Americans, Brits and French are BORN miserable: Length of  gene determines how happy you will be - and Danes rank top (?)

Cross-cultural studies of happiness are inherently problematic.  The fact that there is no word in German for happiness may give you a clue about that.  Germans can only be "gluecklich", which actually means "lucky".  I remember years ago talking to an elderly German Jew who had escaped Hitler and ended up in Sydney, Australia.  We were talking about the meaning of "gluecklich",  when he said: "Gluecklich I am but happy I am not".  He knew he was lucky to have escaped the gas chambers but he missed the rich cultural life of prewar Germany.  So "gluecklich" is NOT an adequate translation of happy.  So do you rate the happiness of Germans when you can't ask them about it?  Beats me.  So I think the international happiness differences described below must be taken with a large grain of salt.

The article below also seems to be talking about quality of life but how you measure that is quite controversial.  How highly do you rate good weather, how highly do you rate crime incidence, how highly do you rate income? How highly do you rate traffic jams, how highly do you rate particulate air pollution, how highly do you rate ethnic diversity?  The answers to such questions can only be matters of opinion

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The French are often accused of being grumpy and dismissive. But Britons and Americans are also hardwired to be miserable, scientists claim.

Despite stable governments and good economies, those living in the UK and US will never be as happy as people in other nations, because they are simply born more miserable.

They are genetically programmed to be less cheerful than the Danes, for example, who top the list of the happiest nation.

Americans and Britons (such as the famously grumpy American actor Larry David, left, and British tennis star Andy Murray, right) are actually hardwired to be miserable, new research claims
Gabby Logan calls Andy Murray a miserable b******' at lecture

And scientists at the University of Warwick discovered it all comes down to a gene which regulates levels of the hormone serotonin in the brain.

Short forms of the gene inhibit levels of the hormone, which can invoke depression. Meanwhile those with longer forms of the gene are more likely to be happier, as a result of higher levels of serotonin in the body.

Researchers discovered people from Denmark have the longest form of the gene, and as such topped the happiness chart.

But Professor Andrew Oswald said it could be worse, we could be French - the nation with one of the shortest forms of the gene, which may explain their reputation for being grumpy.

Annual tables of national happiness ratings, compiled by organisations across the world, tend to rank Denmark at the top, along with nations including Panama and Vietnam.

They use factors ranging from job satisfaction to economic progress, health, wealth and education standards, along with weather, war and political stability to judge nations.

Scandinavians do well as their health is good, they are educated to a high standard and they earn more. But warm weather countries can do well too.

Some wealthy Western countries fare less well because there are big divides between rich and poor or they have high unemployment rates or less job satisfaction for instance.

But according to Professor Oswald, many of these may still be miserable even if they are earning a fortune, basking in sunshine and living to 100.

His findings from 131 countries for the ESRC Festival of Social Sciences, found genetics to be the most important factor but not the only one.

Those who are either young or old tend to be happiest rather than those who are middle aged.

Those who are slim are happiest, with obesity levels in some developed countries making them less happy as nations.

And being married, in a job and well educated can also be a contributory factor.

Professor Oswald, said: 'Intriguingly, among the nations we studied, Denmark and the Netherlands appeared to have the lowest percentage of people with the short version of the serotonin gene.'

He added that many individual Americans were happy but they tended to be descended from immigrants who came from countries like Denmark in the first place.

He said: 'There was a direct correlation between the (US) individual's reported happiness, and the levels of happiness in the country their ancestors had come from.

'Our study revealed an unexplained correlation between the happiness today of some nations and the observed happiness of Americans whose ancestors came from these nations.'

SOURCE

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Obama plays the oldest racist card in the deck: Hatred of Jews

Yehudah Glick has spent the better part of the last 20 years championing the right of Jews to pray on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem – Judaism’s holiest site. On Wednesday night, the Palestinians sent a hit man to Jerusalem to kill him.

And today Glick lays in a coma at Shaare Zedek Medical Center.

Two people bear direct responsibility for this terrorist attack: the gunman, and Palestinian Authority President and PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas. The gunman shot Glick, and Abbas told him to shoot Glick.

Abbas routinely glorifies terrorist murder of Jews, and funds terrorism with the PA’s US- and European-funded budget.

But it isn’t often that he directly incites the murder of Jews.

Two weeks ago, Abbas did just that. Speaking to Fatah members, he referred to Jews who wish to pray at Judaism’s holiest site as “settlers.” He then told his audience that they must remain on the Temple Mount at all times to block Jews from entering.

“We must prevent them from entering [the Temple Mount] in any way…. They have no right to enter and desecrate [it]. We must confront them and defend our holy sites,” he said.

As Palestinian Media Watch reported Thursday, in the three days leading up to the assassination attempt on Glick, the PA’s television station broadcast Abbas’s call for attacks on Jews who seek to enter the Temple Mount 19 times.

While Abbas himself is responsible for the hit on Glick, he has had one major enabler – the Obama administration. Since Abbas first issued the order for Palestinians to attack Jews, there have been two terrorist attacks in Jerusalem. Both have claimed American citizens among their victims. Yet the Obama administration has refused to condemn Abbas’s call to murder Jews either before it led to the first terrorist attack or since Glick was shot Wednesday night.

Not only have the White House and the State Department refused to condemn Abbas for soliciting the murder of Jews. They have praised him and attacked Israel and its elected leader. In other words, they are not merely doing nothing, they are actively rewarding Abbas’s aggression, and so abetting it.

Since Abbas called for Palestinians to kill Jews, the White House and State Department have accused Israel of diminishing the prospect of peace by refusing to make massive concessions to Abbas. The concessions the Americans are demanding include accepting the ethnic cleansing of all Jews from land they foresee becoming part of a future Palestinian state; denying Jews the rights to their lawfully held properties in predominantly Arab neighborhoods; and abrogating urban planning procedures in Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem built within the areas of the city that Israel took control over from Jordan in 1967.

The US claims that it has great influence over the Palestinians. If this is true, then as Fatah’s official celebrations of Glick’s attempted murder make clear, that influence is being intentionally exercised in a negative way. The Americans are encouraging the Palestinians to be more violent, more radical and more extreme in their demands of Israel and propagation of Jew-hatred.

The Obama administration is abetting Palestinian terrorism today. And it is doing so after it spent last summer siding with Hamas and its state sponsors Qatar and Turkey in its illegal war against Israel.

Moreover, it is important to note that the most outrageous statements the administration has made to date against Israel came after the first terrorist attack in Jerusalem directly inspired by Abbas’s call to murder Jews.

The most outrageous statements the administration has made about Israel came of course this week with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg’s report that senior unnamed Obama administration officials called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a chickenshit” and a “coward.” They also described an administration in a state of “red hot anger” against Netanyahu and his government. Those statements were made after three-month old Chaya Zissel Braun, an American baby, was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in Jerusalem in an Abbas-incited attack.

The most distressing aspect of Goldberg’s quotes is that in and of themselves, these profane, schoolyard bully personal attacks against Israel’s elected leader were the mildest part of the story.

The most disturbing thing about the gutter talk is what they tell us about Israel’s role in Obama’s assessments of his political cards as they relate to his nuclear negotiations with Iran.

The senior administration officials called Netanyahu a coward because, among other reasons, he has not bombed Iran’s nuclear installations.

And now, they crowed, it’s too late for Israel to do anything to stop Iran.

They are happy about this claimed state of affairs, because now Obama is free to make a deal with the Iranians that will allow them to develop nuclear weapons at will.

The obscene rhetoric they adopted in their characterization of Netanyahu didn’t come from “red hot anger.” It was a calculated move. Obama knows that he has caved in on every significant redline that he claimed he would defend in the nuclear talks with Iran.

Obama has chosen to demonize Netanyahu and castigate Israel now as a means to transform the debate about Iran into a debate about Israel. The fact that the trash talk about Netanyahu was a premeditated bid to capture the discourse on Iran is further exposed by the fact that Obama has refused to take any action against the officials who made the statements.

He isn’t going to punish them for carrying out his policies.

Obama knows that after next week’s midterm elections, he will likely be facing a Republican-controlled House and Senate. He has no substantive defense against attacks on his policy of enabling the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism to acquire nuclear weapons. The threat a nuclear- armed Iran poses to the US is self-evident to most people who pay attention to foreign affairs.

Since he can’t win the substantive debate, he wants to change the subject by pretending that the only country that opposes Iran’s nuclear weapons program is Israel, which, his senior advisers insinuated to Goldberg, was apparently bluffing about its danger. After all, if it was a reason for concern, Netanyahu would have bombed Iran three years ago rather than try to accommodate Obama.

As a consequence, any congressional opposition to his deal makes no sense and therefore must be the result of the nefarious Israel’s lobby’s control of Congress. Loyal Americans, like Obama, must stand up to the cowardly, power grabbing, warmongering Jews, led by the coward in chief Netanyahu.

