Libertarian brawl breaks out

Instapundit savages Reason's Tim Cavanaugh for savaging a nonchalant tourist who is now looking for a good time on the beaches of Malaysia.

Cavanaugh's original commentary was short and vague ("Western civilization is in a state of terminal decadence"). And, true, he deviated from the Libertarian line that assigns no value to emotions and intent -- only to the results on a balance sheet.

I don't think anyone at Reason would wish away the few tourists South Asia still attracts, as Instapundit suggests. Cavanaugh was simply appalled at the tourist's indifference to the suffering all around him. When he walks down the empty corridors of his hotel, past the silent restaurants and shops, won't he feel a little . . . strange?

Happy New Year!

I just wanted to wish everyone a happy and safe new year; and thank everyone who has made this blog a success, from the bloggers to the readers. Thanks for making this semster so great!

Marco

Bad Charlotte

In the London Review of Books, a devastating review of Tom Wolfe's latest novel.

But information compulsion is not the only thing Wolfe suffers from. Another is repetition compulsion. When in doubt, repeat words for emphasis. Hoyt's smile, for instance, is described as 'so warm, warm, warm, loving, loving, loving, so warm and loving and commanding, all commanding' that Charlotte 'couldn't move'. But later, when he deserts her, she gives way to 'sobs sobs sobs sobs sobs sobs racking racking racking racking racking racking convulsive sobs sobs sobs sobs sobs'. A description of a basketball match begins: 'Static::::::::::: Static::::::::::: Static::::::::::: Static::::::::::: [repeat 12 further times] choked the Buster Bowl.'

Sounds like a real page-turner.

The war on pharmaceuticals...

"[I]n a tiny nook of the Franklin County Sheriff's Department, Detective Jason 'Jake' Grellner is leading a campaign to cut off the supply of over-the-counter cold pills that have fueled the explosion of methamphetamine production across the nation's heartland. 'To say that we're excited is an understatement ... 2005 is going to be our year,' said Grellner, who has spent much of the last few weeks working with legislators and policymakers from across the Midwest. Their goal: to severely restrict sales of pseudoephedrine, the active chemical in scores of decongestants and the backbone of the $3 billion U.S. market for over-the-counter cold remedies."

This time its cough medicines, other times its pain killers.

[Link via Freedom News Daily]

A step in the right direction

"The gay and lesbian partners of Montana University System employees have the same right to health insurance benefits as their heterosexual counterparts, the Montana Supreme Court ruled Thursday. To deny gays and lesbians the same benefits available to unmarried heterosexual employees of the University System violates the equal protection clause of the Montana Constitution, Justice Jim Regnier wrote in the 4-3 majority opinion that overturned a 2002 lower court decision."

Indeed.

Obvious Questions

For despite the fact that farm income has doubled in two years, federal subsidies have also gone up nearly 40 percent over the same period - projected at $15.7 billion this year, and $130 billion over the last nine years. And that bounty is drawing fire from people who say that at this moment of farm prosperity, the nation's subsidy system has never made less sense.

Even those deeply steeped in the system acknowledge it seems counterintuitive. "I struggle with the same question: how the hell can you have such high government payments if farmers had such a great year?" said Keith Collins, the chief economist for the Agriculture Department.

Me too.

Keynesian economics & the Tsunami "boom"

NPR interviewed an economist, C. Fred Bergsten, who pushes optimism in the wake of a tragedy to new levels. Sure, the tsunami killed tens of thousands of people and robbed a poor country of countless dollars in lost tourism and property damage --

but think of the flurry of economic activity that will result from the rebuilding process!

Does Bergsten envy the people - excuse me, the survivors - in South Asia's disaster area?

Link via Clubforgrowth.

More on Stingyness

Daniel Drezner chimes in on the subject:

Having blogged on the topic, and written elsewhere about it. More importantly, I'm on the Board of Advisors for the Center for Global Development's Ranking the Rich exercise, which means I've seen a lot of these debates in the past. So I guess I have a duty to fill the information gap here...

Out of the 21 major donors, we're ninth -- hardly stingy, though not the most generous. One could make the case that comparing large economies with Scandanavia or the Benelux states is unfair, because the bigger economies have other public goods functions to fulfill (see Bruce Bartlett for this argument). If you limit the comparison to the G-7 countries, only Great Britain is more generous. Indeed, the most shocking figure in that table is how ungenerous the Japanese have been on this front.

Check out the post for more thoughts and numbers.

Cry me a cyber-river

In the WSJ, Cameron Stracher wishes we could just turn off all the gadgets and connect with one another, for goodness' sake.

