The Next Cold War?

February 19, 2013 – 12:02 pm

A young researcher in China has begun a project to find the genetic basis for the heritable components of human intelligence.

We shouldn’t be surprised to see that this is happening in China, and not in the West, where most of the academics I know are of the opinion that there’s no such thing as quantifiable intelligence, that intelligence-testing is rendered worthless by cultural bias, and that even to the extent that there may be a genetic component to “intelligence” (with the implication that there may be racial and sexual differences in its distribution), investigating it is research that shouldn’t even be done at all, because of the possibility of discrimination.

The Chinese are much franker and more realistic about these things than we are. They also don’t seem to share the West’s post-war horror of eugenics. Don’t be surprised if this becomes rather an important topic in the not-too-distant future.

By Malcolm | Posted in Science | Comments (3)

Another Cobblestone On The Road To Hell

February 19, 2013 – 1:01 am

Milton Freidman responds to President Obama’s call for a hike in the minimum wage.

Here, from beyond the grave.

By Malcolm | Posted in The Economy | Comments (0)

Ave, Kevin!

February 18, 2013 – 9:24 pm

Kevin Kim, whose academic specialty is the study of the world’s religions, has written a stupendous essay on the possibly-divine nature of Peter Sellers’s character Chance, from the movie Being There.

Get thee hence and read it, here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Reason and Philosophy, Religion | Comments (3)

Disarmed Forces

February 18, 2013 – 3:08 pm

Reader JK sends along a provocative item from ABC News. The gist: the soldiers who were shot at Fort Hood by the jihadist infiltrator Nidal Hasan have been denied various benefits, including the Purple Heart, because the Defense Department refuses to define the shooting as an attack by an enemy combatant — preferring instead to treat it as an ordinary instance of “workplace violence”.

Given that we are, and have been for years, at war with Islamic jihadists in theaters around the world, and given also that Mr. Hasan represented himself as a “Soldier of Allah”, and made perfectly clear at the time of the shooting that he was attacking in the name of holy jihad (he shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he killed our soldiers, just as the 9/11 attackers did as they flew the planes into the towers), this is absolutely indefensible.

We read:

“These guys play stupid every time they’re asked a question about it, they pretend like they have no clue,” said Shawn Manning, who was shot six times that day at Fort Hood. Two of the bullets remain in his leg and spine, he said.

“It was no different than an insurgent in Iraq or Afghanistan trying to kill us,” said Manning, who was twice deployed to Iraq and had to retire from the military because of his injuries.

An Army review board initially classified Manning’s injuries as “combat related,” but that finding was later overruled by higher-ups in the Army.

Manning says the “workplace violence” designation has cost him almost $70,000 in benefits that would have been available if his injuries were classified as “combat related.”

“Basically, they’re treating us like I was downtown and I got hit by a car,” he told ABC News.

And:

[Secretary of the Army John] McHugh says awarding Purple Hearts could adversely affect the trial of Major Hasan.

“To award a Purple Heart, it has to be done by a foreign terrorist element,” said McHugh. “So to declare that soldier a foreign terrorist, we are told, I’m not an attorney and I don’t run the Justice Department, but we’re told would have a profound effect on the ability to conduct the trial.”

If you should have any doubt that this was an act of lethal aggression specifically directed against U.S. military personnel by the enemy (if you have a better definition of “combat”, I’m all ears), note that Major Hasan deliberately spared civilians, and fired only at soldiers.

Finally, as part of our “national conversation” about gun control, I’ll remind readers also that the area that Nidal Hasan selected for his rampage was a “gun-free zone”, so nobody was able to stop him until the police arrived. (This gave the Soldier of Allah time to shoot forty-three people.) Furthermore, the weapon Hasan used was not a so-called “assault rifle”, but a single low-caliber handgun. He carried multiple magazines.

Read the article here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Jihad, Guns | Comments (3)

You’ll Always Be A Part Of Me

February 17, 2013 – 10:46 pm

I do love Wikipedia.

Here’s a page listing those parts of our bodies that are named after people.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (6)

Chasing Rainbows

February 17, 2013 – 1:16 am

A vexing feature of modern physicalistic non-theism is that, followed to its logical conclusion, it leads to moral nihilism. (I realize that theistic attempts to put morality on an objective basis also face serious challenges, but that’s not the point tonight.)

Moral nihilism being, to most folks, bad, there’s been a rash lately of books and essays attempting to square the circle. Generally the plan seems to be a kind of scientistic utilitarianism, based on the notion that by understanding what leads to human well-being, we can understand the Good to be whatever maximizes it.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m all for maximizing happiness, and the only reason I hold the traditional conservative views I do — about multiculturalism, big government, the welfare state, mass immigration, etc. — is because I think all of those things make for less-happy societies.

But the argument put forward by writers like Sam Harris goes further than that, and claims that Science, which concerns itself entirely with what is, can actually leap the chasm and give us objective oughts.

This is a fool’s errand, and completely unnecessary. We come wired up from the factory with moral instincts and intuitions, and cultures can, and do, build on those in all sorts of ways to get perfectly acceptable results. We should just leave it at that. The desire to ground the Good, somehow, in the indifferent material Universe of the atheist is understandable, but it is doomed to failure at the most elementary philosophical level.

The argument that science can bridge the gap from is to ought seems to be:

1) Science can tell us what things increase and decrease human suffering.
2) Therefore, science can tell us what is morally good, and what isn’t.

This is an “enthymeme”: a syllogism with a piece missing. With the missing bit put in, it looks like this:

1) Science can tell us what things increase and decrease human suffering.
2) We ought to do what decreases human suffering.
3) Therefore, science can tell us what is morally good, and what isn’t.

