Diversely We Sail

THE DEVIL'S BRIEF

2007-03-16T06:58:00.000-05:00

From: Al-Qaeda mastermind says he beheaded U.S. reporter(Katherine Shrader, Associated Press, March 15th, 2007)

Suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to the beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl and was central to 30 other attacks and plots in the United States and worldwide that killed thousands of victims, said a revised transcript released Thursday by the U.S. military.

“I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan,” Mr. Mohammed is quoted as saying in a transcript of a military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, released by the Pentagon.[...]

Sealing a legacy of historical notoriety, Mr. Mohammed portrayed himself as al-Qaeda's most ambitious operational planner in a confession to a U.S. military tribunal that said he planned and supported a series of terrorist attacks, topped by 9/11. The gruesome attacks range from the suicide hijackings of Sept. 11, 2001 — which killed nearly 3,000 — to a 2002 shooting on an island off Kuwait that killed a U.S. Marine, according to an account released by the Pentagon.

Many plots, including a previously undisclosed plan to kill several former U.S. presidents, were never carried out or were foiled by international counter-terrorism authorities.

“I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z,” Mr. Mohammed said in a statement read on Saturday during a Combatant Status Review Tribunal at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mr. Mohammed's confession was read by a member of the U.S. military who is serving as his personal representative.[...]

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, questioned the legality of the closed-door sessions and whether the confession was actually the result of torture.

“We won't know that unless there is an independent hearing,” he said. “We need to know if this purported confession would be enough to convict him at a fair trial or would it have to be suppressed as the fruit of torture?”

In listing the 28 attacks he planned and another three he supported, Mr. Mohammed said he tried to kill international leaders including Pope John Paul II, President Bill Clinton and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

He said he planned the 2002 bombing of a Kenya beach resort frequented by Israelis and the failed missile attack on an Israeli passenger jet after it took off from Mombasa, Kenya.

He also said he was responsible for the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia. In 2002, 202 people were killed when two nightclubs there were bombed.

Other plots he said he was responsible for included planned attacks against the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Empire State Building and New York Stock Exchange in New York, the Panama Canal, and Big Ben and Heathrow Airport in London – none of which happened.

What word is missing from this lengthy account of the outrages of this despicable creature? Give up? This may help.

If the mainstream media and the tranzi human rights brigade been around at Nuremburg, surely they would have challenged every verdict on procedural grounds and only described the defendants using ambiguous phrases like “senior German Government official” or “suspected Jewish resettlement mastermind”.

THE TODDLER GESTAPO

2007-03-14T16:20:00.000-05:00

From: Is your baby playing with its toes yet? If not the government wants to know why (Lucy Ward, The Guardian, March 14th, 2007)

Babies will be assessed on their gurgling, babbling and toe-playing abilities when they are a few months old under a legally enforced national curriculum for children from birth to five published by the government yesterday.

Every nursery, childminder and reception class in Britain will have to monitor children's progress towards a set of 69 government-set "early learning goals", recording them against more than 500 development milestones as they go.

At five, each child will be assessed against 13 scales based on the learning goals and their score, called an early years profile, must be passed to the Department for Education and Skills.

When children enter compulsory schooling, they should be able to read simple sentences using a phonics-based approach, count reliably up to 10 and sing simple songs from memory, as well as respecting others' beliefs and learning to share and take turns.

We can’t shake this horrific vision of a whole generation of British five-year olds being trained in secret to drop whatever they are doing the second the Government inspector arrives and start all playing with their toes while belting out a lusty rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone.

EVOLUTION, THE MERRY PRANKSTER

2007-03-13T13:20:00.000-05:00

Beyond Stones & Bones (Newsweek, March 13th, 2007)

Now the contentious part. In 2001, a team digging in Chad unearthed what it claimed was the oldest fossil of an ancestor of humans but not chimps. If so, it must have lived after the two lineages split. Trouble was, Sahelanthropus tchadensis (nicknamed Toumai, the local word for "child") lived close to 7 million years ago. The genetic data, pointing to a human-chimp split at least 1 million years later, suggest that Toumai is not the ur-hominid—the first creature ancestral only to human and not our chimp cousins—after all.

If Toumai is not our ancestor, what is he doing with such a humanlike face and teeth, which look like those of species 5 million years his junior? "A 7 million-year-old hominid should be just starting to look like a hominid, not have a trait you see so much later in the fossil record," says paleoanthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University. Even if he is not our ancestor, Toumai is valuable because he undermines the "begat" model of human evolution—that Toumai begat Australopithecus who begat Homo habilis who begat Homo erectus who begat Homo sapiens. That model assumes that each biological innovation, whether bipedality or a large brain or any other, evolved only once and stuck.

Instead, evolution played Mr. Potato Head, putting different combinations of features on ancient hominids then letting them vanish until a later species evolved them. "Similar traits evolved more than once, which means you can't use them as gold-plated evidence that one fossil is descended from another or that having an advanced trait means a fossil was a direct ancestor of modern humans," says Wood. "Lots of branches in the human family tree don't make it to the surface."

ABRIDGED CLASSICS

2007-03-13T06:37:00.000-05:00

From: The great unread: DBC Pierre, Harry Potter ... oh yes, and David Blunkett (Paul Lewis and John Ezard, The Guardian, March 13th, 2007)

It's the literary club no author wants to belong to, but boasts the likes of Salman Rushdie, Bill Clinton, Paulo Coelho and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. A survey out today of the books Britons own but do not finish shows a surprising lack of appetite for many of the nation's most popular titles.

The bestselling book that topped the poll, DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little, has been lauded the world over - ironically, for its explosive denouement. But 35% of respondents who bought or borrowed the Man Booker-winning satire about a Texan schoolboy in a death row reality TV show failed to get to the end.

And while few can dispute the crazed popularity of JK Rowling's books amid the under 16s, the survey of 4,000 adults found 32% were not particularly fussed about the fourth in the series. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire beat James Joyce's 1912 novel Ulysses - running to more than 1,000 notoriously laborious pages - into second place.

Confession being good for the soul, you are invited to reveal a well-known book you only finished half of at most, but which you saw no harm in talking about as if you had finished it. For us, Lord of the Rings.

DON’T MENTION THE WAR!

2007-03-11T08:41:00.000-05:00

From: Bishop demands 'better theology' of sex (Michael Valpy, Globe and Mail, March 8th, 2007)

The Christian church has a deeply flawed understanding of sex that has led to morally groundless objections to masturbation, birth control, abortion and homosexuality, says a leading Canadian Anglican bishop.

In particular, the church has been wrong for centuries on the notion that sex exists only for the purpose of procreation, Right Rev. Michael Ingham, bishop of the Greater Vancouver Diocese of New Westminster, told a conference in Ottawa last night.

"Christianity as a religion stands in need of a better theology of sexuality," he said, "a better understanding of the complex role sexuality plays in our human nature and of the purposes of God in creating us as sexual beings."

He said the church has misunderstood references to homosexuality in the Bible, wasted energy in persecuting individuals who have argued for a new understanding of sexuality, and failed to comprehend how much the Bible and church doctrines have been shaped through the lens of male experience.

Bishop Ingham's call for a new theology of sex will be felt as a shock throughout the 77-million member Anglican Communion, Christianity's third largest denomination.

If so, they must be an easily shocked lot because this little play is into its umpteenth revival, although each time the houses are emptier.

A keen-eyed modern Rip Van Winkle awakening from a slumber of several decades might perceive a certain dislocate between the rhetoric and the action that attends many public issues in the West. For example, he might notice how many environmental activists are forever claiming to ground their terrifying predictions in science while at the same time declaring the scientific debate to be over and shouting down any further inquiry. He might wonder why many religious folks in the West, characterized widely as slaves to intolerant, absolute dogmas that brook no dissent, are getting their hands dirty trying to distinguish between Muslims who threaten them and Muslims who don’t, while many secularists proclaiming tolerance and freedom can’t wait for the glorious day Islamic culture and faith are completely eradicated. And he might notice that certain church leaders whose dawn-to-dusk calling seems to lie in preaching or defending sexual amorality are forever accusing their opponents of being fixated by sex.

Theological libertines like Ingham love to drop phrases like “the complex role sexuality plays in our human nature”, when they mean the exact opposite. What they mean is that it is complex only for those who believe in restraint and objective morality and suffer all manner of warping complexes and hang-ups as a consequence. Their sub-text is that, when the sexual apocalypse arrives, we will understand that sex stands in glorious isolation from the rest of our material, psychological and spiritual lives and none of us will give a hoot what we or anyone else does. We will go wherever the itch leads us because that’s the Divine Will. When that happens, there will be no further need to talk about it, but until then, do they and his cheerleaders ever seem to have a lot to say.

PAGANS IN THE LAB

2007-03-11T07:43:00.000-05:00

From: The Brain on the Stand (Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times, March 11th, 2007)

“To a neuroscientist, you are your brain; nothing causes your behavior other than the operations of your brain,” Greene says. “If that’s right, it radically changes the way we think about the law. The official line in the law is all that matters is whether you’re rational, but you can have someone who is totally rational but whose strings are being pulled by something beyond his control.” In other words, even someone who has the illusion of making a free and rational choice between soup and salad may be deluding himself, since the choice of salad over soup is ultimately predestined by forces hard-wired in his brain. Greene insists that this insight means that the criminal-justice system should abandon the idea of retribution —the idea that bad people should be punished because they have freely chosen to act immorally —which has been the focus of American criminal law since the 1970s, when rehabilitation went out of fashion. Instead, Greene says, the law should focus on deterring future harms. In some cases, he supposes, this might mean lighter punishments. “If it’s really true that we don’t get any prevention bang from our punishment buck when we punish that person, then it’s not worth punishing that person,” he says. (On the other hand, Carter Snead, the Notre Dame scholar, maintains that capital defendants who are not considered fully blameworthy under current rules could be executed more readily under a system that focused on preventing future harms.)

Others agree with Greene and Cohen that the legal system should be radically refocused on deterrence rather than on retribution. Since the celebrated M’Naughten case in 1843, involving a paranoid British assassin, English and American courts have recognized an insanity defense only for those who are unable to appreciate the difference between right and wrong. (This is consistent with the idea that only rational people can be held criminally responsible for their actions.) According to some neuroscientists, that rule makes no sense in light of recent brain-imaging studies. “You can have a horrendously damaged brain where someone knows the difference between right and wrong but nonetheless can’t control their behavior,” says Robert Sapolsky, a neurobiologist at Stanford. “At that point, you’re dealing with a broken machine, and concepts like punishment and evil and sin become utterly irrelevant. Does that mean the person should be dumped back on the street? Absolutely not. You have a car with the brakes not working, and it shouldn’t be allowed to be near anyone it can hurt.”

Even as these debates continue, some skeptics contend that both the hopes and fears attached to neurolaw are overblown. “There’s nothing new about the neuroscience ideas of responsibility; it’s just another material, causal explanation of human behavior,” says Stephen J. Morse, professor of law and psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. “How is this different than the Chicago school of sociology,” which tried to explain human behavior in terms of environment and social structures? “How is it different from genetic explanations or psychological explanations? The only thing different about neuroscience is that we have prettier pictures and it appears more scientific.”

Morse insists that “brains do not commit crimes; people commit crimes” — a conclusion he suggests has been ignored by advocates who, “infected and inflamed by stunning advances in our understanding of the brain . . . all too often make moral and legal claims that the new neuroscience . . . cannot sustain.” He calls this “brain overclaim syndrome” and cites as an example the neuroscience briefs filed in the Supreme Court case Roper v. Simmons to question the juvenile death penalty. “What did the neuroscience add?” he asks. If adolescent brains caused all adolescent behavior, “we would expect the rates of homicide to be the same for 16- and 17-year-olds everywhere in the world — their brains are alike — but in fact, the homicide rates of Danish and Finnish youths are very different than American youths.” Morse agrees that our brains bring about our behavior —— “I’m a thoroughgoing materialist, who believes that all mental and behavioral activity is the causal product of physical events in the brain” —but he disagrees that the law should excuse certain kinds of criminal conduct as a result. “It’s a total non sequitur,” he says. “So what if there’s biological causation? Causation can’t be an excuse for someone who believes that responsibility is possible. Since all behavior is caused, this would mean all behavior has to be excused.” Morse cites the case of Charles Whitman, a man who, in 1966, killed his wife and his mother, then climbed up a tower at the University of Texas and shot and killed 13 more people before being shot by police officers. Whitman was discovered after an autopsy to have a tumor that was putting pressure on his amygdala. “Even if his amygdala made him more angry and volatile, since when are anger and volatility excusing conditions?” Morse asks. “Some people are angry because they had bad mommies and daddies and others because their amygdalas are mucked up. The question is: When should anger be an excusing condition?”

Still, Morse concedes that there are circumstances under which new discoveries from neuroscience could challenge the legal system at its core. “Suppose neuroscience could reveal that reason actually plays no role in determining human behavior,” he suggests tantalizingly. “Suppose I could show you that your intentions and your reasons for your actions are post hoc rationalizations that somehow your brain generates to explain to you what your brain has already done” without your conscious participation. If neuroscience could reveal us to be automatons in this respect, Morse is prepared to agree with Greene and Cohen that criminal law would have to abandon its current ideas about responsibility and seek other ways of protecting society.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of historical precedents to guide and inspire us.

Although ambiguous about where this all leads, Professor Morse is correct that there is nothing particularly original here. Each new wave of determinist thinking tends to arrive with a splash and claim the idea that our behaviours are influenced by genes, brains, nature, nurture, the stars, the climate or whatever is brand new and a counterpoint to a supposed universal historical belief that humans are independent actors in full control of their lives and equally capable of choosing from an infinite number of possible actions. In fact, the opposite is the case. Almost nobody believes that or ever did. Free will, moral agency and individual responsibility are gifts of monotheism, which holds we have the capacity to rise above our largely determined natures, but not without struggle and not unaided. That belief is the historical exception to the rule and the grounding of the most prosperous, culturally rich and successful civilization in history.

Determinism is the default belief in human history. It defines paganism, which explains why aboriginal peoples and so many African communities cannot break out of endless cycles of poverty and pathology. It defined much of Asia until Asians consciously and expressly rejected their traditions to adopt Western ways. Since about fifty years after the Enlightenment, it has largely defined secularism. Not unlike medieval astrologers, Marx, Freud, Darwin and a host of minor others all argued man is in the grip of forces of which he is unaware and which absolved him of responsibility for his actions and fate. Their popularity was instant and widespread, demonstrating what every lawyer knows–that people will go to the most extreme lengths to find exculpatory explanations for their actions, no matter how heinous or injurious. It is the man who genuinely admits responsibility that is the rare exception.

Neuroscience appears to be the current exciting cutting edge of determinism, which unfortunately means we will once again probably spend decades watching judges grapple with the implications of considering defendants and witnesses as mindless automatons in the controlling grip of independent cerebral forces only judges and neuroscientists can escape. One can only hope this latest attack on free will and ultimate individual responsibility, the plinth of Western civilization, does limited damage before the inevitable reaction sets in. At an intellectual level, the reaction will come when our learned scientific sages finally admit that, while their theories work great on chimps and slugs, there are too many aspects of human nature and human behaviour that simply cannot be explained by them. At a popular level, it will occur when a collective revulsion wells up from within at the gut realization that the idea we cannot control our destinies and are not responsible for our choices means there is no particular reason to move forward in life or even go on living.

Even soccer hooligans know that.

MIND YOU, NOT THAT ROUGH, UNLETTERED, MATERIALIST, EXPLOITATIVE AND STUPID ARE UNKNOWN.

2007-03-10T11:22:00.000-05:00

From: Gerald Own Gerald Owen, National Post, March 8th, 2007)

Anna Nicole Smith's body lies amouldering in her Bahamian grave, but her media presence will go marching on, decelerating slowly. My favourite moment in her life-after-death so far was an interview by Larry King of Barbara Walters (the occasion for which I have forgotten), in which he asked her to explain the enormous attention being paid to Ms. Smith. Ms. Walters said she wasn't following the story and fittingly asked him to explain it himself, since he had been covering it for days on end, with little interruption. Mr. King said he didn't understand it, as if he were just an unpiloted boat being swept along by a tidal wave of popular demand and ratings (possibly, he is). But Ms. Walters defended the attention to the misfortunes of Britney Spears, on the questionable ground that she has talent, unkindly contrasting her to the newly departed soul of Ms. Smith.

There is a good case to be made that this has been the purest instance yet of celebrity culture, because it is so hard to say who Ms. Smith was. She was a kind of Platonic ideal of the phenomenon pointed out in 1961 by the historian Daniel Boorstin in his brilliant book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America: "The celebrity is a person who is known for well-knownness."

She does not lend herself to any of the customary front-end-loaded descriptions: "Bahamas-based reality TV actress Anna Nicole Smith," "Texas born former fried-chicken waitress?," "former Playboy model?" or "litigant and alleged gold digger Anna Nicole Smith" -- none of these is adequate to her. Reporting on her death, the New York Times made a brave attempt in its lead sentence, and refrained from front-end-loading: "Miami, Feb. 8 -- Anna Nicole Smith, a former Playboy centerfold, actress and television personality who was famous, above all, for being famous" -- the usual restatement of Professor Boorstin's wise saying -- "but also for being sporadically rich and chronically litigious."

Let's see now. Beauty? Nope. Talent? Nope. Achievement? Nope? Inspiration? Nope. Tragedy? Nope.

Can anyone offer an explanation for this? We can’t even craft a good theory of decline out of it.

SOFT (HEADED) POWER

2007-03-10T07:27:00.000-05:00

From: A French intellectual--in the worst sense of the term (Robert Fulford, National Post, March 10th, 2007)

Jean Baudrillard, who died on Tuesday in Paris at the age of 77, was a French intellectual in the most sinister meaning of that term.

He was intoxicated by hastily concocted theories and drunk on incomprehensible explanations of world affairs. He could make any subject more obscure just by briefly visiting it. Many of his readers eventually discovered that his work, some 50 books in all, usually wasn't about what it claimed to be about. His real concern was always Baudrillard and the passionate drama of his daydreams.

His way of thinking involved intense snobbery on his part and great tolerance on the reader's. To the public and his students he said, in effect: "You poor fools are deluded by all your ideals, your dreams, your accomplishments. You think that's reality? It's a fraud, all of it. I know better."

Strange as it seems, in the 1970s much of the Western world was ready to embrace him. He and Jacques Derrida were among the most prominent members of the platoon of French imperialist intellectuals who landed on the shores of North America and conquered a whole continent.

They set up base camps on elite college campuses and soon began enlisting local recruits for their army of postmodernists, post-structuralists, post-Marxists and full-time professional obscurantists. They became an all-consuming vogue. Soon it was impossible to get through Yale without encountering them, and by the early 1990s their thoughts had penetrated Western Canada, where you could hear professors talking the ugly and mostly incomprehensible language of critical theory while students struggled pathetically to keep up. In some circles, those who didn't imitate the French stars were considered eccentric.

What is it about North American (and Australian) life that makes generation after generation of progressives, artists and intellectuals defer so slavishly to the putative superiority of European culture and thought? From early twentieth century American expats in Paris to Swedes like Myrdal and Bergman to existentialists like Sartre and de Beauvoir to artistic weirdos like Dali to radical darlings of the sixties like Marcuse through to the cerebral pathologies of French deconstructionalists, our intellectual history is marked by a repeated self-abnegating embrace of European philosophical fads we hold to far beyond their sell-by dates.

The themes are always the same: America is rough, unlettered, materialist, exploitative and (let’s face it) stupid. By contrast, Europe is learned, wise, subtle, sharing, reflective and aesthetically rich. Their toilets may not work, they may be self-immolating demographically, their economies may be in reverse, there may be riots in their streets and they may even be going through one of their periodic internecine slaughters, but my goodness, these people know how to live!

Certainly we want our children to tap into the formative richness of European cultures. There is an admittedly limited return from cathedral tours of Wyoming and Ontario or post-doctoral work on the social philosophy of Daniel Boone. But almost all of that cultural treasure-trove long pre-dates the twentieth century and has been renounced repeatedly and comprehensively by European elites for generations, sometimes with words, sometimes with guns. Yet still they come with their gobbledegook celebrating despair and decline and still we welcome them speechlessly with feigned deferential awe, secretly praying it’s all a bad dream our children will grow out of someday.

OH BOY, ANOTHER SONG ABOUT YOUR PAIN

2007-03-08T08:23:00.000-05:00

From: Song of the Week #45 (Mark Steyn, SteynOnline, February 26th, 2007)

What do these five songs have in common?

“The Way You Look Tonight”, “Thanks For The Memory”, “Over The Rainbow”, “When You Wish Upon A Star” and “White Christmas”.

Answer: They were all Academy Award-winning songs from the Best Song Oscar’s first decade.

And what do these five songs have in common?

“When You Believe”, “You’ll Be In My Heart”, “Into The West”, “Al Otro Lado del Rio” and “It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp”.

Answer: They were all Academy Award-winning songs from the last decade.

We’ll spare you the curmudgeon’s obligatory rant on the putridness of modern music and simply ask whether anyone can think of a song from film or Broadway from, say, the last twenty years that he or she thinks is likely to endure in the repertoire of popular, memorable favourites.

THE LIBERTARIANS OF TURTLE BAY

2007-03-08T08:02:00.000-05:00

From: Canada told not to use term 'visible minorities' (Steven Edwards, National Post, March 8th, 2007)

Canada's use of the term "visible minorities" to identify people it considers susceptible to racial discrimination came under fire at the United Nations yesterday --for being racist.

In a report on Ottawa's efforts to eliminate racial discrimination in Canada, the world body's anti-racism watchdog said the words might contravene an international treaty aimed at combatting racism.

Members of the Geneva-based Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination also questioned other terms used by the federal government, among them "ethnocultural communities."[...]

"The committee is concerned that the use of the term may not be in accordance with the aims and objectives of the Convention," the report says.

It adds that Canada should "reflect further on the implications of the use of the term," but offers no suggestions about what words would be acceptable.

Canadians?

SWINGING FOR KYOTO (Via Robert Duquette)

2007-03-07T09:00:00.000-05:00

From: Love-making gets green light from adult stores (Misty Harris, CanWest News Service, March 6th, 2007)

For those who like to make love to the soundtrack of the global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Greenpeace has released a list of strategies for "getting it on for the good of the planet," suggesting "you can be a bomb in bed without nuking the planet." TreeHugger, an online magazine edited by Ontario's Michael Graham Richard, has just published a guide on "how to green your sex life." The famed adult store Good Vibrations announced last week they would no longer sell sex toys containing phthalates, controversial chemical plasticizers believed by some to be hazardous to humans and the environment alike.

And throughout Canada and the U.S., people who want to pleasure the planet can now buy everything from bamboo bed sheets to organic lubricant and "eco-undies."

"Green living is getting sexy," says Jacob Gordon, author of TreeHugger.com's recent green guide for the bedroom.

"Even a year ago, people wouldn't have been nearly as receptive to this kind of thing. ... But, as the importance of living green gains traction in our culture, people are willing to take things like that a lot more seriously."

