THE EDUCATION MESS

Australia's Left falls foul of teachers' unions: "Latham's policy that good teachers in bad schools be paid more is a good idea. It is recognition from the Labor Party that market forces apply in education as they do in all walks of life.... The great myth of education policy in this country is that non-government schools outperform government schools because government schools must teach any student that wishes to attend, while non-government schools have the privilege of choosing who they enrol. In fact, non-government schools achieve higher outcomes because they employ better teachers, and they are largely free from the dictates of state education departments and teachers unions.... the union of teachers in government schools, the Australian Education Union, is implacably opposed to merit pay and differential salaries because such measures require an assessment of the performance of individual teachers and their school... Latham can't have it both ways. He can't reform government schools and satisfy the teachers union."

Educational control freaks: "Although many teachers and principals officially tout the benefits of parental involvement, they become nervous when parents actually do get involved. They fear parents and seek to stop them from making choices about which schools their children will attend, about the curriculum used in their children's instruction, and about the punishments used in the schools."

Home schooling "A newer breed of home schooler is emerging, motivated not by religious belief or countercultural philosophy. Uppermost for such parents are concerns about violence, peer pressure, and poor academic quality in their schools."

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THE ISLAMIC MESS

Those delightful Muslims again: "A young boy, pleased that his dad shot his mum. Brothers who urge their father to shoot their sister. Girls as young as thirteen imprisoned by the state "for their own protection" from family members who want to rape or kill them. This is Jordan today, generally regarded one of the most westernised countries in the Middle East."

Europe likes to pretend that its Muslim problem is a by-product of their nominal alliance with the USA. But that ignores both history and demography: "Today, 15 million Muslims make their home in the European Union." Ultimately, Islam is a bigger problem for Europe than the USA.

Mark Steyn on appeasement: "a defensive war against terrorism will ensure terrorism."

A book review of Onward Muslim Soldiers, by Robert Spencer, points out that what Muslim "extremists" are doing is an integral part of Islam.

Christopher Hitchens says that many of the ideas of Islamic fundamentalism come from Western Fascists and other Leftists: "In many areas of German, Russian and French culture, one finds the same hatred of "decadence," the same cultish worship of the pitiless hero, the same fascination with the infallible "leader," the same fear of a mechanical civilization as opposed to the "organic" society based on tradition and allegiance".

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ELSEWHERE

California kookiness like Wow! "The law allows students and school staff to define their own gender, regardless of their biological sex, to prevent discrimination against transsexuals and others who do not conform to traditional gender roles". I guess Californian schoolgirls are going to love having weird guys turning up in their restrooms! If any of the girls are attacked, the legal fallout could be interesting!

"Sen. John F. Kerry has started talking about health care for the first time since securing his party's nomination for president. Americans should beware: Kerry's platform represents perhaps the greatest threat to health care and patient sovereignty since the Clinton health plan. Though Kerry claims he would reduce costs and expand access to medical care, his two-pronged health plan would have the opposite effects, for it would bring America several steps closer to a system of socialized medicine, with all the increased costs and rationing of care that follow."

An Icelandic blogger has a great collection of quotes (in English) showing how Leftist Nazism was.

A great article on the Indian love of cricket here. "seeing cricket as a way of pursuing diplomacy by other means" refers, of course, to a famous statement by Clausewitz. Cricket as an alternative to war sounds pretty good.

I have mentioned this academic article on IQ before (see here) but I think the abstract (summary) of it is worth reproducing in full: "Virtually all indicators of physical health and mental competence favor persons of higher socioeconomic status (SES). Conventional theories in the social sciences assume that the material disadvantages of lower SES are primarily responsible for these inequalities, either directly or by inducing psychosocial harm. These theories cannot explain, however, why the relation between SES and health outcomes (knowledge, behavior, morbidity, and mortality) is not only remarkably general across time, place, disease, and kind of health system but also so finely graded up the entire SES continuum. Epidemiologists have therefore posited, but not yet identified, a more general "fundamental cause" of health inequalities. This article concatenates various bodies of evidence to demonstrate that differences in general intelligence (g) may be that fundamental cause." (From the very mainstream journal: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2004, Vol. 86, No. 1, 174-199)

The British government is gradually removing all mention of the Crown from its functions. Given Britain's lack of a written constitution, Peter Hitchens sees the move as a loss of important safeguards.

Today's recipe is for that classic Indian dish, Roghan Josh. It feeds 6 so is good for a discerning family or a dinner party. See 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.

Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

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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GREENIE WATCH

What the Greenies will never tell you: "What the suburbanite doesn't see is that, in the vast stretches of American and Canadian wilderness lands, a quite different process is unfolding: Far more trees are being planted than harvested, a trend that has been going on for decades. America has roughly the same forested area in 2002 as it did 80 years ago. Just two examples of the resurgence: Vermont's woods have expanded from 37 percent of the land in 1850 to cover 77 percent today. The forests in New Hampshire covered 50 percent of the state in 1850 and cover 87 percent today. One reason America has the same area of forestland today as in 1920--despite a 143 percent rise in population--is that, in 1910, about 25 percent of the cropland was devoted to producing feed for horses. As the automobile and farm machinery replaced equines, all that land was freed up for human-food crops. Another reason for the lack of pressure on wooded lands is the huge strides in technology, chemistry, and genetics that have vastly increased farm productivity, allowing far more food to be grown per acre than was ever dreamed possible".

The weird Green/Left attack on GWB's "mercury" record is rebutted here

The world leaders in water conservation are the USA and Israel. So why no cheers from the Greens? They are always telling us how wonderful the Germans and Danes are at arguably less relevant forms of conservation

Global warming: The movie: "Coming to a multiplex near you on May 28 is the global warming disaster movie, 'The Day After Tomorrow.' I've only seen the trailer, but my money is on the movie, not global warming, being the disaster. Featuring sensational but implausible weather phenomena ... the movie's unmistakable purpose is to scare us into submitting to the Greens' agenda: domination of society through control of energy resources. This column has addressed Green extremism and global warming many times in the past. ... So suffice it to say that there's no credible evidence humans are altering global climate in any measurable way and, to the extent that global climate is changing -- as it always has and always will -- there's nothing that humans can do about that change except to adapt."

Greenie false prophecy: "Paul Ehrlich had written in The Population Bomb (1968) that it was "a fantasy" that India would "ever" feed itself. By 1974 India was self-sufficient in the production of all cereals. Pakistan progressed from harvesting 3.4 million tons of wheat annually when Borlaug arrived to around 18 million today, India from 11 million tons to 60 million"

More California kookiness: "It would be nice to think that major public policy decisions are based on sound science and rational thinking rather than emotionalism and scare tactics. Of course, the reality is far different, as any aficionado of the political process has noticed. This reality is especially stark when dealing with environmental issues, where emoting replaces thinking, and where the neuroses of activists drives policy more than anything else. It's one thing to spend hundreds of millions of tax dollars to, say, actually clean up some land or a waterway, quite another thing to spend the same amount to accomplish little more than boosting the self-esteem of activists. Yet here in Orange County, residents are doing just that: paying additional fees to fund a costly new program that cleans something that doesn't need to be cleaned as a sop to vocal environmental activists who are impervious to scientific data proving them wrong. It's policy as psychology, yet it's costing taxpayers plenty. The program I refer to goes by the name of "full secondary treatment," and it relates to sewage treatment."

