SOME N.Z. STUPIDITY
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon is famous for commenting that the constant flow of emigration from New Zealand to Australia "raises the IQ of both countries" -- implying that the Kiwis who emigrate are stupid but Australians are even stupider. That comment is only one example of a generally derogatory view of Australians almost universally held in New Zealand: Much like the attitude of Canadians towards the USA --- and for similar reasons: resentment of a more affluent and capable big brother.
I was therefore rather amused by something that happened recently. A few months ago I bought some shares in one of the icons of New Zealand industry -- Fisher & Paykel, best known for making high-tech washing machies. Yesterday I received a dividend cheque from them -- to my amazement. These days dividends are normally deposited directly into a shareholder's bank A/c. Shortly after you buy into a company, they send you a form asking for your bank particulars and thereafter the money just appears on your statement. Fisher & Paykel sent me no such form, however, so I had to make a special trip to the bank to deposit their pesky cheque -- which I regard as a prehistoric thing to have to do. But it does not end there. I resolved to write to them and ask them to deposit my dividends directly in the future. But nowhere on the documentation that came with the cheque was there any address that I could write to! So I looked up their Annual Report, a big glossy production with lots of colour photographs, graphs, auditor reports and all the usual nonsense that you expect of a company annual report. But there was no address anywhere there either! Which is probably illegal, I would think. It was only by digging out the envelope that the report came in that I found a return address on the back of that. But that is not the end of the story either! Included with my cheque was a cheque to someone else with their dividend! Which I of course promptly sent on to the correct recipient. If that is how bright a New Zealand high-flyer is, it does not say much for the average Kiwi.
I guess NZ Pundit will never forgive me for saying that.
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Thursday, December 18, 2003
THE SKEPTICS HAVE SOLD OUT
It is sad to see a voice of reason fall silent but exactly that seems to have happened over at "The Skeptical Inquirer". They quite rightly say that limitless skepticism leads nowhere. To be precise it leads to solipsism -- doubting everything but your own existence -- but the means they propose to limit skepticism are astounding. They seem to want to decide scientific truth not on the facts or on the balance of the probabilities but by majority vote! If you had taken a majority vote among the learned men of Galileo’s day you would have "discovered" that the sun rotated around the earth. And you would be WRONG! The example they give is instructive. They say that because 2500 "scientists" signed a document saying that mankind is causing global warming therefore it must be true. No weighting to the degree of expertise of the "scientists" involved is given (I cannot imagine 2500 "experts" in any scientific field -- which makes the whole thing reek of a propaganda exercise) nor is any account taken of how many of them stand to lose their research grants if the theory is disproven. But above all, no weighting is given to the many discordant FACTS -- such as evidence that global warming is occurring on Mars too. Did mankind cause THAT? Or did solar variability do it? I think we will have to rename them "The Credulous Inquirer".
It is sad to see a voice of reason fall silent but exactly that seems to have happened over at "The Skeptical Inquirer". They quite rightly say that limitless skepticism leads nowhere. To be precise it leads to solipsism -- doubting everything but your own existence -- but the means they propose to limit skepticism are astounding. They seem to want to decide scientific truth not on the facts or on the balance of the probabilities but by majority vote! If you had taken a majority vote among the learned men of Galileo’s day you would have "discovered" that the sun rotated around the earth. And you would be WRONG! The example they give is instructive. They say that because 2500 "scientists" signed a document saying that mankind is causing global warming therefore it must be true. No weighting to the degree of expertise of the "scientists" involved is given (I cannot imagine 2500 "experts" in any scientific field -- which makes the whole thing reek of a propaganda exercise) nor is any account taken of how many of them stand to lose their research grants if the theory is disproven. But above all, no weighting is given to the many discordant FACTS -- such as evidence that global warming is occurring on Mars too. Did mankind cause THAT? Or did solar variability do it? I think we will have to rename them "The Credulous Inquirer".
ELSEWHERE
Ludicrous an idea though it is, Greenies have bullied governments into spending billions on windmills as an "alternative" source of electricity, but it seems -- sorry, Mr and Mrs Taxpayer -- that windmills too are now bad: "Since the phalanx of giant windmills began churning in the air above the Altamont Pass east of San Francisco Bay, an estimated 22,000 birds have died, including hundreds of golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, kestrels and other raptors, after flying into the spinning blades of the wind turbines". When will governments learn that it is impossible to please a Greenie?
Jeff Jacoby has a good post on how charitable donations so often don't go towards those whom they are supposed to help. I used to donate to World Vision until I discovered that they were anti-Israel. Ditto for the Red Cross. There's no simple solution. Even in India a lot of the street beggars are actually reasonably well-off by Indian standards. Treat people generously in your private life has always been my main idea of how to be kind.
Note the new address for Aaron’s Rantblog. His old address has gone to that great blogspot in the sky where blogspot sites do sometimes go. Warning: Aaron puts up lots of good graphics so his site is slow-loading unless you have a high-speed connection. Aaron’s current project is to get Hillary Clinton rather than George Bush as the No. 1 link returned by Google in response to the search-term “Miserable Failure�. A fun project, it seems to me. He has got an amusing photo of her up on his “failure� site.
Dave Huber has some more examples of the compulsive Leftism of the American teacher's union -- of which he is a regretful member.
Further to my suggestion on 15th that Saddam looked like Karl Marx, Valete Fratres has put up pictures of the two of them side by side. Scroll down to his post of 15th. The resemblance sure is there.
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual select postings.
The Wicked one says that the old Soviet Union lives on -- in the U.S. bureaucracy. It is suing someone who transports elderly people too cheaply!
My latest academic upload (details here or here) is about why Scotland is a poor country when by all indicators it should be a rich one. Hint: They're knee-jerk socialists there. The enterprising Scots emigrated long ago.
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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Ludicrous an idea though it is, Greenies have bullied governments into spending billions on windmills as an "alternative" source of electricity, but it seems -- sorry, Mr and Mrs Taxpayer -- that windmills too are now bad: "Since the phalanx of giant windmills began churning in the air above the Altamont Pass east of San Francisco Bay, an estimated 22,000 birds have died, including hundreds of golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, kestrels and other raptors, after flying into the spinning blades of the wind turbines". When will governments learn that it is impossible to please a Greenie?
Jeff Jacoby has a good post on how charitable donations so often don't go towards those whom they are supposed to help. I used to donate to World Vision until I discovered that they were anti-Israel. Ditto for the Red Cross. There's no simple solution. Even in India a lot of the street beggars are actually reasonably well-off by Indian standards. Treat people generously in your private life has always been my main idea of how to be kind.
Note the new address for Aaron’s Rantblog. His old address has gone to that great blogspot in the sky where blogspot sites do sometimes go. Warning: Aaron puts up lots of good graphics so his site is slow-loading unless you have a high-speed connection. Aaron’s current project is to get Hillary Clinton rather than George Bush as the No. 1 link returned by Google in response to the search-term “Miserable Failure�. A fun project, it seems to me. He has got an amusing photo of her up on his “failure� site.
Dave Huber has some more examples of the compulsive Leftism of the American teacher's union -- of which he is a regretful member.
Further to my suggestion on 15th that Saddam looked like Karl Marx, Valete Fratres has put up pictures of the two of them side by side. Scroll down to his post of 15th. The resemblance sure is there.
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual select postings.
The Wicked one says that the old Soviet Union lives on -- in the U.S. bureaucracy. It is suing someone who transports elderly people too cheaply!
My latest academic upload (details here or here) is about why Scotland is a poor country when by all indicators it should be a rich one. Hint: They're knee-jerk socialists there. The enterprising Scots emigrated long ago.
********************************
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
EDUCATION -- LEFTIST AND OTHERWISE
A reader notes that alternatives to the degraded “education” offered by the universities are emerging. There is a similar private J-School here in Brisbane too.:
“Keith Windschuttle and his wife Elizabeth run Macleay College a private college here in Sydney that teaches journalism, editing and PR. This college runs out of inner city locations so is easy for adult part time students to attend. Macleay students are highly regarded and tend to do better in the job market than their government trained competitors. And the idea of CBD based class rooms is something the government run colleges have never thought of. Anyone who has tried to work full time and study part time knows the pain extra commuting to and from college, over and above work commuting, causes. Windschuttle says journalism isn't an academic profession and should be seen simply as an apprenticeship, craft or trade. The main thing is accurate reporting, quality notes, documented sources and the routine follow up of other opinions. These "basics" are the things that have suffered as media sociology, political correctness and cultural relativism have replaced basic skills among academic trained journalists. The academic teachers of journalists must consider these basics beneath them. The recent Jason Blair affair and the BBC's failure to take notes in the David Kelley affair may suggest this. My guess is that a lot of the hostility Windschuttle has received has little to do with his controversial work on Australian frontier history and may represent a backlash from 'the profession'.”