Even city streets, which used to be a veritable Petri dish for communication, are being overrun by headsets and Blue Tooth-enabled cell phones that allow people to walk, talk and chew gum while ignoring everyone around them. Get in a cab, and the driver is chatting away, but not with you. The advent of the Internet has only made matters worse, as children retreat to their rooms to surf the Web and IM their friends, whereas at least there used to be a fighting chance to get them into the family room to watch "Seinfeld."

Annoying, isn't it, that people with radically diverse tastes no longer settle for being on the same communal "page" when there's an alternative that suits them?

The tsunami was NOT our fault.

It was only a matter of time before someone blamed America for the tidal wave in South Asia.

Is anyone else getting tired of the way people demand handouts from the US government in the wake of tragedies? Charity is great -- and it has nothing whatever to do with the duties of governments. If a private school building burns down in NYC, do the administrators of that school go running to other private schools and demand assistance? (Well, nowadays, probably.)

NRO's Jim Boulet is irritated by the inability of left-wing humanitarians to just shut up and give:

Seems like liberals are all full of ideas on who should be giving money. Bonus-rich Wall Street brokers are a popular choice. The Washington Post's Sally Jenkins nominated America's football-playing colleges: "The big football schools should take all that ill-gotten Bowl Championship Series money, $14.3 million each, and send it to Phuket. Come on guys, feed the world."

Not one of these articles insisting upon enormous generosity by others has begun thusly: "While personally donating my own money to the relief effort, I had an idea ..." Too many liberals seem to believe charity should begin anywhere but from their own purse. Or as a smart man once defined liberalism as "where A meets with B to decide how much C will give to D."

Kind of reminds me of something that struck me deeply as a kid, long before I read Atlas Shrugged and got sucked into politics. I grew up in an east-coast suburb peopled with educated, left-wing professionals. In town was a huge charity organization that chose its division leader based on who donated the most each year.

For two years in a row, the leader of the "young physicians" division was a quiet, self-effacing Republican. Believe me, this man was of average means. He had a small bank account and, unlike his left-wing counterparts, a big heart.

I'm not endorsing huge charity-dispensing, least of all when you can't really afford it. Just thought that story was worth telling.

SUVs

From Reason's Weekly Dispatch:

Parents let inexperienced teen driver have "too much car," teen flips car and dies. The culprit? Yep, SUVs.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29937-2004Dec27.html

Not to mention that she was speeding and had been drinking.

Say it with me: "Useful Idiot"

From the New York Times' 5-page eulogy of the "telegenic" Susan Sontag:

She could be provocative to the point of being inflammatory, as when she championed the Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl in a 1965 essay; she would revise her position some years later. She celebrated the communist societies of Cuba and North Vietnam; just as provocatively, she later denounced communism as a form of fascism.

In other words, she was wrong when it mattered the most -- and right when it was so late that nobody even paid attention. (Who ever heard of Susan Sontag, ardent anti-communist?)

Clara runs out of blog fodder

This is how I feel when someone violates my rights to life, liberty and property.

Congratulations, Mr. Yuschenko

And congratulations to the people of Ukraine.

pBS goes pro-Soviet

I just saw a couple of creepy documentaries about WWII spies, and I'm haunted by more than the music.

It's amazing how much PC baloney has tainted "history" as told by movie people. First I saw some sob-story about Soviet spies and their aging, completely unapologetic loved ones. It was UNfrigginBELIEVABLE. And, of course, they portrayed all the officers who tried to catch Ted Hall, the Rosenbergs, et. al as trigger-happy hicks.

Ooooh, it was just so unfair and mean when they dragged Ted Hall and Saville Sacks in for questioning to get confessions that never came. (The investigators knew perfectly well these men were spies, see, because they'd cracked coded Soviet documents that said as much -- but they couldn't use that evidence in a trial b/c then the communists would know that the US had cracked the code.)

The documentary had an interview with some Leftist scholar who gravely intoned that Ethel Rosenberg was "murdered in cold blood." Trust me, the way they put the program together, you were supposed to nod and shed a tear when he said it.

Of course, the men who sold bomb secrets to the communists were just "idealist, earnest young men" who wanted to "level the playing field" or whatever. Really, the documentary people tried so hard to interview people - like Mrs. Ted Hall - explaining how these traitors were actually American patriots trying to avert a nuclear disaster. How's that?! And why isn't the missus in jail for admitting that she helped her husband dump boxes of "left-wing papers" into the river before the officers could search his home? Her husband, whom she KNEW was a Soviet spy when she married him?