Much recycling is ideological rubbish, a monumental waste of effort. And this is not just the view of free-market economists... Both Valfrid Paulsson, the green guru and former director-general of Sweden's environmental protection agency, and Soren Norrby, the former campaign manager for Keep Sweden Tidy, argue that the whole concept of recycling household rubbish is a mistake.

Ted Lapkin's Quadrant article about the genocidal Greenie ban on DDT is available here

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ELSEWHERE

This is another story about how America's drug enforcement bureaucrats show the brains of fleas in the way they enforce the law -- making criminals out of ethical doctors and making effectve pain relief just a memory for many Americans. Surely it is about time that GWB made the effort to put someone with at least half a brain in charge of the agency concerned. I have never heard of the equivalent Australian authorities being remotely as moronic.

Some rare good sense from a psychologist: "Three problems of working in the disease model have plagued Psychology since it became a mere handmaiden of medicine. First, victimology, a moral problem: We took on a pathological view of human nature such that people were seen as victims of circumstances, and we forgot about venerable concepts like choice, will, character, and responsibility. Second, we misplaced our mission of making normal people happier and worse, genius became a dirty word". Interesting that those remarks (by Martin Seligman) were originally circulated as an email only, however.

Our blacked-robed rulers: "American courts do not use sharia as grounds for their autocratic pronouncements, but they have their own uniquely Western equivalents: fuzzy moral sensibilities, 'international law,' the inviolable principle of tolerance, and even public polling. With these inane justifications and others, they are stealing Americans' birthright of self-rule."

Keith Burgess-Jackson suspects that my focus on the meaning of moral discourse makes me a "descriptivist" in R.M. Hare's terms and that I am therefore a relativist. That really requires a full essay in reply but, fun though that would be, it would also be a rather big sidetrack for a political blog such as this so I will simply say that I doubt that I am a descriptivist but I don't think that Hare's critique of it holds up anyway. For some of the reasons why see here. And I do cheerfully admit to being a relativist. But, unlike Leftists, I do not at all see that the relativism of morality makes it either arbitrary or unimportant. Quite to the contrary, I think that the rightness of an action can be a very important empirical enquiry: Does it lead to long term results that would be generally desired?

My recipe for today is another way of doing pork fillet. Show what a good Muslim you are not! See 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.

Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

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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THE STRANGE MENTAL WORLD OF THE LEFT

There is a very clear-sighted article on the Gefen blog about how Leftists abuse talk of human rights. One quote: "One could say that the entire world Left is suffering from a severe case of cognitive dissonance on this issue. They can extoll peace and yet defend Saddam Hussein. They can love human rights and acclaim Arafat. They can decry racism and revel in the basest anti-semitism, sometimes in the same breath. Their desire for an absolutism of justice has resulted in an embrace of righteous murder". The author is wrong to call it "cognitive dissonance" however. "Cognitive dissonance" means you feel uncomfortable about the inconsistencies -- but inconsistencies have never bothered Leftists. They are psychopathic -- they have no moral anchors. Under the guise of "Postmodernism" they often tell us that in fact.

For any of my readers who have any interest in the social sciences, there is a fabulous article here about the "Militant Tendency" Trotskyist group that was very influential in the British Labour Party in the 1980s. The author specializes in the study of cults and shows that "Militant" is a good example of one. The reader who drew my attention to the article commented: "One sees a lot of this same behavior by the Greenies also -- the Messianic sense of mission, the closed frame of reference, and the looming apocalypse that only they can avert." The article is at the moment up on a Marxist site but also appeared in an academic journal. The author advises me that a revised version of the paper is also to be found in his book with Tim Wohlforth - On the Edge: Political Cults Right and Left, ME Sharpe, 2000.

Prof J.E. Haynes explains why Leftists routinely ignore the inconvenient reality of how destructive and inhumane Leftist policies always have turned out to be: "Psychologically, they do not see what you see. They see the present and the past through a special lens. What is overwhelmingly clear to them is an imagined future collectivist utopia where antagonisms of class and race have been eliminated, the economic and social inequalities that have driven people to crime have been removed, poverty does not exist and social justice reigns, world brotherhood has replaced war and international strife, and an economy planned by people like them has produced economic abundance without pollution or waste. Coupled with this vision of the future is loathing of the real present which falls woefully short of these goals and hatred for anyone or anything that stands in the way of their illusion of the radiant future". I would be less charitable than that. Some Leftists may be like that but many if not most are not idealists at all -- just people who are pretending to be -- in order to boost their own ego by appearing "different", "caring", "wise" etc. Their ego matters to them far more than mere facts.

"Harvard scholar Samuel P. Huntington has not even published his new book on the cultural threat of mass Third World immigration, but already the Open Borders onslaught on book and author has begun.... What's interesting about the attacks is not only that they precede the appearance of the actual book but seek more to discredit Mr. Huntington himself- as a nut, a "nativist," a fount of "hate and suspicion"-by name-calling.... The tactics of smear almost always tell us that the smear's target has offered facts and arguments that can't be answered on their merits-and the only way to answer them at all is to attack the person who brings them up in the first place."

The Bell Curve by Murray & Herrnstein was also attacked in a similarly unscholarly way. Murray comments: "I do not know how to explain the extraordinary discrepancy between what The Bell Curve actually says about race and what most commentators have said that the book says, except as the result of some sort of psychological projection onto our text. Other factors are at work as well. Michael Novak (who has written favorably about The Bell Curve) and Thomas Sowell (who has his criticisms of the book) have pointed out in similar terms that the Left has invested everything in a few core beliefs about society as the cause of problems, government as the solution, and the manipulability of the environment for reaching the goal of equality. For the Left, as Novak puts it, The Bell Curve's "message cannot be true, because much more is at stake than a particular set of arguments from psychological science. A this-worldly eschatological hope is at stake. The sin attributed to Herrnstein and Murray is theological: they destroy hope".

Australian academic Leftists don't care about the truth either: "Claims of plagiarism against Keith Windschuttle reveal the desperation of his critics. Windschuttle's book, launched last Monday at the Tattersalls Club, has already had an extraordinary impact in the academic world. It refutes the "black armband" view of Australian history and seeks to overturn the concept of white guilt and black victimhood which have become embedded in the national psyche. It told how Australia's academic historians have "failed their public responsibility to tell the truth", said Claudio Veliz... The book has already forced admissions from three high-profile purveyors of "black armband" history."

