About the unrest among Uighurs in China’s far West.

UK PM offers to cut nuclear capability for deal with “rogue” states.

Honduras as a manifestation of the Chavez model. Noting parallels with the political situation in the Philippines.

Wide-ranging interview with Robert Kaplan on the brutality of the Sri Lankan government’s win over the Tamil Tigers, why China was a winner, India and Chinese maritime competition, the soft power of a more liberal Iran and Afghanistan-Pakistan as a single entity.

About the sheer backwardness and social inertia of Afghanistan: Afghanistan suffers from never having been colonised.

The US Administration has asserted its legal right to continue to hold terrorism detainees even if they are acquitted in courts. (If this was the previous Administration, it would be a sign of BushHitler’s rampant fascism.)

Critiquing Obama’s Middle East strategy as dangerously incoherent.

The US is reported to be against economic sanctions on Iran. The US has released five Iranian Qod force operatives captured in Iraq. The US military was not keen on the release. About the problems with the release.

Inside the Basij militia, used against the Iranian demonstrators: For Mr. Moradani, the biggest shock during the election turmoil came in his personal life. He had recently gotten engaged to a young woman from a devout, conservative family. A week into the protests, he says, his fiancée called him with an ultimatum. If he didn't leave the Basij and stop supporting Mr. Ahmadinejad, he recalls her saying, she wouldn't marry him.
He told her that was impossible. "I suffered a real emotional blow," he says. "She said to me, 'Go beat other people's children then,' and 'I don't want to have anything to do with you,' and hung up on me."
She returned the ring he gave her, and hasn't returned his phone calls. "The opposition has even fooled my fiancée," he says.

Michael Yon reports on the slow progress towards peace being made in Mindanao, with pictures: A guerrilla commander told me that he had been fighting since 1976, but came out of the jungles with 34 fighters on 20 April this year. Publicly it’s called a “surrender,” but on the ground it seemed more like a mutual agreement to stop fighting and do something constructive. And also with more detail. And more.

Report that the Taliban are buying children to train them for suicide attacks. Iran had previous used child soldiers.

The problem of Israel finding its would-be negotiating partners (Syria, PLO) keep increasing their demands.

The case for a Sunni-Israeli alliance. The Israeli and Saudi governments have denied that the Saudis have given permission for Israel to use its airspace to attack Iran. About prospects in the Middle East: The settlements aren’t the central question. They’re a tragedy in part because they obscure the central question of this conflict. The only question is: can the world of Arab Islam accept the idea of Jewish national equality? That’s the question, and I don’t know the answer to that.
Naturally, I shade toward pessimism on that question. I’m recalling, among other things, that the Six Day War wasn’t started because of the settlements. If you study the history of the last one hundred years, you’ll see that this is the central animating cause of the conflict. And I don’t see much evidence that Arab Islam can assimilate this idea right now.

Roadside bomb kills British regimental commander in Afghanistan. Russia will allow NATO forces in Afghanistan to be supplied through Russian territory. More.

A short guide to Israeli settlements.

Still some tricky times ahead in Iraq. Some of the more pessimistic views on the ground in Iraq.

Really cool building-a-new-bridge picture.

About symmetry and beauty in physics.

About using spelling errors to catch plagiarism and genetic errors to trace evolutionary lineages.

The second man to walk on the Moon urges Mars settlement as a way of giving people goals.

Research suggests that coffee may counteract some effects of Alzheier’s.

About autism and vaccines as a manufactured controversy.

About political patterns in the blogosphere.

On what makes people “snap”: According to Siegelman and Conway's theory, snapping is not a psychiatric disorder, it is a communication problem. And any kind of closed situation that isolates people and limits communication and contact — preparing for a NASA mission, for example, or any other high-pressure work situation — contributes to the possibility of snapping.

About how language shapes our thoughts: Unfortunately, learning a new language (especially one not closely related to those you know) is never easy; it seems to require paying attention to a new set of distinctions. … Simply put, speakers of languages like Kuuk Thaayorre are much better than English speakers at staying oriented and keeping track of where they are, even in unfamiliar landscapes or inside unfamiliar buildings. What enables them — in fact, forces them — to do this is their language. Having their attention trained in this way equips them to perform navigational feats once thought beyond human capabilities.

