Quotulatiousness

December 20, 2011

The kind of folks who make up the bulk of the “Occupy” movement

Filed under: Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:49

Charles Cooke reports on a recent study of the membership of the “Occupy” groups:

The report, Shortselling America, reveals that, below the surface, there is a lot more going on than meets the eye, and most of it has very little to do with “social justice.” Its author, Frontier Lab takes an interesting approach, applying techniques of market research to political science. The group’s aim is to move away from the short-term model employed by political pollsters — which, although valuable, essentially provides just a fleeting snapshot — and instead to conduct a more thorough assessment of participants’ values. From these data, they then seek to predict future behavior. An example: Surface-level polling will see consumers tell us that the reason they buy a particular dish soap is because it is green, or cheap, or conveniently sized. But research shows the deeper truth is that, overwhelmingly, people buy the same brand as their mother did. (Nobody will write that on a survey.)

What did Frontier Lab discover? First, that many of the rank-and-file occupiers feel isolated in their lives, and appear to lack basic community ties such as are provided by participation in clubs, churches, and strong families. Indeed, much of the report could have come from the early chapters of Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. They thus attach to their political causes with something like a religious fervor. For many, a commitment to “social justice” is “not the end, but rather a means to an inflated sense of self and purpose in their own lives.” Crucially, involvement with others who agree with them provides an “overwhelming feeling of being part of a family.” I noticed this on my first trip down to Zuccotti Park, when I saw a telling sign adorning the entrance to the tent city: “For the first time in my life, I feel at home.” On subsequent visits I was struck by the importance of the commune to the project. As much as anything else, vast swathes of occupiers were simply looking for a new club. This group, Frontier Lab dubs the “Communitarians.”

The second group, which to all intents and purposes forms the leadership, is less existentially lost, and derives its fulfillment from the “prestige,” “validation,” and “control” afforded by the movement’s coverage in the media. Frontier Lab calls this group the “Professionals.” Its members fill the ranks of the professional Left and boast long histories of attending and organizing protests. For them, indignation is quotidian, “community action” is a career, and they feel “validated by the fame and attention” and “rewarded for their life choices.” Unlike the Communitarians, the Professionals actually want tangible change, or a “win,” but politics is still playing second fiddle to self. There is nothing spontaneous or organic about the movements they lead. They are waiting for the revolution and hope to be in its vanguard. Their careers depend upon it.

H/T to Ace, who added this post-script to the quote: “Testing on the Myers-Briggs personality profile consistently put the rank-and-file in the Stunted Weakling category, and the leadership in the Gigantic Colossal Douchebag group”

December 14, 2011

Revolt in a Chinese fishing village

Filed under: China, Government, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:08

Local unrest is hardly uncommon in China, but unrest of this nature is almost unheard of:

For the first time on record, the Chinese Communist party has lost all control, with the population of 20,000 in this southern fishing village now in open revolt.

The last of Wukan’s dozen party officials fled on Monday after thousands of people blocked armed police from retaking the village, standing firm against tear gas and water cannons.

Since then, the police have retreated to a roadblock, some three miles away, in order to prevent food and water from entering, and villagers from leaving. Wukan’s fishing fleet, its main source of income, has also been stopped from leaving harbour.

The plan appears to be to lay siege to Wukan and choke a rebellion which began three months ago when an angry mob, incensed at having the village’s land sold off, rampaged through the streets and overturned cars.

Of course, one of the reasons we rarely hear about protests of this nature is that the Chinese government actively suppresses media coverage. This is only coming to our attention because western journalists are there and able to communicate with their employers.

H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord, who commented “You have to admire these 20,000 future organ donors for their intestinal fortitude”.

Eurosceptics described as “bunch of insular snobs who seem to have a hard time restraining their inner fascist”

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:06

Frank Furedi exposes the real reasons behind the chattering classes’ abuse of David Cameron:

It is one thing to accuse Cameron of committing a diplomatic faux pas or the Foreign Office of ineptitude. But the criticisms currently being made of Cameron verge on the hysterical. When I listen to the hyperbole about what will apparently be the consequences of his destructive behaviour, it almost sounds as if he has committed an act of political betrayal in order to appease a handful of incorrigible reactionary Eurosceptics.

