Category Archives: Philosophical and speculative

“Genes are the most important determinant of maths and reading skills among schoolchildren”

Posted on by
Reply

Is it really permissible to say this in public? Jennifer Oriel did: Cash can’t beat genetics in class. Here’s the detailed comment:

Speaking on SBS’s Insight program, Brian Byrne of the University of New England revealed findings of soon to be published research with colleagues at the Centre of Excellence for Cognition and its Disorders. It indicates that genes are the most important determinant of maths and reading skills among schoolchildren. Their study of twins’ NAPLAN performance apparently found that maths, reading and spelling skills are up to 75 per cent genetic and writing skills are about 50 per cent genetic. The influence of schools and teachers, the focus of Labor’s policies, accounts for only about 5 per cent of performance.

It wouldn’t worry me one way or the other whether it is genetics or environment, but not since I was very young has it even been possible to side with the genetics without creating a storm of protest. Maybe things are changing, maybe it’s just that this is Australia or maybe I will have to read the papers tomorrow to see the reaction.

Possibly the world’s last sane psychiatrist

Posted on by
Reply

This is from the incomparable Theodore Dalrymple, the only man on the planet to rival Mark Steyn for saying the most important things in the most readable way. Interestingly, I discovered them both at the same time when they were writing for The Spectator while I was living in England multitudinous years ago, Mark reviewing movies and Dr Dalrymple writing a weekly diary on the travails of life as a prison doctor. Here is a sample of the sort of things Dr Dalrymple (whose real name is Anthony Daniels) writes:

I am no respecter of persons, particularly politicians, but even politicians are human — more or less — and are therefore deserving of some kind of elementary courtesy.

When, shortly after my arrival in Australia to spend April at CIS, I read a Guardian article reporting the Treasurer’s remarks on state taxation, I read with mild dismay, but not surprise, the readers’ on-line responses; for example the following:

… thanks Scott you f***ing two faced jumped up lying mendacious piece of crap. (asterisk insertion mine)

Since the Guardian sometimes excludes contributions as not being in accordance with its ‘community standards,’ one is forced to wonder what those standards actually are. Are contributions excluded for being too polite or too well-reasoned? The community standards do seem to include the use of the language cited above, for the following comment approved of what had been said:

Pretty well spot on with that lot.

It seems, then, that at least a proportion of the population’s minds — not necessarily the least educated proportion of the population, for the Guardian’s readership (I assume) is better educated than average — runs like a sewer, in which insult is not only an argument, but also the only argument. The medium really is the message.

However, for a moment he managed a short burst of lucidity, writing:

… now i know who to blame when i can’t… find a decent public school for the kids…

Certainly, his difficulty is not beyond the bounds of possibility. But if Australia is anything like my native England, the state spends $150,000 per head on a pupil’s education, and still 20 per cent of pupils can’t read properly when they leave school. This is a miracle that makes the parting of the Red Sea seem like an everyday event.

He is in Australia on a speaking tour organised by the CIS and if you can you should go to see him. Here is where you can sign on.

Viva Che, accountant

Posted on by
Reply

IMG_2049

I went to an Economic Society presentation last night about the role of statistical measurement in creating economic reality given by one of the stellar scholars of our time. That was the first slide of the night. This is the text below the picture:

Che Guevara, as Minister for Economy in Cuba, used American accounting systems (left behind by fleeing American corporations) to deliver, and increase, output in a socialist economy after the revolution.

You would think the presenter would be embarrassed to say any such thing, or if one cared to give the benefit of the doubt, is perhaps oblivious to the offence that might be caused or has no idea how this might be judged given how badly the Cuban economy has been managed. None of it. Understood it all and dared anyone to say a word. No one, of course, did.

Hillary Clinton and the rights of the unborn

Posted on by
Reply

Can you see why everyone was upset with this from Hillary Clinton? More particularly, why did it upset so many of those on the left?

Democratic primary front-runner Hillary Clinton ran afoul of both the pro-life and pro-choice sides of the abortion debate Sunday when she said constitutional rights do not apply to an “unborn person” or “child.” . . .

