7-30-11 Hodgepodge

Russia's Act of War

Russian military intelligence has been linked to an explosion at the American embassy in Georgia.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in a classified report late last year that Russia’s military intelligence was responsible for a bomb blast that occurred at an exterior wall of the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia, in September. [links removed]

It may be too much to ask of the Obama Administration, but I hope this derails the President's "reset" policy towards relations with Russia.

Weekly Reading

"To think rationally about nuclear safety, you must identify the whole context." -- Alex Epstein, in "Nuclear Power is Extremely Safe: That's the Truth about What We Learned from Japan" at Fox News

"Not even the socialistic, fiscally-reckless, and morally despicable Democrats could bring themselves to endorse Obama's vulgar vision of an ever-expanding state." -- Richard Salsman, in "Washington's Spending 'Cuts' Would Boost Spending 50%" at Forbes

"If the debt ceiling is not raised, it would represent a 16% decrease from Bush's 2009 budget request of $3.11 trillion, decried by both the right and the left as overspending." -- Wendy Milling, in "The Truth about the Debt-Ceiling Fight" at RealClear Markets

"Bad therapists often stir up feelings and emotions for their own sake, leading a new client to think that the therapy is profound and deep." -- Michael Hurd, in "Good Therapy for Your Marriage" at DrHurd.com

"[M]any new readers of [Sun Tzu's The Art of War] may be surprised to find that the text isn't primarily devoted to warfare and fighting -- but to planning and waiting." -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "Stock Market Warfare is about Planning -- Not Fighting." at SmartMoney

My Two Cents

Wendy Milling's piece starts off with the following sentence: "In any scientific endeavor, one must quantify a phenomenon in order to understand it." Her piece does just that with the debt limit fight, and, in the process, shows that neither side (at least in the Senate) is dealing with our debt problem forthrightly. In a similar quantitative vein, Salsman's piece is also very illuminating.

Fun with Distillation

I'm not a Scotch connoisseur (or even a "Scotch snob," if there is such a thing) by any stretch of the imagination, but I found this article about separating the flavors of scotch through vacuum distillation very enjoyable.

I would pay for a bottle of the separated-out 18-year-old. It's got more complexity than any of the younger ones, and I even taste that saltiness Eben mentioned, which I think comes from the used sherry casks in which a portion of this Scotch is aged. Dave Arnold has taken the wood component of the 18-year-old and made it, with cream and sugar, into an ice cream, which he freezes in a messy shower of liquid nitrogen before our eyes. The idea of oak ice cream is not the most appealing, but what comes through is the vanilla, spice, and maple notes of the wood -- as well as an inescapable flavor of briny lumber, like I'm eating an ice cream cone while strolling on an old sea pier. Wash down the wood ice cream with the matching gray dog whisky and the combination instantly comes together as a creamy aged Scotch on the tongue.

Later on, the same technology is applied to make a mint- and carraway- based vodka.

-- CAV

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A Minor Detail

Slate's advice columnist, Emily Yoffe, provides a dramatic example of the relevance of being thorough about evaluating new information (in particular, about other people) in today's Dear Prudence column. Yoffe takes a question from a woman who had been enjoying a new relationship with a man, but accidentally stumbled onto a very serious question about his character from an unbiased source, whose answer might contradict what she knows (or thinks she knows) about the man.

The woman clearly knows that she must either gain a satisfactory answer to this question or end her relationship with the man, but she is just as clearly fighting denial. Yoffe gives an excellent answer, considering the situation, part of which I excerpt below.

Think about what you've written: You can't seriously be considering trying to mentally deep-six the knowledge that he was arrested for seeking sex with a minor. You can't unlearn what you know, and you must learn what you don't know. He hasn't been straight with you, but you should be with him. Say: "I found out about your arrest. I Googled your name for fun and saw an article. I'd like you to tell me the whole story." Then let him explain, and note his demeanor.

The only thing I would add would be that it is also quite possible that the woman will be unable to reach a satisfactory conclusion one way or the other about the matter, at least within a reasonable amount of time. Given that a good character is essential for a close relationship, I would advise, at least on the level of friendship (and certainly of an intimate relationship!) with the man that she treat an unsatisfactory answer as if it were a bad answer.

The virtue of justice is hard to apply on multiple levels, but its practice is high stakes and it is not a game. Consider this example: This man could be a framed innocent or a dishonest pervert. Among other things, the woman risks, by being wrong in one way or the other, missing out on a satisfying relationship with a good man -- or misplacing her trust with a monster; ruining someone's reputation -- or helping a criminal pass himself off as a member of polite society. And, to top this off, she is in the unenviable position of suddenly having to question the honesty of someone she likes and trusts.

-- CAV

P.S. On a humorous note, I noticed that just after posting this that today is Friday, the day I normally reserve for posts about good news or things I enjoy -- although I do enjoy thinking about philosophy. Chalk one up to lack of sleep caused by caring for a newborn! When I got back from being out of town recently, I was amused that my wife didn't know what day it was. The joke is now, officially, on me.

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Dear American, ...

Via RealClear Politics, I ran across an article from Texas Monthly called, "Dear Yankee," in which Paul Burka offers journalists, "Eight things you ought to know before you start writing stories about Rick Perry." This is (or could be) timely advice to journalists and voters alike, especially since Perry polls well and some are practically begging him to throw his hat into the ring for a possible Presidential run against Barack Obama. The article is more human interest than anything else, but I found the following, from Burka's fourth item, rather disconcerting, given what I know of Perry.

Texas is not a "weak governor" state. A common misconception. It used to be true, but during his historic governorship, Perry has reinvented the office as a power center. This may be his greatest accomplishment. Yes, our state constitution, written the year before Reconstruction ended, created a weak governor's office (as did most constitutions of the states of the former Confederacy). We had two-year terms (the Legislature changed it to four-year terms beginning with the 1974 election) and a fragmented executive department with power divided among the governor, the lieutenant governor, the comptroller, the land and agriculture commissioners, the attorney general, and the railroad commission. But Perry has used his appointment power to install political allies in every state agency, effectively establishing a Cabinet form of government and making him vastly more powerful than any of his predecessors. In this regard, the Texas politician he most resembles is LBJ, who, Robert Caro reports, once told an assistant, "I do understand power, whatever else may be said about me. I know where to look for it and how to use it." Rick Perry, to a tee. [bold added]

At a time in which the biggest threat to individual freedom is excessive government power, someone who is good at consolidating power can potentially do enormous immediate harm, as well as set the table for a successor to abuse such a consolidation. Regarding the havoc that one powerful Chief executive can wreak, we need only consider the man to whom Burka just compared Perry: LBJ. Johnson's legacy most notably includes his "Great Society" program, which greatly expanded the welfare state into the life- and liberty-threatening monster that it is today. (It is an interesting exercise to see what comes up from a search of the terms "Lyndon Johnson Great Society site:capitalismmagazine.com".)