Then they interviewed a Russian, a former KGB agent now living in London, sitting in his kitchen, looking like a regular guy. He mentioned that we now know for sure that Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy. (Well boy, it's good to put all those doubts to rest!) Aye, but here's the rub -- this former KGBer (he was awfully young, too) looked up wistfully and said that the Americans who gave bomb secrets to the KGB were "true heroes." Or something like that. And that was the last thing he said on the film.

Umm... how about some equal time for the anti-communists?

Right after that program, the same channel had a documentary that was refreshingly pro-Allies in comparison... but it focused on the "brave" women secretaries at BCS, a Canadian pro-British spy agency based in NYC during the war. Okay, whoop-dee-do for these secretaries, but they weren't "the real heroes" in any sense, and their stories of typing up and passing along messages they knew nothing about really does not "need to be told."

Don't touch the Powerline... zzzt

Powerline's Hindrocket is all over Tom Friedman's snarky little news round-up, which tests readers' knowledge of how much the Bush Administration messed up by not making Tom Friedman lord high chief advisor. Right.

"3. The report that the Bush-Republican budget for 2005 contained a $100 million cut in federal funding to the National Science Foundation."
This one I think is true; the cut represents a 1.9% decline.

Heh. And when Friedman runs out of scare stories, he just plugs in the phrase "tax cut" to get a rise out of his Times readers:

"9. The report that among President Bush's top priorities in his second term is to simplify the tax code and to make the sweeping tax cuts from his first term permanent."

Also in this Powerline post: some handy charts on per capita education spending -- handy if you disagree with the belief that we're sucking the kids dry.

Et tu, Kudlow?

Larry Kudlow chucks free markets out the window and concludes that reimporting drugs from Canada would be a dangerous blunder. For one thing, Canada's supply would scarcely be "enough" to meet American demand. (Okay, so let's not even bother.) Moreover, these pills aren't subject to life-giving FDA scrutiny. Oh, the humanity!

But Cato's Roger Pilon cautions against the fear-mongering. (He also lists some reasonable reason to oppose reimportation -- like worries that we'd just be importing Canada's price controls -- but knocks down each of these objections.)

An aside: Pilon makes it seem like the FDA is to blame for insisting on extensive safety testing, which drives up R&D costs ($800 million, on average, for a new compound that reaches the market). Bad, stupid, monopolizing FDA.

Step Right Up!

And test your mastery of news trivia...

May require registration.

Clara, I'm expecting a good show!

Ah...

Merry Christmas.

Bailey on babies and non-babies

I tend to lean pro-life, but this is sort of compelling.

killing in the name of... the death penalty!?

"Assailants claiming to be members of a revolutionary group opposed to the death penalty opened fire on a public bus in northern Honduras, killing at least 23 passengers and escalating an ongoing battle between gangs and a government dedicated to fighting them."

Hmm

You knew this was coming

France has outlawed anti-women and anti-gay speech.

The law puts anti-gay and sexist comments on an equal footing with racist or anti-semitic insults, allowing French courts to hand down fines of up to €45,000 (£30,000) and jail sentences of up to 12 months for "defamation or incitement to discrimination, hatred or violence on the grounds of a person's sex or sexual orientation".

Whoa there. Why doesn't everyone get protected status? How about anti-Clara speech?

UPDATE: Never mind -- I'm a woman, so I'm covered. Also, I have a race. =)

Talk about stepping on the little people

Why then, as their flagship hero, does Nintendo choose an overweight, big-nosed plumber with an ungainly mustache and ridiculous suspenders? Why was this, the most unlikely heroic figure, chosen? Unusual yes . . . but deliberate?

A website unconvers the not-so-subtle Communist propaganda of... Super Mario Brothers. (Via the Corner)

. . . Mario, and his short-lived brother, are none other than cartoon representations of Joseph Stalin. Stalin was Russia's amicus humani, amor patriae or communist super man. So could this "super" Mario represent another "super" man?

Don't miss the link at the bottom of the page -- for a hilarious interpretation of the REAL Mario story.

One wonders what will become of the Princess he is attempting to "rescue" once Red Mario seizes power himself . . . .

And think of all the U.S. productivity hours lost to that addictive game. Oh, it all makes sense now!

Mideast Internet censorship

No, not Syria -- Israel, which shut down "Hebrew Labor," a site that matched Jewish employers with Jewish jobseekers.

I should add that these were employers who hired only Jews.

The site's philosophy is morally repulsive, to be sure -- especially when there are thousands of peaceful Christians and Muslims living as Israeli citizens -- but people have the right to be morally repulsive. Don't they?

Weasels Ripped My Flesh!!!