But science tells us nothing about the truth or falsity of 2). At best it can predict that “if you do X, you’ll get result Y.” And so the whole thing falls apart.

It may be that we all agree with 2) — but what do we consult to arrive at that conclusion? We refer to our moral instincts and moral training, which already tell us what’s right and wrong, and what we ought to do. It is only because of this that people can get away with leaving 2) out of the syllogism: it just seems obvious, so much so that we don’t even mind (or, for that matter, even notice) that it’s missing.

At Twitter, Steven Pinker just linked approvingly to a brief essay by Michael Shermer that is no better than any of the others I’ve seen, and proceeds along the same lines. Indeed, in many ways it’s worse than some, because it tries to pull in natural selection as having something (I’m not sure quite what) to do with objective Good:

Why does a higher standard of living matter morally? Because it increases the probability that an individual will survive and flourish. Why does survival and flourishing matter morally? Because it is the basis of the evolution of all life on earth through natural selection.

If this makes sense to you as an objective foundation for morality, dear reader, you see farther than I.

Take a few minutes to read Mr. Schermer’s essay, here.

The post attracted some pretty sharp commenters. Here’s a good reply, from someone calling himself Daniel, in response to Mr. Schermer’s assertion that “it is science that tells us why witchcraft and sorcery is immoral.’ (My emphasis.)

Science does no such thing, just as science can’t tell me why it’s wrong to rape, pillage and murder. Maybe science can tell me why it feels icky inside to do stuff like that, but it has nothing to say one way or another as to whether that it’s wrong.

This is exactly the right distinction. Science, and evolutionary theory, may well be able to account for why our moral intuitions are what they are — indeed, I believe that the phsyicalist position should be that a correct theory of human evolution must be able to account for this — but they cannot tell us, without reference to some moral intuitions already in place, what our moral instincts ought to be.

Commenter “Trimegistus” gets this point just right:

The trouble with any reason-based, “scientific’ attempt at morality is that it ultimately becomes a vast exercise in question-begging.

What objective, provable reason is there for a person to behave morally at all? Before we can come up with any moral calculus or universal principles, there’s that troublesome Rule Zero which all moral systems assume: “You should try to behave morally.’

But of course there’s no proof for Rule Zero. It’s an axiom. It’s “because I said so’ or just “because.’ And thus all rational, “scientific’ morality crashes straight into the obstacle that sometimes people’s self-interest is served by non-’moral’ behavior. Why should I put morality ahead of what I want? Because it’s moral? It’s an endlessly repeating loop.

Exactly.

The way to cut the Gordian knot here is simple enough: just forget about trying to put morality on an absolute, objective foundation. Just go with what you’ve got. The traditional moral frameworks that have prevailed for long ages in human societies have done so, generally, because they work. Your conscience tells you that it is good to help others, bad to behave selfishly, and really bad to rape and torture little girls? Most folks will agree, and on the basis of those intuitions and others like them (which generally coincide, as it happens, with the prescriptions arrived at by people like Sam Harris and Michael Shermer), we can build stable, happy societies. Isn’t that good enough?

By Malcolm | Posted in Darwin and Biology, Society and Culture, Reason and Philosophy, Science, Religion | Comments (2)

Underwhelmed

February 15, 2013 – 12:13 am

As often happens to me at this point in the week, I’m up late again, working. I’ve been thinking about all sorts of postworthy topics in the past few days, but I just can’t find the time right now to write about them, so they’ll have to wait.

So for tonight, all I have to offer is a brief article from Forbes about that “overwhelming judgment of science” thingy the President mentioned on Tuesday evening.

By Malcolm | Posted in Global Warming | Comments (2)

Coda

February 13, 2013 – 3:40 pm

Sad news from Lawrence Auster today: the pancreatic cancer he’s been fighting so stoically has now metastasized to his brain. It’s hard to imagine that he has much time left.

It’s also hard to imagine VFR silenced.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

State Of The Union: Great, But Undergoverned

February 12, 2013 – 11:58 pm

I haven’t got a whole lot to say about the speech. What did anyone expect? There isn’t a problem anywhere on Earth that isn’t best solved by some new Federal program, “partnership”, or “investment”. And all without adding a “single dime” to the deficit.

There was the call for higher Federal minimum wage, the argument for which seemed to be that there should be no job in America, however menial or temporary, that pays less than what it costs to support two kids. So why not just make the minimum wage $100 dollars an hour?

(Hey here’s a thought: you want a better job market for low-end workers? How about not flooding the nation with unskilled immigrants?)

For gun control, there was the expected cavalcade of victims, and ghoulish exploitation of a young murdered girl (who was shot and killed by the feral underclass of a city that already has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation).

There were reassurances that if the separation of powers should present any friction in the run-up to Mr. Obama’s Great Leap Forward, he will be able to push things along anyway by executive fiat. (I can already hear the EPA cracking its knuckles.)

And as always, we need to “ask” the rich to pay more, despite taxes having just been raised a month ago.

Most infuriating of all: mawkish pieties about our obligation to “future generations” — even as we bankrupt them.

And so on. In sum: more, more, more. Feh.

Oh well. It’s been pretty clear for years, and utterly obvious since November, that we are completely, irredeemably, fatally screwed. Enough said, I guess.

As an aside, here’s an interesting item I stumbled upon just now: a look at the literacy level of the State of the Union throughout the nation’s history, president by president. Topping the list: James Madison. Have a look.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (6)

Let’s Just Flush The Whole Bloody Civilization Right Down The Loo And Be Done With It

February 12, 2013 – 4:09 pm

My God, this is unbelievable. The IOC has decided that wrestling will no longer be part of the Olympics as of 2020. Wrestling.

What next, running?

Well, at least we still have synchronized swimming, ping pong, kayaking and badminton, for you traditionalists.

