Martyrs or Victims?

Alvaro Vargas Llosa discusses a weeks-long hunger strike by Cuban political prisoners and public shows of support in the streets of Cuba by "Ladies in White." Although he holds that the world has been riveted by the drama for weeks, I must confess that this is the first I've heard of it. But then the story has had to compete for attention with Barack Obama's crusade to make the United States more like Cuba (much to Fidel Castro's pleasure).

Two things about this article pique my interest.

First, Vargas notes that during the hunger strikes:

[A] group of women symbolically dressed in white are also putting their lives on the line by taking to the streets day in and day out against the Castro brothers, whom they consider the murderers of [Black Spring prisoner Orlando] Zapata and those who might follow. The Ladies In White -- mothers, wives and sisters of the Cuban political prisoners incarcerated in the 2003 crackdown -- have been kicked, punched, headlocked, dragged through the streets, insulted and arrested by mobs of government thugs. And they have not flinched. [bold added]

If any time seemed especially ripe to lend moral support to Cuban dissidents or aid an overthrow of the communist dictatorship there, now certainly does. Vargas hopefully notes the rise of civil society in Cuba.

Second, Vargas grapples provocatively with the concept of "martyrdom." He makes a valiant effort to understand it, but stops just short of fully grasping why the actions of the hunger strikers and the Ladies in White are good. Vargas is correct to look at the origin of the term and its etymological root in the ancient Greek word for "witness," but seems unclear on precisely what these martyrs are witnessing.

Vargas ends his column amazingly close to the mark with, "As witnesses, they are testifying the truth -- indeed a deadly truth," but the following shows that he remains only tantalizingly close, thanks to the Christian influence on the historical development of the concept:

In his "Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion," Robert Wuthnow states that "a crescive society, one that is weak but on the rise, produces martyrs like those of early Christianity." Their willingness to die "affirms the priority of culture over nature, law and civilization over biological self-interest."

No. What the Cuban prisoners and protestors have witnessed is the fact that, without freedom, there can be for man neither cuture nor nature, neither civilization nor self-interest. These pairs of things are not opposed, but of a piece, as Ayn Rand, who herself escaped from the prison that was Soviet Russia spent much effort making known:

Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries." ("For the New Intellectual," in For the New Intellectual, p. 25.)

Freedom cannot be properly understood, intellectually defended, or enjoyed for very long until more people come to realize that economic and intellectual freedom are two sides of one coin, and why this is so. To the point here, what good is physical life for anyone who cannot think or communicate freely? Rule by criminal gang, as in Cuba, is anything but "nature" or "self-interest."

So long as the hunger strikers remain in prison for their beliefs, they are being deprived of their lives in the proper, human sense of mental and physical freedom: This means that in terms of their own survival as rational beings, the hunger strikes merely hasten what the government is slowly doing to the strikers anyway. They are not sacrificing anything for their beliefs, but demonstrating that life in any sense proper to man is impossible without freedom. The Ladies in White are, probably more than they realize, correct when they call the Castros murderers.

Let's support freedom in Cuba, but let's not mistake the actions of the strikers for the sin, human sacrifice, of their captors. Insofar as the strikers are making a stand for freedom, they are martyrs in the honorable sense of upholding that principle. But it is not this principle that may cause them to die. The cause is the victimization of the strikers by cowards who excuse their imprisonment on altruistic and collectivist grounds, and who leave them only starvation as a means of illustrating what they already know to be true.

The Cuban hunger strikers are both martyrs for freedom and victims of statism.

-- CAV

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Brin on "Cooperation" with China

There is an interesting interview with Google co-founder Sergey Brin at Spiegel Online where he discusses both Google's initial willingness to go along with government censorship of search results and its current shift of operations to hong Kong, which lies outrside the "Great Firewall of China."

One of his comments I found particularly insightful:

SPIEGEL: Do you now fear that you will lose China, a huge potential future market?

Brin: If you adopt that point of view then you would agree to completely arbitrary limitations and distortion. If you take the point of view that you have to be friendly with the Chinese government and they can make arbitrary demands of you, then you can't really run a business. I really don't think that is a practicable way to proceed.

That's the value of experience, but the value of principles is that they enable one to see that this inability to proceed actually applies more broadly, both to anyone who thinks he can do business as a "partner" of a government and to all aspects of running a business.

Case in point: Henry Waxman is gearing up to persecute any company with the temerity to perpare for the enormous costs he just handed them with passage of the immoral and impractical "Health Care" bill.

Last week, AT&T announced it will take an immediate $1 billion write-down thanks to a new tax in the health bill that will cause Caterpillar ($100 million) and Deere & Co. ($150 million), among other large employers, to do the same. The benefits consultancy Towers Watson estimates that the change may reduce corporate profits by as much as $14 billion over time.

...

Not to fear. Waxman, ... who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is on the case. No, he doesn't want to change the tax provision -- he wants to browbeat the affected corporations. He has called the CEOs of AT&T, Caterpillar and Deere to testify before his committee, accompanying his summons with a far-reaching document request lest the corporations miss the point: This is naked political harassment.

What's going on here? In China, and increasingly in our country, people do not generally understand the nature of the government as the only social institution that can legally wield force or its proper purpose, which is to wield such force only for the purpose of protecting individual rights. There is also not a solid understanding of the danger of accepting arbitrary premises, such as, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

And so, you see scoundrels like Henry Waxman or members of the Chinese government armed with moral blank checks and guns doing everything they can to prevent private citizens from doing what they know to be proper. In a society, trade requires (and often, effectively is) open communication. But what if it makes government orders harder to carry out?

Well, when there is no reality check on the whims of officials armed with guns attempting to boss people around, what protection do we have should they arbitrarily see quashing dissent as part of their jobs? And if they're acting on premises that have nothing to do with reality, is it at all surprising that communicating facts will raise doubts about the wisdom of such officials? Since these officials are making people act against their own judgement, anything they order will have unintended consequences -- just like any lie will eventually lead to a contradiction when investigated, and any arbitrary assertion will lead to nothing.

Not only is it impossible to plan ahead with a nakedly arbitrary government "partner," it sooner or later becomes impossible to cooperate with any such partner. The only good government is one that leaves non-criminals alone, protects us from foreign aggression, and enables us to solve disputes in the courts.

-- CAV

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Quick Roundup 518

If this morning's roundup seems more focused on computing than normal, here's why: I spent a fair chunk of the weekend switching to Ubuntu Linux on my desktop after a particularly annoying SUSE Linux "upgrade" broke several things that had been fine before.

How SUSE Lost a User

One of these things both made the upgrade necessary and was the straw that broke the camel's back: I'd suddenly stopped getting software updates, including security patches. Assuming my installation had reached end-of-life, I upgraded, only to be asked for all kinds of marketing (read: personal) information by Novell when I tried doing post-installation patches. Novell now has their marketing information, but since I never got any patches, it won't do them any good.

Yeah, sure, there's probably a fix or a work-around, but updates were working with zero hassle before, as well as with the two Ubuntu-based installations I already had. Plus, I had better things to do than fix this, and then figure out (1) why VMWare (which is mission-critical for two major projects) suddenly couldn't find the kernel headers it needs to compile and run, or (2) what to do about the latest dumb change to the default mounting behavior or nomenclature (or was it both, this time?) for USB devices, or (3) how to find a happy medium in focus-stealing under KDE 4 between everything stealing focus and nothing, with things you want to pop up popping under, or ... you get the idea. I could waste a day fixing all this niggling stuff that had been working fine before -- or I could jump ship and get control of my computing life back.