Most environmentalists will agree the mainstream success of the Al Gore vehicle An Inconvenient Truth has helped give climate change the pop-culture sheen it's currently enjoying. Indeed, global warming is a cause to which everyone from Diesel apparel to Vanity Fair magazine and Starbucks are pinning their marketing efforts.

And if shopping to save the planet is trendy, having sex to clear your conscience is at the cutting edge.

It is appalling to see the depths of depravity to which the left will stoop to hijack the global agenda. We only hope intellectual conservatism in the West is resilient enough to convince people to ignore these perverts and persuade them instead to get it on more to support the war on terror.

AN ART, NOT A SCIENCE

2007-03-07T08:33:00.000-05:00

From: In the name of all fathers (Neil Tweedie, The Telegraph, March 7th, 2007)

Latest off the "how rubbish a parent are you?" production line is a report from the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at the Institute for Education in London, conducted for the Equal Opportunities Commission. It has some disturbing things to say about dads.

Apparently, children at the age of three are more likely to suffer from "developmental problems" such as hyperactivity if their fathers took no time off at birth, or had no access to flexible working at that time.

Now, that's pretty amazing, isn't it? Because baby Ben didn't see much of his dad during his first days tucked up in bed with mum, he will end up bouncing off the ceiling three years later. It must be true because the statistics show it to be so.

But there's another amazing finding: children who enjoy forms of "formal child care" such as nursery and nannying from nine months are likely to be better behaved by the age of three than other children.

"Other" in this case includes children raised by stay-at-home mothers, grandparents or fathers with working wives. So, packing Ben off to the local crèche could be the best thing you could do for him. Now, you might have spotted something a little odd here.

In one section, the report says Ben is more likely to suffer by three years of age if his dad was not around for the first few weeks of life and wasn't given any flexitime at work. But another section says Ben is more likely to incur developmental problems by three if he stays at home with dad, rather than attending a nursery.

Professor Shirley Dex, one of the authors of the report, which got lots of media coverage, explained: "We found a statistical correlation. We don't have all the answers. They may not, for example, be the same kinds of parent." So, what does the research, trumpeted by the EOC, a central component of the busybody industry, really tell us?

Prof Dex answered with a giggle: "It doesn't tell you the whole answer - it tells you to look further. There's more work to be done."

Great! So a big report is published saying dads are good for you and bad for you, but that's all right because it'll keep the experts at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies in work for another couple of years at least.

And that's really the point: surveys and reports and endless statistics never, ever tell you the truth about the family because there is no central truth about the family.

A witty riposte, but rot nonetheless. There may be no rigid universal laws about the family, but there are certainly central truths. Any good teacher can spot the parents of academically, psychologically and socially promising young children at fifty paces. The mother is completely committed emotionally from dawn to dusk, whether she works or not, knows everything that is going on and demands high standards of achievement and behaviour. The father is committed financially and emotionally to mom and the kids in that order and backs up mom 95% of the time, only occasionally running interference for the child to temper mom’s intensity. The child takes his parents completely for granted and is blissfully unaware of any personal needs of his parents or any dysfunctions in the family other than his own. He is almost never alone. The rest is detail.

It isn’t that we don’t know this or are lacking evidence of it. We are surrounded by evidence of it. It’s that so many modern parents resent the discipline and outward focus it implies and have successfully hijacked the social sciences to free them from them or slough them all off on the other parent.

TEN FIVE-YEAR PLANS LATER...

2007-03-06T17:05:00.000-05:00

From: Muted jubilation over $20M golden jubilee (Peter Goodspeed, National Post, March 6th, 2007)

Fifty years ago today the Gold Coast became Ghana and Africa changed forever. Kwame Nkrumah, a former school teacher who became the prophet of Pan-African liberation, transformed the continent the night he hoisted Ghana's new flag -- red, yellow and green with a large black star -- at independence celebrations in Accra's Old Polo Grounds.

"From now on, there is a new African in the world, and that new African is ready to fight his own battle and show that after all, the black man is capable of managing his own affairs," Mr. Nkrumah declared that night in 1957.

"We are going to see that we create our own African personality and identity," he vowed. "We again re-dedicate ourselves in the struggle to emancipate other countries in Africa; for our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent."[...]

Ghana, which produced up to 10% of the world's gold when it won its independence, used to have a gross domestic product per person that was equal to that of South Korea.

Now, South Korea has per capita GDP of US$24,200 while Ghana's is only about $2,600.

Tens of thousands of people in Accra today still don't have running water and the capital continues to be plagued by recurring power failures.

Within a year of coming to power, Mr. Nkrumah had passed laws allowing him to jail his political opponents for up to five years without a trial. By the time Ghana was seven, he had created a one-party state and declared himself President-for-Life.

Deposed in a coup in 1966,Mr. Nkrumah died in exile in 1972.

Ghana meanwhile stumbled through a series of coups and failed to have a peaceful, legal change of government until 2000.

While Africa has wallowed in conflict and deprivation for decades, Ghana has continually stumbled and failed to prosper.

The country, rich in resources of gold, timber, palm oil, coca, industrial diamonds and bauxite, enjoys twice the per capita income of the poorest countries of West Africa. Yet a third of the population lives on less that US$1- a-day and the economy is heavily dependent on international financial and technical assistance.

We wouldn’t want to spoil a good party and goodness knows these people deserve one, but wouldn’t two minutes of silence be more appropriate? Yet the beat goes on.

AT LAST, BIOLOGY THAT MAKES SENSE

2007-03-06T12:55:00.000-05:00

From: Birds don't mess with the cowbird mafia (Randolph E. Schmid, Globe and Mail, March 6th, 2007)

People have long wondered how cowbirds can get away with leaving their eggs in the nests of other species, who then raise the baby cowbirds. Why don't the hosts just toss the strange eggs out?

Now researchers seem to have an answer -- if the host birds reject the strange eggs, the cowbirds come back and trash the place.

HOCKEY AND SEX APPEAL ARE AN UNBEATABLE COMBO

2007-03-06T12:33:00.000-05:00

Canada has most positive image worldwide: Survey (Associated Press, March 6th, 2007)

Israel, Iran and the United States were the countries with the most negative image in a globe-spanning survey of attitudes toward 12 major nations. Canada and Japan came out best in the poll, released Tuesday.

The survey for the British Broadcasting Corp.'s World Service asked more than 28,000 people to rate 12 countries –– Britain, Canada, China, France, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, North Korea, Russia, the United States and Venezuela –– as having a positive or negative influence on the world.

Israel was viewed negatively by 56 per cent of respondents and positively by 17 per cent; for Iran, the figures were 54 per cent and 18 per cent. The United States had the third-highest negative ranking, with 51 per cent citing it as a bad influence and 30 per cent as a good one. Next was North Korea, which was viewed negatively by 48 per cent and positively by 19 per cent.

Canada had the most positive rating in the survey, with 54 per cent viewing it positively and 14 per cent negatively. It was followed by Japan and France.

This is a wonderful compliment, but we suspect that whatever the question was, most of the respondents heard: “Who do you fear least?”

SPEAKING OF INCONVENIENT TRUTHS

2007-03-06T09:15:00.000-05:00

From: Ursine numbers up, but rescue continues (Don Martin, National Post, March 6th, 2007)

Their status ranges from a "vulnerable" to "endangered" and could be declared "threatened" if the U.S. decides the polar bear is collateral damage of climate change.

Nobody talks about "overpopulated" when discussing the bears' outlook.

Yet despite the Canadian government 's $150-million commitment last week to fund 44 International Polar Year research projects, a key question is not up for detailed scientific assessment: If the polar bear is the 650-kilogram canary in the climate change coal mine, why are its numbers INCREASING?

The latest government survey of polar bears roaming the vast Arctic expanses of northern Quebec, Labrador and southern Baffin Island show the population of polar bears has jumped to 2,100 animals from around 800 in the mid-1980s.

As recently as three years ago, a less official count placed the number at 1,400.

The Inuit have always insisted the bears' demise was greatly exaggerated by scientists doing projections based on fly-over counts, but their input was usually dismissed as the ramblings of self-interested hunters.

As Nunavut government biologist Mitch Taylor observed in a front-page story in the Nunatsiaq News last month, "the Inuit were right. There aren't just a few more bears. There are a hell of a lot more bears."

The only thing that enrages an environmental activist more than denying global warming is suggesting to him that it might be good news. Although, to be fair, some of we social conservatives are starting to fret about the moral implications.

INSPIRATIONS OF THE LEFT

2007-03-06T09:04:00.000-05:00

From: Hello Presidente? This is the Presidente (National Post, March 6th, 2007)

Castro: I see that you do not let go of the books. When do you sleep?

Chavez: I sleep a little in the early morning. I sleep some. I study a lot. That is one of the responsibilities of every revolutionary. We follow your example. I am now reading -

Castro: [Interrupting] Yes. You have been reading for a long while. You have great talent to keep it all in, to remember everything. The only thing you sometimes forget is figures.

Chavez: I forget numbers but not that much.

Castro: However, you have them all bookmarked and never miss one. It is not easy to keep up with you.

Chavez: Do you know how many hectares of corn are needed to produce one million barrels of ethanol?

Castro: To do what?

Chavez: To produce one million barrels of ethanol?

Castro: Ethanol. I believe you told me about that the other day. Somewhere around 20 million hectares.

Chavez:[Laughing] Just like that.

Castro: Go ahead, remind me.

Chavez: Indeed, 20 million. You are the one with an exceptional mind, not me.

Castro: Twenty million. Well, of course. The idea of using food to produce fuel is tragic, is dramatic. No one is sure how high the price of food will rise when soy is being used for fuel, with the need there is in the world to produce eggs, milk, to produce meat. It is a tragedy. One of many today. I am happy to know that you have taken up the flag to save the species because... there are new problems, very difficult problems and therefore tosee someone become a great preacher of the cause, a champion of the cause, an advocate of the life of the species. For that, I congratulate you. Continue fighting [words inaudible] to educate the people so they can understand.

Dumbfounding.

THE ENGLISH, THE IRISH, THE SCOTTISH ARE BEST...

2007-03-05T18:14:00.000-05:00

From: English, Irish, Scots: They’re All One, Genes Suggest (Nicholas Wade, New York Times, March 5th, 2007)

Britain and Ireland are so thoroughly divided in their histories that there is no single word to refer to the inhabitants of both islands. Historians teach that they are mostly descended from different peoples: the Irish from the Celts, and the English from the Anglo-Saxons who invaded from northern Europe and drove the Celts to the country’’s western and northern fringes.

But geneticists who have tested DNA throughout the British Isles are edging toward a different conclusion. Many are struck by the overall genetic similarities, leading some to claim that both Britain and Ireland have been inhabited for thousands of years by a single people that have remained in the majority, with only minor additions from later invaders like Celts, Romans, Angles , Saxons, Vikings and Normans.

The implication that the Irish, English, Scottish and Welsh have a great deal in common with each other, at least from the geneticist’s point of view, seems likely to please no one.

Wow, even more irrefutable evidence of how altruism and kindness are found in proportion to genetic affinity.

Read the whole article for the most all-encompassing revision of British history since this.

DR. SEUSS, YOU SILLY GOOSE

2007-03-05T08:14:00.000-05:00

From: An ode to a hatted cat (Chris Knight, National Post, March 5th, 2007)

In 1954, Life published a screed
That was based on the thesis, "Why Johnny Can't Read."
Its author, John Henry, called primers too prim,
Lacking interest and humour and vigour and vim.
And how best to combat books so antiseptic?
With poems tetramerous and anapestic!
The leading narrator of four-metre voice
Was Theodore Geisel, a.k.a. "Doktor Zoice."
(American speakers found German abstruse
And so they had always pronounced it as Seuss.)
On a dare he composed a brief tale, quite absurd,
With a vocab of just over 200 words.
It follows a young boy and his sister Sally
As a puss in a stovepipe bounds in from the alley
And causes much mayhem and brings them dismay
While their mother is out of the house for the day.
But all's well that ends well; Cat cleans up his mess
And is gone before mother gets back. (Did you guess?)
On a morning in March, 50 years back at that,
His opus was published: The Cat in the Hat.
(And authors said, "Why didn't we think of that?")
For the yarn was so simple, so cheeky yet fun
That for legions of boomers it ranked No. 1.
(And I'd argue to this day it's not been outdone.)
The result was a wave of ecstatic reviews
As The Cat in the Hat spread like wonderful news.
"The moppets' Milton!" That was Newsweek's opinion
As Cat made its way to some far-flung dominions.
It has since been translated to Hebrew, Chinese,
Dutch, Latin, Italian, Braille and Portuguese.
And the places it's gone! There's a sequel, you know
In which 26 more cats help clean up some snow.
The Cat's been on a stamp, and on TV revealed.
There's a bronze of him in Seuss's hometown, Springfield.
(There was even a movie; that's best left concealed.)
And though Seuss himself died 16 long years ago
The Cat in the Hat still makes young readers glow
With its fish and its kites and its things and its snow.
But the only sad note, and I wish it weren't so,
Is that never another such doctor we'll know.

Today we honour the memory of the man who singlehandedly destroyed the concept of plot in literature for young children.

FROM THE "WE'RE ALL GOING INSANE" FILES

2007-03-05T06:27:00.000-05:00

From: The secret? Conspiracy theories sell (Dave Mcginn, National Post, March 5th, 2007)

The hidden knowledge revealed in The Secret, a hugely popular self-help DVD, hardly seems to live up to the drama promised by the video's title.

Over the course of the documentary, a series of authors and motivational speakers explain "the law of attraction," which boils down to this: Think positively and positive things will happen to you.

That may not seem like a secret to anyone with a dose of common sense or any familiarity with several decades' worth of self-help literature, from the Master Key System to The Power of Positive Thinking.

But that has not stopped The Secret from selling more than 1.5 million copies, more than half of them in January, according to The New York Times.

It did not stop the book based on the DVD from becoming the top-seller on Amazon.com this week. Nor did it stop Oprah from devoting a two-hour special to The Secret.

If the secret of the movie is a well-known piece of pop psychology, why is The Secret so popular? Its phenomenal success says as much about the power of conspiracy in marketing as it does about people's endless desire to achieve health, wealth and happiness.

The DVD begins with a shot of a man in a tunic stealing away with a papyrus as a voice-over promises that an ancient secret, hidden from most of mankind, is about to be revealed. It is a secret that "they" have suppressed throughout the centuries because of its power, a secret known to Beethoven, Lincoln, Einstein and 19th-century robber barons.[...]

Yet outside of popular culture, conspiracy theories are increasingly entering the mainstream. Experts say that although theories of one variety or another can be traced back hundreds of years, this latest resurgence can be traced to Sept. 11, 2001.

"9/11 saw an explosion of conspiracy theories and put the conspiracy theory firmly back in the media's eye," said Mark Barber, author of Urban Legends Uncovered.

"The world is an uncertain place right now and we are living in times of fear, paranoia and anxiety," added Mr. Barber, who is at work on a book investigating conspiracy theories. "It is this combination that feeds our quest for the truth and to make sense of something that seems completely senseless."

The average North American has never been healthier, wealthier, better-cared for and better-protected. So why do so many of us simply nod our heads in dull agreement when some soi-disant sage tells us the world is particularly uncertain these days and we live in times of “fear, paranoia and anxiety”?

THE QUEST

2007-03-04T21:07:00.000-05:00

Darwin’s God(Robin Marantz Henig, New York Times, March 4th, 2007)

This is a pretty comprehensive account of current evolutionary theories on the origin of religion.

THE USUAL SUSPECTS

2007-03-04T11:23:00.000-05:00

From: Canada named a culprit in China's brain drain (Lena Sin, Vancouver Province, March 4th, 2007)

The Chinese government has raised an alert about a severe brain drain and has listed Canada among the top recipients of its exported talent.

But as much as the talent war is raising fears in China, it has been a cause for hope in British Columbia.

A report by the Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing says China suffers the world's most severe brain drain. Since 2002, more than 100,000 students have gone abroad to study annually, with only 20 to 30 per cent returning to China, the state-run newspaper China Daily reports.

The study lamented that China was losing its foreign-trained professionals to Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia and urged them to return home.[...]

"Why does it happen?" asks Kenny Zhang, a senior research analyst for the Asia Pacific Foundation.

"It's because the world we are living in now is knowledge-based, high-tech-based, which requires, more and more, a high skill level from the labour force. Every country has a demand for these workers."

Zhang says while businessmen are drawn to China, professionals such as engineers are sought-after everywhere, and many are attracted to Vancouver's laid-back lifestyle.

This is welcome news for the B.C. government, which recently warned of a "demographic time bomb" characterized by an acute labour shortage as baby boomers sail off into retirement.

It’s gratifying to know the Anglosphere is blessed with a steady stream of over-achieving immigrants to temper our imminent demographic crises, but how can we be so thick as to believe the cream of China is coming because of our laid-back lifestyles?

SUDDENLY, THE WEST RE-DISCOVERS THE YELLOW PERIL

2007-03-04T08:31:00.000-05:00

From: How Christianity builds democracy (Jennifer Green, The Ottawa Citizen, March 3rd, 2007)

Christianity is catching on in China like never before, and for reasons that would surprise the secular West: It's a great way to build a democracy.

For the past 25 years, Christianity has been realigning worldwide, shifting south toward Africa, Asia and Latin America, away from western Europe.

Relatively few Chinese are Christian, but with its enormous population of 1.3 billion, even a small percentage has a huge global repercussion. It already has the world's fourth-largest Christian population.

The China Daily, controlled by the Communist government, recently reported on its front page that 31.4 per cent of the country considers itself religious, astonishing in a dictatorship in which religion is strictly controlled and was banned outright only 40 years ago.

A poll done by professors at a Shanghai university indicated 300 million Chinese regard themselves as religious. Of these, about 40 million are Christian, far higher than the 2005 official estimate of 16 million.

But even those numbers may be low. Since a great many Chinese attend underground Christian churches, estimates usually range between 50 million and 100 million, with some as high as 130 million.[...]

Most significant is Christianity's spread among urban middle classes and intellectuals who believe the faith can contribute to China's economic and social modernization.

In 2002, a Chinese scholar told a delegation of Americans in Beijing that he and his colleagues had studied every aspect of western civilization to discover why it is so pre-eminent. The scholars looked at politics, economics and military power, but they finally came to one conclusion: "The heart of your culture is your religion, Christianity," the scholar said. "That is why the West has been so powerful. We don't have any doubt about that."

David Aikman, a former Time correspondent in Beijing and author of Jesus in Beijing, was in that delegation, and he still remembers the astonishment of the Americans, most of them Christian ministers. The last thing they had expected in Communist China was a socio-political assessment of Christianity, and a positive one at that.

No doubt the last thing they wanted either.

And that's not the worst of it. Perhaps we should send Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens over to have a word with these folks.

CAESAR’S TRIBUTE

2007-03-04T08:16:00.000-05:00

From: 'No reward' for non-nuclear Libya(BBC, March 3rd, 2007)

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has said his country has not been given adequate compensation for its decision to renounce nuclear weapons in 2003.

Speaking to the BBC, Colonel Gaddafi said the failure by the West to reward Libya meant Iran and North Korea were reluctant to follow Tripoli's lead. [...]

Speaking to BBC diplomatic correspondent James Robbins, Col Gaddafi said this meant the West had lost bargaining power with countries like Iran and North Korea.

"This should be a model to be followed, but Libya is disappointed because the promises given by America and Britain were not fulfilled," he said.

"And therefore those countries said 'we are not going to follow Libya's example because Libya abolished its programme without any compensation'."

Some years ago I was in Greece discussing international politics with a group of young modern progressive types who were very aggrieved about the raw deal Greece was getting from the West and particularly the United States. They were angry about support for Turkey, angry about Macedonia, angry about American bases and angry about a lot of other things. Trying to convey to them as politely as possible that Greek sensibilities might not always be the number one strategic consideration in Western foreign ministries, I slowly became aware that they were nursing a huge sense of past Greek sacrifices for the rest of us for which they were owed big time. In their eyes, Greece’s membership in NATO and the consequent millions of dollars in civil and military aid she received was not a noble commitment the West made to keep Greece free, but a huge sacrifice Greeks made to improve the American strategic position vis-a-vis the Soviets. When, they wanted to know, was payback time?

Clearly this sentiment is driving much diplomacy today as the West ever more desperately seeks ways to bribe countries like Iran and North Korea not to blow us all up. In Britain, the perennial debate on the special relationship focuses on what the UK “gets out of it”. Africa is always at the door with a beggar’s bowl. Does the end of history imply the world will be one big welfare project with the American taxpayer paying everybody else to stay friendly, free and democratic?

DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC?

2007-03-04T06:40:00.000-05:00

From: Why we are closer to cousins from our mother's side (Roger Highfield, The Telegraph, February 28th, 2007)

Evolution by natural selection has shaped us to mistrust paternity, say researchers, and their findings confirm a prediction by evolutionary scientists that we tend to be kinder – altruistic – to the children of our mother's sister than those of our father's brother.

Evolutionary biologists say that the more likely we are to have genes in common with our kin, the more likely we are to put ourselves out for them.

One would expect us, therefore, to be equally helpful to all our cousins, since they are equally genetically related to us. However, reality is less straightforward because a small but significant fraction of men throughout history have brought up another man's child, often not even realising their wife has been unfaithful.

Therefore, we are related to our father's brother's children with two uncertain links and to our mother's brother's children and to our father's sister's children with one uncertain link.

In contrast, there is no uncertainty whatsoever in our genetic relatedness to our mother's sister's children.

Today, in Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, Joonghwan Jeon and Prof David Buss of the University of Texas at Austin publish the first evidence that we treat our cousins differently based on this evolutionary logic.

A favourite sport of many secularists is to pin believers to the wall and demand they fess up as to whether they believe this or that miracle from scripture actually happened. “Do you think Jonah was really swallowed by a whale? Well, do ‘ya?!” Any answer other than an unqualified yes leads to charges of cherry-picking or hypocrisy and a lecture in formal logic that “proves” every other belief is thereby undermined. It is an attack on “comfy” religion designed to demonize all believers as scriptural literalists and it completely misapprehends faith by analogising it to scientific inquiry.

But what of comfy Darwinism? It’s easy enough to march through life with a vague belief life evolved from simpler forms through unguided natural selection, but how could anyone other than a thoroughly indoctrinated fundamentalist believe nonsense like this? We are more likely to loan money to our maternal cousins because we (or our genes) are worried great-great-grandad might have been cuckolded? It is a derivation of William Hamilton’s theory of inclusive fitness, popularized by Richard Dawkins, which holds that our degree or altruism or kindness towards an individual increases with the proportion of the genes we share with them. As the late Australian philosopher David Stove (an atheist) showed, the proposition is madness on the face of it, completely unsupported by evidence and is refuted before our eyes daily just about every where we look.

