A first-day-of-the-month ramble [updated]

Over January I’ve indexed a few stories and websites to talk to you about, but never had the time.  So here they are now.

• “Recent events have shown, rather embarrassingly, that the IPCC is not “the” consensus of scientists, but rather the opinions of a few scientists (in some cases as few as one) in various subject areas whose consensus among themselves is then kludged together by the designers of the IPCC final product who a priori know what they want the ultimate outcome to be . . . ”
  IPCC “Consensus”—Warning: Use at Your Own Risk – MASTER RESOURCE
• The warmist “consensus” is collapsing before our eyes, exposed to the cold light of publicity.
  Ten signs that the warming scare is collapsing  - ANDREW BOLT
• The Demographia organisation produce their 6th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey, showing amongst other things that central-planning-ridden Tauranga and Auckland are among world's most pricey places, and the world’s media goes into denial. New Zealand’s provincial media is no exception.
  6th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey [pdf] – DEMOGRAPHIA
  Zoning rules see NZ among least affordable places to buy a home – NBR
• An interesting hypothesis concerning the causes of the explosion in child obesity, adult obesity and metabolic syndrome (diabetes, obesity, hypertension, heart disease).  Could that be caused by central planning too?
  Sugar (and Central Planning): The Bitter Truth – THE RATIONAL CAPITALIST
• “Is it “your” rail network? The Auckland rail tracks and stations are being upgraded at present and, due to disruptions, a special timetable has been issued. On the front of this is written ‘Buses replacing trains while we improve your rail network.’ That’s the socialist lie, here comes the libertarian truth…”
  The myth of public property  - KIWI POLEMICIST
• A precursor of things to come here in New Zealand?
  For Cape Cod Wind Farm, New Hurdle Is Spiritual – NY TIMES
• Michelangelo burned most of his working sketches that would indicate the germination and development of some of his greatest work, but a very few sketches still survive in which you can see the birth of much of his great works of genius. Seattle Museum’s curator talks about a few of the special ones.
  
  
  

 

• “I was at the mall the other day and overheard a mother tell her 2-3 year old: ‘Stop doing that! You're old enough to know better than that!’”  But isn’t that kind of a stupid thing to say to a kid?
  Old Enough to Know Better – RATIONAL JENN
• More on the collapsing warmist “consensus.”  “Despite the claims of the Nobel Prize winning UN IPCC AR4 report of 2007, there is no evidence that the warming of the late 20th Century caused an increase in the frequency of natural disasters!” None at all.
  Does Global Warming Cause More Natural Disasters?    - OBJECTIVIST INDIVIDUALIST
• Yet more evidence that the IPCC cooked the books. . . its 2007 claim that global warming could ‘devastate African agriculture’ is just another one busted by real science.
  The IPCC scandal: the African data was sexed up, too – ANDREW BOLT
• And more. 
  Nicholas Stern’s figures were false, too – ANDREW BOLT
• Since I link to Andrew Belt so often on some topics, I need to point out that despite his many virtues he’s still insufferably xenophobic.  He wrings his hands about “boat people” (i.e., human beings escaping tragedy) arriving in Australia in “ever-increasing numbers.” Yet those numbers show . . . what, exactly? That last year there were just 589 arrivals of “boat people” in a country that could fit 100 million.  Bolt needs to buckle up his inner bigot, I’d say.
  Two more in two days – ANDREW BOLT
• January 31st is Mario Lanza’s birthday, and since it’s still January 31st in the US and UK, here’s a birthday tribute: Mario (below) in his greatest role, as The Great Caruso. And Lindsay Perigo re-delivering his own birthday tribute from a few years back.
  Happy Birthday Mario! – LINDSAY PERIGO
  
  
  
  

