QotD: Get out while the getting is good

I have tried pointing Americans at the British example to show them what an appalling idea it is to have the state directing any industry, let alone medical care. But alas it is very hard to overcome that special kind of insular American optimism that does not think what happens in another advanced first world nation can teach them anything, because in the USA things will be different.

Well yes, it will be different . . . in that the control obsessed Obama's of this world will find new, innovative and oh so wholesome American ways to end up with a third rate health care system much like Britain has today.

This might be a good time for Americans to invest their money in Swiss medical clinics as I suspect in the coming years expatriated medical care will be a serious growth industry... plus it has the added benefit of getting your money out of the USA and US dollar.

Perry de Havilland, "A stupidity of voters'', Samizdata, 2009-06-21

QotD: Sex lives of the powerful

Why do we care about the sex lives of the powerful? Mostly, we don't, because it's bad enough looking at these guys (and with the rare exception of someone like former Sen. Helen Chenoweth, it always seems to be guys) with their clothes on, much less imagining forming the beast with two, three, or more backs. But in the cases of folks such as Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the rampant hypocrisy brings home the point that most of these people can't run their own lives, much less yours and mine. So there's a lesson to be learned here: Don't do this at home, kids. Or, if you do, then don't run for office. And if you do run for office and manage to get elected, don't moralize in a way that is grossly at odds with your lifestyle.

Nick Gillespie, "DC Pols Have Forgotten More Sex Than You'll Ever Have in Your Whole Lifetime!", Hit and Run, 2009-06-18

QotD: the importance of sleep

I am a gold medalist in the macho Sleepless Working Olympics. I once worked a 60-hour shift without sleep. (Yes, that's 2.5 days without any shuteye.) One stormy February, I put in 468 hours, almost 120 hours a week for four weeks straight, sleeping an average of less than 4 hours a night. I have enjoyed all the exciting side effects of prolonged sleep deprivation, like uncontrollable "microsleep" which once almost caused me to walk into the path of a cab, or the hallucinations that set in after 48 hours or so — not fun hallucinations, either, just long conversations with co-workers who turned out to have left the building hours or even days before. I was essentially dreaming with my eyes open.

So I know whereof I speak when I think about interns training on gruelling regimens. And you know what I learned on all those sleepless nights?

Well, actually, not much. It turns out that adequate sleep is crucial to memory formation. But I did manage to process and retain one fact: when you have not had enough sleep, you. are. stupid.

Megan McArdle, "Let them sleep!", Asymmetrical Information, 2009-06-12

QotD: The Iranian "elections"

Iran and its citizens are considered by the Shiite theocracy to be the private property of the anointed mullahs. This totalitarian idea was originally based on a piece of religious quackery promulgated by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and known as velayat-e faqui. Under the terms of this edict — which originally placed the clerics in charge of the lives and property of orphans, the indigent, and the insane — the entire population is now declared to be a childlike ward of the black-robed state. Thus any voting exercise is, by definition, over before it has begun, because the all-powerful Islamic Guardian Council determines well in advance who may or may not "run." Any newspaper referring to the subsequent proceedings as an election, sometimes complete with rallies, polls, counts, and all the rest of it, is the cause of helpless laughter among the ayatollahs. ("They fell for it? But it's too easy!") Shame on all those media outlets that have been complicit in this dirty lie all last week. And shame also on our pathetic secretary of state, who said that she hoped that "the genuine will and desire" of the people of Iran would be reflected in the outcome. Surely she knows that any such contingency was deliberately forestalled to begin with.

Christopher Hitchins, "Don't Call What Happened in Iran Last Week an Election: It was a crudely stage-managed insult to everyone involved", Slate, 2009-06-14

QotD: We'll take option three

Estimates of the cost of Obama care start at $1.2 trillion over the next decade. The administration believes it can cover about half that amount through tax increases on the rich and greater efficiencies in Medicare and Medicaid. But it's hard to find anyone else who shares that touching faith. When I asked Robert Bixby, head of The Concord Coalition, a bipartisan fiscal watchdog group, he said, "I don't see any plausible way of getting the savings they need to add the expanded coverage in a deficit-neutral way."

There are only three ways to pay for this expansion of health insurance coverage: increased taxes, reduced benefits, or shiny gold ingots falling out of the sky. Voters emphatically prefer the latter option, so that is the one most likely to be embraced by Congress and the administration.

Steve Chapman, "Indulging Our Health Care Fantasies: The problem with Obama's health care plan", Reason Online, 2009-06-15

QotD: The GM bailout again

We know what Obama is getting with this money — an empowered union that will back him when he runs in 2012 — but what are we getting? The Globe and Mail in Canada estimates that it will cost taxpayers $1.4 million per job saved. Had the free-market been left to be free, it would have cost us nothing to "save" these jobs. In fact one of the most compelling things for tax payers about a "free-market" is that it is free.

In absence of government intervention, GM would have gone into bankruptcy, like Delta Airlines and others did when they filed, keeping employees and operating. The reason Obama did not want this to happen is that in bankruptcy, the company can reject contracts and leases. The sweet UAW contract, which is the main cause of GM's demise, would be adjusted to fair market value. And "fair market" is nothing the liberals want any part of anymore. If only we had had a wise Latina woman on the board who could have used the richness of her experiences to make better decisions than the white males.

With the Democrats now running the car companies, look for quite a fall lineup of cars. My guess is that you will like the GM two-cylinder Geithner Midget. It veers hard to the left for no good reason, pays no taxes, blocks Rush Limbaugh on the radio and shows no remorse for past bad driving.

Ron Hart, "Government motors", The Destinlog.com, 2009-06-10

QotD: Government Motors on dealership closings

The Edsel was one of the biggest flops in the history of car making. Introduced with great fanfare by Ford in 1958, it had terrible sales and was junked after only three years. But if Congress had been running Ford, the Edsel would still be on the market.

That became clear last week, when Democrats as well as Republicans expressed horror at the notion that bankrupt companies with plummeting sales would need fewer retail sales outlets. At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing, Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va)., led the way, asserting, "I honestly don't believe that companies should be allowed to take taxpayer funds for a bailout and then leave it to local dealers and their customers to fend for themselves."

Supporters of free markets can be grateful to Rockefeller for showing one more reason government shouldn't rescue unsuccessful companies. As it happens, taxpayers are less likely to get their money back if the automakers are barred from paring dealerships. Protecting those dealers merely means putting someone else at risk, and that someone has been sleeping in your bed.

Steve Chapman, "Government Motors: The trouble with Washington running a car company", Reason Online, 2009-06-08

QotD: Writers as heroes

Netflix describes [Nim's Island] fairly accurately: "When the young island-dwelling Nim loses contact with her scientist father, she reaches out to her favorite author for help. Problem is, the writer — of adventure stories, no less — is a recluse who hasn't left her house in years . . ."

What is it with this recent mania of casting various writers, living, dead, or fictional, as story heroes? Don't people know how distracted and dissociative and generally unphotogenic we really are? There are *reasons* we live as we do . . . The ending of this one was sweet, but unconvincing, even though "and then the writer gets the scientist!" is deeply appealing. Although I did like the author's various interactions with her long-running series hero. "You've been working on Chapter Eight for three months! Either drop me in the bloody volcano, or figure out how I'm going to get out of this one!" "Quiet! I'm doing *research* . . ."

Lois McMaster Bujold, writing to the LMB mailing list, 2009-06-08

QotD: Fix Medicare First

Think about this for a moment. Medicare is a huge, single-payer, government-run program. It ought to provide the perfect environment for experimentation. If more-efficient government management can slash health-care costs by addressing all these problems, why not start with Medicare? Let's see what "better management" looks like applied to Medicare before we roll it out to the rest of the country.

This is not a completely cynical suggestion. Medicare is, for instance, a logical place to start to design better electronic records systems and the incentives to use them. But you do have to wonder why a report that claims that Medicare is wasting 30 percent of its spending thinks it's making a case for making the rest of the health care system more like Medicare.

Virginia Postrel, "Medicare First!", The Dynamist, 2009-06-04

QotD: California today is America tomorrow

California is famously considered a bellwether state for social and political trends, from the positive (hot rod and surf culture, the human potential movement, tax revolts, digital culture) to the regrettable (murderous cults, carbon reduction mandates). With that in mind, a simple — yet terribly difficult for our political class — contemplation of the state's current cash crisis is both instructive and scary for the future of our nation as a whole.

California now confronts a roughly $24 billion deficit. Recent attempts to get voters to approve various fiscal shenanigans and cost-shifts got smacked down at the polls. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is now making a big show of proposing heavy spending cuts that will, we are told by the state's journalistic and political mavens, destroy the state, beggar its sick and young, and leave just enough cash to forcibly keep people out of various state parks, though not to "operate" them.

Of course, nowhere among the "serious options" under consideration is legalizing pot and other controlled substances, which would likely give the state an extra billion dollars a year in tax revenue. That simple act of political sanity would also save the state the $43,000 a year per inmate now spent incarcerating drug criminals, of whom a fresh nearly 19,000 were added in 2008 alone.

Brian Doherty, "California: Harbinger of Fiscal Doom", Reason Online, 2009-06-03

QotD: The Law, misused

IME, British businesses often lie "the law requires X" or "the law prohibits X" — absurd!

UK banks are the worst for inventing imaginary laws to excuse their BS. Eg, "law requires you tell us reason for funds withdrawal"

"The law requires it" is used interchangeably with "Our lawyers require it" by UK businesses — these are nowhere near the same thing.

Cory Doctorow, posting to Twitter, 2009-06-02

QotD: Coyote vs Roadrunner

If I had time for retweet theater, I'd use this: "Breathes there a man who, against his better judgment and prior experience, has not attempted to adjust a lawn sprinkler while it's running?" (exactly 140 characters, too!) Yet we try, over and over again, thinking we will outrun the sprinkler, or avoid a spritz in the puss. This is why men identify with the Coyote, not the Roadrunner. And well we should; a canine's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's an ACME catalog for? The Coyote paid sales tax on those items, I'd wager; the Roadrunner paid no taxes for the highways he used.

At least the coyote tried to solve a problem with technology instead of running around all day like an idiot.

James Lileks, Bleat, 2009-05-29

QotD: The stupidity of an Anti-Flag-Burning Amendment

As a veteran, I love my Constitution too much to cheapen it by using it as a tool to restrict people's rights. It is, and always has been, a restriction on the GOVERNMENT. It's but a step from banning flag desecration to banning alcohol (we tried that, if you recall) to regulating relationships (also proposed) to seizing people's assets for the good of society.

I refuse to cross that line.

Norm Eadie says: Patriotism gives symbols meaning. Enslaving people to symbols destroys patriotism.

The Flag is a symbol of our greatness. Do not make it a symbol of our shame.

I will not destroy the Constitution for a mere symbol. To do so over a symbol that represents it would be a sick irony.

I expect to receive a donation envelope from you today — one of your fundraisers called me late Sunday night.

You can expect to receive it back, minus a check, with a paper copy of this comment. I will not pay to support fascism, no matter how noble it pretends to be.

I am saddened that so many veterans' organizations are disgracing themselves, and willing to destroy the Constitution, over a matter of free expression, one of America's founding principles.

If this filthy travesty of a proposal gets added to the Constitution, I expect to personally desecrate a great many flags, because at that point, it will represent nothing, and be a symbol of all we have lost.

Michael Z. Williamson, "So Furious I Could Start A Revolution Single Handedly", mzmadmike.livejournal.com, 2009-05-12

QotD: Bonus payments and bosses

[. . .] bosses will rationally search for more-informal ways of rewarding their best staff. Rather than writing down a specific, objective measure of performance, they give themselves discretion to reward "good work" without being too precise about what "good work" is. The thinking is, quite sensibly, that while they can't define good work, they can recognize it when they see it. And with this discretion over raises, promotions, and bonuses, they have plenty of flexibility to dish out rewards and punishments in line with what everybody knows but nobody could prove in court.

There the story would end, but for one important problem: Managers are lying weasels. If performance bonuses are purely discretionary, the boss can weasel out of paying them, and so the workers won't be motivated by them. Why would anybody believe a manager who promises raises and promotions, but can't be specific about what they will be and what his staff would have to do to earn them?

Tim Harford, The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World, 2008.

QotD: The down side of emigration

It is always better to stay where you are and face the music. Even if the music in question is the tinkling of your broken sitting room window or the screams of other prisoners in the showers or the gristly, gooey sound of your fingernails coming out.

The fact of the matter is this: every single person who ever moves to another country — with the exception of America where you go to grow — is a failure. Seriously, no one has ever woken up and said: "I am completely happy. I have a lovely family, many friends, a great job and plenty of savings. So I shall move to Australia."

It's always the other way around. "My wife has left me. My children don't want to know. The divorce cost a bundle and I don't have any mates. So I shall move to Oz." That's why they call us whingeing poms. Because the poms they get do nothing else.

Jeremy Clarkson, "Stand still, wimp - only failures run off to be expats", The Times, 2009-03-29

QotD: Spreading fear about Global Warming

I suppose my perception of precisely who stood to benefit from the spreading fear about Global Warming comes into it. Anyone who hates technology, of course, or the present economic system. Also, hordes who will get rich from all of the asinine proposals to reduce Global Warming — anyone who makes solar panels or water heating systems or nasty little cars that go short distances very slowly, carrying almost nothing.

Most persuasive, I suppose, was an anthropological understanding I have (that being my principle field of interest and study in college) of what constitutes a religion. The planet gets transmogrified into a goddess in the minds of the faithful, and all of the entities upon it, the birds and bees and flowers and trees (to quote an old song) — all of the entities, that is, except humans — become sacred objects. Exhaling carbon dioxide becomes Original Sin. Better that a thousand human babies should die than one single snail darter or a furbish lousewort.

In fact, what the Earth needs, they often say, is a good plague.

L. Neil Smith, "This One's for Holly", Libertarian Enterprise, 2009-05-05

QotD: American Government

We live in democracies. Rule by the majority. Rule by the people. Fifty per cent of people are below average in intelligence. This explains everything about politics.

Not that we'd want to live in a country ruled only by the best and brightest. That would be too much like being married to Cherie Blair.

So we have to keep supporting democracy. Even when democracy acts up the way it's done in Russia, Pakistan and the American presidential election.

Long term there's only one thing that gives me hope as a right-winger - the left-wing.

It's going to be hard to do a worse job running America than the Republicans did, but the Democrats can do it if anyone can.

P.J. O'Rourke, "The ditch carp of democracy", The Canberra Times, 2009-04-22

QotD: The office

Not many people lie on their deathbeds wishing that they had spent more time in the office. Ah, the office: the mournful gloaming under the fluorescent strips, the monotonous swish of the photocopier, the "ping" as e-mails arrive from bullying bosses, work-shy colleagues, and backstabbing rivals. Much of it is little better than spam. In fact, spam is a blessed release: a missive from another world, sent by a transparent crook and wasting no more than a second or two. Real e-mail also comes from time-wasting criminals, but takes a lot more effort to deal with.

Tim Harford, The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World, 2008

QotD: Events

It was a Friday afternoon. Richard had noticed that events were cowards: they didn't occur singly, but instead they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once.

Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere, 1996, 1997.

QotD: The real environmental disaster

Ira Einhorn was arrested for murder March 28, 1979, the day the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident occurred. Ira Einhorn, environmentalist, was charged with murder during the same period as one of the greatest environmental accidents in United States history.

But the real irony is that more people died in the apartment of Ira Einhorn, co-founder of Earth Day than at Three Mile Island. The environmentalist killed more people than the so-called environmental disaster.

Happy Earth Day.

Michael P. Tremoglie, "Earth Day Philly Style", The Bulletin, 2009-04-22

QotD: Why demographics matter

Whenever I write about demography, I usually get a ton of responses from folks saying: What’s so bad about falling population? Japan, Belgium and the like are pretty congested: Wouldn’t it be nice to have a bit more elbow room? Sure. With the rise of mill towns in the south and the opening up of the west, the population of my small municipality in New Hampshire peaked in the 1820 census, declined till 1940 and still hasn’t caught up to where it was 200 years ago. But it didn’t matter. Because we were a self-contained rural economy with no welfare and no public debt. If Japan and Germany were run like 19th century Granite State townships, they’d be okayish. But they’re not, so they won’t be. You can’t hunker down behind national borders when there aren’t enough young people inside the perimeter with a sufficient level of consumption to grow the economy at the rate necessary to cover existing government obligations.

This is the first crisis of globalization, and it is a far more existential threat than the Depression. In living beyond its means, its times, and its borders, the developed world has run out of places to pass the buck.

Mark Steyn, "Subprime Demography", National Review, 2009-04-21

QotD: What Britain used to be

The outstanding and — by contemporary standards — highly original quality of the English is their habit of not killing one another. Putting aside the 'model' small states, which are in an exceptional position, England is the only European country where internal politics are conducted in a more or less humane and decent manner. It is — and this was true long before the rise of fascism — the only country where armed men do not prowl the streets and no one is frightened of the secret police. And the whole British Empire, with all its crying abuses, its stagnation in one place and exploitation in another, at least has the merit of being internally peaceful. It has always been able to get along with a very small number of armed men, although it contains a quarter of the population of the earth. Between the wars its total armed forces amounted to about 600,000 men, of whom a third were Indians. At the outbreak of war the entire Empire was able to mobilise about a million trained men. Almost as many could have been mobilised by, say, Rumania. The English are probably more capable than most peoples of making revolutionary changes without bloodshed. In England, if anywhere, it would be possible to abolish poverty without destroying liberty. If the English took the trouble to make their own democracy work, they would become the political leaders of western Europe, and probably of some other parts of the world as well. They would provide the much-needed alternative to Russian authoritarianism on the one hand and American materialism on the other.

George Orwell, "The English People", 1947

QotD: "America is kooky"!

Here's a stone truth: Every political protest, and indeed just about every political gathering, is filled with kooks, on account of America is kooky! A commentator's protest kook-detector works great when he disagrees with the protest, then gets turned off when the kooks on his side get busy. It has ever been thus, and it will always be.

Matt Welch, "Army of Dicks Goes After Dick Armey", Hit and Run, 2009-04-16

QotD: Weird Al honoured

Apparently SNL has just bestowed upon me the highest honor imaginable — my name has become a metaphor for masturbation. So proud.

Weird Al Yankovic, Twitter, 2009-04-12 01:46

QotD: Australia's Anti-Tourist Board

You probably know most of the cane toad story already because my country of origin, in order to ensure that its high standard of living should not be threatened by a population of excessive size, has a kind of anti-tourist board dedicated to making Australia look less attractive than it might be in the eyes of the world. After World War II, the anti-tourist board spread stories through overseas outlets about Australia's teeming range of poisonous spiders and snakes.

There were stories of the red-back spider that hides under the toilet seat to avoid publicity, and the taipan snake that was so poisonous it could kill a man on a horse after killing the horse, and would do both these things unprovoked, because it liked publicity. The anti-tourist board was scarcely obliged to exaggerate.

Australian spiders and snakes are really like that. So you're a prospective migrant and you're afraid of getting bitten a little bit? What are you, a man or a mouse? If you're a mouse, you've got no business going near a taipan anyway.

More recently, the anti-tourist board positioned its enormous influence behind a film called Australia, which was plainly designed to put immigrants off going to Australia by presenting, at enormous length, a prospect of a country where nothing happened except a 150,000 cattle moving slowly across the parched landscape, each beast pausing for an individual close-up at any moment when the director thought the pace was too hectic. But the most reliable weapon in the armoury of the Australian anti-tourist board has always been the story of the cane toad.

Clive James, "Raising cane", BBC News Magazine, 2009-04-10

QotD: Problems with public service

This whole they're-denigrating-public-servants complaint, a longtime favorite of Bill Maher's, has always struck me as willfully missing at least one important point. A core problem of government ineffectiveness has to do with incentives, and unintended consequences, not necessarily venality and incompetence. The do something mentality of elected officials inevitably leads to crude applications of blunt power, and just as inevitably that power has a tendency to get all mission-creepy, into areas of human existence that no government should really be messing with. And believe it or not, this can happen under Democrats, too.

Matt Welch, "Washington: Crackling With Brainy Sacrifice", Hit and Run, 2009-04-07

QotD: Paranormal phenomena in Science Fiction

Most folks who read my science fiction novels probably notice that, unlike Star Trek, Star Wars, or Babylon 5 (to name three examples), I never write about phenomena like telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance, precognition. There are reasons for this. Chief among them is that psychic doings make bad writing entirely too easy. Paint yourself into a corner, plotwise? Then have your hero teleport out of it.

Another is that science fiction deals in real possibilities, based on our understanding of the universe, and the way science has let us learn and do more every century. I write about starships because I have reason to believe we'll have them someday. I also think faster-than-light travel will be possible, perhaps even time travel. The most fantastic thing I write about is the possibility that someday we might be free — yeah, I know it's a stretch, but the possibility is there, nonetheless.

However psychic phenomena are an altogether different kettle of gagh. Very early in my life, I realized that, if such power actually existed, there wouldn't be a single politician or religious leader on this planet left alive and standing above his charred and smoking shoetops.

L. Neil Smith, "Zenna", Libertarian Enterprise, 2009-04-06

QotD: Lessons from the Great Depression

The relevance for today is simple. The famous "multiplier effect" of public spending may exist. U.S. cities do indeed need new highways, new buildings, and new roads, maybe even from the government. There may also be a spillover effect, as historian Alexander Field has noted. When the government builds a road, it is easier for the trucker to get from one point to another, and the trucker makes higher profits. These merits should be weighed against damage that comes when officials create projects and jobs for political reasons.

An emergency such as a Great Depression can serve as a catalyst for job creation. But the dire moral quality of that emergency does not guarantee that a project undertaken in its name will be more efficient than your standard earmark. In fact, infrastructure spending is often just a nicer name for what we used to call pork. Given the depth of modern capital markets, the New Deal's old argument that "only the government can afford this" looks particularly weak. The New Deal edifice is solid enough, but it doesn't form the best basis for the national future.

Amity Shlaes, "Afterword to the paperback edition", The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, 2007, 2008

QotD: Criminalizing "hate" speech

If the pen is mightier than the sword, then criminalizing words is a way of disarming potential opposition, of inculcating a reflexive self-censorship in the citizenry. And, after all, self-suppression is the most cost-effective of tyranny. Political correctness isn't merely the blasphemy law of our time. It makes communication impossible. It renders a people literally illiterate: The conventions of language used by functioning societies throughout human history — irony, indirect quotation, period evocation, and, yes, even comic stereotype — are all suddenly suspect. What a strange fate to embrace.

Mark Steyn, "No Laughing Matter", Macleans, 2009-04-01

QotD: Bailing out newspapers

I have never had anything but contempt for America's "greatest" newspapers. During my lifetime, a little over six decades, they have never been anything but contemptible. Everything that was foreseeably harmful to individual liberty — or later proven to be so — they have championed. Everything that would have been good for it, they have opposed.

Regarding a small, exceptional handful of dire matters of life and death — the ugly little war in Vietnam comes to mind — where they finally aligned themselves with the proper, decent, moral, and Constitutional side of the issue, they were opinion followers, not leaders.

Now, according to the "new media" to which I happily switched ten years ago or more, in preference to being libelled, threatened, and lied to on a continuous basis as a member of the nation's Productive Class, America's "greatest" newspapers, on the brink of financial collapse as millions of other readers and advertisers make the same change I did, are looking to be "bailed out" by the current political administration. They've agreed to stop making political endorsements, giving us to wonder what good they'll be after they seal this devil's bargain.

L. Neil Smith, "No Bailout for America's Newspapers!", Libertarian Enterprise, 2009-03-29

QotD: Falling down the wrong side of the Laffer Curve

David Cameron, Tory leader, appears determined that it will not be just the current government that comes out with serious errors on policy. This refusal to not state that a new, higher tax band of 45 per cent "on the rich" will be repealed is a serious error. The error is to ignore the history of what happens when marginal tax rates are cut — these cuts lead to more, not less, revenue. Now of course, as small-government folk, we support tax cuts because we want taxes to fall, and not because we want higher revenues. But if it is revenues you are worried about, then raising taxes is dumb.

The UK and many other economies are falling down the wrong side of the Laffer Curve. It is profoundly depressing that the lessons I thought had been learned have been so totally lost. It makes me wonder whether any senior politician has a clue about economics whatever.

Johnathan Pearce, "It is the lack of basic economic understanding that is so terrifying", Samizdata, 2009-03-23

QotD: The 60's Generation

Don't moan. I'm not going to "pass the wisdom of one generation down to the next." I'm a member of the 1960s generation. We didn't have any wisdom.

We were the moron generation. We were the generation that believed we could stop the Vietnam War by growing our hair long and dressing like circus clowns. We believed drugs would change everything — which they did, for John Belushi. We believed in free love. Yes, the love was free, but we paid a high price for the sex.

My generation spoiled everything for you. It has always been the special prerogative of young people to look and act weird and shock grown-ups. But my generation exhausted the Earth's resources of the weird. Weird clothes — we wore them. Weird beards — we grew them. Weird words and phrases — we said them. So, when it came your turn to be original and look and act weird, all you had left was to tattoo your faces and pierce your tongues. Ouch. That must have hurt. I apologize.

P.J. O'Rourke, "Fairness, Idealism and other atrocities: Commencement advice you're unlikely to hear elsewhere", L.A. Times, 2008-05-04

QotD: The Jimmy Carter legacy

The current depression was born when the administration of Jimmy Carter, and a Democratic Congress, irrationally demanded that lenders approve mortgages for individuals who really couldn't afford them and would almost certainly never be able to pay them back. The political strategy of giving goodies away like this, in exchange for votes and other kinds of popular support, was probably old hat by the time the Romans got around to plying urban tenement dwellers with bread and circuses.

At the same time, housing for the poor appears to be some kind of bizarre obsessive-compulsive fetish for President Peanut. He's spent decades since his deeply flawed and humiliatingly failed presidency, hammering nails into future residences under the Habitat for Humanity program. How ironic it is that, just as the economy begins collapsing, so are the former president's shoddily-constructed houses across the country.

L. Neil Smith, "Cambodian Road Trip", Libertarian Enterprise, 2009-03-15

QotD: Partisan view of the presidency

When a Democratic president goes from being wrong to being damn wrong is always an interesting moment: Bay of Pigs, Great Society, Jimmy Carter waking up on the morning after his inauguration, HillaryCare.

P.J. O'Rourke, "Stem Cell Sham: The president as sophist", Weekly Standard, 2009-03-23

QotD: Inherited debt

Just between you, me, and the old, the late middle-aged and the early middle-aged: Isn't it terrific to be able to stick it to the young? I mean, imagine how bad all this economic-type stuff would be if our kids and grandkids hadn't offered to pick up the tab.

Well, OK, they didn't exactly "offer" but they did stand around behind Barack Obama at all those campaign rallies helping him look dynamic and telegenic and earnestly chanting hopey-hopey-changey-changey. And "Yes, we can!"

Which is a pretty open-ended commitment.

Are you sure you young folks will be able to pay off this massive Mount Spendmore of multitrillion-dollar debts we've piled up on you?

"Yes, we can!"

We thought you'd say that! God bless the youth of America! We of the Greatest Generation, the Boomers and Generation X salute you, the plucky members of the Brokest Generation, the Gloomers and Generation Y, as in "Why the hell did you old coots do this to us?"

Mark Steyn, "Welcome, kids, to the Brokest Generation: The young aren't to blame for this mess, but they'll be paying for it", Orange County Register, 2009-03-13

QotD: Motivation

It is a deformity in some 'radicals' to imagine that, once they have found the lowest or meanest motive for an action or for a person, they have correctly identified the 'authentic' or 'real' one. Many a purge or show trial has got merrily under way in this manner.

Christopher Hitchens, Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, 2006

QotD: Newspapers versus News Magazines

Time magazine has a list of the ten most endangered newspapers.

That's interesting, because our paper had a list of the ten most endangered magazines named Time. Seems like a duel on a Titanic lifeboat before it's winched down the side, no?

Or not. I remain enthusiastic about the paper's survival, for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with the pleasant sound my whistling makes as it echoes off the tombstones. I do think we'll survive. Newsmagazines, less so. I can't remember the last time I bought one. Not even after 9/1l1 — even by then the desire to remember an event with a glossy print recap had vanished [. . .]

I think the last time I looked at a newsmagazine, it was full of things that were Generally Wrong or Growing Concerns or Worrisome Trends, with lots of ads for acid-reflux pills. The default mode of these magazines a long time ago seemed to be banging the tocsin with a bloody shirt, to horribly mix metaphors, and it's not surprising; the default position of journalism is reminding us how far we live from the fabled borders of Utopia, and how we might speed the journey through the magic accelerating powers of wise, targeted legislation.

James Lileks, Bleat, 2009-03-11

QotD: Cereal-ity

No wonder this Irish trickster-spirit always reacted to the sight of children by saying "they're after me Lucky Charms." They had a history, going back to the very first encounter [. . .] I always sided with the Trix rabbit, too. It made no sense that he was denied Trix. Why? Some international convention, perhaps? Interpol has expressed its concern that the rabbit might have Trix. Great lesson for kids: you may be small, weak beings with few legal rights, but at least you’re not the rabbit. Laugh at him! Smack the bowl from his paws! It’s okay.

Lucky Charms was, and is, my favorite non-grown-up cereal. I don’t care if it’s compacted grain nodules studded with sucrose-dusted styrofoam; I love it. Whenever my parents knew I was coming home for the weekend, my Mom would always have a box of Lucky Charms in the cupboard. I still buy it when it’s on sale. The rest of the childhood cereals I’ve left behind, including King Vitamin — that stuff was like eating a mouthful of jagged metal. You brushed your teeth after that, and when you spat it was like a a boxer gobbing in the bucket after six haymakers to the jaw.

James Lileks, "Evening Commercial Break: Yellow Moons", Bleat, 2009-03-06

QotD: Inherently unpatriotic thoughts

Is it inherently unpatriotic or immoral to want to see a president fail? After chewing over the larger implications of that vital question, I've come to a conclusion: I am a twisted human being. Thankfully, I'm not alone.

You see, when I'm not wasting time greedily praying to be rich, I plead with some higher power to sentence my middling local representatives to painful obscurity and professional failure. My congresswoman, for instance, carries an intellectual confidence so severely out of step with her skill set that the promise of disappointment, I trust, one day will bring me great joy.

If we can't look to our politicians to fulfill our yearly schadenfreude quota, whom can we trust?

David Harsanyi, "Nothing Personal, But I Hope You All Fail: What's wrong with rooting against our elected officials?", Reason Online, 2009-03-04

QotD: Newspapers

See enough movies and you'll quickly discover that nobody likes the news media. No matter the political viewpoint of the director, the writers, or the actors — from socialist Nick Nolte, to conservative Bruce Willis, to libertarians Clint Eastwood and Curt Russell — TV and newspaper people are invariably portrayed in movies as dimbulbs and dillholes. Media people invariably take this as praise (they actually think they're in the middle of the conventional political spectrum), a sign that they're doing their job right. Their utter inability to see it for what it really is, the lowest rate of customer satisfaction in Western civilization, is another reason they're going under.