In other words, in castigating Netanyahu and Israel, the Obama administration has decided to use Jew-hatred as a political weapon to defend its policies of abetting Palestinian terrorism and enabling Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

There are critical messages to the Israeli people and our leaders embedded in the Goldberg article.

First, the unbridled attacks against Israel’s democratically elected – and popular – prime minister show us that when we are faced with an inherently hostile administration, the wages of appeasement are contempt.

No Israel leader has done more to appease a US administration than Netanyahu has done to appease Obama. Against the opposition of his party and the general public, Netanyahu in 2009 bowed to Obama’s demand to embrace the goal of establishing a Palestinian state.

Against the opposition of his party and the general public, in 2010 Netanyahu bowed to Obama’s demand and enacted an official 10-month moratorium on Jewish property rights in lands beyond the 1949 armistice lines, and later enacted an unofficial moratorium on those rights.

And Netanyahu bowed to Obama’s pressure, released murderers from prison and conducted negotiations with Abbas that only empowered Abbas and his political war to delegitimize and isolate Israel.

And for all his efforts to appease Obama, today the administration abets Palestinian terrorism and political warfare.

As to Iran, Netanyahu agreed to play along with Obama’s phony sanctions policy, and bowed to Obama’s demand not to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. All of this caused suffering to the Iranian people while giving the regime four-and-a-half years of more or less unfettered work on its nuclear program.

Netanyahu only cut bait after Obama signed the interim nuclear deal with Iran last November where he effectively gave up the store.

And for Netanyahu’s Herculean efforts to appease Obama, Netanyahu found himself mocked publicly as a coward by senior administration officials who snorted that now it is too late for him to stop Obama from paving Iran’s open road to nuclear power.

One of the assets that Netanyahu’s continuous attempts to please Obama was geared toward securing was US support for Israel at the UN Security Council. And now, according to the senior administration officials, Obama has decided to spend his last two years in office refusing to veto anti-Israel Security Council resolutions.

Before formulating a strategy for dealing with Obama over the next two years, Israelis need to first take a deep breath and recognize that as bad as things are going to get, nothing that Obama will do to us over the next two years is as dangerous as what he has already done. No anti-Israel Security Council resolution, no Obama map of Israel’s borders will endanger Israel as much as his facilitation of Iran’s nuclear program.

As unpleasant as anti-Israel Security Council resolutions will be, and as unpleasant as an Obama framework for Israel’s final borders will be, given the brevity of his remaining time in power, it is highly unlikely that any of the measures will have lasting impact.

At any rate, no matter how upsetting such resolutions may be, Goldberg’s article made clear that Israel should make no concessions to Obama in exchange for a reversal of his plans. Concessions to Obama merely escalate his contempt for us.

Bearing this in mind, Israel’s required actions in the wake of Goldberg’s sources’ warnings are fairly straightforward.

First, to the extent that Israel does have the capacity to damage Iran’s nuclear installations, Israel should act right away. Its capacity should not be saved for a more propitious political moment.

The only clock Israel should care about is Iran’s nuclear clock.

As for the Palestinians, whether Netanyahu’s willingness to stand up to Obama stems from the growing prospect of national elections or from his own determination that there is no point in trying to appease Obama anymore, the fact is that this is the only pragmatic policy for him to follow.

The proper response to the assassination attempt on Yehudah Glick is to allow Jews freedom of worship on the Temple Mount. The proper response to Obama’s nuclear negotiations is a bomb in Natanz. Obama will be angry with Israel for taking such steps. But he is angry with Israel for standing down. At least if we defend ourselves, we will be safe while isolated, rather than unsafe while isolated.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Did rationing in World War 2 increase intelligence of Britons?

The journal article is Aging trajectories of fluid intelligence in late life: The influence of age, practice and childhood IQ on Raven's Progressive Matrices and the key passage is reproduced below:

"Standardizing the MHT [original] scores indicated a difference between the cohorts of 3.7 points. This is slightly smaller than expected and may be brought about by survival and selection bias discussed above. Late life comparisons indicate a significantly greater difference between the cohorts, comparing the cohorts at age 77; where there is overlap in data we find a difference of 10.4 raw RPM points or 16.5 IQ points, which is surprisingly large."

What this says is that both groups started out pretty much the same but by the time they had got into their 70s the younger group was much brighter.  The authors below attribute the difference to nutrition, which is pretty nonsensical.  They say that eating "rich, sugary and fatty foods" lowers IQ but where is the evidence for that?  The only studies I know are epidemiological and overlook important third factors such as social class. So those studies can only be relied on if you believe that correlation is causation, which it is not.  And one might note that average IQs in Western nations have been RISING even as consumption of fast food has been rising.  So even the epidemiology is not very supportive of the claims below.

Where important  micronutrients (iodine and iron particularly) are largely absent in the food of a population  -- as in Africa -- nutritional improvements can make a big difference but the idea that Aberdonians in the 1920s were severely deprived of such micronutrients seems fanciful. Aberdeen has long been an important  fishing port and fish are a major source of iodine -- and iron is mostly got from beef and Scots have long raised and eaten a lot of beef.  The traditional diet of poor Scots -- "mince 'n tatties" -- is certainly humble but it does include beef. Aberdeen even has an important  beef animal originating there: The widely praised "Aberdeen Angus".  You can eat meat from them in most of McDonald's restaurants these days.

So why was the IQ divergence between the two groups below not observed in early childhood when it was so strong in later life?  A divergence of that kind (though not of that magnitude) is not unprecedented for a number of reasons:  IQ measurement at age 11 is less reliable than measures taken in adulthood; IQ becomes more and more a function of genetics as we get older.  In early life environmental factors have more impact and it takes a while for (say) a handicapping early environment to be overcome.

But I suspect that the main influence on the finding was that two different tests were used.  IQ was measured at age 11 by an educational aptitude test and in the 70s it was measured by a non-verbal test.  The two were correlated but only about .75, which does allow for considerable divergence.  So the oldsters (1921 cohort) were simply not good at non-verbal puzzles, probably because they had little experience with them.  The tests they did in 1921, however mostly used problems similar to problems they had already encountered many times in the course of their schooling.

The 1936 cohort, by contrast, had most of their education in the postwar era when people spent longer in the educational system. And IQ testing in the schools was much in vogue up until the 1960s so that generation would have had a much wider testing experience.

The retest was, in other words, invalid.  It was not comparing like with like

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A study by the University of Aberdeen and NHS Grampian has found that children who grew up during the Second World War became far more intelligent than those who were born just 15 years before.

Researchers think that cutting rich, sugary and fatty foods out of the diets of growing children had a hugely beneficial impact on their growing brains.

The University of Aberdeen team examined two groups of people raised in Aberdeen, one born in 1921 and one born in 1936. These people are known as the Aberdeen Birth Cohort and were tested when they were aged 11 and when they were adults after the age of 62. The study consisted of 751 people all tested aged 11 and who were retested between 1998 and 2011 on up to five occasions.

Researchers compared the two groups at age 11 found an increase in IQ of 3.7 points which was marginally below what was expected but within the range seen in other studies. However, comparison in late life found an increase in IQ of 16.5 points which is over three times what was expected.

Before the war, more than two thirds of British food was imported. But enemy ships targeting merchant vessels prevented fruit, sugar, cereals and meat from reaching the UK.

The Ministry of Food issued ration books and rationing for bacon, butter and sugar began in January 1940.

But it was the MoF’s Dig For Victory campaign, encouraging self-sufficiency, which really changed how Britain ate. Allotment [mini  farm] numbers rose from 815,000 to 1.4 million.

Pigs, chickens and rabbits were reared domestically for meat, whilst vegetables were grown anywhere that could be cultivated. By 1940 wasting food was a criminal offence.

More HERE

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The statin craze is fading as doctors see the side-effects

Two thirds of GPs are refusing to comply with controversial NHS advice to prescribe statins to millions more adults, polling has found.

Family doctors said guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), advising 40 per cent of adults to take the pills, were “simplistic”. They insisted they would not allow the “mass medicalisation” of the public.

The guidelines, published in July, say drugs to protect against strokes and heart attacks should be offered to anyone with a one in 10 chance of developing heart disease within a decade.

It means 17.5 million adults, including most men aged over 60 and women over 65, are now eligible for the drugs, which cost less than 10p a day.

A number of cardiologists have defended the guidance, which Nice says could cut 50,000 deaths a year from strokes and heart attacks.

But the advice has divided experts, with prominent doctors accusing Nice’s experts of being too close to the pharmaceutical industry.

The survey of 560 GPs, carried out by Pulse magazine, found 66 per cent of family doctors say they are not complying with the guidance. The system of pay for family doctors means part of their income depends on how far they comply with guidelines on prescribing, including the Nice advice on statins.

