Someone Who's Been Listening to Crackpots
Apparently Igor Panarin has been listening to the crackpots who have been claiming that “Jesusland” should be separate from “The United States of Canada” as well as the apparently-different crackpots complaining about the alleged un-Americanism of recent immigrants.
On the other hand, maybe he figures that it's our turn to break up.
On the gripping hand, the breakup of the Soviet Union was a matter of reversing part of the Russian conquests of a few centuries ago. Reversing the American Civil War is unlikely, considering that much of the former confederacy has been taken over by the Yankee race. (George W. Bush, for example, is a Texan of Yankee descent.) Reversing the Mexican War is marginally more likely, until we notice that Mexican politics has been upended in the past decade or so by the increasing influence of the areas close to the United States. It may be that the United States is taking over Mexico rather than the other way around.
Not Necessarily a Paradox
In an attempt at showing how religious beliefs can be paradoxical, Kip at Overcoming Bias wrote:
While most people believe in an “afterlife,” people don't believe that parts of a crazy person's mind go to Heaven when he loses them; by extrapolation, all of a person's mind doesn't go to Heaven when you lose all of it.
A resurrection at the End of Days (or on the Riverworld) avoids this apparent problem.
Did I Predict Something Like the Madoff Scandal?
Last year, I wrote:
By the way, do they know better than the market? There are reasons to be skeptical. As I've mentioned before, violations of the Efficient-Market Hypothesis tend to be temporary and may be no more reliable than the data-mining results that appeared to indicate astrological signs could be medically relevant. The fact that the hedge-fund people tend to be Democrats might be no more relevant than the political opinions of lottery winners.
We might have to brace ourselves for a scandal. If potential investors suddenly realize the hedge funds are simply a type of gambling, they will look around for people to blame. Since everybody knows “the rich” are on the right side of the political spectrum, they will blame the activities of these Democrats on free market capitalism. Could this be the next Enron?
On the other hand, I also expected the scandal would involve somebody socially liberal who think he knows better than religious traditions. That turned out not to be the case.
The Other Side of the “War on Christmas”
Instead of complaining about occasional opposition to public celebrations of Christmas, wouldn't it make more sense for Christians to complain about the fact that religion is nearly absent from popular culture the rest of the year?
A Brief Note on the Weather
Right now I'm in favor of global warming.
Another Consequence of the Conscience Clause
According to a commenter at Dark Christianity (commenting on the Conscience Clause that ensures that the cliche that “abortion is between a woman and her doctor” actually means something):
I wonder what would happen if a Pagan, agnostic, or atheist doctor refused to offer artificial insemination to a Christian couple on the grounds that they don't feel it's right to help put a child into a psychologically hostile, cult-like Christian household.
It sound cruel, but I'd really like to see this law backfire on the wingnuts.
I will defend such a doctor, even if he or she applies such reasoning to Jews.
By the way, where did the commenters on that thread get the idea that opposition to abortion was limited to Dominionist Christians?
A Consequence of the Conscience Clause
Allegedly Jewish groups are criticizing the conscience clause (seen via Brothers Judd) that extends religious freedom to doctors and pharmacists. I must remind them that one of the effects of the conscience clause is that Orthodox Jewish pharmacists have the right to refuse to sell calendars.
The Meaning of “Madoff”
The “Mad-off” is, of course, the contest between Bernard Madoff's victims to see who can be angriest …
Meanwhile, the old saying “If you would have peace, prepare for war.” has a corollary: “If you would have honesty, prepare for fraud.”
Addendum: I have been informed that Madoff is pronounced “made off,” ruining a perfectly-good pun.
Razib Answers My Question
I recently asked (with more comments here):
The normal operation of the financial markets should confine problematic debt in a small part of the system where people who specialize in risky investments can deal with it. In other words, what were those financiers smoking?
Razib has some reasons to conclude it was speed:
So here's my explanation of the present Collapse of Western Civilization: amphetamines. The world of finance is a rather small one, populated entirely by supersmart, extremely aggressive and competitive men (mostly) who have to go at top speed twelve or more hours a day, day after day. How do they do it? Performance-enhancing drugs, that's how: legally-prescribed amphetamines. (Cocaine is uncool, and so Eighties.)
Maybe the drugs being used by financiers should be included in annual reports.
A Problem with the Shoe Incident
If the United States doesn't retaliate for the recent shoe-throwing incident, some clowns in the Middle East might take that as a “sign of weakness” and use that to recruit wannabee terrorists. To prevent that, we must find the home town of the shoe thrower and … DUMP A THOUSAND SHOES ON IT!
Stiletto heels if we want to be nasty about it.
Which States Have Been the Swing States?
I've been wondering which states have been the swing states. If you list the states in order from most Democratic to most Republican in a Presidential election, which states have been the ones to put the victor over the top? For example, in the last three Presidential elections, Florida was famously the swing state of 2000, Ohio was the swing state of 2004, and Iowa was the swing state of 2008.
I've made a list of the swing states from 1824 to 2008 (the data at Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections only go back to 1824) and, when I sorted the states in order of most likely to swing, I got the following results:
| Swings | State |
| 10 | New York |
| 7 | Ohio |
| 6 | Illinois |
| 4 | Pennsylvania |
| 3 | Michigan |
| 3 | New Jersey |
| 2 | Iowa |
| 1 | California |
| 1 | Colorado |
| 1 | Florida |
| 1 | Idaho |
| 1 | Louisiana |
| 1 | Maine |
| 1 | North Carolina |
| 1 | South Carolina |
| 1 | Virginia |
| 1 | Washington |
| 1 | West Virginia |
| 1 | Wisconsin |
New York has been the swing state surprisingly often. On the other hand, it hasn't been a swing state since 1944.
Problems with an Academic Scientist Heading the Department of Energy
It looks like the President-elect is planning to pick a real scientist, Steven Chu of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, to head the Department of Energy. I can see two potential problems:
- One of the biggest scams of the anti-nuclear movement is to convince the experts that the people are anti-nuclear and the people that the experts are anti-nuclear. Someone from Berkeley might be more likely to think anti-nukes represent the people. As a result, he might not push nuclear energy enough.
- Scientists have an incentive to support more research. When combined with the first problem, this leads them to think that the alleged opposition can be overcome by perfecting nuclear technology with more research when, in the real world, it's sometimes time to stop researching and ship.
I suspect that someone from a computer hardware or software business might have been a better choice. Their motto is frequently “Get it first the right time.”
A Speculation on What If Japan Hadn't Been Nuked
On this 67th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, I've been considering that the Japanese were mobilizing school children and also considering the effects of fighting wars in the Middle East against an enemy determined to mobilize emotions. As a result, I can think of three nasty possible effects of using an invasion of Japan as an alternative to nukes:
- We might have had a Vietnam War Syndrome twenty years earlier. The returning veterans would have been greeted as “baby killers” (at least those who survived attacks by ten-year old kids with machine guns). We might have seen a general turn toward pacifism and distrust of the “establishment.” On the other hand, we might have seen a cold civil war between the generations. (By the way, I suspect we might see such a cold civil war in the generation after abortion becomes obsolete.)
- We might have had reinforced racism. The returning veterans would have been as influential as in our time-line but they would be used to the idea of shooting at people just because they were a different race. Civil rights or relaxed immigration laws might not have gotten off the ground. (There is little danger of that in the aftermath of the Current Unpleasantness. We're not fighting brown people over there; we're fighting white people with suntans.)
