Four Recent Wins

A Friday Hodgepodge

Whenever possible, I list three wins at the end of each day. Here are a few from a recent review of my planner.

***

1. My son wanted to change his hair style, but didn't do the best job explaining what he wanted to the barber.

He spent the next day or so in a hoodie, which got a good laugh when I told our barber the next time I saw her.

She made a great suggestion for his next visit, which I put out there for any fellow parents who might happen by: Have him find pictures of what he wants online ahead of his next haircut.

He was happy after the next attempt, and I was able to say No. when I next saw the barber and she half-jokingly asked if he took to his hoodie again.

2. My wife loves getting me to take photographs and video of the kids on special occasions. This mildly annoys me as I'd rather mostly enjoy the moment and perhaps take a few shots here and there.

And so it was that I found myself having to take video of the kids during their penguin encounter at the Gulfarium over Spring Break.

Close to the end and deeming myself as having met my task requirements, I was about to put my phone away when I saw Mrs. Van Horn taking photos of a penguin that had waddled up to the glass wall of the viewing area.

I ended up with footage of my wife taking her photos, standing up, and giving me an annoyed look when she noticed I was taping her.

Instant family classic!

Our other cat, Seymour, got caught hatching a stowaway scheme ahead of Spring Break.

3. Apparently, I have accidentally trained one of our cats to play fetch.

Lucinda sometimes climbs onto the bed when I go to sleep at night. One night, she brought a small, belled cat toy with her and played around with it enough that I picked it up and tossed it away. She showed up with it again a short time later, so I tossed it through the bedroom door. She came back with it again.

I figured this was a game to her, and correctly guessed that we'd do this a few more times and she'd get tired of it.

She showed up the next night with a different toy. She had to tussle around with that one a bit longer before I was disturbed enough to want to get rid of it.

I tossed that toy out and she came back with it.

Then it dawned on me what was going on.

Luckily, it seems so far that half-a-dozen throws are enough for her have her fun and let me go to sleep.

(Reading this again, it does seem plausible that it was Lucinda, and not me, who did the training here.)

4. I was never a big fan of the tuna fish sandwich until I had a couple made by my father-in-law, whose sandwiches are generally a step up from other home-made sandwiches.

We were visiting my in-laws in Florida recently when Papa offered those as a lunch option.

This time, I had the presence of mind to watch him make the tuna salad, and dictate notes into my phone.

Don't be fooled by the simple recipe below, or by the fact that there are few ingredients. (In fact, when I tried my hand with it the other day, I was hoping to avoid a trip to the store, and found that I already had everything on hand.)

Without further ado, here's what we call Papa's Tuna Salad at the Van Horn Estate:

• Ingredients: 7 oz. can albacore tuna in water; 3 celery hearts; salt; pepper; 1/3-1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1. Chop celery hearts.
• 2. Open, drain, and rinse tuna.
• 3. Place tuna in mixing bowl and flake it.
• 4. Add salt, pepper, chopped celery, and 1/3+ cup of mayo to bowl.
• 5. Mix thoroughly.

This is great on toasted bread with some mayo and, optionally, a tomato slice. Sliced croissants are even better.

-- CAV

Low-Stakes Advice Can Still Be Valuable

In need of something of a break from current events, I was happy about advice columnist Eric Thomas's recent decision to help a pub patron improve the quality of his favorite establishment's fries:

... A simple path: Just tell the owner what your experience has been and what you'd like to see coming out of the kitchen. They'd surely appreciate a direct conversation with a customer willing to give them another chance more than a stranger leaving a scathing online review.

A good way into this conversation, and others like it, is to ask, "Are you open to some feedback?" Now, sometimes the answer is "No, thank you." But the restaurant industry lives on word-of-mouth (pun partially intended)...

In today's cultural climate, it can be easy to forget that one's self-interest quite often -- arguably normally -- aligns with that of others. I have no appetite for delving into the myriad reasons this is not always obvious to one or both parties, or that it is thus so easy to forget.