L. Neil Smith, "Rocky Mountain News: Not R.I.P., Good Riddance", Libertarian Enterprise, 2009-03-01

QotD: Stop the spending

Last night, President Barack Obama underscored that, despite being in the Senate for the past few years and his party being in charge of Congress since 2006, he's just mopping up for the bungler in chief who preceded him. I yield to no ink-stained wretch in my vast and bottomless dislike of George W. Bush but let's hold Obama's feet to the fire here: He has consistently pledged to, you know, stop spending right after well, you know, he and Congress stop spending.

Seriously, we're really going to knuckle down and cut some "eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs" costing $2 trillion over the next decade. Spoiler alert: That comes to a whopping 5 percent or so of baseline projected spending over the next decade. Break out the champagne, 'cause happy days are here again!

If Obama is serious about restoring trust and confidence in the government's ability to live within its gargantuan means (and he should be), he should start by rewriting the $410 billion Omnibus Spending Bill that the Democrats have just dropped like a big, wet, steaming, stinking pile of...pork barbecue.

Nick Gillespie, "The Deficit That Obama Didn't Quite Inherit But Will Almost Certainly Vastly Expand", Hit and Run, 2009-02-25

QotD: Extending Freedom of Religion too far

Old-fashioned types might think that those Britons - okay, make that "Britons" - helping to manufacture bombs for the Taliban are engaged in an act of treason. But, as a current court case in Quebec helps clarify, giving support to the Queen's enemies in their attempts to kill your compatriots is now just another vibrant, colorful manifestation of cultural diversity.

As the International Free Press Society notes, Said Namouh is on trial up north for aiding and abetting terrorism. The Crown charges that Mr Namouh distributed jihadist snuff videos, offered advice on bomb-making, volunteered his expertise for a planned truck bombing, and threatened governnments (including Canada's) with troops in Afghanistan. Defense counsel René Duvall doesn't deny any of this, but says his client's enthusiasm for violent jihad is protected on grounds of freedom of religion and (mirthless chuckle from your humble typist) Canadians' cherished right to freedom of expression. As Maître Duvall put it outside the court, "Where do you draw the line?"

In fact, the line seems to be pretty clear: If a jihadist says he wants to kill Canadian troops, he's just exercising his right to freedom of religion. If I quote what he said in Canada's biggest-selling news weekly, we'll be charged with "flagrant Islamophobia" and hauled up in court.

Mark Steyn, "Which side of the war would you like to be on?", National Review, 2009-02-22

QotD: Autarky Now!

I see that the former BBC presenter of a programme about gardens and gardening, Monty Don, has recently argued that we should aim to be self-sufficient in food. The trouble with such calls for self-sufficiency is that the unit in which such activity should occur is not spelled out. Does Mr Don think trade should be confined to within Britain, or within a region of it, or a village? Has this character no idea of how starvation frequently accompanied those societies cut off from the benefits of trade? Has he no notion of the benefits of trade, division of labour, regional specialisation, etc?

Of course I have nothing against owners of land looking to grow their own food if they want — how could I? But of course I doubt that Mr Don or other self-sufficiency types want to adopt such a grass-roots policy, to excuse the pun. I grow most of my own herbs, for instance. People have at times brewed their own beer to avoid the insipid stuff on sale in the shops, and as a result, this encouraged the "micro-brewery" movement in the US and elsewhere. But that is an example of enterprise at its best. The trouble with Mr Don, I suspect, is that his approach tends to be accompanied by calls to restrict imports, and the like.

Johnathan Pearce, "Bad ideas on economics", Samizdata, 2009-02-20

QotD: Government Economy

The George W. Bush administration was so incredibly careless with your money that, according to this report to the Senate Banking Committee, it paid $254 billion this past autumn for bank stock worth $176 billion on the dates of purchase. Seventy-eight billion dollars wasted! Why isn't this on the front page of every newspaper in America? If you made a workplace decision that wasted several thousand dollars, you'd be in hot water — yet Bush administration White House and Treasury Department officials wasted $78 billion without consequences or accountability. That amount would have been more than sufficient to create universal health care for a year. Instead the money was forcibly removed from your pockets and transferred to the rich of Wall Street and the banking world (buying stock at more than market value effectively is a gift to the firms). Your children will be paying for this and similar irresponsible use of public funds for their entire working lives.

Treasury officials had the temerity to tell Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren, chairwoman of the bailout oversight panel — by the way, her excellent 2003 book "The Two-Income Trap" predicted a national financial meltdown caused by bad mortgages — the mistake isn't quite as bad as it sounds because the stocks purchased have returned $271 million in dividends to taxpayers. So we threw $78 billion out the window but $271 million (three-tenths of 1 percent) blew back! In contemporary Washington, this is viewed as driving a hard bargain.

Gregg Easterbrook, "TMQ's annual Bad Predictions Review", ESPN Page 2, 2009-02-10

QotD: Islamic science

The larger story here, unaddressed by both exhibit and reviewer, is what did that civilisation do with these potentially game-changing insights? The answer is that it marginalised them as mere trinkets and toys for the elite, and set them aside as curiosities mostly incompatible with an Islamic universe ordered by the will of Allah. The 11th century Islamic civilisation armed with a vastly better understanding of geography, medicine, physics, rudimentary mechanics and robotics continued to spread its borders, but largely sat in scientific neutral after the 13th century.

Europe, meanwhile, rediscovered many of the classical themes, philosophies and knowledge that earlier Islamic scholars had been so careful to preserve. And then went on to make practical use of them in commerce, politics, transportation and warfare.

If I get anything out of exhibits like this, it is the opposite of what the designers intended. While I am awed by the intellectual achievements of men like Ibn Said and Al-Jaziri, I am saddened that their patrons did not see any practical social use for their innovations. Islam has squandered its historic intellectual capital, just as it continues to do so today.

Chris Taylor, "Sultans of Spin", Taylor & Company, 2009-02-10

QotD: The cost of bad policies

Politicians and their disgusting, fawning, sycophantic pilot fish — the media — want us all to believe that economic ups and downs are a natural phenomenon, similar to earthquakes, meteor strikes, or the weather.

The simple fact that nobody ever mentions is that the economy itself is an artifact, a human invention, and while natural events do affect it in various ways — floods, drought, storms, and so on — most of whatever happens within it is as man-made as the computer I'm using to write this. Human beings shape the economy through all of their acivities. They find, make, buy, and sell innumerable goods and services. Unfortunately if they have political power, along with the evil will to use it, they can distort an economy in ways that conceal, destroy, steal, and force other folks to accept their products and practices, that have changed little since the walls of Babylon were erected.

That's what happened with the price of gasoline.

We've already discussed the way that the administration of Jimmy Carter (who worked in inflation the way artists work in watercolors) forced lenders — businesses that, like everything else in a truly free country, would have been immune to such an abuse of power — to offer mortgages to individuals who, by any reasonable market test were unable to pay them off. This, in effect, created money out of thin air — call it "fiat credit" — in a process only differing from actual counterfeiting because no printing press was involved. Clinton's administration piled this fraud higher and deeper until the "housing bubble" — an enormous market based solely on imaginary wealth — was created.

All that's required for a bubble to burst is a number of lenders who can't get their money back and can't sell the houses they've had to repossess. Companies the lenders owe money to don't get paid, and have to lay people off or go bankrupt. More disasters follow in a horrifying cascade of unpaid bills, fired workers, and rapidly dying businesses.

Who says there's no such thing as "trickle down"?

L. Neil Smith, "The Unnecessary Depression", Libertarian Enterprise, 2009-02-01

QotD: Springsteen at the Super Bowl

ST: Why has the Super Bowl become a de facto national holiday? Do you watch it and prepare a table of fast food and snacks, and do you care who wins? And do you think people who say "I only watch the Super Bowl for the commercials" are full of shit?

NG: I have never quite gotten over losing a $5 bet to my father when I foolishly bet on the Redskins to beat the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl VII (that's 7, for those folks like me who have trouble with regular math, let alone Roman numerals). Why would anyone, even a stupid 10-year-old kid, ever bet on Billy Kilmer to win anything other than a hot dog eating contest? That stupid fucking one-bar facemask! Like the rest of America, I walked away from that game a huge Garo Yepremian fan.

Now I watch the Super Bowl for wardrobe malfunctions. I mean, who doesn't want to see Ken Whisenhut split his pants? I think America lost its innocence when we witnessed Justin Timberlake touch a woman, any woman. It was like staring directly into a total eclipse of the sun, the heart, you name it. And it started the current cycle of FCC mania about protecting TV viewers from anything other than really shitty halftime shows.

In short, watching the Super Bowl is a great way to kill some time. Just make sure your bungee cord is secured properly and don't stint on the Tostitos.

ST: Are you as appalled as me that Bruce Springsteen, that Philip Berrigan kind of liberal who eschews materialism, is playing the half-time show at the Super Bowl?

NG: Why Springsteen? Is Gary Glitter still stuck in Thailand? Is Buddy Holly not returning the NFL's phone calls?

I grew up in Monmouth County, New Jersey, which contains both Springsteen's hometown (Freehold) and his early haunt (Asbury Park), so I can't stand him in the same way that only a New Yorker can really, really hate the Yankees. I'll say this much about the Boss: His output over the past 25 years or so would make even Beethoven nostalgic for the first few albums. Springsteen is in that elite group of rock stars who have objectively sucked two, three, or even four times longer than they were ever any good (are you listening Sting, David Bowie, R.E.M., Patti Smith?). That, and in the video for "Glory Days," he had the worst fake baseball throwing arm since Gary Cooper in Pride of the Yankees. Which is saying something.

Watching Springsteen perform at the Super Bowl — and before him, rock mummies like Tom Petty and Rolling Stones — let's just say I'd rather go straight to the Bodies exhibition, where at least no one is pretending that the corpses on display aren't actually dead.

Nick Gillespie, interviewed by Russ Smith at Splice Today, 2009-01-30

QotD: The end of Canadian Conservatism

Say what you like about the Tories: they don't do things by halves. When they spend, they spend. When they go into debt, they do it $100-billion at a time. And when they decide to put an end to conservatism in Canada — as a philosophy, as a movement — they go out with a bang.

We can safely say that the strategy of incrementalism, at least, has been put to bed. With this historic budget, the Conservatives' already headlong retreat from principle has become a rout: a great final leap into the void. For there will be no going back from this, for the party or for the country. Whatever the budget's soothing talk of "temporary" this and "extraordinary" that, and for all its well-mannered charts showing spending obediently returning to its pen, deficits meekly subsiding, "investments" repaid in full, we are in fact headed somewhere we have never been before. We are on course towards a massive and permanent increase in the size and scope of government: record spending, sky-high borrowing, and — ultimately, inevitably — higher taxes. And all this before the first of the Baby Boomers have had a chance to retire, and cough up a lung.

Andrew Coyne, "Budget ‘09: Tories take a final leap into the void" Macleans, 2009-01-27

QotD: "The real scandal is what's legal"

I still can't understand how AIG, beneficiary of $152 billion in federal subsidies and loan guarantees, could get away with giving management $400 million in year-end bonuses for a year in which management did one of the worst jobs in financial history. That money was forcibly removed from your pocket and placed into the pockets of incompetent scoundrels — yet Congress does nothing! Now it turns out federally subsidized Merrill Lynch, the Bank of America subsidiary given $20 billion of your money two weeks ago, lost $15.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008, and yet handed its senior managers $4 billion in bonuses. Four billion, not million, forcibly removed from your pocket — or borrowed, with the bill handed to your children — and put into the pockets of scoundrels who did a terrible, horrible, awful job. Merrill Lynch managers must be laughing out loud: They screwed up in a major way, and for screwing up were lavishly rewarded, while blameless federal taxpayers were punished. Why isn't our Democratic-led, supposedly populist Congress incensed about such abuses?

Unfortunately, I do understand — because Congress is to blame for the abuses. Congress enacted October's $700 billion bailout of banks and Wall Street without including fraud provisions. At the moment of maximum leverage with banks and Wall Street, Congress simply handed over vast sums of your money without getting any accountability concessions in return. If a Pentagon contractor abuses federal money, if the vendor who supplies staplers and paper clips to the National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center abuses federal money, federal prosecutors move in, because contracts issued by federal agencies have fraud clauses. The October deal by which Congress handed over hundreds of billions of dollars to banks and Wall Street doesn't contain fraud clauses!

The AIG and Merrill Lynch top dogs may be despicable, but it's legal for them to stuff your money into their pockets as bonuses. As Michael Kinsley once said, "The real scandal is what's legal." That billions of the $700 billion bailout fund are being looted directly in front of our eyes is legal, owing to the carelessness of Congress.

Gregg Easterbrook, "Super Bowl Pick and Unwanted All-Pros", ESPN Page 2: TMQ, 2009-01-27

QotD: The Bush Legacy

In a way that was inconceivable when he took office, Mr. Bush — the advance man for the "ownership society," smaller and more trustworthy government, and a humble foreign policy — increased the size and scope of the federal government to unprecedented levels. At the same time, he constantly flashed signs of secrecy, duplicity, ineffectiveness and outright incompetence.

Think for a moment about the thousands of Transportation Security Administration screeners — newly minted government employees all — who continue to confiscate contact-lens solution and nail clippers while, according to nearly every field test, somehow failing to notice simulated bombs in passenger luggage.

Or schoolchildren struggling under No Child Left Behind, which federalized K-12 education to an unprecedented degree with nothing to show for it other than greater spending tabs. Or the bizarrely structured Medicare prescription-drug benefit, the largest entitlement program created since LBJ. Or the simple reality that taxpayers now guarantee some $8 trillion in inscrutable loans to a financial sector that collapsed from inscrutable loans.

Such programs were not in any way foisted on Mr. Bush, the way that welfare reform had been on Bill Clinton; they were signature projects, designed to create a legacy every bit as monumental and inspiring as Laura Bush's global literacy campaign.

The most basic Bush numbers are damning. If increases in government spending matter, then Mr. Bush is worse than any president in recent history. During his first four years in office — a period during which his party controlled Congress — he added a whopping $345 billion (in constant dollars) to the federal budget. The only other presidential term that comes close? Mr. Bush's second term. As of November 2008, he had added at least an additional $287 billion on top of that (and the months since then will add significantly to the bill). To put that in perspective, consider that the spendthrift LBJ added a mere $223 billion in total additional outlays in his one full term.

Nick Gillespie, "Bush Was a Big-Government Disaster: He expanded the state, and the sense that the state is incompetent.", Wall Street Journal, 2009-01-24

QotD: Why men don't like spas

Then there's the overwhelming feeling of disappointment and pointlessness that comes when you get a masseur who doesn't work your soft bits hard enough. You know this from the very first touch when his/her pressure is akin to a tentative stroke of a friend's new puppy. Great, you think. Now I am going to have to lie here for the next hour, with no trousers on, basted like a Christmas turkey, bloody Enya simpering away in my ear, while some failed hairdresser rhythmically tickles away at my flabby parts as if petting a consumptive hamster.

[. . .]

Why don't men know how to spa? Well, we feel awkward, adiposal and clumsy. We feel vaguely absurd, incongruous and, frankly, rather appalled that we have surrendered to that chink in our masculinity that is required to get us through the door of one of these establishments.

If we sign up for treatment at a mixed facility, the experience is never anything less than sweat-inducingly humiliating. The girls on the reception desk appear to be making fun of us as we fill in the health questionnaire, the throwaway sandals are at least four sizes too small, and the gown is comically short in the leg and arm. We don't have the nous to say exactly what we want because we don't want to appear overly expert in such arrant girliness.

It is almost impossible to make things pleasurable for any man who isn't a spoilt, self-serving, over-indulgent Premier League footballer. The environment is skewed towards the type of narcissism that makes most men squirm. We simply do not know the form, and to cover our arses (quite literally, in those shorty gowns), we start to act like nervy, cowed saps, doing as we are told and never asking any questions.

We certainly can't relax. If it's a massage that we are in for, we are concentrating so intently on not farting or entering a state of visible arousal that our bodies tense up like England footballers during a semi-final penalty shootout. That is bad enough if the person doing the massage is a woman. If it's a man's fingers on us, the tension is trebled.

Simon Mills, "Why real men don't like spas: Ill-fitting gowns, whale songs and lavender candles... no wonder many men struggle with the spa experience", TimesOnline, 2009-01-24

QotD: Hot, Flat, and Hypocritical

When some time ago a friend of mine told me that Thomas Friedman's new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, was going to be a kind of environmentalist clarion call against American consumerism, I almost died laughing.

Beautiful, I thought. Just when you begin to lose faith in America's ability to fall for absolutely anything — just when you begin to think we Americans as a race might finally outgrow the lovable credulousness that leads us to fork over our credit card numbers to every half-baked TV pitchman hawking a magic dick-enlarging pill, or a way to make millions on the Internet while sitting at home and pounding doughnuts — along comes Thomas Friedman, porn-stached resident of a positively obscene 114,000 11,400 square foot suburban Maryland mega-monstro-mansion and husband to the heir of one of the largest shopping-mall chains in the world, reinventing himself as an oracle of anti-consumerist conservationism.

Where does a man who needs his own offshore drilling platform just to keep the east wing of his house heated get the balls to write a book chiding America for driving energy inefficient automobiles? Where does a guy whose family bulldozed 2.1 million square feet of pristine Hawaiian wilderness to put a Gap, an Old Navy, a Sears, an Abercrombie and even a motherfucking Foot Locker in paradise get off preaching to the rest of us about the need for a "Green Revolution"? Well, he'll explain it all to you in 438 crisply written pages for just $27.95, $30.95 if you have the misfortune to be Canadian.

I've been unhealthily obsessed with Thomas Friedman for more than a decade now. For most of that time, I just thought he was funny. And admittedly, what I thought was funniest about him was the kind of stuff that only another writer would really care about — in particular his tortured use of the English language. Like George W. Bush with his Bushisms, Friedman came up with lines so hilarious you couldn't make them up even if you were trying — and when you tried to actually picture the "illustrative" figures of speech he offered to explain himself, what you often ended up with was pure physical comedy of the Buster Keaton/Three Stooges school, with whole nations and peoples slipping and falling on the misplaced banana peels of his literary endeavors.

Matt Taibbi, "Flat N All That", New York Press, 2009-01-14

QotD: The Business Cycle

I am not an economist, nor — unlike a half-vast majority of the hairsprayheaded newsies who have somehow lately, miraculously, become overnight experts on all matters economic — do I pretend to be one on TV.

What I am is an individual who has worked hard for forty years in a difficult, exacting, and not terribly rewarding profession, which has nevertheless offered me the opportunity — an expensive one, but worth it — of telling the truth, exactly as I see it, without having to worry about what interests, corporate or otherwise, I might offend. And it seems to me that this is the moment — the very moment — when whatever I have sacrificed for that opportunity will now begin to pay off.

About halfway through those forty years, I made the acquaintance of Robert LeFevre, that great libertarian storyteller and teacher, who showed me (although I had already had suspicions in that direction) that what my generation had been indoctrinated to call the "Business Cyle" of boom and bust throughout American history was actually a government cycle of interference with the economy, followed by disaster, followed — usually — by government's backing off until prosperity restored itself, whereupon the idiotic cycle started over again.

In the 19th century, economic turndowns were called "panics", and from 1776 until 1929, two facts about them were incontrovertible. First, each and every one of them can easily be shown to have been the direct result of some particular stupidity on the part of the federal government. And second, as soon as government withdrew from the part of the economy it had damaged, the economy began to heal itself. Until 1929, no panic had ever lasted longer than about eighteen months. When the big Crash came in '29, and the Franklin Roosevelt regime decided to interfere even more, the resulting Great Depression lasted twelve years.

L. Neil Smith, "Collectivism's Last Stand", Libertarian Enterprise, 2009-01-18

QotD: Bad SF/Fantasy Writing

[Responding to the question "what turns you off in SF/Fantasy reading:] Egregiously bad science. Backgrounds that don't hang together (vampirism should not be ancient, secret and prone to spreading like a virgin field plague. If starship navigators are rare and die after a dozen trips, there should not be a large population of tramp starships. Ideally, one should not equal two and the standard method of landing a spaceship should not be the crash-landing).

The number one thing that turns me off is when it becomes clear that the author considers most humans a waste of valuable meat. See Bova's Titan where it's clear most of the humans in the Saturn system have no productive value, despite being a collection of scientists annoying enough to have been sent almost 10 AU from home, or David Marusek's Mind Over Ship, which includes this little rant:

"So who needs people? People are so much dead weight. They eat up our profits. They produce nothing but pollution and social unrest. They drive us crazy with their pissing and moaning. I think we can all agree that Corporation Earth is in need of a serious downsizing . . ."

James D. Nicoll, posting to the Lois McMaster Bujold mailing list, 2009-01-17

QotD: Next leader of North Korea

Tyrannical dictator, action star (Team America: World Police), and opera theorist Kim Jong Il has reportedly named number-three son his successor to lead the world's worst country. As of press time, it was not immediately clear what the twentysomething Kim Jong Un had done to warrant such punishment.

Nick Gillespie, "Change North Koreans Can Believe In", Hit and Run, 2008-01-15

QotD: Marketing Obama

On that historic evening in November, as Barack Obama definitively made passé the notion that we cannot, the president-elect’s acceptance speech signified a triumph not just for his campaign but for motivational wall décor. Like a Successories catalog made flesh, Obama invoked burning beacons, long roads, steep climbs, and new dawns. He was lofty, he was declamatory, he was as aesthetically challenging as a majestic golf course on a crisp autumn morning. And yet his well-worn rhetoric managed to move multitudes. Could it be that all those corny corporate psalms to Character and Service, the ones hanging in regional sales offices and telemarketing call centers across the nation, have touched us more deeply than we realized?

Greg Beato, "The Successories President: The posterized secret of Obama's success?", Reason, 2009-01-13

QotD: Hamas and civilian casualties

It is commonly said that by storing weapons in mosques and firing rockets and mortars from residential areas and school yards, Hamas is using human shields in Gaza, a war crime. But the truth is really worse than that. Hamas doesn't endanger civilians in hopes that it will deter retaliation; it does so in the hope and expectation that civilians will be killed and wounded.

This tactic is part of a larger strategy to create tragedy and disaster, which the Palestinians have developed into something akin to an industrial process. They build tunnels, but they do not build bomb shelters. They do not, apparently, suspend classes in schools in the midst of bombardments. And Hamas, with the tolerance if not approval of most Gazans, uses schoolyards as launching zones for rockets and mortars. Think about it: is there anything about a schoolyard that makes it a particularly desirable place from which to fire ordnance? No. Hamas uses schools (and mosques, and residential areas generally) in this way in the hope that civilians, especially children, will be killed.

John Hinderaker, "Manufacturing Disaster", Powerline, 2009-01-11

QotD: The Madoff "victims"

If there is anything we have learned from the crisis in the financial sector, it's the urgent need for more regulation. Had federal regulators been more vigilant or wielded greater powers, all this suffering and heartache might have been averted. That's the story we've been told, and it must bring a rare smile to the face of Bernard Madoff.

Madoff was the manager of a Wall Street investment fund that he allegedly confessed to his sons was "one big lie" and "a giant Ponzi scheme." But "giant" fails to capture the scale of his fraud, which may have lost $50 billion, more than the entire gross domestic product of most of the countries on Earth.

Also striking is that his alleged victims were not rubes and simpletons but individuals of exceptional wealth and financial acumen — including various tycoons, as well as managers for banks, pension funds, and hedge funds. Even Madoff's own son, who worked for his father's firm, invested millions of dollars of his own money in the supposedly phony fund.

A Ponzi scheme, as it happens, is not a scam of dizzying complexity. It's the oldest scam in the book. You take money from new investors to pay off previous investors, and you keep doing it until the new infusions can't keep up with the withdrawals. It's about as simple as financial trickery gets.

So if regulators had been paying attention, they would have detected what was going on, right? After all, as one expert noted, Madoff was conspicuously unable to attract a lot of big institutions. "There's no Harvard management, there's no Yale, there's no Penn . . . no State of Texas or Virginia retirement system," James Hedges IV of LJH Global Investments told Fortune magazine.

Why not? "Because when you get to page two of your 30-page due diligence questionnaire," said Hedges, "you've already tripped eight alarms and said, 'I'm out of here.'"

Steve Chapman, "The Empty Case for More Regulation: The Madoff scandal shows why bigger government isn't the answer", Reason Online, 2009-01-08

QotD: The dark science of dark matter

Roughly a decade ago, it was discovered the expansion of the universe is accelerating, not decreasing as expected. This led to the assumption there must be "dark energy" as well as the conjectured "dark matter," because some force must be providing the impetus of the cosmic acceleration. Dark matter, if it exists, is substance in some guise other than stars, planets, nebulae and black holes, and would explain why celestial objects move as if the galaxies contain substantially more mass than can be detected. Dark energy, if it exists, would be roughly the opposite of gravity. Gravity attracts, its effect declining with distance. The conjectured dark energy repels, and increases with distance — the farther the galaxies move apart as the cosmos expands, the more punch dark energy packs, steadily increasing cosmic acceleration. It's just that, um, er, science has only vague indications of what dark matter is and not the slightest clue what dark energy might be. Physics and astronomy departments at leading universities rather cavalierly have embraced an assumption that as much as 96 percent of all mass and energy in existence is dark matter and dark energy, neither of which can be located or explained. We can't locate 96 percent of the universe — but trust us, we're experts!

Gregg Easterbrook, "TMQ: Ministers of defense", ESPN Page Two, 2009-01-06

QotD: How to make a law

The British Government plans to make it illegal to have sex with a prostitute if said tart has been trafficked, or is being controlled. Nor will this crime will be limited to offences committed in the UK — it will apply to what British men get up to wherever in the world they may be.

Now I'm a classically liberal type, and I'm naturally against the criminalisation of something that no society has ever managed to extinguish. But leaving that aside, I think this is a great example of how law is now made. Stir up a fuss, lie repeatedly, change the definitions and then do what you wanted to in the first place anyway. Just as they did with passive smoking and pubs.

Tim Worstall, "Spinning the war on the UK's sex trade: Step one, inflate the size of the problem", The Register 2009-01-04

QotD: Alberto Gonzales, self-described victim

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales actually made John Ashcroft look like the Bush administration's resident civil libertarian. By the time he left office, his zeal for executive power coupled with political ineptitude and general incompetence managed to win him contempt from both the left and the right.

Now Gonzales can't find a publisher for his book, and no one has yet offered him the cushy, high-paying job at a D.C. law firm that high-ranking public officials seem to think they're entitled to upon stepping down.

According to Gonzales, Gonzales is a victim.

Radley Balko, "Sure, Al. A Couple Hundred Tortured Detainees, 100,000+ Iraqi Citizens, the U.S. Constitution, and You", Hit and Run, 2009-01-02

QotD: The Single Most Interesting Day in NFL History

Sunday was the Single Most Interesting Day in NFL History, both for the numerous high points and for the Single Worst Game Ever Played, supplied by the Dallas Cowboys. Before we get to the particulars, let me make sure you know about the player of the day. I speak, of course, of Ramzee Robinson. In the second half at Green Bay, Robinson, a Lions defensive back, was penalized for taunting. The Lions at that point were 0-15 and within sight of attaining the designation they now hold, that of worst NFL team ever. After a Green Bay incompletion, Robinson danced around, pointing at himself and taunting Packers receiver James Jones. A player for the worst-ever NFL team was called for taunting in the game in which that team reached 0-16.

Gregg Easterbrook, "Week 17 gave us the Single Most Interesting Day in NFL History", ESPN Page 2, 2008-12-30

QotD: Seasonal wishes

Chrysler spends $100K on a full-page ad in USA Today thanking American taxpayers for a bailout most of the public opposed, Congress never approved, and that you average taxpayer had no choice but to help fund, lest he go to jail.

Doesn’t exactly come off as heartfelt, does it?

Radley Balko, "Chrysler: Thanks, Suckers.", The Agitator, 2008-12-23

QotD: Wall Street remuneration

Very high pay to Wall Street managers is justified on the grounds that they are financial geniuses with astonishing expertise. Instead it turns out many financial industry managers made basic blunder after basic blunder. The 2008 financial markets crash belies the entire premise of Wall Street — that the people there deserve huge paychecks for incredible skill in finance. Any fool can make money in a rising market by borrowing! But if the rise stops and you're leveraged, you hit the wall. This is the short version of how many Wall Street and hedge fund managers appeared to be "financial geniuses" from 2003 to 2006, then ended up destroying their investors. The financial manager with true expertise knows to avoid bubbles, especially bubbles based on borrowing. Many Wall Street and big-bank managers during the housing bubble were taking wild risks or performing no due diligence —and when the risks blew up, they got to keep their bonuses while investors and stockholders got hosed. At this point, it's totally obvious the system is rigged — lie about returns (or take crazy risks), claim a spectacular year, award yourself a vast bonus. When the scandal hits, so what? You keep the bonuses. TMQ's basic question: Why isn't this considered embezzlement, punishable by law? Financial managers have a fiduciary responsibility to act in their investors' interest. When financial managers instead act against their investors' interest in order to line their own pockets, that isn't just cynical — that sounds like a crime.

Gregg Easterbrook, "Armageddon", Tuesday Morning Quarterback, 2008-12-23

QotD: The extra-traditional holiday season

Almost every civiliztion in human history has had a midwinter holiday — a time when somebody finally said, "I'm sick of this lousy, miserable, depressing weather, let's light some candles, maybe even a bonfire, roast something large, get drunk, and sing and dance!" — and the earliest such holiday that my research has disclosed so far is Zagmuk.

Zagmuk commemorates the triumph of the Babylonian god-king Marduk over the Forces of Chaos (so I guess Marduk was an early incarnation of Maxwell Smart). I suppose that it's possible — no, it's absolutely inevitable — that earlier people, perhaps Homo neanderthalensis, or at least the inhabitants of 8000-year-old Catalhoyuk, beat the old Babylonians to this idea, but for now, what we've got is Marduk and Zagmuk.

So, in whatever manner you choose to celebrate it, a very Happy Zagmuk to you and yours, from me and mine. And because those ancient Babylonians apparently drank beer and wine, we hoist a bowl to you! Like Marduk, may we all overcome the Forces of Chaos in the year to come!

L. Neil Smith, "A Message From The Publisher", Libertarian Enterprise, 2008-12-21

QotD: Sporting Karma?

Someone up there above the cirrus clouds — whether an omnipotent being or an NFL schedule maker in a New York skyscraper — is displaying a sense of humor.

The two opponents positioned to keep the Vikings from their first playoff berth since 2004? The Falcons and Giants, the teams responsible for perhaps the two most embarrassing losses in the history of a franchise known for its momentous losses.

