I've just discovered, while reading a Guardian piece about and against censorship by Nick Cohen, that Salman Rushdie has just published an autobiographical work about what his life has been like for the last decade or so, while being subjected to the calculatedly frenzied threats of the Islamist hordes following the publication of The Satanic Verses.

I have never regretted for a single second purchasing my copy of The Satanic Verses, and I still have it. But like many others who voted thus with their wallets, I soon gave up with actually reading the thing.

Joseph Anton, on the other hand, looks like it might be quite a page turner. As a general rule I far prefer reading autobiographies by award-winning literary novelists to reading their award-winning literary novels. Whether I enjoy reading Joseph Anton or not, I won't regret buying that either. Which I just did.

I have yet to discover why it is called Joseph Anton, but I'll find out soon enough. And … I just did. While inserting that "page turner" link above, I found myself reading this:

Rushdie's new memoir, Joseph Anton: A Memoir, takes its title from the name he used while in hiding - which was a combination of the first names of two of his favourite writers, Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov.

So there we are.

Bloody hell, I also just found out: 656 pages! That's a lot of pages to be turning. Maybe just bits of it, eh?

"After all these years of endlessly repeating the same tired tropes on the New York Times op-ed page, taking Maureen Dowd’s columns seriously requires a suspension of disbelief that is normally only needed to watch science fiction."

- Jonathan Tobin

Incoming from Michael Jennings, in the form of a link to this:

How many months do we still have to save the world from verbal catastrophe?

And I have to say it’s a little unseemly for our government to officially take a position on a YouTube video, even one that sparked an international crisis. It’s even more unseemly that our government is taking the same position on that film as the people who just killed our ambassador in Benghazi.

- the indispensable Michael Totten

This August researchers making a first analysis of data from the European Space Agency's observation satellite CryoSat-2 were startled to find that the loss of sea ice – as measured both by depth, and by area – was far more dramatic than their own forecasts had predicted. The summer Arctic could be an open sea within a decade.

Guardian editorial, 17 September 2012

Despite having a belief in CAGW two-and-a-half letters to the left of most commenters on this blog, it told me something about my own beliefs that my first thought when I saw this was "why have they reverted to making their bets public, short term and easy to measure? I thought they had given that up after the Himalayan Glaciers fiasco." Only later did it occur to me that "they" might be making this public prediction because they believed it.

ADDED LATER: 2022? No, 2016. Right or wrong, and I am inclined to think "wrong", kudos to Professor Peter Wadhams for not hedging.

Putting your wishes aside - whatever they may be - what is likely to be the state of Islam ten years from now?

Did you hear what John Major had to say yesterday? "The 'green shoots' of economic recovery are on the way as 'darkest moment' passed" Oh my God, I guess we are closer to the brink than I thought.

- Perry de Havilland over a glass with some Samizdatistas.

James Delingpole surely spoke for many in fearing that one Owen Paterson does not make a summer of sane energy policy. Nevertheless, as Bishop Hill notes, Paterson has been talking sense, to Farmer's Weekly:

From my own direct constituency experience I don’t personally think that inland wind farms are effective at reducing carbon. I don’t even think they are effective at producing energy.

A BH commenter desribed that as:

... the kick in the groin that the wind energy sector has so long deserved.

I hope it hurts.

More from Delingpole, about one of the many creatures that the Paterson tendency is up against, here.

LATER from Christopher Booker:

What they could not have expected was Mr Davey’s response. He trenchantly dismissed their calls, restating his view that we urgently need a massive new investment in gas generation. Only after 2030 would this require the "carbon capture and storage" that, as Mr Davey has already admitted, is still an “unproven technology” (and is likely to remain so). So the first message of last week was that the once hugely influential Climate Change Committee in effect has been kicked into touch. In the name of keeping Britain’s economy running, the Government seems now determined to break its own law.

What makes all this even more significant, however, is that it is taking place against the background of a truly astonishing worldwide energy revolution. As can be seen from the website of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, country after country is now rushing to exploit the shale gas that, in the past four years, has more than halved gas prices in the US. China, Germany, France, Russia, South Africa and others all have immense reserves that promise to provide the world with cheap energy for centuries to come. And, here in Britain, determined moves are at last being made to reverse the Government’s grudging negativity towards our own vast shale gas reserves, led by our new Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson, who seems to be winning surprising support for his enthusiasm for shale gas from key officials in his own department and the Environment Agency, which has regulatory responsibility for this new industry.

After years when our energy policy was being dictated by green wishful thinking, by the likes of Lord Deben and by state-subsidised pressure groups such as Friends of the Earth (which first invented, then helped to draft, the Climate Change Act), reality is at long last breaking in. The green make-believe that has cast such a malign spell over our country for far too long is finally on the run. Truly, last week was history being made.

