Misplaced Vitriol

An article about breast feeding, interesting in its own right, brings up an issue that has puzzled me several times in the past, but which I think I am beginning to understand. I'll state at the outset that breast-feeding is a topic I have not thought about a great deal, although I will volunteer that think that breast feeding is better for babies than formula. How long? I really don't know, and I probably won't get to that question for a while.

That said, my focus here isn't on the merits of breast feeding or on how long it ought to last. Rather, I am looking at how emotionally charged a debate can become, even among people presumably making an honest effort to do what is best for themselves and their children.

No topic is liable to prompt a fist fight among mothers so rapidly as breast-feeding. Foot soldiers for the breast versus bottle debate line up like Roundheads against Cavaliers. Women who bottle-feed are often accused of lacking maternal instinct, while those who dare lactate beyond the three-year mark are viewed as hessian-clad feminists, only one short step away from running a lesbian commune in a yurt.

The last time I wrote on the topic, saying in the mildest terms that while I subscribed to the view that breast was best it was counter-productive to bully women on the topic, I received a torrent of abusive mail...

But this is nothing to the vitriolic missives received by friends who have written thoughtful articles on why they decided to breast-feed their offspring beyond three years of age. From the tone and volume of the correspondence, you might have believed they were slipping their children heroin. One was told she was a work-shy man-hater who had clearly driven away her husband -- which all came as something of a surprise to that happily married, hard-working mum.

I have seen (and have occasionally experienced, first-hand) similarly heated debates among Objectivists. (And no, to be completely clear, I am not talking here about the ongoing on-line debate about Episode 118 of the Leonard Peikoff Show, of which I just became aware yesterday, although it is possible that what I have to say on this issue might conceivably pertain to it.)

Specifically, I am speaking not of fundamental disagreements about philosophical premises, but about issues pertaining to the application of proper philosophical principles to one area or another of one's life, and which may require specialized knowledge. Whether and how long to breast feed a baby is an excellent example of just such an issue for any potential parent or specialist in infant care.

Note two things from the passage quoted above. First, there is a tendency by some in each of the opposed camps to view the opposite camp in caricature. Second, there is a haste by some of these to condemn those in the other camp in line with such a caricature, be it in terms of implying stupidity, immorality, or both.

How can this happen between two sides sincerely interested in unearthing the truth, living by it, and getting the word out about it? Remember, we are assuming for the sake of argument that both sides are acting on proper premises and are being honest, if passionate. (And let's set aside the issue of the moral import of failing to control oneself while in the midst of strong emotions.) Can such anger exist between two people who disagree on a non-philosophical matter, and, if so, why?

I would say that it can, and that the reason for this is related to the fact that when one considers a complex issue in depth, it can be very easy to forget any number of related issues: (1) Not everyone else has done the same amount of work or has reached the point that they even see the need to consider the issue in question, or at least to think about it as deeply. (I've been accused of being "willfully ignorant" about such an issue, only to later learn more about it, and conclude that there had, in fact, been no need for me to pursue it, given my circumstances and intellectual context at the earlier time.) (2) Some people have done a similar amount of work and see the issue as important, but have not reached the same conclusion. (This happens all the time in new areas of science.) (3) Other people have done more work on the issue, and disagree. (This can hold whether one or both people are wrong.) (4) Other people have different value hierarchies. (A cut-and dried example is needed here: Some people derive enough pleasure from smoking, that they decide to do so, and accept the health risks. If you know that someone smokes, but not that he has thought about this, you could reasonably wonder whether he is immoral or ignorant.) (5) The state of knowledge in the non-philosophical subject may be such that both "extreme" views in the debate of the day are wholly or partially wrong.

As I see it, problems like the above stem from the following facts pertaining to human cognition: (1) Induction is a knowledge- and value-driven process. One must reach a critical mass of believable data and find an issue personally relevant enough to spend a great deal of time on a complex induction, particularly one requiring lots of specialized knowledge. Or, as I believe I have heard it put before as advice on figuring out where to start inducing a philosophical principle: "What would I have to know for this principle to even be an issue?" (2) We can't read other people's minds. Given that, it can be hard sometimes to imagine why someone else might not study a topic one is passionate about. Ignorance and immorality on the part of the other party can be easy conclusions to jump to. (3) We aren't infallible. (4) Proper application of philosophical principles has to be done by each individual, taking into account any special circumstances he faces as an individual, including any optional values.

Aside from possibly avoiding unnecessary fights with friends, of what further use is the above knowledge? Right off the bat, I can think of a couple. First, it can help one to get past one's own anger at being "bullied" about deciding whether to entertain poorly-presented arguments that happen to have some merit. Second, it can help one present one's own ideas more effectively, so as not to alienate people by coming across as a bully. In short, people are more receptive to arguments that are made when they respect their cognitive requirements, which means: when an argument connects with preexisting knowledge and provides objective motivation for further study.

This is a very interesting topic to me, and I think it is very important. I am eager to hear what you think.

-- CAV

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Collectivism vs. Education

At the New Republic, linguist and conservative commentator John McWhorter reviews Stuart Buck's Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation. In his review, McWhorter focuses on the origins of the slur "acting white," which is often directed by adolescent blacks against their academically successful peers, and considers why it arose during desegregation of public schools during the 1960s.

It was the demise of segregation, of all things, that helped pave the way for the "acting white" charge. With the closing of black schools after desegregation orders, black students began going to school with white students in larger numbers than ever before. White students were often openly hostile, and white teachers only somewhat less so. Black teachers and administrators from the old black schools often lost their jobs. Unsurprisingly, black students started modeling themselves against white ones as a form of self-protection. This dovetailed nicely with the new open-ended wariness of whites that was the bedrock of "Black Power" identity.

As Buck rightly notes, humans seek group identity, and black teens passed on a sense that black identity did not include "white" scholarly achievement even as the old-fashioned bigotry receded. Hence the "acting white" charge now flung in plush schools like those in Shaker Heights, where racist hostility from whites is an affair of the past. Subtle interracial tensions surely exist--but students of other races cope with them without developing a sense that they are rejecting their heritage by making A's.

Here we see a sad situation: Because skin color made it so easy for white racists to persecute black children (i.e., sacrifice them to an imaginary white racist collective), many ended up running straight into the arms of those who called for black group identity (i.e., the sacrifice of their identity as individuals to an equally imaginary black racial collective). While one can certainly understand the appeal to the apparent "safety of numbers" being offered to young, uneducated, and inexperienced minds, human beings, in fact, exist as individuals.

Arbitrary metaphysics, such as the idea that one "belongs to" his race, lead to mistaken ethical guidance, and on top of this, minds unarmed against the arbitrary will be unprepared to evaluate and reject such bad advice. Case in point: Many children accept rejection of education as some outward sign of fealty to their race at the expense of having their own minds even further stunted. Sadly, it appears to me that Buck and McWhorter both correctly see that desegregation (under the circumstances of the time) caused this unfortunate cultural phenomenon, but do not fully grasp why it did, in philosophical terms, as I attempt to indicate above.

Furthermore, if the implicit selfishness that has been a hallmark of America over its history appears to be in peril today, its political expression in capitalism is in even worse shape. This fact is reflected not only in the limits of the above analysis (as presented in this review), but also in how the problem of teaching black children to value education can be addressed. McWhorter indicated that Buck offers:

... two possible solutions for closing the black-white scholastic gap. The first is the elimination of grades in favor of having whole schools compete against one another, but this will take us only so far. Besides the unlikelihood of its adoption nationally, it would leave the possibility that black kids in integrated schools would continue to fashion themselves as a subgroup apart.

... And this leads to Buck’s second suggestion, which runs up against the deeply entrenched impulse to decry "segregation" -- namely, the establishment of all-black schools.

