Magic Statistics

The Spanish Socialist Party wants to classify simians as legal “persons”, thus enduing apes with human rights.

The Spanish Socialist Party will introduce a bill in the Congress of Deputies calling for "the immediate inclusion of (simians) in the category of persons, and that they be given the moral and legal protection that currently are only enjoyed by human beings." The PSOE's justification is that humans share 98.4% of our genes with chimpanzees, 97.7% with gorillas, and 96.4% with orangutans.

The party will announce its Great Ape Project at a press conference tomorrow. An organization with the same name is seeking a UN declaration on simian rights which would defend ape interests "the same as those of minors and the mentally handicapped of our species."

According to the Project, "Today only members of the species Homo sapiens are considered part of the community of equals. The chimpanzee, the gorilla, and the orangutan are our species's closest relatives. They possess sufficient mental faculties and emotional life to justify their inclusion in the community of equals."

If a high proportion of shared genes qualifies creatures as persons, shouldn’t the mouse be included?  “Mice, men share 99 percent of genes”.

Have the Spanish Socialists fallen so low in the polls that they need extra votes?  Do they figure primates are natural Socialist voters?  They could be in for a rude surprise: I’d bet that the guerillas gorillas are revolutionary terrorists.

Has anyone asked the simians whether they want legal rights?  If it entails civic obligations to pay taxes and traffic fines, they’d be smart to say, “Thanks, but no thanks”.

I’ll take this legislation seriously the first time an orangutan is hauled into court for assaulting a chimpanzee.

via little green footballs.

Life expectancy is falling in Russia.  In the mid-1960s, Russian males could expect to live to about 65; today, that’s down to 58.  The life expectancy of Russian women is much higher at 71, but it is also falling.  This, combined with decreasing fertility, means that Russia’s population could shrink by one-third before the middle of the century.

Falling life expectancy is very rare in a country not at war.  Something is seriously wrong in Russian culture and society, but exactly what is unclear.

Demographic experts say it's hard to understand why so many Russians are dying.

The causes that usually get the blame — alcohol, drugs, violence, suicide, disease, accidents and a long list of others — are problems that plague many other countries, but somehow Russia suffers the worst.

The Globe and Mail story focuses on a 26-year old man named Vlad Pohabov, who survived years of drug abuse.  Ten years ago, he was injecting hanka, an opium derivative, with four other teenage friends.  Today, he is the only one left alive; the others are all dead from AIDS or overdoses.  Why is he so fortunate?

On a farm outside the city, Mr. Pohabov considers himself blessed. He escaped the death that surrounded him for the past decade, even as he shared needles, went to prison and spent a year squatting in a dirt-floored cellar with no running water and only a pile of clothes for a bed.

He eventually checked into a Christian rehabilitation centre, a farm where he learned to raise cattle and love Jesus. Social workers say that about 60 per cent of people enrolled in the program manage to stop using drugs.

Hallelujah!

Then, however, the reporter veers off track with this baffling comment: “But finding God isn't enough for many Russians.”  Next, he recounts a conversation between a doctor and an HIV-positive 35-year old Russian who’s on the point of losing his job due to excessive drinking.  God isn’t mentioned once.  The man’s problem is not that he’s found God but God isn’t enough: God’s not part of his life right now.  One hopes and expects he’d be better off if he did turn to God.

The Globe and Mail report is the second in a five-part series on the ominous demographic trends in Russia.  The first part is posted here.  The third part, posted here, focuses on tensions between ethnic Russians and Muslims arising from the fact that the Muslims are growing in numbers due to their much higher birth rate.

Previous related posts:

• Low-income countries are aging, too
• Russia, sick man of Europe

Sounds like an oxymoron to me, but some British nurses beg to differ.  Treatment of mental-health patients who harm themselves was discussed at the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) annual conference this week.  Many nurses think patients who want to should not prevented from cutting themselves.  In fact, they say, nurses should provide clean blades and other “implements”.

In a debate at their Bournemouth conference, many nurses argued that preventing patients from self-harming made the situation worse.

Under current rules, nurses feel that [sic] are prevented from allowing patients to continue self-harming because they are meant to minimise risk.

But early indications from the pilot at St George's Hospital in Stafford show that allowing self-harm to continue to do so, as part of care plan, can reduce a patient's dependence.

The pilot, which allows patients to keep blades and implements and provides them with cleaning equipment, is not expected to be completed until the end of the year.
. . .
The majority of nurses supported calls to allow some form of safe self-harm to continue for adult patients who cut themselves.

The majority really thinks that mental-health patients should not be prevented from injuring themselves?  What about patients who harm themselves by burning?  Is that OK, too?  How does a nurse decide what’s really “safe” and what isn’t?  Is it OK for a patient to indulge in self-harming behaviour that risks long-term physical damage?  If a patient does suffer long-lasting adverse effects and concludes it’s not as therapeutic as he or she had anticipated and decides to sue, what legal liability would the nurse and her hospital or care facility face?

I think this is a clue to what’s driving this proposal.  Nurses who back the idea “pointed out that drug users were provided with syringes and needles to help them use drugs safely”.  I’m afraid to ask, but I have to: Are drug paraphernalia given to patients in UK hospitals or mental-health facilities?

