Stopped at the lights on Bridge Rd in Richmond, I observed a tram pull up. A pretty young woman with a very dark-honey complexion was standing at the stop. A white, overweight, late middle age man--almost a walking caricature in appearance--smiled and motioned to her to get on ahead of him. She demurred, indicating she was actually waiting to go the rest of the way across the road. So he smiled again and walked past to the middle door of the tram.

It was just a very ordinary moment. But the sort of moment that reminds me of why I like living here, in Melbourne, in this time.

Waterboarding and sleep deprivation are torture
I just wanted to make that clear. They are clearly torture as defined by the Torture Convention which lots of countries (including Oz and the US) have signed and ratified. President Ronald Reagan signed the convention on behalf of the US. The Convention defines torture as:

...any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to, lawful sanctions.

On my reading that includes waterboarding and sleep deprivation.

In transmitting the Convention to the Senate for ratification, President Reagan wrote (via):

The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention. It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

The declared policy of the Reagan Administration on terrorism (pdf) was:

Another important measure we have developed in our overall strategy is applying the rule of law to terrorists. Terrorists are criminals. They commit criminal actions like murder, kidnapping, and arson, and countries have laws to punish criminals. So a major element of our strategy has been to delegitimize terrorists, to get society to see them for what they are -- criminals -- and to use democracy’s most potent tool, the rule of law against them.

In other words, to not become what we were fighting.

In a 1980 decision, the US Federal Court accepted a claim to damages from a family for an act of torture that had occurred in Paraguay. In its decision the court held that:

Indeed, for purposes of civil liability, the torturer has become like the pirate and slave trader before him hostis humani generis, an enemy of all mankind. Our holding today, giving effect to a jurisdictional provision enacted by our First Congress, is a small but important step in the fulfillment of the ageless dream to free all people from brutal violence.

In fact, it had even older antecedents in British (and thus American) law. In a recent decision, the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords ruled that:

... that from its very earliest days the common law of England set its face firmly against the use of torture. Its rejection of this practice was indeed hailed as a distinguishing feature of the common law, the subject of proud claims by English jurists such as Sir John Fortescue (De Laudibus Legum Angliae, c. 1460-1470, ed S.B. Chrimes, (1942), Chap 22, pp 47-53), Sir Thomas Smith (De Republica Anglorum, ed L Alston, 1906, book 2, chap 24, pp 104-107), Sir Edward Coke (Institutes of the Laws of England (1644), Part III, Chap 2, pp 34-36). Sir William Blackstone (Commentaries on the Laws of England, (1769) vol IV, chap 25, pp 320-321), and Sir James Stephen (A History of the Criminal Law of England, 1883, vol 1, p 222). That reliance was placed on sources of doubtful validity, such as chapter 39 of Magna Carta 1215 and Felton's Case as reported by Rushworth (Rushworth's Collections, vol (i), p 638) (see D. Jardine, A Reading on the Use of Torture in the Criminal Law of England Previously to the Commonwealth, 1837, pp 10-12, 60-62) did not weaken the strength of received opinion. The English rejection of torture was also the subject of admiring comment by foreign authorities such as Beccaria (An Essay on Crimes and Punishments, 1764, Chap XVI) and Voltaire (Commentary on Beccaria's Crimes and Punishments, 1766, Chap XII). ... In rejecting the use of torture, whether applied to potential defendants or potential witnesses, the common law was moved by the cruelty of the practice as applied to those not convicted of crime, by the inherent unreliability of confessions or evidence so procured and by the belief that it degraded all those who lent themselves to the practice.

The House of Lords further stated that:

Despite this common law prohibition, it is clear from the historical record that torture was practised in England in the 16th and early 17th centuries. But this took place pursuant to warrants issued by the Council or the Crown, largely (but not exclusively) in relation to alleged offences against the state, in exercise of the Royal prerogative: see Jardine, op cit.; Lowell, op cit., pp 290-300). Thus the exercise of this royal prerogative power came to be an important issue in the struggle between the Crown and the parliamentary common lawyers which preceded and culminated in the English civil war. By the common lawyers torture was regarded as (in Jardine's words: op cit, pp 6 and 12) "totally repugnant to the fundamental principles of English law" and "repugnant to reason, justice, and humanity." One of the first acts of the Long Parliament in 1640 was, accordingly, to abolish the Court of Star Chamber, where torture evidence had been received, and in that year the last torture warrant in our history was issued.

In other words, we settled this issue in the C17th, why is it even up for discussion?

The reason why I wanted to make my position quite clear is that myself, Mario P and Sam H spent a frustrating time arguing with someone who thought:

(1) waterboarding and sleep deprivation were not torture (but he would not define what was torture);
(2) even if it was, the US had only done it to three people;
(3) they were very bad people and deserved it; and
(4) do we not understand that we are at war and what the people we are at war with are like.

To which we responded with:

(1) yes it is, under the UN Convention definition;
(2) a wrongful act is wrong regardless if done once, thrice or a hundred times;
(3) they were but no-one does (in particular, no one deserves to have us degrade ourselves like that), that is the point;
(4) yes we do, but if we become like those we fight, we lose.

I understand why the US went down this path. Panic coupled with outraged tribalism plus the bravado pseudo-toughness of the hollow. The scale of the Sept 11 attack (which violated the US sense of being a haven from the problems of the world), the belief (clearly justified IMHO) that modern technology gave the possibility of horrific acts which the jihadis would engage in if they could, and (reprising the circumstances of the C16th and C17th) not knowing how to tell decent Muslims from the homicidal maniacs led to a "such means are justified' approach, even if on a retail basis rather than a wholesale one.

But that is the point of being civilised: to look beyond panic and outraged tribalism and be able to grasp that there are things You Do Not Do. To know real strength, not the wicked pretense of it.

It was one of those wicked and stupid things that Clever Stupid People do. The Clever Stupid people with a hollow core. "I understand the stakes so therefore ...". Actually, no you do not. The House of Lords does, but you do not.

I just wanted to make my position quite clear on this point.

(Cross posted here.)

ADDENDA You would think that people who call themselves 'conservatives' might have some grasp that torture is a violation of centuries of their common law heritage. But, as bar_barra says, a lot of modern "conservatives" are post-modern conservatives for whom "conservatism" is a free-floating attitude, a statement of tribal "authenticity", not something grounded in a genuine appreciation of what our heritage actually is.

How many global warming sceptics does it take to change a light bulb? None, because it is far too early to say whether it needs changing. (Viscount Monckton) What the IPCC would call a spade is pretty funny too.

Paper looking at glacial and interglacial cycle argues CO2 has a very limited effect on temperature.

Simple presentation, with link to formal paper, on the general atmospheric greenhouse effect.

Study finds that trees may be growing faster due to global warming. Pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere seems likely to have such an effect.

Chair of the IPCC was apparently told of problems with the glacier chapter before the Copenhagen summit. More embarrassment for the IPCC over snow:

The United Nations' expert panel on climate change based claims about ice disappearing from the world's mountain tops on a student's dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.

It just gets worse and worse:

A STARTLING report by the United Nations climate watchdog that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise.

A scientist on how his work on disasters was misused by the IPCC. The IPCC got how much of the Netherlands is below sea level wrong too. The longstanding complaints about the IPCC process are now being vindicated. Anyone broadly familiar with the social science literature on cognitive conformity and its problems would find this all less than surprising. A former Chair of the IPCC says it is losing credibility as it is revealed that the latest IPCC include completely unsubstantiated claims about crop reductions in Africa. More details on the African claims, which seem to have originated with advocacy groups. One of the consistent themes in the IPCC report failures has NGO advocacy being passed off as science. As identified errors in the IPCC report mount, concerns about the use of “grey literature”.

Author of a study into disasters claims Stern Report misused his study. Various claims in the Stern Report w ere quietly removed or watered down between release and publication due to lack of scientific verification.

CRU head Phil Jones in trouble over dubious data manipulation. In more detail. He promises to be more open in future. George Monbiot wants some resignations, starting with Prof. Jones.

Irish climatologist thinks sceptics are winning the propaganda war at the moment because scientists are bad at selling their message. Yes, you could say that. Arguing that we are seeing a collapse of the global warming grand narrative. Arguing that the IPCC process has always been deeply flawed.

