Potentially Bright News

A politician who promised to hold hearings on the light bulb ban that isn't technically a ban, but is just as good as one, has finally bowed (HT: Instapundit) to pressure to ... keep his own promise:

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., has finally agreed to support a bill this summer that means lights out on the looming 2012 ban on the common light bulb. Upton himself co-sponsored 2007 legislation making light bulbs illegal, a ban that has become a symbol of bipartisan Big Government run amok.

Upton has come under increased pressure in recent weeks, sources say, after failing to follow up on a promise he made after assuming the committee chairmanship that he would hold hearings on reversing the ban. After months of paralysis - and with the ban just six months from going into effect on January 1 - outrage was building among his own Republican committee colleagues and conservative activists, including a national petition campaign, FreeOurLight.org, sponsored by the influential Competitive Enterprise Institute. [bold added]

I like the phrase, used by Henry Payne of The Michigan View, "bipartisan big government," because it kills two birds with one stone: First, the phrase makes clear that the Republicans will need to earn a reputation as a party that opposes government interference with the economy. Second, it refuses to treat bipartisonship as if it were some unquestionable virtue among politicians.

I suppose, in the same spirit of New York Times reports to the effect that opponents of the ban were raising a stink about nothing, one could offer assurances to any leftish acquaintances who are bothered by this (as evidenced by any panicked or belittling remarks about such an effort) that they're blowing smoke. "Hey! It's not really a ban, anyway, so let the Republicans flap their gums."

Three cheers to Free Our Light, and may their efforts pay off. Incidentally, they are still collecting signatures.

-- CAV

Moving towards Sound Money

The New York Sun endorses a recently-introduced bill that would prevent gold and silver coins that have been declared legal tender from being taxed in the event of an increase in their fiat-money value. This is intriguing, but the bill offers no challenge to the government's ability to forbid the use of gold and silver as money in certain circumstances. (That is what would ultimately be needed to impose fiscal restraint on the state.) I am sure the government could still find a way to tax such coins, but this bill would, as I see it, make it much more difficult to do so, so I offer my very qualified support for it on those grounds.

I find the impetus for this bill much more interesting and encouraging than the bill itself:

... Utah was the first state in our modern time to exercise its constitutional power to make gold and silver coins legal tender. It did so earlier this year, ahead of as many as a dozen states that are at various stages of looking in to the question of how to protect themselves against the collapse of the United States dollars that are being issued by the Federal Reserve. They are all being energized by the fact that the value of the dollar has collapsed to barely a fifth of what it was, if that, at the start of the 21^st century. [link added]

My misgivings aside, I think the bill would help us move sightly towards using actual money again. More important, I think, the bill and the actions of the various states mentioned above are an encouraging sign that the idea of abandoning fiat money is becoming more widely regarded as worthy of serious consideration. If we are to adopt a gold standard without enduring a very ugly economic collapse along the way, the pendulum of public opinion will need to swing much further before anyone will successfully challenge the idea that the government should be in charge of the currency. This is, perhaps, a sign that that swing has started.

-- CAV

Coming and Going

I especially like the below ad for both lampooning overprotective parents and, then, once it gets the attention of the audience, driving home a safety recommendation that lots of people really do need to hear.

It is interesting to me that most people will see the two parts of the commercial as "extreme" positions with regard to safety. I think that this is not the case, however.

While there is a tightrope to walk regarding child safety, the balance isn't between "too much" and "too little" safety, but between allowing children enough freedom to do new things, and limiting the ways they can come to harm until they disappear (due to the child's skill or knowledge) or the child knows the dangers himself and how to avoid them. Hovering over them and attempting to insulate them from all possible harm strikes me as mere risk avoidance.

I see the overprotective parent as focused on ritual rather than actual safety. Such an attitude not only sucks the fun out of everything, but can ultimately breed a degree of contempt for safety as such, especially when the rituals become burdensome or patently ridiculous. Worse, a ritualistic approach to safety can cause people to fail to think conceptually about safety (and thus realize on their own, for example, that texting while driving is foolish), or to make rational assessments of risk.

-- CAV

--- In Other News ---

Somewhat related to the body of this post, Glenn Reynolds notes that the tornado warning system breeds complacency. My dad, a cop in Jackson, Mississippi, had to do his share of tornado sightings when he was on patrol back in the late '70s and explained to me much the same thing: By the time the sirens sounded, it was often too late. I am a little surprised to hear that the problem persists even today, with Doppler radar and other technological improvements to tornado forecasting and monitoring.

If I didn't think he actually believed his own nonsense, I'd say Barack Obama had lots of gall. "We can't simply cut our way to prosperity," he says. So, which government make-work program built this country in the first place, and where the hell does all that money he wants to give away come from? More to the point, what would we be cutting if the opposition weren't playing games? The amount of money confiscated from private citizens. Obama says "cut," but that really means, "steal less from the productive."

Another sports figure has recently expressed admiration for Ayn Rand: major league baseball player Orlando Cabrera. (HT: Shane Atwell)

This guy sounds like ...

... a character from an Ayn Rand Novel. (But in a good way.)

Catching up on HBL, I ran into a link, submitted by Jared Rhoads, about the unorthodox goalie of the Boston Bruins, who recently won the Stanley Cup.

In 1980 a five-year-old [Tim] Thomas watched goaltender Jim Craig play beyond his means to lead Team USA to its Miracle on Ice victory over the Soviet Union and, with a win over Finland two days later, the Olympic gold medal. "From then on," says Thomas, "I wanted to be a goalie." Within a few years Tim Sr. and his wife, Kathy, had pawned their wedding rings for $300 so they could send Tim to a peewee tournament. The father sold cars and, later, local produce, and at 16 the son went door-to-door peddling bushels of apples. "He was determined to be the best at that too," says Tim Sr., 57. "Sometimes if people wouldn't answer the door, he'd peek around the back to go find them. He'd sell about five bushels and make $40, and he'd stay out until he made it."

In his yearbook at Davison (Mich.) High, Thomas was dubbed Rip Van Winkle because he could sleep through classes yet still maintain an A average, frustrating teachers by having the right answer when they woke him up. "I don't think it was hard enough for him," Tim Sr. says with a smile. He fondly recalls Tim's high school paper on his ambitions and goals. There was no mention of hockey; instead he wrote of hoping to live up to Tim Sr.'s example as a husband and father of two.

Had Rand written a sports novel, I could see her putting something like the story behind the Rip Van Winkle nickname in.

Thomas, on the small side for an NHL goalie and defying accepted conventions for playing the position, had a hard time reaching the highest professional level of the game, but he persisted against skeptics and long odds alike.

