“It says something about our prospective future prime minister that when he decided to respond to accusations of being a lightweight, he did so by granting privileged access to the “most fashionable man in Britain”, and that the subsequent book that was produced (for which he was paid £20,000) and the subsequent articles that continue to be produced (Jones recently wrote a 3,288 word piece on Cameron for The Mail on Sunday), have resulted in revelations such as the fact that Cameron doesn’t really like Pot Noodle, that he needs six or seven hours’ sleep a night, that he has “small flecks of grey in his thatch” and that his karaoke song of choice is A Hard Day’s Night by the Beatles, because “even I couldn’t muck up a song like that”.
|
|||||
|
This development may horrify the old guard, but peer-to-peer review was just what forced the release of the Climategate files – and as a consequence revealed the uncertainty of the science and the co-opting of the process that legitimizes global warming research. It was a collective of climate blogs, centered on the work of Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, which applied the pressure. With moderators and blog commenters that include engineers, PhDs, statistics whizzes, mathematics experts, software developers, and weather specialists – the label flat-earthers, as many of their opponents have attempted to brand them, seems as fitting as tagging Lady Gaga with the label demure. – Patrick Courrielche, discussing the circumstances by which the Climategate e-mails came to light and were analysed by independent parties. Parts two and three of his article are unnecessarily on separate pages. I confess that I do like the phrase “Peer to peer review”. I am struck by how much of the progress here has been made by the so called “lukewarmers” – people who are (or at least were) open to the idea that global warming was real and human caused, who often had relevant expertise, and wanted to look at the data for themselves. After all, many interpretations are always possible. (First link via Bishop Hill). January 13th, 2010 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
 We don’t have to show the slightest respect for other people’s views – just for their right to hold them. Respect, after all, must be earned. It’s only freedom of speech that’s a right. When someone says something which you find stupid or offensive, you can say something back. You can tell them to fuck off. They don’t have to, but they’ve still been told. – David Mitchell, writing about the self-publicising Islam4UK. As Mr Mitchell says, we should have the right to be offensive, and we should have to put up with being offended sometimes. A pity that we don’t. Freedom of speech has ceased to be a right in Britain. In practice you are no longer permitted to be offensive, if you are within the grasp of the authorities. You may be threatened or arrested, have property seized, or forced to defend a criminal trial. Sell or wear a mildly rude T-shirt, and you may find public order legislation stretched to make an example of you. Write down “inappropriate” fantasies in a blog, or a poem, and prepare to defend a serious criminal charge. Quarrel with someone, a planning department, say, and if they can even suggest you hinted at forbidden speech, they can use the police to intimidate you. January 10th, 2010 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
“I think that people can legitimately complain that the educated class that dominated Wall Street and Washington first made the mortgage mess and then railroaded through a bailout in which a transfer of wealth from main street to Wall Street was marketed as a benefit to main street. The educated class is losing the respect of the rest of America for reasons that are well deserved.” – Arnold Kling. The quote is equally applicable to the UK. Read the whole item. It contains interesting commentary on a new book by Thomas Sowell. By the way, the question of the influence of an “educated class” begs the interesting question as to whether this class is all that well educated in the first place. Surely one of the hallmarks of a traditional, liberal education was understanding certain lessons of history, such as the dangers of concentrations of power in a few hands with few checks or balances. Just a thought. January 7th, 2010 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
“The sexual conservative’s true hypocrisy is that he doesn’t really believe in his own idealisation. Men will be inflamed by the sight of hair, women will bear other men’s children at the fall of a veil, boys will suddenly cast off the tedious ways of heterosexuality and put on the gaudy garb of gayness. In truth, sexual conservatives wants to make everyone else pay for their own dark thoughts.” January 6th, 2010 | 67 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Our exercise program can dramatically improve a woman’s sexual performance,” says Olga Nikitina, 40, the founder of the School for VUM-Building in central Moscow. “She can transform herself from a slow Russian car like a Lada into a Ferrari.” To disguise the fact that the equipment really does look like it belongs in a car-mechanic’s workshop – it’s all pressure gauges and rubber hoses – the school’s two rooms are painted pink and blue; stuffed animals model phallic devices. “Once a woman reaches optimal fitness, she can shoot a fountain of water up out of her vagina in the bath,” boasts Nikitina, a ponytailed blonde in a leopard-print top. The core device is a small silicone balloon that is inserted in the vagina and inflated with a pneumatic pump. “You squeeze against the balloon and measure the pressure on the attached gauges,” says Nikitina. Fine-tuning can be achieved by learning to shoot out pebbles onto a metal target. – Russian women learning how to get – and to keep – rich and generous husbands (with thanks to Instapundit) January 2nd, 2010 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