Shyness, being blue-eyed, binge drinking and a clever way of telling that the Iranian elections were fraudulent. Explaining the statistical analysis establishing that fraud was extremely probable: Why would fraudulent numbers look any different? The reason is that humans are bad at making up numbers. Cognitive psychologists have found that study participants in lab experiments asked to write sequences of random digits will tend to select some digits more frequently than others.

The number of cafes in France is way down, partly because consumption of sandwiches is up.

A suggestion to increase transparency in public policy.

Pointing out that massive increase in the subsidising of public transport has seen decreases in its usage.

About what is wrong with the Happy Planet Index.

About restraining health care costs (pdf): In 1960, Americans paid almost half of their health care expenses directly out of pocket; today less than one eighth of health care costs are paid out of pocket. As government and private health insurance programs have taken on increasing shares of health care payments, medical prices relative to general prices have risen precipitously. Putting it all in a single chart. About how government provided health insurance is not administratively cheaper. The problems of indeterminacy in such measurements and why the US adopting a European-style system would make the European systems worse: Our messy, organic, wasteful, unfair, irrational system allows experimentation, and they cherry pick the best results. If we stopped doing this, their system would stop looking so good. Link to paper setting out different ways of allocating health care.

About 6% of Brits do their own dentistry, such as the man who superglued his teeth, or the Iraq veteran who pulled his own teeth out with pliers, both because they could not find a NHS dentist. But PM Brown goes to a private dentist.

That anti-trust action helps consumers lacks much supporting evidence, but gives bureaucrats lots to do: it is now getting in the way of keeping US airlines afloat.

GM emerges from bankruptcy. About that: The main difference in the new GM is that it will have an ownership group whose primary concerns are NOT the financial success of the company. … Both the UAW and the US government can pursue such non-business goals secure in the knowledge that financial success is virtually irrelevant, as the US taxpayer can be counted on to make up any shortfalls.

In the US, layoffs have stabilised but hirings have stagnated: suggesting why. Another report of a climate of fear. As well, raising the minimum wage restricts (would-be) employees too. Saying it in pictures. Working through the weird and wonderful steps by which furloughed academics are banned from working on their day(s) off.

The US federal government’s fiscal performance may be a bit unsustainable.

US federal stimulus money is going far more to counties which voted for Obama. This is likely structural rather than deliberate: The secret to the riddle seems to be that areas that benefit from federal spending formulae tend to support the Democrats. Not as a result of short-term fluctuations in voting patterns or federal spending levels, but as a structural element of American politics.

Congressional report finds US federal government policies responsible for (pdf) housing bubbles. They greatly aggravated the problem by enormously increasing the level of risk in the financial system, but the bubbles required local restrictions on land use to start. Sub-prime loans were not the big problem with foreclosures, no-deposit loans were. Suggesting a link between (pdf) housing bubbles and productivity growth. The model only works once what are now called “smart growth” become widespread, because it is only once land use for housing is subject to major regulatory restrictions that a key premise (The fact that land, a finite resource, is a relatively large component of housing (compared with its “share” in other goods) makes the overall supply of housing relatively unresponsive to demand changes; the supply of houses cannot expand indefinitely to meet increases in demand) applies.

In Washington DC, there is a move to restrict the “blight” of “too many” taxicabs. In Melbourne, a taxi licence costs about the same as a median house, in New York: New York City's medallion system, established in 1937 during the Great Depression in response to a ballooning number of unregulated taxis, artificially capped the number of cabs on the road, to what is now about 13,000. … The May 2009 price for an individual medallion, those held by owner-operators, was $568,000. The cost of a corporate medallion was $744,000.

Paper arguing for reform of (pdf) the Oz budget openness rules.

Explaining cricket to American baseball fans.

About the segregationist and white-supremacist policies of Woodrow Wilson.

The Mexican-American border can be a dangerous place.

Canadian customs are notoriously obstructionist about matters sexual: a personal experience thereof.

Post with a useful set of distinctions between (US) liberals and conservatives.

Seems fair: I became a Conservative by being around Liberals, and I became a Libertarian by being around Conservatives.

