Elsewhere (104)
Tim Blair on the self-regarding eco-guru David Suzuki:
Self-importance comes with the territory when you’re a warmist. After all, you’re saving the planet. Who could be more important than you? This elevated sense of self manifests itself in curious ways, such as Tim Flannery’s prediction of a universal belief system or his insistence that everybody is always writing about him, or Will Steffen’s fear that a retired public servant wanted to shoot climate scientists and Michael Mann’s mistaken Nobel Prize claim. But those three are mere junior narcissists compared to David Suzuki, who is now starring as a global climate martyr in a “powerful live theatre and public engagement project” about himself.
Tim Worstall on the myths and omissions of the “gender pay gap”:
Women who work part time earn more than men who work part time. Women in their 20s earn more than men in their 20s. Women who don’t marry and don’t have children earn more than men. What kills the average wage of all women, in comparison to the wage of all men, is that women – and it’s important to note that this is on average – take career breaks to have children and often then either more time off or lighter workloads to raise them. We might want to say that this isn’t a good idea. We might think that it’s just fine that people who make different life decisions earn different amounts of money. But what this isn’t is a gender pay gap. And anyone who wants to change matters has to recognise that it isn’t a gender pay gap so it isn’t something that is going to be changed by blathering on about gender. It’s about children and the having of them. And, if we’re to be honest about it all, as long as more women than men decide that they want to take those breaks and changed workloads in order to raise their children, then we’re always going to have that motherhood pay gap. Whether it’s a good or bad thing is entirely reliant upon your personal definitions of good or bad.
Theodore Dalrymple on modern priorities:
The slowness [of the police] to react – infinite slowness, in fact, since they did not react at all – contrasted oddly with an experience I had the previous Sunday. A couple of American filmmakers came to Paris to interview me… and decided that the little park opposite my flat would be a good place to do so. They set up the camera, but a few seconds later, before they could ask me a single question, a municipal policeman arrived. They were not allowed to film here without a permit from the mairie of the arrondissement, he said. I explained that these were Americans, come all the way from Texas expressly to interview me. He, a very pleasant and polite man of African origin, phoned his chief to see whether an exception could be made. As I suspected, it could not. I told the film crew that we should make no fuss; the man was only doing his job, silly as that job might be. As it happens there were several drunks in another part of the park making aggressive-sounding noises and breaking bottles, but them he did not approach, perhaps wisely, as they were several and he was only one. He thought he would have more luck with someone wearing a tweed jacket and corduroy trousers as I was.
And Jack Dunphy on our student intelligentsia:
Only on a college campus, and nowhere more so than an Ivy League one, does it take a committee to figure out the obvious. Which in this case is that a group of coddled elitists, none of whom would dare set foot in the New York neighbourhoods that benefited most from the NYPD’s “stop-and-frisk” tactics, decided that their opinions… are the only ones deserving of a public airing, and that anyone whose opinion may differ is therefore worthy of mockery, shame, and contempt.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments.
our student intelligentsia
This is what happens when you teach kids leftist *attitudes* instead of how to think. You get little bastard fascists.
What was that about the importance of the arts and humanities again?
This is what happens when you teach kids leftist *attitudes* instead of how to think.
Pretty much. I’m trying to imagine how the chanting, screaming students would engage with, say, Heather Mac Donald, who’s written in favour of Mr Kelly, and at length and in detail on the effectiveness and fairness of various policing strategies. As she says,
And,
Presumably the students would howl at her too and make sure she couldn’t be heard by anyone, and then call her a racist, all while working themselves into a kind of self-congratulatory hysteria.
[ Edited. ]
Dalrymple describes in the few lines quoted the end of civilization. The barbarians are ignored, because they are feared. Citizens are accosted for minor “violations,” because they are the only ones who respect civil society.
The gender pay gap: occasionally there’s a Guardian article rehashing some aspect of the gender-gap as though it hasn’t been debunked.
Above you see one aspect of it, then the fact that an overall average pay differential doesn’t automatically imply discrimination – you have to do extensive research to try to clarify the cause.