- Our troops might have been reluctant to shoot back and gotten bogged down. After a few years, the Russians would be ready to launch a successful brutal invasion of what would eventually become the Japanese SSR.
The '70s Are Back
In my previous post on the return of 1970s economics, I forgot to mention one of the most irritating phenomena of the era: the propensity of liberals to blame opposition to “economic stimulus” on a desire for either inequality or mass unemployment.
As a result of that, I am unable to claim the credit of predicting the revival of that theory.
On the other hand, I still have time to predict that when interest rates rise again, some people will claim that that aggravates inflation.
I Detect a Pattern
Some recent search terms:
Maybe they should stop beating around the bush and tell us what they really think.
My term, in case you were wondering, was “disinformation.”
Maybe It's Not Time to Sell Google
Last year, I was highly dubious about Google's move to invest in alternatives to fossil fuels on the grounds they didn't mention nuclear energy. Lately, they've been looking into nukes.
Maybe Obama's election (and subsequent moderation) convinced them that it was safe to make sense on occasion, as long it's dressed up in left-wing clothes.
Recently, Google searches for phrases on the Atlas Shrugs blog have not returned results from that blog. This apparent censorship has a precedent. About a year ago, I found that a Google search for sites that link to BoingBoing gave zero results. (It got better.) I doubt if that was political and was probably just a bug in their system. In any case, Google blog searches for phrases on the Atlas Shrugs blog yield some results.
On the other hand, they might not be that eager to fix a bug until it strikes somebody they don't like.
The real question is why Google is still using secret algorithms instead of open source. I thought “security through obscurity” was supposed to be obsolete.
Maple Syrup and Freedom
The original slave crop of the revival of slavery in Western Civilization wasn't cotton; it was sugar. I suspect that may people were reluctant to oppose slavery simply because they had a sugar habit and were unwilling to be hypocrites.
If that's the case, New England may have become a center for opposition to slavery simply because they used maple syrup instead. (Ob Thanksgiving: Maple syrup was almost certainly available at early Thanksgiving celebrations.)
Leftist Bingo
If leftists are simply repeating the same stock of old ideas under the guise of “new ideas” (earlier discussed here), we can ridicule them for it. One way to ridicule people repeating the same nonsense over and over is to prepare bingo cards with the top 25 pieces of nonsense. This has been done by math teachers and even by leftists who pretend that their side hasn't opposed the best solution to a possible global-warming problem.
Anybody want to send in suggestions for entries?
This Sounds Familiar Somehow
Arthur C. Clarke on the British economy in the 1950s (in “Armaments Race,” a story in Tales from the White Hart):
“All the better for you. Sol's come over here to apply his talents to the British film industry.”
“There is a British film. industry?" said Solly anxiously. "No one seemed very sure round the studio.”
“Sure there is. It's in a very flourishing condition, too. The Government piles on an entertainments tax that drives it to bankruptcy, then keeps it alive with whacking big grants. That's the way we do things in this country.…
This couldn't have anything to do with the American economy fifty years later, could it?
Disturbing News
I agree with George Monbiot on something:
The move by Mark Lynas, 35, is the second blow in a few months to the resolutely anti-nuclear movement. George Monbiot, another high-profile environmentalist from Britain, announced in August that, after much agonising, he had decided that nuclear power was the only credible way to tackle global warming.
There was no other way, said Mr Monbiot, 45, who has held visiting fellowships at Oxford, Bristol and Keele universities, to reduce carbon emissions in an energy-hungry world.
In a related story…
The Disadvantages of Openness, II
Last year, I complained that the Republican tactic of recruiting new members resulted in recruits who were “ot-nay oo-tay ight-bray.” This past election, the Democrats went to great lengths to recruit the previously apolitical. Sure enough, guess what they got?
I Scooped Xkcd!
I made the same point as the latest xkcd comic years ago:
Hmmm... If the Second Amendment applies to all weaponry and if encryption systems are munitions then the DMCA is unconstitutional.
An embarrassing note
I must admit that this was part of a message claiming that Michael Bellesiles's alleged research was irrelevant when it turned out to have been largely fabricated.
Pointless Event, Part II
The Pointless Event recently mentioned has finally happened (seen via Bng Bng). It would have been funnier in an alternate timeline in which the surge either hadn't occurred or had been a failure and in which The New York Times weren't a left-wing paper.
By the way, I noticed the alleged prank includes an attempted satire on experts. I wonder if any of the Elitist Bastards would care to issue a rebuttal.
Leftist Indoctrination in School
According to an article in The New York Times (seen via Pure Pedantry), leftist professors have relatively little effect:
If there has been a conspiracy among liberal faculty members to influence students, “they’ve done a pretty bad job,” said A. Lee Fritschler, a professor of public policy at George Mason University and an author of the new book “Closed Minds? Politics and Ideology in American Universities” (Brookings Institution Press).
Please recall that George Mason University is the new University of Chicago. (We can expect leftists to try infiltrating it over the next few decades, though.)
If you're looking for political indoctrination, I recommend looking at primary and secondary school teachers. The teacher I had who was most likely to be a Stalinist agent taught social studies in high school. Little things gave her away, such as the time she interrupted fast when I pointed out that the totalitarian system described in Plato's Republic resembled the Soviet Union. I also remember the way she had the class debate the merits of capitalism, socialism, and communism for an imaginary nation in which capitalism didn't come out very well and in which she didn't correct obvious fallacies from students, e.g., that the nation didn't have to borrow money from capitalists because they could always print their own.
The clincher was her attitude toward Hubert Humphrey, “He was always backed by the bosses.” Years later, I found that Hubert Humphrey was one of the first liberal Democrats to combine anti-Communism and anti-racism, thereby depriving Communists of their monopoly of opposition to racism. (A mere liberal Democrat would have said, “Humphrey has changed.”)
On the other hand, the social-studies teachers I had also included a normal liberal (I think) and a moderate conservative, so the probably Communist agent didn't do that much damage.
It's Happened Before
This isn't the first time a Democrat has been elected with expectations of reviving the “Fairness” Doctrine. For example, according to a Usenet post in 1993:
Clinton and the Democratic Party are close to utterly distroying the
freedom of speech that has made talk-radio a vital medium.
In August 1987, the Federal Communications Commission, (FCC), abolished
the so-called "Fairness Doctrine", a political tool much used to restrict
free speech of political enemies. Not the Clintonians have slipped it
back as part of campaign-finance. Now without much notice this provision
has passed the Senate and headed for the house. Of course Clinton supports
it and is trying to get it through. Time to get on the phones and call in
to your Represenative and tell them to vote no.
As Virginia I. Postrel reported in the LA Times column Column Right:
[ My comments are in brackets. ]
[She reports how the other Administrations used the so-called fairness doctrine
to muzzle opposition view points and goes on. ]
"Clinton Administration officials aren't likely to be any more scrupulous
about protecting free speech and editorial independence. Indeed, given the
Administrations troubles with talk-show listeners -- the outpourings against
Zoe Baird, gays in the military. -- it is hard to imagine that the Clintonians
wouldn't use the law to muzzle enemies." [ Not hard at all. ]
[ How Clinton Could Muzzle Talk Radio ]
"Some simple interpertations of "fairness" would do the trick. The FCC could
require stations, as it has in the past, to balance the viewpoints on a issue
to issue basis; simply having both liberal and conservative hosts would not
suffice. And it could require that stations balance audience size -- for
example, putting Rush Limbaugh on at 3am until his numbers dropped to a drivve
norm."