Nice discussion of the problems of peer review:

Many of the emails reveal strenuous efforts by the mainstream climate scientists to do what outside observers would regard as censoring their critics. And the correspondence raises awkward questions about the effectiveness of peer review – the supposed gold standard of scientific merit – and the operation of the UN's top climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The scientists involved disagree. They say they were engaged not in suppressing dissent but in upholding scientific standards by keeping bad science out of peer-reviewed journals. Either way, when passing judgment on papers that directly attack their own work, they were mired in conflicts of interest that would not be allowed in most professions.

About the internal arguments over the “hockey stick”.

Man who thinks we should use public transport has a chauffeured driven car drive him one mile to his office every day. The British government fails to express support for him over the IPCC problems. Indeed, has expressed official concern. Pressure on the IPCC head to resign, including from Greenpeace. More. Greenpeace announces it is not. The Indian government has established its own body to monitor global climate because it cannot rely on the IPCC.

Sir David King looks for malign villains behind the release of the CRUtape letters. Then admits he actually has no knowledge on the matter. While he feels the IPCC runs against the spirit of science and a hunger for certainty but warming is firmly established.

Lord Monckton and Prof. Plimer apparently had quite a successful time as the sceptical side in a debate in Brisbane. Lord Monckton puts his case. 70 minute presentation from Viscount Monckton.

Osama bin Laden calls for breaking the US economy as the solution for climate change. About that.

Negotiations for a climate-change pact are not going well:

"The forces trying to tackle climate change are in disarray, wandering in small groups around the battlefield like a beaten army," said a senior British diplomat.

Suggesting the global warming movement as was is now dead due to bad politics combined with bad science. Noting the politics have shifted in Oz. More scepticism is coming out of China.

A journalist feels he has been had, just a bit:

This doesn’t necessarily mean manmade global warming is disproven. But it does deflate the certainty and moral righteousness of the Al Gores and the IPCCs of the world.

A Chinese journalist is less than impressed with the IPCC’s response to scientific disagreement and its own errors.

A climate scientist demurs from the construction put on his work in a recent Daily Mail piece. Another quoted scientist clarifies his work. An egregious example of a general problem with science reporting.

Shift towards scepticism in the British public. About the poll result.

A nice summary of where things are:

None of this is to say that global warming isn't real, or that human activity doesn't play a role, or that the IPCC is entirely wrong, or that measures to curb greenhouse-gas emissions aren't valid. But the strategy pursued by activists (including scientists who have crossed the line into advocacy) has turned out to be fatally flawed.
By exaggerating the certainties, papering over the gaps, demonizing the skeptics and peddling tales of imminent catastrophe, they've discredited the entire climate-change movement.

Mapping wine, beer and spirits belts in Europe.

Life imitating Art Garfunkel: political scandal in Ulster involving Mrs Robinson and much younger lover.

An employer in Britain told that she could not advertise for reliable workers because it discriminated against unreliable workers. Yes, it does: precisely the point, surely?

Norway does not seem to quite grasp this incentive thing finds an unexpected consequence:

that criminal foreigners who serve more than a year in jail will henceforth automatically qualify for welfare. After three years in prison, they will have a right to a government pension and to health coverage. This will be the case even if they have come to Norway illegally. In other words, it pays for foreigners to come to Norway and commit serious crimes – and the more serious the crime, the greater the reward.

Man ordered to pull down a house he had built himself for not getting planning permission.

Farmers protesting in Greece over big spending cuts.

Prince Charles proud to be a stirrer and treated as an enemy of the Enlightenment.

Crime statistics for (pdf) the UK. About Britain’s smallest police officer (she’s 4’10”):

While Port, of Devon and Cornwall police, revealed that he tackles the bigger offenders by hitting them low, Day said that ne'er-do-wells were often stopped in their tracks by the very sight of her.

I think that means she punches them in the goolies.

Protests in the UK about a proposal to have Muslims march through a town that honours British war dead denouncing British soldiers. Arrested Muslim claims calling British soldiers ‘murderers’ was not upsetting anyone because it is was simply the truth. Five are convicted. Pointing out a small inconsistency in their free speech defence.

About how female genital mutilation continues in the UK:

The police face growing criticism for failing to prosecute a single person for carrying out FGM in 25 years; new legislation from 2003 which prohibits taking a girl overseas for FGM has also failed to secure a conviction.
Experts say the lack of convictions, combined with the Government's failure to invest enough money in education and prevention strategies, mean the practice continues to thrive.

French youths celebrated the new year by torching 1,137 cars.

About the dangers confronted by critics of tendencies within the Muslim communities:

In her Monday post, Hege suggested that if all the influential newspapers in Europe had published the Danish cartoons, “it would have been much more difficult to build up the increasingly brutal climate we see now all over Europe: the fact that people are not just the subjects of attacks, and of attempted murder, but are denied virtually all personal freedom in their daily lives, so that Westergaard cannot set foot outside his home without the police on his heels, just as Robert Redeker is living underground in the homeland of Voltaire.”

About the trial of Geert Wilders for speaking his mind:

To read the official summons addressed to him—a sitting member of the Dutch Parliament and the head of a major Dutch political party—is all but surreal. It is to feel as if one has been hurled back into a distant, pre-Enlightenment era; it is to feel that in one fell swoop, the illusion of freedom in Europe has been extinguished. …
The charges are itemized. First, Wilders is charged with having “intentionally offended a group of people, i.e. Muslims, based on their religion.” Second, with having “incited to hatred of people, i.e. Muslims, based on their religion.” Third, with having “incited to discrimination . . . against people, i.e. Muslims, based on their religion.” Fourth, with having “incited to hatred of people, i.e. non-Western immigrants and/or Moroccans, based on their race.” And fifth, with having “incited to discrimination . . . against people, i.e. non-Western immigrants and/or Moroccans, based on their race.”
Supporting these charges is a long list of statements from Wilders, many purely factual, others opinions that follow logically from those facts. Among them: “The demographic composition of the population is the biggest problem of the Netherlands” and “those Moroccan boys are really violent. They beat up people because of their sexual orientation.” Absurdly, among the statements cited in support of the charges against Wilders are his direct quotations from the Koran in Fitna, such as “Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers in fight, smite at their necks; at length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly on them” and “Fight them until there is no dissension, and the religion is entirely Allah’s.” The summons also mentions footage shown in Fitna of imams preaching against unbelievers: “What makes Allah happy? Allah is happy if non-Muslims are being killed” and “Destroy the unbelievers and polytheists, your (Allah’s) enemies and the enemies of the religion. Allah, count them and kill them up to the very last of them. And do not spare a single one.”
In short, Wilders is charged with stating facts about Islam and its adherents; drawing logical conclusions from, and forming opinions based reasonably on, those facts; correctly quoting the Koran; and making a film that shows actual imams doing actual preaching and that shows other Muslims expressing violently hateful opinions about Western liberties, gays, Jews, and so forth. And for having done these things, Wilders is deemed by the public prosecutor to have offended Muslims and incited hatred and discrimination against Muslims and other non-Western immigrants, and thereby to have committed serious crimes punishable under the laws of the Netherlands.

The indictment (pdf) (in English). Interview with Wilders.

I linked to this piece conversion therapies before, but this little gem is worth airing:

She moves on. "Any Freemasonry in the family?" No, I say, again asking her to elaborate. "Because that often encourages it as well. It has a spiritual effect on males and it often comes out as SSA."

SSA=same-sex attraction.

If one remembers that the "evil" of Freemasonry was a common theme back in the days when the Catholic Church's favourite hate objects were Jews, one sees that some things just keep repeating.

I have also linked to this piece where a Fairfax journalist opines on it not being a good first year for President Obama before, but the evidence-free assertion at the end of this passage:

Obama ends his first year in office with the worst ratings of any modern president at the end of his first year - 49 per cent approve and 46 per cent disapprove of his job performance.
His problems have provided new momentum to the Republican Party and the conservative movement, whose protests have swelled to a political outpouring of discontent over causes as diverse as bank bail-outs, taxes, government spending, health-care reforms, immigration and discomfort with having an African-American president

just gets sillier the more one thinks about it. It simply does not apply to most politically active US conservatives. These are the sort of people who thought Condi Rice was great (and should probably have run for President), hang off Thomas Sowell's every word, have Shelby Steele as Chairman of the Republican Party and hold Clarence Thomas to be their favourite Supreme Court justice: indeed, that he should be Chief Justice.

Of course there are racists in the US. There are racists in Europe too (indeed, on the polling evidence, rather more of them). But American conservatism really has moved on. As indicated by the fact that when Trent Lott made his spectacularly inappropriate comments about Strom Thurmond, it was young conservative bloggers who led the charge to get Trott dumped as Republican Senate leader.

