Unearned Guilt via Environmentalism

Lubos Motl at The Reference Frame has a great post titled "Trillions for CO2 regulation and guilt propagation". In it he points out how expensive carbon mitigation really is, provides another proof that the whole AGW campaign is driven by politics not science, and shows how China may be blaming the western nations for its emissions. Mr. Motl talks about how the west should not accept this guilt because it is just typical communist propaganda as well as being inherently unjust. All true but I want to focus on the concept he correctly identifies as "guilt propagation." Regarding guilt Mr. Motl says:

This question about the propagation of "guilt" is another important aspect of this whole debate. Imagine, for a little while, that CO2 emissions are harmful. Who is responsible for the Chinese emissions? Is it the buyers?

A few paragraphs later he correctly points out that:

But one of the principles of an enlightened modern society is that guilt simply cannot propagate in this way. For example, you shouldn't be held responsible for your parents' being killers even though you have had relationships of many kinds with your parents.

On close inspection one can see that the kind of guilt Mr. Motl is referring to is unearned guilt. I want to pursue this concept further for it is indeed an "important aspect of this whole debate."

The entire AGW-equals-catastrophe movement is spread by employing two main techniques; the propagation of fear and the propagation of unearned guilt. We all know about how the greens propagate fear. Just pick up any newspaper or magazine or consult any evening news broadcast and you'll see enough half-truths, package deals, out of context assertions and nonsequiturs to fill a book of logical fallacies.

But it's the propagation of an unearned guilt that is the most insidious. The main tool used in this technique is the concept "the environment." Let's look at that concept a little closer.

My Webster's college dictionary defines 'environment' as "1.surrounding or being surrounded, 2.something that surrounds,3.all the conditions, circumstances and influences surrounding and affecting the development of an organism or group of organisms: often contrasted with heredity." We see then that the concept 'environment' is local and/or regional.

If we look around the world, we see many different species of organisms living in a discernible environment. Some even share the same environment like predators and prey or competitive species. The sum total of all these environments is what we refer to as nature. Just as there is no such thing as a global climate, only local or regional ones, so the same is true for the concept global environment. It refers to the total of all the environments.

As an aside, notice how a trick is being used with both above mentioned concepts. Both 'global climate' and 'the environment' are being sold to American citizens as if they were individual things, single entities which can be controlled with a few tweaks by knowledgeable 'experts.' But if one remembers that global climate actually refers to hundreds if not thousands of local and regional climates all dynamically interacting with each other, and it is these the enviros are claiming we must--and they know how--to control, one sees the utter absurdity of their claims. Well, the same is true for 'the environment'. And this is where the selling of unearned guilt comes in.

To get a person, or nation, to accept an unearned guilt, one must get them to believe they are responsible for something which in reality they are not. The method used is the cognitive package deal. It takes the valid meaning of environment, an organism's surroundings that influence it, and stretches its meaning to include everyone else's environments. If he accepts this new meaning, he is agreeing to be held responsible for whatever happens to anyone's environment. It is a guilt he has not earned but has accepted. Thus, if he can be told that his actions or lack of same, had a negative impact on someone's environment halfway around the world, his guilt will make him want to atone by offering sacrifices (like donating to green foundations) or performing rituals (like recycling). {The former is what the enviro movement is all about}

Just as it would be immoral to hold Antarctic penguins responsible for the environment of a tree frog in Argentina, and that frog responsible for the environment of a sparrow in Michigan, and that sparrow responsible for the environment a Hudson Bay polar bear, so it is equally immoral to hold a man in New York responsible for the environment in Miami, or that Miami man responsible for the environment in Tokyo. It isn't their environment. They are not responsible for it. And no one should accept an unearned guilt from anyone for any reason.

Lubos Motl nailed it when he said:

Guilt for well-defined sins must be localized to those who are really responsible.

Amen


(I am indebted to Peter Schwartz for his identification of 'the environment" as a cognitive package deal in his lecture set "Clarity in Conceptualization: The Art of Identifying 'Package-Deals'" which can be purchased here.)

Update: fixed a typo in headline.

Flushing Meadows?

I have sometimes heard the expression that our world was going down the toilet. I always thought that was just a metaphore, until now. My comcast news page reports that "Mr. Toilet" in Korea, has built a two story house in the shape of one. Toilet that is. For now, ABC News online has a short video here.

I suppose he's just trying to be ac-commodating!

Socialized Medicine

Sarita at The Kalamazoo Objectivist has a good post on socialized medicine. She has a link to a 9 minute video titled "Uninsured in America" by Blain Greenberg which I recommend viewing. She says about the video:

It explains how this 45 million uninsured figure is a canard to get us all up in a tizzy about the shamefulness of it all. But actually if one examines the number closer a different picture emerges.

Indeed it does.

Evidently, this video is at a website called Free Market Cure with other similar videos on how subhuman socialized medicine really is. I've added it to my favorites list.
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About why it has to be subhuman, Myhraf has a perceptive observation in his post "It's Over" about why he thinks Hillary doesn't stand a chance in 08. It is:

Clinton is a statist through and through. She sees the American people as helpless, deluded creatures who need to be forced and controlled for their own good by altruist philosopher-kings like Hillary Clinton. She thinks of herself as having "compassion" and "caring for the common man," but when one thinks of people as inferior children who need to be lied to, there is another feeling just beneath the surface: contempt. Her contempt and condescension shine through on TV.

I couldn't agree more. When I watch her on TV she just looks condescending to me. Anyway I do think contempt for the unwashed masses is shared by many on the left.

Reducing CO2 Emissions, It's So Simple Even a....

In my last post "New Paradigm: Correlation=Causality" I wrote about what it can look like when scientists consider the issue of truth and falsehood irrelevant. In it I wrote that

So, if one becomes indifferent to truth and therefore reality, one will also become indifferent to the meaning of those things that identify reality--concepts and their symbols, words. Words then become nothing more than tools that one uses to get what one wants in a social context. Sometimes all one might want is to do is observe a problem, like a lady's splitting grocery bag dumping its contents onto the floor, and write an essay on the need for double-bagging.

This article at the Times of India (h/t Benny Peiser) is about:

The UN Human Development Report's core message is that climate change could cause reversal of human development in
the 21st century, particularly in developing countries. Lead author Kevin
Watkins tells Narayani Ganesh that rich countries ought to take drastic,
mandatory action to prevent global catastrophe:

It continues with my comments in brackets:

Q: Should India set hard targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions (GHGe)?

A: No. I said rich countries ought to undertake mandatory, binding emissions
cuts to stabilise GHGe during 2012-2050. It is unrealistic to expect developing countries to do so. The aim should be to gradually reduce emissions from
developing countries after 2020 [This sounds like a marketing ploy: sign up now and you won't have to make any payments-sacrifices-till 2020.] but at a rate which is consistent with expanding
access to electricity [what is that rate? How is it determined? Who determines it?] for the 1.6 billion who don't have access and in improving [how?]
energy services for the five million people who manage their energy needs
through collecting firewood and dung.

And:

For this to happen we need to transfer financial and technological resources [whose?] through multilateral ways [multilateral means ganging-up-on the owners and producers of those resources], expanding access to energy and improving efficiency
through low carbon technology. Funds [whose?] should also be made available for adaptation. This mechanism should be part of whatever replaces the present Kyoto Protocol (KP) that culminates in 2012.

What does 'made available' mean? Notice how all the problems are only problems because of a lack of access? Evidently people don't have energy, technology and riches because they don't have access to them. Presumably, rich people are rich because they have access to riches. In Mr. Watkins mind, it is access that the haves have, and access that the have nots have not. The obvious solution then is to 'transfer' the resources of the haves so that the have nots have access to them. Have you ever heard of a more simplistic view of reality?

(Nowhere is there any recognition of the fact that prosperity, energy and technology are things that have a specific nature and very specific requirements to bring them into existence. If the have nots are ever to have, it is these requirements they need to discover then have, capitalism, individual rights, reason, freedom.)

The words and concepts for solving GW problems are slung together by the Gores and Watkins of the world in such a concrete bound, obvious, but-of-course, simplistic kind of way, one gets the impression that intellectual cavemen would be able to understand them. Alas, it's not an impression, that's to whom that essay is appealing.

Update: edited last sentence for clarity.

New Paradigm: Correlation=Causation

In my recent post "Lil' Junk Science Roundup" of 10/29, I linked to an article at JunkfoodScience.com about how epidemics are created by changing the definitions of diseases and how the definition of heart attack will soon be expanded to include detection of elevated Troponin levels. But as JFS moderator Sandy Szwarc points out, there are things other than heart attacks that can cause such elevated Troponin levels.

Now I have no problem with advances in science that expand our knowledge of reality. Maybe medical science will integrate the addition of Troponin rationally. But I do have a problem with widening the goal posts to increase one's chances of achieving a scientific/political/funding/publishing score. In that post Ms. Szwarc reveals that in 1997/98 the goal posts were moved adding millions of people to various sick or unhealthy lists. For example:

“Overweight:”Definition changed from BMI ≥ 27 to BMI ≥ 25 by the U.S. National Heart Lung and Blood Institute in 1998, instantly increasing by 43% the numbers of Americans, an additional 30.5 million, deemed ‘overweight.’

Obesity epidemic? Now you know where a large chunk of it came from. The article also shows this was done to "hypertension", "high cholesterol" and "diabetes" just to name a few.

