Gus Van Horn blog

Yesterday, Patrick Brown, a climate scientist whose work recently appeared in Nature, published a bombshell article in The Free Press about what he had to stoop to to get it published there, despite its scientific merit:I am a climate scientist. And while climate change is an important factor affecting wildfires over many parts of the world, it isn't close to the only factor that deserves our sole focus. So why does the press focus so intently on climate change as the root cause? Perhaps for the same reasons I just did in an academic paper about wildfires in Nature, one of the world's most prestigious journals: it fits a simple storyline that rewards the person telling it.A bit later, we learn that Brown had, earlier in his career, tried to get more complete accounts of some of his other work published, only to find himself relegated to less-prestigious journals. The rest of the piece is a good description of how perverse incentives help distort reporting of climate science, thereby making it of less practical use and more suited to the anti-fossil fuel narrative. For example:Unlike your foot, information can get lost entirely or grossly mangled when one forces it to fit a narrative. (Image by Clément Bucco-Lechat, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)This type of framing, with the influence of climate change unrealistically considered in isolation, is the norm for high-profile research papers. For example, in another recent influential Nature paper, scientists calculated that the two largest climate change impacts on society are deaths related to extreme heat and damage to agriculture. However, the authors never mention that climate change is not the dominant driver for either one of these impacts: heat-related deaths have been declining, and crop yields have been increasing for decades despite climate change. To acknowledge this would imply that the world has succeeded in some areas despite climate change -- which, the thinking goes, would undermine the motivation for emissions reductions. This leads to a second unspoken rule in writing a successful climate paper. The authors should ignore -- or at least downplay -- practical actions that can counter the impact of climate change. If deaths due to extreme heat are decreasing and crop yields are increasing, then it stands to reason that we can overcome some major negative effects of climate change. Shouldn't we then study how we have been able to achieve success so that we can facilitate more of it? Of course we should. But studying solutions rather than focusing on problems is simply not going to rouse the public -- or the press. Besides, many mainstream climate scientists tend to view the whole prospect of, say, using technology to adapt to climate change as wrongheaded; addressing emissions is the right approach. So the savvy researcher knows to stay away from practical solutions. [italics and links in original, bold added]We thus have a scandalous, blow-by-blow account of how an important part of what energy expert Alex Epstein calls the knowledge system systematically distorts scientific information even at the earliest stages of transmission. All that is missing is a deeper explanation -- which Epstein indicates elsewhere, "Experts who are on the standard of 'lack of human impact' are unconcerned with the benefits of fossil fuels, including the climate mastery benefits." The powers that be at Nature and similar publications hold the wrong standard when evaluating what climate science results to publish. This last point indirectly comes up several times in Brown's piece, although it remains obvious that the kind of narrative scientists are having to shoehorn their work into is compromising how well it is understood and used. In addition to having made so many aware of what is going on, Brown deserves credit for the following call for culture change:The media, for instance, should stop accepting these papers at face value and do some digging on what's been left out. The editors of the prominent journals need to expand beyond a narrow focus that pushes the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. And the researchers themselves need to start standing up to editors, or find other places to publish. I am glad for Brown's sake he has already left academia. His uphill battle will not be easy, but there is some hope he can carry it on and that it will be a bearable burden. -- CAVLink to Original

Writing at The Hlll, Mark Mix warns of a bureaucratic rule change by Joe Biden's National Labor Relations Board that would have union goons making recruitment calls at the homes of American workers:[T]he NLRB, at the end of August, effectively mandated the "card check" unionization process by bureaucratic fiat. Never mind that numerous union-backed measures in Congress to require this abuse-prone unionization process have failed to pass into law. Card-check drives occur when employers, usually in the face of union-applied political and economic pressure, waive workers' right to a secret ballot election. During these drives, union officials are allowed to demand union authorization cards directly from workers using coercive tactics that would be unlawful during a secret ballot vote. [bold added]This is being done in part because nearly 60 percent of workers are not at all interested in joining the unions the President would foist on us. For good measure, Mix provides examples of what unions have stooped to in the past to avoid the secret votes that incessant propaganda would have you believe are slam dunks:It's for our own good, according to this guy. (Image by John Simmons, via Unsplash, license.)Union organizers can show up at workers' homes over and over again demanding signatures, in some instances requiring workers to call the police to get organizers to leave. Workers report being misled about the true implications of signing the cards, and some have been told they would be fired if they didn't sign just before the union successfully took over. Some workers even face threats of violence. In one SEIU organizing drive, a worker reported being told that the union would "come and get her children" and "slash her tires" if she didn't sign a union card. [bold added]The NLRB is the same agency Biden hopes to weaponize against contract work and the franchise business model. Aside from enforcing legal contracts and providing the legal infrastructure to adjudicate disputes, the government has no legitimate say in the daily operation of business. The NLRB shouldn't exist in the first place, but these blatant uses of it to directly violate our right to work on our own terms underscore the need to abolish it as soon as possible. -- CAVLink to Original

In the wake of Hurricane Idalia, there are reports of electric vehicles bursting into flames as a result of being flooded or otherwise exposed to salt water:Some electric vehicles in Florida are bursting into flames after coming into contact with saltwater. Residual saltwater particles left behind on flooded batteries and battery components can conduct electricity, resulting in short circuits and eventual fires. Safety officials are urging EV owners with vehicles that flooded to take action now as fires can ignite weeks after flooding.Among the actions-to-take? "[M]ove their EVs at least fifty feet away from any structure." (!) We didn't have much to worry about in our part of Florida this time, but I recall my EV-owning neighbor across the street having enough sense to evacuate for Ian last year -- by piling his family into a conventional SUV. (I stayed home, but evacuating was hardly a silly choice.) We're safe from most storm surges here, but imagine evacuating to safety -- only to drive home to the burnt-out hulk of your former home because your garage flooded a little bit with an EV inside. Conservative blog Hot Air asks:An EV, parked safely away from other flammable objects. (Image by George Sargiannidis, via Unsplash, license.)When Tesla, Ford, and everyone else were designing these vehicles, how did nobody anticipate this? Did it never occur to them that sometimes cars get wet? And if people live near the ocean, did anyone point out that they might be exposed to salt water, occasionally deep enough to come up to the wheel wells? ...This is an understandable question, but may or may not be a fair one. Why do I say this? Recall that conventional automobiles have been in widespread use and under development for over a century. Granted, some of the first were electric, but they lost in the marketplace early on. So conventional "ICE" (internal combustion engine) cars have had a century to develop and for everyone to become familiar with their merits and drawbacks. By contrast, electric vehicles are a new thing, and one cannot expect all the kinks to have been worked out in the same way as for regular cars, or for ordinary people to know how to react when things go wrong. It is commonplace for climate catastrophists to claim that they are following "the science" -- while also pretending that the wholesale transformation of our energy sector is all but trivial. After all, "Just Stop Oil" is the name of one catastrophist organization. But these actual (if small-scale) EV catastrophes demonstrate that it is anything but trivial to make such a change. Countless things that no one person can know or anticipate have to be factored in before a technology can become safe enough that we can use it without having to worry too much about it. Electric cars are clearly not ready for this kind of use, and it is wrong to attempt to force mass adoption ahead of (or contrary to) demand and the natural timing of the marketplace. And don't forget, it's not just cars that we're supposed to be able to just swap out overnight... -- CAVLink to Original