Being a conservative in academe could be a lonely experience. Being born with the gift of self-confidence, I was never bothered a bit by it but I guess it would bother most. PID points out that in Australia’s “history wars” it is basically one man on the conservative side (Windschuttle) versus the rest. That sure is a lonely eminence! But it only takes one person to show that the Emperor has no clothes, of course. And for all their numbers, the lying Leftist historians still have no answer to Windschuttle. They have been forced into admissions that ought to have seen them sacked, in fact.
Now here is a sentence that any Leftist reading this blog will enjoy quoting out of context: I have recently been browsing through my copy of Mein Kampf and noted this comment about the Germany of Hitler’s time from the translator (Ralph Manheim): “Germany was a land of high general culture, with the largest reading public of any country in the world. In the lower middle class, there was a tremendous educational urge. People who in other countries would read light novels and popular magazines devoured works on art, science, history, and above all philosophy. Certain philosophical phrases became journalistic cliches. Hitler is forever speaking of ‘concepts', of things ‘as such' (an sich). Moreover, he is constantly at pains to show that he, too, is cultured”. So being intellectual and cultured leads where? Like Hitler, the intellectuals of today are mostly socialists too. Most intellectuals think they know it all and want to impose that on others. It is no coincidence that the most intellectual country in the world also became one of the most vicious. And Bolshevik Russia was run by bourgeois intellectuals too.
My goodness! The Tugboat has ventured into giving lessons about basic moral philosophy. He tries to explain what words like "ought" and "good" mean. He seems to wander about a lot, though. I think everybody now agrees that such terms function to commend but where we go from there is contentious. I myself would add that such statements can convey empirical claims but see nothing further that they could conceivably do or be -- though my deontologist friend and fellow-conservative Keith Burgess-Jackson thinks there is yet more to be found in such statements. I point out how my view is distinct from Leftist moral relativism here.
I have just discovered a new book on authoritarianism -- that favourite whipping-boy of Leftist psychologists. Only this time it is not conservatives under attack. The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad, says that, behind the humanistic and permissive mask, gurus and other "alternative" cult figures and “teachers” are all really a bunch of authoritarians who subtly do their best to control others. I agree!
A reader notes that alternatives to the degraded “education” offered by the universities are emerging. There is a similar private J-School here in Brisbane too.:
“Keith Windschuttle and his wife Elizabeth run Macleay College a private college here in Sydney that teaches journalism, editing and PR. This college runs out of inner city locations so is easy for adult part time students to attend. Macleay students are highly regarded and tend to do better in the job market than their government trained competitors. And the idea of CBD based class rooms is something the government run colleges have never thought of. Anyone who has tried to work full time and study part time knows the pain extra commuting to and from college, over and above work commuting, causes. Windschuttle says journalism isn't an academic profession and should be seen simply as an apprenticeship, craft or trade. The main thing is accurate reporting, quality notes, documented sources and the routine follow up of other opinions. These "basics" are the things that have suffered as media sociology, political correctness and cultural relativism have replaced basic skills among academic trained journalists. The academic teachers of journalists must consider these basics beneath them. The recent Jason Blair affair and the BBC's failure to take notes in the David Kelley affair may suggest this. My guess is that a lot of the hostility Windschuttle has received has little to do with his controversial work on Australian frontier history and may represent a backlash from 'the profession'.”
Being a conservative in academe could be a lonely experience. Being born with the gift of self-confidence, I was never bothered a bit by it but I guess it would bother most. PID points out that in Australia’s “history wars” it is basically one man on the conservative side (Windschuttle) versus the rest. That sure is a lonely eminence! But it only takes one person to show that the Emperor has no clothes, of course. And for all their numbers, the lying Leftist historians still have no answer to Windschuttle. They have been forced into admissions that ought to have seen them sacked, in fact.
Now here is a sentence that any Leftist reading this blog will enjoy quoting out of context: I have recently been browsing through my copy of Mein Kampf and noted this comment about the Germany of Hitler’s time from the translator (Ralph Manheim): “Germany was a land of high general culture, with the largest reading public of any country in the world. In the lower middle class, there was a tremendous educational urge. People who in other countries would read light novels and popular magazines devoured works on art, science, history, and above all philosophy. Certain philosophical phrases became journalistic cliches. Hitler is forever speaking of ‘concepts', of things ‘as such' (an sich). Moreover, he is constantly at pains to show that he, too, is cultured”. So being intellectual and cultured leads where? Like Hitler, the intellectuals of today are mostly socialists too. Most intellectuals think they know it all and want to impose that on others. It is no coincidence that the most intellectual country in the world also became one of the most vicious. And Bolshevik Russia was run by bourgeois intellectuals too.
My goodness! The Tugboat has ventured into giving lessons about basic moral philosophy. He tries to explain what words like "ought" and "good" mean. He seems to wander about a lot, though. I think everybody now agrees that such terms function to commend but where we go from there is contentious. I myself would add that such statements can convey empirical claims but see nothing further that they could conceivably do or be -- though my deontologist friend and fellow-conservative Keith Burgess-Jackson thinks there is yet more to be found in such statements. I point out how my view is distinct from Leftist moral relativism here.
I have just discovered a new book on authoritarianism -- that favourite whipping-boy of Leftist psychologists. Only this time it is not conservatives under attack. The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad, says that, behind the humanistic and permissive mask, gurus and other "alternative" cult figures and “teachers” are all really a bunch of authoritarians who subtly do their best to control others. I agree!
ELSEWHERE
I guess even the Devil would be a good guy if he was anti-American. “A senior Vatican official and critic of the war in Iraq said today that he felt compassion for Saddam Hussein, and he reproached the United States for releasing video footage showing the former Iraqi leader handled "like a cow." “
The media is reporting (shock! horror!) that segregationist Strom Thurmond had a child to a black woman. If he is or was thus a hypocrite so what? How many "multiculturalists" prefer to live in all-white neighbourhoods? How many egalitarians look out for No.1? And, come to think of it, how many Leftist whites have any sort of relationship with blacks of the opposite sex? Doesn’t it show that Strom liked blacks better than they do? But I guess I am “naive”.
An excellent demolition of Noam Chomsky and the Far Left generally in The Guardian. It makes the point that anti-Americanism is all that the Left now have to say. They stand for nothing else. Pathetic.
Jay Bryant has a good article on how the Democrats fight democracy tooth and nail.
My latest academic upload (details here or here) is from a 1986 book about Eysenck in which both Chris Brand and I had chapters -- with somewhat opposing viewpoints. The upload is of a dialogue we had about our differing views of Eysenck’s theories. Curiously, Eysenck and Chris are on the side of the libertarian theory that politics are two-dimensional and I am on the side favoured by the Left -- that politics consists only of a single Left-Right dimension. I just go where the survey evidence indicates, however -- as I also explain here.
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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
I guess even the Devil would be a good guy if he was anti-American. “A senior Vatican official and critic of the war in Iraq said today that he felt compassion for Saddam Hussein, and he reproached the United States for releasing video footage showing the former Iraqi leader handled "like a cow." “
The media is reporting (shock! horror!) that segregationist Strom Thurmond had a child to a black woman. If he is or was thus a hypocrite so what? How many "multiculturalists" prefer to live in all-white neighbourhoods? How many egalitarians look out for No.1? And, come to think of it, how many Leftist whites have any sort of relationship with blacks of the opposite sex? Doesn’t it show that Strom liked blacks better than they do? But I guess I am “naive”.
An excellent demolition of Noam Chomsky and the Far Left generally in The Guardian. It makes the point that anti-Americanism is all that the Left now have to say. They stand for nothing else. Pathetic.
Jay Bryant has a good article on how the Democrats fight democracy tooth and nail.
My latest academic upload (details here or here) is from a 1986 book about Eysenck in which both Chris Brand and I had chapters -- with somewhat opposing viewpoints. The upload is of a dialogue we had about our differing views of Eysenck’s theories. Curiously, Eysenck and Chris are on the side of the libertarian theory that politics are two-dimensional and I am on the side favoured by the Left -- that politics consists only of a single Left-Right dimension. I just go where the survey evidence indicates, however -- as I also explain here.