In case you have not seen it already Ron Rosenbaum's 2002 article on the moral imbecility of the Left ("Goodbye, All That: How Left Idiocies Drove Me to Flee") is also worth reading.

Slate reports that we know next to nothing about the effects of gay parenting on children. So let's experiment on a generation to find out! No "precautionary principle" there. Under the precautionary principle Green/Left politicians say that the alleged unknowns of genetically modified crops make them too risky to even experiment with, so modifying tried and tested social systems is surely at least as risky. Where's the hysteria? Once again we see that a so-called "principle" is just a tool to cause disruption, not something sincerely believed. It will never be used against disruption of society.

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ELSEWHERE

"Behind closed doors many U.S. technology executives will say something that could get them flayed if repeated in public: Sending computer programming jobs to India and China is good for America".

Internet pioneer Marc Andreesen supports the outsourcing of computer programming jobs as win-win.

The wicked one says the Pledge of Allegiance is Leftist!

My recipe for today is for pumpkin muffins. Very vegetarian! But they taste good too. See 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.

Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

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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THE NATURE OF MORALITY

One of the most common topics of conversation among people is whether or not various things are right or wrong so it is more than a little strange that Leftist intellectuals very often claim that there is no such thing as right or wrong. Clearly, then, the nature of right and wrong is an important topic if only for political reasons. So Keith Burgess-Jackson and I have each in our own way been trying in our recent postings to give a careful account of what morality is and what it can and cannot do.

I think Keith's most recent posting on the matter is a very clear one that very few people could have much argument with but I think it needs to be extended a bit to answer what Leftists say. So I will try to do that. Keith says that only values exist rather than any abstract properties of rightness or wrongness and I agree with that, as would most Leftists. Where do we go from there, however? Leftists draw the to-be-expected inconsistent conclusion that describing anything as "wrong" or "evil" is therefore silly unless it it applies to the actions of George W. Bush or other conservatives.

The conclusion I draw is that people use moral language in a variety of ways but they mostly mean something real and important by it that transcends the personal. They are not merely expressing their own preferences or values. They are conveying propositions that do have truth value. This can most clearly be seen in those cases where we feel that we could substitute the word "advantageous" for "good" or "right" with no loss of meaning or little loss of meaning. I take "advantageous" to mean "leading in the long term to a situation that you would prefer". So the saying "killing babies is wrong" translates not to "there is an immutable property of wrongness about killing babies" but to "Killing babies leads in the long term to a situation that you would not prefer over the alternative."

Now, obviously, many people DO want to say that killing babies has nothing to do with preferences and that it would still be wrong even if everyone in the universe said it was right. That is however a mere assertion or expression of personal opinion that is not testable and so has no truth value. I do not argue with such people. They are entitled to their opinion and to their way of using words. I simply want to point out that for many if not most people "advantageous" is either a large part or 100% of what they mean by "right" and that in such cases the statement is capable of being argued for as being either true or false. I could, for instance, argue against the proposition that "Killing babies leads in the long term to a situation that you would not prefer over the alternative" by saying that the ancient Greeks routinely killed babies and that theirs was the most brilliant society and civilization of its times so killing babies does not have consequences that are automatically or on the whole unpleasant. Many people would fault my argument in that respect (by presenting, for instance, reasons why Greece would have been even more brilliant if they had not killed babies) but the argument would be about what leads to what -- a scientific argument, if you like. It would not be a mere assertion of values.

So it is perfectly reasonable, rational, realistic and coherent to see "is right" statements as having truth value -- and Leftists who deny truth value to such statements are distorting or ignoring what many if not most people mean by such statements.

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BUREAUCRACY AT WORK

"The well-known inefficiencies of government operation are not empirical accidents, resulting perhaps from the lack of a civil-service tradition. They are inherent in all government enterprise, and the excessive demand fomented by free and other underpriced services is just one of the many reasons for this condition."

Bureaucratic lies: "Last fall, every state was required by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act to identify schools with a 'persistently dangerous' atmosphere so parents would have a better idea of whether their children were being educated in a safe learning environment. When 44 states denied having any such schools and the remaining states admitted to having a combined total of fewer than 50, one safety expert greeted the publication of the lists with a Bronx cheer."

Bureaucrats take aim at doctors "Some doctors have been literally 'under the gun.' Government agents broke down the doors of Dr. Jonathan Wright's office in Washington state, seeking to investigate the heinous crime of using a form of Vitamin B12 that didn't meet the government?s idea of what a 'good vitamin' should be."

Drug hysteria: "I have long referred to the war on drugs as the war on some people who use some drugs, sometimes. Now there's a byproduct of that war -- a side effect, if you will -- a war against doctors who prescribe painkillers, putting a chill on legitimate pain treatment by physicians who fear prosecution."

Patient billed $1100 for 5min visit: ""Whether the doctor is there for 10 minutes or 10 hours, that is the standard charge for the management of labour," she said. "Her own doctor would have charged exactly the same fee. It is an item number set by Medicare and there is one set charge for that item regardless of how long it takes.""

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ELSEWHERE

Dick McDonald shows that John Kerry's latest tax proposals are a good way of DESTROYING millions of American jobs.

The Horny-headed one has an interesting graph showing that poverty was declining until the LBJ-era expansion of welfare. Poverty CLIMBED as more welfare became available. Then when welfare programs were cut back in the Clinton era, poverty went DOWN again! How strange? Not at all. The Happy Carpenter explains why.

The wicked one has several links about the idiocies of gun control.

My recipe today is for Vindaloo -- a well-known "hot" (spicy) curry. By making it yourself at home you can put as many chillies in it as you like (or none at all) and thus have it hot, medium or mild. It tastes great even without the chillies. See here.

I have put quite a few postings up on PC Watch lately. Political correctness is showing no signs of waning but there is the occasional victory over it.

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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.

Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

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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GREENIE CORNER

At a time when resources have never been so cheap or abundant the nutty Greens have somehow got it into their heads that we are running out of things. Why? Because they work on simple-minded theories and are totally oblivious of facts. Once upon a time it made sense to darn socks and lots of women took a basket with them to go shopping. I can remember my mother doing both things back in the '50s. But who does either of those things now? Socks are so cheap that it would be lunacy to spend time darning them and plastic is so cheap it is almost free. Shops wouldn't give plastic bags away willy-nilly otherwise. The price system gives us all the resource scarcity signals we need. If wool and plastic were becoming scarcer the price would be going up and we would all soon be back to darning socks and taking baskets when shopping. But the opposite is happening. Things are getting cheaper, not dearer. It takes a Greenie not to notice that.

The Associated Press ran a global warming story this past weekend that makes the following statement: "Carbon dioxide, the gas largely blamed for global warming, has reached record-high levels in the atmosphere after growing at an accelerated pace in the past year..." See here for a systematic puncturing of the claim.