A Friday Hodgepodge 1. At the blog of the Texas Institute for Property Rights, Brian Philips comments on the post-fire moratorium on property sales imposed by Hawaii's state governor:Undoubtedly, the moratorium will prevent some individuals from making rash decisions that they later regret. But that doesn't justify the governor's rights-violating proposal. Preventing some individuals from making bad decisions also prevents individuals from making good decisions. The governor's proposed moratorium prevents all individuals from acting as they deem best for their lives. The governor implies that individuals are too stupid to know what is best for themselves. [bold added]This is, as far as I know, the only answer to that awful policy. As such, it is illustrative of the power of thinking in terms of principles: When one remembers that the proper purpose of a government is to protect rights -- that is, the freedom of individuals to act on their own judgement -- the injury this moratorium does becomes obvious in a way it can't to people hyperfocused on preventing misfortunes on behalf of other people. 2. At How to Be Profitable and Moral, Jaana Woiceshyn argues that businesses should embrace a moral defense of capitalism because "governments tend to ignore logical and economic arguments because they are ideologically committed to" their various anti-freedom measures. Interestingly, her argument soon nicely shows why this is such a good idea:Calling out the government on these rights violations would be more powerful than trying to argue on logic and economics. [The moral argument could also be a basis for a legal case and merit support from Canadian Constitution Foundation to challenge the government in court]. Appealing to individual rights to defend the freedom of business to operate also makes a case for capitalism, a social system where the government's only role is to protect -- not to violate -- individual rights. As first recognized by Ayn Rand, individual rights are the central moral principle of capitalism, the only system where physical coercion, including fraud, is banned. [link omitted, bold added]In other words, taking up the moral cause moves one from defense to offense, and that is what we ultimately need to win against today's all-out, multidirectional assault on freedom. 3. The third post of this roundup continues our emerging theme of seeking the positive. At Thinking Directions, Jean Moroney answers the question, "What is defensiveness?" As usual, the answer is comprehensive and merits a couple of readings, but the below is what really hit me:Image by Mick Haupt, via Unsplash, license.Defensive reactions are emotional responses that have been intensified by an unrelated threat-oriented emotional reaction. The key concept here is "unrelated." This is why defensive reactions are a bit more difficult to understand. Every emotion draws your attention to its object, i.e., the value (if it's a value-oriented emotion such as joy or love or grief) or the threat (if it's a threat-oriented emotion such as fear or anger or relief). Normal (non-defensive) emotions draw your attention directly to the object that seems to need attention; defensive emotions pull your attention away from it. [bold added]Anyone familiar with Moroney's work will see the problem: Defensiveness can make it hard to maintain an orientation around one's values -- and this makes it vital to detect it and do something about it. Anyone not familiar with her work can better understand how this is a problem by referring to the brilliant golf course analogy linked within the beginning of the post. 4. As he does periodically, Amesh Adalja commemorates his esteemed mentor, epidemiologist D. A. Henderson at Tracking Zebra. I always enjoy these posts, because they include questions Adalja would ask if he could, but I also appreciate this vignette of his mentor:... D.A., often wearing a sweater vest, would turn in his chair and indulge me while regaling me with some story of some thing that happened to him or related to whatever the subject of my question was. In the end, I often had the answer -- sometimes DA would affirm my own thinking and other times he would point out a connection that I was not aware of and lead me to dive into the medical literature. I was recently looking through some old papers and spotted DA's handwriting in the margins of a medical journal article alerting me to something he noted and wanted me to notice as well. It is his benevolence and his interest in cultivating my limitless quest to learn all I could about infectious disease that is what I miss most about him. Individuals infrequently get to sit in the presence of extreme competence and genius that it is hard to describe to those who have not experienced it themselves. [bold added]Whether or not Adalja has accurately captured what it is like to be in the presence of a giant, he very well portrays someone who was both an excellent teacher and a friend. I couldn't help but fondly recall several of the people who made a big difference for me after I read that, including my father and my favorite science teacher from way back in high school. -- CAVLink to Original

Since every year, each hurricane I have to pay attention to comes along with climate catastrophists hectoring us about their pet (non-)crisis, it is nice to see a rebuttal at Issues and Insights. It reads in part:Going back more than a 100 years, we can see from the data that today's hurricane activity, defined as a hurricane making landfall in the continental U.S., is roughly the same as it was at the turn of the previous century. As author Michael Shellenberger says, the media have "lied about hurricanes," "lied about heat waves," "lied about floods," and of course "all they do is lie about fires." The climate mob has also lied about snowfall, polar ice, polar bears, the temperature record, and the reliability of their warming models. [links in original]Note the copious supply of links I left in. The article is a handy quick reference that way. My only quarrel with the piece comes from the paragraph immediately preceding the excerpt, which debunks the claim that climate-related fatalities are on the rise. I don't dispute that at all, but that is a missed opportunity to bring the concept of climate mastery into the public's awareness. Fortunately, the economist Bryan Caplan explores the idea at his Substack blog, and quotes Epstein freely. (I have supplied the page numbers for these within Fossil Future below for your convenience.)[T]he history of climate safety shows that fossil-fueled machine labor makes us far safer from climate -- a phenomenon I call "climate mastery." (Fossil Future, p. 49)Epstein, again quoted by Caplan, elaborates:Climate Mastery: Ever-improving models allow millions to decide whether or not to evacuate. Neither prediction nor speedy escape -- both made possible with fossil fuels -- were options a century ago. (Image by The National Hurricane Center, via site archives, public domain.)[O]ver the last century, as CO2 emissions have most rapidly increased, the climate disaster death rate fell by an incredible 98 percent. That means the average person is fifty times less likely to die of a climate-related cause than they were in the 1920s. The first time I read this statistic, I didn't think it was possible. But rechecking the data repeatedly, I found that was indeed the case: the rate of climate-related disaster deaths has fallen by 98 percent over the last century. This means that not only does our knowledge system ignore the massive, life-or-death benefits of fossil fuels, but it has a track record of being 180 degrees wrong about the supposedly catastrophic side-effect of climate danger -- which has dramatically decreased. (47-48)Epstein's concept backs the climate catastrophists who deny climate mastery into a corner: Even if, for the sake of argument, we allow that climate is causing more disasters, they would still have to explain why relatively fewer people are dying from them, despite there being more of us. Indeed, as if the lower death rate weren't impressive enough, do note that the absolute numbers also fell for the items discussed by Issues and Insights. -- CAVLink to Original

