apparent.

This is A-Day, "Awe" day, not meant to awe with military power, but meant to awe by its MESSAGE. We will set right wrong in the world when we see it, and we don't need permission. We can not wait for another 9/11, it was a wake up call - and we are AWAKE.

If we have shown at least 4 new, advanced, extremely effective weapons - then you can rest assured we have several more that we will NOT show the world. Rest assured we can protect the American public - and will. We will also help to assure peace in the world, because as a race we are getting so advanced, that the wrong weapon - in the wrong hands, could literally obliterate us all. We will not let that happen.

The US and the UK are together. There can be no doubt that of TWO making the largest whole, and 46 countries so far saying they would rather be with us than against us.

Be proud to be an American today because the message is that this young country is going to show the rest of the world how to let freedom ring.

France says the UK and the US can't administer Iraq after this war?! Are they going to and stop us? The answer is that the US, UK, and 46 others make up a Coalition -- and France can join it, shut up, or be Awed. Either way, it will benefit them - they found Ricin in their subway - and that is the type of thing the US seeks to stop.

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THE EVIL THAT A PAIR OF MAN-HATING “FEMINISTS” CAN DO

A reader writes:

Your recent post about the London paedophile case reminds me of another case in the UK discussed here. The accused workers were put through 9 years of hell and ultimately obtained justice in the form of damage awards of two hundred thousand pounds each.

The witch hunt against them was led by Judith Jones (formerly Judith Dawson) and her partner Beatrix Campbell. Campbell was a key figure in the Cleveland child abuse scandal:

"....in their 1999 co-written book Stolen Voices which sought to portray, through misinformation and misrepresentation, the British False Memory Society and other critics, as part of a 'paedophile's lobby'. Unsurprisingly, the totally unfounded slurs in the book resulted in a queue of people intending to take legal action. Responding to the first of many potential claims, the publishers withdrew the book the day before publication...."

More here

Under the heading “No Man is safe” here are some other examples of Campbell's campaigns.

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ELSEWHERE

Today’s funniest headline: France Rejects U.S.-British Control of Postwar Iraq. Who do they think will be listening?

And a pleasing report for Australians: "Coalition forces, led by Australia, captured an Iraqi tug boat that apparently was preparing to lay sea mines in the Persian Gulf.".

Nice people, the French: All the EU leaders except Chirac offered their condolences to Blair on the deaths of eight British servicemen in a helicopter crash in Kuwait..

Hello Bloggy has some thoughts on why Baghdad will NOT be like Mogadishu and wonders at how TV commentators can be so asinine.

The Wicked one has some good jokes plus scathing comments about black congressmen and the Africanization of London.

Michael Darby condemns Australia’s Leftist opposition party for lack of any principles.

Chris Brand has posts on flirtation and IQ tests for pregnant women.

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IF YOU ARE FOLLOWING THE WAR IN IRAQ

Warblogcorner is probably the best place to follow the war. Heaps of bloggers are logging in and posting news. It seems that whole Iraqui armies have already surrendered -- as expected. And it seems pretty likely that the “Saddam” we saw on TV after the first strike was in fact a double.

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THE WAR FOR A FREE SOCIETY

There is a long and very scholarly article here that argues that European Post-modernism is the real enemy of the Anglosphere countries:

George Bush and Tony Blair's appeal to common ideals in their attempt to recruit Europe to the task of reshaping the Middle East is fundamentally mistaken: such common ideals do not exist. Indeed, I will argue that the Cold War is not over, that the U.S. has not won the "war" and that the battles that lie ahead will be far more difficult to pin down than even the asymmetric warfare of the Islamic terrorists. These battles will not be fought with guns and missiles but will take place in the sphere of ideology. The core issue around which these battles will be joined is the very definition of what it means to be a free society. Among the European masses and across the spectrum of academic intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic, the position of classical liberalism - the founding ideology of the United States - has already lost.

The Post-Modern project enjoys both the energy of moral outrage and a philosophical cover for its errors to prevent anyone from undercutting the outrage. In this, it is enormously attractive to any party having a gripe against the modern world. Every failed state, every ethnic hustler, every ideological movement, every intellectual poseur, and every tyrannical thug has a stake in feeding and propagating this modern variant of Rousseau's Hydra. Its energetic rise in modern Europe will prove to be one of the great ideological challenges of the 21st century.

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THE FAT WARS

A reader writes:

In your recent posting featuring Paddy McGuinness's column on the "symbolic" legal cases being raised against fast food chains, McGuinness mentions that the scientific debate in this field is still pretty nebulous.

These two recent stories in "Reason" here and here give an airing to both sides of the "fat wars" in science . My guess is that we are still a long way from deciding these issues and my guess is that the methodological and modelling issues in nutrition science would make climatology look simple.

Food of course has been a major cultural and ideological divide for humans since the year dot, yet somehow McDonalds has become the prime symbolic target of choice for anti-globalisation protestors. A good example is French farmer and anti-GM food campaigner Jose Bove arrested for trashing a McDonalds.

The global spread of curry and thai food outlets, which vastly outnumber McDonald's franchise outlets are never mentioned or criticised by the anti-globos, who thanks to double think, often simultaneously imagine themselves as enjoying a "cosmopolitan" lifestyle whilst opposing globalisation. Did they protest the replacement of the humble Aussie pie by pizza? Or the ongoing demise of the traditional Aussie cake shop to the cambodian bread stall? For those who have already made up their minds on this issue, they can always quietly celebrate the 150th birthday of the potato chip.

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HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

Some interesting history of the U.S. Army's Third Infantry Division, known as the "Rock of the Marne," which "is likely to smash head-on into Iraqi defenses":

The 3rd Infantry Division's history dates back to World War I, when it earned its nickname, said Walter Meeks, the director of the division's museum at Fort Stewart, Ga. In northeast France, near the Marne River, American troops rebuffed a German offensive while two French divisions fled. The victory was credited with helping turn the tide in the war.

