I want to post about what a crappy day yesterday was, but then some nutcase killed a bunch of people at Virginia Tech. That made me realize that my day could have been a lot worse. That said, I am now going to whine about my crappy day.
In the first instance, it has rained here in the Hudson Valley as it has not rained in 124 years. I’m sure we had over 5 inches in 36 hours or so. The drainage from a little less than a square mile runs through my backyard on its way down Hosner Mountain, and my stream beds and pond were not adequate to handle all the water that came through. The streams and pond overflowed with beaucoup erosion. Part of the yard under the east fence washed away so that the dogs can just walk right out if they please. Then again, part of someone else’s yard is now in and next to part of the pond, so I won’t need to buy fill.
We lost quite a few of the perennials in the pondside planting beds, but the fish somehow managed to avoid being washed away. The path over the culvert that carries one of the streams washed away almost entirely. Much of the yard is covered in silt and detritus, and the rest is a swampy mess.
We didn’t lose power, but the sump pump was overwhelmed by the volume of water coming into the basement. By the time I got home and realized something was awry, the water was up to my knees and over the machinery of the furnace (which was no longer working). I set up another pump and started draining the excess water, a process that took several hours. The furnace wouldn’t reset, so we had to call the oil company for maintenance and repairs. 2:00 am and $500 later, the furnace was up and running. I kept the second sump pump on just in case, but the back up pump was flooded and might not work. It is still raining and is expected to rain for a couple more days.
To top off the crappy day, I had jury duty in Poughkeepsie. Jury duty. In Poughkeepsie. It took forever to get there because all but the main roads were flooded out. The Taconic was half flooded when I used it, but I-84 and Route 9 were OK. The road to the Taconic was marked by debris and missing chunks of pavement. My number came up for voir dire in the first batch, but this was interrupted by lunch.
I was not keen to sit on a jury in a dental malpractice case, so I made sure to point out that I have had a lot of dental work and know more than your average schmoe about being a dental patient. I also made it known that I might not apply the law as instructed if I reckoned it was unjust. I was challenged and excused by 3:30 pm (although I might have to go back later in the week). This works better than obvious attempts to get off the jury. If you act as if you are keen to be on the jury, you are more likely to get thrown off. By the way, this was the worst voir dire I had ever seen, and the plaintiff’s attorney seemed to be going through the motions only.
On my way home, I found my way blocked by road closures on several occasions. I was astonished at how big Fishkill Creek was and how much flooding there had been. Once home, I had to deal with the flooding situation and the dogs. I didn’t want to leave them in the yard unsupervised because the pond was too dangerous and because the integrity of the fencing had been compromised, but they had been cooped up for a couple of days and I wanted to take advantage of a window of time with no precipitation to let them get some exercise. You can imagine how filthy the dogs were after a few squirrel chases. I should have hosed them down before I let them in the house.
Then that stupid Labrador Bingo from Woodmont Road shows up and gets Jesse all riled. Every time it rains, it seems that Bingo gets loose and visits. I couldn’t get Jesse to come inside so I could deal with the basement while Bingo was around to be hated. I had to slog into the swamp with a leash to make the devil come in. Then Bingo ran around the front, so the dogs knocked over several potted plats in order to bark at him through the front windows. They also got the chairs by the picture window really dirty (the slipcovers were in the laundry). So Mrs Vache Folle laid into me when she got home. She took Bingo home (she used my car for some reason to transport the filthy critter) while I cleaned up the boys.
Then a herd of deer had the audacity to come inside the fence to graze, and that set the dogs off again.
Thank God for vodka.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Friday, April 13, 2007
Do Recurring Dreams Have to be Nightmares?
Zombie movies freak me out. I sometimes have zombie nightmares, and sometimes a zombie will gratuitously appear in an otherwise zombie free dream. I watched a zombie movie the other day, “Land of the Dead” or some such thing where people lived in a city where zombies were excluded, partly by a river. But then zombies figured out how to wade and got into the city and started noshing on the living. I had a zombie nightmare that night.
I hate zombies. They make no sense at all. How do they digest the flesh of the living while they are decomposing? Do they poop and pee? Why are none of their organs vital except for their brains?
I have another recurring dream theme. I have a house that turns out to have multiple basement floors with lots of luxurious amenities but lots of water damage and plumbing problems. Sometimes, the bottom floor turns out to be a warehouse. In exploring the house, I will be delighted to discover an indoor swimming pool but disappointed because it has a big crack in it and the filter doesn’t work. That kind of thing.
I also find myself in the same dream city which has a confusing transit system, and I need to get to the airport across town. I know the city well since in my dreams it seems that I used to live there in a dense neighborhood where the topography matches the farm I grew up on. I never get to the airport on time.
I sometimes find myself at a weird theme park that is part public aquarium and part amusement park. Another recurring dream has me trying to make my way through a building only to find that there are no exits and that I am hopelessly disoriented. In another, I live in a dormitory where the bathrooms are disgustingly filthy and unusable.
In the worst recurring nightmare, I find myself in a university of some sort, about three quarters of the way through the semester, but for some reason I haven’t attended several of my classes and haven’t done any work in the others. I am going to flunk, and I am desperate to find a way to get out of my situation. I have to beg the faculty for a reprieve, pleading amnesia, but the faculty finds this implausible. I am screwed.
I have never really tried to get to the bottom of why I have the same or similar dreams over and over again. I reckon I am afraid of what they might mean about my innermost self. I don’t have any idea how to interpret dreams. I just wish I would stop having them.
When I was kid and up until my twenties, I had a recurring nightmare in which I found that I could fly by flapping my arms. I fly around gleefully for a while but tire and look to land. But I can’t land because the ground is completely covered with snakes. I have to rest on the branch of a particular dogwood tree that my grandfather had planted by one of the tractor trails. The snakes start climbing the tree, and I wake up. That one stopped a long time ago.
In childhood up until about age 8 or so, I had nightmares about a six foot tall carnivorous hot dog who lived in a cave and who ate humans in revenge for all the wieners they had eaten. I attribute this to my mother’s tactic of using ventriloquism to make my food talk in order to get me to eat it. I was a very picky eater as child, and I found the talking food disturbing instead of enticing.
In my preschool days, I had frequent nightmares about a demon whom I called “The Blasted Thing”. He lived in a tree most of the time or under the bed, and he would try to eat me. As long as I was entirely under the covers, however, I was entirely protected. I would also screw up my face into what I reckoned was a monstrous appearance so that any monsters who came by would mistake me for one of their own and pass me by.
I hate zombies. They make no sense at all. How do they digest the flesh of the living while they are decomposing? Do they poop and pee? Why are none of their organs vital except for their brains?
I have another recurring dream theme. I have a house that turns out to have multiple basement floors with lots of luxurious amenities but lots of water damage and plumbing problems. Sometimes, the bottom floor turns out to be a warehouse. In exploring the house, I will be delighted to discover an indoor swimming pool but disappointed because it has a big crack in it and the filter doesn’t work. That kind of thing.
I also find myself in the same dream city which has a confusing transit system, and I need to get to the airport across town. I know the city well since in my dreams it seems that I used to live there in a dense neighborhood where the topography matches the farm I grew up on. I never get to the airport on time.
I sometimes find myself at a weird theme park that is part public aquarium and part amusement park. Another recurring dream has me trying to make my way through a building only to find that there are no exits and that I am hopelessly disoriented. In another, I live in a dormitory where the bathrooms are disgustingly filthy and unusable.
In the worst recurring nightmare, I find myself in a university of some sort, about three quarters of the way through the semester, but for some reason I haven’t attended several of my classes and haven’t done any work in the others. I am going to flunk, and I am desperate to find a way to get out of my situation. I have to beg the faculty for a reprieve, pleading amnesia, but the faculty finds this implausible. I am screwed.
I have never really tried to get to the bottom of why I have the same or similar dreams over and over again. I reckon I am afraid of what they might mean about my innermost self. I don’t have any idea how to interpret dreams. I just wish I would stop having them.
When I was kid and up until my twenties, I had a recurring nightmare in which I found that I could fly by flapping my arms. I fly around gleefully for a while but tire and look to land. But I can’t land because the ground is completely covered with snakes. I have to rest on the branch of a particular dogwood tree that my grandfather had planted by one of the tractor trails. The snakes start climbing the tree, and I wake up. That one stopped a long time ago.
In childhood up until about age 8 or so, I had nightmares about a six foot tall carnivorous hot dog who lived in a cave and who ate humans in revenge for all the wieners they had eaten. I attribute this to my mother’s tactic of using ventriloquism to make my food talk in order to get me to eat it. I was a very picky eater as child, and I found the talking food disturbing instead of enticing.
In my preschool days, I had frequent nightmares about a demon whom I called “The Blasted Thing”. He lived in a tree most of the time or under the bed, and he would try to eat me. As long as I was entirely under the covers, however, I was entirely protected. I would also screw up my face into what I reckoned was a monstrous appearance so that any monsters who came by would mistake me for one of their own and pass me by.
I'm Against Silencing People Even When They Are My Enemies
The Rude Pundit sums up how I feel about silencing others, only with way more cussing: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2007/04/firing-don-imus-stinks-no-no-for-rude.html. Somehow, RP knows just how to use the right cuss word at the right moment to make his point more effectively.
In my opinion, it is a virtue to tolerate speech, even hateful or uncivil speech. I do not have to listen to it or agree with it, but I do not want to go down the road of silencing people. That does no good at all.
In this whole Imus affair, there is so much hypocrisy going around that you need hip boots to wade through it. O&A, my favorite shock jocks, are rightly nervous about their own careers because of the chilling effect of Sharpton’s protests. They featured that idiot Sean Hannity on the program this morning who spoke out against silencing people. He is afraid that right wing pundits will be targeted next. Didn’t right wing pundits work tirelessly to get Ward Churchill fired from his job because of some of his statements? Wasn’t it nutjob Catholic League Bill what’s his name that got some bloggers run off John Edwards’ campaign and who threatened O&A? Now that the worm is on the other foot and the shoe has turned, wingnuts are all about “freedom of speech”.
The Imus affair isn’t about “freedom of speech”. Constitutional rights pertain only to government action (except in the case of the 13th Amendment), and a private individual cannot abridge another individuals right to free speech. The government didn’t silence Imus. It was the work of mindless corporations exercising their prerogatives in the market. The Imus affair is about an ethos that fights disagreement by silencing the disagreeable speaker instead of fighting speech with speech. It takes a lot of work to change an ethos. The wingnuts, the snarky knee jerk progressives, and everyone else has to eschew efforts to silence others, not just when it is happening to their side.
Let’s see if Sean Hannity doesn’t target some poor schmendrick for his speech in the next year.
In my opinion, it is a virtue to tolerate speech, even hateful or uncivil speech. I do not have to listen to it or agree with it, but I do not want to go down the road of silencing people. That does no good at all.
In this whole Imus affair, there is so much hypocrisy going around that you need hip boots to wade through it. O&A, my favorite shock jocks, are rightly nervous about their own careers because of the chilling effect of Sharpton’s protests. They featured that idiot Sean Hannity on the program this morning who spoke out against silencing people. He is afraid that right wing pundits will be targeted next. Didn’t right wing pundits work tirelessly to get Ward Churchill fired from his job because of some of his statements? Wasn’t it nutjob Catholic League Bill what’s his name that got some bloggers run off John Edwards’ campaign and who threatened O&A? Now that the worm is on the other foot and the shoe has turned, wingnuts are all about “freedom of speech”.
The Imus affair isn’t about “freedom of speech”. Constitutional rights pertain only to government action (except in the case of the 13th Amendment), and a private individual cannot abridge another individuals right to free speech. The government didn’t silence Imus. It was the work of mindless corporations exercising their prerogatives in the market. The Imus affair is about an ethos that fights disagreement by silencing the disagreeable speaker instead of fighting speech with speech. It takes a lot of work to change an ethos. The wingnuts, the snarky knee jerk progressives, and everyone else has to eschew efforts to silence others, not just when it is happening to their side.
Let’s see if Sean Hannity doesn’t target some poor schmendrick for his speech in the next year.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
What Jason Whitlock Wrote
Jason Whitlock’s column on the Imus affair was read on the O&A show this morning: http://www.kansascity.com/182/story/66339.html It’s worth a read.
The meat:
“I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?
When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset. Until then, he is what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you’re not looking to be made a victim.
No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There’s no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.”
The meat:
“I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?
When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset. Until then, he is what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you’re not looking to be made a victim.
No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There’s no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.”
Black Hole at the Center of the Blogosphere
I came across a cool map of the blogosphere in Discover Magazine, and I found on the internets: http://datamining.typepad.com/gallery/blog-map-gallery.html
Take a look at the bottom image on the page. The big white circle represents DailyKos. See the dark area at the core. That is the massive black hole at the center of the blogosphere, not unlike our own Milky Way. It is otherwise known as the Gorgon Michelle Malkin, and it represents wingnuttery so dense that no reason ever escapes from it.
This blog is a mere Kuyper object in orbit around the left libertarian system.
Take a look at the bottom image on the page. The big white circle represents DailyKos. See the dark area at the core. That is the massive black hole at the center of the blogosphere, not unlike our own Milky Way. It is otherwise known as the Gorgon Michelle Malkin, and it represents wingnuttery so dense that no reason ever escapes from it.
This blog is a mere Kuyper object in orbit around the left libertarian system.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Some Stuff About Kids
I never had kids. Kids are a little creepy to me. Their heads are way out of proportion to their bodies, and they run around with sticky little fingers touching the walls. Their ingratitude is galling. And they seem to crap themselves for a lot longer than they used to.
What’s up with the delayed toilet training? I have known quite a few parents who did not get around to toilet training until forced to by a school rule barring admission to kids who still crap themselves. They can learn to go to the bathroom a lot earlier, as young as a year old even, if parents will bother to teach them. Why wouldn’t you invest a little time and effort early on to avoid years of diaper changes?
I made a few social blunders before I realized that early toilet training had gone out of fashion. I mistakenly assumed that the three or four year olds walking around with pantloads were simpletons, and I expressed my sympathy to the parents. Parents don’t like it when you think their kids are “special”.
Teaching kids to do stuff does smack of effort, I’ll grant you that, but it pays off with less effort in the long run. Teach the kid to wipe or wipe the kid for years. Teach the kid to dress or dress the kid for years. Teach the kid to bring you beer or get your own beer for years.
Oddly, I did my master’s thesis on birth spacing, infant mortality and breastfeeding. I reckon breastfeeding is the way to go, if you can swing it. You could breastfeed until your kid is four or five if you wanted to, but most women seem to get tired of it when the kid starts growing teeth. And it might be weird to breastfeed a kid who could comment on the flavor in complete sentences.
If breast milk is so good for us, why don’t we drink it instead of cows’ milk? You could have teams of professional lactators whose milk you could sell in supermarkets. I bet chocolate human milk would be good and good for you.
I was a bottle baby myself. I was born back when women were anesthetized, and I had to be yanked out into the world with forceps. My father was not in the room. For some reason that eludes me, my genitals were mutilated by removal of the foreskin. I confronted my mom about this a couple of years ago. “Why did you have my genitals mutilated, Mom?” “What are you talking about?” “You had me circumcised. Why?” “It was part of the procedure. We weren’t told we had a choice.” “Thanks a lot for the decreased sensation.”
What’s up with the delayed toilet training? I have known quite a few parents who did not get around to toilet training until forced to by a school rule barring admission to kids who still crap themselves. They can learn to go to the bathroom a lot earlier, as young as a year old even, if parents will bother to teach them. Why wouldn’t you invest a little time and effort early on to avoid years of diaper changes?
I made a few social blunders before I realized that early toilet training had gone out of fashion. I mistakenly assumed that the three or four year olds walking around with pantloads were simpletons, and I expressed my sympathy to the parents. Parents don’t like it when you think their kids are “special”.
Teaching kids to do stuff does smack of effort, I’ll grant you that, but it pays off with less effort in the long run. Teach the kid to wipe or wipe the kid for years. Teach the kid to dress or dress the kid for years. Teach the kid to bring you beer or get your own beer for years.