There are serious pockets of disadvantage in the US, but they have far more to do with class than race. If American voters can demonstrate how things have changed by electing an African-American president with a popular majority (not something that often happens to Democratic nominees), perhaps Fairfax journos could also move on.

Why spiders do not need arachno-capitalism (I laughed lots and do read the comments).

Amusing undergrad video.

The classic 1958 I, Pencil essay updated to I, Beer. Three quotes on markets.

You are poor, you cannot afford daycare, you both work and your daughter has already been stolen so, how do you ensure you do not lose your two-year old son?

Great post on the choice between fiscal stimulus and monetary stimulus. (NGDP = nominal, i.e. in current currency, GDP, AD = aggregate demand, AS = aggregate supply, MTR = marginal tax rates, BOJ = Bank of Japan.) Mapping bailout and stimulus spending around the world.

A prominent Chinese economist on difficulties with the Chinese economy. About the very vigorous economic policy debate within China.

Nice piece on the efficient market hypothesis and the literature around it:

The efficient markets paradigm is a triumph of economics because it is so counterintuitive to the layman, so restrictive in what it allows, and so pervasive in its application. A healthy respect for the rationality of markets is a hugely advantageous mindset for the researcher and practitioner. This should be the base from which one identifies anomalies, and then explains them with specific frictions or cognitive biases.

Looking at inflation hedges.

Arguing for regulatory reform of UK and US financial sectors. A survey of what those in the financial sector think (pdf) are the big concerns.

Study finds evidence that abundant natural resources (“the resource curse”: based originally on this study [pdf]) does not impede democratisation (pdf). Study finds that high oil prices do not undermine (pdf) democracy. Suggesting the resource curse is not correct:

Resource wealth is positively associated with both economic growth and institutional quality. How could that be? We then revisited the earlier papers, and it dawned on us that the resource abundance variable used in other studies is not measuring abundance at all. The Sachs–Warner resource measure is simply the ratio of primary exports divided by national income. But of course this is a measure of dependence (the extent to which a country is dependent on exports of resources) and not of abundance (which should be a stock variable).
On closer inspection we found that the causation is opposite to that usually claimed in the curse literature. There is no evidence that resource-dependent countries end up with slow growth and bad institutions. Rather, countries with bad institutions attract little investment, and as a result they grow more slowly and remain dependent on exports of commodities. But this is not a paradox at all.

Nice brief discussion of development and the resource curse.

Brad DeLong starts agreeing with John Cochrane about the GFC but ends up not. Taking a thorough view of banking reform. Whatever the last couple of decades in the US have been, an era of smaller government and deregulation is not it. A podcast on Hayek, business cycle and money.

Timeline of Greece’s fiscal crisis. Of proposed actions. Worries about possible impacts on the euro. A more sanguine view.

The EU carbon trading system hit by fraud.

Graphing US federal spending: defence spending is clearly not the big issue. Though there may be efficiencies to be had. Proposing tax increases and limited spending freezes to do something about the burgeoning US federal debt. More. (The economic literature suggests spending cuts are a more reliable way of reducing budget deficits than tax increases: the latter tend to encourage slipping in more spending.) The budget deficit will be 10% of US GDP. More on budget projections. Looking at the political and strategic implications of the projected debt. (Graph here.) The Inspector-general running TARP (the US financial bailouts) is not convinced anything much has been fixed (pdf):

To the extent that the crisis was fueled by a “bubble” in the housing market, the Federal Government’s concerted efforts to support home prices — as discussed more fully in Section 3 of this report — risk re-inflating that bubble in light of the Government’s effective takeover of the housing market through purchases and guarantees, either direct or implicit, of nearly all of the residential mortgage market.

And there is a lot more. Reminding folk of what is not in the stated federal budget. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue to loom as a (huge) problem.

Considering signalling or sorting with high productivity workers and expensive housing markets. Study finds that good public school feeds into house prices in Oz. Pumping up demand in a supply-constrained market, who would have thought that would have ended badly?

ALMOST half the first-home buyers lured into the market by the Rudd government's $14,000 grant are struggling to meet their mortgage repayments and many are already in arrears on their loans.
… a survey of more than 26,000 borrowers conducted by Fujitsu Consulting revealed that 45 per cent of first-home owners who entered the market during the past 18 months are now experiencing "mortgage stress" or "severe mortgage stress". …
Steve Keen, professor of economics at the University of NSW said last year that the homeowner grants were a "disaster waiting to happen".
"The grant panicked first-home buyers to rush into the market, which pushed prices up by far more than the grant itself," he said yesterday.

Australia wins the least affordable housing in the Anglosphere (but Vancouver is the least affordable city). Supply of housing in Oz is not expected to match demand (i.e. prices, including rents, will rise.) RBA does not raise interest rates: methinks they are worried. They surprised a lot of folk:

Betting agency Centrebet was even refusing to open a book on this rates decision for the first time since it started taking wagers on rate movements, because it thought the outcome was too certain.

Getting Easter imagery a little wrong.

Exploring the rich religious life of India.

Thousands of Iranians celebrate ancient Zoroastrian fire festival.

The head of St John Chrysostom will be visiting New York so people can venerate this queer-hating, Jew-hating, misogynist patron saint of preachers of the gospel of love.

Visiting Qom:

Despite their conservatism, Qom’s pilgrims seemed motivated not by passion for Ahmadinejad—I never heard anyone say his name, though the “Leader” Ali Khamenei was mentioned repeatedly over outdoor loudspeakers—but by a total denial of politics, and a preference for something much simpler. In Tehran the previous week, I’d heard many rumors about protests, violence, provocation. Here I saw no sign of disloyalty to the government (save one: on a campaign bumper sticker with a picture of Ahmadinejad next to the slogan MAN OF THE PEOPLE, someone had scraped out his eyes and cheeks). Instead, I felt the opposite of the idealistic flurries of this summer’s protests—the happy docility of a one-party state.

Iranian regime is keen on having Islamic studies departments in British Universities. France denies a man citizenship for allegedly forcing his wife to wear a veil.

A 1977 lecture by one Margaret Thatcher on Christianity and Conservatism: how many contemporary politicians could sound anywhere near as informed and intelligent on politics and religion? (Apart from Obama and Abbott--except, of course, when T.Abb is telling women that their sexuality belongs to their future husband: nice takedown here.)

A series of thoughtful posts on the philosophical issues of trinitarianism and the Incarnation.

Pat Robertson blames Haiti’s problems on a pact with the devil. Dealing with the myth of a Haitian pact with the devil here, here and here.

About Catholicism and masturbation:

So we continue to live in the late Soviet period of Catholicism. They pretend to make sense; we pretend to believe them.

About why sexual strictness helps preserve church membership:

How did sex, of all subjects, come to occupy such a prominent place in the division of Christendom? In a sense, the potential was always there. From the first believers on up, the stern stuff of the Christian moral code has been cause for commentary—to say nothing of complaint. …
Thus does the Anglican attempt to lighten up the Christian moral code over the specific issue of divorce exhibit a clear pattern that appears over and over in the history of the experiment of Christianity Lite: First, limited exceptions are made to a rule; next, those exceptions are no longer limited and become the unremarkable norm; finally, that new norm is itself sanctified as theologically acceptable.
Exactly that pattern emerges in another example of the historical attempt to disentangle a thread of moral teaching out of the whole: the dissent about artificial contraception. Here, too, Anglicans took the historical lead. Throughout most of its history, all of Christianity—even divided Christianity—upheld the teaching that artificial contraception was wrong. Not until the Lambeth Conference of 1930 was that unity shattered by the subsequently famous Resolution 15, in which the Anglicans called for exceptions to the rule in certain difficult, carefully delineated marital (and only marital) circumstances. …
In all, it has been an about-face that certainly would have shocked the Lutherans of yesteryear—beginning with Martin Luther himself, who once called contraception “far more atrocious than incest or adultery.” …
… cites Christianity’s surprisingly strong combination of flexibility and inclusivity on the one hand and “uncompromising adherence to its basic convictions” on the other. “In striking contrast with the easy-going syncretism” of the time, he emphasizes, “Christianity was adamant on what it regarded as basic principles.”
And right from the beginning, those principles were understood to include matters of sexual morality— especially matters of sexual morality. The pagans, the early Christians were instructed, could have it all: their idols, their infanticide, their contraception, their abortion, their homosexuality; the Christians couldn’t. The Jews could have their divorce; the Christians couldn’t. And on the list of forbidden practices went. Of course, these were not the only features that distinguished Christianity from other sects. But from the beginning, they were not only fundamental features of Christianity, and not only features that put many people off. They were also, and are still, features that drew other people in.