Great post by a very non-Republican feminist who is puzzled by the rage, even misogyny, against Gov. Palin among feminists: These people don’t hate Palin because of the lies; the lies exist to justify the hate. The comments thread is also well worth reading.

The University of Illinois has a patronage-entry scandal. How very Chicago politics.

Analysing the “three rules” of Obama. I thought the biggest issues with an Obama presidency would be his lack of experience and his being a Chicago pol. Both calls seem correct already.

Keeping track of Obama’s campaign promises. Noting a pattern to which promises are kept, which are broken: Obama has been willing to spend plenty of political capital on his promises that vastly expand the size and scope of the federal government, and relatively little on promises related to eliminating waste, putting limits on his own power, or making the government more transparent and accountable

The “cap and trade” bill going through Congress is not much about restricting CO2 emissions but is a whole lot about special favours. Including the US Federal government getting all excited about what you do with you trees, your house … Years ago, Aaron Wildavsky responded to a Kiwi former student telling him that NZ had appointed the first “Minister for the Environment” with “if you are Minister for the Environment, pretty soon you are Minister for Everything”. What ever else the CAGW push is, it is also a whole series of power-grabs. And if you are not in favour of them, you are “against the environment”, “committing treason against the planet” etc.

Nature, red in tooth and claw narwhal pieces: Don't let cute overrun the world, fight back with your own Avenging Narwhal!

How to do carpetbagger steak with pictures.

Review of a book about the very different sexual outlooks of West and East and the interaction between the two.

A model of critical thinking.

About Zhao Zhiyang’s posthumous memoirs.

About the life and liberalism of Sir Isaiah Berlin.

About de Tocqueville and the power of ideas.

About the duc de Saint-Simon and his extraordinary Memoirs.

About the life and death of Trotsky.

About the insufferable pseudo-brilliance of graduate students.

An informative and wide-ranging discussion between Alan Wolfe and Russ Roberts on liberalism.

About the use of the term ‘neoliberalism’. The full paper (pdf): In the quotes of Mises and Rustow we see reflected a schism of liberalism: To Rustow, old school liberals like Mises were dangerous extremists; to Mises, neoliberals were not much better than totalitarian socialists. In any case, neoliberalism as a concept was clearly established as something quite different from the ‘free market radicalism’ with which it is usually associated today. Neoliberalism, from Rustow’s 1932 speech to the Colloque Walter Lippmann of 1938, had been the attempt to formulate an anti-capitalist, anti-communist, but halfsocialist Third Way.

About the repression in Burma.

Member of UAE royal family videotaped engaged in torture.

The Sun is behaving a little unexpectedly, and a cooling period is likely for a few years.

About declining humidity in the atmosphere.

A suggested explanation for the Medieval Warm Period.

A Polar Bear expert has been barred from a conference because his views are “unhelpful”.

The testimony of a physics professor before the US Senate.

Claiming errors in Plimer’s book. More.

Noting an upsurge in scepticism about CAGW. And also.

A prominent sceptic finds that an art appraiser refused to deal with him because of his views.

The Oz Federal Government is apparently proposing to add climate crimes to the Federal Police’s responsibilities, without, at this stage, any increase in resources.

China is refusing to be in any binding commitment on CO2 emissions.

Getting the carbon trading bill through the US House of Representatives was not exactly open deliberation at its finest. That the bill was 1,200 pages long raises the question of compulsory upper limits to length of laws.

Wondering how many monumental works in history were to keep people busy in the off-season.

About celebrating craftmanship.

About behavioural economics.

About structural problems in the Chinese economy.

About the decay of the Swedish model.

A senior Bank of England official arguing for inflation targeting and against “bubble popping” (pdf). The Bank of England has moved the bulk of their pension funds into indexed gilts, suggesting they believe inflation will rise.

Alan Greenspan on economic prospects and the dangers of public debt, including political allocation of capital.

The Obama administration is planning to provide further support for distressed mortgage holders. More. About not solving the problems. Interventions to restrict land use create the bubbles, intervention to promote low-income home ownership aggravate the effects and now further intervention is occurring to try and clean up the mess.

