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No, none of this is logical. It’s petty and silly. But it is why ad hominem attacks on everyone from Michael Moore to Sarah Palin are so enduringly popular.

Logical types who are caught up in Robert’s Rules of Order and all those ancient boring and frankly arbitrary rules for debate and rhetoric just don’t get it; the average person doesn’t care about your elaborate arguments and statistics and clever quotations, which are probably read only by people who more or less agree with you already.

They just know Al Gore seems like a fat pushy scold with too much money, and Sarah Palin has too many kids for their liking, and Ron Paul is as cuddly as a rusty bear trap, and I have an ugly voice and frown all the time.

They’re too busy living ordinary lives to spend hours reading Ayn Rand or Koranic apologists or William F. Buckley or to find out that the number of Catholic priests who’ve abused children is about 0.1%. They make judgements based on the evidence of their senses, then rush off to the next thing.

It’s all very shallow. Most of us are.

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(for the record I consider myself a libertarian and would legalize pot in a heartbeat even though I don’t and won’t partake in it. - I also don’t smoke or drink but wouldn’t make it illegal for others to do it either.)

Popularity: 16% [?]

And here’s a perfect distillation of why. Spend some time and listen to the entire podcast of what happens when a perfectly functioning profitable private transportation system in a large city is privatized to eliminate “greed” and “profit”

Munger on the Political Economy of Public Transportation

Popularity: 16% [?]

SDA has a post up this morning (also linked to by Kathy) that points out the rather quaint yet sinister tendency of the media to refer to Muslim extremists in somewhat counter-intuitive yet subtly biased manners.

This however is not a new thing I noticed a few years back in the Economist (a magazine that has gone so far downhill I won’t be renewing my subscription this time around.)

From The Economist July 19th 2007:

In the majlis these consist of a rump of Khatami-style reformists and a larger block of people who travel under the “conservative” banner but who are pragmatic in their approach and oppose Mr Ahmadinejad’s brand of what many outsiders have come to call “neoconservatism”.

That’s right you read it correctly. Two years ago the Economist was calling Ahmadinejad a neocon. Read the Original article. if you don’t believe me.

Popularity: 11% [?]

I’m tempted to say first they came for the “war on terror supporters” and I did nothing but really that is getting kind of old. What is not getting old is youtube’s continuing to ban videos of people who seem to be on the side of freedom, reason and post renaissance Western Culture. Someone needs to sit these folks down with a history book.

This video doesn’t really say much except that youtube banned James Randi and that is bad. But it does have information on how to complain and a request to make this video “go viral”. It is already up to 30,000 views. Although that obviously doesn’t hurt youtube’s traffic. It seems the internet has spawned its own set of monopolies much like in the late 19th century when monopolies were at their peak. Now we have Amazon, Ebay, Youtube etc and no real alternatives (yet). This isn’t necessarily a healthy situation.

Disclaimer: I don’t know why the account was suspended. It could have been for perfectly legitimate reasons.

Via

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Apparently sales of Atlas Shrugged have been increasing concurrently with the increasing government intervention in the economy:

Atlas felt a sense of déjà vu t

Popularity: 5% [?]

Anyone who has read economic accounts of the causes of the Great Depression can tell you that one of the worst policy decisions was that of governments the world over to raise tariffs in reaction to US Smoot Hawley pact (which was FDR’s equivalent to the current “Buy American” proposals).

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act “imposed an effective tax rate of 60% on more than 3,200 products and materials imported into the United States”, quadrupling previous tariff rates.

Although the tariff act was passed after the stock-market crash of 1929, some economic historians consider the political discussion leading up to the passing of the act a factor in causing the crash, the recession that began in late 1929, or both, and its eventual passage a factor in deepening the Great Depression.[11] Unemployment was at 7.8% in 1930 when the Smoot-Hawley tariff was passed, but it jumped to 16.3% in 1931, 24.9% in 1932, and 25.1% in 1933.[12]

I have been saying since last summer that we will be fine as long as we don’t get countries doing idiotic things like raise tariffs. Well guess what…..

Nations Rush to Establish New Barriers to Trade

Popularity: 6% [?]

