Word of the day

Broigus – a bitter dispute or feud; angry or bitter,

Sowell says

Our educational system may not teach students much math or science, but students learn from gutless academic administrators that mob rule is the way to get what you want — and to silence those who disagree with you.

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) May 15, 2024

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Woman of the day

Woman of the Day doctor, physician and member of the Dutch Resistance Tina Strobos born OTD 1920 in Amsterdam. She hid more than a hundred Jewish people and helped them to reach safety during the Occupation of The Netherlands.

Tina was twenty and a medical student when Germany… pic.twitter.com/PbaDQJScMU

— The Attagirls (@TheAttagirls) May 19, 2024

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Labour’s legacy, National’s responsibility

Government debt ballooned under Labour, it now amounts to $90,000 for every household in the country.

That’s a lot of money to owe and the interest on it amounts to billions of dollars that are needed for other priorities including education, health and infrastructure.

The steep increase in debt is Labour’s legacy. Reducing it is the National-led coalition’s responsibility and one it must take very seriously.

Labour’s six years in power were characterised by wrong priorities, poor, or no, delivery and waste.

National and its coalition partners must set and act on the right priorities, deliver and deliver with value for money, and stop all the waste.

In less than an hour, govt debt will amount to $90k for every kiwi household. 😞
Watch live @ https://t.co/pxCxtSYm9s pic.twitter.com/egN8cuVKT5

— New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union (@TaxpayersUnion) May 19, 2024

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Word of the day

Immiscible – not forming a homogeneous mixture when mixed; incapable of mixing or attaining homogeneity; of two or more liquids that are not mutually soluble: unmixable.

Sowell says

Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true. But many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly—and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence.

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) May 14, 2024

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Woman of the day

Woman of the Day pioneer Alaska aviator, bush pilot and flight instructor Pearl Chamberlain born OTD 1909 in West Virginia, the first woman to fly solo along the Alaska-Canadian Highway. She insisted on teaching everyone who wanted to learn to fly, including Native Alaskans; one… pic.twitter.com/oIIaPk5Eol

— The Attagirls (@TheAttagirls) April 29, 2024

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Quotes of the week

Calling a man a man is not ‘bullying’ or ‘punching down.’ Crossdressing straight men are currently one of the most pandered-to demographics in existence, and women are under no obligation to applaud the people caricaturing us. – J.K. Rowling

I have worked in the tertiary sector for almost 30 years and a common complaint made by my colleagues, when speaking freely and candidly, is that the quality of students both entering and graduating the universities has greatly declined.  Yes, the best are as good as they ever were, but the majority of them are lacking the ability to read and write to what used to be a tertiary level expectation – both on entry to university and many, upon graduating. Of those who can, on a surface level, read and write to some satisfactory level, many lack the level of comprehension required to make proper sense to what they are reading. Their frame of reference is far too small. If you ask undergraduates for their honest opinion, many will say that they do not do the required readings (at most, they skim for 3 main points), they cannot concentrate to the degree required to read a journal article or a book chapter and that there are many words, phrases, and ideas within them that they don’t comprehend. I have found, over the past decade, that even a magazine article, written for that mythical creature, the educated general reader, contains words, ideas and references to issues and events that are beyond the ability of even, on the face of it, smart students to understand.

Yet even more concerning is the inability – or I should say, the increasing unwillingness – of many students to ‘think’.  Part of this is our fault – at tertiary level and in the NCEA schooling system. The expectation has grown, especially over the past decade or so, of being told what to think and being expected to regurgitate it, unthinkingly. – Mike Grimshaw

If we are to review the university system, we need to return the university to an elite system of limited, preferential entry that is able to truthfully deliver on what it says it does. A university system that can fulfil its elite function of tertiary-level education, participation, research, skills and training for society.

But actually, if we wish to review the university system, we need to review the school system and the post-tertiary work and business environment as well.  For the universities are not the problem, they are the sign of the problem – the problems that feed into them and the problems they are expected to correct.