How the US federal bailout money can end up in weird and wonderful places: such as a British distillery in the Virgin Islands.. The budget deficit and the auto bailouts have American evenly divided. The US fiscal stimulus is overwhelmingly being saved not spent. (Ricardian equivalence anyone?)

Research finds that medical costs rose faster in publicly subsidised parts of American health care. Graph. This is surprising how? Remembering Milton Friedman on why health care does not show the same productivity gains as other parts of the economy. (Nor, of course, does schooling.) Malpractice insurance in the US has got extremely expensive. (It is, of course, rife with third-party spending effects.) Americans register high levels of satisfaction with their health care and have a low rate of long-term uninsured.

Funding big projects is easier than funding their periodic reconstruction.

Melbourne is getting new tram and train operators.

Looking at housing bubbles and bank exposure in Oz.

The State of California is in a deep fiscal hole, in part because of the housing bubble created by regulatory control over land use.

Victoria’s Planning Minister rejects the “cultural snobbery” of inner city planners against fringe suburbs and expanding Melbourne. WA Planning Minister is also in favour of some more urban sprawl.

Owner fined $52,400 dollars for demolishing own house: originally built by the Housing Commission in the 1940s. In Perth, an owner is being prosecuted to be forced to rebuild the house he demolished.

About the damage to the Iranian theocracy and to the Iranian model. Reports of discussions to eliminate the Supreme Leader position. More. The deeply implausible election results. Some “errors” have been admitted to. But no major irregularities. The Guardian council has since extended its deadlines for examining irregularities. The Interior ministry has found no voting discrepancies. The Iranian President is keeping a low public profile. Though he does what President Obama to apologise for the nasty things he said. The regime is busy blaming the West (particularly the UK) for its problems. More. London Lord Mayor Boris Johnson laughs back. European states have criticised the repression. Repressive measures include banning memorials in mosques for victims and, it is reported, withholding the body of a slain protester until the family paid for the bullets which killed him. An online guide to following the protests. A list of many of those killed or arrested. The Basij militia is reported to be particularly targeting women. Amnesty International has denounced the use of the Basij militia. An eerie calm has descended on Teheran. A history of female activism behind the protests.

The US government spends billions on intelligence, and is still struggling to get reliable information on Iran. And also. The Obama Administration wrote to the Iranian regime before the election, with no result. Invitations to Iranian diplomats to attend July 4 US embassy parties have been withdrawn. The Obama Administration is still offering to talk to the regime about nukes.

Then there are those for whom the really important thing is that the Iranian regime is anti-American: so congratulated President Ahmadinejad on his re-election and explain that there was no stolen election, while the problem was Ahmadinejad’s popularity: That is also reflected in the western media, whose cameras focus so lovingly on Tehran's gilded youth and for whom Ahmadinejad is nothing but a Holocaust-denying fanatic. (On “gilded youth” the author is The younger son of the former BBC Director General Alasdair Milne, he attended the leading public school Winchester College and read PPE at Balliol College, Oxford and Economics at Birkbeck College, London University.)

Iran as country with many signs of social stress: including the fastest decline in fertility rates ever recorded.

Last month, I suddenly dropped 3kg, making my total weight loss since January 2007 11kgs. I am not sure what caused the drop, since I have been doing much the same sort of thing: regular walking with weights, keeping water consumption up, saturated fats down. Possibly, my rediscovery of salt might have something to do with it. Certainly, I have been sleeping better and been much less tired during the day.

Review of a book that argues that religion is not, nor is it likely to, die out. Interview with the authors.

Post with lots of links about Scientology.

UK’s Chief Rabbi warns of virulent new strain of anti-Semitism.

George Galloway having a bit a problem on film of Islamic imans making violent statements.

A Rev. Fred Phelps exposure site.

Environmentalism does lapse into religious language: Observe an eco-sabbath. For one day or afternoon or even hour a week, don't buy anything, don't use any machines, don't switch on anything electric, don't cook, don't answer your phone, and, in general, don't use any resources. In other words, for this regular period, give yourself and the planet a break. Keep your regular eco-sabbath for a month. You'll find that the enforced downtime represents an improvement to your life.

