Tuesday 31 August 2010

Perigo on Beck’s “God thing”

Glenn Beck galvanized hundreds of thousands of patriotic Americans to show up in Washington for his 'Restoring Honor' rally, observes Lindsay Perigo. That’s the good part.

_Quote Though [Beck] was obliged to play down the political implications of the gathering, there is no doubt that this was the Tea Party out in force, giving The Anti-American President the message that his socialist agenda will soon be consigned to the ashcan of history.

Yay!

_Quote As Sarah Palin so succinctly put it, the task is not to transform America but
restore it.

Um, not so yay. Why her? And what exactly do she and he mean by “restore”?

_QuoteThe alarm bells of liberty-lovers from sea to shining sea should be ringing from every mountainside at Beck [and Palin]'s sloppy exhortation to 'try the whole turning back to God thing.'

Oh. So that’s what they mean!

_Quote_Idiot"Let's try the whole turning back to God thing and see what happens," said Glenn Beck [again] on Fox News Sunday.

No, says Perigo.  "Let's not."

_QuoteThe greatness of America lies precisely in its constitutional separation between church and state. Though Beck denies he has a theocracy in mind, and claims to respect the right of atheists to their (dis)beliefs, it's hard to imagine that part of the Religious Right that does want a theocracy not being emboldened into pushing for one as part of a 'whole turning back to God thing.'

The ‘God thing’ and Americathe ‘God thing’ and freedomthey just don’t mix well.

IPCC Climate Science Chief Gets Good Advice, Finally

Guest Post by Jeff Perren.

IPCC Climate Data Fudger-In-Chief Rajendra Pachauri gets a mild spanking from some real scientists, the sort who haven't yet completely lost their scientific integrity.

_Quote "Qualitative probabilities should be used to describe the probability of well-defined outcomes only when there is sufficient evidence," said the review group, which was supported by the academies of science from the United States, Netherlands, Britain and other countries.
Good advice (although I'm not altogether sure what a "qualitative" probability would look like). Think he'll take it? Nah, me neither.

Monday 30 August 2010

Turkel House, Detroit – Frank Lloyd Wright

Turkel01

Frank Lloyd Wright always had an intense interest in low- and moderate-cost homes. One solution was his Usonian Automatic—a system of special owner-built concrete blocks, unique to each house, woven together to make a home—just the sort of thing that NZ’s Building Code now makes illegal—of which the Turkel House in Detroit, Michigan, is a recently restored example.Turkel02

Head here to the Hour Detroit for the story of the restoration, and many more pictures.Turkel03

And head  to the owners’ own website for more of the story.Turkel04 Hat tip Prairie Mod.Turkel05

Facebook in history

If Facebook had been around for several centuries, here’s what some famous updates might have looked like. If Ben Franklin ever said “Booyah.”

FacebookHistory  Click the pic to see it all. [Hat tip Geek Press]

Oh yeah, and here’s Abe Lincoln’s original Facebook page.

‘ECONOMICS FOR REAL PEOPLE’ MEET-UP: Capital & its structure

Sorry it’s short notice … but the next meeting of the Auckland Uni Economics Group is tomorrow night, and it’s going to be a goody. Once again, it couldn’t be more topical, explaining in simple terms how something that even most economists have never heard about was part of the cause of the present crisis.

UoAEconGroup-chalkboard summary

All welcome, from students of economics to students of life.

See you there!

PS: Here’s the “official” announcement for the evening:

_Quote The UOA Economics Group is coming back online for the second part of the year.  Overseas travel and study and work commitments have meant that we had to take a longer break than we had wanted, however we are now back with an interesting and challenging programme for the remainder of the year.  We will be bringing you more meetings over the coming months as we get to grip with some complex topics.
    Economic ideas, as we have seen, change the world and any student of economics must be familiar with the range of ideas that exist. This is especially important as economists struggle to explain what has happened in recent years to the world's financial system.
    We have looked at The Broken Window Fallacy, Division of Labour and Say's Law. We will now continue looking at Capital and its Structure.  This will be crucial in understanding why things have gone so wrong recently as we later examine business cycle theory and apply this to the recent financial crisis.  The theory of capital lies at the heart of economics which we will introduce in the next seminar.  Capital is a large subject but this should whet your appetite for some interesting conversations and more talking points to get you thinking. 
    Look forward to seeing you...

Hubbard’s SCF: Too big for govt not to create another big balls up

Talk has now turned from the Serious Fraud Office’s Kafka-esque harassment of to Aalan Hubbard and his other companies to a government “bailout” for the company he founded and chaired, South Canterbury Finance (SCF). 

“Too big to fail”?  Surely that should mean “too big for taxpayers’ money to be wasted.” What it means, however—and I say this with much sadness—is that it’s too big for governments to ignore.  And you know what that’s going to mean, don’t you. Another balls up.

Consider the foolishly offered government guarantee scheme for failing finance companies, without which talk of “bailout” would even be talk.  Or shouldn’t be.  As many sane and sober folk were saying when Michael Cullen and John Key agreed to the scheme, “The big banks didn't need it, even at the height of the crisis, and sure don't need it now, and its only function was to prop up risky finance companies that should have failed.”  Now a big one has, and with the combination of imminent collapse and Bill’s foolishness the taxpayer now finds him-and-herself on the hook for several hundred million dollars. Thanks Michael.  Thanks John. You dickheads.