In other words, we need to review society: what is it, what do we expect – and what do we want? Only then we can include the universities as properly funded, staffed, equipped, elite partners in that new societal project; to seek to do otherwise is only going to relocate the current issues in various new and old ways – and nothing changes. – Mike Grimshaw

The internet and social media, theoretically perfect means for rational discussion, have promoted an epidemic of vehemence. Of course, I paint with a broad brush: Uniformity is not to be expected in media used by hundreds or even thousands of millions of people. But there is a tendency for people to resort to insult of an escalating violence very quickly, as if by their verbal aggression they are proving a real commitment to a cause such as justice, equality, protection of the environment, or even economic growth. – Theodore Dalrymple

In a somewhat ironic twist of fate, Te Pati Māori and the Greens need to pay closer attention to Ghahraman’s words – who, after multiple shoplifting convictions, clearly didn’t abide by them either.

“People are watching, and they do deserve better of us.”– Jason Walls 

Is there even such a thing as transgender? What is this completely invented demographic that we’re all told we have to be kind to, but it includes very vulnerable & confused teenage girls and very deviant men with autogynophilia? This is not the same demographic of people.”– Sal Grover 

I am concerned by climate scientists becoming climate activists, because scholars should not have a priori interests in the outcome of their studies. Likewise, I am worried about activists who pretend to be scientists, as this can be a misleading form of instrumentalization. – Ulf Büntgen

I recommend that climate science and climate activism should be separated conceptually and practically, and the latter should not be confused with science communication and public engagement. – Ulf Büntgen

While I have no problem with scholars taking public positions on climate issues, I see potential conflicts when scholars use information selectively or over-attribute problems to anthropogenic warming, and thus politicise climate and environmental change. Without self-critique and a diversity of viewpoints, scientists will ultimately harm the credibility of their research and possibly cause a wider public, political and economic backlash.

Likewise, I am worried about activists who pretend to be scientists, as this can be a misleading form of instrumentalization. In fact, there is just a thin line between the use and misuse of scientific certainty and uncertainty, and there is evidence for strategic and selective communication of scientific information for climate action⁶.  – Ulf Büntgen

Moreover, I find it misleading when prominent organisations, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its latest summary for policymakers⁵, tend to overstate scientific understanding of the rate of recent anthropogenic warming relative to the range of past natural temperature variability over 2000 and even 125,000 years^8,9,10,11. The quality and quantity of available climate proxy records are merely too low to allow for a robust comparison of the observed annual temperature extremes in the 21st century against reconstructed long-term climate means of the Holocene and before. Like all science, climate science is tentative and fallible⁷. This universal caveat emphasises the need for more research to reliably contextualise anthropogenic warming and better understand the sensitivity of the Earth’s climate system at different spatiotemporal scales¹². Along these lines, I agree that the IPCC would benefit from a stronger involvement in economic research^13,14, and that its neutral reports should inform but not prescribe climate policy^3,15.

Furthermore, I cannot exclude that the ongoing pseudo-scientific chase for record-breaking heatwaves and associated hydroclimatic extremes distracts from scientifically guided international achievements of important long-term goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate global warming¹⁶.  – Ulf Büntgen

In essence, I suggest that an ever-growing commingling of climate science, climate activism, climate communication and climate policy, whereby scientific insights are adopted to promote pre-determined positions, not only creates confusion among politicians, stakeholders and the wider public, but also diminishes academic credibility. Blurring boundaries between science and activism has the potential to harm movements of environmentalism and climate protection, as well as the much-needed international consent for sustainable growth and a global energy transition. If unbound climate activism results in widespread panic or indifference, people may think that it is either too late for action or that action does not matter. – Ulf Büntgen

In conclusion, and as a way forward, I recommend that a neutral science should remain unbiased and avoid any form of selection, over-attribution and reductionism that would reflect a type of activism. Policymakers should continue seeking and considering nuanced information from an increasingly complex media landscape of overlapping academic, economic and public interests. Advice from a diversity of researchers and institutions beyond the IPCC and other large-scale organisations that assess the state of knowledge in specific scientific fields should include critical investigations of clear-cut cases, such as anthropogenic climate change. A successful, international climate agenda, including both climate mitigation and adaptation, requires reliable reporting of detailed and trustworthy certainties and uncertainties, whereas any form of scientism and exaggeration will be counterproductive. – Ulf Büntgen

My God, it must be a pretty long trigger warning before King Lear or Titus Andronicus! Crikey, is that really what happens now?

I can see why they exist, and it is preparing people, I suppose, but if you’re that sensitive, don’t go to the theatre, because you could be very shocked. Where is the surprise of seeing and understanding it in your own way?