Mrs. Clinton also said “there is room for reasonable kinds of restrictions” on abortion during the third trimester of pregnancy.

Here’s the reason they were upset.

Describing the fetus as a “person” or “child” has long been anathema to the pro-choice movement, which argues the terms misleadingly imply a sense of humanity.

In addition, the specific term “person” is a legal concept that includes rights and statuses that the law protects, including protection of a person’s life under the laws against homicide. Pro-choice intellectuals have long said that even if an unborn child is a “life,” it is not yet a “person.”

See the distinction?  You may think this is sick and depraved, but what do you know? You have to be a constitutional scholar or an intellectual to understand these things.

Even an old pro like Hillary can’t get it right even after all these years, although you may be sure this is nothing but a passing moment on her way to the White House. I only mention it as a reminder of the extent to which the media makes everything into a sensation when it want to get you. But with those it supports you hardly hear a sound. I point this out just so you know which side you are on when you buy into American politics. Because if these eight months old “fetuses” are actually persons with constitutional rights – you know, actual real people – then perhaps some of you were just a tad harsh the other day in your judgements of what nameless others had been saying on this very issue. Not that he was necessarily right, but only that you are picking up your cues from George Soros and The New York Times.

The problem is that most people are too young to remember the world before it went insane

Posted on by
Reply

ivanka and children

My thoughts on the photo story of Ivanka Trump, her husband and children in a normal mother, father, kids relationship, on the day she came home with their third child. It is just like how it used to be. And then there is the picture of Donald Trump with his grandchildren having an Easter lunch. Many people can any longer relate to such a world.

trump with grandchildren

“Wealth is not a fact of nature”

Posted on by
Reply

I met Alan Kors a year ago. He is, among other things, one of the co-founders of The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, FIRE. He has also survived 43 years at the University of Pennsylvania, largely because he can be used as evidence that all sides of the political spectrum are represented on campus. In fact, he is unique, not just there but virtually across the Western world. The ignorance is truly scandalous.

The presentation is about socialism, an idea so bad that it has swept the world and now the West. As he says, it is by no means clear to whom the future belongs. It runs an hour and a half, with questions making up the last half hour. Very impressive.

Some very useful rhetorical advice

Posted on by
Reply

Some useful advice on how to deal with the left from Stacy McCain that comes in large print:

NEVER ACCEPT THE PREMISE
OF YOUR ANTAGONIST’S ARGUMENT!

This is the somewhat expanded version:

Carve that into your cerebral cortex, young men. One of the tricks by which liberals succeed is by smuggling into the argument some dubious premise that they don’t expect you to question. Take for example, “equality.” Exactly what do we mean by “equality”? Where in human history can we locate this “equality” of which the liberal speaks?

A couple of books worth reading — The Mirage of Social Justice by Friedrich Hayek and The Vision of the Anointed by Thomas Sowell — will do wonders for helping you see why liberal ideas about “equality” should always be viewed with skepticism. Most people, however, never think seriously about glittering generalities like “equality,” “progress,” “rights,” etc., and are therefore apt to let the liberal get away with smuggling an unexamined premise into the argument. The result is that the liberal easily forces his antagonist into a defensive “me, too” position where, having tacitly accepted the unexamined premise, the conservative cannot avoid certain logical conclusions based on this idea.

Of course, before any of that you have to uncover what that premise is. What you really need to do yourself is to read history and political philosophy, but this is where you need to end up. Might I also suggest Russell Kirk.

The best political thriller in a long, long time

Posted on by
Reply

A film not to miss: Eye in the Sky. Here is the beginning of the description at Rotten Tomatoes:

EYE IN THE SKY stars Helen Mirren as Colonel Katherine Powell, a UK-based military officer in command of a top secret drone operation to capture terrorists in Kenya.