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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
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Tuesday, December 16, 2003
I think this is the best Leftist comment on the capture of Saddam so far: “"I think it is shameful that the ACLU has not commented on the obvious mistreatment Hussein has suffered at the hands of the American military." Leftists that bad are obviously skipping their medication.
BestOfMe is a variation on the “Carnival of the Vanities” theme. It revives good older posts rather than recent ones. Worth a look.
BestOfMe is a variation on the “Carnival of the Vanities” theme. It revives good older posts rather than recent ones. Worth a look.
ANTI-ISRAEL BIAS AT AUSTRALIA'S PUBLIC BROADCASTER
An email from a reader:
I was very incensed to see the extended coverage given on 'Everybody's ABC' to a family of Palestinian morons.
This young couple are planning to have eight children and want at least 4 to be suicide bombers. They were presented as if this was their only option for a better future and nary a word about the payments they will receive for each child slaughtered this way. Where is the human rights outcry against this sort of abuse of children?
Not a word was mentioned of the billions given to the PLO and associates and the money spent by their leaders on their own lifestyles that should have gone to the Palestian people to ease their suffering
The reporter went on at great length with regard to the 'INCURSION' of the IDF and the destruction of Palestinian homes where 'THEY' claimed 3 terrorists were hiding. Footage was extensively focused on the damage. Then, as almost an afterthought, it was mentioned that there had been an attack on Jews in Tel Aviv. Nothing else -- no details. I am so tired of "Our" ABC's biased coverage -- not once have I seen such coverage of Jewish/Israeli families and homes when their women, children and soldiers are butchered unless it is to record the delight to the deranged Palestinan sympathizer.
It is outrageous that we are still subjected to such bias. As for the 'Wall' being built, what in God's name would we do if our lives were under constant terror attack?”
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An email from a reader:
I was very incensed to see the extended coverage given on 'Everybody's ABC' to a family of Palestinian morons.
This young couple are planning to have eight children and want at least 4 to be suicide bombers. They were presented as if this was their only option for a better future and nary a word about the payments they will receive for each child slaughtered this way. Where is the human rights outcry against this sort of abuse of children?
Not a word was mentioned of the billions given to the PLO and associates and the money spent by their leaders on their own lifestyles that should have gone to the Palestian people to ease their suffering
The reporter went on at great length with regard to the 'INCURSION' of the IDF and the destruction of Palestinian homes where 'THEY' claimed 3 terrorists were hiding. Footage was extensively focused on the damage. Then, as almost an afterthought, it was mentioned that there had been an attack on Jews in Tel Aviv. Nothing else -- no details. I am so tired of "Our" ABC's biased coverage -- not once have I seen such coverage of Jewish/Israeli families and homes when their women, children and soldiers are butchered unless it is to record the delight to the deranged Palestinan sympathizer.
It is outrageous that we are still subjected to such bias. As for the 'Wall' being built, what in God's name would we do if our lives were under constant terror attack?”
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ELSEWHERE
There is a lot to be said about what follows from the capture of Saddam and lots of people are saying it so I will forbear from adding to the hubbub but I liked Tom Barrett’s comments at Conservative Truth. I have got to say that I am pleased at what a good kick in the guts it is for GWB’s critics who were constantly harping on about his “inability” to find Saddam.
I have just received an interesting comment from one of my Portuguese readers: “Today, I read the post about your ranking on “Blogrunner”. You wrote: "I have often noted that things I post seem to have been heard even though nobody has linked back to me over them too." I think the blog's name is a reason for nobody linking back to you. People don't quote you because they try to avoid conflict - something, it seems, that you're not afraid of. They want to present ideas that deconstruct leftist views without it appearing to be a personal attack (IMHO, "dissect" is a too strong word...). Have you ever considered changing the name of your blog to "John Ray"?” I replied: “Yes. I am sure you are correct in what you say. But the name also attracts attention so that has first priority. I am more concerned to get the ideas out than to attract personal fame -- unlike Leftists!”
I wondered yesterday why there are so many good Chinese pianists and the good old blogosphere has instantly produced a possible answer. Sam Ward drew my attention to page 4 of this article: “Diana Deutsch, an expert in music cognition, discovered that, as children, we all may have had Mozart's ear for identifying notes but then lost it -- unless we were lucky enough to grow up speaking tonal languages such as Mandarin, Cantonese, or Vietnamese. It turns out that speakers of these languages use absolute pitch every day, but in conversation, rather than in the concert hall." My 16 year old son appears to have perfect pitch and he was taught piano from age 4 so that fits in too.
This article is one of those accursed PDF files but if you have a high-speed connection it may be worth reading. It shows how the labyrinthine regulations of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are driving companies out of the US vaccine business and creating shortages and "flu crises". We never "run out" of hamburgers or Coke because these "less important" industries are less regulated.
Arlene Peck has a post about the people the mainstream media ignore -- the maimed Israeli victims of Arab terror.
Mangled Thoughts has a fun excerpt from a column by Max Boot about ”unilateralism” and Europe. And Tim Blair has a good comment from Australia’s foreign minister about it. Amazing how sins come and go. The sin of unilateralism seems to have been invented by the Left in the last 12 months.
But the good old sin of “gluttony” is making a comeback too -- only this time it’s not your fault but somebody else’s. It’s called the “obesity epidemic” and just about all the people who feed us are under attack over it. There are all sorts of things the do-gooders want done about it -- with warning labels stuck on Big Macs being only the opening salvo. What none of the do-gooders seem to realize is that the good old socialist paradise of Sweden has been doing all that nonsense for years -- with zero effect. Swedes are as fat as anyone else. Even socialists can’t keep fatties away from their food.
A lot of the sites I link to these days hit you with popup advertisements as soon as you log onto them -- which is pretty pesky. Downloading the Google toolbar is very good at stopping them, though. You will find a link enabling you to do so at the bottom of any search you do on Google. Once you have installed it, the popups just stop!
The Wicked one has a warning about identity theft that could save you a lot of trouble if you travel at all.
Interested Participant has some more amusing stuff about the political ideas of the nutty Leftist linguist, George Lakoff.
The latest upload of a chapter from my book looks at ways of combatting union thuggery. Details here or in chapter 17 here. Since I wrote it, however, the problem has subsided a lot. The defeat of the air-traffic controllers under Ronald Reagan, the defeat of the coal miners under Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and the defeat of the wharfies (dockers, longshoremen) under Australia’s John Howard seem to have mostly knocked the stuffing out of union militancy in the Anglosphere.
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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
There is a lot to be said about what follows from the capture of Saddam and lots of people are saying it so I will forbear from adding to the hubbub but I liked Tom Barrett’s comments at Conservative Truth. I have got to say that I am pleased at what a good kick in the guts it is for GWB’s critics who were constantly harping on about his “inability” to find Saddam.
I have just received an interesting comment from one of my Portuguese readers: “Today, I read the post about your ranking on “Blogrunner”. You wrote: "I have often noted that things I post seem to have been heard even though nobody has linked back to me over them too." I think the blog's name is a reason for nobody linking back to you. People don't quote you because they try to avoid conflict - something, it seems, that you're not afraid of. They want to present ideas that deconstruct leftist views without it appearing to be a personal attack (IMHO, "dissect" is a too strong word...). Have you ever considered changing the name of your blog to "John Ray"?” I replied: “Yes. I am sure you are correct in what you say. But the name also attracts attention so that has first priority. I am more concerned to get the ideas out than to attract personal fame -- unlike Leftists!”
I wondered yesterday why there are so many good Chinese pianists and the good old blogosphere has instantly produced a possible answer. Sam Ward drew my attention to page 4 of this article: “Diana Deutsch, an expert in music cognition, discovered that, as children, we all may have had Mozart's ear for identifying notes but then lost it -- unless we were lucky enough to grow up speaking tonal languages such as Mandarin, Cantonese, or Vietnamese. It turns out that speakers of these languages use absolute pitch every day, but in conversation, rather than in the concert hall." My 16 year old son appears to have perfect pitch and he was taught piano from age 4 so that fits in too.