Given the NHL's preference for tall goalies who fill up the net, Thomas's height, generously listed at 5'11", did not help his cause. But more than that, the advent of the butterfly technique had caused goaltending to become a matter of puck repulsion by geometric equation, with an emphasis on positioning in order to cut down angles and allow only for openings up high, which are tougher for shooters to hit. Thomas's style is intuition over science. He scrambles from his crease, attacking shooters, relying on instinct and reflex, even embracing contact with screeners to get better looks at pucks, the boy diving into the bushes. It's fun to watch and maddening to face. "You can't really scout him," says one rival NHL goalie coach, "because he has no pattern." His unusual approach was enough to make general managers leery of signing him. And he still must deal with the occasional skeptic. Thomas hosted a clinic three years ago along with Bruins goalie coach Bob Essensa when one prospective netminder, a 10-year-old girl, watched his demonstration and said, "But wait, that's wrong."

Unsurprisingly, Thomas, whose college major was English, "was especially taken with Atlas Shrugged, ..., which he reread this year," and credits it with "influenc[ing] my life and even the way I play goal."

I don't normally follow hockey, and saw only the end of the last game of the Stanley Cup this year, but after reading this, I really wish I had.

I do, however, now have a standing order to catch a Bruins game next season just to see this man in action. He sounds like he'd be fun to watch.

-- CAV

6-26-11 Hodgepodge

The King is Dead

In the words of the first item in a top ten list of child care precepts I read recently, "Routine is king!" (This may have been in all caps.) In that sense, having a bundle of joy around is regicide -- although the powerful and benevolent feeling of holding your own child is definitely more than worth it.

Mrs. Van Horn and I are on her schedule now, and have to fit our other obligations in accordingly. This is a process of both learning what our baby needs from us and thinking carefully about our priorities. I think that posting here will be somewhat irregular or less frequent for some time as we adjust to our daughter being a part of our lives. Thanks for your patience.

Weekend Reading

"When it comes to genuine, pro-capitalist job-creation, Obama is a saboteur, in the original meaning of the word." -- Richard Salsman, in "Obama the Luddite: Friend to Labor Unions, Enemy of Job Creators" at Forbes

"It's almost as if Washington envisions the economy not as a complex network of billions of voluntary, mutually beneficial relationships, but as a lawn mower which could be forced to run smoothly if only they'd yank hard enough on the starter cord." -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "The One Stimulus Government Hasn't Tried " at SmartMoney

"I'd like to add the name of Cesar Millan, National Geographic Channel’s 'Dog Whisperer,' to the ranks of the mental health establishment." -- Michael Hurd, in "Be a 'Child Whisperer'" at DrHurd.com

My Two Cents

If it were truly possible to summarize the problems with our economy in a one-liner, the title of Hoenig's column is that one-liner. Salsman marshals lots of historical data many people have never heard of in support of the same general point, that government economic interventions are endangering our way of life.

A Spot of Good News

I see that Hugo Chavez is seriously ill, and has been hospitalized in Cuba for weeks now.

Chávez [sic] silence has led to chatter and speculation in Venezuela that the socialist leader is actually suffering from prostate cancer. Intelligence officials could not confirm a diagnosis of prostate cancer but Chávez family did go to Cuba in the last 72 hours, according to wire service EFE.

I understand from another report that none of the dictator's possible successors is especially popular. Chavez's demise might thus represent a good opportunity for his political opponents in Venezuela. Furthermore, as dependent as the Cuban regime is on shipments of looted oil from Venezuela, this is potentially good news for Cuba as well.

-- CAV

Induction

Well, the baby's not here yet, but that didn't stop my wife from getting me my first Father's Day card, the front of which is pictured at the right.

The title of this post is the medical term, not the epistemological one. This morning, Mrs. Van Horn and I are heading off with our bags to the hospital where, some time between today and Wednesday, we should finally meet the baby girl we've been preparing for over the past few months.

An email that I received yesterday from an old friend sums things up pretty well for me:

I can't even begin to imagine the range of simultaneous emotions you must be going through - from incredible excitement to downright nervousness.

Exactly.

Along with that, the amount of time and energy I'll have to deal with other things while we're there sounds like it could lie in a range anywhere from essentially none to too much, based on what we have learned in classes, and what friends and relatives have told us. Oh, and the stay itself can range anywhere from two days to about a week.

So, to play it safe, I'm assuming that I'll be too preoccupied to post, moderate comments, or answer email for about a week; I'll consider anything more than that as gravy.

Thanks for stopping by, and I'll see you in about a week! (Of course, how regularly that will be over the first few months of my daughter's life is a whole other question...)

-- CAV

6-18-11 Hodgepodge

The Hidden Cost of Telecommuting the Welfare State

The Wall Street Journal reports that a Maryland company faces a New Jersey tax bill since a single employee telecommutes from there. (The company does not sell anything or solicit business in New Jersey.)

That's bad enough, but there's more bad news. Since "lots of states seem to be on the same page as New Jersey," and "[m]ost states don't offer companies clear guidance in this area," one way to avoid the problem would seem to be using such workers on a contractual basis.

Or not:

[T]he former employer would have to pay the former employee more to cover new expenses and lost benefits. And, although it would be a challenge, states could still make a case for taxing the former employer.

If the central "planners" haven't gotten around to regulating telecommuting to death, perhaps it's only because they don't have to.

Weekend Reading

"In accepting the pie metaphor, we concede a moral point that should not be conceded. Wealth does not arise from an amorphous social process; 'society' owns no pie." -- Yaron Brook and Don Watkins, in "When It Comes to Wealth Creation, There Is No Pie" at Forbes

"[C]onsider that this pathetic recovery was 'achieved' by a ridiculous increase of 54% in the U.S. public debt (from $9.3 trillion as the recession began in late-2007, to $14.3 trillion today) and of 211% in the Fed's monetary base (from $825 billion to $2.5 trillion), which serves as latent rocket fuel for rising inflation rates." -- Richard Salsman, in "How The Demand-Siders Ruined The U.S. Economy" at Forbes

"From a psychological point of view, nobody can advocate or condemn divorce across-the-board except in cases of outright abuse or neglect." -- Michael Hurd, in "Do Kids and Divorce Mix?" at DrHurd.com

"The public outrage has stemmed in my opinion not from Weiner's tweets, but his deception. " -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "Weiner's Most Shameful Reveal" at SmartMoney

My Two Cents

I recommend reading the Hoenig column for a full appreciation of the double standard by which Anthony Weiner had been living his life. This same, small man had supported laws that imposed criminal penalties on financial CEOs for inaccurate documents -- despite the fact that there are strong, objective incentives for honesty in the financial sector.

