Saturday, April 24, 2004

SOME ECONOMICS AGAIN

What wonderful morality! "In 1975, the Ethiopian government nationalised the land. It meant that food production was controlled not by the profit motive but by need. It put people before profits. The result was that the people starved.

What if other countries stopped "outsourcing"? "Just as American firms have been increasing their presence overseas, foreign firms have been seeking access to American markets and talent by locating here. According to the Organization for International Investment, California has been the state benefiting most from this trend, garnering more than 700,000 jobs from foreign firms' "insourcing" to the United States. Nationwide, the creation of such insourced jobs is outpacing those outsourced by U.S. firms 2 to 1, and the pay for these jobs averages 16.5 percent more than that at all U.S. firms. Creating anti-outsourcing policy based on unemployment fears makes as much sense as bemoaning the loss of American careers in the stenographer pool, slide-rule assembly line or coal shoveling. The loss of such jobs has netted us more and better-paying jobs and extended higher living standards"

Cafe Hayek points out that jobs are being destroyed all the time so why don't we protect them all? "Any - ANY - change in the pattern of consumer spending eliminates some jobs and creates others. Do we condemn the spaying of dogs because it reduces the demand for dog catchers? Ought we to stymie research on electrical cars because, if successful, such cars will cause many workers to lose their jobs in oil fields? Should we denounce the Atkins diet because it will eliminate some jobs in factories making pasta and chocolate? Are the jobs threatened with elimination by spaying, electrical cars, the Atkins diet, and the multitude of other economic changes having nothing to do with international trade, less important to workers who hold them than are jobs held by people working in industries that compete with foreign suppliers?"

Fewer workers, more production: "How should the public, economists, politicians and workers measure the relative success and failure of a particular industry? By its profits? Its stock price? By its total employment? This may seem a rather elementary question, yet a proper and clear answer would go a long way in silencing what has been the loudest protectionist cry in recent memory."

"Unless those who wish to outlaw "outsourcing" can clearly demonstrate why it is that an economy benefits from higher costs of production versus lower costs, then they have no argument at all.. Should they succeed in forcing their views into law, we can be sure that the ultimate outcome will that which befalls any society that gives into protectionism: a lower standard of living and, in the end, even more joblessness."

Free trade good for welfare spending: "The richer the country it becomes, the more likely it can afford higher levels of taxation. It is because of free trade, in part, that today's world can invest so much in welfare states"

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As a follow-up to my posts on the U.N. yesterday, here is some more on "Kofigate": The U.N.'s "Oil for bureaucrats" program: Safire says all the money passed through Paris; The Christian Science Monitor gives details of how it worked and says 10 billion was ripped off; The Economist says everybody involved with the program is on the nose. And with billions of dollars involved, Kofi-gate isn't small potatoes either, at least when compared to some of history's major financial scandals. And these are the people who believe that Israel is "poison"!

Dumb teachers: I was alerted to this report by Dick McDonald. About 50% of Philadelphia middle-school teachers "don't know the subjects they're teaching well enough to pass a new federally-mandated test". There have been plenty of previous reports of incompetent teachers too. American education is another example of the destruction wreaked wherever Leftists get control of anything. Before the Communists took over in 1917, Russia was the world's fourth largest industrial economy. Today they are more like a Middle-Eastern economy -- with their main exports being the oil and gas that nature put underground for them. At least they can feed themselves these days.

Schoolteacher Dave Huber has seen forced desegregation of schools close up and points out how it has not remotely done what it was supposed to do: Improve black educational achievement. He documents the desperate twists and turns of the Left now that their failure is plain for all to see.

Democrats for Bush has got to be a good blog. I'd say he needs all the help and encouragement he can get.

C.J. Maloney is outraged that New York City Council is trying to make pharmacies stock "morning after" pills. It does seem an odd role for a municipality.

Michael Darby has put up some poems for us to read and reflect on in connection with Australia's only truly national day -- Anzac day (this Sunday).

My recipe for today is for Asian fruit and pork canapes. Slow to make but they go down fast! See here or here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring with them a genuine concern for the welfare of their country. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion


Comments? Email me 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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Friday, April 23, 2004

Aha! "The day after John F. Kerry said he would make all of his military records available for inspection at his campaign headquarters, a spokesman said the senator would not release any new documents". Useful Fools gives us a good clue to what he is trying to cover up. He was on active duty in the Navy reserve from 1970-1972 -- at a time when he was aiding and abetting the enemy in Paris and elsewhere.