Bidinotto asks: "Do you ever wonder why terrorism has become so widespread? Then consider the crucial role played by terrorism's enablers: those intellectual and cultural leaders who act as apologists and excuse-makers for violence... Hollywood is now producing a new movie glorifying the violent exploits of eco-terrorist Paul Watson, transforming him into a cultural hero and icon. The film will star Academy Award-winner Sean Penn as the thug who rams and sinks fishing vessels..."

Physicist A.E. Brain says that global warming is part of a normal cycle unconnected with human activity: "It seems likely that the melting of the ice-sheet around the North Pole will continue whatever is done and that the climate differences we have seen within the last two decades will not alter their present course. To a physicist the supposition that such a considerable change in the temperature of the Pacific Ocean has been produced by a minor variation in the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere "caused by the burning of fossil fuels" is simply nonsense. Unfortunately, among the world's politicians this supposed "fact" has now become dogma; the waste of resources that has resulted from fighting this mythical dragon can only be regarded as futile and tragic.... Unfortunately many of the environmentalists who denounce global warming supposedly created by the burning of fossil fuels, may be driven by a political agenda and may be illiterate in matters relating to physics. Our concern here is simply with trying to get the physics right - events will inevitably take care of the rest. Global warming will definitely affect the future of every person on the Earth directly and to a non-trivial extent. We are all seekers after the truth. There are those who claim to have all of the answers by mystical revelation and do not need evidence - they "just know""

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FROM BROOKES NEWS

Economic indicators do not point to a market drop this year Share prices could continue to rise right into 2005 as excess capacity falls, investment rises and output and productivity continue to increase.
Union leader claims minimum wages don't raise unemployment The likes of Combet and their media hand-puppets blather on about the low-paid and the need to price them out of work, because that's exactly what their economic nostrums amount to.
Journalist misleads readers over Bush's war on terror There is just no pleasing Bush-hating journalists, including Australian ones. Peter Hartcher of the Sydney Morning Herald, aka "The Saddam Times". No wonder some people now think that Fairfax Press, to which this paper belongs, is an intellectual cesspit.
The Age lies for Palestinian terrorism Fairfax Press cheerfully welcomed a Palestinian apologist for terrorism.
Saudi Columnist: Terrorists in Iraq are more barbarous than Saddam A Saudi columnist criticises Arabs for blaming the US for the terror attacks in Karbala and Baghdad.
Solution of China's ills demands a free society China's problems are turning the country into a ticking time bomb.

Details here

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ELSEWHERE

Aaargh! Has Mr Flip-flop flipped? "John Kerry wants to cut corporate taxes by 5 percent and eliminate tax loopholes that push U.S. jobs overseas." Has he now lost the Leftist vote? There will certainly be much weeping and wailing and garnishing of teeth among Leftists today. ("gnashing", I know).

Bidinotto has some satirical details of John Kerry's private life.

There are less than 1,000 homeless people in the whole of Chicago! How tragic for the do-gooders. Never mind: 1,000 out of 8 million is still too many! Tax the rich! More welfare! More rent control! Down with patriarchy! Or something.

Good man! "Lord Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury, has launched a trenchant attack on Islamic culture, saying it was authoritarian, inflexible and under-achieving. In a speech that will upset sensitive relations between the faiths, he denounced moderate Muslims for failing unequivocally to condemn the "evil" of suicide bombers. He attacked the "glaring absence" of democracy in Muslim countries, suggested that they had contributed little of major significance to world culture for centuries and criticised the Islamic faith." It may be noteworthy that Carey is one of the few Anglican bishops who still seem to believe in God.

A black blogress exposes the "reparations" industry for what it is -- a racket.

The Taliban's fall has helped lift the veil of superstition in Afghanistan. Women and children are the winners

The wicked one has some comforting thoughts for those who worry whether their diet is "healthy".

My recipe for today is for an upmarket version of Steak Diane -- The classic Australian way of cooking a fancy steak. See here. If any reader has "family-favourite" recipe that he/she thinks should be more widely known, do send it in to me and I will give it a trial run to see if it works for me -- and if it does I will post it up.

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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.

Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

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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APPEASEMENT WATCH

People sometimes forget that the United States has been to war against Muslim terrorism once before -- not long after the USA became a nation. The terrorists concerned were the Barbary pirates of North Africa and on that occasion too, the USA had to act with only sporadic help from Europe. And also then appeasement just led to more demands and more attacks so that it was only force of arms that won peace and freedom from attacks. See here and here

Beat this! Appeasement doesn't work -- deterrence does: "A group of 70 Palestinian intellectuals and officials urged restraint on Thursday over Israel's killing of Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin, calling for peaceful protests instead of bloody revenge."

There is a good short article here about the double standards applied to Israel in its fight against Islamic terrorism. OK to kill Osama & Co. but not OK to kill their Palestinian equivalents?

A very sober warning here of the likely dreadful consequences of the Spanish appeasement: More bombs for Europe.

Gefen says: "Watching the parade of hypocrisy, racism, lies, and abject cowardice spewing forth from Europe over the execution of Hamas murderer Yassin has led me to only one conclusion: Europe is our enemy. The enemy of Israel, the enemy of the United States, the enemy of civilization itself. Its weakness and moral/spiritual bankruptcy threatens the lives and freedom of every one of us. It has become a continent of collaborators with terror and political evil".

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ELSEWHERE

A MOST interesting United Nations report (about the "Micronutrient Initiative") has just come out which acknowledges that the people of poor countries are less intelligent! "But the most disturbing gap between countries with good and poor nutrition is in intelligence, said Cutberto Garza, a Cornell University professor who also leads the nutrition program at United Nations University. "A difference of five to seven IQ points doesn't sound like a lot, but you have to look at the tail ends of the (statistical) curve". The report, however, glides past the magnitude of the problem. It states, correctly, that about 5 IQ points can be added by optimal nutrition but neglects to mention that the gap between (say) some European and (say) some African populations is more than 20 points on average! And the means they recommend for utilizing the potential of good nutrition is also perfectly reasonable -- adding vitamin and mineral supplements to manufactured food. But the inhabiants of poor countries eat very little manufactured food! So how are we going to get them rich enough to buy manufactured food? More capitalism and less socialism is the only way. I don't think that got a mention, though. See Lynn & Vanhanen for the full facts about international differences in IQ.

Law versus science?? Frank Sulloway, one of the authors of the infamous "Berkeley Study" of the psychology of conservatism, has just shown how much of a scientist he is. When another scientist could not replicate the findings reported in Sulloway's book, Sulloway used the legal system in an almost successful attempt to suppress the contrary evidence. How Leftist! Replicating (repeating) a finding is the acid test of any scientific theory so Sulloway has totally discredited himself as a scientist. His book was devoted to the theory that it is birth order that makes you Leftist or Rightist. If you are not a firstborn, you should be a Leftist according to Sulloway! So it was another attempt to discredit the role of reason and logic -- and his legal attack on his critics was an attack on science itself.