"The first option means airing lots of UNPAID responses. The second means
cutting off popular but controversial hosts. In both cases, regulators can
pick and choose where to attack, favoring their friends and punishing their
enemies. And the can utterly the freedom of speech that has made talk-radio
such a vital medium."
It is not hard to see why some people think Clinton should be impeached.
Call your Represenative today and tell them to vote no.
Aaron J. Greenwood
We dodged that bullet.
Ballet Dancers as Enforcers?
On NRO's Corner, Lisa Schiffren writes:
(Rahm Emmanuel trivia watch: FWIW, he will surely be the first White House chief of staff who started life — after Sarah Lawrence, as Cliff May notes — as a ballet dancer. And who thinks of ballerinas as thuggish enforcers?)
That seems less strange after reading “Dark Night of the Soul” by James Blish, in which a revolt in an artist's colony orbiting Jupiter is helped by the intimidating presence of ballet dancers (the strongest people around there) armed with sculptor's knives.
Conspiracy Theories and Science Fiction
According to an article on the web site of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (seen via Orac):
Is Barack Obama a brilliant orator, captivating millions through his eloquence? Or is he deliberately using the techniques of neurolinguistic programming (NLP), a covert form of hypnosis developed by Milton Erickson, M.D.?
Wasn't that a story by Charles Sheffield “What Song the Sirens Sang”? In the story, a hack politician discovers to secret to hypnotizing voters.
By strange coincidence, the story was set in Georgia and a few months after it was written Jimmy Carter was elected for no clear reason. Wait a moment, it's starting to make a little more sense now …
Liberal Fascism Watch
Windows includes a “feature” of downloading alleged improvements without one's knowledge or explicit consent. It might be user friendly but only in ways approved by the Microsoft Soviet. I think I'll hang onto my Linux computer for a while and use the Windows computer mainly for connecting with work.
What? You were expecting a political comment?
I'm Not Looking Forward to the Next Few Years
I just got a new Windows Vista computer and I already hate it.
I also heard there was an election recently …
Barr vs. McCain
Earlier this year, I decided not to vote Libertarian for two reasons: 1) Libertarian votes would be interpreted as support for isolationism; 2) I thought the Wall-Street wing of the Republican Party (which McCain is currently allied with) was worth supporting against the populists.
The financial bailout made both of those dubious. Libertarian votes will now be interpreted as opposition to bailouts and the Wall-Street wing of the Republican Party looks much less worthy of support.
The deciding factor was the attempt by Obama supporters to get the votes of every conformist in the United States. This is partly a matter of the “Obamacons” and partly a matter of the possibly-manipulated opinion polls. I haven't seen this concentrated an attempt to make it looks like “everybody's doing it” since people were passing around joints in the 1970s. (In case anybody was wondering, I was in the control group during the drug-experimentation era.) A non-vote or a Barr vote would whisper that the conformists didn't succeed with me but a McCain vote would shout it. I plan to vote for McCain out of sheer orneriness.
A Question about the “Obamacons”
Is it possible that the Obama campaign has a highly effective blackmailing operation going on behind the scenes? That would explain so much …
Addendum: I just remembered that a few months ago Overcoming Bias predicted that this sort of phenomenon might be common:
Before becoming a pundit someone may spend a long career as a trustworthy academic or journalist, giving careful measured evaluations of the small issues before them. As a pundit they may even usually give thoughtful reasoned commentary on issues of moderate importance.
But every four years, when a major election is at stake, or when a big crisis appears, styles change. In their world folks mutter, "pull out all the stops, this is really important." They may retain the outward appearance of keeping to their previous standards, but in fact they start to say whatever it takes to push "their side."
Come to think of it, that might explain why some alleged defenders of capitalism support the bleeping bailout.
A Prediction
If Sarah Palin is elected President in 2012 or 2016, in the following election the Democratic candidate will bear a striking resemblance to Amy Poehler.
Alternate Physics in Stephenson's Baroque Cycle
A few years ago, I speculated that a minor change in physics would make nuclear bombs nearly impossible to make. If the neutron mass were a little bit higher, all the uranium 235 on Earth would have decayed to non-fissionable neptunium 235. (At least, I don't think it's fissionable. Part of the energy that makes uranium 235 nuclei fission comes from the fact that there's an odd number of neutrons in a U-235 nucleus and there's a larger energy yield when such nuclei absorb a neutron. Neptunium 235 has an even number of neutrons.)
More recently, I've been reading Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. Among other differences between the Baroque Cycle universe and our universe is that gold has more than one stable isotope. In the hypothetical universe I mentioned above, gold 199 will be be stable as well as gold 197. The 20th-century discovery of the Theory of Relativity may have less spectacular effects there than here.
Why Many Voters Are Ignoring Ayers
In view of the incompetence of the Weathermen when it comes to blowing up people, the voters have the attitude described in an article in the April 1979 issue of Analog, “Build Your Own A-Bomb And Wake Up The Neighborhood” by George W. Harper:
Terrorists who blow up only themselves are merely amusing and not at all terrible.
Stupidity apparently excuses everything.
The Good Side of Protectionism
It looks like the governments of wealthy nations are getting together to shaft capitalism. We could use politicians who will be offensive as possible over the next year or two. Protectionism is one of the most effective ways to be obnoxious.
We'll just have to remember to turn them out of office soon after.
I just realized I'm starting to sound like Dr. Pangloss…
Switzerland's Next Step
Switzerland has recently passed a law protecting the dignity of plants. The next step, of course, is dirt rights. There's a theory that life started as a type of clay (see Genetic Takeover by A. G. Cairns-Smith). When we protect the dignity of dirt, that will include the right to not be humiliated, so the phrase “dumb as dirt” will have to go…
Obama Might Not Be a Complete Disaster
Merely a half disaster. He's apparently been bought by a nuclear utility called Exelon:
A prominent supporter of Yucca Mountain, though, is Exelon Corp., an electric utility based in Chicago.
Exelon operates the largest nuclear fleet (17 reactors) in the United States and the third-largest commercial nuclear fleet in the world, according to Exelon's Web site.
In a speech to nuclear energy executives in May 2007, Exelon CEO John Rowe said permanent disposal at Yucca Mountain or a similar facility remains "a long-term imperative" for the industry, even while he acknowledged it would not happen soon.
………
Meanwhile, campaign finance records confirm Exelon is one of Obama's top contributors. The Center for Responsive Politics found that Exelon employees were his sixth-largest corporate donor group. (No. 1 was Goldman Sachs.)
In other words, Obama might be corrupt enough to be tolerable.
Addendum: I just noticed the line about Goldman Sachs. That might explain why Henry Paulson has acted as an Obama mole.
Addendum II: I just realized that Exelon might be trying to suppress other people's nukes.
Proof Intelligence Tests Are Culturally Biased …
… in animals. In particular, intelligence tests at first appeared to show that dogs are smarter than wolves:
Dr Hare’s experiments involved showing his animals two upside-down cups, one of which covered food. A human would then gesture in some way at the cup covering the food. In theory, if the animal being tested was properly interpreting the gestures, it should have been lured to the object that the experimenter was indicating. And that is what Dr Hare found. Dogs selected the cup hiding the food far more than half the time, whereas the wolves he used for comparison got it right no more frequently than chance.