The power of priests rests on them being “gatekeepers of righteousness”. Having the authority to declare and enforce taboos is the classic manifestation of that. If one loosens longstanding taboos (such as sexual taboos) one is doing three things:
(1) Undermining one’s claim to have a special conduit to moral truth;
(2) Lessening distinguishing markers of membership of the religiously correct;
(3) Lessening the ability to sell effortless virtue against those who “do not cut it”.
No wonder it has a negative effect on church membership, even without fertility effects.

About the seeking the presence of the infinite:

Those who believe that such religions are ultimately a regression, and a refusal to stare the joys and terrors of human freedom square in the face, need to better understand the reason why such a bizarre process as canonisation can re-enter the world as a rational activity, and the degree to which the self-defeating neo-atheist movement of people like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins - the most shatteringly empty creed to come along for many a year - has been of God's party without knowing it.

Atheist Convention in Melbourne sells out (the complaint about not getting government support is a bit twee).

About Abu Nuwas, Muslim queer poet.

Study finds that the interaction of Western personnel and concepts with Pashtun culture is causing something of a sexual identity crisis:

The U.S. army medic also told members of the research unit that she and her colleagues had to explain to a local man how to get his wife pregnant.
The report said: "When it was explained to him what was necessary, he reacted with disgust and asked, 'How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean, when one could be with a man, who is clean? Surely this must be wrong.'"

Useful discussion here. (The contrast with the comments on the FoxNews site is just sad.)

Ouch!

UCLA finally decided to honor its commitment to diversity by attacking another minority group. This time, homosexuals had their turn in the multicultural bile wheel.

An Arab academic assured the audience that “queer” was a term of Western imperialism.

Looking at the backstory on the Uganda “kill gays” bill. The notion that same-sex activity should be criminalized is still alive and well in the US.

The Pope criticises UK Equality Bill for breaking “natural law”. More.

About conversion therapies:

I speak to Daniel Gonzalez, one of Nicolosi's former clients. "Conversion therapy is a very complicated form of repression," he says. "It's a way of convincing yourself that your same sex attractions have some alternate meaning. It continued to haunt me for years."
I also speak to Peterson Toscano, who spent 17 years in Britain and the US trying every different reorientation treatment available. He says simply: "It's psychological torture."

Study finds that about one in six British psychiatrists have sought to “cure” homosexuality.

Review of Patti Smith’s memoir of her friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe.

About the “gays molest boys” canard. More.

Consdering the Proposition 8 trial as an exercise in public education.

China is holding its first gay pageant.

Nepal is looking at same-sex marriage tourism opportunities. Two Malawans get married knowing the legal consequences. Two Argentinans have Latin America’s first same-sex civil marriage. Pointing out that Latin America has done more on same-sex marriage than the US. Two Hawaiian wedding planners put the case for same-sex marriage. Study finds same-sex relationships are often open.

Boyband singer announces his engagement.

A prominent libertarian puts the case for recognition of same-sex marriage as a constitutional issue. The conservative case for gay marriage, by the prominent Republican lawyer who is leading the court challenge to Proposition 8. The arguments over whether it is appropriate to mount the current court challenge to Proposition 8. Following the dilemmas of both sides in the Prop 8 trial. Lots of links on same-sex marriage issue.

Gay and lesbian candidates continue to do increasingly well at the polls in the US.

Coming out in middle school in the US.

In 2002, more tolerance of gay Muslims was looked for as an effect of 9/11:

“I don’t know of any imam … or reform-minded scholar who has written anything that would create a theological understanding of a safety place for gays and lesbians,” she said.


More recent evidence. Gay Muslim scholar shunned by his community. An August 2005 article by him. A group of Muslim scholars in Jakarta declare homosexuality to be part of God’s creation. Islamic Council of Norway says imans should listen to homosexuals. In Egypt and Kuwait, police crackdown on homosexuals to appease Islamists. The top Islamic body in Malaysia declares girls cannot be tomboys or have sex with each other. Struggling with being gay and Muslim in the US. Study finds that about a quarter of Iranian women and a sixth of Iranian men have had at least one homosexual experience. Iranian regime wants to establish Islamic studies departments in British universities.

Push to have US gay donors boycott the Democrats. About what gays and lesbians have not got from the Democrats.

Huge drop reported in use of crystal meth by gay men in New York City.

Post with links or citations of various pieces supporting the Catholic position on homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

A Catholic priest on why teenagers should be discouraged from identifying as gay: classic example of talking at rather than with.

Poll finds strong majority of American favour repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT). Including former Chairs of the Joint Chiefs:

former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Shalikashvili gave the strongest signal to date that now is the time for military leadership to move forward on repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and law. He stated, “As a nation built on the principle of equality, we should recognize and welcome change that will build a stronger, more cohesive military. It is time to repeal ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ and allow our military leaders to create policy that holds our service members to a single standard of conduct and discipline.”


The current Chair of the Joint Chiefs supports lifting the ban. Pentagon to conduct a year long review of how to lift the ban now that President Obama has announced he will seek to have DADT repealed. Lots of links on the issue. Congressional testimony here.

Nice little article about a queer-friendly fraternity opening up in a local university.

The funniest blog post (or is that meta-blog post?) ever. (Do read the comments.)

The Gettysburg Address as a PowerPoint™ presentation. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech as a PowerPoint™ presentation.

Natural selection explains why there are more jocks than nerds in the world.

Humans are part virus.

Study estimates there were only about 18,500 breeding pairs of humans 1.2million years ago.

About reproductive technology and it's implications for family structure.

Fermentation may have been the reason we started cultivating plants. More.

About how we enjoy music.

About eating and exercising more randomly and with greater variation (pdf).

A website that tells you how many people are in space right now. The Obama Administration wants to commercialise space, the Republicans prefer the government monopoly.

About the biological basis of human compassion: that compassion is grounded in human nature would hardly have been a surprise to Adam Smith, author of The Theory of the Moral Sentiments. Studying how power creates forms of mind-blindness.

Suggesting that shouting at the cosmos is not a clever idea.

About a study that false confessions to crimes are much more common than one might expect.

A surfer dude with no academic affiliation has published what may be a breakthrough physics paper. (One not good for string theory.)

Really cool picture illustrating design problem with windfarms.

About internet obsession in China:

But in China’s rigid, hypercompetitive society, the Internet explosion represents more than a disciplinary annoyance. It is seen as an existential threat. And that helps explain why treating kids with supposed Internet addiction has become a national obsession.

Rating economic blogs by their scholarly impact.

Reminding us of how wrong predictions about technology can be. Inteview with Jaron Lanier being pessimistic about where the internet has gone.

There is likely to be a really nasty earthquake and tsunami in the West Coast of North America’s future.

China is apparently being quite successful in developing anti-missile technology.

The US Navy’s latest ship is an aluminium trimaran which can do 45 knots and has range of 3,500 nautical miles: it looks sexy.

The US Air Force is developing killer micro-drones.

Looking at the energy expenditure of different types of transit systems: mass transit is not nearly as energy efficient as people assume.

More things scientists say from the archives of the NYT.

Study finds that blondes are more aggressive and determined to get their way than brunettes or redheads. Actually, the study found something quite different.

Study finds that being raised by two parents is not significantly affected by whether the parents are of the same-sex. Study finds that stepdads do as well or better at parenting than biological fathers.

Pointing that technology may change, politics not so much. South Australia wants to control internet comment on its State election.

A nice takedown of homeopathy:

Homeopathy is actually based on 18th century wishful thinking that water will somehow remember substances that it had previous contact with (but will forget the countless effluent that it has passed through). That a 10 billion year old water molecule will remember everything it has touched flies in the face of all known science and is an insult to any thinking person. Sincere people with medical needs buy homeopathic remedies only because they masquerade as being something more than mere sugar pills.
They are an insult to the herbal remedies on the shelf next to them at Boots; at least snake-oil has the decency to contain some snake.

The Lancet publishes a study which blames the Jews for Palestinian wife-beating. About the money trail.

Nice comedy skit on why meat-eating is ethical (and vegetarianism is not).

Nice discussion of the difference between fact and opinion.

An appreciation of philosophers Stephen Toulmin, a professor at the University of Southern California's Center for Multiethnic and Transnational Studies, and John Edwin Smith.

Review of a book of interviews by a philosophy of researchers in moral psychology.

