The Anti-Israel Left

By Madeleine Kando

On October 7 2023, the terrorist group Hamas butchered 260 young music lovers at the Supernova Music Festival Negev Desert. They left 1,200 Israelis dead and 2,800 more wounded. Clearly they had ‘kill as many as you can’ on their mind.

The sheer brutality of it all left me breathless. The next day, there were pro-Palestinian and left wing groups celebrating that atrocity. In Manhattan, in London, at Harvard University and other campuses, the chant was: “the Israeli regime is entirely responsible for the violence’.

I spoke to some neighbors, trying to make sense of what just happened, the sheer brutality of the attack. What I heard was ‘It’s terrible, yes, but what about the poor Palestinians?’

It almost seemed like a brainwashed response. I am a liberal and so is most of my neighborhood, but can liberals not call a spade a spade? Can they not see beyond their binary worldview of the oppressors versus the oppressed? I am all for the underdog myself, but mass murder should not be condoned by blaming Israel for imposing an “apartheid” regime on Palestinians. That response requires a much more detailed knowledge of the long lasting Palestinian/Israeli conflict, than my liberal neighbors have. Read more...

Nature-Nurture: Are we born Intelligent or Stupid?

by Tom Kando

 The September 13, 2021 issue of the New Yorker has an interesting article titled “Force of Nature” by Gideon Lewis-Kraus. 

It describes the work of Kathryn Paige Harden, a University of Texas psychologist. Harden’s research is about the importance of genetic inheritability of intelligence. In other words, she addresses the age-old “nature-vs.- nurture” question: Are our behavior, our personality and our achievements the result of the environment and socialization (nurture), or are they the product of inborn and inherited genes (nature)? 

 As a sociologist, I have dealt with this issue in many of my classes. That nurture is more important than nature has always been axiomatic to sociologists. How successful you are in life depends much more on environment than on heredity. However, biological determinism (nature) has gained a lot of ground in recent years. Psychology’s holy grail is the identification of the PHYSICAL location of mental faculties, whether in the brain or in one’s genetic make-up. 

There appears every decade or so research that challenges the conventional wisdom that nurture counts for much more than nature. This research suggests that genetic inheritability of things like intelligence plays a much bigger role than we are willing to admit. 

For example, in 1969, Berkeley psychologist Arthur Jensen published an article in the Harvard Educational Review   in which he argued that there is an I.Q. gap between the races, and the reason for this is at least partly genetic. Nobel laureate William Shockley agreed with this, stating that “my research leads me inescapably to the opinion that the major cause of the American Negro's intellectual and social deficits is hereditary and racially genetic in origin and, thus, not remediable... by practical improvements in the environment.”  Read more...

Afghanistan

by Tom Kando

This week, the crisis is Afghanistan. Last week it was the Haitian earthquake. For a year and a half, it’s been Covid. Things are not going well on planet Earth, or in the US. 

I don’t mean to trivialize what’s going on in Afghanistan. It’s a mess, a tragedy, and it was inevitable. 

First, let’s be clear about one thing: The Taliban are the equivalent of the barbarians that were held at bay for centuries by the ancient Romans. 

There are in the world, always, advanced civilizations that expand their sphere of influence and bring progress (as well as exploitation) to outlying regions. And then there are tribal societies that are several hundred years behind in their historical and moral development. Their treatment of women alone puts the Taliban somewhere at the beginning of Europe’s Middle Ages. 

The 14th century Arab sociologist  Ibn Khaldun  described the relationship and inherent conflict between advanced urban civilizations and more primitive nomadic groups, and the cycle of rise and fall of the former at the hand of the latter. 
Now don’t misunderstand me: I am not saying that the Taliban is about to take over the White House (although a Taliban-sponsored group did “take over” the New York World Trade Center in 2001). 
What Biden just did is the equivalent of decisions made two thousand years ago by intelligent Roman leaders such as the emperor Hadrian: He abandoned his predecessors’ expansionist policies. Instead, he invested in “defensible borders and the unification of the empire’s disparate peoples. He built Hadrian’s Wall, which marked the northern limit of Britannia.” As Voltaire said, one must cultivate one’s own garden.  Read more...

France, the US and Germany: Old Friends, New Friends

by Tom Kando

This is a timely post, as President Biden is in Europe, repairing our ties with our major allies. 