This article is one of those accursed PDF files but if you have a high-speed connection it may be worth reading. It shows how the labyrinthine regulations of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are driving companies out of the US vaccine business and creating shortages and "flu crises". We never "run out" of hamburgers or Coke because these "less important" industries are less regulated.
Arlene Peck has a post about the people the mainstream media ignore -- the maimed Israeli victims of Arab terror.
Mangled Thoughts has a fun excerpt from a column by Max Boot about ”unilateralism” and Europe. And Tim Blair has a good comment from Australia’s foreign minister about it. Amazing how sins come and go. The sin of unilateralism seems to have been invented by the Left in the last 12 months.
But the good old sin of “gluttony” is making a comeback too -- only this time it’s not your fault but somebody else’s. It’s called the “obesity epidemic” and just about all the people who feed us are under attack over it. There are all sorts of things the do-gooders want done about it -- with warning labels stuck on Big Macs being only the opening salvo. What none of the do-gooders seem to realize is that the good old socialist paradise of Sweden has been doing all that nonsense for years -- with zero effect. Swedes are as fat as anyone else. Even socialists can’t keep fatties away from their food.
A lot of the sites I link to these days hit you with popup advertisements as soon as you log onto them -- which is pretty pesky. Downloading the Google toolbar is very good at stopping them, though. You will find a link enabling you to do so at the bottom of any search you do on Google. Once you have installed it, the popups just stop!
The Wicked one has a warning about identity theft that could save you a lot of trouble if you travel at all.
Interested Participant has some more amusing stuff about the political ideas of the nutty Leftist linguist, George Lakoff.
The latest upload of a chapter from my book looks at ways of combatting union thuggery. Details here or in chapter 17 here. Since I wrote it, however, the problem has subsided a lot. The defeat of the air-traffic controllers under Ronald Reagan, the defeat of the coal miners under Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and the defeat of the wharfies (dockers, longshoremen) under Australia’s John Howard seem to have mostly knocked the stuffing out of union militancy in the Anglosphere.
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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Monday, December 15, 2003
SADDAM CAPTURED!
I guess I am not the first to notice it but the picture of Saddam after his capture (.e.g. here) looks an awful lot like the usual pictures of Karl Marx! Do socialist icons even LOOK alike? Opinion Journal has a roundup of Leftist reaction and Hippercritical has a roundup of the reaction from antiwar bloggers. In summary, some pretended joy and some very unhappy people. It's a great victory for the people of Iraq and those who liberated them, though. But it was a “black day” among our dear delightful Palestinians, of course.
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I guess I am not the first to notice it but the picture of Saddam after his capture (.e.g. here) looks an awful lot like the usual pictures of Karl Marx! Do socialist icons even LOOK alike? Opinion Journal has a roundup of Leftist reaction and Hippercritical has a roundup of the reaction from antiwar bloggers. In summary, some pretended joy and some very unhappy people. It's a great victory for the people of Iraq and those who liberated them, though. But it was a “black day” among our dear delightful Palestinians, of course.
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ISLAMIC IMMIGRANTS
This story from someone with first-hand knowledge tells you about the delightful Islamic illegal immigrants that Australia has rightly locked up:
This graph of illegal immigrant arrivals tells how hard the anti-illegal-immigration policy recently implemented by Australia's conservative government has bitten. Note at the right of the graph that for the current year illegal arrivals have just about vanished. Illegal immigration CAN be stopped if governments have the will to do it.
I went to a private classical music concert here in Brisbane last night and heard what I believe is the best rendition of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" that I have ever heard. It was played by a young Australian-born Chinese. Why do the Chinese produce so many brilliant pianists and the Koreans so many brilliant violinists? I guess I will never know. All I know is that we are lucky to have them here in Australia. Why we have to have Islamic rubbish here when we could have any number of high-quality Han Chinese instead entirely escapes me.
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This story from someone with first-hand knowledge tells you about the delightful Islamic illegal immigrants that Australia has rightly locked up:
"Ms Thorne says her book debunks the perception that most of the illegal immigrants were hard done by. "Certainly some of them are very decent people, but some were very unpleasant characters," she says.... "They'd get angry, pull on a blue and smash everything in sight," she says. Ms Thorne says the most violent and difficult to deal with were Muslim men who were extremely demanding and readily resorted to violence over what they perceived as slights to their manhood. "Some of the biggest fights happened in the medical centre where the men would do their blocks because women and children were treated first," she said. Free phone calls permitted daily to detainees were another source of conflict. "There were three cordless phones to be used. Each person could speak to relatives in Iraq or Iran or wherever for six minutes. As soon as you told someone their six minutes were up you'd get abuse and sometimes get spat on. One guard was punched in the face." ... Guards were injured when attacked with star-pickets, shards of glass and stones. In one incident a guard had his testicles "nearly torn off"' by one of the detainees".
This graph of illegal immigrant arrivals tells how hard the anti-illegal-immigration policy recently implemented by Australia's conservative government has bitten. Note at the right of the graph that for the current year illegal arrivals have just about vanished. Illegal immigration CAN be stopped if governments have the will to do it.
I went to a private classical music concert here in Brisbane last night and heard what I believe is the best rendition of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" that I have ever heard. It was played by a young Australian-born Chinese. Why do the Chinese produce so many brilliant pianists and the Koreans so many brilliant violinists? I guess I will never know. All I know is that we are lucky to have them here in Australia. Why we have to have Islamic rubbish here when we could have any number of high-quality Han Chinese instead entirely escapes me.
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ELSEWHERE
Entertainers seem to make a specialty of being dumb when they are not entertaining but this one spoke some VERY long overdue words recently: "American singer Lauryn Hill, from a stage used by the Pope, shocked Catholic officials at a concert by telling them to "repent" and alluding to sexual abuse of children by U.S. priests. The broadside came during the recording Saturday night of a Christmas concert attended by top Vatican cardinals, bishops and many elite of Italian society, witnesses said”
Another triumph of socialized medicine: "CANCER patient Rodney Plows believes he will die waiting for relief from his chronic back pain. He has been told he faces a delay of up to five years for treatment in Queensland's public hospitals. Mr Plows, 53, was shocked to learn there were 540 people ahead of him on the waiting list for an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon at Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital. The invalid pensioner spends his days mostly housebound as he fights a losing battle to manage the pain".
Australian Leftist teachers TEACH hate-speech and do so very publicly! Read Andrew Bolt for a heap of examples.
The Greenies will love this one: Refrigerators are bad for you. They could cause the terrible rotting-bowel disease called Crohn’s: “Researchers writing in this week's issue of The Lancet hypothesise that the emergence of Crohn's at the same time Kelvinators became fixtures in kitchens around the world is no mere coincidence. In fact, that's exactly how Dr Jean-Pierre Hugot, lead author of the paper, describes his theory”. Will we see a Kyoto treaty on refrigerators in the future? It would be as logical as the current Kyoto treaty.
Further to my mention yesterday of Michael Crichton's view that environmentalism has become a religion, Gerry Jackson of Brookes News writes: "Although I'm in broad agreement with Michael Crichton regarding the Greens' cult his view of religion is a very narrow one. One might even call it prejudiced. For example, any honest person who was even slightly acquainted with the intellectual history of the Catholic Church could never call it "totally rigid and totally uninterested in opposing points of view." Nor could they assert that it thinks it knows it all. To argue otherwise would be an insult to the scholastics whose works and thoughts refute Crichton's accusations. One only has to peruse their debates on the nature of law, economics and the state to see what I mean. Atheists do not help their cause by overstating their case".
Amazing! I have just squeaked into the the top 200 of "The most influential reporters and bloggers on the web". I have often noted that things I post seem to have been heard even though nobody has linked back to me over them too. As one possible such instance, a reader recently drew my attention to the fact that a misspelt headline I alluded to here has since been fixed.
I have just put up here Chris Brand's latest thoughts. He takes up the "Flynn" challenge to the meaning of IQ scores, among other things. He notes that although IQ test scores have been rising, the Black-white gap is not closing.
The latest upload of a chapter from my book looks at ways of having universal health care without socializing medicine. Details here or in chapter 24 here.