The first of these is more collectivism, and the second of these focuses on integration, which is a non-essential, as the existence of integrated schools that do successfully teach black students ought to indicate. Indeed, in the integrated elementary school I attended, one teacher used skin color constructively to teach an important aspect of individualism on Day One of her classes each year. She would state, "There are good white people and bad white people, and there are good black people and bad black people." She also always made it clear that she would not tolerate children of one group picking on anyone for membership in the other group.

Setting aside the vital importance of children being prepared for adulthood by learning the responsibilities they have to themselves as individuals, the whole question of whether "schools" should or should not be desegregated points to a whole other problem in this important cultural debate by means of the implicit premise -- that the government ought to be dictating where most people send their children for educations in the first place.

Unlike any other social institution, the government is the only one that can legally wield force. As such, it must be delimited to its proper purpose of protecting individual rights. As "educator," the government destroys the educational marketplace by stealing money from parents and subsidizing a "free" competitor (for starters). Furthermore, when it dictates whether schools are segregated or not, it both limits parental choice and places limits on free association of individuals that differ in particular, but are actually the same in kind as Jim Crow laws. (e.g., Having all-black private schools forces segregation on no one. All-black government schools do, even if only to the extent that people who disagree with the premise are forced to support them. Conversely, (proper) government institutions, such as the military, ought always to be integrated.)

When, earlier, I called the focus on segregation "non-essential," I was not saying that it is wholly without merit. Were most of the whites in a given area racist, black parents would be completely justified in wanting their children to attend all-black schools, and should be free to do so. Likewise, black parents wanting their children to become comfortable in a pluralistic society ought to be free to send their children to integrated schools. Setting aside the many other reasons education should become private, complete privatization is the only way to ensure that parents can become fully able to have their children educated in whatever environment they think gives their children the best chance of success.

-- CAV

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Quick Roundup 544

Marriott on Immigration

Alexander Marriott has written a lengthy, but superb blog post on immigration. He comments on many aspects of the issue, but I particularly like his take on the situation at the Mexican Border.

Without a quota and visa system, the current mess on the Mexican border should almost entirely evaporate as far as concerns people interested in making an honest living go. It's far safer, cheaper, and easier to enter a known border crossing to undergo an identification confirmation and medical examination than to hike through the desert with hardcore criminals. As for the criminals, they will suddenly find themselves as isolated figures in the desert easy to handle for the resources already appropriated for the purpose. No more endless sea of humanity to hide in. The key is to not drive honest decent people into the arms of rapacious unsavory criminals in order to achieve non-objectionable ends. No citizen of the United States has any right to interpose themselves between prospective employers and employees except in a case where someone's legitimate individual rights are violated.

Marriott ends his post with a proposed constitutional amendment.

Less-than-Elephant Gives Birth to Less-than-Mouse

At the Charlotte Capitalist is a short review of Glenn Beck's most recent show focusing on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

Do I think the publicity for Atlas Shrugged from Beck's show is of value? Perhaps, but I question the message, the messenger, and the target audience. If I had never heard of Ayn Rand prior to the last two years and had to rely solely upon the predominant current Atlas publicity, my impression would be that Rand was some kind of self-appointed prophet who wanted us to head to the mountains to escape from the government. I would not be interested.

I'd have to agree, although I hold out hope that Yaron Brook's appearances on the show might steer a few people in the right -- meaning correct -- direction.

Why the fuss?

I don't have a problem with people having different tastes from mine regarding optional values, but I always wonder when those who do feel the need to insult what I like. Pursuant to the below game, two sports writers deliver textbook examples of this phenomenon in the form of snide columns titled, "Unpatriotic or not, who cares about World Cup?" and "Americans now return to regularly scheduled fandom."

I have some ideas on why this is so, but would be interested in what others who have noticed the same thing have to say.

USA 1, Ghana 2 (Overtime)

Well, I got my answer early on the question of whether fighting spirit or iffy defense would ultimately decide the fate of Team USA in this World Cup. Mrs. Van Horn and I were going to watch this at a pub, but it was full, so we went back home. The US team was already behind, on a goal scored within the first five minutes of the match, when we arrived.

This was not a big surprise -- until I learned of two positively Martian lineup decisions by Coach Bradley: He started both the not-ready-for-primetime Robbie Findley -- and Ricardo Clark, whose miscue caused the Ghanaian goal and who had already handed England its early goal in Game 1! Bradley ended up burning two of his three substitutions to rectify these errors, ultimately meaning that there would be no fresh legs for overtime. It also did not help that Goalkeeper Tim Howard had an off day. He was out of position for the first goal and probably could have stopped the second on any other day.

But then again, how far can a pair or two of fresh legs go when the whole team has had to play like maniacs for the three games previous due to its habit of spotting opponents a goal or two? This may be a surmountable problem during the qualification stage (and it was going on then) when players have time to recover physically and mentally. But during the World Cup? For a team thin on talent, but obviously still capable of playing at a respectable level, no.

Take the early concessions out of the picture and, to be conservative, pretend we didn't score on England. We'd have finished the first round with two wins and a draw, atop the group, and defeated Ghana 1-0. We'd still be in the easiest quarter-bracket of this tournament, with beatable Uruguay as our biggest obstacle to the semifinals.

Nevertheless, this team was better and got farther than the one we fielded in 2006, but it could have and should have done more. The signs of progress for the sport in America are good news, but this tournament will also go down as a huge missed opportunity.

-- CAV

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USA to the Semis?

Jeff Klein of the New York Times sees a relatively clear path to the semifinals of the World Cup for the American team after its injury-time victory Wednesday -- and how the standings in the other first-round groups have shaken out:

Their cardiac 1-0 victory over Algeria on Wednesday gave the Americans first place in Group C, and because of that they are in an attractive spot in the tournament's bracket. They will face Ghana in the Round of 16 on Saturday, and should they win, they will go on to face the winner of the Uruguay-South Korea match in the quarterfinals.

While Ghana, Uruguay and South Korea are all difficult to beat -- if anything, this World Cup has shown that any team, no matter how modest its reputation, can defeat any other -- none of them are considered giants of the game.

Of course, neither is the United States. But the benefits it reaps for winning its group are appreciable. [minor format edits]

Even though it was the Ghanians who finished us off in the group stage in 2006, I was relieved that we'd face them Saturday rather than Germany. I hadn't thought to look at opponents beyond that, although perhaps Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times might argue that I should have:

I loved the video that showed different parts of America cheering Donovan's goal, but shouldn't that rejoicing have been filled with more relief? We should have won that game because we were clearly the better team. We should advance to the round of 16 because, well, we're the 14th-ranked team in the world.

...

Despite what you may read, the only Cinderella [in Saturday's game] is the other team.

The U.S. is ranked 18 places higher in the world than Ghana. The U.S. has six consecutive World Cup appearances; this is only Ghana's second. Despite a loss to the Black Stars four years ago, the U.S. is light-years ahead of Ghana in age, experience and funding. This is not a gift game. This is a must-win game.

Now, if the U.S. team can win two more times and make the Final Four for the first time? Well, that's something. That's progress. That's an awakening. That's big-boy soccer.

Until then, don't just cheer for their success, but demand that success, and stop treating them like children.

He makes a good point about expectations keeping pace with the continued growth of the game in this country. I agree that the above is a reasonable expectation, but my own expectations for this team in particular are tempered by my own observations: Our team's greatest strength is a fighting spirit that is glorious to behold (and which has been missing in the past). But can this strength overcome its possibly fatal flaw of a weak defense? I don't know, but I'll watch as long as they're still playing -- just as I (and Spencer Hall) have over the past twelve years.

... On some huge life-map, I'd tacked my course using this team as a reference. Pins and lines ran all over its meridians: lost, confused, giddy, absent. With Donovan weeping during his postgame interview, I put another pin on this spot: happy.

Here's hoping that "successful" will continue the above string of adjectives, and sooner, rather than later!