Oddly, I did my master’s thesis on birth spacing, infant mortality and breastfeeding. I reckon breastfeeding is the way to go, if you can swing it. You could breastfeed until your kid is four or five if you wanted to, but most women seem to get tired of it when the kid starts growing teeth. And it might be weird to breastfeed a kid who could comment on the flavor in complete sentences.
If breast milk is so good for us, why don’t we drink it instead of cows’ milk? You could have teams of professional lactators whose milk you could sell in supermarkets. I bet chocolate human milk would be good and good for you.
I was a bottle baby myself. I was born back when women were anesthetized, and I had to be yanked out into the world with forceps. My father was not in the room. For some reason that eludes me, my genitals were mutilated by removal of the foreskin. I confronted my mom about this a couple of years ago. “Why did you have my genitals mutilated, Mom?” “What are you talking about?” “You had me circumcised. Why?” “It was part of the procedure. We weren’t told we had a choice.” “Thanks a lot for the decreased sensation.”
Taking Offense for Fun and Profit
I never found Don Imus entertaining. On the contrary, I find him annoying. It was mean spirited and stupid to disparage the Rutgers women’s basketball players the way he did. I don’t think he should be executed, though, or even imprisoned. I don’t have an opinion on whether he should be fired from his radio gig. I wouldn’t go on his show if invited (and why would I be, what with being a nonentity and all) because he’s liable to make me look like an ass just like everybody else who appears on his show.
I don’t really miss being able to insult black people as freely as I once could back in the day. I don’t recall doing it all that much anyway except for enjoying the occasional racially themed joke. It is a social fact that white people are forbidden to disparage black people in certain ways, and it is necessary to keep this in mind when speaking in public. This is a lot easier the less racist you are. Is it fair? Fair has nothing to do with it. That’s just the way it is. We still have most of the privileges that go with being white, so the loss of the ability to drop N-bombs whenever we feel like it is not such a big deal really.
One thing I think is unfair is that “rednecks” and “crackers” come under disparagement all the time, and there are no consequences to this. Sure, we’re white and all, but we’re not the white people in charge. Our backpack of white privilege isn’t as fully loaded as your elite white folks’ designer backpacks with matching water bottle and bandana. What we need are some self appointed leaders to raise hell whenever anyone defames us, a redneck Al Sharpton if you will.
How about we form a Celtic-American (that’s what we call ourselves now in homage to our Scots-Irish forebears) Anti-defamation League that takes offense for all of us whenever anyone slips up. The best part would be that we could start taking offense at language that nobody would anticipate might be offensive. How dare you use the word “feud”. Let’s make people start using euphemisms such as “people of altitude” instead of hillbilly. We would get the show “Cops” off the air because it is offensive to us of the sun touched nape. You won’t be allowed to tell redneck jokes or use the word redneck unless you are one.
How do you get a gig as a professional offense taker? How did that Catholic League loon become the spokesman for Catholics and get invited on TV all the time?
I don’t really miss being able to insult black people as freely as I once could back in the day. I don’t recall doing it all that much anyway except for enjoying the occasional racially themed joke. It is a social fact that white people are forbidden to disparage black people in certain ways, and it is necessary to keep this in mind when speaking in public. This is a lot easier the less racist you are. Is it fair? Fair has nothing to do with it. That’s just the way it is. We still have most of the privileges that go with being white, so the loss of the ability to drop N-bombs whenever we feel like it is not such a big deal really.
One thing I think is unfair is that “rednecks” and “crackers” come under disparagement all the time, and there are no consequences to this. Sure, we’re white and all, but we’re not the white people in charge. Our backpack of white privilege isn’t as fully loaded as your elite white folks’ designer backpacks with matching water bottle and bandana. What we need are some self appointed leaders to raise hell whenever anyone defames us, a redneck Al Sharpton if you will.
How about we form a Celtic-American (that’s what we call ourselves now in homage to our Scots-Irish forebears) Anti-defamation League that takes offense for all of us whenever anyone slips up. The best part would be that we could start taking offense at language that nobody would anticipate might be offensive. How dare you use the word “feud”. Let’s make people start using euphemisms such as “people of altitude” instead of hillbilly. We would get the show “Cops” off the air because it is offensive to us of the sun touched nape. You won’t be allowed to tell redneck jokes or use the word redneck unless you are one.
How do you get a gig as a professional offense taker? How did that Catholic League loon become the spokesman for Catholics and get invited on TV all the time?
Monday, April 09, 2007
Government Contracting Ain't Privatization
I watched Bill Maher’s show on HBO where he interviewed Ron Paul. He hit Paul right out of the box with some of his more controversial sounding views such as his belief that the Civil War might have been avoided. Paul didn’t waffle on anything, and he didn’t come off as a nut or anything, but I was disappointed in Maher’s squandering an opportunity to air some views that are not usually covered in the mainstream media.
I was peeved by Maher’s and his panelists’ take on “privatization”. They evidently consider it “privatization” when a company is given a contract to perform a service for government. Is it any surprise that outsourcing government activity to Halliburton in Iraq, to contractors at Walter Reed, or to cronies of Bush in New Orleans results in disaster? Of course not. It’s still a government activity driven by the commands of central planners and as bureaucratically mismanaged as ever. That’s not “privatization”, that’s just plain old government contracting.
For me, to “privatize” something is for the government to stop doing it altogether or to give up its monopoly on doing it. Paul remarked that veterans would get better care if they were given vouchers to use at any medical facility of their choice instead of having to get treatment at government facilities. That’s closer to “privatization” than turning management of a VA Hospital over to a private company to run for the government. The key distinction for me is that the consumer or client gets to decide how to spend the money, and the vendors have to be responsive to them in order to succeed.
To “privatize” schools means for the government to stop operating schools and to allow schooling to be delivered in the marketplace. Setting up a charter school is not “privatization”. Contracting out school administration is not “privatization”. In my preferred scheme, the government would not even involve itself in schooling, but it could still work if the government wanted to give some families money to spend on education as they saw fit.
I was peeved by Maher’s and his panelists’ take on “privatization”. They evidently consider it “privatization” when a company is given a contract to perform a service for government. Is it any surprise that outsourcing government activity to Halliburton in Iraq, to contractors at Walter Reed, or to cronies of Bush in New Orleans results in disaster? Of course not. It’s still a government activity driven by the commands of central planners and as bureaucratically mismanaged as ever. That’s not “privatization”, that’s just plain old government contracting.
For me, to “privatize” something is for the government to stop doing it altogether or to give up its monopoly on doing it. Paul remarked that veterans would get better care if they were given vouchers to use at any medical facility of their choice instead of having to get treatment at government facilities. That’s closer to “privatization” than turning management of a VA Hospital over to a private company to run for the government. The key distinction for me is that the consumer or client gets to decide how to spend the money, and the vendors have to be responsive to them in order to succeed.
To “privatize” schools means for the government to stop operating schools and to allow schooling to be delivered in the marketplace. Setting up a charter school is not “privatization”. Contracting out school administration is not “privatization”. In my preferred scheme, the government would not even involve itself in schooling, but it could still work if the government wanted to give some families money to spend on education as they saw fit.
Friday, April 06, 2007
Revocation of Independence
I lifted this from tbogg: http://tbogg.blogspot.com/2007/04/notice-of-revocation-in-light-of.html
To the citizens of the United States of America, in the light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new prime minister (The Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed. To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:
1. You should look up revocation in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up aluminium. Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'favour' and 'neighbour', skipping the letter 'U' is nothing more than laziness on your part. Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters. You will end your love affair with the letter 'Z' (pronounced 'zed' not 'zee') and the suffix ize will be replaced by the suffix ise. You will learn that the suffix 'burgh' is pronounced 'burra' e.g. Edinburgh. You are welcome to respell Pittsburgh as 'Pittsberg' if you can't cope with correct pronunciation.Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up vocabulary. Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up interspersed. There will be no more 'bleeps' in the Jerry Springer show. If you're not old enough to cope with bad language then you shouldn't have chat shows. When you learn to develop your vocabulary then you won't have to use bad language as often.
2. There is no such thing as "US English". We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of -ize.3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard. English accents are not limited to cockney,upper-class twit or Mancunian (Daphne in Frasier). You will also have to learn how to understand regional accents - Scottish dramas such as Taggart will no longer be broadcast with subtitles. While we're talking about regions, you must learn that there is no such place as Devonshire in England. The name of the county is Devon. If you persist in calling it Devonshire, all American States will become shires e.g. Texasshire, Floridashire, Louisianashire.
4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys. Hollywood will be required to cast English actors to play English characters. British sit-coms such as Men Behaving Badly or Red Dwarf will not be re-cast and watered down for a wishy-washy American audience who can't cope with the humour of occasional political incorrectness.
5. You should relearn your original national anthem, God Save The Queen but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.
6. You should stop playing American football. There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American football is not a very good game. The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays American football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football. Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US Rugby sevens side by 2005. You should stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the 'World Series' for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.15% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders,your error is understandable. Instead of baseball, you will be allowed to play a girls' game called rounders, which is baseball without fancy team strip, oversized gloves, collector cards or hotdogs.
7. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry guns. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous in public than a vegetable peeler. Because we don't believe you are sensible enough to handle potentially dangerous items, you will require a permit if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.
8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 2nd will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called Indecisive Day.
9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean. All road intersections will be replaced with roundabouts. You will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time,you will go metric with immediate effect and conversion tables. Roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.
10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips. Fries aren't even French, they are Belgian though 97.85% of you (including the guy who discovered fries while in Europe) are not aware of a country called Belgium. Those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut and fried in animal fat. The traditional accompaniment to chips is beer which should be served warm and flat. Waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.
11. As a sign of penance 5 grams of sea salt per cup will be added to all tea made within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, this quantity to be doubled for tea made within the city of Boston itself.
12. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all, it is lager. From November 1st only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer,and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. The substances formerly known as American Beer will henceforth be referred to as Near-Frozen Knat's Urine,with the exception of the product of the American Budweiser company whose product will be referred to as Weak Near-Frozen Knat's Urine. This will allow true Budweiser (as manufactured for the last 1000 years in Pilsen,Czech Republic) to be sold without risk of confusion.
13. From November 10th the UK will harmonise petrol (or Gasoline, as you will be permitted to keep calling it until April 1st 2005) prices with the former USA. The UK will harmonise its prices to those of the former USA and the Former USA will, in return, adopt UK petrol prices (roughly $6/US gallon- get used to it).
14. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.
15. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy.
16. Tax collectors from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all revenues due (backdated to 1776).
Thank you for your co-operation and have a great day.
John Cleese
To the citizens of the United States of America, in the light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new prime minister (The Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed. To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:
1. You should look up revocation in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up aluminium. Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'favour' and 'neighbour', skipping the letter 'U' is nothing more than laziness on your part. Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters. You will end your love affair with the letter 'Z' (pronounced 'zed' not 'zee') and the suffix ize will be replaced by the suffix ise. You will learn that the suffix 'burgh' is pronounced 'burra' e.g. Edinburgh. You are welcome to respell Pittsburgh as 'Pittsberg' if you can't cope with correct pronunciation.Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up vocabulary. Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up interspersed. There will be no more 'bleeps' in the Jerry Springer show. If you're not old enough to cope with bad language then you shouldn't have chat shows. When you learn to develop your vocabulary then you won't have to use bad language as often.
2. There is no such thing as "US English". We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of -ize.3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard. English accents are not limited to cockney,upper-class twit or Mancunian (Daphne in Frasier). You will also have to learn how to understand regional accents - Scottish dramas such as Taggart will no longer be broadcast with subtitles. While we're talking about regions, you must learn that there is no such place as Devonshire in England. The name of the county is Devon. If you persist in calling it Devonshire, all American States will become shires e.g. Texasshire, Floridashire, Louisianashire.
4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys. Hollywood will be required to cast English actors to play English characters. British sit-coms such as Men Behaving Badly or Red Dwarf will not be re-cast and watered down for a wishy-washy American audience who can't cope with the humour of occasional political incorrectness.
5. You should relearn your original national anthem, God Save The Queen but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.
6. You should stop playing American football. There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American football is not a very good game. The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays American football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football. Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US Rugby sevens side by 2005. You should stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the 'World Series' for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.15% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders,your error is understandable. Instead of baseball, you will be allowed to play a girls' game called rounders, which is baseball without fancy team strip, oversized gloves, collector cards or hotdogs.
7. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry guns. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous in public than a vegetable peeler. Because we don't believe you are sensible enough to handle potentially dangerous items, you will require a permit if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.
8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 2nd will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called Indecisive Day.
9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean. All road intersections will be replaced with roundabouts. You will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time,you will go metric with immediate effect and conversion tables. Roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.
10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips. Fries aren't even French, they are Belgian though 97.85% of you (including the guy who discovered fries while in Europe) are not aware of a country called Belgium. Those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut and fried in animal fat. The traditional accompaniment to chips is beer which should be served warm and flat. Waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.
11. As a sign of penance 5 grams of sea salt per cup will be added to all tea made within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, this quantity to be doubled for tea made within the city of Boston itself.
12. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all, it is lager. From November 1st only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer,and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. The substances formerly known as American Beer will henceforth be referred to as Near-Frozen Knat's Urine,with the exception of the product of the American Budweiser company whose product will be referred to as Weak Near-Frozen Knat's Urine. This will allow true Budweiser (as manufactured for the last 1000 years in Pilsen,Czech Republic) to be sold without risk of confusion.
13. From November 10th the UK will harmonise petrol (or Gasoline, as you will be permitted to keep calling it until April 1st 2005) prices with the former USA. The UK will harmonise its prices to those of the former USA and the Former USA will, in return, adopt UK petrol prices (roughly $6/US gallon- get used to it).
14. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.
15. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy.
16. Tax collectors from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all revenues due (backdated to 1776).
Thank you for your co-operation and have a great day.
John Cleese
Reductio ad Absurdam
Reason’s Hit & Run has two posts that bring reduction ad absurdum to mind. In one, it is reported that a Missouri legislator wants to make purchasers of baking soda register and go the counter to buy it because it is used in making crack cocaine: http://www.reason.com/blog/show/119518.html . Ridiculous? As H&R points out, this is no more ridiculous than laws controlling the purchase of allergy medicine because it is used to make meth. My brother tells me that wooden matches are restricted in Georgia because their heads can be used in meth making.
An apple or the cardboard tube in toilet paper can be transformed into serviceable hash pipes. Wouldn’t it make sense to restrict these products the same way? If someone can conceivably misuse an object, then everyone should be inconvenienced. You know what else is used in meth making? Containers of all sorts. Yet you can just go right into Wal-Mart and buy all you want with nobody questioning you.
The other post takes the idea of carbon offsets and extends the reasoning behind them to other forms of anti-social douchebaggery: http://www.reason.com/blog/show/119538.html . If you are a jerk, you can buy offsets from folks who will be extra nice. That way, you needn’t feel bad about your rudeness because you are really being nice when you take into account the offsets you bought.
This idea can be extended to other areas as well. Obesity offsets might work. I’d give money to people to eat less and be scary thin so as to balance out my fatness. If enough people participate, the epidemic of obesity will be solved as the average weight of Americans falls. Of course, that problem may be solved by increased use of ethanol. What you do, see, is encourage more corn to be used to make ethanol and less for animal food and human consumption. That way, food costs go up, and fat people won’t be able to afford to eat so much, especially poor fat people. Obesity epidemic and energy dependence solved in one brilliant stroke.
Rogier van Bakel reports on Alabama’s prohibition of sales of decent beer: http://www.bakelblog.com/nobodys_business/2007/04/ban_potent_beer.html
Alabamans can’t buy microbrews because they have a slightly higher alcohol content than other beers and children might drink them and get drunk faster. As Rogier points out, kids aren’t supposed to be buying any beer and they have a wide range of boozes to choose from if they aim to get drunk. What’s so special about good beer when there are so many other things that Alabaman kids might misuse? The state has a lot of power to regulate alcohol. Other articles in interstate commerce, not so much.