It turned out that the tests in question were culturally biased towards canids who had been raised by humans. In another experiment:
Her team therefore worked with a mixture of pet dogs, dogs from animal shelters that had had minimal interaction with people, and wolves raised by humans. They exposed their animals to an experiment similar to Dr Hare’s and came up with strikingly different results.
As they report in Animal Behaviour, the wolves outperformed both shelter dogs and pets. Indeed, six of the eight wolves followed human gestures perfectly in more than eight out of ten trials. Only three of eight pets were as successful as that and, as with Dr Hare’s wolves, none of the shelter dogs performed better than chance.
If the intelligence tests had involved moose hunting …
Something to Worry About
No. It's not about Wall Street this time.
According to the November 2008 issue of Natural History magazine, there's a species of vampire bat that has evolved something resembling opposable thumbs.
It's not just for cute cuddly pandas any more.
The Republicans' Secret Weapon in Regaining Congress in 2010
It looks like the Democrats have convinced themselves that any Republican opposition is fueled by racist prejudice against Senator Obama. That means, of course, they won't be prepared for a backlash against a mostly-white Democratic Congress. It will be 1994 all over again.
But wait … There's more … If this also produces a a Republican landslide in State Legislatures in 2010, the redistricting will be Republican influenced.
Set Paranoia Bit to ON
According to Bryan Caplan:
Last week was the most plausible example of a psychologically-driven financial panic that I've ever lived through. I have to think that most of the people who sold did so because they were scared by falling prices. Falling prices, in turn, scared people. At risk of sounding like a pop psychologist, the result was a scare spiral.
Admittedly, the fact that you're paranoid doesn't prove that "they" aren't after you. Maybe all this fear-driven selling is just bringing the market back to where it belongs. But I'm skeptical - I think last week was noise trading run amok.
In any case, suppose I'm right. What then should we think about Paulson, Bernanke, and Bush publicly freaking out in the weeks before the panic? What should we think about all the voices warning about "the end of the world"? While there's no way to know for sure, isn't it at least plausible that in the absence of this high-profile doom-saying, last week's panic would never have happened?
There's a very simple explanation for all this: Either Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, or both are closet Democrats trying to sabotage the McCain campaign. The panic didn't go into high gear until it started to look like McCain would win.
425?
If Sarah Palin's verbal SAT was 425, does that mean she scored badly on a culturally-biased, meaningless test?
What was that? It's a forgery? As Bullwinkle once said:
If you can't believe what you read in the funnies, what can you believe?
But wait… They're trying to suppress Bullwinkle! It's a coverup!
A Problem with an Obama Presidency
If Obama is elected and doesn't govern from the center, the Republicans will almost certainly regain the House and probably the Senate in 2010 and possibly the White House in 2012. The problem is that the Wall Street faction of the Republican Party has taken itself out of consideration in the course of the past few weeks. In other words, we are likely to see nativists (and possibly protectionists) running the government in a few years.
We right-wing open-borders people might start looking at the theocratic wing of the Republican Party. (I promise that if I endorse Mike Huckabee for President on the blog, I'll throw up first.)
Meanwhile, the Libertarians are looking like a better choice lately. A month ago, a large Libertarian vote would be taken as an endorsement of isolationism. Right now, it's likely to be taken as opposition to bailouts.
This Sounds Familiar Somehow
According to Milton Friedman:
The two chief enemies of the free society or free enterprise are intellectuals on the one hand and businessmen on the other, for opposite reasons. Every intellectual believes in freedom for himself, but he’s opposed to freedom for others.…He thinks…there ought to be a central planning board that will establish social priorities.…The businessmen are just the opposite—every businessman is in favor of freedom for everybody else, but when it comes to himself that’s a different question. He’s always the special case. He ought to get special privileges from the government, a tariff, this, that, and the other thing…
That seems apropos to current events for some strange reason.
A Note on the Evidence Offered for the Claim That We're in an Economic Emergency
I noticed many of the claims that credit has been “frozen” are either from anonymous sources or based on underwhelming data, e.g., that the three-month dollar LIBOR has gone to almost four percent.
Addendum: A segment of the economy with some actual evidence of frozen credit has been identified: municipal borrowers. I'm not sure if that's a bug or a feature.
Praying for an Uptick in the Dow–Jones Average?
I noticed my synagogue was even more crowded than the usual for Rosh Hashanah on Tuesday morning.
An Essential Part of the Economy Is Drying Up!
Is it my imagination or do the advocates of emergency action on the credit crisis sound like the advocates of emergency action on peak oil?
Some perspective
Back in the 1970s, I recall reading a comment that “monetary crisis” used to mean interest rates would go to 7% (this was when interest rates were much higher). In the current crisis, with the worst money shortage since the 1990s (a time out of living memory if you're a financial journalist), the three-month LIBOR went all the way up to … 3.77%.
Somehow, I don't think this is an unprecedented emergency.
On the other hand …
Many of my fellow wingnuts are also treating this as an unprecedented and permanent expansion of government. I suspect the best analogy, even under worst-case conditions, would be the wage–price controls of the early 1970s. Not only wasn't that permanent, it managed to discredit wage and price controls as a tool for handling inflation.
A Brief Note on McCain's Campaign Suspension
I think it's an excellent idea for McCain to suspend his campaign during this crisis while he learns some elementary economics.
At least, I hope that's what he's doing …
Transparency Instead of Prohibition
Instead of a blanket ban on financial service work for people who use some types of mind-altering chemicals, it might make more sense (it would also be less of a violation of libertarian principles) for their use to be transparent. So when prospectuses include the chemicals ingested by the financial advisors, we'll be able to which are actually dangerous to one's wealth. (Needless to say, the chemicals in question must be legalized for the data to be reliable.)
After that, we can also check on the chemicals used by advocates of a proposed regulation. In the specific case of the bailout plan, we must recall this was the product of an all-nighter and also recall David Sedaris's description of the effects of speed:
Speed eliminates all doubt. Am I smart enough? Will people like me? These are questions for insecure potheads. A speed enthusiast knows that everything he says or does is brilliant.
The next step is to include similar data in scientific papers about global warming etc. …
If We Must Violate Libertarian Principles …
The current crisis has two parts:
- The creation of a large amount of bad debt.
- The spread of bad debt to the allegedly-sound parts of the financial system.
Preventing the next occurrence of the first is fairly simple. It's a matter of phasing out the politically-influenced GSEs that created the problem in the first place.
Preventing the second part is harder. The normal operation of the financial markets should confine problematic debt in a small part of the system where people who specialize in risky investments can deal with it. In other words, what were those financiers smoking?
It might make sense to take advantage of the de facto legalization of mind altering chemicals for anybody who isn't poor, to check which ones are correlated with the spread of bad debt and, if necessary, prohibit them, at least for people working in the financial sector.
The Banking System Is at the Point of Collapse …
… so they ask the Smartest Man on Earth to come up with a plan, only to find he's going insane …
In other words, I've been reading Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle.
Pointless Event Alert!
According to Geek Girl:
If you live in or near New York City, or plan on being there in early October, please sign up to be part of a very special event that the Yes Men are planning with some amazing activist groups.