-- CAV

PS: Scott French, writing for ESPN, calls the disallowed goal in the Slovenia game a favor to American soccer:

[Koman] Coulibaly, the Malian referee who waved off a stunning goal by Maurice Edu of Fontana, Calif., to complete the U.S.'s comeback from a two-goal deficit Friday against Slovenia, did American soccer a favor. He robbed us -- not just Edu and Donovan and Jozy Altidore and Michael Bradley, but all of us -- and by doing so fermented this country's identification with this U.S. team. We'd been wronged, and in our indignation, soccer suddenly mattered. [links dropped]

If the drop in stock market trading volume at the tail end of the win against Algeria is any indication, French is right.

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Quick Roundup 543

Credential Bubble Hits Legal Profession

Glenn Reynolds points to a post by John Hinderaker titled, "The Law of Supply and Demand Hits the Legal Business." Said post quotes from a New York Times story, including the following:

[Loyola Law School Los Angeles] is retroactively inflating its grades, tacking on 0.333 to every grade recorded in the last few years. The goal is to make its students look more attractive in a competitive job market.

Hinderaker's point, vis-a-vis the "education bubble" Reynolds has been discussing lately, is that there is now a glut of people with training as attorneys, and that such grade inflation is a means for a law school to remain competitive, at least in the short term.

That may be, but it is also a symptom of a deeper cultural problem that threatens the integrity of the process of matching the needs of employers with what job applicants bring to the table. Paul Graham calls this specific manifestation "credentialism."

Although Graham sees reliance on credentials purely in terms of sorting through large talent pools with little in-depth information, I see the problem as a manifestation of the effects of pragmatism on a specific application of the difficult problems of judging the moral character and evaluating the talent of others.

Does it do anyone good to choose one candidate over another based on an inflated GPA? Let's rephrase this question: What is the demand for people whose records say they can hack it when, in fact, they didn't? I wouldn't blame an economic law for this problem.

Small Government vs. Proper Government

I'm sure that many conservatives with a libertarian bent are all atwitter about the fact that Maywood, California plans to lay off all its city employees and even dismantle its Police Department.

The city of Maywood will lay off all city employees and begin contracting police services with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department effective July 1, officials said.

In addition to contracting with the Sheriff's Department, the Maywood City Council voted unanimously Monday night to lay off an estimated 100 employees and contract with neighboring Bell, which will handle other city services such as finance, records management, parks and recreation, street maintenance and others. Maywood will be billed about $50,833 monthly, which officials said will save $164,375 annually.

Yes, this makes Maywood's government smaller, in terms of cost and personnel, but it does zilch to reduce it to its proper scope, which is solely the protection of individual rights.

What would it take to get me excited? Something closer to what Boulder, Colorado did recently, but more principled, as I indicate in that post.

Engineers vs. Twitter

I see that I'm on the same page as many engineers regarding Twitter (HT: Paul Hsieh), at least regarding the cons of wasted time and broken concentration and the pro of having a good information filter.

USA 1, Algeria 0

What a game!

Staring a first-round exit in the face and already a minute into injury time -- and having had, for the second game in a row, a perfectly good goal disallowed by the referee -- Team USA scores as if from force of will alone to win its group and proceed to the knock-out round of the World Cup.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected typos.

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Taking a Mile or Three

One unfortunate consequence of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has been the fact that the environmental movement and other fans of central planning (in the form of government regulations on business) have been more than happy to use it as fodder in their unrelenting war against industrial civilization. Case in point: The Obama Administration's (recently overturned) moratorium on offshore drilling below 500 feet, which is generally safer at shallower depths than the mile at which this accident occurred.

And now, just as some elements within the environmentalist movement seemed to have become friendlier to the idea of nuclear power, even that energy option is now catching flak again. Mark Gimein, writing for The Big Money (via Slate), uses the spill to tar nuclear power, warning "about our propensity to underestimate the chances of 'low probability, high cost events.'"

Gimein's infatuation with worst-case scenarios may be fashionable, but it is both philosophically and factually wrong. On the latter score, consider his argument against nuclear power:

I've been wary of jumping on the Black Swan bandwagon because people who go around thinking of worst-case possibilities tend to overcount the cost of worst-case events (when markets collapse, the world doesn't end). But when it comes to nuclear failure, though, the cost of failure really is incalculable. Bad as the Deepwater Horizon spill is, it is nothing next to the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown, which has left close to 1,100 square miles surrounding the Chernobyl reactor uninhabitable to this day.

...

Deepwater Horizon brings those low probability, high-cost events close. The near meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant did a lot to sour Americans on nuclear power, but Three Mile Island was a disaster that didn't happen. The safety systems and protocols worked. The plant shut down. The core didn't melt.

On the Deepwater Horizon well, the safety systems didn't work. ... [minor format edits]

Gimein fails to mention not only the predictable disastrous consequences of men not pursuing economically viable sources of energy, but also the following facts: (1) Safety devices not even installed, as with the Deepwater well simply can't work. (2) The kind of severe accident that happened at Chernobyl is physically impossible with the types of nuclear reactors used for power generation in America. (Regarding the Three Mile Island accident he implies to be similar to Chernobyl, there is an interesting discussion of "meltdowns" here.) (3) Even in the Cheronbyl disaster, radiation would not have been released had American containment practices been in place! There are others, but I think I've made my point.

When Frank Furedi called worst-case thinking "an act of imagination," he wasn't whistling Dixie.

-- CAV

P.S.: Via HBL, Ron Pisaturo has an excellent blog posting about a capitalist solution to the oil spill.

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Value Avoidance

Frank Furedi, whom I have mentioned here before in connection with Europe's absurd, unnecessary response to the Icelandic volcano eruption (But also see this.), takes up a topic closely related to the precautionary principle: risk avoidance. He does not explicitly put the issue this way, but it might actually be more accurate to say that he is speaking both of risk avoidance as an intrincicist ethical standard, and as a ritual of a subjectivist ethics. He takes the Gulf oil spill as his point of departure.

Fascinatingly, Furedi notices that, as applied to industry, this elevation of risk avoidance to a standard for judging action/putting on the appearance of risk avoidance results in the production of what he calls "fantasy documents" on policy -- including responses to emergencies -- that provide no real-world guidance. These documents, he holds, are a manifestation of a more widespread cultural phenomenon.

There is now a widespread culture of deception -- often self-deception -- in the West's confused relationship with risk, and it is widely codified and institutionalised throughout society. As I have argued before, risk is no longer regarded as an opportunity but as a hazard to be avoided. As a result, risk-taking is now culturally stigmatised. People who take risks are frequently denounced for being, by definition, irresponsible. Parents who let their children roam in the outdoors are told off for "taking a risk with your child." Scientists and businesses engaged in experimentation or technological innovation are often treated as pariahs for "putting communities at risk." In contrast, risk aversion, the act of avoiding risk, is increasingly held up as a positive value. [minor format edits]

This is a profound point, and probably more so than Furedi realizes.

As living beings, we face an alternative: perform certain actions in the pursuit of the values we need to live -- or die (or, at least, fail to flourish). As Furedi and others have noted in the past, there is a vast difference between worst-case thinking and rational risk assessment, and that difference is best appreciated when considering the relationship between values and actions noted above in light of the concept of risk.

Consider the dictionary definition of risk: "exposure to the chance of injury or loss; a hazard or dangerous chance." Consider further the fact that every possible action one can take involves risk, even if only of the waste of time that could be better spent doing something else. Worst-case thinking, as Furedi has noted, "is based on an act of [imagining] the worst-case scenario and then tak[ing] action on that basis."

Furedi is right, but is still not quite out of the woods. Why? Because those who see risk as intrinsically bad are smuggling in advocacy of a course of action whose risk is assumed to be practically zero.

To take a simple example, suppose I need to shop for dinner tonight. The grocer is across the street. I could get hit by a car on the way, so I decide to minimize that risk by staying home. Left out of that equation are many, many things, including: the risk of starvation if I maintain such a zero tolerance policy for the risk of car-pedestrian accidents, the risk of my home burning to the ground if I stay there and fall asleep, and the risk that, if I order pizza instead, the deliveryman may really be waiting for a chance to kill me in a home invasion. Some of these risks are practically nil, but they are all risks, and must be weighed rationally. Such a weighing says, "Cross the street and buy the groceries." This is because the risks of not doing so outweigh the risks of doing so. Put positively, I will gain the greatest possible value for that period of time by picking up what I need for dinner.