Those are the concluding paragraphs of a piece well worth reading in full. The times they are a-changing.

A favourite occasional source of LOLs for me is the Top Tips section at Viz Magazine. This morning I found one that makes a distinction that is more than merely humorous, I think:

HOUSEWIVES. Look in the dictionary to find the difference between the words 'need' and 'want' then carefully choose the right one to use when talking about buying new dresses.

'Need' suggests some kind of objective truth about what is, well, needed. It can thus be used to disguise the whimsical nature of a decision, as above.

It makes very good sense, when you are discussing some project which you both agree you want, to speak of this or that contributory item or procedure being accordingly needed.

The problem is that discussing 'need' can be an exercise in disguising or misrepresenting the degree to which we all want something which then means we also need this particular extra, by simply not engaging in that prior discussion.

Collectivists regularly use 'need' to disguise what they want, and want often for very dishonourable reasons.

Perhaps I am being naïve and starry-eyed (as I often am) in believing that the kind of argument which makes clear what I - and I hope you also? - want, as well as what that project will consequently need, is the one that will triumph in the long run, because the logic of what I am saying may be needed, to get what I want and think you should want also, is presented with greater honesty and completeness.

Detlev Schlichter's latest posting - Stimulus, to infinity and beyond - is up.

Beginning:

There was a beautiful symmetry to last week’s policy announcement by the Fed. Precisely a week after the ECB had pledged its commitment to unlimited purchases of Euro Zone government bonds, the Fed declared that its new round of debt monetization – ‘quantitative easing’ or QE3 – would be open-ended. Unlimited, open-ended. The concept of stimulus has certainly evolved since the crisis started.

End:

This will end badly.

Nothing to add to that myself. Other than: do what I am about to do, which is to read the whole thing.

Joan Brady, a previous winner of the Whitbread literary prize, writes:

Costa Coffee should keep out of book prizes – and town centres

In 1993 I became the first woman to win the Whitbread Prize, and it changed my life. Money! One winner blew it all on a swimming pool for the family's French villa. Not me. Mine paid off my debts: there are few joys in life to beat clearing the slate.

I suppose I should have given some thought to where the money came from. I didn't. The shortlist was awarded at the Whitbread brewery –which meant I could hardly avoid knowing it had something to do with beer – but how was I to know that Whitbread saw the whole excitement as just an advertising gimmick?

I liked the comment by scepticalhawkeye:

Most of us would have thought that the executives of a brewery at heart saw their life's work as promoting English Literature.

Joan Brady appears upset that Whitbread has taken over the Costa Coffee chain, so instead of authors being given dosh by noble brewers they are getting it from effete caffeine-fiends. For a moment the flame of hope flickered within me that Ms Brady might be emulating the staunch heroes of of God Emperor of Didcot, in which mighty vows are made that never more shall the arm of the honest tea drinker be made limp by the latte of foreign oppressors! Alas, she just has a thing against Costa:

Costa is strong-arming its multinational way into small towns and villages all over Britain and plonking down its identical coffee shops even though local people in overwhelming numbers – from Southwold in East Anglia to Cottingham in Yorkshire to Totnes in Devon – make it clear they aren't wanted.

I lived in Totnes for 30 years, and Totnes outdid itself. Three quarters of its population protested against Costa: Totnes already has more than 40 independent coffee shops. That many people agreeing on anything approaches a miracle, a landslide of public opinion. Costa isn't bothered. It hasn't bothered with the populations of other protesting towns either. But isn't this supposed to be a democracy? Here's a corporate giant flouting the fully expressed will of local people. And for what? To boost a profit margin that'll go to build more coffee shops in Russia and Egypt – Costa's largest is in Dubai – at the expense of UK shopkeepers.

As every second comment says, if local people in overwhelming numbers do not want Costa Coffee then Ms Brady's problem will not persist long. Local people in overwhelming numbers won't go there, and Costa will cut their losses and go.

In fact there is an issue worth discussing here. I cannot help wondering what Ms Brady would say if local people in overwhelming numbers expressed the view that they did not want immigrants of a different race, Egyptians for instance, setting up shop in their town and making a profit "at the expense of" UK shopkeepers. Would opposition to incomers on those grounds still count as the "fully expressed will of the people" and if not, why not? Isn't this supposed to be a democracy? Perhaps if she reads the many pointed comments, the CiF crowd being on the right side for once, Ms Brady will be prompted to question the limits of majoritarianism.

Perhaps she will also be prompted to do as so many of the commenters suggest and send Whitbread / Costa back their money. Given that she thinks that only the involuntary contributions of taxpayers are pure enough to fund a literary prize, that would be the principled course of action.

This whole idea of 'respect' - which is a code-word for 'fear' - is something we have to get away from.