Amusing: "With a small band of performers, writers, technicians and investors, Mr Walsh is taking a set of unmistakably leftwing voices to America's airwaves, where the right reigns supreme. Air America radio goes on the air next Wednesday". Are they trying to do NPR out of a job?

The National Urban League has just released the very old news that blacks are poorer than whites. This bit slipped past the censors, however: "About 68 percent of Americans own their homes, but the Census Bureau has reported that ownership among blacks and Hispanics is about 48 percent. Nearly 54 percent of Asian-Americans own their homes, compared with 75 percent of whites." Those poor Asians! Someone give them a dime! That the choices people make influence how well-off they appear to be is obviously the unmentioned elephant in the bedroom there.

"Hispanics and the Bottom Rung: Often uneducated, many are more willing than blacks or whites to take less desirable jobs, which keeps their jobless rate fairly low.... Latinos' thirst for labor and employers' eagerness to hire them "is so powerful that it offsets the education advantage blacks have," adds William M. Rodgers III, chief economist at the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University." No comment.

With Saddam gone, the Ba'athist dictatorship next door is now coming under popular pressure

New Iraq has had enough of Old France: "France's policy is still sharply criticized by Iraqis. Contrary to what Europeans often think, having opposed the American occupation certainly does not help the popularity of Europe, or of any country, in Iraq."

Don Hagen has a humorous political beliefs quiz here

Amusing: Instead of importing people from the Third World to do menial jobs, The Japanese use robots.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again with its usual select reading

Pork fillet mostly seems to be eaten in the form of chops as far as I can work out but you can buy just the fillet if you want a treat. My recipe for today gives a good way to cook it. See 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.

Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

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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JOBS AND GLOBALIZATION

Economist Alan Reynolds points out that loss of factory jobs is occurring worldwide as processes become more efficient and that losses in the USA are actually SMALLER than the loss of factory jobs in China, South Korea, Germany and Japan.

The brainless Leftist idea of how to protect American jobs: "The trouble with protectionism, aside from its costs to the consumer, is that other nations retaliate: If America forbids the import of their goods and services into America, they will not permit export of American products to their countries. That would be costly because one factory job in five in America depends on international trade."

"186 million children, between the ages of 5 and 14, perform illegal child labor. 111 million of these jobs involve hazardous work. Kaushik Basu offers his analysis and observations in the latest issue of Scientific American. Obviously wealth is the best cure for hazardous and oppressive child labor. By the latter part of the 19th century, child labor was declining in the richer nations. Basu notes that many anti-child labor campaigns backfire. A 1990s boycott of Nepalese carpets, made with child labor, led many of those children to become reemployed as prostitutes".

Some economists ask: "Does increased international trade promote child labor? ... We find that countries that trade more have less child labor."

"Massachusetts ... has lost a higher percentage of jobs the past three years (6 percent) than any other state, according to data released this month by the Labor Department." Funny that! Nothing to do with firms moving elsewhere to escape tax and regulation burdens, of course.

The war against slavery isn't over, and globalisation is helping to eliminate it in India.

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THE EDUCATION MESS

"Oxford University is moving to reintroduce entrance tests for history and English in the latest assault on the credibility of the A-level system as a means of identifying bright pupils. The move comes just nine years after the university scrapped its entrance examinations amid concern that they favoured independent school pupils.

Teachers hate free speech: "The Michigan Court of Appeals today threw out a lawsuit filed by the Michigan Education Association that attempted to punish the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free-market think tank that accurately quoted the union's president in a fundraising letter. The Court stated that discussion on matters of public interest, such as school choice, should enjoy broad protection under the First Amendment ..."

Janet Albrechtsen argues against special scholarsips to entice males into teaching: "In promoting special privileges for male teachers, the Government has made exactly the same mistake as the unionists and the feminists - extrapolating the wrong conclusion from raw numbers without looking behind the numbers" Albrechtsen is not entirely fair, however. All Australia's conservative Federal government proposed was to REMOVE certain legal restrictions on what private bodies can do.

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ELSEWHERE

Cronkite attacks Kerry: "Dear Senator Kerry: In the interests of your campaign and your party's desire to unseat George W. Bush, you have some explaining to do. During the primary campaign, your Democratic opponents accused you of flip-flopping on several important issues, such as your vote in favor of the Iraq War resolution. ... Shades of gray don't do well in political campaigns, where primary colors are the rule. And your long and distinguished service in the Senate has no doubt led to genuine changes in some positions. But the denial that you are a liberal is almost impossible to reconcile. ... A candidate who lacks the courage of his convictions cannot win a nation, Mr. Kerry."

Guess who supports John Kerry? Malaysia's famously antisemitic Muslim ex-Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir Mohammad!

From Conservative Truth: "You don't believe Kerry is al Qaeda's choice? America certainly does. In a national survey, Americans were asked, "Who do you believe the terrorists want to win in November?" 65% answered "Kerry". Only 17% thought Bush would be their choice."

Some interesting statistics: Assassinating Palestinian terrorist leaders saves both Palestinian and Israeli lives.

A couple of readers have asked why I was not more critical of the article in the Christian Science Monitor that quoted my work. I take the view that ANY mention of Hitler's Leftism in the mainstream media is a breakthrough. See here for the full story.

I like Keith Burgess-Jackson's idea of hurling epitaphs at people. Should be more of it!

Writing on his "other" site, China Hand reviews the changes of the last 20 years or so in both China and Australia and notes the progress towards economic rationality in both -- with an accompanying rise in living and other standards.

The wicked one has a story about the Australian approach to salesmanship.

My recipe for today is a quick way to make good spaghetti bolognaise. See here. I am pleased to say that a lady in Melbourne emailed me yesterday after trying my recipe for Korean meatballs. She said they were "a big hit with all the family".

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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.

Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

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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HOMOSEXUALITY

I personally don't think that what homosexuals do among themselves matters a hill of beans one way or the other but nobody (Left or Right) seems to agree with me so here are some of the more interesting recent comments:

"Newsweekly" (Catholic conservative publication) on same sex marriage... "Until recently, laws in every country throughout the world recognised marriage as a legally enforceable agreement between a man and a woman to become husband and wife. Marriage changes the status of those who enter into it: it is an exclusive and enduring contract which requires the husband and wife to pledge fidelity to each other, and to care for each other and their children. On this foundation, marriage is regarded as the basis of the family unit, necessary to protect the position of children, and ultimately, important to the stability of society. With the best will in the world, none of these conditions apply to homosexual couples."

Osama & Co. can't stop Saudi Arabia's homosexuals: "Jeddah's malls have become meeting places for another group: homosexuals. Gay Saudi men now cruise certain malls and supermarkets, openly making passes at each other"

"Nationalizing marriage laws will only grant more power over our lives to the federal government, even if for supposedly conservative ends. A far better approach is for Congress to exercise its existing constitutional power to limit the jurisdiction of federal courts."