Stove also showed that a pure belief in Darwinism, and especially in the modern synthesis popularized by Dawkins, et. al. requires belief in a whole series of derivative propositions that describe a world Lewis Carroll might have invented. But unlike religion, scientific materialism offers limited openings for distinguishing between myths and hard facts.

SPECIAL LITTLE NITS

2007-03-01T09:37:00.000-05:00

From: College students think they're so special (MSNBC, February 27th, 2007)

Today’s college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.

“We need to stop endlessly repeating ‘You’re special’ and having children repeat that back,” said the study’s lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. “Kids are self-centered enough already.”[...]

Narcissism can have benefits, said study co-author W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia, suggesting it could be useful in meeting new people "or auditioning on 'American Idol'. "

“Unfortunately, narcissism can also have very negative consequences for society, including the breakdown of close relationships with others,” he said.

The study asserts that narcissists “are more likely to have romantic relationships that are short-lived, at risk for infidelity, lack emotional warmth, and to exhibit game-playing, dishonesty, and over-controlling and violent behaviors.”

For years we’ve all swallowed the leftist lie that Hitler was warped by a cold father who whipped him regularly. A soon-to-be-released study shows that the real problem was that Mrs. Schicklgruber wouldn’t stop telling him how special he was.

LIVE AND LET DIE

2007-03-01T09:12:00.000-05:00

From: Study: 1 in 4 U.S. women infected with HPV Lindsey Tanner, Globe and Mail, March 1st, 2007)

One in four U.S. women ages 14 to 59 is infected with the sexually transmitted virus that in some forms can cause cervical cancer, according to the first broad national estimate.[...]

Dr. Dunne said HPV prevalence is thought to be high in men as well, but none were studied

An estimated 11,150 U.S. women will be diagnosed this year with cervical cancer, and about 3,670 will die from it. Numbers are much higher worldwide, especially in developing countries where Pap tests to detect cervical cancer are not routine.

The new vaccine, Merck's Gardasil, was approved last June for girls and women aged 9 to 26. It protects against two HPV strains believed responsible for about 70 per cent of cervical cancer cases, and two other strains that cause 90 per cent of genital wart cases.

Other vaccines are in the works to protect against other HPV strains, Dr. Collins said.

Women aged 20 to 24 had the highest overall HPV prevalence in the study, 44.8 per cent. Prevalence increased each year from ages 14 to 24, then dropped off gradually, confirming that young, sexually active women face the greatest risk of infection.

The study underscores the need for young women to get vaccinated, and to get routine Pap tests, said Dr. Howard Jones, a gynecologic cancer specialist at Vanderbilt University.

Dr. Richard Haupt, medical affairs director in Merck's vaccine division, said the study “reinforces the idea that Gardasil would have great benefit” for young women.

As we do with AIDS in Africa, it seems our approach to serious diseases caused by sexual behaviour is to fight them by any means other than trying to change behaviour. This is not really very surprising as it has been clear for a long time that modern Western men and women will go to the most extreme lengths to deny any authority, whether moral, legal, scientific or otherwise, that would compromise their absolute sexual freedom or suggest a public interest in their sexual practices. As we suspect the most at-risk here are the poor and vulnerable, undoubtedly much of the more-favoured segment of the population feels the consequences are well worth the price.

THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT

2007-03-01T06:40:00.000-05:00

From: Daniel Dennett Hunts the Snark (David B Hart, First Things, January, 2007)

Generally speaking, Dennett’s method in all his books is too often reminiscent of the forensic technique employed by the Snark, in the Barrister’s dream, to defend a pig charged with abandoning its sty: The Snark admits the desertion but then immediately claims this as proof of the pig’s alibi (for the creature was obviously absent from the scene of the crime at the time of its commission). And past experience perhaps caused me to approach his most recent book with rather low expectations. Even so, I was entirely unprepared for how bad an argument his latest book advances-so bad, in fact, that the truly fascinating question it raises is how so many otherwise intelligent persons could have mistaken it for a coherent or serious philosophical proposition.

The catalogue of complaints that might be brought against Breaking the Spell is large, though no doubt many of them are trivial. The most irksome of the book’s defects are Dennett’s gratingly precious rhetorical tactics, such as his inept and transparent attempt, on the book’s first page, to make his American readers feel like credulous provincials for not having adopted the European’s lofty disdain for religion. Or his use of the term brights to designate atheists and secularists of his stripe (which reminds one of nothing so much as the sort of names packs of popular teenage girls dream up for themselves in high school, but which also-in its favor-is so resplendently asinine a habit of speech that it has the enchanting effect of suggesting precisely the opposite of what Dennett intends).

There are also the embarrassing moments of self-delusion, as when Dennett, the merry "Darwinian fundamentalist," claims that atheists-unlike persons of faith-welcome the ceaseless objective examination of their convictions, or that philosophers are as a rule open to all ideas (which accords with no sane person’s experience of either class of individuals). And then there is his silly tendency to feign mental decrepitude when it serves his purposes, as when he pretends that the concept of God possesses too many variations for him to keep track of, or as when he acts scandalized by the revelation that academic theology sometimes lapses into a technical jargon full of obscure Greek terms like apophatic and ontic. And there are the historical errors, such as his ludicrous assertion that the early Christians regarded apostasy as a capital offense.

The prose is rebarbative, moreover, and the book is unpleasantly shapeless: It labors to begin and then tediously meanders to an inconclusive conclusion. There is, as well, the utter tone-deafness evident in Dennett’s attempts to describe how persons of faith speak or think, or what they have been taught, or how they react to challenges to their convictions. He even invents an antagonist for himself whom he christens Professor Faith, a sort of ventriloquist’s doll that he compels to utter the sort of insipid bromides he imagines typical of the believer’s native idiom.

In fact, Dennett expends a surprising amount of energy debating, cajoling, insulting, quoting, and taking umbrage at nonexistent persons. In the book’s insufferably prolonged overture, he repeatedly tells his imaginary religious readers-in a tenderly hectoring tone, as if talking to small children or idiots-that they will probably not read his book to the end, that they may well think it immoral even to consider doing so, and that they are not courageous enough to entertain the doubts it will induce in them. Actually, there is nothing in the book that could possibly shake anyone’s faith, and the only thing likely to dissuade religious readers from finishing it is its author’s interminable proleptic effort to overcome their reluctance. But Dennett is convinced he is dealing with intransigent oafs, and his frustration at their inexplicably unbroken silence occasionally erupts into fury. "I for one am not in awe of your faith," he fulminates at one juncture. "I am appalled by your arrogance, by your unreasonable certainty that you have all the answers." And this demented apostrophe occurs on the fifty-first page of the book, at which point Dennett still has not commenced his argument in earnest.

This is a lengthy, but wonderful takedown of arguably the most gruesome of the current crop of religion-bashers from the world of the brights, which shows why the reaction of so many religious folks to the attacks of Dawkins, Hitchens, et. al. is not anger and engagement, but mystification.

On the assumption that not all of you will read it through to the end, could anything convey the hubris of the determined secularist missionary better than these few lines from Lewis Carroll:

In one moment I’ve seen what has hitherto been
Enveloped in absolute mystery,
And without extra charge I will give you at large
A lesson in Natural History.

GIVE ME YOUR TIRED, YOUR POOR, YOUR FAMISHED...

2007-03-01T06:14:00.000-05:00

From: No Charles, you can't ban the food of the gods (Bryony Gordon, The Telegraph, March 1st, 2007)

Mmmmmm, McDonald's. The food of the gods. I am drawing on previously unknown reserves of strength and willpower just to stop myself legging it to the nearest franchise. Just imagine: a McChicken sandwich, covered in that special mayonnaise they do - perfect for treating the hangover. Or nine chicken nuggets, with that lovely sweet-and-sour sauce. Or a portion of their large, greasy chips. Mon Dieu! What I'd do for such a meal right now.

People who don't get a buzz from eating McDonald's food are dead inside (even Marco Pierre White has come out in favour of the Big Mac). They're the kind of folk who don't drink because they're scared of losing control, or the sort of man who (and I'm getting specific here), when his new fiancée announces that she loves him, can only respond: "Whatever love means." In short, dull people who need to get out a bit more.

I was wondering why I should care for the opinion of an unelected twit with no experience of real life, but then I realised you could think the same of me, and also that Charles has highlighted a real problem, if not quite the one he had in mind.

McDonald's should not be banned. It shouldn't even be encouraged to sell healthy food. Who goes to the golden arches to eat salad? You go there to eat fat when you're feeling a bit indulgent, but I don't know anybody who eats there more than once a month, and if they did, would it be the fault of McDonald's?

I am not denying there is a problem. It would be difficult to do that when we have children who look like sumo wrestlers and believe cows lay eggs. And I will concede that McDonald's is not without blemishes. It has in the past been accused of cutting down rainforests to raise cattle, it farms land in the third world at the expense of the growth of local food; it is responsible for many things, but not for our children getting fatter and fatter. That's our problem.

Is there any better metaphor for modern anti-Americanism than the protean disdain of the beautiful people for McDonald’s? The putative sins of this corporation are never-ending. It is garish in appearance and deportment, reduces mealtime to a rude, noisy functionality, destroys “traditional” cultures (meaning local restaurants with worse food), is a threat to the environment, exploits its young workers and offers a fare that nauseates every culinary snob and nutritional ideologue in the world.

And still they come.

PROPER ENGLISH IS, LIKE, TOTALLY AWESOME

2007-02-28T09:01:00.000-05:00

From: What is the most annoying phrase in the English language? (The Telegraph, February 23rd, 2007)

Here are many dozens of contributions (I almost wrote “literally dozens”) from Telegraph readers on the solecisms and popular gobbledegook that raise their blood pressures. Most are indeed abominations, but the more I read the more I cringed at recognizing my habitual reliance on no small number of them. It proves once again how it is nearly impossible to master this rich, vibrant language made for curmudgeons.

IT’S THE MAIN COURSE, NOT THE DESSERT

2007-02-27T08:47:00.000-05:00

From: China's Premier says democracy up to 100 years away (Scott McDonald , Globe and Mail, February 27th, 2007)

Communist leaders have no plans to allow democracy in the near future because they must focus on economic development before political reform, China's No. 3 leader said in comments published Tuesday.

Democracy will emerge once a “mature socialist system” develops but that might not happen for up to 100 years, Premier Wen Jiabao wrote in an article in the People's Daily, the main Communist Party newspaper.

For now, China must focus on “sustained rapid growth of productive forces ... to finally secure fairness and social justice that lies within the essence of socialism,” Mr. Wen wrote.

The Premier said the country is “still far from advancing out of the primary stage of socialism. We must adhere to the party's basic guidelines of the primary stage of socialism for 100 years.”

Mr. Wen said China would develop its own democratic policies and that a socialist system was not contradictory to those policies.

“A highly developed democracy and a complete legal system are inherent requirements of the socialist system and important symbols of a mature socialist system,” Mr. Wen said.

It is a bit of a conservative trope that socialism was defeated with the fall of the Soviet Union and that the superiority of liberal democracies is now acknowledged by nearly everybody. This may prove to be naive in that it underestimates the resolve and ability of the left to re-invent itself and its rhetoric. Although almost nobody touts state ownership and direction of the economy anymore, there seems to be a growing belief in the progressive world that democracy, while highly desirable in theory, is at odds with other more urgent objectives like social justice, human rights, ecological balance and even growth. Leftist ideologues used to argue that marxist states were in fact more democratic than Western ones. Today, in the groupspeak of the left, democracy has replaced the withering away of the state as the apocalyptic dream autocrats promise is just around the corner to those they are crushing beneath their heels.

THE WILL TO DISBELIEVE

2007-02-27T08:06:00.000-05:00

From: Scholars, clergymen deride Jesus documentary (Marshall Thompson, Globe and Mail, February 27th, 2007)

Archeologists and clergymen in the Holy Land have derided assertions in a new documentary produced by the Oscar-winning director James Cameron that contradict major Christian tenets.

The Lost Tomb of Christ argues that 10 ancient ossuaries –– small caskets used to store bones –– discovered in a suburb of Jerusalem in 1980 may have contained the bones of Jesus and his family, according to a press release issued by the U.S. Discovery Channel.[...]

Stephen Pfann, a biblical scholar at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem who was interviewed in the documentary, said the film's hypothesis holds little weight.

“I don't think that Christians are going to buy into this,” Mr. Pfann said. “But skeptics, in general, would like to see something that pokes holes into the story that so many people hold dear.”

Which leads us to wonder whether, if religion has been implanted in our genes by evolution, the same must be true about scepticism.

WHEN WE URGED YOU TO EXPRESS YOURSELVES, WE MEANT ABOUT GEORGE W. BUSH

2007-02-27T07:43:00.000-05:00

From: Parents defend son's speech on boredom (Melissa Leong, National Post, February 26th, 2007)

The parents of an 11-year-old Mississauga student are charging that school officials violated their son's right to freedom of speech after the boy was prohibited from reading aloud a dissertation about classroom boredom.

Frank and Donna Trimboli say they were upset when their youngest son, Gianmarco, returned home from St. Sebastian Catholic School about two weeks ago with news that his speech was "unacceptable and derogatory." The teacher and principal asked him to produce another for his Grade 6 class, Mr. Trimboli said.

"I was really upset. You're taking my son's voice out of his mouth," he said last night.

What a great slogan for a return to sanity in the classroom.

RATIONALIZED BIGOTRY

2007-02-27T06:19:00.000-05:00

From: Charest backs 'no hijab' ruling in soccer (Graeme Hamilton, National Post, February 27th, 2007)

Quebec Premier Jean Charest yesterday supported a soccer referee's decision to order an 11-year-old player to remove her hijab, likening the incident to a game in his youth when he and his teammates were told to tuck in their jerseys.

"I see that as the application of a regulation by a sports federation that wants, for the practice of its sport, to see to it that all players can perform properly," Mr. Charest told reporters during a campaign stop yesterday. Debate over the "reasonable accommodation" of religious minorities in Quebec society has become an issue in the province.

On Sunday, Asmahan (Azzy) Mansour of an Ottawa girls team, the Nepean Hotspurs, was told to remove her hijab, the Islamic headscarf, when a referee judged that it presented a danger to her or her fellow players. Her coach protested and pulled his team from the indoor tournament in the Montreal suburb of Laval -- a move that four other Ottawa teams imitated in solidarity.

Asmahan wore her hijab during games on Saturday without incident and has never had a problem playing in her home province.

However, the Quebec Soccer Federation yesterday stood behind the referee's decision, saying the rules of the international governing body of soccer, FIFA, prohibit all jewellery and headgear.

"FIFA rules state that they are not going to let players play if they are going to put themselves or other players at risk," said Valmie Ouellet, the federation's technical director. Ms. Ouellet said the hijab could endanger the person wearing it: "If it becomes untucked and the player is running on a breakaway, for example, and another player pulls on it, I would imagine it would be quite a jar to the neck and head of the player wearing the headgear."

Of course, soccer has always been very concerned about this danger. We should probably ban the kippah too on the basis that the fellow wearing it might get hurt when somebody tries to knock it off.

Update: Just to show that nothing is ever simple about this kind of thing, it appears the referee who banned her from wearing her hijab was a Muslim.

FOR SKIPPER

2007-02-25T18:06:00.000-05:00

From: Circumcision helps prevent HIV infection, studies confirm (CBC, February 23rd, 2007)

Adult male circumcision reduces the risk of HIV infection from heterosexual intercourse by up to 60 per cent, three trials suggested.

Early results of the trials conducted in Kenya, Uganda and South Africa were so positive that the studies were ended early to give all of the men participating a chance to get circumcized.

Full data from the trial appears in Saturday's issue of The Lancet.
"This is an extraordinary development," said Dr. Kevin de Cock, director of the World Health Organization's AIDS department. "Circumcision is the most potent intervention in HIV prevention that has been described."

Boy, that first-order evidence sure does have a knack of doing a one-eighty on you.

Hey, Skipper, whose idea was this crazy nonsense in the first place?

NOW THAT WE’VE ALL REACHED AGREEMENT ON THE BASICS

2007-02-25T09:06:00.000-05:00

From: Row over family values splits Cabinet (Gaby Hinsliff and Ned Temko, The Observer, February 25, 2007)

A leading minister is to rally to the defence of single parents amid a growing cabinet split over whether the government should champion marriage. Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, will warn that family policy should not be based on 'the prejudices of yesterday's generation' or hung up over whether parents are married or not, but focused on what children need.

His words will be seen as a sharp change of direction from the line championed by the Work and Pensions Secretary, John Hutton, backed by Number 10, arguing that two parents may be better than one for children and that the benefits system at present discriminates against marriage.

Johnson will tell a conference on Tuesday: 'Family policy must be bias-free - to express it in a more Clintonesque manner, "It's the parenting, stupid". Not all children from married couples fare well, and other family structures are not irretrievably doomed to fail.'

His intervention comes as figures close to Gordon Brown criticised Downing Street for not responding more quickly or coherently to David Cameron's promises of tax breaks for married couples or to his argument that absent fathers are to blame for gun and gang culture. The government had failed to show a lead and stand up for lone parents and cohabitees, said sources in the Chancellor's camp: 'It almost smacks of "well, maybe we should be looking at some of these things", but on what possible planet would we be looking at [tax breaks]?'

The issue is incendiary because it strikes at the heart of politicians' private lives. Tony Blair, famed for one of the strongest marriages in politics, is said to be concerned that the Conservative leader's argument has resonance, while other colleagues fear the demonisation of single parents and cohabitees. Brown's wife, Sarah, was raised by her mother for some years after her parents divorced and the couple are close to author J K Rowling, who has campaigned on behalf of lone parents.

Of course. It’s not about whether your parents are married. It’s not about whether you see your dad or even know who he is. It’s not about whether you go to daycare or anybody is home for you after school. It’s not about whether your mom has a new boyfriend. It’s not about whether anybody is telling you what you can and cannot do. It’s not about being punished if you do something wrong. In fact, it’s not about anything concrete at all.

It’s about a special magical thing called "parenting".

EL JUEGO PRECIOSO

2007-02-25T08:50:00.000-05:00

From: Argentina's Soccer Gangs Test Limits of Public Tolerance(Monte Reel, Washington Post, February 24th, 2007)

Even by the standards of Argentina, where people like to joke that soccer is less a pastime than a pathology, a recent surge of fan violence has been exceptional.

In the past two weeks, local stadiums have erupted in mass fights -- some of them all-out brawls injuring dozens of fans -- an average of every other day.

Politicians are vowing reforms, and most fans and league officials are blaming the violence on organized hooligan groups known as barrabravas, which are increasingly labeled as out-of-control mafias eroding the integrity of the sport.

On Tuesday afternoon, as police fired rubber bullets into a crowd to separate warring fans in a Buenos Aires suburb, a congressional committee was grilling the president of River Plate, one of South America's most famous soccer clubs, about the violence that has resulted in the closure of its 65,000-seat stadium for five games.

Among the incidents in question was a gun-and-knife fight Feb. 11 among members of a River Plate hooligan gang that sent picnicking families fleeing the stadium.[...]

According to local security officials, the gangs -- which began in Argentina in the 1950s -- have begun exporting their methods. Javier Alberto Castrilli, an official with Argentina's Interior Ministry who is in charge of soccer security, said the barrabravas' influence has spread in the past five years across South America and into Mexico.

"Here in South America, in countries where five years ago you'd never be able to imagine that so much soccer-related violence could exist . . . organization among barrabravas has reached very highly developed levels," Castrilli, a former World Cup referee, said in an interview Tuesday. "Groups abroad are copying the chants, the songs and even the flags that got their start here in Argentina."

We are delighted to be absolved of the outrageous slander that we are anti-European.

WHO WILL SLAY THIS DRAGON? (Via Brothersjudd)

2007-02-25T08:47:00.000-05:00

From: The Literary Tenor of the Times (Mark Helprin, Claremont Institute, Winter, 2006)

One seldom encounters pure nihilism, for just as anarchists are usually very well-organized, most of what passes for nihilism is a compromise with advocacy. Present literary forms may spurn the individual, emotion, beauty, sacrifice, love, and truth, but they energetically embrace the collective, coldness of feeling, ugliness, self-assertion, contempt, and disbelief. And why? Simply because the acolytes of modernism are terribly and justly afraid. They fear that if they do not display their cynicism they will be taken for fools. They fear that if they commit to and uphold something outside the puppet channels of orthodoxy they will be mocked, that if they are open they will be attacked, that if they appreciate that which is simple and good they will foolishly have overlooked its occult corruptions, that if they stand they will be struck down, that if they love they will lose, and that if they live they will die.

As surely they will. And others of their fears are legitimate as well, so they withdraw from engagement and risk into what they believe is the safety of cynicism and mockery. The sum of their engagement is to show that they are disengaged, and they have built an elaborate edifice, which now casts a shadow over every facet of civilization, for the purpose of representing their cowardice as wisdom. Mainly to protect themselves, they write coldly, cruelly, and as if nothing matters.

But life is short, and things do matter, often more than the human heart can bear. This is an elemental truth that neither temporarily victorious nihilism, nor fashion, nor cowardice can long suppress, which is why the literary tenor of the times cannot and will not last. And which is one reason among many why one must not accept its dictates or write according to its conventions. These must and will fall, for they are subject to constant pressure as generation after generation rises in unprompted affirmation of human nature. And though perhaps none living may see the change, it is an honor to predict and await it.

BREACH OF TRUST

2007-02-25T08:13:00.000-05:00

From: 'We have absolutely no reason to give up' (Graeme Smith, Globe and Mail, February 23rd, 2007)

Exactly one year after Canada took responsibility for Kandahar, many Canadians are expressing deep skepticism about that dream. Canadian troops fought the biggest battles of their generation to protect this dusty city on the other side of the world, losing 45 lives and spending $2.3-billion in Afghanistan so far, and the broad outlines of the country's plight have hardly changed: It remains terribly poor, and plagued by a vicious insurgency. This week, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion called for Canada to give up the mission in Kandahar by 2009 at the latest, saying the whole approach was flawed.

But a dozen interviews with key players in Kandahar, including the provincial governor and two of President Hamid Karzai's brothers, suggest that the people who are the most intimately involved in building Afghanistan are vastly more optimistic than observers abroad. A positive outlook is a job requirement for many of these people, as they have staked their careers, or their survival, on the effectiveness of foreign intervention.

Their arguments in favour of the Afghan project, however, are also rooted in a broader understanding of the historical context of Canada's struggles in Kandahar, and the significance of the fight for the country's south. They listed the mistakes of 2006, and the dangers of the coming years, and all of them reached the same conclusion: success is possible.[...]

These optimists describe a city slowly emerging from the grip of fear, enjoying unprecedented interest from aid donors and hoping to seize this chance to build a legitimate economy. If all goes well, and that's a major caveat, they say it's possible that the next few years will see Kandahar light up with new sources of electricity, establish new factories, revive its agricultural exports and resume its ancient role as a major trading centre.

While the major battles around Kandahar in 2006 are usually viewed by Canadians as proof that the situation got worse last year, the Afghan leadership views the fighting as a necessary step, a component of success rather than a hallmark of failure.

