To read this column, just click on the picture of it.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Rifkin is right on? Rifkin?
To read a nice letter to the Enterprise about my column, click on the picture of it above.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
The current fiscal crisis is a decade or more in the making
To read this column, click on the picture of it.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Ricci v. DeStefano: Responding to Ginsburg's Dissent
In a 38 page dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took issue with the majority decision in Ricci vs. DeStefano, the case in which the City of New Haven, Connecticut refused to promote white and Latino firefighters who scored high enough on the promotional exam because no blacks who took the test were among the highest scoring.
New Haven's reason for throwing out the test seemed to be: If no blacks who took this test scored high enough for promotion, then the test must be at fault. Ginsburg appears to share that view.
To my mind, New Haven should have the burden of proof: Show me a question or series of questions on the exam which are irrelevant to being a fire captain or lieutenant; and show me how those questions would be inherently more difficult for black firefighters than they would be for whites or Latinos.
New Haven did not bother to prove its case. Instead, the city threw out the test results on the basis of race and race alone. Imagine, for example, if all of those who scored highest had been black. Would New Haven have been guilty of racism for throwing out the test with no evidence that the test itself was at fault? Obviously, the city would have. And just as obviously, New Haven was guilty of racism by not promoting its highest scoring firefighters because those candidates for promotion had the wrong skin color.
Justice Ginsburg writes:
A vested right is a legal term for an absolute right. "When a retirement plan is fully vested, the employee has an absolute right to the entire amount of money in the account."
Before the rules were set for promotion in the NHFD, no one had an absolute right to be promoted. However, after the rules were set, after promotions were deemed necessary for that department and after the exams were given (and no one proved that the exams were objectively biased or unfair), then those who scored the highest in the promotion process did have a vested right to be promoted. Ginsburg's argument is unfounded.
Ginsburg's next contention:
Multiple flaws? This is a strange argument to make in dissent, because no one -- not the City of New Haven or any other party to this case -- ever took a critical look at the actual questions on this exam. The determination of its "flaws" was solely on the basis of insufficiently high scores by the black firefighters who took this test in 2003. Does Ginsburg in her 38 page argument give one example of a flawed question? No.
Her justification for saying the test was flawed is because "the City simply adhered to the testing regime outlined in its two-decades-old contract with the local firefighters’ union: a written exam, which would account for 60 percent of an applicant’s total score, and an oral exam, which would account for the remaining 40 percent. ... The City never asked whether alternative methods might better measure the qualities of a successful fire officer, including leadership skills and command presence."
It's one thing to argue that New Haven could find better candidates for promotion by changing its standards of promotion. (Ginsburg did not attempt to prove that alternative methods find better fire department officers. So we really don't know if other departments which use other methods objectively get better results from different standards.) But it is something entirely different to contend that because the individual black firefighters who took this exam under the process in place failed to score high enough for promotion the test and/or the process is flawed or racist. Much more likely the results suggest that those individuals who did not score high enough were either not smart enough or did not study hard enough, neither of which has anything to do with one's ancestral heritage.
That said, I don't discount the possibility that New Haven (and other cities) could be better off by changing their promotional processes. If objectively better people are promoted using a different weight for the tests, then the next time officer positions open up, use a better gauge. However, don't equate better with racial statistics. That is racism. All individuals of all races always deserve to be judged as individuals and not as representatives of a larger group.
The idea that the 2003 test should be thrown out because there might be a better test or process for promotion is unfair to those who scored highest on that 2003 test. First, prove that some other test is objectively better. And second, once you have the proof of a better test or procedure, put that in place from this point forward.
Ginsburg says that other cities have better tests, because those tests "have yielded less racially skewed outcomes." In other words, Ginsburg does not believe in equality of opportunity, she believes in equality of results. The only way we would ever know if the other tests are truly "better" would be if the performance of those who are promoted under one examination is markedly higher (all else held roughly equal) than those promoted under the other test. Just because some cities use a test in which the black applicants in those cities scored high enough for promotion does not make those exams better.
It's shocking to me that we have justices on the Supreme Court of the United States whose judgment is as flawed as Ginsburg's is here, so far.
