RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/375539/print

‘If all you have is a hammer,” the old saying goes, “everything looks like a nail.” Left unsaid is the fact that the real problem isn’t the possession of a hammer, but the certitude that all you need is the hammer. In other words, it’s a failure of the imagination — which is a kind of arrogance — that’s really to blame. “I’ve got my hammer, and that’s all I need. Besides, have you ever seen a problem that didn’t look like a nail?”

This is a version of what academics call “confirmation bias” — the tendency to accept only the facts that buttress your closely held views. It’s a hot topic these days. Ezra Klein, a young liberal writer, has launched a news website, Vox.com, that purports to be the vanguard of something called “explanatory journalism” (which is something of a redundancy, like culinary cooking or belligerent war). In his inaugural essay, Klein argues that conservatives and liberals alike are prone to confirmation bias, which he is here to fix.

This is a very old idea. Legendary journalist and one-time progressive intellectual Walter Lippmann argued the same sort of thing nearly a century ago. Like many progressives, Lippmann was an often deeply ideological advocate of purging competing ideologies from public life. We needed “disinterested” servants who were free of the partisan or ideological bias.

The problem, as we discovered, was that disinterested public servants were deeply interested in their jobs and expanding the power of the state. The government was their hammer and we the people were the nails.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/can-valls-deliver/?print=1

François Hollande, the French socialist president, nominated a new prime minister on March 31 — the day after his party lost 155 cities and scores of lesser municipalities in the local elections. Constitutional issues were not at stake: local elections are local and do not interfere, theoretically, with national politics. However, the debacle confirmed what polls had repeatedly foretold for months: both the president and his administration were sinking to an unprecedented popularity low, down to 25% or less in overall approval according to the latest surveys [1].

In 2012, the motto for Hollande’s successful presidential campaign had been “Time for change!” (Le changement, c’est maintenant”). Ironically, he must now undergo a complete change of course in order to survive until the 2017 election.

It was certainly the right move to pick Manuel Valls, hitherto the Interior minister, as the new premier. Jean-Marc Ayrault, the outgoing prime minister, was said to be “a poor, bland, copy and paste of Hollande.”

Valls, in terms of image and profile, is everything Hollande is not. He has a square, skinny, Napoleonic, face with piercing eyes, which is the opposite of Hollande’s roundish and bespectacled face. While Hollande was born in Northern France in a conservative upper middle class family, Valls is the son of a Spanish painter who settled in France in the late 1940s, and he was not naturalized until the age of 20. Hollande, a graduate of the elite ENA (National School for Administration), is a high-ranking member of France’s statist elite. Valls just attended college, and then served for years as a socialist party underling and petty official.

Hollande has always had rather “complicated” relationships with women, as they say on Facebook (last January, he dropped almost overnight Valerie Trierweiller, his semi-official companion for seven years, presumably for Julie Gayet, a much younger mistress). Valls looks more like a classic male: half Iberian macho, half Latin lover. Hollande has always been eager to promote compromise and consensus among socialists and leftwing allies, while Valls sticks proudly to his own views. Last but not least, Valls has been very popular as Interior minister over the past two years — not just the most popular socialist minister, but the most popular French political leader as well, whereas Hollande’s popularity has steadily declined from his first day in office.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/nazi-gun-control/?print=1

Over the last twenty years, Stephen P. Halbrook’s scholarly work on gun control has become more polished, nuanced, and methodical. His latest book, Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming the Jews and “Enemies of the State,” [1] is an astonishing piece of scholarship: complete, careful, and thoughtful.

For a very long time, Americans opposed to gun control have used the example of Nazi Germany’s gun control laws as a warning of what might happen here. Regrettably, not everyone has been careful enough. There is a quote purportedly from Hitler about gun control that starts out “1935 will go down in history” that used to float around the Internet; it does not appear so often anymore because a number of people, including me, demonstrated its falsity.

Part of what allowed bogus quotes like this to survive was that few historians had bothered to research the real history of the Nazis and gun control. Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership did a nice job of obtaining and translating the 1928 and 1931 Weimar Republic gun control laws and the 1938 Nazi gun control law [2] some years ago. But as useful as those translations are, they simply do not compare to what Halbrook has done with his new book.

Halbrook traces the development of German gun control law from the collapse of the Kaiser’s government in 1918 through the post-war chaos, the Weimar Republic’s efforts to prevent the violence of the Nazis and the Communists in the 1920s and early 1930s, and then the ways in which the Nazis used those laws to disarm anyone who they regarded as “enemies of the state” (which of course included all Jews).