It is one thing to overstay one’s welcome, but just imagine being a young Afghan full of gratitude and hope for the future and being told by a “progressive” Canadian that the situation is hopeless and that he would be much better off if Canada withdrew in favour of the Taliban while promising to protect him through human rights initiatives at the United Nations.

JUST CHIPS OFF THE OLD BLOCKS

2007-02-24T09:10:00.000-05:00

From: Worlds apart - poll finds parents out of touch(Julian Glover, The Guardian, February 24th, 2007)

The gulf between parents and risk-taking teenagers is revealed in a unique Guardian/ICM poll which explores the realities of growing up in Britain today.

Teenagers drink, smoke, take more drugs and lose their virginity earlier than many of their parents believe, according to the results of the study. It shows that many parents are in the dark about the way their children cope with pressures that are often very different from those they faced in their own childhood.

Researchers questioned more than 500 11-16-year-olds about their lives - asking them to fill in confidential forms about issues such as alcohol and drug use, sex and the internet. Their parents, who gave permission for the research, gave separate answers about what they believed their children had experienced.

The gap between what teenagers have done and what their parents think they have done is striking. Of children who have tried drugs, 65% of parents think that they have not, or do not know. Of children who smoke, 52% are unaware.

Of children who say that they have looked at pornography online, 60% of their parents think that they have not done so, or did not know either way. The poll shows that 15% of children say that they have talked about sex online. Only 3% say they have met a stranger they encountered on the internet - but of those, only 1% of parents are aware of the meeting.

Most 16-year-olds, and almost half of 15-year-olds who have lost their virginity say they have had unprotected sex - but 83% of their parents think they have not, or do not know. Parents of children who have lost their virginity - 29% of 15-year-olds and 49% of 16-year-olds say they have - often do not know about it. Only half of parents of children who have had sex were aware.

Partly in response to a controversial UNICEF report and presumably partly in response to problems too glaring to ignore, the British press seems to be going through a period of introspective fixation on the issues of marriage, family cohesion and youthful dysfunction. One senses it is all a bit like African poverty in that everybody can easily be stirred to a white-hot heat of concern about the problem, but nobody can come up with much more by way of solutions than anodyne measures like tax breaks, lots of counseling and hounding everybody’s favourite whipping boy, the deadbeat dad. But it’s obviously a field day for sociologists and other members of the helping professions, and we imagine the available grant money is soaring. This study reveals the astounding news that parents don’t always know when their children misbehave, presumably because the kids aren’t telling them. Not like the good old days when delinquent kids gave a running account of their misdeeds to their parents.

One senses the authors of this report and perhaps The Guardian think parental ignorance is a far more serious problem than what the kids are actually doing. Undoubtedly there is some link, but isn’t the sub-text a somewhat dated assumption that they would share the alarm and would or could do anything about it if they did know?

WE ALWAYS THOUGHT THEY JUST NAGGED THEM TO DEATH

2007-02-24T08:19:00.000-05:00

From: Women may have invented weapons (Mark Henderson, The Australian, February 24, 2007

The survival techniques of West African chimpanzees have revealed that the first human weapons may have been developed by women.

The use of spears and axes to hunt and kill is commonly thought to have been pioneered among humanity's ancestors by males, but research has indicated weapons may have been a female invention that compensated for their lesser size and strength.

Anthropologists' observations of chimpanzees in Senegal have revealed they gnaw the ends of sticks to create rudimentary spears, which they use to hunt bushbabies, a small primate.

The findings are the first evidence of the systematic use of weapons in a species other than humans - and they are intriguing because all but one of the chimps using the spears were females or immature males.

This gender imbalance has led scientists to theorise that female chimps pioneered hunting with weapons as the only way in which they could compete with the physically stronger males to add animal protein to their diets. While males can hunt with their bare hands, females need weapons to help them.

"Females have to come up with creative ways at getting at a problem, whereas males have brawn," said Jill Pruetz, of Iowa State University, who led the research.

The findings support a hypothesis that women played an integral part in the development of weapons for hunting, and other kinds of tools. [...]

Dr Pruetz said the findings suggested that chimps, the closest animal relatives of humans, were more similar to humans in behaviour than previously thought.

What a great gig. Note how seamlessly the behaviour of a few modern female chimps translates into a blanket conclusion about arguably the most important event in human pre-history. We don't want to spoil the party, but given all those biologists frantically trying to teach these critters how to talk or type or whatever, isn't mimicking observed human behaviour a more plausible explanation?

FREED FROM THE HUMAN CONDITION

2007-02-23T15:07:00.000-05:00

Becoming an atheist (Michael O'Shaughnessy, National Post, February 23rd , 2007)

It is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when I became an atheist. I was raised Catholic, in a devout family environment. My father is Irish by descent -- from the Catholic parts of the island, not the "occupied counties" -- and a Quebecer by birth. My mother is an immigrant from the Philippines. My family not only attended weekly mass and all days of obligation, but also a lay prayer group affiliated with a group called Charismatic Catholics, which is Catholic in theology but borrows liberally from Protestant Pentecostal denominations (including an emphasis on the real presence of the Holy Spirit, lively music, and speaking in glossolalia).[...]

Though all good theoretically came from God, I didn't feel particularly evil now that I was denying his existence. Why did I not cheat on tests, skip class or lie to my parents if there was no God to watch over me and threaten me with punishment? Why did I bother being a good person at all? Though I wrestled with these questions, I never behaved in an amoral way. I concluded that my moral compass was not given to me by God but by my parents. I came to believe that "right" and "wrong" were based around the suffering of other people, and that morality can be summed up very succinctly in the words of Hippocrates: "First, do no harm."

I came to appreciate how the universe operates on its own, without any outside interference, and came to see how humanity evolved through a slow, incremental process over hundreds of millions of years, from the simplest single-celled organism, to the dinosaur, to the ape who carves great cities out of the earth. And eventually, in the midst of all this, I came to the conclusion that while there was nothing directly contradicting the existence of God -- He could possibly be sitting in His divine director's chair watching this all happen-- there was nothing to confirm it, either. So why believe it at all? And so I became an atheist.

It was lonely, at first. Even terrifying. But eventually I realized it meant I was free.

It isn’t hard to understand how he would feel relief at leaving behind the demands of the Church or its clergy, but in what sense can it be a liberating experience to look in the mirror and see “an ape that carves cities out of the earth?”

APPLIED RELATIVISM

2007-02-23T08:57:00.000-05:00

From: The great university cheating scandal (MacLeans, February 12th, 2007)

Experts say the reasons for cheating among today's students extend from on-campus competition, to more fluid notions around what is unethical, to a cultural generation gap between students and professors. "In this knowledge-worker age, it's now increasingly tied to doing well in school so you can get into better grad schools so you can get better jobs -- so the pressure to do well is really high," says Stephen Covey, author of The Speed of Trust. "There's strong data that within companies the No. 1 reason for ethical violations is the pressure to meet expectations, sometimes unrealistic expectations." The same, he says, holds true for school. Over the last two decades, too, North American universities have seen their mandates shift from institutions of learning, remote from the more quotidian aims of finding work and putting food on the table, to the necessary condition for entree into the corporate world. "I think there's a lot of students these days who have bought into the message that you come to university for a credential -- to get a better job, to make more money," says Christensen Hughes. As Covey says, students "get the degree, not the education."

Some students who admit to misconduct often believe their professors are complicit in their cheating. Among engineering students, says Christensen Hughes, "there was a sense that they were expected to take more courses than other students, typically, so they felt justified -- they needed to find shortcuts." She adds: "They also said that they assumed that faculty knew that. So in a sense they felt there was collusion or, 'Nudge-nudge, wink-wink, we all know what's going on, we all know what it takes to survive this program.' "

McCabe sees something else at work in the trend. "Younger people joining the workforce feel much more at ease making their own rules -- deciding what rules they can ignore, what rules they should apply and what way they can apply them," he says. In a small but not insignificant number of the students surveyed, McCabe finds some who see cheating as a valuable skill in itself. "I'll have students who will say, 'I'm just acquiring a skill that will serve me well in the real world,' " says McCabe. "They see it as training in a sense -- they're learning how to beat the system."

Cheating at university is hardly a new development, but surely a culture of widespread, openly-admitted cheating is. Faced with a generation that has been taught to equate “wrong” with “wrong for me”, how could this problem be tackled other than through increased surveillance, invasion of privacy and police work? Is honesty not just another one of those platonist ideals that have caused us so much unnecessary grief? Would they respond to reasoned arguments on how we evolved an aversion to cheating because it conferred survival benefits?

HEY MOM, I JUST RE-INVENTED THE WHEEL

2007-02-22T19:52:00.000-05:00

From: Chimpanzees 'hunt using spears' (BBC, February 22nd, 2007)

Chimpanzees in Senegal have been observed making and using wooden spears to hunt other primates, according to a study in the journal Current Biology.

Researchers documented 22 cases of chimps fashioning tools to jab at smaller primates sheltering in cavities of hollow branches or tree trunks.

The report's authors, Jill Pruetz and Paco Bertolani, said the finding could have implications for human evolution.

Chimps had not been previously observed hunting other animals with tools.

From: Jane Goodall Institute

At first, the Gombe chimps fled whenever they saw Jane. But she persisted, watching from a distance with binoculars, and gradually the chimps allowed her closer. One day in October 1960 she saw chimps David Graybeard and Goliath strip leaves off twigs to fashion tools for fishing termites from a nest. Scientists thought humans were the only species to make tools, but here was evidence to the contrary. On hearing of Jane's observation, her mentor Louis Leakey said: "Now we must redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as humans."

Also in her first year at Gombe, Jane observed chimps hunting and eating bushpigs and other animals, disproving theories that chimpanzees were primarily vegetarians and fruit eaters who only occasionally supplemented their diet with insects and small rodents.

FATHER AL BLESSES THE FLOCK

2007-02-22T05:57:00.000-05:00

From: Eco-pilgrims gather to 'heed the Goracle' (Anthony Reinhart, Globe and Mail, February 22nd, 2007)

They came in their hundreds to hear him speak, and even those left standing outside the crowded hall would not be deterred from lingering in the proximity of the Baptist prophet from Tennessee.

It wasn't any old-time religion that drew these believers to Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto, but a concept they feel is every bit as crucial to humanity -- global warming -- that made them want to get close to Al Gore, the impassioned former U.S. vice-president, as he delivered his now famous Inconvenient Truth about climate change.

Like many a bygone leader who happened along at a key moment in history, Mr. Gore -- who has been sounding the environmental warning bell for years -- has suddenly inspired the kind of faith and fervour in others that he insists will be needed to overcome such a monumental problem.

"From my perspective, it is a form of religion," said Bruce Crofts, 69, as he held a banner aloft for the East Toronto Climate Action Group amid a lively prelecture crowd outside the old hall. [...]

Across the driveway in front of the hall, a large banner exhorted the crowd to "Heed the Goracle." Belonging to a fledgling group called ecoSanity, it was still there hours later, as Mr. Gore enjoyed a reception at the adjacent Simcoe Hall and the dispersing crowd voiced its praise.

"He's the prime minister we need in Canada," said Reid MacWilliam, who has been re-examining his entire life to make it more environmentally responsible.

Many attendees said that the speech closely mimicked the documentary An Inconvenient Truth, but they seemed pleased to listen to it again.

"You can't hear that message enough," said Shawn Omstead, attending with his daughter Meredith. "When we watched the movie, the next day we went and replaced all the light bulbs in the house . . . you see the movie and it sticks with you for a bit and then it fades."

"It was not our intention to have a religious approach," ecoSanity group founder Glenn MacIntosh said, "but it was our understanding that it was that kind of movement that people were craving; that kind of spiritual connection in their gut."

Perhaps the most quaint thing about us climate change sceptics is that we still believe we’re engaged in a scientific debate.

THAT THIRD ORDER EVIDENCE CAN BE SO PERSUASIVE

2007-02-21T07:35:00.000-05:00

From: Finding God at 30,000 feet (Larry McCloskey, National Post, February 21st, 2007)

I didn't expect spiritual uplift from the magazine -- just the usual fluff. Yet there in front of me was an extraordinary article written by the Canadian intellectual Northrop Frye just before his death in 1991. Frye astounded the world with his dispassionate and erudite academic writing for half a century. But this was Frye raw, naked, utterly unlike his former public self.

The article described how Frye came to grips with the death of his beloved wife of many years. He began by mentioning the fact that, in 1936, before his academic life began, the author was ordained a United Church minister.

Yet he admitted that during his entire life he had never had faith. Even as the author of the monumental The Great Code: the Bible and Literature, Frye hadn't believed in God. It seems that, for most of his life, he was content to consider all matters of faith as academic.

Yet after his wife died, Frye could no longer sustain an academic distance from his own life. Though he had a masterpiece on the Bible to his credit, on the question of God he now felt the need to go deeper. So he put his giant intellectual motor to work.

What he could not accept was that his wife of a lifetime -- what she had meant to him, the essence of her -- could be reduced to simply a collection of cells that had once lived and were now dead. And since this belief was his strongest impulse, it followed that he must believe that she continued to live in some way. And if this latter belief was really stronger than his former academic belief, he reasoned that this was faith, perhaps not in the accepted pure sense of the word, but what he saw as a negative faith--a default faith.

It was an epiphany. If Northrop Frye believed that the concept of negative faith had merit, that was good enough for me.

After a lifetime of guilt for what I had not been able to believe, Frye's revelation was a welcome relief. Negative faith may not be a fulfilling form of faith -- because it means never really knowing the things we long to know, such as the nature of God and the afterlife. But I'll take negative faith with an open mind over the fraudulence of an atheist's claim to knowing what can never be known.

Mock on, Dawkins.

IN THE TRADITION OF JEREMIAH

2007-02-21T06:36:00.000-05:00

From: Climate protection best choice for business growth, top economist says (Mike De Souza, National Post, February 20th, 2007)

Fighting global warming and working to meet Canada’s Kyoto commitments will not cause an economic collapse, despite the Harper government’s recent assertions, a major economist told a lunchtime business crowd on Monday.

Former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern was making his first visit to Canada since last fall, when he published a 700-page report that made international headlines with its warnings that the world could face an economic catastrophe similar to the Great Depression by ignoring the threat of climate change.

"So you have your choice now," Stern said in a speech to the Economic Club of Toronto: "You can be absurd and reject the science; you can be reckless and say we can adapt to whatever happens; or you can be unethical and disregard the future, simply because it’s in the future. That’s entirely up to you."

Decisions, decisions.

More: Stern Warning

WHY CAN’T YOU BE IRRATIONAL, LIKE THE ANGLOSPHERE?

2007-02-20T22:45:00.000-05:00

From: Airbus faces break-up as Franco-German talks fail (David Robertson et. al., The Times, February 20th, 2007)

The crisis at Airbus was triggered on Sunday by shareholders refusing to back a restructuring plan submitted by Louis Gallois, the co-chief executive of EADS and head of Airbus. The plan, which was scheduled to be announced today at Airbus headquarters in Toulouse, called for cost-cutting and improved efficiencies in aircraft production.

The Power 8 plan will entail the outsourcing of factories, the rationalisation of the supply chain and possibly thousands of redundancies. Mr Gallois is also trying to tie work on a new aircraft, the A350, into this new, more efficient production regime. This would mean concentrating A350 work at fewer sites rather than spreading construction across Europe, as happens at present.

However, the German Government has balked at receiving less work on the A350 than the French. The present proposals could leave the Germans with only 10 per cent of A350 work, compared with France’s 35 per cent.

Pressure will be on Mr Gallois to water down Power 8 and assign more A350 work to Germany. This could endanger the UK’s role in the A350, which covers about 20 per cent of the €10 billion (£6.7 billion) project. The Airbus factory at Broughton, North Wales, is scheduled to build the wings of the aircraft. However, sources close to Airbus said last night that the Germans were playing a political game with France. These sources believe that the Germans will agree to Power 8 — and giving France the bulk of A350 work — only if they get all A320 production in return. This would effectively split Airbus, with the smaller aircraft made in Germany and the larger ones in France. A formal divorce between the two countries would then be achieved easily.

French Airbus executives were pinning the blame yesterday on German shareholders for the deadlock over Power 8 restructuring. They said that Angela Merkel, the Chancellor, had used the main German shareholder, DaimlerChrysler, to express her opposition to a reorganisation of Airbus’s production model.

Sources in Paris accused Mrs Merkel of playing politics at the expense of Airbus to win praise among the German electorate.

Which, of course, the French would never do. But what a debacle. Is it any wonder half of Europe wants to deep-six the EU and the other half wants to get rid of the nation-states that compose it?

More.

SHOOTOUT AT THE OK CORRAL

2007-02-20T09:36:00.000-05:00

From: The fantasy that is Kyoto(Don Martin, National Post, February 20th, 2007)

Deep in the bowels of government, they're working on Operation Dusty Shelf. OK, so that's not the actual name of this huge bureaucratic undertaking. More like the code word for its future destination.

When a Liberal-ordered bill forces a Conservative government to plan ways to implement the Kyoto protocol, let's just say this is not a motivational exercise for federal bureaucrats. They know their strategy will be stillborn.

Sources say Environment Minister John Baird regrets his initial dismissive bluster against the Kyoto-enforcing private member's bill, which passed through the Commons last week and now awaits a rubber stamp after being debated in the Liberal- dominated Senate.

But it hasn't dimmed his government's disdain for a bill that gives them 60 days to produce an action plan to deliver on the Kyoto target of cranking down Canadian greenhouse gas emissions to 6% below 1990 levels.

"It's not enforceable, not economical and not even constitutional," fumes a senior official in the Environment Ministry. "But we're working on something to deal with it."

This much is certain. The cost and consequences of Kyoto's implementation will not be sugarcoated by this government. The intention is not to deliver warm and fuzzys on ways to meet our international obligations, but to pour cold water and hard realities on the folly of aggressively trying to meet the 2012 target.[...]

If there's a message Prime Minister Stephen Harper should be preparing amid his sudden greening, it's that Kyoto is a fantasy. That Canada will default on the first round of targets for the Kyoto accord is no longer in doubt.

In the months to come, his government will have to roll out a plan to sell the cost of Kyoto as incredible -- and his alternative as credible.

If the Liberals, New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois cannot stomach a Conservative green scheme that doesn't include Kyoto's 2012 targets, they will be dared to force an election.

Canada is not generally in the forefront of intellectual debate on global issues, but this could be very interesting. Last week the opposition parties foolishly combined to pass a bill compelling Ottawa to meet its Kyoto commitments and to produce a plan within sixty days. Everyone knows the task is impossible, but on this issue we live in a world where rhetoric trumps reality. Last fall, Harper was sagging in the polls over the environment, but a series of high-profile announcements earned him some credibility and he now seems to be standing in good stead for a looming spring election. Harper is obviously looking for a way to force the opposition to tell Canadians exactly what Kyoto would mean to them personally. He is articulate and intelligent himself, and not a man to back away from a principled fight or hide behind mushy platitudes. If you will excuse the cliche, sparks are going to fly.

BUT SURELY WE ARE HARDWIRED TO USE THEM?

2007-02-20T09:06:00.000-05:00

From: Are cliches the Achilles' heel of our language? (Or do they take one for the team, give 110% and keep us in the loop?)(Robert Fulford, National Post, February 20th, 2007)

Anyone who talks about writing, or writes about talking, makes a point of condemning dead phrases. These denunciations, while effective and sometimes eloquent, change nothing. The enemies of cliches come and go, but cliches persist.

Everyone seems to agree that cliches stifle writing and thinking. In politics they're downright dangerous. Vaclav Havel, hero of the Czech struggle against the Soviets, claims that cliches, by supporting accepted ways of thinking, encourage dictatorships: "The cliche organizes life; it expropriates people's identity; it becomes ruler, defence lawyer, judge and the law."

Thirty-five years ago Walter Ong, a great student of language, described the anti-cliche campaign in Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: "Cliches have for many years now been hunted down mercilessly with a view to total extermination." More recently, Martin Amis expanded that metaphor in his book of essays, The War Against Cliche. Ideally, he claimed all writing opposes cliche, including cliches of the mind and heart. "When I dispraise, I am usually quoting cliches. When I praise, I am usually quoting the opposed qualities of freshness, energy and reverberation of voice."

But if you open a newspaper, or watch the TV news, you're likely to be told that wolves are appearing in sheep's clothing, someone is killing someone else with kindness, fools aren't suffered gladly, X is a poster child for Y, and today's fast-paced society is causing widespread stress.

Meanwhile, some helpful soul will explain (as if it had been discovered recently) that most of an iceberg lies below the water, out of sight, like certain problems. Expressions like these fill the air around us. Just the other night on TV I heard it said that some commentator was a boy crying wolf.[...]

Observant readers can take innocent pleasure in the appearance of attachment-cliches, in which one word serves as the inevitable accessory of another. In newspapers we write about only one kind of hoax, the elaborate hoax. In book reviews (as Tom Payne noted in the London Telegraph) epics are all sprawling, quibbles minor, insights penetrating and roller coasters emotional. Scholarship, if worn, is worn lightly.

Contest time. You are invited to share your examples of modern cliches that thwart intelligent or even intelligible debate on the war on terror and/or climate change. There are no limits, so enter often. There are no prizes either.

ECRASEZ L’INFAME!

2007-02-20T08:31:00.000-05:00

From: Von Trapp Children to perform in Ottawa (Allison Hanes, National Post, February 20th, 2007)

They break into song spontaneously, wear lederhosen, play practical jokes and had to convince their parents to let them perform on stage.

There are many parallels between the modern lives of Sofie, Melanie, Amanda and Justin von Trapp and the mostly true story of their ancestors made famous by the 1965 film classic Sound of Music.

But the four chipper home schooled teens from Montana got in to show business by accident when they recorded themselves singing to cheer up their ailing grandfather, Werner von Trapp --called Kurt in the movie.

Now the real-life great-grandchildren of Georg von Trapp, an Austrian naval captain, and Maria, a prospective nun who became stepmother to seven and mother to three, have picked up where their performing relatives left off after fleeing the Nazis for the United States.[...]

Six years on, the von Trapp Children have toured the world, playing sell-out shows in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Japan the Philippines and Korea.[...]

They include such Sound of Music favourites as So Long, Farewell and Do-Re-Mi in their repertoire

Some days, even the crustiest traditionalist gets in touch with his inner Jacobin.

A FARAWAY COUNTRY OF WHICH WE KNOW LITTLE

2007-02-20T08:04:00.000-05:00

From: The audacity of Obama (Niall Ferguson, National Post, February 20th, 2007)

Take a look at Obama's arguments for a speedy U.S. withdrawal. Speaking on the Senate floor on Jan. 30, he asserted that "redeployment remains our best leverage to pressure the Iraqi government to achieve ? political settlement between its warring factions." The key is "to give Iraqis their country back," since "no amount of American soldiers can solve the political differences at the heart of somebody else's civil war." He repeated these words when he announced that he was running for the presidency last weekend.