Several of the books I read recently are about history and war (the two sometimes seem to be almost synonymous). They include Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, by Sarah Vowell, The Kaiser’s Web, by Steve Berry, and The Alice Network, by Kate Quinn.
The first of these books involves France’s role in America’s war of independence. The second book is about Germany in World War Two and thereafter. The third one is about France and Germany during World Wars One and Two. 
I grew up in France, and I remain an inveterate Francophile. France has played a huge role in the history of the Western world during the past two and a half centuries. However, Anglo-Saxon culture - beginning with its language - still dominates the world, and Germany is viewed as the primary European country, certainly in economic terms. For France, there also remains the stain of its prompt defeat by Germany at the outset of World War Two. There are those who enjoy reminding us of this, poking fun at the supposedly cowardly French. An example is Bill Bryson, who wrote in his otherwise delightful travel book, “Let’s face it, the French Army couldn’t beat a girls hockey team.” And of course, we are often reminded how indebted France is to the US for liberating it from the Nazis in 1944-45.  Read more...

Do we need more Religion?

by Tom Kando

I recently came across an article by Andres Oppenheimer titled “Churches, Religion Losing Followers Around the World” (Sacramento Bee and Miami Herald, April 13 ‘21). He, in turn, quotes Shadi Hamid’s article titled “America Without God” in the April 2021 issue of The Atlantic. 
Neither of these pieces is earth-shattering, but I will use them as a prompt for some comments about religion. 
To quote Oppenheimer and Hamid: “The decline of religions in the western world is leaving a huge vacuum.... Human beings by their very nature are searching for meaning...and that won’t change....The danger now is that religions will be replaced by secular political fanaticism....If religions aren’t around to teach us basic values - you shall not lie, you shall not be indifferent to oppression, etc. who will do it instead? Christianity, Islam and Judaism (should) reinvent themselves... (They) offer us ancient tales of wisdom....they can serve as a much-needed moral guide...(if) they adapt to modern times. (Otherwise,) their decline will continue and dangerous secular radicalism will take their place.” 
Wrong. 
The only thing which Oppenheimer and Hamid got right is that “human beings by their very nature are searching for meaning,” and truth, I should add. That is what philosophers and scientists have been doing for thousands of years - from Plato’s Idealism and Aristotle’s Metaphysics to Darwin’s theory of evolution, Twentieth Century Existentialism, Socialism and Einstein’s Relativity Theory.  Read more...

Staring Down the Ugly Throat of Anarchy

by Madeleine Kando

Boston, 1/6/2021

Today, the State of Georgia votes for their 2 US Senators in a run-off election. If they vote Democratic, they win the US Senate. I am glued to my computer screen, checking every 10 minutes, to see where the numbers are. They are! One of them is in the bag. The other candidate’s numbers are going up too. Up enough to prevent a recount? Is it finally time to say goodbye and good luck to Mitch McConnell?

Today is also the day when Congress officially counts the Electoral Votes certified by each state. But some lawmakers have decided to object to the results, hinged on baseless allegations of election fraud. Those debates would start at 12:30 pm.

The line behind candidate Osoff turns a solid blue. Yes! We won the Senate! I step away from my desk to make coffee. When I return, the screen is filled with images of smoke and screams. I am looking at the coverage of the MAGA insurrection in DC. The elation is gone, from high to low, like a bowling ball dropped on my foot. 
Now things are getting worse. The announcer’s voice rises to a pitch: ‘They are storming the capitol building!’ A close up of people breaking windows, climbing walls, waiving giant flags on the scaffolding that have been raised in preparation of inauguration day. Then, inside the building, an endless line of rioters, walking across the ‘Great Rotunda’, like a group of tourists. Some are taking pictures of the ceiling. One is taking a selfie with a guard. No one is even trying to stop them.

I cannot make sense of this surreal moment: For me, life has been put on hold for almost a whole year now. I only venture out to go food shopping once or twice a week. On my daily walk in the woods, I step into the underbrush every time I cross path with another human. I put on my mask, my glasses fog up and I cannot see where I am going. But that’s better than risking infection.

In which alternate world do these hundreds of unmasked, yelling, chanting MAGA hat wearing rioters live? Is there no virus in their world? Are there no free and fair elections? Are there no laws that prevent them from entering and vandalizing government buildings? This live footage must be from another country and the announcer will soon apologize for his error. ‘Sorry, folks, this footage was taken in Somalia (or another failed state). We apologize for making you think that it was happening in the Capital of the United States’. Read more...