Many of the GPs said they were not prepared to be “bribed” to put more patients on the drugs, with others saying the recent advice was “bonkers,” and “simplistic”. “You won’t bribe me with payments to hit statin targets,” said Dr Sanjeev Juneja, a GP from Rochester, Kent. “I have seen havoc caused in some patients with this drug, so Nice pressure is not so nice.”

Dr Richard Vautrey, deputy chairman of the British Medical Association, said: “This is something that an awful lot of GPs have concerns about, and they simply aren’t prepared to prescribe drugs in such a broad way, when the evidence supporting this approach isn’t clear.”

Arguments have raged about the side effects of statins. In May the British Medical Journal withdrew statements which had said that one in five of those on the drugs suffered from ill-effects such as muscle pain, tiredness and diabetes, saying the claims were wrong.

But some doctors believe such problems have been under-reported.

Dr May Cahill, a GP partner in Hackney, east London, said she was not convinced of the benefits of prescribing drugs with “horrific” sideeffects. She said: “Why give something to a patient that you would not take yourself nor recommend a family member or friend to?”

Dr Andrew Green, chairman of the BMA’s clinical and prescribing subcommittee for GPs, said no doctor should automatically prescribe the drugs based on a “slavish devotion” to advice from Nice.

Until July, GPs were advised to offer statins to anyone with a one in five chance of heart disease within a decade. The new advice halves the threshold to one in 10.

Even before that change, Britain was the “statins” capital of Europe, with the second-highest prescribing levels in the Western world for the drugs. A study last by year by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, which examined 23 industrialised nations, found this country had the highest levels of statins use in Europe, with 13 per cent of adults taking the pills daily.

Dr Aseem Malhotra, a London cardiologist who has been critical of the Nice guidance, said: "Although it is clear that the benefits of statins outweigh harms in those who have suffered a heart attack and are at high risk, this is in my view is not the case in a healthy population, where it does not reduce the risk of death.

"I am pleased to see that the majority of GPs are also realising this and acting upon it."

SOURCE

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Immigration Services Union: Amnesty Will Lure More Terrorists, Criminals, Disease Carriers to US



On Tuesday, the president of the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council said the Obama administration is endangering America on a daily basis by pressuring immigration officials to rubber-stamp applications for potential Islamic terrorists, criminals, and disease carriers.

Kenneth Palinkas, who represents 12,000 United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) agents, said the situation will actually become "exponentially worse" and "more dangerous" after Obama enacts his executive amnesty later in the year. Palinkas referred to the USCIS contract bid for up to 34 million green cards and work authorization permits ahead of Obama's planned executive amnesty, which Breitbart News first reported.

Palinkas, who has repeatedly slammed the agency's culture that encourages as many applications to be approved as possible without proper vetting, said the Obama administration is actively blocking USCIS's "loyal and dedicated adjudicators and personnel" who "diligently man the front lines in the battle to protect Americans from terrorism and the abuse of our economic and political resources" from doing their jobs.

"As the individuals who screen the millions of applications for entry into the U.S., it is our job to ensure that terrorists, diseases, criminals, public charges, and other undesirable groups are kept out of the United States," he said. "Unfortunately, we have been blocked in our efforts to accomplish this mission and denied the professional resources, mission support, and authorities we urgently need by the very same government that employs our skill sets."

He said immigration "caseworkers still operate under a quota system that prioritizes speed over quality, and approvals over investigations." He mentioned that the agency is pressured to process applications "without regard to national security" and mentioned potential "plans to waive interviews of applicants who seek adjustment of their status in the U.S. to ready our workforce for the coming onslaught of applications unforeseen in previous administrations."

"We are still the world’s rubber-stamp for entry into the United States – regardless of the ramifications of the constant violations to the Immigration and Nationality Act," he said. "Whether it’s the failure to uphold the public charge laws, the abuse of our asylum procedures, the admission of Islamist radicals, or visas for health risks, the taxpayers are being fleeced and public safety is being endangered on a daily basis."

Palinkas, who opposed the Senate's "Gang of Eight" comprehensive amnesty bill, said "America dodged a bullet" when the Senate's amnesty legislation that "would have been a financial and security catastrophe" did not pass Congress. But since efforts by Senators like Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) to stop Obama's executive amnesty failed in Sen. Harry Reid's (D-NV) Senate, Palinkas urged Americans to pressure their elected officials to stop Obama's executive amnesty: "If you care about your immigration security and your neighborhood security, you must act now to ensure that Congress stops this unilateral amnesty."

"Let your voice be heard and spread the word to your neighbors," he said. "We who serve in our nation’s immigration agencies are pleading for your help – don’t let this happen. Express your concern to your Senators and Congressmen before it is too late.”

SOURCE

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Are GDP Numbers a Trick or a Treat?

The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released its third-quarter report, claiming Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by an annual rate of 3.5%. The report goes on to list a number of indicators leading to the conclusion that the economy, though still unspectacular, is on the upswing. With Election Day right around the corner, that’s good news, right? Maybe it’s a little too good.

How fortunate for Barack Obama and Democrats in power that this positive economic report comes out just days before the midterms. It brings back memories of the days leading up to the 2012 presidential election, when Obama spun a slight uptick in the unemployment rate to suggest that the country was still better off than it would have been without his failed stimulus and his punishing interventionist policies. “The private sector is doing just fine,” he said that summer.

In a keen analysis of the numbers, James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute argues the GDP report is nothing more than “lipstick on a pig.” Pethokoukis notes that, since the last two quarters are really little more than a rebound of the first quarter, the year’s overall growth has not been impressive.

One of the biggest boosters to third-quarter GDP was a 16% surge in defense spending due to Operation Inherent Resolve. As for the high export numbers, we have reduced economic performance in China and Europe to thank for that, along with a strengthening dollar driven by concern over European debt and global security matters. These factors, though beneficial to the American economy right now, will lead to a slowdown in the future as world economies adjust and react to a bleaker world economy.

It’s also worth noting that every major indicator mentioned positively in the third-quarter report – from consumer spending to housing to the sale of durable goods and beyond – is down compared to the second quarter. And just wait until this report is quietly revised down sometime after the midterms.

Taking all this into account, it’s clear the economy is still not strong. Furthermore, there are no realistic appraisals that it will improve under current conditions. Chief among those conditions are the business-killing, government-loving policies of the Obama administration and congressional Democrats. Voting out Democrats in Congress is not a guarantee the economy will improve, however, because we’ll still have Obama for two more years, and Republicans haven’t exactly paved the way to economic salvation. But it’s a start.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Left-leaning academics reject science

Chris Mooney is continuing his voyage of discovery in social science.  He has just rediscovered one of the most well-known facts about Leftists -- that they reject genetic explanations of human behavior.  Perhaps encouragingly, however, among a group of academic sociologists there was SOME acceptance of genetic influences.  Among many other Leftists, there would be none. 

Mooney's usual schtick is bashing conservatives and climate skeptics so it is understandable that he is very defensive about where the Left stand on science.  Rather hilariously, he finds their stance on global warming heartening.  But global warming is inherently anti-science.  What scientists do is use regularities that they discover in nature to predict the future -- but Warmism predicts a DEPARTURE from known trends and regularities.  There has been so little warming in the last 100 years or so that changes have to be expressed in tenths of a degree Celsius.  So the best  scientific prediction from that trend would be that warming in the 21st century will also be trivial.

But that does not suit Greenie catastrophism and Messianism.  So they have various unproven theories which say that the normal scientific prediction is wrong and we are all facing doom unless we do what they tell us. If that consoles Mooney he really is moony.  The Left are solid Warmists so the Left is much more anti-science than Mooney believes.  If Warmism really were science they would readily make their raw data available for re-analysis and would welcome debate.  They do neither.  They even resort to lawfare to protect their data and do their damnedest to shut down debate

In trying to find something anti-science among conservatives Mooney would have a better case if he had stuck to creationism -- the belief that God created the world in 7 days of 24 hours approximately 4,000 years ago.  The fact that only a small number of conservatives hold that view would not normally disturb chronically deceitful Leftist polemicists.  (Democrats even manage to create a "war on women" out of the fact that Republicans are reluctant to facilitate abortion). Theologically sophisticated Christians, of course, point to the fact that, as in English, the original Hebrew word for "day" can be used vaguely and may refer to a long period ("In my day", for instance)

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Conservatives often face a lot of questions -- and controversies -- for their views on science. Most notably, only 22 percent of conservative Republicans accept the scientific consensus that global warming is mostly caused by humans. Meanwhile, conservative officials in some states have pushed to undermine the teaching of evolution in public school classrooms.

Liberals get a lot less flack, in general, for ignoring scientific findings. Yet there is also reason to think they, too, are susceptible to allowing their political biases influence their reading of certain scientific questions. And now, a new study just out in the journal Sociological Spectrum accuses them of just that.