I must say that I'm about as happy with this change as I was when I first dropped Windows for SUSE Linux (6.1) over a decade ago. Yes, I still had to tweak a few things here and there, but everything I need now just works again, plus I can do a few things that I never quite had time to figure out how to get working in SUSE. I'm (obviously) no computer expert, but I find that Ubuntu strikes a better balance for me between customizability and ease-of-use than SUSE Linux presently does.

Rejuvenate an Old iPod (or other mp3 player)

In the process of trying out an alternative to iTunes, I goofed up the firmware in my 30 GB fifth-generation iPod. I never liked its firmware interface anyway, so I looked around for alternatives and hit the jackpot: Rockbox. This software is both easy to use and feature-rich, which is a rare combination.

Lifehacker has a write-up, and the first commenter there nicely sums up what I thought after using it yesterday:

I installed RockBox last night on my iPod... and it immediately resolved all the times I'd say "why can't my stupid iPod do -this-" whatever -this- had been in the past. If you're happy with your ipod as a super easy to use and intuitive device with a crapload of restrictions built in by apple... I wouldn't bother. But if you want to expand on what you can do with it and prefer a directory driven experience, go for it.

All an iPod is is a really dumb computer specialized to store, organize, and play audio/video files. In principle, there is no reason you can't just use standard commands to copy a directory of music files to one and play it. As far as I could tell, though, you could copy the files over, but unless you used iTunes or something like it, the firmware couldn't even see the music. Rockbox can. It also supports more file formats than the firmware in an iPod.

And what about my alternative to iTunes? I'll revisit that later. In the meantime, cp -ruv will "sync" my iPod nicely enough.

An Epistemological Freak Show

I'd call the blog, Tales of Corporate Oppression, both amusing and instructive.

First, we have the following reductio ad absurdum of rigid adherence to rules regardless of context:

Customer: "Do you provide such and such service?"
Employee: "Can I get your name please?"
Customer: "Sure, it's John."
Employee: "John. John, John, John, John, no we don't, thanks for calling."

And then we have what I would call, "fun with mirroring when surrounded by drones:"

[M]y next door cube neighbor came up with an idea. She and her husband both worked at the company in different departments. She said they wanted to introduce the word "beneful" as a new buzzword and see if it would stick.

In case you don't know, Beneful is the name of a dog food.

It worked.

Even the Tip of This Iceberg is Alarming

Glenn Reynolds quotes a Wall Street Journal story about compensation for government workers that shows how bad the welfare state has gotten:

What if government workers earned the average of what private workers earn? States and localities would save $339 billion a year from their more than $2.1 trillion budgets. These savings are larger than the combined estimated deficits for 2010 and 2011 of every state in America. In a separate survey, the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis compares the compensation of public versus private workers in each of the 50 states. Perhaps not coincidentally, the pay gap is widest in states that have the biggest budget deficits, such as New Jersey, Nevada and Hawaii. Of the 40 states that have a budget deficit so far this year, 28 would have a balanced budget were it not for the windfall to government workers. [bold added]

As amazing as this is, it's nothing compared to how the states -- and their over-taxed, under-employed citizens -- would do if they were to even begin reducing government to its proper scope. There could be massive tax cuts even now.

This problem, like "pork" is a mere symptom of a far bigger one. The same one, in fact.

Oh, boy!

The 85% I got on this quiz says I'm a "high nerd" -- and this Venn diagram (HT, Instapundit) tells me in my own language that it's not a compliment!

Maybe, maybe not. But after this weekend, I would agree that I need to spend less time around my computer...

-- CAV

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Edison Hour

Don't forget to celebrate Edison Hour, also known as "Human Achievement Hour," tonight:

Don't forget to crank up the illumination this Saturday at 8:30 p.m., local time. And swap out any Bush Bulbs beforehand or you'll short-change the man in the wattage department.

I almost forgot about that, and if I can, anyone can.

-- CAV

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Next Stop, Acadiana!

My latest culinary adventure takes me back to somewhat familiar territory, the swamps of southern Louisiana, and to the joy of good company.

With Boston being both a major center for higher education and a hotbed for biotechnology, it comes as no surprise that quite a few friends from my grad school days landed up here along with Mrs. Van Horn and me. Among the old friends are half of my small, close-knit grad school class. I can bump into any of them at any time and things would pick right back up from where they left off, the years since then vanishing in an instant. Needless to say, we get together occasionally and plan to do so in another couple of weeks. Spring is upon us and, when you've been in Houston long enough, that means crawfish season begins. We expatriates have to celebrate.

One of the many culinary influences on Houston that make it such a great restaurant town is that of neighboring, French-influenced Louisiana. Many Cajuns and Creoles have made Houston their home over time and brought their distinctive cooking with them. This would make Houston interesting as an intersection of Southern, Western, Mexican, and French influences even without the more recent influxes of immigrants from around the world. During my time there, I gradually developed a nice gumbo recipe, making it for parties and soliciting criticism from people who knew what it was supposed to taste like. The PI of a lab upstairs from mine would regularly host catered parties around this time of year featuring boiled crawfish.

But how does one celebrate in the arctic wastes of New England? Don't get me wrong: Without my usual indicators of spring, I'm learning to read with anticipation such signs as emerging plant buds and have become a little bit too acquainted with a device known as a "thermometer." And I am becoming familiar with such spectacles as large numbers of people I wish I could have photographed the other day sunning themselves outside when it was scarcely sixty degrees. And some people are wearing shorts already. (Poor, poor, sun-deprived Yankees!) But I digress.

For our class's spring hootenanny, I wanted to make something with crawfish since our hostess -- who first introduced me to Mrs. Van Horn -- is a crawfish fanatic. Also, being on a creative tear in the kitchen, I wanted to come up with a new recipe. I love etouffee and can't get it up here, so there you go.

Not having years to tinker around this time, I turned to the Internet for ideas and, once I got a decent first stab together using locally-available crustaceans, I ordered frozen crawfish tail meat from CajunGrocer.com. The happy result is that I really have here two recipes for the price of one, or perhaps even a decent generalized seafood etouffee recipe.

The below recipe marks the first time I have ever employed a spreadsheet as a cooking implement! Heading over to my favorite Cajun recipe site, I was sure I'd find two or three good recipes, from which I would cobble together something good of my own. This time around, I did know how I wanted it to taste, and had Mrs. Van Horn, a New Orleanian, for feedback. So the problem was only on one end: How do I make it?

Unfortunately, that looked like a big problem at first: I found seventeen recipes at my trusty site, some quite different from each other. To get an "average" of the recipes and to be better able to see which ingredients or techniques might be distinctive for good or ill, I entered each ingredient and amount into a spreadsheet, along with a shorthand characterization of the cooking method used. (Interestingly, I learned that some of the variation was simply in how the red color was achieved.) I based my initial recipe on this average and some variations I thought would work well. Then, using half crab meat and half shrimp tails as an approximation for the crawfish, I made a test batch. All I had to do was bump up the paprika. Perfection in two tries! And yes, I went ahead and ordered tail meat for the second attempt.

This etouffee is great made with crab and shrimp, but divine with crawfish. If you try it, I hope you enjoy it.

-- CAV

***

Crawfish Etouffee

Preparation Time is 45 minutes.