Consider too the harassment of South Canterbury Finance’s founder and chairman Alan Hubbard by the Serious Fraud Office—an investigation over issues in another company which are still not clear, which have been deliberately left vague, and which have been used as a stick with which to blackmail Mr Hubbard into handing over the keys to this company—an investigation done so poorly and so publicly that it all but guaranteed any chance of South Canterbury Finance finding another funder to make up its capital reserves was effectively extinguished. (We’ll never know whether SCF did have a chance of saving itself, but the jackboots rendered that possibility null.)

What the government should have done was not what it did. Risking taxpayers’ money with this sort of guarantee was unconscionable; putting it at risk with the Keystone Cops’ persecution of the company’s chairman was intolerable. To compound both errors now by pouring taxpayers’ money down what looks like a black hole would be beyond irresponsible—which is what it will probably happen.

What it should do now is allow liquidators to the clean out the dead wood as quickly and effectively as possible so that resources tied up in this debacle can be set free for other entrepreneurs to find a better use for them, ASAP—to use them as fertiliser for new ventures, unencumbered by whatever meddling strings the government would like to attach .

Since that’s the most logical thing to do, however, we can be almost certain that it won’t be done. Expect instead to see South Canterbury Finance effectively nationalised, using the money you were thinking of using on home improvements, debt repayment and educating your children to be used instead to prop up a zombie company that was doing moderately well until the jackboots came through the door.

DOWN TO THE DOCTOR’S: Republicanism, Rand and the Right

_richardmcgrath Libertarianz leader Dr Richard McGrath ransacks the newspapers for stories and headlines on issues affecting our freedom.

This week: Republicanism, Rand and the Right…

1. DomPost: “Pharmacist, 70, jailed for supply of P ingredients
    In my work as a part-time medical officer at a drug and alcohol clinic I have a particular interest in reducing the harm to individuals, and to the greater community, caused by the health and legal problems associated with drug use. The legal problems associated with drug use include individual acts of violence and neglect related to the procurement, sale and consumption of drugs; as well as problems caused by the criminalisation of the choice to trade and/or personally use certain neuro-active substances.
    Support or opposition for drug laws is a political litmus test which distinguishes the conservative ("right-wing") attitude on drug use from the libertarian view.
    Conservatives believe the state owns your body, and can therefore make the rules as to what can and can't go into it, in order to stop you from making mistakes that could harm you.   
    Libertarians believe you own your body* and can thus determine input and output. 
    Conservatives treat adults as children; libertarians tend to treat adults as adults.
    Currently, the state tolerates self-regulation of alcohol and nicotine intake in adults. These two drugs cause a well-documented and well-known range of negative health outcomes.  
    While permitting the use of these substances, our government forbids the use of many others.
    This prohibition causes immense harm by arbitrarily turning peaceful people into nominal criminals, in many cases incarcerating them and labelling them as real criminals for little more that ingestion of substances of which the state presently disapproves.
    Prohibition often does turn previously peaceful people into real criminals (i.e. initiators of violence against other people or their property). It tends to make the illicit substances traded much more concentrated (and therefore more dangerous), less reliable in terms of quality (has Consumer magazine ever ranked the best suppliers of cannabis?) and far more expensive. The vendors of illicit drugs are often far less scrupulous than vendors of legal substances (witness stories of illicit drug dealers flogging their wares outside schools, for example, compared to where party pills used to be sold).
     The demand within our community for stimulant drugs such as amphetamine, and the state's determination to stop adults being able to buy it, has spawned the P industry—a marketplace that is dominated by criminals and gangs, and is supported by the politicians. The biggest nightmare for P manufacturers and dealers would not be further criminalisation of drug use in adults, but legalisation. Profits would simply go through the floor.
    The Libertarianz Party endorses drug legalisation, because it is consistent with improving individual freedom. Supporting drug legalisation is not an election-winning strategy, but as I said before, but it is a litmus test. Those who attack the Libertarianz Party for raising the issue are always reluctant to say where they stand on it.
    It is a matter of freedom. The thought of people Morris dancing in their own homes, or at Green Party conferences, repels me—but outlawing it would not stop people wanting to do it. The activity would be driven underground, to less salubrious environments run by nasty violent people, at much greater cost to all involved.
    The septugenarian pharmacist jailed for supplying methamphetamine substrate to P manufacturers is a victim of our drug laws. Locking him up will not stop people wanting to self-medicate with stimulants, it simply makes less salubrious the places and suppliers with which they have to do business.
    And anyone who claims that no-one should need stimulants should first check whether they themselves drink coffee. And how they would feel if coffee was outlawed.

2. NZ Herald: “Cullen: New Zealand should be republic
   
Whether or not Michael Cullen delivers his anticipated call for establishment of a republic, comments contained in speech notes indicate he has done an about-face on the issue. 
    At the time he held a cabinet post he opposed republicanism, describing himself as the last cabinet’s  "token monarchist." I guess he must have “token” vales as well.
    I abhorred Cullen during his years in parliament. Fuelled by a childhood resentment of wealth and success, he and his ilk spent their entire political careers harassing and intimidating the productive people who funded their jobs and perks. Cullen's war cry, his battle chant—“we won, you lost, eat that”—perfectly summarises his snark, biting the hand that fed him like the ungrateful parasite he was. 
    However, I come not to bury Cullen, but to praise him—faintly, and in passing mind you—for rekindling the republicanism debate. For it has long been Libertarianz Party policy to replace the current system of democratic representative government under British monarchy with a system of constitutional republicanism similar to that of the original United States. The important point is not so much the replacement of Betty Battenburg as our head of state, but an overhaul of the form of state governance itself.
    Libertarians believe government should not only be small, it should be tied up with a very short (constitutional) leash, and beaten with a very long stick if it gets ideas above its station. To ensure this, there should be separation of government powers: administration of the state bureaucracy (the executive function) should be separate from law-making (the legislative function), which in turns  needs independence from dispute resolution and law enforcement (the judicial function).
    History professor Paul Moon correctly points out that we are a de facto republic already, with a Queen that does not interefere in the political process. And, of course, with abandonment of recourse to the Privy Council, the judicial system has freed itself of all ties to Britain. Herald columnist Garth George, despite a silly title to his article, uncharacteristically gets things exactly right:

        “We might have our own Supreme Court but we need to remember that
    Parliament remains the country's ultimate court.