THE UNITED NATIONS

The United Nations: "It was in the middle of the 1970s that the late Daniel Moynihan entered and exited as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Upon his leaving he gave three definitions of that organization: 'A theater of the absurd, a decomposing corpse, and an insane asylum.' Then, giving his remarks support, he quoted a leading British journalist of the time who said that the U.N. was among 'the most corrupt and corrupting creations in the whole history of human institutions.'"

The U.N. today: "Whatever the sum involved, it vanished from the UN-administered Iraq Oil For Food programme, and unlike last year's petty looting, those at the centre of suspicion aren't lowly bureaucrats but a tight cluster of high-up insiders centred on the office, family and inner circle of Secretary-General Kofi Annan himself."

UN fraud on terror: "I simply cannot understand why President Bush keeps appealing to United Nations for its help and cooperation when that institution has proven itself to be incapable of doing anything significant in the field of human rights let alone international terrorism... I base this judgment on a long dead-letter UN resolution dated Dec. 9, 1994, passed by the General Assembly almost a decade ago, about which little is heard. In fact, few people even know it exists. And why should they, since the resolution died the day it passed? To discuss this resolution is to prove beyond a shadow of doubt the UN is a fraud, a betrayer of our hopes to establish a rule of law among nations."

The strange logic of the UN elite: "In Australia there have been calls for full recognition of same sex couples in Federal law. This was in response to the finding by the United Nations Human Rights Committee that Australia had breached Article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by refusing to give a war widower's pension to Edward Young who had been the homosexual companion of a deceased war veteran. It is worth noting that only one (Finland) of the twelve countries represented on the Committee that heard this matter gives national legal recognition to same sex couples and that homosexual behaviour is illegal in three of these countries (India, Benin and Mauritius)."

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A fascinating short article in the WSJ pointing out that Democrats have abandoned any pretence of idealism in foreign policy and now favour stability and the status quo! I think the Democrats did once have some principles but that is all gone now. They will now advocate ANYTHING that they think will get votes. Historians will remember that J.S. Mill was a great spokesman for liberty but that he was in fact on the Left in British politics and voted in favour of government restrictions and regulation on lots of issues. Principles were very rubbery for him too.

Excellent comment on the Kurds: Why do the Palestinians get to jump ahead of the Kurds?... The Kurds meet all of the qualifications to get a state. They are a cultural and national group with strong ties to the land on which they live. They've been persecuted mercilessly for a long time.. and even better, they have quietly gone about building the institutions of statehood and a civil society pretty much on their own... Oh, one other thing. The Kurds have never blown up any buses full of civilians, never desecrated religious shrines, never mutilated 'enemy' corpses, never machine-gunned elementary schools, never sent teenagers in bomb vests to kill other teenagers at restaurants and coffee shops.. Perhaps the Kurds should do all of those things. Then they would be rewarded .... People would say that there can be no peace in the Middle East until the Kurds get a state.. That's the problem with the Kurds. They spend their energy and talents on things like economic development, education, and infrastructure.

Mike Reagan: "The 9/11 Commission is not doing its job. It is ignoring a document that shows that President Clinton was alerted in 1996 about the possibility of 9/11 style attack, while instead focusing on the August 6 Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB). Having harassed the Bush administration into declassifying the August 6 PDB, the Commission must now demand that a PDB from the Clinton administration also be declassified. Unlike the August 6 document which had no information about hijacking jets to crash into U.S. Targets, the 1996 PDB gave specifics about al Qaeda plans to carry out exactly that kind of attack."

Fallujah Gets Loud Silence From World's Muslim Leaders: "Western Christians were near unanimous in their support for Muslims as they faced (backlash) bigotry after Sept. 11, 2001; when will these Christians hear comparable expressions of support from Muslim leaders now that they are increasingly under threat from the Islamists? "

Tiger Woods on the U.S. military: "I'm just trying to hit the ball into a little bitty cup that's 400 yards away," Woods said on Friday. "These people here are putting their lives on the line. That to me is the ultimate dedication. They're doing it for our country to keep all of us safe."

Tim Worstall has some fun posts up -- like why Coca-Cola produced in the USA is more fattening than Coke produced elsewhere (It's true!) and what the word "truck" originally meant.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with lots of good postings.