But Obama's claim that an American withdrawal would somehow "pressure the Sunni and Shia to come to the table and find peace" is a fraud. On the contrary, an American withdrawal is much more likely to lead to an escalation of the internecine conflict that is tearing Iraq apart. In a devastating paper for the Brookings Institution, Daniel L. Byman and Kenneth M. Pollack have pointed out that, given the vast potential for violence that exists in the Middle East, we ain't seen nothin' yet.

If the U.S. pulls out, as Obama recommends, Byman and Pollack predict "a humanitarian nightmare" in which we should expect "hundreds of thousands (conceivably even millions) of people to die". There could also be huge economic fallout, with oil prices surging above $100 a barrel as the war spilled over into neighbouring countries.

What is particularly objectionable is that Obama appears to have forgotten Colin Powell's Pottery Barn rule, as famously enunciated on the eve of the invasion of Iraq: "You break it, you own it." Far more than in Sudan, the United States has a burning moral responsibility to prevent Iraq from plunging into a bloodbath. When Obama refers to "someone else's civil w a r," you have to ask how he thinks this civil war got started.

It might be different if there were any informed voices arguing that a withdrawal from Iraq or Afghanistan would result in peace, but of course there are none. It might be different if the left was arguing the old isolationist view that liberating or protecting foreigners is not worth the death of one American soldier, but they aren’t. The only coherent explanation for the rising anti-war ethos is that it is based on a self-contempt so profound that it now views the death of one Iraqi at the hands of the U.S. as more morally offensive than a massive internecine slaughter of which we can all thoroughly wash our hands. We imagine that, in the morally confused universe of the left, this is all made blindingly compelling by the doctrine of self-determination.

DOES NOT COMPUTE

2007-02-19T06:36:00.000-05:00

From: A people who would rather kill than eat (Robert Fulford, National Post, February 17th, 2007)

Earlier this month, under the guidance of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, representatives of Hamas and Fatahmet in Mecca, agreed to stop shooting each other for now and began the formation of a united government. Hamas insisted that it still doesn't recognize Israel and never will. Abolishing Israel is its only political program. Without it, there would be no reason for Hamas to exist.

Since the Mecca conference, the United States, Israel and the Europeans have said they will "wait and see" how the new government works out. What's to wait? What's to see? The West, having sworn to oppose Hamas until it recognizes Israel and gives up terrorism, is obviously considering the restoration of funds. What they are waiting for is someone who will propose a formula to let this happen without making everyone involved look like Neville Chamberlain. They will find a way.

Meanwhile, the central tragedy of Palestinian life continues to unfold, consistently made worse by Palestinian leaders: About a third of Palestinian children under age five suffer from chronic malnutrition. That's not the result of famine or the indifference of the world. The reason, so far as the record shows, is that Palestinian adults would rather kill than eat and would rather kill than see their children eat.

The strength of Hamas lies in the fact that the rational West is so horrified by this truth that it will go to extreme irrational lengths to deny it.

FOR THE MATERIALIST WHO HAS EVERYTHING

2007-02-19T06:04:00.000-05:00

From: DNA ‘bar-codes' help find new species (Allison Jones, Globe and Mail, February 18th, 2007)

Canadian researchers have co-authored a biodiversity study on DNA “bar-coding” they say will pave the way for cataloguing the world's organisms and lead to the discovery of untold numbers of new species.

With this technology, the study authors envision the creation of a hand-held device that will allow the average person, within minutes, to identify any species of plant or animal life and access biological information about it.

“When we're finished codifying bar codes and creating this reference library for life, any person on the planet will be able to identify any organism,” said co-author Paul Hebert, director of the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario at the University of Guelph.

“Any person equipped with a bar-coder can walk through the forest and identify the life around them.”

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth

VICTORIA’S SECRET

2007-02-17T10:05:00.000-05:00

From: Tourism official in Victoria defends ad that promises a "perfect orgasm" (CBC, February 17th, 2007)

Tourism Victoria is defending a new advertising slogan that says "the search for your perfect orgasm is over".

The organization has got about 20 calls and e-mails from people concerned about the phrase. But spokeswoman Melissa McLean says that particular line will only appear in culinary magazines in the United States.[...]

Another version of the ad aimed at gay and lesbian visitors reads: "Time to experience that tingling sensation."

What a humiliating sell-out. In the Canadian editions, they try to lure us with the image of a brisk seaside walk in sensible shoes after a hearty breakfast.

NOW THAT THEY HAVE SOLVED WORLD POVERTY...

2007-02-17T08:52:00.000-05:00

From: Action plan for killer asteroids (Jonathan Fildes , BBC, February 17th, 2007)

A draft UN treaty to determine what would have to be done if a giant asteroid was on a collision course with Earth is to be drawn up this year.

The document would set out global policies including who should be in charge of plans to deflect any object.

It is the brainchild of the Association of Space Explorers, a professional body for astronauts and cosmonauts.

At the moment Nasa is monitoring 127 near earth objects (NEO) that have a possibility of hitting the earth.

The association has asked a group of scientists, lawyers, diplomats and insurance experts to draw up the recommendations.

The group will have their first meeting in Strasbourg in May this year. It is hoped the final document will be presented to the UN in 2009.

"We believe there needs to be a decision process spelled out and adopted by the United Nations," said Dr Russell Schweickart, one of the Apollo 9 astronauts and founder of the Association of Space Explorers.

The threat of an asteroid hitting the Earth is being taken more and more seriously as more and more NEOs are found.

Diversely We Sail was begun in part to chronicle our collective descent into madness, but it is rare to be presented with such double-barrelled evidence at the same time. Does the greater insanity lie in everybody worrying about being hit by asteroids or in thinking the UN is the best body to prevent it?

WE CANADIANS JUST HATE TO IMPOSE

2007-02-17T07:22:00.000-05:00

From: To sell Canada on war, try `hope' but not `liberty' (Allen Woods, Toronto Star, February 17th, 2007)

The Conservative government has been "too American" in its attempts to justify the Afghan war to a skeptical Canadian public, according to an internal report commissioned by the Department of Foreign Affairs.

The extensive critique of the Tory communications strategy on the war comes from a series of cross-country focus groups conducted in November 2006 at a cost of almost $76,000.

The study, obtained by the Toronto Star, found that Prime Minister Stephen Harper was "echoing" U.S. President George W. Bush in his attempt to explain why Canadian soldiers are fighting and dying in the country's southern province.[...]

"Participants associated this message with public relations positioning – it was seen as echoing the kind of messaging American officials have made regarding Iraq," wrote the report's authors, the Strategic Counsel public opinion firm.

The report lists "vocabulary/terms/phrases/concepts to reinforce" the message that the government is right about its commitment to the war in Afghanistan. They include "rebuilding," "restoring," "reconstruction," "hope," "opportunity" and "enhancing the lives of women and children."

Words and phrases to avoid include: "freedom, democracy, liberty – in combination this phrase comes across as sounding too American."

Strategic Counsel also advised that the government "avoid developing a line of argumentation too strongly based on values. While the value of human rights is strongly supported, there is a risk of appearing to be imposing Canadian values. Again, this is not seen to be the `Canadian way.'"

Being firmly in support of the war, we’d like to help the government out here, so we suggest: “Canada’s hope is to be given the opportunity to obliterate the thugs trying to rebuild their reign of terror, restore the enslavement of the Afghan people and reconstruct their jihad against the West in order to enhance the lives of Canadian women, children and anything else that walks. But we have no intention of forcing hockey on them.”

THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE GENDER-SENSITIVE HUSBAND

2007-02-16T20:22:00.000-05:00

From: He Cooks. She Stews. It’s Love. (Katherine Wheelock, New York Times, February 15th, 2007)

“I used to think I was a good cook,” said Ms. Edwards, an editor at the parenting magazine Cookie. “But my husband’s a kitchen bully. He’s so critical, I second-guess myself now.”

If there were a clinical diagnosis for her problem, it might be called beta cook disorder. Even though Ms. Edwards blithely prepared flank steak for dinner parties when she was in college, she is now married to someone who takes charge in the kitchen: an alpha cook.

“I have no problem admitting that I’m an alpha,” said her husband, Matthew Hranek, a photographer. “Yolanda wouldn’t know a corked bottle of wine if you put it in front of her. When we met, she had four days’ worth of dishes in her sink, most of which had what looked like black bean on them. Ever since then, I’ve cooked for her.”

True, life with an alpha cook can mean sitting back and watching while someone else prepares restaurant-quality wild mushroom risotto on a quiet Tuesday night.

But it can also mean putting up with small culinary humiliations and an unending patter of condescending remarks.

When Robin Henry, an interior designer, helps make dinner with her fiancé, Andrew Goldman, a writer, she endures his constant, conspicuous scrutiny.

“I’ll be standing there, sautéing onions, and I can feel him standing over my shoulder, staring down at the pot and gnashing his teeth,” Ms. Henry said. “He’ll say things like, ‘You should really turn that down now.’ ”

Ms. Henry relayed this — along with her feeling that she is expected to greet any meal he might make on an average weeknight with the equivalent of a marching band reception — with affection.

“It’s part of his charm,” she said. Like many betas, she seems to have made peace with her lower status. The only time bitterness crept into her voice was when she talked about the tasks her fiancé assigns her when she plays sous-chef.

“He’s like, ‘Great, yes, come cook with me.’ And then he gives me the take-the-chicken-out-of-the-package-and-rinse-it job,” she said.

Listen up, fellows. It’s not difficult. Beta cook, alpha bathroom cleaner. Got it?

THE OTHER CALIPHATE

2007-02-16T18:40:00.000-05:00

From: The best we can hope for is tolerance (John Gray, The Spectator, February 17th, 2007)

If liberals have given up on toleration in favour of the adjudication of rights, it is probably because history has not turned out as they expected. Most have held to a teleological view of human development, believing that in the long run a society of the sort they wanted would come into being as a by-product of the free expression of ideas. The actual course of events has come as a terrible shock. Even in societies where expression is most free, there is nothing resembling agreement. Religion — which many contemporary liberals have come to see as an evil — has not disappeared, but grown stronger. There has been no movement towards consensus — liberal or otherwise. The idea that the practice of toleration leads to a convergence of values seems more and more like whistling in the dark. This may be the source of the strident, bullying tone many secular liberals adopt when they address religious believers. Their own faith in progress is on the line, and they are afraid of losing their nerve.

The radically plural society we find ourselves in today is not a transitional phase leading to a point, some time in the future, when we will have the same fundamental values. It is the way we can expect to live from now onwards. There may be nothing intrinsically good about this sort of diversity but it is a fact, and teleological liberalism is a poor guide to negotiating the difficulties it brings. Luckily there is another liberal tradition in which the goal of toleration is not agreement, still less truth, but peace. It may sound odd to describe Thomas Hobbes as a liberal, but he had a better grasp of how freedom can be maintained than most of the liberal thinkers who came after him. Hobbes wrote at a time when religious wars were living memories, and understood the destructive potential of faith. Belief may be beyond regulation, but for the sake of public order its expression must be controlled. Here Hobbes agreed with his contemporary Spinoza, an ardent defender of freedom of conscience who never doubted that in the end it must yield to the need for peace.

These early modern thinkers have more to offer than the doctrinaire liberals and secular fundamentalists who make so much noise today. The lesson they teach us, I believe, is that trying to curb differences in belief and lifestyle is a recipe for chronic conflict. While it may seem that social cohesion and the pursuit of peace go together, the insistent demand for integration can be highly divisive. Crowd-pleasing comments by senior politicians that suggest wearing the hijab signals a refusal to join the British mainstream do nothing to create a climate of tolerance. By strengthening Islamist ideologues who claim Muslims are outsiders in Western societies, they speed the process of radicalisation. As things stand, Islamist terror has inflicted much less loss of life and limb in the UK than the IRA did. Unlike the IRA, it may be acquiring a mass base here and in other countries which makes it a more intractable problem. Rather than raking over the ashes of multiculturalism, political leaders should focus on genuine obstacles to peaceful co-existence between Britain’s communities. This means being ready to shut down organisations that preach hate. The closure of the Jameah Islamiyah school, which was raided last year by police as part of an anti-terror operation, seems to have been for educational rather than security reasons. But it should be part of the terms of peaceful co-existence in this country which schools that teach hatred of Jews or Christians, or which make any religious or ethnic group a potential target of violence, should be put out of business. There can be no question of tolerating such institutions, which threaten the very possibility of peace.

One wonders sometimes whether the elusive “moderate Muslim” in the West is hesitant to speak out because of an abiding suspicion the secular establishment is as determined to impose its beliefs on him or her as the Islamists.

STATE PLANNING FOR FUN AND PROFIT

2007-02-16T09:47:00.000-05:00

From: Global leaders reach climate change agreement(The Guardian, February, 26th, 2007)

Leading world politicians and industrialists have reached a new, non-binding agreement at a meeting in the United States on tackling climate change.

Delegates agreed that developing countries will have to face targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions as well as rich countries.

The non-binding meeting in Washington of the G8+5 Climate Change Dialogue also agreed that a limit should be decided for maximum acceptable carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, the NBC reported. A global market should be formed to cap and trade carbon dioxide emissions, they also said.[...]

Jim Rogers, the chief of Duke Energy, applauded the mandatory cap-and-trade approach, and stressed that if the United States did not act soon to cut greenhouse emissions, fast-developing China and India probably would not participate in any global emissions-cutting program.

The forum's closing statement yesterday said man-made climate change was now "beyond doubt".

From: The new bootleggers: A U.S. climate alliance pushing a 'cap and trade' emissions regime is lined with cartel-creating firms that get money for nothing (Fred L. Smith Jr., Financial Post, February 15th, 2007)

We are all indebted to Professor Bruce Yandle of Clemson University for introducing us to the concept of "Baptists and Bootleggers." His theory's name, first elucidated in 1983, is meant to evoke 19th-century laws banning alcohol sales on Sundays. Baptists supported Sunday-closing laws for moral and religious reasons, while bootleggers were eager to stifle their legal competition. Thus, politicians were able to pose as acting to promote public morality, even while taking contributions from bootleggers.

Something similar seems to be going on here in the Climate Action Partnership of environmental groups and corporations. The environmental pressure groups are the Baptists, providing a moral screen to the bootleggers, in this case the energy and manufacturing companies. The policies laid out in the partnership's "Call for Action" actually stand to benefit the companies at a cost to the economy and consumers. By their actions and in their own words, the partnership's commercial members are fully aware of this.

At the heart of the partnership's plan is the regulatory capping and trading of greenhouse-gas emissions. Cap and trade, as it is known, is often described as market-based, because there is buying and selling involved. This is a misnomer. In fact, cap and trade is an ugly combination of two of the greatest ills to affect the market economy over the past 200 years: cartelization and central planning.

Let us turn to the companies involved in the Climate Action Partnership, beginning with Duke Energy Corp., which formed in May, 2005, when Duke Energy merged with Cinergy. In 2004, 97% of Cinergy's emission reductions came from efficiency improvements in its overwhelmingly coal-fired electric generating stations. Cinergy's investment of US$1.94-million in efficiency upgrades reduced the company's carbon- dioxide emissions by 349,882 tonnes. This works out to a cost of US$1.11 per tonne of CO2 reduced. If CO2-equivalent permits sell for US$15 a ton in 2010 and US$45 a ton in 2025, as estimated by the Energy Information Administration, Cinergy would reap a windfall profit of between 1,263% and 3,990%.

One of the perennial weaknesses of the right is that we tend to accord an integrity and directness of purpose to big business that can be as simplistic as the mirror stereotypes of the left.

In 1980, when everyone in the West was paranoid about energy security and certain the price of oil would rise forever, the Canadian Government enacted a defiantly statist near-expropriation of the oil industry that alienated Western Canada bitterly and which so ruined public finances that the country ultimately came close to calling on the IMF for help. Called the National Energy Programme, it was a highly complex tax-and-grab assumption of industry direction and oil ownership that assumed control over oil exploration and development and mandated a 50% “back-in” for the government in development profits in exchange for public funding for the bulk of exploration costs. Western governments, especially Alberta, and small to medium-sized oil companies howled incessantly in angry protest, but multinationals like Esso and Shell seemed surprisingly calm about it all, and some of their executives even defended it.

Here’s why: in non-provincial lands over which the Federal Government had complete control, particularly the offshore High Arctic, Ottawa granted exploration licenses to the large multinationals, the only companies big enough to bear the huge costs in that forbidding region. Ottawa refunded 90% of exploration costs in exchange for a 50% stake in any consequent development. The civil servant architects of the plan had the simplistic idea that these companies would move as fast as they could and as directly as they could to find and develop recoverable oil.

But that is not the way the oil multinationals work. Its members are in for the long haul and for them, finding inventory and reserves for development in the decades to come is just as important as pumping lots of oil today. Having suffered similar mad schemes from tinpot dictatorships elsewhere in the world, the companies knew it was so market-insensitive and fiscally insane that it simply couldn’t last for very long. From their perspective, they were being offered whopping subsidies in the short term to explore in the most expensive, high-risk, forbidding area in the world. It was in their direct economic interest to take full advantage of the scheme to try and get as accurate a picture of reserves in the whole region. Ottawa wanted oil as fast as possible, but the companies were getting near-free mapping and exploration for a rainy day, and that suited them just fine.

These companies maintained huge offshore drilling platforms that may have had fixed costs of $5-10 million a day to sit inactive versus $20 or $25 million a day to be out drilling. In the latter case, they recovered 90% of the costs within weeks, but nothing in the former. No prizes for guessing what happened. In the words of one senior executive, “We used to drill for oil, but now we are drilling for money.”

In the end, the price of oil fell and there has never been a drop of oil produced from the Canadian High Arctic. The Conservatives won the next election and repealed the whole thing, but not before untold billions of dollars had flowed to the oil companies and federal finances were a complete mess. Another smashing socialist success story. The moral seems to be that, while free markets are to be respected and encouraged, as soon as we hear about subsidies, partnerships with government, joint ventures or, as in this case, artificial markets to solve imaginary problems, we should be as suspicious as leftists about the motives driving the captains of industry.

YOU TIED YOUR SHOES ALL BY YOURSELF? AND YOU'RE ONLY ELEVEN?

2007-02-15T11:43:00.000-05:00

From: Day of the dad (Tom Leonard, The telegraph, February 15th, 2007)

Telling children they are clever only discourages them from trying to do anything where they might fail. Children who are told they are "smart" learn to concentrate on appearing smart. They try to avoid difficult challenges for fear of embarrassment and - in the tests - ended up performing much worse than children simply congratulated for "trying hard".

Nothing terrifies a New York parent more than the thought that their carefully laid schooling plans might come unstuck. The study contains some further uncomfortable truths - namely that showering praise on the kids has been a panacea for the uncertainties of modern parenting and that parents who lavish praise on pre-school children are actually subconsciously praising themselves.

Given that an estimated 85 per cent of Americans believe it's important to tell their children they are intelligent - and British parents cannot be far behind - this study has lessons for us all. But particularly for New York moms and pops who tend to tell their children they are a genius for everything short of breathing.

"Positive reinforcement" is more deeply embedded in the city's mindset than even zero tolerance. And there's none of that British reserve and tendency to offset any compliment directed towards one of our offspring by instantly providing one or more drawbacks of the child that the admirer may not have noticed.

The other day we saw a mother telling her little girl how clever she was just for sitting in a buggy. Last weekend, another mum almost expired with admiration after a four-year-old "did a poop" in our lavatory.

He'd just wandered in with our children while we were having drinks at his parents' apartment along the hall, and got taken short. He'd located the appropriate facilities and used them. Not exactly The Famous Five Investigates, but the mum who relayed the joyful news made it sound like a stirring tale of initiative and resourcefulness.

A thrice-yearly ritual at Casa Burnet occurs when She Who is Perfect has to write the report cards for her grade four class. She frequently asks for editing help, not because she needs grammatical or spelling assistance, but because she must master the sophisticated art of conveying to the parents that although their child can’t read or add, or is making life hell for the rest of the class, he or she is nonetheless an exceptionally bright and lovable little scamp with a potential in the stratosphere. The rules are simple. One oblique criticism must be followed by three concrete instances of lavish, unqualified praise. Try it sometime if you think that would be easy. The whole exercise usually concludes with her private explosion of rage at the parents, following which we both burst into hysterical giggles and then give thanks for how brilliant our own son is.

BRINGING CULTURE TO THE PEASANTS

2007-02-15T10:54:00.000-05:00

From: Odd mascot is France's gift to Quebec City (Graeme Hamilton, National Post, February 15th, 2007)

In a puzzling goodwill gesture, the French government has crafted a distinctive mascot for next year's 400th anniversary of Quebec City -- a dairy cow with antlers.

The brainchild of a young French graphic designer, the hybrid animal is intended to invoke the famous dairy cattle of Normandy, homeland of Quebec's original settlers, and the wild caribou that roam the Quebec tundra.

It was only when a French delegation led by former prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin arrived in Quebec this week that their hosts pointed out that the antlers atop the cow belonged to a moose, not a caribou. Adjustments will be made so the mascot dubbed the Vachibou (Cowibou) is as anatomically correct as possible.[...]

Mr. Raffarin told a news conference in Quebec City that the Vachibou was intended as a playful wink at France's Quebec cousins. "Our imagination knows no limits," he said

Serge Allen, Quebec City's commissioner for the 400th anniversary celebrations, declined to offer a critique of the mascot, although he did point out that it is odd for a female cow to have a male moose's antlers.

One of the charms of the French is that, just when you think they are a dangerous enemy who deserve to be blasted to High Heaven, they find a brilliant way to make you feel silly you ever took such clueless buffoons so seriously.

A RUNNING DOG OF AMERICAN ANTI-AMERICANISM

2007-02-14T09:25:00.000-05:00

From: Once the most beloved country in the world, the US is now the most hated(Jan Morris, The Guardian, February 14th, 2007)

But I think it is true that only in our time has the American Idea lost its baraka. A generation or two ago, most of us, wherever we lived, loved the generous self-satisfaction of it, if not in the general, at least in the particular. The GI was not then a sort of goggled monster in padded armour, but a cheerful fellow chatting up the girls and distributing candy not as a matter of policy, but out of plain goodwill - everyone's friendly guy next door. To millions of radio listeners around the world, the Voice of America was a voice of decency, and one could watch the lachrymose patriotic rituals of America - the hand on heart, the misty-eyed salute to the flag - with more affection than irony.

For myself, I responded to them all too sentimentally. Like Walt Whitman before me, I heard America sing! I relished the hackneyed old lyrics - Mine eyes have seen the glory, Thy word our law, Thy paths our chosen way, Oe'r the land of the free and the home of the brave, God bless America, land that I love ... Most of the words were flaccid, many of the tunes were vulgar, but as I heard them I saw always in my mind's eye, as Whitman did, all the glorious space, grandeur and opportunity that was America, Manhattan to LA. Sea, in fact, to shining sea.