Ingredients (List: cre)

onions, 2
bell pepper
celery, 2 stalks
butter, 1 stick
crawfish fat or bacon grease, 2 tbsp
cornstarch, 2 tbsp
garlic, minced, 2 tbsp
catsup, 1 tbsp
paprika, 1 tbsp
salt, 1/2 tsp
pepper, 1/2 tsp
Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning, 1 tbsp
parsley, 2 tbsp
water, 1 cup (for etouffee)
water, 2 cups (for rice)
rice, 1 cup
olive oil
crawfish tails, pre-cooked, 2 lbs. (See Note 2.)

Directions

1. Finely chop onions, bell pepper, and celery. Set aside in a bowl.

2. In parallel with the next step, melt butter and fat at medium heat in a large pot. Stir in cornstarch.

3. Mise en place: the minced garlic and catsup in a bowl; the paprika, salt, pepper, and Tony Chachere's in a small bowl; the parsley in a small bowl; 2 cups of water in small pot for rice; 1 cup rice in small container; 1 cup water for etoufee in measuring cup; and a bottle of olive oil.

4. In parallel with the next step, dump chopped vegetables into pot and saute until onions are translucent.

5. Add a dash of olive oil to the rice and set water for rice to a boil.

6. When water for rice has come to a boil, add rice, stir, return to a boil, then reduce heat to low and cover, cooking for 25 minutes.

7. Add remaining ingredients, except the crawfish and parsley, and stir.

8. In parallel with the next step, cover pot, reduce heat to medium-low, and cook for about 20 minutes.

9. If necessary, thaw, but do not drain, crawfish meat. Set aside for next step.

10. Add crawfish tails, stir, and cook for another two minutes.

11. Add parsley, stir, remove pot from heat, and let sit for five minutes.

12. Serve over rice.

Notes

1. Interesting serving suggestions include substituting various types of pasta or even toast points for the rice.
2. If lacking crawfish, substitute a pound each of pre-cooked crab meat and shrimp tails.

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Quick Roundup 517

The King Edward Flies Again

It closed around the time I was born and, by the time I was old enough to remember things like it, it had become a dilapidated hangout for vagrants. (Thanks to a question about the place, I learned the term "flophouse" from my dad, a policeman.) Still, I always wondered what the Kind Edward Hotel might have once been. The twelve story building in downtown Jackson, Mississippi always stood out to me, and I wondered what had ever happened to it.

According to Dismuke, it has recently been restored and reopened as the Hilton Garden Inn-Jackson Downtown. (Its twin in Beaumont, Texas, was recently demolished.) Furthermore, its reopening is showcasing the best of the South as it was and as it is now becoming. To see what I mean, though, you'll have to read the story, which describes a visit to the restored hotel by a man who was once not even allowed to enter it.

A blog posting, "Pigeons to Pearls...The King Edward Flies Again", about the restoration has quite a few interesting pictures of the state the building had fallen into before, including an image of a secret card room above its entrance.

How Statists "Clean up" their Own Messes

I can't help but note the parallels between two gathering storms.

In Venezuela, as opponents of Hugo Chavez count down the level of the reservoir behind a major hydroelectric plant, el Loco cuts off power to businesses, but does nothing to curb power theft.

In California, as a budget crisis snowballs, there is no talk that I know of about reducing the scope of the welfare state, but officials sound like they're itching to unleash its prison population.

If Hugo Chavez would merely protect private property and keep from meddling with industry, the power crisis would practically solve itself. Likewise, California would have plenty of money to house its prison population if it allowed normal businesses to assume even part of what it is illegitimately undertaking. (And fewer prisoners if it would work to legalize non-narcotic drugs, like marijuana.)

Instead, statists more fully reveal themselves to be what they are in times of crisis: Merely the most powerful criminals in their particular locales.

About 11 percent of the state budget, or roughly $8 billion, goes to the penal system, putting it ahead of expenditures like higher education, an imbalance Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vowed to fix. [link dropped]

If the governor had any idea what his job really entailed, by "fix" this problem, he would mean something like, "sell off the higher education system."

Quote of the Day

"[T]he road to hell is paved with compromise." -- Brian Phillips

Oh, no!

I don't recall how I learned about it, but there's a blog out there called, "My Boss Is Michael Scott."

Poor man souls!

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Pursuant to a couple of good points raised in the comments by Cogito, edited a comment on drugs via strikethrough.

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How 'bout "Repeal and Repeal"?

The good news: Republicans in Congress are talking about repealing ObamaCare. The bad news that worse than nullifies this? They're already planning a u-turn:

"I think the slogan will be 'repeal and replace', 'repeal and replace,'" [Mitch] McConnell [R-KY] said. "No one that I know in the Republican conference in the Senate believes that no action is appropriate."

It's bad enough that McConnell has just fallen into the "What have you got?" trap that Barack Obama laid for him in the form of his February health care summit "invitation." All the Democrats have to say to this is, "Where was this proposal back in February?" What's worse are the huge holes in understanding on many levels this reveals on McConnell's part.

First of all, on the practical level, the problems ObamaCare is pretending to address through government controls are themselves caused by government controls. No "action" by the government -- aside from the protection of individual rights -- is necessary or desirable within the medical industry, or any other. Unless McConnell has a comprehensive program for disentangling the government from our health, he could not possibly mean anything but "more of the same" in answer to the obvious question of, "Replace? With what?"

Second, and more important, there is no grasp of what is morally wrong with this bill evident in the short piece at the Caucus political blog. The "health spending law"? Excuse me while I whistle through my teeth. Is that all you've got in the outrage department, Mr. McConnell? Congress just told your constituents to buy medical coverage whether they want it or not, and that it will pay for whatever the government deems necessary for their medical care. They were just converted -- legally, anyway -- into state property. Screw spending. This is the worst violation of my person and danger to my life to come from Washington, bar none. This is also true for each of your constituents, whether they are aware of this or not.

Get rid of it, and then get rid of anything else like it. Repeal and Repeal.

If the GOP calls for a repeal of ObamaCare only to follow it with the same thing thinly disguised as "capitalism," I'll vote to reelect the Democrats. At least they aren't spitting in my face and telling me it's raining.

Try again.

-- CAV

Updates

3-9-11: Corrected a punctuation error.

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Quick Roundup 516

An Unintended Good Consequence

Writing for The Dallas Morning News, Mark Davis indicates how the passage of ObamaCare could touch off a much-needed challenge to the legitimacy of the welfare state at the legal level.

[T]he Constitution itself rises to say no. Someone please show me where the Constitution gives Congress the authority to even address health care issues, much less embark on socialist adventures of this scope.

Don't even try to trot out the old, failed "commerce clause" argument, which says only that Congress may "regulate" already existing commerce of certain types, a far cry from mandating commerce that the public does not wish to engage in.

This is government forcing people to purchase something they may not want, and punishing them if they do not. Millions are thrilled with this because it amounts to more free stuff paid for by other people, but if there is a rising voice in this wilderness, it is from Americans, not all conservatives, stunned by the sheer fiscal irresponsibility of the whole mess. [bold added]

I am no legal scholar, but I was under the impression that the Commerce Clause has been used to excuse all kinds of similar laws that should have been thrown out long ago. This bill is so clear-cut that perhaps a successful challenge could pave the way for other legal assaults on the welfare state by creative attorneys who support limited government.