Today, the Vikings face the Falcons, who upset perhaps the most talented Vikings team ever in the 1998 NFC title game in the Metrodome, in perhaps the most statistically improbable loss in franchise history.

Jim Souhan, "Just how far will the Vikings' culture change take them?: The Vikings have games remaining against the Falcons and Giants, teams that should remind fans of how things used to be around here", Star-Tribune, 2008-12-21

QotD: Perfume

Most people don't realize just how intensely personal scent is. It interacts with the chemicals in your skin, so perfume that smells divine on one person (or in the bottle) can smell horrid on another. I have a friend who swears by the Philosophy line of scents, which make me smell like I've been ripening for decades in a nursing home.

Megan McArdle, "Holiday Gift Guide: Girl Stuff", Asymmetrical Information, 2008-12-17

QotD: Conservative promises

I'd say Harper is governing like a Liberal — except that, the last time they were in power, the Liberals eliminated the deficit. (Sorry, folks, but the truth hurts.)

Damian Penny, "Fiscal Conservatism, R.I.P.", Daimnation!, 2008-12-19

QotD: Inventing even more unconstitutional Presidential powers

Even Americans whose knowledge of the legislative process is limited to the "I'm Just a Bill" episode of Schoolhouse Rock know about the veto: If Congress approves legislation the president doesn't like, he can refuse to sign it, in which case the law can be enacted only by a two-thirds vote of each chamber. President Bush's plan to aid the auto industry relies on a more obscure maneuver: If Congress rejects a bill the president likes, he can act as if the vote went the other way.

This maneuver, unlike the veto, is illegal by definition, not to mention unconstitutional, violating the separation of powers and the rule of law. But it is business as usual for Bush, who has shown no compunction about ignoring the law when it prohibits him from doing what he considers necessary in response to what he considers an emergency.

Jacob Sullum, Illegal Lending Practices: Bush's plan to help carmakers is not authorized by law", Reason Online, 2008-12-17

QotD: Modern Superstitions

A new Harris poll finds that 28 percent of you believe in witches and 40 percent of the public — including 46 percent of women — believe that ghosts are hovering in the so-called "real" world. Over 20 percent of you have claimed to have actually witnessed a poltergeist.

I, too, may believe in miracles (like 73 percent of you) to rationalize the haphazard existence of mankind. I may believe in Beelzebub (61 percent) because human cruelty could never go on without supernatural prodding. And I believe in hell (59 percent) because some people deserve to fry. I get it.

I get it because I was born under the 11th astrological sign in the Zodiac, Aquarius. According to experts, Aquarians are, among many other wonderful things, "tolerant," "opinionated," "far-sighted," "revolutionary" . . . and so on. Our character and personality quirks are predetermined by a study of random stars and planets that happen to be detectable from Earth.

Believe it or not, 20 percent of the American public believes in this gibberish. And, trust me, they will not rest until Dennis Kucinich is president.

In fact, with troubling economic times upon us, conspiracy theories, peculiar beliefs and harebrained philosophies will only flourish.

Gita Johar, a professor at the Columbia Business School, recently explained to Wired magazine that increasingly, once-normal rational adults are turning to psychics for guidance. "You have an illusion then that you can then control the outcome," she explains. "People want the illusion of control."

David Harsanyi, "I don't trust you people", Denver Post, 2008-12-16

QotD: Che Chic

Being a sunny-side-up kinda guy, the sight of college students, protesters, and/or retarded celebrities consuming Che Guevara-branded merchandise [. . .] makes me laugh more than seethe, not least because of what Cuban jazz great Paquito D'Rivera observes [. . .] There's something hilariously perverse about a violent anti-capitalist becoming a Western marketing icon. With rare exception, I don't expect much in the way of historical knowledge from Che-shirters, not least because few have been to the island-prison themselves.

Ah, but some have, and still retain their jock-sniffing totalitarian apologia, and this is what makes my brown eyes blue. A decade ago I went to a secretive gathering at a house in Havana, where rebellious youth sat around indulging in the disapproved and even dangerous behavior of . . . listening to the Beatles. It was an underground society of sorts, where the kids danced, sang, and gaped at the wonders of the G-sixth chord. None of them could understand what kind of evil, micro-managing jerkoff would criminalize "She Loves You" . . . well, except for the American woman who was nice enough to bring me there, a graying hippie named Karen Wald. Yeah, Castro might have gone a bit too far, she said, but it was an "understandable" defense in the face of "Western cultural imperialism."

Matt Welch, "But if You Go Carrying Pictures of Chairman Mao", Hit and Run, 2008-12-11

QotD: A smoky anniversary

Last week marked the 10th anniversary of the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) that resolved state lawsuits against the leading tobacco manufacturers. The occasion prompted attempts by the agreement's supporters to portray it as a great "public health" victory, as opposed to a government-backed conspiracy in restraint of trade that enriched trial lawyers, protected Big Tobacco from competition, and brought state treasuries more than $200 billion in found money, all at the expense of smokers, usually portrayed as victims of the companies that benefited from the deal. A good example of MSA boosterism was provided by syndicated columnist Marie Cocco, who opined that the public-spirited lawyers behind the deal have helped "save millions of lives and billions in health costs." Let's ignore the fact that discouraging people from smoking does not prevent deaths so much as delay them, and that increasing the ranks of longer-lived nonsmokers actually raises total spending on health care instead of reducing it. Is Cocco right to argue that the MSA "may well be the most significant advance in the campaign to curtail tobacco use since the 1964 surgeon general's report"?

Cocco notes that per capita cigarette consumption has fallen by about 28 percent since the MSA was signed in 1998. That compares to a decline of about 22 percent in the previous decade. Cocco attributes the acceleration of the downward trend to the MSA's restrictions on cigarette advertising and promotion, which included bans on billboards and on merchandise embossed with cigarette logos. I am skeptical that advertising has such a powerful effect on total consumption of cigarettes (as opposed to brand share), and Cocco offers no evidence to back up her thesis.

Tellingly, Cocco fails to mention that during this same period state and local cigarette taxes were raised over and over again. The one aspect of the MSA than can most plausibly be credited with discouraging consumption, a price increase of about 45 cents a pack that the tobacco companies used to cover their payments to the states, pales in comparison with the increase in the average state cigarette tax, which rose from about 35 cents in 1998 to $1.19 this year. Meanwhile, smoking bans have proliferated throughout the country and become increasingly strict. Cocco notes this development, which had nothing to do with the MSA, but still clings to the notion that getting rid of Marlboro billboards and Joe Camel T-shirts deserves the lion's share of the credit for reducing cigarette consumption.

Jacob Sullum, "When Paternalists Fall in Love With Greedy Lawyers", Hit and Run 2008-12-03

QotD: Modern Culture

Global imagination, like global climate, seems to have cycles — natural, man-made, or whatever. Sometimes what people imagine for the future is bogged down in the literal — call it "blogged" for short. The last thousand years of the Roman Empire, for example, were no great shakes. The Romans had all the engineering necessary to start an industrial revolution. But they preferred to have toga parties and let slaves do all the work.

The Chinese had gunpowder but failed to arm their troops with guns. They possessed the compass but didn't go much of anywhere. They invented paper, printing, and a written form of their language, but hardly anyone in China was taught to read.

And here we are in 2008. Name an avant-garde painter. Nope, dead. Nope, dead. Yep, Julian Schnabel is what I came up with too. But it's been a quarter of a century since he was pasting busted plates on canvas. He's making movies now. And movies are famously not any good anymore. Name a great living composer. Say "Andrew Lloyd Webber" and I'll force you to sit through Cats and Starlight Express back-to-back. Theater is revivals and revivals of revivals and stuff like musicals made out of old Kellogg's Rice Krispies commercials, with Nathan Lane as "Snap." More modern poetry is written than read. Modern architecture leaks and the builders left their plumb bobs at home. The most prominent contemporary art form is one that is completely unimaginative (or is supposed to be): the memoir.

To top it all off, we have just experienced perhaps the greatest technological advance in the history of humans. And what are we using the Internet for? To sell one another 8-track tapes on eBay and tell complete strangers on Facebook the location of all our tattoos. And, apparently, to tell ourselves what to do with the groceries we just bought.

P.J. O'Rourke, "Future Schlock", The Atlantic, 2008-12

QotD: The long, slow, lingering death of science fiction

Since its inception around the mid-19th century, SF had always been the literature of promise. It told stories of a universe that was knowable and lawful, in which rational human beings were capable of applying what they learned from it to make life better for everyone. For the most part, the central element was the advance of technology. But the driving ideology was almost always some form or another of socialism.

As we all know, socialism failed. At the height of its popularity it caused widespread starvation and deprivation, wrecking whole economies wherever it was applied. It inspired childish, petulant dictators — idealogues who were eager to do anything except give up an idea that didn't work — to put millions against the wall and send millions more to places like Siberia because the people couldn't (the dictators said "wouldn't") gladly transmogrify themselves into New Collectivist Mankind, or whatever the slogan was at the time. In the end, it finally destroyed the most enormous empire history had ever known.

With every failure of socialism, the promises made by socialist- inspired SF rang more hollow until, sometime in the late 1950s, the genre tried to turn itself inside-out, becoming skeptical of science and technology — instead of junking its broken ideology — becoming increasingly inner-directed and "psychological" as the real world grew more unbearable for disappointed leftists to look upon. Sliding into something resembling nihilism, SF writers lost interest in a future that — however else it might turn out — would not be socialist. And as SF writers lost interest in the future, readers lost interest in SF.

The sweeping nature of this change may have been difficult for the average consumer to notice at first. As literary SF was dying a slow, agonized death on the racks, SF in the movies and on TV appeared to flourish. But it was a narrowly-defined kind of SF, wedged between the anachronistic feudalism of Star Wars and the paramilitary fascism of Star Trek without any room remaining for individuality, let alone individualism.

Exactly like the dictators who were willing to sacrifice millions, rather than give up their precious but unworkable ideology, America's northeastern publishing establishment was willing to let SF die out, rather than give up the socialism of its youth and embrace a new philosophical and political viewpoint that offered real hope for the future.

L. Neil Smith, "New Maps of Bulgaria", Libertarian Enterprise, 2008-11-23

QotD: Shooting Zombies

Seriously, man. I'm doing them a favor. They're zombies, after all. It's not like they have rich internal lives. The time for book clubs and PBS has passed for them, you know? And anyway, there's something oddly soothing about going to a high place with a scoped rifle and picking off their shambling asses. I wouldn't say it's a zen thing (it seems inadvisable to use the word "zen" with anything involving firearms), but it does get you into a contemplative frame of mind. At least until the zombies figure out where you are and swarm you. But until then: Bliss. I can't think of anything better.

Oh wait, I can: If they were Nazi zombies. Yes.

John Scalzi, "Man, If Blowing the Heads Off of Zombies With a Scoped Rifle is Wrong, I Don’t Ever Want to Be Right", Whatever, 2008-11-19

QotD: Of course they know what they're doing . . . we hope

Remember when Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson warned us that the economy was about to collapse unless Congress immediately authorized him to spend $700 billion on "troubled assets" held by banks? Remember when he said banks would never lend again as long as they remained saddled with these bad investments?

You do remember? So it's not just me. I was beginning to think I had dreamed the whole thing, because a month and a half later the Treasury Department has yet to buy any troubled assets, and last week Paulson said it had no plans to do so. Instead the department is using its $700 billion to buy the banks themselves, which I could almost swear Paulson said was a bad idea a couple of months ago. Evidently the Bush administration is still calling the effort the Troubled Asset Relief Program for the sake of the acronym, which suggests a cover for something unsightly or embarrassing.

Jacob Sullum, "Everything bad is good again", Reason Online, 2008-11-19

QotD: Toxic fans

Excessive praise is even worse when it is unwanted praise, or what specialists refer to as dissonant encomium. James B. Stewart, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning articles about Mike Milken and Ivan Boesky led to his 1992 best seller "Den of Thieves," said in an e-mail message that he once upset his publisher by refusing to go on Rush Limbaugh's show after the talk-show host heaped praise on "Blood Sport," his 1996 book about Bill Clinton. This is like having Phil Gramm describe you as being even zanier than Al Gore.

The dark side of flattery, according to P. J. O'Rourke, is attracting a fan base you may not want. Once described as "the funniest writer in America" by Time and The Wall Street Journal, O'Rourke suspects that this raised his profile among libertarians, who for some reason think of themselves as a pack of wild cutups.

"There's a nutty side to libertarians, starting with the Big Girl, Ayn Rand, and going straight through Alan Greenspan," O'Rourke told me over the phone. "When I go to Cato Institute functions, there's always a group of guys who look like they cut their own hair and get their mothers to dress them, with lots of buttons about legalizing heroin and demanding a return to the gold standard. The institute has tried to weed them out over the years, but they still turn up at the bigger events. As soon as I see them coming toward me, my heart sinks."

Joe Queenan, "Enough With the Sweet Talk", New York Times, 2008-11-14

QotD: Bailing out the Big 3

It is all a reminder that the biggest threat to a healthy economy is not the socialists of campaign lore. It's C.E.O.'s. It's politically powerful crony capitalists who use their influence to create a stagnant corporate welfare state.

If ever the market has rendered a just verdict, it is the one rendered on G.M. and Chrysler. These companies are not innocent victims of this crisis. To read the expert literature on these companies is to read a long litany of miscalculation. Some experts mention the management blunders, some the union contracts and the legacy costs, some the years of poor car design and some the entrenched corporate cultures.

There seems to be no one who believes the companies are viable without radical change. A federal cash infusion will not infuse wisdom into management. It will not reduce labor costs. It will not attract talented new employees. As Megan McArdle of The Atlantic wittily put it, "Working for the Big Three magically combines vast corporate bureaucracy and job insecurity in one completely unattractive package."

In short, a bailout will not solve anything — just postpone things. If this goes through, Big Three executives will make decisions knowing that whatever happens, Uncle Sam will bail them out — just like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In the meantime, capital that could have gone to successful companies and programs will be directed toward companies with a history of using it badly.

David Brooks, "Bailout to Nowhere", New York Times, 2008-11-14

QotD: The Presidential power-grab

If there’s one thing defenders of civil liberties know, it's that assaults on constitutional freedoms are bipartisan. Just as constitutional darkness didn't first fall with the arrival in the Oval Office of George W. Bush, the shroud will not lift with his departure and the entry of President Barack Obama.

As atrocious as the Bush record on civil liberties has been, there's no more eager and self-righteous hand reaching out to the Bill of Rights to drop it into the shredder than that of a liberal intent on legislating freedom. Witness the great liberal drive to criminalize expressions of hate and impose fierce punitive enhancements if the criminal has been imprudent enough to perpetrate verbal breaches of sexual or ethnic etiquette while bludgeoning his victim to death.

No doubt the conservatives who cheered Bush on as he abrogated ancient rights and stretched the powers of his office to unseen limits would have shrieked if a Democrat had taken such liberties. But now Obama will be entitled to the lordly prerogatives Bush established.

Alexander Cockburn, "A Long Train of Abuses", The American Conservative, 2008-11-17

QotD: Canada's largest hate-mongering group

Who is Canada's largest "hate group", as measured by the number of anti-Semitic, anti-gay, anti-black and pro-Nazi comments published on the Internet?

As I've pointed out before, it's none other than the taxpayers' own Canadian Human Rights Commission.

It is official CHRC policy for their employees to join neo-Nazi groups, and go online in full neo-Nazi drag, spewing filthy venom that would make Joseph Goebbels proud. You can see a few examples here.

This, of course, is being done in the name of human rights.

It's also why the CHRC is currently under investigation by the RCMP and the Privacy Commissioner — because in one case, they actually hacked into a private citizen's Internet account to cover their tracks as they went out surfing as Nazis.

Ezra Levant, "Canada's free speech enemies to lay Remembrance Day wreath", National Post: Full Comment, 2008-11-10

QotD: The wasted Conservative opportunity

Let us bend over and kiss our ass goodbye. Our 28-year conservative opportunity to fix the moral and practical boundaries of government is gone — gone with the bear market and the Bear Stearns and the bear that's headed off to do you-know-what in the woods on our philosophy.

An entire generation has been born, grown up, and had families of its own since Ronald Reagan was elected. And where is the world we promised these children of the Conservative Age? Where is this land of freedom and responsibility, knowledge, opportunity, accomplishment, honor, truth, trust, and one boring hour each week spent in itchy clothes at church, synagogue, or mosque? It lies in ruins at our feet, as well it might, since we ourselves kicked the shining city upon a hill into dust and rubble.

[. . .]

In how many ways did we fail conservatism? And who can count that high? Take just one example of our unconserved tendency to poke our noses into other people's business: abortion. Democracy — be it howsoever conservative — is a manifestation of the will of the people. We may argue with the people as a man may argue with his wife, but in the end we must submit to the fact of being married. Get a pro-life friend drunk to the truth-telling stage and ask him what happens if his 14-year-old gets knocked up. What if it's rape? Some people truly have the courage of their convictions. I don't know if I'm one of them. I might kill the baby. I will kill the boy.

[. . .]

Our impeachment of President Clinton was another example of placing the wrong political emphasis on personal matters. We impeached Clinton for lying to the government. To our surprise the electorate gave us cold comfort. Lying to the government: It's called April 15th. And we accused Clinton of lying about sex, which all men spend their lives doing, starting at 15 bragging about things we haven't done yet, then on to fibbing about things we are doing, and winding up with prevarications about things we no longer can do.

P.J. O'Rourke, "We Blew It", The Weekly Standard, 2008-11-17

QotD: Hyper-inflated expectations

Being a libertarian, I naturally think that people are too optimistic about the government. But there were people on CNN declaring that Obama was going to lower the price of gasoline and pay their mortgage if they couldn't afford it, lower their tax bill and raise their wages, and presumably, make them taller, smarter, and get the chickweed out of their hair. I'm not exaggerating: there were voters who seemed to think that about three weeks after Obama took office, all their budget problems would be solved. Not that Obama would eventually make things better, or help them get past the rough spots; they were expecting an immediate influx of really quite a lot of money, as well as a rapid and permanent increase in base wages and housing prices.

I don't recall Republicans engaging in this kind of magical thinking in 2000. They, too, seemed to have an unreasonable belief that George Bush was going to improve America a great deal (unreasonable even before 9/11), but as I recall, this was concentrated on intangibles like restoring honor to the white house, not putting an extra $3,000 in everyone's pockets.

I was eighteen when Clinton was elected, and I don't remember if this sort of thing is simply typical of Democratic victories. But the expectations I saw in those "man on the street interviews" were not fulfillable by any president--at least, not until Santa agrees to stand for election.

Megan McArdle, "Things can only get better . . .", Asymmetrical Information, 2008-11-07

QotD: Voting and retribution

Listening to my complaints about Obama, a friend of mine in New York asked what alternative I had to recommend her. Since in New York the split for Obama-Biden is roughly 65-29 I told her it didn't matter. She could write in the straight Wiccan ticket if she felt so inclined. (Not a bad platform either, as she duly reminded me: "Do as you will, as long as it harms none.") It wouldn't make any difference, any more than it would in California, where you can vote for Nader or Barr or McKinney and Obama is going to win regardless. In most states in the Union you can write in the Bertie Wooster/Jeeves ticket, and even without your vote Obama-Biden will canter home. So get out there and have fun and don’t feel excessively burdened by responsibility to History — always a left-wing failing.

And wouldn't Barr be the first mustachioed occupant of the White House since Teddy Roosevelt? Even if you don’t like the man, vote the mustache! This would be change we can see. Does that phrase have a vaguely familiar ring? It was what LBJ used to advise his staff during the Great Society build-up: "You've gotta give them change they can see." Meaning bridges, roads, new parks. Apparently the Obama pre-transition team is studying the early days of the New Deal and Great Society programs as thematic precursors for their initial two years — before they lose one house of Congress, I suppose. I like freshman Montana Senator John Tester’s notion of change we’d like to see. Tester said people "want to see the executives that drove Wall Street into the ground in orange suits picking up cans along the side of the road." He's got a hugely popular reception for that thought.

If the new Obama administration has got any sense at all, it'll start planning a series of show trials of the ci-devant Masters of the Universe, now delightedly fingering the billions handed them by Hank Paulson and the US Congress. If they get a veto proof majority the ground work could start in the Senate, in a committee armed with subpoena power. If not, in some Partisan Commission, taking testimony around the country. Or both. This is the moment to fix in the popular mind for the next couple of generations exactly who are the malefactors of great wealth along with their intellectual courtiers. Stake out the battlefield, otherwise the enemy will stake it out for you. For sure, it would be divisive. Division and unity go arm in arm.

Alexander Cockburn, "Change You Can See", Counterpunch, 2008-10-31

QotD: Rationalizing your vote

I'm probably going to vote for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) this year, and my reason is particularly indefensible. It's a straightforward case of reverse racism. For most of my life (beginning, I think, with a broadcast of that paean to racial harmony Brian's Song), I have figured that America should have a black president, and that if such a candidate ever came along who wasn't a complete disaster, I'd vote for him. That moment has arrived, yet it's full of irony: Usually I throw away my vote by betting on some third-party forlorn hope, but this year Obama's lock on California makes my vote especially superfluous and irrelevant.

And the candidate himself comes quite close to being a complete disaster. Obama has taken positions and even — with the slight peevishness of a man who knows he's been singled out by destiny and doesn't see much point in going through the usual channels — documented and supported them. To the extent we can piece together a portrait of the candidate, it's awful. He's a strident anti-trader and industrial-era dead-ender, persuaded that protecting decades-gone jobs in the Midwest is a national responsibility. He will try to enact some version of universal health care. On most issues where he's not worse than Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — foreign policy, wiretapping, finance — he's just as bad. He may or may not be friendly with too many anti-American jackholes, but he's definitely too friendly with jackholes in general. His budget projections are fanciful. Worst of all, for at least the next two years he will almost certainly have the support of the majority party in Congress.

And yet in a dream, in a Nixon-era fog of progressive uplift, I'm ready to vote for him. And I'm pretty sure my reasons for voting for Obama are no dumber than your reasons for voting for whomever you're voting for.

Tim Cavanaugh, "Don't Vote As I Vote: Everybody's got a reason for voting, and they all stink", Reason Online, 2008-10-28

QotD: Political meddling

[. . .] a worrying trend about the direction America is poised to go during the coming Obamaverse. You might think that the Fannie/Freddie debacle would forever sear the eyeballs of those dreamers who aim to improve society by forcing private or semi-private companies to redirect their activities away from the bottom line and toward the desires of various interest groups, but then you'd be hopelessly naive. Mortgages and endowments ain't the half of it Everywhere you see government contracting you see a fantastical variety of social engineering projects. There are any number of colossal pension funds being tweaked as we speak to fit the political goals of people whose track record with managing money has been, shall we say, suboptimal. In the ongoing financial-market crisis, such politically correct investing may contribute to an awful lot of carnage.

Matt Welch, "You Will Be Mine You Will Be Mine, All Mine", Hit and Run, 2008-10-27

QotD: Motorbikes

What I'm trying to say here is that, yes, bikes and cars are both forms of transport, but they have nothing in common. Imagining that you can ride a bike because you can drive a car is like imagining you can swallow-dive off a 90ft cliff because you can play table tennis.

However, many people are making the switch because they imagine that having a small motorcycle will be cheap. It isn't. Sure, the 125cc Vespa I tried can be bought for £3,499, but then you will need a helmet (£300), a jacket (£500), some Freddie Mercury trousers (£100), shoes (£130), a pair of Kevlar gloves (£90), a coffin (£1,000), a headstone (£750), a cremation (£380) and flowers in the church (£200).

In other words, your small 125cc motorcycle, which has no boot, no electric windows, no stereo and no bloody heater even, will end up costing more than a Volkswagen Golf. That said, a bike is much cheaper to run than a car. In fact, it takes only half a litre of fuel to get from your house to the scene of your first fatal accident. Which means that the lifetime cost of running your new bike is just 50p.

Jeremy Clarkson, "Vespa GTV Navy 125", TimesOnline, 2008-10-19

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QotD: Bailing out the ethanol speculators

The federal government's ethanol policies have driven up the price of corn [. . .] But rather than reforming the policies that have caused a spike in corn prices, the federal government wants to bail out ethanol producers who speculated on the price of corn. Only the U.S. Department of Agriculture could dream up a policy like this. [. . .] The high price of corn has had a ripple effect over our entire economy. Instead of trying to bail out every industry hurt by it, the federal government needs to take a serious look at reforming our ethanol policies.

Rep. Jeff Flake, quoted by Mike Sunnucks, "Flake blasts proposed ethanol bailout", Phoenix Business Journal, 2008-10-22

QotD: The negativity race

In part, the hypocrisy stems from the sincere conviction that one's own hatred and fear are justified because the other side really is evil: Palin would usher in an American Taliban; Obama is a friend to terrorists. (By the way, it is appalling that so many mainstream liberals were willing to embrace the unrepentant Ayers — but it's hardly better for mainstream conservatives to "pal around" with Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy, who once plotted to murder his fellow Americans and more recently counseled gun owners to shoot federal agents in the head.)

Many people who are tired of the mudslinging can't wait for the election to be over. But Nov. 4 is unlikely to bring much relief. The dogs of war are loose, and they won't be easy to leash. If, as seems likely, Obama is elected, a large number of people on the right will see him as a stealth radical who won thanks to media bias and rampant voter fraud. If McCain pulls off a surprise upset, at least as many people on the left will blame racism, Republican dirty tricks or both—and some will regard the results as proof that the right-wing cabal behind Bush will never let go of power. Either way, a substantial minority of Americans will see themselves as living under an illegitimate and evil regime.

And that's more frightening than the economic crisis.

Cathy Young, "The Campaign Turns Nasty: American voters deserve better than this vicious squabble", Reason Online, 2008-10-22

QotD: Orwelling Orwell

It is not an accident these [George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm] have disappeared down the memory hole. The Establishment has decided it is more important for you to feel empowered than for you to be empowered.

Nick Packwood, "An unbroken line", Ghost of a Flea, 2008-10-21

QotD: That's gonna leave a mark

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez mocked George W. Bush as a "comrade" on Wednesday, saying the U.S. president was a hard-line leftist for his government's intervention of major private banks in the U.S. financial crisis.

Chavez, who calls capitalism an evil and ex-Cuban leader Fidel Castro his mentor, ridiculed Bush for his plan for the federal government to take equity in American banks despite the U.S. right-wing's criticism of Venezuelan nationalizations.

"Bush is to the left of me now," Chavez told an audience of international intellectuals debating the benefits of socialism. "Comrade Bush announced he will buy shares in private banks."

"Reporting by Patricia Rondon; Writing by Saul Hudson; Editing by Anthony Boadle", "Chavez says 'Comrade Bush' turns left in crisis", Reuters, 2008-10-15

QotD: Libertarians are not Conservatives

I think libertarians must come out directly, staunchly, entirely, and frequently against racism, sexism, gay bashing, immigrant bashing, and all the other tawdry aspects of the so-called conservative movement. I think we have to stand up and say that if you are a racist, you are not a libertarian, if you are a sexist, you are not a libertarian, if you are against equal freedom for gays, the transgendered, the polyamorous, you are not a libertarian, if you discriminate against people because of their choice of religion, you are not a libertarian, if you think people from other countries should be rejected because of their choices in clothing, culture, religion, or behavior, you are not a libertarian.

I don't mind saying that I can work with conservatives on common causes. I don't mind saying that I have met, gotten to know, and worked with some racists. I am exceedingly uncomfortable with people who are racist, sexist, religious bigots, anti-immigrant, xenophobic, or homophobic. But I can work while uncomfortable, whether it is sawing a tree branch while forty feet in the air, eating goat eyeball stew because I was in Yemen and it was "what's for dinner," or finishing a writing project on time with a 54-hour "all nighter." I can be uncomfortable and get the job done. And if finding extremely bizarre people and working with them is the only way to obtain smaller government and more freedom, now, I'm willing to do it.

But I won't ever make the mistake of considering conservatives to be libertarians. They are not. They can talk a game about freedom for white people, they can make a pretense about constitutional government for the Christians, and they can mount a patrol against swarthy-complected persons coming across the border and claim it is all about property rights for ranchers along the border, but I don't have to choose to believe it.

Jim Davidson, "Why I Am Not a Conservative", Libertarian Enterprise, 2008-10-12

QotD: The crisis, in perspective

So. We are not in a depression. We are not even, so far as anyone knows, in a recession. And while the rest of the world's financial system dissolves in panic, Canada remains a notable island of stability. We do not have an emergency on our hands. What we have is a nasty downdraft in the stock market — one that is reflective of a deeper crisis, to be sure, but a crisis not of our making.

Is a 35% drop in the stock market (from its June peak) a crisis in itself? No it is not. The stock market does not owe you a living. It's down 35% from four months ago, but it was up 50% in the three years before that (see chart). The present "crisis" has taken prices on the TSE all the way back to where they were in the dark days of 2005 — when they had just finished climbing 50% in two years. Think back to that time. You were rich! You were happy! You were counting your money!

Maybe you should have sold then. But you didn't, because you wanted more. Now you're paying the price. You've given up three years of gains. But you're still up 50% from where you were five years ago. And, if you're sensible, you'll make up for not selling then by buying now. Those who were on the buy side on October 19, 1987 made a killing in the months that followed.

Not willing to risk it? Fine. Just sit tight. Worried about your retirement? If you're anywhere under 55, you'll be fine. You don't need the money for 10 or 15 years. Stocks will have more than recouped their losses by then (at a compound annual growth rate of 5%, you double your money every 14 years). If you're over 55 — what are you doing in the stock market?

Andrew Coyne, "The only thing they have to fear", Macleans.ca/blogs, 2008-10-08

QotD: Europe's under-regulated market?

As European stock markets tank, the Irish government guarantees bank deposits, the Benelux countries nationalize Fortis bank, Germany bails out Hypo Real Estate Holdings, and Denmark also guarantees bank deposits and dismally so forth, the question arises: Who knew that Europe, of all places, was so under-regulated? Or maybe de-regulation is not the chief cause for the outbreak of financial chaos? Just wondering.

Ronald Bailey, "Europe Under-Regulated Too?", Hit and Run, 2008-10-06

QotD: Bush Administration: Special Victims Unit

I guess fighting one elective war isn't enough for the Bush administration. Or the Senate. Or the media.

But it's pretty clear that the White House, helped by a codependent Congress and media, has yet again manufactured a consensus for massive intervention. The last time they managed to pull this off, of course, the United States invaded Iraq. And that has worked out so well that they've decided to start a brand extension or spin-off series: Intervening massively into the economy. The bailout package as Bush Administration: Special Victims Unit.

Think about it and the parallels are disturbing: a high-ranking, respectable, above-the-fray cabinet member working the ropes to achieve bipartisan cooperation; a pliable Congress where appeals to patriotism always trump appeals to principle (sadly, those two things are almost always construed as oppositional); and a media that is fueling the fire (the dread MSM's role in spreading the Bush admin case for war has been pretty well-documented; in terms of the bailout, the most hysterical champions for intervention have been in the print and TV press). Time magazine's next cover story, I learned watching Morning Joe this AM on MSNBC, is actually an essay on "The New Hard Times" and compares our current day to those of The Great Depression. Ominous parallel or coincidence: In the Depression, people formed lines for free soup; today, people form lines to . . . buy iPhones?

