Martin Hanson: The unmasking of a political sociopath - the rise and fall of Jacinda Ardern

In an earlier essay I showed that Pfizer and other pharmaceutical corporations, and indeed all corporations

are sociopathic in their pursuit of profit. Institutionally, they show the same characteristic behaviours as individuals with sociopathic tendencies: callous unconcern for the safety of others, incapacity to experience guilt, repeated lying and conning others for profit.” (emphasis added)

Left largely unsaid was the implication that, in acting as Big Pharma’s enforcers, many leading politicians reveal themselves to be sociopaths.

Martin Hanson: CO2 levels have been higher in the past, but how do we know?

We often read that atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) has been much higher in the past than today – up to 2000 parts per million (ppm) by volume, or 0.2%, compared with 400 ppm (0.04%) today. 

Yes, but how do we know this? The evidence comes from fossil relatives of a plant that is familiar to many - the maidenhair tree, Ginkgo biloba. It is often called a ‘living fossil’, because its earliest remains extend to 200 million years ago (mya), and close relatives to 300 mya. What’s particularly interesting is that it’s the outer ‘skin’ (epidermis), of its fossilized leaves provide evidence about ancient climates, and in particular, atmospheric CO₂.

Martin Hanson: The Education Debate*

Few areas of human concern are more riven with contention than education. Yet despite this there is one thing upon which everyone agrees — children must be given as much opportunity as possible to achieve their full intellectual potential. This is not only important to parents — directly or indirectly, educational under-achievement affects everyone, having a pernicious effect on all indices of social well being, such as unemployment, crime, and domestic violence. Even those who are wealthy enough to feel insulated against these social effects must surely concede that at the very least, unused ability has an adverse effect on the balance of payments.

Martin Hanson: The New Lysenkoism - is advocating biological reality a thought crime?

“Language is the first domino in the war over reality, and pronouns have nothing to do with politeness and everything to do with ideological submission” – Jonathon Van Maren 

Monty Python’s 1979 box office hit comedy “Life of Brian” was often said to be the funniest film of all time. Set in the Roman occupation of Judea at the time of Christ, one scene depicts four members of the People’s Front of Judea, who are opposed to the Roman occupation.

In the scene, Stan says “I want to be a woman”, and “from now on, I want you all to call me Loretta”. He says that it’s because he wants to have babies, explaining that “it's every man's right to have babies if he wants them”.

Reg explains “you haven’t got a womb”, but the others support Stan’s right to have babies, as it is "it is symbolic of our struggle against oppression”.

Judith has a solution: that they agree that though Stan can’t have babies, he must have the right to have babies.

Martin Hanson: Evolution of the educationist

Extracts of a speech I gave on my retirement from King's College, Auckland in 2006. 

As an ageing biology teacher, I find it interesting to look at the creatures in the education business from the evolutionary point of view. The ancestral species, from which all the contemporary ones have evolved, were the schoolmaster and schoolmistress. Both occupied broad ecological niches, which in layperson’s language means they were multi-talented, taking two or three sports, producing plays, conducting orchestras and running debating — and all that on top of imparting knowledge in the classroom.

Though they have been driven to extinction in most schools, such paragons still exist in some 'elitist' schools where they are generally still held in high esteem. Elsewhere, however, they are only to be found as fossils in rest homes.

Martin Hanson: Does New Zealand need a new Scopes trial?

In July 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, John T. Scopes, a high school science teacher, was put on trial, accused of violating the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in state-funded high schools and universities. Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 ($1500 in today’s money), but the verdict was overturned on a technicality.

The trial was deliberately engineered in order to bring attention to the theocratic approach to truth, freedom of speech and rationality in the Deep South at that time.

The trial received national and international attention, and was given the colourful title of “The Monkey Trial” of “the infidel Scopes” by journalist H. L. Mencken of the Baltimore Sun.

Martin Hanson: Inclusivity, or a new authoritarianism?

When Stuff Sports headlined Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson’s disappointment at Manly’s seven rugby league players refusing to wear the rainbow pride jersey because it was in opposition to their religious beliefs, there was scarcely a ripple of dissent, let alone any attempt at critical analysis of the issue in the New Zealand media.

Mr. Robertson was not the only one to be disappointed. I was, too, but for a very different reason.

LGBQT politics can be a minefield for the unwary, and I’m fully aware that the Woke Police will be waiting in the bushes to ambush me. So I’ll start by putting my cards on the table to avoid any misunderstandings.

Martin Hanson: Slavery - should we apologise for what our ancestors did?

“We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did.” Thomas Sowell

The toppling of statues of historical figures by Black Lives Matter has brought into focus the issue of slavery.

While nobody questions the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade, slavery is presented in schools and media and as an extreme form of racism, with white people enslaving black people. This highly selective, distorted view of history has fostered a sense of guilt among European descendants of the enslavers, leading to calls for apologies and reparations.

Martin Hanson: When an incontrovertible statement is ‘controversial’

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” George Orwell, Nineteen eighty four

In Two & Two, a Bafta-nominated short film, a male teacher and twelve schoolboys are in a grey, featureless classroom. Via a loudspeaker the headmaster announces that there are going to be changes and that the students must follow all instructions to the letter. The teacher starts the lesson by writing 2 + 2 = 5 on the blackboard. When the boys protest, he orders them to be silent. He then orders the boys to repeat the equation, and when one student raises his hand to say that two plus two is four, the teacher says, "Don't think, you don't have to think," and again tells the boys that the answer is five. 

Martin Hanson: Science, Knowledge, and Myth - The New Priesthood

"We condemn thee, Michael Servetus, to be bound, and led to the place of Champel, there to be fastened to a stake and burnt alive, together with thy book, as well the one written by thy hand as the printed one, even till thy body be reduced to ashes; and thus shalt thou finish thy days to furnish an example to others who might wish to commit the like.”

Thus, in October 1553 Michael Servetus was burned at the stake in Geneva for heresy at the behest of Protestant John Calvin (surprisingly, not the Catholic Church, but they were just as keen to see him burn).

His crime? Having the impudence to contradict the teachings of the Church. In addition to calling the Trinity “a  three-headed monster, he had the temerity to show that Galen, a Second Century physician, had been wrong. Galen had taught that blood passed directly from the right to the left side of the heart through invisible pores, but so great had Galen’s authority been that his teachings had become sclerified as religious dogma for the next three quarters of a millennium.