Another Thai recipe today: Pork and seafood salad with water chestnuts. See here or here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring some principles with them. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion


Comments? Email me 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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Thursday, April 22, 2004

FROM BROOKES NEWS

How a Murdoch reporter twisted the news about the 9/11 commission Rodney Dalton, New York correspondent for Rupert Murdoch's 'Australian' is walking proof of how dishonest the mainstream media has become, especially with respect to the Bush administration.
Bunny Champers meets Al Franken for the Bunny and Al show Bunny Champers meets Al Franken to join Air America. Unfortunately for Franken, and his Hollywood weirdoes, he didn't know what Bunny meant by liberal.
Clinton's media outing to China and the media's harassment of Bush Watching America's leftwing media hound President Bush reminded me of their simpering treatment of the Clintons. I recall in particular when the Clintons returned in triumph to Washington from China.
How Rupert Murdoch's Australian carrion leapt on Linda Chavez Some readers think I've been too harsh on our heroic journalists, particularly Roy Eccleston. If only that were so.
Free trade does not lower wages or cause persistent unemployment There is nothing new in the current hullabaloo about free trade, jobs, and trade deficits. Senator Kerry, please note.

Details here

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BABOONS R NOT US

This story about a troop of baboons showed that if you remove all the aggressive, dominant males, everybody remaining has a more peaceful life. Trying to apply that to humans would be a laugh though. Look at all the fuss caused by knocking out just ONE aggressive and dominant male -- Saddam Hussein! Not to mention Herr A. Hitler. Keith Burgess-Jackson worries that such findings may cause feminists to engage in selective breeding designed to produce less aggressive males. He shouldn't worry too much. It is the dominant males that most normal women tend to like best! "Bastards" the women call them but they still find it hard to resist such men. Wimps don't get far with women. Even quite feminist heterosexual women are attracted to a dominant male. I know. There will always be plenty of babies sired by dominant men. And feminist women are often themseves dominant and aggressive and some of them do have sons -- as my mother did. And guess what sort of sons they tend to produce? Complex creatures, these human beings -- as conservatives have always said.

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Despite all the detail in THAT film, there is still little evidence outside the New Testament about the events of Jesus's life and death -- as is pointed out here and here. But so what? Even from an atheist viewpoint, what the critics overlook is that the New Testament is a COLLECTION -- made very early on -- of quite different documents by different authors on the subject. And to have all four histories (Gospels) plus the Pauline epistles telling much the same story -- despite differences of detail -- is in fact remarkably good evidence that events pretty much like what was described did in fact happen. Of course to Christians faith fills any gaps. But exactly the same goes for the Left. Their faith is that the early documents, the traditional Christians and 2,000 years of belief are wrong. Most Leftist intellectuals (such as the post-modernists) explicitly reject the quest for hard evidence in any event. To them traditional Christians beliefs are just examples of argument from authority and blindly following a historical consensus. But recent fashions and modern elite opinions are authoritative, of course!

Socialized medicine again: Patients have to wait so long to see a doctor in Queensland public hospitals that they get aggressive towards any hospital staff that they DO see. So what is the government going to do about it? Hire more doctors? No way! They are going to spend more money on security to keep the patients away from the staff! What would a business do if it had a similar upsurge of customers?

Good for the French!: "An Algerian-born imam who said wife-beating was justified in cases of adultery, was expelled from France yesterday... The Interior Ministry said: "The Government cannot tolerate words contrary to human rights, detrimental to human dignity and in particular to the dignity of women." " More Western countries should follow suit.

Sudan is in flames: No Leftist outrage of course. The imperialists there are Muslim Arabs. See also here

Dick McDonald has got a lot of good postings up -- most of which I could have written myself.

My recipe for today is another fried chicken recipe from Thailand. This is an easy one. See here or here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

All politicians seek power but conservatives bring some principles with them. Leftists bring only their hate-filled Stalinist hearts and their pretend compassion


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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Wednesday, April 21, 2004

SOME MORE ECONOMICS

Amusing: The two almost universally-known icons of American business are arguably McDonalds and Coca Cola. McDonald's is now headed by an Australian and the outgoing head of Cocal Cola, Douglas Daft, is also an Australian. Watch out KFC! The international marketplace in skills certainly produces results that no planner would ever dream of.