All this demonstrates once again the truth of "Governmental encouragement does not order men to believe that the false is true, it merely makes them indifferent to the issue of truth or falsehood."-Ayn Rand.

But what does it mean to be indifferent to truth or falsehood? In what concrete forms would that manifest itself? First, we have to ask what is truth? Objectivism answers that it is that which corresponds to reality. So, if one becomes indifferent to truth and therefore reality, one will also become indifferent to the meaning of those things that identify reality--concepts and their symbols, words. Words then become nothing more than tools that one uses to get what one wants in a social context. (Whoops! My mistake. There is no longer any such thing as a context or hierarchy into which concepts are integrated. There are only paradigms which have a mysterious power to change now and then. How? Somehow.)

The meaning of words is no longer determined by reference to reality but by whatever seems to be socially acceptable in the current paradigm. Thus it should come as no surprise that another JFS article informs us that the words 'correlation' and 'association' are now deemed to have the meaning 'causal'. Ms. Szwarc informs us:

How did they define associations as being causal? They created three grades of evidence:


· Convincing: Associations deemed as strong enough evidence to call ‘convincing’ of a causal relationship included: “at least two independent cohort studies...and a plausible biological gradient (‘dose response’) in the association. Such a gradient need not be linear or even in the same direction across the different levels of exposure, so long as this can be explained plausibly.”


· Probable: They defined associations as being strong enough to label as ‘probable’ of a causal relationship if it included: “at least two independent cohort studies, or at least five case control studies” and they could find a biological plausibility.


· Limited: The label of “limited, but suggestive” included associations “too limited to permit a probable or convincing causal judgement, but where there is evidence suggestive of a direction of effect. The evidence may have methodological flaws, or be limited in amount, but shows a generally consistent direction of effect. This almost always does not justify recommendations.” It included “at least two independent cohort studies or at least five case control studies.” And evidence labeled “limited, no conclusion” was that so limited no conclusion could be made.

So, if you wish upon a star, causal is what correlation and association are. In fact, 'plausible' can even become 'convincing'. Man,what magical power these words can have if you only put them in the right paradigm. (I recommend reading the whole article. It's packed with info.)

Obviously the above is nothing more than the attempt to declare something to be causal without having to do the rigorous work usually involved in identifying a causal mechanism. For a long time now, science, the media, academe, and the body politic have treated statistical studies as if they were a substitute for actual scientific experiments. This study is an attempt to put over the notion that there is no difference, they are the same.

Expanding the goal posts of existing disease definitions by including an ever growing number of non-essentials will serve only to obliterate the essential defining characteristics of those diseases and lead to chaos in medicine. So will the packaging together of different meaning concepts and pretending they have the same meaning.

ISU Arms Campus Police

The Iowa State Daily is reporting that their board of regents will adopt a security plan which will include campus police being armed. According to the article:

The Iowa Board of Regents passed a new comprehensive security plan that will, among other things, permit campus police officers to carry firearms.

Cmdr. Gene Deisinger of the ISU Police said the new policy is multifaceted.

"The training and arming of university police officers was one subsection of the overall policy that was submitted by the board," Deisinger said.

I am in favor of such a policy. No campus can ever be completely safe but an armed campus police force plus an enhanced communications system could go a long way toward making sure a killer doesn't take 2 hours to kill and reload for more killing. When a psychopathic killer is loose, a gun free zone full of unarmed victims is a welcome mat.

What do the students think of this?

Brian Phillips, senior in political science and president of the Government of Student Body, said the GSB was pleased that the regents had addressed the issue of arming police.

"Students were clearly in support of arming the officers, the PA systems, crisis management, interventions and things of that nature," Phillips said.

He said in August some student leaders at all three state universities conducted surveys at the behest of the Board of Regents to see how students reacted to the idea of arming police.

"At all three there was about 60 percent that agreed or strongly said that the police should carry arms, all three expressed overwhelming support," Phillips said.

I agree with this policy and hope other universities follow suit.

Lil' Junk Science Roundup

Galileo Blogs has a good post on how the environmental movement places nature above humans, this time in Atlanta, Georgia.

The city of Atlanta, Georgia, is running out of water. Despite this, the Army Corps of Engineers has ordered that sufficient water flows be drained out of Lake Lanier, the city's main reservoir, to keep alive the fat threeridge mussel located in Florida's Apalachicola River, some 350 miles away.

It is stories like this that prove beyond any shadow of a doubt the misanthropic credentials of environmentalism.
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At the website of ICECAP is a 10/26/07 article "Global Warming Is Not Caused By Carbon Dioxide" by Marc Moreno at the website of Gary Novak. It seems to be written for the non-scientist like me. Anyway, I've always thought that the so-called greenhouse gasses had no power to fry the earth. That's because neither carbon dioxide, nor any of the other GHGs for that matter, are capable of generating heat. They can only temporarily trap whatever heat was imparted to the earth by the sun.

Did you or your significant other ever pile on the blankets--3,4 or maybe even 5-- on a particularly cold winter night? Did you find that that person had ignited or melted or turned into a crispy critter the next morning? Of course not. It didn't happen for the same reason it isn't going to happen to planet earth. This article helps explain why.
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JunkScience.com of Oct. 29th. links to a NYT story that says

"After purchasing a vast unbroken wilderness in Adirondack Park which only loggers and a few hunters have ever seen, the Nature Conservancy will not preserve it all as public land."

I'm sure that the NC will not make any more money off this land than the $110 million they paid for it since they claim to be non-profit. Yeah right! I do think all wilderness should be privately owned but not for the expressed purpose of not using it for some purpose. And because of its shady past, I don't consider TNC a proper conservation group.
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Sandy Szwarc at JunkfoodScience does it again with another revealing article on how scare stories are manufactured. This time it's about how so-called 'epidemics' are created just by changing the definition of various diseases. We are now warned that:

With heart disease deaths dropping dramatically for the past half century, the world’s top four organizations representing heart disease interests have all gotten together to change the definition ... of a heart attack.

No doubt, in a year or so we'll be hearing of a new 'epidemic' of heart disease.
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Still at JunkfoodScience is another article on "more 'bad carb' myths" about how sugar and so-called bad carbs really don't cause type 2 diabetes.

One of the more popularized beliefs is that you can give yourself type 2 diabetes by eating sugars or ‘bad carbs’ because they cause blood sugars and insulin levels to surge. No matter how many times researchers have shown this not to be the case, myths surrounding dietary sugars and carbohydrates, especially those that come in the color white, continue, with each generation 'refining' their explanations.

Live and Learn

Did you ever have what you thought was a simple yet neato idea, a cool thing to do, and have it turn out to be a disaster? Well, that was me last week.

I had been impressed with a few friends who had pretty birds coming to bird feeders in the trees in their back yards. Now that the tree in my front yard was big enough, I decided to buy a feeder and be nice to nature. (Moron!) I bought a wild bird feeder at a local store. It was made of plastic, square and had four feeding ports. I bought a small bag of wild bird seed, hung the benevolence in my tree and waited for nature to show her gratitude. (Idiot!)

After an hour or so I looked out my front window and observed a handful of birds chowing down at the feeder and said unto myself "this is good!"

About 2 hrs later I looked again and observed about 35-40 birds in my tree waiting their turn. Then I noticed about 35-40 more birds on the ground apparently also feeding. But on what? I went outside to inspect and saw seed on the ground. The feeder trays had a tiny hole in them obviously for rainwater drainage. Evidently, some of the seeds were small enough to fall through. Either that or the feeder birds were sloppy eaters.

I went back into the house and watched as the 80 or so birds returned and said unto myself "Oh s--t!" I decided to step back and consider the facts I had observed on this day.

First, the birds were all sparrows, no pretty birds.

Second, at the base of my tree is a ring of white bricks which border a planting of Hens and Chicks which were growing nicely. But I noticed that my once green Hens and Chicks were now turning white along with parts of the lawn.

Third, those birds finished off about 2 pounds of feed in 5 hrs flat. Keeping it full was going to be expensive.

Fourth, I reasoned that if there are that many sparrows in my neighborhood, they certainly aren't in any danger of starving and definitely don't need me to feed them.

Fifth and lastly, since this was unfolding in my front yard, my neighbors had to be looking out their window wondering "WTF is he doing?"

So, since winter is almost here, I have decided to take down this particular feeder and do a little research over the winter. Maybe I'll think about getting special feeders like hummingbird or finch feeders or some such. Maybe I'll consider putting the feeders in my back yard perhaps hanging from the garage corners. In the meantime I will take solace in the idea that I didn't make a mistake but rather, had a learning experience, and that's a good thing.

Viva Carbon

John Brignell, moderator of Number Watch, has a pretty good post titled "In Praise of Carbon" which I highly recommend. (h/t JunkScience.com of Oct 22nd.) He puts the whole global warming issue in perspective. I thought his section "In The Stocks" about how AGW has become a secular religion was very perceptive. For example:

When you are establishing a new religion, it is necessary to create the basic infrastructure of sacrifice, ritual and credence. Commitment comes from the combination of these three, but the greatest of these is belief. It is not sufficient to induce just any undemanding belief, such as that the sky is blue. That would require no leap of faith and therefore no devotion. If you can induce a belief that is logically insupportable, such as the reward for immolating yourself and others being eternal attendance by somewhat implausibly numerous virgins, then you have established mastery. It is then, of course, absolutely necessary to cut off other interfering sources of information, which is why the Greenies made such strenuous, if covert, efforts to occupy the commanding heights of the scientific and media establishments, from which to orchestrate a blanket censorship of alternative views.