Another Possible Good Consequence

I have noticed -- but not read -- a smattering of pessimistic, "We are doomed!" pieces to the effect that America is somehow past the point of no return thanks to the passage of ObamaCare by a certain type of conservative -- the type that thinks that ideas don't matter. This argument is about as valid and, now that I think about it, about as classy as the comment that famously sank the candidacy of Clayton Williams for Texas governor in 1990:

During the campaign, Williams publicly made a joke likening rape to bad weather, having quipped: "If it's inevitable, just relax and enjoy it".

Yes. We are in serious trouble. But no, the destruction of America is not inevitable.

As in the American Revolution before, what we face is a battle to win minds over to our side. The fact that everyone isn't yet roiling about the very existence of the welfare state is about as significant as the fact that there were British loyalists living in the American colonies even during the Revolution.

Such writers will discover and check their premises -- or they will lose credibility and influence among real Americans who refuse to give up and are looking for a way to win. In any event, they should be easy pickings for those of us who do understand the importance of ideas.

Some Unintended (?) Bad Consequences

Thomas Sowell indicates a variety of things that can result from central "planning" of medicine.

If the current legislation does not entail the transmission of all our individual medical records to Washington, it will take only an administrative regulation or, at most, an Executive Order of the President, to do that.

With politicians now having not only access to our most confidential records, and having the power of granting or withholding medical care needed to sustain ourselves or our loved ones, how many people will be bold enough to criticize our public servants, who will in fact have become our public masters?

It is important to get this fight going again sooner, rather than later.

Hitchens: Tear Down that Wall

Christopher Hitchens has been magnificent lately in his call for bringing the Roman Catholic hierarchy to justice for its systematic covering-up of the sexual abuse of minors:

Almost every week, I go and debate with spokesmen of religious faith. Invariably and without exception, they inform me that without a belief in supernatural authority I would have no basis for my morality. Yet here is an ancient Christian church that deals in awful certainties when it comes to outright condemnation of sins like divorce, abortion, contraception, and homosexuality between consenting adults. For these offenses there is no forgiveness, and moral absolutism is invoked. Yet let the subject be the rape and torture of defenseless children, and at once every kind of wiggle room and excuse-making is invoked. What can one say of a church that finds so much latitude for a crime so ghastly that no morally normal person can even think of it without shuddering?

Read the whole thing.

To be clear, perhaps to the point of redundancy, about one thing: Moral certainty is possible, but only in a moral code discovered through reason and based on the requirements in reality for man's survival in reality.

Holleran on Alice in Wonderland

I was already planning on seeing this, but Scott Holleran's review makes the latest movie version of Lewis Carroll's classic sound compelling.

Alice has an equally solid story, which engages the senses and, in its finest moments, the mind. Though it dips in the middle, Alice in Wonderland rises to the occasion. This is due in large part to the earnestness of its leading lady, an actress named Mia Wasikowska. Striking the right balance of innocence and seriousness, her Alice is that rarely seen sight: a heroine. Amid Lewis Carroll’s fantastically humorous characters, Mia makes the tale matter.

In addition: "For once, [Tim] Burton's strange sensibility isn't overplayed..."

I would probably save it for older children, though. I keep hearing about young children being terrified by the realistic monsters and having to be escorted from theaters.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected Mark Davis's name, HT Dismuke.

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The Word "Repeal"

In a historic vote yesterday, the Democratic Party told the American people to go to hell -- and tried to send them on their way -- by passing an unpopular bill that threatens to adversely affect the life of every man, woman, and child in this country. Far from being a "credit to Nancy Pelosi's savvy," this bill is simply another indicator that something is horribly wrong, culturally, with America.

That such a manipulative, power-lusting, worm could wield such power in a republic founded by the likes of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington is a symptom: It is a manifestation of the cultural rot that occurs when enough people accept or fail to challenge the idea of "from each according to his ability to each according to his need." Kill that idea and Nancy Pelosi will die with it to become the mere cautionary tale she deserves to be and actually is.

All wars consist of battles, and you can't necessarily win every single battle. The good guys lost one yesterday, but the war goes on. On HBL, Harry Binswanger has already noticed a silver lining: The unpopularity of this bill has some Republicans bandying about the word, "repeal," which he rightly notes has been missing from political discourse for quite some time and must be reintroduced for us to ever have a hope of dismantling the welfare state.

There is much to say about and learn from this battle, but after this post, I am stepping back from it for most of the day. The dishonest, emotionally manipulative nature of this battle has been exhausting -- revealingly, for the enemy side as well. This fight is far from over, but winning it will require not just the right ideas, but the will to fight, which can only come from moral certainty and the ability to sustain oneself by always remembering one's values. Towards that sacred end, I recommend enjoying something one loves today, or in the near future as a means of catching a breather, of remembering what we are fighting for, of fully experiencing the independence and defiance of a free mind, and most importantly, of living the life that Nancy Pelosi's ilk forfeited long ago, and now want to sap away from you.

Speaking of values, I want to end by acknowledging everyone who fought against this cowardly raising from the dead of the institution of slavery. I particularly want to thank my fellow Objectivists, and especially among them, Paul Hsieh, whose efforts have been nothing short of heroic. Seeing what those on the forefront of this long fight have done shows me what is possible and demonstrates that I am hardly alone. Those things are all vitally important.

-- CAV

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A Good Rule

Farhad Manjoo recently asked his readers to help him formulate "a concise, easy-to-remember rule that we could all consult when deciding whether to reach for our phones" before texting in a social setting. His readers, regardless of age, mostly thought there was too much texting in public and he received over 300 responses.

The rule that came out of the ensuing discussion Manjoo dubbed the "Bathroom Rule", and he formulated it as follows:

If you're in a situation where you'd excuse yourself to go to the bathroom, you should also excuse yourself before reaching for your phone. Otherwise, go ahead without asking. Either way, don't play with your phone longer than you'd stay in the bathroom.

I found myself really liking this rule, but at the same time wondering why I did. Plainly, it is easy to remember, and thus easy to teach, but why did it immediately strike me as valid?

Manjoo offers a big chunk of the answer:

[T]he rule also recognizes that the phone, like going to the bathroom, pulls you away from others people. If you're looking at a screen, you're not paying attention to me. The beauty of the Bathroom Rule is that it relies on a fairly well-established protocol to determine what's rude and what isn't. Every adult knows when it's necessary to excuse yourself to the restroom and when it isn't; indeed, doing is so almost automatic, you don't even really have to think about it. The rule for looking at your phone should be the same way.

All true, but still: Why does practically every adult know this? What is the underlying principle? Judith Martin (aka Miss Manners) comes to the rescue on that count:

Here we go again. Every time there is a new toy, people imagine that it is not covered by existing etiquette rules and therefore they feel free to use it to annoy other people.

So it was with cellular telephones. And, as you point out, people still need to be reminded not to use their telephones to violate the old rules against disturbing others with noise and ignoring people who have a claim on their attention.

Well, guess what? Texting also comes under the latter rule. Nobody sympathizes more than Miss Manners with the tedium of having to make this point to people who aren't paying attention.

Martin is not, to my knowledge, a fan of Ayn Rand, but if she were, I suspect that she would agree that the underlying principle is the trader principle.

A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. He does not treat men as masters or slaves, but as independent equals. He deals with men by means of a free, voluntary, unforced, uncoerced exchange--an exchange which benefits both parties by their own independent judgment. A trader does not expect to be paid for his defaults, only for his achievements. He does not switch to others the burden of his failures, and he does not mortgage his life into bondage to the failures of others.

If you owe someone your attention, you are violating this principle if you cause that person to expect it and then renege. The rules of etiquette thus provide you a way to know how to honor your commitment.

