Why I am proud to be a Westerner

But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

- Reg in Monty Python’s Life of Brian



It’s hip nowadays to proclaim oneself a global citizen, thereby impressing others with one’s espousal of an inclusive, non-judgemental, live-and-let-live philosophy which studiously avoids allegiance to a particular culture. Yet contrary to the nomadic airs they affect, global citizens actually do have preferences when it comes to where they put down roots, or at least stay for longer than the typical sight-seeing holiday. Curiously, they tend to be permanent residents of countries with longstanding traditions of democracy, the rule of law, liberalism and respect for human rights.

Bad science, bad media

So here we are, newly arrived in the second decade of the twenty-first century. Yet in an era of bionic prosthetics, large hadron colliders and gene therapy, media corporations pay self-styled astrologers and ‘psychics’ to cast horoscopes and tell fortunes, the charlatans’ babble splashed across newspapers, magazines and websites. And on the same payroll as the mumbo-jumbo peddlers are journalists who cannot, or will not, differentiate between science and pseudoscience.

The dark side of Japanese traditionalism

It’s a familiar travel-guide cliché: Japan is a land of contrasts, where tradition and modernity coexist in harmony. While many elements of Japanese traditional culture embody all that is refined, sensitive, beautiful and noble, there are aspects of such traditionalism that aren’t as flattering, which fall far from the lofty reaches that the best in Japanese culture attains. Two that are especially pervasive are gender inequality with its attendant discrimination against women, and negative attitudes towards migrants.

When Darwin meets Smith

The Great Recession has discredited the once-irreproachable efficient-markets hypothesis (EMH). It turns out after all that markets do not present all available information, that investors and consumers are not always rational agents, and that prices fluctuate with alarming frequency and wide variation. In the ‘Issues 2010’ special edition of Newsweek, Barrett Sheridan ('Markets are like people') reports on a proposed alternative to the EMH; the adaptive-markets hypothesis (AMH). This idea’s foremost proponent is MIT economist Andrew Lo, who has set out to repair the now-obvious flaws of the EMH using the findings of behavioural economics. More specifically, Lo wants to introduce Adam Smith to Charles Darwin.

Cartoon kid porn: evil pedophilia or victimless crime?

Earlier this month, the Arkansas Supreme Court sentenced thirty-five year old John McEwen to two years jail for the crime of possessing images depicting cartoon children engaged in sexual acts. McEwen’s sentencing sparked an internet protest movement, with supporters calling the sentence ‘draconian’ and demanding that it be repealed. Peter van Bruen, a civil rights lawyer and one of the founders of the movement, is here today to explain why he and many others oppose the Supreme Court’s verdict.

Good morning, Mr van Bruen.

Good morning.