Why this over-the-top reaction to what could turn out to be a relatively minor case of diplomatic miscommunication?

Outwardly, the anger of the cosmopolitan clerisy is directed at Cameron’s alleged appeasement of Tory Eurosceptics. The term Eurosceptic has a special meaning for the adherents to cosmopolitan policymaking. In their view, Euroscepticism is associated with values they abhor: upholding national sovereignty, Britishness and a traditional way of life. The moralistic devaluation of these values was vividly communicated by the New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, who this week characterised Tory Eurosceptics as the ‘pinstriped effluence of an ex-imperial nation’. He seeks to dehumanise these people by arguing that this ‘specimen’s ascendancy’ was reflected in Cameron’s behaviour during the treaty negotiations. Cohen’s moral devaluation of Eurosceptics, his dismissal of them from the ranks of humanity, is captured in his description of them as a ‘bunch of insular snobs who seem to have a hard time restraining their inner fascist’.

The intemperate language suggests that the venomous anger directed at Eurosceptics cannot simply be driven by the clerisy’s love affair with the European ideal. Rather, what is at issue here is the clerisy’s preference for the technocracy-dominated and cosmopolitan-influenced institutions of Brussels. From their standpoint, the main virtue of the EU is that its leaders and administrators speak the same language as the UK clerisy. They read from the same emotional and cultural script, which they believe to be superior to the script and values associated with national sovereignty. That is why it isn’t surprising that a BBC journalist can casually ask the Estonian prime minister to have a go at her own national leader. The UK-based communications clerisy has a greater affinity with the outlook of EU technocrats and political administrators than it does with the outlook of its own people.

December 13, 2011

Gary Johnson has been “hung out to dry” by the RNC

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:02

A profile of Gary Johnson in the St. Petersburg Times:

The wildly popular former two-term governor of New Mexico, who lost part of his toe to frostbite climbing Mount Everest on a broken leg, has been excluded from 15 of 17 presidential debates.

The 58 year old who was elected governor in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to 1 has virtually disappeared from major political polling. The governor who got rid of 1,200 state employees, vetoed 750 bills and left New Mexico with a billion-dollar budget surplus is not Republican enough for the GOP.

“They won’t return my calls,” he said.

That’s why he thinks you’ve probably never heard of Gary Johnson. Even if he grew a handyman business in Albuquerque from scratch to 1,000 employees. Even if he has ridden his bike across mountain ranges. Even if some see him as an electable version of Ron Paul.

“The Republican National Committee has turned their backs on a message that appeals more and more to the American public,” he said.

That message?

Less government is the best government. He wants to cut federal spending by 43 percent. He advocates throwing out the entire U.S. tax system in favor of a 23-percent fair tax on consumption that he says would create thousands of jobs overnight. He wants to abolish the Department of Education and the IRS, and he promises to submit a balanced budget in 2013.

Maybe those are ideas many Republicans can swallow. But his stance on social issues, Johnson knows, rub many the wrong way.

He thinks building a fence between the United States and Mexico is an awful idea; better to have a smooth and easy work-visa program. He supports gay marriage. He is fully in favor of a woman’s right to choose. He wants to legalize marijuana (and yes, he has smoked pot for pleasure and for medical purposes, but quit several years ago) and decriminalize drug use.

December 8, 2011

Health advocates argue in advance of the data in new cancer study

Filed under: Britain, Health, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:36

Rob Lyons on the latest cancer study, which makes unsubstantiated claims about the “lifestyle” causes of cancer:

The essential idea we are being sold here is that medical experts know that certain behaviours — like smoking, drinking alcohol, eating read meat and not eating enough fruit and vegetables — increase your risk of developing cancer by a certain percentage. So, all we need to do is work out how many people would have got cancer if no one did any of those things, take that number away from the number of people who do get cancer, and the remainder is how many people that ‘unhealthy living’ is killing. Simple, right?