This clearly gets to the motive of Justice Ginsburg's politics, which obviously drives her jurisprudence. She wants the Supreme Court to allow discrimination against whites and a Latino, in this case, because in the past blacks were discriminated against. However, that is irrelevant and unfair to consider in this particular case. Why? Two reasons. First, no one showed that in this case the firefighters who won promotions were promoted for any reason other than merit. No one showed that those who were not promoted were denied because of their race. The only reason New Haven blocked the promotions of those who scored highest on the test was because they were not of the correct race. Second, the firefighters who would have been promoted did not discriminate against blacks or any other minorities; and therefore it is unfair to deny them promotions because some blacks years ago were discriminated against by other whites who have nothing to do with this case.
The next part of Justice Ginsburg's argument deals with "disparate impact." She gives the statistics for the pass rate for each race on the test; and says because collectively non-whites did not do nearly as well as whites on this test, the test itself is a violation of Title VII's disparate impact provision.
Disparate impact was born in the Griggs case of 1971. It says:
Griggs is a flawed decision. If Ricci becomes the new standard, then the "mathematical comparison" clause of Griggs is effectively dead.
The idea that it is okay to discriminate against an individual of one race because some other "group's success rate" failed to match up in "a mathematical comparison" is racist. No test or process should ever be judged on the basis of "a group's success rate." A group is composed of individuals and each individual has unique reasons why he did well or poorly on an exam. Employment tests instead should be judged on whether the questions asked are germane and reasonable and if those who get jobs based on the test prove themselves competent in their jobs.
Justice Ginsburg goes on at great length discussing the 39 year history of disparate impact cases. She eloquently argues:
To me, the question here is about burden of proof. The examination process for promotion in New Haven may well be unfair, inadequate and not the best for finding the best candidates for promotion. But just because one racial group performs less well than some other racial group on a test does not prove the test is racially biased. Thus, the burden of proof for discrimination should be on those who allege that the test was racially biased by design or by accident. Only when that is proved should a testing procedure be thrown out. And just because a different test results in having members of all racial groups in question pass the test in proportion to their groups does not mean that the test is racially unbiased or the best possible test. As such, it makes no sense to measure group outcomes and then proceed to argue that they prove racial bias. Instead, show me how the test itself is biased against a racial group or how a better test, regardless of race, would objectively find better candidates for promotion and I would throw out the old test.
Ginsburg's reasoning is again flawed here. Why? Because New Haven decided that its test process "needlessly shuts out a segment of the applicant pool" on the basis of the races of those who did well and those who did not do as well. This gets back to burden of proof. The test results only should have been thrown out if New Haven could show that the questions used were not germane -- they did not show that -- or that some other process would objectively found better candidates for promotion -- and the city did not do that either. Therefore, those who scored highest on this exam should have been promoted.
If that weighting objectively fails "to identify the most qualified fire-officer candidates," the burden of proof should be on those who make that claim. Because the test results were thrown out before anyone could prove that claim, the claim itself remains unproven.
This may be true. However, it does not explain why black firefighters did not score as highly as whites on the New Haven exam, unless Ginsburg is arguing that blacks cannot "recall what a particular text stated on a given topic" as well as whites. If that is her argument, that is patently racist on her part.
Ginsburg ends her argument attacking the arguments of Justice Alito in his majority opinion. She makes a better case that some of Alito's arguments were flawed than she does that his conclusion was flawed.
New Haven's reason for throwing out the test seemed to be: If no blacks who took this test scored high enough for promotion, then the test must be at fault. Ginsburg appears to share that view.
To my mind, New Haven should have the burden of proof: Show me a question or series of questions on the exam which are irrelevant to being a fire captain or lieutenant; and show me how those questions would be inherently more difficult for black firefighters than they would be for whites or Latinos.
New Haven did not bother to prove its case. Instead, the city threw out the test results on the basis of race and race alone. Imagine, for example, if all of those who scored highest had been black. Would New Haven have been guilty of racism for throwing out the test with no evidence that the test itself was at fault? Obviously, the city would have. And just as obviously, New Haven was guilty of racism by not promoting its highest scoring firefighters because those candidates for promotion had the wrong skin color.
Justice Ginsburg writes:
The white firefighters who scored high on New Haven’s promotional exams understandably attract this Court’s sympathy. But they had no vested right to promotion.