The lesson I am taking from this is that it can be surprisingly easy to: (a) find simple examples of this, (b) improve one's immediate world in a small way, and (c) gain the relief of the resulting small affirmation of the benevolent universe premise.

While it may be true that anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today, that fight can certainly bring the occasional small, but still meaningful victory today.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: If one thinks carefully enough, one can see, as Ayn Rand once so eloquently pointed out, "There are no conflicts of interests among rational men." (See "The 'Conflicts' of Men's Interests" in The Virtue of Selfishness.)

A Good Follow RE: RFK, Jr.

One of my favorite science bloggers, Derek Lowe, has been doing admirable work reporting on the damage that RFK Jr. is wreaking as head of Heath and Human Services, a role that places him in the position of being able to set back American medical care, research in medicine and the biosciences, and agriculture.

Lowe almost certainly does not agree with me that government should be separate from the economy (including neither funding nor regulating scientific research). Lowe nevertheless rightly demands competent personnel be in charge so long as the government does do these things -- and he is well-qualified to comment on this aspect of the news, given his long career in pharmaceutical research.

I began following Lowe, like many others -- laymen and fellow scientists alike -- when I first became aware of his well-written, informative, and very amusing "Things I Won't Work With" series on hazardous chemicals, but I have found his other writing highly informative as well. For example, Lowe's discussions of various aspects of the Covid pandemic were very helpful then, both for debunking such quackery as ivermectin and for comments on vaccines and more serious possible treatments.

Although I left academic science long ago, I maintain an interest, and Lowe's sound reasoning and engaging, accessible writing have been a very enjoyable part of my way of doing so.

That, briefly, is my short recommendation of Lowe, and why I think it ought to carry some weight: He is an expert and, as someone trained to know the limits of his own knowledge and to evaluate the work of others, I find his opinions well worth consideration.

That said, I offer a quick sample of Lowe's commentary on RFK, Jr., following the latter's ridiculous recent assertions that he would somehow get to the bottom of "the autism epidemic" in only a few short months:

... [L]ast week Kennedy made a bizarre statement that "By September we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we will be able to eliminate those exposures" That set off all kinds of uproar among those people who follow this stuff (of whom I am certainly one), and it is absolutely the sort of statement that I would expect him to make: assuming that there is an "autism epidemic" to start with, and going on to assume that it is due to "exposures". That's the sort of stuff that has made him a great deal of money over the years, and here he is, playing the hits.

I have been told, though, that some believe that this was a garbled statement on his part and that what he was trying to get across is that his desired study on autism will get underway in September. Be that as it may, I think that what he actually said is what he actually thinks, because it's so consistent with years of behavior and public statements on his part. The idea that you could run a study to prove anything about the causes of autism and have it deliver definite answers to you by September is of course laughable to anyone who knows the field and the amount of research that's been done already - or, for that matter, to anyone who knows anything about clinical research at all. But even if that's not what he was trying to say (I'm agnostic on that point), the facts remain that blaming a so-called "autism epidemic" on environmental factors is not a position that is supported in any way by multiple investigations over many decades. These include gigantic natural experiments in countries where (for example) vaccination types and schedules have changed with absolutely no effect on rates of autism whatsoever. No, people have looked over and over and over for an "environmental exposure" explanation for autism, and nothing has emerged. But I believe what Peter Marks told us in his resignation letter: Kennedy has his mind made up already and is asking people to go prop up his conclusions. [bold added; italics and link in original]

As if that isn't bad enough, Lowe reports that Kennedy went on a truly nutty rant in his official capacity (!) later on in the same week he made the above announcement.

None of this will come as a surprise to anyone who knows much about Kennedy or about science, but there might be revelations to otherwise rational people who don't know much about Kennedy or who are unfamiliar with how scientific research actually occurs.

-- CAV

Trump Tariff Crisis Built on Quicksand

Jeff Jacoby draws on the works of legal scholar Ilya Somin, "Trump-friendly" economist Stephen Moore, and Republican Senator Rand Paul among others to argue that the legal basis Trump asserts for his tariffs is nonexistent.