The study is far from the authoritative word on the subject of left wing science denial. Rather, it is a provocative, narrow look at the question. In particular, the study examined a group of left wing people -- academic sociologists -- and evaluated their views on a fairly esoteric scientific topic. The specific issue was whether the evolutionary history of human beings has an important influence on our present day behavior. In other words, whether or not we are "blank slates," wholly shaped by the culture around us.

While there's virtually no argument in the scientific community that personality traits like being extroverted run in families and have at least some genetic component, there's been much greater debate among academics about whether other phenomena, such as an inclination toward committing violence and demonstrating an unusual level of jealousy, are rooted in nature rather than life experience.

The new study, by University of Texas-Brownville sociologist Mark Horowitz and two colleagues, surveyed 155 academic sociologists. 56.7 percent of the sample was liberal, another 28.6 percent was identified as radical, and only 4.8 percent were conservative.  Horowitz, who describes himself as a politically radical, social-justice oriented researcher, said he wanted to probe their views of the possible evolutionary underpinnings of various human behaviors. "I wanted to get at the really ideological blank slate view, it’s sort of a preemptive assumption that everything is taught, everything is learned," he explained.

Sure enough, the study found that these liberal academics showed a pretty high level of resistance to evolutionary explanations for phenomena ranging from sexual jealousy to male promiscuity.

In fairness, the sociologists were willing to credit some evolutionary-style explanations. Eight-one percent found it either plausible or highly plausible that "some people are born genetically with more intellectual potential than others," and 70 percent ascribed sexual orientation to "biological roots." Meanwhile, nearly 60 percent of sociologists in the sample considered it "plausible" that human beings have a "hardwired" taste preference for foods that are full of fat and sugar, and just under 50 percent thought it plausible that we have an innate fear of snakes and spiders (for very sound, survival-focused reasons).

Yet the study also found that these scholars were less willing to consider evolutionary explanations for other aspects of human behavior, especially those relating to male-female differences. Less than 50 percent considered it plausible that that "feelings of sexual jealousy have a significant evolutionary biological component," for instance, and just 36.4 percent considered it plausible that men "have a greater tendency towards promiscuity than women due to an evolved reproductive strategy.” While it is hard to be absolutely definitive on either of these issues (we weren't there to observe evolution happen), evolutionary psychologists have certainly argued in published studies that people exhibit jealousy in sexual relationships in order to ensure reproductive fidelity and preserve the resources that come from a partner, and that men are more promiscuous because they are not constrained in how often they can attempt to reproduce.

So is this proof positive that academic sociologists are science deniers? Not at all. Still, it's certainly noteworthy that a substantial minority of these scholars are resistant even to the least controversial evolutionary explanations, such as those involving hardwired tastes for certain foods or innate fears of poisonous critters.

But there's also a notable limitation to the study. When it comes to some of the more controversial statements about the evolutionary basis of various human behaviors that were used (for instance, the assertion that "The widely observed tendency for men to try and control women's bodies as property...has a significant evolutionary biological component"), the research doesn't really take a strong stand on whether they're actually true -- which makes it rather hard to call the sociologists woefully biased. Instead, study subjects were merely asked to state whether they considered such statements "highly plausible," "plausible," "implausible," or "highly implausible."

"I think the 'science denial' here among sociologists is their mechanical dismissal of evolutionary reasoning applied to human behaviors -- a dismissal that's much sharper when considering potential sex differences in behavior," says Horowitz, explaining why the study took this approach.

Take one case where sociologists were pretty dismissive -- the assertion that "Feelings of sexual jealousy have a significant evolutionary biological component," which only 44 percent of them considered plausible. Certainly evolutionary psychologists have argued that sexual jealousy is a deeply rooted part of human "nature." One such scholar is David Buss at the University of Texas-Austin, who argues in his book The Dangerous Passion that jealousy is an "adaptation...an evolved solution to a recurrent problem of survival or reproduction," namely, keeping your mate faithful to you.

"Though we can't strictly speaking 'prove' that jealousy was adaptive, we find the mechanical dismissal of the adaptiveness hypothesis dogmatic," comments Horowitz.

There's no doubt that many left leaning academics have historically been quite skeptical about evolutionary psychology, presumably out of the fear that ascribing certain traits to biology suggests that they cannot be changed -- and thus, can perpetuate inequality. The famed Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker extensively challenged their "blank slate" view in a bestselling 2002 book. Going back further, in the storied "sociobiology" wars of the 1970s, evolutionary thinkers like Harvard's E.O. Wilson sought to apply their understanding of humankind's origins to modern human behavior -- and fell into a ferocious row with broadly left-leaning scholars who attacked biological or genetic "determinism," and defended the idea that social factors explain most of what we need to know about why people do what they do....

None of this is to say that a few sociologists' views about evolution can be considered proportionate with global warming denial, in either the volume of those holding the belief or the belief's consequences. But it does suggest that 100 percent objectivity doesn't exist on any side of the aisle.

More HERE

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A defeat for bureaucratic rigidity and a win for individual liberty



The American nurse at the centre of a national battle over quarantine rules for health workers returning from west Africa has won the latest round in her fight not to be forced into three weeks of isolation.

A judge in Maine rejected a request by the state to impose a mandatory quarantine order on Kaci Hickox in a ruling that was being closely followed by politicians and heath chiefs across the country.

Miss Hickox, who has showed no Ebola symptoms and twice tested negative for the disease, had refused to agree to a voluntary home quarantine during the 21-day incubation period since returning home from treating Ebola patients for an aid agency in Sierra Leone.

Judge Charles LaVerdiere had initially imposed a temporary order requiring Miss Hickox to keep three feet away from people and to avoid public places.

But after hearing arguments from lawyers for the state and Miss Hickox and evidence from a health expert, he lifted those restrictions ahead of a full hearing to be held on Tuesday.

"This decision has critical implication for [Miss Hickox's] freedom, as guaranteed by the US and Maine constitutions, as well as the public's right to be protected from the potential severe harm posed by transmission of this devastating disease," he noted in a written ruling.

SOURCE

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Over 214,000 Doctors Opt Out of Obamacare Exchanges

Over 214,000 doctors won't participate in the new plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA,) analysis of a new survey by Medical Group Management Association shows. That number of 214,524, estimated by American Action Forum, is through May 2014, but appears to be growing due to plans that force doctors to take on burdensome costs. It's also about a quarter of the total number of 893,851 active professional physicians reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

In January, an estimated 70% of California's physicians were not participating in Covered California plans.

Here are some of the reasons why:

1.      Reimbursements under Obamacare are at bottom-dollar - they are even lower than Medicare reimbursements, which are already significantly below market rates. "It is estimated that where private plans pay $1.00 for a service, Medicare pays $0.80, and ACA exchange plans are now paying about $0.60," a study by the think-tank American Action Forum finds. "For example, Covered California plans are setting their plan fee schedules in line with that of Medi-Cal-California's Medicaid Program-which means exchange plans are cutting provider reimbursement by up to 40 percent."

2.      Doctors are expected to take on more patients to make up for the lost revenue, but that's not happening, because primary care doctors already have more patients than they can handle. "Furthermore, physicians are worried that exchange plan patients will be sicker than the average patient because they may have been without insurance for extended periods of time, and therefore will require more of the PCPs time at lower pay," says the study.

The study also points to two reasons that doctors might not get paid at all:

3.      An MGMA study indicates that 75% of ACA patients that had seen doctors had chosen plans with high deductibles. Given that most of the patients are low-income, doctors are concerned that the patients cannot meet the deductibles and they will get stuck with the bill.

4.      HHS requires that insurers cover customers for an additional 90 days after they have stopped paying their premiums: the insurer covers the first 30 - but, it's up to the doctor to recoup payment for the last 60 days. This is the number one reason providers are opting to not participate in the exchange plans. Currently, about a million people have failed to pay their premiums and had their plans canceled.

So, Obamacare is asking doctors to take on sicker patients for less money, with the risk of not getting paid at all? No wonder doctors are running from these plans!

SOURCE

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Houston Mayor Withdraws Sermon Subpoenas

 Houston Mayor Annise Parker said Wednesday she has instructed city lawyers to withdraw subpoenas ordering five local pastors to turn over all sermons and other communications relating to their opposition to an ordinance that allows transgender people to use any public bathroom regardless of gender.

"After much contemplation and discussion, I am directing the city legal department to withdraw the subpoenas issued to the five Houston pastors who delivered the petitions, the anti-HERO petitions, to the city of Houston and who indicated that they were responsible for the overall petition effort,” Parker, the city’s first lesbian mayor, told a press conference.

She vowed to keep the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) – dubbed the “bathroom bill” by critics – in place.