A vested right is a legal term for an absolute right. "When a retirement plan is fully vested, the employee has an absolute right to the entire amount of money in the account."
Before the rules were set for promotion in the NHFD, no one had an absolute right to be promoted. However, after the rules were set, after promotions were deemed necessary for that department and after the exams were given (and no one proved that the exams were objectively biased or unfair), then those who scored the highest in the promotion process did have a vested right to be promoted. Ginsburg's argument is unfounded.
Ginsburg's next contention:
... (the Court) ignores substantial evidence of multiple flaws in the tests New Haven used. The Court similarly fails to acknowledge the better tests used in other cities, which have yielded less racially skewed outcomes.
Multiple flaws? This is a strange argument to make in dissent, because no one -- not the City of New Haven or any other party to this case -- ever took a critical look at the actual questions on this exam. The determination of its "flaws" was solely on the basis of insufficiently high scores by the black firefighters who took this test in 2003. Does Ginsburg in her 38 page argument give one example of a flawed question? No.
Her justification for saying the test was flawed is because "the City simply adhered to the testing regime outlined in its two-decades-old contract with the local firefighters’ union: a written exam, which would account for 60 percent of an applicant’s total score, and an oral exam, which would account for the remaining 40 percent. ... The City never asked whether alternative methods might better measure the qualities of a successful fire officer, including leadership skills and command presence."
It's one thing to argue that New Haven could find better candidates for promotion by changing its standards of promotion. (Ginsburg did not attempt to prove that alternative methods find better fire department officers. So we really don't know if other departments which use other methods objectively get better results from different standards.) But it is something entirely different to contend that because the individual black firefighters who took this exam under the process in place failed to score high enough for promotion the test and/or the process is flawed or racist. Much more likely the results suggest that those individuals who did not score high enough were either not smart enough or did not study hard enough, neither of which has anything to do with one's ancestral heritage.
That said, I don't discount the possibility that New Haven (and other cities) could be better off by changing their promotional processes. If objectively better people are promoted using a different weight for the tests, then the next time officer positions open up, use a better gauge. However, don't equate better with racial statistics. That is racism. All individuals of all races always deserve to be judged as individuals and not as representatives of a larger group.
The idea that the 2003 test should be thrown out because there might be a better test or process for promotion is unfair to those who scored highest on that 2003 test. First, prove that some other test is objectively better. And second, once you have the proof of a better test or procedure, put that in place from this point forward.
Ginsburg says that other cities have better tests, because those tests "have yielded less racially skewed outcomes." In other words, Ginsburg does not believe in equality of opportunity, she believes in equality of results. The only way we would ever know if the other tests are truly "better" would be if the performance of those who are promoted under one examination is markedly higher (all else held roughly equal) than those promoted under the other test. Just because some cities use a test in which the black applicants in those cities scored high enough for promotion does not make those exams better.
It's shocking to me that we have justices on the Supreme Court of the United States whose judgment is as flawed as Ginsburg's is here, so far.
The Court’s recitation of the facts leaves out important parts of the story. Firefighting is a profession in which the legacy of racial discrimination casts an especially long shadow.
This clearly gets to the motive of Justice Ginsburg's politics, which obviously drives her jurisprudence. She wants the Supreme Court to allow discrimination against whites and a Latino, in this case, because in the past blacks were discriminated against. However, that is irrelevant and unfair to consider in this particular case. Why? Two reasons. First, no one showed that in this case the firefighters who won promotions were promoted for any reason other than merit. No one showed that those who were not promoted were denied because of their race. The only reason New Haven blocked the promotions of those who scored highest on the test was because they were not of the correct race. Second, the firefighters who would have been promoted did not discriminate against blacks or any other minorities; and therefore it is unfair to deny them promotions because some blacks years ago were discriminated against by other whites who have nothing to do with this case.
The next part of Justice Ginsburg's argument deals with "disparate impact." She gives the statistics for the pass rate for each race on the test; and says because collectively non-whites did not do nearly as well as whites on this test, the test itself is a violation of Title VII's disparate impact provision.