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

I never dived to the bottom of the ocean, nor have I ever ascended Everest. I never ran a marathon, nor did I (or will I) make a billion bucks. I never sang at the Met, nor did I ever ski the Matterhorn. But together, Caroline and I made it through fifty years of marriage – a feat more daunting than those listed, and certainly one more cherished.

Neither of our parents made it to fifty years of marriage. Death intervened. Of our four sets of grandparents, only one made it to fifty years, my paternal grandparents. Ironically, they were the oldest of that batch to marry, both being in their 30s, something unusual when they were married in 1907. There was a small family party for them in 1957 in Wellesley, which was good fun. But they seemed pretty old to me at the time. Consequently, I do my best to act young and be vigorous as possible when around my own grandchildren!

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was standing at the altar in the chapel of the Church of the Heavenly Rest on New York’s Fifth Avenue. My brother Frank was at my side, as were two cousins and Caroline’s brother. My sister Betsy and the wife of Caroline’s cousin were her attendants. The rector, Floyd Thomas stood behind us. I was 23 and nervous. And then Caroline Elliott appeared coming down the aisle – a vision of beauty – on her reluctant father’s arm. And why wouldn’t he be reluctant? He was 71 years old, a Princeton and Harvard Law School graduate. I was a boy from New Hampshire with a year to go in college – the University of New Hampshire – from which I had dropped out for a couple of years to work and to go into the army. I was not what one would have called a promising prospect. On the other hand, I have been blest with an innate sense of optimism. I am one who prefers “what might be” to “what could have been.”

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2014/04/climate-papers-without-peer/
Want your, er, highly innovative research to get lots of attention, the sort that keeps those grants coming? You could do worse than start with some kind words from a peer-reviewer whose work is glowingly cited in your own paper. After that, apply for the next batch of grants.

Peer review is claimed to be the gold standard for scientific papers. Yet in the establishment climate science world, “peer review” operates differently. Professor Stephan Lewandowsky’s now-retracted paper Recursive Fury, about conspiracy-mindedness of “deniers”, raises a few issues about peer reviewing.

The background is that in 2012 Lewandowsky, Winthrop professor of psychology at the University of Western Australia, wrote a paper on climate “denialism” with the provocative title “NASA Faked the Moon Landing-Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science”. This caused an outcry on climate sceptic blogs, where it was alleged, among other things, that the survey was based on only 10 anonymous internet responses. Lewandowsky, now at Bristol University, surveyed and analysed the outcry and created last year a new paper, “Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation”.

I won’t go into this paper’s merits, except to note that its host journal, Frontiers, has retracted the paper, saying,

As a result of its investigation, which was carried out in respect of academic, ethical and legal factors, Frontiers came to the conclusion that it could not continue to carry the paper, which does not sufficiently protect the rights of the studied subjects. Specifically, the article categorizes the behaviour of identifiable individuals within the context of psychopathological characteristics.[1] [2]

Lewandowsky is undeniably a heavy hitter in his psychology patch. He’s been publishing scores of papers for nearly 30 years (20 in the past three years alone) since gaining his Ph.D. He has taught at UWA for nearly 20 years and was awarded the UK Royal Society’s Wolfson Research Merit Award last year.

So who peer reviewed his Recursive Fury paper? It was an ambitious paper, and when published,it got 30,000 online views and more than 9000 downloads, a record for the journal. The editors would hardly have selected as a peer reviewer a mere post-graduate Sydney student in journalism, would they?

Step forward Elaine McKewon, student at the sub-august Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at the University of Technology, Sydney, one of the three reviewers. (Check the output of its star researcher Wendy Bacon here).[3]

McKewon’s academic lustre shines with a BA (Hons) in Geography, UWA, and a Grad Dip in Journalism at UTS.

Her studies for a PhD involve, a la Wendy Bacon, “examining coverage of climate science in Australian newspapers during 1996-2010.” The primary aim, she says, “is to explain how the scientific consensus on climate change was reconstructed as a ‘scientific debate’ in the Australian news media.” In other words, how and why have evil sceptics been casting doubt on the certain, absolutely settled case for catastrophic human-caused global warming that will occur in the late 21st century. Or in her own words, “I am developing an interdisciplinary model of the social production of scientific ignorance — the process whereby a coalition of agents from different social fields constructs a false scientific controversy at the public level in order to undermine authoritative scientific knowledge.”[4]

Here also speaks McKewon, terrifying the horses at a journalism education conference in Perth:

“The latest report of the (IPCC) in 2007 raises the prospect of unthinkable scenarios over the coming century: millions of people without adequate water supply, devastating droughts and bushfires, mass starvation, catastrophic floods, more frequent extreme weather events, rising sea levels, millions of people displaced in an environmental refugee crisis and one-third of the world’s species committed to extinction…”[5]