The World's Universities Ranked and Located; An Update

by Tom Kando

Once in a while, I  play  with statistics that list and  rank the world’s major universities. At this time, such a game may be a welcome distraction from   the  double nightmare of Covid-19 and Trump’s attempted Coup d’Etat.

 My source is the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2020.html  The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) was created  in 2003.  It uses six  indicators, including the number of  Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, number of highly cited researchers, number of articles published in scholarly journals, number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index, and per capita performance of a university. More than 1800 universities are ranked every year and the best 1000 are published. I don’t know whether their methodology is the best, but they have good credibility, and  at least they can’t be suspected of pro-America bias.

I last wrote such an article about three years ago.  I now offer you an update, with some interesting factoids. All calculations are mine. I hope that  you enjoy perusing these.  I focus first on the top 100 and then on the top 500 universities of the world. 

Table 1. Top Universities of the world. By Region

Region	Top 100	101-500	Total 500	%
Europe	36	147	183	36.6
North America	45	108	153	30.6
Asia	11	100	111	22.2
Australia-New Zea.	7	19	26	5.2
Middle East	1	11	12	2.4
Latin America	0	9	9	1.8
Africa	0	6	6	1.2
Anglo Countries	60	157	217	43.4%

 Table 1 shows that a disproportionate number of quality universities are located in  Europe and in  North America - primarily the US -  with North America especially dominant in the “elite” category (top 100). Read more...

America’S Ranking

by Tom Kando

 Regarding Covid-19, there is quite a bit of talk about “herd immunity” lately. This is the view that the best response to the pandemic is neglect. That is, let the epidemic spread until a majority of the population is infected, after which most people recover and become immune. In this approach, mitigation measures are kept at a minimum; as is damage to the economy... and more people die. 

Sweden is one country which tried this route initially. However, when its Covid-caused death rate soared, it changed course. In the US, it is the Republicans and the Trump administration of course who advocate “herd immunity.” The president himself, having survived the virus, is more than ever convinced that the pandemic will blow over and that there is little need for major mitigation. 

 
Absent a vaccine, “herd immunity” can only be achieved if, say, 75% of the total population goes through the wringer (= catches the virus). But how many people die? 

I fervently hope that our nation does not throw in the towel, and does not resign itself to “herd immunity,” i.e. to accepting the current astronomical rates of infection and death as the new normals. 
However, our record so far is not promising. Read more...

Politicize This

by Tom Kando 

As the covid-19 pandemic was starting to affect the US half a year ago, the idiots on the right began to politicize the issue right away. Responding to my  article  Mother Nature?  (March 23, 2020), an anonymous reader wrote the following:

“Tom, following your penchant for statistics, Coronavirus deaths per million population: - Italy 206 - Spain 194 - Belgium 71 - Netherlands 68, France 54 - Switzerland 53 - UK 35 - Sweden 24 - Denmark 18 - Austria 16 - Ireland 14 - USA 12

Thank you President Trump for acting rapidly in blocking European flights!”

He added: “Contrary to your assertion, the death stats show that Western Europe remains the epicenter of the Coronavirus, every other stat is just a question of who measures the most. Besides, when our summer becomes the southern hemisphere’s winter, the southern hemisphere will become the epicenter. While I recognize we all have a problem, my previous point was to show statistically that we have more competent executive branch leadership (reacting faster and minimizing loss) than the other European democracies, and that I personally am grateful that Trump is president rather than the senile idiot the democrats are about to nominate. I would also point out that while Italy by far appears to be the most incompetent and ill prepared of the European nations, at the same time New York which has almost 50% of our Corona cases is ironically led by two Italians named Cuomo and DeBlasio!"   

Read more...

Memories from Wisconsin

by Tom Kando

On August 23, Jacob Blake was shot 7 times in the back by a cop in Kenosha, Wisconsin. This reminds me of some of my own experiences with racism in that state when I lived there: Nothing as horrific as the Blake case, but “interesting” even so:

In 1968-69, I had my first job as an assistant professor at a branch campus of the University of Wisconsin. - Stout, in the godforsaken town of Menomonie.

I had just gone through a nasty divorce. I was broke, miserable and lonely, renting an apartment in the snowbound college town. My girlfriend Nicole lived in Chicago. I tried to visit her most weekends and holidays.

To save money, I advertised for a roommate to share the rent. Several students applied. I ended up selecting Clark Dawson, a fine young black guy.