In those days we did not think of American evangelists as prophets of political extremism - they seemed more akin to the homely convictions of plantation or village chapel than to the machinations of neocons. We bridled rather at the American assumption that the US of A had been the only true victor of the second world war, but most of us did not very deeply resent the happy swagger of the legend and danced gratefully enough to the American rhythms of the time. We thought it all seemed essentially innocent.

Innocent! Dear God! Half a century, and nobody thinks that now. Far from being the most beloved country on earth, today the US is the most thoroughly detested. The rot really started to set in, in my view, with Abraham Lincoln, one of the most admirable men who ever lived. He it was who saw in American glory the duty of a mission. America, he declared, was the last best hope of earth. The pursuit of happiness was not its national vocation, but the example of democracy. The more like the United States the world became, the better the world would be. No statesman was ever more sincere or kindly in his beliefs, but poor old Abe would be horrified to see how his interpretation of destiny has gone sour.

For the missionary instinct, which impelled Americans into so many noble policies, was to be perverted by power. Pace Lincoln, America was not necessarily the last best hope of mankind, and the knowledge that it has possessed unchallengable powers of interference has distorted its attitude to the world and cruelly damaged its image in return.

OK, that’s it. It’s bad enough that we live in a world where Americans control global geopolitics, drive the world economy and undermine everybody’s popular culture. Until now, the rest of us could at least sniff, pout and rend our garments under the inspiration of a vast array of anti-American politicians, intellectuals, religious fanatics and activists from Europe, Asia, Latin America and even Africa. Those fellows liked their anti-Americanism neat. They knew the place is rotten to the core and always was. How we soared on their poetic imagery: “The Great Satan”, “yellow American imperialist” and even our personal favourite, “rapacious Yankee trader”. It was the one little corner of life we controlled that all the lure and might of America could do nothing about.

But what’s this? “I heard America sing”? Honest Abe is rolling in his grave? GIs distributing candy? Once beloved worldwide like innocent children, but now hated as thugs? There is only one kind of anti-American that talks that way and he/she probably doesn’t follow soccer. Are all our heros selling out for some mess of Yankee pottage like a walk-on role in Michael Moore’s next film or a guest fellowship at Harvard? Are our traditional indigenous versions of anti-Americanism too fragile to withstand the relentless imperialist march of the American version?

Do they have to control everything?

TALK ABOUT REALISM!

2007-02-14T08:26:00.000-05:00

From: How video games became the latest weapon in the Middle East(David Lasserson, The Telegraph, February 14th, 2007)

In one themed room, visitors are faced with two interpretations of the intifada. A Syrian game called The Stone Throwers offers a sort of digital martyrdom, as the player takes the role of a lone Palestinian resistance fighter armed only with rocks against waves of Israeli soldiers.

Next to it is the Israeli game, Intifada. Here the player becomes a single IDF soldier facing stone-throwing demonstrators. In dealing with the demonstration, players must bear in mind the army's public opinion rating, and refrain from using live ammunition. If they cause casualties, the government is voted out of office, and available weaponry is reduced for the next game.

PROBLEMS. OH, WE’VE GOT PROBLEMS. YES, WE’VE GOT LOTS AND LOTS OF PROBLEMS.

2007-02-14T08:17:00.000-05:00

From: Off the couch and on to the coach (Ruth Eglash, Jerusalem Post, February 12th, 2007)

It takes Leora Spitz, life coach and president of the Israel chapter of the International Coaching Federation (ICF), less than 30 minutes to assess that there are some serious issues that need addressing in my life.

Her method is simple: Together we draw a "wheel of life," with each spoke representing one element - money, career, family, friends, environment, health, personal growth, romance and leisure. We define the strong values that I have for my family and friends and we note the "gremlins" or sacrifices I make in other areas.
The wheel is clearly uneven, and on that basis she encourages me to imagine where my life would be if it was more equal.

"If you managed to achieve your career goals and there was a write-up about you in the newspaper, what would it say about you as a person?" she asks me.

The question allows me to dream: a mother of three children under the age of six, working a full-time job, who manages despite that to succeed in her goals…… I really am amazing! Through her encouragement to let loose and fantasize, I feel empowered and free.

After that release, Spitz draws me back in to define some more realistic and concrete goals that might be achievable in the next week or so. "Small steps," she calls them.

My session with Spitz is part of an initiative run last week - International Life Coaching Week - by the ICF in Israel in which free life coaching sessions were offered to the public in an attempt to raise awareness about the profession, which is suddenly booming here. Estimates put at close to 1,000 the number of life coaches already working in Israel and note the more than 20 educational institutions offering courses in the profession - a cross between psychological and sports coaching theories.

"Life coaches focus on what you have already and where you want to go with your life," explains Spitz, who has an MA in organizational psychology from Columbia University and who became ICF's Israel president two weeks ago. "We help people make the most of what they have and to understand for themselves how they work inside."

Can there be any better proof than this of how at sea we have become morally and psychologically and how enslaved we are by psychobabble? What is particularly cute is their concern that we be able to distinguish the “professionals” from the charlatans.

DAS WUNDERBARE SPIEL

2007-02-12T18:56:00.000-05:00

Germany considers banning soccer fans from stadiums (Toronto Star, February 12th, 2007)

Soccer federation and police officials warned clubs Monday of increased security measures to handle fan violence, including the possibility of playing in empty stadiums.

"A situation like Italy can't be tolerated here," said Konrad Freiberg, the head of the national police union.

Hundreds of fans of FC Lokomotive Leipzig attacked 300 police officers after FC Erzgebirge Aue II beat their team 3-0 Saturday in the eastern state of Saxony. Police said 36 officers and six fans were injured, while 21 police vehicles were vandalized.

Federation and soccer officials from Saxony will meet Tuesday to consider canceling all matches in the state next weekend.

Federation president Theo Zwanziger said Germany could follow Italy's lead and order teams with violent fans to play in empty stadiums.

Germany has seen a surge in stadium violence since hosting the largely peaceful World Cup last year. Several of the worst incidents have been instigated by fans of teams from Saxony.

Zwanziger threatened a permanent stop to all soccer matches at stadiums in troubled areas of Saxony.

Continuing our ongoing series on why it seems to take the full force of an organized and prepared state to assure a safe soccer game, we offer the following insight for your consideration: In Europe, soccer hooliganism, like terrorism and riots, is seen as an inevitable release of ingrained social tensions that must be managed and minimized, but basically accepted at minimal levels. In North America, it is viewed as a crime that won’t be tolerated by the police, fans or teams for one minute. Everybody know that. Especially the hooligans.

SAVED BY THE BELLES

2007-02-12T12:36:00.000-05:00

University challenge (The Guardian, February 9th, 2007)

It was after a trip to see the film Sin City - in which female characters run the gamut from prostitute to stripper - that Laura Woodhouse became a feminist activist. "I went to see the film with four male friends," she says, "and suddenly the misogyny hit me. I looked around and my friends were all loving it and I felt really shocked and alone. That's the first time I've walked out of a film. I got home and typed 'feminism' into a search engine and found the feminist website The F-word. Then I followed the links to feminist blogs and read them into the night."

Shortly afterwards, Woodhouse, 22, became one of the founder members of Sheffield Fems, a feminist group set up at Sheffield University in 2005 and largely made up of students. In its short life, the group has become quite a presence on the feminist circuit, partly due to the remarkable success of its first campaign, which got it coverage in the local press and an invitation on to Woman's Hour.

"At our first meeting, the one thing that we all brought up was the mainstreaming of porn-type images and the Playboy bunny, which we had seen around a lot on children's products in WH Smith, John Lewis and Claire's Accessories. So we decided to go with Playboy as our first campaign," says Woodhouse. The group put together a leaflet and hit Sheffield town centre during the Christmas rush. "We got a lot of positive responses from the public," she says. The group passed these on to the shops' head offices. Within a few weeks, John Lewis and Claire's Accessories had pledged not to order any more Playboy-branded stock. But, says Woodhouse, "WH Smith sent us the same old thing that they send to everyone - that it's a popular product and people are allowed to choose, blah, blah, blah."

Over the past two years, a new wave of feminist groups has been sweeping across the UK. Like Sheffield Fems, many were formed on campus, although they have since attracted non-students - teenage girls, working mothers, and men as well. Groups such as Mind the Gap in Cardiff, the London Feminist Network and Warwick Anti-Sexist Society (Wass) have been established for a few years now, while Resisters, East Midland Feminists and North West Feminists all started up last autumn.[...]

Perhaps the biggest trigger for this growing movement, though, has been the mainstreaming of the porn and sex industries, and, specifically, the way in which they have begun to aim their products, branding and culture at children and young people, including students.

The reason why so many men find feminism maddeningly confusing is that it often encompasses two distinct and not apparently compatible impulses. The first is to secure for women the rights and freedoms enjoyed by men. The second is to rein in male excess and force them to treat women, children and society-at-large more responsibly. For every Emily Pankhurst chaining herself to a post to gain the suffrage, there seems to be a Carrie Nation right behind terrifying the boys in the tavern with her axe.

These two impulses sometimes exist in tandem (19th century feminists were split over votes for women), but since the late sixties the sexual and social libertarian impulse has been dominant among Western feminists. It will be extremely interesting to see whether we are on the verge of a new wave dedicated to female efforts to impose norms of civility and propriety on men. As the history of both civilization and blogging shows the extreme lengths many men will go to rationalize and defend their right to wallow in the prurient and depraved, we wish them luck.

HAVEN’T THESE GUYS EVER HEARD OF CHICKEN SOUP?

2007-02-12T11:30:00.000-05:00

It's all in the genes (Scott Deveau, Financial Post, February 9th, 2007)

Great entrepreneurs are more likely produced by their genes than by business schools, according to a new CEO survey released by Compas Inc.

While business background, charisma, and innovation are all important attributes, they pale in comparison to a strong personal drive to succeed, according to the survey of CEOs from midsized, entrepreneurial firms.

The CEOs were asked to rank, in order of importance, 13 attributes they felt were important to success in running your own business. The qualities related to the personal charisma, drive, intelligence and innovation.

According to the survey, persistence in the face of difficulty is the most important attribute for entrepreneurs, followed by determination and a passionate belief in what they are doing.

The results don't surprise Steve Farlow, executive director of the Schlegel Centre for Entrepreneurship at Wilfrid Laurier University. He is a strong believer that successful entrepreneurs are born, not made.

Great, so now we’re looking for the aggressive s.o.b. gene. What these folks are presumably saying is that decades of efforts by educational psychologists and business professors to reduce successful entrepreneurship to a technique that can be passed on through a well-taught curriculum have failed miserably and so, being 21st century kind of guys, they conclude it must be “in the genes”. They don’t seem to have even paused to consider how minor little details like successful fathers and/or demanding mothers may have a role in professional achievement, which is strange because everyone sure is quick to blame them for any failures.

“THUMPER, WHAT DID YOUR FATHER TELL YOU?”

2007-02-12T09:03:00.000-05:00

U.S. war ally rips Obama's election bid (Sheldon Alberts, National Post, February 12th, 2007)

A leading international ally of George W. Bush said yesterday the election of Democratic Senator Barack Obama as the next American president would mean a "victory for the terrorists" and leave the Middle East in chaos.

In a rare intervention by a foreign leader into U.S. domestic politics, Australian Prime Minister John Howard ridiculed a proposal by Mr. Obama to completely withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq over the next 13 months.

Mr. Howard's unexpected criticism of Mr. Obama -- an underdog candidate to win his party's presidential nomination -- stunned Democrats even as U.S. conservatives joined the attack on the Illinois senator's dovish foreign policy views.

"If I were running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March, 2008, and pray as many times as possible for a victory, not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats," Mr. Howard told an Australian broadcaster.

Given Howard’s stalwart courage in the war on terror, his faithful support of the United States in the face of constant domestic criticism, his standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Americans against most of the rest of the world and the brave sacrifice of Australia’s military, this was still an incredibly stupid thing to do.

THIS WILL MAKE EVEN THE FRENCH JEALOUS

2007-02-12T07:54:00.000-05:00

From: Flexible work rights should be for us all, says minister (Rosemary Bennett, The Times, February 12th, 2007)

Labour is putting itself on a collision course with business today by proposing that all employees should have the right to request part-time work.

All 29 million workers should have a right that is at present granted only to parents with young families, according to the minister in charge of family policy.

Beverley Hughes, the Minister for Children, calls for changes to reflect the growing demand of people to be able to work flexibly. She proposes that all jobs be advertised as possible part-time or flexitime positions, unless there is a sound business case not to.

Her proposals are contained in Politics for a New Generation, a book on Labour’s future agenda with contributions from a host of the Government’s rising stars.

We aren’t even going to ask why the Minister for Children is calling for job benefits for the childless because we’re not sure we want to know. We just hope the Minister for Middle-Aged Men is awake enough to ground her and dock her allowance.

WHAT’S A HEAVEN FOR?

2007-02-12T05:57:00.000-05:00

From: Blair sees climate change breakthrough as his grand finale (Larry Elliott, The Guardian, February 12th, 2007)

Tony Blair will hold a mini-summit with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, in Berlin tomorrow amid growing optimism that he can crown his 10-year premiership with an international breakthrough on climate change in June.

Aware that his influence in domestic policy is dwindling, Mr Blair has decided to focus on four foreign policy issues during his remaining months in power in the belief that he can make progress on the environment, global trade talks, the Middle East peace plan and Africa.

Tragically, the fickle and unimaginative British public may not give him enough time to reform Islam and cure AIDS.

One of the sure signs that a long-serving politician is past his sell-by date is when he announces he will no longer get his hands dirty with the complex muck of petty domestic bickering and will instead take the high road and solve the riddles of peace, harmony and other global problems. (“Al Gore, come on down!”) This is redolent of Canada’s Pierre Trudeau in his last year of power. Having divided the country bitterly over the constitution and so damaged the economy that we were approaching IMF bailout territory, he sensed almost everybody viewed him with an exhausted, visceral contempt and was counting the days until someone–anyone–replaced him. Openly disdaining this parochialism with aristocratic hauteur, he consulted himself in private and set out with much fanfare to jet around the world knocking on the doors of foreign leaders to promote peace through accommodation between East and West and nuclear disarmament. As Reagan, Thatcher and JP11 were just warming up at this time, he ended up marching firmly against history and made an utter fool of himself, although his eternal adorers on the Boomer Canadian left can still be heard sniffing how “at least he tried.”.

There is, however, something quintessentially modern about this kind of conceit. We are surrounded by folks who make total hashes of their personal or professional lives, but who try to convince us, often successfully, that they hold the keys to resolving everybody else’s conflicts, putting all us on the road to good health, bringing our families together, etc. More and more, for some strange reason, we have come to see the everyday mundane challenges we face in our lives as incredibly knotty, but are convinced we could personally make the lion lie down with the lamb if only the stupid people around us would let us.

THE OLD, OLD STORY

2007-02-11T09:47:00.000-05:00

From: Trees and crops reclaim desert in Niger (Lydia Polgreen, International Herald Tribune, February 10th, 2007)

In this dust-choked region, long seen as an increasingly barren wasteland decaying into desert, millions of trees are flourishing, thanks in part to poor farmers whose simple methods cost little or nothing at all.

Better conservation and improved rainfall have led to at least 3 million newly tree-covered hectares, or 7.4 million acres, in Niger, researchers have found. And this has been achieved largely without relying on the large- scale planting of trees or other expensive methods often advocated by African politicians and aid groups for halting desertification, the process by which soil loses its fertility.

Recent studies of vegetation patterns, based on detailed satellite images and on-the-ground inventories of trees, have found that Niger, a place of persistent hunger and deprivation, has recently added millions of new trees and is now far greener than it was 30 years ago.

These gains, moreover, have come at a time when the population of Niger has exploded, confounding the conventional wisdom that population growth leads to the loss of trees and accelerates land degradation, scientists studying Niger say. The vegetation is densest, researchers have found, in some of the most densely populated regions of the country.

Absent: Population control, foreign aid, state planning, NGO’s, mega-projects, high-tech.

Present: Community cohesion, self-reliance, private property.

OF COURSE, THE GERMANS THINK PIE-THROWING IS IRONIC

2007-02-10T12:23:00.000-05:00

From: What are you laughing at? (Simon Pegg, The Guardian, February 10th, 2007)

You could spend a lot of time exploring the differences between British and American comedy only to reach the conclusion that, ironically, they're pretty much the same. Back when director Edgar Wright and myself were writing our debut feature, Shaun Of The Dead, we were certainly banking on a comic universality in the story of a suburban waster battling the living dead. We had every confidence that the humour would translate. Indeed, we made only one subtle dialogue adjustment during the writing process, changing the word "pissed" to "drunk", so as to avoid any confusion between the conditions of being munted and mardy. The film went on to enjoy surprising success in the US, suggesting that surmounting the supposed gulf between our respective senses of humour requires nothing more than a light skip.

When it comes to humour, however, there is one cultural myth that just won't die. You hear it all the time from self-appointed social commentators sat astride high horses, dressed as knights who say, "Ni". They don't get it. They never had it. They don't know what it is and, ironically, they don't want it anyway. That's right: "Americans don't do irony." This isn't strictly true. Although it is true that we British do use irony a little more often than our special friends in the US. It's like the kettle to us: it's always on, whistling slyly in the corner of our daily interactions. To Americans, however, it's more like a nice teapot, something to be used when the occasion demands it.

Which lead to the obvious question: is it the ultimate irony that a Brit who goes on incessantly about how North Americans don’t get irony really doesn’t understand irony?

WE WILL NOW PASS THE COLLECTION PLATE

2007-02-10T10:39:00.000-05:00

From: The green fervour (Joseph Brean, National Post, February 10th, 2007)

In his new book Apollo’’s Arrow, ambitiously subtitled The Science of Prediction and the Future of Everything, Vancouver-based author and mathematician David Orrell set out to explain why the mathematical models scientists use to predict the weather, the climate and the economy are not getting any better, just more refined in their uncertainty.

What he discovered, in trying to sketch the first principles of prophecy, was the religious nature of modern environmentalism.

That’s ok, we believe strongly in freedom of religion, but we draw the line at compulsory tithing.

YOU SHOULD SEE THE SON ET LUMIERE WHEN THEY INTEND TO DIVIDE

2007-02-10T10:14:00.000-05:00

From: Scientists becoming mind-readers (Roger Highfield, The Telegraph, February 9th, 2007)

Scientists have edged closer to mind-reading by using brain scanners to measure changes in blood flow that signal a person's intent to do something.

Every day numerous actions are planned, such as returning a book to a friend, shopping or making an appointment.

But how and where the brain stores these intentions has been revealed thanks to a study that unveils the intentions in the brain.

The work is remarkable because it has never before been possible to deduce from brain activity how a person has decided to act in the future.

The feat is reported today in the journal Current Biology by Prof John-Dylan Haynes from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, working in co-operation with Prof Richard Passingham from University of Oxford, Prof Geraint Rees, Sam Gilbert, and Prof Chris Frith of University College London and Prof Katsayuki Sakai from Tokyo.

The scientists let subjects choose freely and covertly between two tasks, either to add or subtract two numbers. The subjects were then asked to hold in mind their intention for a few seconds until the relevant numbers were presented on a screen.

Using a brain scan method called functional magnetic resonance imaging, the researchers were able to recognise the subjects' intentions with 70 per cent accuracy based on their brain activity alone, even before the participants had seen the numbers and had started to perform the calculation.

OK, we’ll stick our necks out and indulge in a little blind, uninformed second-guessing here:

A) Given a choice between adding and subtracting two unknown numbers, isn’t it a fair bet that most folks–maybe as many as 70%–would choose to add? Might not most folks be just a tiny bit more stressed or pumped by the prospect of subtraction?

B) Note that by the third paragraph, intentions appear to have become animate objects independent of us that are “stored” somewhere. What happens if they are unfulfilled or we change our minds? Do they rot?

C) How is this mind-reading when the choice was ordained and it was a condition of the experiment that nobody change their minds?

In other words, does this experiment indicate anything more than that different mental processes may have different physical manifestations in the brain, and what exactly is so novel or surprising about that?

Before we leave you cleverer chaps to ponder all this and help us out, we simply have to note that this report earns our award for most creative trumping of ethical concerns by the promise of future medical benefits. In the face of sombre fears about how all this may herald a dark age marked by the total destruction of personal privacy and rampant Big Brother totalitarianism, we are asked to balance such mundane matters against this important upside:

The understanding could find use in mind-reading methods under development to enable tetraplegics to move prosthetic limbs and operate computers.

HONOUR TO THEM, ALL THE REST OF THEIR DAYS

2007-02-10T09:13:00.000-05:00

From: Military makeover (Andrew Duffy, The Ottawa Citizen, February 9th, 2007)

When the Canadian War Museum opens a new exhibit today that promises "a glimpse of war" in Afghanistan, the rebranding of the Canadian soldier as a creature of combat will take another giant leap forward.

The exhibit, designed to convey the human experience of Canadian soldiers and Afghan civilians, features wreckage from a Canadian military vehicle destroyed by a roadside bomb and Canadian Press photos of soldiers in combat.

It's one of the only times the museum has mounted an exhibit of an ongoing war.

"This exhibition," museum director Joe Geurts has said, "will offer a glimpse of a current conflict, one involving Canadians in the type of heavy combat we have not seen since the Korean War."

The groundbreaking exhibit also promises to accelerate the image makeover of the Canadian soldier from peacekeeper to combatant.

Historian Jack Granatstein, author of a new book, "Whose War Is It? How Canada Can Survive in the Post 9/11 World," said the rebranding is overdue.

During the past two decades, he said, Canadian troops have faced combat situations in Croatia, Kosovo and Somalia, but the "pernicious" idea of the soldier as peacekeeper has been difficult to displace.

"It seems to me it has taken Afghanistan, and what is clearly combat against an irregular force, to bring the combat soldiers back into the Canadian consciousness," Mr. Granatstein said in an interview.

"The peacekeeping mythology has been a terrible drag on us."

A gentleman was once defined as one who thinks his wife is the most beautiful woman in the world, but doesn’t talk about it. That seems to describe the near-unspoken pride more and more Canadians are taking in their long-patronized and marginalized Forces.

Despite marshaling herculean efforts in the world wars and doing its full share in Korea, Canada really has no tradition of a military ethos outside of historical garrison towns like Halifax. This is especially true of the urban well-to-do, for whom any connection to the military through friends or family is rare. For most of us, soldiers and sailors are high school grads from small towns one might occasionally come across in a bus station if one were the sort of person who frequented bus stations.

Beginning in the ‘60s, the military complement and budget were slashed repeatedly to ultimately laughable levels. The Forces became the politically impotent plaything of left-liberal tranzi impulses that even Conservative governments were prey to, and they were subjected not only to repeated financial squeezes, but also to wave after wave of spirit-destroying “rational” reorganizations, bureaucratic corruption, political correctness and open careerism in the officer ranks, all the while being forced to make do with near welfare-level pay and equipment older than they were. The warrior impulse was disdained as an un-Canadian anachronism and statues of peacekeepers (for some reason always looking afar through binoculars) started to pop up to overshadow memorials to the dead of past struggles. There was no political constituency to challenge all this. How the rank and file kept up any morale at all is a mystery, but they did.