And made me feel ashamed that I am not made of “post-Edwardian stuff”

There is still great bravery in the world, still much to aspire to. But I cannot see anything of that post-Edwardian daring in our world, fashioned as it was in the trenches of the War To End All Wars. I have a great fear for what lies ahead of us. If the conflagration comes and our remaining strength should fail then many, many of us will be killed. The ones who survive will only do so through having chosen submission. Our books will be burned, our freedoms thrown with them on to the pyre. Our priceless, irreplaceable treasures of history, philosophy and art plundered and destroyed; at first through through wanton violence and soon thereafter by neglect. Any truth remaining then claimed as a prize of war, as the “science” of the conquerors when it will be no more than barbarous, and sterile, translation….

…If some spark of civilization is to endure, we must imagine a leaderless resistance, a rhizomatic resistance; something closer to Anonymous than the Maquis of wartime France, there will be no friendly power across the Channel, no airdrops of arms, no broadcasts from Bush House.

Read it all. Every last bit of it.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Doublethink:

The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them . . . . To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.[1]

Via Tim Blair the modern example:

Climate change is also reducing opium production, according to the Independent, by ingeniously making winter colder via global warming:

Faltering British efforts to tackle Afghanistan’s poppy crop have found an unlikely ally – in the weather.

Freak weather linked to global warming is expected to reduce parts of the country’s opium harvest drastically. Scientists believe freezing winter temperatures followed by late rains and a possible drought may cut this year’s yields, with some farmers losing half of their crop.

Related: (via Instapundit) The attempt to silence a noted global warming climate change skeptic, which contains this gem of a sentence:

His comments toward adversaries often are biting and adversarial.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Remember Bisphenol A? Nah that’s so last week. Here’s a new plastic bogeyman for ya: phtalates

Greenpeace now has a new target called phthalates (pronounced thal-ates). These are chemical compounds that make plastics flexible. They are found in everything from hospital equipment such as IV bags and tubes, to children’s toys and shower curtains. They are among the most practical chemical compounds in existence.

Phthalates are the new bogeyman. These chemicals make easy targets since they are hard to understand and difficult to pronounce. Commonly used phthalates, such as diisononyl phthalate (DINP), have been used in everyday products for decades with no evidence of human harm. DINP is the primary plasticizer used in toys. It has been tested by multiple government and independent evaluators, and found to be safe.

Despite this, a political campaign that rejects science is pressuring companies and the public to reject the use of DINP. Retailers such as Wal-Mart and Toys “R” Us are switching to phthalate-free products to avoid public pressure. […]

[…] The hysteria over DINP began in Europe and Israel, both of which instituted bans. Yet earlier this year, Israel realized the error of putting politics before science, and reinstated DINP.

The European Union banned the use of phthalates in toys prior to completion of a comprehensive risk assessment on DINP. That assessment ultimately concluded that the use of DINP in infant toys poses no measurable risk.

The antiphthalate activists are running a campaign of fear to implement their political agenda. They have seen success in California, with a state ban on the use of phthalates in infant products, and are pushing for a national ban. This fear campaign merely distracts the public from real environmental threats.

Source:
Why I Left Greenpeace - WSJ.com

Popularity: 15% [?]

Last night for some bizarre reason I watched The National (for those not in Canada The National is the nightly news program from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation which is the state sponsored media in this country).

I haven’t watched the program in years because quite frankly the whole idea of tax dollars being extorted from Canadians to provide a service that is ably provided by the private sector irks me. However I was between hockey games (another service that could also be provided by the private sector) and an abbreivated version of their news came on. So there I sat as Wendy Mesley breathlessly announced the latest news or more properly “the latest thing we could dig up to scare the living shit out of you”.

Tonight the bogey man was something called: Bisphenol A!!!. Apparently one of CBC’s sister agencies Health Canada has decided that Bisphenol A (which is used to make hard plastic bottles - like the kind you use when you are camping) is going to kill us all. They are the first governement body in the world to issue a warning about the product.