Review of a book pessimistic about Islam’s future. A YouTube piece that is very worried about the vigour of Islam’s future.

The Iranian upheaval is, in part, the latest manifestation of a deep theological split within Iranian Shi’a: Opposing Na'ini was an ayatollah named Nuri. He dismissed democracy and the rule of law as inferior alternatives to the divine, eternal, atemporal, nonerrant wisdom embodied in the Koran and sharia. As Ayatollah Khomeini would declare more than once, his own ideas were nothing but an incarnation of Nuri's arguments. … Before coming to power, Khomeini argued that the most important duty, indeed the raison d'etre of an Islamic government, was to implement fully the tenets of sharia. But once in power and faced with the complexities of modern Iranian society, he subtly changed the very foundation of his theory. He introduced the concept of maslaha--interests of the regime--and declared, much to the consternation of nearly every other ayatollah, that these interests, as determined by him or his successor, would supersede even the fundamentals of Islam. In other words, the state was everything--and sharia was nothing but its legitimizing narrative, a narrative that could be suspended at the will of the leader.

An ad that was not quite thought through …

About how originality overwhelmed beauty.

A city in Montana [tried to] requires prospective employees to hand over their Facebook™ passwords[, but has since retreated from the idea].

Remembering Farrah Fawcett.

Remembering Rocky and The Karate Kid.

Asking a spectacularly and offensively stupid question.

Broadway is struggling with the notion of having some diversity … of opinion. About that.

A newspaper ad campaign using near-worthless Zimbabwean banknotes to print billboards has won an award.

The Oz Federal government has set its sights on censoring computer games. Via longi.

A piece on Michael Jackson, aka Wacko Jacko, published just before died. An obituary, on him as a prisoner of fame. Apparently, he was consuming lots of powerful pharmaceuticals, a result reported to be confirmed by the autopsy. About the awful physical decay and his greedy entourage. Having an entourage significantly drawn from the Nation of Islam "looking after" a gay man was not a good start.

More bullying from Canadian Human Rights (sic) apparatchik. How things ended up. Mark Steyn is happy to debate the CHRC: If you schmooze enough Third World thug states, it’s not surprising your postmodern cultural relativism starts to drift past the point of no return. As Commissar Lynch primly notes in her report, America’s First Amendment absolutism on free speech is out of step with the “growing global consensus”—that would be the “growing global consensus” represented by the CHRC and its “distinguished guests.” Take Sweden and Cameroon, split the difference, and that should be enough human rights for anyone.

The six-month old BBC Farsi service has been a major source of information for the protestors. Lists of arrested Iranian journalists. The steady change of views of a NYT columnist from “we should engage with Iran” to “they’re a bunch of theocratic thugs”. Back when he was putting a positive gloss on how to treat with the regime, he failed to distinguish between the Iranian Supreme Leader responding (Khamenei also quieted the crowd when it began its ritual “Death to America” chant) or inciting “death to America” chants.

About food rations.

Argentinian soldiers are testifying about being tortured by their own officers during the Falklands War. The British victory not only discredited an unusually vile military government, so that Argentinia has had democratic government ever since, it also established Western willingness to fight in self-defense: a good thing during the prolonged death throes of the Soviet Union.

Honduran President arrested by the military. Lots more links: the situation is somewhat murky.

Can we guess who the most prolific official executioner in history would work for?

During the time of the Anglo-Soviet occupation of Iran, FDR’s representative was keen on democracy for Iran. The fight for Iranian democracy already had an American martyr.

The North Korean situation is getting more interesting.

Minor oops during exercises, Chinese sub collides with US destroyer sonar array.

FBI to have a bigger role in US anti-terror strategies. The Obama Administration has started exchanging terrorists for hostages. More.

A French magistrate is probing whether a terrorist attack in Pakistan in 2002 what killed 14, including 11 French consultants, was prompted by loss of bribes.

More on Hezbollah’s defeat in the Lebanese elections.

Poll finds Israelis are unimpressed by Obama and take a differentiated view of settlements.