A random tribute to my favorite Sicilian, Italian, Greek, Arab, French, Irish, German (i.e. AMERICAN) Artist, Frank Zappa.

(Hey, at least I'm not forcing you to listen to his music like I did Marco and Adam)


From his Wikipedia Entry:

Back in 1965:
After being approached by a customer who wanted him to produce a suggestive tape for a stag party, Zappa and some friends jokingly faked the 'erotic' recording, which purported to contain the sounds of people having sex. Unfortunately the customer turned out to be an undercover member of the Vice Squad and Zappa was jailed for ten days on charges of supplying pornography. His entrapment and brief imprisonment left a permanent mark on him, and was a key event in the formation of his anti-authoritarian stance.
...

During a residency in New York's Greenwich Village in late 1966, Zappa became friends with Jimi Hendrix and is reputed to have introduced Hendrix to the Wah-wah pedal.

The Mothers' anarchic stage shows were legendary — during one famous 1967 performance at the Garrick Theatre in New York, Zappa managed to entice some soldiers from the audience onto the stage, where they proceeded to dismember a collection of baby dolls.
...

From the 'Mothers of Invention Anti-Smut Loyalty Oath,' September 1970:
I _(you just fill in the blank)_, do hereby solemnly swear, in accordance with the regulations of the contract with this here rock and roll engagement, and the imbecilic laws of the State of Florida, and the respective regulations perpetrated by Red-Necks everywhere, do hereby solemnly swear, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES, TO REVEAL MY TUBE, WAD, DINGUS, WEE-WEE, AND/OR PENIS ANYPLACE ON THIS STAGE!! This Does NOT include Private Showings in the motel room, however.
...

On September 19, 1985, Zappa testified before the US Senate Commerce, Technology, and Transportation committee, attacking the Parents Music Resource Center or PMRC, a music censorship (though others would say watchdog) organization founded by then-Senator Al Gore's wife Tipper Gore and including many other political wives, including the wives of five members of the committee. He said,

'The PMRC proposal is an ill-conceived piece of nonsense which fails to deliver any real benefits to children, infringes the civil liberties of people who are not children and promises to keep the courts busy for years dealing with the interpretational and enforcemental problems inherent in the proposal's design.

'It is my understanding that, in law, First Amendment issues are decided with a preference for the least restrictive alternative. In this context, the PMRC's demands are the equivalent of treating dandruff by decapitation.'
...

'I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth get cleaner?' in response to Tipper Gore's allegations that music incites people towards deviant behavior, or influences their behavior in general

What would we do without U-M studies?

U-M study: Men prefer subordinate women.
(Yes, I'm covering the "what would we do without..." beat while James Taranto is on vacation.)

ANN ARBOR, Mich.--Men are more likely to want to marry women who are their assistants at work rather than their colleagues or bosses, a University of Michigan study finds.
. . . Brown and Lewis found that males, but not females, were most strongly attracted to subordinate partners for high-investment activities such as marriage and dating.

What next -- women are attracted to men of higher status? Get outta here!

The stuff that "disappearances" are made of

"Police Need Not Say Why Arrest Made: U.S. High Court Overview"

Dec. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Police officers don't have to give a reason at the time they arrest someone, the U.S. Supreme Court said in a ruling that shields officers from false-arrest lawsuits.

The justices, voting 8-0, threw out a suit against Washington state police officers who stopped a motorist and then told him he was being arrested for tape-recording their conversation. Although the recording was legal, the high court said the arrest was valid because the man could have been arrested instead for impersonating a police officer.

In an opinion for the court, Justice Antonin Scalia said the officers didn't have to provide a reason for arresting the man at all, as long as they had probable cause to do so.

"While it is assuredly good police practice to inform a person of the reason for his arrest at the time he is taken into custody, we have never held that to be constitutionally required," Scalia wrote.

[Hat tip: Bureaucrash]

Guns don't kill people; Wal-Marts do

DALLAS -- Near the end of her short life, Shayla Stewart, a diagnosed manic-depressive and schizophrenic, assaulted police officers and was arrested for attacking a fellow customer at a Denton Wal-Mart where she had a prescription for anti-psychotic medication.
Given all those signs, her parents say, another Wal-Mart just seven miles away should have never sold her the shotgun she used to kill herself at age 24 in 2003.
Her mother, Lavern Bracy, is suing the world's biggest store chain for $25 million, saying clerks should have known about her daughter's illness or done more to find out.

Gee, can you think of someone else who should have known about Shayla's problems?

Mr. Walton, tear down this Wal-Mart!

The Nation urges shoppers to rise above greedy self-interest and resist the seduction of Wal-Mart bargains.