The CBC in it’s kindly maternal fashion decided it would be good to have a chemist go visit a worried Mom to see just how much danger her and her child were in. So we were treated to a scene in the mother’s kitchen where an array of plastic containers were spread out. It looked like the same variety of plastic containers that we all have in our houses. Uh-oh I thought is everything on the table poisonous? Or more importantly: “is my wife watching this”? She had wandered out of the room to get ready for bed earlier and I hoped she hadn’t returned. You see my wife is a worry wart of the first order. If any government body or media outlet says something is bad she pretty much believes it and will go into paroxysms of panic (ok not panic but she does make life miserable for me if she gets it in her mind that something is bad - this is why my lawn is full of weeds because she is convinced that the pesticides used to keep that mono-culture alive and thriving caused the cancer that killed our first dog). I snuck a look over my shoulder damn! she was standing right there and it was too late to change the channel.

So I watched with trepidation as Mr. Chemist delivered his verdict to Worried Mom. Turned out most of the plastic containers she (llke all of us) had in her kitchen were safe (or at least free of Bisphenol A|) the only two containers she had that were manufactured using the dreaded killer were two bottles she used to feed her baby with. Oh NO! Her poor precious baby had been poisoned right?

Nope. Mr. Chemist went on to tell her that unless she was filling the bottles with a liquid and storing them for an extended period of time there was no real problem with Bisphenol A leaching into the liquid and killing her toddler.

So I thought why the fuss? Why lead off with this story?

Why indeed. I went to CBC’s web site this morning where their FAQ on Bisphenol A contains some interesting information:

First of all the FAQ says there is a debate “raging” about Bisphenol A and it’s health effects which is interesting considering there was no evidence of a debate on last night’s program. No one was given any air time to counter the CBC’s claims that Bisphenol A is a dangerous product. The only thing presented that countered Health Canada’s claim was a small block of text that appeared as the story ended saying that the American Plastics Institute (or some such industry body - I can’t remember the name) says that Bisphenol A is one of the most tested products out there and has shown no ill effects on humans.

In fact the story mentioned that the only people who are at risk were young children and people with hormone problems (I think pregnant women). And that is not all, the CBC itself said that these people MIGHT be at risk.

This is pretty much in-line with what the FAQ says, check out some of the language:

recent animal studies theorize the chemical may be linked to obesity, infertility and insulin-resistance in rodents.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has said it does not consider normal exposure to BPA to be a hazard. However, on Apr. 14, 2008, the U.S. National Institutes of Health released a report that concludes that there is some concern that fetuses, infants and children exposed to BPA may be at increased risk for early puberty and prostate and breast cancer.

Animal studies suggest that, once ingested, BPA may imitate estrogen and other hormones, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Lots of mights and mays but not much definitive information there. In fact one of the scientists involved in a study that supposedly links Bisphenol A to health problems isn’t ready to condemn the product:

He cautioned that the study, by researchers at Indiana University and University of California at Berkeley, did not indicate products such as bottled water aren’t safe.

“We have only demonstrated a possible mechanism that explains what people have been speculating about for years.” he said. “It doesn’t mean that your bottled water is any less safe today than it was yesterday. It just means that if it isn’t safe, we might be able to explain why.”

Oh and what does Health Canada say on its website?

Analysis and testing conducted by Health Canada in 2000/2001 on plastic baby feeding bottles and other plastic products showed that the levels of bisphenol A in these products were exceedingly low, and did not present a risk to Canadian children,” it said.

“Health Canada’s investigation also showed that although low amounts of bisphenol A could migrate from the plastic into milk, it would do so only under conditions of extreme use.… These results suggest that plastic products do not pose a health risk if used properly.”

BTW if you haven’t figured it out the bolding above is all mine -not from the original quotes.

So there you have it bisphenol A MIGHT cause some problems in children and infants but no one seems 100% sure.

But just to be on the safe side retailers are panicking:

In December 2007, Vancouver-based Mountain Equipment Co-op became the first major Canadian retailer to pull polycarbonate containers from its store shelves.

Because MEC’s core demographic is infants and pregnant mothers. Yeah I always spot them out rock climbing and participating in other extreme sports. Guess I’ll be ordering my Nalgene bottles via the interweb from now on.

One more thought. The FAQ suggests that parents can allay their fears by substituting the hard plastic baby bottles for something else like (wait for it) glass!! Because we all know a glass bottle in a baby’s hands is much safer than a hard plastic bottle which contains a substance that if liquid is stored in for a long time might leach some of that substance which in turn just might cause health problems for the child down the road. Maybe.