Clark dated a white girl. Her name was Sylvia and she was an attractive, intelligent, soft spoken, brown-haired, bespectacled girl. The first time Clark brought her back to the apartment, I recognized her immediately, because she had taken my introductory Sociology class.

At first I thought that Clark had brought her home for a study session, but my roommate promptly dispelled that misunderstanding by saying, “Hi Prof. Kando (he still didn’t call me by my first name), let me introduce you to my fiancée, Sylvia.”
To tell the truth, I was briefly taken aback. Not because I disapproved, to the contrary. All my life I have had the unswerving conviction that the future of mankind lies in the total integration of the races at all levels, social and biological. However, the percentage of interracial couples was still infinitesimal in 1969, certainly in the upper Midwest. I was just surprised by a statistical anomaly. Read more...

Is Tyranny Winning?

by Madeleine Kando

I recently read Timothy Snyder’s ‘On Tyranny’ (2016), a short but very rousing book. It made me realize, that I spent my entire life, which is quite long by now, under a system of government whose values I have always taken for granted. It is called Democracy.

But nothing about it should be taken for granted. Since Trump became our President, I realize how ‘unnatural’ this order really is. It is ‘unnatural’ in the sense that were it up to nature, things would be arranged quite differently.

Nature doesn’t give a fig about the ‘rule of law’, about ‘freedom’ or ‘equality’. You won’t see a gazelle stop dead in her tracks while fleeing from a cheetah and say: ‘Hey, stop right there! I have my rights too, you know!’ We made up those rules and those concepts because it made living together a lot safer, freer and ultimately more enjoyable.

I was born and fled a country that had a tyrannical regime. Hungary was part of the Communist block for almost 60 years and, even though I was a child when I left, there was enough talk in our family about the dangers of totalitarianism. I should have recognized what was happening in the US a lot sooner than I did. Besides, being a septuagenarian, I have had enough time to learn how to recognize rot when I see it. But I didn’t. Like many of us, I suffer from complacency and a sense of entitlement.

Snyder meant to write On Tyranny as a manifesto, a wakeup call for people like me, who are asleep while walking around. People who say things like ‘It will work out’, ‘It is just temporary’ and ‘This cannot happen here’. But there is nothing ‘exceptional’ about America. Even though the country was founded on democratic principles to fight tyranny, nothing prevents a tyrant from taking over that system. The only advantage America has, Snyder says in his Prologue, is that we can learn from Europe’s past mistakes. Read more...

“Mother Nature”?

by Tom Kando

Let me try this: A good word to describe the coronavirus crisis is “biblical.”

Now I don’t want you to misunderstand: I don’t believe in God. A biblical interpretation of this crisis goes against everything my rationalist mind and education have taught me.

But the paradigm, or the metaphor, seems so apt. This is Sodom and Gomorrah all over again. God’s revenge, punishment for our sins, for our descent into greed and selfishness, for raping the planet, for excessive hedonism and materialism, for Wall Street, etc.

Okay, convert the term “God” into “Nature.” Then, the metaphor works better already: We are destroying the planet. Even so, a near unanimity of economists - left and right - still agrees that the solution to poverty, inequality and all other economic problems is GROWTH. It is almost universally agreed that a 1% growth rate is bad (that’s often Europe’s rate), a 3% rate is pretty good (something the US achieves occasionally) and that 6% to 10% annual growth, which China has often achieved in recent decades, is the envy of the world. Read more...

Liberals and Conservatives; Kind or not, Smart or Not?

Tom Kando

This is a game: I take 3 variables, I cross-tab them, and I formulate some hypotheses about their correlation (or lack thereof).
The variables are:

1. Conservatism vs. Liberalism

2. Kindness or not

3. Being well-informed or not

In other words, an individual can be conservative or liberal; he/she can be a by and large  nice person or what we could call an a...hole; and she/he can be well-educated and intelligently informed or not.

For the sake of simplicity, the three variables are dichotomous. Also, let’s not quibble about the true meaning and nature of being ”nice” as opposed to being an “a...hole”  This is just an experiment, maybe  a fun one, and most of us know an a...hole when we meet one... Also, for the purposes of this experiment, I use a total sample of 200.

If we cross tab these 3 variables, we get 2 x 2 x 2 = 8 possibilities Read more...