It is crucial that Wal-Mart's liberal and progressive critics make use of the growing public indignation at the company over sex discrimination, low pay and other workers' rights issues, but it is equally crucial to do this in ways that remind people that their power does not stop at their shopping dollars. It's admirable to drive across town and pay more for toilet paper to avoid shopping at Wal-Mart, but such a gesture is, unfortunately, not enough. As long as people identify themselves as consumers and nothing more, Wal-Mart wins.

This article also exposes what The Nation gravely calls "Wal-Mart's wefare scam" -- i.e. the store encourages low-income workers to get on welfare, food stamps, the works.

First, a Dem strategist railed against red-state welfare; now The Nation slams Wal-Mart for taking over the job of welfare-and-needy matchmaker. Has the world gone mad?

He WEARS red...

Is Santa Claus a Republican?

"Santa is clearly a proponent of the Patriot Act. He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He doesn't bother with warrants or court orders or international conventions controlling satellite surveillance, so be good for goodness' sake."

BUT...

"Santa has not shipped a single job to Mexico, despite the obvious financial benefits from hiring Mexican elves. Also, rather than driving a gas-guzzling SUV, Santa operates a vehicle that runs on a renewable resource: magic."

Won't Get Fooled Again

From the Jewish Telegraph Agency:

Anti-Semitic graffiti in a Ukrainian city may be a political provocation aimed at discrediting presidential challenger Viktor Yuschenko.

Slogans reading �Kikes get out of here!� and �Yes, Yuschenko!� were spray-painted over several buildings and the World War II memorial in the city of Chernigov early this week, days before Sunday�s presidential election. �I believe that it is an anti-Yuschenko provocation,� said Irina Lipkina, a Jewish leader in Chernigov. A leading member of Parliament told JTA he agrees: �This is a dirty provocation,� said Gennady Udovenko, head of the Ukrainian Parliament�s Committee on Human Rights and Ethnic Minorities.

I've been following this election pretty carefully, and it's incredible to see how wise the Ukranians have been to Yanukovich's dirty tricks. Maybe it's the internet, or perhaps its their yearning to get away from Putin's grasp before turning into another Belarus, which is a dictatorship whose stalled economy is increasingly reliant on Russian aid (mostly in the form of free energy).

Of course, there are some legitimate reasons to support Yanukovich. Yuschenko's opposition movement (like many of the post-Soviet independce movements) is associated simulataneously with pro-Western Democrats and Ukranian nationalists, leading some minorities (Russians and Jews, for instance) to feel that the stability and safety they have under Yanukovich is worth closer relations with an undemocratic and domineering Russia.

But it's not that simple. As for Ukraine's Jews, they're split between young and old.

Ebay India [update]

CEO wins bail.

Greedy, greedy Wal-Mart

First store on the block to offer $500 laptops, which I'm sure is bad and evil and part of their plot to oppress and destroy us all.

Happy Holidays

Thanks to Julian Sanchez at Reason for this fine expose of the "Christmas-Under-Attack" myth:

It's a Christmas tradition as venerable as mistletoe and caroling: As the days grow shorter, conservative activists claiming to speak for American Christendom raise their voices, not for a rousing round of "Good King Wenceslaus," but to complain that the roughly 75 to 80 percent of Americans who profess allegiance to some denomination or another of Christianity constitute a cruelly oppressed minority.

The kvetching is especially loud this year, with a spate of stories chronicling the outrage over a particularly insidious form of anti-Christian bigotry: the Satanic phrase "happy holidays."
...

In order to pull off the sort of grab at victim status conservatives used to deride as a tactic of the left, self-appointed defenders of the faith draw from a cornucopia of bogus anecdotes about oppression.
...

To some extent, the feeling of marginalization may be the result of the very real process of cultural fragmentation. There is probably now as rich and varied a marketplace of Christian media—from Veggie Tales cartoons to the apocalyptic fantasy of the Left Behind series and its spinoffs—as there's ever been. But it's perceived as niche culture, in large part because cultural products are increasingly tailored to niches. As a recent New York Times op-ed notes: "Plain-vanilla Top 40, once the chief vehicle for hit songs, is now the format for only 5 percent of the nation's 10,000-plus stations." A few crossover hits notwithstanding, a young singer who wants to incorporate her faith into her music is now likely to narrowcast to a Christian rock audience because, well, she can.
...