The rest is the most nerve-wracking film I have seen in ages. It also follows Kates’s Five Minute Rule for Hollywood movies, that the last five minutes of every serious film are devoted to replacing life’s reality with some kind of making-everything-right for the kind of people who need trigger warnings. In company with Zootopia, it captures the madness of our own times. Do yourself a favour and not find out what it’s about beyond what I have just said before you enter the cinema. It is also Alan Rickman’s last film which is another reason to go.

As I say, the best political thriller in a long, long time and about contemporary issues as well.

UPDATE: The reason I had invoked my Five Minute Rule for Hollywood endings was that I was not sure which side the film was actually on. No question that the film as it came out will appeal to people like myself, but there is that last five minutes which made me think that the producers had not intended the film to appeal to me at all. That this is the case has been confirmed by the comment from PoliticoNT, who wrote:

Two stars at best. The director’s film ‘Rendition’ which the critics panned is much better. You’ve been warned.

To have preferred Rendition gives the game away. So let me give you just a touch of an understanding of what the film is about. Suppose that we are in the middle of World War II, at the end of 1943, and the entire Nazi high command is meeting in some place that can be bombed to smithereens. There you find Hitler, Göering, Himmler, Goebbels and Eva Braun all in one location at the same time. However, as they are about to bomb this location, some innocent young fräulein is so close to the building that the entire decision making process is frozen as they decide whether or not to bomb the place if there is more than a 50% chance that the girl will be killed. Now go see the film since there is nothing in it that anyone will think of as unrealistic about how the threat of terrorists is treated in the modern world.

You know, I cannot even begin to think of a title that can capture how surreal this is

Posted on by
Reply

The story comes with a title that exactly captures what an American president can now say in public: OBAMA: ‘THERE’S LITTLE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COMMUNISM AND CAPITALISM’. And it is not just that the American president is a vacuous cypher, but that it has been evident from the beginning that everything he said today is what he has always believed. That it will only be the usual suspects who are riled by these words that is the disaster. Since he can say them without much worry about capsizing his presidential boat, you now know a very great deal about the country that elected him, its education system, and possibly about why the American economy refuses to recover.

Obama responded to a question about nonprofit community organizations and the necessity of attracting funding from both the public and private sectors.

“So often in the past there has been a division between left and right, between capitalists and communists or socialists, and especially in the Americas, that’s been a big debate,” Obama said.

“Those are interesting intellectual arguments, but I think for your generation, you should be practical and just choose from what works. You don’t have to worry about whether it really fits into socialist theory or capitalist theory. You should just decide what works,” he added.

Obama went on to praise Cuba’s socialist system under dictator Raúl Castro, touting the country’s free access to basic education and health care, although he acknowledged that Havana itself “looks like it did in the 1950s” because the economy is “not working”.

A phenomenon of idiocy. And it is not just the march through the institutions, but comes right down to the way we teach economics that he can be as ignorant as he is since it is an ignorance now shared with many. That the article merely states that Obama “has stoked controversy” shows even the writer of the story sees nothing much out of the ordinary. It’s not even the feature story at Drudge where this was found.

ISIS is not a group it’s an ideology

Posted on by
Reply

The central problem is that the smug European/Western mentality believes that what he seeks is an impossibility. Hardly any story there at the link and the title is inane: We talked to an ex-ISIS fighter in Belgium, and what he said was chilling. It’s not chilling to him; it’s what he is willing to die for.

His dream to “live underneath an Islamic caliphate, underneath Islamic law” would soon become a reality in Europe. ISIS’s brand of militant Islam would not be denied, he said, because “ISIS is not a group, it’s an ideology.”

And just what is it that will prevent this from coming true, do you think, over let us say the next sixty years?

We have had a declaration of war and we know their war aims: Islamic State video calls for jihad after Brussels blasts.

“Every Muslim who is well aware of the history of Islam, knows that the holy war against infidels is an integral part of Islam, and those who read history would know.”

And those who do not read history can watch as it happens around them as they sleep. All that stands between you and this kind of fate is a billionaire property developer from New York who our elites disdain because he is not one of them. See the ISIS recruitment video below in which the voice of Donald Trump shines as the only piece of sanity found anywhere in this horrific mess.