The pursuit of values, and indeed life itself, entail risk. To avoid all risk is impossible, and to fail to weigh risks rationally will diminish or even end one's life.

-- CAV

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Quick Roundup 542

How to Fix College Football

The Wall Street Journal publishes a piece that makes a point related to a recent post I made here regarding the cultivation of athletic talent, while also improving upon a sentiment of mine regarding college football:

There's no governing authority that can make unilateral decisions for all of college football -- in fact, that's another part of the problem. But what if there were? Is there a model anywhere in the sports world for a system that could erase some of the chronic problems with college football without killing the golden goose?

In a word, yes. It's the English Premier League.

The EPL, which is the world's richest and most prominent professional soccer league, consists of 20 teams. At the end of the season, however, the three worst teams are demoted, or "relegated," to another, less-prestigious division of professional soccer -- the Football League Championship.

Is it not interesting that, along with all the media attention given lately to a sport emotionalistically derided as "anti-American" and even "socialist" by a certain type of conservative, there are worthwhile lessons about capitalism to be had for Americans?

Waste Breeds Waste

How does a central planner deal with such debacles as entire warehouses of food spoiling?

Much of the wasted food, including powdered milk and meat, was found last month in the buildup to legislative elections in September. The scandal is humiliating for Chavez, who accuses wealthy elites of fueling inflation and causing shortages of products such as meat, sugar and milk by hoarding food. [minor format edits]

Obviously, by replacing it with more food looted from what's left of the private sector.

And this is happening with the government controlling only about a quarter of the distribution system for staple foods.

Racism Far from Dead

(Although it doesn't exactly thrive anymore where the left would have you believe.)

Helen Thomas on why she said of the Israelis, "Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine." (HT: Instapundit)

I'm from [sic] Arab descent.

Italian soccer fans, chanting in about a professional player raised in Italy by Italian parents and possessing Italian citizenship, but of African descent:

A Negro cannot be an Italian.

You will note that the former comes from the lips of a leftist journalist and the latter from crowds in a nation practically deified for its cultural superiority by the left.

The second quote comes from a thought-provoking couple of posts by Steven and Harrison Stark on worse-than-predicted World Cup performances in the first African tourney by nations known for having problems with racist crowds at home. (Unsurprisingly, this has sometimes been accompanied by behavior one could call insensitive at best by some teams.)

The Starks note that many among these crowds are, "supporters of the right-wing political parties that have sprung up across the continent." Given the leftist canard that racism is practically the same as non-leftism, how does one explain its existence across the political spectrum? I'll yield to Ayn Rand on this one:

Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage--the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

You will note of Helen Thomas and her European-right-wing siblings-in-spirit that they excuse their bigotry on biological grounds. [Clarification: Anti-Jewish or anti-semitic bigotry is probably better described as tribalism than as racism, although it remains a form of collectivism.] Furthermore, racism exists across the political "spectrum" because left vs. right is for the most part a false dichotomy between two anti-individualistic fractions of the body politic.

And what about the following statistic noted by the Starks of the underperforming teams? (Records given are in win-loss-tie format.)

Predicted result for matches so far: 5-2-0
Actual result for matches so far: 1-3-3 [minor edits for format and uniform presentation]

To the extent that this isn't (also) due to other factors, I'd attribute it to simple cowardice, which is the flip side of bullying.

USA 2, Slovenia 2

I love the fact that the Yanks look capable of beating anyone at times, but hate the fact that they seem to need their backs to be against the wall to show it. In Friday's game, I switched off the television after they fell behind 2-0, including yet another early goal caused by sloppy defense. But then, remembering I had packing to do for a short trip, flipped it back on and was rewarded with an electrifying second-half comeback. A perfectly valid goal was negated by an utterly brainless (and unsatisfactorily-explained) call by the referee.

That said, I wholly agree that this team and its coach deserve part of the blame for not actually winning:

Bad things happen to teams that fall behind often enough, far enough. The back line lost shape early, gave up way too much space on those first two goals. Upfield, Robbie Findley and Francisco Torres were utterly lost, and are now unlikely to reappear at this World Cup.

Even the stars of the previous England match were imperfect. Tim Howard was screened by Oguchi Onyewu on the first goal, a beauty by Valter Birsa in the 13th minute. The second goal was a numbers game, caused by late track-backers and miscalculations from Onyewu and Jay DeMerit. [minor format edits]

If either early lapse hadn't occurred, Team USA would be basking in a 2-1 win and sitting atop its first-round group.

I had heard that before the game, Coach Bradley specifically addressed the need to keep from falling behind early. He also started out with a more defensive formation, which he shifted away from when the need to score became dire. I think he's taking the wrong approach, psychologically, to put so much focus on the monkey that seems to be riding this team's back.

He should just start off on offense.

What's the worst that could happen? We spot our opponent an early goal?

At least other results ensure that a win sends the USA to the next round.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Added a clarification.

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Novelty in Flight

I found a Wall Street Journal article on the Airbus A380 double-decker jetliner interesting, in terms of both the kinds of amenities the plane can offer and the economics behind how airlines choose whether to use them (and, if so, how). On that second score, the audio clip included with the article is worthwhile.

So for the most part, [airlines] opted for lots and lots of seats, with an occasional stand-up bar for premium passengers. A few exceptions: Singapore Airlines offers first-class suites -- private cabins with double beds (the airline has a no-sex policy). Emirates has a shower cabin installed on its A380s for first-class passengers. (You get 25 minutes in the shower cabin with five minutes of water.)

Because of the vast differences in service and cabins, fares aboard the same flight can vary as widely as the 262-foot wingspan of the plane. On Singapore Airlines, for example, an Aug. 14-21 round-trip between London and Singapore on A380 flights was priced Wednesday at $14,505 for a suite, or $1,556 for a coach seat. On Australia's Qantas Airways, the span was even greater. A coach seat from Los Angeles to Sydney and back on A380 flights for the same dates could be had for as little as $818; first-class seats on the same flights cost $24,538 round-trip. [minor format edits]

These jets have been in service for about three years now, and remain relatively rare. There are none flying domestically within the U.S. and, from what I gather, there won't be any time soon, given the general preference in that market for frequent, flexible flights.

-- CAV

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Quick Roundup 541

A Bleg: That Quote

An article about a drive to get America's billionaires to donate half of their personal wealth to charity has reminded me of an especially elusive quotation I was surprised to hear read over the radio eons ago. This article, like several other bits of news and commentary in the recent past, has reminded me of that quote and made me want to track it down.

I haven't read the entire article, but its title aroused my curiosity enough to locate the following within:

Those qualifiers noted, the magazine stated the 2009 net worth of the Forbes 400 to be around $1.2 trillion. So if those 400 were to give 50% of that net worth away during their lifetimes or at death, that would be $600 billion. You can think of that colossal amount as what the Buffett and Gates team is stalking -- at a minimum.

All one has to do is ponder the trillions in obligations that Bush and Obama are burdening our nation with to appreciate how much damage they will do to our economy, and how this "colossal" effort pales in comparison with the government's ability to loot us faster than we can even think about giving things away.

I am pretty sure the author of the quote I have in mind was Ayn Rand, but no amount of creative searching has helped me find it. It went something along the lines of there not being enough wealth in existence in the world to feed every mouth or fill every need -- and that taking it all would not only not be enough, but would destroy our economy's ability to create the wealth necessary for our continued existence.

Has anyone heard or read such a quote? If so, can you tell me where I can find it?

Note: I may be slow getting to replies today, as I am scheduled for oral surgery and might be recovering from anesthesia this evening.