A Silk Purse from a Sow's Ear

In the words of a man who once accomplished the above, supposedly impossible, transformation, "Things that everybody thinks he knows only because he has learned the words that say it, are poisons to progress."

-- CAV

Updates

Today: (1) Corrected title to first section. (2) Added missing link to Brook/Watkins article.

Three Amusing Items

For various reasons, some of the news I encountered this week caused me to chuckle. That's convenient since I have some loose ends to tie up before Mrs. Van Horn and I head to the hospital to deliver Baby Van Horn some time within the next few days...

1. Michael Hurd says all that needs to be said about Anthony Weiner: "He was so drunk on power that he couldn't imagine being exposed in this way, much less being abandoned by the likes of his boss, Nancy Pelosi." My sophomoric amusement at the impossible-to-avoid (and probably unintentional) pun aside, read the whole thing. The same analysis applies to other sleaze-balls, like Eliot Spitzer.

2. Back when I was in OCS, the powers that be constantly made minor rule changes that we had to keep up with. Once, due to an error in how they defined "morning," this led to the following absurd situation: It was, for a day or so, technically correct to say, "Good morning, sir," between evening colors and midnight. San Francisco recently achieved, if not exactly the same kind of absurdity, about the same level when it recently began considering a ban on the sale of goldfish within its borders.

3. Conservative commentator Mona Charen, properly advising the Republican presidential field not to be bullied by debate moderators into leaving out all context, notes the following blatant contradiction:

Since they insisted upon expressing their views in full sentences and paragraphs, rather than the monosyllables the moderator was hoping for, he tried later in the evening to dictate their answers. Turning to Ron Paul, [moderator John] King said:

"So, congressman, come into the conversation. As you do, don't make it just about foreclosures. This is -- this is an interesting topic of discussion, especially -- especially when money is scarce and you've got to start cutting. It's a question of priorities. What should the government be doing? And maybe what should the government be doing in a better economy that it can't do now that has to go?

"So talk about foreclosures a bit, but then tell me something, if you were president and you were dealing with it in your first few weeks, and you said, 'I might like to do this, but I can't afford to do this,' be as specific as you can, what goes?"

That question clocked in, by the way, over 100 words.

This silliness was supposedly in the interest of saving time, but the moderator also asked about such things as, "Regular or spicy?"

Oh, and none of the candidates called King on any of this, which is too bad, or the situation could have been funnier: "[W]hen the questioner is insufferable, as King was in New Hampshire, the candidate who confronts him will be the hero of the night."

-- CAV

A Gross Invasion of Privacy

Betsy McCaughey of the New York Post describes just how intrusive of patients' privacy ObamaCare will be, but I think the story quickly veers off-course.

Section 1311 of the Obama health law says that private health plans can pay only doctors who implement whatever the federal government dictates to improve "quality." This is the first time the federal government has asserted a broad power to control how doctors treat privately insured patients.

Before the Obama health law, patients who voluntarily bought insurance shared information with their insurer. Now, government regulators will have access to oversee physician compliance.

The advantage of an electronic medical record is obvious. When you need emergency care, a doctor can get information about your past illnesses, tests and treatments with the click of a mouse. It will reduce testing, save money and sometimes save a life. But there are dangers. [i.e., besides the big one mentioned in the first paragraph of this excerpt --ed]

Mark Rothstein, a University of Louisville School of Medicine bioethicist, worries that the system discloses information that's no longer relevant but could be embarrassing. Your oral surgeon doesn't need to know about your erectile dysfunction or your bout of depression 20 years ago. Nevertheless, such information will be visible. [format edits, emphasis added]

Compared to the dangerous possibility of the government deciding to make doctors abide by mistaken guidelines, the concern about embarrassing, but irrelevant information appearing in your medical record is relatively small potatoes, although still worrisome on its own. I am much more concerned about the purpose of such record-keeping.

As Daniel J. Solove recently indicated, the problems with such records run deeper than the possibility that such information might be embarrassing:

Another metaphor better captures the problems: Franz Kafka's The Trial. Kafka's novel centers around a man who is arrested but not informed why. He desperately tries to find out what triggered his arrest and what's in store for him. He finds out that a mysterious court system has a dossier on him and is investigating him, but he's unable to learn much more. The Trial depicts a bureaucracy with inscrutable purposes that uses people's information to make important decisions about them, yet denies the people the ability to participate in how their information is used.

The problems portrayed by the Kafkaesque metaphor are of a different sort than the problems caused by surveillance. They often do not result in inhibition. Instead they are problems of information processing -- the storage, use, or analysis of data -- rather than of information collection. They affect the power relationships between people and the institutions of the modern state. They not only frustrate the individual by creating a sense of helplessness and powerlessness, but also affect social structure by altering the kind of relationships people have with the institutions that make important decisions about their lives.

ObamaCare is already Kafkaesque, and it is so on purpose! We will have no say in whether this information is collected, or in how it is used. If you suffer from an illness or condition and have had the misfortune of having it diagnosed and entered into your record -- but, due to your own research, disagree with how the government wants to treat it -- you will have only the following "choice" under ObamaCare: a treatment you don't think will help, or none at all. (And even this choice obtains only if there is adequate funding or the government deems your case worthy of treatment.) That is, the purpose of this intrusion is to practically have someone watching over your doctor's shoulder while he works.

And we haven't even gotten to what might happen if other government agencies "need" any of this information for other purposes, yet, and how they might choose to process the data. The possibilities for regulating any lifestyle choice any creative bureaucrat can remotely associate with health boggle the mind, just to begin with.

-- CAV

Tips for a Gold Standard

Via RealClear Markets, I encountered an article by Brian Domitrovic of Forbes that lists "10 Things Not to Do When Going Back to Gold." In making his list, Domitrovic argues against several anti-gold myths, but in the process, he caused me to wonder: If fiat currency and all these government controls are so bad, and the best monetary policy is "hands-off," why have central banking, either?