Miss Manners takes up a question from a reader who was "huffily informed" how to pronounce a baby's name -- by a parent either too clueless to bother to learn how to spell it or too enamored of conflict to legally change it while the child is still very young. The name is spelled like another name, but is supposed (by the parent) to be pronounced like the name of an ancient civilization for which the spelling is both commonly known -- and often used as a first name anyway. Miss Manners -- who duly notes that there are plenty of perfectly good reasons to give unusual names -- rightly indicates that the huffy parent is guilty of courtesy lapses to two parties:Image by Arina Krasnikova, via Pexels, license.Your annoyance is nothing compared to what those children will have to go through. Having an unusual name means a lifetime of spelling and pronouncing it for other people. ... [Miss Manners] requires an equal good-faith effort from the bestowers and holders of these names when patiently explaining those preferences to others -- and ignoring mistakes that are not likely to be repeated.My wife and I both grew up with the opposite problem: Our names were en vogue when we were born, so we frequently got to be one of several people with our first names in school. But we both knew people who had to go through a whole rigmarole regarding their names every single time they met other people. Their routine put our relatively minor annoyance in perspective. My wife's wise solution to both problems is her "keychain rule:" A name should be common enough to find in a key chain display, and yet not so common as to be sold out. Back in Boston, while waiting on a subway platform with my daughter in a stroller, an admiring stranger struck up a conversation. Upon my mentioning her name, she smiled and laughed: I can pronounce that one and spell it! While I admit it will tempt me in such situations to note the inconvenience of the unfortunate child, something more constructive occurs to me: Upon hearing that a friend or friendly acquaintance might confer such a name, it might be a kindness to gently bring up the lifelong inconvenience the name will cause the future child. Depending on the reaction, mentioning the easily-remembered keychain rule might even be in order. -- CAVLink to Original

Over at The Daily Beast, David Rothkopf speculates on "11 Wild Things" that could happen in the 2024 election. His list:Trump is disqualified. There is a candidate health scare. Trump is convicted of one or more crimes. Trump could melt down and make his legal peril even greater. A new candidate could enter the GOP race and catch fire. Trump flees the country. An extremist act of violence. Intensified foreign election interference. A sudden major turn in the war in Ukraine or in Russia's leadership. A natural disaster. The usual disruptive suspects.As might one expect from someone who says, "Americans will continue not to fully appreciate all the good Biden has done," (!) the piece reads a little like a left wing fantasy in places, but I think it gets most of the possibilities. Three, one of them not even on the list, bear comment. Regarding Trump being disqualified, about which I have already commented, we are now seeing leftists argue, for all practical purposes, that there isn't even a legal need to establish that Trump aided or abetted an insurrection:So far, I'm answering none of the above. (Image by Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu, via Unsplash, license.)The new twist is the idea that none of that is necessary. Trump is already disqualified, and all state election officials have to do is remove him from ballots on their own initiative. And then he is gone. Section 3 [of the 14th Amendment], in this way of thinking, is "self-enacting." It is "constitutionally automatic," in the words of law professors William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, writing in a new law review article that is making the rounds. "Section 3 requires no legislation or adjudication to be legally effective. It is enacted by the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment [in 1868]. Its disqualification, where triggered, just is." All a state election official has to do is pick it up and use it. That's nuts, and as much as I would love to see Trump disqualified, doing so without legally establishing why would set a legal precedent dangerous in the same way that reelecting a Chief Executive who has no respect for the law would be. What would happen next election? Some climate catastrophist polling official decides that anyone who won't "leave it in the ground" is abetting an "insurrection?" Anyone who won't protect a fertilized egg as if it's a human life is an insurrectionist? It's a non-starter, if anyone at all still has his marbles. The other item on the list deserving of comment is the one regarding a candidate catching fire. That's the best normal possibility. I read a few leftist reviews of the Republican debate and found them worthless -- as one might expect from quarters where even lip-service to capitalism gets equated with Trumpist populism. Leftists are almost uniformly unable to tell the difference -- or admit that there is one -- between, say, Donald Trump and Nikki Haley. While even the "good" candidates leave lots to be desired, any would be better than Trump, and a few in the race now could attract enough reasonable voters to win over Trump. I'd even go so far as to say I could see casting a vote for Haley with a clear conscience. As I said earlier, much of this piece is heavily slanted left and reads like a protracted wish/projection of non-leftists as bomb-toting nuts. Perhaps that explains the following blind spot or deliberate omission:12. No Labels gets ballot access in enough states for a run to become feasible.As far as I can tell, each party fears No Labels because they imagine it will tip the election over to the other's candidate. Let them worry: If we do end up with Trump vs. Biden, it's the least they deserve for presenting us with such a dire "choice." That organization will be holding a nominating convention in April:"Our plan is to only run if we think we have a chance to win realistically," he said. "And look, we just finished a poll of 10,000 voters in the eight battleground states. And we give them a choice of Trump, Biden and a moderate independent third choice, and 63 percent say that they're open to a moderate Independent third choice."This independent voter would have been among that 63 percent. -- CAVLink to Original