Update: Thanks to Jennifer Snow, I found the quote.

How NOT to Fight Back, Part 506

Glenn Reynolds notes that the RNC is slamming Barack Obama for playing golf during the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which is precisely the last thing it should be doing. Worse still, the ad (which is embedded at the above link) features an extended video overlay of James Carville urging Barack Obama to "take control" of things.

So much for the GOP having any credibility as a party of limited government.

Reynolds describes the above sound bite as "knife-twisting." I guess if he means this as the culmination of an act of hara-kiri (minus any sense of honor), I might be able to agree with him.

Chiding your enemy for not practicing his irrational principles enough -- while not standing up for a rational alternative at the same time -- is to confess intellectual bankruptcy.

This video is sickening, but I recommend watching it as a reminder of what we're up against. It's plainly not just the Democrats.

We don't need ... more ... regulation.

On HBL, Harry Binswanger recently pointed to the following bit of useful intellectual ammunition:

Financial services have long been subject to detailed regulation by multiple agencies. In his book on the financial crisis, Jimmy Stewart is Dead, Boston University Professor Laurence Kotlikoff counts over 115 regulatory agencies for financial services. If more hands in the pot helped, financial services would be in fine shape. Few believe such is the case.

115?!?! That's a good number to be able to toss out there in casual conversation.

The Decline of Civilization

Reader Fernando emails me a link to a humorous infographic illustrating the decline of philosophy in the West in terms of the kinds of questions we are asking.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected a typo. Updated first section.

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Leaping Laggards!

Clive Thompson of Wired discusses the idea that purveyors of high-tech gadgets may be ignoring a key market segment when they snub late adopters.

[Israeli academic Jacob] Goldenberg offers the following thought experiment. Imagine that John is a laggard who buys a Walkman and listens to it while he jogs every day. Eventually, the Discman comes along, but John doesn’t upgrade because he doesn’t see anything wrong with his Walkman and doesn't want to rebuy his music on CD. Then MiniDisc players come along, but John still holds on to his Walkman. Then, 16 years after he bought his portable tape deck, MP3 players become the hot new thing.

By now, though, John is finally starting to feel self-conscious about his huge, bulky Walkman, and maybe it's starting to break down. He's finally ready to buy a new music player, so he becomes -- ironically -- one of the first people to get an iPod.

Goldenberg calls this the "leapfrog effect," and he estimates that this previously unidentified market segment could nearly double the profitability for a new device should its makers take aim at people like John. The article goes on to show how this approach could make an iPad very attractive even to older consumers one could understandably describe as technophobes.

Goldenberg elaborates further.

"We realized that the definition of laggard is wrong," Goldenberg says. "In the case of multiple generations of products, they can just skip generations. So they can also be first."

I see this issue in a slightly different light. I think Goldenberg is on to something, but that he focuses too much on how quickly, relative to a product's release, someone decides to make a purchase. I would say that the early adopters that gadget makers tend to cater to include a large proportion of less-serious customers who basically want toys, or cachet, or just love almost any new technology and have money to burn. Marketing to these types of customer will often tend towards the superficial and might, in many cases, be almost unnecessary.

What Goldenberg is calling late adopters are the people who won't or can't let vanity or mere curiosity cause them to part with their money. They need reasons to purchase a high-tech gadget or service. What the marketers seem to be failing to do is to supply these people good enough reasons to consider buying their product.

New products and services will always have their skeptics who will, as I do in such situations, delegate testing for quality and usefulness to earlier adopters. But there are doubtless many people who merely pass as skeptics simply because their (lower) sales thresholds aren't being reached by advertisers. I think Goldberg is painfully close to rediscovering a legitimate purpose of marketing, which is to inform potential customers of the actual advantages of owning his employer's product or using his service.

-- CAV

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Anti-Law, Anti-Man

Writing for USA Today, Jonathan Turley asks, "Do laws even matter today?" There is much I disagree with in his article, which wanted clarity on the following two aspects of the problem he identifies: (1) the proper purpose of government; and (2) the difference between the political and the cultural fallout of this problem. Nevertheless, Turley's basic point is an excellent one:

A legal system cannot demand the faith and fealty of the governed when rules are seen as arbitrary and deceptive. Our leaders have led us not to an economic crisis or an immigration crisis or an environmental crisis or a civil liberties crisis. They have led us to a crisis of faith where citizens no longer believe that laws have any determinant meaning. It is politics, not the law, that appears to drive outcomes -- a self-destructive trend for a nation supposedly defined by the rule of law.

The government, rather than protecting individual rights, is engaged in all kinds of things that contradict this central, proper purpose. Its laws, already handing over power to central planners to begin with, are also, therefore, becoming increasingly contradictory by the day, often giving rise to the appearance of impotence or the apparent need for a sort of "manual override." In either case, what should provide a firm basis for citizens to act within a society becomes increasingly arbitrary and anarchic. That's the political fallout. Culturally, bad men are emboldened by the manifold opportunities this milieu presents, and good men are marginalized. The very life-giving purpose of law is thereby subverted.

Without a solid understanding of philosophical principles, one cannot really grasp what is wrong with this picture or what to do about it. In small ways, people become accustomed to "ignoring stupid laws" (as a college professor of my past acquaintance once put it), rather than working to change them. Man-made foolishness thereby becomes confused with metaphysical limits on human endeavor to be worked around by small acts of cunning -- rather than overthrown by principled opposition and replaced with a proper government. Whatever rebellion -- without guidance by proper philosophical principles -- would be blind and ultimately impotent.

What does this mean for those of us who do understand the nature of the philosophical and political revolution that must occur for the tide to turn in favor of increased individual freedom? On the one hand, many who would be sympathetic will be confused and demoralized. But on the other, clarity about principles and how they apply to this situation will help us gain support, and will doubtless be greatly appreciated.

-- CAV

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Quick Roundup 540

An Anti-Terrorist Fatwa?

David Ignatius reports on a fatwa against terrorism and the funding thereof by Saudi clerics.

The fatwa begins with a clear definition of terrorism, which it calls "a crime aiming at destabilizing security" by attacking people or property, public or private. The document goes on to list examples of this criminal activity: "blowing up of dwellings, schools, hospitals, factories, bridges, airplanes (including hijacking), oil and pipelines." It doesn't mention any geographical area where such actions might be permissible.

What's striking is that the fatwa specifically attacks financing of terrorism. The Muslim religious council said it "regards the financing of such terrorist acts as a form of complicity to those acts ... to bring a conduit for sustaining and spreading of such evil acts."

Ignatius sees this in a positive light, but since the above definition of terrorism would seem to include legitimate acts of self-defense against terrorism by the West, I am skeptical of the motive behind the fatwa. And then, of course, there the small problem of the very non-objectivity of religion severing anything of the sort from a rational consideration of what one ought to do in life, let alone even having force among other Moslems. Ignatius himself notes this as he quotes an American official in passing: "Negative reaction from extremists online shows that they see this as a threat that needs to be responded to."

Ignatius notes that the fatwa was sought by its king, and an Israeli outlet sees it as an attempt by the theocratic Saudi regime to form a legal basis for fighting domestic terrorism. Interesting to note is that Saudi Arabia has also given Israel the green light to pass through its air space en route to a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

I see this as a short-term move for self-preservation by the Saudi regime at best.

Harvard's Madonna-Whore "Debate"

En route to other things, I see that a couple of years ago, New York Times Magazine published an interesting piece about a new "secular" version of the pre-marital virginity movement, which has now spread to college campuses, including some in the Ivy League. The movement resembles both Catholic theology and mainstream leftism in that it attempts to promote various religious tenets as if they are supported by reason.

Unsurprisingly, the end of the piece notes the dullness of a campus debate between two feminist Harvard students, Janie Fredell and Lena Chen -- the one an exponent of the secular chastity movement and the other a hedonistic sex blogger:

By underscoring their similarities and demonstrating mutual respect for each other, Fredell said she hoped to suggest to the audience that perhaps True Love Revolution [the chastity group] was a friendly force at Harvard -- and also deserving of a little respect. The [student paper], though, declared the whole event "boring!" and without open disagreement, the debate seems to have been resolved almost as a beauty contest. Two women sitting side by side, posing a silent question to the audience: which of us do you find more appealing?