This, in turn, led me to search for anything on the web by Richard Salsman on the subject of central banking, and one of the results was a fascinating 2006 column at Capitalism Magazine, in which Salsman comments at length on Alan Greenpan's legacy, using a comparison of Greenspan's eighteen-and-one-half year "reign" versus the performance of the economy, over a similar period of time, under non-Greenspan central bankers operating without a gold standard and central bankers constrained by a gold standard. The whole thing is worth reading now, but the following passage struck me as particularly relevant:

It's ironic that the gold-based U.S. monetary system of the 1950s and 1960s beats the Greenspan Fed hands down, for during that era Greenspan became an eloquent, clear and knowledgeable proponent of the gold standard and free banking -- that is, no central banking whatsoever. He knew better than most the virtues of the gold standard and the dangers of central banking -- especially arbitrary central banking. Yet he conducted policy arbitrarily. He made no attempt to move the Fed back to a gold-based system, even though he had accumulated the political (and persuasive) power to do so and knew the practical details necessary to achieve it. When the time became politically propitious for a move to gold – when President Reagan proposed a return to a gold-based dollar in the early 1980s -- Greenspan joined with Milton Friedman to scare him out of it, warning that the U.S. might lose its gold stock (true only if the "re-entry" exchange rate between gold and the dollar was set too low). A return to gold, he said, was possible only when the Fed improved its policies to the point where it "replicated" the performance seen under the gold standard. Such performance certainly was not "replicated" under Greenspan; conveniently, then, he could always cling to his lame excuse for never moving the U.S. dollar back to gold. [minor format edits, footnote numbers removed]

Later, Salsman closes by saying, "The question we should be asking today is the reverse of the one posed by The New York Times editorialist: 'Who Needs Greenspan (or Bernanke) When We have Gold?'"

I respectfully urge Mr. Domitrovic to add an eleventh item to his list: "Fail to move to a private banking system, completely free from central 'planning.'" Central banking, as a tool for government manipulation of the economy, is clearly a big part of how we ended up breaking our monetary system in the first place.

-- CAV

--- In Other News ---

Here we go again. A Christian commentator argues that John Galt is really Jesus Christ. Yeah. And, anything in a book that resembles a right angle is really a cross, as it so often seemed to me in literature classes at the Catholic university I attended. I forget whether the Reverend Sirico brings up the fact that the letter G was derived from C in Roman times, so that "J.G." really equals "J.C," but I've heard that one before, too.

Matthew Inman on "Why I Love and Hate Having a Smartphone:"

You bring up war, poverty, or famine in a conversation and you'll find a barren vacuum of opinions. You announce what kind of phone you have and you'll spend the next hour enduring an obnoxious holy war.

Ugh. That sounds like a hybrid from hell between a "Ford-Chevy argument" and a "bike shed argument."

The next time you hear someone speak of states' "rights" as some sort of panacea for federal tyranny, remember this story: "Massachusetts is backing Vermont's assertions that it is not pre-empted by federal law from closing the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant."

The "Backfire Effect"

Via Lifehacker comes a lengthy article that delivers a grain of truth, but I thought could have been much more compelling. Titled, "The Backfire Effect," the article is a lengthy exploration of a phenomenon almost anyone who has engaged in debate on the Internet will be familiar with: Individuals who, confronted with evidence contrary to their views, only dig in deeper.

So, here you are, in the future surrounded by computers which can deliver to you just about every fact humans know, the instructions for any task, the steps to any skill, the explanation for every single thing your species has figured out so far. This once imaginary place is now your daily life.

So, if the future we were promised is now here, why isn't it the ultimate triumph of science and reason? Why don't you live in a social and political technotopia, an empirical nirvana, an Asgard of analytical thought minus the jumpsuits and neon headbands where the truth is known to all?

This is indeed an important question, but I disagree with David McRaney's explanation, which combines a plausible-sounding evolutionary explanation with soft determinism and an unfortunate lack of emphasis on the actual survival value of being correct:

Have you ever noticed the peculiar tendency you have to let praise pass through you, but feel crushed by criticism? A thousand positive remarks can slip by unnoticed, but one "you suck" can linger in your head for days. One hypothesis as to why this and the backfire effect happens is that you spend much more time considering information you disagree with than you do information you accept. Information which lines up with what you already believe passes through the mind like a vapor, but when you come across something which threatens your beliefs, something which conflicts with your preconceived notions of how the world works, you seize up and take notice. Some psychologists speculate there is an evolutionary explanation. Your ancestors paid more attention and spent more time thinking about negative stimuli than positive because bad things required a response. Those who failed to address negative stimuli failed to keep breathing.

Yes, I think that, in very general terms, the bit above about negative stimuli attracting attention is a plausible consequence of the way our nervous systems and minds work, at least in terms of unpleasant stimuli as a subset of stimuli that stand out from the cognitive background. However, I find McRaney's treatment of this phenomenon unsatisfying.

For one thing, if your beliefs are mistaken and your method of "dealing with" the "negative stimul[us]" of a differing belief (that happens to also be correct) is merely to explain it away, you, too, can fail to "keep breathing." Furthermore, the fact is that people can and do change their minds about all kinds of things all the time: Clearly, people do not always dig in when their beliefs are challenged.

I find it interesting that the title of the Lifehacker post that points to this is, "Why you can't win that argument on the Internet." (If you count email, I once very memorably did change someone's mind about a very big issue, in the sense of getting him to check his premises. The first thing he did upon changing his mind was thank me.) I see that title as symptomatic of a kind of problem that many lengthy Internet arguments exemplify, which is this: What difference does what any particular person thinks -- other than oneself or a loved one -- make to one's own survival?

Culturally, yes, throwing good ideas out there to attract the interest of people who are amenable to rational argument can indirectly improve one's life if they accept them, but that still has to be done in a way that engages their minds. That said, one needn't get the last word in every time or "win" every (or any) argument one engages in so long as one presents one's ideas in such a way that a rational person who happens on them can see their merit and want to learn more about them. And sometimes, in order to defuse commonly-accepted, but mistaken arguments, it can be valuable to at least put the counterargument out there -- but that value has nothing to do with making your opponent bow down publicly before your superior wisdom.

Continuing on with the premise that getting good ideas out there can be in one's rational self-interest, even a rational audience can fail to agree with an argument for a correct position for any number of good reasons. The argument can be poorly presented, and even come across as a load of garbage that someone is trying to foist on others for whatever reason. I have seen people display what I can only describe as an apparent contempt for someone else's need to make up his own mind. Setting aside a clear-cut case of bullying (which is beyond the scope of my concerns at the moment anyway), the immediate reaction of anyone who doesn't simply head for the hills will be to oppose an argument presented in such a way. And then, of course, there is the fact that human beings have free will, and can, at any time, choose to ignore or evade the truth.