We can’t tell you the details right now, but it will be about the Iraq War, and will involve doing simple public performances individually or in groups. It will be easy, outrageously fun, and will culminate in what promises to be a super-fun outdoor dance party.
You can visit http://www.BecauseWeWantIt.org/ to sign up, and to sign up for cell phone alerts so that if anything changes the day of the event you’ll know right away.
In 2003, the thugs in charge of Washington began destroying a country they knew posed no threat. Five years later, that country is still the most dangerous place on earth, and ours isn’t doing so well either. This action is about trying to change the political discussion around this, the biggest crime of the twenty-first century.
Onwards!
The Yes Men and friends
p.s. If you can’t attend, but would like to help with a donation, please visit http://theyesmen.org/donate/. Many of you already have, which is why this is moving forward!
It looks like they'll be too busy patting each other on the back to make sense. BTW, can there be a counterprotest?
Hmmm… When I looked up the Wikipedia entry for Yes Men, I found there's been a counterprotest for one of their events:
Not all actions succeed. In July 2007 an attempt to pretend to film a documentary about Milton Friedman in order to obtain interviews with right wing think tanks was foiled by the Cato Institute when their cover story did not work out. Paint was thrown on them by Bureaucrash, the Competitive Enterprise Institute supporter pro-capitalist culture jammers, on their way out.[11]
I suppose that means the skunk bombs won't be needed after all …
McCain Had Better Oppose the Proposed $700 Billion Bail Out
Let's see … The proposed bail out is a monstrosity on several levels:
- It increases future moral hazards.
- It provides a precedent to bail out other problem industries.
- It gives waaay too much power to the administration. (I certainly would not want this power in the hands of Democrats.)
- It has provided the demagogues with a plausible story. (The expected stories of “The Republicans are letting oil prices rise!” and “The Republicans are out of touch with the common man!” were erased by “drill here” and the Sarah Palin selection.)
McCain has better come out against this. (He sounds undecided so far.) He's maverick enough to get away with that.
Has the Last Riot Taken Place?
The ultimate anti-riot weapon has been unveiled: the skunk bomb.
The Fourth Conspirator Has Been Found
Doug Stanhope, an alleged comedian, has started a website to collect money to pay Bristol Palin to abort her baby. I'm reminded of a well-known quote from the SF writer R. A. Lafferty (in “About a Secret Crocodile”):
There is a secret society of only four persons that manufactures all the jokes of the world. One of these persons is unfunny and he is responsible for all the unfunny jokes.
Is America an Aristocracy?
According to Caligula for President: Better American Living Through Tyranny by Cintra Wilson (quoted on BoingBoing):
I humbly suggest that you take a moment to gaze at the family tree of a few members of your ruling class. Any of them. Take your pick. The Kennedys, the Lees, the Bushes, the Rockefellers, the DuPonts, the Daleys, the Dulleses, the Gores, the Johnsons, the Adamses, the Roosevelts...
Actually, don't bother. I always suspected that the Washington Monument wasn't modeled on an erect phallus so much as on a modern interpretation of the ideal imperial family tree: one that doesn't branch off at all. Just one big, vertical, erect log of incestuous monarchy (with all the power in the world concentrated right on the end of my tip, ho ho).
It's an odds-on favorite that if one laid enough Mormon genealogy charts end to end, one could prove either that all these fine families are related or that at least they've all laid each other end to end. Political alliances, after all, have always been made by marriage (Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and Julia the Elder? Meet Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, blah blah blah, and nineteen centuries of examples in between). The Gores are related to the Kennedys are related to the Carters and now the Shriverneggers. I have it on good authority that a relative of either the Bush or the Gore families has had a candidate in every presidential election for the last 190 years... and both families happen to be distantly related to the queen of England (which just goes to show you that even while debutantes may have jumped ship and married poets and gurus in the sixties, these ideological and eugenic detours corrected rather quickly once the girls figured out that communal goat farming wasn't as fun as getting their legs waxed and lunching at the Hay-Adams).
On the other hand, if you trace ancestry back far enough, we are all descended from royalty.
On the gripping hand, the time scale for the common descent in the American political class appears to be much less than for the human race as a whole. That might be due to the fact that we prefer Presidents who are not descended from recent immigrants. (IIRC, it took until 1960 to elect a descendant of 19th-century immigrants.) That means the ancestors of American politicians belong to a small (but not very exalted) group.
Lest we forget, the real Caligula was assasinated by the Pretorian Guard … a non-aristocratic group.
It Finally Happened
My prediction that:
It's only a matter of time before the left side of the blogosphere starts referring to the well-known Down-syndrome baby Trig Palin as a “future welfare recipient.”
finally happened:
Sarah Palin? Accidentally got pregnant at age 43 and the tax payers of Alaska have to pay for the care of her disabled child.
It took slightly longer than I expected.
Addendum: I am embarrassed to note a blog from one of us reactionary wingnuts also had a similar reaction:
A parent has a moral obligation to provide for his or her children until these children are equipped to provide for themselves. Because a person afflicted with Down syndrome is only capable of being marginally productive (if at all) and requires constant care and supervision, unless a parent enjoys the wealth to provide for the lifetime of assistance that their child will require, they are essentially stranding the cost of their child's life upon others.
Maybe I've Been Posting Too Much about Politics
Maybe I should post a little on SF (but I'm not sure if the Baroque Cycle from Neal Stephenson counts) or an expanded explanation of how an apparently-simple mindless little system using such primitive concepts as point, line, circle, and spiral, can encode arbitrarily-complex propositions. Let's see … If we can encode Goldbach's Conjecture …
It's about Bleeping Time Someone Said This
According to the blog The point of view of An Aspergian, in a pro-“choice” society a pre-natal test for nerdiness (currently called Asperger's Syndrome) will amount to a pre-natal nerdicide:
We are watching the clock tick down. Every day we are a little closer to a prenatal test for autism. The not so funny fact is it wont be 100% accurate. It will be anywhere from 75% to 95% accurate. Just like down syndrome once it is there there will be no more walks for a cure.
Often in this world we are faced with decisions that are hard. No easy alternatives. damned f you do, damned if you dont. I try to choose as best I can the choices that at least make things a little better.
We are faced with evil in our time. The specter of eugenics is raising its ugly head once more. The call is now for "Normalcy" a normal race. We all want normailty ?? right? It is the latest ploy to rid the world of its so called undesirables deemed by a few.
On the other hand, abortion may become obsolete enough before that happens for there to be a ban.
A Theory on Why the Left Is Attacking Sarah Palin
I suspect they think of this a payback for the anti-Clinton attacks by Republicans during the 1990s. Their attitude is “Your side started this business of talking about people's private lives!”
They should try to remember that Clinton won, and even carried some “red” states.
Addendum: How could I have forgotten! The original controversy on this topic was Dan Quayle vs. Murphy Brown. Apparently, those dastardly Republicans are prejudiced against fictional characters. I suppose they're not pro-reif. I won't more than mention the fact that the Religious Right candidate of 1988, Pat Robertson, admitted conceiving a child out of wedlock, so it's not like they haven't dealt with this before. (For one thing the child in question was born after the marriage.)