According to the report, If you do all the ‘right’ things — if you are a cigarette-dodging, skinny teetotaller who avoids all red meat, barely goes out in the sun (except, perhaps, to take the prescribed 30-minute sessions of exercise five times per week), gets lashings of fibre, cuts down on salt, avoids infectious diseases and ionising radiation, and so on — then you can cut your cancer risk by over 40 per cent. On that basis, you may avoid cancer but die of boredom instead.

More specifically, even in this report there’s a huge gulf between the widely acknowledged risk of smoking — which is estimated here to cause 19.4 per cent of all cancers — and other risk factors. Smoking accounts for nearly half the lifestyle risk of 43 per cent claimed in the report. The next biggest factors suggested are overweight and obesity (5.5 per cent), lack of fruit and veg (4.7 per cent), alcohol (4.0 per cent), occupation (3.7 per cent) and sunlight (3.5 per cent). No other single factor, according to the report, is responsible for more than three per cent of cancers. Some oft-quoted examples like salt (0.5 per cent) and physical exercise (one per cent) have little effect at all. Even avoiding red meat altogether would only avoid 2.5 per cent of cancers, says the report.

December 6, 2011

The GOP field, in brief

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:24

Really, it’s no wonder that GOP voters are seriously unimpressed with the field of candidates they’ve got to put up with. L. Neil Smith sums up the “front-runners” on the way to explaining why Herman Cain’s bid was quashed:

I don’t write about race very often, because it’s unimportant to me. But allow me to preface this by admitting I never liked Herman Cain.

Not as a presidential candidate. It had nothing to do with his color, of course. I can think instantly of three black men (Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, and Richard Boddie) who would make excellent candidates, and Cain, for all his mercantilist baggage, would have made a better President than that crypto-Democrat Mitt Romney, or America’s answer to Benito Mussolini, Il Douchebag himself, Newt Gingrich.

I leave Rick Perry undescribed only because I can’t summon up an adjective adequate to deal with this dull-witted second-rate George Bush imitation, a walking, talking violation of the Law of Natural Selection.

Cain, however, did not find himself jettisoned from the American electoral process because of his opinions on policy (at least not directly), his past association with the Evil Menace of Fast Food, or even because of the naughty things he was accused of having done with women by three specimens of highly questionable believability and a million braying jackasses of the government-approved news-generating industry.

Cain got the boot because—well, let me tell you a story …

Guardian study finds that August rioters were motivated by Guardian editorials

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Government, Law, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:16

Brendan O’Neill on the recent study, carried out by the London School of Economics and the Guardian:

Well, that’s convenient, isn’t it? A four-month Guardian/London School of Economics study into the riots that rocked English cities in August has found that the rioters were pretty much Guardian editorials made flesh. Concerned about government cuts, annoyed by unfair policing, shocked by social inequality and outraged by the MPs’ expenses scandal, it seems the young men and women who looted shops and burnt down bus stops weren’t Thatcher’s children after all — they were Rusbridger’s children, the moral offspring of those moral guardians of chattering-class liberalism.

This is a blatant case of advocacy research, of researchers finding what they wanted to find, or at least desperately hoped to find. For months now, the Guardian has been publishing articles arguing that the rioters were politically motivated, under headlines such as ‘These riots were political’ and with claims such as ‘the looting was highly political’ and the riots were a protest against ‘brutal cuts and enforced austerity measures’. And now, lo and behold, a Guardian study, Reading the Riots, has discovered that the rioters were indeed ‘rebels with a cause’, with 86 per cent of the 270 rioters interviewed claiming the violence was caused by poverty, 85 per cent arguing that policing was the big issue, and 80 per cent saying they were riled by government policies. Reading this study, we are left to marvel either at the extraordinary perspicacity of Guardian writers, or at their ability to carry out research in such a way that it confirms their own political preconceptions.