Editor's Note: We are likely to feel some impact from Tropical Storm Idalia, which is currently tipped to hit the other side of Florida as a major hurricane and be at or near hurricane strength as it goes through or near our area the day after. Posting may be interrupted for some time afterwards.*** Despite arguably winning the GOP presidential debate last week, Vivek Ramaswamy has not, according to the Wall Street Journal, lived up to whatever elevated expectations that might have led to:[M]uch of [Ramaswamy's] usual sunniness disappeared on Wednesday, replaced by snarky interjections. For all his complaints about "professional politicians," he rivaled the best of them with an evening of canned sound bites -- contrasting his "bought and paid for" "Super PAC puppet" opponents with his "patriot" self.This came after the Journal panned him for what it deemed unserious remarks during the debate itself. Nikki Haley comes off best in the column, and we can add her position on Ukraine to her "least bad" one on abortion and her lambasting of Trump's economic policy to the list of reasons to consider her:Image by Nikki Haley, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.While the press is predictably highlighting Ms. Haley's smackdown of Vivek Ramaswamy's foreign-policy confusion, her more consequential moment was her persuasive argument that supporting Ukraine is entirely in America's self-interest. She noted that only a small fraction of the U.S. defense budget has gone to Ukraine and that the country has become a "first line of defense" against both Russia and its partner China. This is the speech Joe Biden should have given more than a year ago. [bold added, link omitted]Nikki Haley is far from my dream candidate for President, but it beggars belief that we are wasting our time instead discussing losers like Donald Trump and Joe Biden at all, and may well end up with one of them as President again. -- CAV Link to Original

A Friday Hodgepodge Note to Myself My wife's career is taking us to New Orleans, and we move during the next few months. I like New Orleans, but really, really hate moving. Today's post is as much about giving myself a way to stay motivated for all the drudgery this will entail as it is this blogger's "feeding of the beast." *** Image by Onur Bahçıvancılar, via Unsplash, license.1. This move is my big chance blast away a big accumulation of junk we don't need. Up until about five years ago, we had to move frequently with babies or toddlers in tow. In addition to my wife and her parents being ... overexuberant ... with toy purchases during that time, the combination of frequent moves and the time demands of child care meant that lots of things ended up in boxes that there simply wasn't time to go through. (This situation is in part due to us having used professional packers twice in a row. They are fast, but they have no clue about what you may want to keep or throw out, so it all goes, and it will be boxed by room, with no other thought as to organization.) I have some time to go through those things now. More importantly, with the kids having outgrown most of those things, I also have a free hand to discard or donate most of it. 2. This move will allow me to consolidate and organize what's left. The ditching-out is huge. I made some progress organizing the garage shortly after we moved here, but without a clear mandate to get rid of things, the effort stalled and left me with no overflow space. Things like art supplies ended up being stored in multiple odd places, depending on where we could find space or who put them away. Predictably, this sometimes led to things being lost and bought again. I am finally about to round up all of this stuff (and a couple of other categories of things), thin the herd, and pack it. On the other end, I'll know what we have and how much, and can have a designated place for it. This will save time, money, and hassle on the other end. 3. We can have pets on the other end. We will have a bigger (and less cluttered) house after we move. We've all wanted cats for about the past year, but I didn't see a way to do so here without the massive clearout sparked by the move: It was already too easy for the house to get very messy very fast, and cleaning up required an inordinate amount of decluttering. I did not want to add pets to the mix. 4. We can entertain more often on the other end. In a small, cluttered house, the prospect of hours of straightening and cleaning always came with that of guests. I have for some time wished we could ... just have people over. The big clearout will make it easier to maintain a regular cleaning schedule and enlist the kids's help (in the form of picking up after themselves or taking over chores they're interested in). We're looking to augment this with a professional coming in once or twice a month, since we won't have to worry about things we actually want or need being misplaced by a third party anymore. -- CAVLink to Original

At least, that's what Matt Drudge's poll showed this morning, after the first Republican debate. I did not watch, having pretty low expectations, but was curious to see whether anyone would make a strong impression. Judging by an admittedly early lack of spectacular headlines, it looks like novelty won the day, in the form of Vivek Ramaswamy, who was perhaps aided by being the target of the likes of Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, and Mike Pence. As of this morning, Ramaswamy had won just under a third of the votes in the Drudge poll. Haley's second was just over one-fifth, about three percentage points ahead of Christie and Ron DeSantis, who didn't exactly revive his flagging status as top alternative to Trump, but might perhaps be content to lie in wait in the hopes that Trump gets sunk. It's hard to draw a definitive conclusion from the debate, but I'm cautiously optimistic for Haley, assuming other polls show similar results. I take my lead from a good description of the contenders, in both leaning towards Ramaswamy's current strength reflecting his novelty and Haley's current weakness her relative lack of exposure. Regarding Ramaswamy, Philip Wegmann of RealClear Politics has this to say of the "surging enigma:"He is fast-talking and unapologetically optimistic about the future of the country, so long as the nation embraces his prescription for a second revolution, what he calls "our 1776 moment." Everyone is paying attention now, including DeSantis, whose allies are urging him to take the fight to Ramaswamy. The fear? Ramaswamy could easily steal the spotlight. His campaign argues the primary is already a two-man race between him and the other Florida man. In a leaked memo obtained by RCP, they told their donors Ramaswamy is set to "eclipse DeSantis." He has a chance to prove it in Milwaukee. "Campaigns like his, which come out of nowhere and get early momentum, tend to flame out," [Republican strategist Alex] Conant said, pointing to stars that burned bright right before crashing, like Herman Cain. A big part of avoiding that fate could be demonstrating policy expertise, particularly in foreign affairs. [bold added]I'm not writing him off, but I will hardly be the last potential supporter to start out intrigued only to find myself having a major problem with him. His stated positions, being the hodgepodge they are, are practically guaranteed to make up for his charisma down the line. So we have Ramaswamy, who was polling among the top three non-Trumps heading in finishing first. Compare this to Nikki Haley, who was in single digits coming in. Wegmann's preview of Haley ("experienced, but overlooked") reads in part:She has attacked Trump for his skepticism of the war in Ukraine, DeSantis for his metaphorical war with Disney, and Ramaswamy over his plan to cut aid to Israel. It hasn't worked. But Haley has a unique advantage as the only woman on stage at a moment when her party desperately needs to win back that constituency, and she has succeeded where her competitors struggled. For instance, Haley was the rare candidate to handle populist firebrand Tucker Carlson with ease. And if her competition looks past her, they may open themselves up to a broadside. "She is someone who could easily be declared the winner of the debate if she delivers some punches and doesn't take any," Conant said.If the below is any indication, Haley certainly did land some punches:Image by Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commons, license.The truth is that Biden didn't do this to us. Our Republicans did this to us too. When they passed that $2.2 trillion Covid stimulus bill, they left us with 90 million people on Medicaid, 42 million people on food stamps. No one had told you how to fix it. I'll tell you how to fix it. They need to stop the spending, they need to stop the borrowing, they need to eliminate the earmarks that Republicans brought back in, and they need to make sure they understand these are taxpayer dollars, it's not their dollars. And while they're all saying this, you have Ron DeSantis, you've got Tim Scott, you've got Mike Pence, they all voted to raise the debt and Donald Trump added 8 trillion to our debt and our kids are never gonna forgive us for this. And so at the end of the day, you look at the 2024 budget, Republicans asked for 7.4 billion in earmarks, Democrats asked for 2.8 billion. So you tell me who are the big spenders. [my emphasis]Again, assuming other polls are consistent with Drudge, Haley might have really helped her cause with her performance, as one might hope it did. Regarding DeSantis, Christie, and Pence, I see all of these as "Trump-limited." The former apes Trump too much, the second is too focused on attacking Trump, and the last is too religious. Pence is the kind of candidate holy rollers would have backed before their orange savior showed up in 2016. His natural constituency won't return, either, ironically because he did his job by certifying the election of Trump's opponent. Pence's ceiling is Trump's ceiling minus anyone who feels aggrieved by that fact. And, while I thank Pence for upholding his oath of office in that moment, I can't overlook his theocratic tendencies, and I doubt others will, either. -- CAVLink to Original