Of course, a Tea Partier might counter, a powerful man could do great good. True, but that good can only arise if such a man does what we need him to do, which is to start dismantling the welfare state. For all his alleged fiscal conservatism, Perry has shown no such inclination. Rather, he has displayed a tendency to merely transform the welfare state into a religious welfare state. For example, Perry signed into law a nanny state measure that penalizes couples for not taking marriage counseling classes, in addition to "[o]ther such laws, passed by the majority-Republican Legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Rick Perry, [that] take aim at such 'deadly sins' as gluttony and sloth." Not that I regard raising a child alone as optimal, or advocate laziness, but by what right are such matters the concern of the government?

Perry is also, crucially, indifferent (at best) to freedom of speech, as witnessed by his signature of a bill that, "has a provision that allows film grants to be denied 'because of inappropriate content or content that portrays Texas or Texans in a negative fashion.'" The state shouldn't be funding movies in the first place, much less dictating their content. The fact that Perry spoke of secession a while back, rightly described by Burka as opportunistic on Perry's part, also indicates to me that the man is unprincipled and sees speech only as a means of acquiring political power, and not as an instrument of effecting meaningful cultural change by persuasion. I don't see how such a person would come to the conclusion that he should be vigilant about protecting that right.

The Burka piece mentions that many people underestimate Perry. That fact; Perry's record of co-opting for religious purposes the welfare state that his fellow Texans, LBJ and George W. Bush, greatly expanded; his indifference to freedom of speech; and his knack for acquiring political power all show him to be a menace to the cause of individual rights. A despised incumbent President and the relative economic success of Texas compared to the rest of the country may be just the opportunity he needs to become Chief Executive.

I disagree that Perry has a substantially different agenda than LBJ, or that he has little in common with Dubya. These men are three peas in a pod, and Americans concerned about where our country is heading would do well to look elsewhere than Perry for our next President.

-- CAV

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Out-Competing "Free"

Today, I came across an interesting example of the impracticality of theft, in the form of news that the file streaming arm of Netflix may well be causing a popular type of theft to decline.

In May, the network management company Sandvine reported that Netflix had overtaken BitTorrent to become the main component of North American Internet traffic. Indeed, BitTorrent's share of traffic declined slightly from last year.

As to why this is the case, in a culture that pooh-poohs the very idea that it is wrong to take intellectual property, Slate's Farhad Manjoo -- an admitted illegal downloader -- is in a good position to comment.

I also disagree with [Bill] Wyman about the relative convenience of legal streaming versus illegal downloading. Sure, if you're looking for a specific movie or TV show, it can be tough to find it legally online. But if you're just looking to watch something, streaming services are much more convenient than file-sharing networks. I'm an expert torrenter, but I still find the process tedious. You have to search for a copy of whatever show you want to watch, wait for it to download, transfer it or convert it to a format that will play on your television, and then, as you watch, brace for the possibility that it will look or sound awful. I admit that sometimes I brave these waters; the other day I downloaded a recent episode of True Blood. But while it was downloading, my wife and I found My Cousin Vinny on Netflix and had a great time rewatching that. I still haven't touched the pilfered HBO show.

... When you sit down to watch TV, you don't want to do a lot of work. Piracy requires work. Netflix doesn't. [bold added]

In other words, Netflix is killing off piracy for the same reason that very few petty criminals ever go on to rob banks: it's too much trouble. The very thing that criminals evade -- that acquiring anything of value requires some kind of effort -- ends up explaining (at least in part) why Netflix is beginning to kill off piracy.

Set aside for a moment the cost of making a movie, and the right of the producers of a movie to make money for their effort. Just making the movie available to its audience also requires effort, and someone who is rewarded for this effort beyond the pleasure-of-the-moment of viewing the movie will do so more reliably and efficiently.

-- CAV

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It's all a federal case.

The Wall Street Journal notes that there were only three federal crimes mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, whereas now, there are thousands "sprinkled throughout some 27,000 pages of the federal code." (Legal scholars can't come to an exact number.)

Along the way, the article relates several egregious examples of people discovering in the course of living their daily lives that they were guilty (but only in a legal sense) of federal crimes. My "favorite" of these was a case in which a man did time after he was found guilty of violating the law of a country whose own courts had ruled that it was invalid.

Occasionally, Americans are going to prison in the U.S. for violating the laws and rules of other countries. Last year, Abner Schoenwetter finished 69 months in federal prison for conspiracy and smuggling. His conviction was related to importing the wrong kinds of lobsters and bulk packaging them in plastic, rather than separately in boxes, in violation of Honduran laws.

According to court records and interviews, Mr. Schoenwetter had been importing lobsters from Honduras since the mid-1980s. In early 1999, federal officials seized a 70,000-pound shipment after a tip that the load violated a Honduran statute setting a minimum size on lobsters that could be caught. Such a shipment, in turn, violated a U.S. law, the Lacey Act, which makes it a felony to import fish or wildlife if it breaks another country's laws. Roughly 2% of the seized shipment was clearly undersized, and records indicated other shipments carried much higher percentages, federal officials said.

In an interview, Mr. Schoenwetter, 65 years old, said he and other buyers routinely accepted a percentage of undersized lobsters since the deliveries from the fishermen inevitably included smaller ones. He also said he didn't believe bringing in some undersized lobsters was illegal, noting that previous shipments had routinely passed through U.S. Customs.

After conviction, Mr. Schoenwetter and three co-defendants appealed, and the Honduran government filed a brief on their behalf saying that Honduran courts had invalidated the undersized-lobster law. By a two-to-one vote, however, a federal appeals panel found the Honduran law valid at the time of the trial and upheld the convictions.

Unsurprisingly, a large percentage of the people in federal prison are there due to federal laws pertaining to drug prohibitions, environmentalism is spurring the most growth in punishment for manufactured federal "crimes," and many regulations call for federal penalties when violated.

A major weakness in the article was that it failed to distinguish between legitimate crimes (i.e., those that violate individual rights, such as fraud -- versus acts that harm no one, and yet are punishable by federal law, such as wrapping lobsters in plastic under the "wrong" circumstances).

Tougher federal drug laws account for about 30% of people sentenced, a decline from over 40% two decades ago. The proportion of people sentenced for most other crimes, such as firearms possession, fraud and other non-violent offenses, has doubled in the past 20 years.

With the numbers for actual crimes, like fraud, co-mingled with those for federally-punishable not-really-crimes, it is hard, in one sense, to fully appreciate the extent of this problem. (We can, however, say that upwards of about a third of all federal prisoners are serving sentences for things that should not be classified as crimes.) But in another sense, it is easy to see that we are in big trouble: The precedent has not only been set for ordinary actions taken without any criminal intent to land people in hot water, that precedent is being followed on a large scale already.