A piece arguing that, among other things, we should feel sorry for the consequences of Hamas’ actions because they are incompetent murderers: The horror of Israel which uses the pretext of the derisory Palestinian missile attacks to mount a ferocious punitive response, trusting overly in high technology to destroy an enemy using archaic means. I intentionally use the words derisory, futile, archaic, infinitesimally bothersome, because a glance at the statistics is enough to see that these words are justified. The thousands of missiles launched at Israel by Hamas from Gaza in recent years have killed but a dozen people and wounded a few dozen more. But hey, they were only Jews.

About the emergence of house cats. About that purring.

Dogs cannot talk, but they can imitate. Though Saint Bernhard's are on the way out as rescue dogs.

Sumerian and Babylonian mathematics and why there are 60 minutes in an hour.

Pictures of Mars.

Great pics of a volcanic eruption.

About the placebo effect.

Review of a book about the nature of mathematics.

Multiple intelligences was a nice theory, too bad about the empirical evidence …

About the evolution and function of spite: the article cites research suggesting that higher consciousness of status leads to more spiteful behaviour (as a way of policing status).

Research suggests that self-confidence is inherently persuasive, more so than expertise.

Questioning Jared Diamond’s notion of collapse and finding adaptation and resilience instead.

When it comes to what happened to the Neanderthals, we still do not know.

A new fungus strain is a risk to up to 80% of world wheat crop.

About the notion of getting energy from car braking.

About the Chinese push to put information blocking software in computer chips.

The Iranian regime is engaged in possibly the most extensive internet surveillance anywhere. More. Iran had previously claimed to have built a supercomputer. Apparently for rocket research, but … Selling monitoring services to repressive regimes is quite a money-spinner for Siemens™ & Nokia™. The American Islamic Congress has a “boycott Nokia™” campaign.

A recent book review put two positions about the power of ideas up against each other.

One is: Rahe believes that "ideas have consequences," that they have the power to guide and even make events, and therefore that they are not mainly caused by the conditions of their time or context but are, on the contrary, mainly the cause of these conditions.

The contrasting position is: In [Skinner and Pocock’s] view, often called "historicism," ideas can be traced to prior conditions that are not ideas, such as economic forces or, more particularly for them, political interests. Ideas are essentially defensive; they justify, defend, and protect the established interests of various regimes and of their opponents, for example the defense of the American colonists in the Declaration of Independence.
Ideas cannot cause events because they themselves are caused; so the colonists were not moved to act by the ideas in the Declaration, but those ideas merely expressed what they thought to say after the fact. Ideas are no different from ideology in which you say what you are forced to say in your situation, or your "context," like a defendant speaking through a clever lawyer.

Both these positions strike me as wrong: the former because it gives ideas too much causal importance, the latter because it gives them too little.
( consequences and resonances )
To suggest ideas trump social context is belied by experience. Ideas have to resonate in order to have power, and social context, including social and material interests, are powerful sources of such resonance.

But not the only ones: after all, not all gentiles are anti-Semitic, not all heterosexuals hate homosexuals and not all tenured or would-be tenured academics have contempt for getting income from commerce while all the laws which improved the status of women, blacks and Jews were originally passed by white male gentiles. Hence both the above positions are wrong because they are too simple.

* Note, all this still leaves open the possibility that the net effects of protection were still negative overall: particularly in terms of long-term and intangible effects.

Residents of a council housing block told to remove welcome mats and pot plants as health and safety risks. The Brits are being encouraged to report neighbours who have "too much" money as potentially living off the proceeds of crime.

The text of one of Gordon Brown’s quitting minister’s resignation letter.

A new Eurosceptic group is being formed in the European Parliament. The UKIP did particularly well.

Austria’s culture of non-debate is seeing radical populism march to ever more success.

The European elections as a sign of the failure of the EUropean elite: Subverting democracy to suppress neo-nationalism doesn’t seem a smart move. But then if the political class were that smart it wouldn’t be in this situation. The problem in Europe is not a lunatic fringe but a lunatic mainstream ever more estranged from its voters. Via jordan179.