The first Republican debate of the presidential primaries is tonight and Nick Reynolds of Newsweek weighs in with his list of things to look out for. These are:DeSantis vs. Ramaswamy,"Pile on Ron,"Splintering on Ukraine,Nuance on Abortion, andWho Takes on Trump?Of these, only the third and fourth interest me and the fourth is -- I think -- already settled. Except for Nikki Haley, all the candidates who will be present will, to my knowledge, sign whatever abortion ban a GOP-controlled Congress sends to their desk. Haley thinks abortion should be left to the states, so Haley, as the status quo candidate, is the "best" of the bunch in the short term on that issue. The fact that aiding Ukraine is an issue at all reflects the regrettable fact that Donald Trump is at least setting the agenda despite his absence. That said, at least he won't be there to prevent anything serious being said by turning the debate into a circus. It's too bad everyone there is so fixated on Trump and his cultish followers that they will walk on eggshells rather than take full advantage of that fact. Much has been made of Trump's decision to skip the debates, including a pro-and-con piece in The Hill, but what I dislike the most about that decision is that it was an open invitation to the media to make the debate all about him, which it has stupidly and predictably accepted. Image by Amy Reed, via Unsplash, license.There are major issues we could and should be discussing instead of paying all our attention to Donald Trump: Here are just three: What can we do about global warming hysteria? How will we deal with the looming Social Security funding crisis? What should we do about China's increasing hostility? What would I like to see in a debate? I'd like each candidate to pretend Trump doesn't exist and tell us why he or she would be a good President. We already know what Trump thinks. That's old news, and his most loyal voters are (a) unreachable, (b) won't be paying attention, and (c) will stay home (or write him in) if Trump isn't the nominee, anyway. (A remedy -- in the form of a vast pool of politically homeless independent voters -- exists and is there for the taking.) Impress those of us you can reach, and remember that independents make up much more of the electorate than Democrats or Republicans. An impressive-enough performance need only galvanize the significant number of Republicans who want to move on from Trump. Consolidate these voters and get the attention of enough people who support Trump, but more by default than slavish loyalty. Another Republican can defeat Trump, and he has just left an opening to start doing so. Will anyone there have the wits to get that ball rolling? There is no need to hope that Donald Trump drops dead or gets disqualified from office: Luck is there to be made. -- CAVLink to Original

Populist. Everyone uses the term and, unfortunately, politicians fitting the description are seeing success the world over. The term gets sprinkled around news reports like croutons on a salad all the time. But I can't remember anyone giving a definition of "populism." From my view, it's one of those terms everyone seems to understand, but which raises questions as soon as one tries to pin it down: It cuts across left and right, so it doesn't seem to be an "ism" in the sense of being a specific set of beliefs and arguments one can wrap one's head around. But you can know a populist when you see one. The dictionary isn't much help. Here's what Google belched forth:a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.A political approach ... to achieve what, exactly? And what counts as an "establishment" or an "elite?" For what reasons -- good or bad -- would "ordinary people" feel that their concerns are ignored? Do they have a point, and would 'populism' actually help them? Why or why not? Believe it or not, it only occurred to me this morning to see what, if anything, Ayn Rand might have said about populism. I was not disappointed:It is no accident that the state that elected Huey Long during the Depression is Trump Country today. (Image by U. S. Senate Historical Office, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)The commentators regard [George McGovern and George Wallace] as opposites -- as the extremes of left and right -- and are shocked by the extent of Mr. Wallace's popularity. Mr. McGovern is the consistent representative of the New Left. But can one call Mr. Wallace a representative of the right? Yes -- symbolically and journalistically. No -- in fact, if by "right" one means capitalism. Mr. Wallace is a "conservative," which means a statist; and a "populist," which means an old-fashioned, anti-intellectual, non-ideological collectivist. He can match any liberal in attacks on the rich and in appeals to the "little fellows." He is behind the times: he sounds like a New Dealer of the 1930s. But he has the courage to attack some of the modern outrages which the Establishment protects by uncritical silence: welfare, busing, foreign aid, the U.N., the appeasement of Soviet Russia. People are relieved to hear these attacks, which are long overdue. ("The Dead End," in The Ayn Rand Letter, vol. 1, no. 20, July 3, 1972)Freshen up the above by swapping out Bernie Sanders for George McGovern and Donald Trump for George Wallace (as I did some time back in a different context). Oh, and keep reading past the bold for what could be a preemptive review/account for the popularity of "Rich Men North of Richmond." In terms of a coherent belief system, there is no "there" there in populism, at least beyond what is already "out there" in the culture (and is likely at the root of the frustrations felt by those permitting themselves to fall under the spell of a populist). There is just a willingness on the part of a populist to channel anger and frustration -- without challenging any basic premises -- in the quest for political power. The people so upset at the "establishment" (as they put it in the sixties) or the "elites" (as they put in now) that they would blindly revolt this way will pay for such blindness if they ever get their way. Their payment will be to get what they want "good and hard" -- when they learn that the primary goal of their supposed champion is political power and its trappings. -- CAVLink to Original

John Stossel recently provided a short, sweet synposis of the past and present of the college cost crisis brought on by the federal student loan program. Regulars here will likely already understand why that program has caused college costs to skyrocket, but Stossel has a good, simple explanation for anyone who hasn't thought much about the issue before. Spolier: The same perverse incentives that are making college expensive are also causing many to spend five or more years there without graduating, or to leave with degrees that are worthless to employers. Most interesting to me is Stossel's report on conditions on the ground in today's job market, in light of this:College not required! (Image by Elvert Barnes, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)College students take on loans and spend decades in debt because they believe they must get a degree to be hired. But that's no longer true. IBM, Accenture, Dell, Bank of America, Google and other big companies, recognizing the uselessness of many undergraduate degrees, recently dropped college-degree requirements. So have state governments in Maryland, Utah, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Alaska, North Carolina, New Jersey and Virginia. Good jobs in the trades, like welding and plumbing, don't require a college degree. Trade school programs often take less than two years and cost much less than college.Mike Rowe, of Dirty Jobs fame, started a foundation to support students interested in vocational education, and has said similar things in the past. It is interesting to see some of the companies whose actions are speaking louder than words in agreement. -- CAVLink to Original

A Friday Hodgepodge I wasn't actively looking to learn any of these short tidbits, but I did... On a lark, I put "one-liner" into an image search engine and got this. I like flamingos, so here it is. (Image by Kelly Sikkema, via Unsplash, license.)1. Within the debunking of a job-hunting fallacy I blogged yesterday: "f you ever see me walking to my car during a downpour, it’s because the MythBusters proved you get wetter by running. Almost twice as much, actually." 2. This bit of reading advice comes from Harry Binswanger's commentary on some bad reporting on housing costs in Miami: "For propaganda pieces, I always look to the last paragraph because savvy propagandists put there the thought, or feeling, they want you to take away." 3. Alison Green comes through with the following answer to What can you say when your hand hurts too much for a handshake? "'I have an injury so I'm not going to shake your hand, but it's great to see you/meet you!' Say it warmly and you should be fine." 4. As in the title of a post at Irreal, I am often "Writing Prose in Emacs, I visited, expecting to get an idea of whether there would be useful advice I might eventually want to tinker with. I wasn't disappointed, but it was nice to get something I could use immediately. "You need merely toggle variable-pitch-mode to try this out for yourself." Yes. Proportional fonts are much easier on the eye. I look forward to playing with hiding markup, too. I'd love to be able to toggle between, say, raw HTML and how it renders within one window, although my longstanding solution is fine. -- CAVLink to Original

I just encountered a thorough debunking of a common myth I myself used to believe. Job hunters just about can't avoid being told to ferret out unadvertised positions, often in the form of the maxim in the title of the post I just linked: 80% of All Jobs are Hidden. An important reason I like the post is that, before he dives into how this myth might have originated or why it might seem plausible, Jonathan Blaine gives a good executive summary right out of the gate:Let's examine the question from the point of view of an employer. Why would a company keep a job opening secret? Short answer: in most cases it wouldn't because it wants to be able to find the cream of the crop. Successful businesses do not restrict options. Also, the longer the role remains unfilled, the less money the company will make, or the more stretched and ineffective existing staff will become. [emphasis in original]Image by Jan Canty, via Unsplash, license.The rest is interesting reading, but that question is easy to remember and very nicely boils the problem with that myth down to its essence. (Blaine has also, by this point mentioned two general cultural factors behind the ubiquity of the myth.) As with any good advice, it is not too hard to generalize: Never assume that something "everyone knows" is the truth, particularly if it starts sounding implausible as soon as you begin asking yourself why it would be true. -- CAVLink to Original

To accommodate typical work schedules, many elementary schools provide on-site after-school child care. We used the one at ours last year, but are picking the kids up at dismissal this year. Image by note thanun, via Unsplash, license.I normally pick the kids up, so naturally, I wondered what time I should show up that would minimize the amount of time the kids and I would have to wait. At first, I didn't realize I already had crucial data and assumed I might try various increments of time ahead of dismissal: Through experimentation, I would find some sweet spot whereby I'd be reasonably close to the head of the line, and so neither waste my own time waiting for school to let out nor stick the kids with a ridiculous wait every day. On Day 1, I tried showing up 15 minutes early and was stunned to see myself quite far back in line. It was about 10 minutes after dismissal before I picked up the kids. 30 minutes ahead was similar: I wasn't that close to the head of the line and pick-up followed about 10 minutes after school was out. I wondered: What are those people ahead of me doing? Getting here an hour early? That jogged a couple of memories from last year, when we were using the after-school care option. The first memory was from a time I had to pick my son up early for a trip to the dentist, about an hour ahead of regular dismissal. I recall seeing a couple of cars already in the pick-up line and thinking that was nuts. So... Yes, indeed: At least some of them were showing up an hour early! The second memory told me that was, in fact, nuts. Last year, although I had the option of using the after school time, I'd normally pick the kids up early on Thursdays, and the earliest I could do so, for logistics reasons, was half an hour after dismissal: I realized that I never saw cars in the pick-up line then. Clearly, although the line took time to get moving, it took less than half an hour to clear, and that meant to me that I could probably just show up at dismissal time, with everyone -- the kids and me -- waiting less than half an hour. It has rained every day since I realized I should try this, meaning that the rain and all the extra kids (who would otherwise walk, bike, or ride in golf carts, but are now being driven in cars) are making the line longer, but I am confident that I have my answer, and will sail through efficiently on the next sunny day. Only on rainy days do the people showing up more than half an hour early stand a chance of coming out ahead with the way this line is set up. The rest of the time, they're just wasting gas and time. Sometimes it pays more to be just on time, rather than early. -- CAV P.S. On further thought, I realize that anyone who has to chauffeur a kid around to an activity scheduled too soon after school is pretty much stuck having to show up an hour early, so it is useful to know how far in advance one would need to show up to be able to do something like that.Link to Original

The New York Times recently reported that two Federalist Society law professors have concluded that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution bars former President Donald Trump from returning to office:The professors -- William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas -- studied the question for more than a year and detailed their findings in a long article to be published next year in The University of Pennsylvania Law Review. ... He summarized the article's conclusion: "Donald Trump cannot be president -- cannot run for president, cannot become president, cannot hold office -- unless two-thirds of Congress decides to grant him amnesty for his conduct on Jan. 6." [links omitted, format edits]The text of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is clear enough:The transmittal letter for the 14th Amendment (Image by Edward McPherson, LL.D., Clerk of the House of Representatives of the United States, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.I am no lawyer, but the only legal question would seem to be whether Trump has "engaged in insurrection or rebellion." The article reportedly argues that he has:There is, the article said, "abundant evidence" that Mr. Trump engaged in an insurrection, including by setting out to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, trying to alter vote counts by fraud and intimidation, encouraging bogus slates of competing electors, pressuring the vice president to violate the Constitution, calling for the march on the Capitol and remaining silent for hours during the attack itself. "It is unquestionably fair to say that Trump 'engaged in' the Jan. 6 insurrection through both his actions and his inaction," the article said.This is still a country of laws and not men. May the legal machinery operate correctly, and rapidly-enough to settle this question once and for all, and ahead of the election. -- CAVLink to Original