What remains of the mainstream, meanwhile, steers clear of potentially divisive religious themes, not just because American society is gradually becoming more pluralistic in terms of the proportion of Christians to devotees of other faiths, or of none, but because the idea of a monolithic Christian audience is a lot of nonsense, however useful it is to demagogues. Many believers, after all, don't much care for the Left Behind books. Critics of the "Anti Christian Lawyers Union," for that matter, tend to forget that the lead plaintiffs in Abington School District v. Schempp, which barred schools from conducting morning Bible readings, were Unitarians who resented the school's usurpation of their prerogative to teach their children about the Bible in their own way.

So are we really seeing an unprecedented wave of hostility toward either Christmas or Christianity? Or is it, rather, that the waning of the cultural hegemony to which some Christians have come to feel entitled is perceived as an attack? Many of the most loudly trumpeted complaints in this vein are, after all, complaints about the absence of special treatment: no special spot for the Ten Commandments in the courthouse rotunda; no pride of place for Christmas among those happy winter holidays; no exceptions for the Christian charity.

Since "special rights" has been a term of aspersion among conservatives for decades, would-be theocrats have at least the decency to be too ashamed to demand them explicitly. Instead, they've learned the power of the victim narrative, of framing the debate to cast themselves as underdogs. Rather than attempting to entrench their values, demagogues purport to be playing defense against a plot to "purge religion from the public square," trading on the same ambiguity in the word "public" that has eased the acceptance of ever more regulation of privately owned establishments that are open to the public, and allowed for the metastasis of the term "public health," which now apparently covers not just infectious disease control or mosquito abatement, but smoking and obesity. Since the battle is a reactive one against the undifferentiated forces of anti-Christian bigotry, such nice distinctions as that between a business that fails to cater to its customers and an arm of the state adhering to strict neutrality can be dispensed with. More importantly, moderate Christians with no desire to impose their faith on others might be convinced to support a re-Christianization of public life on the premise that they'd only be defending themselves against marauding secularists.

The stratagem is so perverse as to be almost admirable: Take a holiday associated with sentiments like peace and goodwill, mix in some well-intentioned attempts to acknowledge it in an inclusive way suited to a pluralistic society, and then use the combination to generate fear, divisiveness, and high ratings. But whether we're impressed or appalled by that cynical ploy, whether we're gearing up for Christmas dinner or just a post-Ramadan pig-out, we can all breathe a little easier knowing that the anti-Christmas "jihad" is no more real (sorry kids) than Santa Claus. Happy holidays.

Speaking of niche markets, i've been grooving to the hasidic reggae stylings of Matisyahu recently... great music for studying and chilling.

Geez.
My first post, and i've already cornered myself in as the shylock...

Choice and Information

From Glenn Reynolds' Tech Central Station column:

The trouble is encapsulated in Ken Layne's now-famous statement, "this is the Internet, and we can fact-check your ass." Where before journalists and pundits could bloviate at leisure, offering illogical analysis or citing "facts" that were in fact false, now the Sunday morning op-eds have already been dissected on Saturday night, within hours of their appearing on newspapers' websites.

Annoyance to journalists is the least of this, because what is really going on is something much more profound: it's the end of the power of Big Media. For almost a hundred years - from the time William Randolph Hearst pushed the Spanish-American war, to the ascendancy of talk radio in the 1990s - big newspapers and, later, television networks have set the agenda for public discussion, and tilted the playing field in ways that suited their institutional and political interests.

Not any more. As UPI columnist Jim Bennett notes, what is going on with journalism today is akin to what happened to the Church during the Reformation. Thanks to a technological revolution (movable type then, the Internet and talk radio now), power once concentrated in the hands of a few has been redistributed into the hands of the many.

This article spoke to my belief that all too often debates centered on choice ignore the flip side of the issue - information. Here is an example from The Washington Post:

It's not just that financial planning is a dry topic to most folks. It's that modern life is overloaded with choices. In "The Paradox of Choice," the Swarthmore College psychologist Barry Schwartz shows how a certain measure of choice can be liberating but how too much is a treadmill -- sometimes even triggering depression. Freedom and choice are wonderful things that allow us to realize our human potential. But there's a limit to how many choices each of us has time to make, and most people in the rich world are pretty much maxed out already.

You see this truth in the behavior of the affluent, who actually pay to avoid choices. They hire home decorators so they don't have to stare glassily at 200 kinds of curtain rail. They hire marriage planners so they don't have to fret about cream napkins vs. white ones. There are said to be 10,000 wedding consultants practicing in the United States. If the rich are deliberately avoiding choice, why are we so sure that the majority want more of it?