The dubious legality begins with the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) itself, which is Trump's primary excuse for unilaterally raising taxes and cutting off trade without our consent:

In the nearly half-century since President Jimmy Carter signed that statute, no president ever invoked it to impose tariffs -- not against any country and not for any reason. That wasn't because seven consecutive presidents failed to make use of a powerful tool granted to them by Congress. It was because no such tool exists.

Trump's assertions notwithstanding, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize presidents to singlehandedly change the tariffs charged on foreign imports. Indeed, nowhere in the 3,700-word statute does the word "tariff" appear. Neither does "duty," "excise," "impost," "levy," or any other synonym for the taxes charged by governments on imports from other countries. The IEEPA has nothing to do with tariffs. It doesn't even appear in the section of the United States Code -- Title 19 -- that deals with trade. Rather, it is codified in Title 50, which covers "War and National Defense."

Congress passed the law in 1977 to enable presidents to deal quickly with a national emergency during peacetime by ordering sanctions against, or freezing the assets of, a hostile foreign power or terrorist organization. The legislative text refers to an "emergency" that gives rise to "an unusual and extraordinary threat" -- in fact, lawmakers specified that "emergencies are by their nature rare and brief, and are not to be equated with normal, ongoing problems." ... [bold added]

Needless to say, Jacoby follows on with an explanation -- understood by nearly everyone but Trump -- of why "trade deficits" are neither rare, nor brief, nor even a problem.

In addition to helping his readers understand why Trump imagines he has the authority to do this and why he doesn't, really, the piece surveys the legal efforts currently underway to bring the 2025 Trump Tariff Crisis to an end and points the interested reader to further reading on the matter.

-- CAV

Stossel Looks at Government-Run Gambling

In a fully free society, government would be drastically reduced in scope to its proper function, the protection of individual rights, and would be financed voluntarily.

We are obviously a far, far cry from either goal, to the point that Ayn Rand, who advocated laissez-faire did not devote much time to the topic since it would be a final detail for hashing out at the tail end of the massive political changes that only a philosophical revolution within our culture could make possible.

But she does touch on the topic:

In a fully free society, taxation -- or, to be exact, payment for governmental services -- would be voluntary. Since the proper services of a government -- the police, the armed forces, the law courts -- are demonstrably needed by individual citizens and affect their interests directly, the citizens would (and should) be willing to pay for such services, as they pay for insurance.

The question of how to implement the principle of voluntary government financing -- how to determine the best means of applying it in practice -- is a very complex one and belongs to the field of the philosophy of law. The task of political philosophy is only to establish the nature of the principle and to demonstrate that it is practicable. The choice of a specific method of implementation is more than premature today -- since the principle will be practicable only in a fully free society, a society whose government has been constitutionally reduced to its proper, basic functions.

The above comes from the online Ayn Rand Lexicon. The next paragraph from its source, "Government Financing in a Free Society," reads:

There are many possible methods of voluntary government financing. A government lottery, which has been used in some European countries, is one such method. There are others.

It was my memory of this paragraph that piqued my interest when I saw John Stossel lay into the bizarre treatment of gambling by American politicians, who treat private betting like a scourge they should eradicate -- but turn around and set up things like government lotteries, which offer worse odds and fall prey to government cronyism.

Given that Rand viewed government lotteries as a way for government to raise funds voluntarily, it is interesting to consider whether these differences are problems and, if so, why.

Stossel reports:

But government is so incompetent, so inefficient, that its off-track betting parlors lose money!

"Government is always inefficient," says [economist Jason] Sorens. "Unions get their cut ... wages are high, benefits immense. It's another reason we shouldn't want government running gambling operations. They do it at a high cost."

[Politician] don't mention that "their" games offer worse odds.

This week, the price of a Mega Millions lottery ticket more than doubled.

Years ago, they sneakily increased the number of white balls in the Powerball lottery, reducing your odds of winning to 1-in-292 million.

"In the private sector, we're used to products improving," Sorens points out. "Only the government running a lottery would make it get worse."