"Marriage is a fundamental human right. For many of us, and our churches, it is a holy act; in some religions even a sacrament. These two facts point to the only decent American solution to the gay marriage controversy. Marriage belongs in church, not in the courthouse or the legislature.

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ELSEWHERE

I noted over 30 years ago how violent "peace" demonstrators were then. They are still the same -- as hypocritical and dishonest as ever.

Thanks to one of my readers, I found this article in the "Christian Science Monitor" which quotes some of my points about Hitler. The realization of how Leftist Hitler was is slowly getting into the mainstream instead of being known only to historians.

"Wearing the American military uniform doesn't guarantee the person wearing it loves America, understands America, or is even interested in defending America. That should be quite clear by now. That people like John Kerry should think to conjure up images of genuine American patriotism by publicizing a very dubious military record and subsequent political activism is a sign of leftist delusion. The Left always presumes the public is ignorant and treats the public as such"

"The story of Anthony Bars -- the 4-year-old boy who was starved and beaten to death in Indiana by foster parents with a criminal record of child abuse -- continues. Due to media and public outrage, the caseworker who recommended removing Anthony from an earlier, loving foster parent is facing charges. Denise Moore is accused of official misconduct and of falsifying reports in an adoption proceeding: misdemeanor offenses. Sadly, Anthony is just one in a long list of children neglected or abused by Child Protective Services... The increased power of child welfare agencies to do so comes from legislation dating back to the Mondale Act of 1974. That act established huge financial incentives for state agencies to uncover abuse, without providing checks or balances to protect those wrongfully accused. It also virtually immunized child welfare workers and false accusers from liability."

Capitalism is good for your health. Poland is much more capitalist than Russia and it shows in their health statistics: "In the early 1980s life expectancies in Soviet Russia and Communist Poland were roughly similar, and both were starting to get worse. Cancer and cardiovascular disease were beginning a rapid rise, in lock step with their prime causes: smoking and alcoholism. Two decades later, Poland's life expectancy for men, at 70, has risen by four years since the collapse of communism and now is more than 10 years longer than that of Russian men. In Poland, cardiovascular disease has fallen by 20 percent in a decade, while in Russia, it has risen by 25 percent"

A paragraph from a very impassioned book (Beyond Terror) by Ralph Peters: "A room filled with university professors makes me nostalgic for the Khmer Rouge. Since I value intellect, I dislike intellectuals-those men and women, freed from the necessity of labor, who prefer theory to reality and who footnote while others fight our nation's battles. The enormous increase in the number of minds shielded from mundane concerns-thanks to our expanding wealth-is far more dangerous than the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction: Absurd theories killed vastly more human beings in the twentieth century than did the most terrible weapons. Those powers of thought that so enrich the years of the man or woman unafraid of life are employed by the intellectual to reduce life to a colorless, explicable sketch. The intellectual, whether a dean on a Cambridge campus or a scholar in a Cairo madrassah, perverts the power of the mind in order to force reality to conform to a simplified, strict, and inhuman vision of the way the world should be. With intellectuals in charge, of course."

Blogger A.E. Brain has been looking at what the National Library of Australia carries on its website: "I did a search on "Iraq & Saddam". The results, frankly, astonished me. A result worthy of the Misistry of Truth. Of the 4638 hits, I reviewed the first 1000. Of these, approximately 300+ were political anyalysis and commentary. Of that 300+, I found 2 that were neutral, neither pro- nor anti- war, but dispassionate analysis of alternatives. The rest were all anti-Bush, anti-War, anti-American." As Slattery comments: "And that clearly displays the difference between us rationalists and the dumb, unconfident in their convictions, moral relativists: we can handle all sides of the debate, because we know truth will win; they can't because they don't want truth, only ideology." Leftists really are pathetic in their fear of the full truth on any matter becoming known.

Colorado Conservative says fitness is bad for you. I agree. The last time I did any exercise was when I was 16 and at 60 I feel fine.

China Hand says very few people in China are interested in politics. They are too busy improving their personal lives.

I have just put up a recipe for Liptauer cheese spread and Hungarian open sandwiches: Something different. See 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.

Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

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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SOME MORE PHILOSOPHICAL OBSERVATIONS

Amusing: My critique yesterday of an article by big-time Princeton philosopher Gilbert Harman produced a very rapid backdown. Prof. Harman emailed me a brief reply, the key sentence of which was "My article was intended only to point to certain developments in social psychology" -- a much more modest claim than he in fact originally made. For instance, he originally said "Character based virtue ethics may offer a reasonable account of ordinary moral views. But to that extent, these ordinary views rest on error". A climbdown from "error" to "certain developments" is quite a plummet. Given the way he had ignored half the evidence on his topic, a backdown was of course all that was available to him.

Being an old guy, I have long ago decided (and got into print) what my views are on most of the major questions of analytical philosophy. Keith Burgess-Jackson's various posts on philosophical questions have however reminded me what fun philosopical questions can be so my interest in thinking about them has revived somewhat. Keith and I do not however agree on many of our conclusions. I suspect, in fact that there are NO two philosophers who agree with one-another on all philosophical questions. So I am sure that Keith will not take it amiss if I make a few comments (in my usual "take no prisoners" way) about his theories. He will probably just give my theories a hard time in reply.

In particular, Keith has a theory of "rightness" that is deontological. A deontologist believes that at least some actions have little bits of rightness or wrongness attached to them in some mysterious, mystical and unobservable way. Keith's own version of deontology seems to be peculiar to him: He thinks that uncontracted actions (contracted actions being actions done or refrained from pursuant to some sort of contract) can only have wrongness attached to them, not rightness. That oddity aside, however, he seems (in his major paper on the subject) to give NO reason why he believes that some actions have moral attachments nor does he say how we find out what those attachments are or resolve disputes about what they are.

That really puzzles me. I could understand such a view in a religious believer -- as religious believers believe in lots of mysterious, mystical and unobservable stuff -- but Keith is an atheist! I am forced back onto the view espoused by John Maze that Keith and those like him are simply making a mistake about how uncontracted actions come to have rightness or wrongness. Maze (See: Maze, J. (1973) "The concept of attitude". Inquiry, 16, 168-205) says that because moral properties are sometimes spoken about in the same way as physical properties (the statement "X is right" is of the same form as "X is pink"), some people mistakenly conclude that moral properties must have a separate and distinct existence of their own similar to physical properties. They don't, however. As most people readily see, "X is right" is an entirely different sort of statement from "X is pink". They see that "X is is right" is a value judgment whereas "X is pink" is a statement of fact. It is easy to detect, measure and agree on pinkness. None of that is true of rightness.

That "rightness" is a value judgment does not however mean that it is unimportant. As I think almost all psychologists would agree, values are very important indeed. I spent most of my research career studying them.