“It is extremely important to me to protect our Equal Rights Ordinance from repeal, and it is extremely important to me to make sure that every Houstonian knows that their lives are valid and protected and acknowledged,” Parker said.

“We are going to continue to vigorously defend our ordinance against repeal efforts.”

More HERE

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Marine Sgt. Tahmooressi Just Ordered to Be Immediately Released From Mexican Jail by Judge

Marine veteran Sergeant Andrew Tahmooressi has been ordered to be immediately released from a Tijuana jail, following a Mexican federal judge’s ruling late Friday.

Tahmooressi, who moved to San Diego to receive treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, was jailed March 31, after accidentally crossing the Mexican border with three loaded weapons in his car, which are against the law in Mexico.

The family issued the following statement: “It is with an overwhelming and humbling feeling of relief that we confirm that Andrew was released today after spending 214 days in a Mexican jail.”

Congressman Duncan Hunter of San Diego, a Marine combat vet, is particularly galled at the President’s lack of action on behalf of Tahmooressi. Hunter and several other Congressional Reps have worked to free Tahmooressi.

More HERE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Violence genes may be responsible for one in 10 serious crimes

Leftists assure us that poverty is the cause of crime.  Could they be wrong?

The genes for extremely violent behaviour have been discovered by scientists who fear they may be responsible for one in 10 serious crimes.

Researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden analysed the genetic make-up of 895 criminals from Finland to see if violence was in their DNA.

The majority of violent crime is committed by a small group of antisocial, repeat offenders, who seem incapable of rehabilitation.

Now scientists believe they have found which genes are responsible for high levels of rage and violence. They believe that they could be responsible for up to 10 per cent of serious crime in Finland.

The criminals who had committed the most serious crimes, such as murder, were found to have variants of two genes; monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) and cadherin 13 (CDH13).

MAOA is linked to dopamine levels in the brain, a chemical which makes people feel happy and fulfilled. CDH13 is linked to impulse control.

“When compared to the control population, non-violent offenders were not observed to exhibit either variant to a greater degree, indicating that these genetic variants may be specific to extremely violent behaviour,” said lead researcher Professor Jari Tiihonen.

The researchers, whose findings were published online in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, also suggest that the low dopamine levels associated with the MAOA gene may make carriers more aggressive when drunk or on drugs, increasing the risk of violent behaviour.

British scientists said the study could help identify potential criminals early when it was still possible to treat their violent tendencies.

However some British researchers criticised claims that the genes could be responsible for such large amounts of crime in Finland.

Prof John Stein, Emeritus Professor of Physiology, University of Oxford, said "This is a very interesting study with plausible aspects.

“But please do not accept the claims that these alleles are 'responsible for 5-10 per cent of violent offences in Finland'. All they show is that they may contribute 5-10 per cent to the chance of an individual being very violent.

“These alleles are quite common and so environmental factors are probably much more important. For instance simply improving prisoners diets can reduce their violent offending by 37 per cent."

Prof Jan Schnupp, Professor of Neuroscience, University of Oxford, added: "Half the people in your office will carry these genes. Odds are 50/50 that you do. How violent has your day been? To call these alleles "genes for violence" would therefore be a massive exaggeration.

“In combination with many other factors these genes may make it a little harder for you to control violent urges, but they most emphatically do not predetermine you for a life of crime.”

SOURCE

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Curbing Obama power grabs

The courts and Senate provide no checks and balances. Could a Republican Senate help?

Paul Driessen

You’ve got to admire the sheer audacity: Democratic Senator Mark Begich telling Alaska voters that he stood up to President Obama and fought for oil drilling and jobs in his state. Maybe he had a few chats.

But he certainly knew his concerns and opinions meant nothing, changed nothing, accomplished nothing. And then he voted 97% of the time with Mr. Obama and Senate Majority Dictator Harry Reid

Reid has kept over 300 bills bottled up, squelched almost all proffered Republican amendments on anything that did move, and used the “nuclear option” to end the longstanding 60-vote rule and wipe out any chance that Republicans could block Obama nominees or prevent the President from packing the vital DC Circuit Court of Appeals. The three new liberal judges on that court can now be counted on to defer to Mr. Obama’s policies and “agency discretion” on future arrogations of power.

Ditto for Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu. She bellyached from time to time about offshore drilling and the Keystone XL pipeline. But she also voted with Obama, Reid and their agenda 97% of the time, on everything from ObamaCare to Dodd-Frank to packing the DC Court.

The tally for other Democratic Senators running for reelection is revealing: Hagan (NC) 96% for the Obama agenda, policies and fiats … Merkley (OR) 96% … Pryor (AR) 90% … Shaheen (NH) 99% … Udall (CO) 99% … Warner (VA) 97%

Now they’re telling their constituents, next year will be different. Send me back to Washington, and next year I will stand up to Obama and support letting people keep their doctors and insurance, allowing more domestic drilling and pipelines, promoting economic recovery and fiscal responsibility, curbing the fraud and abuses at the Environmental Protection Agency, tackling Ebola and going after Islamic terrorists.

The IRS, Benghazi, Ebola and Middle East screw-ups and cover-ups seem to have set the tone. These Senators seem willing to say almost anything to get them past the elections. However, their votes have had real consequences for millions of Americans, especially the poor, minority, elderly and working classes they profess to care so much about. They should not escape accountability so easily.

A recent political ad by black Democrat-turned-Republican Louisiana State Senator Elbert Guillory lays it on the line. “While you dig through the couch looking for gas money,” Guillory says, Mary Landrieu “flies around in private jets funded by taxpayer dollars.” To her, “you are just a vote,” every six years.

Nor do liberal stereotypes fit. The four Democratic House and Senate candidates in Northern Virginia are all well-off, middle-age white guys. Republican candidates include one middle-age white dude, plus two working moms and a black man – who’s also Jewish and an 8-year Marine Corps veteran.

Few of us have any personal animosity toward any of these Democrat Senators. They’re all amiable people. But as President Obama himself says, “my policies are on the ballot, every single one of them.” Those policies have been dragging this country down, and as long as Harry Reid maintains his iron grip on the Senate, there can be no checks and balances or budgetary constraints on the Obama policies.

Messrs. Reid and Obama have made it clear that they have no interest in working with Republicans. Indeed, the President prefers Saul Alinsky tactics of community agitation and interest group divide-and-conquer. He disdains democratic processes and bipartisan compromises, and much prefers to simply legislate, regulate and dictate from the White House and Executive Branch – ignoring or rewriting the clear language of laws and our Constitution whenever and however necessary.

The Train of Abuses and Usurpations gets longer by the week. Environmental Protection Agency actions alone could place virtually all our land, air, water, energy and economy under the control of regulatory ideologues, working closely with radical Big Green activists, billionaires and “charitable” foundations.

Climate. As the planet refuses to cooperate with computer models and White House fear mongering, the EPA simply ignores all contradictory studies and evidence – and continues to operate under assumptions that: carbon dioxide levels dictate climate change; natural forces are irrelevant’ America can easily replace the fossil fuels that provide 82% of its energy; skyrocketing energy prices will have no effect on the economy, jobs or human health and welfare; and slashing America’s CO2 emissions will make a difference, even though China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Poland and other nations refuse to do likewise.

Of course, the real goal was never to stop climate change. It was always to control and “fundamentally transform” our nation’s energy, economic, social and legal structure and institutions, regardless of costs.

Water. Proposed rules are so broadly written that they would cover nearly all “waters of the United States” (WOTUS), based on assertions that they would eventually end up in “navigable” waters: rivers, rivulets, lakes, groundwater, stock ponds, occasional puddles and dry creek beds. In the process, they would also control land use activities on farms, forests and other private property. Friendly, collusive lawsuits by radical environmentalists would further expand this EPA jurisdiction.

Ozone. Almost every US county meets current 2008 ozone standards. Proposed regulations would render the vast majority of them “nonattainment” areas, subject to severe restrictions on economic growth. Even EPA says the rules would cost $100 billion a year. The National Association of Manufacturers puts the cost at $270 billion annually. The impact on people’s jobs, incomes, health and welfare would be huge.

Even bigger ambitions. Clearly not satisfied with these unprecedented usurpations of power, EPA has also launched major “sustainable development,” “environmental justice” and “clean power” initiatives. These deliberately vague and infinitely malleable terms would further expand the agency’s mission far beyond anything previously imaginable or contemplated by EPA’s authorizing legislation.

Other agencies are busily writing new regulations governing Christmas lights, automobile and refrigerator coolants, endangered species guidelines that would block ranching, drilling and pipeline projects, while giving bird and bat-killing wind and solar projects carte blanche – and other activities.

Collusion. A recent Senate Minority Staff Report explains in frightening detail how far-left billionaires, foundations and environmentalist groups actively collude with EPA managers and regulators. EPA in turn happily recruits high-level eco-activists, who then help lobby, guide and control agency policies – and channel millions of taxpayer dollars to pressure groups that promote those policies. The agency also engages in frequent friendly lawsuits with activists, to make policies even more extreme.