About Aristotle on money, justice and virtue (pdf). Aristotle as sociologist. Critiquing the Aristotelian themes in (pdf) Marx’s economic thought.

Excerpts from Stoic Roman philosopher Musonius Rufus, an early advocate of female equality.

About claims about Greek philosophy, use of language, academics as expert witnesses and a controversial court case.

Series of articles on the philosophy of private property.

Philosopher Ben Shapiro on why the welfare state (as defined) is probably not justified.

On taking science seriously. Arguing that is begging the question and evading a longstanding critique.

About freedom of religion and offence:

We need freedom of speech because none of us is morally good enough to choose for others what to say and think. And that's a basis for free speech which believers and unbelievers alike can accept.

Making a further point:

It’s not that the cartoon gave offence so the offended man got angry and attacked (even if that’s what the attacker himself honestly believes). It’s that the cartoon offered the opportunity to construct a pretext for violence and intimidation, and the taking of offence is part of that construct. There is a deeply dishonest and sinister, and extremely broad and radical, agenda behind the attack on Westergaard. And that is true even if the attacker, in his foot-soldier childishness, really thinks that he was acting alone and purely out of his own personal anger. If he thinks that, then he is simply unaware of the degree to which he had already been taught and conditioned to do violence.

About intentionality and potentiality:

Now here is a tough question: are dispositionality and intentionality merely analogous, or can we take it a step further and say that utimately there is no difference between dispositionality and intentionality? If that case could be made, then Brentano would be shown to be wrong in his claim that intentionality is the mark of the mental. For if the three characteristics of intentionality mentioned above are found below the level of mind in the physical world, then it looks as if intentionality cannot be the mark of the mental. Or should we stay instead that, since intentionality is the mark of the mental, and intentionality is found in nature below the level of mind, that there is something mind-like about all of nature?

I can see the desire to “disenchant” the world naturalistically so intentionality is driven out and there is no space for religion. I can see the religious impulse wanting to extend intentionality so as to “enchant” the world. But, given our cognitive bias to see motive and intention, we should be wary of the latter extension in particular.

Nice post on political labels and their use for psychological rather than analytical reasons:

The impulse to label an opponent as an extremist is a common and tempting one. It is a very easy thing to do, provided that you are not concerned with accuracy or persuading undecided and unaffiliated people that you are right. These labels are not descriptive. They are a way to express the extent of one’s discontent and disaffection with the other side in a debate. When some Republican says that Obama and his party have been governing from “the left,” he might even believe it inasmuch as Obama and his party are to his left politically, but what he really means is that he strongly disapproves of how Obama and his party have been governing. He may or may not have a coherent reason for this disapproval, but declaring it to be leftist or radical leftist conveys the depth of his displeasure. That is, it is not analysis of political reality. It is therapy for the person making the statement.
The same thing goes for progressives who were trying to find words to express how outraged they were by Bush. Inevitably, many resorted to using labels such as theocrat, extreme right, radical right and the like. These did not correctly describe the content of Bush’s politics, but they did express the critics’ feelings of disgust and loathing for Bush’s politics. That doesn’t mean they weren’t right to be disgusted and outraged, but the words they used to express these sentiments typically had no relationship to the substance of what Bush was actually doing.

SF writer and futurologist David Brin on cheerful libertarianism and doctrine versus pragmatism with a great title.

Bertrand Russel’s view of Arabic philosophy. Suggesting that the hard left’s view of radical Islam reflects a deeper lack of realism.

SF writer Steve Barnes on the difference between being Awake, Adult and Enlightened.

Historian John Terraine called the American Civil War “the first modern war”: this picture of Charleston in 1865 reminds one of post-bombing WWII Germany.

On how the Middle East has always been hard:

The Middle East doesn't need a diplomatic process; it needs a revolutionary transformation of its political culture, like what we saw in Western Europe after World War II and in Eastern Europe after the real Berlin Wall fell. Something similar may very well occur in the Middle East at some point, but it's not going to happen all of a sudden because Barack Obama or any other American president tweaks our foreign policy.

Suggesting that Syria needs to be pressured to stop Hezbollah provoking a new (and much wider) war with Israel. About Hezbollah’s world view:

Hezbollah's new manifesto condemns the United States as the "root of all terror," and a "danger that threatens the whole world." The document also reiterates the call for the destruction of Israel, describing the need to "liberate Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa" as a "religious duty" for all Muslims. There is not a shred of evidence to suggest that these sentiments are intended for the printed page only. Indeed, recent visitors to Lebanon speak of a high, almost delusional state of morale among circles affiliated with Hezbollah. In the closed world around the movement, it is sincerely believed that the next war between Israel and Hezbollah will be part of a greater conflict in which Israel will be destroyed.

Studying audio and video tapes of al-Qaeda operatives:

They do, however, offer clues about how the jihadis see themselves and one another, how they think about what they're doing and why they're doing it. One tape is titled "Listen, Plan, and Carry Out Al Qaeda." What's on the tape is not, however, a practical treatise on committing terrorism, but rather a four-hour speech by a theologian on Islamic law. Al Qaeda is presented as a middle road for all Muslims and yet, at the same time, the theologian encourages followers to isolate themselves from those who disagree. The tape may sound esoteric to Western listeners, but according to Mr. Miller, its message is at the heart of the movement. "They see it as an ethical calling," he says. "That may be difficult to swallow, but it's important to deal with."

About how the region works and US policy does not:

… we want to ignore the role of states in terrorism, and the President still seeks to engage the Syrians on our way out of Iraq, as the sage men who authored the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report counseled. That is, explain to Iraq’s neighbors who have been working so hard over the last 6 years to destabilize the country that a stable Iraq is in their best interest, a subtle point that they are obviously too foolish to understand without American policymakers explaining it to them. American elites have a hard time distinguishing between intelligence and cunning, largely because their lives do not depend on them outwitting murderous rivals. In hard places, intelligent people is what the cunning eat for lunch.
Ask people in the Obama administration about Syrian involvement in the Baghdad attacks and they tell you this is why we haven’t sent an ambassador back to Damascus yet. That’s how we punish states that kill our men and women in uniform and target the Arab civilians whose lives are under our protection as an occupying force—we withhold diplomats. Pretty stern stuff, no? Bashar al-Assad must be shaking in his boots.

About how Sunni Arabs are increasingly implicitly allied with Israel against Shi’ite Iran:

The Arab-Israeli conflict is a minor historical hiccup compared with the ancient feuds between Arabs and Persians, and Sunnis and Shias. It has barely lasted a fraction as long and has hardly killed anyone by comparison. Arabs and Persians killed hundreds of thousands of each other in the Iran-Iraq war alone in the 1980s. The civil war between Sunni and Shia militias in Baghdad a few years ago was much nastier than any of the Israeli-Palestinian wars.
It took time for all this to sink in with everyday Arab citizens. For a while there was a disconnect between the region’s Sunni Arab rulers and people. It looked like Iran, by supporting Hezbollah and Hamas against Israel, might actually pull off the most unlikely of coups in rallying the mass of Sunni Arabs in support of Persian Shia hegemony. That disconnect now seems to be over.
Thanks to the Iranian government’s stubborn insistence on developing nuclear weapons, the age-old strife between Persians and Arabs, and Shias and Sunnis, may finally be eclipsing the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Most in the Western media and foreign-policy establishment still haven’t caught on. The policy implications for both the U.S. and Israel are profound, and the sooner Washington and Jerusalem figure this out, the better.

Tony Blair on how the struggle against the jihadis is one single global struggle. Making similar points:

More than eight years after the destruction of the World Trade Centre, there are two competing narratives in the West. The first is frightening, difficult and poses a host of deeply unwelcome questions. According to this version of events, we face a global struggle against a new mutation of militant Islamism ready to use all and any means at its disposal, bonded by anti-semitism, hatred of America and a desire to enforce sharia law and to restore the Caliphate. This network plots globally and kills locally. The merit of this is that it happens to be true.

Reviewing the history of the long war. The US policy is to work with and through the existing regimes while targeting Al-Qaeda operatives.

An Iranian physicist with ties to the opposition is assassinated.

More on online war correspondent Michael Yon being handcuffed for refusing to tell Customs police how much money he makes.