Why go to the theatre if you’re going to be warned about things that are in the play? Isn’t the whole business of going to the theatre about seeing something that you can be excited, surprised, or stimulated by? It’s like being told they’re all dead at the end of King Lear. I don’t want to be told. – Judi Dench

The state is hopeless at parenting. Keeping families intact is better for children and cheaper for the taxpayer. – Richard Prebble

New Zealand politicians regard just spending money as a success. Labour boasts it spent an extra billion dollars on mental health. The minister admitted he had no idea where the money went. There is no data that the extra spending made any difference.

Agreeing in advance what is a success but also what is a failure must improve the quality of spending. The room for improvement is massive. The minister said in her speech that the taxpayer is spending $70 billion a year on social issues. It is clearly not working. – Richard Prebble

The idea of targeting complex and expensive social issues has merit. Even more meritorious is deciding in advance what is a success. – Richard Prebble

Labour must now regret its decision to abandon Bill English’s approach to social spending which was focused on measuring outcomes. A responsible opposition would give at least qualified support to social investment bonds.

Part of the reason social investment bonds are successful is because of the participation of private investors. They bring new money to fund new approaches and bring the disciplines of business. People are much more careful when it is their own money at risk. Involving private capital would also reduce the possibility of wacky schemes being funded.

In social investment projects private investors have identified that social workers are crucial to success. The schemes have often rewarded social workers better than the state. – Richard Prebble

Why not use social investment bonds to get the long-term Jobseekers into work? The measure of success would be employment.

The social benefits of getting 100,000 Kiwis back into work would be massive.

It could be the coalition’s big idea. – Richard Prebble

Call yourself what you like, wear what you like, be as socially feminine or masculine as makes you most comfortable BUT humans cannot change biological sex. Enforcing Stereotypes is regressive & presently extremely destructive to both physical but especially mental health. – Sharron Davies

1906: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

2024: “I support freedom of speech in its proper place, but please don’t speak your mind because I am not really willing to defend you against snitches trying to get you fired.” – Liam Hehir

There are more than 900,000 people who identify as Māori in this country. The arrogance of determining who qualifies and who doesn’t depending on their political views is exceeded only by the arrogance of assuming that any single coterie gets to claim to speak for them all.

— Liam P. Hehir (@PronouncedHare) May 17, 2024

How to close the gap is not a puzzle. We know what to do. The 2025 Taskforce wrote a report on it more than a decade ago. It recommended, slashing government spending, cutting taxes, reducing beneficiary numbers, raising the pension age, selling state-owned assets and vigorously encouraging foreign investment.

All of which are logical. Many of which will make many Kiwis uncomfortable.

But we have to do it. We have to cut the fluffy feel-good nonsense we’ve been distracted by. Labour’s Wellbeing Budgets made us poorer. The Reserve Bank identifying as a tree hasn’t made them any good at fighting inflation. Hiring public servants en masse hasn’t improved our services.

We need to focus all of our attention on supercharging economic growth and make some tough calls.

In the end, pay is the difference between smart Kiwis staying or leaving. It’s the only thing we can really lift to compete with Australia. Just ask the Kiwi cops thinking about taking up NSW’s offer. – Heather du Plessis Allan

There is no family who doesn’t go through a time where one of your children is really struggling. And, um, we’ve certainly had that in our family, . . .

I have had those moments where I’ve gone to work in the morning and thought, oh I say I’m here to make a difference, maybe the best thing I could be doing to be the difference is being at home with my child. –  Nicola Willis

Everything that’s been really tough I can look back on and go, ‘we got through that’, so it’s my number one piece of advice to new parents. I realise giving advice to parents is a very fraught thing to do, but I just say, remember, ‘this too shall pass’.” – Nicola Willis

I wouldn’t wish it on her. I was a political journalist and I know how thankless a task it is. No matter what you do, it’s never good enough. It’s always going to have strong criticism. That’s just the way of the job but she set her heart on it and it’s not for us to say what she can and can’t do. – Shona Willis

If people think I’m in any way, cold or heartless or I don’t care about things because of the significant implications of decisions, that really hurts me because who I think of myself is being someone with an enormous heart who’s completely in this job so that I can help people and make a difference.” – Nicola Willis

It’s just the opposite of academic for me, it’s so human because I’m a Wellingtonian, this is my town and my kids go to school here and this is our community, and so of course I know people who are affected. – Nicola Willis