Nick Gillespie, "The Iraq War, but This Time as Economic Pearl Harbor", Hit and Run, 2008-10-02

QotD: Redefining "market failure"

In an interview with The Los Angeles Times editorial board last December, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson made clear that he defined "market failure" as any instance in which investors, including home owners, lost money. In discussing various grand plans to buoy the economy, Paulson said, "What we're doing is avoiding a market failure that would have forced housing values down in a way that was not in the investors' interest, and in a way that the market wasn't intended to work."

You can read more of that exchange here, where it's reprinted in a recent reason column by Tim Cavanaugh. It's a pretty stunning and open admission of how Paulson conceives his job. Basically, his job is to maintain or increase prices, period. He doesn't want to oversee a market that acts as a discovery process because, as Dr. Zaius, the patron saint of all great Platonic experts, could tell you, "You may not like what you find." Indeed, you might find that you misunderestimated what people think your crap is worth (has Paulson, one wonders, ever gone to a garage sale, that ultimate testing ground of the subjective theory of value?).

So Paulson wants to socialize losses by the investing class with his economic PATRIOT Act, a hasty, hurried, and not-clearly-warranted piece of legislation that will somehow manage to change everything without addressing basic incentives in the financial sector (other than underscoring the idea that the American economy is too big to fail, so the feds will oddly bail it out in the name of capitalism).

Nick Gillespie, "The Fearsome Fear of a Looming Recession", Hit and Run, 2008-10-01

QotD: Don't panic (yet)

No matter how many times you'll hear it said over the next several awful days in Washington, this is not a binary choice between Henry Paulson's re-regulatory bailout and Great Depression 2.0. The 1930s will never happen again, thanks to a whole host of innovations and insights over the past seven decades. And even though the current mortgage-backed securities crisis is undeniably beginning to leak out from Wall Street, I'll reserve the kind of panic Bush seems eager to foment until maybe the economy actually stops growing, unemployment actually gets within shouting distance of Reagan-era levels, and the stock market does something scarier than fluctuate a whole lot.

As the participants in our June 2008 roundtable on the economy (including Donald Boudreaux, Ron Paul, and Megan McArdle) repeatedly pointed out, the one thing that may speed and deepen a so-far-nonexistent recession into something worse is the same kind federal overreaction that put the "great" in the Great Depression in the first place. I would have thought we'd all learned our lessons since then, but tonight's speech really hit home that it's no longer safe to take for granted any market literacy whatsoever.

Matt Welch, "The Four-Paragraph White Flag", Hit and Run, 2008-09-24

QotD: Cruise ships

I have never been on a cruise ship, but I'm intrigued by the concept. I enjoy travel, but I'm not so sure I enjoy traveling. My favorite travel generally involves sitting around somewhere new and reading, and generally there's an awful lot of fuss and bother required just to be able to sit and read among majestic glaciers or ancient Mayan ruins.

So you can see why the cruise ship model compels. It's not so much going places as going to a single place, and then that place goes places. It is travel without movement, a Zen koan with a seafood buffet.

Lore Sjöberg, "Silliest Cruises for Seafaring Geeks", Wired, 2008-09-24

QotD: The invisible (back)hand

The hidden hand did well this month punishing stupidity. But libertarians committed to free markets, not corporate oligarchs, must pause to consider the need for field-leveling regulation. More precisely, we should ask whether there was sufficient enforcement of reasonable restraints already in place. We need Republicans to stand against excessive tinkering in markets, of course. But my modest retirement fund may be safer with Democratic regulators in charge than rogue elephants.

Terry Michael, "The Libertarian Case for Obama: Seven potential upsides to a hope-monger presidency", Hit and Run, 2008-09-19

QotD: The state-supported wing of Feminism

Mrs. Palin's marriage actually makes her a terrific role model. One of the best choices a woman can make if she wants a career and a family is to pick a partner who will be able to take on equal or primary responsibility for child-rearing. Our culture still harbors a lingering perception that such men are less than manly — and who better to smash that stereotype than "First Dude" Todd Palin?

Nevertheless, when Sarah Palin offered a tribute to her husband in her Republican National Convention speech, New York Times columnist Judith Warner read this as a message that she is "subordinate to a great man." Perhaps the message was a brilliant reversal of the old saw that behind every man is a great woman: Here, the great woman is out in front and the great man provides the support. Isn't that real feminism?

Not to Ms. Marsh, who insists that feminism must demand support for women from the government. In this worldview, advocating more federal subsidies for institutional day care is pro-woman; advocating tax breaks or regulatory reform that would help home-based care providers — preferred by most working parents — is not. Trying to legislate away the gender gap in earnings (which no self-respecting economist today blames primarily on discrimination) is feminist. Expanding opportunities for part-time and flexible jobs is "the Republican Party line."

I disagree with Sarah Palin on a number of issues, including abortion rights. But when the feminist establishment treats not only pro-life feminism but small-government, individualist feminism as heresy, it writes off multitudes of women.

Of course, being a feminist role model is not part of the vice president's job description, and there are legitimate questions about Mrs. Palin's qualifications. And yet, like millions of American women — and men — I find her can-do feminism infinitely more liberated than the what-can-the-government-do-for-me brand espoused by the sisterhood.

Cathy Young, "Why Feminists Hate Sarah Palin", Opinion Journal, 2008-09-15

QotD: The Bill of Rights

I don't think many people realize it any more — many of those who do are inclined to lie about it and attempt to cover it up — but the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, commonly known as the Bill of Rights, were written not just to protect us from the would-be kings and dictators in government, but to protect us, as well, from democracy.

On both sides of the Federalist-Antifederalist split, most of the Founding Fathers expressed hatred and fear of the notion of "absolute democracy" in which the highest law was "vox populi, vox dei" ("The voice of the people is the voice of God."), an ancient proverb that novelist Robert A. Heinlein, an unusually astute observer of history and human nature, translated as "How the hell did we get into this mess?"

The rights that the Founders chose to enumerate were meant never to be decreed, legislated, adjudicated — or voted — away. They had been placed (or at least the Founders believed) beyond the reach of politicians, bureaucrats, and the people, themselves. While they were inclined to celebrate the mind and spirit of the individual human being, the Founders knew that our species doesn't play particularly well in groups, and that the collective intelligence of a mob is that of its brightest member — divided by the number of people in the group.

L. Neil Smith, "Click, Clickity-Click", Libertarian Enterprise, 2008-09-07

QotD: Non-mainstream candidates

I doubt anything concrete will come out of this press conference (other than the damage to Bob Barr among what ought to be his strongest supporters). But the event reflects something interesting and valuable that's happening out there in the ideological long tail, a collection of conversations that cross the ordinary political lines. In essence, two leftists and a paleocon just held a press conference to say, "We're listening to the libertarian." They did this because actual leftists and actual paleocons are listening to libertarians. And even third-party candidates — or some of them, anyway — have sharp enough political instincts to respond to their constituencies.

Jesse Walker, "The Radical Center", Hit and Run, 2008-09-10

QotD: Modern Feminism

But what I learned at the knee of my 1970s feminist, name-hyphenating, here-honey-why-don't-you-put-down-that-doll-and-play-with-this-truck mother was that feminism is about seeing female humans as more than just uterus-bearing beings. And that's the kind of feminist I have become. Maybe that's why I find all the feminist hysteria around the uteri of the Palin women so confusing. And that's why I don't think abortion should be the alpha and omega of female political discourse.

To me, this means that the kind of powerful woman who inspires a (hilarious) website like Sarah Palin Facts should have some claim to respect from feminists both for her joke accomplishments — "Little known fact: Jesus has a bracelet that says, 'WWSPD?' " She's a role model! "Sarah Palin can divide by zero." She's good at math! "Sarah Palin's image already appears on the newer nickels." She's on U.S. legal tender! — and for her real ones.

Truth be told, I haven't been tracking feminist hermeneutics too closely. I'm sure you'd agree, Amanda, that encouraging strong female role models is an important part of feminism. But in a world where mainstream feminists almost unanimously backed Bill Clinton during the Paula Jones scandal and now excoriate McCain for choosing Palin, I'm not totally clear on what feminism entails — if not simply support for the Democratic Party.

Katharine Mangu-Ward, "The search continues for the elusive pro-Palin feminist", LA Times, 2008-09-10

QotD: Pundit Googasm

Last week, Google released a web browser called Chrome, and the online tech media had a powerful Googasm. We were long overdue for another climax like this, having been lightly stimulated with half-baked Google web products in the four years since GMail was released.

Every time the media fires off its gravy so violently, it highlights how little some of the supposed "experts" actually know about computers. Case in point: People saying that Google Chrome is an operating system designed to compete head-to-head with Microsoft Windows. [. . .]

Users aren't going to decide which computer to buy based on which browser comes pre-installed, and even if they do, I'm going to guess that they will choose Internet Explorer (or - as it is known commonly in user parlance - "the blue internet that opens my web sites").

Ted Dziuba, "Chrome-fed Googasm bares tech pundit futility: It's a f***ing web browser", The Register, 2008-09-08

QotD: Stiletto heels

Someone once pointed out how brave and foolish was the first man to eat an oyster. And we celebrate the genius of Jenner for inventing vaccination, yet we never consider the idiotic heroism of the small lad who said, yes, of course you can slit my arm open with a knife and insert a cowpox scab into the gaping wound just to see what'll happen. So, we may venerate the master shoemaker Roger Vivier for the invention of the stiletto (named appropriately after the Italian knife favoured by assassins), but the first woman who slid her toes into these tortuous things is a martyr whose name is known only to God.

Setting aside the agony, which is not unlike having your toes forced into a blunt pencil sharpener, it's astonishing how difficult walking with anything close to elegance is. I caused much hilarity clopping around the kitchen like a bow-legged pantomime dame with third-degree piles. "Point your toes," the Blonde kept saying. I felt like a cross between a Tchaikovsky cygnet and a lipizzaner. What is so inexplicable about stilettos is not why women wear them, but why they ever wear them twice.

A.A. Gill, "When a man wears heels", TimesOnline, 2008-09-07

QotD: Torture as a litmus test issue

Eve expresses mild surprise that I haven't tried to "sway her against" Sarah Palin yet. It remains to be seen whether Palin is merely as big a fraud as most politicians or a bigger one, but Palin herself is a distraction. And, you know, she’s not running for President. John McCain is, and as Larison says, John McCain would be everything anyone hated about the Bush years minus the occasional bouts of temperance. Eve and Nat Hentoff (whom she links) wonder if Palin would be "as flip-flopping as Mr. McCain on the Bush torture policy," which is an odd way to put it. There's no evidence that Palin has a preexisting torture policy to flip away from, let alone what it would be. What there is evidence of is: Sarah Palin is John McCain's running mate, not the other way around. Sarah Palin and John McCain are running under the aegis of the Republican Party, which has made support for torture a litmus-test issue. Think about it: John McCain would not be the GOP presidential nominee if he had not flip-flopped on torture, because the GOP is a pro-torture institution. Its elites and its mass base insist on the rightness and necessity of torture. It doesn't even matter what Sarah Palin's personal opinion is: she's not being hired to be the Party's conscience on civil liberties and the treatment of prisoners.

Jim Henley, "Strange We Can Believe In", Unqualified Offerings, 2008-09-03

QotD: Faith and Science

I'm also given to understand that the rules of science begin to bend and even break at the extremes of the universe's scale. Down where everything is subatomic-sized, things tend to be a bit random with mesons, leptons, quarks, brilligs, slithy toves, etc., subjected to Strong Force, Weak Force, Force of Habit, and so on. Meanwhile, in the farthest reaches of outer space, matter, antimatter, dark matter, and whatsamatter are tripping over string theory and falling into black holes. God is not like that. He's famously there in the details, and He is the big picture.

In one way, however, faith in science does come easier than faith in God — if fear is any gauge of how real we believe a thing is. To judge by human behavior, people are not trembling before the Almighty much. But many of those same people are scared silly by science. They are frightened by a climate stuck in the microwave of technological advances, frightened by genetic modifications that may — who knows? — cross cabbages with kings and produce a Prince Charles, and naturally they are frightened by the clouds of mushrooms being grown in the science cellars of Iran and North Korea.

P.J. O'Rourke, "On God", Search Magazine, 2007-03

QotD: "A vodka fuelled Genghis Khan't"

. . . it is absurd to contend that Russia as a long term threat in the way the Soviet Union threatened the world for more than fifty years. Hapless Russia has a near mono-culture economy (GDP the size of Italy, for gawd's sake) and catastrophic demographics that make Europe seem like a stud-farm (Germany, Poland and Austria more or less total the same population as Russia's 'hordes'). The appropriate personification for Russia circa 2008 is not an oil fuelled Genghis Khan, threatening to surge once more across Eurasia . . . no, it is more like a drunk with a knife unable to admit they have terminal liver disease . . . a vodka fuelled Genghis Khan't if you will.

Perry de Havilland, "Like a drunk with a knife", Samizdata, 2008-08-19

QotD: What is said . . . and what is reported

Yesterday in the British Press, much was made of the Soviet, sorry, Russian threat to nuke Poland if it hosted American, sorry, NATO defensive missile systems.

THREAT TO NUKE POLAND . . . well, really? What the Ruskies are saying is not "if you allow these systems on your soil, we will nuke you", but rather "in the event of a war between NATO and Russia, we will attack military targets in Poland, which is a NATO member".

Well no shit? This is hardly a revelation. Yet to read many of the article headlines you would think it was a clear and present danger, which it clearly ain't. Move along, not much to see here.

That said, clearly what the Russian general said is a crude attempt to intimidate Poland, albeit politically and not actually by making a threat of imminent action. Also predictably it has stiffened already deep hostility to Russia across Central Europe. Good, it is probably exactly what Europe needed.

Perry de Havilland, "Threats to nuke Poland . . . and crap journalism in action", Samizdata, 2008-08-17

QotD: Futility, overlaid with hypocrisy

There is something wrong with our political system, don't you think, when policy is determined by people who know that it is wrong, and know that their colleagues also know that it is wrong, but all are compelled by personal interest to rehearse the same orthodoxies? The propaganda of received wisdom has its own momentum, and no one person changing their mind will have much effect. Critchley will be ignored. His colleagues will be silent. And next autumn we will have a new moral panic about some drug-related social phenomenon, real or imaginary, justifying some extended power.

There have of course been other systems that worked this way. But the official Marxism-Lenninism of the Soviet Communist Party or the irrelevant doctrinal minutiae of theocracies had or have at least a clear purpose in maintaining the power of institutions. In our mediated ochlocracy policy is a peacock's tail in which random illusions of public opinion power political and bureaucratic machines, that then feedback more of the same, regardless of reason or utility.

Guy Herbert, "Not about drugs", Samizdata, 2008-08-15

QotD: Worldcon

I don't know why anyone else goes to Worldcon, but I go to see many of my friends who aren't otherwise in the same place at the same time and have a big ol' ball staying up late and saying terrible, hilarious things. What sort of hilarious things? Well, let me just say this: The moment that I, Ian McDonald, Paolo Bacagalupi and Blake Charlton tried to sell an anthology to Lou Anders at Pyr Books by saying "Two words, Lou: Unicorn Bukkake" was not actually the most disturbingly, howlingly funny moment of the con.

(Also, if you don’t know what "bukkake" means, for God's sake don't look it up. Especially at work. For serious, man.)

John Scalzi, "Denvention 3: An (Oh, Probably Not) Brief Recap", Whatever, 2008-08-11

QotD: That peculiar Canadian moral stance

During the Beijing opening ceremonies, Peter Mansbridge farted out an opinion to the effect that Western governments considering a boycott could hardly ignore a "quarter of humanity" but managed to leave the entrance of the Iraqi delegation totally unremarked. Canada is in the peculiar position of being able to say whatever it wants about its largest trading partner, say nothing that is not muttered from kowtowing position to its second largest parter and to do so while sporting a smug grimace in place of a smile. This as we celebrate "the Olympic spirit" and recapitulate every moral and strategic failure of the 1930s.

Not to worry; I expect Canada's future Prime Ministers will have no trouble finding another meaningless apology to offer the survivors.

Nick Packwood, "One World, One Dream", Ghost of a Flea, 2008-08-09

QotD: Guarding the border from data

If someone develops a practical mind-reading device, you can expect the Department of Homeland Security to argue that skulls are merely another "closed container" that officers guarding the border may search at will. After all, government agents have long been allowed to read documents in briefcases carried by Americans returning from abroad. Why should the medium in which information is stored make a constitutional difference?

That argument is only slightly more far-fetched than the one DHS uses to justify its policy regarding border searches of laptop computers. Given the nature and quantity of the data they contain, portable computers are in many ways extensions of our brains. Yet DHS is treating them as if they were no different from purses or fruitcake tins.

Jacob Sullum, "File Keepers: The government wants to sit on your laptop", Reason, 2008-08-06

QotD: Literary Tattoos

Inspired by the Telegraph, John Stoehr believes a trend for literary tattoos is underway.

Some of them, like this one, a long passage from Chuck Palahniuk's novel Fight Club, are very impressive — and they suggest a kind of depth of character, a kind of cultural sensibility, that one doesn't normally associate with those who want to adorn their bodies with indelible ink.

Which says more about his preconceptions than it does about ink enthusiasts. As for me, the letters "John" and "3:16" tattooed across the knuckles are sufficient literary allusion to get the point across.

Nick Packwood, "Literary Tattoos", Ghost of a Flea, 2008-08-04

QotD: The new voting screens

I'm tellin' ya, they're gonna change the electronic voting screens to say, "Click here to accept Barack Obama's Friend Request" so that these dim-witted youth voters can figure out how to cast their ballots for Obama. It'll be like ballots in Spanish. You will soon be able to request your ballot in electronic youth-speak (l337).

"aero", Comment at Hot Air, 2008-07-29

QotD: Open borders to eliminate wage disparities

Wage gaps between observably identical Nigerian workers in the United States and Nigerian workers in Nigeria (same gender, education, work experience, etc) are . . . considerable. They swamp the wage gaps between men and women in the US. They swamp the gaps between whites and blacks in the US. Actually, they swamp the wage gaps between whites and blacks in the United States in 1855. For several countries, the effect of border restrictions on the wages of workers of equal productivity "is greater than any form of wage discrimination (gender, race, or ethnicity) that has ever been measured." The labor protectionism that keeps poor workers out of rich countries upholds one of the largest remaining price distortions in any global market.

Who cares? You weren't planning on seeking employment in Nigeria anyway. The upshot is that even a very limited loosening of borders could do enormous, immediate good. No other poverty alleviation policy — microcredit, education, public health interventions, anti-sweatshop activism — compares with a work visa, even a temporary one.

Kerry Howley, "The Road Out of Serfdom", Hit and Run, 2008-07-23

QotD: Is Barack Obama "black enough"?

The issue of Mr. Obama's blackness has come up. The Reverend Jackson has made it clear he doesn't feel Mr. Obama is black enough, apparently he seems to be disregarding "black issues." While I do not support Mr. Obama I have to call the good Reverend on this one. Barack Obama is not running for President of Black America. He is running for President of all America. If he intends to push the interest of one ethnic group over any others than he has no business running for President of a nation that is about eighty eight percent white, Asian, Dine, and other races.

Sooner or later a Latino will run for President and I damn well expect him to run as an American who happens to have Latino roots, not a Latino who happens to be an American.

Back in the Fifties segregationists didn't get it, their way of doing business violated both the written Constitution and the spirit of freedom and justice it upon which it was based. Nowadays the debate is on what methodology is needed to achieve desegregation, not it's desirability [. . .] The Segregationists of old have become obsolete.

A. X. Perez, "Getting It", Libertarian Enterprise, 2008-07-20

QotD: iPhones

Since Reihan already had an iPhone, and I don't, he's choosing between the marginal upgrades — mostly the GPS and the 3G network, and his old phone. I, however didn't have one before, so I get to be all gee-whiz about features the rest of you have had for a year. Which are, as I have repeatedly been told, pretty great. The phone interface is unbelievably easy to use — so easy that my technophobe mother and luddite crank sister want to join me on an AT&T family plan with iPhones of their very own. Unlike Reihan, I've had absolutely no trouble with call quality — indeed, it seems quite a bit better than the reception on my old Razr. And the iPod sounds great.

On the new side, there are a host of new apps that take advantage of the GPS feature, and I've installed most of them. The killer app is, obviously, using Google maps to get you un-lost. But people have also coded a bunch of social networking applications that let you, for example, see where all your friends are. The ones with iPhones, anyway. And if they don't have iPhones, they should be dead to you.

Just kidding. Since I'm the early adopter on a lot of these applications, it remains to be seen how useful they will be. But things like Twitterific, AIM, and Facebook are already pretty key.

Megan McArdle, "Pondering the iPhone", TheAtlantic.com, 2008-07-15

QotD: Batman = Richie Rich

I was thinking about the upcoming Batman movie, and I suddenly realized: Batman and Richie Rich are basically the same character.

They both have butlers (Alfred, Cadbury), they both have sidekicks (Robin, Dollar), they both dress in ridiculous outfits (bat costume, short pants with bow tie) and they both have adventures in which problems are solved by the appropriate use of incredibly expensive material possessions.

The main difference is that Richie Rich's parents weren't shot to death in a filthy alleyway right in front of him, but tell me that wouldn't have improved Richie's back story.

Lore Sjöberg, Grading Batman's Gear", Wired, 2008-07-15

QotD: Buh-bye!

American army deserter Robin Long could be headed home as early as today after his bid to delay his deportation order was rejected yesterday by [. . .] Canada's Federal Court. In her ruling, Justice Anne Mactavish said Mr. Long did not provide clear and convincing evidence that he will suffer irreparable harm if he is deported. Mr. Long, 25, is the first of an estimated 200 American army deserters who have sought refuge in Canada to be deported. Bob Ages, chairman of the Vancouver chapter of War Resisters Support Campaign, said he fears the decision will set a new precedent. Mr. Ages said he suspects the deportation is in reaction to his group's recent successes — last week, Canadian courts granted deserter Corey Glass a stay of removal and, in a separate case, ordered the Immigration and Refugee Board to reconsider the failed refugee claim of Joshua Key. Mr. Long, who had been living in Nelson, B.C., since moving from Ontario, needed the Federal Court to grant a stay of his deportation order in order to have his appeal heard.

Uncredited report in the The Ottawa Citizen, 2008-07-15

QotD: That dreaded "lurch to the right"

I make a point of looking at the Economist each week, in order to see what this part of the establishment are thinking. I can not normally stand to read it for than a couple of minutes (as it makes me feel unclean), but that is enough time to find some utter absurdity with which amuse people.

However, this week I think I have come upon the worst Economist article of all time:

The title, featured on the front cover, is "McCain's lurch to the right" . . . For those who do not know British "political speak", "lurch to the right" is what the Labour party (and so on) have long said whenever a Conservative party politician gives any sign of not agreeing with everything the BBC and Guardian newspaper hold to be correct.

Paul Marks, "Latest attack on John McCain: The worst 'Economist' article of all time?", Samizdata, 2008-07-05

QotD: Free Society or Drug-Free Society — Pick One

Getting back to the WHO study, it's striking that the lifetime marijuana use rate in the U.S. (42.4 percent) is more than twice as high as the rate in the Netherlands (19.8 percent), despite the latter country's famously (or notoriously, depending on your perspective) tolerant cannabis policies. The difference for lifetime cocaine use is even bigger: The U.S. rate (16.2 percent) is eight times the Dutch rate (1.9 percet). Do these results mean that draconian drug laws promote drug use, while a relatively laid-back approach discourages it? Not necessarily; that would be a hell of a "forbidden fruit" effect. But one thing that's clear is the point made by the WHO researchers: Drug use "is not simply related to drug policy." If tinkering with drug policy (within the context of prohibition) has an impact, it is hard to discern, and it's small compared to the influence of culture and economics.

Jacob Sullum, "What's the Opposite of a Drug-Free Society?", Hit and Run, 2008-07-04

QotD: The Pursuit of Happiness

Some science suggests that happiness is essentially a fixed commodity. It may rise or fall sharply because of events — getting a raise, breaking a leg — but over the long run, people adapt to those experiences and revert to their natural level of satisfaction (or melancholy).

Scratch that theory. According to a recent global survey, happiness is not only variable but on the rise in most of the world.

Two things, it appears, are needed to increase the supply of happiness: freedom and money. As it happens, a substantial amount of freedom is crucial to the creation of wealth. There is no such thing as a rich totalitarian country, as even the onetime totalitarians in Beijing finally realized. So in a very real sense, freedom is the key to happiness.

Steve Chapman, "The Pursuit of Happiness: How economic liberty creates personal fulfillment", Reason Online, 2008-07-03

QotD: Swift Boat Derangement Syndrome

It is impossible to overrate the rage and anguish Democrats feel at the success of the 2004 campaign 527 called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth; it would be silly to even try. When Democratic voters and establishment sheikhs chose John Kerry over John Edwards, it was in large part because Kerry served in Vietnam and returned to campaign against the war. They completely discounted the bitterness that conservatives and many vets still harbored against Kerry. They were caught flatfooted when Kerry's military record became a months-long campaign liability after the group of angry vets caught the attention of the mainstream media and started getting cash infusions from big-time conservative donors. In November, Bush beat Kerry by 16 points among military veterans. Nominating a veteran got the Democrats nothing.

This is why, when today's Democrats talk about John McCain, they can sound incredulous. After all the crap they took, why is he able to ride his Vietnam record to the GOP nomination? How could he enjoin the culture wars by bragging that he missed Woodstock because he was "tied up at the time" and get so much praise he started running TV ads on that theme? Why is he able to follow it up with an ad named for his Navy ID number (624787) and featuring video of him lying in POW camp? It's not . . . it's not . . . it's not fair! Thus, Wesley Clark.

I don't think Clark's comments can stand up to scrutiny; no experience, not even being a Joint Chief of Staff or Defense Secretary, can directly prepare someone to become commander-in-chief. McCain's occasional argument that his command of a navy squadron was executive experience is sort of risible, but not as much as when he claimed it would qualify him to manage the economy. His POW years are as relevant to his qualifications as any presidential candidate's experiences. Eight years ago, weren't we hearing about how George W. Bush's 20-odd years of sowing his oats turned him into a great leader?

David Weigel, "Swift Boat Derangement Syndrome", Hit and Run, 2008-07-01

QotD: Freedom to criticize religions

Personally, I think all religious beliefs — Christian, Muslim or otherwise — should be fair game for criticism and satire. Kari Simpson should have the right to speak out against homosexuality, and Rafe Mair should have the right to condemn her for it.

Many people are indeed more sensitive about possibly offending Muslims than offending Christians, either because of Western guilt or simply, old-fashioned fear. I have a real problem with that — but I certainly wouldn't want a situation where Islam can be criticized but Christianity is sacrosanct, either.

Damian Penny, "Speech Notes", Daimnation, 2008-06-29

QotD: The value of religion

I was brought up traditionally Church of England, which is to say that while churchgoing did not figure in my family's plans for the Sabbath, practically all the Ten Commandments were obeyed by instinct and a general air of reason, and kindness and decency prevailed.

Belief was never mentioned at home, but right actions were taught by daily example.

Possibly because of this, I have never disliked religion. I think it has some purpose in our evolution.

I don't have much truck with the ' religion is the cause of most of our wars' school of thought because that is manifestly done by mad, manipulative and power-hungry men who cloak their ambition in God.

I number believers of all sorts among my friends. Some of them are praying for me. I'm happy they wish to do this, I really am, but I think science may be a better bet.

Terry Pratchett, "I create gods all the time - now I think one might exist, says fantasy author Terry Pratchett", Mail Online, 2008-06-21

QotD: Basic economics

It's easy to shrug this kind of stuff off, especially with a (newly veto-tastic) former oilman in the White House, but all that will change six months from now, and the Democrats are rubbing their hands at the prospect of unified government. In the meantime, the air is only getting thicker — on both sides of the aisle — with Mahatir/Larouche levels of hostility toward those shadowy bankster types who make money without even manufacturing widgets or tilling the land.

Seriously, did we kick communism to the curb only to suddenly discover, centuries after the French, that a free market will attract (and benefit from!) suspiciously smart people in pinstriped suits who are using their money to — wait for it — make more money? "Speculators" provide crucial liquidity (which is marketese for "money with which to buy the stuff you want to sell"), and perform a valuable function in helping locate assets that are under- or over-valued. Even those nassty speculatorsses at the end of the real estate boom (the evil "flippers" mom told you about) did some good stuff: They allowed people to sell their houses at a tidy profit, and fixed up old properties in preparation for resales that maybe never came. Many gambled and won (as did the people who sold to them), many others gambled and lost (freeing up "winners" who will buy those properties at firesale prices). That's all kind of the point.

Matt Welch, "There Was Music in the Cafes at Night and Re-Regulation in the Air", Hit and Run, 2008-06-24

QotD: Former Yugoslavia

The man smiled. He didn't speak English, but he understood when I told him we were driving to Tuzla and he verified that the road we had just turned off was the right one.

So we continued driving toward Tuzla, in Bosnia proper outside the Republica Srpska, and wherever we saw mosques we also saw blown up houses.

There was pain and suffering on all sides during the war. No faction was entirely innocent. I take seriously the following observation written by Rebecca West in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon shortly before the outbreak of World War II: "English persons . . . of humanitarian and reformist disposition constantly went out to the Balkan Peninsula to see who was in fact ill-treating whom, and, being by the very nature of their perfectionist faith unable to accept the horrid hypothesis that everybody was ill-treating everybody else, all came back with a pet Balkan people established in their hearts as suffering and innocent, eternally the massacree and never the massacrer."

Nevertheless, it's obvious just from driving around that the Muslims of Bosnia really got hammered the hardest in the last war. I don't mean to pick on the Serbs, but the visual evidence, as well as the documented evidence, is just overwhelming.

Michael Totten, "The Road to Kosovo, Part I", Michael J. Totten, 2008-06-23

QotD: This is not what we mean when we talk about an "educational brand"

What stands in my mind, however, is this bit from the article, in which the teacher explained "he simply was trying to demonstrate the device on several students and described the images as an 'X,' not a cross." Because, you see, zapping an "X" into the flesh of your pubescent students with a tool that outputs 50,000 volts a pop is not a problem.

The particular tool comes with the following warning: "Never touch or come in contact with the high voltage output of this device." Any teacher willfully ignoring the safety instructions on high voltage equipment to use it to intentionally inflict pain and injury on his students, and to brand a large, recognizable pattern on their skin, is one that's going to land on my "fire this idiot" list. You don't even have to get into the religious angle, as far as I'm concerned. That's just the bonus round, as far as the firing goes.