I also made a very brief comment yesterday about how I believe rights (as distinct from rightness) come about. Keith asked in reply whether or not I think that babies have rights. The ancient Greeks certainly thought that newborn babies had no rights at all. A father has the right (up to a certain age) to say whether a baby lived or died. So it seems to me that we GIVE babies rights. They are not BORN with rights. If babies are born with rights that are independent of any human law or custom, where do we find those rights? -- under the baby's fingernails? If not there, where? Or do we merely assert them without proof or evidence? And how come the Greeks could not find them?

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ELSEWHERE

There is a very interesting article in "Spiked" which blames terrorism on the risk-aversion that the politically-correct brigade have engendered in Western society. We look so chicken-livered to the rest of the world that they think they can easily intimidate us into doing what they want. And the lack of cojones among the Spanish has reinforced that impression. Thank goodness for the resolve of GWB in Afghanistan and Iraq!

The NYT has used the occasion of declaring the famously polluted "Love Canal" clean to revive all the Greenie myths about it. Wayne Lusvardi writes: "Times reporter Brian De Palma is incorrect that in 1978 "hundreds of families were evacuated from the working-class Love Canal section of Niagara Falls, N.Y., after deadly chemicals started oozing through the ground into basements and a school, burning children and pets and causing birth defects and miscarriages." The truth is that after decades of research, there is no scientifically substantiated incident of harm, not even so much as catching a cold, that ever occurred to humans at Love Canal due to exposure to so-called toxic chemicals, as documented in the book by Aaron Wildavsky: But Is It True? A Citizen's Guide to Environmental Health and Safety Issues -Harvard University Press, 1995.

Western Australia has decriminalized cannabis. Prohibition of alcohol did not work either. As Queen Elizabeth I of England asked King Philip II of Spain centuries ago: "Why cannot Your Majesty let your subjects go to the Devil in their own way?"

"An opinion poll suggests most Iraqis feel their lives have improved since the war in Iraq began about a year ago. The survey, carried out for the BBC and other broadcasters, also suggests many are optimistic about the next 12 months and opposed to violence."

Michael Darby has just put up a new lot of postings. Some of his headings:
THE PRIME MINISTER IS RIGHT (about Australia's risk from terrorism)
Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen (Influential former conservative Premier of the State of Queensland)
Chipangali Wildlife Orphanage
Education Debate: Good work by Hon Brendan Nelson MP
Adoption of children by homosexual couples
Food Scares

David Yeagley compares the so-called "Christians" of the Left to the Pharisees.

Peg Kaplan has the Jug Man ("Krug" means jug" in German) summed up.

The wicked one has put up an alaming scenario of how difficult it soon might be to order a pizza.

My recipe for today is for that old Greek favourite -- Moussaka. It's not a quick recipe to make but the result is worth it. See 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.

Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

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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SOME DUBIOUS PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY

I have just been reading a much-linked article on moral philosophy by Prof. Gilbert Harman of the Philosophy Dept. at Princeton -- titled "Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology". Judging by his publication list, Harman is one of the eminences of American moral philosophy so I am sorry to say that in my view his article is straight out of cloud-cuckoo land (with apologies to Aristophanes). I have no idea of Harman's general political orientation but his argument on this subject is classic Leftist stuff. To oversimplify a little, he claims that there is no such thing as a stable personality trait in anybody and that "It's all situational". It is only people's environment that dictates how they behave. So there is no barrier to creating a "new Soviet man", for instance. He claims, in other words, that there is no such thing as a "kind" man, a "dominant" man a "selfish" man etc. etc. His reasoning seems to be the completely fallacious: "Because nobody is kind all the time, therefore nobody is kind most of the time".

His article is deceptive from the outset. He claims that his view is "widespread" among social psychologists. If one psychologist in half a dozen countries around the world held such a view, I suppose the view could indeed be described as "widespread" but that would not at all mean that it is a majority view. And to my knowledge it is in fact the view of only a small minority of psychologists. Such a view had some vogue in response to a paper by Mischel (Mischel, W. (1977) "On the future of personality measurement" American Psychologist 32, 246-254) but the vast majority of psychologists continued to talk of traits nonetheless.

Where Harman appears to have gone wrong is in his narrow view of social psychology. There are two strands of social psychology -- the experimental and the correlational. The typical method of the first is to tell lies to your students and see what happens next while the typical method of the second is simply to ask people what they think about a variety of topics. Almost all my papers are in the latter tradition. And the reason why I and many others do the sort of psychology we do is that we find the totally unknowable generalizability of the experimental work to be deeply unsatisfactory. Neither people nor situations are normally sampled in any way in such work so any attempt to draw general conclusions from its results is faith, not science. And it is the "faith-based" work that Harman relies on.

The more soundly-based correlational work, on the other hand, almost automatically has the means of examining the sort of assertion made by Harman. It has the data to tell (via factor analysis etc.) whether there is any trait-like consistency in what people report about themselves. And there is. People do report considerable consistency in how they behave from situation to situation. And not only that, but the consistency can usually be readily summarized by normal trait adjectives, and OTHER PEOPLE agree that the self-described consistencies of behaviour do exist in the individual concerned (e.g. here). Harman has simply not attempted to look at the evidence most relevant to his assertion. But unconcern about the evidence is of course hardly new among Leftists. I would even describe it as one of their "traits"!

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ANIMAL RIGHTS

Why animal rights don't exist: "My point was, in essence, that rights are just not the sort of things animals other than people could have. Could animals have guilt, be blamed, feel regret and remorse, or apologize or anything on that order? No, and why so, that was the gist of my thesis: They are not moral agents like us, not even the great apes." I must say that I cannot see any way that rights can arise except through some sort of contract (implicit or explicit) or law so the idea of inborn animal rights seems mere emotionalism to me. Though I imagine that Keith Burgess Jackson might have something to say about that.

PETA's latest: Constitutional rights for fish! "Sorry, crustaceans and reptiles. You didn't make People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' list of animals that deserve protection under their proposed constitutional amendment, which declares 'all mammals, birds, and fish will, henceforth, be defined as 'persons' in the eyes of the law.' Of course, PETA's idea of protecting animals would strip us of everything from our leather shoes to the milk in our breakfast cereal (not to mention bacon and eggs). PETA president Ingrid Newkirk has called human beings the 'biggest blight on the face of the earth.'"

Get ready to see the real PETA, warts and all . ... Showtime will air the program at 10pm (all time zones) on April 1. ... This might be the only kind of publicity PETA's self-styled 'total press sluts' would prefer to avoid. The group's radical zealots may wish this were just an April Fool's joke, but it's not."

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ELSEWHERE

Andrew Bolt gives details of how Australia's universities and public broadcasters acclaim the views of Far-Leftists who believe that Israeli children and other innocents deserve to die.