This study looks less like a cool-headed, neutral piece of sociology, and more like a semi-conscious piece of political ventriloquism, where rioters have been coaxed to mouth the political beliefs of the middle-class commentariat. This is not to say the Guardian and LSE researchers have been purposely deceitful, inventing evidence to suit a political thesis. Advocacy research is more subtle and less conscious than that. It involves a kind of inexorable pursuit of facts that fit and evidence that helps bolster a pre-existing conviction. So mental-health charities keen to garner greater press coverage always find high levels of mental illness, children’s charities that want to raise awareness about child abuse always find rising levels of child neglect, and now Guardian researchers who want to show that they’re right to fret about Lib-Con policies and outdated policing have found that these are burning issues amongst volatile English yoof, too.

December 2, 2011

Biggest general strike since 1926 becomes a “damp squib”

Filed under: Britain, Government, History, Media — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:07

Some sense the evil hand of . . . Jeremy Clarkson?

It was to be the biggest strike in a generation. People were openly and unabashedly comparing Wednesday’s day of action over public sector pensions to the general strike of 1926. It was to bring Britain to a standstill. Mark a turning point in the battle against the cuts instigated by the spawns of the evil Iron Lady. Become a talking point that would strike fear into the cold heart of Cameron and pave the way to bigger, more decisive action.

Except, erm, the very next morning it had been almost completely forgotten. It barely registered as a blip on BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today programme. Newspaper coverage was on the whole sympathetic, but slight. None of the predicted chaos came to pass. Prime minister Cameron could quite safely dismiss the strike as a ‘damp squib’ and provoke few comments except from the usual suspects. People shrugged and went back to work. Far from being a Great Event like the 1926 strike that people would draw inspiration from in 85 years time, it was barely discussed. As my colleague Brendan O’Neill had anticipated, it all felt more like a ‘loud and colourful PR stunt ultimately designed to disguise the fact that, in truth, trade unions are a sad shadow of their former selves’.

Just as the PR flames were beginning to dim, however, enter Jeremy Clarkson, the cartoonish presenter of Top Gear, who sped to the rescue with a particularly naff joke about the strikers being shot in front of their families. Of course, he didn’t actually mean it. In the context of the programme, BBC1’s The One Show, his remarks were actually more a dig at the BBC: he had in fact been praising the strikers (‘London today has just been empty. Everybody stayed at home, you can whizz about… it’s also like being back in the 70s. It makes me feel at home somehow.) but then said, as it was the Beeb, he had to provide ‘balance’, making his now notorious quip: ‘Frankly, I’d have them all shot. I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families. I mean, how dare they go on strike when they have these gilt-edged pensions that are going to be guaranteed while the rest of us have to work for a living?’

Update: James Delingpole said he’s been flooded with interview requests since the strike began, largely because of the public’s reaction to the strike:

I got my answer from a chance remark made by Jeremy Vine after our interview. He was telling me about the phone-in he’d done the day before during the public sector workers’ strike and what had astonished him was the mood of the callers. If I remember what he said correctly, one of his studio guests was a nurse on a £40,000 PA salary, with a guaranteed £30,000 pension, and this had not gone down well with the mother-of-three from Northern Ireland struggling as a finance officer in the private sector on a salary of £14,000 and no pension to speak of. The callers were very much on the side of the private sector. In fact, they were on the whole absolutely apoplectic that privileged, relatively overpaid public sector workers with their gold-plated pensions should have the gall to go out on strike when the people who pay their salaries – private sector workers – have to go on slogging their guts out regardless.

[. . .]

After all, as Fraser Nelson reports, the strike itself was a massive flop. Only a minority of union members voted it for it; the turn-out was so poor that the unions felt compelled to send out hectoring letters accusing their membership of being “scabs”; the hospitals – and many schools – stayed open, Heathrow’s immigration queues actually got shorter. This was not the glorious day of action (or inaction) that the militants had hoped for. Nor did it fit into the BBC’s ongoing narrative that Osborne’s vicious cuts (what cuts, we ask) are causing such hardship and misery among the saintly frontline public sector workers who bravely rescue our cats from trees and smilingly change our bed pans that really a Labour government run by Ed Balls is the only option.