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ELSEWHERE

Here is a good description of the U.N.: The headquarters of global tyrant-appeasement evidently serves as a clubhouse in which butchers are celebrated, while Jews, Americans and women who are both, are not wanted.

Not so strange: As Americans braced in recent days for the war against Iraq, many Californians were feeling strangely out of it.

I like it: "A man protesting the looming U.S. war on Iraq fell to his death from San Francisco's famed Golden Gate Bridge on Wednesday as he was hanging a banner"

Chris Brand continues the story of his intellectual development with some thoughts about aggression.

Michael Darby has news of developments in Romania and Spain.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. I used to teach survey research methodology at university and I try here to educate some of my colleagues out of doing the silly things in surveys that they usually do.

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CONGRATULATIONS TO PRESIDENT BUSH AND PRIME MINISTER BLAIR

Against enormous opposition worldwide, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair have pushed through this tremendous effort to bring down yet another enemy of the liberty and civility that the English-speaking people have always valued so highly. All best wishes for the American, British and Australian fighting men in Iraq who are fighting for civilization today. Once again, only the the English-speaking world has the guts to be the bastion and defender of liberty.

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FRENCH IMPERIALISM

The McDonalds’ restaurants worldwide often come under attack from Leftists as embodying American “cultural imperialism”. Yet there are probably even more French restaurants around. Why are they not a sign of French “cultural imperialism”? One would seem to be as logical as the other.

But as Don Quixote said: “Facts are the enemy of truth”. The Don was obviously a Leftist. Many of the targets that Leftists aim at are at least as silly as the Don’s windmills.

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ANTI-GLOBOS AS RACISTS AND NATIONALISTS

An Australian reader says that “Leftist” anti-globalizers and Australia’s most prominent anti-immigration politician (the “rightist” Pauline Hanson) both really want the same thing. They both want to retain a “national” identity and individuality:

I have been thinking about this doublethink amongst the anti-globos of late. I have a pain in the neck friend who is always on the latest lefty bandwagon. He hates Pauline Hanson and is afraid Australians are all becoming "xenophobic" but then is against "globalisation".

My argument is that if there is a problem with economic globalisation at all, (I am not convinced it is bad) it must apply to cosmopolitanism as well, something he and his ilk are always praising as a great social advance on the old Australian "anglo-celtic" culture. Thanks to cosmo, Sydney and Melbourne are now just like Vancouver, San Francisco and London. If it weren't for the climate differences you'd hardly know which one you were in. They all have the same big fast food chains, and Thai and Indian curry houses on every other corner. All these cities are "cosmopolitan" and the same at the same time. "Cultural Diversity" at the local level is paradoxically leading to homogenity at the international level. Sameness.

Luckily for us, Star Bucks has been slow to spread here... mainly because the Italians taught the Australians what constitutes good coffee, a lesson the North Americanos never really learned. Yet when my pro-cosmo anti-globo friend travels he prefers to visit places that are "out of the ordinary", culturally different, have their own culture and traditions.. the non-cosmo cultures. But isn't that the very thing he is preventing Australia from keeping and developing by opposing "Hansonism"? I enjoy the diversity of restaurants etc as much as the next guy but if we lose what makes Australia different and become just another cosmopolitan ant pile, with all the social cohesion of an international airport transit lounge.. we can't blame it all on McDonalds and The Simpsons.

Note that the famous French Leftist anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (1983) also justified ethnocentrism as a means of preserving cultural diversity.

Reference:
Levi-Strauss, C. (1983) Le Regard Eloigne Paris: Plon.

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BLOGGER.COM REALLY ARE THE PITS

Sorry to talk of mundane things in these dramatic times but it is rather forced upon me.

I am really happy with Blogger.com software when it works as it should. But hardly a day goes by when it does NOT work as it should. They seem to have got WORSE since Google took them over. For instance, today and yesterday I could not post to any blog for a couple of hours. When I got through at all, I kept getting absurd error messages (error 203) instead. I eventually emailed Jason Shellen about it and he got it fixed after about an hour. But it was exactly the same bug that I had encountered two days ago and it soon came back.

Anyway, I have decided to follow Instapundit and set up a parallel site that is completely independent of blogger.com and blogspot. You can see it here. It is a bit basic but it does the job. If you are a regular reader of this blog please bookmark the alternative site for occasions when Blogger.com will not let me put anything up.

In case I sound paranoid, note that there is one site here that I lost contact with months ago. I can no longer access it to add or change anything either through blogger.com or through an FTP program. I cannot even delete it! It would be most vexing if the same happened to this present site.

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ELSEWHERE

Wylie says: I have a feeling the names Bush and Blair will stand in history alongside those of Roosevelt and Churchill and Reagan and Thatcher in opposition to tyranny. And that's pretty heady company indeed.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual big range of good reading.

Chris Brand comments on the latest bouts of paedohysteria and has some stories about the man that Leftists worldwide campaigned so hard for.

Michael Darby gives his predictions about the likely course of the Iraq war.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. I take my academic colleagues to task for some of the absurd things they do when they purport to measure people’s attitudes and personality.

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N.Y.T. “QUOTE OF THE DAY”

The New York Times email edition made the following expression of good sense and caution their quote of the day. How it must have hurt them to do so!