An apple or the cardboard tube in toilet paper can be transformed into serviceable hash pipes. Wouldn’t it make sense to restrict these products the same way? If someone can conceivably misuse an object, then everyone should be inconvenienced. You know what else is used in meth making? Containers of all sorts. Yet you can just go right into Wal-Mart and buy all you want with nobody questioning you.
The other post takes the idea of carbon offsets and extends the reasoning behind them to other forms of anti-social douchebaggery: http://www.reason.com/blog/show/119538.html . If you are a jerk, you can buy offsets from folks who will be extra nice. That way, you needn’t feel bad about your rudeness because you are really being nice when you take into account the offsets you bought.
This idea can be extended to other areas as well. Obesity offsets might work. I’d give money to people to eat less and be scary thin so as to balance out my fatness. If enough people participate, the epidemic of obesity will be solved as the average weight of Americans falls. Of course, that problem may be solved by increased use of ethanol. What you do, see, is encourage more corn to be used to make ethanol and less for animal food and human consumption. That way, food costs go up, and fat people won’t be able to afford to eat so much, especially poor fat people. Obesity epidemic and energy dependence solved in one brilliant stroke.
Rogier van Bakel reports on Alabama’s prohibition of sales of decent beer: http://www.bakelblog.com/nobodys_business/2007/04/ban_potent_beer.html
Alabamans can’t buy microbrews because they have a slightly higher alcohol content than other beers and children might drink them and get drunk faster. As Rogier points out, kids aren’t supposed to be buying any beer and they have a wide range of boozes to choose from if they aim to get drunk. What’s so special about good beer when there are so many other things that Alabaman kids might misuse? The state has a lot of power to regulate alcohol. Other articles in interstate commerce, not so much.
Cosmology Rocks!
I watch a lot of science shows on cable, and I especially like cosmology and particle physics. Both of them are spooky to me. Of course, I’m not smart enough to understand a lot of what the scientists are talking about, but I am nonetheless fascinated. I once read a classified ad where a hair salon was looking to hire a cosmologist. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why they’d want one of those on staff, maybe to lecture the ladies while they were getting their hair done. My wife reckoned that they were really in the market for a cosmetologist, but I like to think that there’s a whole world of job opportunities for cosmologists in the beauty industry.
Cosmology is awe inspiring. I find that I get a tingly sensation and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up when I think about the subject. It is close to some spiritual experiences I have had, and I find that cosmology reaffirms my religious faith. It also informs my faith in that it helps me to see God as so much greater than I can even imagine, as the Creator of a 100,000,000,000 galaxies. God is more awesome even than our capacity for awe. The vastness of the universe helps me remember that we talk about God in metaphors that make sense to humans and that relate to the human scale but which do not really capture God in the essentials at all. We mustn’t get too attached to our metaphors and should allow for creativity in coming up with new ways to talk about God.
Knowing that the universe is so immense and so old even affects the way I pray. I don’t even use language most of the time. God knows how I feel and what I’m thinking better than I do. I know God is greater than anything I can even imagine, so I am reluctant to articulate the inadequate and faint praise that I am capable of generating with human speech.
There is something comforting in knowing that I am as insignificant as I am. It makes the grace of God all the more wonderful and mysterious.
Did you know that in several billion years Andromeda and the Milky Way are going to collide? Man, that is going to be spectacular and destructive. With that to worry about, my little day to day problems pale in significance. Global warming troubling you? That’s nothing compared to the warming we’ll see when the sun blows up. I hope somebody videos these events so we can watch them after the Resurrection. At least take some cell phone pictures or something. Better yet, maybe we’ll have the capacity to drop into time and see them for ourselves. Maybe I’m watching myself right now and wondering what I was thinking when I made my life choicers?
Cosmology is awe inspiring. I find that I get a tingly sensation and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up when I think about the subject. It is close to some spiritual experiences I have had, and I find that cosmology reaffirms my religious faith. It also informs my faith in that it helps me to see God as so much greater than I can even imagine, as the Creator of a 100,000,000,000 galaxies. God is more awesome even than our capacity for awe. The vastness of the universe helps me remember that we talk about God in metaphors that make sense to humans and that relate to the human scale but which do not really capture God in the essentials at all. We mustn’t get too attached to our metaphors and should allow for creativity in coming up with new ways to talk about God.
Knowing that the universe is so immense and so old even affects the way I pray. I don’t even use language most of the time. God knows how I feel and what I’m thinking better than I do. I know God is greater than anything I can even imagine, so I am reluctant to articulate the inadequate and faint praise that I am capable of generating with human speech.
There is something comforting in knowing that I am as insignificant as I am. It makes the grace of God all the more wonderful and mysterious.
Did you know that in several billion years Andromeda and the Milky Way are going to collide? Man, that is going to be spectacular and destructive. With that to worry about, my little day to day problems pale in significance. Global warming troubling you? That’s nothing compared to the warming we’ll see when the sun blows up. I hope somebody videos these events so we can watch them after the Resurrection. At least take some cell phone pictures or something. Better yet, maybe we’ll have the capacity to drop into time and see them for ourselves. Maybe I’m watching myself right now and wondering what I was thinking when I made my life choicers?
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Middling Politicians in the Middle
JL Wilson discusses the “center”: http://partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2154
He argues that in our current political climate a “centrist” ticket for president would either be a McCain/Lieberman type with more war and more social programs or a Paul/Kucinich kind of ticket with less war and fewer social programs. The “center” could be either fascist or libertarian.
“Center” and “centrist”, and similar terms like “moderate” make almost no sense in America. The two major parties agree on almost everything except the details and who gets the spoils. They are like golden retrievers and Labrador retrievers, different only in superficial ways. They all agree on the basic premise that the government has no inherent limits, although they disagree on what to do with their claimed unlimited authority. What would it mean to be in the “center” of the goldens and the labs? You’d be a mutt, that’s all. You’d still be stupid and barely trainable, and you would fetch things and jump in ponds for hours just like the pure breds. In time, you might become a recognized breed, a labragolden if you will. OK, I’ve taken the metaphor too far. The point is that a centrist is not ideologically distinguishable from a non-centrist in any meaningful way because the ideological spectrum is already extremely narrow.
Perhaps a centrist is someone who wants to set aside partisanship and have both parties work together to rob the people more efficiently. What a waste to fight each other when the two syndicates can divide the country up amicably. Everybody wins!
I often hear folks talk about the extremists in the major parties. You have your nannies on the right and your nannies on the left both of which groups aim to subject us to an increasingly powerful state and who differ mainly in the specific conduct they aim to regulate. They agree 100% on the principle that the state can and ought to regulate the minutest details of our lives. They just can’t agree on which details to regulate first.
He argues that in our current political climate a “centrist” ticket for president would either be a McCain/Lieberman type with more war and more social programs or a Paul/Kucinich kind of ticket with less war and fewer social programs. The “center” could be either fascist or libertarian.
“Center” and “centrist”, and similar terms like “moderate” make almost no sense in America. The two major parties agree on almost everything except the details and who gets the spoils. They are like golden retrievers and Labrador retrievers, different only in superficial ways. They all agree on the basic premise that the government has no inherent limits, although they disagree on what to do with their claimed unlimited authority. What would it mean to be in the “center” of the goldens and the labs? You’d be a mutt, that’s all. You’d still be stupid and barely trainable, and you would fetch things and jump in ponds for hours just like the pure breds. In time, you might become a recognized breed, a labragolden if you will. OK, I’ve taken the metaphor too far. The point is that a centrist is not ideologically distinguishable from a non-centrist in any meaningful way because the ideological spectrum is already extremely narrow.
Perhaps a centrist is someone who wants to set aside partisanship and have both parties work together to rob the people more efficiently. What a waste to fight each other when the two syndicates can divide the country up amicably. Everybody wins!
I often hear folks talk about the extremists in the major parties. You have your nannies on the right and your nannies on the left both of which groups aim to subject us to an increasingly powerful state and who differ mainly in the specific conduct they aim to regulate. They agree 100% on the principle that the state can and ought to regulate the minutest details of our lives. They just can’t agree on which details to regulate first.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
My Take on Some Random Stuff
I want to know how you can have a list of the 50 most powerful American gays and neither Karl Rove or Condi Rice is on it: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2007/04/out-magazine-ranks-50-most-powerful.html. I realize the administration is on the downswing, but surely they are more influential than Jodie Foster at #43.
Who is behind the Draft Dick Cheney movement? http://www.reason.com/blog/show/119475.html I want to know because that person is either a prankster or a nutcase. It’s Larry Kudlow, you say? Nutcase it is. Seriously, who is less popular than Dick Cheney or more unelectable? Even the BTK murderer has better poll numbers, and he’s a lot more likeable to boot. Cheney/Guiliani in 2008! I want a bumper sticker now.
The political money numbers are in. These are in millions of dollars.
Republicans
Romney $23 Giuliani $15 McCain $12.5 Huckabee $0.5 TOTAL $51
Democrats
Clinton $26 Obama $25 Edwards $14 Richardson $6 Dodd $4 Biden $3 TOTAL: $78
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/4/4/12533/44995
If these figures are an indicator, I would predict a Romney/Giuliani GOP ticket. It would be unfortunate for America if those guys win. The Democrats are looking to have a competitive primary season, and I wouldn’t venture to guess how that would turn out. I’m not a Clinton fan (except that she makes the wingnuts extra crazy, and I like that). I found out that I’m an Obamamaniac when I took the presidential candidate selector JL Wilson linked to: http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2007/04/presidential-candidate-selector.html
Ron Paul was a close second, and I had expected that I would come out a Paul supporter. I’m a big fan of Ron Paul, and I wish him the best. He’ll need to pull out a major grassroots coup to get nominated. The big money won’t like him.
Who is behind the Draft Dick Cheney movement? http://www.reason.com/blog/show/119475.html I want to know because that person is either a prankster or a nutcase. It’s Larry Kudlow, you say? Nutcase it is. Seriously, who is less popular than Dick Cheney or more unelectable? Even the BTK murderer has better poll numbers, and he’s a lot more likeable to boot. Cheney/Guiliani in 2008! I want a bumper sticker now.
The political money numbers are in. These are in millions of dollars.
Republicans
Romney $23 Giuliani $15 McCain $12.5 Huckabee $0.5 TOTAL $51
Democrats
Clinton $26 Obama $25 Edwards $14 Richardson $6 Dodd $4 Biden $3 TOTAL: $78
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/4/4/12533/44995
If these figures are an indicator, I would predict a Romney/Giuliani GOP ticket. It would be unfortunate for America if those guys win. The Democrats are looking to have a competitive primary season, and I wouldn’t venture to guess how that would turn out. I’m not a Clinton fan (except that she makes the wingnuts extra crazy, and I like that). I found out that I’m an Obamamaniac when I took the presidential candidate selector JL Wilson linked to: http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2007/04/presidential-candidate-selector.html
Ron Paul was a close second, and I had expected that I would come out a Paul supporter. I’m a big fan of Ron Paul, and I wish him the best. He’ll need to pull out a major grassroots coup to get nominated. The big money won’t like him.
John Bolton and Management Styles
John Bolton was on the repeat of The Daily Show yesterevening. On the one hand, he argued that the permanent bureaucracy should be required to implement the president’s policies without question and to adopt his positions. On the other hand, his closest advisors should be able to communicate with him in confidence. Why would they need to keep their advice secret if it consists merely of telling the president what he wants to hear at all times. Surrounding yourself with a posse of yes men was the best way to assure good government per Bolton.
When I have been in a leadership position, I have welcomed dissenting points of view. If you don’t, your staff will watch you screw up without lifting a finger to help you. At times, it was annoying, but I was better off for listening to a wide range of views. Now that I am a staffer, I am helpful to the managers who welcome my advice even when it goes against their views, but I will let a manager who is an arrogant prick implode as long as I’m sure none of the debris will get on me. I pick my battles. On the crap that doesn’t matter (about 90% of what a holding company does), I hold my peace and cheerfully implement even the most idiotic policies and procedures. On the “important” stuff, I voice my concerns. I like to think that this helps me in the credibility department.
How do guys who hate dissent get ahead so often? They work for the same kind of douchebags and get promoted based on their perceived loyalty and cooperativeness. If they find themselves under a more open minded manager, they may get stuck. They are often found in rigid bureaucracies where they are most at home and in administrative departments and holding companies of businesses where they are evaluated based on activity rather than results. If the function that they oversee is important, their deficiencies as managers will become manifest quickly. The Bush regime is a spectacular example of how bad management leads to failure.
The intolerant manager finds himself cut off from intelligence and information that might be helpful. His decision-making becomes progressively divorced from reality. He comes to view failures as manifestations of disloyalty or incompetence of subordinates in carrying out his agenda when his own program is itself to blame.
I wouldn’t let John Bolton manage a taco stand.
When I have been in a leadership position, I have welcomed dissenting points of view. If you don’t, your staff will watch you screw up without lifting a finger to help you. At times, it was annoying, but I was better off for listening to a wide range of views. Now that I am a staffer, I am helpful to the managers who welcome my advice even when it goes against their views, but I will let a manager who is an arrogant prick implode as long as I’m sure none of the debris will get on me. I pick my battles. On the crap that doesn’t matter (about 90% of what a holding company does), I hold my peace and cheerfully implement even the most idiotic policies and procedures. On the “important” stuff, I voice my concerns. I like to think that this helps me in the credibility department.
How do guys who hate dissent get ahead so often? They work for the same kind of douchebags and get promoted based on their perceived loyalty and cooperativeness. If they find themselves under a more open minded manager, they may get stuck. They are often found in rigid bureaucracies where they are most at home and in administrative departments and holding companies of businesses where they are evaluated based on activity rather than results. If the function that they oversee is important, their deficiencies as managers will become manifest quickly. The Bush regime is a spectacular example of how bad management leads to failure.
The intolerant manager finds himself cut off from intelligence and information that might be helpful. His decision-making becomes progressively divorced from reality. He comes to view failures as manifestations of disloyalty or incompetence of subordinates in carrying out his agenda when his own program is itself to blame.
I wouldn’t let John Bolton manage a taco stand.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Bush Holding 150,000 Plus Hostages
This should be interesting. Bush is fixing to veto the supplemental spending bill because it has deadlines for withdrawal from Iraq. This is supposed to set up a situation in which the troops in Iraq will run out of resources. Bush will try to make it look as if he is playing chicken with Congress with the welfare of the troops on the line.
He has the stronger hand here in one sense, because he doesn’t give a crap about the troops. He has already demonstrated his contempt for them in many ways. If it takes getting every last one of them killed to further his agenda and build up his ego, that would be fine by Bush. In fact, he would probably arrange for the first cuts in spending to be sure to result in casualties. Congress, on the other hand, hasn’t yet demonstrated a complete lack of regard for the troops’ welfare, and some of them are going to want to appear to be genuinely concerned for them.
Who will be blamed in the eyes of the people? Will it be Bush with his track record of troop hating and low credibility? Or will it be the Democrats in Congress with their deadlines that reflect the will of the people? You’d think this would be a no brainer, but since the people are also no brainers it is hard to tell where they will come down on this. The lunatic Bushie base will rally behind their Fuehrer no matter what he does, and the Democratic base will stay in line. The ignorant horde of middle of the roaders will decide the issue.
Remember the showdown between Newt and Bill that resulted in the government’s being shut down? I wouldn’t have thought that anyone would have cared if the government took a break from harassing us, but the people were pissed at Newt because of this. Congress got the blame because they wouldn’t pass a spending bill. In this case, the money is on the table so it might be possible to lay the blame on Bush for walking away from the money especially since he can also withdraw the troops and get them out of harm’s way. It’s as if Bush has the military as his hostage to threaten if the people and Congress don’t fall in line with his will.
Will Congress have the guts to see this through even when Bush lets troops get killed and maimed just to make a point?
He has the stronger hand here in one sense, because he doesn’t give a crap about the troops. He has already demonstrated his contempt for them in many ways. If it takes getting every last one of them killed to further his agenda and build up his ego, that would be fine by Bush. In fact, he would probably arrange for the first cuts in spending to be sure to result in casualties. Congress, on the other hand, hasn’t yet demonstrated a complete lack of regard for the troops’ welfare, and some of them are going to want to appear to be genuinely concerned for them.