Leftist antisemitism: "Anti-semitism is a virus and it mutates. To claim Jews cause their own suffering by failing to denounce Israeli policy is a revival of an old hatred"

Those delightful Arabs again: "More than 100 women have been raped in a single attack carried out by Arab militias in Darfur in western Sudan. ... "It is more than just a conflict. It is an organised attempt to do away with a group of people," he said...Arab militias, backed by the government, have driven hundreds of thousands from their homes"

It comes as no surprise to learn that John Kerry, who hates to take one position on an issue when he can take two or three, has come down strongly in favor -- and strongly against -- US policy in Cuba.

The Lolita story was first created by a Nazi. Makes sense: Nazis were Leftists and Leftists have no moral restraints.

Seeing Easter is coming up, I have put up on my recipe site a recipe that could be useful for family reunions -- a recipe for Greek Easter Lamb. The Greeks really know how to do lamb. See 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.

Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

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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GREENIE WATCH

The Democratic Leadership Council released on March 18 a commentary, Carbon Flip, Mercury Flop. The screed begins: "When it comes to environmental issues, the Bush administration seems determined to destroy its own limited credibility." For a point by point refutation, see here

Some current posts on ecoNOT:
* Much a-doo: Greens advise moms not to use diapers!
* Misanthropic quotation of the week: from "animal rights" philosopher Tom Regan
* "Alternative energy" -- but not in environmentalists' back yards
* A new primer on the Mother of All Eco-Crises

If the scientists don't understand climate change, how can anyone be so sure of what to do about it? "As scientists have studied the climate record trapped in glacial ice from Antarctica and Greenland, and in mud samples extracted from beneath the ocean floor, their respect for the speed of change has grown. In the mid-1950s, a change of roughly 3 degrees C over more than 1,000 years was deemed abrupt. In 1999, a team led by Jeffrey Severinghaus at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., determined that the last ice age ended with a temperature burst that raised the thermostat at Greenland by some 9 degrees C over a mere decade.... "We still don't understand the causes" behind the increase, he says. .... But here, too, the picture grows murky. At a meeting last fall at the WHOI, researchers from the US and Canada looked at the problem and raised more questions than answers."

More elitist trash from the Green/Left: "In Growth Fetish, Hamilton admits that, in the past times of scarcity, growth was beneficial - but he argues that in today's era of superabundance development no longer leads to subjective wellbeing. To support his argument, he quotes opinion polls showing that people in prosperous societies are often unhappy with their lives... There is a nauseating undertone of elitism in Hamilton's work. In his view, the marketing industry, including advertising, plays a key role in shaping individual desires. He refers to 'gullible consumers' and goes on to argue that 'today's average consumer may be an everyday victim of foolishness and feeble-mindedness in their consumption behaviour' .... Whatever people's subjective sense of wellbeing, there remains a huge amount to be done to raise living standards, even in the more developed countries. For instance, we are constantly being told that there is a demographic problem that means that the elderly cannot expect a reasonable standard of living. But with greater economic growth it will become possible for the elderly and others not able to work to have higher living standards." I wonder how many working people today share the judgment that we are living in a world of "superabundance"? Only a "limousine liberal" would think so.

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OUTSOURCING AND INTERFERENCE WITH FREE TRADE

Who's outsourcing whom? "Airwaves and newspapers are abuzz of late with talk about the loss of manufacturing jobs, the offshoring of tech jobs, immigration, and general alarmism about the 'outsourcing' of the American worker. We hear lots of talk about exactly why (and if) this is happening, but rarely do pundits and commentators look at the relationship between companies moving plants overseas, and the kinds of tax and regulatory policies employed by the states they're moving away from. As it turns out, states with business-friendly public policies attract and retain jobs. States with policies hostile to business tend to lose them."

Outsourcing creates AMERICAN jobs: "When Americans hear the word 'outsourcing,' they typically imagine the movement of U.S. jobs overseas. But globalization has created many forms of outsourcing. Consider the world's appetite for American popular culture. America annually exports $90 billion worth of movies, TV shows, sound recordings and other products created by U.S. 'copyright industries.'"

South Africa's Leftist leaders have been successful in their vow to stop SA becoming the West's African "sweat shop". Pity about their 40% unemployed.

For years we have been hearing about a water shortage in the western states... What specifically is a shortage? It is a situation where you are willing to pay the price but simply cannot find as much as you want.... a shortage is a sign that somebody is keeping the price artificially lower than it would be if supply and demand were allowed to operate freely. That is precisely why there is a water shortage in the western states.... Even in California's dry Central Valley, less than 10 percent of the water available from federal water projects is used by cities and industries. The vast majority of it is used by farmers, who pay a fraction of what urban users pay, thanks to federal price fixing.The long-term contracts under which this ridiculous arrangement goes on expire this year, so theoretically these contracts could be renegotiated so that everyone who uses water supplied by federal water projects has to pay his own way and cover the costs of the operation. Alas, this is an election year, so you can bet the rent money that no such thing is going to happen.

Western protectionists to India. Don't do as I say. "I read about one Indian who said something like the following: "Hey, you lectured us for decades during the Cold War and Indian socialism. Aren't we now doing exactly what you told us to?"

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ELSEWHERE

Jeff Jacoby says: "Once upon time it was racists who insisted that "nonwhite" was a synonym for "intellectually deficient." Today that attitude is promoted most emphatically by the defenders of affirmative action, a system rooted in the belief that blacks and certain other minorities can't hope to win if they have to compete on a level playing field."

Even the tolerant Dutch cannot stand Muslims: "Dutch parents are abandoning the state-run school system in droves, and sending their children to private schools with high education standards, which just coincidently happen to be almost exclusively native Dutch. The private schools are referred to as 'white' schools, and the remaining high-ethnic state schools are referred to as 'black' schools, and the phenomena is being called 'white flight'."

Spanish "socialism": "Here are some of the economic promises on which Zapatero's Socialist Workers Party campaigned: lowering the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 30 percent, cutting income taxes, and reducing the value-added tax. Oh, and they're going to balance the budget and control inflation."

I have just put up a recipe for Korean fried meatballs. I am betting that they are the best meatballs you have ever tasted. See here. Food names change a lot from country to country. I can translate some Australian food names into more widely understood ones but I will no doubt miss some. For instance, in yesterday's recipe I mentioned "zucchini". They are "courgettes" in England and "Italian squash" in the USA.

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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.

Three more examples of Leftist dishonesty: They blame the 9/11 attacks on "poverty" in the Islamic world. Yet most of the attackers were Saudis and Saudi Arabia is one of the world's richest countries! They also say that they oppose racism yet support "affirmative action" -- which judges people by the colour of their skin! They say that they care about "the poor" but how often do you hear them calling for the one thing that would bring about a worldwide economic boom in poor countries -- the USA and the EU abandoning their agricultural protectionism? Leftists obviously care more about conservative farmers than they do about the poor!

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