"In this century, when evil men plot chemical, biological and nuclear terror, a policy of appeasement could bring destruction of a kind never before seen on this earth. Terrorists and terrorist states do not reveal these threats with fair notice in formal declarations. And responding to such enemies only after they have struck first is not self defense. It is suicide. The security of the world requires disarming Saddam Hussein now."
- PRESIDENT BUSH

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ANOTHER FALSE PAEDOPHILIA CONVICTION OVERTURNED

Jubilation in court as care workers freed. ON FRIDAY 14 MARCH, in the solemn surroundings of the High Court in London, the friends and supporters of two Merseyside care workers rose to their feet to cheer and applaud as Mr Justice Kennedy announced that the men's convictions were unsafe

Thank your lucky stars if you do not live in England. They specialize in jailing the innocent and ignoring the guilty there. More here.

For more on the madhouse of British Injustice see the post headed Gunman shoots security guard, Guard gets arrested for murder on PC Watch (post of 18th)

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SPAM

Most people seem to be groaning under the load of spam they get these days. I guess I delete about 50 of them from my inbox every day. If governments cannot do anything about it, they should declare all commercial spammers to be outlaws so that we can put a bullet through them anytime we find one. The amount of time people must waste deleting all the stuff must add up to a huge workload overall. A reader writes:

In terms of junk mail I have discovered that if you use those "remove me from this mailing list" things on the bottom of spam it mainly makes things worse. they then know that the e-mail address is active and send your more spam and/or sell your address to other spammers. Spam is the one form of free enterprise I hate. I really like this Cringely guy when talking about net stuff. He has a couple of articles on spam here and here and he refers to this WIRED story here which makes me feel that using remove pages is (was) a bad idea.

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NICE TOXINS

Quote from the science journal "Nature":

Dioxins, which are industrial by-products that at certain doses can cause cancer, can actually reduce tumour growth in some species. Similarly, small amounts of the toxic trace metal cadmium can promote plant growth

The great Greenie scare about all the "toxins" produced by industry is gradually becoming unravelled. The concept of "hormesis" (the therapeutic effect of things that can be poisonous in high doses) has been around for nearly a century and is in fact the basis of one form of "alternative" medicine (Homoeopathy). Once again we find that nature is unkind to simplistic formulations. It depends on the dose whether something is a "toxin" or not. Common salt can be a poison if you take too much of it.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

The British Firemen have agreed to drop their outrageous pay claims. This is a victory for Tony Blair almost on a par with Margaret Thatcher’s defeat of the coalminers.

Alternatives to Blogger.com are emerging: Welcome news. The constant malfunctions of Blogger.com really are a trial.

I note that wine-drinkers who are boycotting French wines refer to themselves as The coalition of the swilling!

Timothy Noah says that France is America's NATO ally. With allies like those ....

British Leftist academic Tony Kushner (PDF file) thinks that scientists who say that there really are differences between the races should be subjected to something like Hitler’s holocaust. And they try to deny that Leftism is a religion of hate! Hitler, of course, was a good socialist.

Chris Brand says that he first became an hereditarian when he worked as a prison psychologist and noted that criminals all blamed their criminality on their families -- even though other members of the family were generally not criminal.

Michael Darby has the story about how it was only the incredible persistence of one man that overcame the bureaucratic hurdles that nearly prevented the development of a great Australian industry.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. I look at the claim that people who are wary of AIDS victims are “authoritarian”. I point out that what the researchers have really found is that it is old-fashioned to be wary of homosexuals.

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SUPPORT SOLID IN AUSTRALIA

Americans might be pleased to hear that Australia's pro-war Prime Minister is miles ahead of his Leftist rival in the polls:

John Howard is winning the war for public opinion as Australia braces to invade Iraq by the end of the week. Despite nationwide anti-war protests, and Labor scrapping 30 years of bipartisanship on sending troops overseas, the Coalition has maintained an election-winning lead. Although Mr Howard's support as preferred prime minister has dropped to its lowest level since July last year, he still holds more than a 2-to-1 advantage over Simon Crean.

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CANADA SHOWS GLOBAL COOLING

The latest news now from the Canadian Ice Service is that Lake Superior is now 100% frozen over. In addition, Lakes Huron and Erie are also frozen tight. This is a rare and brief occurrence, the last events being in 1982 and 1994. The northern one third of Lake Michigan is also ice covered. Further east, the Gulf of St. Lawrence has 25% more ice than normal, and the Atlantic coast down to Halifax is covered with sea ice, a direct result of the deep winter freeze that has gripped Eastern Canada. Toronto recorded its coldest March day since 1868. This in spite of the `urban heat island'. The city has now had 63 days in which temperatures failed to rise above 0oC, more than double the number last year.

The occurrence of such a record-breaking freeze in these greenhouse times must raise questions as to the validity of the greenhouse warming theory, particularly its assumed magnitude, since the theory suggests that the greenhouse effect has its greatest leverage in the coldest places and at the coldest times.

Post of 12th from John Daly's site.

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CHIRAC THE STATESMAN

The BBC has a discussion going under the heading:

Jacques Chirac's domestic opinion poll ratings are as high as they've ever been, in a period when the economy is in a decidedly patchy state. Is Iraq a much needed panacea for the French President's popularity problems, or should his views on war be interpreted as a purely moral stance by a truly independent world leader?

I would not have thought that there was much to discuss there!

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THE CAUSES OF RACISM

Today's academic paper from my past is here. In it I look at how modern academic psychologists explain racism. For many years they pretended that racism was a form of mental illness to be found only among conservatives. Eventually, however, the sheer weight of their own evidence on the subject forced them to acknoweledge that racism in some form was in fact universal and normal.

This still however left the puzzle that some people appear to be more racist than others. Why? There are many pet theories about that now and in my paper I surveyed most of them and pointed out their flaws (which makes it a very long paper). What I pointed to as the best supported theory is that racism emerges as the result of culture clash. Different ethnic groups really are different in their customs and values so those who encounter people from groups with values that they would normally decry in anyone also decry the groups holding those values.