By Malcolm | Posted in Sport | Comments (6)

Thick and Thin

February 12, 2013 – 1:27 pm

Slideshows (scroll down) here and here, respectively.

By Malcolm | Posted in Shameless Filler | Comments (5)

Enumerating The Eschaton

February 12, 2013 – 12:01 am

The End of Days, 263 ways, ancient and modern. Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Nightly News Notes New Nork Nuke; Nearby Nations Nervous

February 11, 2013 – 11:28 pm

So, it seems that North Korea has detonated another atomic weapon.

I wonder if there will be any room for this in tomorrow’s SOTU, in between calling for new “investments” and introducing all the Lenny Shotniks I’ve heard will be attending.

By Malcolm | Posted in Military | Comments (3)

Skynet

February 11, 2013 – 2:39 pm

If you live in Santo AntÁ´nio da Platina, Brazil, you might want to buy an umbrella. Or, better yet, a new home, somewhere else.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

Must-See TV

February 10, 2013 – 11:11 pm

Here’s Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick’s pre-storm presser from Thursday night. Pure gold.

By Malcolm | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (4)

Glass Half Full

February 10, 2013 – 9:59 pm

Readers, as bad as things may be getting over here — and anyone with any sense can see they’re going to get a hell of a lot worse before they get better — at least we don’t have to endure some of the unspeakable horrors that afflict other, less fortunate nations.

So be of stout heart, readers, and let us carry on as best we can, knowing that even as the storm-clouds gather, the days grow dark, and the guiding light of Western civilization begins to flicker and fail, things could always be worse. There could be Japanese pop.

By Malcolm | Posted in Rubbish | Comments (3)

Battery, Parked

February 10, 2013 – 9:34 pm

Attentive readers may recall that a few years ago we U.S. taxpayers lent $465 million to Tesla, a maker of electric cars. More recently we restructured the loan so that Tesla wouldn’t run out of money. (It is now, after all, a matter of vital national interest that Elon Musk’s entrepreneurial speculations actually pay off.)

Though I don’t think any of us were consulted about this, I guess we’re all Tesla investors now, so it’s only natural to ask: How’s our little business venture going?

Well, I’ll say this: I’ve seen these cars up close (Rob Nail of Singularity University had one parked out front while I was there last year), and they certainly look mighty snazzy, tooling silently around the streets of Silicon Valley. But a New York Times reporter recently tried to use one of these government-subsidized doo-hickeys for the sort of thing people actually need cars for — going from one place to another place far away — and the results were a bit of a letdown. Pit stops for recharging took an hour, and the battery, clearly better suited for the clement Bay Area than for the meteorological rigors of the Northeast, failed to hold its charge in the winter chill. All in all, our man would have been better off in a Yugo, and that’s saying something.

It’s really frustrating; electric batteries just seem to have some serious intrinsic limitations. As Joshua TreviÁ±o remarked Twitter, just imagine if instead there were some sort of energy-dense substance that was cheap to produce — maybe some sort of naturally-occurring material that concentrated eons of energy from the Sun into some convenient liquid form — that our vehicles could simply carry on-board in some sort of container?

Naah. That’s just pie in the sky, folks.

Anyway, read the story here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology, Politics | Comments (8)

Artificial Inanity

February 9, 2013 – 11:55 pm

I’ve mentioned the incomparable Deepak Chopra in these pages a time or two in the past. The man is of course the world’s greatest living mountebank, and has made a fabulous living hawking 24-carat flapdoodle to swooning suckers.

You have to admire talent like that. As it turns out, somebody admires it enough to have provided us with a fully operational software emulation of the glitter-templed Guru of Woo-Woo himself, for those scary moments when you really need some “Deep” thoughts, but keep getting a busy signal on the Quantum Consciousness Hotline.

Take it for a spin here. It’s as good as the real thing.

By Malcolm | Posted in Rubbish | Comments (4)

Lèse Majesté

February 9, 2013 – 10:46 pm

In case you haven’t heard, the chattering classes are all atwitter about a talk given at the recent National Prayer Breakfast by one Ben Carson, chief of pediatric neurosurgery at John Hopkins.

At the podium, standing just a few feet away from President Obama, Dr. Carson spoke about several matters of national policy — in particular, deficit spending, health care, and taxation — in a way that marked him as, let’s just say, less than fully supportive of Mr. Obama’s approach.

This in turn evoked a range of responses. It was catnip for mainstream “conservative” sorts — who immediately, with the hope that springs eternal, began having moist thoughts about 2016 — while for more than a few liberal observers it was shocking effrontery.

I thought it was a pretty good speech overall, though very long-winded and rather a little too attentive to the good works of Dr. Ben Carson (not to mention being awfully secular for a prayer-breakfast, I should have thought — but hey, what do I know about prayer-breakfasts). It certainly warmed me to see the president tweaked from the podium like that; it was pleasant to watch him trying to swallow some of his own medicine. (I’m guessing, here, that some difficulty with deglutition must have been why Mr. Obama kept lifting his chin in the air as Dr. Carson began to warm to his topic.)

Dr. Carson does seem to have done some good work with his charitable foundation, which encourages children to read. It’s nice also to see this sort of work done by private associations — the intermediary, self-organizing layer of civil society that the liberal urge to bring everything under the direct central supervision of the Federal sovereign continuously seeks to destroy. Perhaps that was part of the reason Dr. Carson spent so much time talking about it.

Anyway, watch the speech here, if you haven’t already seen it.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (0)

Flying Squid

February 9, 2013 – 1:19 am

That’s right, flying squid. And as fast as Usain Bolt, if flying isn’t enough. Here.

(“Fast ‘n’ bulbous”, as I think a wise man once said.)