Another choice quote from the article, from a friend of the teacher: "With the exception of the cross-burning episode. . . . I believe John Freshwater is teaching the values of the parents in the Mount Vernon school district," said the friend. Yes, well. That's a heck of an exception, now, isn't it.

John Scalzi, "From the 'That Doesn’t Actually Make it Any Better' Department", Whatever, 2008-06-21

QotD: EUrocrash imminent?

Is the European Union heading for a Yugoslavian-style denouement? It sometimes looks as if its political class, oblivious to the wishes or concerns of the EU’s various populations, is determined to bring one about. The French and the Dutch voted against the proposed European Constitution, but that did not deter the intrepid political class from pressing ahead with its plans for a superstate that no one else wants. To bypass the wishes of the people, the politicos reintroduced the constitution as a treaty, to be ratified by parliaments alone. Only the Irish had the guts — or was it the foolhardiness? — to hold a referendum on the issue. Unfortunately, the Irish people got the answer wrong. They voted no, despite their political leaders’ urging that they vote yes. No doubt the people will be given an opportunity in the future — or several opportunities, if necessary — to correct their mistake and get the answer right, after which there will be no more referenda.

The European political class was briefly taken aback. What could explain the Irish obduracy? Several explanations came forth, among them Irish xenophobia and intellectual backwardness and the malign influence of the Murdoch-owned press. The narrowest economic self-interest was also said to have played a part. Having been huge beneficiaries of European largesse over the last 30 years, the Irish — who have the second-highest per capita GDP in Europe after Luxembourg — are now being asked to pay some of it back in the form of subsidies to the new union members from Eastern Europe. Ingrates that they are, they don’t want to pay up, especially now that their own economic growth rate has slowed dramatically in the wake of the financial crisis and the economic future looks uncertain.

Another explanation for the Irish “no” vote was that Irish citizens had been frightened by the proposal of the French finance minister to equalize tax rates throughout Europe, thus destroying unfair competition (all competition is unfair, unless the French win). No prizes for guessing whether the high tax rates of France or the low rates of Ireland would become the new standard. Ireland’s golden goose would find itself well and truly slaughtered in the process.

Theodore Dalrymple, "Europe's Unhappy Union", City Journal, 2008-06-18

QotD: Richard Nixon

Nixon had no friends except George Will and J. Edgar Hoover (and they both deserted him.) It was Hoover's shameless death in 1972 that led directly to Nixon's downfall. He felt helpless and alone with Hoover gone. He no longer had access to either the Director or the Director's ghastly bank of Personal Files on almost everybody in Washington.

Hoover was Nixon's right flank, and when he croaked, Nixon knew how Lee felt when Stonewall Jackson got killed at Chancellorsville. It permanently exposed Lee's flank and led to the disaster at Gettysburg.

For Nixon, the loss of Hoover led inevitably to the disaster of Watergate. It meant hiring a New Director — who turned out to be an unfortunate toady named L. Patrick Gray, who squealed like a pig in hot oil the first time Nixon leaned on him. Gray panicked and fingered White House Counsel John Dean, who refused to take the rap and rolled over, instead, on Nixon, who was trapped like a rat by Dean's relentless, vengeful testimony and went all to pieces right in front of our eyes on TV.

That is Watergate, in a nut, for people with seriously diminished attention spans. The real story is a lot longer and reads like a textbook on human treachery. They were all scum, but only Nixon walked free and lived to clear his name. Or at least that's what Bill Clinton says — and he is, after all, the President of the United States.

Hunter S. Thompson, "He Was a Crook", Counterpunch, 1994-05-01

QotD: Forbidden fruit's allure

I wonder if these students appreciate the great irony that always occurs when censorship is involved: As a result of their case, undoubtedly more people have sought out and read the supposedly denigrating articles than would have ever done so in the normal course of events. There is perhaps no surer way to get people to read something than to tell them that they should not be allowed to read it.

Edward Greenspan, "Civil Liberties Alert: CIC's human rights complaints are an administrative fatwa", Edmonton Sun, 2008-06-16

QotD: Democratic nomination race

But none of this "sexism" could be counteracted by organized, activist feminist groups, says writer Linda Hirshman. In Sunday's Washington Post, Hirshman mapped the fractious women's movement that failed to coalesce around Clinton's campaign. The absurdities and esoterica of the "millennial feminists" produced internecine warfare and factional fighting not seen since the Spanish Civil War. In the trenches of the gender war, the slights cited by Penn are deemed inconsequential, as is the candidate on the receiving end of them. Hirshman quotes one activist: "I . . . don't believe that simply putting a womyn's face where a man's face once was is going to solve our problems...by Real Womyn I am talking about womyn of color, incarcerated womyn, migrant womyn, womyn at the border, womyn gripped in violence, rape, and war.'" (For those whose university experience predated the ubiquity of Woman's Studies departments, the misspelling of 'women' is deliberate, a semantic kick in the patriarchy's groin.)

The Democratic primary was a lose-lose proposition for the image of American tolerance: If Senator Obama lost, ours was an irredeemably racist country. Senator Clinton lost, and we are infected by sexism. But whether viewed through the prism of radical gender feminism or a boy's club media conspiracy, the truth is considerably less complicated. The vaunted Clinton machine — devoid of fresh ideas and facing a dynamic, inspirational opponent — simply couldn't compete. Blame the media, blame the patriarchy if you so desire, but the truth is that Americans wouldn't mind a woman as president. Just not that woman.

Michael C. Moynihan, "The Feminist Mistake", Reason Online, 2008-06-13

QotD: "The chains of history always rust away"

For all the paper thin guarantees of the Charter, Canadians have no more rights before the law than Czech dissidents did forty years ago. This is not only the province of those few singled out for the extremity of their views or, increasingly, those singled out for their audacity to mock the Canadian Establishment. This is also about the systematic silencing of what used to be Canada across entire professions, academic disciplines, the federal and provincial civil service, the arts and the media. To merely hold as private opinion what was until recently the law of the land can now produce fines, imprisonment and — worst of all to my mind — public recantations.

There was a lot I did not like in what used to be Canada: A priggish, self-satisfied narrow-mindedness, the public imposition of private morality and a nose in every window. Much of which, I suspect, would not have bothered David Warren in the least, transparent as the imposition of his religious views on the rest of us might have been to him at the time. But it dawns on me now not a thing has changed; Canada's clothes are new but the sour expression remains.

Yet we must not despair. I share a conviction with David Warren if not the particulars of his faith. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierces me that in the end the Shadow is only a small and passing thing: there is light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.

Nick Packwood, "The chains of history always rust away", Ghost of a Flea, 2008-06-12

QotD: The press secretary

The release of former Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan's tell-all memoir has Washington buzzing, though there's a certain Capt. Renault-like phoniness to all the indignation: Are we really all that surprised that this administration — or for that matter, any administration — would ask its press secretary to lie, mislead, or dissemble in front of the media?

Should we really be shocked-shocked! that the White House might also keep its press secretary out of the loop when it comes to brewing political scandals, so he can convincingly feign ignorance when the press queries him about them?

While ostensibly serving as a liaison between the press and the president, White House press secretaries serve really only one function: to boost the president's image. White House press offices are little more than public relations machines for the administration they're serving.

Radley Balko, "The Public Spinmeisters: Why do politicians get a well-oiled PR machine at taxpayer expense?", Reason Online, 2008-06-10

QotD: North and South

There exists in England a curious cult of Northernness, sort of Northern snobbishness. A Yorkshireman in the South will always take care to let you know that he regards you as an inferior. If you ask him why, he will explain that it is only in the North that life is 'real' life, that the industrial work done in the North is the only 'real' work, that the North is inhabited by 'real' people, the South merely by rentiers and their parasites. The Northerner has 'grit', he is grim, 'dour', plucky, warm-hearted, and democratic; the Southerner is snobbish, effeminate, and lazy — that at any rate is the theory. Hence the Southerner goes north, at any rate for the first time, with the vague inferiority-complex of a civilized man venturing among savages, while the Yorkshireman, like the Scotchman, comes to London in the spirit of a barbarian out for loot. And feelings of this kind, which are the result of tradition, are not affected by visible facts. Just as an Englishman five feet four inches high and twenty-nine inches round the chest feels that as an Englishman he is the physical superior of Camera (Camera being a Dago), so also with the Northerner and the Southerner. I remember a weedy little Yorkshireman, who would almost certainly have run away if a fox-terrier had snapped at him, telling me that in the South of England he felt 'like a wild invader'. But the cult is often adopted by people who are not by birth Northerners themselves. A year or two ago a friend of mine, brought up in the South but now living in the North, was driving me through Suffolk in a car. We passed through a rather beautiful village. He glanced disapprovingly at the cottages and said:

'Of course most of the villages in Yorkshire are hideous; but the Yorkshiremen are splendid chaps. Down here it's just the other way about — beautiful villages and rotten people. All the people in those cottages there are worthless, absolutely worthless.'

I could not help inquiring whether he happened to know anybody in that village. No, he did not know them; but because this was East Anglia they were obviously worthless. Another friend of mine, again a Southerner by birth, loses no opportunity of praising the North to the detriment of the South. Here is an extract from one of his letters to me:

I am in Clitheroe, Lancs. . . . I think running water is much more attractive in moor and mountain country than in the fat and sluggish South. 'The smug and silver Trent,' Shakespeare says; and the South-er the smugger, I say.

Here you have an interesting example of the Northern cult. Not only are you and I and everyone else in the South of England written off as 'fat and sluggish', but even water when it gets north of a certain latitude, ceases to be H₂O and becomes something mystically superior. But the interest of this passage is that its writer is an extremely intelligent man of 'advanced' opinions who would have nothing but contempt for nationalism in its ordinary form. Put to him some such proposition as 'One Britisher is worth three foreigners', and he would repudiate it with horror. But when it is a question of North versus South, he is quite ready to generalize. All nationalistic distinctions — all claims to be better than somebody else because you have a different-shaped skull or speak a different dialect — are entirely spurious, but they are important so long as people believe in them. There is no doubt about the Englishman's inbred conviction that those who live to the south of him are his inferiors; even our foreign policy is governed by it to some extent.

George Orwell, "North and South", The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937

QotD: A reason to regret Hillary's departure

I personally leaned toward Obama in this contest fairly early on (I think Edwards was marginally closer to my own most perfect candidate this time around, but that was pretty much a non-starter), but as I also mentioned, as far as these leading candidates went on the Democratic side, there was no real downside for me. I would have quite happily voted for Clinton if it had gone her way, not only for her own policies and qualities, but also simply to watch conservative heads explode at the idea of the Clintons setting up shop at 1600 Pennsylvania again. There's not enough Schadenfreude Pie in the world for that sort of event.

John Scalzi, "Off Into the Sunset", Whatever, 2008-06-07

QotD: Womens' rights in France

[C]ritics of the ruling, including the justice minister and the prime minister, insist it must be challenged because it represents a defeat for feminism and secularism. Evidently women's freedom must be restricted to protect their freedom: they cannot be allowed to enter into whatever contracts they choose or make their own legal decisions because they might misuse those rights. Just to be clear, that is the feminist position. As for the secularist imperative, which in France is strong enough to override the free exercise of religion, I do not understand how it can co-exist with legal principles that empower aggrieved religious groups to punish people for speech that offends them. How can the same country that fears Muslims are taking over when they insist on wearing headscarves or marrying virgins prosecute a novelist for contempt of Islam?

Jacob Sullum, "What's the matter With France?", Hit and Run, 2008-06-05

QotD: Modern political corruption

In today's terms, you might call it the Medicare Part D problem: even when Congress starts out with a laudable policy goal, like providing prescription drugs for seniors, by the time the legislation gets through both houses it amounts to little more than a grab bag of giveaways to politically connected business interests. Case in point: the recent Senate-passed Foreclosure Prevention Act, which contains $25 billion in tax breaks for home-builders and other businesses while doing very little to justify its name. The reason for this is straightforward: the amount of money spent on lobbying in the last Congressional session was $2.8 billion, nearly two times more than was spent in 2000. Overall, industry has contributed $14 million to Congressional candidates in this session.

This money, Lessig says, insidiously distorts Congressional outcomes and priorities because Congress members don't experience it as corruption. "Let's say you go to Congress," says Lessig, "and you believe there are two problems to deal with: piracy of copyrighted materials and welfare mothers who are really getting screwed by the system. You open up shop, and a million [lobbyists] come in and say we've got a thousand things to tell you about piracy, and nobody comes into your office and says we're going to help you with the welfare moms. So you shift your focus, but you never feel it. You think: maybe I could've spent more time on welfare moms, but I'm having a real effect on stopping piracy! That's the dynamic that is so critical here."

Of course, good-government reformers have been decrying the influence of money since at least the late nineteenth century. For all of Lessig's status as a visionary (he literally wrote the book on cyberspace law), what's most striking is that, as he admits, Change Congress doesn't embody any "new ideas." He envisions it as a movement tool kit that connects citizens to the work of the reform groups that already exist, a kind of "Google Maps mashup," as he puts it.

Christopher Hayes, "Mr. Lessig Goes to Washington", The Nation, 2008-05-29

QotD: Trade is THE solution to poverty

Trade is THE solution to poverty. Throw in international labor mobility, and we're well on the way to remedying any of the problems that money can fix — like controlling infectious diseases, providing electricity, clean water and sanitation, feeding people, educating women, and so forth. Or at least that's what Kym Anderson, an economics professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia more or less asserted in his presentation on trade and migration on the third day of the Copenhagen Consensus 2008 Conference.

Anderson looked at a number of econometric modeling scenarios and calculated the cost and benefits that would obtain from full trade liberalization under realistic assumptions derived from the current World Trade Organization's Doha Development Agenda negotiations. Anderson estimated that liberalization of global merchandise trade would mean an annual increase of $287 billion per year in global GDP, of which $86 billion would go to developing countries. This compares very nicely with the $104 billion in development assistance that the governments of industrialized countries gave to developing countries in 2006.

In other calculations, Anderson found that the long term effects of trade liberalization would be that global income in 2098 would be up to 10% greater than it otherwise would have been. The associated net present values from freer trade range from $50 trillion to $424 trillion. Consider that in 2007, total gross world product was $53 trillion. In other words, both the immediate and long-term benefits from free trade are enormous. Anderson reports benefit cost ratios ranging from 269:1 to 1121:1.

Ronald Bailey, "And the World's Top Priority Is . . . Free Trade?: The fourth dispatch from the 2008 Copenhagen Consensus Conference", Reason Online, 2008-05-29

QotD: "Government is complete bullshit"

Now, this strikes me as one of those incidents — like a lot of the cases of intrusive government noted in the old-fashioned anarchist magazine The Match — that should just cut across ideological divides and unite everyone not simply in thinking "That sounds excessive" but in thinking "Government is complete bullshit, and we were not born to be slaves to these uniform-wearing goons."

Todd Seavey, "Wine and Cheese Anarchy", ToddSeavey.com, 2008-05-28

QotD: Same-sex marriage

We introduced same sex marriage up here after conservatives assured us this would result in wall to wall orgies. This promise was a lie, just like the one about how if we legalized upper body nudity for women in Ontario, Ontario would become a sea of naked boobs despite the climate. And the mosquitos and the blackflies. Conservatives are always promising promiscuity and licentiousness if only we will liberalize our laws and they never deliver.

On the plus side, the initial divorce rate was extremely low for SSM because we didn't think to change the explicitly "one male one female" language in the Divorce Act.

James Nicoll, posting to the Lois McMaster Bujold mailing list, 2008-05-26

QotD: Testifying before congress

I was watching the Big Oil execs testifying before Congress. That was my first mistake. If memory serves, there was lesbian mud wrestling over on Channel 137, and on the whole that's less rigged. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz knew the routine: "I can't say that there is evidence that you are manipulating the price, but I believe that you probably are. So prove to me that you are not."

Had I been in the hapless oil man's expensive shoes, I'd have answered, "Hey, you first. I can't say that there is evidence that you're sleeping with barnyard animals, but I believe that you probably are. So prove to me that you are not. Whatever happened to the presumption of innocence and prima facie evidence, lady? Do I have to file a U.N. complaint in Geneva that the House of Representatives is in breach of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?"

But that's why I don't get asked to testify before Congress.

Mark Steyn, "Your car can't run on Congress' hot air", Orange County Register, 2008-05-24

QotD: The Presidency

It's a curious thing in America that each July we celebrate how the founding fathers threw off the shackles of an oppressive monarchy, that we favorably compare our republican system of governance with the world's tyrants, dictatorships and monarchies (and rightly so) — and yet we then celebrate those American presidents who most behaved like tyrants, monarchs and dictators.

Presidents like Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman are regularly put at the top of lists of America's greatest presidents. This is true when both historians and the American public at large are polled. Yet these are presidents who did everything they could to expand the power of their offices, to extend the sphere of influence of the federal government and to bully through policies that met inconvenient hurdles otherwise known as checks and balances.

[. . .]

These are odd men to call heroes.

Inexplicably, the presidents who knew and understood their constitutional limits, who respected those limits and who generally took a more laissez-faire approach to government get short shrift — even derision — from historians.

Men like Calvin Coolidge, Warren Harding, Rutherford B. Hayes and Grover Cleveland merely exhibited what Healy calls "stolid, boring competence." Historians loathe them, Healy writes, because they had the audacity to "content themselves simply with presiding over peace and prosperity" and not seek to remake the world in their own image. The nerve of them.

Radley Balko, "Presidential Power-Tripping", FoxNews.com, 2008-05-19

QotD: Secret laws

Like most of Bush's executive power grabs, he relies on findings from the Office of Legal Counsel to give him cover. The OLC's opinions are considered binding on the executive branch. If you work in the executive branch, you're essentially immune from prosecution if the OLC has signed off on whatever you're doing. Which is why John Yoo's OLC memos on torture and detainment are so devastating.

Thing is, over the years Bush (actually, Cheney) has staffed the OLC with lackeys like Yoo and Jay Bybee (now a federal judge). The Bush administration has treated the OLC not as an office from which to get a considered, scholarly opinion on the constitutionality of some power they'd like to claim; rather, they tell the office the power they plan to claim, and ask the OLC to come up with a way to justify it. Yoo's memos would frequently contain footnotes supporting his theories of executive power and secrecy. Unfortunately, those footnotes frequently would refer to previous writings by John Yoo.

Radley Balko, "Now: Secret Laws", The Agitator, 2008-05-22

QotD: They are "rational individuals", not "a nebulous glop of misery"

In 1990, the Burmese were asked to choose between a viable pro-democracy party and the status quo. (There were many pro-democracy parties but none with the national appeal of Suu Kyi's NLD.) Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won a significant majority of seats, which indicates that the significant majority of Burmese were tired of living under a military dictatorship. The U.S. had not yet imposed comprehensive sanctions at this point. But even if they had been a prominent topic of debate, it would be strange to assume that a vote for Suu Kyi's party were a vote for sanctions rather than a vote for regime change. It's as if Americans were asked to choose between McCain and Kim Jong-il, and every voter who went for McCain was then assumed to support a gas-tax holiday.

I don't want to make too much of my personal experience, but I found that near-universal admiration for Suu Kyi in Rangoon existed alongside some gentle criticism of the NLD's disorganization and general ineffectiveness. You might, in conversations with actual Burmese people, find that they are capable of both supporting Suu Kyi and disagreeing with her on various things. But that would require envisioning them as rational individuals rather than as a nebulous glop of misery.

Kerry Howley, "Do the Burmese Support Sanctions?", Hit and Run, 2008-05-20

QotD: Greenery as religion

Since we were here to do things we had not done before, we decided to take in "The Circle of Life," a show about the interconnectedness of man, nature, and anthropomorphic cartoon characters. I hate to be a killjoy grump about these things, but oy, what a load of sanctimonious rubbish. The actual Circle of Life, as applied to animals, consists of birth, killing, consumption, excretion, copulation, and solitary death from small predators in the blood or nasty ones with big teeth. Sometimes there's death by fire, for variety's sake. It takes consciousness on the human level to extract the metaphorical weight in the whole Circle of Life thing, and while I think it's wonderful to appreciate and marvel at the intricate ecosystems of the planet, and tread as lightly as necessary, wordless choirs voicing ecstatic vowels over footage of wildebeest herds does not really equal a High Mass for spiritual impact or depth. All of which I kept to myself, of course. But I felt like the village atheist.

The plot was hugely ironical: Timon and Roomba or whatever the warthog is named were building a resort in the jungle, and damning a stream to create a water feature. Simba showed up to demonstrate the error of their ways. The hilarity of any manifestation of the Disneyverse criticizing an artificial lake to build a resort goes without saying. And it did go without saying, of course. Simba said that Timon and Roomba or whatever were acting like another creature that did not behave in tune with nature, and that creature was . . . man.

BOO HISS, I guess. Jaysus, I tire of this. Big evil stupid man had done many stupid evil bad things, like pile abandoned cars in the river, dump chemicals into blue streams, and build factories that vomited great dark clouds into the sky. Like the People's State Lead Paint and Licensed Mickey Merchandise Factory in Shanghai Province, perhaps? Simba gave us a lecture about materialism and how it hurt the earth — cue the shot of trees actually being chopped down, and I'm surprised the sap didn't spurt like blood in a Peckinpah movie — and other horrors, like forests on fire because . . . well, because it was National Toss Glowing Coals Out the Car Window Month, I guess. I swear the footage all came from the mid-70s; it was grainy and cracked and the cars were all late-60s models. Because I'm pretty sure we're not dumping cars into the rivers as a matter of course any more. You're welcome to try to leave your car on the riverbank and see how that turns out for you.

At the end Timon and Phoomba decided to open a green resort, and everything's hakuna Montana.

James Lileks, The Bleat, 2008-05-20

QotD: Documentation

I have encountered far too many managers who couldn't recognize bad documentation at all. Until the flaws are pointed out to them, or they compare it with good documentation, they are oblivious. That is why there are also far too many people working as technical writers who should be wearing greasepaint and ruffled collars instead. Those of us who are competent should be continually educating our co-workers and managers by pointing out excellent examples of technical communication.

We have a lot of fun commenting on the bad examples, but I think we should be showing off the good ones much more than we do now.

Beth Agnew, posting to the Technical Writing mailing list TECHWR-L, 2008-05-15

QotD: Human Rights Commissions

[. . .] off-air the chit-chat went rather more pleasantly, and, in the course of it, Mr. Awan observed that Jews had availed themselves of the "human rights" commissions for years but it was only when the Muzzies decided they wanted a piece of the thought-police action that all these bigwigs started agitating for reining in the commissions and scrapping the relevant provisions of Canada's "human rights" code.

He has a kind of point. Which is why some of us consistently opposed the use of these commissions even when it was liberal Jews using them to hunt down the last three neo-Nazis in Saskatchewan. Yet, accepting that the principle is identical, there is a difference. For the most part, the Canadian Jewish Congress, B'nai Brith and the other beneficiaries of the "human rights" regime went after freaks and misfits on the fringes of society, folks too poor (in the majority of federal cases) even to afford legal representation. These prosecutions were unfair and reflected badly on Canada's justice system, but liberal proponents of an illiberal law justified it on the assumption that it would be confined to these peripheral figures nobody cared about. You can't blame Muslim groups for figuring that what's sauce for the infidel is sauce for the believer — and that, having bigger fish to fry, they're gonna need a lot more sauce.

Mark Steyn, "I'm starring in one of those movies", Macleans, 2008-05-14

QotD: Expert Witnesses

Lawyers and scientists have completely different ways of discovering truth. The lawyers’ way is dueling witnesses. This is as good as any in determining which of two people is lying about a police shootout. It is no good in determining whether a hair sample matches that of the murder defendant or whether Vioxx caused a heart attack. Do heavy objects fall faster than light ones? Scientists answer with an experiment. A court would answer by having the jury hear from two experts, one saying yes, the other saying no. It would make as much sense to have the jury watch a medieval jousting contest between the two witnesses.

William Baldwin, "An Expert? Prove It", Forbes, 2008-06-02

QotD: Sign of the times

Would you find it odd to walk into a place that billed itself variously as an "internet café" and a "cybercafé" in the year 2008, only to be told "Sorry, [we] don't have wireless [internet]?" This happened to me on Sunday and I am still trying to figure out whether I am the crazy one.

Colby Cosh, "This is a sincere question", ColbyCosh.com, 2008-05-13

QotD: Invading Burma?

Now in all probability if the "good old U.S. military" actually does invade Burma it will incinerate every vestige of armed opposition in its path. Burmese Army units will stand about as much chance as ants before a kid's homemade flamethrower. And then all of a sudden the assumptions will collapse in reverse order. People are going to say, 'we didn't realize invasions meant killing people'; 'we didn't realize we wouldn't have allies'; and finally 'we did not think it would be so expensive'. And then we will hear that classic line: "I was for it before I was against it."

"Wretchard", " Invasion Burma", The Belmont Club, 2008-05-10

QotD: Title IX and the candidates

USA Today asked the three remaining major-party candidates how they feel about Title IX and about performance enhancing drugs.

Refreshingly, all three said neither steroids nor gender participation are any of the government's business, and that, being private entities, sports organizations should be free to set their own rules free of meddling from the federal government or grandstanding congressmen.

Just kidding. All three favor using the federal government to bend pro and amateur sports to their liking.

Radley Balko, "Sports and Election '08", The Agitator, 2008-05-11

QotD: Looking for a new England

"I do wish Billy Bragg would stop banging on about Englishness" wrote one correspondent, before going on to suggest that "as a socialist, Bragg should be celebrating the internationally minded South African trade unions who refused to unload arms destined for Mugabe's regime — rather than some highly dubious notion of Englishness". The implication that, as socialists, we should disavow all notions of Englishness plays into the hands of the far-right, leaving them free to define who does and who doesn't belong on their own terms. Our folly would be compounded if we were to go around taking down St George's day bunting and ordering those celebrating to replace it with slogans of solidarity with the South African Congress of Trade Unions. Such behaviour would only serve to give credence to the lies that the BNP spout on the doorstep.

I doubt it will come as a surprise to learn that this is not the first time that I have been shouted down for putting forward challenging ideas about what it means to be English. Hoping to provoke debate by styling myself a progressive patriot, I seem more often to provoke kneejerk reactions from fellow leftists. Last week was no different. "The idea of the 'progressive patriot' is worthy but misguided," argued one letter. "The prospect of watching an England game with bellicose fans belting out 10 German Bombers or Dambusters doesn't appeal." Unsurprisingly, that doesn't appeal to me either, but we are never going to escape from that mentality unless we make the effort to counter it.

As socialists, we are all too familiar with the tactic of opponents who are quick to portray those who question the free-market system as supporters of the worse excesses of Stalinism. It's a blinkered mindset that refuses to accept that there are different strands within socialism, preferring instead to dismiss as a commie anyone who argues for a more compassionate society. Such simplistic attempts at stifling debate are mirrored by those on the left who fail to recognise that there are different types of patriotism, some adamantly opposed to that voiced by the xenophobic minority.

Billy Bragg, "A different strand of socialism", Comment is free, 2008-04-30

QotD: Peter Jackson Isn't A Better Choice

Anyone who suffered through the Star Wars prequel trilogy — or Godfather III — will understand when I suggest that it's not always wise for a director to return to his old stomping grounds. Jackson left Middle Earth as a hero to geeks and film investors, and on such a creative high note, he essentially slacked through King Kong and no one gave him any crap for it. That being the case, what's the upside for him to re-direct in Middle Earth? If he does it perfectly and sticks the dismount, it's still not fresh. If he screws it up, the fan response will make the Phantom Menace backlash look like a group hug.

Jackson put a huge target on himself by agreeing to return to Middle Earth; getting someone else to direct gets him out of the line of fire. Now, if it works, he'll still get (producer) credit. If it fails, the audience will blame del Toro — because among other things, he's not Jackson, or more accurately, the imaginary Jackson who did the film perfectly.

That said, I don't think Jackson hired del Toro just to aim flak toward someone else. I think he hired del Toro because Jackson's aware that — contrary to O'Hehir's worry — these films need someone who isn't very much in love with either Tolkien or the world that he made.

This has to do with the subject matter, namely, The Hobbit. That book, written by Tolkien to amuse his kids, is a twee bit of fluff at best. Beloved, yes, but a bit squishy in the middle. This is fine for bedtime readings and Rankin-Bass animated adaptations, but for the continuation of one of the most successful film series of all time, every installment of which was nominated for Best Picture? The Hobbit needs someone willing to slice through the fat and mush and not ask himself WWTD (What Would Tolkien Do?) at every critical juncture. Jackson did this with The Lord of the Rings, which is why, among other things, the film series is thankfully Tom Bombadil-free, but The Hobbit needs an extra wash of astringency. Del Toro's love of the fantastic has never descended into huggy cuteness, which makes him perfect to save The Hobbit from itself.

John Scalzi, "Is Guillermo del Toro the Right Man for The Hobbit?", AMCTV SciFi Scanner, 2008-05-08

QotD: Judicial Activism

For the better part of six decades, in fact, judicial activism was associated almost exclusively with the protection of economic rights, while its counterpart, judicial restraint, was the rallying cry of liberal reformers. Between Reconstruction and the New Deal, as the states began legislating a variety of new "progressive" regulations, it was judges acting in the name of private property and "liberty of contract" that "usurped" the power of the people, "invented" new rights, and gave birth to judicial activism as we know it today.

This history suggests that a principled form of libertarian judicial activism — that is, one that consistently upholds individual rights while strictly limiting state power — is essential to the fight for a free society. In fact, a genuinely libertarian jurisprudence would, in the words of the legal scholar Randy Barnett, "requir[e] the state to justify its statute, whatever the status of the right at issue." The real legal challenge facing libertarians isn't judicial activism; it is defending individual rights from the liberals and conservatives who seek to take our liberties away.

Damon W. Root, "Unleash the Judges: The libertarian case for judicial activism", Reason, 2005-07

QotD: Bureaucrats

The problems with the actual good bureau'rats (the 'c' is silent) are:

a) their good efforts are often overshadowed by the effects of the nasty buggers, who really know how to play the system to worst effect — and as we know, a single bad experience wipes out a world of OK and good experiences in the mind of the 'consumer'.

b) everybody in a department might be a hardworking, efficient saint, but if what they are doing is not needed or is actively harmful in its conception and its implementation, then all the good will in the world won't suffice to put lipstick on that pig. Think Gun Registry.

I won't even get into the subclass of bureau'rats who are "true believers" — they can sometimes be worse than the malicious ones.

Kevin McLauchlan, personal email, 2008-05-02

QotD: Audio recordings

I am, sadly, old enough to have been assistant manager at an A&A Records and Tapes and to remember the excitement and trepidation that came with the introduction of the CD. It was not just the new colder sound of these things but a sense of loss at all that acreage of cover art reduced to the CD's smaller footprint. They were so compact we used to shelve each CD in a cumbersome plastic box three times its length; the new digital format seemed all too easy to steal. Little did any of us see where that logic would lead.