A Republican Senate will not guarantee the kind of change needed to end these excesses and get the nation’s economy and employment back on track, especially if certain GOP members remain timid or recalcitrant. (Perhaps DePuy or Stryker could donate some spinal implants?) Presidential vetoes could also pose problems, although strong leadership could often craft bipartisan veto-proof majorities.

House and Senate hearings could grill agency heads under oath – and investigate potential fraud in developing regulations, unethical collusion between agencies and activists, improper agency funding of activist groups, sweetheart lawsuits and other activities. These investigations could form the basis for budget reductions and restrictions, legislation to end mission creep or block specific regulations, and laws requiring congressional approval of “major” regulatory actions costing billions of dollars.

Such actions would also help restore our tripartite system of government. Right now, the Executive Branch is riding roughshod over businesses and citizens alike, and the courts merely rubberstamp agency decisions. Meanwhile, the Legislative Branch is little more than an appendix that writes overly broad laws giving unaccountable bureaucrats unfettered discretion to impose an increasingly intrusive, expensive leftist, centralized government agenda. No wonder our nation is foundering on the rocks.

The upcoming elections could help get the USS United States back on course. Let’s hope they do.

SOURCE

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Janet Napolitano Says DACA Balances 'Doing What Is Right' and 'Doing What Is Lawful'

Former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told law students Monday that she balanced "doing what is right" and "doing what is lawful," as she pushed through Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

The controversial policy defers deportation for hundreds of thousands of people who came to the United States illegally as children, allowing them to get work permits and driver's licenses.

"This was an initiative that required a careful navigation between the potentially conflicting dictates of doing what is right, of doing what is lawful, of doing
what is doable, and of doing what is defensible, both in the court of law and, to a lesser degree, the court of public opinion," Napolitano told students at the University of Georgia Law School on Monday.

Napolitano confined her remarks to the past. She said she would not anticipate what President Obama plans to do next. But in his own words, Obama has said he intends to "fix as much of our immigration system" as he can, on his own.

He's widely expected to expand Napolitano's deferred deportation program to millions more illegal immigrants after the midterm election.

Napolitano on Monday explained how she helped "more than 675,000 young people, who were already in this country...come out from the shadows."

Categorically applying "deferred action" to that entire group of young people would have "raised serious questions," she admitted.

"It would run the risk of appearing to make law, and usurping Congress. Thus, it would be crucial, both legally and politically, to underscore that each case would be assessed individually, on its own merits -- similar, but not identical, to how a prosecutor decides to charge a case."

Napolitano said her solution was to require the so-called Dreamers to "step forward individually and apply for deferred status."

"At this point, I could not say with any degree of certainty that we would be able to pull off this approach," Napolitano told the students. "Individualized review of potentially hundreds of thousands of cases would require building complex new systems and processes within the existing bureaucracy – a daunting challenge.

"Who knew how it all would turn out? What I did know was that this was the right thing to do. What I believed was that it was lawful. And, while it would be a heavy lift, I expected it would be doable and, in the end, defensible."

Napolitano said she anticipated legal challenges to the new policy, and she got one from "a handful of immigration agents" who objected to DHS's policy of prosecutorial discretion, which prioritizes the removal of illegal aliens with criminal convictions.

More HERE


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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Another attempt to "psychologize" conservatives -- one which overlooks the obvious

Does the Study of Science Lead to Leftward Leanings?  Not  quite. Key excerpts from the latest article below.  It is difficult to know whare to start in such a rubbishy article but I should note initially that the use of student attitudes to draw great inferences about people in general is an act of faith. In the very first piece of research I ever did (in the mid-60s) I used students and found a correlation of .808 between two variables  -- which is very high.  Being a very skeptical person even then, however, I repeated the research using a sample of Army conscripts, a much more representative group.  The correlation dropped to negligibility. Plainly, you CANNOT draw reliable conclusions from student samples

But does the research below tell us anything about institutions of higher education?  Perhaps it does, though what it shows is obvious and no surprise.  It shows that universities and colleges  are hotbeds of Leftism.  So even some students who do not start out as Leftists eventually become brainwashed into it.  The authors found that in the third and fourth year of study, the students had become more Leftist than they were in the first and second year.

So how come the authors found the effect among science students only?  Probably because the social science and humanities students were already asymptotically Leftist from the outset.  They started out Leftist in their studies so had little room to move further Left.  The authors don't give their results in tabular form so I was not able to check that. It is however a common finding that social science and humanities students are the most Leftist

But even the interpretation of the results as showing us something about academe may be too incautious.  The measuring instruments used by the authors were woeful.  The ad hoc scale they used in Study I had a reliability (alpha) of only .58, which is simply too low to conclude that it is measuring any consistent trait.  It implies that the items had virtually nothing in common.  An alpha of .75 is the normal threshold for a usable research instrument.

And the rest of the research relied on an even  more execrable instument -- the SDO scale, which assumes what it has to prove.  The SDO scale must be one of the most uninsightfully put-together instruments in the psychology literature.  See here for details on that.

So the only really safe conclusion is that the research proves nothing at all

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

According to a research team led by Harvard University psychologist Christine Ma-Kellams, immersion in the world of science tends to shifts students’ attitudes toward the left side of the political spectrum.

In the Journal of Social and Political Psychology, Ma-Kellams and her colleagues describe four studies that support their thesis. In the first, 196 students from a New England university revealed their ideological positions by responding to 18 statements expressing political opinions.

“Across domains,” the researchers report, “those who are in scientific fields exhibited greater political liberalism compared to those in non-hard-scientific fields.”

Importantly, this was only found for students in their third or fourth year of college. This strongly suggests that, rather than political liberals being attracted to science, it was the hands-on study that made the difference.

The second study featured 100 undergraduates, who expressed their views on three hot-button political issues (same-sex marriage, affirmative action, and the Affordable Care Act). They also completed the Social Dominance Orientation Scale, in which they expressed their level of agreement or disagreement with such statements as “Sometimes other groups must be kept in their place,” and “In getting what you want, it is sometimes necessary to use force against other groups.”

Consistent with the first study, the researchers found that “for those with significant exposure to their discipline (i.e., upperclassmen), studying science is associated with more liberal political attitudes.” Furthermore, they found this was due to a lower level of support for the my-group-deserves-to-dominate positions outlined above.

Additional studies featuring Canadian students and a community sample from the Boston area came to the same conclusions.

“Relative to those studying non-sciences, students in the sciences exhibited greater political liberalism across a variety of domains (including foreign policy, health care, and the economy) and a variety of social issues (gay marriage, affirmative action), as well as in general self-reported liberalism,” Ma-Kellams and her colleagues write.

This, they conclude, is the result of “science’s emphasis on rationality, impartiality, fairness, progress, and the idea that we are to use these rational tools for the mutual benefit of all people in society.”

In one sense, these results are something of a surprise. Given the fact the social sciences involve people and politics more directly, one might think the study of these disciplines would be more likely to shape minds in a more liberal direction. But these students were no more liberal than those majoring in disciplines having nothing to do with science.

More HERE

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States Enact Ebola Quarantines, Obama Vows to Fight Them!

Context: Australia has banned all arrivals from West Africa

We’ve been calling for a moratorium on flights to/from Ebola stricken countries in West Africa. The vast majority of Americans (3 in 4) want a travel ban or, at the very least, force travelers exposed to the disease to spend 21 days in quarantine.

As of this writing, 35 countries have instituted travel bans to/from West Africa. Obama has refused to follow suit.

Now, three states have announced mandatory quarantines for health workers returning from West Africa. Illinois, New Jersey, and New York have all announced their new containment policy.

All three refuse to sit by as potentially infected travelers put their populations at risk.

This comes after Dr. Craig Spencer tested positive for Ebola in New York City. The doctor had recently traveled back to the United States from West Africa after being exposed to Ebola patients. He was told to self-quarantine, but instead, Dr. Spencer traveled across NYC using public transportation, a taxi service, and even went to a bowling alley.

This policy could save lives. But Barack Obama has instructed his government to fight these states tooth-and-nail to overturn the quarantines!

Obama is putting Americans at risk! You must DEMAND that Congress institute quarantines for ALL West African travelers!

The country of Nigeria is now officially Ebola-free. Part of the reason for this is the fact that Nigeria has closed its borders to any country with an Ebola outbreak.

Whether it is illegal aliens, ISIS terrorists, or the Ebola disease, Obama simply refuses to close the border and do what is necessary to protect Americans.

Both New Jersey and New York have seen what happens when “self-quarantined” individuals disobey orders and put the population at risk.

Dr. Nancy Snyderman and her team from NBC news agreed to “self-quarantine” after returning to New Jersey from West Africa. The team struck a deal with the CDC and NJ officials, agreeing to remain indoors and monitor their temperatures.