Paper by three experienced practitioners about gathering and using intelligence (pdf) in Afghanistan:

The U.S. intelligence community has fallen into the trap of waging an anti-insurgency campaign rather than a counterinsurgency campaign. The difference is not academic. Capturing or killing key mid-level and high-level insurgents – anti-insurgency – is without question a necessary component of suc¬cessful warfare, but far from sufficient for military success in Afghanistan. Anti-insurgent efforts are, in fact, a secondary task when compared to gain¬ing and exploiting knowledge about the localized contexts of operation and the distinctions between the Taliban and the rest of the Afghan popula¬tion. There are more than enough analysts in Afghanistan. Too many are simply in the wrong places and assigned to the wrong jobs. It is time to prioritize U.S. intelligence efforts and bring them in line with the war’s objectives.
Doing so will require important cultural changes. Analysts must absorb information with the thor¬oughness of historians, organize it with the skill of librarians, and disseminate it with the zeal of journalists. They must embrace open-source, population-centric information as the lifeblood of their analytical work. They must open their doors to anyone who is willing to exchange informa¬tion, including Afghans and NGOs as well as the U.S. military and its allies.

US spy drones are generating so much raw data the human analysts are having trouble keeping up. US accused of not sharing IED detecting intelligence.

President Obama’s pledge to start withdrawing from Afghanistan seems to have an effect on recruitment for the Afghan police and army. Coalition fatalities in Afghanistan have been steadily increasing. Poll finds Afghans increasingly optimistic, support the presence of US troops and growing antipathy to the Taliban.

Noting the American war in Iraq is winding down (and that a lot of Democrats, etc called the war lost when it wasn’t).

A discussion, with pictures, of how modern American artillery works.

An economics music video: the Hayek versus Keynes rap.

About the market economy of classical Rome (pdf). About labour supply in the Roman Empire (pdf).

Paper on the continuing effects of forced labour system (pdf) in Peru almost 200 years after its abolition.

Various papers on influences on and in contemporary economics. A 1982 paper by Tobin defending Keynesianism (pdf).

Noting how limited the recent “Great Recession” was.

A simple theory of political jobs.

Identifying successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs. More.

Great post about lateness to meetings. How to cut down interruptions.

Pointing out the proven best way to help Haitians. A blog from a Haitian clinic: this post is particularly pertinent. The Lancet has an editorial attacking the aid industry: comments here, here and here. Using Haiti to remind people of the broken windows fallacy:

It is absurd to say that the earthquake will be good for Haiti’s economy. If that were true, why did the world await natural disaster? If Haiti needed an economic boost, we should have carpet-bombed it years ago. The plain fact is that disasters make everyone permanently poorer by the values of the lives and property they destroy. Earthquakes have no silver linings.

Paper looking at the history of credit crises. An evil plan to stick to the goldbugs (it made me laugh).

Looking at China’s economy. Arguing that global imbalances are not of themselves a problem.

The case for bountiful oil:

A nasty oil shock is always possible. But the case for bountiful oil is strong.

About the prospects for a middle class transformation across the Middle East:

The region’s middle classes are rather small outside Turkey, yet once freed from dependence on the state for their economic well-being, they tend, Nasr says, to make similar political demands as their counterparts in the West. There is an enormous gulf, after all, between practicing Muslims with a stake in society and violent reactionaries at war with the world. The Middle East’s professionals and entrepreneurs need stability, access to foreign markets and a modicum of freedom to live their lives and run their businesses without interference from secular or religious authoritarians.
Nasr brilliantly narrates the tortured histories of the middle classes in Pakistan and Iran, torn between secular dictators like Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and Gen. Pervez Musharraf on one side, and the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Republic and the Taliban on the other. The road to a new Middle East, where Turkey is the norm rather than the exception, will be a long and perilous one. Even so, “Forces of Fortune” is as hopeful as it is sobering, and Nasr makes a convincing case for optimism tempered with caution and patience.

Wrestling with the notion of bubbles. A useful discussion of bubbles and the efficient market hypothesis. The notion of "correct" prices is a notion that is not able to be "cashed out" in advance. There is a nice discussion here and another here. A nice post on the belief problems of EMH here. A paper on spotting bubbles (pdf).

Critiquing the history of the Fed and its ability to dominate information about its performance.

Graph of housing prices in various Anglosphere countries. Canadian housing prices movements. Analysing the Canadian housing market.

A nice summary of factors likely to have caused the global financial crisis. Going through why housing crashes in the US have only indirectly caused economic downturns.

A view of the politics are big-spending, big-regulating government produces:

Any government that annually spends $3-plus trillions of dollars, and regulates trillions upon trillions of dollars worth of other resources, will inevitably be targeted by special interests and their lobbyists. And any government manned by persons capable of the duplicity, pandering, and cheap theatrics required to win elections will inevitably and without shame put itself at the service of these special interests.

The RBA is bothered by capacity constraints and consequent cost pressures in the Oz economy. (Most Western central bankers would love it if that was their main worry at the moment.) So yes, interest rates are likely to go up.

Noting private sector employment has fallen markedly in the US, while public sector employment has grown. The number of US Federal subsidies is soaring. How the US Congress raised the minimum wage and devastated the economy of American Samoa.

A case illustrating the Baptists-and-bootlegger’s theory of regulation (sellers of “vice” donating to politicians to keep legal restrictions of “vice” going to limit competition).

About the police power to seize assets, its use and abuse in the US.

The US decides to penalise American consumers by stopping the Chinese selling electric blankets cheaply to them. (Same point made about steel here.)

Daily mean temperatures in the Arctic 1958-2008.

Arguing about models and energy flows.

No increase in the intensity of tropical cyclones discovered from examining 26 years of Australian data.

Nice discussion of how snow can induce warming.

Paper suggests that carbon feedback is 80% lower than expected. More.

Paper suggests the hole in the Ozone limited global warming.

The CSIRO says the evidence is not clear one way or another to attribute drought in Tasmania to climate change.

Accusation of manipulated temperature data air in the US. Further. Fun and games with which stations NASA uses in its aggregate series. (It has fallen a bit.) More on such (pdf).

The IPCC in a particularly ludicrous comedy of errors about a prediction of Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035: it really has to be read to be believed. About all that: some of the comments are particularly informative. The Indian Environment Minister puts the boot in because he is feeling just a little vindicated. Further. A scientist claims he told them so. Another scientist wants an apology. The IPCC apologises. More errors are found in the glacier section of the IPCC report. Yet another use of the clip from Downfall: this time being funny and cruel on Glaciergate.

The money trail in the false glacier claims:

Even more damaging now, however, will be the revelation that the source of that offending prediction was the man whom Dr Pachauri himself has been employing for two years as the head of his glaciology unit at TERI – and that TERI has won a share in two major research contracts based on a scare over the melting of Himalayan glaciers prominently promoted by the IPCC, using words drawn directly from Dr Hasnain.

And more:

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.
Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

The IPCC is further accused of having wrongly linked natural disasters to global warming:

THE United Nations climate science panel faces new controversy for wrongly linking global warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.
It based the claims on an unpublished report that had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny — and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link too weak. The report's own authors later withdrew the claim because they felt the evidence was not strong enough.
The claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that global warming is already affecting the severity and frequency of global disasters, has since become embedded in political and public debate.

Nature thinks scientists need to become cleverer in presenting findings, including the uncertainties. Looking at the uncertainties. The UK Chief Scientist thinks more openness to sceptical views is desirable:

I don’t think it’s healthy to dismiss proper scepticism. Science grows and improves in the light of criticism. There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can’t be changed.”

Suggesting the IPCC process is losing credibility. The Dutch environment minister finds the IPCC problems worrying. The Economist is unimpressed:

This mixture of sloppiness, lack of communication and high-handedness gives the IPCC’s critics a lot to work with.

Calling for reform of the IPCC. Starting with the resignation of its current chair. Canadian climatologist suggests the IPCC has crossed the line into political advocacy and the Chair should resign.

China appears to be officially agnostic on AGW. More. Russian PM is also worried about global cooling.

A list of WWF reports cited in the latest IPCC report.

The CRU in East Anglia is found to be in breach of the UK Freedom of Informtion Act.

A local debate. Sceptics are often engineers, it seems.

Having read this article on how expensive running shoes do not appear to be a good investment (via qamar), when my runners finally gave up the ghost today, I went off to The Athlete's Foot at Highpoint to get replacements.

But it was school-back time and the shop kept having Mums with kids in it. Also, the runners on offer all seemed a bit pricey. After a sojourn in the local hot-chocolate shop, and having gone to The Athlete's Foot for the third time and finding it full, I wandered off to check out some other sporting shoe stores. One did not have prices listed and another did, but it all seemed a bit much.

So, off to Rebel Sports which seemed to have some genuine bargains. Then I noticed tennis shoes on sale for $40. Sold!