Not only were the strikes a failure in numbers terms, though, but more damagingly they were a failure in propaganda terms. As both Fraser Nelson and Jeremy Vine have noted, there really has been a shift in public mood. I remember not more than a year ago going on Vine’s show to state, somewhat provocatively that I’d rather toss my children out on the street than have them sponging off the taxpayer in the public sector, and of course the mainly left-leaning BBC audience went apoplectic. I think if I’d gone on and said the same thing today they would probably have been demanding a statue erected in my honour in Parliament Square.

November 25, 2011

“[Fill-in-the-blank] is now a clear and present danger”

Filed under: Environment, Health, Media, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:07

Andrew Orlowski explains how we keep falling for junk science through media exposure:

Firstly. An obscure researcher or scientist will make a dramatic claim.

The media picks up on this, and a reporter is assigned to the story. The reporter will have no scientific background — but looks to the state and the bureaucracy to do something. Anything.

The hapless minister is then hauled on to explain the inaction. He will be intelligent — he is likely to have a PPE from Oxford, like the presenter — but no specialist knowledge. He, too, trusts the scientists.

A pledge is then made to increase funding for the scientist who makes the claim.

A pledge is also made to act — by introducing legislation or other regulations. Perhaps a task force or committee will also be involved:


Illustrations: Andy Davies

The bandwagon is now rolling.

November 18, 2011

A topic that sends the Guardian off into deep social conservative waters

Filed under: Britain, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:35

Of the various British papers I link to on a regular basis, the Guardian is the most liberal. It can generally be depended upon to come down on the liberal side of any question except for one:

… on the broad subject area of sex and sexuality, the Guardian, more often than not, comes down on the side of repression. The paper comes very much from the liberal, middle-class, English tradition, and the one subject the English middle-classes have always had trouble dealing with is sex. The Guardian also tends to take anti-sex campaigners more seriously if they adopt the “feminist” label than if they crusade under a more old-fashioned “morality” banner. On this subject, the Guardian’s coverage can swing from liberal to deeply conservative in the blink of an eye.

I blogged recently about the UK Government’s steps towards Internet censorship, using the excuse of “protecting children from pornography”. The Guardian, normally a warrior against censorship, lost its mind in an editorial on the subject, using Daily Mail-type phrasing such as “…bombarding of people’s homes and children by pornography…” and “…the destructive effects of pornography on relationships and values…“. The editorial also mentioned a recent government-commissioned report on “sexualisation”, neglecting to mention that it came from a Christian lobbying organisation. The idea that anyone who doesn’t want to see porn is “bombarded” with it is of course laughable, and serious research on porn has yet to reveal the harmful side effects claimed by conservatives of various shades.

And this wasn’t a one-off: on the icky subject of sex, the Guardian is often deeply conservative. I recently interviewed strippers who are defending themselves against campaigners who threaten their right to work in the London boroughs of Hackney and Tower Hamlets (podcast coming soon). These women are articulate, well-paid and belong to trade unions. Yet, the Guardian is apparently convinced that stripping is bad, and refuses to take seriously the voices of the women themselves who earn a living that way; instead, they give a platform to “feminist” (aka sexual morality) groups who use fascist-style propaganda methods (such as claiming a non-existent link between strip venues and rape) to attack the venues and the people who work in them. While women who strip have offered to write for the Guardian about their experiences, only one ex-dancer, Homa Khaleeli is published, because she tells “the truth about lap dancing” — in other words, she makes the “exploitation” and “objectification” noises that Guardianistas want to hear.

The Guardian has a confused idea of defending sexual freedom. While Gay, Lesbian, Transgender issues are treated with the appropriate straight-faced correctness, other forms of sexuality and sexual freedom have Guardian journos giggling like school children. Fetishes, swinging, polyamory, BDSM, open lifestyles, bisexuality and sex work… these aren’t causes for free speech but excuses for the Guardian to pander to middle-England prejudices (and have a good, Carry On giggle in the process).

November 15, 2011

The Occupy movement: the height of 21st century civilization?