Disparate impact was born in the Griggs case of 1971. It says:
A person claiming that an employment standard has a disparate impact based on race, color, sex, national origin, or religion must demonstrate factually a disparity of legal consequence before the law will require an employer to demonstrate business necessity. A person who has established such a disparity is said to have established a prima facie case of discrimination. In evaluating whether an employment standard has a disparate impact, a mathematical comparison must be made of a particular group's success rate in regard to the standard versus the success rate of other groups.
Griggs is a flawed decision. If Ricci becomes the new standard, then the "mathematical comparison" clause of Griggs is effectively dead.
The idea that it is okay to discriminate against an individual of one race because some other "group's success rate" failed to match up in "a mathematical comparison" is racist. No test or process should ever be judged on the basis of "a group's success rate." A group is composed of individuals and each individual has unique reasons why he did well or poorly on an exam. Employment tests instead should be judged on whether the questions asked are germane and reasonable and if those who get jobs based on the test prove themselves competent in their jobs.
Justice Ginsburg goes on at great length discussing the 39 year history of disparate impact cases. She eloquently argues:
Observance of Title VII’s disparate-impact provision ... calls for no racial preference, absolute or otherwise. The very purpose of the provision is to ensure that individuals are hired and promoted based on qualifications manifestly necessary to successful performance of the job in question, qualifications that do not screen out members of any race.
To me, the question here is about burden of proof. The examination process for promotion in New Haven may well be unfair, inadequate and not the best for finding the best candidates for promotion. But just because one racial group performs less well than some other racial group on a test does not prove the test is racially biased. Thus, the burden of proof for discrimination should be on those who allege that the test was racially biased by design or by accident. Only when that is proved should a testing procedure be thrown out. And just because a different test results in having members of all racial groups in question pass the test in proportion to their groups does not mean that the test is racially unbiased or the best possible test. As such, it makes no sense to measure group outcomes and then proceed to argue that they prove racial bias. Instead, show me how the test itself is biased against a racial group or how a better test, regardless of race, would objectively find better candidates for promotion and I would throw out the old test.
If an employer reasonably concludes that an exam fails to identify the most qualified individuals and needlessly shuts out a segment of the applicant pool, Title VII surely does not compel the employer to hire or promote based on the test, however unreliable it may be.
Ginsburg's reasoning is again flawed here. Why? Because New Haven decided that its test process "needlessly shuts out a segment of the applicant pool" on the basis of the races of those who did well and those who did not do as well. This gets back to burden of proof. The test results only should have been thrown out if New Haven could show that the questions used were not germane -- they did not show that -- or that some other process would objectively found better candidates for promotion -- and the city did not do that either. Therefore, those who scored highest on this exam should have been promoted.
In choosing to use written and oral exams with a 60/40 weighting, the City simply adhered to the union’s preference and apparently gave no consideration to whether the weighting was likely to identify the most qualified fire-officer candidates.
If that weighting objectively fails "to identify the most qualified fire-officer candidates," the burden of proof should be on those who make that claim. Because the test results were thrown out before anyone could prove that claim, the claim itself remains unproven.
Courts have long criticized written firefighter promotion exams for being “more probative of the test-taker’s ability to recall what a particular text stated on a given topic than of his firefighting or supervisory knowledge and abilities.”
This may be true. However, it does not explain why black firefighters did not score as highly as whites on the New Haven exam, unless Ginsburg is arguing that blacks cannot "recall what a particular text stated on a given topic" as well as whites. If that is her argument, that is patently racist on her part.
Ginsburg ends her argument attacking the arguments of Justice Alito in his majority opinion. She makes a better case that some of Alito's arguments were flawed than she does that his conclusion was flawed.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Sotomayor & The Lexicon Impact
To read the column above, click on it.
To read the column above, click on it.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
May 2009 California Propositions
If you would like to read this column, just click on it and it will appear in readable form.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Why there is no two-state solution to be had
There was an excellent letter to the editor published in today's New York Times by Shlomo Avineri:
In his article “The changing face of Hamas” (Views, April 13) Paul McGeough mentions that for all the changes he saw in Hamas, its leader Khalid Mishal answered “No chance” when asked if his organization would consider changing its charter, which calls for Israel’s destruction.