Marginal Revolution points out two new Hayek sites. One of them is CafeHayek -- which has this comment on the many millions of Americans who pay zero tax: "But the political economy of large numbers of people paying little or no tax is a bit frightening for the long-run growth of government. When you pay little or nothing for something, you tend to want a lot more of it."

Charles Murray on how to give taxpayers more say over where the dollars go. Marginal Revolution on where US tax dollars actually go. Health and welfare is the big item -- nearly three times bigger than defence spending.

"Free trade is again under assault. If there is one reason for the perennial attack it is likely the one Frederic Bastiat made so much of: the failure to look for what is "unseen." The costs of free trade (temporary job loss, closed firms) are easily traced to the free movement of goods, services, and capital. The benefits (lower-priced goods, new products, new job opportunities), though great and impossible to produce any other way, are not readily traceable to that movement.... Bastiat illustrated the point with his tale about Crusoe and the plank that washes ashore. Crusoe had intended to make a plank. Should he destroy the free one in order to protect the plank-making job he anticipated? Or should he welcome the good fortune because now the hours earmarked for plank-making are free for coconut-gathering, hammock-weaving, or leisure? The answer is obvious.... Import restrictions intended to protect jobs inevitably reduce foreigners' export-buying power; that costs Americans well-paying jobs. The restrictions also tend to provoke protectionist retaliation, which harms still more Americans. Living standards just don't stagnate; they drop."

"They call him 'rightwing extremist' and 'xenophobic' among many other epithets but this hasn't stopped Switzerland's Christoph Blocher from standing tall in his love of limited government, independence and sound finances. Just last week, he made the tourist promotion people upset by suggesting that the government reduce the subsidy it gives them to a mere 30 centimes (about 25 US cents). Their sceaming and name calling echoed all through the Gotthard tunnel but the message was clear. Why should the taxpayer subsidize any industry?"

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Another triumph of socialized medicine: They left a large pair of scissors inside a woman after surgery and only a demand for X-rays by the woman herself finally revealed them. And it was NOT human error. It was a careless system. Careful surgery would count everything in and everything out but who cares about public patients? And the "Health Care Complaints Commission" refused to look into it until the media got involved! But you can always rely on your government to protect you, can't you? That's what all those regulations and all that bureaucracy is for!

Unarmed robbery is not a serious offence according to California judges! I guess that means that "hate speech" and pollution must be no crimes at all! Or am I being naive here?

Conservative Truth points out in detail why and how the 9/11 Commission has become a kangaroo court rather than a serious judicial body.

Good stuff from a Leftist leader: "The federal Opposition Leader, Mark Latham, has unveiled a new conservative vision for an Australian identity that redefines multiculturalism. In a wide-ranging, landmark speech delivered in Sydney yesterday, Mr Latham said Australians had moved on from the concept, which he said risked being frozen in time.. Multiculturalism needed to be redefined to prevent it being a policy that separated people from each other, he said. A "new and realistic way of thinking about multiculturalism" was necessary, he said, emphasising that "social cohesion is as important as respect for difference"."

Australia's federal system fights tax too: "Victoria is expected to lure property investors with a $1 billion tax reduction, just as NSW buyers have been hit with higher land taxes. The real estate industry is predicting investment dollars could also move south as a result of the changes, which the Victorian Government claims will mean 96 per cent of Victorian property owners paying less land tax than they would in NSW."

My recipe for today is another Thai chicken recipe -- for when you are tired of KFC. See here or here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

America is engaged in a titanic struggle with hate. The American Left hate America, much of Europe hates America and, most of all, the Islamic fundamentalists hate America. Fortunately America is -- in every sense -- the world's strongest country.

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, April 20, 2004

THE BRITISH DISEASE

Tony Blair's U.K. government has been caught ENCOURAGING massive immigration fraud: "It is hard to exaggerate the scale of the crisis that now faces Tony Blair and his Home Secretary. They are confronted with a failure of public policy of massive dimensions". And This is the sort of thing Blair's policies have brought about: "Dozens of refugees were living on Wrexham's Caia Park estate before the two nights of rioting that earned the place its notoriety last June. Now the old, white monoculturalism is back; the refugees have all but vanished without trace. At the Red Dragon pub, the scene of last summer's battles, a man was set upon a few weeks ago on the mere suspicion of being an Iraqi."