Quack Solution vs. Quack Solution
According to Bad Science:
Meanwhile, for over five years now, newspapers and television stations have tried to persuade us, with “science”, that fish-oil pills have been proven to improve children’s school performance, IQ, behaviour, attention, and more. As I have documented with almost farcical repetitiveness in this paper, these so-called “fish-oil trials” were so badly designed that they amounted to little more than a sham. In the case of the biggest, “the Durham trial”, the county council has refused even to release the results, which I have every reason to believe were unflattering.
………
But I wouldn’t start with molecules, or pills, as a solution to these kinds of problems. The capsules Durham are promoting cost 80p per child per day, while it spends only 65p per child per day on school meals, so you might start there. Or you might restrict junk-food advertising to children, as the government has recently done. You might look at education and awareness about food and diet, as Jamie Oliver recently did very well, without recourse to dodgy pseudoscience or miracle pills.
Translation: Don't use quack solutions from capitalists! Only use quack solutions from governments!
The blog post did include a reference to a scientific paper:
In 2007 the British Medical Journal published a large, well-conducted, randomised controlled trial, performed at lots of different locations, run by publicly funded scientists, that delivered a strikingly positive result: it showed that one treatment could significantly improve children’s antisocial behaviour. The treatment was entirely safe, and the study was even accompanied by a very compelling cost-effectiveness analysis.
On the other hand, the actual paper said:
Participants 153 parents from socially disadvantaged areas, with children aged 36-59 months at risk of conduct disorder defined by scoring over the clinical cut off on the Eyberg child behaviour inventory. Participants were randomised on a 2:1 basis, 104 to intervention and 49 to remaining on the wait listing (control). Twenty (13%) were lost to follow-up six months later, 18 from the intervention group
That looks a bit lame. I'm not sure if a sample size of 153 was enough in a study that seemed to indicate we should hire more psychologists, i.e., a study that might confirm the biases of the authors. Besides that, do we have any reason to believe those “lost” were random?
A Speculation on r and K Strategies
At first, you might think of the adoption of r strategies by Sarah Palin and family as a step downward. After all, we usually think of r strategies in terms of bacteria, oysters, or mice. On the other hand, evolution does not always run in just one direction.
You can think of the ape to human transition as the partial adoption of r strategies. Mama ape will usually raise just one child at a time. Human mothers are likely to raise several at a time, even if they rarely give birth at once. In addition, human infants are much more altricial than is the norm among primates. (This is not completely original but I'm not sure where I read it.)
ObSF: The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, a look at what type of civilization an intelligent species with r strategies might develop.
Addendum: We Support Lee has similar comments.
Addendum II: Cory Doctorow compared r strategies to open-source publishing in “Think Like a Dandelion .”
Why the Palins Look Strange in Our Society
They're r strategists, not K strategists.
Of course, in Alaska r strategies make sense. For that matter, the United States as a whole is more suited for r strategies than Europe, which is one reason we look strange to Europeans.
I Was Partly Right
My claim that leftists would accuse Sarah Palin of violating conservative principles, when all she was doing was violating leftist stereotypes of conservatives was right but I was wrong about what their accusation would be.
The mistake of the leftist activists was in thinking everybody else would define hypocrisy as doing X and preaching Y whereas social conservatives are more likely to define hypocrisy as doing X and denying it. We must recall that a large fraction of evangelical preachers will include something like “I, too, was a sinner.” in their sermons. (For that matter, the activists ignored the fact that Ms. Palin's oldest child was born less than nine months after the wedding.) In other words, she would have little motive to cover up a temporarily-illegitimate grandchild (the social conservatives would forgive that) and a strong motive not to do so.
A conspiracy theory I haven't seen yet
What if the rumor had been planted by a right-wing agent? It would make leftists look like idiots when the truth was revealed, provide an opportunity to announce the real pregnancy, and remind social conservatives that leftists don't understand them.
A Prediction
It's only a matter of time before the left side of the blogosphere starts referring to the well-known Down-syndrome baby Trig Palin as a “future welfare recipient.” It's what you can expect from people who are eager to accuse conservatives of violating conservative principles, when all they're doing is violating leftist stereotypes of conservatives.
Resartus, Google, and Linear Algebra
Mencius Moldbug is trying to help start something called Resartus:
For simplicity, I'll describe Resartus in the present unconditional tense, as though it actually existed and I, not Lex and Daniel, was its designer and administrator. Please remember that neither of these statements is true. The consuls may or may not use any of the ideas below. If you don't like their decisions, please don't complain to me.
Resartus is a social revision engine. … Resartus is designed to complement Wikipedia - a remarkably valuable and useful service, though untrustworthy in general and often malignantly deceptive on controversial issues. Think of it as Wikipedia for controversial material and (perhaps eventually) original research, and you won't be too far off.
………
A social revision engine exists to help you, the reader, make up your mind about a controversial issue without appealing to external authority. For example, Wikipedia's policy suggests:
Material that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable; this means published in peer-reviewed sources, and reviewed and judged acceptable scholarship by the academic journals.
Material from mainstream news organizations is welcomed, particularly the high-quality end of the market, such as The Washington Post, The Times in Britain, and The Associated Press.
Here at UR, we refer to these fine institutions collectively as the Cathedral. Note that La Wik does not stoop to filling us in as to why we should believe the Cathedral. It is simply infallible, like the Vatican. Om mane padme hum. "Trust the computer. The computer is your friend."
The process by which the "scholarly community" and the "mainstream news organizations" produce their reliable material is quite different from the process by which the Vatican produces its. The claim that the former is infallible - or even nearly infallible, or even fallible but eventually convergent toward the truth - is not one to be scoffed at. The Cathedral is a grand old edifice, a fabulous achievement of Western civilization. It is full of many fine people, many of whom do excellent work. As a whole, I don't trust it at all and I think it needs to go. But this is just my own two cents. If you do trust the Cathedral, you have much less need for Resartus.
One way to accomplish the goal of making it easier to find non-consensus opinions is to start with something like Google. Google will mainly deliver consensus opinions first but minor changes could enable other viewpoints to to be delivered and distinguished from each other and the consensus.
Google is able to deliver consensus viewpoints first by creating a matrix of which pages link to each other and first using linear algebra to find the eigenvector with the largest eigenvalue and then using that eigenvector to rate sites. Apparently, that eigenvector will deliver conventional liberal sites first. If Google (or Resartus) kept track of eigenvectors with the dozen or so largest eigenvalues, and users could select which one they wanted, other viewpoints would be easier to find.
I suppose the largest eigenvalue would be associated with conventional liberal sites, the second component would be associated with conventional conservative sites (also known as “the Great Library of Tlön,” with my earlier comments here), and others would be associated with libertarians, marxists, paleoconservatives, etc. This might even be a remedy for the common idea that, if you are opposed to the consensus view, you must believe in standard conservatism.
An Engineering Proverb and Top Doctors
There's a well-known engineering proverb: A brilliant engineer is someone who can do for one dollar what any fool can do for two. There's evidence the same principle applies to medicine. According to a recent study (seen via Overcoming Bias):
Patient sorting can confound estimates of the returns to physician human capital. This paper compares nearly 30,000 patients who were randomly assigned to clinical teams from one of two academic institutions. One institution is among the top medical schools in the country, while the other institution is ranked lower in the quality distribution. Patients treated by the two teams have identical observable characteristics and have access to a single set of facilities and ancillary staff. Those treated by physicians from the higher-ranked institution have 10-25% shorter and less expensive stays than patients assigned to the lower-ranked institution. Health outcomes are not related to the physician team assignment, and the estimates are precise. Procedure differences across the teams are consistent with the ability of physicians in the lower-ranked institution to substitute time and diagnostic tests for the faster judgments of physicians from the top-ranked institution.