What McGeough did not mention is that Hamas views all Jews, and not just Israel or Zionism, as its enemies. Its charter goes to some length (Article 22) to state its views on this. According to Hamas, the Jews (together with the Masons) were responsible for the French and Communist revolutions; they instigated World War I in order to destroy the Ottoman Caliphate; they instigated World War II in order to make money out of trade in war materials; they control world finance and the media; and they have established numerous secret organizations (like Rotary and B’nai B’rith) in order to achieve world domination.
Some of this is straight out of the anti-Semitic literature of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” and some of it — especially the references to the two World Wars — is the original contribution of Hamas ideologues. Compared to this, Austria’s Jörg Haider and France’s Jean-Marie Le Pen, or even the Ku Klux Klan, are moderates. If any organization in Europe or the U.S. used such language in its founding document, it would be viewed universally as beyond the pale.
Such views cannot be part of any political discourse, and these are the issues which have to be raised with Hamas leaders by anyone who cares for peace in the Middle East. It is regrettable that McGeough chose not to do it.
What the Israel-hating left -- the so-called "peace movement" -- often ignores is that the Palestinians don't want peace with Israel. They want to destroy Israel. Some of them want to murder all of the Jews. Others want to overwhelm the Jews by combining their populations and making the Jews a minority group in a larger Palestine which the Arabs would forever control. A minority of Palestinians -- include some of the moderates in Fatah -- do want a two-state solution. But there can be no peace, no two-state solution until the Palestinians unite around the idea of living in peace side-by-side with the Jewish state as a welcome neighbor. Until that happens, there will be endless war. The American and European "peace groups" love to blame Israel for this. But their blame is entirely misplaced. Israel is not perfect. But compared with the Arabs, the Jews are angels.
11 Pirates Are Seized in Raid by French Navy
It's good to see the civilized world is having a little success fighting back against Somali piracy. Here is what the New York Times is reporting today:
French forces detained 11 suspected pirates during an assault on what they described as a pirate “mother ship” in the Indian Ocean off the eastern coast of Somalia Wednesday, less than 24 hours after an American cargo ship was attacked by pirates in the same region. The French forces initially responded to a distress call from a Liberian-flagged container ship, the Safmarine Asia, which came under attack by rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire from two small pirate skiffs Tuesday night. A helicopter from the Nivôse arrived on the scene and observed the skiffs retreating and returning to the “mother ship” — actually, a 30-foot boat — which was being used as a floating base about 460 miles off the Somali coast, according to a statement by the European Union’s Maritime Security Center. The French forces then mounted their assault on the boat on Wednesday, and found a range of firearms and equipment on board along with 17 barrels of fuel. The Nivôse took the boat and the skiffs in tow and made for the port of Mombasa, Kenya, the Maritime Security Center said. Once it arrives, the detainees are expected to be sent on to France to be prosecuted.
I have an idea that I have not heard from anyone else: station 20 or so submarines at intervals off the coast of Somalia on the lookout for pirates. Whenever and wherever the subs spot (on sonar) a small boat, the type the pirates are using, heading out to sea, have the submarines fire a torpedo and, shiver me timbers, blow the pirates to kingdom come. Insofar as the argument is, we won't spot them because the sea is too large, I have to wonder in counterpoint: the small pirate crafts don't seem to have trouble locating the merchant ships in that big sea. I think if the likelihood of death for the pirates became greater than 50 percent, they would give up this inane hostage-taking scheme.
Obama to boycott World Conference Against Racism: I think he should attend
The Washington Post is reporting that the Obama Administration will boycott "the World Conference Against Racism next week in Geneva." The Post:
White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said that although progress has been made in revising the draft text, concerns remain. "We hope that these remaining concerns will be addressed, so that the United States can reengage the conference negotiations in the hopes of arriving at a conference document that we can support," he said.
The main reason the U.S. has objected to this conference is that it is, like so much U.N. business, a veil for Islamic anti-Semites to bash Israel done in the name of ending racism. In 2001, the U.N. held a similar conference in South Africa, and all of the Israel-haters used the conference as a guise to vent their bile on the Jewish state. The U.S. ended up walking out. A large percentage of the U.S. Congress does not want to see a replay of 2001:
Last week a bipartisan group of House members sent a letter to Obama congratulating him for deciding to boycott the meeting, which is scheduled to begin Monday.