Interestingly, Rand had little to say about etiquette, all of what I could find being obiter dicta. For example (Search "etiquette" to land on the passage.):

Only one aspect of sex is a legitimate field for legislation: the protection of minors and of unconsenting adults. Apart from criminal actions (such as rape), this aspect includes the need to protect people from being confronted with sights they regard as loathsome. (A corollary of the freedom to see and hear, is the freedom not to look or listen.) Legal restraints on certain types of public displays, such as posters or window displays, are proper--but this is an issue of procedure, of etiquette, not of morality . . .

Rand's many detractors would probably be inclined to take this as a dismissal of etiquette as unimportant, but that would be wrong. Rand is merely indicating that etiquette, like language, is a distinct field from morality. In order to protect rights or trade, we need a way to do so, and etiquette provides us with such a means. Etiquette is a form of communication which, like language, requires both parties to understand and abide by certain conventions. You could not have morality or trade without language. And all social interactions also require additional commonly-understood protocols.

Manjoo veers off into a discussion of subcultures that might regard such matters as constant texting or even communal trips to the restroom as acceptable, but that's a side issue. It's also probably a safe bet that such groups have their own rules of etiquette. "Don't cover the display of my phone while I'm texting," would probably be Rule One for for the "over-text."

So why did I like this rule so much? It succinctly illustrates the power of principles to guide our actions no matter what new or strange situation we find ourselves having to navigate.

-- CAV

P.S. Yesterday, this week's Objectivist Roundup was hosted by Amy Mossoff.

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Quick Roundup 515

Big Government vs. Big Cities

In the process of considering some of the ways that government interference in the economy has been (and is) slowly destroying some of the country's older big cities, John Stossel provides the following comparison.

... Houston has almost no zoning. This permits a mix of uses and styles that gives the city vitality. And the paperwork in Houston is so light that a business can get going in a single afternoon. In Cleveland, one politician bragged that he helped a business get though the red tape in "just 18 months."

One day to start a business versus "only" about five hundred and forty -- if you have political pull.

Stossel earlier mentions that over the past sixty years, Cleveland has lost half its population. During that same interval, Houston -- the city proper -- has approximately tripled its population.

"Nightmare" is Exactly the Right Term

In an article titled, "My Inflation Nightmare," Michael Kinsley names the elephant in everyone's living rooms.

Compared with raising taxes or cutting spending, just letting inflation do the dirty work sounds easy. It will be a terrible temptation, and Obama's historic reputation (not to mention the welfare of the nation) will depend on whether he succumbs.

Kinsley doesn't seem to fully grasp or admit just how intimate the bedfellows of central "planning" and inflation are. But insofar as he sees that Barack Obama is likely to fan the flames of inflation, he hits the nail on the head.

The Republicans will not be blameless, though. They have been failing for decades to call for the repeal of expensive government programs or even to vigorously call for spending cuts.

It's been said that if the Democrats voted tomorrow to blow up the Capitol ..., the Republicans would vehemently disagree and instead would vote for dismantling the Capitol over a five year period. [minor edits]

Replace "capitol" with "capital" and this is exactly right, economically speaking.

Discarding the "Outlier"

Texas, which would deserve its reputation as a hotbed for capitalism a lot more if it would abolish state-run education, has instead opted to demonstrate two things very well: (1) A state-run education system necessarily results in the state promoting opinions one may or may not agree with. (2) Conservatives may claim to like free markets, but they'll happily attempt to avail themselves of such state apparatus if they think nobody's looking.

[Texas State] Board [of Education] member Cynthia Dunbar wants to change a standard having students study the impact of Enlightenment ideas on political revolutions from 1750 to the present. She wants to drop the reference to Enlightenment ideas (replacing with "the writings of") and to Thomas Jefferson. She adds Thomas Aquinas and others. Jefferson's ideas, she argues, were based on other political philosophers listed in the standards. We don't buy her argument at all. Board member Bob Craig of Lubbock points out that the curriculum writers clearly wanted to students to study Enlightenment ideas and Jefferson. Could Dunbar's problem be that Jefferson was a Deist? The board approves the amendment, taking Thomas Jefferson OUT of the world history standards.

Christian conservatives, who assert, incorrectly, that America was founded on Christian principles, regard her greatest revolutionary as an "outlier." (HT: Objectivism Online)

That Figures

I am not overweight, even by the government's standards. (Perhaps I should be worried...)

Nevertheless, I have long found the dull roar of the government and its media lapdogs attempting to put the entire nation on a diet extremely annoying, and have occasionally wondered how the government reached its conclusion that there is an "obesity" "epidemic." Adam Reed seems to have found the answer: By adopting an irrational standard for obesity from Prussian military requirements for mounted soldiers.

The continuing use of the Prussian "acceptable weight" ranges, objectively known to be sub-optimal for human life and health, should be an epistemic scandal. It is a public folly with political uses. It permits "public health" authoritarians to claim that individual choice must be restricted to save us from the supposed epidemic of fat. Because if one accepts the Prussian pseudo-standard, 68% of Americans are overweight or obese. And this Prussian pseudo-standard is seldom challenged, because Americans "educated" in Prussian-standard public schools are so concept-deprived that they will believe anything, as long as it comes with a number and a percent sign somewhere - and will submit to the authority of the hoax.

This would appear to be in line with a fairly long series of articles over at Junkfood Science by Sandy Szwarc on what she calls the "Obesity Paradox."

One final note: The problems with using BMI as an indicator of obesity, let alone health, go well beyond which range would generally be optimal for most people.

Whigging Out

I enjoyed this Mental Floss quiz on the party affiliations of past American Presidents. I missed only one.

Trivia note: I have been told, but have never sought definitive proof one way or the other, that I am related to one of the Whigs.

-- CAV

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The Commandment Bubble

Not too long ago, I discussed Sarah Palin's inadvertent, but thought-provoking invitation to us to consider the viability of the Bible as a source for moral guidance. Yesterday, through a damning Christopher Hitchens piece, I learned that none other than Pope Benedict is doing the same thing regarding the absurd notion that morality is a simply a matter of following orders.

Discussing Cardinal Ratzinger's personal role in covering up allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic clergymen, Hitchens pulls no punches.

Very much more serious is the role of Joseph Ratzinger, before the church decided to make him supreme leader, in obstructing justice on a global scale. After his promotion to cardinal, he was put in charge of the so-called "Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith" (formerly known as the Inquisition). In 2001, Pope John Paul II placed this department in charge of the investigation of child rape and torture by Catholic priests. In May of that year, Ratzinger issued a confidential letter to every bishop. In it, he reminded them of the extreme gravity of a certain crime. But that crime was the reporting of the rape and torture. The accusations, intoned Ratzinger, were only treatable within the church's own exclusive jurisdiction. Any sharing of the evidence with legal authorities or the press was utterly forbidden. Charges were to be investigated "in the most secretive way ... restrained by a perpetual silence ... and everyone ... is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office … under the penalty of excommunication." (My italics). Nobody has yet been excommunicated for the rape and torture of children, but exposing the offense could get you into serious trouble. And this is the church that warns us against moral relativism! (See, for more on this appalling document, two reports in the London Observer of April 24, 2005, by Jamie Doward.) [emphasis in original]

This should come as no surprise to anyone who noticed, as I did when Ratzinger became Pope, that the same man who took time to condemn the Harry Potter series and non-reproductive sex between consenting adults also kept Bernard Cardinal Law safe from legal authorities.