About how Baltic and Eastern Europe are highly misleading models for understanding Russia: Part of the reason why both Russian liberals and many Western analysts tend to get Russia so badly wrong is that they instinctively compare that country with former Communist states, Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe and the Baltic nations. There, mass movements were generated in support of economic reform and democratization processes which, however flawed, spared them from the dreadful experience of Russia and Ukraine in the 1990s.
This comparison is dead wrong, and wrong for a reason that goes to the heart of the Russian liberals’ failure to win mass support in Russia. In Eastern Europe, successful democratization, the adoption of successful economic reform, and the eventual achievement of economic growth proceeded in tandem because they were backed up by very powerful mass nationalist drives in these countries that were directed first and foremost towards taking these countries out of the orbit of Moscow, and into their “rightful” historical place as members of the West.
The other aspect of Eastern Europe that cannot be replicated for Russia – or indeed, anywhere else in the world - is the pull, and the discipline, provided to the East Europeans and Baltics by the genuine offer of membership in the EU and NATO. The need to conform to the EU accession process in turn greatly limited opportunities for the kind of outright kleptocracy seen in Russia.

Victoria’s Planning Minister recently rejected the “cultural snobbery” of inner city planners against fringe suburbs. Have just finished a mildly frantic last week of term. On Wednesday, taught at a government school in the Parkville area of the inner city (not University High). On Thursday, taught at a government school in the outer suburbs Dandenong way. On Friday, taught at another, very multicultural government school in the outer Dandenong “darkness”.

The inner city school—full of the children of the progressive inner city middle class—was by far the least fun to teach at. Much, much preferred the outer suburbs kids.

The kids at the Friday school, where I taught Weapons and helped in Jennifer B. Tournament, were just lovely. So were three of the four classes in the Thursday school, where I taught Tournament. Even the fourth class only suffered from an excess of enthusiasm, and were fine with a bit of firmness.

Some of the kids at the inner city school, where I did Troubadors and Education & Games were sweet and polite. But there were rather too many who were just too cool for even elementary politeness. Clearly, the world existed for their satisfaction. Could not be bothered to stop their conversations, could not be bothered to pay attention, sniggering was their default outlook. Worse than almost any private school kids I have had to deal with.

The teachers were supportive in all three schools, and I am socially closer in my origins to the inner city kids than the outer suburbs kids, as are my friendship networks. The difference was in the outlook of the kids.

Minister Justin Madden is correct, cultural snobbery against outer suburban folk is very inappropriate.

Harlan Ellison on pay the writer!

A nice statement of property rights from Wild River.

On why The Economist is thriving while Time and Newsweekly decline.

Rating which type of American movies do well internationally according to their moral/religious content.

About the first feature film shown in Saudi Arabia in 30 years and experiencing Egypt while making the film.

Review of a film about a stoning in Iran in 1986. Another.

Arguing that many Western journalists and intellectuals support Hezbollah not despite its violence, but because of it.

The Iranian repression is turning Iran into the world’s biggest prison for journalists, alongside China. Trying to get around the repression to report. The reporting and arrests extends to bloggers. An émigré Iranian filmmaker points out that, no matter who is President of Iran, they would stone her.

About the failure of Western intellectuals and media in the face of Islamism: Rushdie, too, had to admit that he had been mistaken. In his "Satanic Verses" he had declared that the war on racism in Britain, on Hindu nationalism in India, on Islamism, was part of the Left's greater purpose. But he was doubly mistaken: Islamism has a universalist thrust which makes it more dangerous than mere xenophobia. Yet the Left prefers battling Islamic dissidents to fighting Islamism.


The North Korean detention and harsh sentencing of two American journalists confronts the Obama Administration with the continuing dilemma of how to deal with the North Korean regime.

But do not worry, media Obama-worship has got to the stage of deifying him.

Claiming that the green bubble has burst: In the history of developed democracies with literate publics served by mass media, there is no precedent for today's media enlistment in the crusade to promote global warming "awareness." Concerning this, journalism, which fancies itself skeptical and nonconforming, is neither.

About repairing motorcycles and the dignity of purposeful, physical work.

A very useful speech on the global financial crisis, including why Oz is doing better than most places, by a senior Treasury official.

Paper arguing that it is not the role of monetary policy do deal with (pdf) asset price bubbles.

Arguing that the wealth effect on consumption spending from housing is small.

Post with a time series on what Americans think of government economic policy based on University of Michigan polling. It is all downhill since Clinton.