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:21

Natalie Rothschild takes issue with a fellow journalist’s characterization of the Occupy movement:

A late October edition of the New Yorker carried a ‘postcard’ piece on Occupy Wall Street (OWS). On the third re-read it began to dawn on me that, perhaps, the writer was not being sarcastic, despite her grandiose opening line: ‘Visiting the site of Occupy Wall Street last week . . . was a bit like visiting civilisation at its peak: Paris in the Twenties, Rome in the second century, or, at the very least, Timbuktu in the fifteen hundreds.’

Really? I mean, really? I had recently visited the OWS Zuccotti Park encampment, too, and I’ve been there several more times. Over time, the camp has become better organised. There are now tents, clean-up teams, a set of portable toilets, a library and information points. But ‘the height of civilisation’? Come on.

[. . .]

None of this fawning has stopped occupiers and their supporters from decrying the mainstream media’s coverage — there’s not enough of it, apparently, and most of it is anyway shallow or negatively skewed. In truth, the OWS coverage has been dense and overwhelmingly positive.

The few critics of OWS have been slammed as contemptuous ignoramuses, as corrupt apologists for ‘the one per cent’. Or it is said that they simply ‘just don’t get it’ because they haven’t engaged with the new form of direct, participatory democracy practiced in Zuccotti Park. But, then, even those journalists who have reported directly from the Occupy headquarters and have taken note of the eccentricity and confusion that undoubtedly exist there have been said to be blinkered by prejudice or interested only in shallow, headline-grabbing snapshots. Any commentary that is less than praising is slammed as mocking or as right-wing mud-slinging.

November 2, 2011

The decline and fall of Righthaven

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:40

Ars Technica has what should be the final legal chapter in the Righthaven saga:

Looks like it’s time to turn out the lights on Righthaven. The US Marshal for the District of Nevada has just been authorized by a federal court to use “reasonable force” to seize $63,720.80 in cash and/or assets from the Las Vegas copyright troll after Righthaven failed to pay a court judgment from August 15.

Righthaven made a national name for itself by suing mostly small-time bloggers and forum posters over the occasional copied newspaper article, initially going so far as to demand that targeted websites turn over their domain names to Righthaven. The several hundred cases went septic on Righthaven, however, once it became clear that Righthaven didn’t own the copyrights over which it was suing. Righthaven, ailing, was soon buffeted by negative court decisions as a result.

[. . .]

The appeals court has refused to act on Righthaven’s request to delay its August judgment further, and the money was due last Friday. When it didn’t show up, Randazza Legal Group went back to the Nevada District Court to request a Writ of Execution to use the court’s enforcers, the US Marshals, to collect the money. The court clerk issued the writ today, and Righthaven’s $34,045.50 judgment has now ballooned to $63,720.80 with all the additional costs and fees from the delay.

I spoke to Marc Randazza this evening, who tells me, “We’re going to enlist the US Marshal in marking sure this court’s order has some meaning.” He looks forward to heading over to Righthaven’s offices as soon as possible. Should Righthaven not have the cash in its bank accounts, the writ allows Randazza to “identify to the US Marshal or his representative assets that are to be seized to satisfy the judgment/order.”

The degree of threat that Righthaven and other lawfare groups posed to bloggers and anyone else who quoted material on the internet was discussed back in May.

October 30, 2011

Using Pompeii as another stick to beat Berlusconi

Filed under: Europe, Government, History, Italy, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:48

Mary Beard debunks the widely reported story of yet another wall collapse in the archaeological remains of Pompeii:

By chance I am on the site of Pompeii for the weekend. It is now swarming with more journalists than tourists, and all (it seems) with a determination to hype another collapse, another Pompeian disaster. That is to say, they are here with a determined misunderstanding of what has just happened — or with a drive to use any damage to the site as a stick with which to beat Berlusconi.

Actually, I am usually quite happy to beat Berlusconi, but the fact is that this latest melodrama only serves to make the job much more difficult for those in the archaeological services here, who are doing their level best to keep the place up and running. (This weekend curators and other staff have been fielding tv crews, not getting on with the real job.)