By Malcolm | Posted in Curiosities | Comments (0)

Spot The Bug

February 8, 2013 – 10:35 pm

Here’s an clever idea: crowdsourcing of malaria diagnosis, using a simple video game.

Have a look.

By Malcolm | Posted in Science, Technology | Comments (0)

The Idols Of The Tribe

February 8, 2013 – 10:15 pm

If you’ve been following the national “conversation” about immigration and race relations (at least as publicly reported), it may come as a surprise to you to learn that one can speak about these things in a heterodox way on any grounds but “hate”. To express such dissenting opinions, however rational their basis, and however common they may be in the private thoughts of millions of Americans, is to risk career-threatening opprobrium, and exclusion from polite society. So most people don’t do it.

To get this stuff “wrong” these days, you see, is not simply to be wrong (or even, in the smug phrase now so popular amongst self-styled “progressives”, to be “on the wrong side of history”): it is to be morally wrong, another word for which is “evil”. And it’s quite OK, as it has always been, to hate evil people. (It’s actually quite fun, and brings folks together.)

Nevertheless, here’s the radioactive dissident John Derbyshire, giving it a go anyway in an address to a recent web-conference. His remarks, despite their heretical partiality toward his own, much-despiséd people and culture, are mild-mannered and thoroughly unmalevolent. Read them at the peril of your soul.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (0)

My Kind Of Cat

February 8, 2013 – 1:24 am

Here. Courtesy of Devin Townsend.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

The Girl’s Got Rhythm

February 7, 2013 – 12:46 am

I’m swamped with work this week, so no time for writing. But as always, I’d hate for you to go away empty-handed — so here’s a fantastic dance scene by the one and only Eleanor Powell, accompanied by a young Buddy Rich.

By Malcolm | Posted in Dance | Comments (6)

There Must Be A Better World Somewhere

February 6, 2013 – 1:40 am

Here’s Dr. John.

By Malcolm | Posted in Music and Recording | Comments (3)

Two Scents Worth

February 5, 2013 – 10:51 pm

If you’re like me, you’ve been wondering whether there are any critters out there that can locate food by way of odor gradients. Well, meet the Eastern mole: the mammal that smells in stereo.

By Malcolm | Posted in Curiosities | Comments (4)

Stop The Presses!

February 5, 2013 – 12:44 pm

This just in: the largest known prime number is now 257,885,161 – 1.

More here.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (8)

Holy Wood Brown

February 4, 2013 – 8:59 pm

I almost never write about gustatory matters here, but I’ll make an exception to rave about a particularly outstanding offering from one of America’s most creative microbreweries, Dogfish Head.

Dogfish Head specializes in unusual and high-strength ales. Their best-known products are their highly hopped IPAs (the 90-Minute Imperial IPA, weighing in at 9% alcohol by volume, is universally acclaimed, and rightly so). But the IPA series is actually rather middle-of-the-road compared to some of DH’s more exotic brews.

One of these is something called Palo Santo Marron, a completely over-the-top brown ale, thick and sweet and sticky and almost black. The name refers to a specially made 10,000-gallon vat that the ale ages in, made of “palo santo” wood (Guaiacum sanctum, also known as “lignum vitae”). Among its many uses, palo santo is the same wood traditionally used to make British police truncheons — and at 12% ABV, a couple bottles of this stuff will have roughly the same effect.

The rich flavor of this ale is so complex as to make description difficult. It is caramelly and malty, not hoppy, and evokes coffee, dark fruit, and even cocoa. Behind it all is the smoldering warmth of that 12% (for perspective, Budweiser is 5% ABV).

I could go on, but others already have. Read some reviews here and here.

In short: this is amazing stuff. Get some if you can, beer lovers.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (5)

Edge Of The World

February 4, 2013 – 5:20 pm

February is probably the quietest and loneliest month on the Outer Cape, but in many ways the deep winter is most beautiful time of year out here, I think.

Here’s the high bluff at the end of Longnook Road, Truro, late yesterday afternoon.
 

 

By Malcolm | Posted in Cape Cod | Comments (0)

Worlds In Collision

February 4, 2013 – 12:13 am

Here’s the late Chris Kyle being interviewed by one Belinda Luscombe, an editor at Time.

The gulf between them is obvious. It seems to me that to her he is almost incomprehensible, as if he belonged to some alien species. (Which probably isn’t very far from the truth: I expect that Mr. Kyle had very little in common with the males that Ms. Luscombe encounters in her usual orbit. If what marks off different species is the unlikeliness of their breeding together, then the assessment seems about right.)

Most alien of all to Ms. Luscombe, I suspect, was Mr. Kyle’s willingness to to say: “these are my people, and those are our enemies” — and that he would actually go so far as to kill his enemies to protect his own people. It is discrimination in its purest form.

George Orwell said that “people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” Chris Kyle was such a man. No matter how Belinda Luscombe might feel about such things, and about such men, he would have died to protect her.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Military | Comments (14)

Timing Is Everything

February 3, 2013 – 6:01 pm

“It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”

– Leonardo do Vinci

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (4)

Chris Kyle, 1974-2013

February 3, 2013 – 12:31 am

We’ve just heard that the renowned Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, the most effective sniper in American military history, has been murdered in Texas. Details are scant. Our deepest condolences to his young family.

By Malcolm | Posted in Military | Comments (5)

Service Notice

February 3, 2013 – 12:28 am

We were down for a while tonight: our hosting service, Bluehost.com, had its first extended outage in the seven years I’ve been with them. (I enthusiastically recommend them, nevertheless, to any of you who are looking for an Internet host; Bluehost provides outstanding and highly reliable service for an insignificant sum of money. There isn’t a better deal anywhere.)