Nick Packwood, "The return of the repressed", Ghost of a Flea, 2008-02-14

QotD: The origin of the name Canada

"Canada" [. . .] is the ancient Ojibwa word for "kick me"

Kathy Shaidle, "I missed 'Pingu' for this?", Five Feet of Fury, 2008-04-30

QotD: "Intelligent" Design

Dr. Ayala, a former Dominican priest, said he told his audiences not just that evolution is a well-corroborated scientific theory, but also that belief in evolution does not rule out belief in God. In fact, he said, evolution "is more consistent with belief in a personal god than intelligent design. If God has designed organisms, he has a lot to account for."

Consider, he said, that at least 20 percent of pregnancies are known to end in spontaneous abortion. If that results from divinely inspired anatomy, Dr. Ayala said, "God is the greatest abortionist of them all."

Or consider, he said, the "sadism" in parasites that live by devouring their hosts, or the mating habits of insects like female midges, tiny flies that fertilize their eggs by consuming their mates' genitals, along with all their other parts.

For the midges, Dr. Ayala said, "it makes evolutionary sense. If you are a male and you have mated, the best thing you can do for your genes is to be eaten." But if God or some other intelligent agent made things this way on purpose, he said, "then he is a sadist, he certainly does odd things and he is a lousy engineer."

Cornelia Dean, "Roving Defender of Evolution, and of Room for God", New York Times, 2008-04-29

QotD; [INSERT NAME OF MESSIANIC LEADER HERE]

Mrs Obama is most famous for declaring, a propos her husband's candidacy, that "for the first time in my adult lifetime I'm really proud of my country". Just a throwaway line reflecting no more than the narcissism and self-absorption required to mount a presidential campaign in the 21st century? Well, possibly — were it not for the fact that almost every time the candidate's wife speaks extemporaneously she seems to offer some bon mot consistent with that bleak assessment.

And when she stops looking back across the final grim despairing decades of the 20th century ("Life for regular folks has gotten worse over the course of my lifetime") and contemplates the sunlit uplands of the new utopia, it doesn't, tonally, get any cheerier. Pretend for a moment that the name of the candidate had been excised from the following remarks. Would it seem part of the natural discourse of a constitutional republic of citizen legislators? Or does it sound more appropriate to the leadership cult of Basketkhazia or some other one-man stan?

"[INSERT NAME OF MESSIANIC LEADER HERE] will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

Barack, eh? Barack Jong-Il? Unlikely. Not too many "comfort zones" in Pyongyang. Barack Turkmenbashi, the late dictator of Turkmenistan? Possibly. But he would have exhorted his people to push themselves to grow more melons (a particular source of national pride). No, the above words were his wife's vision of life under the Administration of Barack Obama, the transformative Presidential candidate offering change you can believe in — or else. I hate to sound like I'm walled up in the Shed of Cynicism, but the constitutional right to be "uninvolved" and "uninformed" is one of the most precious, at least if the alternative is being "required" to work at coming out of your isolation and engaging with fellow members of the uninvolved, uninformed masses as we push ourselves to move out of our comfort zone.

Mark Steyn, "Mrs. Grievance", National Review, 2008-04-29

QotD: Biofuel warm-mongering

The biofuels debacle is global warm-mongering in a nutshell: The first victims of poseur environmentalism will always be developing countries. In order for you to put biofuel in your Prius and feel good about yourself for no reason, real actual people in faraway places have to starve to death. On April 15, the Independent, the impeccably progressive British newspaper, editorialized: "The production of biofuel is devastating huge swathes of the world's environment. So why on earth is the Government forcing us to use more of it?"

You want the short answer? Because the government made the mistake of listening to fellows like you.

Mark Steyn, "Chickenfeedhawks: Global warm-mongering", National Review Online, 2008-04-26

QotD: Paranoia in politics

On Tuesday the lesbian assassin of Vince Foster won Pennsylvania's presidential primary. In the larger contest for the Democratic nomination, though, she still lags behind a jihadist sleeper agent who is simultaneously a secret Muslim, a secret Communist, and a secret Republican. Whoever wins their race will go on to face a brainwashed puppet of the Viet Cong, and whoever wins that race will then get on with the modern president's central task: serving the interests of Mexico. It must be true, I read it in my email.

There's a persistant political myth that paranoia is only a feature of the fringe, something common among alienated radicals and reactionaries but rare in the great American center. In fact, paranoia has been ubiquitous across the political spectrum. You can find it in nearly every faction and movement at every point in American history, not least among those establishment figures who think they're immune to conspiracy theories. (The most lurid and destructive tales of Waco were not told by militiamen after the raid was over. They were told by the media and the government while the siege was underway.)

Jesse Walker, "The Paranoid Style Is American Politics: Fear and loathing on every campaign trail", Hit and Run, 2008-04-24

QotD: Banning "evil-looking" guns

When a rash of gun murders takes place, it makes sense for the police to do one of two things: renew tactics that have been effective in the past at curbing homicides, or embrace ideas that have not been tried before.

But those options don't appeal to Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis. What he proposes is a crackdown on assault weapons.

I'm tempted to say this is the moral equivalent of a placebo—a sugar pill that is irrelevant to the malady at hand. But that would be unfair. Placebos, after all, sometimes have a positive effect. Assault weapons bans, not so much.

If there are too many guns in Chicago, it's not because of any statutory oversight. The city has long outlawed the sale and possession of handguns. It also forbids assault weapons. If prohibition were the answer, no one would be asking the question.

Steve Chapman, "The Cops That Couldn't Shoot Straight: Chicago police and their proposed, unworkable gun ban", Reason Online, 2008-04-24

QotD: Humour

[On the topic of satire and A Modest Proposal]:

It's not that it's harder to detect humour now. It's that having an internet address and the ability to email hundreds of people at once doesn't make you Jonathan Swift.

"Azalais Malfoy", posting to the Lois McMaster Bujold mailing list, 2005-06-22

QotD: Offensive Clothing

In the late 1990s era of no-logo vogue, cultural commentators fretted that the once-democratic medium of the T-shirt had been co-opted by corporations, and that T-shirt buyers were concerned only with raising the planet's Hilfiger consciousness and saving the FUBUs. "The slogans on contemporary T-shirts are increasingly meaningless," the novelist and columnist Russell Smith observed in The Globe and Mail in 2000. "Most of them are simply the brand name of the T-shirt itself."

Now that our T-shirts are so blithely outspoken — and deliberately offensive — on every issue from Medicare to Britney Spears, it sometimes seems as if we’d like to ban our way back to a more sartorially decorous era. Ultimately, however, the T-shirt skirmishes that continuously erupt are oddly reassuring. Can the public schools be as out of control as they're often alleged to be if all it takes to get suspended from one is an "I ♥ My Wiener" shirt? Has our public sphere grown as hopelessly coarse as our loudest cultural scrub maids insist if a shirt featuring a faux fishing theme and the phrase "Master Baiter" is enough to make Southwest Airlines ground you?

Shouldn't we take comfort in the fact that so many high school students are ready to fight for their right to champion the unborn, maternal hotties, and whatever else they can think of to test the limits of Tinker v. Des Moines? T-shirts may intrude upon our lives in the public sphere, but they're also our most vivid reminder that free speech is woven into the fabric of our culture.

Greg Beato, "I'm With Stupid: The perennially embattled free speech zone over our chests", Reason, 2008-04

QotD: The Ron Paul Campaign

To be sure, by every conventional measure Paul’s presidential bid has been an abject failure — not a single primary win and only 14 delegates as of press time. Yet Paul managed to raise more than $20 million, virtually all of it online, and inspire an army of hyper-devoted and mostly youthful followers using a pitch — and a style — that will have much more to do with 21st century politics than whatever models of Buick and Oldsmobile the Democrats and Republicans eventually crank out this year. That’s how Paul pulled together over 67,000 people at the social networking site MeetUp (a total that was more than 20 times the number who signed up for the next most popular candidate, Barack Obama). That’s why he won raves from quarters as disparate as conservative commentator George Will (who called Paul "my man" on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos"), punk icon Johnny Rotten (who gave Congress' "Dr. No" a celebratory shout-out during a "Tonight Show with Jay Leno" episode), plus a self-explanatory group called "Strippers for Paul."

What explained the ability of this odd politician, with his inept campaign management team, to attract gobs of money, if not actual votes? Because it was only Ron Paul who said something truly distinct this campaign about the very nature of power. Namely, that government should have less of it on all levels and in every instance. "I don't want to run your life," Paul says. "I don't want to run the economy. ... I don't want to run the world." Such sentiment is simultaneously radical and fully in the Jeffersonian tradition of governing best while governing least. The right to be left alone, as Justice Louis Brandeis once put it, is at the very center of the American experiment because it allows individuals and the communities they form to pursue happiness in competing, peaceful ways. This is especially true in Long Tail America, where people are not only increasingly tolerant of alternative lifestyles but are constantly on the hunt for ways to individualize and personalize their own lives.

Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, "Tuned Out (PDF download)", Politics, March 2008

QotD: Defining the word "obvious"

More often than not, guys interpret even friendly cues, such as a subtle smile from a gal, as a sexual come-on, and a new study discovers why: Guys are clueless.

More precisely, they are somewhat oblivious to the emotional subtleties of non-verbal cues, according to a new study of college students.

"Young men just find it difficult to tell the difference between women who are being friendly and women who are interested in something more," said lead researcher Coreen Farris of Indiana University's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

This "lost in translation" phenomenon plays out in the real world, with about 70 percent of college women reporting an experience in which a guy mistook her friendliness for a sexual come-on, Farris said.

Some might think the results come down to "boys being boys," and so even the slightest female interest sparks sexual fantasy. But the study, to be detailed in the April issue of the journal Psychological Science, also found that it goes both ways for guys — they mistake females' sexual signals as friendly ones. The researchers suggest guys have trouble noticing and interpreting the subtleties of non-verbal cues, in either direction.

Jeanna Bryner, "Clueless guys can't read women, study confirms: Why women's friendly cues get interpreted as sexual come-ons", MSNBC, 2008-03-20

QotD: Drug hysteria

On the opening page of High Society, which aims to explain "how substance abuse ravages America," Joseph Califano declares that "chemistry is chasing Christianity as the nation's largest religion." Although it is not always easy to decipher Califano's meaning in this overwrought, carelessly written, weakly documented, self-contradictory, and deeply misleading anti-drug screed, here he seems to be saying that opiates are the religion of the masses. Americans, he implies, are seeking from psychoactive substances the solace they used to obtain from faith in God, and better living through chemistry is nearly as popular as better living through Christ.

That claim, like many Califano makes, is unverifiable, and it does not seem very plausible. Americans may be less religious than they used to be, but large majorities still say they believe in God and identify with specific faiths, making the U.S. much more religious than other Western countries, which tend to have substantially lower drug use rates. Although Americans have a bewildering array of psychiatric medications to choose from nowadays (with permission from a doctor), they smoke a lot less than they did in the 1960s and drink less than they did a century ago, when they also could freely purchase patent medicines containing opium, cocaine, and cannabis. If the devout are less inclined than the doubters to use mood-altering drugs, how is it that mostly Mormon Utah leads the country in antidepressant prescriptions? And if chemistry and Christianity are locked in competition, what are we to make of Jesus' water-into-wine miracle, or of the Native American Church, Uniao do Vegetal, and other groups that combine Christianity with psychedelic sacraments?

Already I have put more thought into the alleged connection between faithlessness and drug use than Califano did. And so it is with the rest of the book. A proper debunking would require more than the 186 pages of text that Califano, a domestic policy adviser to Lyndon Johnson and secretary of health, education, and welfare in the Carter administration, squeezes out of conversations with politicians and old reports from the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), the prohibitionist propaganda mill he founded and heads.

Jacob Sullum, "No Bad Drugs: The arbitrary distinctions at the root of prohibition", Reason, 2008-03-20

QotD: SWAT raids

Over the last quarter century, we've seen an astonishing rise in paramilitary police tactics by police departments across America. Peter Kraksa, professor of criminology at the University of Eastern Kentucky, ran a 20-year survey of SWAT team deployments and determined that they have increased 1,500 percent since the early 1980s — mostly to serve nonviolent drug warrants.

This is dangerous, senseless overkill. The margin of error is too thin, and the potential for tragedy too high to use these tactics unless they are in response to an already violent situation (think bank robberies, school shootings or hostage-takings). Breaking down doors to bust drug offenders creates violent situations; it doesn't defuse them.

Radley Balko, "Senseless Overkill", Fox News, 2008-03-12

QotD: Going Medieval

I go to law school parties with my wife sometimes, and inevitably one of the laywers-in-training will ask me what I do. I tell them I'm a PhD candidate in medieval studies, to which they usually respond with a baffled, "Wow, that's so cool. So, you, like read old books?"

If only they knew. Yesterday I spent an hour and a half at talk hosted by the English department that was nigh unto indistinguishable from an episode of Beavis and Butthead. It involved senior faculty snickering while looking at dirty medieval art and grad students trying to pretend that they were above such things.

Ostensibly, the subject of the talk was "Chaucer and the Relics of Vernacular Religion," but the handouts were mostly dirty pictures like this one, which I took from an online auction house's listing, because Prof. Minnis's photocopies wouldn't scan well:

Carl Pyrdum, "What it's Like to be a Medievalist", Got Medieval, 2006-01-26

QotD: The problems of Palestinian jihadists

In Tel Aviv, not a single bar or nightclub seems to obey the rules; all are thick with smoke. It is, roughly, a mix of 20 percent hash and 80 percent tobacco. According to a prominent investigative journalist here, it isn't just Israelis who indulge in drugging. The reporter, who works for a major Tel Aviv daily, is a fluent Arabic speaker who spends the majority of his time pounding the pavement in the Palestinian Territories.

He relates a bizarre story: Last year, while interviewing a house full of Hamas members, he entered into a rather ordinary conversation on the banalities of soldiering (the journalist, like most Israelis, is an Israel Defense Forces veteran). "So how do you pull these long shifts?" he wondered. "Well, we take pills smuggled in from Tel Aviv," said the Hamas apparatchik. "What pills?" He didn't know, but graciously placed a call to a Hamas comrade, who, apparently, doubles as his pharmacist. "He says they are called the EK-STAZY." The raver-jihadists explained that these mystery pills induce a mild euphoria, and allow them to shoot at members of the Israel Defense Forces for long, happy stretches.

The Hamas-embedded journalist relates another woe-is-me-story of life as a terrorist. "I'm the Oprah of the Palestinians. They are always telling me things about their private lives." One leader of Islamic Jihad recently confessed that his manifold sexual problems were driving him to depression. It is tough, he moaned, to find a good woman, a woman willing to spend time with you, when you marked for death by Israeli intelligence. Amongst the extremists, they even manage to blame not getting laid on Zionism.

Michael C. Moynihan , "Diary of an Israel Junketeer, Part Two: Tel Aviv, the Oprah of terrorists, and raver-jihadists", Reason Online, 2008-03-17

QotD: Morris Dancers

Morris dancers, for those of you who don't know, are cute people who dress up in little white suits with green sashes and pork-pie hats with feathers. They tie sleighbells to their feet and they strap long white hankies to their wrists. In any event, there's nothing really alarming about Morris dancers; they're actually quite harmless.

Except that from time to time they will arm themselves with some kind of cudgel or bludgeon or some kind of blunt instrument. And they will gather in a knot or a mob known as a clot, or a team. And they'll gather in kind of a mystic circle and, to the accompaniment of accordion and violin, they will rhythmically and ritualistically hit each other again and again and again, with these sticks.

This is supposed to be some form of British fertility ritual, or some form of entertainment, or something. Anyway, this next song has the sort of knuckle dragging Neanderthal beat that Morris dancers really love to dance to.

Stan Rogers, introducing the song "The Idiot" on the album Home in Halifax.

QotD: Revisiting Salem

American history is littered with examples of puritanism deranging the law, from the Salem witch trials onwards. Anthony Comstock, a 19th-century anti-porn campaigner, used his position as a postal inspector to seize 50 tons of books and 4m pictures. He boasted that he was responsible for 4,000 arrests during his career and 15 suicides. Under Prohibition people could be imprisoned for life for consuming alcohol.

Puritanism continues to stalk the country in new guises. The most dramatic example is America's new version of Prohibition — a "war on drugs" that helps explain why one in 100 American adults are in prison. But there are plenty of humbler examples. Schools impose zero-tolerance rules that result in expulsion for minor offences. The citizens of Texas may not buy dildos. Americans are banned from drinking until they are 21.

The combination of legalism and puritanism invariably produces the same dismal results. It creates expensive government bureaucracies that seize on any excuse — rules relating to inter-state commerce are a particular favourite — to extend their powers to boss people about or spy on them. It throws up swivel-eyed zealots who pursue their manias with little sense of proportion or decency (remember Kenneth Starr). And it ends by devouring its children. Mr Spitzer is only the latest in an endless line of self-righteous crusaders impaled on their own swords.

He certainly had no choice but to resign (as he did on March 12th) if, as it seems, he broke the law. But that still leaves the bigger question of whether the law is an ass. George Bernard Shaw once defined "Comstockery" as "the world's standing joke at the expense of the United States"; but it is hardly a joke for the people who are caught in its tentacles. There are enough real problems for America's law-enforcement officials to worry about.

"The hypocrites' club: Now with a new diamond-level member", The Economist, 2008-03-13

QotD: It isn't global warming, it's domestic heating

[. . .] chilling red [wine] isn't a crime, it's the way its always been . . . it's just the world around us that has changed; let me explain. Today, room temperature is ~70 degrees (21 Celsius) — but in the days when room temperature for reds was first adopted, room temperature wasn't controlled by central air or ambient heat; it was a drafty old French chateau. Here you were lucky if rooms got into mid-50's, and walking around with shorts and a t-shirt on indoors was more likely to give you hypothermia than any kind of comfort. So when you went down to the basement and pulled a bottle off the wine cellar shelf to serve with dinner, it was already "chilled". The idea that red wine, to be served properly, had to be stored next to the oven, was perpetuated by restaurants — and somehow that's just become [accepted as] the norm.

Wine should not be the same temperature as your soup . . . too warm and you kill off all those great subtle flavours. Same can be said about too cold, but if it's too cold, it can always warm up to produce those flavours — too warm, and you're being even more uncouth by dropping a few ice cubes in to chill it down, diluting the taste with water in the process. The only thing worse is stirring in a packet or two of sugar (I've seen and heard about both courses of action)

Michael "Grape Guy" Pinkus, "Raise your Spirits: A Chilly Response", Ontario Wine Review, 2008-03-12

QotD: Feministic re-evaluation of prostitution

I’m fascinated by the Spitzer-inspired discussion of prostitution on blogs that identify as feminist, most of which seem to be conflicted but marginally pro-decriminalization. It's a surprisingly utilitarian back-and-forth; few posters or commenters are arguing from self-autonomy (OK, none), and most are weighing the obvious harm of denying sex workers access to law enforcement (in the case of criminalization) against the desire not to reinforce patriarchy and/or heteronormativity (in the case of legalization). Everyone seems to assume that legalizing sex work will reinforce all sorts of ugly cultural phenomena women struggle against all the time. Writes one commenter at Feministing, "I'm politically liberal, openly feminist, and opposed to sex work precisely" because of "patriarchy" and "heterosexuality issues."

I find this incoherent precisely because I share all the poster's intuitions about problematic cultural norms. Of course sexism restricts autonomy in all sorts of ways that deserve consideration when discussing the prevalence of prostitution or the choice to enter sex work. Of course it's deplorable that sexually adventurous young women are constantly told they are "degrading themselves" by seeking out various experiences, that every bit of enjoyment eats away at some secret store of purity. This whole tradition — the idea that women need be preserved in glass so as not to "ruin" themselves, lest they diminish their sexual value by "giving it away" — restricts the lived autonomy of women in ways I can't even begin to articulate. None of the slut-shaming makes sense unless you assume women live to give themselves to men in their purest possible form.

Kerry Howley, "Thoughts on Thoughts on Spitzer", Hit and Run, 2008-03-11

QotD: The Global Warming Creed

I believe in Gore, the Prophet All-Knowing, the Creator of the Internet, and in Global Warming, his brain-child:

Which was conceived from Global Cooling, born of his lust for power, after he suffered a stolen election and was considered dead politically.

He descended into Obesity.

The third year He rose again from the obscure, He ascended into media prominence, and sits at the right hand of Bono the Annoying, from whence he shall come to sell carbon credits to the suckers with guilty consciences.

I believe in the Mother Gaia, the holy Ecological Church, the communion of Hollywood stars, the forgiveness of consumerism, the recycling of all things, and life so miserable it seems everlasting.

Amen.

Chris Claypoole, "The Global Warming Creed", Libertarian Enterprise, 2008-03-09

QotD: Boomer Entitlement Syndrome

Susan Callaway seems to be offended when I spoke ill of the Boomers. Well get over it. Yours is the generation that has whined and begged for every free lunch that they could get from the government. Saying you weren't one of the whiners or beggars is like saying "Don't blame me, I voted for Kerry". So what. Even if you don't cash your Social Security checks every politician will still be doing all they can to win your aging votes and figuring out ways to dump the bill onto the next few generations. So what if you are voting against your generations desires, the rest of them aren't and that's the problem.

Ron Paul resonates with the young for a good reason. They are the ones who will get screwed the worst by all that Boomer pandering. They are the ones who are going to have to pick up the tab for the party and they don't like it. Unfortunately they are greatly outnumbered by their Boomer parents who instead of having kids decided to have extended childhoods of their own. Unfortunately we Gen X and Gen Y types don't get to have the same extended childhoods your Boomers got, we have to grow up and pay the bills your generation racked up.

Scott Graves, Letter to the editor, Libertarian Enterprise, 2008-03-09

QotD: British terrortourists

While Britain is fast catching up to America—and leading Europe—in illiteracy, obesity, and violent crime (despite ubiquitous surveillance cameras and an ineffective ban on handguns), the Wittgenstein references in Monty Python still shape our assumptions of British cultural supremacy. But as the English social critic Theodore Dalyrymple observed in 2004, to profess an interest in high culture in today’s Britain is to be met with accusations of homosexuality.

So before President Ron Paul restores the gold standard, it should be acknowledged that the sagging dollar is providing one useful service: a long-overdue corrective to our self-image as lesser Brits. Europeans, who ranked the English as the “world’s worst tourists” in a recent Expedia poll, have long ago disabused themselves of such stereotypes. Take a look around New York, Boston, or Los Angeles, and spot the omnipresent gaggle of chavs, waddling through the Adidas shop, shouting drunken insults in local Irish pubs, converting the currency on every product within reach. England is just America writ small.

Michael C. Moynihan, "Take Them Back to Dear Old Blighty: The ugliest byproduct of the sagging dollar", Reason Online, 2008-03-06

QotD: Jury Nullification

If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun's manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.

Jury nullification is American dissent, as old and as heralded as the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger [link not in original article], who was acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, and absent a government capable of repairing injustices, it is legitimate protest. If some few episodes of a television entertainment have caused others to reflect on the war zones we have created in our cities and the human beings stranded there, we ask that those people might also consider their conscience. And when the lawyers or the judge or your fellow jurors seek explanation, think for a moment on Bubbles or Bodie or Wallace. And remember that the lives being held in the balance aren't fictional.

Ed Burns, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, and David Simon (writing team for The Wire), "The Wire's War on the Drug War", Time, 2008-03-05

QotD: "Breeders"

If people choose not to have children, that's their decision. Obviously. You could make the argument that the future needs kids, and plenty of them, especially if you believe there should be an intermediary government entity transferring part of their income to you when you're old. You could make the argument that childless people are doing their part to save the earth, and the earth will be so grateful it will show up at your funeral and sit in the front row sniffling into a handkerchief. The other guests will nudge and point — is that the Earth? I didn't know they were close. I tend to believe we have reached an unusual point in human history when we have to debate the merits of reproducing, but there you go.

I'm not talking about the people who don't want their own kids but love kids anyway, and prefer the Cool Aunt or Cool Uncle role: bless you. I'm not even talking about the people who are indifferent to kids. I'm talking about the people who find some sort of personal identification in a militantly anti-kid stance. ( I suspect a lot of anti-kid people would be offended if you told them they wouldn't be a particularly good parent, because it requires skills they lack; the strenuously anti-kid types often believe that these skills are simply beneath them, and could be mustered if — God forbid — the occasion arose.) Granted, some people aren't parent material, and it's best they not do something they don't want to do.

[. . .]

So I don't judge people who don't want kids, but I can't stand "breeder" and "clones" and "crotchfruit" and all the other terms of derision. It's the worst form of misanthropy, and a curious protestation of ignorance: these people literally do not know what they're talking about, since there's nothing about parenthood you can observe from a distance that compares to the thing itself. Being irritated with poorly-socialized children in a restaurant does not set one up in a moral high chair. Believe me, parents are just as irritated with those people as you are.

James Lileks, The Bleat, 2008-03-05

QotD: Email

Email is the granddaddy of seemingly frivolous Internet applications. "It was an afterthought on the original internet. It was not part of what they sold to ARPA," says [Internet guru Clay] Shirky, an adjunct professor at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program and an Internet consultant for Nokia, BBC, Lego, and the U.S. Navy. Email was just a simplified file-sharing program. But within 3 months, email was 70 percent of traffic on the fledgling Internet.

It wasn't because email was a fast way to send a message to someone, or even that it was a fast way to send a message to a lot of people-there were already ways to do both those things pretty efficiently. What really made email take off, says Shirky, was the Reply All button.

Of course, everyone professes to hate the Reply All button and periodically swears bloody vengeance on its abusers. But the Reply All button offer us the power to turn a communication into a conversation (and sometimes even a community) with virtually no effort at all. No coordinating meetings or teleconferences, no need for synchronicity (anyone can read their email at any time and still be a part of the group), and no duplication.

"For the first time in human history," says Shirky, "our communications tools support group conversation and group action." Governments, enormous, ancient institutions like the Catholic Church, and massive corporations used to thorough dominate the landscape because only they could afford the high costs of coordination or large numbers of people. But now, for the first time, coordination (like talk) is cheap.

Katherine Mangu-Ward, "From Ridiculous to Revolutionary: Will girly blogs, flashmobs, Twitter, and other trivial annoyances save us all?", Reason Online, 2008-03-04

QotD: Inside the mind of a Drug Warrior

In any case, [new versions of the drug naloxone] certainly seem like a good idea for private groups and non-profits. It's a cost-effective way of saving lives.

But not everyone is happy. Dr. Bertha Madras, deputy director of the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy, recently told National Public Radio she opposes the distribution programs because — and hold on to your hat for this one — she believes life-threatening overdoses are an important deterrent to drug use.

"Sometimes having an overdose, being in an emergency room, having that contact with a health care professional is enough to make a person snap into the reality of the situation and snap into having someone give them services," Madras said.

Madras' reaction offers a telling glimpse into the mind of a drug warrior.

We're told that certain drugs have to be prohibited because they're too dangerous. But we should also resist efforts to make them less dangerous because doing so might encourage drug use.

It's a bizarre argument until you consider the real motivation behind it: In truth, it's not so much about the harm some drugs do; it's about an absolute moral opposition to the use of some drugs.

Even if they were completely harmless, some people simply don't like the idea that we can ingest chemicals that make us feel good.

Radley Balko, "Better Dead than High", Reason Online, 2008-03-03

QotD: Concern for the poor

I became a libertarian, politically speaking because — and I know this is going to sound sanctimonious but it is literally true — if you are really concerned about the poor people then you have to pick the system that in fact helps poor people. And the only one that has done that is democratic capitalism, period.

Ron Bailey, interviewed by Sean Higgins in "I Want to Believe?", Doublethink, 2008-02-25

QotD: Americans, from the Canadian perspective

Like all Canadians, Americans are my #1 spectator sport. I find you all hugely entertaining to observe anthropologically, and I know you pretty well by now.

Bruce Rolston, "A quiet plea", Flit, 2008-02-01

QotD: Words that don't exist, but should

Straternization: Hanging out socially with people not because you like them, but for their strategic benefits (i.e., helping you get ahead in work, getting you closer to that cute young thing, raising your social status in the lunchroom, etc). Usually doesn't work nearly as well as people hope.

John Scalzi, "Today is International Make Up a Word Day", Whatever, 2008-02-27

QotD: The pitfalls of "Fairtrade" coffee

Despite Fairtrade's moral halo, there are other, more ethical forms of coffee available. Most Fairtrade coffee is roasted and packaged in Europe, principally in Belgium and Germany. That is unnecessary and retards development. Farmers working for Costa Rica's Café Britt have climbed the economic ladder not just by growing beans but by doing the processing, roasting and packaging and branding themselves.

But Café Britt is not welcome on the Fairtrade scheme. Most Café Britt farmers are self-employed small business people who own the land they farm. That is unacceptable to the ideologues at FLO International, Fairtrade's international certifiers, who will accredit farmers only if they give up their small-business status and join together into a co-operative.

There is evidence that Fairtrade is damaging quality, too. Its farmers typically sell in both Fairtrade and open markets. Because the price in the open market is solely determined by quality, they sell their better beans in that market and then dump their poorer beans into the Fairtrade market, where they are guaranteed a good price. That's worth considering next time you pop out for an espresso.

Alex Singleton, "Halo of Fairtrade casts a shadow on poverty", Telegraph.co.uk, 2008-02-24

QotD: The Boomers' Fate?

There seems to be much consternation over Ron Paul failing to win over the mainstream of the Republican Party. The answer is really quite simple, the majority of Republicans are within a few years of getting Social Security. A fiscally sound and Constitutionally honest government would have to tell those Boomers and their still living parents "Terribly sorry but you don't have a contract saying the next generations owe you a damn thing" and they bloody well know it. They may talk a good game about balanced budgets but when push comes to shove they will enslave their kids to provide for their old age.

I just wonder how long it will take for Gen X to start smothering their greedy selfish parents with pillows while they sleep. Especially when "saving" Social Security will mean our contribution will be 25% or more of our paychecks. Until the Boomers start kicking the bucket we wont get that "gimme gimme gimme" monkey off our backs.

Scott Graves, letter to the editor, Libertarian Enterprise, 2008-02-24

QotD: Some good advice

With the possible exception of Disney villains, Imagethief cannot think of a group of people that more richly deserve their miserable fates than Hong Kong celebrity Edison Chen and his cavalcade of cupcakes.

If I sound unsympathetic here, that is because I am unsympathetic. Really, how dumb do you need to be? On all sides? Girls, here's a free piece of advice for you from your friendly neighborhood PR man: If you let a guy take digital nudie pix of you, sooner or later those pix are going to end up on the Internet. Not maybe. Not could be. Inevitably. The Internet is like a gravity well for nudity, and there is a 100 percent chance those pictures will end up there someday. Probably the week of your wedding.

[. . .]