          “It can, the way we have it set up, pretty much do what it likes. There are
    insufficient checks and balances as
things stand, opposition parties and triennial
    elections notwithstanding. Irreparable damage can be done in three
years by
    self-interested politicians, as we well know.”


3. NZ Herald: “Matt McCarten: Death throes of the soulless party of self interest
    Every time I bring up the subject of the ACT Party, its defenders and apologists are quick to rush in and point to the Libertarianz Party's lack of electoral success. ACT, if one cares to remember, was the baby of two high profile ex-cabinet ministers from the best government New Zealand has had in the last fifty years. It received massive publicity and tens of thousands of people, myself included, voted for them.
    Over time, and especially under the leadership of Rodney Hide, its medium-term future has looked increasingly uncertain. Not the least of its problems is abandonment its found principles, the leadership style of Mr Hide, his highly embarrassing perk-lusting behaviour after years of perk-busting rhetoric, and the ongoing lack of any statement of core values on ACT's website. I'm sure they used to have some.** They were probably similar to these ones, http://www.libertarianz.org.nz/principles/,from which come these policies: http://www.libertarianz.org.nz/policies/.
    But bizarrely, it now seems ACT is being tarred with the same brush with which their own followers try and daub Libertarianz.  Look at this, for example, from McCarten:

        “The [ACT Party] cultists worship at the altar of their prophet, Ayn Rand, and delude
     themselves if everyone only
focuses on getting what they want, then somehow this
     is good for everyone.”


    Heaven forbid ACT should ever endorse anything from Ayn Rand! But if it isn’t individualism and rational self-interest that underpins ACT party policy and provides intellectual fuel for its electoral candidates, then what the hell does?  Or did?
    Anything at all?
    Of course, the person throwing these accusations of self-interest at ACT MPs (as if that was an insult) is a woefully ignorant apologist for a totalitarian political movement that has been such an economic failure wherever it was tried that its luminaries murdered and starved tens of millions of people to fit them into into its straitjacket. Matt McCarten and his fellow travellers care not one iota for these facts, nor that a person's brain, his or her thoughts, and the products that derive from these thoughts and action, and the right to trade these products and to prosper thereby, are the vary basis for improvements in human standards of living.
    However, even this well-known political waka-jumper and apologist for murderous totalititarianism can point to Rodney’s Super-Sized City Council as a reason to question just where ACT is heading.
    I find it increasingly difficult myself to reconcile the megalomaniacal concentration of bureaucratic power that Rodney Hide has engineered in Auckland with the vision of smaller government and the devolution of services that ACT seemed to stand for in its earlier days. ACT’s dwindling number of supporters must be feeling equally confused.

“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny - when the
government fears the people, there is liberty.”
- attributed to Thomas Jefferson


* More accurately, your body is you. – Ed.
** They certainly did. The party’s founding principles were stated in two short sentences. And we have a prize on offer to any ACT supporter who can say what they actually were—and who wrote them. – Ed.

PJM Article: The Fragility of Statist Socieities

Guest Post by Jeff Perren.

Another of my articles has been published at Pajamas Media: The Fragility of Statist Societies.

Here's an excerpt:

"The ultimate justification for a free society rests on moral principles. Individuals have inherent rights — to life, liberty, and property — that governments are always wrong to violate, no matter the (temporary) benefits to others. But even on their own terms, the pragmatists who argue that coercion works are mistaken."
Your comments are invited, here and there.

Thanks for reading,

Jeff.

Friday 27 August 2010

Special Techniques Reveal Greek Statues' Original Appearance

Guest Post by Jeff Perren.

Amazing.

A technique called ‘raking light' has been used to analyze art for a long time.

A lamp is positioned carefully enough that the path of the light is almost parallel to the surface of the object. When used on paintings, this makes brushstrokes, grit, and dust obvious.

On statues, the effect is more subtle. Brush-strokes are impossible to see, but because different paints wear off at different rates, the stone is raised in some places – protected from erosion by its cap of paint – and lowered in others. Elaborate patterns become visible.

Ultraviolet is also used to discern patterns. ...

Our image of Ancient Greece is inescapably colored, pardon the pun, by having grown up with the austere appearance of its white marble buildings and statues. The technique reveals just how colorful their culture truly was.

Read the rest.

Thursday 26 August 2010

The world’s best man-caves.

These “fourteen famous man rooms” were selected by the Art of Manliness blog to show where great men went to collect their thoughts, to do their work --“a study where they would retreat to think, read, and write … a garage or workshop where they would tinker and experiment …  places a man could call his own.”

From Ernest Hemingway to Thomas Edison to Frederick Douglass to Thomas Jefferson to Charles Darwin, the blog showcases some great work and withdrawing spaces in which some great men have found inspiration. These are my favourite two, the Oak Park Drafting Room of Frank Lloyd Wright—with the upper mezzanine storey hung on chains above the workroom below—and Mark Twain’s Writing Hut, in which he completed Life on the Mississippi, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finntwain2 Describing his eyrie to a friend he talked of it “perched in complete isolation on the top of an elevation that commands leagues of valley and city and retreating ranges of distant blue hills.