Who will be blamed in the eyes of the people? Will it be Bush with his track record of troop hating and low credibility? Or will it be the Democrats in Congress with their deadlines that reflect the will of the people? You’d think this would be a no brainer, but since the people are also no brainers it is hard to tell where they will come down on this. The lunatic Bushie base will rally behind their Fuehrer no matter what he does, and the Democratic base will stay in line. The ignorant horde of middle of the roaders will decide the issue.
Remember the showdown between Newt and Bill that resulted in the government’s being shut down? I wouldn’t have thought that anyone would have cared if the government took a break from harassing us, but the people were pissed at Newt because of this. Congress got the blame because they wouldn’t pass a spending bill. In this case, the money is on the table so it might be possible to lay the blame on Bush for walking away from the money especially since he can also withdraw the troops and get them out of harm’s way. It’s as if Bush has the military as his hostage to threaten if the people and Congress don’t fall in line with his will.
Will Congress have the guts to see this through even when Bush lets troops get killed and maimed just to make a point?
Are You Depressed or Just Really Sad?
WaPo reports that some researchers think that depression is over-diagnosed: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/02/AR2007040201693.html?hpid=topnews
Some folks are diagnosed as depressed when they are simply “sad”. How would you be able to tell if you were depressed and should take medication or that you are sad and need to get over it with supportive counseling and the passage of time? You are supposed to be sad after a tragedy, say the death of a loved one or a divorce or job loss, but who is to say how sad you ought to be and how long your sadness should persist? Psychiatrists, that’s who! They aim to be the “arbiters of normality”, and they don’t like it when sufferers and their regular doctors throw meds at depression and anxiety when they haven’t seen a specialist. Counseling sessions are a must. Otherwise, psychiatrists will not be as rich as they could be.
I reckon I know when I’m “just” sad and when I’m not right in the head, and I don’t need to be vetted by a shrink to get meds. Moreover, even if I were just sad, it should be up to me whether I want to use meds to decrease my suffering.
In a different world my melancholy disposition might not be triggered so much, so you might say that the totality of circumstances (society, politics, etc) is making me and other depressed people sadder than we might be in a world organized to accommodate our brain chemistry. Is our brain chemistry out of whack, or is the world?
Some folks are diagnosed as depressed when they are simply “sad”. How would you be able to tell if you were depressed and should take medication or that you are sad and need to get over it with supportive counseling and the passage of time? You are supposed to be sad after a tragedy, say the death of a loved one or a divorce or job loss, but who is to say how sad you ought to be and how long your sadness should persist? Psychiatrists, that’s who! They aim to be the “arbiters of normality”, and they don’t like it when sufferers and their regular doctors throw meds at depression and anxiety when they haven’t seen a specialist. Counseling sessions are a must. Otherwise, psychiatrists will not be as rich as they could be.
I reckon I know when I’m “just” sad and when I’m not right in the head, and I don’t need to be vetted by a shrink to get meds. Moreover, even if I were just sad, it should be up to me whether I want to use meds to decrease my suffering.
In a different world my melancholy disposition might not be triggered so much, so you might say that the totality of circumstances (society, politics, etc) is making me and other depressed people sadder than we might be in a world organized to accommodate our brain chemistry. Is our brain chemistry out of whack, or is the world?
Monday, April 02, 2007
How Would a Free Society Deal with Less Proximate Causes of Injuries?
Via lowercase liberty, I came across this article about a libertarian theory of punishment predicated on “proportionality”: http://bkmarcus.com/blog/2007/03/punishment-and-proportionality
What is it about the concept of proportionality as the core principle for determining punishment that makes it particularly “libertarian”? The author discusses some other theories and finds that their application is less consistent with libertarian principles than a system predicated on proportionality. In my view, overall freedom is enhanced through the employment of principles that are simple, predictable and require less in the way of an administrative apparatus.
An issue not addressed in the article, but related and on my mind lately, involves the mechanism for deciding punishment or compensation in the case of multiple wrongdoers and in the case of wrongdoing that is less proximate but nonetheless causative of injury. Is there necessarily a uniquely “libertarian” set of principles to guide us in making these kind of determinations?
There are many instances where the contribution of an action or inaction to causation of an injury can be factually established but where it is does not seem reasonable to attach moral or legal blame. If I feed the ducks in a pond, and these same ducks cause a plane crash, which they would not have done had I not delayed them with duck chow, I may be said to have contributed to the crash, but it does not seem reasonable to blame me for the crash or to require me to compensate the victims.
On the other hand, if I manufacture an aircraft engine part and use substandard materials such that its likelihood of failure is increased, and its failure subsequently contributes to a plane crash, it seems reasonable to bring me to account. The difference, where each action is remote from the injury and where there is no intent to cause injury, is the degree of foreseeability and the extent to which the actor has a duty to the injured party. Of course, opinions may vary as to what degree of foreseeability must be demonstrated before liability should attach. The same goes for duty.
At some point, an arbitrary assumption must be made as to what causal acts or failures to act warrant moral culpability or legal liability. This judgment will be, on the one hand, a moral one. On the other hand, it is related to the complexity and cost of the administrative apparatus designed to make the determination and dispense justice. Accordingly, you may find a remote cause morally objectionable yet be unwilling to maintain a system to apply coercion in the case of that same cause.
Is there a “libertarian” solution to this problem? Are the concepts of foreseeability and duty helpful?
What is it about the concept of proportionality as the core principle for determining punishment that makes it particularly “libertarian”? The author discusses some other theories and finds that their application is less consistent with libertarian principles than a system predicated on proportionality. In my view, overall freedom is enhanced through the employment of principles that are simple, predictable and require less in the way of an administrative apparatus.
An issue not addressed in the article, but related and on my mind lately, involves the mechanism for deciding punishment or compensation in the case of multiple wrongdoers and in the case of wrongdoing that is less proximate but nonetheless causative of injury. Is there necessarily a uniquely “libertarian” set of principles to guide us in making these kind of determinations?
There are many instances where the contribution of an action or inaction to causation of an injury can be factually established but where it is does not seem reasonable to attach moral or legal blame. If I feed the ducks in a pond, and these same ducks cause a plane crash, which they would not have done had I not delayed them with duck chow, I may be said to have contributed to the crash, but it does not seem reasonable to blame me for the crash or to require me to compensate the victims.
On the other hand, if I manufacture an aircraft engine part and use substandard materials such that its likelihood of failure is increased, and its failure subsequently contributes to a plane crash, it seems reasonable to bring me to account. The difference, where each action is remote from the injury and where there is no intent to cause injury, is the degree of foreseeability and the extent to which the actor has a duty to the injured party. Of course, opinions may vary as to what degree of foreseeability must be demonstrated before liability should attach. The same goes for duty.
At some point, an arbitrary assumption must be made as to what causal acts or failures to act warrant moral culpability or legal liability. This judgment will be, on the one hand, a moral one. On the other hand, it is related to the complexity and cost of the administrative apparatus designed to make the determination and dispense justice. Accordingly, you may find a remote cause morally objectionable yet be unwilling to maintain a system to apply coercion in the case of that same cause.
Is there a “libertarian” solution to this problem? Are the concepts of foreseeability and duty helpful?
Friday, March 30, 2007
In Defense of Italian-Americans
I don’t hold it against Rudy Giuliani that his old man supposedly worked for mobsters at one time. What Italian-American doesn’t have mobbed up relatives? Mrs Vache Folle’s current stepfather, for example, is the son of a capo in the Lucchese crime syndicate. He got whacked in a gang war back in the 1930s. That doesn’t make the stepdad a mobster himself.
The more recent generations of Italian-Americans have had more career choices than their forebears. Antonin Scalia, back in the day, would have had to be a mobster or an organ grinder. They didn’t let Italians into law talkin’ school back then, and they certainly didn’t let them sit on the Supreme Court. Rudy would have run a speakeasy or some racket if he had been born in an earlier generation. No way would an Italian have been appointed US Attorney back then.
Nowadays, I would estimate that less than half of Italian-Americans are in the Mafia. Many of them have been partially assimilated into American society and culture, but I don’t reckon they will ever abandon their quaint Italian ways entirely. They will probably always wear lots of jewelry and eat noodles for every meal, but they won’t necessarily steal.
Italian-Americans contribute immensely to the patchwork quilt of diversity that is America, especially Sicilians with their combined African and European heritage.
The more recent generations of Italian-Americans have had more career choices than their forebears. Antonin Scalia, back in the day, would have had to be a mobster or an organ grinder. They didn’t let Italians into law talkin’ school back then, and they certainly didn’t let them sit on the Supreme Court. Rudy would have run a speakeasy or some racket if he had been born in an earlier generation. No way would an Italian have been appointed US Attorney back then.
Nowadays, I would estimate that less than half of Italian-Americans are in the Mafia. Many of them have been partially assimilated into American society and culture, but I don’t reckon they will ever abandon their quaint Italian ways entirely. They will probably always wear lots of jewelry and eat noodles for every meal, but they won’t necessarily steal.
Italian-Americans contribute immensely to the patchwork quilt of diversity that is America, especially Sicilians with their combined African and European heritage.
Chocolate Jesus
On the radio this morning, I heard that one of the New York rags was all offended about someone’s making a six foot statue of Jesus out of chocolate. How do they know it is Jesus? Nobody knows what Jesus looked like. If I were the sculptor, I’d tell any Christian that was offended that the statue is actually the prophet Mohammed. Then I’d tell Muslims that it was Krishna, and so on.
I am a follower of Jesus, but I can’t seem to get worked up about a chocolate Jesus effigy. I definitely won’t participate in a riot over it. I also love chocolate, so I reckon making an image of Jesus out of chocolate is a good thing. And we eat His body all the time in bread form, so what’s the big deal about eating a piece of a chocolate Jesus?
Was the sculptor aiming to mock Jesus? I don’t have any idea. Folks are free to mock my religion all they like. It is understandable that a nonbeliever would find it foolish. Far worse are the Christians who make a mockery of the faith through their practice of it.
I bet the people who are offended by the chocolate Jesus are some of the same people who get all excited when the Blessed Virgin Mother appears on an English muffin.
I am a follower of Jesus, but I can’t seem to get worked up about a chocolate Jesus effigy. I definitely won’t participate in a riot over it. I also love chocolate, so I reckon making an image of Jesus out of chocolate is a good thing. And we eat His body all the time in bread form, so what’s the big deal about eating a piece of a chocolate Jesus?
Was the sculptor aiming to mock Jesus? I don’t have any idea. Folks are free to mock my religion all they like. It is understandable that a nonbeliever would find it foolish. Far worse are the Christians who make a mockery of the faith through their practice of it.
I bet the people who are offended by the chocolate Jesus are some of the same people who get all excited when the Blessed Virgin Mother appears on an English muffin.
Miscellany and Progress Report
I have not been to the gym as much as I’d like because I blew out my left knee. I have a hard time walking on it, let alone working out. I want to see a surgeon and get this thing fixed.
Quite a few of the comets survived the winter and have become active now that the pond has mostly thawed.
The bathroom remodels that were supposed to be done on Groundhog Day are still in progress. The downstairs is finished except for the cedar bench that is supposed to go in the shower. We even painted. The steam shower is terrific, and I love the heated floor tiles.
Upstairs has been slow going. Mrs Vache Folle likens it to differential calculus in that the work progresses but never quite gets finished. My carpool companion likens our situation to Murphy Brown and her live in housepainter Eldon. The whirlpool tub has been problematic due to leaks and due to an ancient clog in the drain, but this seems to have been solved. There is a hole in the living room ceiling, though, and several planks of siding are missing.
Our neighbor who had the portable toilet on his driveway for several months has removed it. I reckon he recovered from his intestinal disorder that required a pit stop on the way to his mailbox.
I aim to put pansies in the window boxes this weekend and break out the deck furniture, but Mrs VF reckons that this will cause at least one more snowstorm. If I also buy a snow blower, that should cancel out the flower jinx.
Quite a few of the comets survived the winter and have become active now that the pond has mostly thawed.
The bathroom remodels that were supposed to be done on Groundhog Day are still in progress. The downstairs is finished except for the cedar bench that is supposed to go in the shower. We even painted. The steam shower is terrific, and I love the heated floor tiles.
Upstairs has been slow going. Mrs Vache Folle likens it to differential calculus in that the work progresses but never quite gets finished. My carpool companion likens our situation to Murphy Brown and her live in housepainter Eldon. The whirlpool tub has been problematic due to leaks and due to an ancient clog in the drain, but this seems to have been solved. There is a hole in the living room ceiling, though, and several planks of siding are missing.
Our neighbor who had the portable toilet on his driveway for several months has removed it. I reckon he recovered from his intestinal disorder that required a pit stop on the way to his mailbox.
I aim to put pansies in the window boxes this weekend and break out the deck furniture, but Mrs VF reckons that this will cause at least one more snowstorm. If I also buy a snow blower, that should cancel out the flower jinx.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Hideous Dog
I am a dog person. I can’t imagine not having dogs. But if this were the dog in question, I would seriously consider giving it a pass: http://www.samugliestdog.com/images/Sammagnetweb.jpg
Via yournamehere at Death Wore a Feathered Mullet http://vivalasvegass.blogspot.com/2007/03/fun-with-internets.html.
Via yournamehere at Death Wore a Feathered Mullet http://vivalasvegass.blogspot.com/2007/03/fun-with-internets.html.
Cylonophobes as Secret Cylons
If you are weirdly and obsessively Cylonophobic, you could be a closeted Cylon. Look at Colonel Tigh. He’s all about Cylon bashing and the so called “Cylon agenda”. Doesn’t he seem like he’s probably a Cylon himself? He has that look about him. You know what I’m talking about.
There is an unsubstantiated rumor that a certain GOP Senator from a border commonwealth famous for its fried chicken and bluegrass is a Cylon.
There is an unsubstantiated rumor that a certain GOP Senator from a border commonwealth famous for its fried chicken and bluegrass is a Cylon.
East Fishkill Not as Thieving as I Thought
I should apologize to East Fishkill. It turns out that the lion’s share of my real estate taxes goes to the school district and to Dutchess County with East Fishkill’s cut being less than a $1,000. That makes more sense in view of the services I get from the town. I don’t know why Dutchess County gets more than the town or what Dutchess County even does. Every square inch of Dutchess is in some town or hamlet or municipality, isn’t it? What is left for the county to concern itself with? Courts or some such thing no doubt. There may be a sheriff and a jail.
Out of the nine grand extorted from us, over seven gets shoveled into the maw of the insatiable Carmel Central School District. The CCSD is proud of its high per pupil spending, as if gross inefficiency in delivering schooling were something to crow about. It seems to me that decreasing per pupil spending would be the goal if the CCSD were really responsive to the unfortunates subject to its power to tax. The CCSD must be responsive more to its employees than to its constituents since its goal is to spend as much money as it can get.
The thing that really disturbs me is that the population of the CCSD is relatively affluent and intelligent such that schooling their children ought to be much less challenging and concomitantly less expensive than schooling in a district with lots of poor and/or stupid children. Yet, the opposite is the case. The CCSD pays more per pupil than its counterparts with needier pupils! How can we suffer this to continue? Incredibly, school board members run on and get elected based on a platform of increased per pupil spending. The delivery of schooling, it seems, is subject to some other kind of economic logic than any other service.
Of course, I am being intentionally obtuse. Per pupil spending is not really related to the quality or efficiency of schooling. It’s about erecting barriers to entry into the district. If taxes and per pupil spending are high enough, property values will rise, and poor people won’t be able to afford to live in the district. The poor folks you already have might even have to sell out and move for want of the means to pay their increased taxes. Everybody wins! It’s discrimination and it’s perfectly legal. Nudge nudge, wink wink. It’s costly, though, and I don’t mind having working class neighbors. It's not worth $7,000 a year to me to make sure that I live among yuppies exclusively. I also hate being robbed. And one of these days, I could get taxed out of my home.