I tried to confront the association representing state lotteries about their scams, but they wouldn't agree to an interview. Instead, they sent a statement that says, "A state-run lottery system offers several key advantages ... strict oversight, helping to ensure fair play, responsible gaming and full transparency."

Bunk.

Government workers are just as crooked as private bettors. In Texas, lottery officials helped certain companies win a $95 million jackpot.

At the outset, the very fact that gambling -- an activity between consenting adults -- is illegal, but shouldn't be, puts criminals in charge of it, and causes most law-abiding citizens to be more ignorant of its consequences than they might otherwise be. (For starters, only a sucker would expect to be able to make a decent amount of money, much less a living, from gambling without a big investment of time and effort.)

The artificially shady nature of gambling means that people expect it to involve such deceptive practices -- like changing the odds behind the scenes -- such that the government doing exactly that doesn't raise hackles. In a free economy, this would damage the reputation of the lottery, causing players to move swiftly to another platform.

And as for operations losing money: They'd go out of business in a free market (rather than presumably staying afloat with loot from taxpayers) and not be forced by improper labor laws to pay extortionate wages and benefits to their employees.

We could go on, but Stossel's reporting provides enough data to conjecture that government meddling in the economy generally and in gambling in particular both damage a legitimate industry while also reducing the amount of money it could take in through this noncoercive means.

Setting those problems aside, such lotteries might well still offer lower odds of winning, or lower payouts than privately-run lotteries. So long as the rules and odds of the game are known, and participation is voluntary, that's not necessarily a problem for the same reason that those aspects of charitable gambling aren't.

There are good reasons for the matter of financing a proper government to belong at the back of the line!

-- CAV

Blog Roundup

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. At New Ideal, Ben Bayer exposes the religious thinking behind a bitter controversy among atheists:

[A]theists need the courage of their convictions. The latest row over transgender ideology dramatizes this for all to see. When religious-style dogmatism infiltrates atheism itself, it's a sign of religion's pervasive influence on our culture, and thus of the need for the courage to challenge widespread conventional assumptions like the alleged virtue of humility. As Jerry Coyne himself once observed, "Atheists have been 'humble' for centuries (who was more humble than Spinoza?) and it hasn't gotten us anywhere." And Coyne now says he's "proud" to be a heretic. It's time to realize he's right, drop the pose of false humility, and proudly assert the value of the scientific truth over unscrutinized feelings for faddish totems. [footnote omitted]

Among the things I learned from the piece was an interesting bit of trivia: the origin of the current humility fad.

2. At How to Be Profitable and Moral, Jaana Woiceshyn makes "The Moral Case Against Tariffs -- and for Free Trade," in part because:

The economic arguments against tariffs are valid but don't explain why tariffs are fundamentally immoral. It is true that they lead to economic misery to individuals and businesses by increasing the cost of everything, from food to fuel to construction materials and by causing job losses. But most economists today do not examine the root causes of tariffs' negative impact from a moral perspective. They take the mixed economy for granted and don't think about international trade that could be free of government intervention.

As neglected as it is, this question is important because supporters of various political measures frequently do so on the basis of what they deem to be moral, often to the point that they will ignore the impractical outcomes of those very policies. (e.g., You don't really need an iPhone!)

The path to winning important cultural and political battles lies in identifying and taking the moral high ground.

3. At Thinking Directions, Jean Moroney explains why a "twofer" doesn't work as a goal:

If it seems like more than one benefit is involved in your goal, check to see if it's a "twofer." Can you name in one word what your deepest motivation is for pursuing it? Can you explain the different aspects of the goal in terms of that value?

Eliminating twofers is critical to your success. The more ambitious and life-changing your goal, the more important it is to ensure your goal is unified. Otherwise, it will not fulfill its purpose, which is to guide and motivate action to the achievement of the goal. There are at least two reasons for this.

For one thing, a twofer gives you no guidance in the critical moment when the two most important benefits are in conflict. It creates pressure and exacerbates conflict between the benefits. It can seem that you can't achieve one except at the expense of the other.

The other problem is at least as bad as being lost at such a time of conflict.