- Salman Rushdie (interviewed on BBC Radio 4). Indeed. And not just in where the bullying religiose are concerned. Tolerance should not mean pretending to agree.

In the aftermath of electoral defeat, a Labour MP and former minister wrote:

"The new Conservative Government is showing itself the most ideological and reactionary right-wing government that Europe has seen in two decades ... Its commitment to lower public spending and its ideology of laissez-faire will mean more poverty, more inequality, a meaner social sector and a worse environment."

As things turned out, once in power the Conservatives preferred "pragmatism" to an ideology of laissez-faire, and the commitment to lower public spending displayed about the same level of commitment as Ming the Merciless did in his marriage vows to Dale Arden:

PRIEST: Do you, Ming the Merciless, Ruler of the Universe, take this Earthling, Dale Arden Lower Public Spending, to be your Empress of the hour?

MING: Of the hour, yes.

PRIEST: Do you promise to use her as you will?

MING: Certainly!

PRIEST: Not to blast her into space?

(Pointed silence from Ming)

PRIEST (hurriedly): ....Until such time as you grow weary of her?

MING: I do.

The election concerned was, of course, that of 2010 1990 1979 1970 and the writer was Anthony Crosland, MP. He concluded:

"Perhaps it did not need this lecture to demonstrate that our basic social democratic aims remain as urgent as they have ever been. If proof were needed, Mr Heath has provided it."

- Anthony Crosland in A Social Democratic Britain, Fabian Tract 404, based on a lecture given in November 1970. (Price 3s / 15p.)

I do not entirely share Perry's view that between Ruling Lizards Group A and Ruling Lizards Group B there is no difference worth a damn. By gum, though, when you think that Edward Heath was once seriously feared as a rampaging warrior of laissez faire, there is no difference worth much.

Economic wisdom from a rather surprising place:

Since 2007, 15 bridges have collapsed in China. Only three of them were more than 15 years old at the time of their collapse, according to a report by the Shandong Business Daily.

On Aug. 24, a 330-footlong approach ramp of Harbin’s Yangmingtan Bridge fell over, killing three and injuring five. The bridge had been in use less than a year and is the eighth bridge collapse in China this year. The Harbin administration has so far not openly addressed the case.

Zhao Wenjin, the lead commentator of Lanzhou Daily, commented on the incident, saying, “With each collapse, we need to reflect: why are we chasing GDP?”

According to a Jingyang Net report, Wang Yang, Party secretary of Guangdong Province, said at a provincial Party meeting in 2009: “Sometimes the GDP number looks good, but it didn’t really create wealth for society. It was, instead, a waste of society’s wealth.

“For example, building a bridge creates GDP. When the bridge collapses and is taken down, it creates another addition to the GDP. When the bridge is rebuilt, more GDP is created. As such, one bridge resulted in three additions to the GDP. But it was a tremendous waste of resources.”

Mainland media Chinese Business Daily said that sticks and pebbles were found in the concrete that made up the Yangmingtan Bridge, and the metal wires on the surface were also not tied together properly.

The headline above the article that the above paragraphs come from reads: Frequent Bridge Collapses Help Boost China’s GDP.

My thanks to Sean Corrigan of the Cobden Centre for sending out the multi-recipient email that told me about this story.

First of all, I think it is fair to say that no-one who wants to be taken seriously should use the words "Arab Spring" without heavy irony.

The fact is that the First Amendment, no matter how embattled, protects a range of expression unthinkable even in Western Europe. Because of that unique position, and because the U.S. seems doomed to play an outsized diplomatic and military role in the tumultuous Muslim world, it behooves the State Department to constantly explain the vast differences between state-sanctioned and legally protected speech in the so-called Land of the Free. If the U.S. government really was in the business of "firmly reject[ing]" private free-speech acts that "hurt the religious beliefs of others" there would be no time left over for doing anything else.

Matt Welch, stating what is alas not obvious to officials at the US State Department.

Meanwhile, I note - as have others - that the killing of the US ambassador in Libya only made it on page 4 of the New York Times. All the news that's fit, to, er, print. Okay, I understand the limitations of print journalism, but something tells me that a journalist and editors goofed. A US ambassador got murdered, FFS.

The US elections got a lot more interesting, alas, for horrible reasons. The ghost of Jimmy Carter hangs over it.

Some wise comments, I think, from Walter Russell Mead. He is even-handed in how he regards the options for Obama and his opponent:

The order and competence dimension of a presidential election should not be underestimated. Voters generally don’t want presidents who drive the U.S. government like it was a Ferrari. They want a comfortable, safe ride; their kids are in the back seat of the car. Yesterday’s events damage President Obama because they call into question the story the campaign wants to tell—that President Obama is a calm and laid-back, though ultimately decisive person who brings order to a dangerous world and can be trusted with the car keys. But if Republicans respond by looking wild eyed and excitable (remember John McCain’s response to the financial crisis in 2008?), bad times will actually rally people to stick with the devil they know.