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Gang Green

February 2, 2013 – 7:38 pm

Here’s a fine curmudgeonly rant about some of the lousy products we’ve had forced on us by our government’s shouldering aside of free markets in the name of saving the Planet. (My pet peeve: those bloody CF bulbs.)

If, upon reading this, your inclination is to leave a comment about how wonderful it is once again to hear the sweetsweetsweet of the prothonotary warbler along the meanders of the Passaic, keep it to yourself. I want toilets that flush properly.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (7)

Ed Koch, 1924-2013

February 1, 2013 – 12:53 pm

Ed Koch died today. He was a good mayor (not perfect, but who is?), a hell of a character, and a real New Yorker. We Gothamites will miss him.

R.I.P., Ed. You did just fine.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

Machines Making Machines

January 31, 2013 – 12:13 am

This is fantastic: Japanese robots making German cars.

Hat tip: William Gibson.

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (2)

It Can Happen Here

January 30, 2013 – 11:19 pm

Here’s a timely quote from Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, in which he describes the same liability that so vexed the Founders:

If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the unlimited authority of the majority, which may at some future time urge the minorities to desperation, and oblige them to have recourse to physical force.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Isn’t It Romantic?

January 28, 2013 – 6:13 pm

More on why women in combat units is a really bad idea. Will somebody remind me again why this is necessary?

(HT- Laura Wood.)

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Military | Comments (2)

Competition For Excrement Is Fierce

January 28, 2013 – 12:38 pm

If you’re like me (of course you are!), you’ve been lying awake at night, asking yourself:

“How the hell do South African dung beetles roll their balls in a straight line? Sure, polarized light from the Sun works fine during the day (duh!), but what about at night, when many of them do their best work?”

Well, fret no longer. The answer is here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Darwin and Biology, Science, Curiosities | Comments (3)

Uff Da!

January 28, 2013 – 12:11 pm

The latest global-warming story from the Research Council of Norway: things aren’t as bad, perhaps, as Mr. Gore, IPCC, and the rest of the AGW syndicate might have you believe.

Excerpt:

After Earth’s mean surface temperature climbed sharply through the 1990s, the increase has levelled off nearly completely at its 2000 level. Ocean warming also appears to have stabilised somewhat, despite the fact that CO2 emissions and other anthropogenic factors thought to contribute to global warming are still on the rise.

Didn’t Lord Monckton just get frog-marched out of a climate conference for pointing this out? Whoops…

A number of factors affect the formation of climate development. The complexity of the climate system is further compounded by a phenomenon known as feedback mechanisms, i.e. how factors such as clouds, evaporation, snow and ice mutually affect one another.

Uncertainties about the overall results of feedback mechanisms make it very difficult to predict just how much of the rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature is due to manmade emissions.

Uncertainties! Complexity! “Difficult to predict”!! Who knew??

Jeez, you could knock me down with a feather.

More:

Professor [Terje] Berntsen explains the changed predictions:

“The Earth’s mean temperature rose sharply during the 1990s. This may have caused us to overestimate climate sensitivity.

“We are most likely witnessing natural fluctuations in the climate system ”“ changes that can occur over several decades ”“ and which are coming on top of a long-term warming. The natural changes resulted in a rapid global temperature rise in the 1990s, whereas the natural variations between 2000 and 2010 may have resulted in the levelling off we are observing now.

Crikey — “natural variations”! Whoever could have imagined such a thing? (Well, that is, aside from those detested kuffar who’ve insisted on pointing out that the Earth has gone through many cycles of warming and cooling in the distant past, long before we arrived on the scene.)

Boy, if this keeps up, we might even have to cancel that whole subjugate-the-world’s-economy thing we’ve all been looking forward to, dang it.

More here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Global Warming | Comments (0)

Stairway To Hell

January 27, 2013 – 1:15 pm

In case you haven’t been paying attention, a major Egyptian city has descended into anarchy and violent chaos. I’ve no time for commentary, but you can read about it here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (0)

Epochs Sometimes Occur

January 27, 2013 – 12:39 am

More from Tocqueville’s Democracy In America:

There is one sort of patriotic attachment which principally arises from that instinctive, disinterested, and undefinable feeling which connects the affections of man with his birthplace. This natural fondness is united to a taste for ancient customs, and to a reverence for ancestral traditions of the past; those who cherish it love their country as they love the mansions of their fathers. They enjoy the tranquillity which it affords them; they cling to the peaceful habits which they have contracted within its bosom; they are attached to the reminiscences which it awakens, and they are even pleased by the state of obedience in which they are placed. This patriotism is sometimes stimulated by religious enthusiasm, and then it is capable of making the most prodigious efforts. It is in itself a kind of religion; it does not reason, but it acts from the impulse of faith and of sentiment.

…But there is another species of attachment to a country which is more rational than the one we have been describing. It is perhaps less generous and less ardent, but it is more fruitful and more lasting; it is coeval with the spread of knowledge, it is nurtured by the laws, it grows by the exercise of civil rights, and, in the end, it is confounded with the personal interest of the citizen. A man comprehends the influence which the prosperity of his country has upon his own welfare; he is aware that the laws authorize him to contribute his assistance to that prosperity, and he labors to promote it as a portion of his interest in the first place, and as a portion of his right in the second.

But epochs sometimes occur, in the course of the existence of a nation, at which the ancient customs of a people are changed, public morality destroyed, religious belief disturbed, and the spell of tradition broken, whilst the diffusion of knowledge is yet imperfect, and the civil rights of the community are ill secured, or confined within very narrow limits. The country then assumes a dim and dubious shape in the eyes of the citizens; they no longer behold it in the soil which they inhabit, for that soil is to them a dull inanimate clod; nor in the usages of their forefathers, which they have been taught to look upon as a debasing yoke; nor in religion, for of that they doubt; nor in the laws, which do not originate in their own authority; nor in the legislator, whom they fear and despise.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (0)

Gotcha!