An excerpt:

More generally, in some cultures industriousness and hard work are much admired. They are seen as badges of responsibility and respect-worthiness. In yet other cultures, however, hard work is seen as something that any sensible person avoids wherever possible. When people from the pro-work culture are mixed in with people from the anti-work culture people from the anti-work culture must be looked down upon by people from the pro-work culture. For people from the pro-work culture to do otherwise would simply be inconsistent and discriminatory. People from the pro-work culture would think ill of themselves for being "lazy" so why should they not think ill of others who are "lazy"? To ask them to approve of laziness would be to ask them to be untrue to their own values and their own culture.

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ELSEWHERE

I got an amusing email today from a Leftist which accused me of being a Nazi and a Fascist for supporting REMOVAL of a Fascist (Saddam). There is just no such thing as Leftist logic. Emotional and irrational abuse is the best they can do. Facts and reality matter to them not at all.

An American college student (otherwise best known for burning U.S. flags in public) was killed while trying to block Israeli bulldozers in Gaza. Good riddance to an arrogant and hate-filled busybody.

China hand seems to have recovered from having his wife come to stay with him and is now blogging again. He has updates on the frenetic construction activity going on there and concedes that corruption is pretty bad after all.

Michael Darby notes that an Australian Leftist government has banned the public release of balloons!

The Wicked one has a joke with an unexpected moral to it.

Chris Brand sounds a skeptical note on what we know about Right-brain, Left-brain function.

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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my home page here or here to get a new blog address.

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HAPPY ST. PAT'S DAY TO ALL

It's not a day I celebrate personally but I have plenty of Irish ancestry (I still remember my Grandmother Kelly quite well) so you will not find me saying a bad word about the Irish.

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U.N. -- R.I.P.

Jeff Jacoby says it as well as anybody can:

"The American people understand," President Bush said at his March 6 news conference, "that when it comes to our security, if we need to act we will act. And we really don't need the United Nations' approval to do so."

"And as we head into the 21st century, when it comes to our security, we really don't need anybody's permission."

What Bush knows but doesn't want explicitly to say is that the United Nations is finished. Oh, it isn't going to go out of business any time soon -- the League of Nations wasn't formally dissolved until 1946 -- but it is finished as a force of any consequence in world affairs, and it is finished as a body whose judgments serious people have reason to take seriously.

Last fall, Bush warned the UN that it would make its own downfall inevitable if it failed to support the US campaign to disarm and depose Saddam Hussein.

"The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the authority of the United Nations, and a threat to peace," he said on Sept. 12. "Iraq has answered a decade of U.N. demands with a decade of defiance. All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?"

More here

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GREAT NEWS FOR FREE TRADE

US to rein in its farmers

THE Bush administration is prepared to confront Washington's protectionist farm lobby to secure a genuine free trade deal with Australia, the US Government declared yesterday

More detailed coverage here

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AUSTRALIA'S LEFT REVERTS TO FORM

We won't back war: Crean

LABOR has called for Australia's troops to be sent home and unequivocally ruled out supporting war in Iraq without UN backing.

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JACQUES CHIRAC OR SHEIKH IRAQ?

In the 1970s Chirac enjoyed a reputation as an amateur Arabist. The rising Gaullist star went so far as to take Arabic lessons and, in a clever twist on his name, earned the media sobriquet "Sheikh Iraq" for his close personal ties with Saddam Hussein.

That quote was written in 1995. See here.

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ELSEWHERE

DDT could save millions of Africans from dying of malaria--if only environmentalists would let it. See here.

The theory that Hitler's behaviour can be accounted for by him being ill with (say) syphilis has popped up again here. All the history showing that he was just another socialist dictator behaving as other socialist dictators do (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il etc.) no-one wants to believe.

Should there be a free market in organ donations? Shock! Horror! But this article points out that it could save thousands of lives. Is that not what's important? If it isn't, what is?

Chris Brand looks at genius, talent and creativity and concludes that IQ is still the biggest contributor to it but allows a contributory role for greater emotionality too.

Michael Darby is once again keeping us up to date with human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. Odd that an old Tory like Michael should be doing this when the "compassionate" Leftists are silent! But then the oppressor in Zimbabwe is BLACK! And we know that in the twisted world of the Leftist, only sunlight shines out of blacks.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. I criticize the idea of some other psychologists that a dislike of erotic imagery is "authoritarian" and point out that it is simply old-fashioned.

A great Oscar Wilde quote: I am not young enough to know everything

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IS SANITY BREAKING OUT IN GERMANY?

It shows what a deep hole the German economy is in that socialist Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has just announced the following policy changes:

Making it easier for employers to fire workers, reducing the length of time unemployed people can receive benefits and eliminating some of the costs of the vast national welfare system. The program also would increase public works spending, would make it easier for small businesses to hire temporary workers and would require unemployed people who have received welfare payments for a year or more to accept jobs, even if undesirable, that are offered to them by the state employment agencies.

The reforms are, however, long overdue. More here

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NEWS FROM SOCIALIST SCOTLAND

HEADTEACHERS are paying council staff up to 250 pounds sterling for an electrical socket to be fitted - more than five times the going rate - because they don't have real control over school funds, it was claimed yesterday.

That's about $500 for one power point. I think it cost me $50 last time I had one installed. Via Freedom and Whisky

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THE GREENIE MENACE

This is pretty scandalous. U.S. taxpayer dollars are being used to prop up Greenie groups that campaign against so-called “global warming” and the building of new homes

A sad article here. Scientists are intimidated against speaking up about Greenie lies.