I say to people when they want to become an MP ask yourself why you’re doing it – and be really honest with yourself. Because if you’re doing it with a role in mind then statistically speaking, chances are you will fail – Nicola Willis

It has long been argued that Israel must be defended as the only western-styled democracy in the Middle East. Israel has been seen as the beach-head, standing against medieval forces that would drive the world back to an age of barbarism. Such language is now considered part of the imperialist lexicon that the enlightened must jettison. Hamas, the radical Islamist terrorist organisation that slaughtered the greatest number of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust, in an orgy of sexual violence, blood curdling torture and depravity, is now feted on American university campuses as a valiant force fighting for the liberation of the “oppressed Palestinian people”.  Thus, savagery is now defended in the enlightened halls of power and influence and the Gaza war has become the symbol of the Progressive Left’s battle against western civilisation. The ideological war is directed not just at Israel, but the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the western world more generally. Advocating for the preservation of western values is seen as a “Euro-imperialist talking point”. Embracing the Palestinian cause is “acting to dismantle empire”.  Indeed, one needs a language guide to decode the rhetoric. Even the word “terrorist” is considered a “racist and politicised” term and defending Israel’s right to exist is interpreted as “white supremacy”.

The West is considered the source of all evil in the current zeitgeist, purveyor of the great sin of colonization and imperialism, in which the world is divided into the white oppressor and brown oppressed. If you happen to be brown but don’t buy into the ideology, behold, you are actually white. The fact that the majority of Israelis are brown is irrelevant. They are still white, according to the dogma. One’s skin colour grants political advantage, but as it turns out, only for those on the Left who are not Jewish.  – Dr Sheree Trotter 

The illegitimate coupling of Māori sovereignty to the Palestinian cause does have a precedent amongst Māori thinkers. It has been cultivated over decades and has become the default position in certain sectors. – Dr Sheree Trotter 

Alarmingly, the apologists for Hamas readily turn a blind eye to the extreme fundamentalism of the Hamas regime and its systematic mistreatment and torture of Palestinians critical of the regime.  Such is the nature of the “sacred”. The Palestinian cause has become hallowed in the worldview of decolonisation’s priestly class. It is a central tenet in the battle to undermine the foundations of the West, and its values of rationalism, the disinterested pursuit of truth, the rule of law, equality before the law, freedom of conscience and expression, human rights and liberal democracy.

Decolonisation’s binary framework of oppressor and oppressed, colonizer and colonized offers a convenient dogma for devotees, but lacks explanatory power and abuses history in the process. Some of our great Māori leaders readily embraced the best of both worlds in their efforts to advocate for their people. In 1858, Pōtatau was declared king at Ngāruawāhia with an oath that bound him to Queen Victoria, Christianity and the law. He was anointed with a Bible over his head, a practice that has continued with his successors to this day. Leaders like Apirana Ngata worked for reconciliation between Māori and Pākehā. Tahupōtiki Wiremu Ratana held a Bible in one hand and the treaty in the other symbolising his dual mandate and Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu had a love for Israel and welcomed Israeli ambassadors onto the marae.

Māori who aspire to follow in the footsteps of these champions are not “colonized Māori.” They simply reject a construct designed to keep them shackled in grievance, anger and bitterness. Even as they seek redress, they refuse to be defined or confined by the pain of colonisation, discrimination or disadvantage. They follow the example of their tupuna who were entrepreneurs, who embraced modernity and literacy, who chose to turn away from tribal warfare, cannibalism and slavery. They embrace their identity with pride, gratitude and dignity and reject the destructive dogma of the decolonisation priestly class.  – Dr Sheree Trotter 

 While a rigorous scrutiny of the legacy of colonialism is needed, the decolonisation priesthood’s attack on everything the West has given us makes as much sense as the man who destroys the very city in which he prospers.  – Dr Sheree Trotter 

 It [Taxpayers’ Union] does seem to have cottoned on to something which has eluded many people. And that is, members of the New Zealand public are roundly sick of being fleeced by their Government.

You don’t have to look too hard to see why. The 17.5c in the dollar tax rate has cut in at $14,000 of income and the 30c rate at $48,000 since 2010. Meanwhile, rampant inflation has driven people up the nominal wage scale so they have ended up paying ever more of their wages to the taxman.