Peter Hitchens details why Britain's Leftist "New Labour" government has winked at mass illegal immigration. "One, it provides a constant excuse to censor the past and change the future. The false argument is made, for example, that migrant minorities will be offended if British history is taught as it should be, or if specifically Christian ceremonies are retained...Two, it props up the economy ...messed up welfare benefits at one end and penal taxation at the other mean that it simply isn't worth it for most British people to work for low-wage jobs. What's more, restrictive laws make it hard for small employers to create such jobs. .."

UK poll: "80% say that government policies on immigration and asylum are "not tough enough". ..a mere 4% share the view of some of the Government's critics that its policies are "too tough" and "76% back the expulsion or imprisonment of Muslim preachers who support extreme Islamic fundamentalism". It reminds one of a 1996 poll in Australia: "According to the results of a Herald-AGB poll released on June 19, Australians think their country is accepting too many immigrants, especially from Asia. About 65 percent of 2,063 people polled thought that immigration was too high; three percent favored more immigration..." 1996 was the year anti-immigration politician Pauline Hanson arrived on the Australian political scene and challenged the major parties to respond to popular rather than elite opinion. Hanson's popular challenge was eventually taken up by the major parties but still has many of Australia's Leftists in denial. Will the UK Leftist elites be the next to feel the shock treatment? A few British National Party victories in the North have certainly rattled them.

Another triumph of British bureaucracy: "Britain spent 259 million pounds ($400 million) on a fleet of unusable military helicopters that can't fly through clouds, a public spending watchdog revealed today. Eight advanced Chinooks designed to carry troops and equipment in all conditions were grounded in the "massively botched" deal."

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There is an intellectually rigorous paper from some economists here (short PDF) which treats Islamic martyrdom as a supply and demand phenomenon. The important conclusion from it is that the "payment" martyrs receive (fame, promises of paradise etc) is the main motivation. You have to stop communities from offering such rewards. Punishing (e.g. bombing) the community as a whole may be the only quick way to do that.

Most Shi'ite Muslims are moderate: "Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most recognizable and respected Shi'ite leader in Iraq, firmly believes in the separation of mosque and state. His belief is also held by mainstream Shi'ite Islam, which believes in the separation"

There is an excellent article in the WSJ on the old chestnut that blacks do poorly on IQ tests because of lack of motivation. The truth is that blacks try harder: When given unlimited time to do tests, blacks tend to stick at it longer. All that seems to be forgotten in the latest bout of weird reasoning, however. Leftist psychologists now say that "Stereotype threat" causes the low scores. The claim is that blacks try less because they fear that their poor results will reflect badly on blacks generally. One would have thought that such fears would cause them to try HARDER but all that is brushed aside. The WSJ concludes: "Lack of evidence and grave methodological defects haven't prevented the stereotype threat industry from taking off. Distortions are now pervasive." My fellow psychometrician, No. 2 Pencil, liked the article too.

There is a good conservative humour site called The Hatemonger's Quarterly. They have plenty to laugh at. From the beginning of one post: "A correspondent from our Boston (M.A.) office recently sent us a flyer from the dubiously titled "Boston School of Herbal Studies" Apparently, this veritable Vegetable University sponsored a fete called "Shamanic Plant Journeying", which was under the careful tutelage of one Tommy Priester, professional herbalist..."

My recipe for today is a Thai classic that is also easy to make: Pork with garlic and pepper. See here. Some readers have reported problems with getting my recipe blog to load lately. If that happens, there is a mirror site here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH.

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

America is engaged in a titanic struggle with hate. The American Left hate America, much of Europe hates America and, most of all, the Islamic fundamentalists hate America. Fortunately America is -- in every sense -- the world's strongest country.

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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Monday, April 19, 2004

STERNBERG'S "TRIARCHIC" THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE

Although I am a psychometrician by trade, my specialty is the measurement of attitudes and personality rather than the measurement of ability so I don't regularly follow the academic literature on IQ. I have been doing a bit of catch-up reading lately, however, and continue to be amazed at the gyrations Leftist psychologists go through in order to reach ideologically acceptable conclusions. One of the people best known for disparaging the importance of IQ (general problem-solving ability) is Robert Sternberg. He acknowledges the reality of IQ but says it is only one of three types of important mental functioning that can be measured.