Yonkers in Westchester County had its school system under federal supervision because of racial discrimination. Meanwhile, the neighboring town that included Bronxville was able to discriminate freely because its schools were in separate villages, and each village could manipulate its taxes such that poor folks, many of whom would be black, would not be able to afford to live in the village and have children in the village schools. If Yonkers could have divided itself into separate villages instead of being a single municipality, it would have been able to effect segregation of its schools just like Bronxville and Scarsdale.
Out of the nine grand extorted from us, over seven gets shoveled into the maw of the insatiable Carmel Central School District. The CCSD is proud of its high per pupil spending, as if gross inefficiency in delivering schooling were something to crow about. It seems to me that decreasing per pupil spending would be the goal if the CCSD were really responsive to the unfortunates subject to its power to tax. The CCSD must be responsive more to its employees than to its constituents since its goal is to spend as much money as it can get.
The thing that really disturbs me is that the population of the CCSD is relatively affluent and intelligent such that schooling their children ought to be much less challenging and concomitantly less expensive than schooling in a district with lots of poor and/or stupid children. Yet, the opposite is the case. The CCSD pays more per pupil than its counterparts with needier pupils! How can we suffer this to continue? Incredibly, school board members run on and get elected based on a platform of increased per pupil spending. The delivery of schooling, it seems, is subject to some other kind of economic logic than any other service.
Of course, I am being intentionally obtuse. Per pupil spending is not really related to the quality or efficiency of schooling. It’s about erecting barriers to entry into the district. If taxes and per pupil spending are high enough, property values will rise, and poor people won’t be able to afford to live in the district. The poor folks you already have might even have to sell out and move for want of the means to pay their increased taxes. Everybody wins! It’s discrimination and it’s perfectly legal. Nudge nudge, wink wink. It’s costly, though, and I don’t mind having working class neighbors. It's not worth $7,000 a year to me to make sure that I live among yuppies exclusively. I also hate being robbed. And one of these days, I could get taxed out of my home.
Yonkers in Westchester County had its school system under federal supervision because of racial discrimination. Meanwhile, the neighboring town that included Bronxville was able to discriminate freely because its schools were in separate villages, and each village could manipulate its taxes such that poor folks, many of whom would be black, would not be able to afford to live in the village and have children in the village schools. If Yonkers could have divided itself into separate villages instead of being a single municipality, it would have been able to effect segregation of its schools just like Bronxville and Scarsdale.
An Open Letter to Michelle and the Bedwetters
Dear Michelle Malkin and the Rest of the Wingnut Bedwetters:
I know John Doe. I have worked with John Doe. John Doe is my friend. You are not John Doe.
The John Doe I know is too courageous to want to turn his country into a police state in order to assuage an irrational fear of terror attacks.
The John Doe I know doesn’t crap himself in fear every time he encounters someone of a swarthy hue or contemplates the existence of Muslim people.
The John Doe I know doesn’t wet the bed each night because he is afraid to go to the bathroom on account of terrorists hiding under the bed.
John Doe you ain’t. John Doe knows that to defeat terror, you have to stop being afraid. And you have to stop trying to make other people afraid. That increases terror, dummy!
You and John Doe? Not the same person. John Doe is not a coward and he is not interested in making bank on other people’s cowardice.
Stop slandering John Doe, Michelle and Bedwetters of your ilk. Stop hurting America.
Sincerely,
Vache Folle
Friend of John Doe
I know John Doe. I have worked with John Doe. John Doe is my friend. You are not John Doe.
The John Doe I know is too courageous to want to turn his country into a police state in order to assuage an irrational fear of terror attacks.
The John Doe I know doesn’t crap himself in fear every time he encounters someone of a swarthy hue or contemplates the existence of Muslim people.
The John Doe I know doesn’t wet the bed each night because he is afraid to go to the bathroom on account of terrorists hiding under the bed.
John Doe you ain’t. John Doe knows that to defeat terror, you have to stop being afraid. And you have to stop trying to make other people afraid. That increases terror, dummy!
You and John Doe? Not the same person. John Doe is not a coward and he is not interested in making bank on other people’s cowardice.
Stop slandering John Doe, Michelle and Bedwetters of your ilk. Stop hurting America.
Sincerely,
Vache Folle
Friend of John Doe
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Everything You Need to Know About Wilkes-Barre
Mrs Vache Folle was born and raised in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. She shook the dust of that loathsome burg from her feet as soon as she could. From time to time, it is necessary to visit Wilkes-Barre because of the poor slobs in Mrs VF’s family who never escaped. Wilkes-Barre is as seedy as it gets. The sun never shines on Wilkes-Barre. Its only redeeming quality is that you can get drunk there cheaply. You will want to be drunk if you are forced to spend much time in the W-B (as nobody calls it).
The country missed a great opportunity back in 1973 when the town was laid waste by Hurricane Agnes when its levees broke. The place could have been bulldozed and made into a serviceable storage space for nuclear waste. Incredibly, the town cleaned up and resumed its uncalled for existence. It’s still there on the banks of the Susquehanna being inferior to its “twin” city, Scranton.
I thank God every day that I never had to live in Wilkes-Barre.
The country missed a great opportunity back in 1973 when the town was laid waste by Hurricane Agnes when its levees broke. The place could have been bulldozed and made into a serviceable storage space for nuclear waste. Incredibly, the town cleaned up and resumed its uncalled for existence. It’s still there on the banks of the Susquehanna being inferior to its “twin” city, Scranton.
I thank God every day that I never had to live in Wilkes-Barre.
Hands Off Sub-Prime Lending
Chris in Paris thinks regulating sub-prime mortgage lending is a no brainer: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2007/03/who-will-get-stuck-with-subprime-bill.html
Chris writes:
“Congress is now talking about putting in place regulations, years too late to have any impact on the economic crisis that this is triggering, but having regulations in place for this sector is basic common sense.”
Appeals to “common sense” always make me suspicious. It usually means that you have no cogent justification for your position and are playing intellectual three-card-monte. I reckon what Chris really means is that some folks are too stupid to be allowed to engage in economic transactions without government supervision.
I am not sure that we are in the midst of a “crisis”. The homeowner in foreclosure is in a crisis, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything to me. The risk of default was calculated into the lending scheme, and I am sure that there are many debtors with sub-prime loans that are not in default or foreclosure. The lenders and underwriters and secondary markets knew what they were about when these loans were floated, and they made a profit on them. Even with defaults, I reckon this sector will have been profitable. I presume that the borrowers needed the loan proceeds and were in the best position to decide whether to take out the loans. Besides, the loans are secured by the real estate and will not have to be written off altogether.
But for nannies like Chris, stupid poor people have to be protected from themselves and the possibility that their transactions might be imprudent. In some cases, the transactions will be imprudent, but there is no reason to believe that regulators and central planners will be in a better position to make such judgments for people they don’t even know.
Chris writes:
“Congress is now talking about putting in place regulations, years too late to have any impact on the economic crisis that this is triggering, but having regulations in place for this sector is basic common sense.”
Appeals to “common sense” always make me suspicious. It usually means that you have no cogent justification for your position and are playing intellectual three-card-monte. I reckon what Chris really means is that some folks are too stupid to be allowed to engage in economic transactions without government supervision.
I am not sure that we are in the midst of a “crisis”. The homeowner in foreclosure is in a crisis, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything to me. The risk of default was calculated into the lending scheme, and I am sure that there are many debtors with sub-prime loans that are not in default or foreclosure. The lenders and underwriters and secondary markets knew what they were about when these loans were floated, and they made a profit on them. Even with defaults, I reckon this sector will have been profitable. I presume that the borrowers needed the loan proceeds and were in the best position to decide whether to take out the loans. Besides, the loans are secured by the real estate and will not have to be written off altogether.
But for nannies like Chris, stupid poor people have to be protected from themselves and the possibility that their transactions might be imprudent. In some cases, the transactions will be imprudent, but there is no reason to believe that regulators and central planners will be in a better position to make such judgments for people they don’t even know.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Libertarians for Law and Order
In a comment to my recent post about Rudy Giuliani, a commenter remarked that “sane” libertarians are for “law and order”, that Rudy’s enforcing the drug laws vigorously was not antilibertarian. “Libertarians for Law and Order” is a wing of the movement that I hadn’t encountered before, and I was taken aback. I should not be surprised, I suppose, since there are “Libertarians for War and the Massive National Security Apparatus”. There may even be “Libertarians for Lieberman”, “Libertarians for Prohibition”, “Libertarians for Censorship”, "Libertarians for Central Planning"and “Libertarians for Authority” as well. I am so new to the libertarian scene, I suppose, that I have not begun to appreciate what a big tent libertarianism is.
Tiger Kilgore Swam the Big Muddy in 1865
When I was in Georgia a couple of weeks ago, I visited a cemetery in Chatsworth, Georgia where I understood that a number of Kilgores, to whom I am related, were buried. I ran into an older fellow there who told me he was also kin to the Kilgores, and we compared notes. It turned out we were third cousins once removed and descendants of Abner Kilgore.
He related a family legend about an uncle Samuel Marion “Tiger” Kilgore who had had to swim across the Mississippi River to escape Union soldiers. He tired and resigned himself to drowning only to find that he was on a sand bar and in less than two feet of water. He was able to rest and wade out of the river. He was so elated that he had not drowned that he made quite a ruckus. His companions said they thought a tiger was coming through the woods, and this is how he got his nickname.
I had heard a family legend from my grandfather about an uncle of his who had a similar experience swimming the Mississippi, but I never knew which uncle he was talking about until I ran into that fellow in the cemetery. There were some differences in the story, most notably that he was returning from the Transmississippi at the end of the War Between the States, that he had had to walk from Texas to his home in Georgia.
I love agood family legend as much as the next guy, but I am a little skeptical about the part of the story where Tiger’s traveling companions thought a tiger was approaching. As far as I know, there have never been any tigers in North America outside of zoos since the Pleistocene. Moreover, whoops of joy do not approximate the roar of a tiger, even assuming that former Confederate soldiers knew what a tiger sounded like. Samuel Marion probably got his nickname in some other, more humiliating context and later tried to attach it to his adventures in the WBTS.
He related a family legend about an uncle Samuel Marion “Tiger” Kilgore who had had to swim across the Mississippi River to escape Union soldiers. He tired and resigned himself to drowning only to find that he was on a sand bar and in less than two feet of water. He was able to rest and wade out of the river. He was so elated that he had not drowned that he made quite a ruckus. His companions said they thought a tiger was coming through the woods, and this is how he got his nickname.
I had heard a family legend from my grandfather about an uncle of his who had a similar experience swimming the Mississippi, but I never knew which uncle he was talking about until I ran into that fellow in the cemetery. There were some differences in the story, most notably that he was returning from the Transmississippi at the end of the War Between the States, that he had had to walk from Texas to his home in Georgia.
I love agood family legend as much as the next guy, but I am a little skeptical about the part of the story where Tiger’s traveling companions thought a tiger was approaching. As far as I know, there have never been any tigers in North America outside of zoos since the Pleistocene. Moreover, whoops of joy do not approximate the roar of a tiger, even assuming that former Confederate soldiers knew what a tiger sounded like. Samuel Marion probably got his nickname in some other, more humiliating context and later tried to attach it to his adventures in the WBTS.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Rudy the Libertarian?
If you are going to tout a candidate as libertarian, I am given to understand that the candidate should have a first rate “libertarian resume”. I have been informed by Eric Dondero, whose own “libertarian resume” is said (by him) to be impressive, that Rudy Giuliani is “libertarian”. Although Eric doesn’t think much of folks’ using their own judgment (https://www2.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=10883291&postID=1040062931335375543 ), I thought I would take a gander at old Rudy’s CV and how libertarian it is.
First off, I was going to give Rudy a plus on the libertarian ledger because of his draft dodging back during the Vietnam War. He bravely declined to be part of the federal government’s slave army, and he managed to avoid the draft thanks to a letter from his boss, a federal judge for whom Rudy was clerking. It’s hard to give Rudy credit for staying out of the slave army by sucking at the federal government’s teat as a civilian employee. I reckon the two cancel out from a libertarian perspective if I am to be as generous as I can.
After two years of clerking for the court, Rudy might have parlayed this experience into a legal job in the private sector as a productive member of society. Instead, he chose to remain a parasite on the taxpayers and work in the ironically named Justice Department. He worked his way down in the lowerarchy of the Office of the US Attorney to become chief of the Narcotics Unit. An enthusiasm for drug prohibition and a career as a bureaucrat are hardly indicative of a libertarian streak. Rudy was such a zealous bureaucrat that he landed a gig as Associate Deputy Attorney General.
He was parked at a big law firm during the Carter administration when he was displaced by Democrats at the patronage trough, but he was immediately brought back to Justice as Associate Attorney General when the GOP regained control of the spoils. He became US Attorney for the Southern District of New York where I recall his being a huge publicity hound. He was fond of the public “perp walk” when he had you arrested, but there was no equivalent publicity when he dropped charges. He was a drug warrior, among other things.
He was parked at some law firms after Reagan left office until he was elected mayor of New York City in which post he served two 4 year terms. From 1968, when he finished law school, to 2002 when he left the mayoral palace, he spent all but 9 years as a parasite on the taxpayers, hardly anything a libertarian would crow about. And his tenure as mayor is not regarded as a great flowering of individual liberty in the city. On the contrary, Rudy was an authoritarian prick. He was especially hard on sex workers and adult entertainment, and he was no friend of drug users. Marijuana arrests in NYC went from 720 in 1992 to over 60,000 in 2000.
Rudy got a lot of credit after the World Trade Center attack, and I got the impression that he believed that he had single handedly brought the city together in the wake of that tragedy. What a glory hound. I didn’t see Rudy running into any burning buildings or breathing a crapload of asbestos in the cleanup. One thing Rudy is good at is squeezing every ounce of attention and publicity out of a tragedy, and if he becomes President he will doubtless stand out in the role of publicity hound. There is nothing particularly libertarian about Rudy’s performance at the WTC.
Since Rudy left office, he has traded on his name and fame as a “security” consultant and investment advisor, although for the life of me I can’t figure out why anyone thinks Rudy knows anything in particular about either thing. I don’t know much about Rudy’s client list, except that it included the government of Venezuela, so for all I know he has worked tirelessly for personal freedom since leaving government employment. He wanted to be a Senator at one time, so he clearly wants another government gig.
Rudy doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would let the bloated powers of the presidency diminish on his watch. On the contrary, Rudy might turn out to be the last president ever elected.
First off, I was going to give Rudy a plus on the libertarian ledger because of his draft dodging back during the Vietnam War. He bravely declined to be part of the federal government’s slave army, and he managed to avoid the draft thanks to a letter from his boss, a federal judge for whom Rudy was clerking. It’s hard to give Rudy credit for staying out of the slave army by sucking at the federal government’s teat as a civilian employee. I reckon the two cancel out from a libertarian perspective if I am to be as generous as I can.
After two years of clerking for the court, Rudy might have parlayed this experience into a legal job in the private sector as a productive member of society. Instead, he chose to remain a parasite on the taxpayers and work in the ironically named Justice Department. He worked his way down in the lowerarchy of the Office of the US Attorney to become chief of the Narcotics Unit. An enthusiasm for drug prohibition and a career as a bureaucrat are hardly indicative of a libertarian streak. Rudy was such a zealous bureaucrat that he landed a gig as Associate Deputy Attorney General.
He was parked at a big law firm during the Carter administration when he was displaced by Democrats at the patronage trough, but he was immediately brought back to Justice as Associate Attorney General when the GOP regained control of the spoils. He became US Attorney for the Southern District of New York where I recall his being a huge publicity hound. He was fond of the public “perp walk” when he had you arrested, but there was no equivalent publicity when he dropped charges. He was a drug warrior, among other things.
He was parked at some law firms after Reagan left office until he was elected mayor of New York City in which post he served two 4 year terms. From 1968, when he finished law school, to 2002 when he left the mayoral palace, he spent all but 9 years as a parasite on the taxpayers, hardly anything a libertarian would crow about. And his tenure as mayor is not regarded as a great flowering of individual liberty in the city. On the contrary, Rudy was an authoritarian prick. He was especially hard on sex workers and adult entertainment, and he was no friend of drug users. Marijuana arrests in NYC went from 720 in 1992 to over 60,000 in 2000.