Some Greenie scientists have recently claimed that evidence from an old sea-level indicator in Tasmania shows that there has been a big rise in the sea-level around Australian in the last century. John Daly shows that the scientists concerned ignore evidence that the marker was not originally placed where they say it was. He also looks at other evidence about sea-levels around Australia and finds evidence of only a tiny rise at best.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. I look at the politics of environmentalism in Australia and find that support for mainstream environmental protection measures is general across the political spectrum. I also find however that agreeing with one environmental issue is a poor predictor of your agreeing with other environmental measures. So just because people want a clean and green environment, it does not mean that they support Greenie extremists like Greenpeace.

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FOOD ADDICTION: WHOSE FAULT?

Paddy McGuiness has a shot at the fee-hungry lawyers who are trying to make money out of proving that food is addictive. If you can blame McDonald’s for the food they sell you, what about banning all restaurants? Most of them sell lots of fatty food. And maybe your old mother is guilty for her choice of menus when you were a child too!

Tech Central Station has details on the latest lawsuit against McDonalds -- which claims that their food is full of chemicals. It is. Before you even dig it out of the ground, the average potato contains 150 chemicals for a start -- many of them toxins.

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THE DECADENT CHURCHES

Christopher Hitchens has an excellent column in “Slate” pointing out that the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury and other mainstream church leaders have come out in defence of Saddam -- and goes on to point out that this does more to damage the ethical authority of the churches concerned than it does anything else. How evil do you have to be before a mainstream church condemns you? Christ may have reduced the Ten Commandments to two but those who speak in his name these days seem to have redduced them to zero. I suppose if it is OK to force homosexual intercourse on little boys, anything is OK. I think that Christians these days who seek moral and spiritual guidance should stick to reading their New Testament. The churches have become a den of Pharisees.

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ELSEWHERE

Have you ever noticed how erratic are the results you get from Google? One day a new site will be listed and the next day it disappears again for a while? This article explains why. The upshot is that until a new site has been listed by Google for a month or more, a search may not always retrieve it.

Chris Brand thinks Britain’s new political party shows promise.

Michael Darby has a rather heartrending letter from a victim of a heartless “child care” bureaucracy -- the infamous New South Wales Department of Community Services. They really do kill kids by their negligence, unbelievably.

The Wicked one has some good jokes up plus another shot at the Pope.

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THE VANISHED “UNION JACK”

For as long as I can recollect, the British national flag has always been known as the “Union Jack” -- a Jack being a flag indicating nationality. The U.S. Navy also has a “Jack” -- a blue flag with a star for each State. I gather that “Jacks” were originally called such because they were flown from the “jack-staff” of a sailing vessel. But in recent times the term “Union Jack” seems to have dropped out of use. All we now hear is “Union Flag” -- which is a lot of nonsense as there are any number of political unions in the world. Which union? The Soviet union? The European union?

Score one for feminism I guess. “Jack” was obviously too masculine. Many who fought under the Union Jack must be sad at their flag being denationalized, though.

Strictly speaking, a Jack is a small flag so “Union flag” is better from a heraldic point of view but I think it is political correctness rather than heraldic correctness that has changed the normal usage from what it once always was.

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MORE ON "ALLOWING" HARM

A good comment from a reader on my recent posting about the difference between doing harm and "allowing" harm:

Liberals know full well that we are unable to stop "all harm" - but, as long as any evil exists anywhere, they can blame conservatives for "not doing enough". Also, they do not differentiate good intentions and good deeds - as long as they "intend" to eliminate all harm (by good deeds - such as giving food to African dictators, etc.) they "feel good".

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HMMM.....

A reader writes:

Have you ever tried using against the anti-war protesters the line that: "The antiwar protesters don't trust the 'coloreds' with Democracy and that is why they are trying to kill the last best chance of Western-style Democracy in the region?" It causes everyone I've seen to blanch; they try to reconcile being "pro-Democratic" with being anti-Racist and recognize they can't do it.

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CRICKET AND USING NOUNS AS ADJECTIVES

Grammatical purists are a dying breed in these days of “Ebonics”, “postmodernism” and the like but for the small band who are left I have been reflecting on when it is that one may use a noun as an adjective. The best known example is from cricket. When England puts a team together to play Australia (generally with some difficulty), we speak of the England team, not the English team. Why? It’s obvious. Every village in England has a cricket team so there are thousands of English cricket teams -- but there is only one England team. An English cricket team is comprised of Englishmen. The England cricket team represents England. Clear? It should be but there is a small hitch. No-one ever refers to an Australia cricket team. The England team always plays “Australia” or “the Australians”! I think I know why .......

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ANTI-ZIONIST “LOGIC”


In case anybody has missed it, the last item on today’s Best of the Web is a brilliant spoof of the logic used by the “anti-Zionists” in America today.


(Crossposted on Israpundit)



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GLOBAL WARMING OR COOLING?

In June, 2002, the BBC reported that Greenland is warming up.

In March, 2003 the BBC has reported that Greenland is cooling down.

What a difference 9 months can make! At least the second report is based on more long-term data. When will people accept that there is nothing systematic going on there at all? Just random variations beyond our control?

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ELSEWHERE

Useful Fools has had an amusing thought: He wanted to boycott the U.N. -- but since he could not think of anything useful that they do he could not figure out how!

I liked this: that axis of paralysis known as the U.N. Security Council. From WSJ

Unfossilized has a picture of America’s latest MOAB bomb for those who have not yet seen it.

Michael Darby reproduces an analysis of how the far Left recruit students to do their dirty work.

Chris Brand looks at the causes of crime and asks whether certain personality types are more likely to be associated with criminal activity but finds no certain answer.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. It was written in about 1980 and was at one stage accepted for publication in an economics journal but for no clear reason never actually appeared. It looks at what it takes for people to be motivated to go into business.

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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my home page here or here to get a new blog address.