But the NBC News Correspondent broke protocol and took members of her team out into Princeton, NJ to go buy lunch, putting an entire city in danger.

We’ve tried it “Obama’s way.” We’ve tried letting infected individuals into the U.S. unchecked. We have tried allowing Ebola health workers to “self-quarantine.”

None of that has worked. That hasn’t stopped Ebola from spreading, nor has it stopped infected individuals from breaking quarantine and putting our country at risk.

And now, Barack H. Obama wants to stop New Jersey, New York, and Illinois from quarantining Ebola workers?

Every time I turn around, it seems that Barack Obama has discovered a new policy to put Americans at risk.

Congress MUST act and institute a travel ban and mandatory quarantines for returning health workers. Polling shows that 75% of all Americans believe this is a common-sense response. Yet, the White House and Congressional Democrats continue to push to allow the Ebola virus into the country!

We must stop air travel to/from these countries NOW! We must force returning health workers to enter quarantine NOW!

SOURCE

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Life under Obama sucks (except for the wealthy). And the numbers prove it

America is so over Obama. In 2008, the media and a majority of the voters were head-over-heels in love with the man who told them that “yes, we can” overcome war and recession.

By 2012, the amour had cooled but they were willing to give four more years to the guy who was – if nothing else – way hotter than Mitt Romney.  But now it’s 2014 and the passion is totally gone.

The reason? Quality of life is poor. Starting at the very bottom, poverty levels point to stagnation. In January 2009 the poverty rate stood at 14.3 per cent. It rose to around 15 per cent and then fell back down in 2013 to 14.5 per cent (but the actual number of those in poverty remained the same from 2012). Things are worse for black Americans, whose poverty rate has risen in that same period from 25.8 per cent to 27.2 per cent.

Not everyone’s doing badly, of course. The richest 10 per cent are the only group – the only group! – who saw their median income rise from 2010-2013. As the Washington Times points out, that’s the same period in which Barack Robin Hood Obama won re-election painting the GOP as corporate vampires. The richest people have seen their share of taxes decline quite dramatically under this “socialist” president – while, interestingly, the share of federal income tax paid by the middle class has, according to the IRS, slightly risen.

According to the Federal Reserve, middle-class incomes stagnated from 2010-2013 while incomes at the bottom end of the scale continued to fall. Yet its latest finances survey discovered a fascinating anomaly: mean income is up while median income is down. The explanation is that while most Americans’ financial performance remains weak, the very rich are doing splendidly. The scale of inequality of appalling: “The wealth share of the top 3 percent climbed from 44.8 percent in 1989 to 51.8 percent in 2007 and 54.4 percent in 2013. … The share of wealth held by the bottom 90 percent fell from 33.2 percent in 1989 to 24.7 percent in 2013.”

Finally, even the much praised unemployment rates can be misleading. While the number seeking work might be falling, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve found some. In January 2009, the labour force participation rate was 65.7 per cent; today it is 62.7 per cent. In other words, a lot of Americans have simply withdrawn from the labour market.

In short, the middle class has good reasons to be frustrated with Obamanomics – especially given that the President has so often claimed to be on the side of the little man but has largely operated to the benefit of the super rich. In fact, I wouldn’t blame Mitt Romney if he secretly cast a ballot for Obama in 2012.

Add to that the administration’s quixotic handling of the Ebola crisis or its vacillating Middle East policy and you get the sense of a regime that has largely given up. Not that it was particularly “engaged” in the beginning. Barack Obama was elected in 2008 less on the back of a programme than a personality. He embodied rather than articulated change. As such, his election did mark a revolution in American race relations but it did not represent a serious effort at governmental reform.

With the notable – and controversial – exceptions of Obamacare and gay marriage (the latter led entirely by the courts and not the administration), liberals should be asking themselves what Obama has ever done for them. Conservatives will be asking what he’s done to the economy, having over-regulated and over-spent to little obvious advantage. I’m not so sure we can call the Obama administration liberal rather than just chaotic and vain.

SOURCE

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Clinton Says Businesses Don't Create Jobs



While campaigning in Massachusetts for gubernatorial candidate Martha Coakley, Hillary Clinton inadvertently revealed exactly how she views American free enterprise. During the rally, the soon-to-be presidential candidate declared, “Don’t let anybody tell you that, uh, you know, it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.”

Oh how wrong she is.

After catching heat for sounding eerily reminiscent of Barak Obama and his infamous “you didn’t build that” line, Clinton clarified her comment. According to one of her aides, she had meant to “talk about tax breaks for corporations and businesses in that sentence, which led into a line about how trickle-down economics had ‘failed spectacularly’ – a sentiment she has long held.”

Despite that “clarification,” Clinton’s rhetoric on economic policy is in line with what the Left wants to hear. Supposing that Clinton will seek the Democrat nomination for president in 2016, she might have to contend with a challenge from her left by progressive populist Elizabeth Warren. According to columnist Timothy Carney, “Clinton is a corporatist,” while “Warren is a populist.” In order to head off Warren’s challenge, Clinton will have to say populist things.

In the same speech, Clinton derided the economic policies of Ronald Reagan, which were the main reason for the economic boom and prosperity enjoyed during her husband’s tenure. “Trickle-down economics,” she sneered, “failed rather spectacularly.”

The truth is just the opposite. Reagan successfully reversed Jimmy Carter’s economic malaise. Reagan wanted government to get out of the way so companies and individuals could prosper. To do that, he implemented massive tax reductions, deregulation and anti-inflation monetary policies, which brought inflation down to 3.2% by 1983 and unleashed a historic period of economic growth.

Instead of learning from the economic success during the Reagan years, however, Clinton advocates the opposite. If she wins the Democrat nomination and, heaven forbid, is elected president, we can expect a continuance of Obama’s failed economic policy.

More HERE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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IRS Confiscating Bank Accounts of Small Business Owners Without Evidence of a Crime

The Internal Revenue Service, still embroiled in controversy over the inappropriate targeting of conservative groups under the leadership of Lois Lerner, is abusing agency rules that allow for the confiscation of bank accounts without evidence of a crime, taking the concept of "guilty until proven innocent" to a whole new extreme by failing to distinguish lawful small business owners from money launderers and illegal drug operations.

According to a report published in the New York Times, the IRS has been confiscating private funds belonging to small business owners based on "suspicions," not evidence of a crime.

For almost 40 years, Carole Hinders has dished out Mexican specialties at her modest cash-only restaurant. For just as long, she deposited the earnings at a small bank branch a block away — until last year, when two tax agents knocked on her door and informed her that they had seized her checking account, almost $33,000.

The Internal Revenue Service agents did not accuse Ms. Hinders of money laundering or cheating on her taxes — in fact, she has not been charged with any crime. Instead, the money was seized solely because she had deposited less than $10,000 at a time, which they viewed as an attempt to avoid triggering a required government report.

“How can this happen?” Ms. Hinders said in a recent interview. “Who takes your money before they prove that you’ve done anything wrong with it?”

The federal government does.

Using a law designed to catch drug traffickers, racketeers and terrorists by tracking their cash, the government has gone after run-of-the-mill business owners and wage earners without so much as an allegation that they have committed serious crimes. The government can take the money without ever filing a criminal complaint, and the owners are left to prove they are innocent.

Many give up. The majority of people targeted by the IRS unfairly give up, which is exactly why this abuse of power and government overreach is unacceptable. It is impossible to fight back against the most powerful agency that exists within the federal government. With one confiscation, the IRS destroys the lives of productive, law abiding, middle-class American citizens. The worst part? The IRS has made this a habit. More on this from Jazz Shaw:

According to their records, Ms. Hinders has still yet to be charged with any crime, but has gone into debt while attempting to get the money returned. And she’s not the only one they turned up. The IRS used this tactic 639 in 2012 alone, with only 20% of those cases ever being prosecuted.

Another interesting item of note show up here. When such funds are seized, law enforcement agencies get to keep a share of whatever is forfeited. If that doesn’t set off some red flags for you, nothing will.

Republican Senator Ted Cruz has repeatedly called for the elimination of the IRS. The revelations and stories of IRS abuse in this manner are just the latest examples of why he is absolutely correct.

SOURCE

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A logic gap on the 'gender gap' in politics

by Jeff Jacoby

ARE YOU voting for Charlie Baker for governor, sweetheart? He's been trying hard to win your support, in part through the familiar technique of highlighting those who support him already. For if there's one thing the Republican gubernatorial candidate wants you to know, it's that plenty of women do indeed support him.