Rudy got a lot of credit after the World Trade Center attack, and I got the impression that he believed that he had single handedly brought the city together in the wake of that tragedy. What a glory hound. I didn’t see Rudy running into any burning buildings or breathing a crapload of asbestos in the cleanup. One thing Rudy is good at is squeezing every ounce of attention and publicity out of a tragedy, and if he becomes President he will doubtless stand out in the role of publicity hound. There is nothing particularly libertarian about Rudy’s performance at the WTC.
Since Rudy left office, he has traded on his name and fame as a “security” consultant and investment advisor, although for the life of me I can’t figure out why anyone thinks Rudy knows anything in particular about either thing. I don’t know much about Rudy’s client list, except that it included the government of Venezuela, so for all I know he has worked tirelessly for personal freedom since leaving government employment. He wanted to be a Senator at one time, so he clearly wants another government gig.
Rudy doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would let the bloated powers of the presidency diminish on his watch. On the contrary, Rudy might turn out to be the last president ever elected.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Think of the Children
According to Digby (http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/saving-children-by-digby-last-refuge-of.html) The AG can’t quit because then nobody would be there to look after the children or to protect us from “illegal immigrant porn moguls”.Paul the Spud (http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2007/03/very-definition-of-grasping-at-straws.html) takes up the theme of how the “think of the children” argument is reserved for the indefensible or desperate cases. He reckons that the AG will next claim that he “needs to spend more time with his family”. I lifted this image of Helen Lovejoy (the “won’t someone think of the children” lady from the Simpsons) from Paul’s post.
It turns out the AG reckons he is indispensable to the welfare of America’s children. Accordingly, how could he in good conscience resign?
The trouble with the “think of the children” argument is that it works all the time with lots of people, even those who should know better. In the AG’s case, however, the child welfare meme is probably so far removed from his situation that it won’t be what saves him, if anything does.
Consider all the regulations of our activities that are predicated on what some stupid and poorly supervised child might possibly do. There are serious calls for more regulation of the internets because some parents are too indolent to counsel their children about making dates with pederasts on line. My TV viewing options are restricted because some child somewhere might see a nipple. I can’t release Siberian tigers on my property to control the deer population because some parents are too lazy and neglectful to keep an eye on their toddlers.
Predicting the Future
On the O&A radio program this morning (it is one of my guilty pleasures), there was a repeat of an old bit about predicting the future and getting it wrong. Anthony read from a list of predictions that did not pan out. Some examples: Lord Kelvin’s announcing the impossibility of heavier than air flight in 1899 and the likelihood that X-rays were a hoax. The CEO of IBM declaring that there was a world market for at most five computers. A silent movie mogul’s wondering who might possibly want to hear actors talking. A Boeing engineer’s prediction that the 10 seater was the biggest aircraft that would ever be built. In each case, credible people with some degree of authority or expertise were incredibly wrong.
When I think back to my childhood in the 1960s, it was widely assumed that we would all have hover cars and live in underwater habitats by now. There would be colonies on the Moon and on Mars and even interstellar travel. Most diseases would be cured or curable. I’m still waiting for my hover car. On the other hand, the more pessimistic predictions of an overpopulation or nuclear war induced dystopia have not materialized either.
In the 1970s, there were a lot of End Times predictions based on the geopolitics of the moment. Hal Lindsey achieved some fame by pitching the idea that the apocalypse was right around the corner and that the US and the USSR were the major players. The collapse of the USSR was not part of his scheme, nor did he predict the current “clash of civilizations” so dear to apocalyptic preachers these days. I suppose one of these days some preacher will come close to getting something right. You’d think that the Millerites’ Great Disappointment would have made folks leery of preachers who make a living out of telling folks that God is fixing to kill them.
A lot of people make predictions all the time and are even paid to do so, but it seems to me that a lot of them are not held accountable or tracked in terms of their success or failure. Economists, for example, don’t have batting averages, so to speak, to indicate how often they have gotten it right. Pundits and politicians can get it wrong time and time again without being called on it. The promoters of the war in Iraq, for example, are still making predictions and being published in major media outlets. Shouldn’t their columns be labeled with some indicator of how prescient or misguided they have been? Shouldn’t government spokescritters have to wear a placard showing their percentage of truth telling?
If I were a futurist, I would be sure to make my predictions far enough ahead that I won’t be around to be called on them. “A billion years hence, we will no longer use hover cars but travel through the medium of pure thought.” I could also make them vague and ambiguous enough, like Nostradamus, that they can be made to fit any circumstances that arise. “A ruler will emerge who will call himself a peacemaker but who will do battle on the ancient plain.” I could also make lots of inconsistent predictions in the hopes that one of them will pan out and I will be cited as prescient. “The Democratic/GOP candidate will win in 2008.”
Or I could just start calling myself an economist or a pundit, in which case I need not concern myself with my accuracy.
When I think back to my childhood in the 1960s, it was widely assumed that we would all have hover cars and live in underwater habitats by now. There would be colonies on the Moon and on Mars and even interstellar travel. Most diseases would be cured or curable. I’m still waiting for my hover car. On the other hand, the more pessimistic predictions of an overpopulation or nuclear war induced dystopia have not materialized either.
In the 1970s, there were a lot of End Times predictions based on the geopolitics of the moment. Hal Lindsey achieved some fame by pitching the idea that the apocalypse was right around the corner and that the US and the USSR were the major players. The collapse of the USSR was not part of his scheme, nor did he predict the current “clash of civilizations” so dear to apocalyptic preachers these days. I suppose one of these days some preacher will come close to getting something right. You’d think that the Millerites’ Great Disappointment would have made folks leery of preachers who make a living out of telling folks that God is fixing to kill them.
A lot of people make predictions all the time and are even paid to do so, but it seems to me that a lot of them are not held accountable or tracked in terms of their success or failure. Economists, for example, don’t have batting averages, so to speak, to indicate how often they have gotten it right. Pundits and politicians can get it wrong time and time again without being called on it. The promoters of the war in Iraq, for example, are still making predictions and being published in major media outlets. Shouldn’t their columns be labeled with some indicator of how prescient or misguided they have been? Shouldn’t government spokescritters have to wear a placard showing their percentage of truth telling?
If I were a futurist, I would be sure to make my predictions far enough ahead that I won’t be around to be called on them. “A billion years hence, we will no longer use hover cars but travel through the medium of pure thought.” I could also make them vague and ambiguous enough, like Nostradamus, that they can be made to fit any circumstances that arise. “A ruler will emerge who will call himself a peacemaker but who will do battle on the ancient plain.” I could also make lots of inconsistent predictions in the hopes that one of them will pan out and I will be cited as prescient. “The Democratic/GOP candidate will win in 2008.”
Or I could just start calling myself an economist or a pundit, in which case I need not concern myself with my accuracy.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Good Post at Upaya
MDM at Upaya has a thought provoking piece on how a “thick dialectical libertarianism” might deal with “exploitation”: http://upaya.blogspot.com/2007/03/exploitation.html
DeCoster versus Postrel
Karen DeCoster takes on Virginia Postrel at Lew Rockwell’s blog: http://blog.lewrockwell.com/lewrw/archives/012533.html#more
Postrel dumps on “deductivist” libertarians while praising “empiricists”. http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/03/18/virginia-postrel/an-18th-century-brain-in-a-21st-century-head/
This issue, or rather a closely related issue, is very close to my heart. One of my ambitions in life was to be an “applied anthropologist”. Even my choice of a career in law was driven by a desire to be a social engineer. Anthropology, I reckoned, would better inform my understanding of human nature and how to engineer society for the betterment of mankind. The promulgation and implementation of public policy was the highest calling. In sum, I was a wanker.
My career path was derailed on a couple of accounts. In the first instance, I came to believe that cultural and social anthropology as these are presently constituted have no useful or beneficial application. Secondly, I came to understand what Weber meant when he wrote that social science cannot tell anyone what he ought to do. At best, social science can make predictions about the consequences of a particular public policy. In the end, human values and goals are predicated on underlying metaphysical assumptions, not on anything that can be empirically derived. Social scientists cannot legitimately counsel anyone on what they ought to want or what values to adhere to. At best, we can give advice on how to achieve our goals or what the likely outcome of the application of a value to the social order will be. Thirdly, any work in this arena by a social scientist is most likely to be deployed in the interests of ruling elites and maintenance of the established order.
I value liberty for its own sake. I derive this value primarily from my religious convictions. These convictions are not subject to any empirical test. For me, liberty is the end. For Postrel, liberty is the means to achieve some other ends. Presumably, to her way of thinking, too much liberty would be a bad thing if it led to a deviation from her vision of the good society. Even the state deploys such reasoning when it decides that giving its subjects more liberty through lower (but not too low) taxes will result in more revenue to the state.
Perhaps I am reading too much into Postrel’s essay. It is possible to read it as simply calling for more pragmatism (assuming you didn’t know any of Postrel’s other views). Maybe it isn’t much different to say that liberty leads to the desired end state than to say that liberty is the desired end state. Then again, in the former formulation, there might be an optimal level of liberty that falls well short of what most libertarians I know see as desirable. What is optimal depends on what you are trying to accomplish. If I am a ruler, I will want to give my subjects as much liberty as necessary to keep them governable and productive at minimal cost and maximum profit, but not so free that they overthrow me. Would I then be a “libertarian” despot? In such a formulation, anyone is a libertarian who advocates any freedom at all. If I allow my slaves to breathe as they see fit so that they might be more productive, then I am quite the liberal.
I also see liberty as desirable for its own sake because I do not presume to know what is best for my conspecifics. Central planning in culture, religion, or other areas of life doesn’t work any better than it does in the economy. My species will probably do better in the long run if it is free to pursue diverse goals and follow diverse values. The more diversity the better. Someone is bound to get something right that way. If Virginia Postrel became queen of the world and could impose her vision of the good society on every human being, who is to say that that would be a good thing? Her utopia could very well be my dystopia.
I agree with Postrel that libertarians should be willing to ally themselves with those who move in the direction of more liberty. Tax cuts are a good thing, but taxation is still theft. I prefer the thief who takes less to the thief who takes more. Public policy is important, but why would a libertarian look first to solutions based on violence and coercion? Wouldn’t a libertarian want to exhaust the possibilities of peaceful, voluntary methods before calling in government goons? It had better be damned important to do so and all but impossible to deal with any other way.
Let’s face it. The libertarian utopia is a long way off. We have to deal with the state as a social fact or risk being killed or imprisoned. We acquiesce in it because we are pragmatists, even though we deny it legitimacy. If we begin to grant it legitimacy, we have lost our souls, and to call ourselves libertarian is self delusion.
Postrel dumps on “deductivist” libertarians while praising “empiricists”. http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/03/18/virginia-postrel/an-18th-century-brain-in-a-21st-century-head/
This issue, or rather a closely related issue, is very close to my heart. One of my ambitions in life was to be an “applied anthropologist”. Even my choice of a career in law was driven by a desire to be a social engineer. Anthropology, I reckoned, would better inform my understanding of human nature and how to engineer society for the betterment of mankind. The promulgation and implementation of public policy was the highest calling. In sum, I was a wanker.
My career path was derailed on a couple of accounts. In the first instance, I came to believe that cultural and social anthropology as these are presently constituted have no useful or beneficial application. Secondly, I came to understand what Weber meant when he wrote that social science cannot tell anyone what he ought to do. At best, social science can make predictions about the consequences of a particular public policy. In the end, human values and goals are predicated on underlying metaphysical assumptions, not on anything that can be empirically derived. Social scientists cannot legitimately counsel anyone on what they ought to want or what values to adhere to. At best, we can give advice on how to achieve our goals or what the likely outcome of the application of a value to the social order will be. Thirdly, any work in this arena by a social scientist is most likely to be deployed in the interests of ruling elites and maintenance of the established order.
I value liberty for its own sake. I derive this value primarily from my religious convictions. These convictions are not subject to any empirical test. For me, liberty is the end. For Postrel, liberty is the means to achieve some other ends. Presumably, to her way of thinking, too much liberty would be a bad thing if it led to a deviation from her vision of the good society. Even the state deploys such reasoning when it decides that giving its subjects more liberty through lower (but not too low) taxes will result in more revenue to the state.
Perhaps I am reading too much into Postrel’s essay. It is possible to read it as simply calling for more pragmatism (assuming you didn’t know any of Postrel’s other views). Maybe it isn’t much different to say that liberty leads to the desired end state than to say that liberty is the desired end state. Then again, in the former formulation, there might be an optimal level of liberty that falls well short of what most libertarians I know see as desirable. What is optimal depends on what you are trying to accomplish. If I am a ruler, I will want to give my subjects as much liberty as necessary to keep them governable and productive at minimal cost and maximum profit, but not so free that they overthrow me. Would I then be a “libertarian” despot? In such a formulation, anyone is a libertarian who advocates any freedom at all. If I allow my slaves to breathe as they see fit so that they might be more productive, then I am quite the liberal.
I also see liberty as desirable for its own sake because I do not presume to know what is best for my conspecifics. Central planning in culture, religion, or other areas of life doesn’t work any better than it does in the economy. My species will probably do better in the long run if it is free to pursue diverse goals and follow diverse values. The more diversity the better. Someone is bound to get something right that way. If Virginia Postrel became queen of the world and could impose her vision of the good society on every human being, who is to say that that would be a good thing? Her utopia could very well be my dystopia.
I agree with Postrel that libertarians should be willing to ally themselves with those who move in the direction of more liberty. Tax cuts are a good thing, but taxation is still theft. I prefer the thief who takes less to the thief who takes more. Public policy is important, but why would a libertarian look first to solutions based on violence and coercion? Wouldn’t a libertarian want to exhaust the possibilities of peaceful, voluntary methods before calling in government goons? It had better be damned important to do so and all but impossible to deal with any other way.
Let’s face it. The libertarian utopia is a long way off. We have to deal with the state as a social fact or risk being killed or imprisoned. We acquiesce in it because we are pragmatists, even though we deny it legitimacy. If we begin to grant it legitimacy, we have lost our souls, and to call ourselves libertarian is self delusion.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Dinesh D'Souza Critiqued by Slightly Less Nutty Guy
What does it take to make VD Hanson seem reasonable? His plucking the low hanging fruit of a D’Souza rant for criticism: http://www.reason.com/blog/show/119248.html
(Actually, low hanging fruit would be harder to pick than getting fodder from D’Souza’s ravings. It’s more like fruit that fell off the tree, was eaten by a lagomorph, excreted by said lagomorph and devoured again for double digestion before being redeposited. Seriously, D’Souza is crazy. Of course, this is the guy that gained his 15 minutes of fame by arguing that his fear of negroes was justified.)
I have one quibble with VDH, however. D’Souza may have been on to something when he suggested that right wing Americans form an alliance with traditional Muslims against liberalism. The Christianist right and Islamists are very much alike. They both decry the decadence of the West and long for an authoritarian state to enforce their religious strictures. VDH ought not to have dismissed this outright, given that most of the GOP core constituency wants to impose something very like sharia law. In a comical turn, VDH remarks that he feels more akin to those dirty hippies Christopher Hitchens and Joe Lieberman than to any of the ayatollahs.
(Actually, low hanging fruit would be harder to pick than getting fodder from D’Souza’s ravings. It’s more like fruit that fell off the tree, was eaten by a lagomorph, excreted by said lagomorph and devoured again for double digestion before being redeposited. Seriously, D’Souza is crazy. Of course, this is the guy that gained his 15 minutes of fame by arguing that his fear of negroes was justified.)
I have one quibble with VDH, however. D’Souza may have been on to something when he suggested that right wing Americans form an alliance with traditional Muslims against liberalism. The Christianist right and Islamists are very much alike. They both decry the decadence of the West and long for an authoritarian state to enforce their religious strictures. VDH ought not to have dismissed this outright, given that most of the GOP core constituency wants to impose something very like sharia law. In a comical turn, VDH remarks that he feels more akin to those dirty hippies Christopher Hitchens and Joe Lieberman than to any of the ayatollahs.
Who is a LIbertarian?