That is the perversity of some manifestations of religion. They operate on a principle of opposites in the nomination of that which is defined as evil. The contradictions are an essential part of the mystique. Religion creates commitment by belief and then adds reinforcement by demanding sacrifice and ritual. It is in the nature of man to deny that a sacrifice, once made, has been in vain, it offends his self regard, so that each further little discomfort and inconvenience affirms the dedication. They have been with us since the dawn of human language – doomsayers, puritans, flagellants, killjoys – the deniers of contentment and the promoters of pain. Every tiny pointless gesture reinforces the commitment: turn off the stand-by light, tolerate death-dealing maggots in the garbage bin, do without the holiday, abandon fresh milk and on and on. Each gesture must involve an element of pain or discomfort and be linkable by mangled logic to the realisation of the return to the supposed stone-age paradise.

Of course the sacrifice would entail the giving up of things as mentioned, the rituals to be performed would be all manner of things like using fluorescent bulbs, recycling, car-pooling, etc. Credence would be achieved by getting people to accept the notion that truth is determined by a "consensus" and by smearing those who don't share the consensus as heretics and non-believers by using the terms 'skeptics', 'deniers' and 'doubters.'

I think this sentence is very true: "It is in the nature of man to deny that a sacrifice, once made, has been in vain, it offends his self regard, so that each further little discomfort and inconvenience affirms the dedication." It is also why an enjoyment of life proper to a rational being in an industrial and technological society will evoke feelings of guilt in the believers and a desire to atone by performing more rituals and sacrifices.

Mr. Brignell ends his essay with:

So, if it is in your nature to give thanks for anything, spare a thought for the much maligned atom that is your primal ancestor and the provider of everything that you are, that you have and that keeps you alive.

A good idea. So, I now think I will write two essays the week of Thanksgiving: one thanking capitalism and modern technology and the other thanking the life giving gas of carbon dioxide. I will include a link to Mr. Brignell's article and may pattern mine after his own. Hell, it might even make a good LTE to the local papers. In fact, I would like to see all my readers follow Mr. Brignell's lead and write LTEs to their local papers Thanksgiving week in praise of carbon and its life sustaining dioxide.

Assault on the Profit Motive

My Congressional Representative sends out a newsletter about once a week. I sometimes write a short note agreeing and disagreeing on various of his positions. Today, I reprint below the first of my congressman's accomplishments:

House Adopts Legislation to Crack Down on Iraq Contracting Fraud

On October 9, the House of Representatives voted 375 to 3 to approve the War Profiteering Prevention Act [H.R. 400] to make war profiteering a felony, subject to up to 20 years in prison and fines of up to $1 million or twice the profits of the crime. There is currently no federal statute specifically targeted at prohibiting contracting fraud during times of war, military action, or reconstruction activities.

War profiteering and reconstruction fraud by U.S. companies has become a significant problem in the Iraq war. The U.S. has devoted more than $50 billion to U.S. contractors for relief and reconstruction activities in Iraq alone, with billions of these dollars unaccounted for. In February, the head of the Defense Contract Audit Agency testified that the agency estimated that there have been more than $10 billion in questioned and unsupported costs related to Iraq reconstruction and troop support contracts since 2003.

(link omitted)

So I sent this letter to his office.

Dear Congressman:

"I object to your voting for the anti-profiteering legislation regarding Iraq contractors.This is nothing but an attack on the concept of profits. I have no problem with prosecuting companies who actually commit fraud in their contracting. If you were serious about fraud, I would think you would go exclusively after that practice. But you don't. Your concern is also that someone may 'profit' from the fraud implying that if no profits were had, the deceit and dishonesty would not be as serious.

This evaluation is supported further by the fact that you specifically cite profits as evidence of possible fraud "War profiteering and construction fraud...". This means that any company making any money in Iraq is automatically suspect in your eyes.

The Constitution's declaration that every man has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is the first declaration in mans' history that held profits to be moral so long as the same right of others to profit is respected. In this light, equating fraud with profit making is very un-American.

The issue of whether profits were made is irrelevant to the issue of was a crime committed. Profits may be a motive-and often are-but never a proof of guilt, nor should they be the target of any legislation. HR400 "to make war profiteering a felony" which you supported, is a direct attack on profits, not fraud. Sure, the word fraud is mentioned several times in your newsletter, but it is not the main focus of HR400, profiteering, or making money, is.

I'm not saying that a thief shouldn't have his loot confiscated and returned to its rightful owner. I am saying that when he goes to jail, it's not because he stole an ipod instead of a toaster.

As mentioned, I'm 100% in support of your efforts to go after fraud. I'm 100% opposed to going after profits as if they were a sign of some kind of evil."
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I want to add that the concept of "profiteering" is a cognitive package deal. A package deal is a concept that destroys the valid meaning of a concept by replacing it with a pseudo or false meaning. In this case, the valid concept money making--the rational pursuit of wealth--is equated with the also valid but opposite meaning of--the irrational pursuit of wealth--in which thieves, robbers and con men indulge.

It is not the case that the users of that package deal are saying "We want a concept that refers to wealth gained by dishonest means but we don't want to disparage or smear in any way the concept of the rational pursuit of profit." No sir. The exact opposite is true. The users of 'profiteering' fully intend to obliterate the distinction between the honest (rational) and dishonest (irrational) pursuit of wealth.

The public is already familiar with the concept of racketeering (another package deal) and by means of association, will attribute the same negative or immoral connotation to 'profiteering'. Thus, when a member of the public hears the term 'profiteering', he will associate the negative or immoral meaning to it. He will also come to believe that the crime is not in the violation of some one's rights, but in profiting from that violation. This means that a bunch of CDs bought with the thousand dollars he just robbed at gun point is evil because he is 'profiteering'. But giving that stolen thousand dollars to his favorite charity is not 'profiteering' and so is not evil. (This last is called taxation.)

As a side note,the above mentioned concept 'racketeering' is also a package deal in that it refers only to that which is illegal and not necessarily a rights violation. It reminds me of the excellent analogy by Peter Schwartz in his CD lecture Clarity in Conceptualization: The Art of Identifying "Package Deals" which I recommend and can be purchased here. In it, Mr.Schwartz explains how the concept criminal could be destroyed by creating the concept 'rule ignorer'. In which case, the idea of a person who violates rights (criminal) is replaced by the idea of a person who ignores arbitrary rules like wearing white after Labor Day. In this way, the government, as a protector of individual rights, is replaced with the idea of government as the issuer of arbitrary rules which every one else must obey.
I would say that the concept 'racketeering' is a version of 'rule ignorer'. Again, I really recommend buying Mr. Schwartz's 4 CD set linked above. Knowing how to spot package deals is like having one's own mental firewall which helps one detect the viruses of package deals and anti-concepts which in turn destroy one's ability to think clearly.

Anyway, I couldn't let my congressman's chest beating go unchallenged. I don't expect him to convert to my way of thinking but I do want him to know there is a difference of registered voter opinion out there. Actually, my rep. is an old fashioned liberal, the old left, so there are fragments of his reasoning one can appeal to.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Interview

Grant Jones at the Dougout posts on an interview of Ayaan Hirsi Ali by Reason magazine. If you read the whole article he links to, you'll see her level of conceptualization is considerably more advanced than the interviewer's. Consider this exerpt:

There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.

Reason: Militarily?

Hirsi Ali: In all forms, and if you don’t do that, then you have to live with the consequence of being crushed.

Reason: Are we really heading toward anything so ominous?

You'd think this last question was asked by a liberal or leftist in denial of reality but no, it was a conservative.

Or this exerpt from the article:

Reason: I want my government to protest the Rushdie fatwa. I’m not so sure they ought to diplomatically engage some idiots burning a piece of cloth or a straw figure in the streets of Islamabad. Isn’t there a huge difference between the two?

Hirsi Ali: It’s not just a piece of cloth. It’s a symbol. In a tribal mind-set, if I’m allowed to take something and get away with it, I’ll come back and take some more. In fact, I’ll come and take the whole place, especially since it’s my holy obligation to spread Islam to the outskirts of the earth and I know I’ll be rewarded in heaven. At that point, I’ve only done my religious obligation while you’re still sitting there rationalizing that your own flag is a piece of cloth.

We have to get serious about this. The Egyptian dictatorship would not allow many radical imams to preach in Cairo, but they’re free to preach in giant mosques in London. Why do we allow it?

Wow! Is this lady tuned in to a reality that the interviewer-and many in America's educated class-isn't? Read the whole article, an intellectual breath of fresh air.

Ignobel Peace Award

I swear if I should ever win a Nobel peace prize I would refuse it and make a public statement repudiating the award and the people behind it. I could not accept an award given to a terrorist like Arafat, a weakling like Carter and a second hander like Gore and help them pretend there is any merit to it whatsoever. Nuff said.

"Successful" Pedagogy

Lisa VanDamme of VanDamme Academy gives us a glimpse into one of the classes at the Academy in a letter sent home to the parents of students. Reprinted below.