_Quote It is a cozy nest and just room in it for a sofa, table, and three or four chairs, and when the storms sweep down the remote valley and the lightning flashes behind the hills beyond and the rain beats upon the roof over my head—imagine the luxury of it.

twain1 Wright’s aim was inspiration. And experiment. And production. This was the workspace he created when he set up on his own , and in which over the next twenty years he and his assistants produced 125 structures the like of which the world had never before seen.frank1 Visit the Art of Manliness blog to read about the importance of man spaces, and to see the other dozen places in which world-beating work was done. They might inspire you to do your own. [Hat tip Gus Van Horn]

PS: I couldn’t resist adding this picture of Wright, below, at work (many  years after leaving Oak Park) in his writing office in Taliesin, Wisconsin.  It’s one of my favourites. FLW-TaliesinStudy

The brains of peaceful people … and murderers

The experience of early childhood education suggests, and brain research confirms, that they way you think effects the way your brain develops. The process of myelinisation in a child’s early years (i.e., the process whereby the brain grows a fatty sheath around developing nerve fibres to better transmit its neural pulses) almost literally cements in the child’s way of thinking, and the “filing system” his brain is developing as he grows and explores his environment. This development of the brain doesn’t cease at five or six, it continues right up until we’re twenty-four or so.

It’s a two-way process. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, We build our brains, thereafter they build us.

California neuroscientist James Fallon studies the brains of psychopathic killers; people with badly built brains—who almost literally have got something missing. But what he also discovered was something “about libertarians that—just might—keep them peaceful.”

And oddly, the part that might keep them peaceful is precisely the part that neuropsychologist Steven Hughes and Montessori researcher Angeline Lillard identify as the very part that Montessori education builds up (and that nannying and “helicopter parenting” discourages): the executive function.

How ‘bout that.

James Cameron—a Titanic lack of balls [update 3]

ChickenLittleWallpaper1024 Director James Cameron is famous for a movie in which you can spend two hours watching people drown (Titanic) and for the first movie in history about war between aliens and humans in which we’re meant to barrack for the aliens (Avatar). He also famously issued a challenge to climate skeptics, saying in a much-discussed March interview he wanted “to call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out with those boneheads."

So Ann McElhinney, the co-writer and co-irector of Not Evil Just Wrong, accepted immediately—telling Cameron she’d “even drive herself to your Camegigantic gated Malibu double mansion to shoot it out.” So did Marc Morano of the popular Climate Depot website.  And new media mogul Andrew Breitbart.

So Cameron accepted the challenge. “His people” set it all up. He agreed to a debate this week at a conference in Colorado. And then, bit by bit, he just kind’a chickened out, as Ann McElhinney describes:

_Quote As the debate approached James Cameron's side started changing the rules.
They wanted to change their team. We agreed.
They wanted to change the format to less of a debate—to "a roundtable." We agreed.
    Then they wanted to ban our cameras from the debate. We could have access to their footage. We agreed.
    Bizarrely, for a brief while, the worlds most successful film maker suggested that no cameras should be allowed-that sound only should be recorded. We agreed
    Then finally James Cameron, who so publicly announced that he "wanted to call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out," decided to ban the media from the shoot out.
    He even wanted to ban the public. The debate/roundtable would only be open to those who attended the conference.
    No media would be allowed and there would be no streaming on the internet.  No one would be allowed to record it in any way.
    We all agreed to that.
    And then, yesterday, just one day before the debate, his representatives sent an email that Mr. "shoot it out " Cameron no longer wanted to take part. The debate was cancelled.
    James Cameron's behavior raises some very important questions.
    Does he genuinely believe in man made climate change?  If he believes it is a danger to humanity surely he should be debating the issue every chance he gets ?
    Or is it just a pose?
The man who called for an open and public debate at "high noon" suddenly doesn't want his policies open to serious scrutiny.
   I was looking forward to debating with the film maker. I was looking forward to finding out where we agreed and disagreed and finding a way forward that would help the poorest people in the developing and developed world.
    But that is not going to happen because somewhere along the way James Cameron … has moved from King of the World to being King of the Hypocrites.

And after cancelling the debate? “Cameron still went to the conference where he called climate skeptics ‘swine,’and sniffed that the skeptics weren’t “of his stature in society.”

Make that King of the Fucking Hypocrites.

JamesCameronatHighNoon (1)

UPDATE 1: Says Climate Depot’s Marc Morano, “Cameron let his friends in the environmental community spook him out of this debate," When he was warned that he was probably going to lose and lose badly, he ran like a scared mouse.”

UPDATE 2: Cameron busted on his stated reasons for withdrawing. Emails show the real story.

UPDATE 3: Meanwhile, a founder of warmist site Real Climate demonstrates at Wikipedia how intellectual honesty is done in warmist circles, leading the charge as the most prolific climate information gatekeeper at Wikipedia.  If he can’t argue his case, he simply bans it.

Things are good. Things are very good.