The importance of a method of communicating good ideas that aids in understanding cannot be overstated because man is a conceptual being. Grasping the truth requires not just self-evident sensory data, but the logical drawing of conclusions that are often far from obvious from that data. If an argument is complex, both the difficulty of evaluating that argument and of convincing others of that argument increase exponentially. (And then, for sufficiently complex topics, each side of an argument can be correct about some things, and incorrect about others). Although this is not always the case, I have often learned that people who hard sell notions that are, in fact, quite complex, do not really understand what they are talking about. This isn't always the case, but I think an intuitive, vague understanding of this possibility also drives people to resist positions presented in such a way. Such people have, to put a twist on the opposite problem, reached, at least for the moment, the "wrong answer for the right reason" (if the person they disagree with happens to have indicated a correct position which they do, in fact, disagree with).

So much for presenting an argument. There is a more fundamental issue, about which one should fully satisfy his mind long before advocating a given argument. Whatever survival value accepting an argument might have depends on whether it is correct. The more complicated that argument is, the more work one has to do to determine whether it is correct, and the more opportunities one has to make mistakes. One would think that knowing this would cause people to be more patient with each other during debates, but that often isn't the case. A lack of patience can come from many things, but a distinct possibility is that it comes from an incomplete or sloppy process of evaluating one's position before shouting it from the mountaintop. In the context of arguments that are very difficult to evaluate, that possibility, too, can impede communication of the truth, because many people will consider it, at least on some vague level, when deciding whether the mental effort of considering an argument is really worth their time.

I think McRaney does get around to getting the reader to consider the idea that he can be wrong, but within the context of a lengthy argument somewhere on the Internet that nobody else is going to read in its entirety, so what? Much more compelling to me, in terms of my own survival, is the value of discovering the truth and using it to live.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected a typo and changed several instances of the word, "argument" to terms like, "position" or "notion." One can use argument to mean position, as I was in those instances, but doing so confuses the following issue: One can argue poorly for correct positions and vice versa.

Alternative? Not Really.

Responding to a reader who dislikes coal and nuclear power, and wants everyone to stop using them, Cecil Adams summarizes the results of an academic paper about the future of the world's aggregate energy demand versus how that demand might be met. The inadequacy of "alternative" energy sources to meet even a modest average level of demand is striking, especially in the context of the unrealistic assumptions behind their maximum outputs:

[Daniel] Nocera conservatively pegs annual global energy usage circa 2050 at between 28 terawatts -- which assumes average consumption at the same rate as in present-day Poland -- and 35 terawatts, roughly the rate now seen in Samoa. You may say: Samoa sounds like a lifestyle I could get used to. That's sporting of you, but it still means we'll need about 15 to 20 more terawatts of energy than we're consuming right now.

Where will it come from? Nocera runs through some possibilities:

• First, biomass. If we devote all the arable land on earth to energy production rather than food crops and presumably just don't eat, we could generate 7 to 10 terawatts.
• Next, wind. If we build wind farms on 100 percent of the sufficiently windy land, we could produce 2.1 terawatts.
• Third, hydroelectric. If we dam all the remaining rivers, we could come up with 0.7 to 2 additional terawatts.
• Finally, nuclear. I know you don't like nukes, Randvek, but the professor's evident aim was to tote up all power sources that aren't net emitters of greenhouse gases. He thinks we could produce 8 terawatts by constructing 8,000 nuclear power plants, which would mean one new plant every two days for the next 40 years.

Total: around 18 to 22 terawatts. In other words, if we squeeze out every available watt of alternative energy on the planet, and build nukes at an impossibly aggressive rate, we'll barely keep up with the energy needed to support even a modest standard of living for the world's people.

"Alternative" energy is anything but an alternative, if the goal is to sustain human life.

-- CAV

--- In Other News ---

Frank J. Fleming offers some free "Tips for Not Appearing Crazy on the Internet."

[O]ften crazy people will just read until they see a word or phrase that sets them off and then go off on a big, crazy rant before even reading the whole thing they're reacting to. Often, then, they're completely missing the point or missing that something is satire and taking it seriously.

Is this a satirical piece or a diagnostic tool? Based on the above, I'd say it's both. Heh!

From a contest at Cracked: Here's what would an over-the-hill King Kong would look like.

From Armed and Dangerous comes this latest tech press headline from the smart phone wars: "Apple's iOS 5 Directly Lifts Features from Android."

This story about the latest government-funded "bullet" train gives the phrase, "faster than a speeding bullet" an ironic new meaning. It sounds to me like there's a humorous ad for a competing bus line just waiting to happen here.

6-11-11 Hodgepodge

Easier than They Say?

Nathan Lewis of Forbes recounts how Germany returned to a gold standard after hyperinflation rendered its currency worthless in the 1920's. He ends his piece with the following claim:

It amuses me today when people invent this, that or another reason why a gold standard system is "impossible." What they usually mean by that is: they don’t know how to do it. You can’t be in a worse position than Germany on Nov. 15, 1923. If it was possible then, it is possible at any time.

On the one hand, I want to credit Lewis for attempting to aid the cause of stable currency with historical data in the vein of winning what I call the "battle of imagination." On the other hand, it bothers me that he mentions, without elaboration or comment, that the first stage of the process was, "effectively render[ing] Germany a military dictatorship." That is a dangerous and unnecessary step, to say the very least.

And I haven't even gotten to the fact that Germany never got rid of its central bank...

Weekend Reading

"Physical or verbal abusers in a marriage, as well as dictators and 'spiritual' gurus on a national scale, can sometimes intimidate bodies to do what minds will never accept. It might even look for a while like it's working, but history has proven again and again that it never lasts." -- Michael Hurd, in "The Down-Side of Control" at DrHurd.com

"All forms of 'gun control,' 'travel control,' or 'health control' are just examples of a broader 'freedom control.' And they are all doomed to fail because at root they are just different ways of government violating our individual rights rather than protecting them." -- Paul Hsieh, in "Dude, Where's My Freedom?" at PajamasMedia

"When times are flush and risk aversion is low, overoptimism leads not only to record towers, but overvalued stock markets as well." -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "What Skyscrapers Say about Markets" at SmartMoney

Even More Controls

As if the parade of controls in Paul Hsieh's piece isn't long or ridiculous enough, there are two more recent ones at OpenMarket.org. One looks bad for e-commerce: "Another bill winding its way through the Senate would allow states to tax companies that have no physical presence inside their borders. I’ve written on similar state-level proposals before. It’s a bad idea."

Comic Relief

I remember seeing a much larger collection of these some time ago, but Mental Floss culled the best: "That Tattoo Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means."

-- CAV

Friday's Fabulous Four

I have to dart out the door early today, so I'll post on "three four good things," with the fourth allowing me an alliterative title.