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FALSE CHILD-ABUSE ALLEGATIONS

For some years now Britain has seen an absolute rash of false accusations of child abuse which have caused great hurt to many innocent people. The way the police and other arms of government have pursued the allegations has been an absolute travesty of justice that makes the very expression “British justice” a sick joke. In the end, however, the higher courts have usually overturned the dubious verdicts. TODAY we will see what the learned appeal court judges hand down in another such case. For more see here.

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ANTI-AMERICANISM

Australia’s Miranda Devine has some trenchant observations:

It's not just about Iraq. Bush faced the same protests in Europe in June 2001, three months before the September 11 terrorist attacks. He was even mooned by 1000 Swedish bottoms outside his Gothenburg hotel room. "I am against so many things about him it is hard to explain," 24-year-old student Kiffa Alverfors told The New York Times at the time. "The capitalist system is a way of living that I don't agree with."

Then there was ABC's Four Corners on Monday, which built up a picture of a sinister Jewish cabal of "neo-cons" who have stolen Bush's brain, for what it's worth. There was even ominous music to introduce these scary conservatives who are "almost all Jews whose parents had emigrated from Eastern Europe", reporter Jonathan Holmes told us. "Most of [hawk] Paul Wolfowitz's extended family perished in the death camps." In other words, it's all Israel's fault and Bush can't think for himself.

More here.

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SAME-SEX "MARRIAGE"

Jeff Jacoby has a good commentary on current attempts by homosexuals to institute same-sex "marriage". He points out that such a change would simply degrade the meaning of "marriage" -- which originated as a reproductive contract. And if you can have same-sex marriage, why not polygamy? Or why not marry your dog? Or even marry yourself? Such things have been suggested.

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DEPLETED URANIUM

The Greens love to waffle on about depleted uranium -- implying that it poses all sorts of health risks. It is a very hard and heavy metal so its main use is in ammunition -- where it is very good at knocking out enemy tanks. So if the Greens could get it banned it would greatly increase deaths among American soldiers during combat -- something the misanthropic Greens would of course cheer. Bizarre Science has an excellent summary of the evidence on the riskiness of DU. All the evidence shows it to be less risky even than normal soil. As well it should. The “depleted” part refers to radioactivity. DU is uranium from which the radioactive component has been REMOVED.

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ELSEWHERE

Professor Bunyip has an hilarious but sensible article on the folly of making recreational drugs illegal here.

Hello Bloggy is not mincing words about makes a "good" school -- it is a school with as few black pupils as possible -- and he notes that the NAACP agrees.

A reader sent me his version of why we should leave the young guys at home and send old guys to fight Saddam. See here. (Original version apparently by Jeff Ackerman)

Dean Esmay has a great collection of the "Day by Day" cartoons plus an interview with the writer/drawer of the cartoons.

And this is what is being taught in US high schools as history these days: Anti-semitism here during World War II was essentially an American Holocaust. From The Lone Dissenter. Only a Leftist would think that you could have a holocaust in which no-one died!

Michael Darby thinks that Jimmy Carter should stick to growing peanuts.

Chris Brand reviews what we know about neuroticism.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. I examine a paper by two Leftist psychologists who purport to show a relationship between conservatism and racism. I show that they ignore or misunderstand much of the literature on the subject and that their own research is flawed as well.

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CENSORING VIOLENCE ON TV

Calpundit has a post on the hoary old contention that kids who watch violence on TV grow up to be violent adults. As he points out, after about 40 or more years of research on the subject, the conclusions are still tentative. Note however that when psychologists (who are almost all Left-leaning) report on the effects of pornography on those who view it they almost always say "no effect". But when they report on the effects of viewing violence, they usually conclude "there was an effect". Could it be that Leftists are not bothered by pornography but do like to deplore violence? Could it be that the conclusions of Leftist researchers are dictated by their ideology? It certainly could. That researchers tend to find what they expect to find has a name, in fact. It is called the "Rosenthal effect".

Note also that there is an old Freudian theory of "catharsis" -- which in the present case would indicate that watching violence "gets it out of your system" and so helps you to avoid actually doing any violence yourself.

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ANTI-COMMUNIST ASSASSINATED

Serbia's prime minister _ who spearheaded the revolt that toppled former President Slobodan Milosevic in October 2000 _ was assassinated Wednesday by gunmen who ambushed him outside government headquarters. More here

Leftists certainly do not like people who topple their dictators -- though they seem to be trying to blame the deed on "criminal gangs" at the moment.

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BEING "WRONG" ON RACE CAN SEND YOU TO PRISON

"It is my understanding that Americans are currently being softened up for the introduction of so-called "hate laws" - legislation similar to that existing in Canada and most Western European countries, which makes it illegal to say, write, publish or distribute anything which could be construed as stirring up "racial hatred" against an ethnic group. I have actually served a term of imprisonment in Britain under such a law, and Americans may find my experiences instructive.

The judge at our trial exhibited the typical do-gooder liberal attitudes in this respect. He could not possibly gainsay, and therefore condemn someone for saying, that blacks perform intellectually at a lower level than whites. At the same time his emotions could not bear the thought that this state of affairs was unchangeable and not capable of remedy by education and social engineering. The first thought was just about acceptable to him; the second was not. It is essential to the liberal's faith in his ability to guide people forward that he have the capacity to lift up the low by civic action, whatever their depressed condition. Offend that faith, and you make the liberal very angry!"

More detail here

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NEW BLOG

Peter Cuthbertson thought that a blog devoted solely to documenting the many idiocies of political correctness (which generally means Leftist correctness) might be an entertaining site for people to bookmark. So he and I have started up http://pcwatch.blogspot.com. Have a look and see what you think. And do draw my attention to any examples of political correctness that you think I should note on the blog.

Some readers have reported problems in getting the blog to come up -- presumably because the blogspot servers were overloaded -- so you may have to try more than once to view it.