So, now I am trying tennis shoes as my walking/running shoes. Did the walk with weights today, the tennis shoes were very comfortable. Stopped and did a run around an oval in the middle. The tennis shoes did fine. (And running seems very easy if you have just been walking for 30 minutes with 10kg in each hand.)

I have decided to add a bit of running to my walk after reading this piece by Mr Black Swan (pdf). Besides, running is how I originally shed lots of weight when I first moved to Melbourne and my weight has been creeping back up again, even if more on my chest and hips than waist.

Wednesday, did the last of the bushfire areas holiday programs for about 20 kids at Hurtsbridge. (The Heart & Soul Cafe in Hurstbridge is worth visiting, they do particularly good potato and sweet potato chips with skin on: their hot chocolates are good too.)

They were mostly younger kids, with a few boys who were maybe 10. One of the older boys was a bit of a "look at me" kid, not as bright as the other boys his age but clearly, if in a non-malicious way, wanting a lot of attention. I made a point of trying to manage him in a way that minimised his ability to consume time without alienating him.

Sian and myself took them for alternate sessions. Sian's suggestion of putting them all on chairs for the indoor sessions worked really well. I did Rulers & Subjects (building an ancient society), then we had a break, then I did Warriors & Warfare (two tribes moving through the different ancient ideas about how to win wars using "paper-scissors-rock" to do the fighting) and Sian followed with Archery. After lunch, I did Gladiators and Sian did Sports & Status (various games with military applications). After the last break, I did Tournament to end the day. At lunch time and the last break, I let them play with the various helmets and armour (but not the weapons and shields)--it becomes much more real the more they get to touch things and it meant even kids who did not get to dress up in the stuff during the presentations got to feel and use it.

Having let them each in turn, from smallest to largest (since that is how they conveniently sat in the line of chairs), have eleven or so hits at me, I then talked about training a warrior in hand-to-hand combat.

At the end of that last session, the "look-at-me" boy (who I found had got better and better during the day) got his two mates to get a rattan sword each, and they knelt in a line, holding their swords before them and bowed their heads while he thanked me for what I had showed them about ancient history.

I bowed to them and thanked them. It was just one of those moments you treasure.

Very funny (not strictly demographically accurate, but funny).

Wise advice.

The sort of lead sentence sub-editors pray for:

A floor collapsed beneath a group of about 20 members of Weight Watchers as they gathered to compare how many pounds they had shed over Christmas.

Funny skit about human arrogance.

Nice quote about the appeal of the retreat into tradition.

Nice quote about everything that can be wrong about appeasement.

Collection on spontaneous order and literature (pdf).

The Obama Administration is apparently proving as incompetent in Haiti as Dubya’s was over Katrina:

Later, as we were leaving Haiti, we were appalled to see warehouse-size quantities of unused medicines, food and other supplies at the airport, surrounded by hundreds of U.S. and international soldiers standing around aimlessly.

More experience from the ground in Haiti:

The creation of these security zones has been like the building of a wall, a wall reinforced by language barriers and fear rather than iron rods, a wall that, unlike many of the buildings in Port au Prince, did not crumble during the earthquake. Fear, much like violence, is self perpetuating. When aid workers enter communities radiating fear it is offensive, the perceived disinterest in communicating with the poor majority is offensive, driving through impoverished communities with windows rolled up and armed security guards is offensive and, ironically, all of these extra security measures actually increase the level of risk for aid workers.
As I said, this wall of fear is not a new phenomenon and it has had very serious implications for the distribution of the millions of dollars of aid that have been flowing into the country for the past 10 days. Despite the good intentions of the many aid workers swarming around the UN base, much of the aid coming through the larger organizations is still blocked in storage, waiting for the required UN and US military escorts that are seen as essential for distribution, meanwhile people in the camps are suffering and their tolerance is waning.

The Dutch woman who ensured that Ann Frank’s diary did not get into the hands of the Nazis has died, at the age of 100.

In China, petitioners for justice risk confinement or worse.

The life and death of an amiable apologist for a megacidal regime.

About a book on daily life in North Korea via the oral records of refugees, a place of systematic control, oppression and starvation:

In her early 20s, Mi-ran became a schoolteacher in a North Korean village not far from where her parents lived. She was lucky: Her father, a southerner taken prisoner by the north during the Korean War and not allowed to repatriate, was politically suspect, which meant that Mi-ran's family occupied a low rung in the politically defined caste system imposed by Kim Il-sung (postwar head of state and father of Kim Jong-il, North Korea's current leader). That could well have barred Mi-ran's entry to teacher's college, for the family was considered beulsun, to have "tainted blood," a stigma that carries across generations and did thwart her siblings' entry to schools.
The unlucky -- the ghastly -- part of Mi-ran's experience was that when she encountered the 5- and 6-year-olds who were to be her classroom charges, she noted that they "looked no bigger to her than three- and four-year-olds" and might have been present only to eat the school's free lunch, a soup constituted from leaves and salt. Over time, attendance thinned ominously, from 50 children to 15. As Barbara Demick writes in "Nothing to Envy," a piercing account of the lives of a handful of North Korean refugees, Mi-ran "described watching her five- and six-year-old pupils die of starvation. As her students were dying, she was supposed to teach them that they were blessed to be North Korean." The Beijing bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times, Demick takes her title from a song of national pride that teachers commonly had their classes sing, which claimed, "We have nothing to envy in the world."

About the Glorious Revolution of 1688:

Yet this apparently uneventful transfer of power concealed profound alterations in the relationship between the English crown and its subjects, and set into motion the formation of a new kind of modern state, whose characteristics – vigorous promotion of economic development, broad religious tolerance, and free competition among political interests – still define liberal democracies today.

A 1961 article on the Arabs of Palestine. A more recent summary of Arab outlooks:

But if America is responsible, of course, that means Pan-Arab nationalism, Islamist radicalism, dictatorship, badly run and rigidly statist economies, strategies rejoicing in violence and terror, and a media system dominated by propaganda have nothing to do with the Arab failure to prosper and progress. If these internal factors are irrelevant—or lacking only a more courageous and consistent application of the correct principles—then nothing needs to be altered. Yet if these things remain unchanged, the Arab world will continue to lurch from one embarrassment or defeat to another.

A very thoughtful comparison of Lebanon and Iraq.

About Montaigne the essayist:

It is putting a very high price on one's conjectures to have someone roasted alive on their account.

The development of opposition manifestos in Iran.

The appeal of Hugo Chavez seems to be in terminal decline.

The full story of the FBI wire-tapping of Martin Luther King.

Looking at the Tea Party movement.

A 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court has struck down limits on corporate electioneering donations. Suggesting the minority opinion has some difficulties regarding treating media corporations as different from corporations in general. Reminding folk of just how broad the category of ‘corporation’ is. A lot of this decision was about not licensing speech and political action:

When a law requires any group of two or more people who raise $5,000 for the purposes of making a political statement to adhere to a blizzard of federal regulations subject to fines, that law by definition chokes off the "voices of everyday Americans" that President Barack Obama, in his ridiculous reaction to the decision yesterday, expressed outrage on behalf of.

About the decision:

To truly appreciate the stakes in Citizens United, one must remember the government's legal position in the case. Implicit in its briefs but laid bare at oral argument, the government maintained that the Constitution allows the government to ban distribution of books over Amazon's Kindle; to prohibit a union from hiring a writer to author a book titled, "Why Working Americans Should Support the Obama Agenda"; and to prohibit Simon & Schuster from publishing, or Barnes & Noble from selling, a book containing even one line of advocacy for or against a candidate for public office. As David Barry would say, "I am not making this up."
The Court said "no," and the only shocking thing about the decision is that the four liberal justices said "yes."

About why corporations play politics. A very informative and intelligent discussion of the decision from Glenn Greenwald:

But what isn't reasonable is to pretend that the 4 dissenting judges endorsed the idea that corporations have no First Amendment rights or that money restrictions don't burden free speech rights. All 9 justices rejected those views. Again, that doesn't mean those views are wrong, but it does mean that those who are arguing these two principles do not find any support even from the dissenters.

Polling support for legalising medical marihuana continues to increase in the US.

Graphing where US Senators sit ideologically via their roll call votes.