"We applaud you for making it clear that the United States will not participate in a conference that undermines freedom of expression and is tainted by an anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic agenda," said the letter signed by seven members of Congress.
Israel and several Jewish advocacy groups have urged the United States and other nations not to take part in the conference. Canada and Italy have said they will not attend, and several other U.S. allies, including Australia, are considering not participating, according to representatives of several advocacy groups.
While I appreciate the principled stance of not supporting the idiocy of the Islamic countries -- everyone of which is far more racist and authoritarian than Israel or the United States -- I think President Obama should go to the conference himself.
He should stand up in front of the sheiks and Marxists and bigamists and cannibals and tell them what jackasses they are. Tell them, the 70 percent white United States just elected a black man president. Who the eff are you to lecture us on racism you two-bit morons? Who are you to lecture us on religious liberty, when a person will be killed in your country if he was born a Muslim and converts to a different faith? Who are you, the people who kicked all of the Jews out of your countries and forced them to move to Israel to lecture Israel about modernity, liberty, human rights, democracy, free speech, civil rights, religious freedom, women's rights, racism or any other value of the modern world? Go back to your effing caves where your four wives live and you beat your daughters for not wearing a burqa.
Boycotting may feel productive. But shoving the feces that the Third World morons are digging up back in their faces would do a lot more good. I say, Obama, go to that conference and tell those yutzes what's what.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
The left-wing war on science
Science writer Chris Mooney three years ago came out with a well-received and important though partisan book bashing the Bush Administration called, The Republican War on Science. This is what Paul Berg, Nobel Laureate in chemistry, said about the subject and about Mooney's book:
If left unchallenged, the Bush administration's deliberate misrepresentation and frequent outright disregard of science advisory processes will have serious consequences for the nation's economy, health and security. Chris Mooney has opened a window to reveal the extent of the anti-science bias in government policy making.
Yet, in reality, it's not only the right which has been at war with science. All over the world, including in the United States, large elements of the left ignore scientific consensus with regard to issues of vaccination, food science and farming. Others have used terror tactics against scientists who work with animals in research.
Joining up with the traditional religious nuts who have not vaccinated their kids, a left-wing group of boneheads has been falsely contending for years that vaccines are dangerous for children.
Many leftists irrationally (and unscientifically) believe in and spread the gospel of organic farming, even in cases where organic objectively causes more damage to the environment than conventional farming and due to its low productivity and high costs harms the ability of poor people to afford proper nutrition.
Another example of leftist calumny, fed by widespread public ignorance, regards food irradiation. Exposing fruits, vegetables and juices to ionizing radiation destroys dangerous microorganisms, bacteria, viruses and insects present in the food and is good for people. The left has actively campaigned to ban food irradiation, and supermarkets (like Whole Foods), in the face of campaigns by environmental groups, won't carry produce or juice products which have "been nuked," under the false presumption that "nuke" means scary and bad.
Nowhere is the left's war on science more insidious than with its worldwide campaign against genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Not only have leftist environmental groups, to the detriment of the environment, successfully gotten governments to ban GMOs, but some leftist terror organizations have threatened the lives and research of scientists who are working on altering the genes of plants so crops can be grown safely without using so many harmful chemicals.
Today, it was announced that the German government, in a complete rejection of science and a bow to leftist pressure, will ban GMO corn:
BERLIN/HAMBURG (Reuters) - Germany will ban cultivation and sale of genetically modified (GMO) maize despite European Union rulings that the biotech grain is safe, its government said on Tuesday.
The ban affects U.S. biotech company Monsanto's MON 810 maize which may no longer be sown for this summer's harvest, German Agriculture and Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner told a news conference.
The move puts Germany alongside France, Austria, Hungary, Greece and Luxembourg which have banned MON 810 maize despite its approval by the EU for commercial use throughout the bloc.
Ilse Aigner is a Dummkopf:
"I have come to the conclusion that there is a justifiable reason to believe that genetically modified maize of the type MON 810 presents a danger to the environment," Aigner said, stressing the five other EU states have taken the same action.
It really does not matter what the science says; it doesn't matter than GMO corn is safe:
The EU Commission, the bloc's executive arm, has tried without success to get the bans in other countries lifted and on Tuesday warned it would examine the German decision.
