Make a Difference

Day: November 19, 2010

Two More Thoughts

First:

‘Social justice’ is a key identifying phrase, a shibboleth, for liberal/progressives. Conservatives are assumed not to care about social justice, being concerned only with making money and reducing taxes.

Then why is it that conservatives give more to charity, and are more likely to be involved in their communities as volunteer fire fighters, ambulance officers, etc?

Informaworld has an interesting article on social justice from a conservative perspective.

Bruce Thyer points out that conservatives are just as concerned about social justice. We just differ about how the best results are to be achieved.

Second:

The Australian Services Union is demanding that women be paid as much as men.

But in Australia, women are paid as much as men for the same work. It’s the law.

Nonetheless, on average, women do earn slightly less than men. The ASU wants this fixed. It’s unjust!

But the difference is not because women are victims of discrimination. It is simply because they make different choices.

Women tend to opt for safer, more comfortable jobs, jobs that have predictable hours and involve less travelling. They are more likely to work part-time, and to retire earlier.

More at Carpe Diem, including this, from a report prepared for US Department of Labor:

‘The differences in the compensation of men and women are the result of a multitude of factors and the raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify corrective action. Indeed, there may be nothing to correct. The differences in raw wages may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers.’

Sophie Mirabella

Sophie Mirabella is one of my favourite Australian politicians.

She is hard working, honest and intelligent – a possible future Prime Minister, and one who would be vastly more effective, in part because she has vastly more integrity, than the present incumbent.

Ben-Peter Terpstra calls her a Greek goddess in comments on the Australian Conservative website on an article by Sophie in The Punch.

Sophie offers Julia Gillard some helpful advice. Namely, mean what you say, say what you mean, and do what’s right.

I won’t quote from either Ben or Sophie. Both are worth reading in full. And the comments on Ben’s article are an amusing dialogue between shallow leftist trolls and reasonable people attempting to reason with them.

P.S.

‘Mean what you say, say what you mean, and do what’s right’ could be Sarah Palin’s motto.

Despite liberalist frenzy and legacy media blackwashing, people like her because she is straightforward, has faced the problems they face, loves her family and her country, knows how to run things, and has a vision for the future.

The usual liberal complaint about anyone who disgrees with them is “He’s stupid, ‘She’s stupid.’

But I defy anyone to read Sarah Palin’s thoughtful and well-constructed open letter to new Republican members of Congress, and believe anything other than that she is caring, intelligent, and capable.

Have an Nice Day, and Naked Pictures at the Airport

I remember seeing a guy a guy who had been asked to leave several supermarkets interviewed on TV.

He objected to being told ‘Have a nice day’ by checkout operators.

Fair enough. It is a silly, empty phrase.

But he responded by abusing the employees. These were mostly teenage girls in their first jobs, who were doing what their employer had asked them to do.

Abusing them was pointless bullying.

I feel the same about airport employees who are now required to implement intrusive and embarrassing security measures, incuding full body scans or searches.

Ann Coulter writes incisively (as usual) about this, and how silly and misguided these airport security measures are:

She notes:

After Muslim terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab of Nigeria tried to detonate explosive material in his underwear over Detroit last Christmas, the government began requiring nude body scans at airports.

The machines, which cannot detect chemicals or plastic, would not have caught the diaper bomber. So, again, no hijackers were stopped, but being able to see passengers in the nude boosted the morale of airport security personnel by 22 percent.

This is amusing, but unfair. It is like blaming checkout operators for ‘Have a nice day.’

I am sure most security personnel find it embarrassing and frustrating to have to pat down nuns and three year olds.

They are not responsible for the utterly ridiculous policies implemented by their political masters.

Ann Coulter again:

It’s similarly pointless to treat all Americans as if they’re potential terrorists while trying to find and confiscate anything that could be used as a weapon. We can’t search all passengers for explosives because Muslims stick explosives up their anuses. (Talk about jobs Americans just won’t do.)

You have to search for the terrorists.

Fortunately, that’s the one advantage we have in this war. In a lucky stroke, all the terrorists are swarthy, foreign-born, Muslim males. (Think: “Guys Madonna would date.”)

This would give us a major leg up — if only the country weren’t insane.

Terrorists are not all foreign born. And I wouldn’t be surprised if islamists started using 3 year olds to carry explosives onto airplanes.