Despite all the doom and gloom about things, despite even the present recession, now is still a very good time to be alive.  The human environment has never been better. The author of The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley, reckons human beings are far better off now than in the past--and make significant advances when free exchanges of ideas and trade flourish. “When our species invented exchanging, it was as if ideas started having sex…” [Hat tip Vulcan’s Hammer]

Notes from a Google Barcamp: The something-for-nothing brigade

Guest post by Paul van Dinther
----------------------------------------------------------------------
    THIS WEEKEND I PRESENTED some of my PlanetInAction.Com work at a Google Barcamp here in Auckland discussing various Google Technologies, and people’s reactions to it.
    The day started with a topic on so-called “net neutrality,” the idea that ISPs should not be able to favor some types of data over others. Almost to a man and woman, the attendees disapproved of Google’s proposal to prioritise certain types of traffic on its own new wireless networks.  The key claim was that airwaves and frequencies are in “public ownership.” Yet not a single person in the room recognised the simple fact that Google is proposing to do something on a network that Google itself owns!
    Google knows wireless data has a constrained capacity. Profit is the motivation that drives them to shape a service that has the potential for maximum return, thus enabling them to invest and sustain a profitable and usable level of service. A fact that was totally lost on a large part of the audience who simply wanted a say in property in someone else’s property.
    SO WE MOVED ON TO NZ government plans to block copyright offenders’ access to the internet.
    This time a mixed response. Some said "Yes" because it enabled offenders to be dealt with permanently, while others said "No" because it would make it impossible to access the internet for learning. "You mean porn?" someone inevitably intervened.
    Once again, nobody entertained the idea of keeping the government out of it altogether. I suggested that ISPs set their own terms and conditions in accordance with the law and, if those terms are broken—for violating copyrights, for example—then the ISP can and should cut you off. However, other ISP's should be free to open an account with you. No government meddling needed.
    Someone in the audience asked: "What if none of the ISP's want you anymore?" My response: "Well then you are screwed, no more internet for you." A teacher objected that "Internet access is a human right." Lot's of agreeing nods. The reasoning was that people “need” the internet for their education. (Need, apparently, being used as a claim on others.)
    I asked them if they were aware that in manufacturing this “right” they intended to impose a duty on someone else to deliver that right. Well that was easily solved for these people: government should play a bigger role in imposing that alleged duty.  Their “need” was that important, apparently.
    I pointed out that, since the government’s announcement that billions of taxpayer dollars would be poured into fibre infrastructure, many potential network investors had simply closed their wallets in response—resulting in less overall investment and far less diversity and choice, and with the government’s hands on the internet faucet.
    THE TOPIC SHIFTED TO privacy with regard to Google Maps and Google Earth—my area of expertise. I showed the audience how data from both Google Maps and Google Earth is contributed from many sources, such as the old historic aerial photography from 1963 of the North Shore. Someone suggested that Google would soon own all our information. It needed pointing out that Google collects, stores and distributes such information but does not own it, any more than a publisher does when he publishes someone else’s photos. Just as in a book, the old historic aerial photographs remain under the ownership of the original owner, in this case Land Information NZ, on whose website those same images can be found.
      "Google Street view invades our privacy" was the next fatuous whine, the whiners oblivious to the fact that all data in Street View is public information easily obtainable by anyone walking down a street.
    SO, A BIG DAY for the whiners.  But who exactly were these people? Well as it turned out there was a large contingent of school teachers among the audience.
    Why was I surprised.

Cheers,

Paul van Dinther

Wednesday 25 August 2010

‘Bather Arranging her Hair’ - Renoir

renoir42 Bather Arranging her Hair, 1893
92.5 x 74 cm, Oil on canvas

Every nude is striking. Renoir’s more so than most.

But what makes this—or Praxitiles’ Aphrodite of last night—a nude rather than just being naked?

Kenneth Clark used to say that nakedness is you or me getting out of the bath, whereas a nude is altogether more stylised. Nudes are “ideal forms of art,” he maintained, while naked bodies are just their embarrassing, real-life counterparts. But Kenneth Clark was a prude.

William Blake chose his words carefully when he said “Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed.” He meant that in every sense. An artist sees all of reality naked, and then paints it.  The nude is one very important, and delightful, part of that.

Thank goodness.

St John of Aotearoa

Following the advice of Imperator Fish, I did check out Bloomberg's hagiography of our Prime Minister, St John of Aotearoa—complete with endorsements of his miracles by both his party’s biggest backer, and his government’s biggest beneficiary.

Unfortunately, I had just eaten…

DOWN TO THE DOCTOR’S: Inflammable Material—Alcohol & ACT

_richardmcgrath Libertarianz leader Dr Richard McGrath ransacks the newspapers for stories and headlines on issues affecting our freedom.

This week:  Alcohol and ACT - both flammable.

1. NZ HERALD: Australia ‘should follow NZ on alcohol’ – expert
THE DOCTOR SAYS: Can you believe Simon Power wants to enact 126 new regulations to tighten how other adults can drink – because he doesn’t think people have the knowledge, or right, to determine how to do so in way of which he approves. Now a fellow control-freak from Australia, Maree Teeson doesn’t feel these 126 new edicts (out of the 153 recommended by Law Commission Wowser-in-Chief Geoffrey Palmer) are anything close to enough, describing them as “lightweight” and “feather-like.” People like Maree Teeson, the sort of we-know-best-what’s-right-for-you guardians that nobody needs, is the living, breathing face of Nanny. Such people are the living, breathing raison d'être for the Libertarianz Party.

2. NZ HERALD:Govt proposes new adventure tourism rules
THE DOCTOR SAYS: All risky tourism ventures will have to be registered (read: taxed) and pass a safety audit (read: taxed + bureaucrats). Sigh. Yet more, not less, Nanny State from the party that promised to roll back the oppressive weight of government after the 2008 election. Because 39 people died in New Zealand in the course of 6 years doing “outdoor activities” (some of these, presumably, from underlying medical conditions that were unrelated to the activities), 1500 commercial operators are now under threat of yet more regulation. Nothing like using a sledgehammer to kill a gnat. (Pun intentional.)

