It seems that Gordon Ramsey (yes, that bleeding f#@%mouth Gordon Ramsey) has a new "inspirational" cooking show called MasterChef, imported from the UK.

They're casting amateur chefs--right here in Kansas City! At the Culinary Center of Kansas City, where Snookums and I have taken a cooking course or two.

Do you think either of us should try out? (Rhetorical question . . . I'm not going to, and I think it would cut too deeply into our busy, busy travel and basketball schedule . . .)

Peter Schweizer, writing in the UK's Daily Mail, points out recent research indicating that conservatives are generally nicer people than liberal "progressives:"

The full-scale embrace of the importance of self-awareness, self-discovery and being 'true' to oneself, along with the idea that the State should care for the less fortunate, has created a swathe of Left-wing people who want to outsource their obligations to others.

The statistics I base this on come from the General Social Survey, America's premier social research database, but they are just as relevant to the UK, as I believe political belief systems drive one's attitudes, regardless of where you happen to live.

Those surveyed were asked: 'Is it your obligation to care for a seriously injured/ill spouse or parent, or should you give care only if you really want to?' Of those describing themselves as 'conservative', 71 per cent said it was. Only 46 per cent of those on the Left agreed.

. . .
Most surprising of all is reputable research showing those on the Left are more interested in money than Right-wingers.

Both the World Values Survey and the General Social Survey reveal Left-wingers are more likely to rate 'high income' as an important factor in choosing a job, more likely to say 'after good health, money is the most important thing', and agree with the statement 'there are no right or wrong ways to make money'.

. . .
Can there be any surprise then that those on the Left tend to be more envious and jealous of successful people? That's what studies indicate.

Professor James Lindgren, of Northwestern University in Chicago, found those who favour the redistribution of wealth are more envious than those who do not.

Scholars at Oxford and Warwick Universities found the same sort of behaviour when they conducted an experiment.

Setting up a computer game that allowed people to accumulate money, they gave participants the option to spend some of their own money in order to take away more from someone else.

The result? Those who considered themselves 'egalitarians' (i.e. Left of centre) were much more willing to give up some of their own money if it meant taking more money from someone else.

Much of the desire to distribute wealth and higher taxation is motivated by envy - the desire to take more from someone else - and bitterness.

The culprit here is not those on the Left who embrace progressive ideas but the ideas themselves.

I have noted that a huge portion of the self-image of those on the Left is wrapped up in being "compassionate," for certain well-delineated definitions of the word.

Furthermore, the entire worldview of "progressives" is affected by their own biases, and their own inability to understand any motivations for behavior other than the motivations that they, themselves have.

In other words, they project, psychologically, their worldview onto their interpretations of what conservatives--who do not share that worldview--say and do. So, then, they accuse conservatives of all manner of motivations which conservatives in reality do not have, but that instead motivate "progressives."

It goes back to some insighful research I've posted on before, by Professor Jonathan Haidt at Virginia. Here's the summary again, in brief:

Haidt and his colleagues have identified five "foundations" of human morality, which seem to be valid across cultures. Those foundations are:

1) Harm/care, related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. This foundation underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.

2) Fairness/reciprocity, related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. This foundation generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy.

3) Ingroup/loyalty, related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. This foundation underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it's "one for all, and all for one."

4) Authority/respect, shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. This foundation underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.

5) Purity/sanctity, shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. This foundation underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).

The kicker is that self-identified liberals depend heavily on only the first two foundations when making moral judgments, and give relatively little weight to the remaining three. Conservatives on the other hand give nearly equal weight to all five of the foundations.

One result of this is that there are elements of human moral thinking to which liberals are simply ill-equipped to understand. So, when attempting to make sense of conservative moral acts, arguments, and judgments, liberals must attempt to map those thoughts and actions of conservatives onto their own, relatively incomplete understanding of morality.

Given this incomplete understanding of the full scope of human moral decision-making by liberals relative to conservatives, it is I suppose only natural that liberals then project--incorrectly--their own motives onto their more conservative fellows.

On the other hand, conservatives being familiar with all five dimensions, are able to understand the morality of liberals, but believe that the liberal's morality represents an incomplete view of the entire range of human morality.

So conservatives "get" liberals in a way that liberals are unable to reciprocate.