What does it tell you that Ratzinger would level the kind of threat he did about reporting something that (as far as I can tell) is immoral even by the expressed "standards" of his church? It might mean that he doesn't really take hellfire seriously himself or that he regards the purpose of morality as something other than helping one live one's life. Perhaps both.

The question any Catholic should ask himself is, what's in this for me? The Pope has already told you through his actions. Why follow his edicts, or those of anyone else?

-- CAV

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Smoke and Mirrors

That would be too good a term for what Congress may be about to do to our health. Thomas Sowell notes the complete lack of correspondence between the facts of reality and scoring of Obama's physician slavery proposal by the Congressional Budget Office.

The CBO, alas, must rely on information provided by Congress:

I can say that I can afford to buy a Rolls Royce, without going into debt, by using my inheritance from a rich uncle. But, in the real world, the question would arise immediately whether I in fact have a rich uncle, not to mention whether this hypothetical rich uncle would be likely to leave me enough money to buy a Rolls Royce.

Not only is this "rich" uncle bankrupt, but Sowell correctly notes that the whole precess is about not thinking:

Fraud has been at the heart of this medical care takeover plan from day one. The succession of wholly arbitrary deadlines for rushing this massive legislation through, before anyone has time to read it all, serves no other purpose than to keep its specifics from being scrutinized-- or even recognized-- before it becomes a fait accompli and "the law of the land."

So much for what's making me pine for some good, old-fashioned smoke. On to what makes mirrors look like good, clean family fun. Pelosi's latest scheme involves pretending to pass socialized medicine by pretending not to vote on it.

The tactic -- known as a "self-executing rule" or a "deem and pass" -- has been commonly used, although never to pass legislation as momentous as the $875 billion health-care bill. It is one of three options that Pelosi said she is considering for a late-week House vote, but she added that she prefers it because it would politically protect lawmakers who are reluctant to publicly support the measure.

If counting nonexistent money as an asset is acceptable budgeting, then I suppose this kind of voodoo-vote for a proxy for ObamaCare doubles as making a brave stand for one's convictions and standing tall for the interests of one's constituents. As Myrhaf recently put it, "Who needs the new Alice In Wonderland movie when we've got the 111th Congress?"

If more people held the view that knowledge is integrated, and all of it is ultimately based on the facts of (objective) reality, we would, furthermore, have near-rioting by now by a public well aware that if this is how Congress wants to run our medical sector, this is also how it will ultimately make our health decisions for us. But then, such a public would never have voted for such a Congress in the first place.

And so we see that the phrase "socialized medicine" refers not just to the political theory behind ObamaCare, but to the epistemological theory, primacy of consciousness, underlying it. Specifically, too many people feel that reality is merely a social construct. Too bad the nature of government prevents the damage from being contained to just those people.

-- CAV

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Quick Roundup 514

Barack Obama vs. Hippocrates

Paul Hsieh's upcoming article in The Objective Standard will discuss one crucial aspect of Barack Obama's physician slavery proposal that has not been getting enough attention:

How state-run medicine keeps physicians from doing what is best for their patients.That British doctors would not administer these outlawed treatments is unsurprising: Breaking the law has consequencesc. But why did these doctors withhold information from their patients regarding treatments that were "widely available throughout Europe"? After all, patients rely on their physicians for information about treatment options--including an honest appraisal of all the risks, benefits, and alternatives--so they can make fully-informed decisions about their lives. Failure to disclose such information is a serious breach of a doctor's Hippocratic oath. [minor format edits]

Because, with some treatment options taken off the table by the government, some physicians judged providing such information potentially more "upsetting" or "confusing" than it was worth.

The idea that the government can magically grant "access" to all medical treatments to all people all the time is a lie. Hell, under socialized medicine, we won't even necessarily have "access" to the best medical information. Instead, we'll live under the threat of de facto censorship of the range of medical information our doctors can provide us.

In two related posts, Amit Ghate points to an editorial by a doctor (and relative of Barack Obama) who opposes physician slavery and posts on the recent desperation move (quoting Paul Hsieh) by Nancy Pelosi to force a "Health Care" vote this week.

From the former:

This free-market approach has worked for everything from high-definition TVs to breakfast cereals, but will it work for medicine? It already is. Take Lasik eye surgery, for example. Because patients are allowed to be informed consumers and can shop anywhere, doctors work hard for their business. Services, availability and expertise have all increased, and costs have decreased. Should consumers demand it, insurance companies - now answerable to you rather than your employer - would cover it.

And from the later:

I personally think that the most important thing we can do in the next few days will be to directly contact our Congressmen and have friends/family do the same.

If you read nothing else on the web today, get outta here and read that entire post.

The Grapes of Wrath in Reverse

Michael Roston of Newsbroke takes a look at recent economic trends in California vis a vis migration to Oklahoma. Eight counties in the former have unemployment rates in excess of 20%. The latter has gained residents from California every year for over a decade. He concludes:

The Joads have spent a few generations in California and may be wondering if they left a little too much behind on that dusty farmland where their Okie forebears squatted. And with more than 1 in 4 people jobless in Imperial, the county that abuts San Diego County in southern California, the ones going east to destinations like Oklahoma City just might be making the right bet.

We'll forgive Roston's obvious amazement that nice, inexpensive places to live exist in "flyover country:" It's an interesting point.

All I can add is that it's not so much what the Joads may have left behind, but what the fools in California didn't turn Oklahoma into: An immoral and impractical, freedom- and wealth- destroying welfare state.

(Intentionally) Blurry Vision towards the Left

Amit Ghate's most recent piece in Pajamas Media discusses a crucial distinction the Left has obfuscated for decades.

The left's modus operandi then, is to denounce the open use of "violence," while promoting and condoning every other form of force.

Indeed, under the left's influence and urging, government now exerts force against its own citizens in myriad and ubiquitous ways. It forcibly takes our tax dollars to fund public schools -- leaving us with little choice or means to give our children the education we consider best. It decides which drugs can and can't be tested; how approved drugs are to be marketed; and which patients, no matter how willing they are to take a risk, qualify for experimental drugs, etc. It regulates commerce and trade in issues ranging from trivial to critical. Just ask any businessman how many arbitrary rules he must heed every single day -- under punishment of fine, closure or even jail. Everything from the placement of signs, to interview questions, to campaign contribution limits -- even pricing! -- is dictated to businessmen.

The initiation of force, whatever its form, is always immoral. The left wants us to wallow in moral self-doubt about "violence" (i.e., the use of force in self-defense) while it illegitimately occupies the moral high ground -- and uses force against us willy-nilly.

Three Cheers for the "Robber" Barons

SB excerpts from a Letter to the Editor that appeared recently in the Wall Street Journal:

Eighth graders understood the concept.

Our President clearly does not.

-- CAV

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Torpedo Extra IPA

When I was an adolescent, a family I knew through school and soccer moved to Mississippi from Houston. The head of that family and I sometimes got scheduled to referee games together, and as I became acquainted with him, his seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of Mississippi impressed me for a couple of reasons. First, he knew more than I did. Second, I wondered why anyone would bother to learn so much about the place. I asked about this once, and he said something like, "If you're going to live somewhere, you might as well learn about it."

I didn't fully appreciate his point at the time, but as I would learn later, he chose to move to Mississippi, and what he was doing was simply learning more about a place he liked. I would later learn through experience that a little extra knowledge is very important part of enjoying life. The knowledge itself is often its own reward, but it can also make one better able to appreciate what one values or lead to other good things. How many people live their whole lives somewhere without ever staycationing, for example?