Pedagogically Correct Volume 2, Issue 2
October 5, 2007

"Pedagogy": The art and science of teaching.
:: Yesterday's Highlights: "Success"
:: Announcement: Pedagogically Correct Blog


Yesterday's Highlights: "Success"

In a letter called "Yesterday's Highlights," I periodically describe my observations of classes to the VanDamme Academy parents. I have decided to share these highlights with readers of this newsletter as well. I hope you enjoy your glimpse into a VanDamme Academy classroom.

Success

Dear Parents,

This week and last, I have had the pleasure of teaching poetry to Rooms 1-5. This gave me an opportunity to get to know each of the students a little better, and to share with them something I love.

In each class, we studied a poem that connects to the novel the class had recently completed. If you want to learn more about your child's education, help him study his poem, and ask him to explain how it relates to what he has been discussing in literature.

For example, Room 5 is memorizing the following gem of a poem, which I only recently discovered, and which immediately struck me as having an obvious connection to The Miracle Worker.

Success

If you want a thing bad enough To go out and fight for it, Work day and night for it, Give up your time and your peace and your sleep for it

If only desire of it Makes you quite mad enough Never to tire of it, Makes you hold all other things tawdry and cheap for it

If life seems all empty and useless without it And all that you scheme and you dream is about it,

If gladly you'll sweat for it, Fret for it, Plan for it, Lose all your terror of God or man for it,

If you'll simply go after that thing that you want. With all your capacity, Strength and sagacity, Faith, hope and confidence, stern pertinacity,

If neither cold poverty, famished and gaunt, Nor sickness nor pain Of body or brain Can turn you away from the thing that you want,

If dogged and grim you besiege and beset it, You'll get it!

BERTON BRALEY

The students were quick to identify and explain that this poem captured Annie Sullivan's dogged, dauntless determination to teach language to Helen Keller. They noted that she "gave up her sleep for it," immediately implementing ideas that struck her in the middle of the night; that she held Helen's obedience and grooming as "tawdry and cheap" compared to her need to learn language; that she endured the bodily pain of being slapped, kicked, stuck with a pin, and having her tooth knocked out, and never gave up on her goal; and that she lost all terror of God, man, and Captain Keller for it. Now, they have seen this theme demonstrated in the inspirational character of Annie Sullivan, and they have heard it eloquently captured in the words of Berton Braley.

Poetry is incredible fuel for the soul. After your children have memorized the poems, they will have a claim to them, and will have them at the ready when a relevant time arises. Just today, a parent shared with me a charming story of her daughters reciting their poem "Courage" to her when she was afraid to jump from the Jacuzzi into the pool.

I will take inspiration from "Success." This school is something I have had to "fret for" and "plan for," something that has at times taken all my "strength and sagacity," something I "schemed" and "dreamed" about. And my life would definitely be "empty and useless" without it. Thank you for helping all of us at VanDamme Academy achieve our "Success." We, in turn, will help your children to do the same.

Saving Michigan

As most of my readers know, Michigan's economy is in the dumps. This week's Detroit papers have been full of articles on the new budget just passed by the state legislature last weekend. As I look at the Detroit News of Tuesday Oct 2nd. I have to laugh at some things and shake my head at others.

First, objectivists understand that altruism is a morality of intentions over results and insists that one's actions should not be condemned or attacked if one's intentions are held to be noble and virtuous.

Well, in a special section called Michigan's Budget Solution, Governor Jennifer Granholm is quoted as saying "I'm very angry at those on the fringe who would attack legislators who voted their conscience." In other words, if you vote to do what you think is right, you should be exempt from criticism, regardless of the possibility those actions might do more harm than good by violating the rights of citizens.

Also implied in that statement is the notion that anyone who criticizes those "who voted their conscience" should not be taken seriously because they are on the "fringe" which means don't bother to examine their arguments, just dismiss them out of hand.

Lastly, the entire premise of the statement, "voted their conscience" is extremely, to the nth power, laughable. Why? In a News editorial it is pointed out that:

The size of the bureaucracy is not measurably shrinking, privatization of services is not significantly expanding, and the incentive for ongoing reforms is evaporating.

This budget promises to give state government a generous windfall. More than half of the $1.4 billion tax increase will go to cover the budget deficit pushed forward last year.

Once that bill is paid, nearly $800 million will be available in coming years to spend on new programs.

The expansion of the sales tax to certain services also gives lawmakers a convenient vehicle for raising future taxes. Expect the number of services covered to grow whenever the government needs more money.

Voted their conscience eh?

But what are those 'services' destined for tax increases?

Besides targeting mainstream industries such as consulting and financial planning, the sales tax changes strike the less familiar and the offbeat: Astrologers, psychics, phrenologists and numerologists would have to begin charging their clients an extra 6 percent.

"None of them contacted us," [State Rep. Steve] Bieda joked. "They must not have seen it coming."

For a complete list of targeted services go here and scroll down to "Taxed Services."

The very beginning of this article is also revealing.

Dating services are covered, but a round of golf is not.

Going skiing will be subject to the state's 6 percent sales tax but not going to see the Detroit Lions.

Consultants' services will be taxed, lawyers' won't be.

Yep, since many of our legislators are lawyers who like to golf, this is what "voted their conscience" looks like.

While there are many other absurdities and inanities in the articles in that edition, I will close with the above linked article's closing paragraphs:

While it's hard to determine how much those "industries" [seers] generate a year, psychic Nina Toro of Dearborn Heights said it's not much. "There is no profit in psychic reading," she said. "If business picked up I'd be more than willing to pay the 6 percent."

Layoffs and foreclosures have hurt her business as well. She typically charges $25 a session, but will drop her price to $10 for the unemployed.

As for the state's future: "I don't see any good."

Neither do I.

Shooting Stars

Spiked has this video which will change the way you view shooting stars forever. heh

Darn

Gus Van Horn has a thank you and a bit of a tribute for Cox and Forkum who are ending their full time job as cartoonists. I too want to say thanks because I really enjoyed their cartoons and will miss them. They say they will continue to publish only on an occasional basis and I will look forward even to that. Gus also links to the official announcement here. The comments section is a pretty nice tribute in itself.

Good Post on Ozone Holes

Lubos Motl at The Reference Frame has a post that pokes holes in the Ozone hole scare. When the hole was discovered in 1985 it was assumed to be a bad thing, all man's fault and an omen of doom if evil humans don't change their capitalistic, wealth producing, life extending, freedom loving, rights respecting, pursuit of happiness encouraging ways.

It sure seems that everytime scientists make some discovery about climate, it always is man's fault and portends imminent doom if governments don't take bold and decisive actions to reduce their citizens' influence on the problem whatever it is. Those calls for governments to institute such 'effective measures' are nothing but calls for forced sacrifices, not to achieve some benefit, but sacrifices in their original meaning: the surrender of a value--technology, freedom, etc--in return for no value whatsoever; citizens sacrificing their standard of living to the ants and allegators, who have an absolute right to exist which humans obviously don't have.

As long as people think that someone's good can be achieved by someone else's sacrifice, they will always see the issue as man verses nature instead of man as part of nature and compatible with it. It will take the banishment of the concept sacrifice from the language and culture before people can see man's proper role as obeyer and master and protector of nature.

Grampa again

Well, I became a grampa for the third time Thursday afternoon. The little guy was almost 2 months early. He weighed 3 pounds and 4 ounces but the doctor said his vital signs are strong. Mom is doing fine and all seems to be working out for the better.

He is in the NICU with 4 others. You know it's amazing how they can keep those little babies alive and growing with modern technology.

Man, the grand kids are coming fast; I'm supposed to be a grampa again in April of 08. Guess I better stock up on film.

Blogroll Additions

The Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) has a new blog here run by climate scientist Fred Singer of the University of Alabama at Huntsville. I recommend visiting it often and have added it to my blogroll. (hat tip Junkscience.com. of Sept 24th.)

I've also added WoPSR, an objectivist blog, moderated by Qwertz and company. Right now they're featuring u-tube videos of I-mean-dhimmitude giving his speach at Columbia U.--a university I would urge you to avoid if you're looking for a good college.

Pedagogically Correct

For those who haven't visited the website "Pedagogically Correct" I urge you to do so and add it to your favorites list or blogroll. Here is a sample of a recent article.



Pedagogically Correct Volume 2, Issue 1
September 25, 2007

"Pedagogy": The art and science of teaching.
:: The First Day of School: VanDamme Academy Style
:: Announcement: Pedagogically Correct Blog


The First Day of School: VanDamme Academy Style

I have often been told that, when asked what was special about their VanDamme Academy education, graduates say, "We always understood why we were learning what we were learning." This important effect has many causes, the most significant among them being that what the students are learning is, in fact, important, and that the teacher always makes a purpose of conveying, implicitly and explicitly, why it is important.

In a discussion of the distinctive VanDamme Academy history program, Andrew Lewis said that the little history that is taught in today's schools typically addresses five questions: Who? What? When? Where? and How? Mr. Lewis recognizes that the answers to those questions are inadequate without answers to two more: Why? and So what? The story of history must be causal and explanatory, the explanations must be relevant to the students' lives, and the students must understand the relevance.