At least one nurse had something sensible to say:

But Jenifer Clarke-Moore, of the RCN's mental health practice forum, said: "My concern is that this is leading us up the garden path."

She said allowing self-harm was a "cheap-fix solution" to a complex problem. Instead, she added, "evidence-based interventions which promote health" would be better.

Evidence?  What a concept!

via LifeSiteNews.

Ya think?

The general public seems to have an exaggerated understanding of the purported effects of global warming.

How much has the planet warmed up over the past century? Most people reckon between two and three degrees. They are not even close. The real figure, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is 0.6C.

Some scientists blame the media for sensationalising the issue.  For example, a study published in Nature used a computer model from Climateprediction.net to estimate the effects of doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  The majority of results indicated that temperature would rise about 3C, but a few runs yielded more extreme estimates, some as high as 11C.  The media focused on the 11C scenario.

Dr Myles Allen, principal investigator at Climateprediction.net, blames the media.

"If journalists decide to embroider on a press release without referring to the paper which the press release is about, then that's really the journalists' problem. We can't as scientists guard against that."

But the press release from Climateprediction.net mentioned only one temperature figure: 11C.  No other hard data were given to the media.  What do you expect them to report?

(Climateprediction.net has recently run into another embarrassing problem.  A "major error" was discovered in its online climate model last week.)

Some scientists blame government agencies for misrepresenting scientific findings.

When the Environment Agency publicised research on global warming over the next 1,000 years, it predicted cataclysmic change; temperature rises of 15C and sea levels increasing by 11m. The agency said action was needed now.

But this isn't how the study's lead author, Dr Tim Lenton sees it. His research shows if you did nothing for a century you would still only get a fraction of the worst case scenario. He says there's consternation among scientists at the presentation of their science by the Environment Agency.

So far, scientists are blaming everyone but themselves.  But it transpires that scientists are at least as much at fault.  A study of frogs in Costa Rica blamed global warming for the declining numbers of the Golden frog.  Said lead scientist Dr Alan Pounds: “Disease is the bullet killing frogs, but climate change is pulling the trigger."  Unfortunately for Dr Pounds and global warming alarmists, the fungus killing the frogs is also killing other frogs in other places with different climates.  When asked about this, Dr Pounds went into damage control mode:

When I contacted Dr Pounds to discuss his research, he admitted they did not know how the fungus was affected by climate but was confident they had shown as [sic] statistical relationship.

"We wouldn't have proposed the hypothesis that we did had we not found such a strong relationship; we are not saying that's the only possible mechanism," he said.

Dr Pounds has apparently committed one of the most elementary errors in statistics: confusing correlation with causation.  Was there no one on his research team who knows something about statistics?  Even Dr Pounds’s suggestion that he’s found a “possible mechanism” goes beyond his evidence.

When it comes to explaining the public’s mistaken comprehension of climate change, there’s lots of blame to pass around.  Is it any wonder skepticism abounds?

via Melanie Phillips's Diary.

Previous related posts:

• Biblical environmental stewardship
• Kyoto is pointless: The globe has stopped warming
• Climate scientists choked
• Climate change forecasts contradict each other

The collect for today, The Feast Day of Saint Mark, Evangelist, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

O Almighty God, who hast instructed thy holy Church with the heavenly doctrines of thy Evangelist Saint Mark; Give us grace, that, being not like children carried away with every blast of vain doctrine, we may be established in the truth of thy holy Gospel; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 4:7-16
The Gospel: St John 15:1-11

Authorship of the second gospel has been attributed to St Mark since ancient times.  He is also commonly identified with the young man, mentioned only in Mark's Gospel, who fled naked when the crowd tried to grab him after the arrest of Jesus.  The Gospel of St Mark is the shortest of the four canonical gospels and it is generally believed to be the first one written, probably in Rome, possibly as early as AD 49.

Tradition from the early church indicates that the evangelist is the same as the person referred to in Acts as John Mark (Acts 12:12, 25; 15:37), John (Acts 13:5, 13), and Mark (Acts 15:39).  Likewise, he is the same Mark as the one referred to by St Paul (Colossians 4:10; 2 Timothy 4:11; Philemon 24) and by St Peter (1 Peter 5:13).

John Mark was the son of Mary, whose house in Jerusalem was a meeting place for the church.  St Barnabas, Mark's cousin, was a Levite from Cyprus, so Mark may have shared the same background as well.

Mark was chosen by Saul and Barnabas to accompany them as an assistant on the first missionary journey.  He later left them unexpectedly to return home, however.  Apparently because of this experience, Paul opposed Mark’s participation in a subsequent missionary journey, so Barnabas and Mark returned to Cyprus without Paul.  St Mark and St Paul were eventually reconciled as can be seen from Paul’s later references to him as a faithful and helpful companion.

In his first epistle, written from Rome, St Peter refers to Mark as his “son”.  This supports the belief that Mark based his gospel on the teachings of Peter.

Some early church writers say that St Mark left Rome to preach the gospel at Alexandria, Egypt.  He is thus revered as the founder of the church in Egypt and first bishop of Alexandria.  He is further said to have been martyred on 25 April, AD 68, by being dragged through the streets of the city.

Around 828, his body was brought to Venice, and he became the city’s patron saint.  A basilica was built to house the relics.  The present Basilica di San Marco was built in the 11th century after the original was destroyed by fire.