And so, with things I enjoy, it has become my habit to look into them a little bit. Noticing a new beer on the shelf recently by Sierra Nevada, one of my favorite brewers, and being back in the mood for a hoppy beer, I purchased a six-pack of Torpedo Extra India Pale Ale at my last visit to the beer emporium. (Might the shift in my "beer mood" from stouts and maltier beers back to hoppy ones be an internal sign that spring has arrived? I've practically wintered on Left Hand Milk Stout and Spaten Optimator.)

I highly recommend the beer to fellow hop heads, although I'm not reviewing it here. That's been done enough already. But what I will do is share some of the interesting things I learned when I became curious about the name of the beer, and whether there was a connection to submarines going on.

• As far as I can tell, the only submarine-themed beer is Yellow Submarine Munich Helles by the Dry Dock Brewing Company, and calling it submarine-themed may be cheating.
• One brewer, New Hampshire's Smuttynose, released its Granite Ghost Ale specifically in honor of the commissioning of the USS New Hampshire, SSN 778.
• You can make whatever beer you like submarine-themed by pouring it into one of these submarine steins, ...
• ... or opening it with a nifty submarine bottle opener.
• There are two mixed drinks, both involving beer, named for submarines, the atomic submarine and the Mexican submarine. I might try the second one some time, if the opportunity presents itself and I think to do so.
  
• Finally, there is no real submarine connection in the name of Sierra Nevada's excellent IPA: "The name itself comes from a device called the 'hop torpedo' that was conceived, designed and developed at the brewery." I believe this might have been mentioned on the label, but I'm not scrounging through the trash for my last bottle to find out.

The Sierra Nevada site also explains what has been a longstanding mystery to me: Why didn't that brewery have an IPA in its non-seasonal product line until so recently?

-- CAV

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Quick Roundup 513

Banning Salt?!?

A New York legislator has introduced a bill to ban the use of salt in restaurants.

[Felix] Ortiz [D-Brooklyn] has said the salt ban would allow restaurant patrons to decide how salty they want their meals to be.

"In this way, consumers have more control over the amount of sodium they intake, and are given the option to exercise healthier diets and healthier lifestyles," Ortiz said, according to a Nation's Restaurant News report. [minor format edits]

As if simply boycotting "salty" restaurants or avoiding salty menu items doesn't constitute control...

More on Sarah Palin

Regarding yesterday's post, Jim May debunks the story of Sarah Palin "hustling" over to Canada (as an adult) for looted medical care and madmax asks the following very good question:

[Why does] the Left hates her so much? I know they hate all Conservatives, but why the extra, extra, hate for Palin?

My first stab boils down to the hatred being both a manifestation of the inherent contradiction of altruism and sort of burning of the messenger. The inherent contradiction comes from the leftist moral ideal of service to the less fortunate -- many of whom they despise. Palin, partly for cultural reasons, brings this contradiction out easily for many leftists, and so is, in addition, a hated bearer of bad news on one level.

I'd be interested in your further thoughts.

How Safe is Pelosi's Seat?

It's so safe that her closest opponent in fourteen years was Cindy Sheehan, who garnered 16.2 percent of the vote in 2008.

And that was the first time since she was elected that she ever won with less than three quarters of the vote.

I discovered this by accident. I doubt that even if she actually had to worry about reelection, she would be any more concerned about whether her party retains its majority in Congress this fall should it legalize physician slavery.

How Big Are Stupak's Problems?

Jay Cost of RealClear Politics takes a look at how hard it's going to be for Bart Stupak's bloc of "pro-life" Democrats to get its amendment into any final physician slavery bill via reconciliation.

I think the only solution for Stupak is somehow to find a way for the Senate to act first on abortion. This is the most important point: when Stupak and his bloc cast their votes in the House, their leverage is completely gone. That's the only power they have in the process. If they are induced to go first, they will lose to the Senate liberals.

If my life weren't affected by the outcome, I'd find this intrigue among altruists very amusing.

Objectivist Roundup

Based on a reminder post on a mailing list, I think this week's Objectivist Roundup will be hosted by Titanic Deck Chairs. At the moment, the Blog Carnival site is down once again. Such intermittent outages happen to be one reason I haven't participated in many of these myself for some time.

Random Post from the Past

Using "crude," the output of this random word generator, and the first Google search result for this blog, I found the following very old post: "It Finally Made the Paper," about Kuwait possibly building the first new U.S. oil refinery in thirty years.

Nearly four years on -- in August of last year -- word was that Kuwait "may revive [its] Louisiana refinery project."

Today, it seems far easier to enslave an entire profession in America than to build new and much needed industrial capacity.

-- CAV

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"God does it, too!"

Recently, Sarah Palin unwittingly illustrated the absurdity of the notion that mystic insight can provide guidance for living one's daily life. How? By attempting to defend, on biblical grounds, her practice of scribbling notes on her hands:

Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me. Thy children shall make haste; thy destroyers and they that made thee waste shall go forth of thee. (Isaiah 49:15-17)

P.Z. Myers notes what God does about ten verses later: He "punishes [the] enemies [of the Israelites] by making them eat their own flesh and drink their own blood." One wonders what else Sarah Palin might deem practical or morally acceptable based on such a standard.

Certainly, God-like inconsistency and hypocrisy are fine with Palin, judging by her actions. This self-proclaimed champion of freedom and capitalism "admits that she would regularly hustle across the border to take advantage of Canadian health care."

[Update: Since Palin was very young when this occurred, this phrasing is disingenuous on the part of Myers and Megan Carpentier in at least two ways. See comments by Jim May. This, of course, means that such trips to Canada do not constitute a valid reason to attack Palin for hypocrisy regarding socialized medicine.]

Such an action on her part opens her up to the obvious criticism that Myers, a fan of physician slavery, dishes out:

[C]an we have Canadian-style health care put in place here in America? It's good enough for Sarah Palin, so it must be good enough for God, so it must be the right thing to do.

As a very young child, I learned that, "The Devil made me do it," was a poor defense for stupid behavior. "God does it, too!" strikes me as equally childish, and it floors me that an adult would resort to it. (That she does so in half-jest is an example of what Ayn Rand called the "court jester premise," and is further proof that she (a) feels the need to defend herself, and (b) doesn't have a decent answer to offer for the cause.)

For different reasons from Myers's, I, too wish that Sarah Palin would just go away.

-- CAV

3-11-10: Added an update. Palin was at most five years old when she was "hustled" over to Canada for medical care.

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The Value of Placebos

Via Amit Ghate is an interesting article about a burgeoning area of research that recent problems experienced by the pharmaceutical industry during drug trials have invigorated: Placebo effects have been growing stronger lately, sinking several candidate drugs and even calling into question the effectiveness of established drugs upon reevaluation.

What might be the basis of the placebo/nocebo effect, and how might we take advantage of it?

Further research by [Fabrizio] Benedetti [of the University of Turin] and others showed that the promise of treatment activates areas of the brain involved in weighing the significance of events and the seriousness of threats. "If a fire alarm goes off and you see smoke, you know something bad is going to happen and you get ready to escape," explains Tor Wager, a neuroscientist at Columbia University. "Expectations about pain and pain relief work in a similar way. Placebo treatments tap into this system and orchestrate the responses in your brain and body accordingly."