What is really interesting to me is that anyone could be surprised by this. Both Janie Fredell and Lena Chen (at least implicitly) agreed that sex is a mindless, physical pursuit -- an attitude that is a symptom of the far-reaching influence of the theory-practice dichotomy in our culture. Both were wrong.

Unsurprisingly, and like many former hippies who have ended up embracing religious views, Chen seems to have been "rethinking virginity" lately.

Two Excellent Pieces

In case you missed them over the weekend, make time to read Paul Hsieh's "Free Speech: Use It or Lose It," and Wendy Milling's, "No Thomas Frank, Capitalism Is Perfect" (via HBL).

From the latter:

Note the subtle trick of [Frank's] op-ed: He attempts to smuggle in an equivocation between the concept of laissez-faire and the concept of industry. The oil spill was an industrial accident. It is unrelated to laissez-faire or any type of political system. Accidents occur in all political systems, and although they are lamentable, they are not any sort of threat to civilization, and they are irrelevant to the choice of political systems. (And if they were relevant, then it is clear which system would be the winner. Observe that the more capitalist the country, the cleaner and safer it is, and the more statist the country, the worse its physical and environmental conditions. The Soviet Union left itself and its satellites toxic wastelands).

That's just one of many excellent points Milling makes.

Commentary -- or Sanity?

That's the choice that confronts television viewers armed with mute buttons when tuning in to the World Cup. Thanks to the mindless drone of vuvuzelas, plastic trumpets that are all the rage in South Africa, every game sounds like it is taking place in the bowels of a beehive.

Sepp Blatter, head of FIFA, soccer's worldwide governing body, rejected the idea of banning the obnoxious devices on multiculturalist grounds -- even after players in the 2009 Confederations Cup (also held in South Africa) complained about them. So far, FIFA seems unswayed to reconsider banning them in upcoming matches, even by complaints from fans around the world. Given how lucrative soccer television contracts are, this stands as a testimony to the power of irrational philosophical ideas to override practical considerations of self-interest.

If you don't believe me, tune in to a game for a few minutes.

USA 1, England 1

I was thrilled that our national team managed not to lose to the heavily-favored English side. The moral of that game is simple: Lose focus even for an instant at this level of the game and you will be punished. Both goals resulted from defensive lapses, and revealed both teams to be more vulnerable than many thought.

That was the good news in the opening match of round-robin play. The bad news is that Tim Howard, the outstanding American goalkeeper and the man who did the most to keep us in the game, may have broken ribs.

-- CAV

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The Games Begin

Needless to say, I won't have time to see every game, but the World Cup starts today! I will be meeting an old friend soon to see the tournament's opening match, between Mexico and South Africa, at a local sports bar. I will also, of course, watch USA vs. England tomorrow when it comes on. Between following the US national team during round-robin play and cherry-picking from lists of recommended matches -- and recording everything else on our TiVo in case I miss anything particularly good -- I should be set for the next couple of weeks. I'll test the waters of sports prognostication here and predict a 2-1 win by Mexico, which has been playing very well lately, over an enthusiastic and well-supported, but still inferior, South African side.

The game's early and I'm running late, so I'll have to throw out a few interesting tidbits from this week's soccer coverage and leave it at that:

• Television Rights to the World Cup in the United States fetched their biggest price ever this time: "'If you ranked World Cup viewing by countries going back to 1998, the U.S. ranked 23rd,' said Kevin Alavy, director of Initiative Sports Futures, a London-based analysis firm. 'In 2002, the U.S. jumped to 13th, and in 2006, it jumped again to 8th place. And we expect America to keep on jumping.'"
• If you enjoyed Monty Python's famous old comedy sketch of German and Greek philosophers taking to the soccer field, you'll love this entertaining review of a book about Soccer and Philosophy. (HT: C. August, who hosted yesterday's Objectivist Roundup)
• Is the enigmatic US Coach Bob Bradley a character out of an Ayn Rand novel, or does the US team need a better coach?
  
• I think our defensive line is shaky and am somewhat relieved that striker Jozy Altidore is back. We'll need to score to make up for some of that. Trivia note: The man who provided the winning goal in America's 1-0 defeat of England way back in 1950 was, like Altidore, of Haitian descent.
• This story, like the fight against apartheid and the American civil rights struggle of the 1960's, is both about fighting injustice and the left's hijacking that fight. It's also not in great depth, but I found this article about "How Soccer Defeated Apartheid" interesting nonetheless.
• For the March Madness crowd comes this humorous list of World Cup likability rankings. I love the comment about South Korea's team logo being the one "most easily used as a beer label."

With that, I'm out the door to watch a World Cup opening match live for the first time.

-- CAV

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Quick Roundup 539

The Man Behind the Curtain

Dan Henninger of the Wall Street Journal writes a column full of interesting observations regarding the ways in which the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf has exposed the non-omniscience of the government. Along the way, he describes an act of mercy Barack Obama dis not deserve.

People sometimes say if only a Jack Welch, the legendary GE chairman, were put in charge, he'd get government to hum. That's a fantasy. Jack Welch, Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs: They'd all fail. After James Carville went off on the president, David Axelrod bemusedly replied, "What I haven't heard is exactly what he thinks we should do." Professional politicians must be amazed, and thankful, at this credulousness.

Amazed and thankful, perhaps, but undeserving: They all run on a platform of omniscience and omnipotence, don't they?

Although Henninger does say at one point that, "[T]he Gulf mess is the moment for the American people to reconsider just what they think government can do, or should do," he doesn't hammer home that "should." Perhaps it's because he doesn't believe it, as his characterization of one leftist's defense of the nanny state as "honest" may indicate. In any event, all he would have had to say was something like, "Using the government for anything but the protection of individual rights would be worse than using a hammer for anything but driving nails."

The Seventeenth Band-Aid

Some Tea Partiers are advocating a repeal of the seventeenth amendment, which mandates popular election of Senators, as opposed to their selection by state legislatures.

Two Republican nominees for House seats -- Ohio's Steve Strivers and Idaho's Raul Labrador -- have expressed sympathy for repeal. And Tim Bridgewater, one of two Tea Party candidates who last month knocked off sitting Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, argues that "if the states elected their senators, legislative monstrosities like ObamaCare or [No Child Left Behind], with their burdensome mandates, would never see the light of day."

I empathize, but disagree. There might be a case that such an amendment would cut down on the use of the unfunded mandate as a mechanism for expanding the government. Nevertheless, so long as the welfare state enjoys popular support, what difference would it otherwise make for state legislatures to choose the Senators? The welfare state funded by some other mechanism still violates my rights.

I suspect that such a selection process could make the Senate slower to change, politically, in either direction, because a sufficient number of state legislatures would have to change in composition substantially before they would select enough senators to, say, enact a radical agenda to bring the federal government back into its proper scope.

Unfortunately, that last is something that needs to happen as soon as possible. At the same time, an amendment effort would take a comparable length of time as a battle for public opinion, and waste the energy of those who ought to be fighting to win minds, rather than to erect a Maginot Line of dubious value.

The energy of activists for limited government would be better spent on changing the composition of the Senate via direct elections involving a populace better educated about the nature of individual rights and proper government. Let's save bringing back legislative inertia for such a time as it would once again actually be beneficial to have it.

Fascism in College Sports

With Congress likely to meddle in a potentially nationwide realignment of college football, this European model for finding and developing professional sports talent looks better and better to me every day.

College football acts like a business when it's convenient and suckles at the government teat when it's convenient. How 'bout this? Let's privatize education and let the colleges sort out for themselves whether to remain affiliated, as farm teams, with professional sports. And, in any case, let the colleges and sports teams run -- and fend for -- themselves. And at their own profit or loss.