Losing 30c in the dollar or even 33 cents (the rate at just $70,000) gets tedious pretty quickly, particularly when you lose a further 15c in GST when you actually buy something. Between cost increases and this stealthy increase in taxation known as fiscal drag, the much-discussed middle-income New Zealander has been well and truly squeezed. – Steven Joyce 

The Government has grown massively. Core government expenditure represented 28 per cent of our economy in 2017, rising to more than 34 per cent in 2022. Despite the end of the Covid age, it is not much less than that now. Sadly, as we all know, that increase in the size of the Government hasn’t been matched by a commensurate improvement in public services.

Measured against that backstory, the arguments that taxes shouldn’t be cut now seem pretty flimsy. – Steven Joyce 

A focus on value for money and performance would likely yield far more improvements in most cases than ever more money. – Steven Joyce 

And so to the positive side of tax cuts. As well as easing some of the cost-of-living pressures on Kiwi households, there are the wider economic and societal benefits of reducing taxation on wage and salary earners, as well as New Zealand’s army of small businesses.

That argument goes a little like this: If we are to lift ourselves out of our economic doldrums, we will have to grow our way out. And that will only happen if we rebalance our economy in favour of rewarding effort rather than redistribution. We need the people with get up and go to work harder and smarter and to earn more in real terms for doing so.

To achieve economic growth, we need to increase the rewards for working an hour, for investing another dollar or hiring another worker. We won’t do that by simply declaring higher nominal wage rates for everyone which are eaten up by inflation, or by slugging people with higher and higher marginal tax rates. We do it by letting them keep more of the money they earn.

It is only by growing faster that we can afford the infrastructure, the public services and the lifestyle we all aspire to. – Steven Joyce 

If we don’t give the people with get up and go more opportunity to get ahead here in New Zealand, they will get up and go to somewhere more welcoming, where they can get ahead.

That’s already happening. As a result of the past five or six years of economic mismanagement, we now have record numbers of New Zealanders voting with their feet and moving to Australia and further afield.  – Steven Joyce 

On this side of the Tasman, we have got ourselves into a bit of an economic doom loop, where we increase taxation, increase the size of Government even faster, increase debt, squeeze businesses and families, and make it more attractive for people to bring up their families elsewhere. One big step to breaking that doom loop is to reduce the burden of taxation to give people more opportunity to get ahead in this country. That will help turn our recession story into a growth story.

Be under no illusions. The state of the government books will mean that this year’s tax cuts are likely to be no more than a downpayment on what’s required to return New Zealand to being an attractive place to start a business and bring up a family. After all, unlike Australia, we don’t have millions of acres of iron ore to dig up.

But it’s important we get started. We need to start giving hard-working Kiwis some economic hope. There are some economists who could perhaps factor that important dynamic into their spreadsheets. – Steven Joyce 

We are well overdue a tax cut. The last meaningful tax cut was from Steven Joyce himself… in 2017 in the Bill English government

But we never got it,  because Labour reversed it when they won the election.

I tell you what: we need Kiwis to feel like they are earning a just reward for the work they’re doing.

One easy way to do that… is cut taxes

Steven Joyce is right… Nicola Willis is right… tax cuts are right.  –  Heather du Plessis-Allan 

It is a common prejudice that free speech is a popular cause. Most people want it for themselves, of course, but many would far rather that others would shut up. It does not come naturally to people to enjoy being contradicted, much less severely criticised. We want freedom from opinion at least much as we want freedom of it.

The impulse to suppress free speech is very strong, and when it is allied to the joys of denunciation and the possible punishment of those with whom we disagree, the stage is set for tyranny and even totalitarianism. This, with the passage of a law in Scotland to make so-called hate-speech criminal even in private, has resulted in thousands of people hastening to denounce J.K. Rowling to the police, in the hope of her arrest, trial and probable imprisonment. – Anthony Daniels 

One suspects, though one cannot prove, that the howls of protest directed at her are so loud because the truth of what she says is, secretly, obvious even to her opponents. Nothing is as hated as a justified heresy.

Many of us must have wondered how the culture of denunciation, such as that which obtained in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany (with a sub-branch in Vichy France) could have developed: how it was that millions of people were willing to denounce their neighbours, friends and even close members of family, in the full knowledge of the consequences of such denunciation. But at least in those polities people had the excuse of fear: that is to say, the consequences of not denouncing people were almost as severe as those of being denounced. – Anthony Daniels 

 But the fact that denunciation is still not obligatory in Scotland makes the thousands of denunciations all the more sinister. They are the product of pure denunciatory malice, the pleasure of contemplating and even bringing about the suffering of others: of course, under the guise of benevolence. In other words, the denunciations in Scotland are a kind of purer form than the denunciations to the Gestapo or the NKVD, uncontaminated by either the hope of material gain or the avoidance of arrest oneself for having failed to denounce.