4. At Value for Value, Harry Binswanger points out that in many conflicts in today's political and cultural scene, neither side deserves support. Case in point? Trump vs. Harvard:

[I]n the end, I cannot support either side. Trump wants to bully and even destroy any institution that stands up to him. (I think the campaign to end certain bad things in the universities is just a pretext, just a way to get support from his MAGA people.)

But Harvard wants to destroy civilization. And it's been doing a damn good job of it, too. Some ... have rightly stressed Harvard's good work in fields other than the Humanities: medicine, physics, biochemistry. But weighing that against the further development and spreading of evil philosophy, I think Harvard, and all universities, are net destroyers not benefactors.

Indeed, Trump, as Binswanger indicates, is ultimately a product of the evil ideas belched into our culture by the likes of Harvard for much of the past 200 years.

-- CAV

Hope for Incompetence, but Row Furiously

Via X, I got wind of an excellent piece on the Abrego Garcia case by Noah Smith, "The Authoritarian Takeover Attempt Is Here".

Although it does stand on its own in terms of getting readers up to speed on the case, it is no mere rehash.

Smith does well helping readers see the implications of the contempt for due process Trump and his cronies have exhibited, and offers his current forecast of where things are headed:

This should scare you, for a number of reasons.

First, there's the obvious: Trump is going around arresting innocent people, and sending them to foreign torture-dungeons, apparently for the rest of their lives. Bloomberg reports that about 90% of these deportees had no criminal records in the U.S., and most have not been charged with any crime...

Some were arrested simply because they had (non-gang) tattoos. Others didn't even have any tattoos, and were arrested for no apparent reason.

It's not clear why the Trump administration is doing this. Perhaps it's to scare immigrants into leaving the country by making an example of a few. Perhaps it's to simply assert power, or to test the boundaries of what they can get away with. Maybe they've really convinced themselves that all of the people they arrested are gang members. Who knows. But what's clear is that this is brutal and lawless behavior -- the kind of arbitrary arrest and punishment that's common in authoritarian regimes.

The second thing that should scare you is the lawlessness. The Trump administration insists it didn't defy the Supreme Court, arguing that simply removing any barriers to Abrego Garcia's return means that they're complying with the court order to "facilitate" that return. Trump's people have also argued that the courts have no right to interfere in the executive branch's conduct of foreign policy. And on top of that, they've declared that their deal with Bukele is classified.

In practice, the administration is arguing that as soon as they arrest someone and ship them overseas, U.S. courts have no right to order their return -- ever. That means that Trump could grab you, or me, or anyone else off the street and put us on a plane to El Salvador, and then argue that no U.S. court has the right to order us back, because once we're on foreign soil it's the domain of foreign policy. If so, it means that due process and the rule of law in America are effectively dead; the President can simply do anything to anyone, for any reason.

The third reason the Abrego Garcia case should worry you is that the Trump administration probably intends to go much further. Kilmar Abrego Garcia isn't an American citizen, but Trump has stated that he wants to start sending U.S. citizens to El Salvador too. Here are three relevant clips from his meeting with Bukele... [links omitted, bold added]

In one clip, Trump shows his hand regarding the excuse of sending foreign criminals away: "Yeah that includes [Americans], you think they're a special type of people or something."

This is how he speaks of you, whose rights and lives he swore to protect as President a few weeks ago.

Smith correctly notes that this is exactly one of things the Founders enumerated in their reasons for rebelling against England, and goes on to offer his analysis of the political situation.

He closes with his best sense of how it could play out:

Trump 2.0 is still likely to struggle to get big things done, despite having a few more years to prepare. The sad spectacle of the flailing, off-again-on-again tariff announcements seems like pretty clear evidence of incompetence. Trump is more vengeful and far less constrained this time around, but he still may fail to execute the transition to authoritarianism any more effectively than he's executing the transition to autarky. He's not benign, but he's probably not invincible either.

It is upon this thin thread that we must hang our hopes for democracy. [bold added]

The time to begin fighting back in whatever way is available is now.

-- CAV