3. NZ HERALD: Alcohol clampdown unfairly targets dairies, owners say
THE DOCTOR SAYS: This got so far up my nose I could feel it tickling my frontal lobes. So.. in response, the Libertarianz Party have put out a press statement calling for Simon Power to stop bullying shop-owners:

Libz Defend Dairy Owners' Rights
Libertarianz Party leader
Richard McGrath described Simon Power's proposed legislation to restrict the sale of alcohol at dairies and convenience stores as a "clumsy, racist, attempt to impose his Victorian attitudes on young people." Dr McGrath urged dairy owners to vote Libertarianz at next year's election, "in protest at the National Party's attempts to interfere in their businesses."
"Once again, Simon Power shows a scant regard for the wishes of communities and the livelihoods of honest traders," he said. "His bullying of dairy owners is a pointed attack on the ethnic groups that own a disproportionately high number of these shops, and the consumers that purchase their wares."
"As for the Minister's desire to restrict access to alcohol for all under-20-year-olds in response to the actions of a minority: will his next edict be a mandated bedtime regime for 18 and 19 year olds? After all, if they can't be trusted to drink in moderation, how on earth could they possibly get themselves to bed at a decent hour?"   
Dr McGrath urged New Zealanders to embrace common-law solutions to the problems of underage drinking. "Dairy owners should be able to sell whatever they like to other adults, subject to mutual consent. Parents should be held accountable for the actions of their children. Therefore, if minors are harmed through alcohol use, their parents or guardians should be questioned and possibly prosecuted. In turn, parents should be able to launch civil action against anyone who gives or sells their under-age children alcohol."
Furthermore, he said, those who commit crime against property and other people should be held responsible and liable for any damage they cause. "Victims of crime committed by those under the influence of intoxicating substances should be compensated in full by the offenders."
Dr McGrath reminded business owners that they had the full backing of the Libertarianz Party in being able to defend themselves from robbers and burglars with appropriate levels of defensive weaponry. "Anyone who tries to rob a dairy or shop deserves to be neutralised rapidly, as the situation warrants."
"The scapegoating of dairy owners, as exemplified by Simon Power's proposed laws, is consistent with the National Party's war on small businesses. The Libertarianz Party, on the other hand, believes in slashing income tax, abolishing GST, opening ACC up to competition, ending liquor licensing laws and repealing the Resource
Management Act, in order to to make the establishment and operation of small businesses simpler and easier."

4. STUFF: ACT’s Heather Roy under pressure to quit Parliament
THE DOCTOR SAYS: ACT party hack Hilary Calvert has been flown up from Dunedin and is now circling like a vulture over Heather Roy. However, in breaking news, Rodney Hide’s “leadership” is being challenged by former ACT board member and list candidate Peter Tashkoff. In a highly damaging broadside which adds fuel to the flames of ACT’s self-destruction, Tashkoff (who was beaten in the Te Tai Tokerau electorate in 2008 by the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party candidate) said Hide was a “failure” and a “liability”—and he was so disgusted at Hide’s handling of the Roy saga that he would challenge the leader’s candidacy in Epsom.
    Hide, the former perk-buster, whose chops were busted when he milked taxpayers and used the very same perk for his girlfriend that he had formerly railed against.
    Hide, who has done irreparable damage to the cause of freedom by his behaviour inside and out of Parliament.
    Hide, who has set back the cause of liberty with his determination to fit the necks of Auckland regional ratepayers into one Super-Sized Noose.
    Rodney Hide needs to go, and ACT themselves needs to either return to their core values (if they have any - they don’t appear anywhere on ACT’s website) or disband.

“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny - when the government
fears the people, there is liberty.”
- attributed to Thomas Jefferson

David Bain has a job

“Did you hear that David Bain has finally got a job? He now has a paper run in Fielding.”

Just another David Bain joke to add to the list.

Save the Whale

Today’s the day that Whale Oil appears in court to defend his challenge against the use of name suppression to protect the guilty, and the well-connected—especially when those two are the same.

Whatever you might think about Whale himself, aka Cam Slater, his is a legitimate form of principled protest.  Of civil disobedience. Breaking the law, on principle, and taking your lumps for the breach is an appropriate way to protest unprincipled law. But it’s activism that comes with a price. A big one.

So if you agree with his protest against the law and you’re able to help an impecunious blogger make it, head here to learn how to make a deposit to his fighting fund—or click on that “Chip In” widget up there on my right sidebar.

New Article: ‘Obama's Playbook: Why He Keeps Saying Dumb Things’

_jeffrey-perren Guest Post by Jeff Perren

Another of my articles has been published at Pajamas Media -- Obama's Playbook: Why He Keeps Saying Dumb Things.  Here's an excerpt:

_Quote The key to everything Obama does is that he truly is a committed, 99-44/100ths pure progressive. That fact explains not only the content of his views but why he keeps stumbling over one controversy after the next. As Jonah Goldberg expressed it in Liberal Fascism, progressivism is “a totalitarian political religion,” and Barack Obama is one of its most faithful acolytes. He’s simply acting in accordance with his personal theology.
    Unlike even semi-rational philosophies, progressivism is built on sheer fantasy. Other doctrines may make errors, some of them very serious, but most are built on at least some foundation of real-world evidence and logical analysis. Progressivism is one of the few that is actually anti-evidence and anti-logic.
    That assertion is not a wild-eyed interpretation by a crazed right-winger. It’s the official view of progressive intellectuals themselves. Merging with its offshoot of postmodernism, progressivism holds that people are unable to grasp evidence first-hand or to be objective about its interpretation.
    Postmodern philosophers from Hegel to Dewey to Heidegger, Herbert Marcuse, and Richard Rorty have said so. Their students and followers are just applying what they’ve been taught. Those individuals are the ones who shaped Obama, nurtured his education and careers, and helped get him elected.

