I hope this works and WordPress doesn’t strip out the HTML code [later note: It did]. This looks like an interesting book, although its evolutionary tree is a bit old fashioned, almost Haeckelian.
New book on climate and human evolution
March 10, 2010 · Leave a Comment
→ Leave a CommentCategories: Biology · Evolution · Species and systematics
Of course I am
March 6, 2010 · 22 Comments
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I am:Isaac Asimov One of the most prolific writers in history, on any imaginable subject. Cared little for art but created lasting and memorable tales. |
→ 22 CommentsCategories: Humor
The policy policy
March 4, 2010 · 15 Comments
Australian Prime Minister for the Obvious has said that there should be a “zero tolerance” policy against bullying. In other news, a 13 year old Victorian girl who held a kitchen knife to the throat of a 12 year old girl – allegedly – is not to be charged by police, but has been cautioned.
Both my kids were bullied. My son was assaulted every day of his secondary school life, sometimes on school grounds in front of teachers, and at other times at the bus stop just outside the school. All his schools, for we moved him to alleviate the problem, assured us that they had no bullying. Why? Because they had a “policy” against it. It slowly dawned on me that there is a certain mindset among bureaucrats, especially among educationalists, who are bureaucrats par excellence, that I call the “Policy policy”; and it is this:
If you have a policy, then no further action is required. The policy is to have a policy. Actually doing something about the problem is thereby avoided.
We see this in everything. Rather than actually do something, say, police work which requires resources and effort, about terrorism, have a policy against it that you can use to shift the effort and costs to travellers. Rather than deal with actual violence in the streets, have a policy that police cannot apply. Instead of dealing with actual mentally ill people, have a policy. Discrimination? Have a policy, but whatever you do, do not actually impede it.
The policy policy allows governments to look like they are doing something, when in fact they are not interested. It allows managers and administrators to say they have taken action, when at best they have said they would take action and at worst they have merely said something. It allows teachers to turn a blind eye to physical assault – the kind that would land an adult in jail – because they are kids and we “have a policy” against bullying.
And it’s bullshit.
If I had my time over as a parent of school children, I would not only insist on criminal charges being laid against the children (and they should be dealt with as children, and none of this equal bullshit about trying them as adults), and any adult involved who failed in their duty of care to my kids. That would include the headmaster and teacher at the private Anglican school – Woodleigh College – where my daughter was whipped 50 times by her classmates with a branch. I would insist on there being criminal charges of neglect and accessory after the fact, because the teacher and headmaster tried to cover it up and refused to act on my daughter’s complaint. I very nearly assaulted them when I went to have a piece of them. Here it is a decade later andI am still in a white hot fury. I defy them to sue me for defamation, because I’ll have their guts for legal garters if they do.
And then, contrary to the Australian Way as it is, I would sue. I would sue the school, the parents of the children, and where necessary the police and government if they failed to take their duties seriously and institute charges when presented with evidence of crimes. I would ensure that it cost everyone much more than it cost my kids to be bullied. Maybe then the policy policy might bear some fruit.
Beware the policy policy – it is a substitute for action, and possibly the greatest threat to our liberties we have faced in our times. It is how censorship of the internet if being justified in Australia. It is why the PATRIOT Act allowed the rollback of civil rights and rule of law. Instead of actually charging terrorists and testing those claims in a court of law, the US has illegally held whoever it wants with impunity, because they had a policy. Once you give bureaucrats power by a policy they will abuse it – it is only a matter of time.
So, ignore what political idiots say, and look at what they actually propose to do. Do not be misled by the policy policy.
→ 15 CommentsCategories: Censorship · Freedom · Politics · Social dominance
Tagged: Australian stuff, Pop culture
mtDNA varies in a single individual
March 4, 2010 · 13 Comments
It turns out, according to a recent study, that mitochondrial genomes vary within a single normal individual (human, but we should be able to generalise). What, I wonder, does this mean for the use of DNA barcoding?
→ 13 CommentsCategories: Biology · Genetics · Species and systematics · Species concept · Systematics
Intelligent late night TV
March 3, 2010 · 3 Comments
Bill Benzon at The Valve links to one of the more interesting pieces on TV I have seen – Craig Ferguson interviewing Stephen Fry without a studio audience, and guess what? The conversation goes into smart and educated territory! There’s a lesson to be learned here, I think. Part 2 includes mention of the Principia Mathematica! Knowing Fry from QI, this doesn’t surprise me, but on American Television! As Bill says, it’s the end of the world…
→ 3 CommentsCategories: Logic and philosophy
Tagged: Pop culture
Updated Olympics rankings
March 2, 2010 · 24 Comments
I did this before, so I’m adding in the Winter Olympics figures to see who is the most successful per head of population… the results might surprise you, again…
→ 24 CommentsCategories: Social evolution · trashcan categorial
Tagged: Pop culture, Sport
Caste in India
March 2, 2010 · 3 Comments
3 Quarks Daily has an excellent essay on the evolution (cultural, of course) of the Varna and Jati system in India. This is often referred to by westerners as “the” caste system.
→ 3 CommentsCategories: Politics · Religion · Social dominance · Social evolution
McCarthy and the autism demon
February 27, 2010 · 1 Comment
Jenny McCarthy has long campaigned against vaccination because her son “acquired” autism after being immunised, and lost the ability to speak. She has since claimed that she has managed to give him (non-medically recognised) therapy that has improved his abilities. She has convinced many credulous people of this.
Except, it turns out, her son may not have had autism after all, but a neurological disease called Landau-Kleffner Syndrome, which, you guessed, sufferers improve as they age – it appears to be a developmental problem of neurological maturation. As this site says: “Most children outgrow the seizures, and electrical brain activity on the EEG usually returns to normal by age 15.” In other words, the entire basis for her campaign was false. She doesn’t appear to be apologetic for the thousands if not tens of thousands of children who have suffered and died as a result of her campaign, though…
[H/T Bora Zivkovic]
→ 1 CommentCategories: Politics · Science
Tagged: antiscience, Pop culture