The best comment I have got from a reader about it so far is: "Do we laugh or cry?"

Another reader was so depressed at the nonsense he read about on PC Watch that he wrote to me as follows:

When I retire in a few years, I think that I will move to Wyoming, Montana or even to upstate Idaho. PC is unimportant there and you are what you are and can say what you please. As long as you know how to use your "shooter".

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“LA BELLE FRANCE”

There is a HUGE Anti-French diatribe here. It IS very hard to see anything excusable in current French policy. They just hate us Anglo-Saxons and that is it. They are now getting it back too. Not clever of them.

A good reply to Mr Chirac: "Apart from securing American independence, ending slavery, and defeating Nazism and Communism, war has never solved anything". (Via Conservative Commentary)

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ELSEWHERE

Chris Brand has a post on political nakedness and speculates that Tony Blair is about to take over the British Tories.

Michael Darby has an excerpt from V.D. Hanson showing that dealing with Iraq, Afghanistan and Al Qaeda are all parts of one war.

The Wicked one has some fun posts about assorted stupidity.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. I examine a paper by a Leftist psychologist who tries to find evidence that racists are maladjusted. I point out that he fails to do so and also point out that there is plenty of evidence in the psychological literature to show that racism is in fact normal.

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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my home page here or here to get a new blog address.

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The latest “Carnival of the Vanities” is now up at The Daily Rant.

DENYING STALIN

I am still having a bit of a chuckle about my Leftist correspondent here (post of 6th March) who denies that Stalin was a Leftist. I wonder how long it will take before that becomes a common Leftist claim? Given the Leftist talent for denial and dishonesty, I doubt that it will take them long. “Since he was such a nasty man, he CANNOT have been a Leftist” will be the drift of it.

There is however some truth in my correspobndent’s claim that Stalin was in fact a Fascist. I pointed that out myself in “Front Page” of 22 October 2002. The twist though is that Fascism was founded by Mussolini -- who was both a Marxist and an intimate of Lenin! Fascism is simply the most nationalist version of extreme Leftism and Stalin did became strongly nationalistic during World War II. So even making Stalin a Fascist still leaves him as a Leftist! No matter how much the Leftists twist and turn, history is MOST inconvenient to them.

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CULTURES OF CONSENSUS

Inappropriate Response has a long discussion of whether the USA has a culture of argument -- compared with an Asian culture of consensus. I think the idea to be largely true but would very much challenge the notion that Europe is in the Asian camp. One example given was of a Dutchman seeking consensus but all the Dutchmen I know are are a blunt, individualistic and unbending lot -- a world away from the Japanese. And I think that Americans are very keen not to ruffle feathers too. Australians are MUCH blunter and more forthright than Americans. So much so that American politeness is often seen as rather dishonest here in Australia.

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MODERN TABOOS

In the past, many of the the strongest taboos regarded sexual matters. One can read almost the entire body of Victorian literature without seeing any explicit mention of that activity which enables the human race to reproduce itself, and which is a major preoccupation of the majority of human beings. Today, one can freely discuss most sexual topics in public.

A major taboo in today's world concerns any mention of genetic differences between the races, even when it is made plain that the differences are statistical rather than universal. The politically correct view is that the only physical difference between Negros and Caucasians lies in the color of their skin. There are, of course, many other statistical differences between the physical attributes of blacks and whites. (For example: eye color, hair color, amount of body hair, age at menarche, and frequency of fraternal twins.) But the most serious taboo regards any suggestion that the well-known racial difference in average IQs is even partly due to genetic factors.

More here

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LOOKING AT THE EVIDENCE ON RACE

Black Intelligence in White Society is a clear-eyed, methodical account of what the presence of large numbers of blacks means for the United States. The author, writing under the pseudonym of Stanley Burnham, explains how employment, education, law enforcement, and welfare programs have all been strained nearly to the breaking point to accommodate a group that cannot, on average, meet the cognitive standards that European civilization requires.

Those accommodations have been made in awkward, often destructive ways because our country refuses to face the fact that racial differences in achievement are due largely to heredity rather than to environment. The first part of this book is therefore an overview of the evidence for a genetic explanation of racial differences.

More here

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ADAMS LIKES AMERICA!

Amazing! Australia’s best-known Left-wing pundit, Phillip Adams has just said that he is not anti-American. And he gives a long list of the things he likes about America. He says he is just anti-Bush -- which as a Leftist he would have to be. I never thought I would find Phillip refreshing but I quite liked what he said about the US. When there is so much real anti-Americanism about, it is rather heartening to find that even one of Australia’s most one-eyed Leftists does actually like America.

Many Leftists really ARE anti-American.

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ELSEWHERE

This heading gave me a laugh: BLIX HIDES SMOKING GUN

Chris Brand looks at the explanation for black backwardness given by a black sociologist and notes how all the explanations fall flat if we note that the problems of blacks in the USA are very similar to the problems of blacks in Africa.

Michael Darby has a letter from East Timor reporting progress there.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. I examine the work of a very Leftist psychologist who tries to find evidence that Leftism is better for you psychologically, fails to do so and then draws that conclusion anyhow! Leftists don’t let evidence or the lack of it hold them up! Such a nonsensical paper would never get published in a truly scientific journal but psychology is so heavily dominated by Leftism that science flies out the window whenever Leftist beliefs come under scrutiny.

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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my home page here or here to get a new blog address.

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AUSTRALIA IN THE THICK OF THE WAR

A lot of the world seems not to have got the point that the US/UK moves against Iraq are defensive and preventive -- designed to prevent horror weapons from finding their way into the hands of anti-Western terrorists. President Bush and Prime Minister Blair have repeatedly done their best to get that message across but -- for whatever reason -- many people do not seem to get the point.