-- CAV

--- In Other News ---

Who knew that a whole bunch of time, spent mostly at home and often rocking a baby would begin to transform me into a mobile phone warrior? Between my recent purchase of a smart phone and my time-starved, unpredictable schedule, I've quickly come to appreciate the versatility of my phone, and look for ways to make it as useful as possible. Among my favorite productivity-enhancing applications so far are Dropbox, Evernote mobile, and Delicious. The last of these is what has made blogging -- at all -- possible over the past couple of days.

I'm nowhere near ditching my printer, but since I am working -- very slowly, now -- to become as paperless as I can get, I found a post at Unclutterer about "Functioning in a Printer-less Office" thought-provoking.

SB and LB share their thoughts about this year's OCON, which I completely missed, including the on-line sessions. The Peter Schwartz talk sounds like it was great.

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Another Mobile Revolution

The Observer tells us how technology many in the West would regard as woefully outdated is revolutionizing life across an entire continent:

It may seem unlikely, given its track record in technological development, but Africa is at the centre of a mobile revolution. In the west, we have been adapting mobile phones to be more like our computers: the smartphone could be described as a PC for your pocket. In Africa, where a billion people use only 4% of the world's electricity, many cannot afford to charge a computer, let alone buy one. This has led phone users and developers to be more resourceful, and African mobiles are being used to do things that the developed world is only now beginning to pick up on.

The most dramatic example of this is mobile banking. Four years ago, in neighbouring Kenya, the mobile network Safaricom introduced a service called M-Pesa which allows users to store money on their mobiles. If you want to pay a utilities bill or send money to a friend, you simply dispatch the amount by text and the recipient converts it into cash at their local M-Pesa office. It is cheap, easy to use and, for millions of Africans unable to access a bank account or afford the hefty charges of using one, nothing short of revolutionary.

The article goes on to describe how mobile phones are also being used to help farmers improve their productivity, as well as the difficulties many in Africa face in implementing the technology:

There are other, more fundamental challenges. Unreliable network coverage in remote areas of Uganda is a significant problem. Keeping smartphones charged in villages that don't have electricity is another. Some ingenious solutions have been devised [such as coupling small generators to bicycles --ed], but low battery power remains a constant headache.

It is notable both that technology and innovative approaches to the problems people face in Africa are doing much more than decades of Western aid to improve life there; and that poor government continues to endanger even this degree of improvement.

-- CAV

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7-23-11 Hodgepodge

"Get out of the Way."

Via HBL comes a link to an opinion piece by Caroline Baum in the popular press that names a problem I noticed in an otherwise good piece the other day -- and suggests the right antidote:

There. He said it. Get out of the way, which is what Ayn Rand's hero, John Galt, tells the desperate bureaucrats in Atlas Shrugged as they struggle to find someone with a plan to avert a national economic collapse.

This medicine is very hard for Americans to swallow, but the truth is, we can't have it both ways. We want an arms-length relationship with the government in good times. In bad times, the cries go out to "do something," even if it's pay us to do nothing. We want a free-market economy during expansions, a nanny state in periods of recession. Privatized profits during the boom, socialized losses during the bust. [format edits, bold added]

The rest of the column lives up this very encouraging excerpt, and is a very good lead-in to John Allison's outstanding piece, linked next, below.

Weekend Reading

"As a longtime banking CEO, I know first-hand and with certainty how jobs are created -- and it's not by government bureaucrats waving magic wands. " -- John Allison, in "Unshackle the Job Creators" at Investor's Business Daily

"Only ex-Senator Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) has offered a truly accurate public appraisal of Bernanke, when he once directly told him: 'You are the very definition of a moral hazard.' More people should be saying this -- armed first with knowledge of the facts." -- Richard Salsman, in "How Bernanke's Fed Triggered the Great Recession" at Forbes

"Because markets are never wrong, but opinions often are, I hold fast to the philosophy that one must acquiesce to the market -- not argue with it." -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "Italian Debt: Now Worth a Look?" at SmartMoney

"[O]perating on the unspoken premise that 'it can't happen to me' is a surefire recipe for depression or any number of unhappy consequences that can come to pass." -- Michael Hurd, in "Stuff Happens" at DrHurd.com

My Two Cents

To say that Richard Salsman writes a damning indictment of Ben Bernanke would be half-understatement and half-wrong, the latter only because Salsman uses the conflict between Bernanke's own actions and past statements. In other words, Bernanke damns himself, and Salsman is, in that sense, just the messenger.

Oops!

This article focuses on a security problem for Apple laptops, but I don't see how the problem, as described, couldn't also exist generally in mobile computing devices, including those made by other manufacturers:

When [Charlie] Miller examined those batteries in several Macbooks, Macbook Pros and Macbook Airs, however, he found a disturbing vulnerability. The batteries' chips are shipped with default passwords, such that anyone who discovers that password and learns to control the chips' firmware can potentially hijack them to do anything the hacker wants. That includes permanently ruining batteries at will, and may enable nastier tricks like implanting them with hidden malware that infects the computer no matter how many times software is reinstalled or even potentially causing the batteries to heat up, catch fire or explode. "These batteries just aren’t designed with the idea that people will mess with them," Miller says. "What I'm showing is that it's possible to use them to do something really bad."

Fortunately, Miller is one of the good guys, and has designed a fix for the problem.

-- CAV

Updates

7-24-11: Corrected spelling of "Bernanke."

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Disruptive Technology

At a networking event this week, I attended a lecture about disruptive technology which, while its message may or may not have been old news to someone with a business background, I found it very helpful in explaining how "good enough" technologies sometimes displace high-quality market leaders. The speaker used a graph much like the one below (from Wikipedia).

However, the speaker's graph also included a bell curve along the vertical axis and to the right, and centered around the end of the "medium quality use" line. This bell curve represented how much of the market wanted any given level of performance, and showed that, over time, a disruptive technology that started out serving only the relatively small, lower end of a market could gradually improve enough to satisfy other, larger and more lucrative market segments. This not only can make the formerly inferior product eventually able to out-compete a market leader, it's the kind of thing that can and often does catch even good companies off-guard.

The reasoning in the lecture was very much like that in the Wikipedia entry on Disruptive Technology, specifically about "low end disruption:"

"Low-end disruption" occurs when the rate at which products improve exceeds the rate at which customers can adopt the new performance. Therefore, at some point the performance of the product overshoots the needs of certain customer segments. At this point, a disruptive technology may enter the market and provide a product which has lower performance than the incumbent but which exceeds the requirements of certain segments, thereby gaining a foothold in the market.

In low-end disruption, the disruptor is focused initially on serving the least profitable customer, who is happy with a good enough product. This type of customer is not willing to pay premium for enhancements in product functionality. Once the disruptor has gained foot hold in this customer segment, it seeks to improve its profit margin. To get higher profit margins, the disruptor needs to enter the segment where the customer is willing to pay a little more for higher quality. To ensure this quality in its product, the disruptor needs to innovate. The incumbent will not do much to retain its share in a not so profitable segment, and will move up-market and focus on its more attractive customers. After a number of such encounters, the incumbent is squeezed into smaller markets than it was previously serving. And then finally the disruptive technology meets the demands of the most profitable segment and drives the established company out of the market.