I do not have the statistics to hand, and I doubt that anyone has: but it is my guess that the educational level, or at least of attendance at supposedly educational establishments and institutions, of the denouncers in Scotland is above that of the population as a whole. The reasons for this are obvious: it takes a certain capacity for intellectual obfuscation and rationalisation to believe that a man can become a woman, simpliciter, and a woman a man. No one can truly believe this, and the enormous effort to do so is what causes the violent reaction when the contrary truth is baldly enunciated. – Anthony Daniels 

There was a time when the extension of education, especially tertiary, was expected to increase the intellectual freedom of a country, to release ever growing numbers of people from the shackles of inherited or conventional ideas, but it seems to have had the opposite effect. The transvaluation of all values does not lead to valuelessness: it leads to different, and not necessarily better, values. Convention is like nature: you may throw it out with a pitchfork, yet it will return. – Anthony Daniels 

As for the human sheep, one of the guises in which wolves come is hate-speech. Everyone knows that to be hated is discomfiting; and to be discomfited is like saying goodbye, it is to die a little. Hence it must be suppressed, for the sake of the welfare of the sheep.

But what, exactly, constitutes hate-speech? According to the Scottish law, it is speech that any reasonable person would consider calculated to arouse hatred towards certain protected groups—which constitute more than half the population.

But who is this reasonable person? He cannot any more be the man on the Clapham omnibus. With the balkanisation of culture, nothing holds people together but geographical proximity. What is reasonable to one group is unreasonable to another, what is sacred to one is odious to another. This creates an eggshell society in which everyone is expecting, and perhaps even hoping, to be aggrieved at any moment. Protection from grievance becomes the object of government, justifying endless intrusion, while at the same time providing an excuse for the obvious deficiencies in what government ought to be doing. How can you suppress hate and fill the potholes in the road on a limited budget? – Anthony Daniels 

Word of the day

Shrive – to grant absolution; to impose penance on; hear the confession of, assign penance to, and absolve; to go to or make confession; confess one’s sins.

Milne muses

“A south wind was blowing little baby clouds along a blue sky; lower down, the rooks were talking busily to each other in the tall elms which lined the church; and the foxhound puppy sat himself outside the blacksmith’s and waited for company.” ~A.A.Milne #BankHolidayMonday pic.twitter.com/SGN3j7qCvE

— A.A.Milne (@A_AMilne) May 6, 2024

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Beautifying the blogosphere

Under the stars with the sound of the curlew drifting into my soul and the lights danced in the sky. I stood on our hill and drank it in. Having been laden with the cold this was all a girl needed to put the world into its perfect spin. pic.twitter.com/MVYfwYwEue

— Sorcha Lewis (@xSorchaLewisx) April 17, 2024

Woman of the day

Woman of the Day Lenah Higbee born OTD 1874 in Canada, one of the first intake of women as US Navy nurses and the first living woman to be awarded the Navy Cross, one of the highest US Navy honours, for extraordinary service.

Lenah emigrated to the US in 1899 to complete formal… pic.twitter.com/tgeUEuNM3E

— The Attagirls (@TheAttagirls) May 18, 2024

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Populism not threat to democracy

Nancy Pelosi did not like what I had to say…

Populism is not a threat to democracy.

Democrat elites like her are.

Watch my full Oxford Union speech from the debate with her: pic.twitter.com/ZNm8maNZjy

— Winston Marshall (@MrWinMarshall) May 10, 2024

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“Knowledge is evidence based”

pic.twitter.com/5C8XbDCCdO

— 🗣 Free Speech Union ✊ (@NZFreeSpeech) May 18, 2024

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Word of the day

Wheest–  a call, demand or plea for silence; hush; to silence or to make or become silent.

Sowell says

It is self-destructive for any society to create a situation where a baby who is born into the world today automatically has pre-existing grievances against another baby born at the same time, because of what their ancestors did centuries ago. It is hard enough to solve our own problems, without trying to solve our ancestors’ problems. – Thomas Sowell

Woman of the day

Today’s Woman of the Day :

Woman of the Day Nancy Grace Roman born OTD 1925 in Nashville, the first woman Chief of Astronomy at NASA and the Mother of Hubble.