January 25, 2013 – 11:29 pm

Remember those “recess appointments” to the National Labor Relations Board that President Obama went ahead and made last January, when the Senate wasn’t in recess? The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia today ruled them unconstitutional. The Obama administration seems inclined to ignore the ruling, with Jay Carney today declaring that it will have “no impact” on the NLRB’s activities. (Because, you know, it’s just some “court” or whatever.)

Well, we’ll see about that. There might be an interesting separation-of-powers scuffle shaping up here.

Blogger Moe Lane comments here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (0)

No Big Deal

January 25, 2013 – 4:27 pm

Here’s a refreshingly forthright article about abortion, in which the author, one Mary Elizabeth Williams, avoids altogether the impossibly difficult task of parsing exactly when life “begins”. She cuts the Gordian knot by conceding, arguendo, that life begins at conception, and then justifies abortion on the grounds that some lives are simply worth more than others.

The article, published at Salon, bears the title So what if abortion ends life?

Ms. Williams writes:

Of all the diabolically clever moves the anti-choice lobby has ever pulled, surely one of the greatest has been its consistent co-opting of the word “life.’ Life! Who wants to argue with that? Who wants be on the side of ”¦ not-life? That’s why the language of those who support abortion has for so long been carefully couched in other terms. While opponents of abortion eagerly describe themselves as “pro-life,’ the rest of us have had to scramble around with not nearly as big-ticket words like “choice’ and “reproductive freedom.’ The “life’ conversation is often too thorny to even broach. Yet I know that throughout my own pregnancies, I never wavered for a moment in the belief that I was carrying a human life inside of me. I believe that’s what a fetus is: a human life. And that doesn’t make me one iota less solidly pro-choice.

As Roe v. Wade enters its fifth decade, we find ourselves at one of the most schizo moments in our national relationship with reproductive choice. In the past year we’ve endured the highest number of abortion restrictions ever. Yet support for abortion rights is at an all-time high, with seven in 10 Americans in favor of letting Roe v. Wade stand, allowing for reproductive choice in all or “most’ cases. That’s a stunning 10 percent increase from just a decade ago. And in the midst of this unique moment, Planned Parenthood has taken the bold step of reframing the vernacular ”“ moving away from the easy and easily divisive words “life’ and “choice.’ Instead, as a new promotional film acknowledges, “It’s not a black and white issue.’

It’s a move whose time is long overdue. It’s important, because when we don’t look at the complexities of reproduction, we give far too much semantic power to those who’d try to control it. And we play into the sneaky, dirty tricks of the anti-choice lobby when we on the pro-choice side squirm so uncomfortably at the ways in which they’ve repeatedly appropriated the concept of “life.’

Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.

Ignore the insulting tone; at least Ms. Williams is staking out a coherent position. (She isn’t, however, looking at “the complexities of reproduction”; what she is attempting here is in fact a radical simplification.) We’ll want to come back to that last line.

Ms Williams continues:

When we on the pro-choice side get cagey around the life question, it makes us illogically contradictory. I have friends who have referred to their abortions in terms of “scraping out a bunch of cells’ and then a few years later were exultant over the pregnancies that they unhesitatingly described in terms of “the baby’ and “this kid.’ I know women who have been relieved at their abortions and grieved over their miscarriages. Why can’t we agree that how they felt about their pregnancies was vastly different, but that it’s pretty silly to pretend that what was growing inside of them wasn’t the same? Fetuses aren’t selective like that. They don’t qualify as human life only if they’re intended to be born.

When we try to act like a pregnancy doesn’t involve human life, we wind up drawing stupid semantic lines in the sand: first trimester abortion vs. second trimester vs. late term, dancing around the issue trying to decide if there’s a single magic moment when a fetus becomes a person. Are you human only when you’re born? Only when you’re viable outside of the womb? Are you less of a human life when you look like a tadpole than when you can suck on your thumb?

This is what’s called “grasping the nettle”. Very good. So, then, on what does the value of a human life depend?

We’re so intimidated by the wingnuts, we get spooked out of having these conversations. We let the archconservatives browbeat us with the concept of “life,’ using their scare tactics on women and pushing for indefensible violations like forced ultrasounds. Why? Because when they wave the not-even-accurate notion that “abortion stops a beating heart’ they think they’re going to trick us into some damning admission. They believe that if we call a fetus a life they can go down the road of making abortion murder. And I think that’s what concerns the hell out of those of us who support unrestricted reproductive freedom.

But we make choices about life all the time in our country. We make them about men and women in other countries. We make them about prisoners in our penal system. We make them about patients with terminal illnesses and accident victims. We still have passionate debates about the justifications of our actions as a society, but we don’t have to do it while being bullied around by the vague idea that if you say we’re talking about human life, then the jig is up, rights-wise.

It seems absurd to suggest that the only thing that makes us fully human is the short ride out of some lady’s vagina. That distinction may apply neatly legally, but philosophically, surely we can do better.

Well! “Wingnuts”. “Archconservatives”. Those, apparently, are the only sort who might believe that “if we call a fetus a life they can go down the road of making abortion murder”. (We’ll just ignore that silly bit about the “not-even-accurate notion that ‘abortion stops a beating heart'”. Of course it does.)

Well, how would you define “murder”? Presumably, it’s the taking of a life without the consent of the person being killed. As Ms. Williams suggests, though, we do in some cases consider such killing justifiable, in which case we stop calling it “murder” and use some other word instead, like “execution”, “euthanasia”, “manslaughter”, “accidental death”, or in the case of military action, just “killing”. Let’s look at the examples given:

Men and women in other countries: We do consider enemy combatants to have forfeited their right to life (by trying to kill us), and so we view our killing them as morally justifiable, as an act of self-defense. How about those innocents within the blast radius, who die right along with the guys we’re after? Clearly we don’t feel so comfy about killing them, but we go on doing so anyway. (We do try to avoid it, though.)