The Dutch Farmers' Protests: What is THAT all about? *

by Madeleine Kando

Did you know that Holland is the second largest food exporter in the world, second only to the United States? It is a country the size of Connecticut with 14 times more people per square mile. Imagine having to share your bedroom with 14 other people, that’s how densely populated Holland is.

There are many amazing things about this tiny country. It is home to some of the largest companies in the world, like Shell, Phillips and the ING Bank to name a few, and it is listed as one of ten countries with the highest quality of life in the world.

But the reason Holland has been in the news lately, has to do with a crisis the Dutch call the nitrogen crisis. In Dutch they call it the stikstof crisis. Literally ‘stikstof’ means ‘suffocating dust’, a much more appropriate description of what is going on with our environment. They call it a ‘suffocating dust’, not because it suffocates humans, but because it suffocates nature.

Air is primarily made up of nitrogen (79%), so you might wonder what’s wrong with a substance that we all breathe in, all day long? Well, when nitrogen mixes with other elements, it produces so-called reactive nitrogen compounds such as nitrogen oxides (NOx) and ammonia (NH3). Nitrogen oxides are released when fossil fuels are burned in traffic, industry and buildings. Ammonia emissions mainly come from agriculture when ammonia is released from both natural manure from livestock and fertilizer. Subsequently, nitrogen deposition occurs: the nitrogen compounds end up from the air in the soil and on the plants.

If you are a gardener, you might recognize this as the Ph balance of your soil. There is then a double impact. First, the nitrogen compounds act as fertilizer for some plants. They are usually the green, fast-growing species. These take over from the species that cannot tolerate nitrogen, which means plant species not only disappear, but in turn pose a threat to the animals that depend on them. Second, nitrogen deposits acidify the soil, something that certainly not all animals and plants can handle well. Read more...

Midsommar and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

by Tom Kando

The Sixties were formative for me, as they were for anyone of college age at that time. I was heavily involved in the Peace and Civil Rights movements, I dug the music and the sex, not so much the drugs, and I examined some of the cult-like groups, as my doctoral major was social psychology.

The Counterculture was both for better and for worse. It was the last time that society had a true “prise de conscience” (Awareness experience). The contrast with today is vivid. The “normalcy” to which we have returned consists essentially of materialism and survival mode. We basically don’t want to be bothered (by stuff like the Muller Report or global issues).

The problem with the Sixties was that chaos is not a sustainable long-term state. It had to stop. On the other hand today’s “normal,” unsatisfying and cacophonous as it is, is likely to go on for a very long time.

Two movies which raise issues and remind us of that time period, are Midsommar and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The former is a horror film directed by Ari Aster. It takes place in Sweden. This movie surprised me. I had no prior idea of what it was about. I had read something vague about a “summer festival,” so I thought it might be about some Swedish version of “Burning Man,” or something like that.

 According to Rotten Tomatoes, the movie critics give it an 83% approval rating. One reviewer calls the movie “upsetting” (but worthy) (Minneapolis Star/Tribune), another one says that Aster is the next Kubrick, another one writes that the film is “superlative, disturbing horror,” another critic says that it’s “unsettling and truly terrifying,’ etc. So I am in good company. Read more...

Mass Shooting Victims: 250; Other Murders: 17,250

by Tom Kando

August 3-4. Two more mass shootings. This time, in one day. El Paso, 20 dead, Dayton, 10. 

So far, this year’s death count for mass shootings is 58 (Source: Mother Jones). Annualized, this comes to about 100. This is roughly the annual average over the past decade or so (except for a couple of years which experienced a very large event, such as the Las Vegas mass shooting in 2017, where 58 people died.
Using a different definition, Wikipedia’s number for 2019 so far is much higher: 246. (See Mass Shootings in the US ). For the full year, this would be over 400. However, the vast majority of the events on Wikipedia’s list resulted in only one death. So One could quibble about what constitutes mass shootings and what does not.

So here we go again, with the same old refrain: The media, the politicians, the main talking points:

1. Most obviously: “We need (more and better) gun control. Outlaw assault weapons, do background checks, etc.” Correct.

2. This is a uniquely American phenomenon. It doesn’t exist in other comparable (highly developed) societies. Correct.

3. The main obstacle to progress consists of power groups such as the NRA and their toadies, largely GOP leaders such as Mitch McConnell. Correct.