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Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Entertainers seem to make a specialty of being dumb when they are not entertaining but this one spoke some VERY long overdue words recently: "American singer Lauryn Hill, from a stage used by the Pope, shocked Catholic officials at a concert by telling them to "repent" and alluding to sexual abuse of children by U.S. priests. The broadside came during the recording Saturday night of a Christmas concert attended by top Vatican cardinals, bishops and many elite of Italian society, witnesses said”
Another triumph of socialized medicine: "CANCER patient Rodney Plows believes he will die waiting for relief from his chronic back pain. He has been told he faces a delay of up to five years for treatment in Queensland's public hospitals. Mr Plows, 53, was shocked to learn there were 540 people ahead of him on the waiting list for an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon at Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital. The invalid pensioner spends his days mostly housebound as he fights a losing battle to manage the pain".
Australian Leftist teachers TEACH hate-speech and do so very publicly! Read Andrew Bolt for a heap of examples.
The Greenies will love this one: Refrigerators are bad for you. They could cause the terrible rotting-bowel disease called Crohn’s: “Researchers writing in this week's issue of The Lancet hypothesise that the emergence of Crohn's at the same time Kelvinators became fixtures in kitchens around the world is no mere coincidence. In fact, that's exactly how Dr Jean-Pierre Hugot, lead author of the paper, describes his theory”. Will we see a Kyoto treaty on refrigerators in the future? It would be as logical as the current Kyoto treaty.
Further to my mention yesterday of Michael Crichton's view that environmentalism has become a religion, Gerry Jackson of Brookes News writes: "Although I'm in broad agreement with Michael Crichton regarding the Greens' cult his view of religion is a very narrow one. One might even call it prejudiced. For example, any honest person who was even slightly acquainted with the intellectual history of the Catholic Church could never call it "totally rigid and totally uninterested in opposing points of view." Nor could they assert that it thinks it knows it all. To argue otherwise would be an insult to the scholastics whose works and thoughts refute Crichton's accusations. One only has to peruse their debates on the nature of law, economics and the state to see what I mean. Atheists do not help their cause by overstating their case".
Amazing! I have just squeaked into the the top 200 of "The most influential reporters and bloggers on the web". I have often noted that things I post seem to have been heard even though nobody has linked back to me over them too. As one possible such instance, a reader recently drew my attention to the fact that a misspelt headline I alluded to here has since been fixed.
I have just put up here Chris Brand's latest thoughts. He takes up the "Flynn" challenge to the meaning of IQ scores, among other things. He notes that although IQ test scores have been rising, the Black-white gap is not closing.
The latest upload of a chapter from my book looks at ways of having universal health care without socializing medicine. Details here or in chapter 24 here.
********************************
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
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Sunday, December 14, 2003
THE GREENIE DISASTER
Michael Crichton (popular Sci Fi author of “Jurassic Park” and TV writer of “ER”) has given an excellent and broad-ranging talk showing how environmentalism is a religion and that it needs to be returned to science. Just some quotes:
“I can tell you that second hand smoke is not a health hazard to anyone and never was, and the EPA has always known it. I can tell you that the evidence for global warming is far weaker than its proponents would ever admit. I can tell you the percentage the US land area that is taken by urbanization, including cities and roads, is 5%. I can tell you that the Sahara desert is shrinking, and the total ice of Antarctica is increasing” .... “There are two reasons why I think we all need to get rid of the religion of environmentalism. ...First, we need an environmental movement, and such a movement is not very effective if it is conducted as a religion. We know from history that religions tend to kill people, and environmentalism has already killed somewhere between 10-30 million people since the 1970s....The second reason to abandon environmental religion is more pressing. Religions think they know it all, but the unhappy truth of the environment is that we are dealing with incredibly complex, evolving systems, and we usually are not certain how best to proceed. Those who are certain are demonstrating their personality type, or their belief system, not the state of their knowledge. Our record in the past, for example managing national parks, is humiliating. Our fifty-year effort at forest-fire suppression is a well-intentioned disaster from which our forests will never recover.
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Michael Crichton (popular Sci Fi author of “Jurassic Park” and TV writer of “ER”) has given an excellent and broad-ranging talk showing how environmentalism is a religion and that it needs to be returned to science. Just some quotes:
“I can tell you that second hand smoke is not a health hazard to anyone and never was, and the EPA has always known it. I can tell you that the evidence for global warming is far weaker than its proponents would ever admit. I can tell you the percentage the US land area that is taken by urbanization, including cities and roads, is 5%. I can tell you that the Sahara desert is shrinking, and the total ice of Antarctica is increasing” .... “There are two reasons why I think we all need to get rid of the religion of environmentalism. ...First, we need an environmental movement, and such a movement is not very effective if it is conducted as a religion. We know from history that religions tend to kill people, and environmentalism has already killed somewhere between 10-30 million people since the 1970s....The second reason to abandon environmental religion is more pressing. Religions think they know it all, but the unhappy truth of the environment is that we are dealing with incredibly complex, evolving systems, and we usually are not certain how best to proceed. Those who are certain are demonstrating their personality type, or their belief system, not the state of their knowledge. Our record in the past, for example managing national parks, is humiliating. Our fifty-year effort at forest-fire suppression is a well-intentioned disaster from which our forests will never recover.
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ELSEWHERE
More glories of socialized medicine: “A PATIENT bled to death unnoticed in the intensive-care unit of one of Sydney's largest public hospitals after he was left without proper medical supervision”
How lucky that your government was looking after you: “THE same strain of influenza that hit Australia during the past winter has now taken hold in the US, killing at least 20 children and causing panic among the many who have been unable to obtain vaccinations.... The most common strain of influenza being identified so far is a type-A virus known as H3N2 Fujian flu. It takes its name from the Chinese province where it originated. It is the same strain that caused widespread illness in Australia and New Zealand earlier this year.... The current vaccination available in the United States does not specifically target Fujian flu, but according to the CDC, it does offer some immunity and will reduce the severity of the disease.
When are they going to admit that Prohibition does not work? “A police chief has admitted that there are now so many drug dealers around Australia's first supervised injecting room that his officers are powerless to stop them”
Miranda Devine writes: “When it comes to playing up gender differences, women can be their own worst enemy... Gender "difference" ... drives the fantasy that women have some unique virtue that will save the world, will succeed where men have made a mess”
The Left try to portray GWB’s “pre-emptive” strikes against terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq as some new sin. But pre-emption is in fact normal U.S. foreign policy. Americans have always very rightly wanted to fight their wars abroad rather than wait for them to arrive on American soil.
It’s not only GWB’s big spending that is alienating conservatives. ”I am always Right” says: “If President Bush gives amnesty to all illegal aliens, I'll have to find somebody else to vote for from the conservative side. I get a stupid ticket for having a brake-light out, and yet if you’re in my country illegally, you get off scot-free? No sir”
Leftists everywhere always claim to be on the side of “the little guy” but every so often their real contempt for the little guy shows through. Note this comment by a U.S. Democrat: “Take the average Joe six-pack down here in Texas. (Sorry to generalize but I know plenty of them and that's where my theory comes from). He may not have finished high school, or may have a few junior college credits. He's had numerous jobs because of lack of education, unreliability, failed drug tests, missing work, etc. He has no savings, no credit, and possibly a record, at least a DWI or two. He works full-time at Wal-Mart or construction and hates it. He's perpetually angry at his lot in life, though much of it is his own making.” Not exactly flattering!
During the gasoline shortage that began in 1979... Senator Kennedy said: "We must adopt a system of gasoline rationing without delay," in "a way that demands a fair sacrifice from all Americans." Ronald Reagan said that we must get rid of price controls on petroleum, so that there won't be a shortage in the first place. One of his first acts after becoming president was to end federal price controls. Lines at filling stations disappeared. Despite angry outcries from liberals that gas prices would skyrocket as Big Oil "gouged" the public, in reality prices came down within months and continued falling.
Useful Fools has an amusing post about modern art being used as torture. I believe it!
The latest upload of a chapter from my book concerns the great Greenie wail that we are going to “run out” of various things -- oil in particular and energy generally being the main candidates for disaster. I pointed out 30 years ago why that is not going to happen. Details here or in chapter 3 here. The Greenie scare campaign about that has been running for something like 40 years now and since it still shows not the slightest sign of happening, we don’t hear so much about it now. It does however seem to have got into the thick Greenie skulls that while there is nuclear power as an energy source we are never going to run out of energy -- so they now concentrate (with some success) on closing nuclear power down. New nuclear reactors are however still being built in some places so the Greenie effort to MAKE shortages happen will generally not work.