I’ll bet that if your own kin were one of these victims, you’d have no qualms about calling it “murder”. I’ll also point out that these innocents are killed “collaterally”, as a regrettable side-effect of a justifiable and necessary military operation; if we were to focus on killing them singly, however (as we do, for example, with aborted fetuses), it would clearly be murder.

Prisoners in our penal system: The key point here is that they are not innocent; they have by their free choice voided their right to life. In this they are obviously in a vastly different moral category than unborn children.

Patients with terminal illnesses: The key here is consent. Patients with terminal illnesses can grant their informed consent; unborn children cannot.

Accident victims: At issue here is what is being terminated. When a patient is taken off life support, it is because there is no longer the potential for life, or at least for life of the sort that we consider to be worthy of protection. Why? Because in our view the essence of human life, and the basis of moral consideration, is consciousness and subjective experience — so we consider it morally neutral to remove life-support from a body for which this is no longer possible. Clearly this is not the case with an unborn child.

At the conclusion of her essay, Ms. Williams writes:

My belief that life begins at conception is mine to cling to. And if you believe that it begins at birth, or somewhere around the second trimester, or when the kid finally goes to college, that’s a conversation we can have, one that I hope would be respectful and empathetic and fearless. We can’t have it if those of us who believe that human life exists in utero are afraid we’re somehow going to flub it for the cause. In an Op-Ed on “Why I’m Pro-Choice’ in the Michigan Daily this week, Emma Maniere stated, quite perfectly, that “Some argue that abortion takes lives, but I know that abortion saves lives, too.’ She understands that it saves lives not just in the most medically literal way, but in the roads that women who have choice then get to go down, in the possibilities for them and for their families. And I would put the life of a mother over the life of a fetus every single time ”” even if I still need to acknowledge my conviction that the fetus is indeed a life. A life worth sacrificing.

So! Let’s review. Can we find a coherent principle in all of this?

Ms. Williams argues that yes, life begins at conception, and so a fetus is no less a life than a new-born infant (i.e., in Ms. Williams’s words, a person who has recently made “the short ride out of some lady’s vagina.”) She points out also that “we make choices about life all the time in our country.” Finally, she says, regarding the mother of the condemned party, that:

“She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.”

Given what Ms. Williams has said elsewhere in her essay, particularly that business about the “short ride out of some lady’s vagina”, that last sentence states the case far too narrowly: the phrase “inside of her” has no good reason for being there. To be consistent, the sentence should read:

“Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of her child, whether born or unborn. Always.”

(If my understanding of this is wrong, please tell me why.)

This may seem a harsh interpretation of Ms. Williams’s position, but she‘s the one, after all, who threw away the one limiting principle that has heretofore made abortion morally justifiable, in most peoples’ eyes: to wit, that somehow a fetus is not fully alive, and so is exempt from the moral consideration that the rest of us expect. If that’s the hand Ms. Williams wants to play, then she has to play it out. It’s an admirably consistent position — which is clearly why she espoused it — and it does get around the impossibility of defining some post-conceptual “bright line” where life begins. But taken to its logical conclusion, it grants to individual women the absolute power, at their whim or convenience, to dispose of the lives of their offspring, even after they’ve been born. Maybe even until they’re headed for college.

What say you, readers?

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Reason and Philosophy | Comments (15)

Tocqueville on Civic Engagement

January 25, 2013 – 12:27 am

I’ve just read through both volumes of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, which I had never read before in full.

Tocqueville’s task throughout the book was to take the splintering-off of America from Europe as a controlled experiment on the grandest scale — and by identifying the independent variables, thereby to come to a deeper understanding of the nature of both democracies and aristocracies. It was an enormously ambitious project, but such was the strength of his formidable intellect that he brought it to a breathtakingly successful conclusion. His insights are as relevant now as they were in the 1830’s, and his prescience seems at times almost superhuman.

Given that I prefer old sources to newer ones, the version I’ve just read was the original (1839) translation by Henry Reeve. It was not until I was very far along that I learned that Tocqueville himself didn’t like the job that Reeve had done, thinking it to show a somewhat aristocratic bias. (Really, I should read the book in French, but I fear my command of that language is unequal to the task. On the other hand, it would be hard to find a better way to brush up.)

I highlighted many passages as I went through the books, and will be posting them here from time to time. Here’s one in which Tocqueville contrasts the civic-mindedness of the free and equal Americans with the disengagement of their European counterparts. This is due, Tocqueville had earlier argued, to the radically local structure of American political life, in which townships generally managed their own affairs, and in which the governing hand of the Federal sovereign (or, for that matter, even of the State) was hardly felt at all. In America (at least the America of the 1830’s), a citizen’s “vertical” relationships with the people and powers above him were a negligible part of his life, whereas in aristocratic, post-feudal European societies — where even the administration of local municipalities was conducted in large part by an aloof and distant central authority — they were everything.

Granting for an instant that the villages and counties of the United States would be more usefully governed by a remote authority which they had never seen than by functionaries taken from the midst of them – admitting, for the sake of argument, that the country would be more secure, and the resources of society better employed, if the whole administration centred in a single arm – still the political advantages which the Americans derive from their system would induce me to prefer it to the contrary plan.

It profits me but little, after all, that a vigilant authority should protect the tranquility of my pleasures and constantly avert all dangers from my path, without my care or my concern, if this same authority is the absolute mistress of my liberty and of my life, and if it so monopolizes all the energy of existence that when it languishes everything languishes around it, that when it sleeps everything must sleep, that when it dies the State itself must perish.