Read more.

Your feedback is invited here, there, and at my blog.

Thanks,
Jeff

Tuesday 24 August 2010

‘Aphrodite’ - Praxiteles

aphrodite1

For the first time in history, in Classical Greece, sculptors began depicting the beauty of the human figure—and the master of Classical Greek sculpture was Praxiteles.

His naked Aphrodite—the Goddess of love, depicted preparing to bathe--was so famous, that dozens of later Roman copies were made. This is the marble original, c.350 BC. It was the first monumental female nude in classical sculpture.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Accentuate the just

_Quote Just as justice demands primary emphasis on recognizing the good, so public policy must primarily be formulated to make life for the good and the innocent possible. Dealing with criminals [and drunks] is a secondary issue.
                      - Amit Ghate, “You Can't Have the Time Back

“A bottle store on every corner…”

Announcing yesterday’s package of puritanism, Simon Power-Lust signalled that he will be continuing the attack on small bottle-store owners begun by Helen Clark the very week bottle-store owner Navtej Singh was shot.  One of the three big “improvements” delivered by his reforms, says Simon, is that it “gives communities a say in when and where liquor outlets can open.”  The unspoken announcement being: “We’re going to make it damned hard to get a new license, or renew an existing one.”

This frankly just blames small-business owners for selling to wiling customers.  It’s the same sort of finger-pointing in which several hundred people indulged in Manukau last week, marching on council buildings to complain about what other people are doing. One woman in the rally, who revealed to the interviewer that she had a god on her side (she didn’t reveal which one), complained that in Manukau there is now “a bottle store on every corner.” “That’s not what we want as a community,” she huffed.

Well, I beg to differ.

If there really were a bottle store on every corner (there are 350 bottle stores in Manukau, but many more corners) then that would in fact be a sign that this is precisely what “the community” does want—because the customers of those bottle stores, who come from “the community,” are the very people who are keeping all these bottle stores open, demonstrating as clearly as you can that this is precisely what “the community” does want.

So what the woman should have said was “this is not what I want.” “The community, c’est moi.” But why is her voice more important than any other?  And why should her puritanism give her any power to to tell you and me when and where we can buy a bottle of wine? 

Well, on that one you’ll have to ask Simple Simon. Because in “giving communities a say in when and where liquor outlets can open,” he is simply giving a say to busybodies like this one, and taking it away from the communities themselves. Because like that woman, Simple Simon is completely unaware that communities already are “having a say” in where and when outlets are open—having a say by voting with their wallet every time they make a purchase.  

They’re called customers, Simon. At the end of the day it’s not you or I or anyone else who decides whether or not a bottle store or any other store stays open.  They do: their customers.  And these customers are the community.

Perhaps you should listen to what they’re saying. Because shutting down these small businesses won’t limit demand for alcohol, it will simply change where it’s bought. And meanwhile, as Eric Crampton observes, there are a lot of immigrant families whose businesses are going to be destroyed.

RELATED POSTS:

Monday 23 August 2010

‘Prisoners From the Front’ – Winslow Homer

PrisonersFront1866 Winslow Homer (American, 1836-1910). Prisoners from the Front, 1866.
Oil on canvas. 61 x 96.5 cm (24 x 38 in.)

I’ve been watching Ken Burns’ stunning TV documentary series on the unspeakable tragedy that was the American Civil War—four years when the country tore itself apart over the stain of slavery the Land of the Free should never have countenanced.

The character of the men making up the war’s two armies is well expressed in Winslow Homer’s classic portrait, representing three rebel soldiers of varying temperaments undergoing the interrogation of a sober Union general.

It remains one of the most well-known images from the whole blood-soaked struggle.

Drinking-age humbug [update 3]

Is it just me, or is there something vaguely distasteful about middle-aged people who’ve made fuck ups out of their own lives making up rules for how 18-20 year-olds should spend theirs—rules, especially, about drinking.  Nothing is more calculated to flush out the fuck-up’s inner puritan.

And when those middle-aged fuck-ups are politicians ready to “bring out the ban”—to ban all 18-20 year-olds from buying alcohol simply because a few, a very few, 18-20 year-olds have behaved badly—then that just stinks of rank humbug.

Not every 18-20 year-old is a train crash waiting to happen, any more than every politician is a braindead, spendthrift fat fool who wants to download porn, travel extravagantly, or play fast and loose with confidential defence documents (though tarring all politicians with the same brush claim is infinitely more justifiable).  Blaming them all for the bad behaviour of some is frankly ludicrous, not to say iniquitous.

And asserting that people considered old enough to vote those politicians into power are not yet old enough to choose what goes into their shopping trolley is frankly indefensible.

Young Jenna Raeburn makes the case for keeping the status quo far more soberly than I can manage. Her restraint is admirable.

UPDATE 1:

_Quote_thumb[2] The government will be unveiling its liquor policy today, and a core element seems to be national opening hours, with off-licences restricted to opening between 7am and 11pm, and bars and nightclubs between 8am and 4am…. What next? A legislated national bedtime?

