Dalrymple recently discovered that, measured by convertible assets (he seems to mean net convertible assets), he is a member of the infamous “one percent”, but he considers this distinction utterly meaningless:

This belief is no doubt the last gasp of dialectical materialism’s law of transformation of quantity into quality. According to this law, when a man grows rich enough he suddenly ceases to be a man like others and becomes—what, exactly?

…

My pattern of consumption and mode of life are not conspicuously different from those of many of my peers, except in so far as I have no television and buy many more books than most. It is true that my interests and amusements are not the same as those of most citizens, but that was so long before I joined the One Percent and would have been the case had I not joined it (or them). If it is really necessary to divide me from others by possession of some characteristic or other, my different tastes and interests would seem to me to be a better way to do it. The fact that I sometimes write art criticism, for example, distinguishes me far more clearly from my neighbors than do my assets.

…

The division of people by income or assets into One Percent versus 99 Per Cent as if they were creatures of different species is not so much descriptive or explanatory as incitement to those two most unattractive and destructive emotions: envy and resentment.

Dalrymple explains on Pajamas Media why a new insulin pump, which seems to control blood sugar better, may or may not be as helpful as hoped:

It seems to stand to reason that if the complications of such diabetes are caused by poor control of the level of blood sugar, and if the new pump assists in producing better control of that level, then it ought to help in reducing the level of those complications. However, this type of reasoning is always hazardous in medicine: the proof of the pudding is always in the eating. It is all too easy to treat biochemistry rather than patients. The better control of blood sugar levels is not an end in itself. It is worthwhile only if it actually leads to clinical benefit, and that has yet to be shown, and this will take a long time.

A street conversation with a man and his dog raises an interesting question:

He himself was a teacher and worked with children ‘in difficulty:’ that is to say disobedient and delinquent. At the suggestion of the school psychologist five years before, he took the dog to school with him where the dog exerted a very beneficial effect on the behaviour of the children, an effect that was lasting.

This was a phenomenon worth reflecting on. Why did the dog have such an effect?

Read the whole thing on the Salisbury Review website for the answer.

This piece in Taki’s Magazine, on the refugee crisis, contains an excellent proverb of which I was unaware (“fine words butter no parsnips”), a new maxim of Dalrymple’s own making (“there is no social phenomenon without its bureaucratic opportunity”) and a number of laugh-out-loud moments:

It was obvious to me that the British authorities reasoned thus: If a man preferred to stay in Rotherham rather than beg to be repatriated, his life must really have been in danger and he was a true refugee.

…in these multicultural times, it is fair to assume that no one, and certainly no Director of Diversity, has any interest in, let alone knowledge of, remote countries or other cultures.

the only Syrian asylum seeker I met was a man who had already been granted it. He said that he had been in the Syrian army, where his job was that of torturer; unfortunately for him, his work was not up to scratch, so to speak, and he went from being a producer of torture to a consumer of it.

I had never met any Kosovar refugees until NATO liberated Kosovo and made it safe for democracy.

But as always in Taki’s Magazine, you will definitely want to avoid reading the comments. My goodness.

Arguing that “No plaintiff should have nothing to lose”, Dalrymple shares the results of a frivolous lawsuit resulting from medical research:

The purpose of research is to discover what was previously unknown. Research wouldn’t be necessary if we knew everything there was to know, but that will never be the case so research will always be a necessity, so long as knowledge remains preferable to ignorance. And while wisdom may be folly where ignorance is bliss, you can never know that to be true until after you’ve become wise.

Apparently, all of this is perfectly obvious except to certain trial lawyers, whose job it is to exploit the corrupt and corrupting tort system.

Dalrymple recently wrote a series of four pieces at The Library of Law and Liberty against what he calls the “extreme libertarian” case for drug legalization. Patrick Lynch, senior fellow at Liberty Fund, wrote a response, and now Dalrymple has replied to it. As usual in these matters (but very unusual for most writers), he is quick to concede that his interlocutor makes some good points, but he again argues against some of the positions of John Stuart Mill to which he says his opponents adhere.

It’s a long, detailed reply. Read the whole thing here.

If a depressing film on an important subject doesn’t dull our appetite for dinner, are we any the less conscientious? On distrusting extravagant shows of sensibility, in Taki’s Magazine:

I have seen some terrible things in my life—the remains of massacres and so forth—but I am afraid that even they have failed to put me off my dinner, though I have of course not been unmoved by what I saw. Is this fortitude of mind or stark insensibility? I ease my conscience by telling myself that refusal of dinner will help no one.

On the web site of the Library of Law and Liberty Dalrymple looks at the live-TV murders in Virginia and identifies three of the perpetrator’s flaws that contributed to the crime: paranoia, a desire for fame and anger:

It ought to be obvious that those who love justice ought not to commit injustice themselves. But anger makes matters worse even than La Rochefoucauld suspected when he wrote that love of justice in most men is merely fear of suffering injustice. Anger makes us love injustice, provided that it is we who are committing it. An atmosphere of rage is concomitantly one of righteous (or self-righteous) cruelty.

Deliberate destruction is not the only means of vandalism, says Dalrymple in Taki’s Magazine. The consciously incompatible design of some modern construction accomplishes the same purpose, and for ideological reasons:

Nothing has shaken me more (and, be it remembered, I was professionally involved in talking to burglars, muggers, blackmailers, kidnappers, rapists, and murderers) than the utter indifference or even hostility to the achievements of the past and the need to preserve and pay them honor of many educated young people in Britain and France. Nor is this indifference or hostility spontaneous; rather, it has been programmed into them by indoctrination that the past is nothing but the slave trade and the oppression of women. Moreover, their visual education has been crude, as a visit to any modern toy shop or modern municipal playground will confirm. Aesthetically illiterate and ideologically convinced that the past was nothing but a moral mistake that they will correct, it is little wonder they do not care for the fabric of the past or worry much about its disappearance.