In the panic following 9/11, the Forces were ordered not to wear their uniforms in public to avoid attracting terrorists. The response was the closest thing to a general mutiny in Canadian history and the order was rescinded within two days. In late 2001, the navy was sent off to Asia by a leftist Governor-General who told them they were going to fight for peace, which earned her silent stares and a lot of flak in the media. The Liberals famously passed on Iraq, but budgets started to climb and in 2005 a tough-talking new Commander took over and began using language nobody had heard for generations. Many of us held our breaths waiting for him to be sacrificed to political correctness by the many powerful defenders of four decades of leftist transnationalism, but not a word was said. Suddenly and for the first time in living memory, everybody sensed the troops were being prepared for inevitable death.

Since last year, 45 Canadians have been killed in Afghanistan, inconsequential by American standards, but the West's third highest sacrifice in the war on terror. Morale has never been higher and recruitment applications have soared. A couple of leftist parliamentarians tried to do Cindy Sheehans over early casualties and were publically put down by bereaved, but proud families. No one has tried that for some time. Recently, several NHL games have featured Armed Forces Appreciation Days, which would have been unthinkable and embarrassing a few years ago. Although fairly subdued affairs, the cameras pan huge crowds applauding reservedly but endlessly in open respect and even awe of the troops gathered in combat fatigues on the ice. Until a few years ago, recruitment ads for the Forces were feel-good films of young folks having a ball visiting exciting places and getting a free education in gender-balanced harmony. “There’s no life like it” was the title of the accompanying jingle. They are gone and instead middle Canada is now being sobered by this ad (Click "Fight Fear") between contestants on American Idol.

What this all means for the war is hard to say. Polls show the country is split and it isn’t easy to see how Afghanistan can keep on indefinitely when the U.S. is more and more openly looking for an exit from Iraq. Even in the face of spectacular successes in battle, there is still plenty of the fussy equivocation and self-righteousness we’re famous for. But even among many liberals and progressives, one senses a confused new-found admiration for the uniform that transcends politics and that one hopes will finally erase past humiliations and restore the well-earned stature of the brave men and women of the Canadian Forces.

BUT WE HAVE SHARPLY REDUCED OUR HOT AIR EMISSIONS

2007-02-09T09:46:00.000-05:00

From: Emissions report card puts Canada last (Martin Mittelstaedt, Globe and Mail, February 8th, 2007)

Canada ranks dead last among members of the G8 industrialized countries when it comes to keeping a pledge made last year to fight climate change by reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, according to a report prepared by researchers at the University of Toronto.

Canada was the only Group of Eight country deemed to have posted a complete lack of compliance with the greenhouse-gas reduction goal set at last summer's G8 summit in St. Petersburg.

Canada has "no plan" to cut its emissions in the short or long term, and could have rising output of the gases blamed for global warming under the Conservatives' Clean Air Act because the legislation doesn't cap releases, the report said.

Ottawa has announced that Canada will reduce greenhouse emissions by 45 per cent -- to 65 per cent -- by 2050, but the report noted that as of Dec. 31, the date at which it conducted the country comparisons, "Canada had not taken significant steps to curb GHG emissions, nor did it have a plan in place to move forward on meeting its Kyoto-mandated targets nor the ambitious 2050 targets."[...]

Canada's record was particularly weak against countries, such as Germany and the U.K., that have exceeded their greenhouse-gas emission reduction targets, he said.

Russia and Italy also had weak records, although their performance exceeded Canada's.

Russia has met some of its obligations under Kyoto, but hasn't taken new steps to mitigate its emissions. Italy isn't close to meeting its Kyoto reduction target.

Although the United States has backed out of Kyoto, the report said it is working hard to reduce its emissions, including funding of $3.9-billion (U.S.) for technologies used to fight climate change.

This really is embarassing. For years we Canadians have been in the forefront of the battle to combat climate change by blaming everything on the U.S. and especially George W. Bush. We now obviously need a Plan B and we think we’ve found just the man to craft it for us. That’s it, you rapacious Yankee traders! You have boasted about that prosperity of yours one too many times. Until we have the average disposable income, per capita SUV rates and air travel figures you do, we’re declaring ourselves to be an “emerging economy” and we’re not doing a thing 'cause Al says we don't have to.

(BTW, giving Al the benefit of the doubt for at least average intelligence, does this not indicate either he is an instinctively self-blaming American or doesn’t for a moment believe the threat is nearly as serious or imminent as he claims?)

JUST IN TIME FOR VALENTINE’S DAY

2007-02-09T07:25:00.000-05:00

From: Web site verifies disease-free sex partners (Katie Rook, National Post, February 8th, 2007)

In what may be the new frontier of online social networking, a Web site is being launched that purports to help online daters verify the sexual health of prospective partners.

Checktonight.com will issue a digital stamp of approval to site subscribers who have tested free of any of five sexually transmitted diseases, a level of disclosure that is seen by some as a predictable innovation in Internet use and by others as a move that is potentially troubling from the perspective of personal privacy, sexual behaviour and possibly the privacy of health records.

"We're talking about this because it's kind of like a new frontier -- it's saying look at how sexual health is coalescing with a Web service that allows people to verify their sexual test records," says Jesse Hirsh, a Toronto-based Internet analyst.

"Last year was You Tube and My Space, people started using the Internet the way it should be used.... Now people are using [the Internet] in a much more interactive way."

We suppose that’s one way of putting it.

AIN’T WE GOT FUN?

2007-02-08T14:24:00.000-05:00

From: Cool clouds turn light to matter (BBC, February 8th, 2007)

A fleeting pulse of light has been captured and then made to reappear in a different location by US physicists.

The quantum sleight of hand exploits the properties of super-cooled matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate.

The emerging pulse was slightly weaker than the high-speed beam that entered the experimental setup, but was identical in all other respects.

The work, published in the journal Nature, could one day lead to advances in computing and optical communication.

"Instead of light shining through optical fibres into boxes full of wires and semiconductor chips, intact data, messages, and images will be read directly from the light," said Professor Lene Vestergaard Hau of Harvard University and one of the authors of the paper.

The Harvard team rose to prominence in the late 1990s when they slowed light from its constant 299,792km/s (186,282mps) to a leisurely 61km/h (38mph).

They applied the brakes by shining light into a cloud of sodium atoms trapped in a vacuum and cooled to just above absolute zero (-273 Celsius), the theoretical state of zero heat.

We at Diversely We Sail would like to offer our heartfelt congratulations to the scientists involved in this exciting development and only wish we had the slightest notion of what they are talking about. But even ignoramus' like we know that this is really cool. We're a little worried about our headlights going 38mph while we're going 60, but these guys are sure a lot more fun than those old climate farts.

THE ONE TRUE FAITH

2007-02-08T14:01:00.000-05:00

Beware the Taleban of Tolerance (Carla Powell, The Spectator, February 10th, 2007)

How is it that when it comes to gay adoption and Catholic charities, ‘being Catholic’ is a conflict of interest but ‘being gay’ is not? A notable journalistic exception was Matthew Parris, usually a critic of Catholicism, who pointed out the sheer lack of proportionality from the opponents of the Church’s position and asked how much of a problem this would really have presented in the first place. How many gay couples would want to approach a Catholic adoption agency in any event?

So much for the way the debate was conducted, but what was it actually about? Not, primarily, homosexuality, nor fundamental human rights. At heart, this debate was about conscience.

After all, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, the Anglican Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Muslim Council have not been calling for a ban on gay adoptions. What they have said is, ‘You do what you want as a society. That’s part of the democratic process. But we are not able to do this for reasons of conscience. Since this is so, we ask for a space for people who cannot in conscience participate. Why do we need this space? Because we are part of this society, and we want to continue providing what everyone sees as a first-class service for society’s most deprived children — something we have done with distinction for over a century.’ That’s what the Cardinal and others have been arguing. And we have found, in the last few weeks, that this is something the anti-discrimination fundamentalists cannot contemplate. It has been amazing to observe the intolerance of those who have been so loudly crying for tolerance.

You may say that this doesn’t affect you. But it does. There are very serious issues here. The democratic process is being by-passed and legitimate views marginalised. Where will our society end up when compromise is not even discussed?

The question is simple: is any politician who is Christian, Muslim or Jewish — or indeed of any faith —to be vilified for believing their faith’s teaching? The answer from the fundamentalists is ‘Yes’. It’’s happened already with Ruth Kelly. And it’’s happened in Europe. Three years ago Rocco Butiglione —— renowned as one of the most thoughtful politicians in Italy —— was vetoed as Italian European commissioner by a militant alliance of gay activists and pro-abortion advocates because he held mainstream Christian views on family life. What if your Christian, Muslim or Jewish sons and daughters want to take part in the political life of their country or of Europe? Are they to be told effectively to hang their religion and conscience at the door or abandon any hope of advancement?

Let’s be more practical. What about Catholic doctors who will not refer women for abortions? What about the surgeons who will not perform them? At present there is a conscience clause, but many within the NHS wish to remove it. They would like medical students to agree in advance to ‘deliver the full range of services pro-vided by the NHS’. This means, of course, performing abortions and a range of other morally problematic procedures. Catholics and others who cannot in conscience perform them will be told to leave their religious views at the door, or give up their places at medical school.

They’ll be lucky to be even given the choice. A minor poet saw through this fiction of secular tolerance battling religious intolerance over forty years ago.

THE ALLIANCE THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME

2007-02-08T09:40:00.000-05:00

From: The English-speaking century (Keith Windshuttle, The New Criterion, February, 2007)

World hegemony, however, has many costs. Like the Romans, the English-speaking peoples would be envied and hated by others. They would sometimes find, Roberts argues, that the greatest danger to their continued imperium came not from their declared enemies without, but from vociferous critics within. One of the constants of their common culture’s freedom of expression has been its propensity to harbor a degree of internal censure that among many other peoples would probably prove fatal.

As early as 1901, British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury was complaining: “England is, I believe, the only country in which, during a great war, eminent men write and speak as if they belonged to the enemy.” He wrote this about the critics of his policy on the Boer War, an encounter which Roberts demonstrates has ever since been perversely and unfairly blamed entirely on Britain. Winston Churchill was later to remark in a similar vein: “I think I can save the British Empire from anything—except the British.”

The Anglosphere is a little bit like the British Constitution in that it is unwritten, irrational and by all logic unable to withstand one good riot. It is characterized as much by incessant bickering and suspicion as by any natural affinities its peoples can recognize. The Americans have a very long and popular history of anti-English policies and sentiments, the Aussies are adolescent in their chippy hang-ups about “Poms”, Canadians are eternally paranoid the Americans will suck out their precious bodily fluids and the British are too divided and confused about Europe these days to even focus on why they don’t like the rest of us.

Moreover, there is nothing like a public pledge of fidelity to the fellow members of the Anglosphere to get a politician in any of its members in big trouble fast. In Canada, everybody will cheer a call for improving relations with France, China or God-knows-where, but a government that tries that with the States will get hammered. Canadians or Americans who wax poetically at noon about historical ties with England will be pilloried as racist apologists for every Imperial sin on the evening news. The British are so sensitive to the charge that they are lackeys of the “cousins” that anti-Americanism comes in both left-wing and right-wing flavours.

Yet slowly, quietly, we drive the world’s economy and are the only peoples in the world to come together more or less dependably to stand up to worldwide threats like Nazism, communism and now Islamicism. Sometimes we do so enthusiastically, while in other cases we’re dragged in kicking and screaming (and whining) after waiting far too long or spending years headed in the wrong direction. Frequently we do so in the face of bitter, near-seditious opposition from our intellectual classes who ape all the intellectual pretensions of feckless, self-destructive Europe. Yet by some mysterious alchemy we just keep on truckin’ as one when we should have destroyed one another years ago. After all, we tried hard enough.

So the question is, if Roberts is right that the 20th century belonged to the English-speaking peoples, will the key to keeping it that way through the 21st lie in never touting the Anglosphere publically? Are we well-advised to be like the Masons and hand down truth and loyalty privately from parent to child while denying any particular affinity in public? Should we stay mute when our beautiful people keep talking like Europeans, knowing that although we can’t publically defend the irrational, we will always line up (whining)with the Americans when push comes to shove and others cower. Are we history’s first counterintuitive world order?

Allah hafiz

2007-02-06T19:40:00.000-05:00

My brothers sacrifice was for peace and understanding(Zeeshan Hashmion , The Times, February 6, 2007)

Just imagine the guts it took to write this.

THAT WAS FUN, BUT NOW BACK TO THE REAL WORLD

2007-02-06T09:03:00.000-05:00

From: Quebec families leaving the hyphen behind (Ingrid Peritz, The Globe and Mail, February 5th, 2007)

Maxim Vachon-Savary belongs to a generation whose very names are meant to make a statement. He's a hyphenated Quebecker, and he bears the family name of both his father and his mother.

"It was a statement about the status of women, and about equality," said Mr. Vachon-Savary, 25. "I know that for my mother, it was important to pass down her maternal side."

Yet when Mr. Vachon-Savary became a father a year ago, politics took a back seat to pragmatism. He and his wife, Veronique Chayer, were legally allowed to choose from eight different name combinations for their twins. It could be Chayer-Vachon, Savary-Chayer, Vachon-Savary, Chayer -- and the list went on.

In the end, the Quebec City couple settled on a single choice. Their girls' last name would be Savary, the same as Mr. Vachon-Savary's father.

As members of Quebec's hyphenated generation grow up and have children themselves, some are discovering that their parents' politics have turned into their conundrum. The most recent figures show only 12 per cent of Quebec parents are giving their children combined family names, while 82 per cent choose the name of the father only.

Which leaves only six percent choosing the mother’s name in an era where more than six percent of new parents don't even co-habit. It’s not hard to see why double names would fall out of favour on pragmatic grounds, but why would a generation raised under firm notions of gender equality be almost unanimous in reverting to paternal lineage?

LA BELLA PARTITA

2007-02-06T06:11:00.000-05:00

From: Italian football rocked by new troubles (Olga Craig and Nick Pisa, Sunday Telegraph, February,4th, 2007)

On the pitch, such is their panache and style that the Italians, current holders of the World Cup, have regularly found themselves lauded as the finest footballers on the planet. On the terraces, too, the fans are known for revelling in their style, their passion, their knowledge. While England had no option but to introduce all-seater stadiums and CCTV cameras to curb crowd violence, in Italy football was a sport supported by families.

But no longer. Yesterday the football terraces of Italy were empty, the turnstiles silent. To Italy's eternal shame it has become the first European country forced to suspend the sport indefinitely after a 38-year-old police officer was killed during serious rioting at the Sicilian derby between Catania and Palermo.

For more than two decades, success on the field at both international and club level has merely disguised the truth: that Italian football has been plagued by corruption, mostly involving match-rigging scandals, allegations of drug-taking and referee-nobbling. The escalating series of convulsions that have shaken the country's game to its core have, despite last year's World Cup success, all but shattered its sporting self-confidence.

In the early Eighties, AC Milan and Lazio were both relegated for match-fixing, and only last summer soccer authorities worldwide were shocked when the corrupt antics of Luciano Moggi, the general manager of Juventus, were revealed. Not only had he bribed referees but, when his club lost a match he believed he had rigged, he locked the referee and linesmen in a changing room to harangue them.

To add to the country's disgrace three more famous clubs - AC Milan, Lazio and Fiorentina - were discovered to have employed the same tactics, while Reggina was accused of "sporting fraud" in six matches. All five clubs were convicted, with Juventus stripped of their 2005 and 2006 Serie A titles, relegated to Serie B and docked 17 points.

Friday night's violence, however, has eclipsed even those shameful incidents. The announcement by Luca Pancalli, the commissioner of the Italian Football Federation, said it all. "I have demanded a stop to all football in Italy," he said, his face sombre. "Enough is enough. It's a situation I cannot speak of. To lose your life at 38 is incredible. This is not a sport. Unless dramatic measures are taken, the championship will not restart."

North American sports experience rare and short post-game riots and occasional bribery or game-fixing scandals, but even at the international level there is nothing resembling the off-pitch colour of soccer. Uncontrollable hooliganism, anti-semitism, defiant and open racism, grand scale corruption, political intrigue, murdering referees and players, and even the occasional war seem to attend the beautiful game on a depressingly regular basis. Whoever has heard of a country shutting down an entire sport? It’s natural and easy to assume it has nothing to do with the game and everything to do with homegrown culture, but the rot is so geographically pervasive and so historically enduring that at times one is forced to conclude either there is something intrinsically feral about those 1-0 snoozefests or North America is simply a more civilized place.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS WORKING FOR YOU, BUT JUST NOT VERY FAST

2007-02-05T18:41:00.000-05:00

From: Canada's Food Guide gets a facelift (Canadian Press, February 5th, 2007)

The federal government has released a new Canada Food Guide — the first update of the bible for good eating in almost 15 years.[...]

It now contains dietary advice tailored to specific groups— children, teens, women, men and the elderly.

And it doesn't just say which foods are good and which are bad, it tells Canadians how much food is enough and how much is too much.

It also addresses new research in the field of good eating, including warning against trans fats, and it contains recommendations for exercise.

The new guide was developed over four years of consultations with more than 7,000 dieticians, nutritionists, scientists, doctors and public health experts.

We at Diversely We Sail like to keep our lifestyle firmly in line with cutting-edged thinking from the health sciences, so we’ve been browsing through the very pretty, online edition of this opus, and are we ever learning a lot. Did you know it is good to eat lots of fruits, vegetables and grains, especially if you mix them up? That fish, meat and dairy are also good in modest amounts? Sugar and fats are not so good, but those wild and crazy dieticians say we can have small portions of them if we exercise regularly and aren’t overweight. Raw celery and carrots are much better snacking choices than a supersized order of fries or a half-dozen Twinkies. Water is very, very good (could you have guessed especially on hot days?) and decaffeinated teas and fruit juices aren’t too far behind. Caffeine is not good for kids, so there goes little Jimmy’s morning double expresso. Soft drinks and alcohol may be “low in nutritional value”. Cakes and ice cream pack a lot of calories and it really is not a terribly good idea to eat too much of anything.

That’s about it.

We wonder how many nutritionists it takes to change a lightbulb.

ON KILLING INCONVENIENT CHILDREN

2007-02-05T17:29:00.000-05:00

From: ‘It's a search and destroy mission' (Tenille Bonoguore, Globe and Mail, February 5th, 2007)

Blanket testing for Downs syndrome is a dangerous ‘search and destroy' mission that should be widely debated, says a leading ethicist.

Margaret Somerville, founding director of McGill University's Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law, says early testing will essentially eliminate Downs syndrome as women opt to abort affected fetuses in “humanity's quest for perfection.”

“It's a search and destroy mission,” Dr. Somerville said.

“I'm deeply disturbed by it. An official group of doctors, a group that's most closely related to the protection of young life, they're making a value judgment that these people are not worth having in society.”

Doctors say the test will arm women with information so they can adequately prepare to raise a Downs syndrome child.

But Dr. Somerville predicts many women will choose to terminate the pregnancy, as is the case in the United States where data indicates over 80 per cent of fetuses that are found to have Downs syndrome are aborted.

Ms. Somerville, a rare ethicist who doesn’t seem to believe ethics are all about finding after-the-fact justifications for whatever we want to do to make our lives easier or more fun, is reacting to this. The doctors are lying of course, although whether to themselves as well is unclear.

Here is a short piece by Fr. Richard John Neuhaus in the February, 2007 edition of First Things, which will be online in about two months.

The freak show used to be a big draw at state fairs. Not anymore. Ward Hall, who styles himself as King of the Midway, is now an old man whose “World of Wonders” is consigned by organizers to the back corner of the fairgrounds, next to the horse stables. His company includes Poobah, a three -foot-seven dwarf who has eaten one hundred skewers of fire a day, twelve hours a day, seven days a week for five decades. His voice is hoarse. There is also the sword-swallower, the four-legged lady, and a few other oddities. The freak show has come upon hard days. “Technology killed the art form too,” says Mr. Hall. For instance, they separate Siamese twins at birth. ‘Can’t they just leave well enough alone?” he asks. You might think that callous in the extreme, and you would be right. We pride ourselves on having become a more sensitive society in which people refuse to pay to gawk at freaks. The late Christopher Lasch had a darker view of the matter. We have become, he said, a society that has no room for freaks. There is prenatal screening for hundreds of potential abnormalities; multiple pregnancies in IVF procedures are “selectively aborted .” I regularly pass the United Cerebral Palsy School around the corner, on 23rd Street. Each day hundreds of school children and young people are bused in. They are slobbering and terribly contorted, with eyes rolling in all directions, and almost all of them happily smiling. The bus drivers and teachers seem to love them very much. And the thought keeps recurring; These children and those who care for them may be the last generation of their kind. In the brave new world that is upon us, such children will be killed before they can be a burden. Ward Hall, the King of the Midway, may be crude, but is it really a more humane society that has achieved the sensitivity that kills?

DOES ANYONE REMEMBER HOW TO SMELL THE FLOWERS?

2007-02-04T14:08:00.000-05:00

From: Schools want to ban my cellphone!?!(Caroline Alphonso, The Globe and Mail, February 3rd, 2007)

The news this week that Toronto's public school board is considering banning cellphones from classrooms and hallways has a ring of inevitability to it.

On the one hand, they are must-have accessories for teenagers, who use them to chat, text, take pictures and even listen to their favourite tunes. Parents rely on them to keep track of their teens as they become increasingly mobile.

On the other hand, cellphones are disruptive in class and can even be used to cheat on tests. Kids have experimented with ring tones that can't be heard by aging ears, and they have also been known to deliberately vex teachers and then record their angry reactions and post them on the Internet.

This was a clash that has long been coming. [...]

A cellphone ban would probably score the trustee some popularity points among teachers and principals, but not all parents and teens are fans of the idea.

"I think individual schools have policies about them and teachers have policies about them, and we really don't need to bring down an edict from on high," says Annie Kidder, a spokeswoman for parent group People for Education.

Toronto parent Mollie O'Neill doesn't believe that her 13-year-old daughter should have to store her cellphone in her locker, as her public school currently requires (she didn't want her daughter's school named for fear of repercussion).

"I want my daughter to be able to carry her cellphone on her person at all times, because I want to be able to reach her and I want her to be able to reach out," Ms. O'Neill says.

Perhaps the favourite theme of unimaginative commencement addresses is how the graduating class is going out into a world wracked by pain, conflict and problems of incredible knottiness which have completely flummoxed the speaker’s generation, but which he just knows that they, the graduating class, will solve by doing something splendid to make everything right. The key to this will be their selfless energy, higher moral sensibilities and clever use of myriad technological wonders to come. The climax is his brow-furrowed warning that they can “choose” to use these marvels for good or bad, and that those choices hold the key to whether they will live in peaceful, prosperous harmony or blow the whole show at once like his generation almost did. He expresses his complete confidence they will get everything right, although by this time he is often so gloomy one wonders if he isn’t more than a little relieved he won’t be around to find out.

