"Respected Organisations Including Peta"

I know Ann Widdecombe is into animal rights but this sentence stunned me:

Other highly respected organisations, including Peta, the RSPCA, Born Free and the Captive Animals' Protection Society, 

 Peta are extremist nutjobs who specialise is lies and misinformation. It also frequently targets young children in its propaganda efforts.

Still I'm looking forward to Ann Widdecombe being the next celebrity to pose for their "I'd rather go naked than wear fur" campaign.

From Deepest Saudivania

FFS:

The Pennsylvania State Director of American Atheists, Inc., Mr. Ernest Perce V., was assaulted by a Muslim while participating in a Halloween parade. Along with a Zombie Pope, Ernest was costumed as Zombie Muhammad. The assault was caught on video, the Muslim man admitted to his crime and charges were filed in what should have been an open-and-shut case. That’s not what happened, though.

The defendant is an immigrant and claims he did not know his actions were illegal, or that it was legal in this country to represent Muhammad in any form. To add insult to injury, he also testified that his 9 year old son was present, and the man said he felt he needed to show his young son that he was willing to fight for his Prophet. 

The case went to trial, and as circumstances would dictate, Judge Mark Martin is also a Muslim. What transpired next was surreal. The Judge not only ruled in favor of the defendant, but called Mr. Perce a name and told him that if he were in a Muslim country, he’d be put to death. Judge Martin’s comments included,

This is so brazenly corrupt it's hard to believe it will stand but even so it's amazing.

Via

The Guardian's New Penn Pal

It's sometimes assumed that Guardian readers give a pass to anyone no matter how stupid provided they are sufficiently left wing.

Sean Penn demonstrates this is not the case.

The Guardian is trolling it's readers by publishing this tripe.

They're also being unkind to Sean Penn by giving him a platform to humiliate himself. They know full well that he is not an intelligent man* but have flattered his ego by persuading him he can write- his prose includes sentences like: 

"This is not a cause of leftist flamboyance nor significantly a centuries-old literary dispute. But rather a modern one, that is perhaps unveiled most legitimately through the raconteurism of Patagonian fishermen."

 It is not actually any different from how the tabloids used to exploit Jade Goody.


* Not simply speaking beyond his competence like Bono or George Clooney, but genuinely lacking in even modest intellectual ability. An drug addled, wife beating high school drop out- if he weren't part of Hollywood's aristocracy he would be unemployable.

Mail Shocked That Kidnapping Children Illegal.

The one sided extradition treaty with the United States has rightly received a lot of criticism, but the Daily Mail's outrage over this potential extradition is demagogic America bashing rather than a serious criticism.

In what circumstances is it acceptable for one half of a divorced couple to deny custodial access to the children by moving to another country and refusing to let them see the other parent?

"Shut Up" He Explained.

The far left's approach to winning arguments:

An open call was issued Jan. 12 for owners of Sarrazin's book to turn in their copies at galleries and museums across the country. The books are to be on display and then, according to the artist, "recycled for a good purpose" at the end of the festival, which runs from April 27 to July 1.

 No, not like book burning at all.

There is a broader point to be made about the tactic of trying to make certain positions simply off limits rather than matters of debate. This happens a lot- albeit usually in a less Hitlery fashion than Martin Zet does here- with speech codes, pressure on newspapers not to report certain topics etc. To do this requires a huge ego- as it assumes that your own position is not only right but that it is impossible for you not to be.

Blaming The Victims

Just in case anyone doubted that Northern Ireland's Parades Commission is simply a sop to terrorists and the people who love them.

My Favourite Story Of 2012 So Far.

An undercover policeman 'chased himself' around the streets for more than 20 minutes after a bungling CCTV operator mistook him for a suspect.

He later vowed to track himself down and bring himself to justice.

Is Librulz Klevvurer? The Numbers

As I said yesterday I would look at actual evidence as to the relative intellectual ability of liberals relative to conservatives.

A lot of the quantitatively minded science bloggers have used the General Social Survey to get estimates of the relative intelligence of different groups. The variable generally used is the literacy test known as "Wordsum". As are also reasoning questions on there known as "Alike1... Alike8" I have combined them into a variable "AlikeSum" and then created a variable combining both known as "WordAlike".

I have then run "WordAlike" with a variable "PolyViews" which asks people to identify their political leanings.

The mean score for each group (out of 26) is as follows:

Extremely Liberal: 15.01
Liberal: 15.56
Slightly Liberal: 15.37
Moderate: 13.99
Slightly Conservative: 15.87
Conservative: 15.55
Extremely Conservative: 14.7

Total Liberal: 15.41
Total Conservative: 15.61

There seems to be a slight conservative advantage on reasoning and a slight liberal advantage on verbal ability, but I doubt enough to be significant. If anyone has the time or inclination they could roughly translate them to IQ scores but that seems a pointless exercise.

Self Refuting Columns: Guardianista's Congratulate Selves On Intellectual Superiority.

The two most commented stories on the Grauniad website at the moment are:

The right's stupidity spreads, enabled by a too-polite left- George Monbiot

When the Daily Mail calls rightwingers stupid, the result is dumbogeddon- Charlie Brooker

These are both referring to a "study" by a Canadian academic that has already been described as “A contender for the worst use of statistics in an original paper ever” by a serious academic.

Studies "proving" the superior intelligence of liberals have a staple among well, liberals, for a few years. Some of them have turned out to be hoaxes, some to be based on such laughably poor methodology that they are actually worse than the mere hoaxes.

Tim Worstall points out that the study itself doesn't even prove what it purports to. Later today or tomorrow I'll use some genuine numbers (mostly American) to look at the actual question of who is smarter*.

* The answer will be "Neither really" but I'll expand upon that.