"The Commission will analyse the ban by Germany with the adequate scientific information support and the Commission will decide on the most appropriate follow-up towards this situation," Commission spokeswoman Nathalie Charbonneau told a regular briefing.
Monsanto spokesman Andreas Thierfelder said the decision was unjustified and no supportable scientific reasons for the ban had been given. Should the ban be confirmed, Monsanto would consider legal options with the goal of enabling GMO seeds to be planted for this year's harvest.
Ferdinand Schmitz, chief executive of the association of German seed producers, said the decision was arbitrary and would damage Germany as a location for research.
Schmitz accused Aigner of trying to score points with voters in the upcoming European parliamentary elections and said banning seeds already approved as safe could generate legal action for compensation.
fārī
Fārī is a Latin root word meaning "to speak." Its interest to me is in the range of English words it is a part of. I think you gain an appreciation for language when you can see the relation of words to each other and how roots and prefixes and suffixes were added and subtracted to express new concepts. Here are words I know that have fārī as a root:
Infant: "one unable to speak" from in- ("cannot") + -fāns, prp. of fārī "to speak."
Fate: "a prophetic declaration of what must be" from fātum "utterance, decree of fate, destiny", orig. neut. of fātus, ptp. of fārī "to speak".
Affable: "pleasantly easy to approach and to talk to" from affārī, "to speak to" from ad- + fārī "to speak."
Fame: "one spoken of" from fāma "talk, public opinion, repute," akin to fārī "to speak."
Preface: "a preliminary statement" from praefari "to speak or say beforehand" from prae "before" + fārī, fātus "to speak."
Fable: "a short tale to teach a moral lesson" from fābula from fārī "to speak."
Effable: "utterable" from effābilis, equiv. to eff(ārī) "to speak out" (ef- "out" + fārī to speak) + -ābilis "able."
Ineffable: "inutterable" from in- "not" + effābilis, equiv. to eff(ārī) "to speak out" (ef- "out" + fārī to speak) + -ābilis "able."
Nefarious: "extremely wicked or villainous" from nefas "crime, wrong" from ne- "not" + fas "divine law;" akin to fari "to speak."
Multifarious: "having many different parts, elements, forms, etc." from multifariam "in many places or parts," perhaps originally "that which can be expressed in many ways," from multi- "many" + -fariam "parts," perhaps from fas "utterance, expression, manifestation," related to fari "to speak."
Ineffable
ineffable [ĭn-EF-ə-bəl]
adj. incapable of being expressed or described in words; inexpressible
[From Latin ineffābilis, from in- ("not") + effābilis ("utterable") from ex- ("out") + fārī ("to speak")]
The primary function of ineffable is as an intensifier. "It wasn't just that the girl was beautiful. Her beauty was beyond description. It was ineffable." Things which defy description or expression are ineffable: "ineffable ecstasy"; "inexpressible anguish"; "unspeakable happiness"; "unutterable contempt"; and "a feast of untellable splendor."
A second way ineffable is used is to describe a sort of gray area. Christopher Hitchens, here in Slate, for example, writes that Barack Obama has reached an undefinable place, a destination which defies description because the boundaries of that place are opaque:
President Barack Obama's visit to Europe afforded us an opportunity to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of his style in operation. And, even though he has almost attained the Holy Grail of public relations—in other words, he is practically at that ineffable and serene point where he gets good press for getting good press—there may come a time when even his trans-Atlantic admirers will have to take a second look.
A third way in which ineffable is used is with sacred concepts that are "not to be uttered" or "taboo." In Judaism, traditionally, it is taboo to speak or write the name of God. God is ineffable to the Jews. The idea is that by putting a description on something sacred, you are inevitably limiting that thing and bringing it down to your level. In his book, A History of Heaven, Jeffrey Burton Russell described the sacred as incomprehensible, and therefore indefinable:
Heaven itself is ineffable, beyond words. The term ineffabilis was established in theology in the fifth century by Augustine (354-430), who said that it is easier to say what God is not than to say what he is. God is not only incomprehensible to humans but is himself beyond all categories; heaven is therefore also beyond categories. Yet we have no way of discussing heaven except in the only speech we know, human language.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