Does this mean that capitalism is bad for innovation? Of course not. The initial innovation here lies in seeing that there is a cheaper, more efficient way to deliver something that many people in a market might want, but can't afford. Dazzling advances in technology are more fun to hear about, but they aren't the whole picture when it comes to innovation.

-- CAV

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Half Full?

Over at Spiked is an article that does something very odd (in a good way) by modern standards: It finds fault with a political debate for failing to address the concept of rights.

[D]ebating the effectiveness of such measures is really beside the point. What has received far too little discussion is whether it is morally and politically acceptable to have our choices manipulated on the basis that Government Knows Best. The report only briefly touches on this, acknowledging that "in some circumstances, changing behaviour will be considered controversial," and adding later: "As a general point, we accept that regulatory interventions which restrict choice may be judged more acceptable if there is good evidence that they will be effective in tackling an urgent issue which is having significant detrimental effects on the population." [minor format edits]

Rob Lyons closes by lamenting that:

It is a testament to the low horizons of modern politics that the hottest idea around is changing our behaviour. It is alarming to note that the only discussion considered worth having is not about our rights or autonomy but about how successfully we can be manipulated.

It is good to see the concept of rights being brought into this discussion, but as laudable as this is, the first thing a fan of the welfare state will do is point out all the things the government is doing "for" us. (Such an individual will likely not distinguish between legitimate tasks of government (e.g., police) that needn't be financed via taxation; and illegitimate redistribution schemes that, by nature, must be financed by some kind of looting.) Indeed, many people who simply haven't considered the issue before will come up with that objection.

To make a truly convincing case that the government has no right to dictate how we live, one must at least mention that it also has no right to take money from anyone, and that this means that none of us has the right to loot given to us by the government. Otherwise, this mention of rights and autonomy too easily (and reasonably) looks like a mere attempt to have one's cake and eat it, too.

-- CAV

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Art? Or Science?

Google hopes to apply algorithms to the problem of identifying start-ups worthy of venture capital investment.

To some, it is a telltale sign of an overheated industry, symptomatic of a late and ill-advised rush to invest during good times. But Google says it has a weapon to guide it in picking investments -- a Google-y secret sauce, which means using data-driven algorithms to analyze the would-be next big thing.

Never mind that there often is very little data because the companies are so young, and that most venture capitalists say investing is more of an art than a science. At Google, even art is quantifiable.

"Investing is being in a dark room and trying to find the way out," said Bill Maris, the managing partner of Google Ventures, the corporate investment arm. "If you have a match, you should light it."

The point about investment being an art is well-taken. First, the fact that human beings have free will would, alone, make it impossible to reduce the whole process to an algorithm. Second, and setting that aside, any attempt to model the decision process would require the accounting-for of a mind-boggling number of variables. But that doesn't mean there is no way to take advantage of the brute strength of computation. On that score, it is interesting to see how Google has separated the wheat from the chaff by evaluating what their algorithms have unearthed.

Google says the algorithms have taught it valuable lessons, from obvious ones (entrepreneurs who have started successful companies are more likely to do it again) to less obvious ones (start-ups located far from the venture capitalist's office are more likely to be successful, probably because the firm has to go out of its way to finance the start-up.)

The second finding exemplifies the saying, "correlation isn't causation;" and if anyone thinks Google is going to start investing on the basis of "distance from Mountain View," I have bridge to sell. Distance has actually been eliminated as a relevant variable (if it was really being considered as one), but the finding with respect to distance may lead to other relevant data: Perhaps the "longer-distance ideas" were better (in and of themselves, or better-promoted). If there were some way to compare the overall merit of the successful long-distance proposals to successful ones from nearby, perhaps Google may be able to estimate how many successful ideas have been missed nationwide by looking at a ratio of successes to failures in its own back yard. Perhaps other findings will tell them how to hunt for talent nationwide.

Is investing an art, in the sense of requiring good intuition about the character of the innovators and market conditions? Or is investing a science that can benefit from algorithms and computational techniques?

Yes.

-- CAV

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Meet Uncle Tom

Slate features a very interesting story I heard on a radio talk show, (possibly on NPR) while driving some time ago, but had forgotten about. David S. Reynolds has written a book, Mightier than the Sword, that Adam Goodheart aptly calls a "biography of the novel itself."

Reynolds takes a look at the popular novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, which at once gave a great boost to the abolition movement, and yet also was so widely adapted that many aspects of the novel became distorted in the popular imagination, even to the point that they would no longer resemble what Harriet Beecher Stowe had written. Most notably, the character, Uncle Tom, is "remembered" almost completely inaccurately:

The strangest twist in Uncle Tom's whole strange career may have come when his name became a synonym not for defiance of racism but for meek submission to it. The earliest known example of this usage, Reynolds writes, dates from 1865, when Frederick Douglass wrote that until the enlistment of colored regiments in the Civil War, most whites thought that the typical black man was "a perfect 'Uncle Tom,' disposed to take off his coat whenever required, fold his hands, and be whipped by anyone who wanted to whip him."

Yet the hero of Stowe's novel, Reynolds notes, stood not for submissiveness but for nonviolent resistance of the kind later exemplified by Martin Luther King Jr. (also derided in his day as an Uncle Tom). Even [Frederick] Douglass himself, whose passion for political agitation never waned, had complicated, if not contradictory, feelings. Late in life, at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, he offered to pose onstage as Uncle Tom during a ceremony honoring Stowe.

One thing that comes up at a couple of points is the interaction between the movement for racial equality and the fledgling Communist movement: The article notes that Stowe may have read some of the early works of Karl Marx, and that Lenin regarded the book as a childhood favorite. Given the close (and unfortunate) alliance between the civil rights movement and the left, this makes sense, although I think many readers will misinterpret its significance in one of two ways: (1) Most commonly, Marx will wrongly get credit for helping to inspire the abolitionists (and, later, the civil rights movement); and (2) Marx will get more than his share of the blame for the corruption of the latter movement.

Reynolds notes, however, that, Stowe brought "together all of these [cultural] strands, [and] directed the whole range of America's favorite pop-culture images toward an assault on slavery." Among these strands was also the "mawkish religiosity" of the time. This being the case, it would seem that the cause of equality for all men, a truly selfish concern, was infected with the altruistic ethos of Christianity (which was secularized by modern philosophers, and fueled the rise of Communism) from the start.

-- CAV

--- In Other News ---

Fans of The Oatmeal will enjoy learning more about the web comic and its creator in this article. The man pulls in some serious buckage in the process of entertaining us, too.

Ugh. In the above sentence, I caught myself spelling article as "artical" and running the two sentences together without so much as a comma between them. So that's what that time known to new parents as, "the other three o'clock" is like...

Here's a comparison, at some length, of three smart phone OSes, iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 7. I never really considered the third, and, knowing what I know now, don't regret the omission.

According to Gil LeBreton, US Soccer still won Sunday, despite the loss suffered by the U. S. Women's national team in the Women's World Cup.

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Middle Eastern Peril

Caroline Glick methodically describes a dire situation in the Middle East, particularly in Egypt and Syria. Following a bleak statistical picture of those two countries, Glick notes the following:

What this means is that we can expect continued political turmoil in both countries as they are consumed by debt and tens of millions of people face the prospect of starvation. This political turmoil can be expected to give rise to dangerous if unknowable military developments.

POOR ARAB nations like Egypt and Syria are far from the only ones facing economic disaster. The $3bn loan the IMF offered Egypt may be among the last loans of that magnitude the IMF is able to offer because quite simply, European loaners are themselves staring into the economic abyss.

This last is, of course, tied in to the sovereign debt crisis.

The common thread to all of this looming danger and misery is the notion that we are all ethically bound to aid those in need on the basis of that need. This idea (1) gave rise to the welfare states that have drained the coffers of the world's wealthy nations, (2) explains the massive foreign aid programs that have artificially made possible the millions of lives now in peril of starvation, and (3) threatens to involve every corner of the world in the ugly consequences of both (1) and (2).

The twentieth century saw communism discredited as a political system. Perhaps this one sill see altruism discredited as an ethical system.

-- CAV

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7-16-11 Hodgepodge

"Security" vs. the Fourth Amendment

A court regarded as friendly to the Fourth Amendment has, unfortunately, ruled that TSA body scans are constitutional:

Judge Douglas Ginsburg writes that the advance imaging technology is not unreasonable given the security concerns on airplanes, and that people have the option to opt out for a ... patdown.

In other words, the choice of a different unreasonable search makes any given unreasonable search reasonable.

As with a freedom of speech suit a few years ago, this is the kind of issue that a proper, private system of airline security measures would completely preempt: Whatever security measures (including body scans) a given airline chose to take would be part of a voluntary transaction between an airline and its customers, rather than government force inappropriately directed at private, noncriminal citizens.

Weekend Reading

"[W]hatever influence Rand might have had on [Paul] Ryan's goal .. one thing is for sure: Her arguments have been conspicuously absent in the budget debate." -- Yaron Brook and Don Watkins, in "What’s Missing From The Budget Debate" at Forbes

"Collectivizing American doctors will fail as badly as collectivizing Soviet farmers." -- Paul Hsieh, in "The Coming Collectivization of American Health Care" at Pajamas Media

"The idea that only government can address poverty or medical research is false, and the philosophy clearly institutionalizes mob rule." -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "Ailing Economy Needs Self-Interest, Not Sacrifice" at SmartMoney

"If everyone took care of themselves first, there'd be a lot less pity, along with the truly selfish contempt that it implies." -- Michael Hurd, in "Achieve Your Own Happiness First" at DrHurd.com

My Two Cents

I regard the Brook and Watkins article as one of their best, especially in terms of taking advantage of a golden opportunity to bring Ayn Rand's ethical positions into the national debate.

Almost Time to Roll

Partly to celebrate a technology-related consulting gig and partly to improve my professional image, I bought a smart phone last week. Since this model's reviews were all either really good or really bad, I found a vendor that wouldn't charge me a re-stocking fee and made my purchase on the premise that, if the bad reviews proved true (i.e., this model's connectivity problems were still unresolved), I could return it and go with my second choice.

I've a few days to go testing it out, but I'm beginning to look forward to rooting the phone (along with a few other setup tasks), importing my contacts from a spreadsheet (Yes. My previous phone is that old.), and installing a variety of applications, including the tools to make the thing my smallest Linux box yet.

-- CAV

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This Book

Congratulating us on the recent birth of our daughter, a relative emailed us the PDF version of a "children's book for adults." Said book, by Adam Mansbach, catapulted to bestseller lists last month, when it was released, as a result of what Wikipedia calls "unintended viral marketing:" Booksellers had released PDFs of the book ahead of time.

Some time after we read the book, my wife saw it on sale while out shopping for the baby and bought several for other new parents in our circle. One friend, upon receiving a copy of the book, told me he believed there was a video somewhere of Samuel L. Jackson reading the book. That reading has been released as an audiobook and it appears on YouTube, but I think Jackson botches the reading by going too much into "frustrated parent" mode. I find the book much funnier if read as if to a child. (Of course, as a first-time parent of a newborn, I could be lacking the context to fully appreciate the Jackson reading. Perhaps I'll revisit that question in a few years...)

Hamming things up for the in-laws, I read the book to my daughter while rocking her after a meal, and ended up with "before and after" pictures, since the baby was crying in the first and sound asleep in the second.

In addition to the style of the prose, I find the illustrations by Ricardo Cortes to be ingenious. He captures the idyllic sensibility of many children's books and the innocence of young children -- as well as the fact that, in any given illustration, the child alone is wide awake.

Part of what makes the book so humorous to me is the juxtaposition of short- and long-range values, along with the focus on the short-range problem of getting a child to -- em -- sleep. Something I've noticed as a parent is that much of what I had imagined would be inconvenient or frustrating -- like changing diapers or having my sleep schedule pretty effectively annihilated -- hasn't been so bad (when it hasn't simply diminished to the status of something-that-has-to-get-done or even been amusing in some unexpected way). The wonderful feeling of being a parent -- described well by Leonard Peikoff recently -- puts such things in perspective much more than I imagined beforehand.

-- CAV

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This is News?

This just in: A restaurant owner exercises his right to property in order to provide better service to paying customers.

Starting July 16, McDain's, a Pittsburgh-area restaurant, will ban children under the age of 6 from its dining area. Restaurant owner Mike Vuick said the policy came in response to complaints he'd received from older customers about kids causing a ruckus. In an email to his clientele, Vuick wrote, "We feel that McDain's is a not a place for young children … and many, many times they have disturbed other customers." [minor format edits]

Predictably, this is causing an uproar, probably among the type of people least likely to control how their own children behave.

Certainly the Pittsburgh-restaurant owner's decision to ban kids has caused a stir online. Moms have been weighing in on various mommy blogs expressing their outrage and insisting that Mike Vuick will likely rue the day he closed his doors to kids. "If said restaurant can afford the loss in money, then go for it. I don't care to go where I'm not welcomed," wrote one commenter on CafeMom.

Setting aside the presumptuousness of the above complaint, it is also worth noting that the restaurant, situated on a golf course, caters primarily to older customers.

It is noteworthy that the article actually has to state that it is perfectly legal for someone who runs a restaurant to decide whom he serve. That should serve as an indication of how close to being forgotten the concept of property rights has become.

-- CAV

--- In Other News ---

Here are two ways to help someone realize that he is being rude. Each involves helping the offender against etiquette realize for himself that he should re-think his behavior.

An article proclaiming government "high speed" rail to be dead offers useful advice for those who would like to see better railroads in places where rail actually makes sense (such as the Northeast) and, indirectly, for advocates of capitalism who want to speak about issues pertaining to major infrastructure.

Three cheers for the U. S. Women's national team on advancing to their first Women's World Cup final since 1999, via a 3-1 defeat of France.

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T. Boone's Pickin'

NRA president David Keene writes a pretty good editorial lambasting former Texas oilman and current suckler at the government teat, T. Boone Pickens, for his transformation into a government looter. He even gets dangerously close to naming the reason for that transformation:

[W]hy would a man who spent the better part of his life competing within the market suddenly develop a business model that depends not on consumers who want to buy his product but on a government that can force them to do so? Perhaps it's because, as Willie Sutton replied decades ago when asked why he robbed banks, "Because that’s where the money is." Americans used to get rich by providing consumers something they wanted, but in today's economy, wealth is just as likely to come to those who produce schemes that appeal to politicians.

In other words, T. Boone Pickens doesn't know or doesn't care about the difference between making money (by offering people something they want) and getting money (by having government thugs take it from them by force).

(If there is one thing I don't like about this piece, it's that it refers to people as "making" money off ethanol: Given that ethanol production for fuel would not be so common in a free economy due to its inefficiency, the vast majority are just getting money off it.)

Pickens is, furthermore, apparently oblivious to the fact that the very premise behind his scheme is quite likely to backfire in the long run, given that he is rich and many government officials, including the President, see him and anything he has in excess of bare subsistence as government property. The name of this short-range, amoral attitude is pragmatism, and it can be briefly summarized as the philosophical idea (held explicitly or implictly) that philosophical ideas don't matter.

T. Boone Pickens fooled lots of people, including Keene, when he used to promote fiscally conservative causes. In truth, he just saw that as the most expedient way at that time to get money. Now, the most expedient way to get money is to get it with government "help", so that's what Pickens will do now.

Pickens clearly sees that what the culture and political climate will reward has changed. It speaks volumes that, rather than fight to improve this situation, he has chosen to go along with it. Government "help" -- that is, anything it does apart from protecting individual rights -- always involves some form of theft or violation of individual rights. It is incredible to me that Pickens, himself an individual, sees nothing wrong with this situation.

I guess that's what pragmatism can do to a man.

-- CAV

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Paralysis by Uncertainty

Thomas Sowell borrows the phrase "unknown unknowns" from Donald Rumsfeld to describe why our economy remains paralyzed, even with numerous potential investors sitting atop mountains of cash.

Secretary Rumsfeld pointed out that there are some things that we know that we know. He called those "known knowns." We may, for example, know how many aircraft carriers some other country has. We may also know that they have troops and tanks, without knowing how many. In Rumsfeld's phrase, that would be an "unknown known" -- a gap in our knowledge that we at least know exists.

Finally, there are things we don't even know exist, much less anything about them. These are "unknown unknowns" -- and they are the most dangerous...

Sowell goes on to discuss the minefield of unknown unknowns that the Obama Administration has laid in the path of would-be investors in the American economy.

Blithely piling onto American businesses both known costs like more taxes and unknowable costs -- such as the massive ObamaCare mandates that are still evolving -- provides more incentives for investors to send their money elsewhere to escape the hassles.

Hardly a month goes by without this administration coming up with a new anti-business policy -- whether directed against Boeing, banks or other private enterprises. Neither investors nor employers can know when the next one is coming or what it will be. These are unknown unknowns.

Sowell doesn't allude to the unintended consequences of any of these policies, but he doesn't really have to. The damage is already great, amounting to a loss of $200 billion in investment capital to the economy since 2009, or the equivalent of two million jobs, according to one estimate.

-- CAV

--- In Other News ---

Related to the above is the following sign of the times: the rise of the mature intern: "Seven percent of employers surveyed by CareerBuilder.com in 2009 reported receiving internship applications from workers over the age of 50. A quarter of employers also reported receiving applications for entry-level positions from the same age group."

Patrick Michaels of the American Association for the Advancement of Science writes, among other things, that, "Federal domination of science funding has two quite intended consequences: both individual scientists and major universities have become wards of Washington."

Open source guru Eric Raymond likes Google+ and thinks that Facebook "might actually have a fight on its hands." Good. Every time I even vaguely consider joining Facebook, something new creeps me out. A viable alternative would be nice.

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Rapinoe to Wambach

Sunday's match between the United States and Brazil in the semifinals of the Women's World Cup was a real treat. As one sports writer put it, "America didn't just win. America overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to win, and insurmountable odds is a more popular opponent than any nation on earth."

Officiating gaffes both marred the game and set the stage for a dramatic triumph:

The U.S. women's soccer team was done. Toast. Down to 10 players against Brazil and the world's greatest player. Down a goal. Down to the last dying seconds of [injury] time and a cruel quarterfinal exit from the World Cup after a series of botched officiating calls had hurt both teams, but the U.S. more than Brazil.

I don't care for the dismissive way Ray Ratto of CBS put it, when he described the Australian referee's contribution to the drama as, "offer[ing] that extra bit of what America likes in its international events -- the jingoism that comes from feeling victimized," but he is right about the referee setting things up.

Here is how the Americans responded:

The U.S. pushed forward, desperate for an equalizer, a Hail Mary. Midfielder Carli Lloyd fed the ball to Megan Rapinoe on the left flank. Rapinoe is one of the great characters on this U.S. team. After she scored earlier in the tournament, Rapinoe celebrated by picking up an on-field microphone and singing "Born in the USA." Rapinoe had an opening, and on the far post she saw the lurking menace of Wambach.

Wambach, America's most productive offensive player, had been in a scoring drought until the previous game. She headed the ball into the net.

But Ratto has it only half-right. As an American, he saw what motivated the American team. It took a foreigner -- America's coach, Pia Sundhage -- to name what actually made the drama:

But then something happened. That American thing. "I come from Sweden," said U.S. coach Pia Sundhage, "and this American attitude, pulling everything together and bringing out the best performance in each other, that is contagious."

Here's the goal, made during injury time after the second half of overtime.

The American team simply never gave in to fatigue or frustration (and there were plenty of both after two hours of play). They didn't quit, and that made all the difference between their game making sports history in dramatic fashion and going down as just another big game blown by lousy officiating.

Certainly, this is a talented, fit, and well-coached team, but their spirit carried the day in yesterday's contest.

-- CAV

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7-9-11 Hodgepodge

Scary-Amusing

Statistician William Briggs takes a long (but hardly exhaustive) look at all the things San Francisco has banned. (HT: John Cook)

Weekend Reading

"The American system treats religion as a private matter, not something to shape government policy." -- Harry Binswanger, in "The 'Ayn Rand vs. Jesus Christ' Campaign" at American Thinker

"Contrary to popular impressions and dubious lore about Alexander Hamilton as a closet 'monarchist' or 'conservative,' in truth he was the most radical American revolutionary of his time..." -- Richard Salsman, in "Honoring Alexander Hamilton, The Great American Revolutionary" at Forbes

"Dismissing whole sectors outright is like refusing to date someone with a tattoo regardless of how much you might enjoy each other's company." -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "Love the Trade You're With" at SmartMoney

"Based on patterns I’ve seen, I do believe that perfectionism, if left unchecked, can cause addictions. Self-defeating or self-destructive behaviors like addiction are the consequence of contradictory or self-defeating beliefs." -- Michael Hurd, in "The Dangers of Perfection" at DrHurd.com

My Two Cents

Michael Hurd's point about perfectionism is, admittedly somewhat speculative, but I strongly suspect that he is correct, based on my own observations. (I am not a psychologist.) I think the following bears repeating.

Some of those conditions arise from mistaken ideas like, (1) "It's always bad to be wrong. Errors are disasters." (2) "Errors make me look foolish in front of others, and that's a catastrophe." (3) "Life should be easy and comfortable. Any departure from this is a disaster." (4) "Knowledge should be automatic. If I can't make it so, then I'll pretend it to be so." (5) "If I don't know everything all at once, then I don't know anything."

I think that a hallmark of intellectual maturity and psychological health is being comfortable with knowing what one does and does not know.

We, as individuals, don't have to know everything, and can't, anyway. Admitting this enables us to prioritize what we need to learn, and objectively consider which experts or specialists we should consult in our division-of-labor society. I freely admit, for example, that I haven't a clue about how to fix a carburetor. I do know, however, ways to get around this ignorance safely because I know what the possible consequences of this ignorance are.

An Amusing Look at Bad Arguments for a Correct Position

I disagree with most of the positive points put forward by John Cheese of Cracked, but I got a kick out of reading his, "5 Pro-Marijuana Arguments that Aren't Helping."

But again, I'm not trying to fall back to the government's "one joint will drive you insane" scaremongering. Pot is not as bad as heroin. That isn't my point. But don't go the other way and start acting like [it's] broccoli.

It is interesting what straws people will grasp when they do not understand the value of a philosophical argument.

-- CAV

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A Medical Milestone

Perusing the Wall Street Journal this morning, I saw news of a medical breakthrough that combines the use of stem cells with nanotechnology. The whole article is available free online, unlike much of the rest of the paper's content:

Doctors have replaced the cancer-stricken windpipe of a patient with an organ made in a lab, a landmark achievement for regenerative medicine. The patient no longer has cancer and is expected to have a normal life expectancy, doctors said.

...

The transplantation of an entirely synthetic and permanent windpipe had never been successfully done before the June 9 procedure. The researchers haven't yet published the details in a scientific journal.

...

"It's yet another demonstration that what was once considered hype [in the field of tissue engineering] is becoming a life-changing moment for patients," said Alan Russell, director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Pittsburgh, who wasn't involved in the latest operation.

Later on in the article is a general description of how the artificial windpipe was made.

-- CAV

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Stossel on the "College Scam"

John Stossel fires the latest salvo in the debate over whether there is a need for as much higher education as Americans generally get. I appreciate three of his points in particular, which I think will help an intelligent reader see that there are reasons to question the prevailing wisdom about the value of higher education.

Hillary Clinton tells students: "Graduates from four-year colleges earn nearly twice as much as high school graduates, an estimated $1 million more."

We hear that from people who run colleges. And it's true. But it leaves out some important facts.

...

[Richard] Vedder[, author of Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much,] explained why that million-dollar comparison is ridiculous:

"People that go to college are different kind of people ... (more) disciplined ... smarter. They did better in high school."

They would have made more money even if they never went to college. [bold added]

Stossel then provides us with a fair number of successful college graduates -- and legions whose time might have been better spent doing something else:

"There are 80,000 bartenders in the United States with bachelor's degrees," Vedder said. He says that 17 percent of baggage porters and bellhops have a college degree, 15 percent of taxi and limo drivers. It's hard to pay off student loans with jobs like those. These days, many students graduate with big debts. [link omitted]

Finally, after mentioning an innovative idea I blogged some time back, Stossel notes that:

... Darren Zhu, a grant winner who quit Yale for the $100,000, told me, "Building a start-up and learning the sort of hardships that are associated with building a company is a much better education path."

This is hardly to say that everyone should attempt to start a business, but it is clear that there are some things that some people need that they probably will not get from college.

Regarding PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel's entrepreneurship grants, I once said:

While dropping out of college or grad school clearly isn't the right thing for everyone to do, I am glad to see Thiel making it easier for the most talented students to stop for a moment and think about whether attending school (at present or, perhaps, at all) truly is the best way for them to get ahead.

This goes, too, for many less-entrepreneurial people, particularly with higher education as it is today: more expensive and lower in quality than in the past. America needs better education, and not simply more, as measured by time spent sitting in desks. Michael Walsh of National Review is right to call the common, reflexive push for more people to attend college a "cargo cult."

-- CAV

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Not Critical Enough

A few days ago, the following headline from The Weekly Standard caught my eye: "Obama’s Economists: ‘Stimulus’ Has Cost $278,000 per Job." This was no surprise, but sadly, neither was the fact that the following conservative commentary was far too generous towards the Obama Administration:

In other words, the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the “stimulus,” and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead.

Furthermore, ... over the past six months, the economy would have added or saved more jobs without the "stimulus" than it has with it. In comparison to how things would otherwise have been, the "stimulus" has been working in reverse over the past six months, causing the economy to shed jobs.

The fact that simply handing out checks would have been cheaper than what our government actually did is a good way to begin to highlight the absurdity of this program, but it is worse than absurd to stop there. To say that taxpayers would have come out "ahead" -- by any amount -- had the government done that is ridiculous, since such the bill for such a handout still would have amounted to $239 billion.

This is facile, economically, and obtuse, morally. There is no mention of the "broken window" fallacy, in which the unseen consequences of all these people (aka, "taxpayers") being unable to spend their own money are considered, let alone any thought about the propriety of a government forcibly relieving people of their money for any reason.

It is disappointing that, rather than moving on to ask whether we should resort at all to the alleged "stimulus" of passing around money looted from productive Americans, the Weekly Standard elected instead to making the same kind of helpless wisecrack that the phrase, "death and taxes" exemplifies. Men have had to die throughout history, due to our nature, but taxation is a curse of our own invention.

At $666 billion, discounting ripple effects, that wisecrack sounds rather lame to me.

--- CAV

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Happy Independence Day!

To celebrate Independence Day, I highly recommend Michael Hurd's latest column at Capitalism Magazine, in which he considers the practicality of being oneself in terms of how it can affect one's professional life, particularly for non-leftists who live in heavily leftist areas.

The only people who hate me are people who would hate me anyway, once they got to know me as a therapist or life coach. These are the people who are not merely liberal Democrats, but really subscribe to core viewpoints that are the opposite of my own: The primacy of emotions; the victim mentality; and the alleged importance of giving up one's self for the sake of others. People who subscribe to these views don't like me, and they tend to run for their lives after a conversation or two with me whether they have read my viewpoints at DrHurd.com or not.

As I often say, read the whole thing. This is advice that many people of integrity who find themselves in such a situation need to hear, but it is, as always with Hurd's advice, much more broadly applicable: You need only at some point in your life to have not held a view that is in fashion among most others around you to appreciate what he says.

With that, I bid adieu, possibly until next week, due to travel, of all things. But, no, I won't be at OCON (although I might check on the Internet broadcasts of some of its sessions, if I have that much spare time): I'll be headed to Northern California, of all places.

-- CAV

--- In Other News ---

Proud father note: I saw that the baby looked interested in a couple of things I was moving, so I decided to see whether she was trying to follow objects. She was, and we amused ourselves with that for ten or fifteen minutes. I'm going to miss things like this over the next few days. Also, I'm grateful that my mother-in-law will be helping Mrs. Van Horn take care of the baby while I'm away.

Apparently, some people celebrate something called "Tau Day" on June 28. While I found "Pi Is Wrong" (PDF) interesting, and think that mathematical pedagogy would benefit by a discussion of some of the issues that piece raises, I have a hard time getting as excited as some seem to about this issue.

I think that the time is finally right to get a smart phone, and I probably would have bought one already had I not been so preoccupied -- and getting used to the baby -- this week. As I've mentioned in the past, I'm leaning heavily towards an Android phone, and will start shopping with advice I linked in two earlier posts here, as well as that in Lifehacker posts like this one. As I did the last time I bought a new phone, I'll solicit reader advice on my future purchase: Have you any recommendations, warnings, or other advice for me? Thank you in advance, and be aware that I may or may not be timely about comment moderation or email for a few days.

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7-2-11 Hodgepodge

National Service in North Korea

There is no meaningful distinction between the notion of government-mandated "national service" that so many American politicians carelessly and sanctimoniously bandy about and the following:

Students are being sent to work in farms, construction projects and factories after the government of North Korea shut down the country's universities for ten months to stimulate the economy...

I imagine that, if pressed, our politicians would say something like, "Kim Jong-Il is going too far." Once freedom is violated, it is violated. That one all-powerful state might happen to treat its victims better than another is cold comfort to anyone who sees that any all-powerful state deprives him of the chance to lead his own life according to his best judgement.

Interestingly enough, there may be a hidden agenda. Here is what one Japanese analyst has to say:

"One reason is that there is a possibility of demonstrations at university campuses," said Toshimitsu Shigemura, a professor at Tokyo's Waseda University to the Telegraph. "The leadership has seen the 'Jasmine Revolution' in Africa and it is very frightened that the same thing could happen in North Korea...they fear it could start in the universities."

Good for North Korea, if it is the case that its leaders feel a need to do this. And it would be better for Americans to continue waking up to and begin fighting the myriad less-painful violations of our freedom now, well before our government becomes able to simply send people on "service" missions willy-nilly.

Weekend Reading

"Although some conspiracy theorists may believe this is a deliberate ploy by media and political elites to destroy America from within, the actual answer is worse." -- Paul Hsieh, in "Why the 'Unexpected' Keeps Happening" at PajamasMedia

"When the British struck America's right cheek, did Jefferson in the Declaration tell America to turn to offer them the left?" -- Onkar Ghate, in "Does America Need Ayn Rand or Jesus?" at Fox News

"The blatant contradiction of 'leading from behind' is the Obama Doctrine: the U.S. may unilaterally bomb another nation, yet never to secure a victory, and it can unilaterally demand the ouster of any foreign leader, yet also leave him securely in place -- which makes the U.S. both a liar and a paper tiger." -- Richard Salsman, in "The Proliferation of Illegal Wars Erodes American Values" at Forbes

"[T]he 200-day moving average, because it is an impartial and longer trending indicator, shouldn't be so lightly dismissed." -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "Another Bad Omen for Stocks?" at SmartMoney

"The healthy approach is to assume two things: First, that the purpose of life is to be happy. Second, that one must take sensible steps to achieve some measure of happiness, and then keep taking those steps to maintain it." -- Michael Hurd, in "The Fallacy of Sacrifice" at DrHurd.com

My Two Cents

Although many Americans may fail to appreciate the requirements of a proper foreign policy -- see the Richard Salsman article linked above -- our enemies grasp them on the level of sensing what they can get away with. For example, Moammar Qaddhafi's recent terroristic threat to attack Europe screams the appraisal, "paper tiger," of the West (like all state-sponsored terrorism does). Our present actions in Libya are worse than too little, beyond too late, and are being taken for the wrong reasons. Again, see Salsman, and recall that Qaddhafi's role in the Lockerbie airline bombing, among other things, merited his immediate removal from power long ago.

An Interesting Limerick

The subject of this limerick isn't identified, but she sure sounds like she could be someone I whose work I admire!

A woman who loved a good fight
Would demand, as she argued all night,
Philosophical heft
From those on the left
And empirical proof from the right.

I found this in the comments to "High-Brow Limericks," at John Cook's math- and science-themed blog, The Endeavour.

-- CAV

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Catching up with Weird Al

Thanks to my old friend Snedcat, I have an easy post for today, and that's good, because Baby Van Horn seems to be most active in the morning, like her Dad. (Although she's fussy -- so she's also, like her Dad, not a typical "morning person," so far, at least.)

That said, I'm enjoying fatherhood far more than I expected, but today's original post idea, on "Being a Dad" will have to wait for some other time, when I can think and write undisturbed. Suffice it to say for now that, since I am not exactly a "baby person," I am pleasantly astounded at what a fool I am for my baby daughter. I smile every time I see that tiny little girl. That said, I'm grateful to have something I can work on intermittently this morning.

In any event, I remarked some time back that, "I look forward to ... catching up on many years of Weird Al [Yankovic] parodies." A rather lengthy interview of Weird Al by The A.V. Club that Snedcat mentioned recently provides a good opportunity to do just that, as well as to learn more about the artist and the thinking behind some of his parodies, videos of which are interspersed throughout.

From late in the interview comes the following anecdote about the first time Yankovic heard himself on the air:

I was in my bedroom, living at home with my folks, listening to the Dr. Demento Show, as I did every Sunday night, and the song came on. It took me several seconds for my brain to acknowledge it, because I recognized it was my song, but I thought, "How did my tape player get turned on?" and when I put the pieces together and I realized that my song was actually coming out of the speakers and it was on the radio and other people were hearing it too, I think I did some kind of giddy jig around the house, and started screaming my head off. [Laughs.] Like everything you’ve seen in the movies, like in That Thing You Do! where they hear their song on the radio for the first time; pretty much like that. Like running down the street going, "WAHH! I'm on the radio!" [Laughs.]

Quickly scrolling through, I count thirty embedded videos, mostly for songs I have not heard yet. Even if I didn't have other things to do, it would take me a while to go through even this whirlwind tour of the work of that prolific parodist. That's a nice problem to have.

-- CAV

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