A fascinating story that complements Heinrich Schliemann’s discovery of Troy in 1871 has appeared in the press today.  To quote from Nasa’s pre-press announcement:-

The location of Greek hero Odysseus’ homeland - the island of Ithaca described in the poet Homer’s Odyssey - is a mystery that has baffled scholars for nearly 3,000 years. Now this ancient enigma has been solved with the help of World Wind, NASA’s 3D planetary visualisation tool.

The site of Homer’s Ithaca has been identified by Robert Bittlestone, Chairman of the UK management consultancy Metapraxis, whose quest was motivated by combining his company’s experience in the visualisation of complex data with a lifelong interest in Greece and the classics. He has solved the problem with the help of James Diggle, Professor of Greek and Latin at Cambridge University, and John Underhill , Professor of Geology at Edinburgh University.

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Alastair Nicholson was until recently the chief justice of Australia’s Family Court. Soon after he retired, he wrote a newspaper article supporting homosexual marriage. His argument was that traditional marriage, defined as an exclusive union between a man and a woman, was already defunct.

Not only was marriage no longer limited to heterosexuals, in Nicholson’s view it was no longer limited to couples either. “It is difficult to argue that a modern marriage necessarily excludes all others”, he concluded.

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Guardian Woman is such a contradictory creature.  She will convince her childless self that kids are an enslaving burden to her, yet proclaim an humanitarian love for everybody else’s.  She will tear your reputation into tatters if you say the wrong thing, yet proclaim herself the very embodiment of tolerance.  She will consider men as irredeemable oppressors, and may even have proved to herself that “gender” is a social construct.  Yet she will invest hours each day patiently finessing away as many of her physical imperfections as she possibly can.  Just in case an interesting oppressor comes upon her in the poetry section in Foyles.

Given her alarming propensity to walk on both sides of the street at once in opposite directions we should, I suppose, always anticipate a new psychological dichotomy.  And she may be developing one right now, albeit extremely patchily.

If it exists – and I am only suggesting the possibility, that’s all - it is still very nascent and based solely on the calculation of what so much childlessness adds up to: race replacement, for good or ill.  Let’s sketch out the historical process I see just beginning to form through the mist.

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Thanks to Johan Van Vlaams for the link to this wonderful example of what the left thinks of ...

... the new North Terrace of England’s monument to its national heroes.

“The Mayor of London is to throw his weight behind an appeal to allow a statue of Nelson Mandela to stand on the north terrace of Trafalgar Square.

Westminster Council rejected plans for the 9ft tribute to the South African president last year saying the terrace was not the best location.

Ken Livingstone’s support comes ahead of a public inquiry to challenge the council’s decision ...  He said: “There can be no better place than our greatest square to place a statue of Nelson Mandela so that every generation can remind the next of the fight against racism.”

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From the Norwegian/English language newspaper, Aftenposten:-

Police in the southeastern county of Østfold have been spending lots of time at an asylum center in Våler, where a group of refugees from Chechnya have demanded that strict Muslim laws be followed. Police worry that center administrators have lost control.
Both residents at the center at Nordbybråten in Våler and employees working there have been frightened by the group of around a dozen Chechen refugees, reports local newspaper Moss Avis. The Chechens allegedly are demanding that everyone must pray to Allah, that no one can wear shorts and that they must be allowed to be the first to take their meals.

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There is a new battleground between left and right liberals, namely, happiness. Their debate about what makes us happy reveals a great deal about the mindset of both the left and the right, so it’s well worth looking at.

I will take as a representative of the left, the Australian “think-tanker” Clive Hamilton, and on the right, another think-tanker, the Swede Johan Norberg.

The left: Clive Hamilton

Last year, Clive Hamilton published a discussion paper called “The Disappointment of Liberalism”. He began this paper by noting that liberalism had succeeded in its basic aim.

What is the basic aim of liberalism? Let me put it this way, as simply as I can.

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Sweden is a land of high taxes. One consequence of this is that some skilled immigrants, understandably, find it a less attractive option for settlement than elsewhere.

So a government business agency has called for skilled immigrants to pay a lower tax rate than native born Swedes.

Kai Hammerich, of the Invest in Sweden Agency, wants to lure more workers from China and India to work in the IT and medical fields (despite considerable unemployment amongst university graduates in Sweden).

His suggestion has met with a warm response from skilled immigrants. This is how “Andrew” from Singapore sees it,

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Kathe Boehringer, the Head of the Law Department at Macquarie University, has written a spirited defence of her colleague, Professor Andrew Fraser.

Here is part of what she has penned:

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