It’s a heartening tale for the occasion, but as every social conservative knows, it’s rot. Technological progress is an imperative that imposes itself on us inexorably. While we can regulate to try and control some of the more alarming potentials, there is no time in modern history that we have successfully made a collective decision not to invent or produce something on ethical or lifestyle grounds.

The reason we don’t is that there is always a beneficent use that we convince ourselves trumps the downside and which we quickly convert into a necessity we can no longer even conceive of doing without. In many cases, such as stem-cell research, the potential is linked to curing frightening diseases. Who can hope to win a battle for the lives of future cell clumps against that of a dying child? For gadgets like cellphones, we suffer billions of dollars worth of distraction, unwanted unnecessary and unhealthy supervision, compulsive and frantic contact, and various levels of anxiety if we are out of touch for minutes, all because somebody has planted the notion in our heads that someday we may be marooned in a car stuck in a snowdrift. That kind of fear eventually becomes such a preoccupation that we couldn’t care less whether cellphones keep the drug trade humming and are a terrorist’s best friend.

If we are really desperate to defend our new toys to ourselves and can’t think of an obvious justification, we’ll make a new, completely incoherent one up, like the mother in this article who has convinced herself “reaching out” of a classroom is an important part of her child’s education. And if all else fails, we just throw up our arms and ask the naysayers trying to take the fun out of our lives whether they would also be in favour of sending children back to work in the mines.

So ok, cellphones are here and they aren’t going away. There is an arguable (but far from self-evident) case they have specific advantages in healthcare, business, government, etc. It is smart to have one in the glove compartment or purse for emergencies. But apart from that, is anyone prepared to defend the gawdawful contraption as other than a useless squandering of endless time and money that is driving us further down the road to collective neurotic madness?

NOT A GOOD TIME TO BE A KURD

2007-02-04T12:33:00.000-05:00

From: Old U.S.S.R. made Old Europe look new (Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, January 28th , 2007)

The American left has long deplored Bush's rhetorical reliance on such vulgar conceits as "good" and "evil." But it seems even "victory" is a problematic concept, and right now the momentum is all for defeat of one kind or another. America is talking itself into willing a defeat that has not (yet) occurred on the ground, and would be fatally damaging to this nation's credibility if it did. Last year Arthur M. Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the New York Times, gave a commencement address of almost parodic boomer narcissism, hailing his own generation for their anti-war idealism. Advocating defeat first time round, John Kerry estimated America might have to relocate a few thousand local allies. As it happens, millions died in Vietnam and Cambodia. And the least the self-absorbed poseurs like Sulzberger could do is occasionally remember that the world is about more than their moral vanity.

The open defeatists on the Democrat side and the nuanced defeatists among "moderate" Republicans seem to think that big countries can choose to lose small wars. After all, say the "realists," Iraq isn't any more important to Americans than Vietnam was. But a realpolitik cynic knows the tactical price of everything and the strategic value of nothing. This is something on an entirely different scale from the 1930s: Seventy years ago, Britain and Europe could not rouse themselves to focus on a looming war; today, we can't rouse ourselves even to focus on a war that's happening right now. Read 100 percent of the Democratic presidential candidates' platforms and a sizeable chunk of the Republicans': We're full of pseudo-energy for phantom crises and ersatz enemies, like "global warming.''

If indeed the United States is about to enter another period of inward-looking defeatism and doubt, this will of course be bad news for the world, but particularly for America’s supporters and allies. For if America-on-the-march can be a little short-fused about criticism from so-called friends, America battening down the hatches is often prepared to sell them out altogether in a desperate attempt to find short term accommodations with her enemies. Not only were the 1970's marked by a steep decline in America’s relative military might, they were also a decade where totalitarianism spread and no one was liberated except in isolated cases of residual colonialism like Rhodesia–and we all know how well that turned out. And it was a decade where the naive lurching of leaders like Carter from one shortsighted “outreach” after another caused much of the free world, and many of America’s natural supporters, to lose confidence in her as a predictable beacon of world liberty, stability and prosperity. Exactly how the left prefers it.

HEY CHICKY, WANT TO CHECK OUT MY HIP REPLACEMENT?

2007-02-04T11:39:00.000-05:00

From: `Sexy' sells, `senior' doesn't (Judy Gerstel, Toronto Star, February 3rd, 2003)

Aging but active boomers and their still lively libidos are changing how products are packaged and marketed.

Hearing aids are promoted as "sleek and sexy devices" in colours such as Champagne Beige, Samoa Blue, Racing Green, Cabernet Red, Sexy Silver and Negligee Black.

A new product called Betty Beauty for safely dying hair down there to match hair up top has gone back to the lab to boost its grey coverage.

And Ensure, the supplement drink used for years to deliver nutrition to the frail elderly is now described as a "cool and creamy shake" in au courant flavours including coffee latte –– a "delicious between-meal snack...to help you stay healthy, active and energetic."

The mature population is even changing the way products are paid for: Chicago-based Chase Bank issues a Kiss Platinum Visa credit card. Monthly statements include "inside gossip straight from the veteran shock rockers."

Aging boomers want convenience, luxury and platinum consumer status without relinquishing their claim on sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.

Here is an experiment you might try. Think back to your youth and try to remember your favourite grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers, neighbours or even parents. Think hard about what they gave you and what is was that made them such a memorable inspiration. Now try to imagine them fussing about pubic hair dye and forcing you to rap about the Rolling Stones or your hot dates with them and you may begin to appreciate why we may soon be the most disrespected generation in history, and deservedly so.

BORDERLINE CLIMATE CHANGE DISORDER

2007-02-04T11:17:00.000-05:00

From: Canadians will be hit harder (Peter Calamai, Toronto Star, February 3rd, 2007)

Climate change is going to hit Canada harder than most other parts of the world and Canadians have little choice but to adapt to the impacts.

That was the sombre message here yesterday from Canadian climate scientists in a briefing organized by the agency that pays for most of the non-government climate change research in the country.

"Our climate is changing and it will continue to change for decades. Canadians need to think about what that means to them," said Gordon McBean, a University of Western Ontario professor who heads the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences.

"The choices we make today can influence what we see by the end of the century, although not over the next two decades," added John Fyfe.

A climate modeller with the federal environment department, Fyfe said computer projections show that a half-degree Celsius rise in average temperature is locked in for the world until at least 2025 because of man-made greenhouse gases already in circulation.

"We really have very little control over this. We're more or less stuck with it," he said.

Renéé Laprise, who specializes in regional climate modelling at the University of Quebec in Montreal, said the locked-in temperature increase would be even higher in North America, possibly 1C in northern Canada.

"We need to be looking at adaptation to climate change," said Laprise, who pointed out melting permafrost will mean costly rebuilding in the North.

Granted every decent climate change skeptic should have moments where he/she worries about being a tad cavalier with the future of Bangladesh and Sub-Sahara Africa, but what is this nonsense? Canada? Quelques arpents de neige? The country that spends four to six months in a deep freeze that everyone who can afford to escapes by fleeing to Florida and Hawaii? There is probably no country in the world that would benefit more economically, medically, socially and psychologically from climate change. Agriculture would thrive (Mmm...peaches!), resources would be more accessible, the cost of living would decrease, we’d get outdoors more, etc. But all our gloomily-correct beautiful people can think of is the cost of rebuilding a few thousand rickety pre-fabs in the Arctic. The horror! Are these people trying to play some game of moral one-upmanship with starving Africans threatened with creeping deserts? Shame.

Note also how this article repeats a theme one sees a lot of late. The time for action is NOW, but no results will be seen for at least a generation, if then. Which of course means no one can credibly challenge the wisdom of the climate change sages or call them to account until most of them have retired or died. Nice work if you can get it.

CALVINIST SCIENCE

2007-02-03T07:59:00.000-05:00

From: Paris report calls climate change 'unequivocal' (CBC, February 1st, 2007)

International scientists and officials hailed a UN report Friday that said human activity was "very likely" the cause of global warming and that higher temperatures and rising sea levels would continue for centuries, regardless of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

"It is critical that we look at this report … as a moment where the focus of attention will shift from whether climate change is linked to human activity, whether the science is sufficient, to what on earth are we going to do about it," said Achim Steiner, the executive director of the UN Environment Program.

"The public should not sit back and say 'There's nothing we can do,'" Steiner said. "Anyone who would continue to risk inaction on the basis of the evidence presented here will one day in the history books be considered irresponsible."

Can anybody think of any other historical occasion where so many intelligent people demanded dramatic action to resolve a problem in the certainty nothing could be done about it?

Surfing various news items and discussions on the IPCC report, one is left with the impression that saving the planet isn’t nearly as important as closing off debate. I’ve been struck by the number of discussion threads where individuals will make (to my unscientific eyes) ostensibly well-informed critical technical arguments and be answered by splenetic attacks to the effect that ‘the time for argument” is over and we must act NOW, even though no one has the slightest clue what to do and the consensus seems to be nothing would work. Scientists seems to have written science right out of this debate and have discovered the discreet charm of irrational rhetoric, such as this gem from David Suzuki, Canada’s favourite fruit loop green scientist and television environmentalist:

"Scientists have been conservative and cautious, now I think they've thrown that caution out," he said.

"I would say that we are in a state of crisis, that it's the equivalent of a hundred Pearl Harbors going off at once in the environment."

It appears we may be in for a few years of politics driven by understated mass panic and collective self-contempt. It will be strong enough to hijack the public agenda and maybe even topple governments such as Canada’s. How and when sanity will return to this debate is hard to see, but in the meantime, here is a series of ten articles on much-accomplished and formerly respected scientists who haven’t forgotten what scientific inquiry is supposed to be about and the key role actual evidence is supposed to play. You may wish to print them off now so we can pass them around as samizdata in the coming years. When the scientific establishment and the left combine to declare there is no longer any doubt about something, it is wise to have someone guarding the door before speaking too freely.

THE TRIUMPH OF MRS. KRAVITZ

2007-02-03T06:20:00.000-05:00

From: Let's talk about sex, for good heath (Maria Cheng, The Globe and Mail, February 1st, 2007)

Doctors shouldn't shy away from asking patients about their sex lives, a new research paper advises.

Researchers say problems in the bedroom can translate into serious medical conditions, and ignoring sexual dysfunction may mean missing early indicators for heart failure, depression or other ailments, according to a paper published in Friday's issue of The Lancet.

“Sex is a legitimate part of medicine, but it has largely been kept separate from the rest of medicine,” said Dr. Rosemary Basson, the paper's lead author. Dr. Basson is based at the British Columbia Centre for Sexual Medicine in Vancouver.[...]

Doctors are being increasingly advised to take the initiative to ask patients about their sex lives, including basic questions about who they have sex with, how frequently and if they engage in potentially risky behaviour.

“People aren't going to volunteer that kind of information unless they're specifically asked,” said Dr. Jonathan Zenilman, chief of the infectious diseases division at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Centre, who was not involved with the research.

What patients often fail to realize, physicians say, is that sexual dysfunctions are often a symptom of something more serious.

From the Archives: Let’s Talk about Sex, to Save Souls (L’Osservatore Romano, February 1st, 1880)

Priests shouldn’t shy away from asking their flocks about their sex lives, says Pope Pius IX. (“Pio Nino”)

Theologians say problems in the bedroom, and especially problems in the wrong bedroom, can translate into serious spiritual disorders, and that ignoring biblical injunctions can lead to extra time in purgatory--if you’re lucky, according to a papal encyclical published this week.

“Sex is a legitimate concern of the Church, but it has been largely ignored because of excessive respect for personal privacy and individual choice," said Cardinal Giovanni Rossini in announcing a reversal of the Rome's longstanding “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Cardinal Rossini is director of The Vatican Office of Morals, Health and Sacrilege.

Priests are being increasingly advised to take the initiative in asking their parishioners about their sexual activities, including basic questions about who they have sex with, where, when, how, what they were wearing, whether the candles were lit and most importantly, whether they enjoyed it.

“People aren’t going to volunteer that kind of information unless they are threatened with eternal damnation”, said Fr. Petro, head of an austere self-flagellating Trappist retreat in the mountains near Assisi. Fr. Petro wasn’t involved in the original research, but was consulted on sanctions.

What people often fail to realize, theologians say, is that excessive sexual activity is often a symptom of a soul in danger. "That’s why the boobies need us to tell them exactly what their problems are and what and what not to do."

A GOOD SCIENTIST ALWAYS ALLOWS FOR A MARGIN OF ERROR

2007-02-02T17:09:00.000-05:00

From: 'Terror birds' never met humans (BBC, January 31st, 2007)

Early humans could never have come into contact with the giant carnivorous "terror bird" Titanis walleri, research suggests.

It had been thought the fearsome beasts became extinct as little as 10,000 years ago - a time when humans shared their North American habitat.

But a US team has now revised this date to about two million years earlier.

The truly depressing thing is that they could have said three summers ago and we all would have just nodded our heads in wonder.

AND SPEAKING OF ADDICITONS...

2007-01-31T06:13:00.000-05:00

Apologies, but as there are about a hundred hours of real work to be completed in the next seventy-two, posting here will be light for a few days. Very, very light. Indeed, barely noticeable. Back this weekend.

HE WAS ONLY THINKING OF THE CHILDREN

2007-01-28T09:07:00.000-05:00

From: 'God' mistakenly bleeped out of in-flight showings of 'The Queen' (CBC, January 25th, 2007)

So much for God and country, at least during some in-flight showings of the Oscar-nominated movie "The Queen."

All mentions of God are bleeped out of a version of the film distributed to Delta and some other airlines. Jeff Klein, president of Jaguar Distribution, the Studio City, Calif., company that supplied the movie to the airlines earlier this month, said it was a mistake, committed by an overzealous and inexperienced employee who had been told to edit out all profanities and blasphemies.

"A reference to God is not taboo in any culture that I know of," Klein said.

Oh, we can think of one where it is.

(Catch this classic line: “Robert Acton, a Whitby resident and contractor, asked councillors to consider the interests of their constituents and not the "moral majority" lobbying to uphold the prayer tradition.”)

SACKCLOTH AND ASHES FUTURES ARE SOARING

2007-01-28T08:40:00.000-05:00

From: Welcome to the new climate (Martin Mittelstaedt, The Globe and Mail, January 27th, 2007)

Here in Canada, where only a year ago the environment was a blip on the radar screens of pollsters, the issue has suddenly emerged as the most important one facing the country, according to polling conducted for The Globe and Mail and CTV.

As first reported Friday, the environment was cited as the top issue by 26 per cent of respondents in polling conducted in mid-January, supplanting the perennial favourite, health care, now the No. 2 issue, at 18 per cent. The shift amounts to the equivalent of a public-opinion earthquake — last May the environment was on the minds of a mere 3 per cent of Canadians.

What is more, Canadians feel so passionately about the topic that they say they don't want half-measures. The Globe's polling has found support for an array of tough actions against global warming: 56 per cent even say they would support rationing the amount of fossil fuels an individual can use each year...

But the effect is also being felt on the street. When Canadians look out the window these days, they say they're seeing global warming. An overwhelming 78 per cent of respondents to the Globe poll, nearly four out of five people, say they've personally noticed climate change. The same number fear it is going to harm future generations. And nearly as many — 73 per cent — say the warming is due to human activity and isn't a natural phenomenon.

More than half of respondents told the pollsters that Canadians would support banning electrical-generation plants that use coal, placing carbon taxes on industries, rationing or setting limits on the amount of fossil fuels consumers can use in any one year, and forcing consumers to switch to fuels that produce lower carbon emissions. Nearly half want to slow down or reduce the development of tar sands in Alberta. About one in three wants significantly higher prices for gasoline and home-heating fuel.

The views are backed by personal commitments. More than nine out of every 10 people say they're willing to make sacrifices, with 55 per cent saying they'd accept major ones and 38 per cent minor ones in the fight against global warming. Only 5 per cent say they won't do anything.

Clear majorities also say they would be willing to pay more for fuel-efficient cars, reduce the amount they fly, cut the amount they drive in half, and have the economy grow at “a significantly slower rate” to help clean up the environment.

Then there are the cases where, having thrown away the guidance of tradition, we figure we might as well toss out common sense too.

More: Who's still cool on global warming? (Toronto Star, January 28th, 2007)

MOM, WE WANTED THE ONE WITH THE LOW-FAT FAT

2007-01-28T08:12:00.000-05:00

From: Unhappy Meals (Michael Pollen, International Herald Tribune, January 28th, 2007)

The story of how the most basic questions about what to eat ever got so complicated reveals a great deal about the institutional imperatives of the food industry, nutritional science and — ahem — journalism, three parties that stand to gain much from widespread confusion surrounding what is, after all, the most elemental question an omnivore confronts. Humans deciding what to eat without expert help — something they have been doing with notable success since coming down out of the trees — is seriously unprofitable if you're a food company, distinctly risky if you're a nutritionist and just plain boring if you're a newspaper editor or journalist. (Or, for that matter, an eater. Who wants to hear, yet again, "Eat more fruits and vegetables"?) And so, like a large gray fog, a great Conspiracy of Confusion has gathered around the simplest questions of nutrition — much to the advantage of everybody involved. Except perhaps the ostensible beneficiary of all this nutritional expertise and advice: us, and our health and happiness as eaters.

This is a very long, but very interesting essay on how neurotically confused we can become about life’s simplest and most straightforward matters when we throw out the wisdom and authority of tradition and replace it with fealty to the scientific rationalism of the expert.

WHY THE LEFT REALLY HATES AMERICA

2007-01-27T07:33:00.000-05:00

From: US answer to global warming: smoke and giant space mirrors(David Adam, The Guardian, January 27th, 2007)

The US government wants the world's scientists to develop technology to block sunlight as a last-ditch way to halt global warming, the Guardian has learned. It says research into techniques such as giant mirrors in space or reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere would be "important insurance" against rising emissions, and has lobbied for such a strategy to be recommended by a major UN report on climate change, the first part of which will be published on Friday...

The US response, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, says the idea of interfering with sunlight should be included in the summary for policymakers, the prominent chapter at the front of each IPCC report. It says: "Modifying solar radiance may be an important strategy if mitigation of emissions fails. Doing the R&D to estimate the consequences of applying such a strategy is important insurance that should be taken out. This is a very important possibility that should be considered."

Scientists have previously estimated that reflecting less than 1% of sunlight back into space could compensate for the warming generated by all greenhouse gases emitted since the industrial revolution. Possible techniques include putting a giant screen into orbit, thousands of tiny, shiny balloons, or microscopic sulphate droplets pumped into the high atmosphere to mimic the cooling effects of a volcanic eruption. The IPCC draft said such ideas were "speculative, uncosted and with potential unknown side-effects".

This is just tooo...delicious. Imagine you are a greying environmentalist who has spent decades musing about biological Armageddon with the sandals and fruit juice crowd. From youthful rebel you have matured into learned sage and now are perhaps a mightily-respected academic or consultant. You have read hundreds of turgid tomes on the looming destruction unrestrained growth will wreck, and written a few yourself. You have spent thousands of hours in seminars and conferences with the like-minded, debating how you, the intellectually anointed, can save Mother Earth by convincing everybody to “fundamentally change their way of thinking”. Your initial pragmatic concern over specific ecological threats has long ago morphed into a comprehensive secular version of The Fall that leads you to lash out indiscriminately against cows, cars, perfumes, plastics, airplanes, prepared food, smokestacks and just about everything else people want in order to squeeze a little enjoyment and comfort out of life. But you know comfort and enjoyment must go, along with freedom, because otherwise we’ll all soon fry/freeze. You have mastered using a veneer of brow-furrowed concern to hide your delight in each item of worrisome news and your growing excitement about the day the dark forces of American capitalism will be overthrown and you will be called by the powers that be to help them outlaw, plan, regulate, restrict and undo us all back to the 18th century.

You’re almost there. The battle against the Bush-led forces of reaction and selfish madness has been tough in recent years, but the tide has turned and the smell of victory is in the air. The IPCC and the UN (the only sane voices on climate, as on everything else) are about to release the definitive work on climate change. (How could so many volumes be wrong?) It will take all doubt and all questions off the table. Even big business is wavering. The enemy is squirming and circling his wagons, while you sharpen your arrows for the final kill that will vindicate your entire life’s work and earn you a well-deserved prominent place in the progressive Pantheon.

And then the U.S. Government throws some brilliant nerdy crew-cut from Texas into the spotlight to tell everybody there is no problem--all we have to do is put lots of his special balloons and droplets into space and the problem is solved. “Can do!”

Aaarrgghhh!

THE VICE THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME

2007-01-27T07:31:00.000-05:00

A dark disease or harmless fun? (Lesley Garner, The Telegraph, January 26th, 2007)

Nobody denies the destructive power of alcohol and gambling. Professionals make good livings treating those ravaged by them and fiscally addicted governments spend a smidgeon of their huge profits on flashy TV ads warning of what they might do to us. But we still seem to hold firmly to the quaint belief that pornography is a harmless pastime with no consequences to ourselves or families. The link above is to a pretty good collection of accounts from men, women and professionals of their experiences with the “innocent” indulgence.

NOT WITH A BANG BUT AN ECO-WHIMPER

2007-01-26T16:02:00.000-05:00

From: The green goodbye Nancy J. White, Toronto Star, January 26th, 2007)

Imagine a gently sloping hill covered with fallen leaves, green ferns and bright wildflowers, the branches of sturdy oaks and maples arching overhead. Birds chirp in the trees. Squirrels and chipmunks scamper on the ground.

Now imagine yourself buried underneath.

No proud shiny headstone engraved "Beloved." No manicured, fertilized grass. Just your body decomposing inside your biodegradable shroud, your tissues feeding the tree roots and who knows what else.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. You can now be politically correct when you're six feet under.

It's known as a green or natural burial, a way of combining an eco-friendly interment with land conservation. Make your burial a statement of values by helping create a forest, says Mike Salisbury, one of the founders of the Natural Burial Coop, a group in southern Ontario. "If you're buried where roots grow through your bones, you're doing what you're supposed to do –– give back in the end."...

"What could be more beautiful than to become a part of nature, that a molecule from your body ends up in a berry that a bird eats," says Woodsen. "It's completing the circle of life."

Circle of life? It sounds to us more like reincarnation for the downwardly mobile. Granted this is a sensitive issue and leeway must be made for personal eccentricities, not to mention outright weirdness, but what is simply unbearable is the thought of spending a seniority trapped at dinners with intense Boomers who insist on sharing every detail of their heroic decision to disappear without a trace for the sake of the biosphere, all the while daring you through pointed stares to admit you are selfish enough to be partial to a modest little memorial in hope of a few visits from the family. I imagine there would be about as much profit in arguing with them as there would be in trying to make them see another side of George W. Bush, but it would be fun to just smile back in feigned respect while turning up that special CD you’ve been saving for the occasion:

And if you come, when all the flowers are dying
And I am dead, as dead I well may be
You'll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an "Ave" there for me.

And I shall hear, tho' soft you tread above me
And all my dreams will warm and sweeter be
If you'll not fail to tell me that you love me
I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.