I’m not surprised that the Australian Psychological Society (which adores Lewandowsky’s papers) has put out a special bulletin on how to educate kiddies about climate change without traumatizing them permanently.[6]

Lewandowsky is a fan of McKewon’s work. In a 40-minute video he did last month at Bristol University, he quotes (at 28:04) from his Recursive Fury conclusion about “a possible role of conspiracist ideation in the rejection of science”. He adds that this “is a finding that aligns well with previous research”. His graphic then pops up alongside, reading “Other research aligns with our basic thinking, e.g. McKewon 2012.”[7]

McKewon published two studies in 2012. Lewandowsky is probably referring to both of them: “The use of neoliberal think tank [i.e. Institute of Public Affairs] fantasy themes to delegitimise scientific knowledge of climate change in Australian newspapers” and “Conspiracy theories vs climate science in regional newspaper coverage of Ian Plimer’s book, Heaven and Earth”.

In the Recursive Fury paper, Lewandowsky cites McKewon’s two papers no less than five times.[8] I imagine McKewon would have noticed the citations she was getting, but not let that affect her objectivity as peer reviewer. As it happened, she seems to have missed, as reviewer, the ethics issues identified by Frontiers’ journal management.

McKewon’s own account is: “Satisfied that the paper was a solid work of scholarship that could advance our understanding of science denial and improve the effectiveness of science communication, I recommended publication. Two other independent reviewers agreed.”[9]

_______________________________

UPDATE: The Recursive Fury paper was edited by Viren Swami, University of Westminster. Strangely, he is also one of the two peer reviewers of the paper, along with McKewon. The Sydney Morning Herald reported on April 2, that McKewon was one of “three independent reviewers”.
Dr Swami’s Ph.D was on body-size ideals across cultures. His papers include :
>Female physical attractiveness in Britain and Malaysia: A cross-cultural study
>Female physical attractiveness in Britain and Japan: A cross‐cultural study
>The missing arms of Vénus de Milo: reflections on the science of attractiveness
>A critical test of the waist-to-hip ratio hypothesis of women’s physical attractiveness in Britain and Greece
>Unattractive, promiscuous and heavy drinkers: Perceptions of women with tattoos.

Anti-Zionism is an annihilationist ideology. They don’t want an entire people, the people of Israel, to live

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4872/anti_zionists_want_the_israeli_people_to_die

Contrary to the old wisdom about history — that it repeats itself — more often it moves in patterns. And where history goes, human progress, or regress, cannot be far behind.

Look at the pattern followed by human rights. From the dawn of recorded history to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and beyond, more rights have been recognized for more people in more conditions; so that today every living human is covered, notionally…Or nearly every human. In its opaque wisdom History ordained for one collective a different lot. Progressive rights were not for the Jews. Briefly consider how the powers of different epochs treated that people.

Effectively the Greeks and Romans decreed, “You have no right to live among us as Jews.”

After them came the Church: “You have no right to live among us.” And finally Hitler, and the Nazi decree: “You have no right to live.”

Today who decrees what for the people of Israel? Brace for it. Anti-Zionism, the axis of two religions and a secular movement, decrees no more rights than Hitler did. Effectively anti-Zionists tell the people of Israel, ‘You have no right to live.’

We may cast a disdainful look at Al Qaeda or Hezbollah, or even the Mullahs of Iran. Forget those anti-Zionists. The fiery placards in Durban or Gaza City might be worth a chuckle: ‘Kill the Zionists’; or ‘If only Hitler had finished the job’.

Forget the hotheads. Think BBC; think the Guardian; think CNN and the UN General Assembly; think the Human Rights Council and Europe’s Parliament; think Amnesty and Oxfam; think of the boycott movement; and yes – think of some homegrown Israeli academics and NGO schemes.

Those are the anti-Zionists to bear in mind. Attend carefully and we’d catch their verdict on the people of Israel, ‘No right to live.’

http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/04/voter_fraud_the_lefts_tool_for_social_justice.html

Why did Democrats applaud the loathsome community organizer Melowese Richardson, a freshly released, unrepentant voter fraud felon, at a recent “voting rights” rally in Ohio?

Because, like Richardson, they believe they are entitled to vote more than once against a system they see as unjust. Some serial voters do what they do in order to exact revenge against a society they feel did them or their ancestors wrong. Richardson is far from alone. Double-voting is distressingly common.