But — and I say this with affection for my gender — dudes are stupid. We're especially stupid when it comes to managing technology effectively. We like to portray ourselves as masters of technological realm, with amazing powers of digital wizardry. But a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and in reality we're as screwed over by modern technology as your grandmother. Probably worse, because at least she doesn't pretend to understand it. We'd rather die — or inflict crushing humiliation on our girlfriends — than admit weakness.

"ImageThief", "Let me tell ya about Edison Chen's dirty photos", ImageThief, 2008-02-13

QotD: Primary Motivation

There is a reason the urban jihadis of Amsterdam and elsewhere specifically target gay men. Islam as a memeplex and as an adaptive strategy is about access to and ownership of women and by extension the control of sexual behaviour. Any number of cults function as a means for a small, core group of men — usually around a single charismatic leader — to mate with as many women as possible while relegating the majority of men to non-breeding status. David Koresh, Mormon fundamentalists, Raelians, the SeaOrg core of Scientology, and, yes, Islam at its earliest foundations down to its most determined exponents today; the list goes on and on. We see this structure over and over again because it works, at least so long as their are neighbouring populations which can be conquered by the otherwise non-breeding males of the cult and mined as a source of slaves, concubines and the spoils these cults cannot produce for themselves. The jihadis target gay men because of the unacceptable truth their overt ideology denies in themselves. And, quite possibly, out of an unconscious recognition of the most dangerous among their enemy if Europe undergoes another phase change, enters a swarm state and carries out another apocalyptic genocide.

Nick Packwood, "Where they make a desert, they call it peace", Ghost of a Flea, 2008-02-22

QotD: The primaries

This year's primary season has been so full of healthy developments that you could package it with oat bran and hawk it at Whole Foods. The country can thank its lucky stars that the process has pushed forward — in McCain and in Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama — the three most formidable figures in American politics. If Obama wins the Democratic nomination, the result will pit the two most widely admired political figures of their generations against each other in a presidential race. The last time the country saw anything remotely like that was when Dwight Eisenhower faced Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 1956.

Democrats can be grateful they have two tough races on their hands, first for the nomination and then, as now seems virtually certain, against McCain in the general election. Remember LBJ and Jimmy Carter? When Democrats win against weak opponents or crippled parties, they overreach, underperform, and lose touch with the country.

Jonathan Rauch, "Saved by McCain: The presumptive nominee is a tonic for the party", Reason Online, 2008-02-21

QotD: Castro and Cuba

Earlier this year, Castro had said that there would be no change in the Cuba-U.S. relationship until that man in the White House had vamoosed. And George W. Bush, along with most Dems and Reps, haven't shown much interest in changing the ongoing, and idiotic, U.S. embargo of Cuba. (Two pols who dare speak logic on this issue are Reps. Jeff Flake and Charles Rangel).

U.S. policy toward Cuba has been generally misguided for well over a century. Here's hoping the Congress and the president will do something right to accelerate a shift to freedom there. And here's hoping that Cuba becomes a better place as Castro puts one foot into the grave. I don't believe in hell, but I sort of hope there is a place like it for a guy like Castro.

Nick Gillespie, "Castro Resigns as President for Life of Cuba; Wants to Spend More Time with Families", Hit and Run, 2008-02-19

QotD: The Mind

I recently spent three hyper-stimulated hours at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. The Exploratorium is a hands-on museum, with devices and experiments that you usually only find in the proximity of "cool" high school science teachers with missing fingers. Various exhibits involving dry ice, piles of sand and other edu-thrilling materials allow you to observe all sorts of scientific principles. Have you ever spent an afternoon wondering why honeycombs are shaped the way they are? Then it's time you discovered something called television, and the Exploratorium can tell you how it works!

The latest Exploratorium exhibit is called The Mind, and it explores those precious 3 pounds of gray matter that keep our skulls from making a marimba sound when we hit our head on the car door. I learned something I've always suspected: The mind is a cruel, lying, unreliable bastard that can't be trusted with even an ounce of responsibility. If you were dating the mind, all your friends would take you aside, and tell you that you can really do better, and being alone isn't all that bad, anyway. If you hired the mind as a babysitter, you would come home to find all but one of your children in critical condition, and the remaining one crowned "King of the Pit."

Lore Sjöberg, "Don't Turn Your Back on Your Brain", Wired, 2008-02-13

QotD: The BBC view of "History"

On the BBC Radio Four News at 18:00 tonight, there was a story about a ceremony in Spain marking the two hundredth anniversary of a 'liberation struggle'.

The listeners were informed that this was a struggle against the Empire of Napoleon and it had helped create 'modern Europe' where everyone works together. Of course it was actually Napoleon who was working to 'get all of Europe working together' (it was called the Code Napoléon and Continental System). The words 'national independence', what the Spanish were actually fighting for, were not mentioned. And although it was mentioned that the British call the conflict 'the Peninsula War' the name "Wellington" was also not mentioned.

Sometimes I suspect that even North Korean radio presents a slightly less distorted view of the world than the BBC does.

Paul Marks, "'BBC History' strikes again", Samizdata, 2008-02-13

QotD: Self-Esteem

Self-esteem isn't all that it's cracked up to be. In fact . . . it can be a huge part of the problem. New research has found that self-esteem can be just as high among D students, drunk drivers and former Presidents from Arkansas as it is among Nobel laureates, nuns and New York City fire fighters. In fact, according to research performed by Brad Bushman of Iowa State University and Roy Baumeister of Case Western Reserve University, people with high self-esteem can engage in far more antisocial behavior than those with low self-worth. "I think we had a great deal of optimism that high self-esteem would cause all sorts of positive consequences and that if we raised self-esteem, people would do better in life," Baumeister told the Times. "Mostly, the data have not borne that out." Racists, street thugs and school bullies all polled high on the self-esteem charts. And you can see why. If you think you're God's gift, you're particularly offended if other people don't treat you that way. So you lash out or commit crimes or cut ethical corners to reassert your pre-eminence. After all, who are your moral inferiors to suggest that you could be doing something, er, wrong? What do they know?

Self-esteem can also be an educational boomerang. Friends of mine who teach today's college students are constantly complaining about the high self-esteem of their students. When the kids have been told from Day One that they can do no wrong, when every grade in high school is assessed so as to make the kid feel good rather than to give an accurate measure of his work, the student can develop self-worth dangerously unrelated to the objective truth. He can then get deeply offended when he's told he is getting a C grade in college and become demoralized or extremely angry. Weak professors give in to the pressure — hence, grade inflation. Tough professors merely get exhausted trying to bring their students into vague touch with reality.

Andrew Sullivan, "Lacking in Self-Esteem? Good for You!", Time, 2004-01-17

QotD: Are Canadians Sexy?

As a people we have two problems. The first I would dub the Tilley Hat phenomenon. No-one looks good in a Tilley hat, but they're damn practical. When you live in a country where you spend eight months a year trying to stay warm and four more warding off mosquitoes you tend to lean toward the practical. Tilley hats and Sears down coats are not sexy.

The other problem arises from another innately Canadian character trait. We're so obsessed with fairness and inclusion we hand out the status of "sexy" the way a special-ed teacher hands out praise. How else to explain Defence Minister Peter MacKay's annual topping of the sexiest parliamentarian list?

Having begun with a hoary old quote, allow me to paraphrase another. The answer to the question of whether Canadians are sexy would appear to be "as sexy as possible under the circumstances."

John Moore, "Canadians - as sexy as possible", National Post, 2008-02-09

QotD: The "Scientific" Method

Global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter, that's what we're dealing with.
- Steven Guilbeault, Greenpeace 2005, as quoted by Canada Free Press

Afterwards, another activist clarified the remark by stating that of course taller can also be evidence of shortness, richer can mean living in poverty, baboons can mean chairs, giraffes can mean pencils and hello Ms. Robinson, your lacy trousers are well buttered with smoked trout, can you hear what I'm writing with my toaster?

"Samizdata Illuminatus", "The Scientific Method is over-rated", Samizdata, 2008-02-05

QotD: Those shadowy "others"

Who these "others" are is left unsaid, though one could argue that "information warfare" hardly counts as a "secret strategy." And while it is at least conceivable that the CIA would be stupid enough to cut off Iran's lifeline to an independent media (it is the CIA, after all), ABC's source for this claim, an "Internet columnist" called Ian Brockwell, is of dubious reliability. According to his online bio, Mr. Brockwell's interests include UFOs and climate change, the latter of which he attributes to the perfidy of the former. But here's some free advice for the kids at ABC: Be slightly more skeptical of claims by online columnists whose work can be found on Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel's website, such as Brockwell's crie du coeur against "people fear those who debate the 'Holocaust'?" (Scare quotes around Holocaust in original, naturally).

Michael C. Moynihan, "Who Cut the Cables? An ABC Investigation" Hit and Run, 2008-02-04

QotD: Mitt Romney

The problem with Mitt Romney is that he isn't Mormon enough. His unusual, unpopular religion is the one part of his public image that doesn’t feel like it came out of a focus group. Naturally, he does everything he can to minimize, marginalize, and neuter it. Most voters, he said at one point, "want a person of faith as their leader. But they don't care what brand of faith that is." He thus reduced his purportedly heartfelt beliefs to a brand name, just another toothpaste in the great big CVS in the sky. It might not be Colgate, but the important thing is that he brushes daily.

Jesse Walker, "Make Mine Mormon: If only Mitt Romney were as colorful as his faith", Reason Online, 2008-02-04

QotD: John McCain

As a direct result of his long media honeymoon, much of what we think we know about McCain is wrong. Exit-poll numbers out of the early states showed that McCain was doing especially well among primary voters who were antiwar. The numbers say something disturbing about our capacity to believe that independent antiwar voters are seriously considering a man who championed pre-emptive war three years before it ever occurred to George W. Bush, who personally told me that the U.S. share of defense spending — more than one-half of the world's total — was much too small, and who has demonstrated repeatedly these past weeks that he doesn't understand why any American would question the deployment of U.S. troops in Iraq 100 years from now. After more than seven years of increasingly unpopular war, Americans look poised to nominate the most explicitly pro-interventionist presidential candidate since Teddy Roosevelt. Don't say you weren't warned.

Matt Welch, "The Unlikely Comeback of John McCain, Maverick Warmonger", LA Weekly, 2008-01-30

QotD: Save the HRCs!

Who will there be to read before we read, and tell us what is proper for us? Who will be there to edit the editors, to copy check the copy checkers? Who will shield our vulnerable law-students, and who will tend to the commission's most industrious serial complainant? There is one person, so eggshell brittle that he has drummed up a fierce amount of business for the HRCs. Is so loyal a customer now to be ignored because the Steyn-Levant tsunami is about to rumble mercilessly on shore?

[. . .]

Mostly I fear, if the HRCs are tied up, Canadians will be reading, unguided, what they choose to read, deciding for themselves what they like and what they don't, will discard a book or pass it to a friend, like a column or curse one - lit only by the light of their own reason.The horror! Before we know it, we'll have an unstoppable epidemic of free speech, free thought, and freedom of the press. And, surely, no one wants that. Otherwise, why would we have human rights commissions?

Rex Murphy, "Coming to a human rights commission near you", Globe and Mail, 2008-01-27

QotD: Libertarianism, the scourge of the GOP

Without attempting to untangle the mess of that second graf — seriously, read it again — my question is this: Exactly where and how has libertarianism poisoned "public life"? Certainly not in the modern, Weekly Standard-approved national GOP, which has shot federal spending through the roof, created mammoth new entitlements, rammed through panicky regulatory nightmares, got the feds deep into local education, and lived out the doctrine of pre-emptive war. Of all the many, many things to complain about the party that has run most of the federal government for the past eight years, "dogmatic libertarianism" has to rank somewhere near the proliferation of Esperanto.

It's always flattering that libertarianism — almost uniquely among strains of modern political thought — is constantly challenged to defend itself against its most theoretical extremes.

Matt Welch, " 'The moral vacuity of dogmatic libertarianism is poisonous to public life'", Hit and Run, 2008-01-25

QotD: How bad could it get?

While sharing cocktails with some delightful Reasonoids at the Happy Hour at The Big Hunt earlier this month, I initiated a little game of ranking presidential candidates. I began by saying that I would have to vote for Hillary Clinton if Mike Huckabee were the Republican presidential candidate. On further reflection, I added that I would have to vote for Mike Huckabee if John Edwards were the Democratic candidate. So my short ranking is that Edwards is worse than Huckabee who is worse than Clinton. On further consideration (and some cocktails later), I began to wonder if reason needs a foreign correspondent for the next four years or so.

Ronald Bailey, "The Presidential Candidate Ranking Game — Who is Worse?", Hit and Run, 2008-01-23

QotD: Economic Interventionism

It can even be argued that in one respect President Reagan was extremely fortunate: the problems he faced, though they had baffled liberals, were problems which gave conservatives no great intellectual difficulty. Liberals were then wont to say, indeed, that conservatives were offering simple answers to complex problems. But the problems were complex to liberals only because they insisted on misunderstanding them at a very simple level. Just as the Ptolemaic theory that the sun goes around the earth can be made to yield accurate predictions only by qualifying it with a multitude of exceptions and special cases, so the liberal belief that inflation was caused by unions and corporations seeking higher prices led to a multitude of difficulties as each intervention to hold down prices created more problems which required more interventions which in turn created more problems and so ad infinitum. And what was true for inflation also held for most areas of policy. It was the complex solutions advocated by liberals that caused the complex problems — at least as much as the other way around. No wonder liberals suffered from malaise.

John O’Sullivan, "Flashback: After Reaganism", National Review

QotD: The Afghan mission

[. . .] We recognize the conflict in Afghanistan as a liberation struggle, waged by the Afghan people and their allies, against oppression, against obscurantism, illiteracy, and the most brutal forms of misogyny. It is a fight for democracy, and for peace, order, and good government. It is also a struggle waged by the sovereign Government of Afghanistan, a member state of the United Nations, against illegal armed groups that seek to overturn the democratic will of the Afghan people.

In Afghanistan, the great global struggle for the recognition and protection of basic human rights — universal rights — is being waged with a particular and necessary ferocity. We cannot and must not retreat from that struggle.

The objective of extending and securing the sovereignty of the Government of Afghanistan to all corners of that great country cannot be achieved without a robust international military presence. Canada is one the richest countries on earth, and as such we have absolutely no excuse to shirk from our duty to make a proper and effective contribution to that military engagement.

Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee, "Submission to the Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan", 2007-11-28

QotD: Bad SF books

[. . .] a lot of SF authors are more interested in the science than the people, so the psychological depth required for good writing is simply missing, whereas romance and mystery authors have to have some minor grasp of psychology, however bad they are. Written by Aspergers for Aspergers.

Rachel Ganz, posting to the Bujold mailing list, 2008-01-20

QotD: Business Schools

The danger is that this will be another jolly club, where pals appoint pals, and the odor of self congratulation extinguishes the possibility of fresh thinking. Creatives may have the Canadian problem I was talking about this week: people who are brilliant as individuals and small groups working in agency circumstances find themselves diminished by still larger groups and the scale, to say nothing of the pretensions, of university life.

I guess the real challenge is how you get the academics and the creatives to play together This is not a famously productive relationship and it will take some tremendously good mediation to make these two parties mutually useful, let alone mutually inspirational. No one has a Rosetta Stone for these two communities, and it is hard for me to imagine an ExEd program that manages to install a linga franca even over 18 months.

Grant McCracken, "B-School + B-School = C-School?", This Blog Sits at the, 2008-01-18

QotD: Age and aging

Sometimes I suspect that everyone under the age of 50 or so thinks they need to get a promotion every few years in order to think of themselves as successful just because the characters on Star Trek all did.

It was noticeable that in the early series, pretty much every StarFleet admiral was either corrupt, insane or a traitor. They only seemed to ease off this unusual hiring policy once Kirk, Scotty, et al reached pensionable age.

Stuart Burnfield, posting to the Techwr-L mailing list, 2007-10-24

QotD: But what do you really think, James?

Insert slippery-slope argument here and an acknowledgment that decades on USENET has biased me in favor of crushing potentially destructive practices, exiling their adherents, sowing their homelands with cobalt-60, raising the temperature of their homeworld to one million degrees, detonating their sun and then ramming a galaxy into their home island universe.

James D. Nicoll, in a comment on Whatever, 2008-01-13

QotD: Cabernet Franc

Ontario's grape is Cabernet Franc [. . .] and after smelling and tasting my way through over 50 different kinds in a variety of styles, I'm even more convinced than ever before. Franc is the blending grape of Bordeaux — the right bank has Merlot, the left bank has Cab Sauv . . . but the lowly Franc has neither, used mainly to add structure to the blend — basically it's a back up role, it's along for the ride, think of it as the Ringo Starr to Merlot and Sauv's Lennon and McCartney.

Here in Ontario, Franc shines. Sure we blend it into Meritages, sometimes it's at the forefront of the blend and other times it takes a backseat, but we also make straight Cab Franc, Reserve Cab Franc, Late Harvest and Icewine Franc wines; we run the gamut of Franc and we make it well and consistently year after year.

I've been in discussions with winemakers, winery owners and wine people from all aspects of the industry — some hear Franc calling out to them while others dismiss it as the rantings of lunacy . . . but it is my belief that Cabernet Franc should be the grape we focus on as an industry and use it to help turn the world's attention to Ontario. It seems these days that every winemaking country has a calling card — a grape to call their own. I mention Riesling you think Germany, Cabernet Sauvignon = California , Shiraz = Australia, Sauvignon Blanc = New Zealand, Carmenere = Chile, Malbec = Argentina , Zinfandel = California, Chardonnay = anywhere that makes wine, same thing with Merlot, of course blends (Meritage) go to France [Bordeaux ] . . . the list goes on and on but nobody has adopted Cabernet Franc as their mainstay. It's homeless — sure it roams the globe popping up here and there, but it has nowhere to call "home". It's time we heed its calling and bring Franc into our fold, and give it a place to finally call home. We have the world's attention with Icewine. Now it's time to show them that we can make other wines too — not just copies of wines from other places, but a distinctive Ontario wine — Cabernet Franc; as with Shiraz, Sauvignon Blanc and Zinfandel, when people hear Ontario, they should think "great Cab Franc".

Michael "The Grape Guy" Pinkus, "My Two Barrels Worth — Cabernet Franc and Ontario", Ontario Wine Review #73, 2008-01-03

QotD: The Canadian Soul

I almost never pull multiple quotations from the same article or blog post, but in this case I had to make an exception (after yesterday's QotD from This Blog Sits at the):

One concept of Canadians is that they are products of contraction and complexity. They come from a world of two founding cultures (the famous "two solitudes") for which integration is always sought. Two cultures and languages have given way to many cultures and languages as the multicultural experiment continues. Canada licenses newcomers with the right to keep and cultivate their differences. This means that for every cultural characteristic that might serve as a national identifier, there is another that contradicts it. Take as one case in point, Toronto as a city animated by the "tension" between Methodist Scots who made it Canada's second city (after Montreal), and the Italians who arrived after World War II to save them from culinary, fashion, social and emotional inadequacies.

Canadians must also endure the fact that they practice a communitarian capitalism, that they insist on a tall poppy individualism, that they are both aggressively egalitarian and aggressively hierarchical. There are really lots of contradictions swimming about here, and I think the people who rise in a world like this are people who are good at surviving and managing complexity. The fact that Canadians generally are uncomfortable with the "imperial self" that is sometimes popular south of their border gives them a certain perspectival flexibility, let's call it. The ones who flourish are precisely the ones who use these complexities as a staircase with which to climb to acts of integration and creativity.

[. . .] Canadians suffer here from the devotion to consensus. Much more than Americans, Canadians think they have to agree. Much more than Americans, Canadians think they have to approve. One of the things I love about Americans is their pragmatism. You will be hammering away at a problem in a boardroom and it becomes clear that we are not looking for a consensus, we are looking for something that is "good enough for television. Let's get on it."

As I recall from my museum days in Toronto, it was customary to watch people withdraw their compliance and it was customary for people to sniff their disapproval. Again, in the American case, people pursue the thing much less personally, and are inclined to go with things that are responsive to the opportunity . . . even if they are not especially consistent with one's own preferences. Finally, Canadians believe [there is] a null space to which a committee, an institution (and their nation?) can retreat, a place of no decision and no momentum. For most Americans, this is intolerable. In American committee meetings there is a unspoken but deeply shared understanding. We are going to decide on something, and we are going to act on it, it's just a matter of what.

In Canadian groups, contradictions live and they have the power to derail things. [. . .] These Canadians cannot escape their contradictions. They cannot integrate. They can ascend to higher plane of generality, a richer synthetic moment of creativity. Canadians in groups become the victim of their differences while as individuals they are the beneficiaries of these differences. Or, to put this another way, the integration that Canadians do so well as individuals is denied them in collectivities.

Grant McCracken, "Canada, the Martin Paradox, and The Opposable Mind", This Blog Sits at the, 2008-01-10

QotD: Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense, Canadian version

A skeptic might say I am going easy on Martin because I have met him, because he is a Canadian (and there is Canadian mafia), and/or because he gave me a copy of his book. May I reassure you that there is no Canadian mafia. Furthermore, I have met, worked with, and deeply admire Zaltman, so personal acquaintance has no sway. And if you think my good opinion can be purchased with a free book, well, I wonder if we should step into the corridor and discuss this further. (This is the Canadian version of Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense. Or, as we might call it in honor of the national sport, Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense on ice.)

Grant McCracken, "Canada, the Martin Paradox, and The Opposable Mind", This Blog Sits at the, 2008-01-10

QotD: Bipartisanship

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said bipartisanship tends to produce the worst that Washington has to offer — transactional politics where lawmakers scratch one other's backs without regard to the bigger picture. Pork-barrel spending goes unchallenged because members of both political parties know that by objecting to one project, they jeopardize their own, Flake said.

"Partisanship is underrated. There is a time and place for it, and more time and place than we realize," he said.

Jonathan Weisman, "GOP Doubts, Fears 'Post-Partisan' Obama", Washington Post, 2008-01-07

QotD: Libertarian turncoats

One career strategy I considered during my happy time at Reason magazine was to become just enough of a bright boy of the libertarian movement to allow me to stage a very public falling out, write a tell-all book with a title like Ex-Friends or Movement Man or Up From Libertarianism or Whose Freedom?, then build a career as a David Horowitz/Michael Lind-style intellectual turncoat, getting paid to warn the masses about the dangers posed by my erstwhile allies. The strategy was unworkable for many reasons: It was a little too dishonest even for me; libertarianism doesn't generate enough public interest to support a longterm market in defection; and as it happens, defectors from and within libertarianism are a dime a dozen.

But the tactic I was planning to use would have been very effective: Simply collect story after story of the moonlight-and-magnolias Confederate nostalgists, stop-the-war-on-men misogynists, traditionalist homophobes, scientific racists and similar fringe characters who seemed to gravitate toward libertarianism, in numbers that I and others found remarkable.

Actually, I probably wouldn't have been very good at this tactic either: I don't do well with policing unacceptable commentary, "kicking" people "to the curb," writing colleagues out of polite society, defining away extremists and all those other things movement types (in all movements) love to do.

Tim Cavanaugh, "Paul vault opens can of worms", L.A. Times Blogs, 2008-01-09

QotD: The Ron Paul newsletter

I'm disappointed in Paul and in his campaign.

First, a few caveats. I think Paul's prone to nutty conspiracy theories, but I don't think he's a racist, at least not today. Perhaps there was a time when he held views that I and many people reading this site would find repugnant. But I certainly don't think that's the case now. Paul's temperament and demeanor in public does not suggest he's the kind of person capable of writing the bile Kirchick quotes in his article. Paul's position on the drug war alone — which he has acknowledged disproportionately affects minorities — would do more for blacks in America than any proposal any of the other candidates currently has on the table. Paul has also recently rescinded his support for the federal death penalty, also due to its disproportionate impact on blacks. Those two positions alone certainly don't indicate a candidate who fears "animal" blacks from the urban jungle are coming to kill all the white people.

I also think the Paul phenomenon ought to be separated from any personal baggage Paul may have. Yes, there are some losers who support Paul's candidacy. Any time you're a fringe candidate cobbling together support from those who feel disaffected and left behind by the two-party system, you're going to end up bumping elbows with a few weirdos. But there's nothing bigoted about the thousands of college kids, mainstream libertarians, war opponents, drug war opponents, and hundreds-long threads on sites like Digg and Reddit where enthusiasm for Paul's candidacy is strong. This movement is about ideas. There's a vocal, enthusiastic minority of people out there, skewing young, that is excited about "the Constitution," limited government, and personal freedom. That's significant and heartening, and shouldn't be tainted by the fallout from Kirchick's article (though I fear it will [. . .]

Radley Balko, "Ron Paul", Hit and Run, 2008-01-08

QotD: Fascists will heart Huckabee

After a year of wringing their hands over their choices in the presidential race — a pro-choice mayor with an authoritarian streak, a serial flip-flopper, and a senator who is a dedicated opponent of free speech — the Republicans finally have a new front-runner.

Mike Huckabee won the Iowa caucuses Thursday night with 34 percent (with 95 percent of precincts reporting) of the vote, handily defeating Mitt Romney, who came in second with 25 percent in spite of heavy stumping in the key Midwestern state.

Just what Republicans longing for a new Ronald Reagan needed: a religious-right candidate who is also a big-spending nanny statist.

Reporters have been quick to jump on Huckabee's comments in a 1992 Associated Press questionnaire that seemed to confirm their suspicions about a Baptist minister for Arkansas. Huckabee told the AP that "homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle," and called for isolating people with AIDS. That was a position, by the way, that the venerable Reagan had firmly rejected five years earlier. In 1997, then-Arkansas Gov. Huckabee pushed for a reaffirmation of the state's sodomy law, and in 1998 he compared homosexuality to necrophilia.

Huckabee says his rise in the polls can only be attributed to God's will. He endorsed the Southern Baptist Convention's declaration that "A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband." He says he entered politics to "take this nation back for Christ."

David Boaz, "Shakeup in Iowa changes the outlook for both parties:What fresh Hell is this?", San Francisco Chronicle, 2008-01-07

QotD: Economics, government style

This is terrific logic. Americans should be bothered with useless, unsolicited junk mail so that the USPS can continue to pay otherwise unneeded postal workers to deliver it. Makes sense to me.

I thus propose a federal "Agency for Digging Holes in Americans' Front Yards." Then, because of the holes-in-people's-front-yards problem that will inevitably result, I propose a second "Agency for Filling In Yard Holes."

These two agencies will create thousands of new federal jobs. And as we all know, new jobs are good for the economy.

Radley Balko, "Public Choice in Action", Hit and Run, 2008-01-06

QotD: Final wishes

I do ask (not that I'm in a position to enforce this) that no one try to use my death to further their political purposes. I went to Iraq and did what I did for my reasons, not yours. My life isn't a chit to be used to bludgeon people to silence on either side. If you think the U.S. should stay in Iraq, don't drag me into it by claiming that somehow my death demands us staying in Iraq. If you think the U.S. ought to get out tomorrow, don't cite my name as an example of someone's life who was wasted by our mission in Iraq. I have my own opinions about what we should do about Iraq, but since I'm not around to expound on them I'd prefer others not try and use me as some kind of moral capital to support a position I probably didn't support. Further, this is tough enough on my family without their having to see my picture being used in some rally or my name being cited for some political purpose. You can fight political battles without hurting my family, and I'd prefer that you did so.

On a similar note, while you're free to think whatever you like about my life and death, if you think I wasted my life, I'll tell you you're wrong. We're all going to die of something. I died doing a job I loved. When your time comes, I hope you are as fortunate as I was.

Andrew Olmstead, posted on his blog by "hilzoy" after his death, "Final Post", Andrew Olmstead, 2008-01-04

QotD: The tone of the campaign

It strikes me as a little-remarked phenomenon in this election that, for the first time since maybe 1988, the Democrats are running a serious candidate with an essentially Naderite worldview on the evils of Corporate Greed. I haven't paid much attention to the Blue Team so far — the Red crack-up being so much more entertaining — but whenever I do I hear some Democrat espousing economic-policy ideas (hatin' on corporations, hi-fivin' Lou Dobbs on trade) much further to the left of Howard Dean in 2004, Bill Bradley in 2000, and Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

With the one-day Hucka-BOO-yah on the GOP side, the big winner in Iowa tonight seems to be illiberal economic populism.

Matt Welch, "Million-Dollar Haircut; Ten-Cent Head", Hit and Run, 2008-01-03

QotD: Libertarianism is not an epiphenomenon of conservatism

I just don't get the controversy surrounding "the freedom to live however you want as long as you don't harm others." If you believe in a free society, what is the alternative precisely? Doesn't the freedom to argue — either through rhetoric or by example — for particular ways of living depend upon, I don't know, the ability to actually live different lives? And what exactly is the "conservative moral agenda"? Should we turn to Newt Gingrich for tips on that one? Or Mark Foley? Or D'Souza's "priest friend . . . [who] once observed that wine is evidence of how much God loves us." D'Souza's comments — and his inability to see libertarianism as anything but an epiphenomenon of conservativsm (whatever that is) — reminds me of the huge gulf between cons and libs, mostly revolving around the issue of pluralism.

I consider myself not an atheist but an apatheist — I just don't care very much about religion one way or the other. I can certainly appreciate the positive and negative roles that religion has played (and continues to play) in human history. And I can fully appreciate that irony that classical liberalism, a political philosophy that ultimately separated church from state (thank god!), has its roots in the English civil war of the 17th century, which was in many — maybe all — ways a religious war over the right to worship god in whatever way you saw fit.

But beyond the caricature of libertarians as, what, amyl-nitrate-huffing poufters (not that there's anything wrong with that — there we go again!), I just don't get the idea that what sometimes gets called the pursuit of happiness is in any way controversial. And if it is for conservatives, then it's a good thing they seem to be in the shitter politically.

Nick Gillespie, "D'Souza on Libertarians: Gay or Drugged-Out or Loose or All Three", Hit and Run, 2007-12-21

QotD: The key to generating blog comments

The secret to generating a huge number of comments on your blog: Write about Robert Heinlein and fanfic in the same week; each entry is at about 450 comments. By concatenation, this means writing an entry concerning fanfic about Heinlein books would come close to 1000 comments, and that writing erotic fanfic featuring Heinlein and Ayn Rand would generate so many comments that the entire power grid east of the Mississippi would collapse under the load. Given the severity of the weather at the moment, I am loath to do that. We’ll save it for summer.

John Scalzi, "Just In Case You Were Wondering", Whatever, 2007-12-16

QotD: The shame of the British army

Having belatedly agreed to pay Gurkhas the same pension benefits as any other men taking the Queen's shilling, the Ministry of Defence has decided to start firing Gurkhas three years short of earning their pension entitlements. I have often been asked why I left England to return to Canada and there are several answers (all true) I usually give. But the real reason was exposure to exactly this sort of short con as government. Everyone responsible for this shitty little trick at the Ministry of Defence should be subject to criminal charges for fraud, the Minister should be tarred and feathered and every free Englishman should hang his head in shame.