In other words, Dr. Charles Emerson Winchester III might seem pricy, but he can save you money.
This might seem odd. It's similar to a claim that top-ranked financial advisors cannot beat the market but can perform better first aid.
On the other hand, it's common for X to be recommended on the grounds that it does the important task Y, but Y is done to the same extent anyway, and X instead enables Z. In this case, X is prestigious medical education, Y is healing patients, and Z is saving money. In another example, time-saving houshold appliances don't save time but provide cleaner houses, dishes, and clothes. Similarly, artificial sweeteners don't help people lose weight, but at least they can eat better-tasting food. In yet another example, faster transportation doesn't shorten commutation times but it does enable transportation to neighborhoods with larger backyards.
Instead of Hot-Air Balloons
Instead of hot-air balloons, would it make more sense to use hot-water balloons? After all, steam is lighter than hot air and has more lifting ability.
A Warning to Climate Skeptics
Much of the time, climate skeptics sound like the economists covered in this article (seen via EconLog):
“Until society realizes that the flawed, growth-oriented neoclassical lens it has been using to guide economic decisions distorts reality and is leading to an ecological disaster, I am not very optimistic about humanity’s long-term prospects,” he confides.
But after three decades of questioning whether the world can continue to support our consumption habits, Rees has had trouble convincing his colleagues in economics that their economic model needs an overhaul.
………
Despite her interest in feminist economics, Julie Nelson’s publication record is so impressive that she qualified for tenure at one of the top 30 US university economics departments. But she’s disheartened by the state of mainstream theory.
………
These accounts are symptoms of a pervasive system of thought control in economics. But no one knows more about how unwelcome ideas are kept from being expressed in economics departments and tainting the minds of curious students than Fred Lee, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He has documented over a hundred cases where economists who wouldn’t drink the neoclassical Kool-Aid got pushed aside – a problem that began over a century ago when the working classes started to teach themselves Marxist theory.
The rhetorical style is starting to sounds familiar, doesn't it? I don't think we want to sound as nuts as they do.
Addendum: In the course of looking at other comments on the above, I saw a link to the following:
Old professors retired to new pursuits are replaced by new professors pursuing old ideas. The new recruits were carefully screened for their orthodoxy. They studied at leading departments, where they demonstrated their commitment to markets, economic growth, free trade and learned to respect the consumer as king. They were not exposed to other disciplines and they will never read an article published in the natural sciences.
Out of what bodily orifice is he pulling that last assertion?
On the contrary, there's evidence that economics programs might even prefer hard-science majors:
Preparing: Math. The most important thing in admissions is your math background (more than economics itself - I suspect most econ PhD programs would love physics and engineering majors). You should
definitely have multivariable calculus and linear algebra. Statistics (that is, real statistics from the math department), real analysis and differential equations help too. You're not really going to use all of it - though it really befuddles you at first, you'll eventually realize that a large part of the math in economics involves taking a derivative, setting it equal to zero and doing a bunch of algebra. Nonetheless, a strong math background - not just the classes, but good grades in them - is vitally important as a signaling device to convince programs that you'll be able to handle the rigors of the first year.
There's even an economics professor with a PhD in physics.
Undecidable “Elementary” Geometry
According to Augustus De Morgan (quoted in A Long Way from Euclid by Constance Reid):
What distinguishes the straight line and circle more than anything else, and properly separates them for the purpose of elementary geometry? Their self-similarity, Every inch of a straight line coincides with every other inch, and of a circle with every other of the same circle. Where, then, did Euclid fail? In not introducing the third curve which has the same property—the screw. The right line, the circle, the screw—the representation of translation, rotation, and the two combined—ought to have been the instruments of geometry. With a screw we should never have heard of the impossibility of trisecting an angle, squaring a circle, etc.
In some ways, the elementary geometry of points, lines, and circles is radically different from elementary geometry including screws. The former is decidable, a fact also covered in A Long Way from Euclid. (Betweeness and congruence can be expressed in terms of lines and circles and vice versa.) The latter, on the other hand, is undecidable. It includes a model for the Peano Axioms: The points on one side of a given point in the intersection of a line and a screw.
This is probably well-known but I haven't seen it anywhere …
Addendum: Mícheál Mac an Airchinnigh had some speculations along these lines over a decade ago:
It seems reasonable to put forward the working hypothesis that there is a geometry of curves which is computationally equivalent to a Turing Machine. Such a geometry of curves we call Geometria
On the other hand, the following claim differs from my result:
One might consider trying to construct geometrical equivalents to essential programming features. For example, it seems reasonable that the spiral ought to correspond to the loop.
In my construction, spirals are more analogous to counters.
Life as a Science-Fiction Story
This portrayal of life in 2008 sounds like something written by a grumpy right-wing SF writer in the mid '70s. (If it were written by a grumpy left-wing SF writer, it would include people dying in the streets from pollution and the excess wealth would go to major corporations instead of indulged kids.)
The biggest differences between reality and the hypothetical SF story is that Britain is the epicenter instead of the United States and it doesn't include a juvenile delinquent being rescued by space industrialization.
The Literati Haven't Changed
In the nineteenth century, a professional wordsmith made an astronomical mistake:
The novels of Sir Walter Scott (who was a contemporary of Gauss) were read eagerly as they came out, but the unhappy ending of Kenilworth made Gauss wretched for days and he regretted having read the story. One slip of Sir Walter's tickled the mathematical astronomer into delighted laughter, “the moon rises broad in the northwest,” and he went about for days correcting all the copies he could find.
In the twentieth century, professional wordsmiths made an astronomical mistake:
Correction: August 16, 2008
An article on Friday about the planned construction of two large solar power installations in California described incorrectly the operation of the solar panels in one, to be built by SunPower. Its panels pivot from east to west to follow the sun over the course of a day —not west to east.
Science Fiction and Reality
From Past Master by R. A. Lafferty:
But owing to his having only one kidney, Paul was now unable to drink water at all.
Overheard in a hospital:
There's some kidney involvement, so I'm not allowed to drink water …
I'm a Discredited Author and I Approve This Message
The essay I'm Sigmund Freud, and I Approve This Message by Paul Waldman (seen via The Brothers Judd) is not a parody:
Meanwhile, McCain himself was sent out to pose in front of working oil rigs, to testify to his thirst for pulling more black gold from the earth. The message couldn't be plainer: See that itty-bitty, little tire gauge? If you vote for Obama, that's how big your penis is. If you vote for McCain, on the other hand, your penis is as big as this rig, thrusting its gigantic shaft in and out of the ground! Real men think keeping your tires inflated is for weenies.
There may not be a sign tacked to a bulletin board at McCain headquarters reading, "It's the sexual insecurity, stupid," but McCain's team of operatives, many schooled at Karl Rove's knee, know just what to do when an opportunity presents itself. They've been playing this tune for so long, they don't need to look at the sheet music: Our guy is a real man, their guy is a sissy, rinse, repeat.