So far as I can tell, what happened is this. There was an absolute downpour last night, in the course of which some stones were dislodged from a relatively fragile (and not very well built) stretch of wall near the Nola gate. A custode entered this damage rather loosely in the incident book — and (we can only speculate how and why) that report got to the press, and it soon became a new “wall collapse”. The carabinieri arrived and everything in the area (including, let me confess, where I want to go) was shut off.

Media folks are not trained archaeologists, so it’s easy to understand how a garbled report could be misunderstood — and that’s setting aside the urge to use any tool as a weapon against the current Italian prime minister. This is why media reports become less and less dependable as they try to report on more specific or more technical information: they lack the expertise and usually don’t take the time to get external experts to help them. (My favourite examples of this are when naval vessels larger than a rowboat are described as “battleships” and tracked military vehicles are invariably “tanks”.)

H/T to Tyler Cowen for the link.

October 29, 2011

More on Malthus

Filed under: Books, Economics, History, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:57

Tim Harford poses and answers some common questions about the much-talked-about 7-billionth birth:

There will be 7bn of us come Halloween? You’re kidding.

Someone at the UNPFA has a sense of humour, it seems. This is a terrifying prospect to some and cheery for others, while most of us find it irrelevant. Halloween seems appropriate.

This is a statistical projection, and statistical projections don’t have a sense of humour.

But they do have margins of error. The UNPFA doesn’t even know whether the seven billionth person will be born in 2011. Even the UK is currently relying on 10-year old census data. There are places in the world where the data are decades old and we’re just guessing at the population. Still, such celebrations — if they are celebrations — do pass the time.

[. . .]

So Malthus was wrong?

Even Robert Malthus realised that there was such a thing as birth control. His more excitable successors, such as Paul Ehrlich, author in 1968 of The Population Bomb, have been fairly thoroughly rebutted by subsequent events. Dan Gardner, author of the fascinating Future Babble, summarises Ehrlich’s three scenarios for the 1980s as “everybody dies” (starvation-triggered nuclear war), “every third human dies” (starvation-triggered virus) and in the optimistic scenario “a billion people still die of starvation”.

October 28, 2011

Malthus provides “cover” for racism

Filed under: Books, History, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:02

Tim Black explores why Thomas Malthus’ ideas have never been more popular than they are today:

Lisping, reclusive and reviled by the working class of his day, the Reverend Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) — the man behind the idea that the ‘lower orders of society’ breed too quickly — would probably be surprised by his current popularity. Because that’s what he is today: popular. Commentators, activists and academics positively fall over themselves in the rush to say, ‘you know what, that Malthus had a point. There are too many people and, what’s more, they are consuming far too much.’

Earlier this summer, a columnist for Time magazine was in no doubt as to the pastor’s relevance. The global population is ‘ever larger, ever hungrier’, he noted, ‘food prices are near historic highs’ and ‘every report of drought or flooding raises fears of global shortages’. ‘Taking a look around us today’, he continued, ‘it would be easy to conclude that Malthus was prescient’. Writing in the British weekly, the New Statesman, wildlife lover Sir David Attenborough was similarly convinced: ‘The fundamental truth that Malthus proclaimed remains the truth: there cannot be more people on this Earth than can be fed.’ Not to be outdone, the liberal-left’s favourite broadsheet, the Guardian, also suggested that Malthus may have been right after all: ‘[His] arguments were part of the inspiration for Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, and they have validity in the natural world. On the savannah, in the rainforests, and across the tundra, animal populations explode when times are good, and crash when food reserves are exhausted. Is homo sapiens an exception?’ The melancholy tone whispered its answer in the negative. Writing in the New York Times, Paul Krugman was less coy: ‘Malthus was right!’ shouted the headline.

Given the encomia that are currently coming the way of Malthus you may well wonder what exactly it was that he was meant to be right about. To find the answer to this it is worth actually taking a look at the work, first published in 1798, on which his supposed prescience is based: An Essay on the Principle of Population. It makes for surprising reading.

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress