A Well-Timed Prod

Dear Uncle Gus,

Now that you've had a successful debut as an OpEd writer at PajamasMedia, will we see more such pieces from you?

Signed,

Tired of Waiting

Dear Tired,

First, let me once again tamp down those persistent rumors to the effect that I can predict the future.

With that out of the way, the timing of your question could not have been better. I would like to ease in to writing a regular column, while continuing to blog on a daily basis. Clearly, the first hasn't happened, yet. Your timing suggests a solution, or at least the start of one, though.

In the first "Ask Uncle Gus," I described a process of squeezing an extra blog post out of scraps of blogging time. Your question suggests to me that this "extra time" would be better spent on work for columns instead.

In fact, now that I think of it, part of the problem with the way I have tried to work in op-ed writing has been that I need to get out of the habit of doing the bulk of the work for such pieces in one sitting. That often requires large blocs of time that I can't always count on, just for starters. The above strategy would work well for such a purpose.

So I'll try that, see how well I can produce that way, and evaluate at the end of each month. Such a work process would have the added advantage of not nuking me out of a column any time my weekend gets crowded, too.

I can't believe I didn't think of this before, but I didn't. At any rate, it's partially for the sake of insights like this, that come from interacting with my readers that I want to continue blogging, so I appreciate your question. (And I'll keep taking FormSpring questions, but now they'll be part of the blogging rotation, instead.)

-- CAV

If you'd like to ask a question, just type it into the box at the upper right labeled, "Ask Uncle Gus."

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Four Light Notes

Good Calories, Bad Calories

I started reading Gary Taubes's Good Calories, Bad Calories recently. I will only get to read this in pieces, and may not finish it for a few months, but I have been pleasantly surprised (and in more than one sense, even relieved) to have found it to be much better than I expected.

My regard for the general state of knowledge in the science of nutrition has been, to put it, in G-rated terms, extremely low, and I have not made a habit of hiding that contempt in the past. Astonishingly, the first third of the book shows that the field (or at least much of what passes as its conventional wisdom) has been even more of a mess than I suspected. Furthermore, what you don't know about this can hurt you.

In addition, this book provides a good case history of how government interference in science can cause mistaken theories to become medical orthodoxy, and provides a look at some aspects of how science is done, which is to say, more messily in some respects than many people realize.

I recommend the book, because, even without finishing it, I have realized value from it. That said, I must stress that I have not finished it, and want to be clear that this recommendation is not a comment, good or bad, on the positive arguments Taubes takes up later. I may discuss these if I find myself strongly agreeing with or strongly disagreeing with him once I am finished with the book.

I will say that even if I do find myself strongly disagreeing with some aspect of Taubes's positive argument, that this is the best work about nutrition that I have ever encountered.

I thank Monica Hughes and Diana Hsieh for bringing this book to my attention.

Old Idiom, Whole New Meaning

Reader Dismuke tips me off to an amusing story about a letter arriving by post seventy-three years after it was sent.

The likeliest explanation (though not the only one): The letter made it to Stockton's main post office, which then was in the Federal Building, 401 N. San Joaquin St.

It fell into a crack, and there, a mere two blocks south of its destination, it stayed for seven decades.

"Back then, all the letters were handled manually," Ruiz said. "If you can imagine a floor full of cases similar to what Ben Franklin used to work with, pigeonholes, that's how mail was sorted back then."

The post office moved out of the Federal Building in 2008. The building has undergone remodeling. Perhaps the letter popped out and someone dropped it in a mailbox, Ruiz theorized.

Unsurprisingly, both the sender and the recipient were already dead.

Hudson's Baked Tilapia

We enjoyed this simple recipe for baked tilapia and a sauce last week. As usual, I rewrote it as follows:

Preparation Time is 30 minutes.

Ingredients

lemon, 1
tilapia, 4 4oz. filets
pepper to taste
Tony Chachere's, 1 tbsp
mayonnaise, 1/4 cup
sour cream, 1/2 cup
garlic powder, 1/8 tsp
lemon juice, 1 tsp
dill, 2 tbsp

Directions

1. In parallel with the next two steps, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place tinfoil on a baking sheet and lightly grease.

2. Thinly slice lemon.

3. Season the tilapia fillets with pepper and Tony Crachere's on both sides. Arrange the seasoned fillets in a single layer in the baking dish. Place a layer of lemon slices over the fish fillets.

4. In parallel with the next step, bake uncovered for 15 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until fish flakes easily with a fork.

5. Prepare the sauce by combining and mixing the mayonnaise, sour cream, garlic powder, lemon juice, and dill.

6. Serve tilapia with sauce.

I love fish, and the fact that we live a block away from the grocer means that we can enjoy it more often than we used to.

Weyerbacher Simcoe Double IPA

Some weeks ago, my wife and I visited with some of her coworkers in the South End, where I noticed a large (for my general area in Boston) beer and wine emporium. I made a mental note of it and visited yesterday on my daily walk. I was rewarded by finding a beer I had once, something like five years ago, at a brewing club meeting back in Houston.

Double Simcoe IPA, 9.0% abv, is our incredible reward for Hopheads seeking the intense hop flavor in a Double IPA, without the harshness. It is brewed untilizing only the Simcoe hop variety. This hybrid hop, developed and trademarked by Select Botanicals Group, LLC in the year 2000, was created for its high alpha acid content, maximum aromatic oils, and low cohumulone(harshness) levels so that brewers can really put a lot of 'em in a beer and not create an overly harsh taste.

Double Simcoe IPA is a full-flavored ale with hints of pineapple and citrus upfront, a good malt backbone in the middle, and a clean finish that doesn't linger too long. Check it out, and you'll soon see why everyone's talking about it. Double Simcoe is available year-round.

Named 2006 "PA Beer of the Year" by Beer Author Lew Bryson, at www.LewBryson.com.

All I'd remembered was the name "Simcoe" and the fact that the hop taste was quite distinctive. It'll be nice to be able to crack one of those open once in a while.

-- CAV

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Case in Point

A little over a week ago, I discussed an email I received regarding the latest political cure-all: a proposed twenty-eighth amendment, which would require the effects of any legislation passed by Congress to apply to everyone. Towards the end of the post, I stated the following:

[I]f we explicitly forbade ObamaCare from the Constitution, the underlying disease of the body politic would remain: That too many people accept (or leave unchallenged) the premise that it's okay to steal from other people so long as the government does it, and passes out the loot equally.

So long as this idea retains its undeserved respect in our culture, we will elect bandits to office, our state and federal governments will compete in a race to be the main gang in our neighborhoods, our wealth will be sapped in one way or another (since loot has to come from somewhere), and everyone will be looking for a way to make sure everyone else is equally screwed.

Please note the locution "equally screwed," gird your loins, and hack your way through the tangled verbiage of the following passage, taken verbatim (minus some formatting) from an email I received last night.

Retribution is less than 1 year away!

Take a look at this and just remember elections in November 2010.

1. U..S.. House & Senate have voted themselves $4,700 and $5,300 raises.
2. They voted to NOT give you a S.S. Cost of living raise in 2010 and 2011.
3. Your Medicare premiums will go up $285.60 for the 2-years
4. You will not get the 3% COLA: $660/yr.
5. Your total 2-yr loss and cost is -$1,600 or -$3,200 for husband and wife.
6. Over these same 2-years each Congress person will get $10,000
7. Do you feel SCREWED?
8. Will they have your cost of drugs - doctor fees - local taxes - food, etc., decrease?
9. NO WAY.

Congress received a raise and has better health and retirement benefits than you or I.

* Why should they care about you?
* You never did anything about it in the past.
* You obviously are too stupid or don't care.
* Do you really think that Nancy , Harry, Chris, Charlie, Barny, et al, care about you?

Send the message to these individuals --- "YOU'RE FIRED!"

In 2010 you will have a chance to get rid of the sitting Congress: up to 1/3 of the Senate and 100% of the House!

Make sure you're still mad in November 2010 and remind their replacements not to screw-up.

It is ok to forward this to your sphere of influence if you are finally tired of the abuse. Maybe it's time for Amendment 28 to the Constitution..

28th Amendment will be as follows:
"Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators or Representatives, and Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States ."

Let's get this passed around, folks - these people in Washington have brought this upon themselves! It's time for retribution. Let's take back America ..

If you don't forward this to all your friends you're just part of the problem of national apathy.

Notice which Congressmen are in in the crosshairs. That's right. Once again, we have grassroots "opponents" of Barack Obama calling for laws passed by Congress to apply with blanket equality to everyone, regardless of merit or propriety. And this opposition is based not on a principled support for individual rights, a desire to begin phasing out the welfare state, or even a return to a proper understanding of what "equality before the law" really means -- but on a vague, softly egalitarian notion of equality.

If this blindfolded, half-cocked effort is the opposite of apathy, we're better off with apathy, because frustration will be the best possible result.

Once again: I don't want an equal share of loot. I want freedom.

-- CAV

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OAC Deadline Approaching

Via email comes the following from Stewart Margolis of ARI:

In case you or people you know are interested, we wanted to let you know that the final application deadline for the Ayn Rand Institute’s Objectivist Academic Center 2010 -- 11 academic year is July 30, 2010. We also wanted to be sure you were aware that auditors are always welcome. And feel free to mention this on your blog!

The OAC is our premier program for individuals who want to systematically study Ayn Rand’s ideas and her philosophy of Objectivism.

• Our courses guide each student in developing the tools necessary to communicate effectively, logically and rationally. It is also the perfect place to meet other students interested in Ayn Rand’s writings and their relevance to today’s world.
• The OAC’s one-of-a-kind curriculum provides an opportunity to learn Objectivist methodology in a way that cannot be found anywhere else. We offer full tuition waivers and phone reimbursement for full-time students.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. We look forward to hearing from you.

I'm looking forward to completing my final year of the program this fall.

-- CAV

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Bypassing the Electoral College

Massachusetts has joined an effort started some time ago to basically do away with the Electoral College:

Once states accounting for a majority of the electoral votes (or 270 of 538) have enacted the laws, the candidate winning the most votes nationally would be assured a majority of Electoral College votes. That would hold true no matter how the other states vote and how their electoral votes are distributed.

Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, Maryland, and Washington have already approved the legislation, according to the National Popular Vote campaign's website.

State senate minority leader Richard Tisei says of the idea that it is "one of the worst ideas that has surfaced and actually garnered some support." Indeed it is. And physicist Alan Natapoff once actually proved (and Will Hively of Discover Magazine explained in layman's terms) that the electoral college is a valuable check against tyranny.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Shea Levy raises some interesting points I hadn't thought of in the comments.

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Powerless to Express Love?

Welcome to the first installment of "Ask Uncle Gus," in which I take on questions submitted through Formspring. This series of posts starts as an experiment in creating new content for the blog over and above the post-a-weekday commitment I have already made.

I'll answer questions as they come up, but spend only "extra time" left over from normal blogging (or blog administration) periods to do so. You get questions answered. I get ideas for posts that might not otherwise have occurred to me. The drawback is that it might take some time before I answer the question.

In the short run, we both get more content without my having to make an inordinate time commitment to do so. In the long run, I get a chance to experiment with an intermittent style of blogging different from the one to which I am accustomed.

With that, let's move on to the first question...

Q: What do you think of this statement: Reason is powerless in the expression of love?

A: I think this sentiment is understandable, but mistaken.

The notion that there is no rational way to express love arises in large part because the nature of what is being communicated (love) is commonly misunderstood, the way an individual experiences it is intensely private, and the methods by which one would communicate about it aren't straightforward.

On top of that, all these things would present difficulties even for people who know they love something or someone. Additional difficulties are presented by the fact that many people aren't really sure about what or whom they love. We'll mostly set that kind of difficulty aside in the following discussion and, for brevity's sake, focus on romantic love.

For starters, let's consider a case in which a man knows he loves his wife and wants to communicate that fact.

The first thing we need to do is consider what it means to say that he loves her. I think Ayn Rand sums it up very well:

Romantic love, in the full sense of the term, is an emotion possible only to the man (or woman) of unbreached self-esteem: it is his response to his own highest values in the person of another -- an integrated response of mind and body, of love and sexual desire. Such a man (or woman) is incapable of experiencing a sexual desire divorced from spiritual values. ("Of Living Death," in The Voice of Reason, p. 54)

Crucial here is the fact that love is an emotion. This means that love is experienced in an automatic, instantaneous fashion, much like a percept. To begin to see how one could communicate about emotions, we can begin by considering how we do so regarding percepts.

When someone tells you something is green, or hot, or bitter, or loud, he is attempting to relay the way he experiences some aspect of the world. How, exactly does even this work? You really have no way to know exactly how other people experience "green-ness," heat, bitterness, or loudness, except that practically everyone says so, and over time, you learn that these generally correspond to each other from one person to the next -- and to what you experience as green, hot, bitter, or loud. That is, you learn over time through introspection, seeing how others report their experiences, and noting context that other people experience the world much as you do, and can thus reliably use words to communicate these experiences.

Going beyond the perceptual level, you learn that others might like similar activities or uphold similar ideals to yours, and you can have a fair guess that, as with perceptual responses, emotional responses, are likely similar from one human being to the next.

However, you also start to see differences. Cedric enjoys jetskiing, whereas you hate it, and would rather read. Marie's heart is stirred by the idea of all men sharing what they produce, while you are alarmed that someone could fall for socialism in this day and age. George finds fashion models attractive, but you like the looks of curvier women more. You see that different people -- because of different personal preferences, or because they subscribe to different ideals, or even because they are affected by different (and completely forgotten) developmental influences -- can have different emotional responses to precisely the same things.

And yet, you can understand that they like or dislike these things. If someone says, of an inspirational story, that it made his spine tingle, you have some idea what he means. How, exactly, we experience these different emotions will always mostly be a mystery to everyone else, but we can communicate generally how we feel, aided by such analogies. "It tastes like chicken." "It was like a breath of fresh air." "Whenever I see her, I feel like all my troubles vanish."

So we know that other people feel love, and can gather something about the emotion from what they communicate about it. We can learn further about the intensity of someone's love (and he can show it, often more truthfully than with his words) from actions. Does he say he loves his wife, but spend every evening out drinking with the boys? Or is he reserved about his feelings, yet always doing things for her, smiling whenever she shows up, and always affectionate? Actions are motivated by emotions, and serve as a means of communication -- whether a lover wants to show his love by purchasing a surprise gift, or notices an action motivated by love on the part of his beloved.

How much does someone love someone (or something) else in relation to everything else? Briefly, Ayn Rand noted that values are properly measured hierarchically. The man who gives up his life to save his wife does so because being without her would be unbearable to him. That's a pretty powerful expression of love, if you ask me. (And you did!)

Thank you for that thought-provoking question.

-- CAV

If you'd like to ask a question, just type it into the box at the upper right labeled, "Ask Uncle Gus."

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Two Howlers

It can be easy to become pessimistic in the face of current political and cultural trends, even when one remembers prior examples of successful change for the better in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. For many of these trends to change, it will be necessary to challenge a large number of widespread and equally atrocious philosophical notions in such a way as to help a large number of individuals to see for themselves that they are mistaken, and to want to find a better alternative than the conventional "wisdom."

And yet, a couple of things I encountered recently make me optimistic that this can be done on the necessary scale within the few decades we can reasonably say we may have to do so. One key is finding the right place to start. Luckily, the opponents of capitalism often dangle it right before our eyes.

Why do I say this? Let's consider the examples.

The first is the following headline from Yahoo! News: "Hayward boosted BP's bottom line, but not safety." Yes, it is worrisome that something like this can actually make it into print, but what a golden opportunity this represents to defend the profit motive in ordinary conversation!

Should the spill come up, it would be incredibly easy to remember this headline, work it in, and say something like, "Hah! Obviously not. BP's bottom line would have been better served by more attention to safety." In doing so, one has helped challenge the laughable notion that the profit motive is somehow at odds with safety. Subsequent conversation may well introduce other, similar opportunities, including, for the better-informed, to discuss how government involvement actually made the problem worse.

Our intellectual establishment has degenerated to the point that it has become a tree full of low-hanging fruit like that, ripe for the plucking.

But what about higher-level abstractions? Take the following oratorical gem, which I found recently en route to other things:

Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

In this fine example of gold-plated foolishness, the speaker, socialist Eugene V. Debs, is (among other things) plainly ignoring why criminals get locked up, and what might happen to him should he get what he is wishing for. Variants of this idea are commonly accepted, and are destroying civilization. And yet, despite the eloquence, the projection of moral certainty, and the destructiveness of the ideas behind this passage, my immediate reaction was to laugh out loud when I read this.

Why? Mainly, it was because I comprehend with immediacy how stupid this really is. In addition, though, it is because I and many others have the knowledge and moral certainty to make mincemeat out of this. Too, socialism has been around long enough that its moral appeal is spent, and there are plenty of examples to draw upon when talking about something like this. Today's socialists are far less eloquent.

Things are tough now, but aspects of causing cultural change are made simple by the smallness of the opponent, as well as by the fact that at least on some levels, many, if not most Americans remain open to reason. Question fallacies like these enough, and the questions will start to occur to Americans without our prompting.

And then we can move on to the less-obvious.

-- CAV

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Quick Roundup 552

Capital Flight

Financial regulations have become onerous to the point that German firms that once sought listings on the New York Stock Exchange in order to benefit from America's business climate are now fleeing -- to the relative freedom of their home country:

The double-digit costs [in millions --ed] of SEC compliance, however, are paltry compared the hundreds of millions of dollars in liability -- either through lawsuits or investigations and prosecutions -- to which a US listing can expose foreign firms. Shareholders can take companies to court far more easily under SEC regulations than those of Germany's stock market regulator. And the US Justice Department and the SEC have been more assertive in investigating publicly traded companies following a wave of investment fraud schemes...

...

"All it takes is one person in the company to make a mistake and (an executive) can go to jail." Executives who sign off on incorrect financial statements can face a sentence of up to 20 years. [one minor edit]

As reader Dismuke put it in an email, "[A]ll of this is because of laws Bush signed into effect. God help us all by the time the recently signed Wall Street 'reform' kicks in."

Several Interesting Posts

Part of why the Paul Graham article I encountered over the weekend resonated so much with me is that I'm being tugged in several directions mentally (and will be for several more weeks) -- right after a couple of weeks that saw me away from my computer most of the time.

If, like me, you haven't been by ReasonPharm or Thrutch in some time, go to either and start scrolling.

At ReasonPharm, I particularly recommend Stella Zawistowski's post on fetal damage:

Here's the problem I have: once the child is born, an actual human being has been harmed by the actions of its mother. Suppose, say, a woman were being treated for multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer, with thalidomide. (Yes, that thalidomide, the stuff that caused babies to be born with grotesque deformities in the '60s -- it also works against certain types of cancer.) Suppose further that she's of the right age to get pregnant and she ignores her doctor's warnings about the risk of birth defects. Nine months later, she gives birth to a baby with no arms. In that, case, it was the woman's action that directly caused an actual human being to have no arms. According to Dr. Peikoff, such an action would be monstrous and immoral (agreed!) but shouldn't be legally punishable (here's where I'm not sure).

...

But, to me that's a case for why the state must leave a woman alone during her pregnancy, ... However, if she takes a particular drug during her pregnancy and it can be proven after the child is born that her actions caused it irreparable harm, I maintain that a crime has been committed.

I have to admit that this is something I haven't considered before. Paul Hsieh's suggestion that tort law might provide a solution sounds reasonable to me.

And, over at Thrutch, it's orchid time again. I always enjoy the orchid pictures.

Paul Hsieh on ...

... "Donald Berwick, the Pro-Gun Control Lobby, and Paternalism," this time.

Lordy mercy! He's writing 'em faster than I can read them now.

New Blog Feature

Keep a sharp eye out for a new blog feature based on reader questions from Formspring. In a minor moment of inspiration yesterday evening, I came up with a good name for it, but that's a surprise. Until then, I didn't really have a particular plan in mind for these, but I do now.

If I keep getting questions like the three I got over the weekend, it ought to be fun.

Alfred Hitchcock did it with more finesse.

That's what she said.

-- CAV

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What is your "top idea"?

After noticing, among other things, that startups seemed to get little done once they went into fund raising mode, venture capitalist Paul Graham makes one of the most profound identifications I have ever seen regarding the creative thought process:

Everyone who's worked on difficult problems is probably familiar with the phenomenon of working hard to figure something out, failing, and then suddenly seeing the answer a bit later while doing something else. There's a kind of thinking you do without trying to. I'm increasingly convinced this type of thinking is not merely helpful in solving hard problems, but necessary. The tricky part is, you can only control it indirectly. [In a note, he calls this "ambient thought". --ed]

I think most people have one top idea in their mind at any given time. That's the idea their thoughts will drift toward when they're allowed to drift freely. And this idea will thus tend to get all the benefit of that type of thinking, while others are starved of it. Which means it's a disaster to let the wrong idea become the top one in your mind.

Graham goes on to discuss two types of "top idea" -- by which he seems to mean something like "primary area of mental focus" -- that can easily come to dominate one's "ambient thinking", crowding out what one is really interested in. These are (1) the problem of raising money (i.e., when that problem is too conceptually distant from or practically disjointed from the desired "top idea"), and (2) disputes.

It is impossible to avoid either completely, but Graham illustrates examples of each and offers some suggestions for reaching the ideal situation of having the top idea you want in its proper place as often as possible.

I feel like I'm gilding the lily when I attempt to add anything to this essay, but I'll try anyway. I think the principle one needs to gain some measure of control in such situations as Graham describes is that values are hierarchical. This allows one to gauge whether a given, unwanted top idea is really worth all the attention one is giving to it and, if so, to realize the importance of dispatching with it quickly, even if it is something one does not particularly wish to deal with.

-- CAV

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A Wedding Toast

Recently, I was honored to be the best man at the stateside ceremony celebrating the marriage of a good friend, who had met his wife while on linguistic field work in Mongolia and married her there not long before. The below is the toast I gave at the reception, with his permission. Names have been changed and a few other minor edits made.

I was a little worried beforehand that my sense of humor might not go over well due to cultural differences or, perhaps, that too much might get lost in translation, but it went over very well, much to my relief.

-- CAV

***

I'd like to start by thanking everyone who has made it here today to celebrate the wedding of Gerry and Sarah, particularly Sarah's family, who traveled all the way from Mongolia to be here. I'd also like to thank everyone who provided transportation; Bethany, for her assistance tonight; Bob, for the reading; and Mother Rita and Alice for officiating. Last but not least, I'd like to thank Gerry's sister, Maria, who, although she was unable to attend, did much of the planning. I am honored and especially happy to be here now to celebrate this wonderful day with my friend and his bride.

I first met Gerry about twenty years ago through a mutual friend in Dallas, where I had gone to college, but it was when I came back to Texas for grad school at Rice University several years later that we really became friends. A man for whom every intellectual pursuit is an adventure, he has, over the years, introduced me to lots of my favorite music, shared anecdotes and jokes with me that are often entertaining on multiple levels, and proven to be an excellent person to bat ideas around with. Whether I need an intelligent opinion or a good laugh, I can easily find one in a conversation -- or even an email exchange -- with Gerry.

It is this adventurous mind and sharp wit that brings me to a few short glimpses of Gerry and Sarah's romance in Mongolia. Until yesterday, I had not had the pleasure of meeting Sarah in person, but I had heard lots about her over the past couple of years through email.

To pursue his interest in the language and culture of the far away and mysterious land of Mongolia, Gerry moved to an apartment in Ulan Bator, and soon thereafter met a neighbor named Sarah when his friend Boudreaux's wife, Rachel, sent her over to retrieve some mutton from the freezer.

Soon after that introduction, Gerry mentioned that Sarah seemed to be interested in him. The interest turned out to be mutual, and seemed to increase over time. (In fact, I learned that it was Gerry's ready wit that first got Sarah's attention.) From another email I learned that Sarah not only taught chemistry, but was a published poet. Gerry was clearly excited to have met such a beautiful and accomplished woman. They also had lots in common. I quote the following from the end of one email: "[S]he loves Schwarzenegger movies, John Wayne westerns, and classical music!"

And she was getting serious about him, too. Like many women, including my wife when we were dating, Sarah undertook a campaign to make her boyfriend better looking. He gave her the same kind of warning I gave my wife: "You're never going to get George Clooney out of this."

It was good to see romance blossom from afar on the Asian steppes, but was it serious? It's certainly plain when you see the joy they bring to each other in person, but in an email correspondence, you have to pay attention to the little things. Did I begin to suspect that there was something special going on? No. It snuck up on me, but going back through my email, I found clues all over the place.

For example, Gerry's work in Mongolia involved getting people to read long lists of words into a recorder. He chose his new neighbor, Sarah, as his first victim. She read only 486 of the 1200 words on the list he gave her -- and in a sarcastic tone at that-- before boredom set in and she quit altogether. She must have been very keen on him, to have known about that going in!

And then, much later, I learned about Sarah's taste in pizza toppings, which is dubious to American sensibilities. Quoth Gerry, "[I] discovered that my dear wife's favorite pizza is tuna fish, onions, and extra cheese." And yes, he did try it!

We laugh about such stories because they make us happy. What most people would barely notice or shrug off comes to life in unexpected ways in the eyes of a lover.

Western wedding vows frequently include the phrase, "forsake all others." It's clear to me that this is unnecessary with Gerry and Sarah. Each has achieved a success with the other that would make Genghis Khan envious. As he once said, "It is not sufficient that I succeed -- all others must fail."

With that, let's raise our glasses in honor of Gerry and Sarah. May they always succeed where all others fail, in making each other very happy.

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Quick Roundup 551

Legislating What's "Legitimate"

In the name of "fairness" to female employees, Joe Biden is urging the Senate to pass a bill that would:

...require employers to provide a legitimate reason for paying different salaries to men and women performing the same job.

Apparently, the acceptability of terms implied by an employee trading her work for a paycheck is not "legitimate" to Joe Biden. Not only is that arrogant on his part, it sweeps aside many well-known, legitimate reasons (some related to childbearing) for such apparent workplace disparities that are not always obvious.

While it is true that some employers might succumb to the temptation to use lame excuses to get out of paying some of their employees what the market will bear, this is a problem that a rational culture and a fully free labor market are quite capable of fixing.

How Obama Thinks

Speaking of the government gumming up the works in the labor market, here's Doug Reich on Obamanomics:

Say that an intruder breaks into your house and shoots you in the stomach. He then robs you, but at the last minute, as he scurries away, he forgets to cut your phone line. This misstep enables you to crawl to the phone and call an ambulance, which rushes you to the hospital where your life is saved. Would it be fair to conclude that the robber saved your life?

In a similar vein, one could just as easily ask regarding the Deepwater Horizon disaster, "Did Obama save the Gulf of Mexico?"

Why There's a "Need" to Jail-Break Smart Phones

Tom Bowden rightly notes that iPhone users unhappy with their carriers signed away their rights when they made their purchases:

They used their phones for the full two years. Then their contracts expired. Now they want to unlock their phones and use them on T-Mobile or some other network. There’s only one small problem with that -- their individual software license agreements with Apple forbid such tampering. That's not to mention violation of Apple's software copyrights. But none of that bothers the plaintiffs and their class action lawyers. [minor format edits]

I hate vendor lock-in, and for that reason will not purchase anything that comes with such an agreement with my own money so long as I have a viable alternative. In fact, I have speculated that in a more rational culture, such business models would be less common.

The fact that legal actions like the one Bowden discusses are so common helps explain why people are so willing to accept such terms in their contracts: Just as government bailouts make people complacent about financial risks, our legal system's disregard for contract law makes many people similarly lackadaisical about what they're getting themselves into when they enter contracts.

Quote of the Day

I think LB sums up very well one of the main points I made in Tuesday's post:

How much further can we remove ourselves from the principle of individual rights before we realize all talk of government fixes [is] anathema to the very purpose of our once rights-respecting government, and, as such, a contemptuous disregard for unique foundational success of our country?

Side note: I like her post title, "The Hairshirt of Blogs," since it reminds me of one of my CO's from my Navy days, who would frequently used the term "hairshirt" in a humorous way.

Budget Cuts Force City To Stop Buying Toilet Paper...

That's the headline at the Drudge Report, anyway. Even the most cursory reading will, however, reveal the lack of toilet paper to be vulgar grandstanding for continued government theft.

... Newark Mayor Cory Booker's belt-tightening plans ... include reducing most city workers to a 4-day work week and shuttering city pools.

Selling off (or even just permanently closing) the pools would, I am sure, go a long way towards the toilet paper supply. Incidentally, the amount of toilet paper in question wouldn't be so great were the mayor of that fair city to make other reductions towards the proper scope of its government as well.

I Want to Do This!

This article from the New York Times has me dreaming big!

Pig roasts often have as much to do with mechanical engineering as they do with the culinary arts. Serviceable roasters can be made from 250-gallon fuel-oil tanks. Brick ovens suitable to the task are often large enough to require municipal building permits. But there is a simpler option for the do-it-yourself cook who lacks welding supplies and masonry skills: start digging a hole.

Pig roasts aren't a tradition where I'm from, but I do have a friend who has tried a couple of times. I think he's just not cooking long enough.

I'll talk to him some time, and then, some time down the road, do some googling...

-- CAV

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Religion "versus" Culture

Over at Secular Right, a blogger calling himself David Hume makes the following interesting observation:

[Stephen] Prothero points out that religionists often use logical constructs to play word games which reinforce their in-group. Caste is not a problem with Hinduism per se, but is a cultural problem. The treatment of women is not a problem with Islam per se, but a cultural problem. The history of European anti-semitism was not an issue of religious conflict per se, but a detail of history.

Hume follows this up with a couple of other interesting observations that I have discussed here as well. These are (1) that religion is profoundly entangled with and shapes culture, and (2) that atheism often ends up incorrectly being regarded as a part and parcel of a particular (leftist/nihilist) worldview. (Follow the preceding links for what I have said about each of these points.)

Sadly, Hume follows the above up in part with the following impotent, bitter sentiment, variants of which are all too common among conservatives: "Of course most humans are too stupid to even spell 'philosophical,' ..."

I have discussed this folly as well from two completely different angles: (1) This is rude, and quite possibly untrue of anyone interested enough to read his post, but who is making up his own mind about something he is addressing. And (2), for anyone who might still be left, Hume offers no recourse since this outlook misses or ignores the importance of both free will and philosophical ideas, as if mere intelligence would lead everyone inexorably to the same conclusions all the time. In a way, though, these limitations are good news, for Hume's point is that man is incapable of objectivity, and he gets to it only after insulting practically everyone.

In any event, I found his first point interesting in that the metaphysical and ethical teachings of religion set the stage for the way religionists excuse their beliefs from any culpability. Religions teach a mind-body dichotomy, and with it a moral-practical dichotomy, which leaves men with little practical guidance in their daily, selfish affairs, aside from giving up to others the fruits of their labors. Furthermore, the ethical teachings of religions, such as they are, are laundry lists of commands -- rather than actual principles that can be rationally derived from or applied to one's daily life.

(Any secular cultural influence can provide even more cover by, for instance, causing many adherents to a religion to ignore certain more barbaric tenets -- and even regard acting upon those as "not really" part of their faith!)

So, what happens when someone acts barbarically based on an understandable conclusion drawn from, say, a learned antagonism to "infidels?" If it's not spelled out word-for-word, it's easy to write it off as being contrary to the faith. If it is, and most of the followers are somewhat secular, they (the horrified fellow believers), "don't really mean" for something like that to occur.

As I once said before, religion is an ideology. And ideologies, as motivators of behavior, have consequences.

-- CAV

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Equal Tyranny for All?

Occasionally, I will hear about a well-intentioned effort to fix to the numerous problems brought about by the fact that our government is attempting to run our lives, rather than fulfilling its proper purpose, which is to protect our individual rights so that we are free to exercise our own best judgment in the pursuit of our own selfish interests.

Usually, these fixes are of a legal nature, such as enacting term limits for elected officials, relying on "states' rights" to head off federal tyranny, and even repealing the seventeenth amendment (to prevent the proliferation of unfunded mandates). Notice that these proposals, in turn, ignore such questions as: why corrupt officials get elected in the first place, whether an individual state might become a tyranny, and what unpleasant fact unfunded mandates (and other sleights-of-hand, like printing money) are hiding.

The latest such scheme is to enact the following as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution:

Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or [sic] Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or [sic] Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States.

I find it both ironic and highly instructive that 28 is twice 14, the number of the Amendment containing the Equal Protection Clause, which was added after Emancipation to ensure that that the rights of former slaves were not abridged by levels of government below the federal.

"[N]o state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

In one sense, then, this proposed amendment is redundant. Our government is already supposed to protect the rights of all citizens equally. The Clause above reaffirms this principle by explicitly making it apply throughout our government.

Unfortunately, this isn't the whole problem. To fully appreciate that, let's look at the rationale for adding something to the Constitution that is, at best, redundant.

For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress. Many citizens had no idea that members of Congress could retire with the same pay after only one term, that they specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary citizens must live under those laws. The latest is to exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform that was passed. Somehow, that doesn't seem logical. We do not have an elite that is above the law. I truly don't care if they are Democrat, Republican, Independent or whatever. The self-serving must stop. This is a good way to do that. It is an idea whose time has come.

The problem with ObamaCare is that violates the individual rights of patients and physicians alike, not that Congress knows better than to subject itself to the snake oil it hopes to force down everyone else's throats. It should be repealed (and not replaced!) at once, and the rest of the welfare state should be dismantled afterwards.

Sadly, this effort not only fails to condemn ObamaCare, it would condone it at the constitutional level by excusing tyranny so long as it applied to all men equally. (It also naively assumes that Congress wouldn't find some de facto way to exempt itself anyway.)

I don't give a hoot in hell that a bunch of jackasses have exempted themselves from ObamaCare or will exempt themselves from something else monstrous in the future. I want to be free from all of this. Making Congress think harder about how to avoid the yoke it's making for the hoi polloi isn't going to work, as the existence of the 14th Amendment and other parts of the law that are already being ignored attest. The real solution is to find a way not to have a gang of thieves making our laws in the first place. Read on.

As I noted above, efforts like this often ignore glaring facts, and this one is no different. On what basis have advocates of ObamaCare justified themselves? Basically, that we all supposedly have a "right" to medical care -- a good that someone must work to provide. Taking something forcibly from someone else is not a right, however, but a violation of that other person's rights. It is stealing, and that is what this proposal is turning a blind eye towards.

This analogy isn't perfect, but If I lived in a slum and saw that only the people living nearby behind glass-topped walls were free from burglaries, I wouldn't demand that the walls be torn down. I'd try to stop the thieves.

So even if we explicitly forbade ObamaCare from the Constitution, the underlying disease of the body politic would remain: That too many people accept (or leave unchallenged) the premise that it's okay to steal from other people so long as the government does it, and passes out the loot equally.

So long as this idea retains its undeserved respect in our culture, we will elect bandits to office, our state and federal governments will compete in a race to be the main gang in our neighborhoods, our wealth will be sapped in one way or another (since loot has to come from somewhere), and everyone will be looking for a way to make sure everyone else is equally screwed.

Making a new law will not act like a magical incantation to restore our liberty. Only a populace that understands and respects the nature of individual rights (starting with their moral basis) and the need for a proper government to protect them can elect leaders who will understand and uphold the principles already written into our Constitution.

The email I received reads in part:

This will take less than thirty seconds to read. If you agree, please pass it on.

...

Have each person contact a minimum of twenty people on their Address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise.

In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one proposal that really should be passed around.

I wish things were this simple, but this isn't the real solution. The real way out of our predicament comes from understanding the nature and value of individual rights for ourselves and helping others begin doing the same. This is a long road that each of us must travel and it will take years, if not decades, to bear fruit.

But it can be done.

-- CAV

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Quick Roundup 550

Being busy, away from the Internet altogether, or both quite a bit lately, I'm playing catch-up with some of my regular haunts. I'll start with a couple of things you should see, if you've missed them, too.

Soccer and Productivity

Stephen Bourque discusses a very interesting point raised by a comment he heard on a sports radio show:

A group was discussing possible reasons why kids play soccer when they are young but do not go on to be fans of the sport when they grow up.

...

A commentator (I believe it was former NFL linebacker Steve DeOssie, but my apologies to the actual speaker if I got it wrong) offered this: Maybe Americans don't like soccer because it is so low scoring--and Americans admire, above all things, productivity. [bold removed]

Commenting on the post, Tito Sarrionandia raises pretty much the same point that I would have raised: that scoring isn't the only measure of productivity in an athletic contest. (This in no way detracts from the issue Bourque discusses.)

Paul Hsieh Does It Again

I'll read the whole thing later, but Paul Hsieh's latest article in Pajamas Media looks compelling:

Recent advances in biotechnology have allowed private companies to offer affordable genetic testing directly to consumers, to help them determine their risks of developing problems such as diabetes, heart disease, and various forms of cancer. In response, the U.S. government has told these companies that their tests must be approved by FDA regulators before they can be sold because, in the government's words, "consumers may make medical decisions in reliance on this information." [minor format edits]

Gov forbid we presume to make our own health decisions -- or attempt to make them with as much information as possible.

And, if you like that article, there's a pledge drive you may be interested in...

Soylent Green Meets Mad Cow

And speaking of genetic predisposition to diseases, I recently ran across an interesting example of natural selection at work among the Fore people in the South Pacific. The disease in question, kuru, is similar to mad cow disease, but is believed to have been transmitted by the ritual cannibalism once practiced by this tribe.

Kuru is a fatal prion disease, similar to [Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease] in humans and [bovine spongiform encephalopathy] in animals, and is geographically unique to an area in Papua New Guinea. In the mid 20th Century, an epidemic of kuru devastated a population in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The infection was passed on at mortuary feasts, where mainly women and children consumed their deceased relatives as a mark of respect and mourning. This practice was banned and ceased in the late 1950s.

Scientists from the MRC Prion Unit, a national centre of excellence in prion diseases, assessed over 3000 people from the affected and surrounding Eastern Highland populations, including 709 who had participated in cannibalistic mortuary feasts, 152 of whom subsequently died of kuru. They discovered a novel and unique variation in the prion protein gene called G127V in people from the Purosa valley region where kuru was most rife.

This gene mutation, which is found nowhere else in the world, seems to offer high or even complete protection against the development of kuru and has become frequent in this area through natural selection over recent history, in direct response to the epidemic. This is thought be perhaps the strongest example yet of recent natural selection in humans.

It has been some time since I thought much about prion diseases, which interested me somewhat during grad school. Had it been available to me then, I would have loved this article (pdf) about how the connection between ritual cannibalism and this disease was made. (Well, okay. Yes, I'll probably read this some time down the road. I never said I wasn't weird.)

Get the Crows off Your Couch

I found this home entertainment tip to be a simple and somewhat amusing way to apply an epistemological principle to the problem of guests using cluttered entertainment remotes.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected two links.

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Smart Phone Test Drive

Recently, I noticed that Android was gaining momentum as an alternative to the iPhone. I like having a choice, so that was good news in a sense, but that got me no closer to purchasing a smart phone. Too many user interfaces and gadgets are too poorly thought-out for me to want to go right out and spend my money. It's hard enough to find a phone I like. What if I hate the OS?

