ELSEWHERE

America's academic elite lead in racism, intolerance: "Many of America's colleges and universities have become the modern leaders of racism and intolerance. Recently, we were treated to information about racism at the University of Michigan, where its academic elite gave students 20 extra points toward admission based solely on race. The U.S. Supreme Court found this explicit racism unconstitutional but did allow continuance of a more hidden form, where universities can consider race as 'a plus' in admission decisions. But this is the tip of the iceberg."

This "global warming" article on creating a market in carbon credits has some interesting implications. The idea is to have tradeable permits to pollute. Instead of enforced bans and prohibitions, authorised polluters would trade and swap carbon quotas among themselves, similar to the trade in taxi licenses or dairy quotas. It would be ironic if in an attempt to solve the dubious environmental problem of global warming, that environmentalists effectively turned pollution into a right, effectively institutionalising and creating a vested interest in protecting "polluter rights". It is not unknown for government interventions to boomerang creating situations worse than the original problem. Is this another example in the making?

It's not vouchers but it seems that Arizona does have one way of making it easier for parents to choose the schools they send their kids to. The Australian system is another way -- I send my son to a private school and pay only low fees (equivalent to the cost of the average smoking habit) because the fees are heavily subsidized by the Australian Federal government. American private schools are also often relatively inexpensive, however, contrary to the image.

Rocket Man has some choice comments about Germany's present socialist policies -- where Kanzler Schroeder is threatening punitive action against firms that do not hire enough workers. More National Socialism? Kanzler Hitler had similar ideas.

Mike Tremoglie is pretty steamed up about some gross journalistic bias he found in his local Philadelphia newspaper. He delivers a good fisking and asks people to email protests pointing out that the “Comments” concerned are sheer Democrat propaganda that show no regard for the truth.

China Hand has a rather amusing account of the confused censorship situation in China at the moment. And the headline he notes from the Beijing People’s Daily seems to say more than it intends!

Michael Darby is back on the net. He has a very good post for Sept. 11 plus a previous post about Edward Teller (a great bogeyman for the Left). Michael describes Teller as: “The man who helped end the Cold War without bloodshed”

The Wicked one has a link to a site claiming that the Confederacy was a more genuine republic than the Union.

I have just put up a quiz question for Christians on PC Watch. If you know any keen Bible students ask them to have a look at it.

I appear to be seen by many as the bad boy of the blogosphere because I keep mentioning the last remaining obscenity of the 21st century -- the word "race". I would not be surprised if the word got banned altogether in the not too distant future. I actually rather sympathize with the reaction that the word evokes. Race is so obviously real and apparently such an intractable problem that I can well understand that people do not want to be made to think about it any more than they have to. In my latest upload of a published academic journal article here (or here), however, I use the example of the Australian situation to show that the problem is NOT intractable and that much of the problem is the result of government meddling.

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