And whadd’ya know…the research has been done. It shows repeatedly that women make different career choices from men, in ways that affect their earnings, from working shorter hours to choosing different types of work, to prioritising friends and family over career. Surprise!
The dishonesty of those who ignore these arguments is truly breathtaking. They then tend to suggest several varieties of what is basically discrimination against men to remedy these “inequalities”.
I said as much in a comment under the latest article, it was deleted. I toned down the message and write another with just the basic argument – that disappeared without a trace too, and then a third time, after I’d put just an outline…
Comment is free, but the moderator’s delete button is sacred, eh?
I said as much in a comment under the latest article, it was deleted.
The Guardian does spend a lot of time – much more than any other paper – eliminating WrongThought™. Making it go away.
The other thing about the “pay gap” that’s consistently ignored is that women are able to spend a lot more money than men. This article in the Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/may/24/women-in-power-gender-imbalance
claims that women “hold the majority of spending power and earning potential – annually, $20tn in consumer spending and $13tn in earnings”. In other words, women spend 7 trillion dollars more than they earn. Where can that extra 7 trillion dollars come from but the earnings of men? There’s obviously a great deal of official and unofficial redistribution from men to women that more than makes up for the women’s lesser earnings.
And as equality gets closer, we get more and more books and articles from women asking if men are necessary, or declaring the end of men, or decrying our failure to launch, because we’re not as much extra money to spend on them as we used to.
Is there a more profoundly entitled yet woefully oppressed creature as the upwardly-mobile western woman earning 70c to the dollar?
The ratio of female to male students at the art school I attend is about 5 to 1, and consequently there’s a lot of talk and art output ostensibly about women’s equality and their issues. Yet if you look at what’s being said there you’d think some of them were a slighted minority yearning to be heard, instead of the institutionally supported whinge-mob that they appear to be.
CIF stands for Censorship Is Frequent
Venezuelan currency control laws lead to chaos in trying to get flights
And in more news from the dysfunctional Bolivarian Socialist economy:
Government seizes electronics store chain
What company would export electronics to Venezuela after this?
Having tilted the resources gap by trillions of dollars/pounds/Euros a year in the ladies’ favor in some attempt to equalize, well, something, it strikes me that what naturally follows is the candid observation that “feminists” are profoundly materialistic.
Which, come to think of it, resembles the left: There’s no injustice money cannot repair, oddly. Or so one would think up to the point where you realize ginned-up injustice is mostly just ginned-up and that a buck robbed successfully is a fabulous career incentive.
Perhaps this fits more neatly into another thread, but this story leaves me a bit conflicted. It’s an absurd, ridiculous form of protest that to my mind cheapens the message the artist is trying to communicate. Yet at the same time is light years ahead of the phony, defecating in public, etc. fools in the usual rogues gallery highlighted here. At least he’s protesting a truly abusive government. Yet at the same time, it points to how far more accepting that government is relative to its predecessors.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2497811/Russian-performance-artist-nails-Red-Square-cobblestone-TESTICLES-protest-Kremlins-crackdown-rights.html
“We might think that it’s just fine that people who make different life decisions earn different amounts of money. But what this isn’t is a gender pay gap.”
One of the simplest political tricks is to take something that is not a problem and then present it as if it is. For instance, everyone in the country earns more money – present it as ‘increasing inequality’. Unemployment down – why, those poor employers must be suffering from a ‘skills crisis’. Women taking time off work to raise children – ‘gender wage gap’, ahoy! Every side does it of course, but I’d suggest it’s particularly congenial to that type of leftist who views people as problems waiting for a solution.
“This is what happens when you teach kids leftist *attitudes* instead of how to think. You get little bastard fascists.”
I took a quick squiz at the video and as I thought, the protesters are just a tiny minority of students. Maybe 10 or 20. Out of a university that must have thousands of students! They are the one per cent!
And that’s always the way with student politics: the vast majority of students are there to learn, while a small cadre of numpties want to change the world, to further their career in politics, or whatever. And because they shout the loudest and break all the ordinary rules of social propriety and act self-righteously, they’ll get all the attention and it will seem as if they are the representatives of the student body; but quite the reverse: I’d say the more they live in this self-created bubble of media, activism, violence, more media, more activism, more violence, they’ll come to be more and more ignorant of what their fellow students are really interested in.