Many leftists have contempt for the electoral process because they don’t believe in the electoral system as it is constituted in capitalist America. To them, elections are already a fraud – an instrument of the rich, or as Saul Alinsky prefers to call them, the Haves. If the electoral system doesn’t serve “the people,” but is only an instrument of the Haves, then election fraud is justified as the path to a future that will serve the Have-Nots, as David Horowitz has explained.

This belief helps Democrats and the rest of the left rationalize their habitual efforts to suppress and cancel out lawfully cast votes. It helps to explain the strenuous efforts of leftists like former Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Ill.), now federal prisoner number 32451-016, to assure the public that voter registration fraud is no big deal and that fraudulent registrations almost never turn into fraudulent votes.

This is why liberal fascists inside and outside government routinely excuse electoral fraud – in all its manifestations – arguing in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary that such fraud is merely a Republican invention created to keep minorities and the poor down.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/04/mixed_socialistcapitalist_systems_dont_work_either.html

One does not have to point to the fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or to the failure of Labor Party policies in the U.K. to justify the conclusion that governments are incapable of efficiently producing goods and services. (Some few exceptions exist, principally in areas that economists call “natural monopolies”, for example.) The problem that popularly-elected governments have is that democratic politics interferes with the essential efficiency force, competition.

The history of U.S. government involvement with financial institutions is especially egregious, as have been its efforts to provide public housing, subsidize higher education, and promote alternative green energy sources. Indeed, Wagner’s law of increasing government explains why there is no limit to government inefficiency. Governments do not compete with themselves.

Government enterprises have had some success in the production of electric power when it is a natural monopoly — especially in the distribution of energy — but its subsidies to energy-producing enterprises has been a failure regardless of what criteria you want to apply. We prefer economic efficiency. That requires the measurement of social costs and benefits. Unfortunately, the measurement of social benefits and costs is a political calculation and subject to the same difficulties as we have with running government enterprises.

Under common law, people could seek legal redress from private enterprises that committed a nuisance (a social cost). Unfortunately they are not able to do so when governments create the nuisance. The only recourse is political. Government-approved and subsidized windmills that generate electricity are a good example. They are a public nuisance that can be replaced or eliminated only by a political process. That same political process is what enabled them to be built in the first place since they required huge public subsidies. The competitive market system would not have enabled them to be built because they are inefficient producers of electricity. Often, they could not sell the electricity they produce without a government mandate requiring energy distributors to buy their product regardless of cost.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303456104579489813562362816?mod=Opinion_newsreel_5

The political left favors “single payer” health care, but that concept has new meaning in New Hampshire this year as just one insurer was willing to participate in ObamaCare. Thus the spectacle of Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen beseeching the feds to save her re-election from her own law.

The Granite State Senator rode the 2008 Obama wave to become the deciding 60th vote for the law’s passage, but now Ms. Shaheen must defend the mess it has made of her state’s insurance markets. She’s cashing in all her government chits amid a statewide uproar as patient access to hospitals and other providers has declined.
Related Video

Editorial board member Joe Rago on the skyrocketing health care premiums and limited doctor network under the new health-care law. Photo credit: Getty Images/Associated Press.

The only exchange option afforded to consumers comes from Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, a unit of WellPoint. The insurer built a narrow network that lowered premiums by 25% or 30% while still complying with ObamaCare’s other mandates. Limiting choice can generate volume discounts on rates and sometimes better medical performance.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304512504579493410287663906?mg=reno64-wsj

Ms Hirsi Ali states: “The motto of Brandeis University is “Truth even unto its innermost parts.” That is my motto too. For it is only through truth, unsparing truth, that your generation can hope to do better than mine in the struggle for peace, freedom and equality of the sexes.”….that “truth in its innermost parts” must include the fact that it is doctrinal Islam that oppresses, subjugates all people….women, men and children….that tolerates female genital mutilation and massacres of Christians….Only that truth will unveil the possibility of reformation of Islam…..rsk

We need to make our universities temples not of dogmatic orthodoxy, but of truly critical thinking.

On Tuesday, after protests by students, faculty and outside groups, Brandeis University revoked its invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali to receive an honorary degree at its commencement ceremonies in May. The protesters accused Ms. Hirsi Ali, an advocate for the rights of women and girls, of being “Islamophobic.” Here is an abridged version of the remarks she planned to deliver.

One year ago, the city and suburbs of Boston were still in mourning. Families who only weeks earlier had children and siblings to hug were left with only photographs and memories. Still others were hovering over bedsides, watching as young men, women, and children endured painful surgeries and permanent disfiguration. All because two brothers, radicalized by jihadist websites, decided to place homemade bombs in backpacks near the finish line of one of the most prominent events in American sports, the Boston Marathon.