Around the Web on 12-4-05

I originally planned to include the following links in a Wednesday roundup, but I have enough to post already, so that's what I'll do.

Cox and Forkum, always good, are on a roll.


I love the Muppet allusion.

The General reports on a new legal strategy being used by anti-abortionists. Here, he quotes law professor Jack Balkin.

That's called an applied challenge. It means the law stays on the books. And it also means that over time, you have to bring a whole series of different plaintiffs in, each of which goes before the court and says, "This law is unconstitutional as to me."

So it greatly increases the costs of bringing abortion litigation, and it greatly impedes the ability of getting rid of unconstitutional statutes. The practical effect is to allow states to pass much more restrictive laws affecting abortion than they ever could before, and it's all through a technical device…

Bothenook posts a couple of fascinating pictures of Mount St. Helen's.

What forms the "smoke rings" is the air flowing over the mountain getting pushed up higher as it goes up and over the top. The moisture content and initial temperature are just right so that the moisture condenses from a vapor to small particles at the higher altitude. When the moving air moves past the peak and comes down again, the particles evaporate back to an invisible vapor.

Hmmm. Is this really Bothenook here? This passage is rife with capitalization!

Robert Tracy has some advice for those of us who wonder whether we might make good artists.

I started with "Jon Gnagy Learn to Draw" It was the cone, sphere, cube and cylinder, and their shading and cast shadows that I learned from him. This is basic knowledge. I drew these objects over and over again until I mastered them at age 7. Then I found other interests, as I had lost my Jon Gnagy kit. Now at 12, I had some money of my own and bought his kit all over again.

An artist makes himself the artist--he's not born with "a gift". If you are interested in expressing yourself in visual art, and you can't fine a good teacher, I recommend Gnagy's kits, available at Martin F. Weber Co.

What? No shortcuts? I have to practice? Drat!

Zach Oakes wonders about Wikipedia.

This is, of course, vandalism, and was deleted eventually. I bring up Wikipedia's problems (yet again) due to an interesting CNET article that I think mirrors what I've been saying. One of the comments was also interesting, as if I needed any more evidence that this model assumes the majority is always right.

I am amazed that Wikipedia works even as well as it does! I have no trouble wrapping my mind around the advantages of open source software or blogging. Like the Wikipedia, these children of the Internet rely upon many eyes to quickly spot and stamp out defects. Unlike Wikipedia, though, the content of one's blog, or the server holding the code for an OSS project can't simply be changed by any random comer very easily.

Amit Ghate notes a Walter Williams piece that demolishes the concept of a "dead-end job".

In addition to observing that the concept of "dead-end" job is not only invalid but also an attack on honest work, he then provides some interesting statistics to support his argument.

Ian Hamet has a piece up on the decline in helpfulness to strangers seen in Red China after the Cultural Revolution.

[I]f you assist a stranger, he will have one of two reactions: gratitude or indignation. And when gratitude is expressed with a simple smile, but indignation by being "informed on" to the government, and getting sent to the steppes of Outer Mongolia for five years for "re-education"… well, anyone lending a hand in those circumstances would be a damn fool.

Alexander Marriott has posted a long, but fascinating and well-researched piece on James Madison and nullification.

The nullification crisis represented the last foray into the public political world James Madison would make. One historian has said, "It was fitting that virtually the last remnant of Madison's strength should be expended against an effort to deny to the nation the benefits of mutual accord that could only come in union." But Madison had entered the field apprehensive of the problems he would face amongst a new generation of Americans who viewed him more as an icon than a political actor. His apprehensions were well-founded with constant aspersions being cast onto his state of mind and ability to reason in his advanced age. He was forced to repeatedly defend actions from earlier parts of his career and even when he expended tremendous amounts of effort and intellectual labor he met with reactions like those of Hayne and Giles, who declared they knew Madison's positions better than Madison did. Despite his overwhelming desire to save his and Jefferson's reputations from the clutches of the nullifiers and to preserve the union, Madison only succeeded in contributing to another Henry Clay compromise. North and South would learn only too soon that compromise over such fundamental issues as whether or not men can be held as slaves was impossible. The old Madisonian solution of not talking about slavery or attempting to "straddle" the gulf between those who wanted to do something about the ghastly blight on the republic and those who wanted to do nothing would simply no longer work. Without a viable alternative, Madison's union was doomed, and in that very real and very tragic sense, Madison had "outlived" himself.

Read this in several sittings if you have to. You'll be glad you did.

Jim Woods reports that Atlas Shrugged was almost made into a comic book!

The proposal would have had Steve Ditko (an Objectivist, who as illustrator was the co-creator of Spiderman) draw the story. The Ayn Rand Estate agreed with the condition that it be drawn by Ditko, who would have been in his late sixties at that time.

And that's a wrap!

-- CAV