********************************
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
More glories of socialized medicine: “A PATIENT bled to death unnoticed in the intensive-care unit of one of Sydney's largest public hospitals after he was left without proper medical supervision”
How lucky that your government was looking after you: “THE same strain of influenza that hit Australia during the past winter has now taken hold in the US, killing at least 20 children and causing panic among the many who have been unable to obtain vaccinations.... The most common strain of influenza being identified so far is a type-A virus known as H3N2 Fujian flu. It takes its name from the Chinese province where it originated. It is the same strain that caused widespread illness in Australia and New Zealand earlier this year.... The current vaccination available in the United States does not specifically target Fujian flu, but according to the CDC, it does offer some immunity and will reduce the severity of the disease.
When are they going to admit that Prohibition does not work? “A police chief has admitted that there are now so many drug dealers around Australia's first supervised injecting room that his officers are powerless to stop them”
Miranda Devine writes: “When it comes to playing up gender differences, women can be their own worst enemy... Gender "difference" ... drives the fantasy that women have some unique virtue that will save the world, will succeed where men have made a mess”
The Left try to portray GWB’s “pre-emptive” strikes against terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq as some new sin. But pre-emption is in fact normal U.S. foreign policy. Americans have always very rightly wanted to fight their wars abroad rather than wait for them to arrive on American soil.
It’s not only GWB’s big spending that is alienating conservatives. ”I am always Right” says: “If President Bush gives amnesty to all illegal aliens, I'll have to find somebody else to vote for from the conservative side. I get a stupid ticket for having a brake-light out, and yet if you’re in my country illegally, you get off scot-free? No sir”
Leftists everywhere always claim to be on the side of “the little guy” but every so often their real contempt for the little guy shows through. Note this comment by a U.S. Democrat: “Take the average Joe six-pack down here in Texas. (Sorry to generalize but I know plenty of them and that's where my theory comes from). He may not have finished high school, or may have a few junior college credits. He's had numerous jobs because of lack of education, unreliability, failed drug tests, missing work, etc. He has no savings, no credit, and possibly a record, at least a DWI or two. He works full-time at Wal-Mart or construction and hates it. He's perpetually angry at his lot in life, though much of it is his own making.” Not exactly flattering!
During the gasoline shortage that began in 1979... Senator Kennedy said: "We must adopt a system of gasoline rationing without delay," in "a way that demands a fair sacrifice from all Americans." Ronald Reagan said that we must get rid of price controls on petroleum, so that there won't be a shortage in the first place. One of his first acts after becoming president was to end federal price controls. Lines at filling stations disappeared. Despite angry outcries from liberals that gas prices would skyrocket as Big Oil "gouged" the public, in reality prices came down within months and continued falling.
Useful Fools has an amusing post about modern art being used as torture. I believe it!
The latest upload of a chapter from my book concerns the great Greenie wail that we are going to “run out” of various things -- oil in particular and energy generally being the main candidates for disaster. I pointed out 30 years ago why that is not going to happen. Details here or in chapter 3 here. The Greenie scare campaign about that has been running for something like 40 years now and since it still shows not the slightest sign of happening, we don’t hear so much about it now. It does however seem to have got into the thick Greenie skulls that while there is nuclear power as an energy source we are never going to run out of energy -- so they now concentrate (with some success) on closing nuclear power down. New nuclear reactors are however still being built in some places so the Greenie effort to MAKE shortages happen will generally not work.
********************************
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Saturday, December 13, 2003
THE CORRUPTION OF THE UNIVERSITIES SPREADS
An email from a reader:
“I am an engineer myself, and my younger brother is just completing his engineering degree. You mentioned how engineers tend to be more realistic, and therefore more conservative than the arts/humanities/social sciences morass.
However, even this oasis of commonsense within the universities is being white-anted by the hangers-on. In my later years of university we were required to take a humanities elective, in which a variety of social "science" lecturers would tell us about the evils of the industrial revolution, and how free people were before it, and how immoral business leaders were, and how scientists and engineers were responsible for the Holocaust, and the importance of the industrial relations tribunal, etc. and would generally show their ignorance about anything technological. Our tutor was a jolly and ignorant hippie who admitted in his totally unstructured tutorials that his criteria for evaluating the quality of an assignment was the number of footnotes it contained. It would have been hilarious if I wasn't paying for it. Strangely, the arts/humanities/social science crowd were not required to reciprocate by taking hard science electives.
In my brother's time, it has gotten even worse, with one subject of this ilk in nearly every semester, and some truly clueless people being appointed even in the Engineering faculty. For instance, when asked to summarise his thesis project, my brother was told that his summary was "a little more descriptive of the project than what we had originally hoped for", and what they wanted was "something a little more personal in regards to your perception or experience of the project". With "engineers" like this, you don't need terrorists to bring down skyscrapers.”
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An email from a reader:
“I am an engineer myself, and my younger brother is just completing his engineering degree. You mentioned how engineers tend to be more realistic, and therefore more conservative than the arts/humanities/social sciences morass.
However, even this oasis of commonsense within the universities is being white-anted by the hangers-on. In my later years of university we were required to take a humanities elective, in which a variety of social "science" lecturers would tell us about the evils of the industrial revolution, and how free people were before it, and how immoral business leaders were, and how scientists and engineers were responsible for the Holocaust, and the importance of the industrial relations tribunal, etc. and would generally show their ignorance about anything technological. Our tutor was a jolly and ignorant hippie who admitted in his totally unstructured tutorials that his criteria for evaluating the quality of an assignment was the number of footnotes it contained. It would have been hilarious if I wasn't paying for it. Strangely, the arts/humanities/social science crowd were not required to reciprocate by taking hard science electives.
In my brother's time, it has gotten even worse, with one subject of this ilk in nearly every semester, and some truly clueless people being appointed even in the Engineering faculty. For instance, when asked to summarise his thesis project, my brother was told that his summary was "a little more descriptive of the project than what we had originally hoped for", and what they wanted was "something a little more personal in regards to your perception or experience of the project". With "engineers" like this, you don't need terrorists to bring down skyscrapers.”
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MORE FUN WITH LAKOFF
All Too Human criticizes my article on linguist-turned-psychologist Lakoff on the grounds that Lakoff has added in to his account a lot of ifs and buts and exceptions that he can fall back on if his central thesis is challenged. Of course he did. He would not be an academic if he had done otherwise. That he allows exceptions does not alter the basic thrust of his claims however. He still claims fairly clearly that typical mothers don't do the discipline, for instance. What a laugh! And this statement from Lakoff’s recent interview: "The conservative worldview, the strict father model, assumes that the world is dangerous and difficult and that children are born bad and must be made good. The strict father is the moral authority who supports and defends the family, tells his wife what to do, and teaches his kids right from wrong. The only way to do that is through painful discipline — physical punishment that by adulthood will become internal discipline. The good people are the disciplined people” is perfectly unambiguous about what a weird view he has of the typical conservative. It is also a demonstrably wrong view as the references I give in my article attest.
“All too Human” also defends Lakoff’s claim that Leftists are devoted to “equal treatment” and has some feeble defences of the fact that conservatives get anything BUT equal treatment on American university campuses. Rather than me reply to that just read this instance of gross, deliberate, sustained (and probably illegal) discrimination against conservatives at Washingtom University School of Law.
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All Too Human criticizes my article on linguist-turned-psychologist Lakoff on the grounds that Lakoff has added in to his account a lot of ifs and buts and exceptions that he can fall back on if his central thesis is challenged. Of course he did. He would not be an academic if he had done otherwise. That he allows exceptions does not alter the basic thrust of his claims however. He still claims fairly clearly that typical mothers don't do the discipline, for instance. What a laugh! And this statement from Lakoff’s recent interview: "The conservative worldview, the strict father model, assumes that the world is dangerous and difficult and that children are born bad and must be made good. The strict father is the moral authority who supports and defends the family, tells his wife what to do, and teaches his kids right from wrong. The only way to do that is through painful discipline — physical punishment that by adulthood will become internal discipline. The good people are the disciplined people” is perfectly unambiguous about what a weird view he has of the typical conservative. It is also a demonstrably wrong view as the references I give in my article attest.
“All too Human” also defends Lakoff’s claim that Leftists are devoted to “equal treatment” and has some feeble defences of the fact that conservatives get anything BUT equal treatment on American university campuses. Rather than me reply to that just read this instance of gross, deliberate, sustained (and probably illegal) discrimination against conservatives at Washingtom University School of Law.