When a pollster cannot find people to be paid to be a candidate’s supporters in a focus group, it’s over. A breakdown of how over it was. Map of vote (Coakley won the rich areas, Brown the middle class areas and a near draw of the blue collar areas). Forget healthcare: this is an excellent reason for Martha Coakley to have not become a US Senator. Scott Brown’s win as sign of limits to public sector union politics:

According to a study done for the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth, spending in specific public categories there skyrocketed the past 20 years (1987 to 2007).
Public safety: up 139%; social services, 130%; education, 44%. And of course Medicaid Madness, up 163%, before MassCare kicked in more Medicaid obligations.
But here's the party's self-destroying kicker: Feeding the public unions' wage demands starved other government responsibilities. It ruined our ability to have a useful debate about any other public functions.
Massachusetts' spending fell for mental health, the environment, housing and higher education. The physical infrastructure in blue states is literally falling apart. But look at those public wage and pension-related outlays. Ever upward.

Why the Dems are in trouble, but the Republicans cannot take credit.

An Obama voter and supporter on how he has done so much wrong. A statement of regret from an Obama voter. Suggesting that Obama words have proved somewhat unreliable. He comes across to me as a conventional Chicago corporatist who happens to be black.

Poll of American voters on various issues. 58% want smaller government with fewer services, 38% want larger government with more services. Poll finds most think a lot of the federal stimulus money was wasted or otherwise had no economic benefit. Ranking of what poll finds American voters think is important: health care ranks 8th, global warming 20th.

A credo for the independent voter:

I want the Democrats out of my pocket and Republicans out of my bedroom. The one word I would use for what’s going on in Washington is embarrassing. I am embarrassed for Republicans and for Democrats.

At the moment, the independent voters are breaking for the Republicans.

Sunday, went to a Committee Sunday BBQ meeting in Balwyn and ate way too much of the good food on offer. My contribution of a wheel of brie and two blocks of Lindt chocolate perhaps made things "worse" :).

Then it was off to Old Kingdom Restaurant in Smith St for Peking Duck to celebrate Bec/Miz Wendy's 40th birthday. The Peking Duck was very good: pity I was already so full that I could not appreciate it as much as I otherwise would. Four of us had the duck (Bec, Darius, Travis and myself). Three did not (Matt, Heather and Sam: though Sam did have a bit of a taste). Our waiter was sweet, efficient and good eye candy :)

We followed that by trooping off to the Botanical Gardens and A Midsummer Nights Dream. (My ticket worked its way out of my back pocket, but a nice gentleman had noticed and took me back to where he had picked it up and put it.)

I enjoyed the performance. It was Pantomine Shakespeare with pop culture references worked into the entrances and exits of the actors. But Oberon was a strong character, Helena was lots of fun (in a rather Ugly Betty sort of way), Puck endearing (as mildly mischievous mildly bogan straight boy) and the rest fine, even if Titania did play rather too much to the crowd and not enough to the other characters. The play-within-a-play at the end went on too long: this is fairly common I am told.

Matt and Heather left during the intermission because Matt could not stand what he thought was the "butchering" of the Bard's work, producing what he described as "bogan Shakespeare". Love Matt dearly, but he can be rather precious about these things. It was not a particularly inspiring Shakespeare, but it was fun Shakespeare. (The small children to my right laughed and chortled throughout the performance.)

Monday night, went to a new film society in Richmond. Afterwards, some of us trooped off to Chappellis, from which I did not get home until after 2am. This wiped me out for much of Tuesday, though I did visit bar_barra and Kerry G. bar_barra and I drank Monteith's Crushed Apple Cider and chatted in their garden, which I am very fond of and was a much better place to spend the heat of the Australia Day afternoon than my place.

A cartoon that made me laugh.

An amusing exchange about “diversity”.

The Hazaras of Afghanistan are investing in education to improve the prospects of their children.

Paper on how the poor quality of Latin American schooling may be (pdf) depressing their economic growth.

A 1997 study on the level of teaching of critical thinking at US universities.

A study of why US academics are disproportionately (pdf) (US) liberal. About the study and issue.

Examining why (Muslim) engineers are disproportionately likely to be terrorists.

UK minister refuses to close loophole that leaves only Muslim schools allowed to use corporal punishment: doing his bit to maximise the BNP vote …

A personal story about black versus Asian expectations and schooling

My son told us about a Korean girl in his class whose opinions command influence among the other Asian girls in the school, or at least she thinks they do. According to my son, the students refer to her as the “queen of the Asians.” She is a straight-A student.
My son’s little brother asked if there was a “Queen of the Blacks” at the school.
“Well,” my son replied, “there is a king of the blacks.”
“Who is that?” his little brother asked.
My son responded, “He is this boy that got held back last year.”

Philosopher Thomas Nagel on public education and intelligent design (pdf).

In Boston, union leaders are blocking teacher bonuses.

Report on racism in Oz schools finds that:

… students who attend a catholic school are 1.7 times LESS likely to report experiences of racism than students attending government schools.

About the shift in the direction of the graduates of US business schools to finance and consulting.

Frank Furedi on how the fetishising of change cuts students off from the past and therefore content and knowledge.

A university which offers a minor in “social and economic justice” without requiring one study any actual economics.

American universities continue to be “islands of oppression in a sea of freedom”:

When students come to believe that censoring rival points of view is not only permissible but laudable, the potential damage goes far beyond campus. Our colleges and universities produce our scientists, our business leaders, our lawyers, and our legislators. The habits formed in college inevitably seep into the other major social institutions.
In 1957 the U.S. Supreme Court said of the nation’s colleges, “Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die.” The Court was right. The next generation needs to learn the practices of a free people. If it doesn’t, we shouldn’t be surprised if, when it takes its turn to run our republic, values such as free speech and tolerance are treated like rusty, battered antiques: quaint, mysterious, and best kept in the basement.

The University of Technology Sydney is really, really, concerned that someone might say something that might be less than entirely respectful. So it will tell you how to avoid that here, here, here, explaining how important it all is here. But I will take a wild guess and suppose it is still fine to class all businesspersons as parasitical exploiters of the workers: regulation of “hate speech” is always uneven in both conception and implementation. A nice discussion of the issues is on this lawyer's blog.

Arguing for full globalisation and as superior to anything-but-labour globalisation.

A study that considers whether disaster relief can lead governments to under-invest in disaster prevention (pdf).

A moving montage of photos and commentary on the burden of aid and Haiti. How not to help Haiti after the earthquake. There are countries poorer than Haiti. Post with links on recent Haitian economic growth. Lessons from the South Asian tsunami. And from previous disasters generally.

Paper examining domestic politics and strategic policy influences on US humanitarian aid.

GDP per capita in 1820 of selected countries: until the early C20th, Australians had a higher average income than Americans.

Great post which compares US GDP per capita to EU country GDP per capita, US State GDP per capita to EU country GDP per capita and the GDP per capita of Americans of European descent with their ancestor’s EU country GDP per capita. Being in the US makes people richer.

A 1983 paper by James Tobin on the1982-83 recession that may seem strangely familiar.

Vernon Smith on experiments creating asset price bubbles and the madness of the US federal government seeking to keep house prices up.

Losses from the US stimulus spending that did not work are mounting.

Paper critiquing use of behavioural economics to justify new paternalism: the basic point is that regulators are not immune from the cognitive patterns identified as problematic for market operations.

Paper on evidence that restricting the use of eminent domain does work to restrain the size of the public sector.

Arguing that the RBA was responsible for Oz avoiding a recession.

Martin Luther King was a supporter of the guaranteed minimum income.

A speech on how commerce is friendlier to difference than politics or religion.

Nice example of how so much licensing is anti-competitive crap.

US federal road and bridge construction apparently has no effect on local unemployment rates. Stimulus “green job” spending apparently costs $135,000 per job.

Hong Kong ranked the world’s freest economy. The Index. Oz ranked 3rd, Kiwiland 4th and Switzerland is the only top 8 country not a former British colony.

Suggesting that Shanghai is not the private business hub people think it is or it ought to be:

The essence of the Shanghai model is to restrict the opportunities for Shanghai residents to become capitalists — but to create an efficient and attractive platform for foreign capitalists to set up production facilities. … The average Shanghainese are the richest proletariat in the country — but among the poorest capitalists in the country.

About the rural basis of China’s massive economic growth and the advantage that gives it over India:

For all their differences, Mao Zedong and the Chinese reform leadership of the 1980s had something in common: They both recognized the huge entrepreneurial potential of China’s rural residents.
Mao went to great lengths — through the commune system and the "Great Leap Forward" — to destroy those potentials because he understood the political ramifications of unleashing them.

The Chinese tiger faces extinction. Suggesting tiger farming as a solution. It worked for alligators.

How government policies are continuing to drive up Oz housing prices.