What's a gadget-maker -- or someone who writes software for one -- to do about people like me? One way would be to make me able to test it without throwing money away.

Android is the latest mobile OS to take the world by storm, but everyone doesn't have access to the latest mobile devices. Thankfully, there's an easy way to run Android on your Windows, Mac, or Linux computer. Google provides an Android emulator with their [software development kit], which is designed to let developers test their apps on Android before running them on handsets. We can use this to test drive Android on our computer, here's how to do it.

While its emulation software was really meant for developers, this does allow potential customers to see whether they like the OS and, if they do, concentrate on finding a phone they like.

-- CAV

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Quick Roundup 549

Browser Problems

[Update: Thanks to Darren Cauthon's suggestion to rid my blog template of a Javascript include, the problem appears to be resolved.]

Amit Ghate informed me last night (and I confirmed) that Firefox for Windows does not load my blog properly. I eliminated last night's minor template change as the problem and now suspect a bug in Firefox itself. If you're on Windows, reading this in a feed reader, and want to visit the site, you may need to use Google Chrome or Internet Explorer. Those both work for me.

The link above offers a few steps on how to rectify/troubleshoot this problem, but I won't be able to try them until this evening. If you try any of these yourself (or know what the problem might be), email me or take advantage of the new feature I added last night to drop me a note...

Template Change

I have an interesting idea for a new look for the blog, but it's going to be a while before I can roll that out. In the meantime, I've added a new feature to the present layout. At the upper right is now an embedded question/comment form.

Alan Sullivan, RIP

Alan Sullivan, author of Fresh Bilge has died of cancer. Brendan Loy has written a nice tribute.

I first discovered Alan's blog in 2004, during Hurricane Ivan. ... His commentary on the tropics was indispensable to me in 2004, and became even more so in 2005, when the Atlantic erupted with a record 28 storms, including Hurricane Katrina (my blog coverage of which was, of course, a defining event of my decade).

But before long, I found myself drawn to more than just Alan's hurricane coverage. Here was a highly intelligent and thoughtful man, a superb writer with a keen intellect and a broad array of interests that he eagerly blogged about -- weather and other natural disasters, yes, but also politics and religion and culture, not to mention the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. Ideologically, we could hardly have been more different. But Alan challenged me and fascinated me. Even when I thought he was absolutely dead wrong -- wronger than wrong -- his commentary and analysis was always worth reading. And so was the lighter fare: Alan was a person who loved aesthetic beauty... [minor edits]

Loy's discovery of Sullivan as a weather blogger, and his subsequent respect for his other writing both parallel my own. I will miss Sullivan's work.

More Po Bronson

A quick peek at Po Bronson's web site pursuant to yesterday's post unearthed the following intriguing book title: What Should I Do With My Life? Here's an excerpt from one of the ten sample chapters posted there.

I began this project because I hit that point in my life. The television show I’d been writing for was canceled. The magazines I wrote for had thinned their pages. My longtime book editor had quit to pursue theater and film. I was out of work, I had a baby on the way (my first), and I was worried: how to be a good father, how to make money to support my family, and how to keep growing as a writer. I probably could have hustled up an assignment (the freelancer’s equivalent of "Just go get a job"), but I wasn’t sure I should. I felt like the kinds of stories I’d been telling no longer worked. They no longer mapped the depth and drama of human life as I experienced it.

Looking for guidance and courage at this crossroads, I became intrigued by people who had unearthed their true calling, or at least those who were willing to try. Those who fought with the seduction of money, intensity, and novelty, but overcame their allure. Those who broke away from the chorus to learn the sound of their own voice. Nothing seemed more brave to me than facing up to one’s own identity, and filtering out the chatter that tells us to be someone we’re not.

What might I learn from those who had confronted this question?

This is one I will read sooner rather than later.

Dan Brown, Eh?

According to a writing analyzer, my blogging most resembles the work of Dan Brown, best known for writing The Da Vinci Code.

I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

(HT: Trey "David Foster Wallace" Peden)

-- CAV

Updates

Today: (1) Added update to first section. (2) Minor edits.

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Fostering Creativity

Writing about a problem near and dear to my heart, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman recommend that we "forget brainstorming" in the sense of rounding up a group of collaborators and telling them to think outside the box.

Brainstorming in a group became popular in 1953 with the publication of a business book, Applied Imagination. But it's been proven not to work since 1958, when Yale researchers found that the technique actually reduced a team's creative output: the same number of people generate more and better ideas separately than together. In fact, according to University of Oklahoma professor Michael Mumford, half of the commonly used techniques intended to spur creativity don't work, or even have a negative impact. As for most commercially available creativity training, Mumford doesn't mince words: it's "garbage."

Bronson and Merryman suggest instead the following techniques, on which they elaborate a little further:

• Don't tell someone to "be creative."
• Get moving.
• Take a break.
• Reduce screen time.
• Learn other cultures.
• Follow a passion.
• Ditch the suggestion box.

I also look forward to reading their companion article, "The Creativity Crisis," which explores why creativity among American workers is in decline.

Long-time followers of this blog might feel deja vu upon encountering the name Po Bronson. That's because I have taken notice of other thought-provoking essays by the author a couple of times already, in posts titled "Flattery vs. Self-Esteem" and "The Impostor Syndrome." He has a website, too, which I plan to take a look at some time in the near future.

-- CAV

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Quick Roundup 548

Admin Note

Starting tomorrow, I'll have have an early, very full schedule until the weekend. Posting may be light until next week.

Globovision under Siege

Guillermo Zuloaga, the majority owner of Venezuela's last opposition television station, fled Venezuela after Hugo Chavez posed the following question on the air and reopened an "investigation" about him: "How is it possible that he can accuse me of such things and walk free?" Zuloaga may seek asylum in the United States.

The attack on Globovision betrays Chavez's desperation. Alone in Latin America, Venezuela's economy continues to plunge sharply downward; inflation is at 30 percent; violent crime is soaring. Zuloaga's journalists have devoted much of their attention in recent weeks to a scandal concerning the spoilage of tens of thousands of tons of food imported by the regime -- at a time when shortages of basic goods are widespread.

Worst of all for Chavez, an election -- for the National Assembly -- is scheduled for Sept. 26. Five years ago a foolish opposition boycott turned the congress into a rubber stamp for Chavez. This year, having hammered together a unity list, the anti-Chavez forces think they could win a majority of the seats. That's certainly what polls show. The outstanding question is what the government will do -- beyond a district gerrymander that has already been imposed -- to skew or steal the election.

Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post draws the obvious conclusion -- that silencing dissent is a big part of how Chavez intends to remain in power.

The Invention of Lying

Some time ago, I saw this movie recommended on HBL, and finally saw it with my wife last week. I was almost put off at first, because I was afraid that the film's premise, that nobody had yet imagined how to lie, was going to be way overdone. But the film quickly settles down after that into a pleasant romantic comedy that lampoons Christianity as a lie.

On the negative side of the ledger, this film unfortunately has a bad premise of its own -- that lying can be beneficial. I think this arises from altruism, which the film never questions, and which blinds its makers to the damage one does to one's relationship with reality when lying.

I'll give it a B.

One final note... My wife and I had to rewind at one point when we'd stopped laughing from a pleasant surprise: An old friend who is trying to make it in show business had a couple of lines.

An All-Male Species?

Via a New Scientist article titled, "Curious liaisons: Nature's weirdest sex lives," I learned about a tropical ant for which there is reason to speculate that the males and females are, in fact, separate species:

That men and women sometimes seem like different species is the stock in trade of pop psychologists and relationship gurus. Some go even farther: men are from Mars and women are from Venus. But in reality, human sexual differences are rather small. Even a naturalist freshly arrived from Mars or Venus would have little trouble binning specimens of men with women, and not with female chimpanzees or gorillas. There are species where males and females are different enough to have fooled real earthly naturalists. But no population geneticist would be misled -- males and females mix their genes in their progeny, and as a result male and female genes comprise a common, well-mixed pool. A fascinating exception to this rule is described [in this issue of Nature.] Males and females each reproduce clonally and, like independent species, follow separate evolutionary branches.