It is this principle that defines the first day at VanDamme Academy. In each class, the teacher begins with the questions: What is this subject? and Why do we need to study it? Here is what I glimpsed walking through the school's halls on that inaugural day:

In Mrs. O'Brien's grammar classes: She discussed what grammar is (principles concerning the proper use of language), and answered the cliché objection, "We don't need grammar; we just need to make ourselves understood." She demonstrated that we cannot consistently make ourselves understood without the rules of grammar, presenting humorous examples from Eats, Shoots, and Leaves and Anguished English of the problems and ambiguities that result from the placement or misplacement of a comma (e.g., "Slow, children ahead," and, "Slow children ahead.") or from an amphibolous construction (e.g., "Customers who find the waitress uncivil ought to see the manager."). She introduced a theme to which she can refer throughout the year: that a mastery of grammar is vitally useful.

In Mr. Travers' literature classes: He began with a discussion of the personal value of literature. He explained that a great plot presents an extraordinary sequence of events that is purposeful and has an abstract meaning, differentiating it from the story of an ordinary day, which is full of the mundane, accidental, and meaningless. He showed how that abstract meaning can illuminate the world around them, and referred to the inspiration they had drawn from the themes of works they had previously studied (e.g., the virtue of independence in An Enemy of the People.) He showed that great works of literature present people who have been distilled to an essence, that they highlight the nature and consequences of certain traits of character, and discussed how this could help the students in understanding and evaluating qualities in others and in themselves.

Educators often wrestle with the question: How do we motivate the students? Many resort to the carrot and the stick, dangling rewards or threatening consequences. But the technique employed by Mr. Travers, Mrs. O'Brien, and Mr. Lewis, and the way they will make good on their promise to present what is important and show why it is important-that is the essence of motivation, and a defining feature of the VanDamme Academy curriculum.


Announcement: Pedagogically Correct Blog
www.pedagogicallycorrect.com
Check out our new 'blog, which will contain much (but not all) of the material we sent out in our newsletters. Spread the word!

Models of Error

One of the main points of contention of global warming critics is that all the gloom and doom predictions of the warming alarmists are found in a single place--computer models. Another piece of evidence demonstrating the fact that such models cannot be trusted to make predictions of the future comes to us via Junkscience.com of Sept. 24th. which links to an article about a press release from the University of Arizona. It says in part:

Drought-stricken regions of the Amazon forest grew particularly vigorously during the 2005 drought, according to new research.

The counterintuitive finding contradicts a prominent global climate model that predicts the Amazon forest would begin to "brown down" after just a month of drought and eventually collapse as the drought progressed.

“Instead of ‘hunkering down’ during a drought as you might expect, the forest responded positively to drought, at least in the short term," said study author Scott R. Saleska of The University of Arizona. "It's a very interesting and surprising response."

UA co-author Kamel Didan added, "The forest showed signs of being more productive. That's the big news."

Even bigger news is that there is no evidence to support the idea that global warming will result in any kind of catastrophe for life on earth and that there is plenty of evidence for the opposite--the historical record--which shows that whenever the climate warmed, life flourished. We absolutely cannot trust those who say that "computer models predict...." Maybe someday, but we're nowhere near that day now.

Remember When

In the Detroit area there are often free newspapers usually found in malls and some restauraunts. Mrs. Eyes spotted one, Senior Living, which had an article titled "The Price is Right" about what things cost in 1942. Knowing that that was the year of my birth Mrs. Eyes correctly thought I'd be interested. So here's a few comparisons:

1942: A 6oz bottle of coca cola--5 cents.
2007: $1.55 for a 20oz bottle.

1942: 1.25oz Hershey bar--5 cents.
2007: 2.10oz bar--55 cents.

1942: loaf of bread--9 cents.
2007: $3.59 (Pepperidge Farm).

1942: Gallon of milk--60 cents.
2007: $3.38.

1942: postage stamp--3 cents.
2007: 41 cents.

1942: New car--$1,100. (average)
2007: $28,400

1942: gasoline--19 cents/gal.
2007: $2.771/gal. (U.S. average--last week)

1942: average anual salary--$2,400.
2007: $36,276.

As far as I can tell, these numbers do not take into account inflation of the money supply.

Two Recommendations

I haven't posted lately because I've been quite busy. I hope to get back to posting more often soon.

In the meantime, I have two recommendations. Sandy Szwarc at Junkfoodscience has another informative post in which she looks at the so-called studies that claim that over 60% of us are two sedentary. She masterfully exposes the tricks used to fool the public and granting agencies, i.e. the government.

And, if you read nothing else, I urge you to go to The Objective Standard where you can read in its entirety the essay "The Morality of Moneylending" by Dr. Yaron Brook.

I'll be back! (couldn't resist)

More Good Videos on GW and Other Stuff

Lubos Motl at The Reference Frame has a good video titled Global Warming: Unsettled Science. It's only about 4 1/2 minutes long and I really like the dramatic music of Holst; the Planets-Mars. Lubos has a number of links to other similarly critical videos ranging from 5 to 8 minutes long. I liked the music to most of them especially the song Die Sonne (The Sun) by Rammstein, sung in German I think.
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Grant Jones at The Dougout has a humorous 2 minute video of a freshman sex orientation class at Ohio State University. Heh. If you ask me, such classes are like trying to persuade a compass needle not to point north.
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Andrew Dalton at Witch Doctor Repellant has a 2 1/2 minute video about a Mandelbrot set song, if you like jazzy math.
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This isn't a video but a photo of-wait for it-a fake sunroof for your car? Yep. Now you too can pretend to have something you don't. Are we really getting into makeup for cars? Some of the comments are funny. (From Boing Boing.)

Man's Mind in Focus

Tired of all the irrational news in politics and the culture in general? Well, if you'd like to see an image of man the thinker and achiever, man the rational animal, Ralph Buttigieg at Quantum Limit has a 20 minute video of a speech by explorer-inventor Bill Stone which I highly recommend.

If you realize that in a laissez-faire economy funding would come from private science corporations and not the government, this is an informative and inspiring video.

The Sorry State of Modern Anthropology

Since my last post was on a toddler learning to walk, I thought this article in the Friday Sept. 7th edition of the Detroit News is interesting by way of contrast. It's an AP article by Lauran Neergaard which starts with these two paragraphs:

WASHINGTON -- Toddlers may act up like little apes, but researchers who compared the species concluded a 2-year-old child still has the more sophisticated social learning skills.

In one test, preschoolers who wanted a toy hidden in a trick tube copied a scientist's movements to retrieve the prize. Chimps watched the lesson but then mostly tried to smash or bite open the tube.

Exactly what is a social learning skill is not defined at least in this article. As evidence of the anti-mind nature of this study, notice how the researchers preferred to use the words 'learning skill' instead of thinking skill. Evidently, learning is something that is done without thought, like a conditioned social reflex perhaps. More anti-mind evidence:

In a novel study, scientists lured 106 chimpanzees, 32 orangutans and 105 toddlers to sit through five hours of testing over several days.

Researchers were trying to tell which innate abilities are distinctly human.

So, abilities are innate. I've always thought that if skills are innate, they are not learned and if they are learned, they are not innate. So what did these researchers learn?

"Human children are not overall more intelligent than other primates, but instead have specialized skills of social cognition," concluded the lead researcher, Esther Herrmann of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. "They learn in a way that chimpanzees don't learn."

What way? Can you define this 'way'? What is the nature of this 'way'? Any clues at all Ms. Herrmann? Well since you didn't identify it I will: it's called concept formation. Only human beings can do it and it is anything but innate, humans must choose to discover then use this ability.

This is the kind of knowledge upon which policymakers are basing their social engineering legislation aimed at regulating you and me. Sad.

(A longer reuters version can be found here.--hat tip Junkscience.com of Sept. 7th.)

Another Grampa Observation

Last week my son proudly told me how my grandson took 4 steps without holding on to anything. I took the opportunity to urge him to observe how the toddler-to-be has to learn every aspect of walking one aspect at a time. For example, he first has to learn how to balance himself without holding on while while stepping forward. Then he has to learn how to stop his forward motion. When babies take their first steps they usually crash into whatever is in front of them, if nothing, then fall down. This may put a temporary dent in their self confidence, but from which they usually recover in a few days. This happened to my grand daughter, trying to take more than 4 steps she crashed into a chair (no harm done). For about a week she would only take about two steps, then sit down and crawl the rest of the way. Once they learn how to stop they then must learn how to do turns without falling over. What we adults do without a thought is what babies have to learn one step at a time and each is a major accomplishment for them. Still, fun to watch.

Save Lives, Use DDT

I've been intending to post on the need to recind the American ban on DDT and encourage its use around the world, but this recent op-ed from ARI says it better than I would have. Reprinted with permission.

"It's Time to Silence Silent Spring
By Ayn Rand Institute: Keith Lockitch on Sep 03, 07

Environmentalist ideology demands opposition to DDT despite the millions of malaria deaths its use could prevent.

This September marks the 45th anniversary of the publication of Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s anti-pesticide manifesto credited with inspiring the environmentalist movement.

But this anniversary is no cause for celebration. The legacy of Silent Spring includes more than a million deaths a year from the mosquito-borne disease malaria. Though nearly eradicated decades ago, malaria has resurged with a vengeance because DDT, the most effective agent of mosquito control, has been essentially discarded--discarded based not on scientific concerns about its safety, but on environmental dogma.