I was about to call this a non-falsifiable argument until I realized that there was no actual argument. I guess it's a non-falsifiable irrelevance. (I've said that before, haven't I?)
I won't more than mention the fact that Freud is no longer taken seriously in psychology.
For that matter, real conservatives are unimpressed with other attempts at exploiting “sexual insecurity.”
Left-Wing Young-Earth Creationists?
Apparently, the Obama campaign is planning an anti-nuclear-waste ad for Nevada, presumably on the grounds that the nuclear waste repository might leak. In view of the fact that there was a natural nuclear fission reactor on Earth a billion or two billion years ago and the resulting nuclear waste did not move from its place, the Obama faction must not believe fossil evidence.
On the other hand, maybe they want to appeal, not to all Americans, but to swing voters in purple states. That explains support of ethanol for Iowa and opposition to nuclear waste in Nevada. If they come out in favor of cheese-fueled power stations for Wisconsin, we'll know that their tactic is to appeal to the Bud Johnson vote.
Is the Left the Nerd Side of Politics?
Where did the idea that the left is the nerd side of politics come from? Which side of the political spectrum got its prejudices from people who floated through college in a semi-conscious haze and made up for that by getting their ideas from people who were just as stoned? Which side of the political spectrum is opposed to the energy source discovered and maintained by nerds (i.e., nukes)?
On the other hand, there are leftists willing to give credit (although they think it's blame) to right-wing nerds.
Will Cheap Energy Lead to Blowing up the World?
The above question was asked at Marginal Revolution (seen via TJIC):
In Cleveland I posed a variant of the following question: let's say that you can blow up the world if a) you can exceed 1550 on your two main SATs, b) you are willing to spend $50,000, and c) you sincerely wish for world destruction for one month straight.
How long would the world last?
We may someday envy the problems we have now.
I doubt if cheap energy will destroy the world. (By “world,” I mean civilized society in general and not just the mudball we currently live on. Right now, the world is smaller than the Earth but that won't always be the case.) Cheap energy will also mean cheap mass and that can act as protective armor.
For example, the World Trade Center attack involved an energy release on the same order of magnitude as a small nuclear bomb. There's another way to look at this: A structure took a small nuke and nearly survived.
Peak Phosphorus?
The latest bullbleep crisis is “peak phosphorus.” According to the noted troll weev (earlier discussed here):
So we're at a new resource shortage. Global peak phosphorus happened in 1989. Phosphorus can be recovered though, so it isn't too critical, but it is definitely bad for growing grain. We consistently as a planet consume more grain every year than we produce. Eventually those fat stockpiles are gonna hit bottom, and then shit hits the fan. We have already seen tortilla riots in Mexico, and commodities shortages and export controls in nearly half the world.
You can find a debunking of “peak phosphorus” here. (By the way, considering that the stockpiles we're drawing down were probably the result of farm price supports, the alleged food shortage might simply be the result of moving away from a silly policy.)
The really odd thing is that the current alleged phosphorus crisis was apparently passed around from loon to loon for years without coming in contact with reality. A few years ago, I even saw a claim that Coca Cola will use up the world's supply of phosphorus in 40 years:
one exampel, just Coca Cola will whit in 40 years used all fosfor on the earth
I knew the left side of Nuts R Us hated Coca Cola, but this is ridiculous.
Obama's Energy Plan
- Tax production.
- Subsidize consumption.
- Claim this will lead to independence.
Run that by me again?
But wait, he has more constructive plans:
- Spending 150 billion dollars on allegedly-renewable technology. (Will Joseph Romm approve?)
- Call for 150 mpg cars and a reduction in electricity demand by the far-off date of 2030.
Okay. He wants subsidies that are called unaffordable when applied to nuclear energy, a plan with a goal date that's considered too far in the future to contemplate when applied to offshore drilling, and a call for 150 mpg cars. That last reminds me of a well-known Shakespeare quote:
Glendower:
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur:
Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?
On the other hand, maybe the best analogy is the Underwear Gnomes:
- Spend 150 billion dollars.
- Energy independence.
The Secular Version of “The Great Desecration”
I've been trying to think of an appropriate secular analogy to P. Z. Myers's Great Desecration. I think I've figured out a possible analogy. It is that blasphemy against The State: destroying currency (earlier discussed here). Remember, from the point of view of a secular leftist:
“The march of God in the world, that is what the state is.” — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
There is a difference between blaspheming the State and blaspheming the Church: The State really is able to burn you at the stake nowadays.
Disclaimer: I am not a believer in either religion under discussion (the Roman Catholic Church or Statism) so I might have misunderstood something.
Ban Children's Haircuts?
One of the perpetual flame wars of Usenet has reached the blogosphere: There's a fight over circumcision on Samizdata.
The same reasoning that might lead people to ban infant circumcision could also be used to ban children's haircuts. After all, children do not normally consent to haircuts.
It's possible to argue that circumcision is the permanent removal of a body part, whereas hair grows back. On the other hand, I suspect that by the time a child circumcised today reaches puberty, circumcision will be reversible by minor surgery. On the gripping hand, if there is a remote risk of permanent “disfigurement,” we must recall the possibility of barber accidents. (“Never mentioned is the missing piece of his left ear.”—Ben Katchor)
To sum up:
- Haircuts have no proven medical benefit.
- Hair is part of the body so removing it is clearly mutilation.
- Ears are also part of the body and they do not grow back or even have a restoration option currently available.
- Even if one in a million objects to possible ear loss that is sufficient to ban parents from manipulating their children that way.
If it was good enough for Samson it should be good enough for everybody else.
Did Someone Blow a Whistle?
One of the eerier aspects of following leftist theories is the “someone blew a whistle” phenomenon, in which apparently someone blows a whistle and calls “ABOUT FACE!” and the proverbial herd of independent minds turns around and starts marching in the opposite direction. This is most clearly seen in the attitude towards the War on Drugs, in which the herd switched from “evil capitalists are harshing my mellow” to “evil capitalists are making addicts of inner-city children.” There are other examples: “we must make banks lend to the poor” vs. “we must protect the poor from predatory lenders” or “global warming is forcing a rethink of capitalism and economic growth” vs. “global warming can be fixed with a little alternative energy.”
Most recently, the herd has switched from “victory in Iraq is impossible” to “victory in Iraq is inevitable” … and Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.
The Real Reason Little Green Footballs Has Been Fighting Creationism
It should be obvious that the real reason Little Green Footballs has been fighting creationism is to hide the fact that the lizardoids are actually dinosaurs.
Official Scientific Policies?
Greenie Watch quotes Hermann Burchard of Oklahoma State University as saying:
In Dr. Bienenstock's response to Lord Monckton he refers to the APS OFFICIAL POSITION ("on the contribution of human activities to global warming") surprisingly, twice. Activities of the APS, a scientific organization, should promote research and its publication, not adopt or sanction official positions on any facts of science. One hardly envisions laughable bulletins "protons and neutrons are composed of three quarks."
As a member of several mathematical organizations I don't recall the AMS (SIAM, MAA) ever having declared which theorems, algorithms, or teaching subjects they support or oppose "officially."
On the other hand, I seem to recall a recent call for the AMS to reject “dubious fear-based hypotheses” (earlier discussed here). Clearly, that would imply a rejection of global-warming hysteria … unless the call came from people who only reject right-wing instances of “dubious fear-based hypotheses” …
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