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ELSEWHERE
Larry Elder has a pretty disheartening summary of GWB’s socialist record. Just one excerpt: “By this time in his term, Reagan vetoed over 20 bills, President George W. Bush, none. Reagan campaigned to shut down the Department of Education. President Bush shook hands with a smiling Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., as they united to pass the so-called No Child Left Behind Act, increasing the federal government's role in education and, by the way, dropping the dreaded-by-liberals voucher provision. Bush also expanded Head Start despite the program's questionable effectiveness” Jeff Jacoby is pretty upset about it too. If the Democrats manage to find a challenger who sounds reasonably sane, I think a lot of GOP voters might stay home next election day. It’s all very reminscent of Malcolm Fraser -- a former Australian conservative Prime minister who said he loved Ayn Rand and had many years in office to do something about it but did zilch. He turned out to be a great friend of African dictators, though. It does rather remind one of some recent remarks by GWB about Taiwan and Israel’s security fence.
Wal Mart, America’s super-successful retailer of recent years, is clearly falling victim to what Australians call the “tall poppy syndrome”: Because they are so successful everyone want to cut them down to size. Some of the criticisms are mentioned here. Thomas Sowell brings a bit of economic sophistication to the discussion, however. A small excerpt: “With Wal-Mart, as with A & P before them, the big bugaboo is that their low prices put competing stores out of business. Could anyone ever have doubted that low-cost stores win customers away from higher-cost stores? It is one of the painful signs of the immaturity and lack of realism among the intelligentsia that many of them regard this as a "problem" to be "solved." “
Stop the Bleating has a good coverage of the issues involved in the French ban on women wearing Islamic dress.
The latest upload of one of my published articles is put up more as an historical curiosity than anything else. It is a report of a computer program I wrote in 1970. Being a boffin, I had access to computers a generation before most people did and I still have a copy of the first program I wrote -- in 1967. It was written for a machine that filled a room but had about the same amount of memory as a modern-day pocket calculator. It was still however very useful and a great advance on what went before. In those days the only software you could usually get for a computer was a compiler -- to enable you to write your own programs. So, unless you could get someone else to write a program for you, all computer users HAD to be programmers in those days. The program mentioned in my upload has subsequently been modernized for use in a PC environment and I am happy to forward both the source-code and an executable to anyone interested. It is however NOT a program for general use. It is for psychometricians and survey researchers only. Details here or here.
********************************
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Larry Elder has a pretty disheartening summary of GWB’s socialist record. Just one excerpt: “By this time in his term, Reagan vetoed over 20 bills, President George W. Bush, none. Reagan campaigned to shut down the Department of Education. President Bush shook hands with a smiling Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., as they united to pass the so-called No Child Left Behind Act, increasing the federal government's role in education and, by the way, dropping the dreaded-by-liberals voucher provision. Bush also expanded Head Start despite the program's questionable effectiveness” Jeff Jacoby is pretty upset about it too. If the Democrats manage to find a challenger who sounds reasonably sane, I think a lot of GOP voters might stay home next election day. It’s all very reminscent of Malcolm Fraser -- a former Australian conservative Prime minister who said he loved Ayn Rand and had many years in office to do something about it but did zilch. He turned out to be a great friend of African dictators, though. It does rather remind one of some recent remarks by GWB about Taiwan and Israel’s security fence.
Wal Mart, America’s super-successful retailer of recent years, is clearly falling victim to what Australians call the “tall poppy syndrome”: Because they are so successful everyone want to cut them down to size. Some of the criticisms are mentioned here. Thomas Sowell brings a bit of economic sophistication to the discussion, however. A small excerpt: “With Wal-Mart, as with A & P before them, the big bugaboo is that their low prices put competing stores out of business. Could anyone ever have doubted that low-cost stores win customers away from higher-cost stores? It is one of the painful signs of the immaturity and lack of realism among the intelligentsia that many of them regard this as a "problem" to be "solved." “
Stop the Bleating has a good coverage of the issues involved in the French ban on women wearing Islamic dress.
The latest upload of one of my published articles is put up more as an historical curiosity than anything else. It is a report of a computer program I wrote in 1970. Being a boffin, I had access to computers a generation before most people did and I still have a copy of the first program I wrote -- in 1967. It was written for a machine that filled a room but had about the same amount of memory as a modern-day pocket calculator. It was still however very useful and a great advance on what went before. In those days the only software you could usually get for a computer was a compiler -- to enable you to write your own programs. So, unless you could get someone else to write a program for you, all computer users HAD to be programmers in those days. The program mentioned in my upload has subsequently been modernized for use in a PC environment and I am happy to forward both the source-code and an executable to anyone interested. It is however NOT a program for general use. It is for psychometricians and survey researchers only. Details here or here.
********************************
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Friday, December 12, 2003
SOCIALIST HYPOCRISY IN BRITAIN:
Below are some excerpts from The Spectator about Britain’s Leftist elite not practicing what they preach. Like the Soviets, what they give the worker is apparently not good enough for them. And the “Speccy” fails to mention that it was always thus. There was, for example, Barbara Castle -- Britain’s “Red Queen”. When she was a minister in the British Labour government led by Harold Wilson in the 60s, she said it was “obscene” for someone “to carve their way to a hospital bed with a chequebook”. When her son got sick, however, what did she do? She booked him into a private hospital under a false name!. And what was her reward for such vast hypocrisy? Harold Wilson made her a Baroness!
"It has become obvious that, in progressive circles, there has been one law for the political elite and another for the people. The most glaring recent example has been Hackney MP Diane Abbott's decision to send her son to a fee-paying school, after a lifetime campaigning for the abolition of private education....
For decades, Labour activists campaigned against the evils of apartheid in South Africa, but when Robert Mugabe embarked on a murderous policy against white landowners, barely a squeak was heard from these supposed crusaders against racial injustice....
Environment minister, Michael Meacher fulminated that 'housing is not, and should not be a status symbol, an object of conspicuous consumption or a source of market power and wealth. Too many people have second homes or too large homes for their needs, while too many others are homeless or over-crowded.' Meacher's words might have carried more weight if he had not been the owner of no fewer than eight homes himself.....
But the hypocrisy works on an even deeper level. For when leftists go private or offshore, they are trying to avoid the very problems they have created through their own socialist policies. They wilfully advocate measures that lower standards or destroy wealth, then run away from the consequences... For a socialist to complain about our shambolic education system is like an arsonist complaining that a building which he set alight has burnt down. Wealthy left-wing parents cannot tolerate the schools they have created, so they .. turn to the private sector they despise"
***********************************
UNEMPLOYMENT
There is a VERY amusing article here about how the record high levels of unemployment in France have been created by French law. There is a huge demand for workers but no-one wants to work: “"We've become a nation of bureaucrats and welfare cheats," Tessier of the Paris bakery says. "No one wants to work." He thought he had found someone last month to fill his vacant pastry chef position, only to have the new recruit quit three days later after learning his €1600-a-month salary meant he'd have to give up his rent-free public housing”.
Meanwhile, as in the USA, so in Australia, the economy is booming -- with lots of new jobs being created all the time.
But PC employment regulations in Britain are driving jobs overseas.
****************************
Below are some excerpts from The Spectator about Britain’s Leftist elite not practicing what they preach. Like the Soviets, what they give the worker is apparently not good enough for them. And the “Speccy” fails to mention that it was always thus. There was, for example, Barbara Castle -- Britain’s “Red Queen”. When she was a minister in the British Labour government led by Harold Wilson in the 60s, she said it was “obscene” for someone “to carve their way to a hospital bed with a chequebook”. When her son got sick, however, what did she do? She booked him into a private hospital under a false name!. And what was her reward for such vast hypocrisy? Harold Wilson made her a Baroness!
"It has become obvious that, in progressive circles, there has been one law for the political elite and another for the people. The most glaring recent example has been Hackney MP Diane Abbott's decision to send her son to a fee-paying school, after a lifetime campaigning for the abolition of private education....
For decades, Labour activists campaigned against the evils of apartheid in South Africa, but when Robert Mugabe embarked on a murderous policy against white landowners, barely a squeak was heard from these supposed crusaders against racial injustice....
Environment minister, Michael Meacher fulminated that 'housing is not, and should not be a status symbol, an object of conspicuous consumption or a source of market power and wealth. Too many people have second homes or too large homes for their needs, while too many others are homeless or over-crowded.' Meacher's words might have carried more weight if he had not been the owner of no fewer than eight homes himself.....