1. From the same source, Thinking Directions, that first taught me about "three good things," comes the first book on salesmanship to ever spark my interest, Ron Karr's Lead, Sell, or Get out of the Way. I have so far taken just a cursory look at the on-line sample, but I suspect that my interest is a direct result of the book implementing its own advice of not "PUKE-ing." (See pages 3-4.) Or, in my words, Karr isn't overwhelming me with mountains of information about salesmanship (or, worse, merely asserting that it's important) so much as helping me understand why I need it. It is much easier to become motivated -- and to remember information -- when one has some idea of its value.

2. Our place is nearly ready for the baby now, thanks in large part to the generosity of our relatives and friends. And yes, the man cave/nursery looks quite good in its new Winnie-the-Pooh theme and pink color scheme.

3. Going paperless has never been so easy: In order to integrate paper and computer note-taking, by digitizing my paper notes -- and to save space -- I purchased a Fujitsu ScanSnap s1100 portable scanner some time ago. (This thing is about the size of a small three-hole punch.) It is so fast and reliable that I am now also gradually digitizing our records at home. I shred any old paper records I can as soon as off-site backups exist, and should eventually realize at least a couple of file drawers of new storage space. (Everything counts in our tiny apartment.) I'll also have backups of everything. My only complaint is that the scanner is not fully supported under Linux, so I have to run it under VMWare or using my wife's computer.

4. My latest beer recommendation is Lagunitas Maximus IPA. I'd hoped to buy another six-pack at my usual beer emporium yesterday but, unsurprisingly, they were out. In linking to the Beer Advocate review, I see that Lagunitas's regular IPA may be a viable alternative.

-- CAV

Evaluating Opportunities

Over at Salon is an article called, "When a Designer Should Turn Down a Client." Despite its rather narrow focus, I think it holds lessons for almost anyone, particularly those who do any kind of freelance work, or who have wide latitude in choosing what kinds of projects to focus on. Here's the opening paragraph:

The failure most of us frequently face in the business of design? The failure to recognize that a client project is something you should decline. Here are common situations where working designers fail to decline an opportunity that may be a poor fit.

Later on:

You will be continually thrown opportunities you don't really need or have the depth of knowledge to fulfill well. You need to be prepared to walk away gracefully as part of any ongoing negotiation. So you've recognized that you should be declining a prospective project. How do you do it?

I can think of quite a few instances I could have used advice like that found in this piece. Read the whole thing.

-- CAV

--- In Other News ---

Can the NFL lockout help the New Orleans Saints? It sounds like it: "'Players around the league look at the lockout differently,' [linebacker Jonathan] Vilma told me. 'Some see the lockout as a time to relax. Some see it as a time to heal from serious injury. Some see it as a time to party. We're definitely not in that last category.'"

Australian columnist Richard Glover starts off saying that global warming "deniers" should be forcibly tatooed -- only to back off before using fellow leftists who "relish climate change" as a foil. The whole piece is a distraction from the one dangerous "boneheaded belief" that goes unquestioned: That unlimited government power can be anything but dangerous.

They report this like it's a bad thing: "US Said to Be Falling Behind in Green Tech." The auto industry roared into life without government "encouragement," so perhaps the failure of this hothouse flower of an industry here is telling us something.

Evaluating a Commute

Correlation isn't causation, but this Slate article about the hidden costs of commuting otherwise makes an excellent point: People often underestimate how much time they lose commuting and, far worse, neglect to place enough value on that lost time.

If you are commuting, you are not spending quality time with your loved ones. You are not exercising, doing challenging work, having sex, petting your dog, or playing with your kids (or your Wii). You are not doing any of the things that make human beings happy. Instead, you are getting nauseous on a bus, jostled on a train, or cut off in traffic.

...

[A]verage one-way commuting time has steadily crept up over the course of the past five decades, and now sits at 24 minutes (although we routinely under-report the time it really takes us to get to work). About one in six workers commutes for more than 45 minutes, each way. And about 3.5 million Americans commute a whopping 90 minutes each way...

Ninety minutes each way! Let's assume forty-eight work-weeks per year and an employer who permits one work day at home each week. That's still 576 hours gone forever from your life each year -- 24 entire days, or 36 days of wakefulness, depending on whether you divide by 24 or 16 (the latter assumes eight hours of sleep per day).

Before we moved to Boston, we faced a stark choice following the first year of Mrs. Van Horn's residency: Live close in and pay through the nose, or live farther out and save money. It turns out that we'd have had to live really far out to save much money -- close to that life- and soul-sucking 90-minute range. My cost analysis fortunately included imagining what life would have been like minus three hours a day apiece. When I speak of our tiny, expensive apartment, I have certain hidden advantages in mind along with the obvious limitations.

-- CAV

The Next Legal Challenge

At the Wall Street Journal is an article about a second wave of legal challenges to ObamaCare, this time predicated on the idea that it is wrong for the government to force the states to expand their Medicare rolls.

Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, states have a choice: Expand their Medicaid rolls or bear the full cost of caring for their state's current Medicaid population, while continuing to subsidize the Medicaid programs of other states. The constitutional danger of such a scheme has long been recognized. In 1936, the Supreme Court warned in U.S. v. Butler that if conditional federal grants were not restrained, the taxing and spending power "could become the instrument for the total subversion of the governmental powers reserved to the individual states."

I'd classify such a challenge, if ultimately successful, under the heading, "buying us time," depending as it does on a welfare state modus operandi that shouldn't exist in the first place. Interestingly, as straightforward as this reasoning might seem, it has already been muddled by the courts.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court's decision in South Dakota v. Dole (1987) confused matters. Dole let Congress condition 5% of federal highway funds on the states raising their drinking age to 21. The Court argued that this modest penalty was mere persuasion -- not coercion -- but cautioned that "in some circumstances, the financial inducement offered by Congress might be so coercive as to pass the point at which 'pressure turns into compulsion.'"

The question, then, is where that point is. Judge Vinson denied that any such point exists because the federal courts have routinely ignored the Court's warning in Dole by approving virtually every conditional federal grant program -- no matter how intrusive.

The reason why the analysis in Dole has failed to offer any protection for state autonomy is that it is fundamentally wrong to think of coercion as a matter of degree. The government always engages in coercion when it taxes away money from the citizens of several states, only to return it to those states that abide by certain conditions. [emphasis added]

It's too bad that too few people -- perhaps even the author of this piece -- don't carry the notion that this type of coercion is wrong all the way down to the individual level, for this is precisely the kind of principle that has failed to inform jurisprudence for far too long.

