Moral Relativism...

Neo-Neocon has a fascinating post up today on moral relativism. The lead:

Moral relativism is the idea that there is no absolute good and evil, but that all customs and practices of mankind must be evaluated in terms of their function in the society where they are found. Any attempt to make moral judgments about other cultures merely reflects our own cultural prejudices.

Some tolerance, doubt, and perspective is good. But this is the notion of tolerance taken to its ultimate—and ultimately, absurd and destructive—conclusion. Not only does it handicap our ability to make moral judgments within our own culture by weakening our convictions, but it handicaps our ability to see true evil as well as our ability to fight against it, and paradoxically can lead to the triumph of a very intolerant society.

As always, her post is insightful and full of interesting notions and perspective…

Double Standard...

If you're not familiar with the issue, this story is going to seem really odd: Ms. magazine refuses to run the ad at right. You'd think the magazine would find an ad bragging about the success of women in a culture or country a very comfortable addition to its pages – which are, after all, mostly devoted to advocacy of women's issues.

You would be wrong, though. You see, these aren't the right kind of women. These women are (gasp!) Israeli – and the liberal narrative to which Ms. magazine tightly adheres says that Israel (and Israelis) are evil! Never mind the rather obvious fact that Israeli society is one of the least gender-biased in the world, living side-by-side with the Muslim Palestinians, whose society is one of the most gender-biased. The standard liberal narrative says that those Palestinians are to be admired, and the Israelis to be loathed … and Ms. magazine sticks to the playbook.

The American Jewish Congress (who tried to place this ad) has issued a press release telling the whole sad story. Do go read the whole thing, as it's an interesting piece of commentary. Here's the lead:

NEW YORK, Jan. 10 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Ms. Magazine has long been in the forefront of the fight for equal rights and equal opportunities for women. Apparently that is not the case if the women happen to be Israeli.

The magazine has turned down an AJCongress advertisement that did nothing more controversial than call attention to the fact that women currently occupy three of the most significant positions of power in Israeli public life. The proposed ad included a text that merely said, "This is Israel," under photographs of President of the Supreme Court Dorit Beinish, Vice Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni and Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik.

"What other conclusion can we reach," asked Richard Gordon, President of AJCongress, "except that the publishers − and if the publishers are right, a significant number of Ms. Magazine readers − are so hostile to Israel that they do not even want to see an ad that says something positive about Israel?"

When Director of AJCongress' Commission for Women's Empowerment Harriet Kurlander tried to place the ad, she was told that publishing the ad "will set off a firestorm" and that "there are very strong opinions" on the subject − the subject presumably being whether or not one can say anything positive about Israel. Ms. Magazine publisher Eleanor Smeal failed to respond to a signed-for certified letter with a copy of the ad as well as numerous calls by Mr. Gordon over a period of weeks.

A Ms. Magazine representative, Susie Gilligan, whom the Ms. Magazine masthead lists under the publisher's office, told Ms. Kurlander that the magazine "would love to have an ad from you on women's empowerment, or reproductive freedom, but not on this." Ms. Gilligan failed to elaborate what "this" is.

"The only conclusion that one can reach from this behavior is that Ms. Magazine feels that an ad highlighting the accomplishments of three incredibly talented and dedicated women would offend their readership. Since there is nothing about the ad itself that is offensive, it is obviously the nationality of the women pictured that the management of Ms. fears their readership would find objectionable. For a publication that holds itself out to be in the forefront of the Women's Movement, this is nothing short of disgusting and despicable," stated Mr. Gordon.

The feminist movement and its mouthpieces are capable of some amazing mental juggling. This is one example; others include their fawning over Bill Clinton and their deafening silence on the miserable plight of women in fundamentalist Muslim societies. The latter reached its nadir when fashion magazines featured the burka in laudatory articles. This seemingly inexplicable hypocrisy is actually a marvelously clear window into the true motives of many of the most influential leaders of the feminist movement – what drives them isn't feminism at all (notwithstanding their words), but rather liberalism – in a particularly arrogant and obnoxious form.

The publishers and editors of Ms. magazine ought to be ashamed of themselves. I imagine that instead they're feeling rather smug and proud. Despicable.

Double Einstein Ring...

The Hubble telescope has discovered something most unlikely: a double Einstein ring. A single Einstein ring is caused by a pair of galaxies in the same line of sight from Earth, with the gravity of the nearer one causing the light from the further one to bend, much like an ordinary lens – and the result is that the further galaxy looks like a ring to us. This effect is known as “gravitational lensing”. The photo's story:

The double ring captured here is caused by three galaxies all in the same line of sight from Earth (an improbable event all by itself). Gravitational lensing makes a ring from each of the two further galaxies.
Image of gravitational lens system SDSSJ0946+1006 as photographed by Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The gravitational field of an elliptical galaxy warps the light of two galaxies exactly behind it. The massive foreground galaxy is almost perfectly aligned in the sky with two background galaxies at different distances. The foreground galaxy is 3 billion light-years away, the inner ring and outer ring are comprised of multiple images of two galaxies at a distance of 6 and approximately 11 billion light-years. (Credit: NASA, ESA, and R. Gavazzi and T. Treu of University of California, Santa Barbara)

Solid science delivered by the amazing Hubble telescope, yet another in the amazing series of accomplishments of NASA's largely unheralded robotic space exploration program...

A Free Lunch...

Of sorts, anyway. The Wall Street Journal has opened up a large part of its web site to everybody, for free. This is a direct consquence of Rupert Murdoch's recent acquisition of Dow Jones (the owner of the Wall Street Journal) and his personal vision of the future of the news business. The lead of their announcement:

Everyone knows that Joseph Schumpeter's "creative destruction" is roiling the newspaper world, and today we'd like to announce something on the creative side. We're rolling out a new destination for the Journal editorial page offering free access to all of our editorials and op-eds, video interviews and commentary. It's as close as we'll get to conceding there is such a thing as a free lunch.

Since 2000, we've operated in a dual world on the Web. The majority of our daily editorial offerings have remained behind a paid subscription wall at wsj.com/opinion, while our free site, OpinionJournal.com, offered select stories plus a few Web-only features. As of today, those two sites will merge and become a single free site for all Journal opinion, both in the U.S. and overseas editions, book reviews and leisure and arts.

You can access their editorial page at this link. In my opinion, it's one of the best sources of English-language informed commentary and political perspective in the world.