Speaking of Suckling

This news story says it all.

The original adult breast-feeding fatwa was issued three years ago by an Egyptian scholar at Egypt's al-Azhar University, considered Sunni Islam's top university. Ezzat Attiya was expelled from the university after advocating breast-feeding of men as a way to circumnavigate segregation of the sexes in Egypt.

Yep. That "theology malfunction" is still going on.

Chalk up the implicit notion of a proper function of theology in the above to poetic license.

-- CAV

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Recycling as Self-Flagellation

Rob Lyons of Spiked makes the following trenchant observation concerning recycling in Great Britain:

Even recycling itself doesn't need to be such an almighty pain in the neck. ... [I]nstead of following endless arcane rules on which kind of rubbish goes into each of the veritable epidemic of multi-coloured containers that local authorities currently provide, with co-mingling there are just three containers: wet waste, like food; dry recyclables, like paper, plastic, card, metals and so on; and everything else. The dry recyclables are then separated out by machine at a depot. The machines aren't quite as good as doing it all by hand - yet - but they're still pretty good.

... This convenient solution, however, doesn't play well with greens. This is partly because of an obsession with recycling every last iddy-biddy bit of waste. But the main reason why co-mingling irritates greens is because if you take away the complexity of recycling, the ritual of thinking about it and doing it - if it's barely any more than shoving stuff in the bin, just like it used to be - then we don't have that daily eco-message drummed into our heads: "We are greedy, wasteful people who throw too much stuff away."

There would be no point in spending lesson after lesson at primary school teaching kids about how to recycle, and why to recycle, if it's just sticking stuff in the same bin. For greens, the attraction of complex, confusing systems of recycling is that they remind us, as we carry them out, what wasteful and destructive creatures we are. It is more like penance than a practical activity. [punctuation edits, bold added]

That last sentence is the height of understatement, as one can easily infer from the rest of the article.

Although Lyons fails to challenge the moral premise behind environmentalism, he does indicate that government market distortions are used to make recycling of household refuse appears to be economical. If recycling really were a life-promoting activity, however, it would not be necessary to graft artificial rewards onto it in order to promote it.

Unfortunately, unless one defends acting selfishly without compromise, such facts won't amount to a rhetorical hill of beans in a culture that is predisposed to regard self-interest as morally neutral at best.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected a typo. (HT Brad Harper)

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We Do Have a Choice

I'm starting to see mentions pop up here and there about how excessive, undisciplined Internet and electronic gadget usage can change how our minds work, complete with scientific studies suggesting that physiological changes are happening to the brains of heavy users. The article, "Your Brain on Computers: Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price," in the Business section of the New York Times is a very good example.

The results from such bad habits (and the changes that go with them) can range from routinely "losing" enormous amounts of time by merely surfing, playing video games, and checking email all the way to "missing" things -- like "one of the most important e-mail messages of [one's] life" -- or starving important "real life" relationships of attention.

Despite my blogging, I would guess that I am probably less caught up in the problems endemic to the lure of electronic time thieves than many, and yet I've noticed myself becoming more productive, or generally enjoying things more than "normal" whenever I have far less time on the Internet than I normally do, as with the first part of our vacation last week.

The other shoe one knows will drop (if it hasn't already) will be for people to start calling for the government to limit the amount of time we can spend using electronic devices, as if these things are "forcing" people to become unfocused. To the contrary, I think that being aware of the problem, having a proper view of one's nature as a rational being with free will, being aware of the importance of a rational hierarchy of values to one's survival, acting on such information, and a commitment to monitoring one's progress is all one needs to head off or overcome such difficulties.

Correcting such a problem can be difficult at first, and the article offers an interesting biological suggestion as to why -- beyond simple questions of technique on such concrete issues as, "How does one best keep track of time when multitasking?" (Note: I find much wrong with many theories about how the mind works, such as evolutionary psychology, because so many assume determinism. However, I still see merit in considering how past evolutionary pressures may affect how the mind works. Also, I find plausible arguments to the effect that such Internet usage can "rewire" parts of the brain to an extent.)

The results also illustrate an age-old conflict in the brain, one that technology may be intensifying. A portion of the brain acts as a control tower, helping a person focus and set priorities. More primitive parts of the brain, like those that process sight and sound, demand that it pay attention to new information, bombarding the control tower when they are stimulated.

Researchers say there is an evolutionary rationale for the pressure this barrage puts on the brain. The lower-brain functions alert humans to danger, like a nearby lion, overriding goals like building a hut. In the modern world, the chime of incoming e-mail can override the goal of writing a business plan or playing catch with the children.

In addition to the kinds of consequences already noted for a lack of focus, there is an emotional component: higher feelings of emotional stress.

The above reminds me of the following description of pragmatism by Leonard Peikoff in his essay, "Pragmatism vs. America" (Ayn Rand Letter, vol. III, no. 16, May 6, 1974):

In the normal course of affairs, the pragmatists elaborate, men do not -- and need not -- think; they merely act -- by habit, by routine, by unthinking impulse. But, in certain situations, the malleable material of reality suddenly asserts itself, and habit proves inadequate: men are unable to achieve their goals, their action is blocked by obstacles, and they begin to experience frustration, tension, trouble, doubt, "disease." This, according to pragmatism, is when men should resort to the "instrument" of thought. And the goal of the thought is to "reconstruct" the situation so as to escape the trouble, alleviate the tension, remove the obstacles, and resume the normal process of unimpeded (and unthinking) action.

Given that pragmatism divorces man from his principles during the conduct of his daily life (to the point of making a rational hierarchy impossible), such a parallel should be no surprise. I would even say that pragmatism makes the challenges posed by the question, "How does one properly use this new technology?" much more severe by masking them and by turning self-correction into a trial-and-error process.

Just consider the following account, taken again from the Times article, just after it detailed how Kord Campbell missed a minor mistake that cost him $1800 over a six month period:

Mr. Campbell can be unaware of his own habits. In a two-and-a-half hour stretch one recent morning, he switched rapidly between e-mail and several other programs, according to data from RescueTime, which monitored his computer use with his permission. But when asked later what he was doing in that period, Mr. Campbell said he had been on a long Skype call, and "may have pulled up an e-mail or two."

And this reminds me of a passage by Ayn Rand -- from a wholly different context -- that seems especially apropos. This is from the second part of her essay, "The Establishing of an Establishment" (in The Ayn Rand Letter, vol. 1, no. 17, May 22, 1972):

Thus most men succumb to an intangible corruption, and sell their souls on the installment plan -- by making small compromises, by cutting small corners -- until nothing is left of their minds except the fear.

That is exactly what happens when one says something like, "Oh, it'll take just a moment to check my email," enough times during an unfocused period at the computer. The problem -- insofar as the new technology is the culprit -- is that such distractions are so easy to indulge and that such indulgence can appear to come at a negligible price. Timewise, it's inexpensive once, but the real, huge cost, is a short-term yanking from (or remaining out of) focus (which can contribute to wasting more time), and a worrisome long-term development of a habit of being less focused than one ought to be.

Of recycling, I once noted that, in terms of time lost in one's life, it is deadly. Look how much more so can going on autopilot be! Learning to resist the insidious temptation to do this posed by our myriad new electronic devices and Internet services is the key to ensuring that they enhance our lives, rather than slowly sapping them away.

-- CAV

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Quick Roundup 538

How They Do It

This weekend's New York Times Magazine carried an in-depth look at a privately-run sports academy whose purpose is to locate and groom kids with world-class athletic potential. Its cost to parents: essentially nil. This sports academy -- its name, De Toekomst, means "The Future" in Dutch -- is in Europe and serves for professional soccer club Ajax the same purpose as a farm system would for a Major League Baseball team.

I'll highlight just a few of the interesting points the article brought up.

The article indicates that, at least as far as general approaches to coaching go, the Ajax system emphasizes the development of individual players more than does the American approach (at least for team sports).

