Charles Murray uses citation analysis to account for “human accomplishment” in his book by that name. However he failed to take into account the fundamentally important accomplishment: negative numbers.  He therefore assigns a positive value for citations which might be best viewed as a negation of human accomplishment.  Examples of such negative accomplishments might be such works as “Das Kapital” (which set political economy back a century), “Civilization and its Disconents” (which set psychology back a century), “Anthropology and Modern Life” (which set sociology back a century) and “The Genetic Basis for Evolution Change” (which set human ecology back at least a generation).  He could have avoided this fatal error of epistemology by using a truly important human accomplishment that’s over a century old: Factor analysis.

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I am not sure how to interpret the tale of two not particularly current documents circulated by the Church in Italy, and both disapproving of mixed marriages between Italian women and Muslim immigrants to Italy.  Yes, it’s extremely heartening that this message is being spoken.  But I am puzzled why the BBC’s Rome correspondent should file this article at all.

This is what he says:-

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People get emotional about the public display of the Nativity Scene.  Maybe the real reason it is so emotionally charged is not that it is sectarian but racist.

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When I saw a reviewer say: “What follows is a kind of modern Depression comedy - a bit like /Sullivan’s Travels/, set in Silicon Valley. Dick eventually sinks to day labour with Mexican illegals. Jane becomes a guinea pig for dangerous pharmaceutical testing.” I honestly thought Jim Carrey might be going for the jugular with Fun with Dick and Jane.  Its good—maybe “great” by Hollywood standards for political satire—but no jugulars were opened.  A clue:  Ralph Nader made a cameo appearance as himself.  But they missed so much potential fun…

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At odd times when I’ve got nothing better to do – which, being a blogger, by definition I often don’t – I find myself wondering about the Selfless Ones who rule so wisely over us.  What lies behind the media image?  What are they really like in their private lives?

For example, just now I am wondering what Britain’s top policemen, the Chief Constables, are like in mufti.  What kind of chaps are they after the last funny handshake of the day, when they can go home and set down the dizzying burden of power?

Are they, for example, basically just the ordinary bloke who likes a beer in the clubhouse after eighteen holes on a Saturday morning?  Or are they more the type who disappears into the loft for hours at a stretch to be alone with his complete collection of dog-eared 1950’s Parade magazines.

I feel entitled to wonder because, as was rumoured five weeks ago, these Chief Constable chappies have been doing a lot of wondering about what you and I do.  And now they’ve hit upon one (devilishly complicated and expensive) way of getting at the answers:-

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Not content to sit on his laurels, Alex Zeka has contributed a second article to the blog.  In this one, the new leader of the British Conservatives gets the treatment.  I’ve told Alex this is the last time I am prepared to extend the Guest Blogger facility to him.  Sorry, from now on he’ll just have to do the same as everybody else, and post the stuff himself as a full MR contributor.  I only hope he doesn’t write too noticeably better than I do.

GW

Ex-Etonian, ex-Oxonian, self-styled man of the people David Cameron has kept his political proposals very much a secret. No doubt thinking policy details simply too gauche for a fully paid up member of the aristocracy to get into, he has preferred to reassure us that he believes neither in irresponsibility nor selfishness.

Such a happy state of affairs could not last indefinitely, and the Tuesday before last (13th Dec.) one of his advisors, Nick Boles, had to “come out” in front of the Adam Smith Institute.  Not about his sexuality, you understand - that’s been known since his failed campaign for Parliament- but about his boss’s political philosophy.  Reports the Spectator’s blog:-

While the hope of many Conservatives has been that Cameron is “really” on the Right but would use better PR to sell a Thatcherite agenda, Boles made clear to the audience that they would be disappointed.

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Observing the reproduction of emperor penguins in March of the Penguins got me thinking.  Did paleolithic white males suffer a similarly high mortality rate during winter?  If so mating-age gender ratio may be the most under-rated controller of white fertility.

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Thanks to Michael R for the link to this interesting survey of US media.

While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper’s news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.

These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.

“I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican,” said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study’s lead author. “But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are.”

“Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left,” said co?author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar.

One can, I guess, query the utility of the left-right model.  But one can’t query the utility of a formal measure of bias that pitches even supposedly right-wing media in the centre or left-of-centre.  It’s what we’ve always known - liberalism is endemic and the bulk of those who consider themselves on the right aren’t.

The full report will be published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, due out any day now.