Her PhD thesis provided the key to understanding the structure of the Milky Way, yet she was held back at every opportunity from primary school to the six years she spent at the University of Chicago. That’s how she ended up at NASA. Nancy’s family relocated often when she was little.

Her geophysicist father “taught me mental arithmetic by playing games with me” and introduced her to household mechanics. “He said that I could not leave for college without knowing how to rewire a lamp.”

In Nevada, aged ten, she formed an astronomy club so she and her friends could study constellations in the night skies of Reno. In Baltimore, she read every astronomy book in the city library and decided that’s what she wanted to do.

Her guidance counsellor was taken aback, “What lady would take mathematics instead of Latin?”

Nancy attended Swarthmore University where its dean of women only encouraged women to pursue “female-appropriate fields”.

“If you insisted on majoring in science or engineering, she wouldn’t have anything more to do with you. So she sent me to Peter van de Kamp.” He wasn’t encouraging either but he did teach her astronomy.

Nancy attended the University of Chicago’s Yerkes Observatory for her PhD in 1946. It was a little easier; there were always at least two women students there. Her thesis adviser would go for six months without speaking to her – “He was just moody” – but visiting professors helped her research to move forward.

This involved looking for stars born with other stars in the Big Dipper using information in existing catalogues. “I could tell how stars were moving now and could reverse that motion, taking them back to the Dipper at about the right time.”

She found more than 200 stars born in the Ursa Major cluster and noticed that where stars orbited in the Milky Way was connected to their metallicity: younger metal-rich stars near the centre, older metal-poor stars further out. She also developed a method of gauging stellar metallicities by comparing their brightness at blue and ultraviolet wavelengths.

It is still used today. After earning her doctorate in 1949, Nancy stayed on as an instructor and then assistant professor, the first woman on the astronomy faculty, and was paid just 60% of the salary of her male peers despite her growing international reputation. Her parents had to subsidise her and as the only woman on the faculty, she had no other women’s salaries to compare with her own. She took the matter to her department chair. He said, “We don’t discriminate against women. We can just get them for less.”

Yerkes Observatory refused to grant a permanent position to a woman (as shrewd a decision as Decca turning down the Beatles in 1962 and signing Brian Poole and the Tremeloes instead) so in 1954, Nancy moved to the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC.

It meant changing her specialisation from optical astronomy to radio astronomy, at that time a new field for the US but now a major area of study. Because her salary at Yerkes had been so low, “They didn’t recognise it as professional experience…I have no soft spot for the University of Chicago.”

From there, it was a natural step to move to the fledgling NASA as Head of Astronomy, making her the first woman to hold an executive office there. “It was like learning to swim by jumping into deep water.” Physicist and astronomer Lyman Spitzer Jr. is the Father of Hubble but Nancy advocated for it, wrote congressional evidence for it, brought together and consulted with astronomers from various specialties across the country, sat them down with NASA engineers to determine what was wanted versus what was feasible.

She was instrumental in convincing the American government that the $1.5 billion price tag (not including ongoing operating costs) was worth it. She is the Mother of Hubble. It was worth every penny.

It confirmed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating and discovered dark energy. After retiring in 1979 to care for her elderly mother, Nancy slowed down: auditing programming courses, consultancies with government contractors, joining Goddard’s Astronomical Data Centre and becoming its director, mentoring budding scientists and engineers in underserved areas of the US, and giving talks on the Big Bang everywhere.

“I like to talk to children about the advantages of going into science and particularly to tell the girls, by showing them my life, that they can be scientists and succeed.”

Her message to women in STEM still experiencing sexism: “Persevere. Things are better than they used to be. Women now can and do get professorships; women are heads of observatories and departments.”

She died in 2018, aged 93.

Teaching how not what

There’s a critical difference between teaching people what to think and teaching them how to think.

This teacher, Warren Smith, gives a very good example of teaching a pupil how to think.

He does it by asking questions that make the pupil think and reason.

How very much better that is than imposing thoughts on him.

 

 

 

Word of the day

Irie – great, fine, all right; pleasing to the senses; powerful; good or excellent quality.

Sowell says

Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) May 11, 2024