My prescription is that liberals drop the "we're more progressive and wise" line that they persist on trying to use on conservatives, and drink deeply from that very cup of humility they keep trying to serve to their conservative brothers and sisters. Because whenever a liberal tells a conservative of their superior compassion, sensitivity, intelligence, and morality, the basic reaction of the conservative is to suppress a knowing smile. We know you're full of it, and we know that you have no idea that you don't know what you're talking about.

But it's OK. The first step in overcoming a problem is to admit that you have a problem. We on the right stand ready to work with you to overcome your moral disabilities. Because we're nicer than you are.

Here it is. I have to admit, if I had my mother-in-law's name in our annual Christmas gift exchange, she'd be getting a copy of Going Rogue. Quite probably an autographed first edition. Sadly . . . she'll have to make do with this NBC Tonight Show encounter that starts with William Shatner (James T. Kirk from Star Trek, T.J. Hooker, and Denny Crane from Boston Legal) doing his beat-poetry schtick with random quotes from Palin's book, followed by Palin's revenge. I think it's absolutely hilarious.



(I guess I just let out the secret that I don't have my M-I-L for this year's Christmas present exchange. Ah, well . . . )

They've made Iowahawk go all serious and stuff.

See what global warming has done? Made the Internet's preeminent satirist go all statistical and stuff. And the fact that he riffs off of the title of the best R.E.M. album is just an unexpected but delightfully ironic bonus.

So, True Seeker Of Truth, you have two choices: either you read and follow his simple, easy instructions for seeing exactly how f*cked up "climate science" is, or . . .

Or, you can avoid the hard work yourself and start demanding real, skeptical science from people who call themselves "scientists" and haul down six- and seven-figure grants from government agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations that are desperate to maintain their relevance and to extend their political reach, scope, and power.

Don't make Iowahawk go Medieval Warm Period on your ass.

As you may have noticed, I've been featuring as my Thoughts for the Day snippets from F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, one of the seminal works of political philosophy of the Twentieth Century--a true cautionary tale written by someone who lived through the rise of National Socialism in Germany, and then through the bitter global conflict which was necessary to defeat--for a very short time--the philosophy of socialism.

The "Austrian School" of economics--Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and others--were and are principled proponents of individual liberty and choice. One of the central tenets of Austrian economics--and one of the most devastating (and hence by Old Media and academia most ignored) critiques of government intervention in economic matters, is the "knowledge problem."

A lot of words have been written to explain the knowledge problem, but this from Virginia Postrel sums it up much more efficiently than any other description I've ever seen--very apropos of this Christmas season:

The problem of buying good presents for other people, even people you supposedly know well, illustrates that old familiar Hayekian concept, the knowledge problem.

If you can't even give your loved ones the right presents, how likely is it that a central authority could make the right decisions for everyone?

Emphasis mine. Via Instapundit.

Climategate is not going to go away soon.

Here's the problem: science isn't based on trust. It is based on proof, on argumentation, on testing. On refutation or confirmation. On repetition of results, and validation of results by independent, adversarial colleagues around the world.

Science is fundamentally adversarial. One scientist tries his damndest to disprove another scientist's hypothesis. And scientist #1, by calling himself a scientist, accepts the adversarial interest of scientist #2, provides scientist #2 with his data and methods, and stands back with his chest puffed out, saying "prove me wrong, if you can."

That's not what the University of East Anglia climate change advocates did. That's not what they're doing, even now. The most damning thing about the leaked e-mails is that these advocates (they are self-evidently not scientists) are completely uninterested in having independent third parties look at their data and their methods.

In fact, they don't have their data any more. It's gone. Lost. Deleted.

Their data is gone.

Let me repeat that: their data is gone.

What that means for the scientific community is that all--ALL of the work of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, and ALL of the papers and studies which have been based on the work of the CRU MUST BE DISCARDED. To be credible, all of that work must be re-done, without any input from the CRU's now-tainted and now utterly unrepeatable work.

Thus the entire edifice of the current "scientific" argument for anthropogenic global warming comes crashing down.

Does this mean that human-induced climate change doesn't exist? No, not necessarly. But it is the obligation of those who assert that it does exist to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it does exist. The result of the CRU e-mail leak and subsequent revelations of data loss and apparent corruption by the climate change advocates at CRU is to provide a heaping dose of doubt on their results.