So oddly I see a strong cause for hope here. It would be tempting to simply encourage these protesters to become even more extreme and stupid so that they alienate everyone…. but they seem to be doing a good job of that themselves.
Mark Steyn and Nick Cohen on the heroism of our arts establishment:
David Suzuki, who is now starring as a global climate martyr in a “powerful live theatre and public engagement project” about himself.
He should just have himself crucified to reduce his carbon footprint.
He should just have himself crucified to reduce his carbon footprint.
He’s a character, isn’t he? This is a man whose ignorance of his own supposed area of expertise is hard to overstate. A man who claims to find it “disgusting” that modern houses are sometimes larger than those of our grandparents, but who nevertheless has two rather spacious estates of his own, one of which I guarantee is much bigger than yours. His ongoing unhingement has been instructive to watch – his hopes that people who disagree with him will be imprisoned, for instance, or his belief that he and his peers will soon be incarcerated en masse (and presumably gassed like badgers). On account of them being so radical and dangerous. And despite these – how shall I put it? – quirks of his personality, some people still take him very seriously. Idiots, mostly.
The experience with the French police doesn’t surprise me. A Russian mate of mine was in Charles de Gaulle airport recently and there was a bomb threat in the terminal he was in. The armed French police shouted to everyone in French before high-tailing it out of the building, leaving everyone behind. The French who understood what was going on went next, leaving the foreigners to stand around to be blown to smithereens should the threat have been real. This post springs to mind.
The other thing about the “pay gap” that’s consistently ignored is that women are able to spend a lot more money than men.
Hence the success of the Daily Mail, who long ago figured this out. It’s not the men of Middle England to whom they pander, but their wives. It is they who hold the purse strings.
An interesting primer on identity politics in the Telegraph. I especially liked the final point:
“5) As a corollary to point 4, notice how all the panelists (again, excepting Hitchens) turn every answer into a speech about how some nefarious force is responsible for all their problems. Nothing is their fault. The ills of the world are due to the racism, sexism, classism, and other -isms of the eternal oppressors. Nonetheless, the panelists seem almost to rejoice in their perceived oppression. It’s almost as though they enjoy it. Why not? It defines them. Like all radicals, their worldview is an odd and toxic marriage of self-worship and self-pity.”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/robertwargas/100245242/how-do-identity-politics-work-a-quick-refresher-course/
Which, come to think of it, resembles the left: There’s no injustice money cannot repair, oddly.
I long ago realised that the left are far more obsessed with money than the right, even down to the most bullish Wall Street trader. At least the right are only obsessed with how much they can make and what they can buy with it, whereas the left are obsessed with how much everyone else makes, believes it brings happiness to those who have it, misery to those without, and that simply having more money can fix anything.
Ted – that USA Today article is perfect. It’s socialism in a nutshell. It’s like a subplot from Atlas Shrugged.
“CARACAS — Thousands of Venezuelans lined up outside the country’s equivalent of Best Buy, a chain of electronics stores known as Daka, hoping for a bargain after the socialist government forced the company to charge customers “fair” prices.
[…]
Members of Venezuela’s National Guard, some of whom carried assault rifles, kept order at the stores as bargain hunters rushed to get inside.
“I want a Sony plasma television for the house,” said Amanda Lisboa, 34, a business administrator, who had waited seven hours already outside one Caracas store. “It’s going to be so cheap!”
Of course, next time Amanda fancies buying an electronic gadget from Daka, the fact that the shelves are bare will be the fault of the bastard capitalists. She’ll probably have to buy it at inflated prices on the black market, with no gun-toting government employees on hand to ensure prices are “fair”.
In Britain we have the Leader if the Opposition promising to make electricity prices, which have rocketed following the Climate Change Act he introduced, “fair” through government force.
It’s not the men of Middle England to whom they pander, but their wives. It is they who hold the purse strings.