An anti-abortionist conducts a post-mortem on his party's recent failed attempt to prevent abortion from becoming enshrined in Ohio's state constitution:Republicans in the Ohio General Assembly called the special election earlier this year after a well-funded group of pro-abortion organizations succeeded in getting an amendment on the ballot this November that protects a virtually unlimited right to abortion in the state. If Issue 1 had passed, the abortion amendment would have needed 60 percent of the vote to become law.At least Shane Harris starts off being honest about why there was a move to raise the bar to amending the state's constitution. What is more interesting is where he goes next in his 1300-word-plus editorial:Image by Element5 Digital, via Unsplash, license.Convincing voters to make a change to a seemingly less democratic process was always going to be a difficult task. Moreover, GOP leaders in the state initially denied that Issue 1 had anything to do with abortion -- a line even the most credulous voter could see right through. This gave off the unavoidable impression (one encouraged by well-funded liberal groups) that Ohio Republicans were trying to unfairly change the rules at the last minute in order to thwart the democratic will of the people. That notion undoubtedly motivated "No" votes from large numbers of Democrat and Independent voters and likely some Republicans as well who saw the question as more a matter of preserving the principle of "majority rules" rather than a pro-life issue. To be sure, there is a valid and compelling argument to be made about why writing and amending state constitutions via a simple majority vote is a bad idea. For starters, it allows deep-pocketed special interests to mobilize a relatively small number of voters in low-turnout elections and effectively bypass the legislative process to enact laws that are often far out of sync with where the state is politically -- which is exactly what is happening in Ohio right now. [bold added]While I was glad in the short term to see that this move didn't kill the attempt to protect abortion via amendment, I am under no illusions about how flimsy that "protection" will be. As Brian Phillips recently argued in the case of California -- and our Founders understood when they created a republic rather than a democracy -- a democracy affords no protection for individual rights against the will of a mob. That is the "compelling argument" to be made for raising the threshold to amend a state constitution, and it could have made Issue 1 into a winner. That the Republicans seem not to understand that and are furthemore so bothered by such a small obstacle to their cause, speaks volumes. Unfortunately Republicans weren't motivated by that better argument. If they were, they wouldn't have waited until an abortion measure looked likely to pass by about the same margin as defeated Issue 1. Indeed, if they cared about individual rights and had a rational case that a fetus is an individual, they could have sought to pass a personhood amendment, then worked to make it harder to amend the state constitution. That is exactly the opposite of what they did. The rest of the article is a muddle because: (a) the author never contests the idea of "preserving the people's power" as being synonymous with democracy; and (b) his protestations that the GOP "dance[d] around the abortion issue" while emphasizing other (more rational) stands by the Republicans leading up to the vote ring hollow. Frankly, given that a majority in Ohio think abortion should be legal and the GOP has only religious dogma behind its assertion that abortion is murder, "dancing around" that issue was about the only hope it had. Leave it to Republicans to make a genuinely good idea look like a fool's bargain. When Harris concludes that his side needs to "creat[e] a culture of life," he sounds like he realizes on some level that political change requires cultural change. But cultural change requires individuals to change their minds, one at a time, and "abortion is wrong because god says so" is not an appeal to reason. Perhaps, deep down, many Republicans, Harris included, understand this, and know that shady tactics are their best hope of political success. In the meantime, a reasonable proposal to make Ohio's state constitution has been a casualty of the crusade against reproductive freedom, and -- as Harris himself notes -- taxpayers will soon be wrongly forced to fund abortions. -- CAVLink to Original

A Friday Hodgepodge 1. At the blog of the Texas Institute for Property Rights, Brian Phillips considers the multitude of things that come up for referenda in California:The fact that this is even up for a vote illustrates that rights are only temporary permissions in California. The proposals to impose new regulations on dialysis clinics and tax millionaires to subsidize electric cars are further evidence. For now, clinics and millionaires enjoy some property rights. But as the initiatives on the 2022 ballot show, those rights can be revoked if the majority chooses. Mob rule rules in California. [bold added]This reminds me of a something I read a long time ago about that state's gutting-by-referendum of its AB-5 anti-contract-work law. The commentator concluded that voters there were of a libertarian bent. That may well be the case, but moods can change, and mob rule, capricious to begin with, can very quickly become even more obviously as bad as Phillips has just argued it is. 2. Although I do not see it posted so far at the OCON 2023 YouTube playlist, I heard that Harry Binswanger's talk, "Saving Math From Plato," was very well-received. In what I hope turns out to be a teaser, he has posted revised slides for the talk at his blog. They are thought-provoking on their own, and apply the lesson from an Ayn Rand quote I encountered a few days ago, but in the form of what he calls Ayn Rand's special question: "What facts of reality give rise to the need of such a thing as mathematics?" 3. Jason Crawford, who has gotten lots of attention for his excellent essay on why Rome never had its own Industrial Revolution, examined another interesting question at The Roots of Progress some time back. In the form of his notes on Empires of Light, by Jill Jonnes, we learn much, including about that early champion of AC, George Westinghouse. On this, Crawford quotes Jonnes:Image by unknown photographer, via Wikipedia Commons, public domain. the War of the Electric Currents grew uglier and fiercer, George Westinghouse decided in the fall of 1889 to hire a Pittsburgh newspaper reporter named Ernest H. Heinrichs to promote his companies and their achievements. On Heinrichs's first day, Westinghouse came by to wish him success and explain his purpose. "All I want to see is that the papers print [things] accurately. The truth hurts nobody. ... "As to the attacks made against me personally, of course they hurt, but my self respect and conscience do not allow me to fight with such weapons. Besides, I feel that my moral reputation and my business reputation are too well established to be hurt by such attacks. However, I am preparing an article for the North American Review in answer to Mr. Edison's charges against the Alternating Current system, but beyond that I shall have nothing to give you for publication ... . By letting the others do all the talking, we shall make more friends in the end than if we lower ourselves to the level of our assailants."Ahead of this, Crawford notes that a popular narrative about the War of the Currents is unjust to both Edison and Westinghouse, the latter by way of omission. In addition to being an enjoyable and informative read about the early history of electricity, you may be pleased to meet a new hero of the industrial era, even if you had heard of Westinghouse before. 4. At New Ideal, Keith Lockitch writes a long, but thorough and absorbing comparison of four recent works challenging the climate catastrophism narrative: False Alarm by Bjorn Lomborg, Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger, Unsettled by Steven Koonin, and Fossil Future by Alex Epstein. A good preview comes in the form of Lockitch's wrap-up of how the last of these goes beyond what the others discuss in terms of how badly scientific findings about the greenhouse effect are being distorted at every step of the way from analysis to headline:Examining each of these functions in detail -- including some of the key people and prominent institutions that perform them on issues related to climate and energy -- Epstein clarifies just what are (in Koonin's phrasing) some of the "filters" that give rise to the "abundant opportunities to get things wrong." In my view, this is a deeply insightful analysis that helps us avoid the false alternative offered by our increasingly tribalistic culture: the "climate denier's" outright dismissal of expert knowledge versus the blind parroting of the alarmist narrative in the name of supposedly "following the science." Instead, what Epstein provides is a nuanced framework for how to think about expert knowledge, and how to identify when "the system we rely on to tell us what experts think is significantly distorting what actual experts think." [bold added]Lockitch turns from here to the question of why things are so bad and again finds Epstein's book to be "in a category of its own" among these four books, all of which he highly recommends. -- CAVLink to Original