Who gets to decide who is ideologically pure enough to be called a “libertarian”? Nobody and everybody. The meaning of the term is, like most words, contested. It, like many words, can be bandied about so indiscreetly that it loses its descriptive power. It can be an epithet on the one hand and a badge of honor on the other. I find myself thinking at times when someone claims to be a libertarian or describes someone else as such: “You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”
I have come to accept that the term “libertarian” can be used in a relative sense. You can be a Stalinist in every respect but if you also advocate decriminalization of marijuana, you are more “libertarian” than the Stalinist who supports the prohibition of weed. An outright fascist who advocates for the freedom to gamble is more “libertarian” than a fascist who supports the prohibition of gambling.
For me, one test of whether you are really a libertarian is a commitment to the principle of limited government. If you advocate decriminalization of marijuana but at the same time acknowledge that it is within the state’s legitimate police power to criminalize it, then that is rather different than claiming that the state has no legitimate business regulating pot in the first place. If you buy into the notion that the state can legitimately do as it pleases without any inherent limits, I don’t think you really qualify as a libertarian. There is a big difference between arguing that the state ought not to engage in an activity because it is not good policy to do so and arguing that the state cannot engage in it as a matter of principle.
A libertarian, in my view, has to accept that some undesirable situations may persist in the absence of regulation. I ask people to think about government by imagining whether the problem to be solved or the service to be offered is so important to you that you would be wiling to send goons over to your neighbor’s house to rough them up to make it happen. That is precisely what you are doing when you support a government program or regulation. You are resorting to violence, and many us have scruples about the use of violence. The trouble is that the violent nature of government is obscured, and many who would not dream of robbing their neighbors directly support taxation for their own pet projects and causes.
Libertarians can disagree on how much government is necessary and still be “libertarian” in the diluted sense that they support less government than someone else who is more statist than they are. If you support more government than I do, you are less libertarian than I am. At some point, you will cease to be a libertarian in my view and probably a lot sooner down the statist road than you might like.
I reckon it ultimately boils down to the non-aggression principle. For me, there are only extreme circumstances under which I would dispatch goons to my neighbor’s place. My religious principles dictate peacefulness and toleration in all but the most limited cases. I cannot love my neighbor and rob him or threaten or coerce him at the same time. I cannot love my neighbor and at the same time let my own cowardice induce me to rob him, restrict him, coerce him and send his children off on military adventures to address some minute risk to myself. If I support the so called “War on Terror”, that is precisely what I would be doing, using violence to mitigate a danger that is far less than the risk that I will be struck by lightning or killed in an auto accident. If I am a frightened bedwetter, that doesn’t give me license to infringe on the liberties of my neighbors to assuage my panic.
Let’s recap. If you advocate decriminalization of some activity as good public policy, for example because it will increase state revenues, you are probably not a libertarian in my book. If you deny the state’s legitimate authority to criminalize the activity in the first place, that’s libertarianism. I get to decide whom I think is a libertarian and who is not one. Maybe I will set myself up as the herald of the ideology and issue credentials.
I have come to accept that the term “libertarian” can be used in a relative sense. You can be a Stalinist in every respect but if you also advocate decriminalization of marijuana, you are more “libertarian” than the Stalinist who supports the prohibition of weed. An outright fascist who advocates for the freedom to gamble is more “libertarian” than a fascist who supports the prohibition of gambling.
For me, one test of whether you are really a libertarian is a commitment to the principle of limited government. If you advocate decriminalization of marijuana but at the same time acknowledge that it is within the state’s legitimate police power to criminalize it, then that is rather different than claiming that the state has no legitimate business regulating pot in the first place. If you buy into the notion that the state can legitimately do as it pleases without any inherent limits, I don’t think you really qualify as a libertarian. There is a big difference between arguing that the state ought not to engage in an activity because it is not good policy to do so and arguing that the state cannot engage in it as a matter of principle.
A libertarian, in my view, has to accept that some undesirable situations may persist in the absence of regulation. I ask people to think about government by imagining whether the problem to be solved or the service to be offered is so important to you that you would be wiling to send goons over to your neighbor’s house to rough them up to make it happen. That is precisely what you are doing when you support a government program or regulation. You are resorting to violence, and many us have scruples about the use of violence. The trouble is that the violent nature of government is obscured, and many who would not dream of robbing their neighbors directly support taxation for their own pet projects and causes.
Libertarians can disagree on how much government is necessary and still be “libertarian” in the diluted sense that they support less government than someone else who is more statist than they are. If you support more government than I do, you are less libertarian than I am. At some point, you will cease to be a libertarian in my view and probably a lot sooner down the statist road than you might like.
I reckon it ultimately boils down to the non-aggression principle. For me, there are only extreme circumstances under which I would dispatch goons to my neighbor’s place. My religious principles dictate peacefulness and toleration in all but the most limited cases. I cannot love my neighbor and rob him or threaten or coerce him at the same time. I cannot love my neighbor and at the same time let my own cowardice induce me to rob him, restrict him, coerce him and send his children off on military adventures to address some minute risk to myself. If I support the so called “War on Terror”, that is precisely what I would be doing, using violence to mitigate a danger that is far less than the risk that I will be struck by lightning or killed in an auto accident. If I am a frightened bedwetter, that doesn’t give me license to infringe on the liberties of my neighbors to assuage my panic.
Let’s recap. If you advocate decriminalization of some activity as good public policy, for example because it will increase state revenues, you are probably not a libertarian in my book. If you deny the state’s legitimate authority to criminalize the activity in the first place, that’s libertarianism. I get to decide whom I think is a libertarian and who is not one. Maybe I will set myself up as the herald of the ideology and issue credentials.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Libertarian Comedian Eric Dondero Makes Me Laugh
I had to check out the pro-war “libertarian” Eric Dondero’s blogs http://libertarianrepublican.blogspot.com/ after reading some of his comments on Independent Country. I am convinced that this is a parody, and I find his postings comical. His schtick is to declare himself a true libertarian while espousing entirely statist viewpoints. This could be a swipe at Virginia Postrel and Tom Palmer and their ilk.
In a particularly hilarious post, he endorses Rudy Giuliani for President despite Giuliani’s fascist leanings because Eric thinks Rudy would be the greatest “warrior” ever in the White House. Even funnier are those who comment on his posts without seeming to realize that the site is not real.
Eric claims to have an impressive libertarian resume and to be the single most influential libertarian political consultant on the planet. He speaks “10-15 languages”, apparently so many that he has lost count. He says that Lew Rockwell is a lefty liberal and not a libertarian at all. He claims that Dana Rohrbacher was a founding father of the modern libertarian movement.
I laughed until I almost wet myself. Thanks, Eric, for your humorous take on libertarianism.
In a particularly hilarious post, he endorses Rudy Giuliani for President despite Giuliani’s fascist leanings because Eric thinks Rudy would be the greatest “warrior” ever in the White House. Even funnier are those who comment on his posts without seeming to realize that the site is not real.
Eric claims to have an impressive libertarian resume and to be the single most influential libertarian political consultant on the planet. He speaks “10-15 languages”, apparently so many that he has lost count. He says that Lew Rockwell is a lefty liberal and not a libertarian at all. He claims that Dana Rohrbacher was a founding father of the modern libertarian movement.
I laughed until I almost wet myself. Thanks, Eric, for your humorous take on libertarianism.
I Call Steve Scott Butter Because He is on a Roll
Steve Scott is on a roll http://fromthepew.blogspot.com/
In one post, he takes on what it might mean to be a “fool for Jesus” http://fromthepew.blogspot.com/2007/03/fools-for-jesus.html It means, per Steve, that the way of Jesus seems foolish to the world, not that followers of Jesus should act like idiots.
I have been thinking about how many passages in the Bible refer to foolishness in contrast to wisdom, especially the Proverbs. The formula is usually “the foolish man does such and such whereas the wise man does something else altogether”. The thing that troubles me is that I have come to believe that all of us are prone to folly to some extent and that some of us are destined to be fools by virtue of our stupidity. I do not equate intelligence with wisdom, but wisdom seems a lot harder to come by if you are stupid. A stupid man is more easily led into folly as he has not the discernment to know whom to trust. Witness the core constituency of GW Bush. Most of them purport to follow Jesus but have been led astray by evil men into following the very Prince of Fools and his ungodly agenda.
Do the proverbs invite us to hold fools in contempt? I know many who seem to think so, who speak of letting fools take “personal responsibility” for their folly, that is to suffer the dire consequences of it. I have come to believe that we should not be contemptuous of fools; rather, we should treat them with an extra measure of solicitude, instruct them if they can be instructed, and mitigate the consequences of their folly when we can.
I am relatively intelligent, but I do not claim to be wise. I have had to learn too many things by experience to claim wisdom as an attribute. I have done my share of foolish things and made many foolish choices, and I am not done yet. It is written that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, and I trust that I have at least embarked on the path of wisdom in this regard.
In one post, he takes on what it might mean to be a “fool for Jesus” http://fromthepew.blogspot.com/2007/03/fools-for-jesus.html It means, per Steve, that the way of Jesus seems foolish to the world, not that followers of Jesus should act like idiots.
I have been thinking about how many passages in the Bible refer to foolishness in contrast to wisdom, especially the Proverbs. The formula is usually “the foolish man does such and such whereas the wise man does something else altogether”. The thing that troubles me is that I have come to believe that all of us are prone to folly to some extent and that some of us are destined to be fools by virtue of our stupidity. I do not equate intelligence with wisdom, but wisdom seems a lot harder to come by if you are stupid. A stupid man is more easily led into folly as he has not the discernment to know whom to trust. Witness the core constituency of GW Bush. Most of them purport to follow Jesus but have been led astray by evil men into following the very Prince of Fools and his ungodly agenda.
Do the proverbs invite us to hold fools in contempt? I know many who seem to think so, who speak of letting fools take “personal responsibility” for their folly, that is to suffer the dire consequences of it. I have come to believe that we should not be contemptuous of fools; rather, we should treat them with an extra measure of solicitude, instruct them if they can be instructed, and mitigate the consequences of their folly when we can.
I am relatively intelligent, but I do not claim to be wise. I have had to learn too many things by experience to claim wisdom as an attribute. I have done my share of foolish things and made many foolish choices, and I am not done yet. It is written that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, and I trust that I have at least embarked on the path of wisdom in this regard.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Report from the Georgia Hills
My stepmother passed away last week, and I drove down to Georgia for the funeral and to spend some time with my father and siblings, some of whom were her children. I got caught in that snowstorm on my way home on Friday, and it took over four hours to get from Scranton to Stormville.
My visits to Georgia are so infrequent that I tend to forget just how southern fried my family is. Their accents are broad, and their tastes run to country and western music, car races, hunting and fishing, and ultimate fighting. They neglect their pets and indulge their children. They fry almost everything they eat, and they like their green beans cooked to a pulp with a slab of pork fat. It seemed to me that I was eating almost constantly. I had fried green tomatoes and butter beans for the first time in decades. Folks tend to be either obese or skinny as a rail, like one of those shirtless drunks getting arrested on “Cops”.
The funeral was in a tiny country Baptist church, and it featured shouting and old time preaching. I didn’t see anybody run the aisles, but I would not have been surprised by it. My stepmother loved that church, and the service was how she would have wanted it. She was laid to rest in a small cemetery across the road from a racetrack. The funeral goers ended up at the Western Sizzlin’ for supper.
My hometown has grown bigger and a whole lot seedier these last few years. Farms that used to raise corn now feature row upon row of manufactured homes. Housing is very affordable. It has to be since wages are so low. Some of the local carpet mills have recruited tens of thousands of Mexicans, many of them undocumented and in the country unlawfully, to work in the mills. This has the effect, desired by the mill owners, of suppressing wages and keeping the locals in their place.
My people are staunchly anti-immigrant and are looking to the federal government to control the border better. It’s not so much that they don’t like Mexicans; rather, they resent the suppression of wages and rising tax burdens. The Mexicans have relatively larger families and have filled up the public schools so that new schools must be built. They also use the public health facilities and other government services without a concomitant contribution to the tax base.
Dalton has a lot of pawnshops, check cashing businesses, and easy credit providers to cater for the working poor. Many folks have more than one job to make ends meet. My sister has three jobs. My mother bakes wedding cakes on the side. Nobody ever gets ahead or out of debt. They are always one illness or injury away from financial disaster.
My people are likely to vote for a Republican for president in 2008. They don’t care for Clinton, partly because she’s a woman, or for Obama, mainly because he’s black, and they reckon one of the other of those senators has a lock on the Democratic nomination. If a Republican candidate is “right” on immigration, they will vote for him despite his positions on anything else and despite the GOP’s platform being against their interests in almost every respect.
There are “more churches than people”, as the saying goes, and frequent schisms over minutiae have led to a proliferation of tiny churches, mostly Baptist. These feature rather lively services with much outpouring of emotion and demonstrations of religious ecstasy. Ecstasy is otherwise forbidden, so you have to have it in church. In principle, most forms of pleasure are sinful.
I am glad that I was able to visit, but I am equally glad to be back to my life as an expatriate here in New York. My accent will go away in a few weeks, and I will get all the gravy out of my system in a month or so.
My visits to Georgia are so infrequent that I tend to forget just how southern fried my family is. Their accents are broad, and their tastes run to country and western music, car races, hunting and fishing, and ultimate fighting. They neglect their pets and indulge their children. They fry almost everything they eat, and they like their green beans cooked to a pulp with a slab of pork fat. It seemed to me that I was eating almost constantly. I had fried green tomatoes and butter beans for the first time in decades. Folks tend to be either obese or skinny as a rail, like one of those shirtless drunks getting arrested on “Cops”.
The funeral was in a tiny country Baptist church, and it featured shouting and old time preaching. I didn’t see anybody run the aisles, but I would not have been surprised by it. My stepmother loved that church, and the service was how she would have wanted it. She was laid to rest in a small cemetery across the road from a racetrack. The funeral goers ended up at the Western Sizzlin’ for supper.
My hometown has grown bigger and a whole lot seedier these last few years. Farms that used to raise corn now feature row upon row of manufactured homes. Housing is very affordable. It has to be since wages are so low. Some of the local carpet mills have recruited tens of thousands of Mexicans, many of them undocumented and in the country unlawfully, to work in the mills. This has the effect, desired by the mill owners, of suppressing wages and keeping the locals in their place.
My people are staunchly anti-immigrant and are looking to the federal government to control the border better. It’s not so much that they don’t like Mexicans; rather, they resent the suppression of wages and rising tax burdens. The Mexicans have relatively larger families and have filled up the public schools so that new schools must be built. They also use the public health facilities and other government services without a concomitant contribution to the tax base.
Dalton has a lot of pawnshops, check cashing businesses, and easy credit providers to cater for the working poor. Many folks have more than one job to make ends meet. My sister has three jobs. My mother bakes wedding cakes on the side. Nobody ever gets ahead or out of debt. They are always one illness or injury away from financial disaster.
My people are likely to vote for a Republican for president in 2008. They don’t care for Clinton, partly because she’s a woman, or for Obama, mainly because he’s black, and they reckon one of the other of those senators has a lock on the Democratic nomination. If a Republican candidate is “right” on immigration, they will vote for him despite his positions on anything else and despite the GOP’s platform being against their interests in almost every respect.
There are “more churches than people”, as the saying goes, and frequent schisms over minutiae have led to a proliferation of tiny churches, mostly Baptist. These feature rather lively services with much outpouring of emotion and demonstrations of religious ecstasy. Ecstasy is otherwise forbidden, so you have to have it in church. In principle, most forms of pleasure are sinful.
I am glad that I was able to visit, but I am equally glad to be back to my life as an expatriate here in New York. My accent will go away in a few weeks, and I will get all the gravy out of my system in a month or so.
Friday, March 09, 2007
China Wants to Invest a Trillion Bucks
WaPo reports that China is looking to increase the return on its trillion dollars of foreign currency that it holds in reserve: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/09/AR2007030900194.html
Currently, China buys US bonds, but they plan to diversify. We are assured by the Minister of the Treasury that this will not impact the market in US bonds.
Currently, China buys US bonds, but they plan to diversify. We are assured by the Minister of the Treasury that this will not impact the market in US bonds.