But what about the other side of the equation? The author makes no mention of the fact that information is now more plentiful, expansive, exchangable, and accessible than ever before. It is no surprise that the Gutenberg's invention predated the Reformation and not the other way around. Information supports a diversity of choices and these choices in return fuel the need for more information. It is undeniable that the premium on information has come down considerably and will on continue to do so. And so while it is true that if I have the same amount of information to choose between 3 choices or 10; the latter may be more stressful, that is probably a gross simplification of reality. Ultimately, it seems that in a world where the premium on information is falling and the number of choices available are increasing, the argument for an elite class deciding for all becomes weaker and weaker; simply because of the reality that individuals from all walks of life are much better than some government expert at choosing for themselves.

On a side note, it's funny how the author ignores the fact that hiring a marriage planner is in itself a choice. And, for the record, the author is trying to dislodge the legitimacy of choice as a guiding ideal for public policy in general and for social security specifically.

N Y political thugs freak out

While drug policy might not be "resonating" around the country, it resonated like hell in Albany County. "There's a new sheriff in town," or at least a new District Attorney, and it looks like David Soares is scaring the living crap out of Albany's ruling political crony class.

"Some longtime observers of New York politics and its cycles of reform see something different this time. One of them is Representative Jerrold Nadler, who is a product of the Upper West Side's 'This time it's deeper,' he said. 'Then it was about reforming politics. Now it's about the government itself.'"

2005 Freedom House rankings

Russia is back in the "not free" category, thanks to Putin's strikes against independent media and democratic elections. Not since the USSR collapsed 14 years ago has Russia earned this badge of shame from Freedom House.

Freedom House said that on balance, the world saw increased freedom in 2004: 26 countries showed gains while 11 showed decline. Of the world's 192 countries, it judged 46 percent free, 26 percent not free, and the rest partly free. Eight rated as the most repressive: Burma, Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria and Turkmenistan.

Rethinking red-state/blue-state

They misspelled "respondent," so I'm not sure how scientific this is. (via the Corner)

Some Perspective

Often we get cought up with what we percieve as encroachments on our freedom without realizing that things could be a lot worse:

The CEO of eBay's Indian subsidiary, Baazee.com, was arrested Sunday following an attempt by an Indian teenager to sell a pornographic video on the auction site. eBay has expressed outrage at the arrest, saying it removed the listing when it learned of its content, and that it has cooperated with police.

Bajaj was arrested on December 17th under section 67 of India's Information Technology Act, which covers the transmission of obscene material via electronic media. The arrest follows an attempt by an Indian teenager to sell a pornographic video on Baazee.com. Under Indian law, all sex videos are considered obscene.

Whither power to the people?

Reason kicks around FCC Chairman Michael Powell. Not too hard, thankfully -- since he seems like a nice chap.

Reason: What about the price consumers are bearing by having government regulation of electronic equipment, like the broadcast flag for Hollywood?

Powell: Specifically what?

Reason: The price of innovation being reduced by someone having to come and beg your agency for approval to implement a new consumer-friendly device like TiVo.

Powell: I think the premise of your question is false. The notion that a complete laissez-faire deployment of equipment always will produce a quicker and more optimal, more innovative solution is not accurate. You wouldn't have a personal computer if there weren't a standard. You wouldn't have the production of content if there weren't protections for the creators of content.

The stuff you find on the Internet...

Amnesiac rediscovers his identity online. Very cool story.

Licensing Everything

I'm sure Damain will love this.

Strippers in [San Antonio] will soon have to put on something they can't take off -- a business license. The City Council on Friday approved a measure requiring exotic dancers to apply for permits and wear them while performing. Law enforcement authorities said the rule, which was unanimously approved by the 11-member council and goes into effect in 10 days, will allow them to quickly identify those dancers who are breaking nudity ordinances. (Among other things, full nudity and contact with customers are not allowed in San Antonio strip clubs.) ... The permit -- expected to be roughly half the size of a credit card -- would include the dancer's stage name and a photo. Police would be able to check that information against club records to determine her real name and other personal data.

Governor Erhlich isn't going to take it any more

Maryland, my home state, has its first Republican governor in 36 years. The Baltimore Sun remains as leftist as ever, though -- and Ehrlich's decided to completely freeze out the Sun's reporters. I have a feeling this isn't the best way to go about things.

Ehrlich and some Md. Democrats support medical marijuana, BTW.

What not to bring to the airport

Your red-state boyfriend's "mystery gift."

Baby talk

Dean Falk, an anthropologist at Florida State U., believes she's discovered the key to the evolution of human language.

"The epiphany for me was that I knew chimp mommies don't make these noises, so I knew something happened during evolution," she said. "The missing puzzle piece was bipedalism. We stood up; we lost hair. It was then that babies could no longer hang on to their mothers. Mothers had to hang on to their babies. That was a eureka moment."