Published in 1962 at the height of the worldwide antimalaria campaign, Silent Spring sparked a crusade against DDT. The widespread spraying of DDT had caused a spectacular drop in malaria incidence--Sri Lanka, for example, reported 2.8 million malaria victims in 1948, but by 1963 it had only 17. Yet Carson’s book made no mention of this. It said nothing of DDT’s crucial role in eradicating malaria in industrialized countries, or of the tens of millions of lives saved by its use.

Instead, Carson filled her book with misinformation--alleging, among other claims, that DDT causes cancer. Her unsubstantiated assertion that continued DDT use would unleash a cancer epidemic generated a panicked fear of the pesticide that endures as public opinion to this day.

But the scientific case against DDT was, and still is, nonexistent. Almost 60 years have passed since the malaria-spraying campaigns began--with hundreds of millions of people exposed to large concentrations of DDT--yet, according to international health scholar Amir Attaran, the scientific literature “has not even one peer-reviewed, independently replicated study linking exposure to DDT with any adverse health outcome.” Indeed, in a 1956 study, human volunteers ate DDT every day for over two years with no ill effects then or since.

Abundant scientific evidence supporting the safety and importance of DDT was presented during seven months of testimony before the newly formed EPA in 1971. The presiding judge ruled unequivocally against a ban. But the public furor against DDT--fueled by Silent Spring and the growing environmental movement--was so great that a ban was imposed anyway. The EPA administrator, who hadn’t even bothered to attend the hearings, overruled his own judge and imposed the ban in defiance of the facts and evidence. And the 1972 ban in the United States led to an effective worldwide ban, as countries dependent on U.S.-funded aid agencies curtailed their DDT use to comply with those agencies’ demands.

So if scientific facts are not what has driven the furor against DDT, what has? Estimates put today’s malaria incidence worldwide at around 300 million cases, with a million deaths every year. If this enormous toll of human suffering and death is preventable, why do environmentalists--who profess to be the defenders of life--continue to oppose the use of DDT?

The answer is that environmental ideology values an untouched environment above human life. The root of the opposition to DDT is not science but the environmentalist moral premise that it is wrong for man to “tamper” with nature.

The large-scale eradication of disease-carrying insects epitomizes the control of nature by man. This is DDT’s sin. To Carson and the environmentalists she inspired, “the ‘control of nature’ is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy.” Nature, they hold, is intrinsically valuable and must be kept free from human interference.

On this environmentalist premise, the proper attitude to nature is not to seek to improve it for human benefit, but to show “humility” before its “vast forces” and leave it alone. We should seek, Carson wrote, not to eliminate malarial mosquitoes with pesticides, but to find instead “a reasonable accommodation between the insect hordes and ourselves.” If the untouched, “natural” state is one in which millions contract deadly diseases, so be it.

Carson’s current heirs agree. Earth First! founder Dave Foreman writes: “Ours is an ecological perspective that views Earth as a community and recognizes such apparent enemies as ‘disease’ (e.g., malaria) and ‘pests’ (e.g., mosquitoes) not as manifestations of evil to be overcome but rather as vital and necessary components of a complex and vibrant biosphere.”

In the few minutes it has taken you to read this article, over a thousand people have contracted malaria and half a dozen have died. This is the life-or-death consequence of viewing pestilent insects as a “necessary” component of a “vibrant biosphere” and seeking a “reasonable accommodation” with them.

This anniversary of Silent Spring should be commemorated, not with laudatory festivities, but with the rejection of the environmental ideology the book inspired."

Keith Lockitch is a PhD in physics and a resident fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute.

(I was alerted to this by Junkscience.com of Sept. 5th.)

The Anti-American Cancer Spreads

Nicholas Provenzo at Rule of Reason has a post on how colonial Williamsburg is being corrupted by political correctness. It is also another verification of the principle identified by Ayn Rand that "Government encouragement does not order men to believe the false is true, it merely makes them indifferent to the issue of truth and falsehood."(--From her essay The Establishing of an Establishment now in the book "Philosophy: Who Needs It" available in most bookstores.)

First Nick reminds us:

For decades costumed "interpreters" or actors have roamed the streets of Colonial Williamsburg, regaling visitors with tales and stories from the period, while inside many of the restored or rebuilt structures they introduced visitors to life in the 18th century, from peruke making to 18th century cooking to gardening to the contradance.

And:

Less emphasis was put on the explication of the political principles that animated many of the town's more famous residents and visiting burgesses, and more on "life as it was." Which is not to say that visitors did not go away without a better knowledge of George Washington, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson and the rival Randolph and Lee families, to mention a few of the men who once were familiar with Duke of Gloucester Street, the mile-long thoroughfare between the College of William and Mary and the colonial Capitol.

But things are changing:

Today, however, in 2007, visitors go away with less of a knowledge of those men, their causes, and their time, and a skewed one, as well - a politically correct one. The rot began to set in and spread late in the last century. What has helped to accelerate the decomposition, among other cultural and political influences, is that Colonial Williamsburg now receives federal money.

When it was a purely private, "not for profit" foundation, depending on donations, endowments, bequests and tourist revenue, it did not need to abide by the Civil Rights Act, or the Equal Opportunity Act, or any other egalitarian legislation intended to usurp and regulate private dealings between individuals and organizations, between employers and employees.

For example, now visitors leave with the impression that there were indeed female footmen and coach drivers, women coopers and carpenters, women fifers and drummers, female "militia persons," and so on, without any attempt by the Foundation or its employees to correct that impression or to even hint at the true, male-defined character of the period.

This is one consequence of taking federal bread - and having to sing the federal song. And it illustrates just one way in which the policymakers of Colonial Williamsburg contradict and ultimately betray the Foundation's decades-old mission and watchword: "That the future may learn from the past." To be willing to falsify the past is to be willing to falsify the present. George Orwell dramatized the motive behind and the consequences of that policy in his novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Unfortunately, there is going to be a celebration of and wallowing in, all of the political correctness.

The climax of the celebration of the beginning of what the Founders more than 150 years later would deem a republic, however, will not be a recognition of that unprecedented political feat, but the "World Forum on the Future of Democracy," to take place between September 16 and 18.

According to the August 14th Colonial Williamsburg Newsletter, an employee in-house publication, "The World Forum will bring together noted international and national scholars on democracy, as well as leading government officials, political practitioners, advocates and commentators who have played a role in democracy's advance.

He then provides a list of these invitees which include some of the most collectivist and statist intellectuals on the planet.

I recommend reading the whole thing for it also discusses the rewriting of how America is supposed to be a democracy instead of a republic. Nick also identifies another principle: "To be willing to falsify the past is to be willing to falsify the present."

Update: corrected a typo.

Affordable Health Care Attacked

The Detroit News of August 27th has a news article titled "In-Store health clinics take off." It's about the growth of small convenience clinics sprouting up in chains such as Meijer and CVS in the Detroit area. I think these clinics are a great idea. Their low-cost helps the poorer part of the population as well as being open at night when doctors' offices are closed. This may even help alleviate some after hours visits to hospital ERs for non-emergency treatments. The article by News writer Jonnelle Marte list the pros and cons of the clinics:

Advantages

Prices for services are usually listed openly and range between $30 and $100.

Most health insurance companies are accepted.

Retail clinics are usually open seven days a week and in the evenings. No appointment is necessary.

Clinics have little or no wait time and visits are usually over in 15-20 minutes.

If you don't have a primary care physician, most clinics will refer you to a doctor in your area.
Disadvantages

Medical treatment is provided by nurse practitioners and physician assistants, not doctors.

Most clinics treat only a limited scope of illnesses, like colds, allergies and infections.

Retail clinics are not for people with serious health conditions or long-term illnesses.

Retail clinics are not for infants. Many clinics require patients to be at least 18 months old.
Services offered
The types of services offered at retail health clinics varies per clinic, but most offer vaccinations and treatment of common minor illnesses including:

Allergies

Bladder infections

Bronchitis

Eye, ear and throat infections

Sinus infections

Strep throat

Stomach flu

Minor sprains

Skin conditions such as cold sores, sunburns, poison ivy and ringworm

Vaccinations: Flu, Hepatitis A and B, polio, meningitis, pneumonia

But, as the main headline reveals "Quick, low-cost outlets prompt medical turf war", this is about political control.

But the growth has prompted the American Medical Association to issue a nationwide advisory calling for states to regulate the clinics -- which operate in places like CVS, Wal-Mart, Target and Meijer -- out of concern that there may be a conflict of interest between the clinics and the pharmacy chains that host them, as well as gaps in holistic care of patients.

Needless to say, more regulations will add time and cost to these clinics and defeat their purpose. But the real issue here is one of individual rights. Do corporations have the right to provide such services? Yes they do. Do individual citizens have the right to seek the kind of health care they want? Our constitution says yes. The state and apparently the AMA, say no.

It's been said that government must do something about the uninsured. Well:

Some clinic officials say they're providing affordable care for people who'd otherwise go without.

Juliet A. Santos, president of Early Solutions Clinic, said that about 40 percent of her patients are uninsured. "We are seeing a majority of people who don't have insurance and they're looking for access and affordability."

The free market would provide all the health care needed if the government would just get out of the way. After all it's common knowledge that the high cost of health care is due to Medicare, Medicaid, government creation of HMOs, the FDA and regulations.

Sadly, the article adds that regulations are in the works:

In response to doctors' concerns, the Michigan State Medical Society is working with Michigan's Department of Community Health to establish statewide regulations for in-store clinics by the end of the year.