Americans like to put together teams, even at the Pee Wee level, that are meant to win. The best soccer-playing nations build individual players, ones with superior technical skills who later come together on teams the U.S. struggles to beat. In a way, it is a reversal of type. Americans tend to think of Europeans as collectivists and themselves as individualists. But in sports, it is the opposite. The Europeans build up the assets of individual players. Americans underdevelop the individual, although most of the volunteers who coach at the youngest level would not be cognizant of that.

The profit motive serves to protect younger players from spending too much time playing with too little instruction on fundamentals.

[O]ne element of the academy's success is that the boys are not overplayed, so the hours at De Toekomst are all business. Through age 12, they train only three times a week and play one game on the weekend. "For the young ones, we think that’s enough," Riekerink said when we talked in his office one day. "They have a private life, a family life. We don't want to take that from them. When they are not with us, they play on the streets. They play with their friends. Sometimes that's more important. They have the ball at their feet without anyone telling them what to do."

[and, two pages later]

[T]he balance between games and practice in the U.S. is skewed when compared with the rest of the world. It's not unusual for a teenager in the U.S. to play 100 or more games in a season, for two or three different teams, leaving little time for training and little energy for it in the infrequent moments it occurs. A result is that the development of our best players is stunted. They tend to be fast and passionate but underskilled and lacking in savvy compared with players elsewhere.

[and, on the next page]

De Toekomst is not where you come to hear a romantic view of sport. No one pretends that its business is other than what it is. "We sold Wesley Sneijder for a ridiculous amount of money," Versloot said. "We can go on for years based on what he was sold for."

I would also say that the profit motive selects for a better means of spotting talent.

After a series of these auditions, some players would be formally enrolled in the Ajax (pronounced EYE-ox) academy. A group of men standing near me looked on intently, clutching rosters that matched the players with their numbers. One man, Ronald de Jong, said: "I am never looking for a result -- for example, which boy is scoring the most goals or even who is running the fastest. That may be because of their size and stage of development. I want to notice how a boy runs. Is he on his forefeet, running lightly? Does he have creativity with the ball? Does he seem that he is really loving the game? I think these things are good at predicting how he’ll be when he is older."

It is interesting to note further that, as big as soccer is in Europe, its colleges do not serve as feeders in a de facto farm system for professional leagues as they do here in America.

Aside from the moral battle to turn the tide of political momentum towards capitalism, there is also what I think of as the battle of imagination. Even people sympathetic to the cause of limited government are often flummoxed when considering how certain things done by the government as it is today could be done in a free society.

Here, we see in detail a viable model for spotting and training professional athletes that, unlike systems in place in America today, neither relies significantly on public education nor costs parents significant amounts of money. Incidentally, such a model could easily apply to areas of endeavor besides sports.

Solar Weather Watch

The Sun appears to be waking up from the low point in its sunspot cycle, and this could mean big trouble for our technologically advanced society:

Smart power grids, GPS navigation, air travel, financial services and emergency radio communications can all be knocked out by intense solar activity. A century-class solar storm, the Academy warned, could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina.

This isn't the Next Global Warming Hysteria. Consider the below account of the Carrington Event in 1859:

[T]elegraph systems crashed, machines burst into flames, and electric shocks rendered operators unconscious. Compasses and other sensitive instruments reeled as if struck by a massive magnetic fist.

Luckily, existing technology seems close to being able to forecast and, through preventative measures, mitigate the greater damage such an event could cause to our even more electrified world.

Changing Times

Charles Blow of the New York Times analyzes recent polling that shows homosexuality bearing far less stigma among men than it once did. The following passage was both spot-on and amusing:

[T]here is a growing body of research that supports the notion that homophobia in some men could be a reaction to their own homosexual impulses. Many heterosexual men see this, and they don't want to be associated with it. It's like being antigay is becoming the old gay. Not cool.

When I was very young, I'd occasionally be taunted for being gay simply, at least insofar as the reason had anything to do with me, for being slight of build and using words of more than one or two syllables. (It was invariably some redneck who would do this.) The above hypothesis makes a huge amount of sense to me, given the kinds of mumbo jumbo that rednecks emotionalistically associate with masculinity.

A God in His Image

The amusing Fail Blog image at this link reminds me of the truism that you can gain sometimes gain insight into whether a religious person is benevolent by the kind of god he worships.

-- CAV

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Kickoff in One Week

Next week, the 2010 FIFA World Cup begins play in South Africa, and this time, I own a TiVo. This is also the first time I have followed things this closely heading into the tournament, thanks mainly to the excellent commentary and coverage available at RealClear Sports and the Fox Soccer Channel, respectively. I know that the former site didn't exist four years ago and suspect that the latter didn't, either. I see the proliferation of sites covering the game for an American audience as a positive sign of the maturation of soccer as a popular sport here.

In addition to there being more commentary geared towards the American market, I think the quality of that commentary has improved. Assessments of the chances for the American team seem more sober and less geared towards simply stirring up interest in the game here by glossing over our team's deficiencies. For example, Steven and Harrison Stark offer a very frank assessment of our team's roster titled, "The US Roster Isn't A Surprise For A Third-Tier Soccer Power."

We seem -- finally -- past the point that we're excited just to have made the tournament and now want to advance significantly there. (Our draw should help in that regard, as the English indirectly note as seen to the right. Let's hope Coach Bradley waves that rag around in the locker room before our squad's opening game with the Limeys, thereby provoking an upset!)

In addition, the reading choices among American fans show that they aren't just showing up every four years to cheer on the American team. Take today's "Most Read" list from Soccer America.

1. Cover boy Rossi dropped by Azzurri
2. Jose Torres makes East Texas town proud
3. USA must fine tune backline
4. USA 1-23 [US Men's National Team jersey numbers --ed]
5. Stronger, broader game boosts Torres' value
6. 'Shambolic' start to campaign
7. Where will you be watching?
8. ESPN2 offers 24-hour World Cup countdown
9. Brazil gets scare in Zimbabwe
10. U.S. star Boxx moves to third team

The many detractors of the American game will doubtless chortle and say, "Just as well," but who truly appreciates a sport who can't enjoy greatness on the part of any athlete who plays the game? That's what the World Cup is all about, and I'll have a great time watching it whether our team once again folds like a cheap lawnchair or surprises everyone by "punching above its weight," as I recall one commentator put it after a 2-1 tuneup win against Turkey.

Along those lines, here's a list, in no particular order, of interesting World Cup commentary I have encountered over the last few days. Any notes of mine follow, separated by a dash.

• 10 Players Who Will Emerge at the World Cup -- Eighth on the list is American striker Jozy Altidore. Let's hope his sprained ankle doesn't get in the way.
• Top 10 2010 World Cup Tough Guys -- Mostly, I see this as a list of idiots likely to get ejected or injure key players. Unfortunately for England's opponents, star striker Wayne Rooney, who is on the list, seems less susceptible to people getting into his head and provoking him into doing stupid things.
  
• Spain Wins World Cup, Sort of -- This is about a computer simulation based on a game being released for the Xbox 360. England beats the Yanks 2-1 in the opener, too. Sort of.
  
• Top 10 World Cup Games -- Need I say more?
  
• The Six Biggest Egos of World Cup 2010 -- Well, one thing our team lacks is prima donnas!
• World Cup Power Rankings -- The US team is in the middle of the pack, just over Mexico, and barely in the top half at #14.

Finally, RealClear Sports previewed each of the initial eight groups of four teams (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H). The Starks regard Group F as the easiest, and D as the most challenging. Group C, where the Americans and the English begin play, they deem the most overrated. They previewed the groups in alphabetical order over a period of a couple of weeks, so the earlier previews are more likely to be less accurate due to injuries.

The tournament runs from June 11 until July 11, for a full month of soccer excellence. What say you, fellow soccer aficionados? What do you most anticipate? What is your favorite source of soccer news and commentary?

-- CAV

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