• Is there any reason, any reason at all, that “that one's religious beliefs, should be respected and not subjected to criticism or satire”?  H.L. Mencken didn’t think so.
  Mencken, Islam, and Political Correctness – Edward Cline, CAPITALISM MAGAZINE
• How to handle all those blog-comments trolls, eh? “Jeffrey Weiss ponders the question of whether the lack of civility evident in the comments section reflects the fact that in the modern age we are becoming psychopaths willing to trade our humanity for a few moments of negative attention. . . Weiss wonders whether or not the comments section isn't an intellectual commons, and thus confronts the same problems that all commons face.”
  Blogology 101: The Important Role of Shaming – COORDINATION PROBLEM (formerly THE AUSTRIAN ECONOMISTS)
• Should Twitter bear this Victor Hugo quote above its portals?
  "To speak with oneself aloud is to carry on a conversation with the god within."
  New Twitter Motto – NEARBY PEN
• While the anti-employment zealots talk up a minimum wage rise in a time of economic penury, Eric Crampton has a few minimum-wage facts for the non-zealots to contemplate.
  Minimum wage - empirics  - OFFSETTING BEHAVIOUR
• UPDATE: And Eric has another minimum –wage reality check today.
  Minimum wage - poorly targeted – OFFSETTING BEHAVIOUR
• A panel of 22 libertarian luminaries from Brian Caplan to Leonard Liggio suggest their best ten pro-liberty books of the decade.  Definitely a strong list, but what have they missed?
  Top Ten Pro-Liberty Books of the Decade  - ATLAS ECONOMIC RESEARCH FOUNDATION
• “Art works best when it celebrates the godlike in us: and this is just what so many contemporary artists fail to do.” Does God really have all the best art?
  The human, above all – THE GUARDIAN
• Landscape painting includes “not only spacious skies, amber waves of grain and purple mountains’ majesties, but seascapes and cityscapes.” So why have “landscapes have often been rated second-class compared to history and narrative paintings, or indeed any paintings with human figures. How did this attitude develop, and what message or meaning can landscapes offer?” [Hat tip Michael Newberry]
  Landscapes: History and Significance by Dianne Durante – FORGOTTEN DELIGHTS
• National Geographic writer and explorer Dan Buettner shares what the world's longest-lived peoples have in common. Buettner condensed the findings into nine easy-to-remember lifestyle habits.
  Presentation: 9 ways to live better, longer, happier – PRESENTATION ZEN
• Andrew Bernstein’s brilliant argument that the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and the Inventive Period demonstrate conclusively that conventional morality must be urgently overturned. Read about “the revolutionary identification that has finally, after 2500 years of the history of philosophy, tied values – and by that means, ethics – to facts. Morality is now a science, a field of objective, rational, fact-based analysis; it is no longer a matter of will or whim or desire – whether social or personal.”
  Dr. Andrew Bernstein: 'The Nature of the Good'  - SOLO
• Chris Trotter’s post justifying soaking the rich is is so disgracefully full of holes it cries out for a good fisking,  Who’s up for it?
  Justifying Progressive Taxation – CHRIS TROTTER
• And you thought New Zealand was bad.
  UK Employer told not to post advert for 'reliable' workers because it discriminates against 'unreliable' applicants
• Another reason to despise Avatar. “It isn’t until Jake’s final voice-over that we discover that, what do you know Earth’s dying and this mineral [that the earthmen are ‘raping’ the blue planet for] would have saved it.”  So we’re meant to hate the humans. Hate them just as much as Avatar’s screenwriters hate basic plotting.
  Review: Avatar – CINEMA VERDICT
• Did Republican Scott Brown really say this the day after his landscape-changing election victory in Massachusetts, in which he surfed the wave of anti-Obamacare sentiment? “We're past campaign mode: I think it's important for everyone to get some form of health care. So to offer a basic plan for everybody I think is important. It's just a question of whether we're going to raise taxes, we're going to cut a half at trillion from Medicare, we're going to affect veterans' care. I think we can do it better."  Uh, yes he did.  Just another politician who thinks “campaign mode” means “time to lie.”
• God’s Control Panel must be something to see, don’t you think?

• Eric Crampton likes ACT/National’s three-strike law. “Back in September, I warned against a three-strikes law that eliminated marginal deterrence. It looks like ACT and National have come up with a compromise that sounds pretty sensible.”
  A good strike – OFFSETTING BEHAVIOUR
• Hands up all those who don’t understand individual rights?  Okay, well that’s most of you at the Mises Institute and Kinsella Law, anyway.  Craig Biddle presents a brilliant four-part seminar tracing the foundations of rights, their historical development, the main arguments for and against rights conceptions, and the errors into which even rights advocates fall. (And you can keep track of where you are by the nifty linked sidebar feature on each page). By the end of the four parts, you’ll grasp why this subject is so important, and why it’s so important to get it right.
  • The Source and Nature of Rights (Part I) – CRAIG BIDDLE
  • The Source and Nature of Rights (Part II) – CRAIG BIDDLE
  • The Source and Nature of Rights (Part III) – CRAIG BIDDLE
  • The Source and Nature of Rights (Part IV) – CRAIG BIDDLE

• Ludwig von MIses (right) would neither recognise nor endorse much of of what appears at the Institute that bears his name.  The Online Literature of Liberty however offers you the chance to recognise von Mises’ genius for yourself with their new Online Guide to his Major Writings.
  A great reference for anybody just getting started on studying his work.
  An Introduction to the Major Writings of Ludwig von Mises – ONLINE LIBRARY OF LIBERTY
• The murderer of abortionist George Tiller has just been found guilty.  Tibor Machan reflects on the defendant’s ‘argument’ that abortionist’s work, destroying foetuses, justifies their homicide.
  Anti-Abortion Murder or Not – TIBOR MACHAN
• And finally, I enjoyed discovering that Wild Billy Childish, the Billy Bragg of the Buff Medways, thinks scam artist Damien Hirst and his fellows are all plonkers—as do I. Here was a piece by Childish in the UK’s Latest art magazine:

  My contention is that the contemporary art scene is
  cynical, marketed rebellion. far from being
  innovative, vital and avant-garde, it bears direct
  comparison
  with the Victorian salon and treats art in very much
  the same way: as rich man’s sausages.
  

  Encrusting a platinum scull with diamonds to belie the
  artist’s fear of death - and gratify his obsession
  with wealth - lends a certain hollow glamour to a news
  bulletin and prospective sausage buyers, but does
  nothing for the poetic heart.

  To popularize art, as Tate modern endeavours to do, is to
  completely miss the point of art, which is not to
  compete with fashion and pop music but to add depth
  and resonance to the lives of people living in an ever
  flimsy and ephemeral world.

  Popularizing a trip to the gallery by turning the
  gallery into an amusement park is not a victory for art
  but a victory for amusement parks.
  Likewise, popularizing a trip to the gallery by turning
  the gallery into the scene of a car accident is not a
  victory for art but a victory for base and morbid
  curiosity.

  The contemporary artist needs to understand that
  although amusement and morbidity are part of our
  experience of life and art, life and art are not are
  not merely amusement and morbidity:
  Art is a personal and transmuted representation of
  experience, not merely the repetition of the experience
  itself, or the lazy artists sausagey finger pointing at
  it.

  If you like, it dose not nurture the suffering soul to
  present it with a shit in bowl.

  Art that enriches our lives requires a commitment and
  love and the the touch of the fairies. Art needs to
  bring beauty into life but not glamour. To stay awake
  the artist purposefully sits on the wrong end of the
  see-saw.
  Billy Childish. 6.6.07

  ‘Isn’t it a miracle what so much money and so little ability can produce,” says critic Robert Hughes of Hirst’s work, before interviewing one the men who bestows so much moolah on the moron.

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