Among the guidelines they'd like to establish are a limit to the scope of illnesses that can be treated and a patient referral system to local doctors. They also want care providers -- typically nurse practitioners or physician assistants -- at retail clinics to be clear about their qualifications at the outset of a visit. And they want the clinics to maintain electronic records and communicate with patients' primary doctors, said David Fox, medical society spokesman.

Many clinics are developing networks of local doctors for referral when patients require care beyond what they can provide.

"We are an adjunct to the medical providers in the regions," said Kent Lillemoe, chief financial officer of MinuteClinic, the largest U.S. provider of retail-based health care, which expanded to the Detroit area less than a year ago. "We are not trying to be a medical home for everyone."

I don't know how these regulations will affect the clinics, but I think they have an inalienable right to offer those services without government interference.

On a Positive Note

Dennis Chamberland, underwater enthusiast at Quantum Limit, posts on his witnessing of the exciting landing of the Shuttle. After the reported damage, I was worried about the crew too. I'm real happy they made it back safely.
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Following that post at QL is one by Ralph Buttigieg reporting on new products as a result of space flight. Ralph says:

For a long time space proponents have talked about space-based products. We were supposed to get pharmaceuticals, advanced alloys and even ball bearings manufactured in the microgravity of space. Well, I haven't seen any space pharmaceuticals but we now have space beveridges including space beer.

Space Beer?

Only in America, naturally, and you've got to admire their entrepreneurship.

Atlantic More and Less Salty

CCNet has a link to a Live Science article which says "Global Warming making North Atlantic less salty." This is followed by an article from New Scientist which says "Global warming is making North Atlantic more salty." I couldn't link to the New Scientist site as it is down for maintenance but the url is http://environment.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn12528&feedId=online-news_rss
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which you can try when it comes back on line, from the August 23rd issue.

This is just one more example of why the general public distrusts science. A Joe lunchbox will see headlines like this and wonder something like "Why can't these scientists get it right?" Indeed. But this just highlights the fact that studies can be made to show just about anything. In reality they really can't prove anything. They're not designed to. They deal in probabilities. Their value to science lies in a study's ability to narrow down possible causes to a few at which time science then conducts a test to prove (or disprove) a causal connection. Without that test or experiment, there is no certainty or proof of causality, only a maybe.

Today, actual experiments are being ignored and statistical correlations and associations are being treated as if they were causal connections by use of the word 'link.' We constantly hear things like "cause A is linked to disease B" and so on. Yet the dictionary definition of link is connection or joining. But correlations are not connections or joinings. The public hears the word 'link' and wrongly assumes a causal connection.

The growing indifference to using experiments or tests to prove causal relationships, or to intellectual precision by calling associations 'links' is further evidence that "Government encouragement does not order men to believe that the false is true, it merely makes them indifferent to the issue of truth or falsehood." (Ayn Rand, Establishing of an Establishment.) The solution is to dismantle the establishment.

[CCNet is a scholarly electronic network edited by Benny Peiser. To subscribe,
send an e-mail to listserver@livjm.ac.uk ("subscribe cambridge-conference").] It's free.

Update: The link to the New Scientist article is here.

Absolutism vs Relativism

I haven't blogged lately because my post and edit post pages disappeared for a while. They're back now so here I go with a post a few days old but well worth it.


Myrhaf has an interesting post in which he asks what is the defining premise of the secular left and the religious right? He effectively argues that it is moral absolutism.

In my opinion, the defining premise is the belief in moral absolutes. Liberals are moral relativists. Both the religious right and Objectivists are moral absolutists. (The problem with the religious right, of course, is that their morality comes from religion, not reality. Their morality is grounded in faith, not reason, and is therefore dogmatic.)

I couldn't agree more. But this paragraph got me thinking:

If the Republicans become the party of religion and the Democrats the party of modern philosophy, then we will have a pure, classic rationalist-empiricist split in American politics, with the left mumbling skepticism and the right shouting dogma detached from reality. Neither party will be a comfortable fit for those who advocate reason, except on an ad hoc basis. We're close to this situation now, although both parties show moments of lucidity and reasonableness.

This made me wonder who on the left or the right would be receptive to rational principles? It was Peter Schwartz (see below) who said bad ideas are spread by two kinds of people, pushers and users. It seems to me that on the secular left the pushers would be mostly university professors and the users would be their students who then go out into all walks of life including some as media pundits. These two groups are not necessarily mutually exclusive of course. Some professors could be users who never challenged what they were taught and some users could become eager pushers like some media persona. These groups tend to reject principles and become pragmatists.

The religious right also has pushers and users. The pushers would be the theologians, and other religious leaders and of course the users would be those who belong to the 'flock.' Both of these groups are accustomed to thinking in terms of principles albeit wrong and contradictory ones.

So, if the moral relativism of the left is an unprincipled practicality (pragmatism) and its requirement to compromise on everything, and the absolutism of the right is religious dogma in the form of principles, which of these will be more receptive to new rational moral values? I just don't know. I think many users leave the left for the right precisely because of a need for a firm, absolutist moral code which religion tries to provide. Myrhaf suggests that in 20 years there could be a vast majority of people on the right and left who reject reason and a small minority who do not. He could very well be right. But I think we have that situation now. I for one am optimistic about the future because I see that small minority growing fast.

("Clarity in Conceptulization: The Art of Identifying Package-Deals" by Peter Schwartz can be purchased here.)

Another Sign of the Times

Since my last post was about signs that said something a little different, I thought I would pass this along. From Gus Van Horn comes this post on his trip to Maine's coast which features photos of the beautiful scenery and a hilarious sign.

"Teenagers:
Tired of being harassed by your stupid parents?
ACT NOW!!!
Move out, Get a job, Pay your own bills. Do it now while you still know everything."

Two Signs Of The Times

Morgan Freeberg takes a lighthearted look at the modern fad of baggy (one nanometer away from falling down) pants. I mention this because Mrs. Eyes and I were on our way to do a little offshore fishing this past weekend and, needing some bait, we stopped at a small market with a "live bait" sign. As we pulled up in front Mrs. Eyes exclaimed "Oh god, read that sign!" Sure enough in the middle of the door was a sign that read "Please pull up your pants before entering. MGMT" I must say, I've not seen a sign like that before. "We need a sign like that on our front door" she said approvingly, meaning the large retail chain for which she works and in which she sees that sort of thing a lot. I agree with Morgan, that's one fad that needs to come to an end.
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On a different note, I pulled into a gas station last week and saw a sign in the window that read "Grizzley Smokeless Tobacco, No Sacrifice!" I took that to imply that something non-sacrificial can be good. I also wondered if the management of that company thought that the idea of non-sacrifice would appeal to the public. It does seem so. Is there hope that non-sacrificial ideas can reach receptive ears?

Another Study Falsely Reported by Media

Junkfoodscience does it again reporting on how studies say one thing and the media reporting on those studies say something else. The post says:

Headlines read: “Maternal obesity heightens risk of birth defects” (Washington Post) and “Maternal obesity prior to pregnancy associated with birth defects” (JAMA Press Release). We were told a study found: “Women who were obese before they became pregnant had a higher risk of having babies with certain birth defects, including missing limbs, malformed hearts and underdeveloped spinal cords.”

More accurate reporting (and what women should have heard) would have been: “Maternal "obesity" was not found to be associated with higher risks for birth defects.”

Ever since Rachel Carson claimed that the studies of Dr. James DeWitt showed DDT to cause eggshell thinning in birds when his studies actually showed no such thing, the practice of deliberately misleading the public by claiming a study to say one thing when it in fact doesn't, has become very wide spread.

Obviously, this is another glaring example of how government encouragement of science leads to a re-orientation of scientists from a devotion to truth to a devotion to government policy. That this re-orientation is championed by the likes of the Washington Post and JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) testifies that the media ideal of speaking truth to power has been abandoned. Like Ayn Rand observed, science is becoming "indifferent to the issue of truth or falsehood."

Lil' Round Up Aug 14th

Mike at "Primacy of Awesome" is calling it quits, sort of. He says that's it for P of A but plans on opening up a new blog under a pseudonym soon. I'll be keeping an eye out for it. I've enjoyed his writing in the past and look forward to it again, a good voice for objectivism.
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Myrhaf posts on the reaction of two Republicans on Karl Rove's retirement, one from John Hawkins and another from Hugh Hewitt. You know, I never could figure out why Dems and liberals considered Rove a genius. Just because someone beats you in a few consecutive elections doesn't make him a genius. It could be you are just a complete idiot. Oh well, Rove now seems to be the consummate pragmatist going with whatever works now and to hell with later consequences.
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Darren Cauthon bravely defends a giant corporation's property rights. Evidently AT&T edited some words by a member of Pearl Jam during their Lapalooza webcast. Now some are calling it censorship and calling for Net Neutrality. Even if AT&T was irrational, they still have a right to broadcast what they want. It's their property.


Update, added link to Myrhaf post. ooops!

1998 & 2006 Not Hottest Years

By way of JunkScience.com of Aug 9th. comes news of temperature adjustments by Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) which now shows the hottest year to have been not 2005 or 1998, but 1934. This change has been at least partially in response to the efforts of Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit, Roger Pielke of Climate Science and Anthony Watts of www.surfacestations.org.

