FROM THE "WE'RE ALL GOING INSANE" FILES

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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...

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.