On the one hand, I'd like to see ObamaCare stopped, but I hope the cost isn't some sort of affirmation of the Dole decision, or some more legally viable rationale for the "next ObamaCare" to succeed.

-- CAV

--- In Other News ---

Although I have used Linux for more than a decade, I have never gotten worked up over whether to call it Linux or GNU/Linux. Nevertheless, I found it interesting that, as measured by lines of code, the "GNU" portion of "GNU/Linux" makes up only 8% of a modern Linux distribution. But don't expect that to settle the naming controversy any time soon: The "Linux" portion (i.e., the kernel), makes up only about 9%.

I haven't read the whole article, but when she opens her piece on "The Republican Who Can Win," Dorothy Rabinowitz opines that he will be the one who can, "talk about matters like Medicare and Social Security without terrorizing the electorate." Maybe so, but conversely, until we can have an intelligent conversation about such things, our economy will continue speeding towards the abyss.

Glenn Reynolds asks: "SO IS THIS TRUE? Libertarians Who Live In The Real World Vote Republican." Taking "libertarian" to loosely mean "pro-capitalist" here, I'd say this belongs in my collection of "idiot bumper stickers." Pro-capitalists don't sequester themselves into their own party, either, as the abolitionists demonstrated long ago. Pro-capitalists who live in the real world support politicians, whatever the party, who promise to do pro-capitalist things, and remove them from power should they reneg. This can include voting for an opponent who is at least honest about where he stands.

Cynical Scare Quotes

A little over a week ago, I commented on an article in the New York Times that made the point that incandescent bulbs had not been banned under environmentalist legislation signed by President Bush. Specifically, after portraying various people who are stockpiling incandescent bulbs as worrying about nothing, the article stated:

"My electrician said they were being phased out," he said. "If he's wrong, I'm going to kill him."

As it happens, Mr. Henault's electrician is wrong.

...

The law does not ban the use or manufacture of all incandescent bulbs, nor does it mandate the use of compact fluorescent ones. It simply requires that companies make some of their incandescent bulbs work a bit better, meeting a series of rolling deadlines between 2012 and 2014.

My comment on this was, "I cannot help but wonder whether federal efficiency standards won't amount to a phase-out, anyway."

This morning, I learned -- and from the Grey Lady herself, no less -- that I was completely right to be suspicious:

[T]hat's fortunate, because one day very soon, traditional incandescent bulbs won't be available in stores anymore. They're about to be effectively outlawed.

And now, for the icing on the cake: In the very next paragraph, Andrew Rice has the gall to chide people via scare quotes who use the colloquialism, "light bulb ban!"

Conservatives like Rush Limbaugh have denounced the "light-bulb ban" -- actually, a new set of federal efficiency regulations that the traditional incandescent can't meet -- as a symbolic case of environmentalist overreaching...

Rice's reasoning seems to go something along these lines: "You see, the law didn't actually call this a ban, so it isn't. And if people in the same lowbrow category as Rush Limbaugh can't even be bothered to say, 'energy standards that don't actually outlaw incandescents, but will make it impossible to manufacture incandescents that meet its requirements,' every time instead of 'ban,' then you know to ignore anything else they might have to say."

First, this babbling about the light bulb ban not really being a ban is a dishonest appeal to the vanity of readers who can't be bothered to examine whether the government should be dictating how we manufacture lighting -- but who will take great pride in "knowing" the difference between a ban and an effective ban. (Actually, they don't, because there is no essential difference.) Second, it is an attempt to undermine the confidence of people who call a spade a spade, by sowing doubt. ("Huh! I heard there was a ban, but I guess I was wrong.")

It is one thing to point out that someone ginning up controversy doesn't really know what the hell he is talking about. It is quite another to take an identification of an essential issue in a debate (i.e., whether we can freely produce incandescent bulbs) as "evidence" that one's opponent has disqualified himself from the debate.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected a typo.

6-4-11 Hodgepodge

Fly by Failing Faster

From a story about a mechanical engineer who won the X Prize of his day, comes the following moment of insight:

[E]veryone working on solving human-powered flight would spend upwards of a year building an airplane on conjecture and theory without the grounding of empirical tests. Triumphantly, they'd complete their plane and wheel it out for a test flight. Minutes latter, a years worth of work would smash into the ground. Even in successful flights, a couple hundred meters [later] the flight would end with the pilot physically exhausted. With that single new data point, the team would work for another year to rebuild, retest, relearn. Progress was slow for obvious reasons, but that was to be expected in pursuit of such a difficult vision. That's just how it was.

The problem was the problem. [MacCready] realized that what ... needed to be solved was not, in fact, human powered flight. That was a red-herring. The problem was the process itself, and along with it the blind pursuit of a goal without a deeper understanding how to tackle deeply difficult challenges. He came up with a new problem that he set out to solve: how can you build a plane that could be rebuilt in hours not months. And he did. He built a plane with Mylar, aluminum tubing, and wire. [emphasis added]

In a contest that had gone on for eighteen years without a winner, MacCready won the prize after six months of work. (HT: The Endeavour)

Weekend Reading

"So why haven't solar and wind triumphed? After all, isn't Al Gore right that the sun gives us more energy than we could ever need, 'free forever?'" -- Alex Epstein, in "Four Dirty Secrets about Clean Energy" at Fox News

"[O]n a day in which the Dow dropped almost 300 points, a 12% rise in the most leveraged VIX product available doesn't appear to be a terribly lucrative return. " -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "Betting on the Next Big Drop? Bad Idea." at SmartMoney

"In the least regulated sectors of medicine, such as LASIK eye surgery, patients can freely see whoever offers them the best value for their medical dollar. The result over time has been rising quality and falling costs." -- Paul Hsieh, in "Here comes Obamacare's Big Brother: Accountable Care Organizations" at The Christian Science Monitor

"A lot of people confuse 'like' and 'respect.' They're so wrapped up in whether someone likes them that they forget to ask, 'Does this person respect me?'" -- Michael Hurd, in "Is It Love, or Respect?" at DrHurd.com

Humanitarian Carnival

From Futility Closet comes a historical example of a medical service being provided for free to the needy, while making money for the provider:

[Martin] Couney moved to the United States in 1903 and displayed babies at Coney Island every summer for 40 years. Because he charged the parents nothing, the exhibition brought the expensive procedure within reach of needy families, saving hundreds of lives as it educated the public.

Follow the link for more and a picture of the building containing "Dr. Couney's Baby Farm."

Back to Flight

I close today's post by pointing to a small set of beautiful long-exposure photographs of planes taking off and landing.