4. The problem is mental illness. The problem is that the mentally ill have access to guns. Hmm... Isn’t this subsumed under item #1, above? Do the Europeans, the Australians, the Canadians, the Japanese have less mental illness? I doubt it. So this argument is a diversionary tactic by the defenders of the status quo.
Read more...

Violence; John Wick 3

by Tom Kando

 My wife and I just saw the movie John Wick 3 - Parabellum. Or actually, we just saw about half of it. Then we walked out.

It takes a lot to make me walk out of a movie. I’m a miser. I don’t like wasting my money. I generally consume everything I pay for.

I find this new movie’s enormous popularity and the rave reviews it gets from both the public and the critics a scandal. During its first week, the film ranked Number One at the box office.

The audience rating at IMDb is 8.2 out of 10 - the same as classics such as Metropolis, The Third Man, and Indiana Jones. Absurd! The audience of Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 93% approval rating, and the critics at Rotten Tomatoes nearly as much - 89%. The general public’s taste can be expected to be flawed, but the critics? What’s the matter with these folks?

Of the 216 reviews published by Rotten Tomatoes, only 24 are negative. The remaining 192 are superlative. Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times writes that this film is “superb wall-to-wall action entertainment, filled with dark humor...” he gives it three-and-a-half stars out of a maximum four. I usually like Roeper’s reviews. I really enjoyed his show with Roger Ebert, and I miss it. But this? Shame Read more...

Should We Break Up Facebook, Google and Amazon?

by Madeleine Kando


Tim Wu, author of ‘The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age” calls our time the ‘new Gilded Age’ and warns that when you allow the private sector to acquire excessive power, the power of the people and their representative government is being undermined.

In his new book, Tim Wu - also known for his strong advocacy for Net Neutrality - makes a compelling argument for the necessity of breaking up the Tech Giants. He sees no difference between Big Tech and the industrial giants of the Gilded Age. Monopolists like the Rockefellers (oil), the Carnegies (steel) and J.P. Morgans (railroad), saw themselves as pioneers in a progressive movement. They believed in social Darwinism, the survival of the fittest and were quite comfortable with the notion that smaller companies deserved to die. The US did lead the world in industry and innovation but laissez-faire government policies created a huge gap between the wealthy and the workers, not unlike today.

We have fallen prey to the charms of tech giants like Facebook and Google, who play down the allure of profit-making while talking a lot about how much value and “connection” they bring to the public. They portray themselves as striving to build a better future, but are in fact, the Robber Barons of today.

Busting up big businesses into smaller parts was once an American tradition, proof that we value competition in our economic system. In the trust-busting days of Teddy Roosevelt, antitrust laws functioned as a check on private power, a safeguard against a widening income gap and of corporations subverting electoral politics. Read more...

Kando's Dogma - Part Two

by Tom Kando

 About a year ago, I posted a piece called. Kando’s Dogma. I now add some further beliefs which I hold to be true:

1. All people are created equal (Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson). There are no inherent differences in intellectual aptitude between the races and between the genders. The science of psychology has not discovered any. Differences in wealth are the result, to a small extent, of aptitude and effort, but much more the result of social class, family wealth and above all: luck.

2. There is no (anthropomorphic) deity, no super-brain which decided at some point in the past to create a world. The universe is a physical reality in which life and mental processes develop. In other words, the universe becomes aware of itself. It is a psycho-physical reality.

3. The nature and processes of the universe are best discovered and understood through science.

4. Science distinguishes between truth and error, and through it, knowledge increases. Humans progress by increasing their knowledge. The total amount of knowledge is infinite.

5. In addition to science, there is philosophy and there is religion (Auguste Comte’s three stages). Philosophy discusses metaphysical questions. These are questions beyond those pertaining to the physical world. Positivist science cannot answer them. Answers to such questions cannot be proved or disproved empirically. Read more...

Murder in the World and in the US - Part Two

by Tom Kando

Part One of this Article has presented  data on and analysis of the distribution of murders across selected countries, and  the concentration of murders among a minority of the world’s nations. In Part Two, I  discuss the worldwide distribution of murder, and compare the US with other parts of the world.

3. The Worldwide Distribution of Murder:

Table 5, below, shows the regional distribution of the 47 most violent countries of the world.

Table 5. Regional Distribution of the Top 47 countries, Ranked by Murder Rates          

Region	number of countries
1. Latin America	13
2. Caribbean Island nations	14
Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Ocean island nations	6
3. Africa	13
4. Europe	1
Total	47

Read more...