But the hypocrisy works on an even deeper level. For when leftists go private or offshore, they are trying to avoid the very problems they have created through their own socialist policies. They wilfully advocate measures that lower standards or destroy wealth, then run away from the consequences... For a socialist to complain about our shambolic education system is like an arsonist complaining that a building which he set alight has burnt down. Wealthy left-wing parents cannot tolerate the schools they have created, so they .. turn to the private sector they despise"
***********************************
UNEMPLOYMENT
There is a VERY amusing article here about how the record high levels of unemployment in France have been created by French law. There is a huge demand for workers but no-one wants to work: “"We've become a nation of bureaucrats and welfare cheats," Tessier of the Paris bakery says. "No one wants to work." He thought he had found someone last month to fill his vacant pastry chef position, only to have the new recruit quit three days later after learning his €1600-a-month salary meant he'd have to give up his rent-free public housing”.
Meanwhile, as in the USA, so in Australia, the economy is booming -- with lots of new jobs being created all the time.
But PC employment regulations in Britain are driving jobs overseas.
****************************
ELSEWHERE
Greg Sheridan has some good comments on the new Australian Labor Party leader. It is truly amazing how the media, feminists and the Left generally let him get away with talk that would sink a conservative leader. It shows that they have no genuinely-held standards at all -- only a hatred of the society in which they live.
The latest “Afro” news is a bit hilarious. The misspelt headline (“duel” instead of “dual”) rather draws attention but the news that Maryland is about to create a special low-qualification High School diploma (presumably mainly for blacks) seems to be welcomed -- though how its impact on blacks can be other than entirely negative escapes me.
Hippercritical is an optimist. He thinks Firas Khoury -- an Arab who recently beat fifteen other contestants to win Israel's latest reality show -- may turn out to be an Israeli version of Sammy Davis junior -- and thus promote tolerance between Jews and Arabs. It seems to me that the Israelis have ALREADY shown their tolerance by choosing him. What positive thing have the Arabs done?
Dave Huber’s blog does a good roundup of conservative news and commentary -- including some good stuff I had missed.
One of my favourite blogs -- Curmudgeonly & Skeptical -- has moved BACK to blogspot! Rodger writes: "My MT site is so hopelessly corrupted (it's always been corrupt) that I can't even do a redirect" Rodger is well-known for his amusing photos and graphics.
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with a huge range of reading.
I have just put up here some more of Chris Brand’s postings. His headings:
SCOTLAND LEADS IN RACE REALISM
POST-POST-MODERN LOONY UNI
BLACK CHRISTMAS IN LONDON
EX-CONVICT, 38, BAGS KEEN 14-YEAR-OLD
SACKED UN-PEECEE JOKER DEFENDED
The Wicked one says slavery is Islamic.
My latest upload of a chapter from my book concerns economic nationalism and its opposition to foreign investment. Foreign investment is widely opposed by ill-informed people everywhere -- which is why Leftists latch on to it. They do not care how irrational a view is if they can sound good by advocating it. I show in my chapter that foreign investment is in fact a gift that should be eagerly welcomed. Details here or in chapter 19 here.
********************************
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Greg Sheridan has some good comments on the new Australian Labor Party leader. It is truly amazing how the media, feminists and the Left generally let him get away with talk that would sink a conservative leader. It shows that they have no genuinely-held standards at all -- only a hatred of the society in which they live.
The latest “Afro” news is a bit hilarious. The misspelt headline (“duel” instead of “dual”) rather draws attention but the news that Maryland is about to create a special low-qualification High School diploma (presumably mainly for blacks) seems to be welcomed -- though how its impact on blacks can be other than entirely negative escapes me.
Hippercritical is an optimist. He thinks Firas Khoury -- an Arab who recently beat fifteen other contestants to win Israel's latest reality show -- may turn out to be an Israeli version of Sammy Davis junior -- and thus promote tolerance between Jews and Arabs. It seems to me that the Israelis have ALREADY shown their tolerance by choosing him. What positive thing have the Arabs done?
Dave Huber’s blog does a good roundup of conservative news and commentary -- including some good stuff I had missed.
One of my favourite blogs -- Curmudgeonly & Skeptical -- has moved BACK to blogspot! Rodger writes: "My MT site is so hopelessly corrupted (it's always been corrupt) that I can't even do a redirect" Rodger is well-known for his amusing photos and graphics.
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with a huge range of reading.
I have just put up here some more of Chris Brand’s postings. His headings:
SCOTLAND LEADS IN RACE REALISM
POST-POST-MODERN LOONY UNI
BLACK CHRISTMAS IN LONDON
EX-CONVICT, 38, BAGS KEEN 14-YEAR-OLD
SACKED UN-PEECEE JOKER DEFENDED
The Wicked one says slavery is Islamic.
My latest upload of a chapter from my book concerns economic nationalism and its opposition to foreign investment. Foreign investment is widely opposed by ill-informed people everywhere -- which is why Leftists latch on to it. They do not care how irrational a view is if they can sound good by advocating it. I show in my chapter that foreign investment is in fact a gift that should be eagerly welcomed. Details here or in chapter 19 here.
********************************
Comments? Email me here or here. If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Page is here or here.
********************************
Thursday, December 11, 2003
The Federalist has some news about the disgraceful prosecution of Colonel Allen West -- who saved lives by firing his pistol near an Iraqi. Apparently he is not now likely to be court-martialled but will still get booted out of the Army.
FROM BROOKES NEWS
Why America's recession had 19th century echoes When the US was on the verge of recession, David Hale drew attention to the economy's imbalances and compared the situation to what happened in Britain during the 1840s. He doesn't know how right he is.
The fallacy of capital gains taxes According to Peter Holding 'income taxes are relatively high because of the overly lenient treatment we give to the taxation of capital gain.' So is he right? Far from it.
Paul Robeson was a dedicated Stalinist, not an American hero The proposal to issue a stamp honouring Paul Robeson is an insult to American patriots. Robeson was a committed communist, a Marxist-Leninist who unwaveringly toed the Stalinist line and sought his own country's destruction.
Syria accused of being behind terrorist attacks in Iraq Kuwaiti media accuse Syria of being behind terrorists attacks on coalition forces, and of hosting Hussein's WMDs.
Taiwan: A dragon economy and the abacus A curious feature of Western culture is the tendency to go to extremes when describing the East.
Details here
******************************
PROBLEMS FOR GREENIES
The Daily Ablution notes that NASA Has Evidence of Global Warming - On Mars. It’s all GWB’s fault of course. He lied! (or something).
And how about this? “Measurements of ancient air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice offered evidence that humans have been changing the global climate since thousands of years before the industrial revolution. Beginning 8,000 years ago, atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide began to rise as humans started clearing forests, planting crops and raising livestock” Stop all that farming! Stop all that ranching!
Can trees cause mass extinction? And if so are human caused extinctions any less "unnatural" than tree caused extinctions?
***********************************
Why America's recession had 19th century echoes When the US was on the verge of recession, David Hale drew attention to the economy's imbalances and compared the situation to what happened in Britain during the 1840s. He doesn't know how right he is.
The fallacy of capital gains taxes According to Peter Holding 'income taxes are relatively high because of the overly lenient treatment we give to the taxation of capital gain.' So is he right? Far from it.
Paul Robeson was a dedicated Stalinist, not an American hero The proposal to issue a stamp honouring Paul Robeson is an insult to American patriots. Robeson was a committed communist, a Marxist-Leninist who unwaveringly toed the Stalinist line and sought his own country's destruction.
Syria accused of being behind terrorist attacks in Iraq Kuwaiti media accuse Syria of being behind terrorists attacks on coalition forces, and of hosting Hussein's WMDs.
Taiwan: A dragon economy and the abacus A curious feature of Western culture is the tendency to go to extremes when describing the East.
Details here
******************************
PROBLEMS FOR GREENIES
The Daily Ablution notes that NASA Has Evidence of Global Warming - On Mars. It’s all GWB’s fault of course. He lied! (or something).
And how about this? “Measurements of ancient air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice offered evidence that humans have been changing the global climate since thousands of years before the industrial revolution. Beginning 8,000 years ago, atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide began to rise as humans started clearing forests, planting crops and raising livestock” Stop all that farming! Stop all that ranching!
Can trees cause mass extinction? And if so are human caused extinctions any less "unnatural" than tree caused extinctions?
***********************************
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