In certain countries of Europe the natives consider themselves as a kind of settlers, indifferent to the fate of the spot upon which they live. The greatest changes are effected without their concurrence and (unless chance may have apprised them of the event) without their knowledge; nay more, the citizen is unconcerned as to the condition of his village, the police of his street, the repairs of the church or of the parsonage; for he looks upon all these things as unconnected with himself, and as the property of a powerful stranger whom he calls the Government. He has only a life-interest in these possessions, and he entertains no notions of ownership or of improvement. This want of interest in his own affairs goes so far that, if his own safety or that of his children is endangered, instead of trying to avert the peril, he will fold his arms, and wait till the nation comes to his assistance. This same individual, who has so completely sacrificed his own free will, has no natural propensity to obedience; he cowers, it is true, before the pettiest officer; but he braves the law with the spirit of a conquered foe as soon as its superior force is removed: his oscillations between servitude and license are perpetual. When a nation has arrived at this state it must either change its customs and its laws or perish: the source of public virtue is dry, and, though it may contain subjects, the race of citizens is extinct. Such communities are a natural prey to foreign conquests, and if they do not disappear from the scene of life, it is because they are surrounded by other nations similar or inferior to themselves: it is because the instinctive feeling of their country’s claims still exists in their hearts; and because an involuntary pride in the name it bears, or a vague reminiscence of its bygone fame, suffices to give them the impulse of self-preservation.

Which of these societies America of 2013 more closely resembles I leave to the reader’s opinion.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (3)

Fun With Science

January 23, 2013 – 10:58 pm

How to make a rail gun. Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (1)

Professional Hard-Asses

January 23, 2013 – 8:02 pm

If, like most folks, you’re a bit fuzzy on the historical context of that Algerian hostage-taking affair, here’s an excellent article.

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (1)

War On Women

January 23, 2013 – 5:27 pm

The Secretary of Defense today announced that women will now have a front-line role in combat.

Here’s why this is such a bad idea that virtually every society everywhere in the world throughout history has used only males as warriors:

– War is an existential conflict. Nations that lose wars stand to lose everything.

– In war, therefore, a society’s highest priority is to protect that which is essential to its continued existence as a distinct nation or people.

– If a people loses the ability to renew itself by having children, all is lost.

– The limiting factor that determines any population’s fertility is the number of women of childbearing age. This does not apply to men. In principle, you could kill off all but a handful of a nation’s males, and in a generation or two you could still be back where you started.

– Therefore, in just about every society, throughout history and everywhere on Earth, male warriors have fought to protect their most precious resource, the one resource above all that is absolutely essential to the survival of their people: their women. (They will continue to do this, of course; now, though, they’ll busy protecting what should instead have been other men fighting next to them.)

It’s that simple. I don’t even need to bring up women’s disadvantage in hand-to-hand combat, the certainty that they will be raped if captured, their lack of physical strength, the sexual tension that exists in mixed units, the high incidence of pregnancy among females in the military, the erosion of traditional male cohesion among warriors, the distractions created by the need to “clean up” military life to make it a suitable “workplace” for women, the cost of providing separate accommodations, the fact that what is now being instituted as an accommodation for those few women who want to fight in combat will be forced on all women in the event of a draft, and so on.

But this is America 2.0. The military, like every other government agency, now is first and foremost a jobs, Diversity, and self-actualization program, in which everyone has a “right” to participate. What was once the military’s only reason for existing at all — to fight and kill our enemies as effectively as possible — is now way, way down the list. To acknowledge that there are fundamental, natural differences between men and women, and that these differences matter, would be to discriminate — and therefore would violate liberalism’s Prime Directive.

And so we have today’s announcement. It should surprise nobody.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (22)

Wond’ring Aloud

January 22, 2013 – 11:25 pm

Can anyone explain to me why the United States is giving Egypt two hundred tanks and sixteen F-16s?

The answer should not be that “we signed an agreement that we are now honoring”. We signed that agreement with Hosni Mubarak, a man we could rely on to maintain a stable peace with our principal ally in the region, Israel.

Since then, we have assisted in Mr. Mubarak’s overthrow and subsequent replacement by an Islamist regime whose leader has made very clear that his sentiments are entirely different. Any weapons that we provide to the new Egypt will be used to oppose U.S. interests in the region, not to advance them.

So can somebody explain to me, then, why on earth we’d want to do this? I’m sorry to be so dense.

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs, Jihad | Comments (4)

Cards On The Table

January 22, 2013 – 3:51 pm

Yuval Levin has written an excellent, and even-tempered, response to yesterday’s unapologetically collectivist speech by the President. Levin seizes on what I also thought was a key point, namely that Mr. Obama remains frankly and resolutely committed to the hollowing out of the essential layers of civil society that stand between the individual citizen and the Federal sovereign. (Recall the chilling campaign slideshow The Life of Julia, in which a radically atomized and deracinated American female goes from cradle to grave in near-solipsistic isolation from any human interaction, reliant only upon the nurturing State as the wellspring of all of life’s blessings.)

Mr. Levin writes:

The ideals of the Declaration of Independence are praised mostly for their flexibility in the face of their own anachronism, as their early embodiment in a political order (that is, the Constitution) proves inadequate to a changing world and must be gradually but thoroughly replaced by an open-ended commitment to meeting social objectives through state action.

The only alternative to state action, in this vision of things, is the preposterously insufficient prospect of individual action. “For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias,’ the president said.

“No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.”

The individual acting alone or the entire nation acting through its government, those are the only options we have. The space between the individual and the state is understood to be empty at best, and at worst to be filled with dreadful vestiges of intolerance and backwardness that must be cleared out to enable the pursuit of justice.

Read the rest here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Politics | Comments (0)