But the other two he puts forward are pretty desperate proposals. The second one he himself summarizes as "street smarts" so is nothing more than knowledge of a particular culture or environment -- and nobody has ever disputed that you need both intelligence and knowledge to solve problems well. So while knowledge is important, to refer to it as an "ability" is evasive. And his third alternative is creativity -- which again seems reasonable at first. The problem with creativity, however, is that there appears to be no such thing. Different indices of creativity often fail to correlate with one another. You can be creative in one field and not in another. I myself, for instance, am highly creative at scientific writing or I would not have 250+ academic papers in print -- but I would not be able to write a novel for nuts. So although problem-solving ability is demonstrably general -- which is why we have the concept of IQ -- creativity is not. So Sternberg is still left with IQ as the single useful generalization about abilities.

And the criticisms of his work simply seem to have driven Sternberg to retreat further and further into dishonesty. He simply ignores whole bodies of data -- including things he had acknowledged in his own earlier work -- as Linda Gottfredson (PDF) points out.

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

Iran's role in the recent uprising in Iraq Iraq uprising planned and funded by Tehran's murderous Mullahs who have put al-Sadr on their payroll.
"My Battalion is Right in the Middle of Sadr's Challenge" Iraq is not the disaster bad news that you are seeing on CNN and other networks.
How the left debased the 9-11 tragedy and turned it into a Bush-bashing media carnival Not content with politicizing the deaths of their own loved ones, these people had the gross indecency to try and politicise the deaths of others whose closest relatives are still grieving.
No Excuse This Time Around It's so bad it's almost impossible for any speaker who is Jewish or from Israel to speak on campus. The Arab coalition and their clueless, Jew-hating supporters are strong and the universities have been greatly weakened by the politically correct dribble that is being taught to the students there.
A socialist journalist bags laissez faire and tax cuts Defending the free market from a journalist's vicious libels.

Details here

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Under the heading "The wimps of war" Dick McDonald points out in his latest posting that those who blame GWB for lack of foresight about Iraq were themselves spectacularly wrong in their predictions about Iraq.

Energy bill illusions: "Why must the government establish a 'coherent energy policy?' Generally, we've left decisions about energy investments to private investors. Five- or ten-year economic plans are traditionally the stuff of Russian Politburos, not American presidents. It's amazing to hear Republican politicians argue that, absent some guidance from Washington, businessmen will blindly stumble through the marketplace, unable to intelligently invest in the energy sector absent some sort of congressional blueprint. It's also insulting to one's intelligence to hear politicians claim that, absent political interference in the marketplace, consumers will not have the faintest idea how to conserve energy or even be aware of the benefits of doing so in the face of high prices."

Leftists think they are superior beings: "Will Hutton, Britain's foremost critic of capitalism and an outspoken advocate for affordable social housing, is married to a property developer who has made a fortune out of selling and renting inner-city properties, often at rates which local council housing officers describe as exorbitant."

I have just put up here Chris Brand's most recent postings -- on sex differences, Leftist universities, Muslims, Femiloons and a BIG climbdown from Leftist theory by British teachers. Teachers don't like enforced equality when it puts them out personally.

The wicked one has some Irish jokes. Get them while they are still legal.

My recipe for today is for Korma -- a classic Indian curry. See here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

America is engaged in a titanic struggle with hate. The American Left hate America, much of Europe hates America and, most of all, the Islamic fundamentalists hate America. Fortunately America is -- in every sense -- the world's strongest country.

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, April 18, 2004

THE "SHORT AMERICAN" NONSENSE

I am rather surprised that the story about some Europeans being taller than Americans has attracted such a lot of attention without anyone (as far as I can see) tumbling to what the finding really shows. Even the careful Iain Murray missed it. The finding, in brief, was that the average American height has stopped increasing but average heights in some European countries have not. And some Europeans -- such as the Dutch -- are much taller than Americans on average. The data underlying the finding may not be all that sound but let us assume that they are:

Anti-American commentators have linked the finding to nutrition -- saying that it shows Americans to be poorly nourished. Given the "obesity epidemic" in America, that is a pretty hilarious explanation but it does contain the grain of truth that there is some connection between nutrition and height. As the geneticists (such as Eaves et al., 1999) have shown, final height is a product of genetic potential plus environmental influences -- and nutrition is undoubtedly one of those environmental influences. Putting it another way, your full genetic potential is realized only when the environmental conditions are ideal. So what the data really show is that ONLY IN AMERICA have the ideal environmental conditions for height maximization been realized. That is why Americans have stopped growing. America ALREADY has gained all it can from nutrition etc. The fact that European heights are still growing shows, then, that they still do not have ideal conditions there for realizing their maximum height. They are still catching up. In short, the data show exactly the opposite to what has been claimed: It is Europeans who are lacking in something that influences height. The traditional European habit of consuming fruit and vegetables in preserved and pickled form rather than in fresh form may be the nutritional factor involved.