Biologist David Queller ends his article by suggesting that if further work indeed supports reclassification of the males, the species name Wasmannia mars would do nicely for the first all-male species ever identified.

One for Urban Dictionary

In the process of attempting to buy some beer for some wedding-related festivities over the weekend, I unexpectedly ran up against blue laws. (Why are they always worse in the supposedly secular North?) The store worker explained why we could not make our purchase and apologized for being a "buzz kill."

"Nope," I replied. "That's not a buzz kill. That's a buzz abortion." Apt term, given who typically supports the state telling people what they can and can not buy on Sunday.

-- CAV

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Best Man

This weekend, I'll be out of town to serve as the best man in a good friend's wedding somewhere in the vast expanse known to many in my current locale as "flyover country." Due to circumstances, the actual date ended up being nailed down only a few weeks ago, and the timing is just ahead of a heaping load of BUSY upon my return. I may be unplugged from the Internet entirely over the weekend and not back to blogging until Tuesday.

That said, in this morning's scatterbrained rush, I'll toss out a few links whose only common thread is that the topics happen to be on my mind.

• I'm holding out on purchasing a smart phone for a variety of reasons. That said, I'm glad that Android seems to be gaining momentum as a competitor to the iPhone, as evidenced by a Lifehacker article on migrating from the iPhone to the Android, and an Ars Technica piece on the increasing attention that developers are giving to the Android.
• A year-old post from Unclutterer on "10 Uncluttering Things to Do Every Day" is worth my while to review when I get back. Especially Item 8.
• I was going to make a crack about LeBron James not running his free agency options by Barack Obama, but I see that the Onion beat me to it by a mile. On the other hand, some software that could have spared me all Internet mention of LeBron came to my attention a day too late. I'm just glad that soap opera is over.
  
• The friend who introduced me to Mrs. Van Horn is, by some odd coincidence, also the one who convinced me to grow the beard I still wear today some time before the fact. As a result, weddings sometime make me think about beards. Don't laugh: Here's a whole web site about beards. Knock yourself out. I will say that I noticed a subtle change for the better in how people reacted to me after I grew mine.
  
• I'll also mention of this week's Objectivist Roundup. There are several posts there about this year's OCON in Las Vegas and a "MiniCon" held in Atlanta. I missed both, but if I had been able to attend OCON, I'd have missed parts of an OCON for two years in a row due to weddings! Last year, I was in Mexico for my sister-in-law's marriage at the start of Boston's edition.
• Oh. One more. I'll watch the World Cup Final on TiVo upon my return. I have to agree with Jamie Trecker on this one: "My heart says Holland ... but my head says Spain." Whatever the result, this should be fun to watch.
  

That's all folks. Have a great weekend, and I'll see you on Tuesday at the latest.

-- CAV

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Quick Roundup 547

Socialist Paradise NOT Crime-Free

A Reuters report by Estefan Israel about a Venezuelan slum infested with armed supporters of Hugo Chavez parrots their claim that, "crime rates here have dropped by 95 percent, ... turn[ing] it into one of the safest places in crime-ridden Caracas."

However, the very same article reports that:

Socialist stores sell milk and meat from recently nationalized producers at about a 50 percent discount. Residents do voluntary work, kids are encouraged to steer clear of drugs, and some youths have even joined a pioneer organization modeled on similar groups in Communist Cuba.

The only remotely accurate part of the above vignette is the word, "producers." That's too bad, because the "crime stoppers" are being praised for cutting prices by half when they are, in fact, fencing stolen goods. And God help anyone who has come to their attention and is being "encouraged" to do anything at all. They have no more recourse to the benefits of their own thinking and effort than do the producers the thugs in the government steal from and forget about, as if they and their work grow on trees.

One almost wonders whether the same reporter, upon finishing dinner with a mob boss, would gush about how safe from mugging, gunfire, and hunger he felt during his meal. One does, that is, until one realizes that altruism provides ready excuses for everything Israel observed and acceptance of collectivism ritual cleansing for the numerous criminal acts committed or aided by the government that made the whole story possible.

Making Gaps for God?

Suppose you're a fundamentalist. Suppose you realize on some level that religion often takes root within gaps of knowledge. Suppose further you're writing a "science" textbook for home schooling.

Then you may well decide to pretend, with an assist from Immanuel Kant, that mankind knows nothing about electricity.

Electricity is a mystery. No one has ever observed it or heard it or felt it. We can see and hear and feel only what electricity does. We know that it makes light bulbs shine and irons heat up and telephones ring. But we cannot say what electricity itself is like.

Note: I cannot verify to my satisfaction that the image I quote from above really is scanned from an actual textbook. That said, if this is a fake, chalk another one up to Poe's Law. I have seen the same basic method of fallacious reasoning being used before.

On the bright side, this "mystery," manufactured to provide a foothold for the "God of the Gaps," seems quite likely to backfire when used against any child whose curiosity doesn't get strangled altogether in the hands of whatever comprachico uses such rubbish to "teach" him.

The image is discussed more at Pharyngula.

Opportunity among the Ruins?

The slow, drawn-out death-by-statism of the city once known as the Arsenal of Democracy may yet provide what long-time regular Jim May has called "teachable moments." The city, for example, is in such dire financial straits that individual citizens are now performing certain "services" that municipal governments should never have started doing in the first place.

Across Detroit, do-it-yourselfers such as Mr. Edwards are rolling up their sleeves and opening up their wallets to provide basic services that the financially strapped city can no longer manage on its own, from boarding up vacant homes to mowing lawns to maintaining parks. In some areas, residents also partner with city agencies or look to philanthropies for help.

Not only can this be done across the board, it should be. Furthermore, through such efforts (including any for profit) and in a political milieu of laissez-faire capitalism, there would never be a danger of there being a surplus of, say, parks, for any city. Demand would quickly find another, more productive use for the land.

Government Stops Oil Cleanup

Via HBL is a story in the Wall Street Journal that pretty much demonstrates that the Obama Administration is worse than useless in the containment and remediation efforts necessitated by the oil spill caused byBP's Deepwater Horizon industrial accident.

As the oil spill continues and the cleanup lags, we must begin to ask difficult and uncomfortable questions. There does not seem to be much that anyone can do to stop the spill except dig a relief well, not due until August. But the cleanup is a different story. The press and Internet are full of straightforward suggestions for easy ways of improving the cleanup, but the federal government is resisting these remedies.

Once again, the one thing the Obama Administration could do to best speed things along is the one thing it refuses to do: Get out of the way.

Unsung Mastery

There is a saying I unfortunately don't recall -- perhaps I encountered it in The Art of War -- to the effect that in certain subtle disciplines or in types of situations demanding discretion, the greatest masters are unknown or at least unappreciated by most people.

An article about Spanish midfielder Xavi Hernandez reminds me a little of that saying.

He won't be the most high-profile player in Sunday's World Cup final against the Netherlands after helping Spain sink Germany in Wednesday's 1-0 semifinal victory. He won't even be the most famous player on his own team.

And yet, the man simply known as Xavi is the finest soccer player on the planet right now and the most accomplished performer at this World Cup. Ahead of Messi. Ahead of Ronaldo. Even ahead of his Spain teammate David Villa, who has scored five goals to Xavi's none in South Africa.

I first noticed Xavi when he smoothly set up the goal in his team's defeat of Portugal, as seen in the embedded video.

Watch closely for him slipping the ball straight to Villa behind him. This was truly sublime in real time.

-- CAV

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Crisis Cow

It should come as no surprise that a bill passed by an administration known to operate on the premise of never letting a "crisis go to waste" will result in one new crisis after another. Joseph Rago, writing for the Wall Street Journal, notes that President Obama has long admitted that his government takeover of the medical sector is "essentially identical" to the statewide scheme enacted by Massachusetts, and which is now being likened to a "train wreck."