Mr. Watts has been creating a network of volunteers to photograph temperature recording sites nation wide. So far his group has found a growing number of sites that are out of spec. as far as placement is concerned. They've been found on or next to paved and asphalted parking lots, air conditioners and other sources of man-made heat. If you haven't been to his site yet I highly recommend visiting it. These are some of the sites that are used by the warmers to 'prove' we are overheating the planet.

I tried linking to Climate Audit but they seem to be down, probably overwhelmed with visitors. The URL is www.climateaudit.org.

If you're wondering why there doesn't seem to be much concern for placement of these sites, "Government encouragement does not order men to believe that the false is true, it merely makes them indifferent to the issue of truth or falsehood." Ayn Rand in "the Establishing of an Establishment." If government encouraged science makes men indifferent to truth, wouldn't it also make them indifferent to things related to truth, like, accuracy?

Convenient Evasions

This past weekend I watched Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." I wasn't going to watch it because I was sure it would be nothing more than propaganda, bald-faced assertions and half-truths. But a little voice in the back of my head kept saying "How will you answer alarmists when they say 'how can you criticize something you haven't seen?'" So I caved and watched it and am happy to announce that my initial evaluation was spot on. In reviewing the movie I would like to focus on many of the things Gore didn't say and some of the assumptions underlying the things he did say.

There were lots of scenes of melting glaciers, melting sea ice and melting permafrost, i.e. anecdotes. Mr. Gore never bothered to tell his audiences that anecdotes are not evidence.

Gore also fails to tell his audience that there is no such thing as a global climate. There are only local and regional climates and they are all interacting with each other. The sum of all these interactions is what is loosely referred to as the global climate and it is always changing. To say that tweaking one variable like CO2, among the large number of variables, will alone cause disaster is ridiculous. For that to be true there would have to be almost zero flexibility in the sum of all those interacting weather systems.

Gore claims that the more CO2 we put into the atmosphere, the more the temperature will rise. He is implying that the relationship between CO2 and temp is linear. He hides from his viewers the fact of saturation which is explained here. This simply means that the more CO2 put into the atmosphere, the law of diminishing returns kicks in, i.e. traps less and less heat.

He also has an impressive chart showing a correlation between CO2 and temperature allegedly from ice cores. It shows a significant spike in CO2 but no corresponding spike in temp. A closer look at this can be had here.

Gore also showed a graph which purports to go back about 1000 yrs. To show the insignificance of the medieval warm period there is a tiny bump. In statistics, there is a technique called smoothing and I think they used a steam roller on this one.

AIT also fails to provide a long historical context. Sure, it claims to go back 600,000 years but that's not enough geologically speaking. Gore omits the fact that the earth has been in a glacial epoch for about 3 million years. According to thissite, a glacial epoch is when ice forms at the poles and like everything else, goes through cycles in which ice grows towards the equator, called glaciations, then recedes again, called interglacials. The historical record shows that the overall climate of an earth during a glacial epoch is heavily weighted in favor of cooling, not warming. How heavily? Well, since glaciations usually last an average of 100,000 yrs, and warm interglacials like the one we are in now, average only about 20,000 years, I would say about an 80% chance of cooling.

The idea that a slight increase in GHGs would stop the next glaciation is just nuts. When they talk of global warming becoming 'irreversible', they are trying to get viewers to believe that a simple doubling of CO2 will slam the breaks on an entire glacial epoch, even reverse it!!! Now they're getting asinine.

Gore drags out the so-called study by Ms. Naomi Oreskes of 928 papers by scientists who she claims, support the AGW hypothesis with no dissenters. Gore conveniently omits the fact that Dr. Benny Peiser conducted a review of those same 928 papers plus a few hundred more in the same data bank and found Ms. Oreskes was way off. Only 13 papers explicitly endorsed the AGW theory. Obviously she was taking those papers which had no position one way or another and recording them as positive. I submit, that's not honest.

Gore also conveniently avoids telling his viewers that the USA is a net carbon sink which means that it takes out of the atmosphere more CO2 than it puts in.

While there are other things wrong with it, the whole documentary is a salad of half-truths designed to disarm viewers into accepting falsehoods garnished with croutons of truth, an exercise in convenient evasion.

Lil' Round Up Aug 6th 07

Over at Rule of Reason, Ed Cline has a lot of evidence showing that the Founders really did want to keep the legalized use of force out of the hands of clergy-any clergy. The comments are interesting too. I agree with Mr. Cline of course. The Founders were part of an intellectual movement that was trying to throw off the religious influences of the past. They seemed to know that man's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was diametrically opposed to the religious requirement that man sacrifice himself.

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Myhraf takes a look at the anti-idea mindset of a leftist commenter at Daily Kos. Such people are truly mindless.

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Focalplane at Global Warming is Good links to a BBC article showing:

Driven by nonsensical European policies, Dayak tribesmen are losing their land to avaricious palm oil plantations.

Back in Europe, biofuel plantings are reducing the land available for self-sufficient food crops, forcing more and more foreign imports.

Whatever their (greenies) motives, a concern for the poor is not one of them. In fact, a concern for any human isn't one of them.

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Ergo Sum at Leitmotif asks Some Questions like what if the United States didn't exist. One thing is for sure; if the U.S. ceased to exist tomorrow morning, all the nations that claim to desire such a thing would be at each other's throats by evening.

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Billy Beck at two-four links to an IBD article covering Hillary's notion that a special acadamy be created to train people how to be public servants. Billy says:

There is nothing in the whole world like government for cultivating the idea of the need of government.

So much for the notion that some government growth doesn't necessarily lead to more government growth.

Thoughts on Sacrifice Update

In response to my post yesterday, A Thought on Self-Sacrifice, some commenters asked some good questions to which I'll now try to respond. But first I want to address the issue of clarity of meaning. Sacrifice can mean different things to different people so I want to say that my meaning is the traditional biblical one, that a sacrifice cannot result in any benefit to one's self whatsoever.

The reason I tackled this subject is that many times when I have tried to point out that sacrifice is contrary to man's nature and therefore works against his survival when practiced consistently, I have been given the argument that nature is replete with examples of sacrificial behavior; that nature hard wires creatures to sacrifice themselves for their young or the group to which they belong. Since this is the case, humans should accept sacrifice as a valid behavior also.

I disagree. I contend that caring for one's young and those in one's group is not a sacrifice but a form of a self-preserving action; that to defend the survival of one's offspring is a very self-interested and therefore survival enhancing behavior.

I further contend that nature, or if you will, evolution, makes no sacrifices--but does make trade offs. If for example, a species develops a survival strategy of massive reproduction whereby it produces so many offspring that it feeds several species of predators and has plenty left over to propagate itself, then massive reproduction is a survival-enhancing behavior. There is no desire by any member of that species to leap or fly into the mouth of its predators. That would be a sacrifice.

One commenter asked about the apparent altruistic behavior of mammalian parents towards their young and about bees and ants and their queens and nests. I think it is just that, appearance, not what's really happening. In the case of bees, ants and other lower life forms, some are born to be soldiers and others born to be workers and so on. They simply respond to different stimuli. I don't think there is any desire to sacrifice themselves. ( I am deliberately ignoring for now the issue of volition which humans have and all other organisms don't, but will discuss later.)

What may look like a sacrifice to us humans is in fact a behavior that has evolved so as to provide a likelihood of survival for that species. I don't think we should call it a sacrifice at all. I once saw a doc where it was shown how an individual bee gives directions to other bees as to the location of a pollen source. The narrator said that if a bee's sense of direction is off or crippled in some way, the other bees will sting it to death immediately. No second chance, no rehab, no mercy whatsoever. No social safety net, i.e. no trace of altruism.

As for mammals, I'm sure their behavior towards offspring is purely self-interested. Again, I saw a doc in which a group of lions were trying to separate a wildebeest calf from its mother. Each time the lions approached, the mother would charge at the lions and they would back off slightly. I wondered why the lions just didn't gang up on her, after all, there were enough of them and they take down full grown wildebeests regularly. Then I realized that a fear-filled wildebeest running for its life is predictable whereas an angry one is not and is therefore more dangerous. The lions probably sense this. So, acting in theirself interest so to speak, decided to focus on the easier meal, the calf. The lions eventually won and the mother rejoined the herd. Had the mother offered her calf to the lions, that would have been a sacrifice. Had the lions felt sorry for the calf and decided to stay hungry for another day, that would have been a sacrifice. But such behavior is not found in the animal world because self-sacrifice is not wired into the minds of these animals.

When we look at some animal behaviors they can appear to be sacrificial but I don't think they are. I think evolutionary trade-offs would be a more accurate identification.

The last reason I think sacrifice doesn't belong in the animal world is because of the issue of volition. Man has it. Animals don't. The concept sacrifice has become a moral concept for humans but it cannot be for animals because there is no morality in the animal world. There is only survive or fail to do so.

Humans must discover their nature then discover a proper behavior (moral code) then choose to behave that way. Animals have to make no such choices. That's why any equating of animal behavior with human behavior as moral is invalid.

My thoughts on this are admittedly, not complete and the commenters have helped me clarify, somewhat, some of them. So the bottom line in my thinking is that, in the animal world, what looks like sacrificial behavior is actually evolutionary trade-offs and what looks like concern for others is actually a survival-enhancing behavior performed with no sense of sacrificial duty. That should do it for now.