Ho hum! The letter is barking mad but it still needs hours of constructing a careful response, the net effect of which will be the same as two Anglo Saxon words. – Richard North responds to a lawyers‘ letter in a comment on this posting. My thanks to Bishop Hill for an email that got me noticing this latest twist in the Climategate saga a little sooner than I otherwise would have. January 1st, 2010 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
“And what should our mood be? The population restrictionists say we should be sad and worry. I and many others believe that the trends suggesst joy and celebration at our newfound capacity to support human life – healthily, and with fast-increasing access to education and opportunity all over the world. I believe that the population restrictionists’ hand-wringing view leads to despair and resignation. Our view leads to hope and progress, in the reasonable expectation that that the energetic efforts of humankind will prevail in the future, as they have in the past, to increase worldwide our numbers, our health, our wealth, and our opportunities…..Adding more people causes problems, but people are also the means to solving those problems.” – Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource, 2nd edition, page 588. The other day, Perry de Havilland took aim at those who would use the violence-backed power of the State to restrict human population. The late Julian Simon had no time for the neo-Malthusian mindset. Among other things, he did not regard wealth as somehow fixed and that if there were more people around, there would be less for each person. We are richer now than we were 100 years ago, and there are more of us. If you want a book that cuts through the crud of the gloomongering cast of mind, this book still ranks up top as one of the very best. December 30th, 2009 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
“I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat. God is an elderly or, at any rate, middle-aged male, a stern fellow, patriarchal rather than paternal and a great believer in rules and regulations. He holds men strictly accountable for their actions. He has little apparent concern for the material well-being of the disadvantaged. He is politically connected, socially powerful and holds the mortgage on virtually everything in the world. God is difficult. God is unsentimental. It is very hard to get into God’s heavenly country club. Santa Claus is another matter. He’s cute. His nonthreatening. He’s always cheerful. And he loves animals. He may know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, but he never does anything about it. He gives everyone everything they want without thought of a quid pro quo. He works hard for charities, and he’s famously generous to the poor. Santa Claus is preferable to God in every way but one: There is no such thing as Santa Claus.” PJ O’Rourke. (Page XXii of Parliament of Whores). Of course, now that the Democrats are led by a Chicago machine “Community Organiser” who is prepared to throw inconvenient former allies under a proverbial bus, it is unclear if O’Rourke’s relatively charming portrayal of the Democrats really holds any more. But hey, any excuse for a Christmas reference. December 22nd, 2009 | 73 comments - (Comments are closed)
Declaration of interest – I know a guy who works on an oil rig. That’s my credibility shot then. – Bishop Hill muses on how any link to Big Oil however tenuous means that your climate scepticism can be ignored by the AGW True Believers. December 19th, 2009 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
… people are beginning to be afraid of the state – but they are also afraid to be without the state But I think, in fact, it is worse than that. There are many people – and you can often tell them by their fierce, defiant pronouncements that they have nothing to hide, they have done nothing wrong – who are in a dependant, abusive relationship with the state. They feel the bullying and their fear itself as evidence they are wanted and have a place in the world. Being pecked is reassurance that you are somewhere in the pecking-order. Seeing people who are outside the hierarchy of subjection as evil, a threat, and pleading one’s own inoffensiveness at every turn is a way of legitimising one’s own pigeonhole. It is a nasty tendency. The feeble people who are trying to hide in the mainstream make up the lynchmob. And it is entirely equivalent to the morality of the prison-house, where violent gangsters are at the top and sex offenders are brutalised at the bottom, of an alternative chain of being. “You may think I’m scum, but at least I’m not one of them.” (Hat-tip: Iain Dale, even if he was only advertising his magazine) December 18th, 2009 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
“There is no reason to doubt that Mr Brown’s statement that he went into politics because of his horror at the effects of unemployment. Unfortunately, he forgot one of the few laws of political economy: that the road to unemployment is paved with work creation schemes. He is likely, therefore, to go down as something like the patron saint of unemployment.” – Theodore Dalrymple, from “Not With A Bang But A Whimper”, essays on current affairs, page 79. The whole chapter from which this paragraph is taken is a brilliant summary of everthing that is wrong about the current prime minister. December 18th, 2009 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
|
   |
||||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||