Read the CBC FAQ here and watch the actual program here (might not work after 24 hours). And for historical context go here

OK one last thought. Why not just require products containing bisphenol A to have a small warning label like “danger might be harmful to infants or nursing mothers” like they do with alcohol?

Update: A Plastic Ban for Dummies

Popularity: 14% [?]

Yes this is a hockey story but it pretty much sums up how the mainstream media works and why many of us think the CBC shouldn’t be a sinkhole for taxpayers money.

This reaction really wasn’t what he wanted.

He asked me how I felt about my beloved Leafs ranking so low, I said (paraphrasing):

Given that the ACC is full of suits - it’s a series of corporations cheering on a corporation - I’m surprised the Leafs placed as high as they did. That, on balance, a sixth place ranking was probably very accurate as the Fans down at the ACC are quiet as a morgue while the Leaf fans that can get tickets in Buffalo, Ottawa and other Canadian cities are far more passionate and likely push the rankings closer to the top five.

(Of course my actual quote was likely chock-full of ums, ahs, uhs and dead air.)

He shut off the tape.

This clearly wasn’t what he wanted.

We talked hockey for a bit (he was a pretty cool guy, seemed like an Oilers fan) and then he told me that he had to go get back on the phone to find a Leaf fan that was actually upset about the rankings.

Nothing like fair and balanced representative journalism from the Mother Corp.

Via: Pension Plan Puppets

Popularity: 7% [?]

Seems almost fitting that in a week where I posted a link to Dan Hill’s nauseating ’70s hit “Sometimes When We Touch” that a story hits the stands in Macleans about his son’s and later family’s brush with a group of street thugs.

Kathy (buy her damn book you weenbags) has more on the story here with a bit of a knee to the nuts to Toronto men:

like so many Toronto women, you’ve stuck yourself with a Dan Hill of your own: a spindly careerist wet who considers safe “uncolourful” communities a peculiarly “American” (sniff!) fetish, and who prefers spending hours alone in the editing suite or watching tv or playing computer games or — in Hill’s case — listening to music on headphones to exposing his faintly effeminate, still-adolescent self to the unpredictable messiness of mature family life.

What struck me about the article is that Hill is despite his experience still lodged in that morally muddy morass of liberal guilt. His son like a lot of teenagers became enthralled with the glorified violence and thuggery of “ghetto culture” that is propagated via rap music. Yet Hill still manages to take a swipe at white kids who skateboard and listen to blink-182 (because so many of them are machine gunning skate parks one assumes) and after his son is beaten up by allegedly a white gang who preyed on minority youth in the hi-toned but staunchly NDP neighborhood that Hill lived in he convinces himself that it was an isolated incident of racism rather than anything related to sonny-boy’s own actions.

Let me re-set this for you. Hill’s son was tangled up with a group of violent extortionist gang-bangers. When he was able at one point to pry him away from those gangsters his son was violently assaulted shortly after that. Isn’t it possible that A. It was some kind of retribution. B. it was done by a bunch of kids who had been previously preyed upon by junior and his gangster friends and the chip of the old Hill block wasn’t so tough when he wasn’t surrounded by his posse? Considering Hill admits in the article that at 50 years old he has NEVER been in a fist fight that might not be a bad assumption.

But no Hill remains convinced that there was this gang of racist white boys who roamed the Beaches neighborhood looking for off-colored chaps to pound.

This could be true but let me tell you something. I lived in that neighborhood from 97-2003. It is the most annoyingly liberal neighborhood in Toronto with a staunch record (despite their wealth) of voting NDP at all levels of government. If there was a racist gang operating out of there it would have been front page news on the Star and all over CityTV every night. (editors note: I don’t watch City TV or read the Star that often so if this phenomenon was reported please feel free to correct me). At the very least it would have made great fodder for the local community papers (or certain bloggers who write books about that sort of thing and live in that very neighborhood) , but I heard none of it.

Used to be that the definition of a Conservative was a Liberal who had been robbed (or the victim of some sort of violent crime). Seems that it isn’t so true after all.

Update: I was going to rewrite this post but have been away from the computer for 24 hours and since then Kathy has linked to it so I am leaving it as is with this addendum.