[O]ne way that [a] placebo aids recovery is by hacking the mind's ability to predict the future. We are constantly parsing the reactions of those around us--such as the tone a doctor uses to deliver a diagnosis--to generate more-accurate estimations of our fate. One of the most powerful placebogenic triggers is watching someone else experience the benefits of an alleged drug. Researchers call these social aspects of medicine the therapeutic ritual.

This research is, of course, in addition to making obviously-needed improvements in the clinical trials themselves.

Benedetti has helped design a protocol for minimizing volunteers' expectations that he calls "open/hidden." In standard trials, the act of taking a pill or receiving an injection activates the placebo response. In open/hidden trials, drugs and placebos are given to some test subjects in the usual way and to others at random intervals through an IV line controlled by a concealed computer. Drugs that work only when the patient knows they're being administered are placebos themselves.

It is interesting how the concept of "placebo" is evolving over time with added knowledge of how the body and mind work and interact. From first denoting a class of sham or merely palliative remedies, to a presumably ineffective stand-in for a real drug, and now perhaps to more of a type of psychological or psychosomatic effect.

-- CAV

P.S. Statistician Nick Barrowman views the idea of a placebo effect with a much-needed jaundiced eye.

Updates

Today: Corrected a spelling error.
10-5-11: Added PS.

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Quick Roundup 512

Raymond on Smart Phones

Over at Armed and Dangerous, Eric Raymond takes a look at two aspects of the rapid evolution of smart phones.

First, he discusses how smart phones might render the PC obsolete.

Here's what I think my computing experience is going to look like, oh, about 2014:

All my software development projects and personal papers live on the same device I make my phone calls from. It looks a lot like the G1 now sitting on the desk inches from my left hand; a handful of buttons, a small flatscreen, and a cable/charger port. My desk has three other things on it: a keyboard about the size of the one I have now, a display larger than the one I have now, and an optical drive. Wires from all three run to a small cradle base in which my phone sits; this also doubles as a USB hub, and has an Ethernet cable running to my house network. And that's my computer.

Since adding Portable Ubuntu to my pocket office, my computing life looks a lot like this already, except, of course, that I'm not making phone calls from my pen drive. Practically any computer serves as my USB hub, keyboard, and screen.

And then, Raymond looks at things to come on the software side of this revolution:

Google is willing to let handset makers, telecoms providers, and third-party developers capture most of the overt value of the Android market. Google can give all that prompt revenue away because everything it's doing in this space is actually funded the same way its search-engine business is; by the volume of consumer attention Android devices will bring to its advertising. Apple, on the other hand, acts as a very controlling gatekeeper of its products -- requiring (and insisting) that it’s going to capture most of the profit margin for itself.

Raymond draws parallels to past battles in information technology (and refers to a few similar articles) to back up his point. He summarizes his point as "Greed kills," but I see the problem more as "Short-range thinking and a failure to appreciate division of labor kill."

Wrong Metric

An article at Politico makes a common mistake: Judging the relevance of a nascent political movement by how many of its candidates get elected. Far better is to have any major candidate who wants to get elected making sure he has something to offer you.

This error is responsible for countless stillborn third party movements and much needless frustration by good men made to feel that they are accomplishing nothing.

And speaking of wrong metrics, I see that the establishment media vultures are circling over David Axlerod -- as if the same damned message we've been hearing since FDR will resonate better if only given a different spin "next time."

Rejuvenate your netbook.

Between the arrival of my desktop and the start of my current position, my now oldish netbook has seen a lot less use. It was also in dire need of a software upgrade. Vaguely recalling from Paul Hsieh that there are Linux distributions tailor-made for netbooks, I hunted around, found a list of ten, and decided that Eeebuntu offered the best combination of usefulness and continued development. So I made a bootable pen drive and installed it yesterday.

As it turns out, I ended up making the same choice as Hsieh and am slapping my forehead for not having done this upgrade much sooner. This runs my netbook far better than the pre-installed OS in every single way that I have noticed a difference so far.

The Thing that Wouldn't Die Already

Mark Steyn explains why the Democrats might not really care about losing the mid-terms if they pass physician slavery, and a commenter to a related blog post predicts what will happen if Nancy Pelosi doesn't gather enough votes to pass it.

Off-the-cuff question, because I'm in a hurry: Does the bill die after this Congress or can it still be passed if it's around after the November elections?

Together and Wise

Karl Martin has found another fun quiz. Here are my results.

You Are Together and Wise

You have a broad, mature outlook on life. You know that there are ups and downs, and you feel like you can weather them.

You feel like you can't depend on anyone but yourself in this world. You feel quite alone sometimes.

You feel exhausted about your past and those you have loved. It's been a long, hard road.

You succeed by tapping into your reserves. You have an extraordinary amount of energy and endurance.

In the process of answering one of the questions, I came up with a corollary to the "coin-flip test:" If you don't figure out your answer while the coin is in mid-air, ask yourself whether you are relieved or unhappy when it lands.

-- CAV

Updates

3-29-10: Added hypertext anchors.

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Two on Time

Coming off four very long days at work, and lacking both time and brain power at the moment, time strikes me as a capital theme today. So I'll briefly note two time-related recent posts over at Lifehacker that have piqued my interest for different reasons.


The first concerns "National Procrastination Week," the only holiday for which one can truly say something like "Every week is National Procrastination Week." Obligatory levity aside, I found several interesting takes on procrastination, ranging from how to avoid it to how to take advantage of the urge. Particularly interesting to me was Item Four of Gina Trapani's Top 10 Smart and Lazy Ways to Save Your Workday.

4. Book a meeting with yourself. If your head is spinning with all the stuff you've got to get done and the interruptions keep coming, you need some alone time. If the hours of your day keep getting stolen by meeting requests and drive-by interruptions, box out an hour or so every few days specifically to regroup and get organized. Literally enter the meeting with yourself on your calendar, and if you need to get away from your desk, book a conference room as well. Take your project list, to-do list, and calendar with you to the room and spend that time deciding what, when, and how you're going to tackle all the stuff in your work life, as if you're a boss meeting with your assistant. (GTD'ers know this technique as the weekly review.)

I used to do precisely this all the time, except that I never formalized it as a meeting. That's an ingenious touch of workplace etiquette that transforms "hiding from your coworkers" into "something anyone will recognize as productive work."

John Perry's essay on "Structured Procrastination," also linked there, looks intriguing too, but in a convenient marriage of necessity and the spirit of the season, I'll take a look at it later.

The second Lifehacker post I have in mind both reminds me of an earlier post of my own about achieving spontaneity -- something I have neglected since starting my new position -- and suggests a tactic that can help one do exactly that, a "possibilities calendar."

If you've ever been in that frustrating situation where you find yourself with some unexpected down time but don't know how to fill it at a moment's notice, lifestyle blog Life Scoop suggests putting together a possibilities calendar.

Blogger Asha Dornfest says she often runs across events or activities she'd like to attend, but aren't necessarily important enough to carve out special time for. She created a "possibilities" calendar in Google Calendar and now, instead of relying on her memory to remind her of an art showing or movie she wants to check out, she simply parks the details on her calendar and pulls it up when she finds herself with some unplanned free time.

Since I was already in the process of fine-tuning my methods of tracking to-do lists, I think I'll make such an adjustment to my calendar system. A non-time-dependent "possibilities list" (distinct from a "someday/maybe" list might be a good companion to such a calendar.

And, speaking of time, Friday may well be my slack day, but I still have to run...

-- CAV

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