An immediate objection to my account is of course the fact that SOME Europeans are much taller than Americans on average. How can they be so tall if they have bad nutrition (or whatever else has been holding them back)? Once again the answer is to be found in the Eaves et al (1999) study: The MAIN influence on height is genetics so if coastal North Western Europeans (such as the Dutch and the Scandinavians) have good genetics for height they will still be taller on average even if their nutrition is not ideal. And that coastal North-Western Europeans tend to be very tall has been known at least since the Viking age. Why they have long been among the world's tallest people (along with some very dubiously nourished East Africans) nobody knows for sure but only a small percentage of the American population is of coastal North Western European ancestry so the final American average must be much lower. And the fact that the legionaries of the ancient Roman empire were real shorties suggests that average national height is a very minor factor (if it is a factor at all) in national achievement and felicity.

Reference
Eaves, L.J., Martin, N.G., Meyer, J.M. & Corey, L.A. (1999) "Biological and cultural inheritance of stature and attitudes". In: Cloninger, C.R., Personality and psychopathology. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press.

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Big surprise for the Democrats: "The Tax Foundation recently announced Tax Freedom Day fell on April 11 this year. Tax Freedom Day is the day when Americans will finally have earned enough money to pay off their total tax bill for the year. The April 11 date is the earliest Tax Freedom Day since 1967 and continues the downward trend in tax burdens enjoyed by Americans under the Bush administration. Tax Freedom Day had hit an all-time high in the last year of the Clinton administration, falling on May 2.... the numbers show the wealthiest Americans shouldering more of the federal tax burden. The wealthiest 10 percent of Americans (average income of $259,000) bear an even 50 percent of the total federal tax liability."

Taxes and jobs: "America's complicated tax system needs a complete overhaul, not minor fixes. The large role that system plays in many of the political dramas dominating the daily headlines shows why. Republicans and Democrats, for instance, are fighting over the 'outsourcing' of jobs to foreign countries. But instead of sniping at each other, they should look at the corporate tax system. Our 35 percent corporate tax rate is one of the highest worldwide -- higher even than the rate in socialist countries such as France and Sweden. Should we be surprised that some jobs leave America when the tax code punishes investors for creating jobs here?"

Are Mosques holy places? Not in our sense they are not. It is perfectly "holy" in Islam for them to be used as bases for terrorism -- which they often are. So they should in many cases be bombed as the military installations that they are.

A good omen: "There was a remarkable event last Friday evening in Moscow. Several of the world's most prominent free-market reformers spent more than four hours in a spirited dialogue about economic reform with Russian President Putin.

Misrepresenting the militia: "It's true that some Reservists and National Guardsmen enlisted while never expecting to actually deploy. However, my personal experience as a Reservist who deployed is that for every soldier who fought deployment, there were 10 more that jumped at the chance to serve their country in Iraq." It was the same in the Australian Army in the Vietnam era. There was an informal policy that conscripts did not have to go to Vietnam. They could spend their two years doing paperwork at a BOD (Base Ordnance Depot -- i.e. an Army storage depot) instead. Almost all chose to go to Vietnam.

My recipe for today is for Thai meatballs. Quick and easy and very tasty. See here.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Greenie Watch includes a big post on that naughty depleted uranium today.

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The Left have always wanted more spent on welfare and made "Fascism" a swear-word. President Bush deposed a brutal Fascist dictator and sponsored a big expansion of welfare. But instead of being admired by the Left, he is hated with a passion. What does that tell you about the Left? It tells you that they have no principles at all: That everything they have ever claimed to stand for is fake.

America is engaged in a titanic struggle with hate. The American Left hate America, much of Europe hates America and, most of all, the Islamic fundamentalists hate America. Fortunately America is -- in every sense -- the world's strongest country.

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