Democracy - win in Venezuela, defeat in Russia
This night brought two different results from the two hemispheres. A slap in the face to the wannabe Caudillo in Venezuela and a resounding win to the “sovereign democrat” Putin in Russia.
Venezuela:
President of the National Electoral Council, Tibisay Lucena, said the process “shows the entire world that we are a democratic country.”Not yet, not yet, and there are five more years for Chavez to wreck the country.
Russia:
And opposition leader Garry Kasparov, the chess grand master who was sentenced to five days in jail for leading an unsanctioned demonstration in November, said Putin and his allies were “raping the democratic system.”Unfortunately, very true and doesn’t bode well to the world.“The campaign was completely dominated by all the authority that all belonged to United Russia,” said Kasparov, whose Other Russia party was disqualified by election officials. “More or less, Russia now has moved to a soft version of one-party dictatorship.”
You win some, you lose some…
No commentsCan Statements of Fact be Immoral?
Saletan’s recent article in Slate summarizing the evidence for the reality and heritability of IQ was something of a dambusting event in the mainstream media. The general public previously had had few opportunities to hear what the evidence was. In the name of political correctness, IQ is one of the most lied-about phenomena of the age. The last thing anyone hears is the evidence.
Saletan did of course come under heavy attack for his “immoral” article and I have commented myself on some of that criticism (e.g. here) but for a really comprehensive reply to the critics, see an article by Linda Gottfredson. Although Gottfredson and I are both psychometricians, she specializes in ability measurement while I do not. So you get a very throrough and detailed —but still readable—account of the matter from her.
Curious how Leftists say “There is no such thing as right and wrong” but suddenly decide that an argument or a statement is “immoral” when the facts of the matter don’t suit them!
I simply laugh when Leftists talk about something as being immoral. Since they believe that all such statements are empty truth-claims, it is obvious hypocrisy when they make such statements. But the reason why they make such statements is to persuade non-Leftists. Saying things that they do not themselves believe is all in a day’s work for Leftists. So it is interesting that Linda Gottfredson goes on to point out ways in which it is immoral to DENY the reality of differences in IQ.
I set out here reasons why most statements of right and wrong are not empty truth claims—though some are, of course.
No commentsFire In The Waxworks
I roughly divide our recording “career” into three parts.
The first, as I’ve mentioned before, was mainly jam sessions. We started adding vocals near the end of this period, but mostly on jokey material like our “rock opera” and the previously-featured “Warning Shots”.
Singing that kind of stuff is a lot easier on the psyche. If you blow a note—an entire verse, for that matter—you can claim you intended it that way all along. But it was time to get serious.
Then we focused on my big backcatalog of songs, the quality of which was uneven, to say the least. Sometimes the music was lame, the melody non-existent or the lyrics laughable. Sometimes it would all come together in a perfect trifecta of awfulness. So we futzed around with those for some months, making improvements here and there, but I eventually realized that I was going to have to write some new stuff. Enter the final—and, I would argue, the most creative—part of our existence.
This was one of the first of the new songs. I found it easier to start with blank slate than go back to try and fix songs that I was heartily sick of by then. We were also finding out that we could play with some snap and precision. It would have been nice to have a real drummer to punch some of this home; but hey, you gotta work with what you got.
To that end, we deployed what I coyly describe as “additional percussion.” Which was:
Read more No commentsSick France
Yesterday evening, three young people died in the suburbs to the north of Paris. Mouhsin (15) and Lakamy (16), two immigrant youths, were killed in Villiers-le-Bel when their motorcycle, which is said to have been stolen, collided at high speed with a police vehicle. The two youths, who were not wearing compulsory crash helmets, died on the spot. A few hours later, Anne-Lorraine (23), a young journalist, was stabbed to death on a suburban train near Creil, whilst resisting a man who was trying to rape her. The man had already been convicted for violent sexual assault in 1996. The news of the deaths of Mouhsin and Lakamy became world news, dominating today’s media in France and abroad. Anne-Lorraine’s death is a mere footnote, a “faits divers” in France, a non-event abroad.
After Mouhsin’s and Lakamy’s deaths their friends and relatives went on a rampage. They destroyed two police stations and a petrol station, torched a few dozen cars, looted stores and injured at least 25 police officers (two of them seriously) and one fireman. A spokesman of the French police union said today that the officers had been shot at by youths with firearms. According to Omar Sehhouli, the brother of one of the two dead youths, the eruption of violence was not what it seemed. “This is not violence,” Omar told the French press agency AFP, “but just anger that needs to be expressed”.
The French authorities fear that the immigrant youths in the Paris suburbs will feel a need to express another round of anger tonight. The French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, is currently in China. His Interior Minister, Michle Alliot-Marie is in charge. She has “urged all sides to act responsibly” and has promised a full inquiry. The “all sides” refers to the angry youths on the one hand and the police on the other hand. The French judicial authorities are conducting a manslaughter investigation against the officers in the police car. According to the friends and relatives of Mouhsin and Lakamy, the officers fled from the scene of the accident, without caring for the two dead boys and without waiting for the friends and relatives to show up.
A police chief who arrived on the scene was, however, beaten up and suffered serious facial trauma. Four police cars that arrived shortly afterwards, also fled when they were attacked, leaving the entire neighbourhood under the control of the youth gangs.
More here
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