The job of climate change advocates just got harder. They now--all of them, must be required to show all of their data, and show all of their work, and allow truly independent third parties--adversarial third partys to tear their data and their work apart. If they do not do this, and do this with alacrity, then reasonable people can conclude that they do not have the confidence of their conclusions, and so we lay-people should not have confidence in those conclusions, either.

The "climate change" movement isn't dead. But it's taken a serious blow in the past week or so.

Only total, complete transparency and openness can save the climate change movement now.

M. Simon posted this at Classical Values:

The government is in essence a criminal organization.

It can murder - through wars and punishment for crime.
It can print money.
It can make you a slave through taxes. (taxation is theft)
It can make you a slave through imprisonment.
It can kidnap you. (politely called arrest)
It can demand ransoms. (fines)
It can steal your property. (confiscations)

Now don't get me wrong. Government has a certain utility. And we have laws and limits (in so far as possible). But ask yourself. Who do you trust with that kind of power? Who do you trust not to get corrupted by that kind of power?

I think it's instructive and informative to consider just exactly what kind of criminal organization governments actually are.

It's a protection racket, obviously. Government promises to protect you from bad guys, from harm, from whatever evil or harm it can discover, manufacture, or create in order to keep you in line and paying the protection money. So did Al Capone.

Consider government from this angle as you listen to debates on "health care reform," "protecting the environment," and "economic stimulus/recovery." Who is government saying that they'll protect? (Hint: they always say they'll help you. As in "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you.")

Who are they actually protecting? (Hint: it's probably not you.)

Who will they get the money from to do that "protecting?" (Hint: it's probably you.)

And watch how they talk about putting the the hit (sometimes figuratively, sometimes not) out those who have the temerity to oppose their schemes.

Posted for our amusement at Tigerhawk, a recently-received e-mail:

Let me get this straight.
...we're going to pass a health care plan written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it,
passed by a Congress that hasn't read it but exempts themselves from it,
to be signed by a president that also hasn't read it and who smokes,
with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes,
all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese,
and financed by a country that's nearly broke.
What could possibly go wrong?

No, not the Wicked Witch of the West . . . the equally wicked Global Warming/Climate Change pseudoscientific cult. The product of defecation is hitting the rotating air circulation device now. And that product is spattering all over everyone who has been convinced that The World Is Getting Hotter And We Are All To Blame.

Don't think so? Then you haven't been paying attention.

Or, you've been watching CNN, or even, God help you, MSNBC.

Some links:
Climategate: “Men behaving badly” – a short summary for laymen from the irreplaceable Watts Up With That.
How to Forge a Consensus from the Wall Street Journal;
More AGW Controversy from Richard Fernandez;
Pretending the climate email leak isn't a crisis won't make it go away from George Monbiot at the U.K.'s Guardian;
There Was Proof of Fraud All Along from Vincent Gray at Pajamas Media.

The bottom line is fraud. Fraud on a scale never before seen on this planet--literally. Not just scientific fraud. The really expensive kind--the money kind of fraud, as in a confidence game. "Get the confidence of the mark, then take him for all he's worth" sort of fraud.

Global Warming/Climate Change isn't just a simple hoax the New Piltdown Man. It's the New Eugenics. From the same so-called "progressive" side of the political spectrum. And, for the most part, for the same reasons. To "make things better."

Why do so many grandiose schemes to "make things better" actually result in things getting worse?

If the "science is settled," then how come populartechnology.net can find 450 (or more) articles which cast some degree of doubt on the "consensus" view of human-caused global warming?

How many of these studies have you heard about on the TV, radio, or newspaper news?

Is there an editorial bias against reporting these studies?

Don't you deserve to know that there are peer-reviewed scientific studies which do not support the unproven assertion that manmade greenhouse gases are warming the Earth so much that we must drastically cut back on--well--everything?

Don't you deserve to know that the assertion of "anthropogenic climate change" is an unproven assertion in the first place?

Is a lie of omission a lie?

If so, would it be reasonable to conclude that you are being lied to by the new media--the very people that you are supposed to trust to tell you what's going on in the world?