Forced apart, she says, mother and child had to communicate somehow.

Foraging mothers would have had to put their babies down to search for food. They may have made noises to reassure them. These noises would have served as codes, and eventually evolved into words.
"The behaviour of chimp mommies and babies and human mothers and infants are delightfully identical in many ways but we are dramatically different in other ways," Prof Falk said.
"We vocalise continually in a way that helps babies begin to learn language. I wanted to find out why we are the only animals that talk, and this need to pacify our babies as humans evolved may be the reason."

This could be the root of it all, but I have my doubts. Language serves a bigger purpose when neither interlocutor is a baby. After all, how many words can an infant understand? I don't know that it's particularly important for babies to have access to meaningful words; after all, baby talk is just meaningless yet "reassuring" syllables.

UPDATE: It makes a lot of sense, actually, when you think about it.

Joy to the *world*

I almost cried when I read this, but that may be because pre-finals cramming has made me a little jumpy.

Dems change their tune on welfare?

That's right -- now that they think they're footing the bills. A Wall St. Journal op-ed says that Democratic strategist Lawrence O'Donnell

complained on MSNBC that "the segment of the country that pays for the federal government is now being governed by the people who don't pay for the federal government." Mr. O'Donnell added for good measure, "Ninety percent of the red states are welfare client states of the federal government."

Whoa there. People with higher incomes are being forced to give money to those with lower incomes? When did this start?!

Blue states have more high earners; these people pay more taxes. Republicans have been complaining about this for years, and they've been called "greedy class warriors."

Using the Kerry campaign's $200,000 income cutoff, four times as many Connecticut residents as Oklahoma residents would have seen their taxes go up.

So why didn't O'Donnell air his concerns before the election, instead of backing the candidate who'd have raised taxes on the blue-state wealthy?

Spamming the spammers

Great stuff. (Via the Corner)

Driving while advertising

This is interesting.

I just encounter a minor act of marketing genius. I was walking back to my apartment when I saw a guy inching up to a stoplight with a large (venti?) Starbucks cup on his driver's side roof. In my Good Samaritan act of the day, I stopped at his window to let him know he had a cup on his roof. He rolled down his window and explained that it was a promotion and the cup was stuck up there with a magnet. Feeling kinda dumb, I walked away when the people from the car behind rolled down their window and asked me, "What's going on? Does he want that cup on his roof?" So the buzz is already beginning...

Turkey and the EU

Johan Norberg writes:

Churchill once said that "The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative". Well, I think you can say that the EU invariably does the right thing, after having said so many nice things about the right thing at ceremonious occasions, as to make it too late to look for alternatives.

EU leaders have agreed to begin membership talks with Turkey in October 2005. Despite the fact that this is merely the start of a very long journey, this is cause for celebration. After the rapid political and economic reforms in Turkey the last few years any other decision would have been discriminatory, and a way of saying that the EU is an exclusive Christian club. Of course there are implementation problems in Turkey, particularly about human rights, but the same goes for Romania and other countries cleared for membership. Opening negotiations is the best way to make sure that this positive process continues in Turkey.

The critics say that Turkey is big, poor and Muslim. I say that this is exactly why it's so important to make it an EU member. It's big - and an ageing Europe needs its millions of workers. It's poor - which means that it really needs the open European market, and it also means that the bizarre regional funds of the EU won't be able to survive such an enlargement. It's Muslim - and Islam desperately needs to be secularised, just as Christianity was. Helping secular and Muslim Turkey to become a stable and rich democracy is our best hope to contribute to such a transition. And a union which includes the country that used to be the heartland of Islam would be an efficient way of avoiding a clash of civilisations, and proving that the present conflict is really a civil war within Islam.

"Smile to hardship O youth, because you are on your way to Paradise!"

Kind of random, but I just came across this. Very enlightening, if you want to know what we're dealing with.

It's voluntary, he says

Neal Boortz gets excited about the Fair (consumption) Tax.

It is amazing how many people don't like the idea because they don't think that the rich will be paying enough in taxes. It doesn't matter that paying taxes will be voluntary under the Fair Tax plan. It doesn't matter that nobody pays the retail sales tax on the basic necessities of life. It doesn't matter that lower income Americans will virtually get a free ride when their entire federal tax liability disappears, including Social Security and Medicare taxes.

Hmm. I'd much prefer a flat tax. The Fair Tax really would punish the poor (and it's not often I say that), who spend the bulk of their incomes on consumption. Some people would have more money to spend, but what about those with no accumulated wealth? The prices would be steeper for them, too. Maybe there's some economic argument I'm missing here.