-- CAV

Crib in the Man Cave

If there are a crib and a changing table in your home office, does it still qualify as a man cave? Plumbing the philosophical depths with that question, I announce something that has me both very excited and very nervous: If all goes well, I will be the proud father of a baby girl within the next three weeks. Mrs. Van Horn is about ready to pop, so if I suddenly seem to drop off the face of the Earth at some point during the next few weeks, that's probably why. I want to be fully present to welcome little "Peanut" into the world, so there won't be any tweets or live-blogging coming from me.

I am not sure how much of that part of my life I will decide to share here, but I understand that the first few months of this lifelong journey can be very hectic. That and the fact that I am juggling a couple of other major life changes along with this one mean that I there could be some really big changes in my blogging and writing routines. But since there is lots of information I don't have right now -- like what kind of baby she will be -- I'm going to play that by ear.

More than one person has told me that the experience of fatherhood will change my life in many unexpected and profound ways. I think I experienced that first-hand a few weeks ago during a daycare tour. In case we would need it, I toured a couple of facilities near home. During the first of these tours, I randomly caught the eye of a baby sitting alone on the floor without his parents around. I immediately felt really sorry for him and found myself nursing a big lump in my throat for the rest of the visit. I wasn't sent to daycare myself and I'm not thrilled with the idea, but the intensity of the emotion was surprising. Fortunately, we won't need daycare for at least the first few months. On the more mundane level, I catch myself looking for stroller ramps wherever I go. Having to look out for a little one changes practically everything.

And speaking of changing things, I need to go now and get back to work on shoehorning the newest member of my family into our tiny apartment.

-- CAV

Baby with the Bathwater

Some time ago, I encountered one of those news items that manages to be both repulsive and fascinating at the same time: an egalitarian couple from Canada have made news because they have decided to keep the sex of one of their children a secret. They are doing this so he can grow up, as they put it, "unconstrained by social norms about males and females." Part of their plan involves getting their other two children, one five years old and the other two, in on the secret.

Now, to be fair, it is true that some social norms -- and not just about sex -- are bad. But this couple's "cure" is far worse than the disease, as an editorial by Mitch Albom of the Boston Herald makes somewhat clear:

The Toronto couple believe they are giving their child a "choice" -- even though that choice was made by nature and was evident in the first pee-pee. Meanwhile, it seems pretty unfair to tell a 5- and a 2-year-old to keep a secret. Isn't that imposing something on them?

Personally, I am all in favor of a little imposition. It's time to eat. Time to sleep. Time to stop crying. Time to go to school. Don't treat others that way. Don't say rude things. [minor format edits]

Several related things interest me further here, although perhaps the first two are beyond the scope of Albom's editorial. (I'll throw them out there, anyway.)

First, if there is a major weakness in Albom's piece, it lies in a distinction he's relying on the reader to make between the "imposition" the couple is making and the "imposition" he favors. It's a normative distinction, namely, that some forms of parental imposition are good, and others bad.

Second, I would not be surprised to learn, upon further pressing Albom (or many other implicitly rational people), for him to object that the above couple are "taking things too far," rather than that the beliefs (explicit or implicit) they are acting on are not objective (i.e., based on perceptual evidence and logic), or that their method of approaching this issue isn't objective. This is because practically all philosophies (and stand-ins, like religions) do not have such a basis. This fact makes most philosophies inapplicable to real-world problems, and look (rightly) absurd when carried out to their logical conclusions. Albom does implicitly raise the issue of the couple's method of thinking about the problem they're trying to address being wrong, but he can only do so in metaphysical terms, when the couple's actions conflict with the facts of reality. He doesn't (and, I think, couldn't) argue that what they are doing is morally wrong. (And I bet he might have trouble helping a child understand why he shouldn't be rude, or what makes something rude.) So Albom correctly pegs the couple as ignoring a fact of reality, but then both objects to imposition and, later, stands up for imposition.

Third, it is interesting to see how many ways the couple's egalitarianism affects how they evaluate and think about sexual mores. They seem to regard them indiscriminately as impositions and, conversely, anything that could be related to their child's sex as up to his whims (and nothing else). This causes them to discard, as far as I can tell, such considerations as whether there are aspects of one's sex that have a bearing on behavior for good (e.g., biological or psychological) reasons, or whether it might be beneficial for their child to at least know what the relevant social mores are so he can more effectively interact with other people who adhere to those mores (e.g., If a boy likes pink, fine -- but he should at least be able to expect that he may have to stand up for his choice if he wears a pink shirt.). Fascinatingly, it is interesting to see what else goes by the wayside, like the importance of teaching children to be honest, as their quest to deemphasize the sex of their child curiously ends up warping every aspect of how they raise their children. It is as if it has never occurred to this couple that they could simply teach their child to question things as he encounters the mores they disagree with or his mind and personality have developed enough to think about them.

This is a disturbing, but thought-provoking story.

-- CAV

Negative Feedback

Stephen B. Meister of the New York Post notes at least one way that the depressed economy is perpetuating itself.

[C]ause and effect have reversed themselves: While the subprime crisis and bursting of the housing bubble triggered the financial crisis that led to a broader recession, now it's the broader recession -- and its persistent joblessness -- that's dragging down housing.

The economy still isn't producing enough jobs to keep up with the growing workforce. So people are reluctant to become first-time homebuyers because they've lost (or fear losing) their jobs, and because they fear further price drops. That means "trade-up" buyers can't buy -- even if their jobs are secure -- because there's no one to buy their current (starter) homes at a price that will pay off their mortgages.

Meister goes on to note that the Feds now back 95 percent of all new mortgage loans and that, "No housing policy will stop housing's double dip. To do that, we need the millions of jobs only a reversal of President Obama's ruinous overall economic policies will bring."

-- CAV

--- In Other News ---

Carolyn Hax, on the futility of appeasing people who do not respect personal boundaries: "Eh, they'd just reject [a lie-detector test] as inadmissible." As with any such problem, there is often plenty of blame to go around on both sides. Hax makes that point, too, and Michael Hurd ably elaborates: "If you begin to recognize your own part in the problem, the problem will start to go away."

Heh! I'm probably old enough to be this guy's dad, but this graph illustrating "How Not to Sell Something to My Generation" applies equally well to me.

I'm no minimalist, but I found the arrangement of the this tiny apartment to be very clever. I agree with the commenters who said something like this would be ideal for someone who regularly spends part of his time working away from home.

It's a lot of effort for a "Big Mac," but I have got to try this some time. "Your move, clown. Your move." Indeed!