UPDATE 2:  Matt Nolan at The Visible Hand wonders why the wowsers can’t even get their outrage straight:

_Quote_thumb[2]One of the main reasons the government wants to crack down on alcohol is because of thescenes no civilized society can relish,“, which is when people of the age of 18-24 go into town and run amok....
    So they are introducing a policy that will give people the incentive to go into town, instead of drinking at home…so more people will just drink in town (where it is likely more student bars with low margins and high quantities will open), and with them already in town there can be even more people to “run amok.”

More unintended consequences of nannying.

UPDATE 3The liquor policy is unveiled. They’ve gone for a half-nanny rather than the full reach-around begged for by the Law Commission. Paul Walker makes a number of cogent objections to being bossed around by Simple Simon. Roger Kerr makes a toast to moderately common sense.

UPDATE 4: Two new Facebook groups you may like: Open Bars and Being Able To Buy Alcohol At Night.  Because “why should it be illegal to buy a bottle of wine after 11pm?”

I Ran [updated]

Q: What’s more important in world politics than the mis-named Ground Zero Mosque?

A: The fact that the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism has just gone nuclear—in rhetoric as well as reality.

Q: And how was this allowed to happen?

A: Thirty years of bipartisan appeasement:

_Quote Consider the rise of Islamic Totalitarianism. In 1979, a new Iranian regime founded on Islamic [] principles held fifty-two Americans hostage for four hundred and forty-four days, while America helplessly begged for their return and Iranian leaders had a world stage to proclaim their superiority to the nation they call the ‘Great Satan.’ … [W]ith America on her knees, the burgeoning anti-American movement achieved a crucial victory.
    [Did this] warrant a military response? Did it rise to the level of a direct attack sufficient to place us at the point of ‘last resort’ with Iran and other nations that sponsor Islamic terrorism? Not according to Jimmy Carter. What about after two hundred and forty-three marines were killed in Lebanon in 1983? Not according to Ronald Reagan. Or after Khomeini’s fatwa offered terrorists a bounty to destroy writer Salman Rushdie and his American publisher for expressing an ‘un-Islamic’ viewpoint in 1989? Not according to George Bush, Sr. Or after the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993? Not according to Bill Clinton. The pattern is telling.

It is a pattern that has allowed Iran’s Mullahs to pursue the Islamist Holy Grail combining nuclear enrichment with the sponsorship of world terrorism—from Lebanon to Gaza to Iraq to Afghanistan—while allowing themselves to think the pursuit will attract no response.

Since future decisions are so often made on the basis of past actions, it underscores again how a forceful response at the right time can quell a conflict before it starts; whereas the lack of one so frequently leads to dangerous escalation, and much more force being necessary much later.

I-RAN-Over-30-Years-of-Bipartisan-Appeasement-4-NRB [Cartoon and article by Bosch Fawstin]

U.S. "reassures" Israel that Iran is "at least 12 months" from nuclear bomb despite starting reactor today…  There, there. You're not going to get obliterated today; it's just later on where things could get a little dicey…  Just try not to think of the idea that the "dying" Lockerbie bomber could, theoretically, outlive your country as you know it.

Attacking the messenger doesn’t alter the message

Um, can someone tell me why it’s so important to know who leaked that 82-page memo last week confirming how far ACT has strayed from being a party of ideas, rather than addressing what is in it, i.e.,

  • that ACT’s caucus has discarded the realm of ideas altogether, and now fights people instead;
  • that unless ACT urgently tries to expand the market for its ideas, something at which it has signally failed, it will remain reliant on National’s favour in the seat of Epsom;
  • that National Party polling in Epsom suggests Hide has only a “tenuous” hold on it, yet, (almost unbelievably given its reliance on the seat for its very existence), no ACT polling has been done to determine the truth of that;
  • that the thuggish David Garrett appears to run the caucus;
  • that secure documents in Act’s offices are just the opposite;
  • that Act is a dysfunctional party run by an ego made fatter by ministerial office, in denial about its imminent oblivion.

The document itself argues “Act sees [politics] as primitive combat, with a need to destroy a colleague's reputation” rather than address the real issues, and it offers ample evidence to back up the claim. 

The reaction to the document’s release tends to just further confirms the thesis, wouldn’t you say?

Australia: Weak govt? Not a problem. [Update 3]

Following the Australian election, which left both Libs and Labor in equal place on either side of the “can’t-form-a-government-on-their-own” line, commentators are talking about the “problems” inherent in having a weak government.

Problems? 

In just the last few years, so-called “strong government” has delivered to Australia a ridiculously profligate programme of economic stimulunacy; eye-watering deficits; a home-insulation programme that killed installers; a tax to strip-mine the economic backbone of Australia … and Kevin Rudd. And it left Australia on the brink of having an emissions tax scam inflicted on it.

So by that standard, weak government—which simply means that this kind of stupidity will be harder for a parliament to deliver—will be a good thing, not a problem.

UPDATE 1: “Strong” government delivered the destructively inept toe-rag called Wayne Swan.  Fortunately there still exist people like Michael Kroger with the gumption to tell him the truth to his face. [Hat tip Tim Blair]

UPDATE 2: Word up to the xenophobes: According to a NSW Labor activist, Gillard’s anti-immigration views were a key factor in the collapse of Labor’s vote: [Hat tip Tim Blair]

_Quote In our attempt to go after the white bread conservative vote in Lindsay, we have lost entire ethnic communities, our traditional base. It’s a disaster,” the [activist] said.
   
“In 25 years, I have not seen people of Chinese background walk past people with Labor how-to-vote cards. As soon as she started talking about too many immigrants, we lost every ethnic vote.”

One bright spot, perhaps, in an election in which bagging would-be immigrants seemed to become a sport for both main parties.