This is an England not worth fighting for. The Gurkhas deserve better; we do not deserve them.

Nick Packwood, "For Shame", Ghost of a Flea, 2007-12-18

QotD: Presidential Propaganda

Here's a history test no one should fail: Name a president whose "only reading materials were government documents and Bible scriptures" and whose tenure was linked to an increasingly unpopular war started under morally murky — if not clearly phony — circumstances.

That would be James K. Polk, who pushed for war with Mexico in 1846 after the Mexican army killed American soldiers in disputed territory along the Rio Grande River. As recounted in You Said What? (Harper Paperbacks), Polk "began to prepare his declaration of war, at no time recognizing that . . . the attack had occurred in disputed land. By not addressing the point, he was able to make the strongest case possible to a skeptical Congress."

Polk lied through omission, a disturbingly common characteristic of many of the "lies and propaganda" campaigns gathered in this volume. One hundred and 20 years later, another president, Lyndon Johnson, took advantage of the fog surrounding the Gulf of Tonkin incident to ratchet up the American military presence in Vietnam. What's more, Johnson systematically pursued a "policy of minimum candor" when discussing U.S. aims and troop commitments: "He left office branded a liar because he could not tell the whole truth about the war."

Nick Gillespie, "You Said What? A happy history of lies and propaganda", New York Post, 2007-12-09

QotD: Military Kangaroo Justice

No American would accept the proposition that one of our citizens, having been cleared of wrongdoing by American courts, could be abducted by a foreign power and imprisoned for years, only to have his fate determined by a kangaroo court that flouted the most elementary procedural rights. The Supreme Court should not accept it from our government either. If a legitimate hearing finds that Boumediene and his fellow detainees are guilty of aiding America's enemies, so be it. But we should not be satisfied to leave them to languish until the military decides whether the witches will float.

Julian Sanchez, "Restoring Habeas: Why old 'enemy combatmant' rules can't apply to a global battlefield.", Reason Online, 2007-12-12

QotD: The evolution of gender equality

That tells me that you are younger than I. Consider the time/culture that Elena was raised in. "Exploring the possibilties of boyfriends" was not an option. Any more than it was when I was 18.

I went from being the property of my father to being the property of my husband. Literally.

If I had been injured and compensation was awarded in a Personal Injury case, the Plaintiff would have been my father/husband. And the judgement (money) would have been payable to him, not me. And, if he had chosen to spend the money not "for my benefit", I would have had no recourse.

I had absolutely no legal rights separate from my father/husband.

"Moving out" and living on your own was no remedy. A woman was legally incapable of signing a contract. Want to lease an apartment? Buy a car? Open a bank account? Your "responsible male", i.e., father or husband, needed to sign for you.

Fortunately, times and laws changed.

Sharon Kutzschbach, posting to the Bujold Mailing List, 2007-12-12

QotD: Huckabee's Energy Policy

I think we ought to be out there talking about ways to reduce energy consumption and waste. And we ought to declare that we will be free of energy consumption in this country within a decade, bold as that is.

Mike Huckabee, as quoted by Jesse Walker in "Energy-Free by 2017!", Hit and Run, 2007-12-12

QotD: The 1960s

The 1960s remain a volatile mixture of sacred birthplace and hallowed battleground, both Jerusalem and Gettysburg for our national politics and culture. The decade's reach is long, its grasp immense, alternately a continuing mystery needing unraveling or an ongoing problem requiring a solution.

As music, art, racial and sexual relations, and citizens' relation to the state all percolated and mutated in that decade, the resulting cultural and political heat weakened certain bridges across cultural divides. Whether the decade's tumult created those divisions or just illuminated them, they are still often read as defining America in our red/blue era. For one example, the '60s legacy led Andrew Sullivan to the mad expediency of declaring that only a Barack Obama presidency can reconcile the dueling meanings of that decade, the era when Baby Boomers' passions and concerns began their long march through all American’s institutions.

Brian Doherty, "Always on Trial for Just Being Born: Revisiting 1960s tumult in art and politics — and seeing what lasts", Reason Online, 2007-12-11

QotD: Underachievement

I've long believed that all the hyperbright procrastinators I know, many of them underachievers, are the product of a particular mindset about intelligence. They are people who long ago internalized the notion that performance is largely based on innate talent--and are therefore putting off work because they know it won't be perfect. Procrastination delays the moment at which you find out that you aren't as talented as you hoped and believed you were.

Megan McArdle, "A for effort", Asymmetrical Information, 2007-12-05

QotD: Facebook

Facebook is no paragon of virtue. It bears the hallmarks of the kind of pump-and-dump service that sees us as sticky, monetizable eyeballs in need of pimping. The clue is in the steady stream of emails you get from Facebook: "So-and-so has sent you a message." Yeah, what is it? Facebook isn't telling — you have to visit Facebook to find out, generate a banner impression, and read and write your messages using the halt-and-lame Facebook interface, which lags even end-of-lifed email clients like Eudora for composing, reading, filtering, archiving and searching. Emails from Facebook aren't helpful messages, they're eyeball bait, intended to send you off to the Facebook site, only to discover that Fred wrote "Hi again!" on your "wall." Like other "social" apps (cough eVite cough), Facebook has all the social graces of a nose-picking, hyperactive six-year-old, standing at the threshold of your attention and chanting, "I know something, I know something, I know something, won't tell you what it is!"

If there was any doubt about Facebook's lack of qualification to displace the Internet with a benevolent dictatorship/walled garden, it was removed when Facebook unveiled its new advertising campaign. Now, Facebook will allow its advertisers use the profile pictures of Facebook users to advertise their products, without permission or compensation. Even if you're the kind of person who likes the sound of a benevolent dictatorship this clearly isn't one.

Cory Doctorow, "How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook", Information Week, 2007-11-26

QotD: Talking to your dog

In the meantime I was outside in the neighborhood calling for a lost dog. It seemed ridiculous: after all these years, now he runs away? I’d gone outside for a small evil cigar; my wife came out to chat, and yes, we Minnesotans stand outside when it’s 14 above and chat, and Jasper came out to stand with us. He went down to drill a yellow hole by the steps, and I thought nothing of it until I realized five minutes had passed. I went around the corner and gave the whistle, the sound I’ve used for so many years, the sound that usually brings the tinkle of a collar and a dog with pricked ears and wide eyes: will there be food? But nothing. I looked in the new snow; no tracks. I checked the side stairs: dog tracks. They went to the street. Ahhh, damn.

Went back inside, put on boots, and tromped around the neighborhood tweeting like a bird. Nothing. Dead silence. Up the block, down, down the hill, wondering if I’d have to head back to the creek; he loves it there. He could have picked up the trace of a squirrel, followed it down to the Falls, tumbled over the icy precipice.

JASPER I shouted. Nothing. I whistled: too-tweet.

Nothing.

I went back to the house to get in the car and drive around. As I came around the corner he came trotting up the steps. He looked at me: what? I looked at him: you dog. His ears went down and he looked away, then looked at me out of the corner of his eyes.

The most important conversations you have with your dog are silent movies.

James Lileks, The Bleat, 2007-12-07

QotD: Fake rare wine

The extraordinary inflation of rare-wine prices — of which the Jefferson bottles are the most conspicuous example — has led in recent years to an explosion of counterfeits in the wine trade. In 2000, Italian authorities confiscated twenty thousand bottles of phony Sassicaia, a sought-after Tuscan red; Chinese counterfeiters have begun peddling fake Lafite. So-called "trophy" wines — best-of-the-century vintages of old Bordeaux — that were difficult to find at auction in the nineteen-seventies and eighties have reëmerged on the market in great numbers. Serena Sutcliffe, the head of Sotheby's international wine department, jokes that more 1945 Mouton was consumed on the fiftieth anniversary of the vintage, in 1995, than was ever produced to begin with.

Patrick Radden Keefe, "The Jefferson Bottles: How could one collector find so much rare fine wine?", The New Yorker, 2007-09-03

QotD: The economics of bioethanol

Promoters of the ethanol mandate assert that it would help the United States achieve energy independence and slow the accumulation of greenhouse gases that are driving climate change. Evaluating the scientific and economic claims being made for bioethanol can be vexing, but a few urgent questions come to mind: if bioethanol is such a good energy deal, why must refiners and consumers be forced to use it? Again, if it's such a great idea economically, why does the federal government offer a tax credit of 51 cents per gallon for blending ethanol into gasoline?

In fact, the subsidies are probably higher than that. For example, a 2006 report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development estimated that if one took into account state renewable fuel tax breaks and direct agricultural subsidies that reduce other costs, the total amount of the ethanol subsidy rises from $1.05 to $1.38 per gallon of ethanol

Ronald Bailey, "Bioethanol Boondoggle: Political viability is more important than commercial viability", Reason Online, 2007-12-04

QotD: College Football

In other college football news, 13 of the 121 Division I-A football coaches have been fired, forced out or resigned under pressure since turkeys were carved. This only seems like a purge because departures of Division I-A coaches are so rare. Eleven percent of Division I-A head football coaches have been shown the door in 2007; last year, 19 percent of NFL head coaching jobs turned over. The average of the past two decades has been roughly 20 percent annual head coach turnover in the NFL, versus about 5 percent in Division I-A.

As TMQ often reminds everyone, the football-factory schools in Division I-A hold such incredible advantages in recruiting, in cupcake-opponent scheduling and in playing more games at home than on the road that an orangutan could coach a Division I-A school to bowl eligibility. Almost every football-factory season ends in a bowl bid, and thus the typical football season outcome at a big school is officially characterized as a success. Two-thirds of NFL teams do not qualify for the postseason, and thus the typical season outcome in the pros is failure. That's why there are far more long-term coaching dynasties in college than in the NFL. It is simply easier to win games at a football-factory college than in the pros, meaning more college coaches with career winning records and longtime tenures.

Gregg Easterbrook, "TMQ: BCS Madness!", ESPN Page 2, 2007-12-03

QotD: The Internet

God did not give us the Internet for porn, political fundraising, or pissing off the RIAA. (*)

[. . .]

* Those were Al Gore's contributions. Thank you, Al!

Jesse Walker, "The Rave Museum", Hit and Run, 2007-11-29

QotD: Dogs in Winter

It is cold as Mars’ Arse out there. I’m already tired of it. Not a good sign; it’s like a stitch in your side sixteen yards into a marathon. The fussy idiot wind doesn’t help any either, poking its nose into everything. The dog wants to go out; the dog goes out, rethinks the wisdom of the effort, then barks to be readmitted. A few minutes later he recalls why he wanted to go out, and he walks over to the door and paws the frame once. The door is opened, and a hand is put on his hindquarters to expedite his passage. Once outside, his nose hurts, and he announces a desire for the comforts of civilization. I wonder if there’s anything to be smelled at all when it’s this cold. I wonder if dogs lean into the wind, nostrils wide, and think: I’m blind.

James Lileks, The Bleat, 2007-11-29

QotD: Hillary Clinton

[. . .] I was happy to find in my stack a new copy of Hillary Clinton's famous bestseller, It Takes a Village, revised, updated, and reissued in a special anniversary edition to coincide with her presidential campaign, by which she seeks to take over the whole village.

Like Castro, like Ceausescu, like many other politicians, Mrs. Clinton prefers to be photographed surrounded by schoolchildren, an image that suggests either a kid's birthday party or a hostage situation, depending on your point of view.

Andrew Ferguson, "Read, Weep, and Vote", The Weekly Standard, 2007-12-03

QotD: Coffee, slowly

Continentals who grew up on Hollywood movies where the guy tells the waitress "Gimme a cuppa joe" and slides over a nickel return to New York a year or two later and find the coffee now costs $5.75, takes 25 minutes and requires an agonizing choice between the cinnamon-gingerbread-persimmon latte with coxcomb sprinkles and the decaf venti pepperoni-Eurasian-milfoil macchiato. Who would have foreseen that the nation that inflicted fast food and drive-thru restaurants on the planet would then take the fastest menu item of all and turn it into a kabuki-paced performance art? What mad genius!

Mark Steyn, "For What the Thanks", New York Sun, 2007-11-19

QotD: Where factoids come from

Decades ago, in the days when I labo(u)red in the Central Laboratory at the bottle factory, one of my collegues was dispatched to a conference on air pollution. Upon his return, he related the contents of a paper there presented.

I don't remember the details, but recall the main thrust of it.

In those days, there were numerous claims that "air pollution costs every man, woman, and child in the United States $137.63 every year" or some such number. The paper in question addressed the source of that widely published figure.

It developed that around 1890, a Pittsburgh (The Smokey City) newspaper had printed an article which reported the cost of cleaning the exterior of each of several office buildings during the previous year.

A a year or so later, someone else totaled those figures, divided by the number of buildings reported, multiplied by the number of office buildings in the Golden Triangle and reported "Air Pollution Cost to Pittsburg Businesses".

Still later, someone took that figure, divided by the population of Pittsburgh, multiplied by the population of the Allegheny County, and published "Cost of Air Pollution for Allegheny County in 1910".

Later, someone divided that by the number of steel mills in Allegheny County, multiplied by the number of steel mills in the state and called the result "Pennsylvania's Cost of Air Pollution".

Later, someone multiplied that figure by the number of states east of the Mississippi to arrive at "Cost to Eastern United States Due to Air Pollution".

Along around 1925, someone adjusted the figure to account for inflation.

In the 1930's someone divided the 1925 figure by the population of the states east of the Mississippi to arrive at an "every man, woman, and child cost of air pollution".

Someone else compared the unadjusted pre-1925 figure to the adjusted 1925 figure, divided the difference by the population of the eastern states to obtain "Increase per capita in Cost of Air Pollution in a Single Year".

Just after WW2 (the big one), the 1930's "every man, etc.." figure was adjusted for inflation, multiplied by the population of the United States, divided by the number of states, and published as "Cost of Air Pollution to Each State".

Finally, after a few more such manipulations over the years, the then- current cost of $137.63 was published.

As noted in the beginning, that's not exactly what the paper said, but the general idea is there. Along the way it was noted that, for example, an alleged total cost for Pittsburgh in 1900 had been divided by the 1914 population of Pittsburgh to get a cost per capita, then multiplied by the 1920 population of Pennsylvania to get a total for the state, even though the population numbers changed from year to year.

The paper's conclusions were:

1) There is a cost incurred by air pollution.

2) No one knows what that cost is.

3) If it is $137.62 per capita, that's just good luck.

4) That the quoted "Cost of Air Pollution . . ." should be scrapped at once.

Robert Netzlof, posting to Yahoo Group "Railroad_Modeling_Still_Makes_Me_Grumpy", 2007-11-21

QotD: The start of the Christmas season

Why does the Christmas celebration start earlier every year? The commercial reasons are obvious; many retailers do a significant portion of their business during Christmastime, so the sooner the sleigh bells ring, the happier stores are. This year, retailers are said to be worried that gasoline and home-heating prices are poised to soar, so they hope holiday shoppers will spend before that happens. But there is a deeper reason Christmas starts earlier each year: We want to live in the Christmastime world, and this has nothing to do with religion. In the Christmastime world, children are happy, family is gathered round, and all the year's exhausting and stressful overwork has at least led to a pile of presents. Candles are lighted, and we listen for a sound in the distance. Just as our ancient ancestors must have dreamed of living always in the moment of the harvest, we want to live as long as possible in the moment of the holidays — regardless of faith, since Santa comes to everyone. Christmastime also evokes the strongest positive memories of most people's childhoods — of presents, singing, anticipation, and the adults forcing themselves to get along. The Christmas weeks are the time we believe all is right with the world, whether or not we actually go over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house. We want to enter the time of believing all is well, so every year we push up the start date.

Gregg Easterbrook, "TMQ: Cover Them!", ESPN Page 2, 2007-11-20

QotD: Local food debunked

[. . .] locally grown food has its own environmental costs. Academics from New Zealand have produced evidence that it is environmentally friendly to produce dairy products, apples and lamb in New Zealand — where there is plenty of space to accommodate natural, energy-efficient methods of farming — and ship them around the world. Maybe the New Zealanders would say that, but it's not a crazy observation. Eating local can consume fossil fuels too: McKibben enjoyed berries in the winter because he froze them for months. Local tomatoes are grown in northern climes in gas-heated greenhouses. And local doesn't necessarily mean "natural": local apples can be stored for months — in storage sheds filled with nitrogen.

The local food movement would argue that local food is about more than just the environmental cost of transportation. Fair enough. But the connection between local food and some of its supposed benefits is pretty tenuous. If it's fresher food, cheery farmer's markets and decent conditions for farm workers that we want, let’s address those aims directly without this fetish for localism.

There's a twist in the tale, too. Two-thirds of the social costs of the food distribution system have nothing directly to do with the environment at all: They are attributable to accidents and congestion. More than half of those costs are caused by driving to the shops. My socially responsible advice to you, then, is not to worry about from how far away your food came, but to walk — not drive — to the supermarket.

Tim Harford, "Frequent Flier Food", Forbes, 2007-11-15

QotD: Higher Education

Flirtin’ with disaster, as Molly Hatchet put it. Flirtin’ with Disaster! Wasn’t that a Molly Hatchet album? Weren’t they a southern-flavor hard-rock band with Frank-Frazetta covers, for no discernible reason? Probably so. Flirtin’ with Disaster! The album gave a motto to all those guys in the dorm my second year, the straight-ahead / good-time / dual-lead-guitar / Allman et al guys who lived in the triple room catty-whompus from ours, and would have kicked our assses on general principle for not being like them, and also for using the term catty-whompus. They loved that stuff. Played it all the time. It sounded like music to hear two hours before you truly and seriously get down the business of throwing up, hunched over the bowl making gargoyle faces. College. The enlightenment just rained down from the skies. No, that was the guy in the room above whizzing out the window.

James Lileks, The Bleat, 2007-11-19

QotD: The missing universe

Fritz Zwicky of Caltech noted in 1933 that large clusters of galaxies don't contain enough visible matter to keep themselves from flying apart. By the 1980s, it had become apparent that individual galaxies don't contain enough visible matter to hold their stars. This triggered the searches for "dark energy" and "dark matter," postulated cosmic forces. Many projects are seeking evidence of dark energy and dark matter, including the Korean Invisible Mass Search, a set of detectors buried inside Jeombong Mountain. The latest estimate from NASA's Microwave Anisotropy Probe suggests that space is 4 percent ordinary matter, 22 percent dark matter and 74 percent dark energy. What might dark energy and dark matter be? No one has the slightest idea. We can't locate 96 percent of the universe. But trust us, we're experts!

Gregg Easterbrook, "TMQ: State of the Nation", ESPN Page 2, 2007-11-12

QotD: Responsibility

Because Americans can't be held responsible for the consequences of using products in ways they were neither designed not intended to be, game publishers should instead, apparently. According to Macworld, game publisher TakeTwo Interactive Thursday announced a preliminary settlement with all consumer class action lawsuits in the U.S. related to the infamous "Hot Coffee" software mod which unlocked simulated (not actual — participants are fully clothed) sex scenes in video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

The question, as I see it, isn't one of scruples, but whether "existence" should blindly trump "intentionality" in the eyes of the law, especially with software governed by an End User License Agreement that explicitly forbids tampering and unauthorized modification of the game code. Does the presence of what amounts to particular sequences of 1s and 0s on a game disk make a game's publisher culpable if a user violates the EULA and manages to access them anyway?

Matt Peckham, "Take Two Takes Hit, Settles Hot Coffee Sex Lawsuit", PCW: Game On, 2007-11-15

QotD: The Boomers

If there's one conviction that afflicts the keenest mind as it ages, it's the belief that Things Were Better Then, and Things Are Horrible Now, usually because no one has learned the lessons of your own generation and insisted on experiencing the world for themselves. (Frank Rich provided a neat example of this a few days ago, when he diagnosed Americans as "clinically depressed" and unable to capture the glories of his demographic, which Took It To the Streets, Man. And blew up a few buildings while they were at it, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking into a farmer's coop, stealing his chickens, setting fire to the coop and running off with the eggs, all of which you later misplaced because you were high.)

I'm so used to being lectured by sour Boomers I’ve come to think of them all as the Gratingest Generation.

James Lileks, The Bleat, 2007-11-13

QotD: The attempt to justify torture

[. . .] any discussion of torture for the sake of the GWOT is bound to be misleading if it does not take account of the hyperbolic, wolf-crying tropes that government officials employ every time a suspected terrorist is apprehended or a plot foiled. (Gregory Djerejian has a good summary with commentary of one instance of the sort of thin gruel we're talking about.) Whether it's a small group of Cherry Hill, NJ poseurs diabolically scheming to attack a heavily armed and armored US military base with weapons they didn't have, or a lunatic who hoped to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch, or UK-based terrorist scoundrels who might have succeeded in hijacking planes to the US if wishes were ponies, or that weirdo who packed his shoes with C4 but didn't have the means to detonate it, the US (and UK) government(s) have consistently, deliberately, shamefacedly overhyped, oversold, and outright lied about all these and many other purported existential crises. (DHS might admit, sotto voce, that a particular plot "was not technically feasible," but why should nuances such as these stop a hack like Murdock when he's on a roll.)

Just a sprinkle of induction should get us from the premise that the administration and its defenders will trumpet the best examples of the utility of torture they've got, to the conclusion that this sad assortment is the best they've got, so forgive me if I'm not quivering in my boots.

Daniel Koffler, "The National Review's Stupid Defense of Torture", Jewcy.com, 2007-11-07

QotD: SF clichés

These shows owe a lot to "Forbidden Planet," or perhaps vice versa; it was just how people saw the future. A logical extension of their own norms. We do the same, of course, which is why Star Trek: The Next Generation had a sob-sister grief-counselor on the bridge. There weren't any women on 50s sci-fi ships. The captain was hard-boiled, the engineers were laconic and practical, and the enlisted men were whooping rabble who'd get drunk and throw a rock through the window of a deserted alien city. You suspect that the authors of these stories were all WW2 Navy vets.

James Lileks, The Bleat, 2007-11-08

QotD: Tyrants left and right

Preventing global warming will become our new orthodoxy, anyone who questions its wisdom must be silenced. Better million starve than more greenhouse gasses be emitted. And as for trying to engage in upward social mobility, forget it!! everything will be rationed, and don't you dare complain we must save Mother Earth.

Which is hogwash. Mother Earth can save herself, thank you very much, that's if she needed saving. Earth has been warmer, we're just now reaching the temperatures the earth enjoyed just before the Little Ice Age.

Man made global warming may be happening, but it is within the range of temperature changes over geological history. With or without human activity the environmental will change creating new niches and destroying old ones and sooner or later species specialized for current conditions in the Arctic will die out anyhow, While we should show a decent concern for not trashing the World we live in, neither should we deny that we are part of that World and have a right to be in it and change it to suit our needs and as we harvest the things we need to survive.

Religious tyrants on the Right try to claim evolution and natural selection are not realities.

Tyrants on the left try to prevent natural selection and the environmental change that causes it from happening.

Perhaps this is simply a reflection of the fact that they are in so many ways living fossils, bearers of memes (cultural equivalent of genes) that are not appropriate for a world that has left them behind. Which is okay, if they'd leave the rest of us alone to evolve and enjoy our freedom.

A.X. Perez, "Ecotyranny", Libertarian Enterprise, 2007-11-04

QotD: "the autumnal aroma of a burning straw man"

Are you still afraid terrorists will attack the Mall of America?

I was never afraid. I was always concerned. I still am; who wouldn't be? It's a big red target with great symbolic value. It never keeps me from going there, though. Somehow I've avoided the FEAR and PARANOIA and PERMANENT WAR HYSTERIA that we're supposedly fed 24/7. You know how it goes; if you believe there's actually a credible threat from Islamofascists — well, no, that's not the right word, because it's inflammatory, inaccurate, racist, and is used as a code-word for an exterminationist agenda founded in a desire to control all the oil in the Middle East and convert it to Christianity. So call it the Small but Legally Containable Conservative Religion threat, since that reminds us that all religions are equally dangerous when taken to extremes. I mean, Fred Phelps, Catholic priests, Timothy McVeigh, and that little thing called the Crusades. Also the Inquisition and the persecution of Galileo. No one has clean hands here, except for me, because I washed them before I put that clever COEXIST bumpersticker on my car. No, I'm more afraid of the Mall of America itself. You go there in December — not that I do — and see people walking around eating meat and shopping for things they don't need and shouldn't really have because they don't need them, and you can almost hear the planet shriek like the music in that scary movie about the psycho, whatever its name is. I didn't watch it. I don't support movies that promote violence against women. Wasn't she in a shower? Those are so wasteful. I clean myself with a pumice stone and the sharpened edge of a clam shell.

(Sorry; I just enjoy the autumnal aroma of a burning straw man.)

James Lileks, The Bleat, 2007-11-02

QotD: Political Experiment goes wrong

Political scientists at the Cato Institute announced Monday that they have inadvertently synthesized a previously theoretical form of government known as megalocracy.

"We were attempting to recreate a military junta in a controlled diplomatic setting, and we applied too much external pressure," said head researcher Dr. Adam Stogsdill, a leading expert in highly reactionary ruling systems. "The resultant government has the ruthless qualities of a dictatorship combined with the class solidarity of a plutocracy — it's quite a remarkable find."

Stogsdill explained that megalocracy is extremely unstable and can only exist in idealistic conditions for a few minutes before collapsing into anarchy.

"Political Scientists Discover New Form Of Government", The Onion, 2007-10-30

QotD: The ever-expanding waistline

Meanwhile, there's the Disney World turnstiles problem. Uncle Walt's Florida showcase opened in 1971, and its turnstiles are sized for waistlines of that era. More than a few Americans now cannot pass through the Disney World turnstiles; when my son Spenser and I were at Disney World a couple of years ago, gate staffers were on hand to help those who needed to bypass turnstiles to enter the park. Two years ago when 300-pound defensive tackle Tommie Harris was drafted in the first round by the Bears, Harris exclaimed that he might be huge but he was fit and said the proof of his fitness was that he recently had been able to go through a turnstile at Disney World. Today, significant numbers of visitors to Disney World are bigger than a Bears defensive tackle. Something to think about.

Gregg Easterbrook, "TMQ: Ticket, Please!", ESPN Page 2, 2007-10-30

QotD: The net

What's happening here? What is it about the network that makes it so potent? Simply this: the network, in every form, is anathema to hierarchy. The network represents the other form of organization, not a contradiction of hierarchy, but, rather, a counterpoint to it. I've rewritten Gilmore's Law to reflect this:

"The net regards hierarchy as a failure, and routes around it."

For the fifty-five hundred years of human civilization, hierarchy has always had the upper hand. Now the network, amplified by all those wires and routers, is stronger than hierarchy, and battle has been joined. But this isn't going to be some full-on Armageddon, a battle between the Empire and the Alliance; this is the Death of a Thousand Cuts. The network is simply kicking the legs out from under hierarchies, everywhere they exist, for as long as they exist, until they find themselves unable to rise again. What it really come down to is this: we are assuming management of our own affairs, because we are now empowered to do so. It doesn't matter if you're a maize farmer in Kenya or a video producer in Queensland; these mob rules apply to us mob.

Mark Pesce, "Mob Rules (The Law of Fives)", hyperpeople, 2007-09-28

QotD: Moderation in religious belief

I have never believed that such a thing as "moderate Islam" exists, any more than I believe that "moderate Christianity" exists. Either Jesus Christ died to take away the sins of the world, or he did not; if one believes that Jesus was just another preacher with a knack for parables, one quickly will be an ex-Christian. Either God dictated a final revelation to Mohammed which invalidates the corrupted scriptures of Jews and Christians, and the sign of the crescent should rise above the whole world, or he did not.

Spengler, "Why does Turkey hate America?", Asia Times, 2007-10-23

QotD: The Farm Question

Here's how the American free enterprise system works. You have an idea for a business. You find the money to start it up. You try to give customers something they want at a price low enough to keep them happy but high enough to earn a profit. Either your plan works, allowing you to make a living, or it doesn't, indicating you should find a different line of work.

Unless, of course, you are a farmer, in which case all this may sound unfamiliar. A lot of American agriculture operates in an environment where none of the usual rules apply — where the important thing is not catering to the consumer, but tapping the Treasury. It's a sector that, ever since the Great Depression, has been a ward of the government, both coddled and controlled.

By any reasonable standard, federal agriculture policy is past due for a major overhaul. But judging from the latest farm legislation moving through Congress, not much is going to change.

Back in the 1930s, when the economy was a wreck, the survival of capitalism was in doubt and Oklahoma was blowing away, you could understand the impulse for Washington to intervene on behalf of farmers. But the days when agriculture meant a lifetime of toil for a meager living are just a memory. Today, farmers monitor soil conditions by computer, drive air-conditioned tractors and have a higher average income than nonfarmers.

Yet many of them continue to enjoy treatment other industries can only dream about. Imagine the government rigging the market to assure high prices to people selling concrete or cameras. Dairy farmers and sugar growers get exactly that, courtesy of the Department of Agriculture. Farmers who plant a host of other crops receive compensation anytime their prices fall below a fixed minimum.

Steve Chapman, "Take the Federal Out of Farming", Reason Online, 2007-10-25

QotD: "Le p'tit gar"

Reading this book you detect an undercurrent of hostility toward "Bay Street" and "Wall Street," but no great sense of what Chrétien's for — other than "tolerance" and the other hollow cobwebbed buzzwords that boil down to little more than a passionate belief in not believing passionately in anything. The Iraq chapter is headlined "No To War," as if M. Chrétien is an elderly student on the march with Naomi Klein and Maude Barlow. In fact, under the cover of various "liaison" programs, Canada had more men in Iraq than many full-throated paid-up members of the "coalition of the willing." It was happy to be a unilateral coalition of the unwilling as long as it didn't have to march in the victory parade. But the author strains credibility when he claims to have told Bush, six months before the invasion, "I've been reading all my briefings about the weapons of mass destruction, and I'm not convinced. I think the evidence is very shaky." My Beltway pals scoffed when I relayed this snippet to them, and I'm inclined to agree. Even Chrétien's chum Chirac, who opposed the war, never disputed the fact that Saddam had WMDs, if only because he had a big bunch of the relevant receipts.

Mark Steyn, "He's still da boss", Macleans, 2007-10-23

QotD: American Media

Indeed, compared to Europe, this country is doing pretty well. It's almost tabloid newspaper free, with a bifurcated media that generally separates celebrity gossip and news into separate publications—although there are exceptions like the New York Post. In Britain, the three highest circulating daily newspapers (The News of the World, The Sun and The Daily Mail) are aggressively low-brow, a mix of top-heavy women and conjecture-heavy, populist reporting. The country's parliament, often praised as an honest, if overly raucous, chamber of debate from which America could learn, is Crossfire on steroids (and with even less honesty and more partisan hackery). The largest-selling paper on the continent is the ridiculous German daily Bild, a tabloid whose softcore front page make its British cousins seem downright priggish.

Michael Moynihan, "There is no truth: The problem with Jon Stewart's media criticism", Reason Online, 2007-10-18