There is a "Women for Charlie" Facebook page and a "Women for Charlie" photo gallery. There was a "Women for Charlie" reception in West Roxbury last night, and a "Women for Charlie" fundraiser in the South End last month. "Women for Charlie" phone banks organize call centers every Wednesday night. There was even a recent drawing for "a basket of W4C goodies," complete with "Women for Charlie" T-shirts and earrings. Needless to say, there is a "Women for Charlie" link atop every page of the Baker campaign website.

All of which makes good sense — assuming you believe that biology is political destiny, and that a candidate who loses the women's vote loses the election.

But biology isn't destiny, and it's patronizing or cynical to act as if it were. Candidates win elections all the time without winning a majority of women. Even Republican candidates. Even in Massachusetts.

For decades, pundits and politicos have harped on the "gender gap" in American politics, which is widely understood to mean that Republicans are crippled on Election Day by their lack of appeal to women. It is true enough that women (especially unmarried women) are more likely to vote for Democrats. But it's also true that men are more likely to vote for Republicans — a counter-gap that has spelled defeat for any number of Democratic hopefuls. At the presidential level, Democratic candidates have attracted more women's votes than their GOP opponents in each election since 1980, yet Republicans have won the White House in five of those nine races

The gender gap hasn't been fatal to GOP hopes at the state level, either.

"In every governor's race of the 1990s, the male vote for the Republican candidate exceeded the female vote for the Democratic candidate, thus producing a net GOP advantage," wrote Elaine Kamarck, a former senior staffer in the Clinton White House, in a 2003 CommonWealth magazine analysis of Massachusetts politics. A Boston Globe story in September on how Baker and Martha Coakley are waging a "war for women's votes this fall" was accompanied by a bar graph that usefully broke down the vote by candidate and gender in six hard-fought marquee Massachusetts races since 1998. In four of those statewide races, the candidate who won more men's votes won the election — and three of the four were Republicans. Only twice did a Democrat win without a majority of male voters: when Governor Deval Patrick turned back Baker's challenge in 2010, and when Elizabeth Warren successfully ousted Senator Scott Brown in 2012.

So why the obsessive focus on the GOP's need to do better among women? If the goal is to win elections, Republicans would presumably do just as well to play to their strength, concentrating on boosting their share of men's votes even higher. Alternatively, Democrats should be fretting about their man problem at least as much as the other team keeps agonizing over its woman problem. Where is the "Men for Martha" Facebook page? Why isn't the attorney general grabbing every opportunity to explain why a Coakley administration will be a boon for Massachusetts men?

Barbara Anderson, the intrepid director of Citizens for Limited Taxation and a battle-scarred veteran of Massachusetts politics going back to the fight for Proposition 2½, strongly backs Baker for governor. But she refused to attend a recent "Women for Charlie" event, she writes in the Salem News, "because I don't do events that begin 'Women for' anyone." Anderson doesn't want politicians to see her first and foremost as a member of her sex, or to be pandered to on that account. Why would anyone? She and Coakley agree on nothing and have little in common "other than the reproductive system," Anderson writes. "So why would political consultants assume other women would support either one of us as if we were interchangeable?"

Exactly right. The gender gap is real, and it's likely to be a feature of American politics for years to come. It is one of many discrepancies that make the sexes interesting, maddening, or perplexing to each other. But it is only a tendency, not even a rule of thumb. Plenty of women vote Republican; plenty of men vote Democratic. There are far stronger influences on voting choices than the presence or absence of a Y chromosome — political ideology, religion, and marital status, to name just three. Your gender is a silly reason to vote for any candidate. It's an even worse reason for any candidate to ask for your vote.

SOURCE

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The Real Story on How Much Obamacare Increased Coverage

We now have the Medicaid and private-market health insurance enrollment data for the second quarter of 2014 needed to complete the picture of how Obamacare’s rollout affected coverage.

What we’ve learned is that the Obamacare gains in coverage were largely a result of the Medicaid expansion and that most of the gain in private coverage through the government exchanges was offset by a decline in employer-based coverage. In other words, it is likely that most of the people who got coverage through the exchanges were already insured.

The second quarter data captures enrollments that occurred during the last two months of the open enrollment period, or which were otherwise delayed due to the numerous problems experienced by the exchanges, and so did not take effect until after the end of the first quarter.

Our analysis of the data is reported in more detail in our latest paper, but our key findings are that in the first half of 2014:

Enrollment in individual-market plans (both on and off the exchanges) increased by 6,254,564 individuals.

Enrollment in private employer-sponsored group plans declined by 3,788,978 individuals.

In the states implementing the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, enrollment in Medicaid grew by 5,716,977 individuals.

In the states not implementing the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, enrollment in Medicaid grew by 355,674 individuals.

Applying a little arithmetic to those four key data points yields the following observations:

The drop in employment-based coverage offset 61 percent of the gains in individual-market coverage, for a net increase in private-sector coverage of 2,465,586 individuals.

Total Medicaid enrollment increased by 6,072,651 individuals, with 94 percent of that growth occurring in the states that adopted the Obamacare Medicaid expansion.

The total, net increase in health insurance coverage (private-market and Medicaid combined) during the first half of 2014 was 8,538,237 individuals, but 71 percent of that coverage gain was attributable to Obamacare expanding Medicaid to able-bodied, working-age adults

When it comes to covering the uninsured, Obamacare so far is mainly a simple expansion of Medicaid.

Thus, while most of the attention this year focused on the new health insurance exchanges, the data indicate that a significant share of exchange enrollments were likely the result of a substitution effect—meaning that most of those who enrolled in new coverage through the exchanges already had coverage through an individual-market or employer-group plan.

Given that increased enrollment in Medicaid accounted for 71 percent of the net growth in health insurance coverage during the first half of 2014, the inescapable conclusion is that, at least when it comes to covering the uninsured, Obamacare so far is mainly a simple expansion of Medicaid.

The 2015 exchange open enrollment period is scheduled to start less than a month from now (on Nov. 15), while enrollment in state Medicaid programs occurs year round. When the resulting enrollment data for the next phase of Obamacare become available it will be interesting to learn:

The share of 2015 exchange enrollments that represent new applicants, as opposed to reenrollments by individuals who obtained exchange coverage in 2014;

Whether the number of Americans with individual market coverage continues to grow, and whether the number of those with private employer-group coverage continues to decline;

and If expanding Medicaid to able-bodied, working-age adults continues to be the principal source of coverage growth under Obamacare.

SOURCE

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Tesla blocked by bipartisan cronies in Michigan

Tesla Motors, the American car maker created in 2003 by “engineers who set out to prove that electric vehicles could be awesome,” has been banned from opening stores in Michigan to advertise and sell its vehicles.

The “anti-Tesla” bill prevents auto makers like Tesla, who set up shop exclusively through regional stores and sell directly to the customer, from cutting out the middle man when competing with established car companies selling through the traditional franchised dealerships.

The new law, pushed unsurprisingly by General Motors and car dealer associations, was signed by into law by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder after passing the state legislature with a single dissenting vote.

This important, anticompetitive law proves exactly why Michigan automobile innovation is dying at the hand of bipartisan cronies unwilling to allow auto makers adapt to a new business environments.

Arguments in support of the law are silly when put to the test of common sense. Proponents of the ban most often say that car dealerships are best for the consumer because the inherent competitive nature of inter-dealership relationships and that a company selling direct would have too much negotiating leverage over buyers.

So imagine a company (say, for instance, a major tech company named after a popular fruit) that designs and sells a high-end product that never goes on sale while competing with products sold primarily through third-party retailers. Yet, somehow, the same proponents of anti-Tesla laws across the country haven’t signed on to legislation banning Apple from doing the exact same thing by selling Apple products and merchandise through the Apple Store — because it would be ridiculous government interference.

Yet, for some indiscernible reason, automobiles are deemed a transcendent product that can only be sold by big government-approved, traditional means of franchised dealerships.

“Tesla is selling a new product with a new technology,” the company said of the new law in a statement. “The evidence is overwhelming that a traditional dealer-based approach does not work for electric cars.”

Further, Democrats who support this bill betray the global warming alarmism religiously adhered to by members of their party. Kill off the coal industry? No problem. Allow fully electric cars to be sold directly to drivers so that an electric car company can take market share from the gas-guzzling competition? No way!

Republican supporters betray the limited government, free market principles they claim to support. The automobile industry may be on the cusp of dramatic change, and they of all parties should understand the damaging nature of government interference for special interests. But for those concerned first and foremost with special interests, donor dollars from GM will flow far deeper than any Tesla contributions for Michigan state legislators.

The bottom line is that government should have no business telling companies like Tesla, who are innovating and risking tens of billions of dollars in the auto market, how they should conduct their business or sales strategies.

Consumers benefit far more, especially in the long term, when industries explore diverse methods of attracting the consumer’s dollar. Special interests (GM, Michigan dealership associations) will spend millions to maintain the status quo, telling consumers that their vice grip on the market is what’s best all the way to the bank. It’s up to the people’s representatives to know better.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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