Stop Slandering God, John Hagee!
The false prophet John Hagee reckons that the state is God’s instrument for bringing about Judgment Day, so he aims to influence the US government and the Israeli government to make war in the Middle East and incite Russia and the Arabs to nuke Israel. http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2007/03/07/aipac-defines-acceptable-discourse/ This will set the stage for the Tribulation and the return of Christ to judge the quick and the dead. Those Israelites have got to be murdered en masse as part of God’s plan, and the sooner the better for Hagee.
Hagee claims the Third Reich was God’s instrument for chastising the Jews and setting the stage for the return of the remnant to Palestine. I suppose this means that Hagee would have advocated for Nazi genocide if he had been preaching back in the 1930s. After all, it was God’s plan unfolding, and collaborating with God is always a good idea. You could presumably have worked at the death camps and still have been a member in good standing at Hagee’s church, what with doing God’s work and all.
I suppose that you can argue that everything that happens is an unfolding of God’s mysterious will, but I don’t reckon that it is at all sensible to opine as to what God’s purposes may be. You are more apt to blaspheme than to prophesy. The attack on the World Trade Center, for example, may very well have some divine purpose, but there is no basis for attributing it to the treatment of homosexuals in America as some false prophets did. Of course, every unfortunate event is due to gays in some crazy preachers’ fantasy worlds.
In any event, letting those who would somehow hasten the end of days influence foreign policy to that end is insanity. For one who claims to be a follower of Jesus to advocate war and mass murder and to work to bring these about is obscene. If God uses catastrophes in His plan, He certainly does not mean for Christians to cause them or to participate in evildoing. There are enough evildoers in the world to go around.
When you announce what you think God is up to in the wake of tragedy, you are telling us about yourself, not about God. Hagee is telling us that he is bats**t insane or satanic or both.
Hagee claims the Third Reich was God’s instrument for chastising the Jews and setting the stage for the return of the remnant to Palestine. I suppose this means that Hagee would have advocated for Nazi genocide if he had been preaching back in the 1930s. After all, it was God’s plan unfolding, and collaborating with God is always a good idea. You could presumably have worked at the death camps and still have been a member in good standing at Hagee’s church, what with doing God’s work and all.
I suppose that you can argue that everything that happens is an unfolding of God’s mysterious will, but I don’t reckon that it is at all sensible to opine as to what God’s purposes may be. You are more apt to blaspheme than to prophesy. The attack on the World Trade Center, for example, may very well have some divine purpose, but there is no basis for attributing it to the treatment of homosexuals in America as some false prophets did. Of course, every unfortunate event is due to gays in some crazy preachers’ fantasy worlds.
In any event, letting those who would somehow hasten the end of days influence foreign policy to that end is insanity. For one who claims to be a follower of Jesus to advocate war and mass murder and to work to bring these about is obscene. If God uses catastrophes in His plan, He certainly does not mean for Christians to cause them or to participate in evildoing. There are enough evildoers in the world to go around.
When you announce what you think God is up to in the wake of tragedy, you are telling us about yourself, not about God. Hagee is telling us that he is bats**t insane or satanic or both.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Gaydar Deficiency
I don't have gaydar. I am usually the last to know whether someone is gay. Quite a few of my high school and college friends turned out to be gay, and I never suspected. It wasn't really safe to come out in my home town, especially in high school.
I suspect that my cluelessness has contributed to some awkward situations over the years where gay men have assumed that I was also gay and came on to me. As flattering as this can be, it can also be a bit shocking as when one man planted a big wet one on me out of nowhere. I don't know what signals I was putting out, but nowadays I don't get out much and don't have much of an opportunity to get into "I thought you were gay" scenarios.
I have never been homophobic or concerned that I might be gay. Presumably, I would know if I were sexually attracted to other men. I am attracted to women, so that rules out gay. I don't enjoy gay porn, so that rules out a career in conservative political circles.
One of my conspecifics doesn't want his kids to have gay teachers or to be exposed to homosexuality. He fears that if they find out that homosexuality is an option, they will decide to be gay! He would rather his sons repress their true sexual preferences, if they turn out to be gay, and pretend to be straight, no matter how miserable this makes them. I don't know why he feels this way. I bet he would love his son anyway.
I suspect that my cluelessness has contributed to some awkward situations over the years where gay men have assumed that I was also gay and came on to me. As flattering as this can be, it can also be a bit shocking as when one man planted a big wet one on me out of nowhere. I don't know what signals I was putting out, but nowadays I don't get out much and don't have much of an opportunity to get into "I thought you were gay" scenarios.
I have never been homophobic or concerned that I might be gay. Presumably, I would know if I were sexually attracted to other men. I am attracted to women, so that rules out gay. I don't enjoy gay porn, so that rules out a career in conservative political circles.
One of my conspecifics doesn't want his kids to have gay teachers or to be exposed to homosexuality. He fears that if they find out that homosexuality is an option, they will decide to be gay! He would rather his sons repress their true sexual preferences, if they turn out to be gay, and pretend to be straight, no matter how miserable this makes them. I don't know why he feels this way. I bet he would love his son anyway.
Best Uncle Ever
If your kindly and attentive uncle bothers to teach you to smoke weed at a young age, you are lucky indeed. I wasted a lot of good weed through improper technique when I started using and could have used some avuncular advice. I still can’t roll a joint if I were to use weed now, which I don’t what with it being illegal and all. Also, I did not use weed until I was an adult, so I missed out on a lot of pleasure for many years. Thanks for nothing, uncles!
The solicitous uncle in Texas that I heard about on the radio has come under fire for teaching a 2 year old and a 6 year old how to smoke weed. I have not heard anyone fault him for the technique he imparted or his teaching style, and he was probably correct in his assertion that the youngsters would eventually smoke weed sooner or later. Better to show them the right way so they don’t hurt themselves or waste any valuable buds. Taping the session would be helpful for the kids to review the lesson later on.
The solicitous uncle in Texas that I heard about on the radio has come under fire for teaching a 2 year old and a 6 year old how to smoke weed. I have not heard anyone fault him for the technique he imparted or his teaching style, and he was probably correct in his assertion that the youngsters would eventually smoke weed sooner or later. Better to show them the right way so they don’t hurt themselves or waste any valuable buds. Taping the session would be helpful for the kids to review the lesson later on.
Gatekeepers Schmatekeepers
JL Wilson (http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2007/03/high-price-of-distrust-and-fear.html) and Lew Rockwell (http://blog.lewrockwell.com/lewrw/archives/012462.html) both posted about gatekeepers today, albeit in different contexts. Wilson problematizes regulators and credentialing agencies as stifling creativity and limiting workers’ opportunities, and Rockwell defends Wikipedia against criticism about its editors’ lack of credentials.
I learned from a comedian last weekend that strippers in Texas must be vetted and licensed. She had had a DWI conviction and was ineligible for a license. In some places, you need a license to arrange flowers. These barriers to entry into such occupations serve no useful purpose. All licensing and credentialing bodies serve only to increase costs and rob folks of opportunities. Who thinks for a moment that a medical license is a guarantee of competence or that bar membership indicates a brilliant legal mind? These professions use licensing to maintain a monopoly for their guilds, not to protect consumers of medicine or legal advice. It would be one thing if membership in a professional association were voluntary. The association would have an incentive to keep as members only the most capable practitioners so that membership might be used as a marketing tool. As it stands now, membership does nothing for the consumer.
As for Wikipedia, I don’t care if the editors have degrees or are approved by the establishment. What do credentials matter as long as the information and knowledge provided are useful and fairly accurate? The establishment’s knock on Wikipedia is that anyone can contribute to it, even if they have not been through the establishment’s vetting process. The same goes for journalists’ disdain for bloggers. I find bloggers’ reporting useful and informative, and I have enough sense to know how credible any particular blog might be. It’s the “professional” journalists that fail to inform and who pump out endless streams of vacuity. The academy does not produce anything comparable to Wikipedia or otherwise do anything for me as a seeker of information or knowledge.
I learned from a comedian last weekend that strippers in Texas must be vetted and licensed. She had had a DWI conviction and was ineligible for a license. In some places, you need a license to arrange flowers. These barriers to entry into such occupations serve no useful purpose. All licensing and credentialing bodies serve only to increase costs and rob folks of opportunities. Who thinks for a moment that a medical license is a guarantee of competence or that bar membership indicates a brilliant legal mind? These professions use licensing to maintain a monopoly for their guilds, not to protect consumers of medicine or legal advice. It would be one thing if membership in a professional association were voluntary. The association would have an incentive to keep as members only the most capable practitioners so that membership might be used as a marketing tool. As it stands now, membership does nothing for the consumer.
As for Wikipedia, I don’t care if the editors have degrees or are approved by the establishment. What do credentials matter as long as the information and knowledge provided are useful and fairly accurate? The establishment’s knock on Wikipedia is that anyone can contribute to it, even if they have not been through the establishment’s vetting process. The same goes for journalists’ disdain for bloggers. I find bloggers’ reporting useful and informative, and I have enough sense to know how credible any particular blog might be. It’s the “professional” journalists that fail to inform and who pump out endless streams of vacuity. The academy does not produce anything comparable to Wikipedia or otherwise do anything for me as a seeker of information or knowledge.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
First Plural is a Perfectly Cromulent Person
Jomama links to an article by Jim Davies: http://djomama.blogspot.com/2007/03/why-i-not-anarchist-any-longer.html
The gravamen of the article is that tribalism is bad, any form of tribalism, and that anarchists seek to live as individuals and to see others solely as individuals.
I reckon tribalism can be bad and often is, but it doesn’t have to be. Voluntary associations of people can be a good thing. I am happy to be part of a family, and I voluntarily choose to participate in family life to some extent. I am happy to be part of the church and to assume responsibility for the welfare of my coreligionists as long as there is no compulsion involved. I am happy to live among cooperative and friendly neighbors and to be part of a neighborhood. I am lucky in that my coworkers are mostly amiable, and I am happy to serve in harness with them. When I have been on sports teams or in clubs, I have been happy to do so. I love being in the choir and singing together as with one voice.
The key is that I am not compelled to do any of these group things. The relationships are largely negotiable, but I accept that participation may give rise to certain kinds of claims on my time and resources. These are voluntary groups, and what makes them work is love, not compulsion. The introduction of violence into any of them would render them valueless and a misery.
Davies’ article focuses mainly on what are more properly called “categories”, i.e. collections of people sorted on the basis of one or more characteristics but having no organization or function as with a “group”. Races are categories, not groups. It is more proper to speak of ethnic categories instead of ethnic groups. Gender is a category. American is a category.
Manipulative bastards work to reify categories and to base claims on them, to imbed the notion of category into individual identity. My nationality is American, but that does not mean that I have any particular duty to or expectation from anyone else having the same nationality solely on the basis that we are subject to the same rulers. I do not regard an American as more or less valuable than any other human being. The same may not be said of voluntary associations. I hold my kinsmen in higher esteem than others. I have special affection for my coreligionists and fellow choir singers. They are my friends and family, and we share more than a set of arbitrary characteristics.
It is okay to speak in the first person plural when you are talking about the groups you belong to. Here are some more examples of the category/group distinction:
Category /Group
Irishman/ Michael Flatley fan club
Women /The Junior League
Christian/ The church
Veteran /VFW Post 1217
Anarchist /East Fishkill Anarchist Society
African-American /NAACP
Dog owner /Friends of the Yonkers Animal Shelter
Gays/ GLAAD
Cheese eaters /Danbury Cheese Lovers Club
Working Class /UMWA Local 12
Children /The Lee Family
Actors /Cast of Battlestar Galactica
Old people /AARP
The gravamen of the article is that tribalism is bad, any form of tribalism, and that anarchists seek to live as individuals and to see others solely as individuals.
I reckon tribalism can be bad and often is, but it doesn’t have to be. Voluntary associations of people can be a good thing. I am happy to be part of a family, and I voluntarily choose to participate in family life to some extent. I am happy to be part of the church and to assume responsibility for the welfare of my coreligionists as long as there is no compulsion involved. I am happy to live among cooperative and friendly neighbors and to be part of a neighborhood. I am lucky in that my coworkers are mostly amiable, and I am happy to serve in harness with them. When I have been on sports teams or in clubs, I have been happy to do so. I love being in the choir and singing together as with one voice.
The key is that I am not compelled to do any of these group things. The relationships are largely negotiable, but I accept that participation may give rise to certain kinds of claims on my time and resources. These are voluntary groups, and what makes them work is love, not compulsion. The introduction of violence into any of them would render them valueless and a misery.
Davies’ article focuses mainly on what are more properly called “categories”, i.e. collections of people sorted on the basis of one or more characteristics but having no organization or function as with a “group”. Races are categories, not groups. It is more proper to speak of ethnic categories instead of ethnic groups. Gender is a category. American is a category.
Manipulative bastards work to reify categories and to base claims on them, to imbed the notion of category into individual identity. My nationality is American, but that does not mean that I have any particular duty to or expectation from anyone else having the same nationality solely on the basis that we are subject to the same rulers. I do not regard an American as more or less valuable than any other human being. The same may not be said of voluntary associations. I hold my kinsmen in higher esteem than others. I have special affection for my coreligionists and fellow choir singers. They are my friends and family, and we share more than a set of arbitrary characteristics.
It is okay to speak in the first person plural when you are talking about the groups you belong to. Here are some more examples of the category/group distinction:
Category /Group
Irishman/ Michael Flatley fan club
Women /The Junior League
Christian/ The church
Veteran /VFW Post 1217
Anarchist /East Fishkill Anarchist Society
African-American /NAACP
Dog owner /Friends of the Yonkers Animal Shelter
Gays/ GLAAD
Cheese eaters /Danbury Cheese Lovers Club
Working Class /UMWA Local 12
Children /The Lee Family
Actors /Cast of Battlestar Galactica
Old people /AARP
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Dying Republics as Entertainment
Mrs Vache Folle and I have been watching DVDs of the HBO series “Rome”. If you can live with some considerable historical inaccuracy, it’s an entertaining series. The set design and costumes are fantastic, and the producers have tried to be true to Roman culture of the late Republic.
The Julio-Claudian gangsters that started the Empire and destroyed the Republic kept the corpse of the Republic around for many years to lend themselves some kind of “legitimacy”. There was still a Senate to legislate, albeit as long as the legislation pleased the Emperors. There were still Republican offices of tribune and consul and such like, albeit filled with Imperial lackeys.
I am reminded of the times we live in now. In the US, we keep the Constitution under glass and appeal to it often. Some folks keep little pocket sized Constitutions on their persons, presumably so they can wipe their arses with it in the case of politicians. But the Constitution has lost its meaning. The US government does not remotely resemble what the founders designed.
Of course, the Roman Republic was ripe for corruption. It seemed to function mainly to maintain the patrician class’ privileges and wealth, and the Julio-Claudians used their popularity with ordinary people to secure and maintain power and cow the Senate. Likewise, the American electorate has acquiesced in and supports the massive federal governmental apparatus we now enjoy. Ordinary folks have voted for tyranny consistently, believing in politicians’ promises of a New Deal, a Great Society, and a New World Order.
The Julio-Claudian gangsters that started the Empire and destroyed the Republic kept the corpse of the Republic around for many years to lend themselves some kind of “legitimacy”. There was still a Senate to legislate, albeit as long as the legislation pleased the Emperors. There were still Republican offices of tribune and consul and such like, albeit filled with Imperial lackeys.
I am reminded of the times we live in now. In the US, we keep the Constitution under glass and appeal to it often. Some folks keep little pocket sized Constitutions on their persons, presumably so they can wipe their arses with it in the case of politicians. But the Constitution has lost its meaning. The US government does not remotely resemble what the founders designed.
Of course, the Roman Republic was ripe for corruption. It seemed to function mainly to maintain the patrician class’ privileges and wealth, and the Julio-Claudians used their popularity with ordinary people to secure and maintain power and cow the Senate. Likewise, the American electorate has acquiesced in and supports the massive federal governmental apparatus we now enjoy. Ordinary folks have voted for tyranny consistently, believing in politicians’ promises of a New Deal, a Great Society, and a New World Order.
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