I don’t want to come accross as making light of Mr. Hill’s situation. It certainly is not something that anyone would like to find themselves in. But I think that the lesson here for most people is that you can spot this kind of trouble a long way off if you are willing to look at people as individuals not as members of an identity group. The problem with assuming that certain pathological behaviors are to be excused or understood because of someone’s supposed historic maltreatment at the hands of another (often majority ) group is that it leaves out the fact that no matter what the group or the circumstances, there are psychopaths and sociopaths out there in all races creed and colors. If you treat people as part of an identity group instead of individuals you will excuse sociopathic or psychopathic behavior or hints of this type of behaviour and pretty soon you will be in way too deep. As the Hill family found out.

Popularity: 9% [?]

I’m standing in the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area, one of the oldest wind farms in the United States and most concentrated in the world. There are now some 5200 turbines crowded into this 4-by-6-mile rectangle of land, operated by about a dozen companies. The first rotors were installed in 1981, prompted by federal tax credits, and at the time no one knew much about how well, or even whether, they would work. What’s more, no one had a clue how the turbines would interact with wildlife—more specifically, birds.

As it turned out, Altamont Pass could add to its list of pioneering superlatives this frightening title: deadliest wind farm in North America. More than 4700 birds are killed here each year, including 1300 raptors. Seventy golden eagles, a federally protected species, are also among them

So the farm has been there for 26 years that works out to 122,200 birds, 33,800 raptors and 1820 Golden Eagles.

source

Popularity: 9% [?]

Almost all are in the former USSR, China and India. All three countries were either communist (USSR, China) or heavily socialist (India) at one time. And two (China and India) do not have to meet Kyoto emission targets. Surprised?

World’s Top 10 Most Polluted Places

Popularity: 4% [?]

From Kathy Shaidle

My male colleagues in the peace movement included a date rapist, a wife beater and guys with the most hair trigger tempers I’ve ever encountered.Scratch a “progressive” male and you’ll frequently find a poorly adjusted, passive aggressive bully.

As one who swam in that particular cesspool (the “protest movement”- not wife beating and date rape, I had neither a wife to beat or a date to rape in those days) during my time in the Hardcore Punk movement in the 80’s I can certainly vouch for Kathy’s statements. At least the skinheads were overt in their sadistic violence - you could see them coming a mile off. The tendency of the socialist movement to attract disagreeable anti-social types probably explains the 800 variations of Marxist organizations that seem to populate it.

For a pretty accurate example just check out ZombieTime’s latest photo caption of a 9/11 “truth march to power” in San Francisco. There is a surplus of booths for all kinds of communist organizations none of whom can stand each other enough to actually form a united party. That movement might be about collectivism but they sure hate co-operation. And if you don’t believe me read a history of any communist party. The great majority of it will be devoted to schisms and splits and ostracization - followed by disgruntled exiles forming their own “true” version of the party.

The only movement that has more fragmentation is Heavy Metal.

Update: Welcome 5 Feet of Fury crew! For the record I am a former lefty AND former Vegetarian (but still insecure and pushy).

Popularity: 8% [?]

Via Relapsed Catholic

Olivia Chow on Honest Ed Mirivsh:

“He was far ahead of his time as he took on big retailers on behalf of working families* and provided lower cost goods for average Canadians since the end of the Second World War. New Canadians and their families, many living in the area around Honest Ed’s store, have come to depend on his fair prices for generations.”

For those who haven’t been to or lived in Toronto Honest Ed’s store was filled to the brim with cheap goods, wasn’t pretty to look at and was generally jam packed with lower income earning people looking to save a penny or more.

Just like a certain US retailing giant whom Olivia Chow probably would want banned from Canada if she could arrange it.

Popularity: 4% [?]

For once I agree with Al Sharpton. Paris Hilton’s early release from prison does (on the surface) appear to be linked to her fame and fortune rather than the supposed “medical issue”.

At this point we have no idea what the medical condition is. But it certainly didn’t prevent her from attending an MTV gala just hours before she turned herself in to the authorities.

There are plenty of people who are incarcerated and have medical conditions. I am sure they feel just swell after hearing about this.

Update: Word is that she was released because she was suicidal. Geez what happened to the days when they just took your shoelaces?

Technorati Tags: Paris, Hilton, Prison, celebrities, Hollywood

Popularity: 3% [?]