[T]he five major state insurers have so far collectively lost $116 million due to the rate cap. Three of them are now under administrative oversight because of concerns about their financial viability. Perhaps [Governor] Patrick felt he could be so reckless because health-care demagoguery is the strategy for his fall re-election bid against a former insurance CEO.

The deeper problem is that price controls seem to be the only way the political class can salvage a program that was supposed to reduce spending and manifestly has not. Massachusetts now has the highest average premiums in the nation.

Shortages and rationing will obviously follow from this, and the following very harsh method will be used to impose them:

Meanwhile, Richard Moore, a state senator from Uxbridge and an architect of the 2006 plan, has introduced a new bill that will make physician participation in government health programs a condition of medical licensure. This would essentially convert all Massachusetts doctors into public employees.

As I see it, such a measure would, at the very best, make it more difficult to avail oneself of concierge medicine, and would certainly represent a dangerous beachhead of government interference with that business model.

Far from representing a cash cow of savings for the government -- which would still not justify its passage -- such health care "reform" is instead proving to be a limitless source of new excuses for even more government meddling with our health.

-- CAV

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Cloaking the Arbitrary

The Andrews Stuttaford and Sullivan each point to an interesting post by one David McRaney, who discusses the Forer Effect, a subcategory of a type of mis-integration normally known as subjective validation. Both focus on how the Forer Effect might account for why some people fall for horoscopes. While this is (partially) true, what I found more interesting is the fact that each uses this observation as a means to smuggle in his own "horoscope substitute," as it were.

Stuttaford smirks at the Forer Effect as an example of a "need to find patterns (and thus 'meaning')" that we all have, while Sullivan's preferred way of dismissing reason is biological determinism: "It's biologically ingrained."

I suspect that many people inclined toward the view that man lacks free will, and thus has no real control over the content and method of his thinking would find statements like the above compelling. Why? For the same reason the Forer Effect works in the first place. McRaney's partial explanation of how the Forer Effect operates is as follows:

The Forer Effect is part of larger phenomenon psychologists refer to as subjective validation, which is a fancy way of saying you are far more vulnerable to suggestion when the subject of the conversation is you.

Since you are always in your own head, thoughts about what it means to be you take up a lot of mental space.

With some cultural variations, most people are keen on being an individual, a unique and special person whose hopes and dreams and fears and doubts are all their own.

...

Yet, somewhere between nature and nurture, we are all far more similar than you think.

Genetically, you and your friends are almost identical. Those genes create the brain which generates the mind from which your thoughts spring. Thus, genetically, your mental life is as similar to everyone else’s as the feet in your shoes.

...

When you want to believe something, when you need something to be true, you will look for patterns; you connect the dots like the stars of a constellation. You will take the random and give it purpose, transmutate the chaotic into the systemic, see chance as fate.

Your brain abhors disorder. You find patterns where there are none, see faces in clouds, demons in bonfires.

Leaving aside the blatant determinism, the valid parts of this argument boil down to this: The human mind is an integrating machine and will attempt to systematize data into something useful.

What is missing from the above, of course, is that there is a way to check one's process of systemization, namely by comparing one's results against reality. This is what people who fall for horoscopes and similar mumbo-jumbo are failing to do.

Doing so with a horoscope, one can immediately see, as McRaney indicates, that much of what is being said can apply to anyone. As he fails to indicate, one should ask further why any actually specific advice would necessarily follow from either the vague generalities (however true) or the whole idea that the positions of stars have any bearing on what happens in our lives.

So it is with the notion of biological determinism and any other form of belittling the power of reason. Human minds, being things that exist, have specific identities, and so would have to work in a certain way. Simply pointing to evidence that this is so does not in any way validate the leap to something like, "the functioning and content of one's mind is determined by one's genetic makeup," or to a notion like, "finding meaning is naive." Such a leap ignores many things and contradicts evidence to the contrary of determinism that one needn't have a degree in psychology or neuroscience to see.

The main difference between what an astrologer or fortune teller is doing and what we are seeing here is that the appeal to the individual has been shifted from a concrete focus on one's own situation to an abstract focus on what one's nature supposedly is and an appeal to one's vanity. On the latter score, I have known too many scientists who take pride in their own skepticism -- and yet who are basically determinists and see that view as a sign of sophistication.

Stuttaford, Sullivan, McRaney, and many of their readers may feel smug about "celebrat[ing] self-delusion" as they look down their noses at a hoi polloi who they think might as well consult horoscopes. But something isn't rational or true if it isn't tied to reality, no matter how in-the-know it might make one feel to imagine so.

-- CAV

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Quick Roundup 546

Happy (Belated) Independence Day!

John Adams wouldn't have it any other way.

Socialism's Second-Guessers

Amit Ghate, in a Pajamas Media piece, notes that a consequence of socialism is a society-wide cacophony of kibitzing:

Socialism's failings are well known. Yet the New York Times regularly advocates policies which lead to it, most recently with its unabashed support for socialized medicine. As a result, we'll all soon be playing backseat drivers to doctors -- debating whether their professional decisions are appropriate or, in the Times' words, "a squandering of taxpayer's" funds. It's a disaster in the making.

This is the flip side to the equally ludicrous notion that every voter needs to be an expert on everything. Omniscience is impossible, and pretending we can act on it will fail.

Of course, some government officials see that voters aren't omniscient and, rather than distinguishing themselves by questioning statism, use this as an excuse to assert themselves as cognitive authorities, and hold themselves above public scrutiny.

Objectivism as Self-Discovery

As with Friday, I have encountered another excellent post from about a month ago.

Roderick Fitts writes a lengthy debunking of Nathaniel Branden's absurd charge that Objectivism as such is dangerous. The piece is solid from beginning to end, but what I enjoyed most about it is what it has to say, positively, about Objectivism.

[Branden] accuses the characters of repressing emotions and "self-disowning," but [Rand's] novels present the most difficult journeys of self-discoveries, of soul-searching, that I've ever read, and I'm sure that I'm not alone in this sentiment. The entire plot of The Fountainhead is based on Roark's uncertainty about a difference between himself and certain kinds of other people, resulting in his discovery of "second-handers," thus learning more about himself and the independent mind as a result. The plot-theme of Atlas Shrugged culminated in the entire world being faced with the need to discover the power of their own minds, to discover their rational selves--if humanity was to survive. In The Fountainhead, Roark only lets his pain and suffering go down "to a certain point," but that didn't mean that he repressed even his negative emotions, such as his pity for Peter Keating. (It should be remembered that he felt bad for the pity he felt, that Peter's life had come to what it did, and that he had to evaluate him accordingly.) Perhaps the characters didn't feel the emotions Branden wanted them to, or when he wanted them to, or to the extent that he wanted, but it's absurd to claim that they were "dis-owning" themselves, or trying to block out certain aspects of themselves, something which can be attributed to the villains of the novels. If Roark had been a repressor, for instance, he wouldn't have done any of a number of things, such as pursuing his strong feelings for a career in architecture; maintaining hope even when his mentor died or when he had to find work elsewhere to survive; staying in love with Dominique, even when she had married Keating; or staying friends with Gail Wynand even after realizing how corrupt the man truly was (or possibly leaving Wynand after the climax's court case). All of these actions (and many more) flowed from a person in tune and at peace with himself, not a person conflicted with blocks and with a hidden "true self."

That's just the tip of the iceberg, too. Fitts makes constructive points throughout his argument. For another example, his discussion of the phrase, "moral breach" is thought-provoking. Take some time out to read the whole thing. Yes, you will find yourself better able to address unjust smears of Objectivism after doing so, but more important, you'll gain a better appreciation for Ayn Rand as a thinker.

Inspiration from the Founding Fathers

Via Paul Hsieh: "Motivational Posters: Founding Fathers Edition"! Following a link from there, I also found two similar collections of posters based on quotations of Winston Churchill. My favorite of these comes from the first set: "If you are going through hell, keep going."

-- CAV

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