And this:

Yesterday rocked President Obama’s world and gave Governor Romney’s campaign some new openings. But one day in a long campaign is just one day. We still don’t know how these events will reverberate across the Middle East or how the U.S. response will develop. In some ways, trouble overseas distracts attention from the White House’s current domestic problems—the Woodward book and the Chicago strike. And the President can thank his stars that the German Constitutional Court decided not to plunge the world economy into crisis this morning and allowed the German government to complete the ratification of the most recent European bailout agreements.

As he says, we are living through a period where there is a lot of what finance geeks and others call "event risk". There is a lot of it about.

I am off to Turkey tomorrow. Gulp.

Professor Stephan Lewandowsky and two colleagues from the University of Western Australia published a paper called 'NASA faked the moon landing - Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax:An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science'.

Johnathan Pearce mentioned it in this post. As I said in the comments, Bishop Hill and other sceptical blogs made scathing criticisms of the survey. For instance, according to Australian Climate Madness, the headline finding about disbelief in the moon landings was produced from a mere ten responses, some or all of which looked likely to be jokers. The whole internet survey had only about 1100 self-selected responses. That self-selection makes it about as reliable as the surveys of the readers of bridal magazines that claim that the average cost of a wedding is £20,273 in the UK, or $26,501 in the US and are every year quoted as fact by credulous journalists.

To their credit, some commenters from the warmist side of the aisle also queried the obviously leading questions. Questions were asked from all sides as to why almost no effort seems to have been made to gather responses from AGW-sceptic blogs, leaving the sceptic responders to come almost entirely from those controversialists who post at warmist blogs. There was a farcical subplot in which Lewandowsky initially refused to reveal which sceptical blogs he had contacted. He does not seem to have asked many of the biggest sceptical blogs, such as Watts Up With That?, or to have made more than token efforts to get noticed by those sceptic blogs he did contact. Shall I go on? There was no option for "don't know" or "no opinion" in the survey questions. The conspiracies chosen were mainly "right wing" conspiracies, such as Birtherism, rather than "left wing" ones, such as those relating to "Big Oil". There were inadequate safeguards against multiple returns by the same person, or joke returns by any person. Different versions of the survey were sent out to different people - but not randomly, which would have been defensible; rather some blogs got one version and others got another. Results were being discussed online while the survey was still open, corrupting later responses. I will stop there. If you want to read more, just Google "Lewandowsky".

Professor Lewandowsky's response to criticism was revealing.

If I am not mistaken, I can indeed confirm that there were 4—not 3—versions of the survey (unless that was the number of my birth certificates, I am never quite sure, so many numbers to keep track of… Mr. McIntyre’s dog misplaced an email under a pastrami sandwich a mere 8.9253077595543363 days ago, and I have grown at least one tail and several new horns over the last few days, all of which are frightfully independent and hard to keep track of).

Versiongate!

Finally this new friend from Conspirania is getting some legs.

About time, too, I was getting lonely.

Astute readers will have noted that if the Survey ID’s from above are vertically concatenated and then viewed backwards at 33 rpm, they read “Mitt Romney was born in North Korea.”

To understand the relevance of Mr Romney’s place of birth requires a secret code word. This code word, provided below, ought to be committed to memory before burning this post.

So here it is, the secret code. Read it backwards: gnicnalabretnuoc.

Translations are available in any textbook for Methodology 101.

Don't give up the day job, Professor. On second thoughts, maybe a career in comedy is the way to go. There was a time when a scientist responding to criticism in such a fashion would have had a career change forced upon him.

This survey was published in the journal Psychological Science.
Reported seriously in the Telegraph and other newspapers.
Peer reviewed and everything.

It does make you wonder. Compared to most readers of this blog, I am still a warmist. But ever since I first saw the term "climate denier" I have worried about what an opinion becoming a cause would do to scientists. I feared, and still do fear, that if having a certain scientific opinion can get a scientist bracketed with Holocaust deniers, then perhaps researchers might unconsciously shy away from results that might have that result. Now that fear is joined by another. As for sticks, so for carrots. If a scientist can be published and lauded for coming up with the equivalent of "nine out of ten cats we tested prefer KittyTwinks to swamp mud" so long as his or her findings promote the Cause, then perhaps researchers might unconsciously prefer results that get that result.

It says here "Egyptian protesters condemned what they said was the humiliation of the Prophet of Islam under the pretext of freedom of speech"... Pretext? I don't think that word means what they think it does, unless it lost something in translation.

- from a conversation overheard between two people in a cafe in London, reading the news on their iThingies.