It is therefore heartening that Australian Prime Minister John Howard is also adding his voice to the debate in trying to get the message across. As it says in today’s papers: John Howard has laid out an effective blueprint for war in Iraq, arguing the world must unite now to disarm Saddam Hussein or face the proliferation of global terrorism.

We also read: Australian troops are almost certain to march into war against Iraq without United Nations backing. Prime Minister John Howard warned of "very serious consequences with or without UN Security Council backing" if Iraq failed to fully disarm.

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THE U.N.

"More than half a century of experience shows that the UN is a theater of hypocrisy, a sink of corruption, a street market of sordid bargains and a seminary of cynicism." --Paul Johnson

Via The Federalist

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LIBERTARIANISM AND TERRORISM

Useful Fools has written an interesting article on the implications of international terrorism for individual liberty. Extreme libertarians (anarcho-capitalists) will disagree violently with his view that international terrorism and weapons of mass destruction make government action and reduced privacy rights necessary for the survival of a good society but I think that minimal Statists and most conservatives will agree with him.

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FRENCH NAZIS

The amazing things you read when you take an interest in history:

The defenders of the last Nazi perimeter in Berlin, around the ruined chancellery and Hitler's bunker, were Frenchmen. They were survivors from the Waffen-SS Charlemagne Division, a handful of battle-hardened French Fascists who now took on the full strength of two converging tank armies in a blatantly hopeless struggle. With them, in the remnants of the Nordland Division - also Waffen-SS - were young Danes and Norwegians, still with a few heavy tanks. Hitler and Goebbels were dead, and most remaining German troops had wisely melted away, but the Frenchmen fought on in the wreckage of Gestapo headquarters.

More here

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CHINESE INTERNET CENSORSHIP SLOWS ACCESS

China’s internet users are suffering sharp slowdowns in access because of the communist government's heightened efforts to police online content, industry experts say. Beijing has essentially built an online barrier around China, requiring traffic in and out to pass through just eight gateways.

More here

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MOTHERS SAY NO TO EQUALITY

Most working mothers are happy for their husbands to be the main breadwinner and do not want an "egalitarian" relationship, Australia's largest survey of work-family patterns has found. The paper's author, leading US work-family researcher Robert Drago, found a substantial gap between the preferred working hours of men and women with children aged 16 or younger. Professor Drago's figures were drawn from the federal Government's House hold Income and Labour Dynamics survey, which aims to track the choices of 7682 households over the course of their lives. His findings appear to support Prime Minister John Howard's recent stance that the best way to help women is to help them find part-time work.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Michael Darby has an article setting out the stupidity of trying to protect local industries from overseas competition.

Today's academic paper from my past is here. It looks at a theory by a Leftist psychologist which asserts that racism is the cause of authoritarianism. I demolish that theory on a number of grounds. For instance, Leftists claim not to be racist but they certainly can be authoritarian (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc.)

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A DEVELOPING ANGLOSPHERE

British Spin quotes this statement approvingly:

The British government's longtime political and military support for U.S. foreign policy has granted it an international standing disproportionate to its real political clout -- or military prowess

I agree that what is described is rather clever on the part of the Brits but I don’t think that that is at all the main point of it. We can see what is at work better if we look at the Australian case. Australia is an older ally of the USA than Britain is. We joined the USA in Vietnam where Britain did not. And we did not do so to give ourselves any delusions of power. Australians do control one of the world’s largest bits of real estate but we are still a numerically tiny community by world standards (20 million). So we can never aspire to great influence.

What we have long seen is a natural and trustworthy ally in the USA and a great community of values between the two nations. I think the Brits see that too. A recent opinion poll in Britain reported that 80% of Brits liked Americans personally. Maybe it makes me sound like a dinosaur but I think in the end it all comes down to the old saying: “Blood is thicker than water”. Common origins do make a big difference. If the Canadians can ever again get a Prime Minister who is not a Frenchman, they might join the party too.

In the meantime, the changing alliances of the post-Soviet world do seem to be bringing old friends back together again. I think the time is very close when Americans, Brits and Australians will all tend to see themselves as part of a larger and reasonably united “Anglosphere” in addition to their own national identities. And such an Anglosphere is a formidable phenomenon from any point of view.

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MORE LEFTIST TYRANNY AT COLLEGE

Well, you’ve got to hand it to them for consistency: The Leftist attitude to freedom of speech never varies. Note this report. Excerpt:

Kahn had required students, to achieve full credit, to write letters to President George W. Bush "demanding" that he not go to war with Iraq. Several students requested that they be allowed to complete the assignment by expressing their own opinions, which would mean, in some cases, writing letters in support of President Bush’s foreign policy. Kahn told the students that letters supporting the president would not be acceptable and would not receive credit. Several students refused to turn in the assignment and were penalized.

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DOING HARM VERSUS ALLOWING HARM

Jim Ryan (post of March 3rd) and Eddie Thomas have been having a discussion about the difference between doing harm and allowing harm. Leftists sometimes argue, with their usual illogic, that it is OK for them to do harm with their addled programmes of action because conservatives ALLOW great harm to go on in the world -- such as starving children in Africa.

There are various possible answers to that “argument” -- the best of which is probably a reductio ad absurdem -- but the one Jim has chosen and that Eddie is dubious about is that actively doing harm is much worse than allowing harm to go on. As Eddie, says, however, that surely depends a lot on the circumstances of the particular case.

I myself would identify the essential point in any answer as being that the amount of harm and suffering in the world is essentially infinite -- the world is full of harm going on all the time. So we HAVE TO allow most of it. Our own positive actions are different however. We have lots of choice about them. And if we do harm through them we should rightly be held culpable. We cannot solve all the world’s problems but we can at least do our best to do no harm ourselves. As I recollect, that is part of the Hippocratic oath: “First do no harm”.

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