But the key word in that sentence is ‘islamists.’

There are no Jewish, Presbyterian, Baptist or Buddhist groups which have an announced policy of destroying the West, and who have proven their seriousness by repeatedly blowing up embassies, churches, and schools.

Targetting Muslims may be unfair to the majority. But as long as a substantial number of muslims living in the West believe suicide bombings and violence in the cause of Islam are acceptable, and as long as Muslim leaders do not consistently, clearly and frequently denounce such violence, the rest just have to wear it.

Is that unfair? Yes.

But it is less unfair than implementing security procedures which humiliate everyone while achieving nothing.

‘Proof’ of Psychic Powers, Fish Numbers and HIV

Proof of psychic powers? Actually, no.

Just proof that academics are not easily able to think beyond their preconceived notions.

Professor Daryl Bem says his work shows most people have psychic powers.

He conducted nine different experiments on over 1000 students. Eight of the experiments showed some psychic ability.

I am willing to bet that the experiment that didn’t was the only one that was properly designed.

Example:

One experiment asked students to memorise a list of words, and then asked them to recall as many as they could.

The students were then asked to type a list of the words randomly selected – which tended to be the words they had earlier recalled.

It suggests they knew which words were going to be selected to be typed.

No it doesn’t.

The question is, how were the words to be typed selected ‘randomly’?

If they were just picked by another person, all this means is that some words have more impact than others, and that those words are more likely to be remembered, and chosen.

It is amazing to me – a non academic, but someone trained in problem solving – how quickly academics jump to the wrong conclusion, and how firmly they then insist on those conclusions being accepted.

I have a friend who is a PhD candidate. She is studying changes in Black Brim populations. Black Brim are a common fish in South Australian waters.

Her thesis is that Black Brim numbers have declined over the last fifty years because of changes in water quality.

She is extraordinarily diligent in examining ear bones from Black Brim. This enables her to track changes in water quality over the life of the fish.

I have no doubt she can get an accurate picture of water quality over the life of any individual fish.

But there are three problems with her thesis.

She has no idea how many Black Brim there really were fifty years ago. There were no accurate counts.

She has no idea whether water quality now has deteriorated in ways that affect Black Brim compared with fifty years ago. There were no accurate measures.

She has no idea whether other factors (eg, fish just move) might account for changes in Black Brim populations in the small area she is studying.

I asked her, since her theory was that fish numbers had declined because of changes in water quality, whether she thought it important to have accurate measurements of fish numbers and water quality from fifty years ago.

She insisted it was OK, because she had accurate measures of fish numbers and water quality now.

But surely, I insisted, if she was claiming changes in fish numbers over fifty years were a result of changes in water quality, she had to know what the numbers and water quality were fifty years ago.

She told me she could measure changes in water quality through studying ear bones.

OK. That tells you about changes over the life of an individual fish, but nothing about what the starting point was fifty years ago.

Nope. She just didn’t seem to understand the question.

Well, it doesn’t matter, really. She’ll get her PhD and work for Natural Resources and ruin a few fishermen’s businesses, or spend her life telling farmers to use less fertiliser.

Not much harm done.

But lots of harm is done in other ways.

As an example, there are reduced rates of HIV infection in males who have been circumcised.

So of course there claims that male circumcision acts as a ‘vaccine’ against HIV infection.

A couple of days ago the Deputy Speaker of the Ugandan parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, called on male MPs to be circumcised to give a moral example to others, and to help reduce the rate of HIV infection.

It seems blindlingly obvious to me that many men who are circumcised are either Jews or Muslims, and that differences in sexual behaviour in those groups would better account for the very small measured differences in rates of HIV infection.

Certainly behavioural differences might be worth investigating before spending vast amounts of money ramping up ‘circumcision services.’

But no, the World Health Organisation is right behind the circumcision prevents AIDS theory.

This won’t work. It is cruel and irresponsible. In fact, like dishing out condoms, it is likely to increase rates of HIV infection, because it encourages people to think they are safe.

The only thing that has been shown to make a long term difference to rates of HIV infection is changes in behaviour.

But that is an unacceptable conclusion, so Africans continue to be given advice which is known to be, or should be known to be, wrong. And more Africans die.

Africa has suffered enough from AIDS.

We have all suffered enough from the consequences of shoddy thinking.

© 2024 Qohel