Two Japanese carrying US$134bn in American bonds have been detained for questioning at the Italian-Swiss border.

With huge sums going out in bailouts and bond sales, the sacking of two inspector-generals is raising questions. The independence of a bailout inspector-general is being tested.

About the sort of people bondholders include.

A leading Chinese economist is unimpressed with K.Rudd’s essay on “neoliberalism”. The Chinese are unimpressed with our opaque foreign investment controls.

People can keep track of the Oz stimulus spending here.

Texan cities are weathering the recession better than most US metro areas. The experience of the recession between metropolitan areas is highly varied. California is losing manufacturing jobs at a high rate.

The background to divisions within the Iranian elite. 2003 article on the millionaire mullahs: how the clerics have looted the Iranian economy. The disintegrating dynamics of the Islamic republic. The strategic background to Iranian dilemmas. Iranian philosopher and dissident on how the crisis exposes the conflict between popular and divine sovereignty in the Iranian system.

The Iranian elections proved much more lively than expected. The official results say that the incumbent has been resoundingly re-elected. Ahmadinejad’s strength in 2005 was very much in the cities: the recent election results are quite different. A scholarly post on rural sentiments and election fraud. 50 cities had more than a 100% turnout. About rural conservatism and urban ideologies in the Middle East. Informative survey of Iranian social attitudes. Ahmadinejah also did poorly among non-Persian ethnic groups. Lots of Iranians seem to be angry with those results. Expatriates voting in LA seem to be a microcosm of Iranian responses.

About the Iranian regime and not making silly analogies with Western elections given the wake-up call to complacent commentary. On not believing a junk opinion poll or miraculously counted ballots.

The Supreme Leader is not compromising. The Revolutionary Guards had previously been re-configured to meet internal threats. Claims that Hamas is providing suppression muscle to the regime and Hezbollah. Clashes are getting bloodier. More. Eyewitness reports. Protesters are beginning to be killed. List of embassies accepting wounded. Tehran quiet the day after. Clashes are continuing in other cities.

The daughter and other relatives of Ransfanji have been arrested.

Arguing that President Obama is finding the explosion of popular anger in Iran embarrassing and awkward. Making similar points. President Obama supports fair elections and freedom of assembly. Unconfirmed response to a previous statement.

Posts with lots of links here, here and (especially) here. Compilation posts here and here.

Since ND has disappeared off to the UK halfway through the (very busy) two last weeks of term, the juggling of gear, roster and presenters has been all up to me.

Doing the packing has the advantage that I am the one (mostly) facing the consequences: what economists would call well-aligned incentives. It also means extra driving to Hawthorn on, for example, Sunday evening to do said packing.

Sunday had the added fun of one presenter not being able to get back in time to work (including driving on of the vehicles) on Monday and another presenter not having read the roster properly and already having work. So, had to find two new presenters for the following day, one of which could drive the station-wagon.

It all worked in the end, but there was some serious juggling getting there. The nice girls of Star of the Sea were fun to do two 75 minute and one 45 minute period of Tournament with. They clearly found trying to pound me with a rattan swords lots of fun, and indeed said so.

It also meant, that rather being at the school in Brighton which finished at 1pm to get to the ABC's SouthBank studio by 4.20pm, I was at the school notionally finishing at 3.15pm in Gardenvale to get to the ABC's SouthBank studio by 4.20pm. As it happened, the organising teacher was very helpful, so we actually finished at 2.50pm, allowing me plenty of time to get out of armour, Rohan/Vandel and I to get everything packed and me to get and find parking at Southbank with 30 minutes to spare.

Took a wrong turn in the building, got misdirected twice but ended up in the studio. The interview/discussion (about 12 minutes or so) on the medieval origins of Western civilisation was fun to do and will turn up on the Counterpoint site.

I drove home, with some extra effort due to an accident on Montague road which was stuffing entrances to Citylink, leading me to eventually backtrack via Clarendon Rd and Flinders St to Footscray Rd.

Then it was off to Prodos' Monday meeting to give the first of my presentations of my Nomads, Medievalism & Modernity talk, which was lots of fun to do and went down very well.