For nearly every couple I know it’s the wife that’s in charge of most of the spending.
I blame the patriarchy.
Mr X,
Like all radicals, their worldview is an odd and toxic marriage of self-worship and self-pity.
Tsk. You mustn’t mock devotees of identity politics. They’re going to fix us with their wisdom.
Further to the braying intellectuals at Brown University, Laurel Conrad has compiled a few more illustrations of the tolerant left in action.
>Like all radicals, their worldview is an odd and toxic marriage of self-worship and self-pity.
Coincidentally http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder#Description
Echoing WTP, I’m also noting a distinct lack of The Great Political Lords Of Art–or mebbe the other way round?–, being willing to, as it were, have their own skin in the game which they insist they are the greatest, or only, participants in.
I also agree with AC, and Yeah, that does prolly relate, where http://www.amazon.com/The-Narcissism-Epidemic-Living-Entitlement/dp/1416575995 is an excellent read as well . . .
On the literature front, I might also add this which was directed to my by a commentor on another blog, re:
Years ago I read a book called “Why Literature is Bad for You,” by Peter Thorpe. It is long out of print but Amazon has some used copies for sale.
This book made me realize that I was far better off sticking with STEM. Thank you, Peter Thorpe.
Here is one review:
Buy this book quickly and pay whatever the bookseller asks! This one-of-a-kind book will change the way you think about literature. I love literature, and so does the author,but its dark side is seldom discussed. It can make you lazy, it can make you a chronic contrarian, it can be a trojan horese which slips silly ideas into your mind which you would never accept if they were presented to you as rational arguments(the perfect example of this is the fact that we’re supposed to sympathize with Mersault in Camu’s “The Stranger,” even though he shot a man for the simple reason that the sun was in his eyes.) The publisher needs to keep this book constantly in print.
http://aphilosopher.wordpress.com/2013/11/11/religious-freedom-discrimination/#comment-31559
I was linked to this site, and one of the first things I thought was, Thompson’ll love this:
http://www.movietriggers.com/
A site that gives “trigger warnings” for things in films that might give viewers “extremely strong and damaging emotional response (for example, post-traumatic flashbacks or urges to harm themselves)”. Like “camaraderie” (Star Trek: First Contact), “ocean” (Man of Steel), “pregnancy” (Pacific Rim) and “crushed dreams” (Monsters University).
The title page says “Do not assume that a movie that is not marked as triggering is non-triggering. It may just be that no one has taken the time to mark it.”
Ted,
And in more news from the dysfunctional Bolivarian Socialist economy…
steve,
Ted – that USA Today article is perfect. It’s socialism in a nutshell. It’s like a subplot from Atlas Shrugged.
What’s happening in the absurdist vaudeville of Venezuela was entirely predictable.
That Movie Triggers site is hilarious:
Toy Story 3 = 13 triggers
Straw Dogs = 1 trigger
Let’s hope babysitters don’t use this to select a film to entertain junior while mum and dad are out!
What kills the average wage of all women, in comparison to the wage of all men, is that women – and it’s important to note that this is on average – take career breaks to have children and often then either more time off or lighter workloads to raise them. We might want to say that this isn’t a good idea.
It is ironic — I hope I am using the term properly — that the reality based community, every member of which is a card-carrying evolutionist, somehow reaches the conclusion that evolution stopped at the neckline.
To decide otherwise would put our Progressive overlords in the very uncomfortable position of realizing they are inherently anti-human.
In my occupation — airline pilot — it is easy to see how fraudulent the whole gender pay gap kerfuffle is. Despite being a reasonably well paying profession, and despite the fact that every woman with the required qualifications will get hired, fewer than 5% of professional pilots are female.
Every one of whom gets paid precisely the same amount as their male counterparts.
Yet there is still a significant pay gap. Women delay upgrading, preferring higher seniority in lower paying positions. They more often drop trips, and much less often fly internationally (which pays more).
Those are choices women make, without a hint of any form of external discrimination. Well, except for the fact that society has conditioned them to think they actually prefer raising their own children.
Clearly the poor dears need re-education until they make the Correct Choices.