From Derek Lowe's excellent In the Pipeline comes the following call to action regarding proposed and ill-considered regulations for curbing the "forever chemicals" you may have been hearing about a lot lately:Banning PTFE, PFA, and other other fluorinated polymers outright would (as the paper illustrates) cause immediate disruption in all areas of chemical research and manufacture. Consider the effects on stirring bars and blades, stopcocks, O-rings, gaskets, valves, diaphragms, membranes, shaft seals in pumps, the inner cap linings of a huge number of commercial reagents and of many types of sample vials, flow systems of many types (including the solvent lines supplying many HPLCs), sterile filters, Nafion membranes in fuel cells, PTFE-lined pipes in process plants, ball valves in water supplies ... the list goes on. And we haven't even gotten to the reagents yet! A water droplet rests on a piece of fabric made water-resistant through the use of fluorine-containing compounds. (Image by Brocken Inaglory, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)The authors of this proposal did not really look into the chemical and biopharma industries very closely. In fact, there's a table of uses in the document itself that shows that none of these are in the "Researched in Detail" category. The "laboratory equipment" and "medicinal products" areas are [marked] as "Researched in General", while the "chemical industry" category is marked as "Not Researched In Detail". It's all very well to talk about how everyone can move to alternatives, but what are those alternatives for many of these applications, anyway? Do they exist, or are we going to have to spend years inventing, testing, and validating them? What happens to research and manufacturing in the interim? [bold added]Several years ago, some articles in the left-wing press about PFAS piqued my interest because I could easily imagine something like this happening. (I'm no prophet: The world is full of idiots whose first impulse upon hearing any claim that something might be dangerous is to call for a government ban, regardless of any other consideration.) Unfortunately, I ran into time and knowledge limitations, as some notes on a contemplated column indicate:... (1) I don't know enough about DuPont's culpability (if any) or the case or any media campaign to know that this is unjust, which I suspect; and (2) I don't know enough about linking diseases to chemicals to know if the "probable linkages" in the settlement pages are bogus or not. The second installment of "The Teflon Toxin" might shed enough light on one of these to proceed, or it might offer another angle. ... This leaves me with possibly an Erin Brockovich-like scenario. Torts seem reasonable so far, but the "Teflon Toxin" article might be trying to build up public opinion for a major looting of DuPont. So we have an AGW-like scenario here, where there may well be something going on, but with the wrong kind of government response in the offing. Perhaps ... the companies really ARE acting reasonably, but the irrational aspects of government regulation or torts are making it harder to do so.I think this is exactly what we have, and I am glad to see that knowledgeable people in the affected industries are beginning to fight back. Like fossil fuels, the chemical industry is crucial to the complex, modern economy that is keeping billions of people alive and comfortable. Banning these chemicals outright could well be as foolhardy and genocical as immediately ceasing the use of fossil fuels: And it's the kind of fundamental disruption that only a misguided government could wreak and from which it could take a generation or more to recover from, if such a recovery were even possible. -- CAVLink to Original

Ahead of a November vote in Ohio to make reproductive freedom a (state) constitutional right, I recently noted:[T]here is an attempt to move the goal posts on what it will take to pass the measure...I am glad to see that the attempt went down in flames yesterday, as Ohioans overwhelmingly defeated a proposal to raise the threshold to pass a constitutional amendment:I'm glad her side won, but I must say that's an interesting question coming from someone protesting against holding yesterday's election at all. (Image by Becker1999, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)The measure would have raised the threshold for approving future changes to the state constitution through the ballot box from a simple majority -- 50%, plus one vote -- to 60%. The outcome of Tuesday's special election maintains the lower bar that has been in place since 1912 and could pave the way for approval of the proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot in November that seeks to protect abortion rights. A July poll from the USA Today Network and Suffolk University found 58% of Ohio voters support the effort to enshrine abortion access in the state's founding document.Ohioans rejected the proposal by a 56% to 44% margin, meaning there is reasonable hope that abortion will be protected by the state constitution after the November elections. -- CAVLink to Original

Setting aside the propriety of the Covid "lockdowns," a major silver lining in my view was that countless people who might not have tried or gotten to try working remotely did so. Based on a recent Business Insider story, it would seem that the experiment was a resounding success, at least for a significant number of knowledge workers:Image by Chris Montgomery, via Unsplash, license.Forcing workers back to the office is slowly backfiring for employers as the tightening labor market increasingly values remote work as a key benefit. While major companies such as Amazon, Disney, JPMorgan, and even the video conferencing platform Zoom require their workers to return to the office at least part-time after the coronavirus pandemic prompted widespread adoption of work-from-home policies, employees are none too pleased. [links omitted]The story elaborates on some of the ways this is backfiring, and cites anecdotes and studies to the effect that remote workers are generally more productive. Regardless of what one makes of the productivity claims, the real boss, the market, is definitely speaking:Employers that insist upon bringing employees back to in-person work are seeing slower hiring rates, The Wall Street Journal reported -- with companies that have full-time remote work seeing a 5% increase in their staffing levels over the last year, compared to just 2.6% for full-time in-person offices. [link omitted]What's most impressive about this is that the experiment started with a handicap: Many were having to juggle their paid employment with their conscriptions as unpaid substitute teachers' assistants. People were still able to get their jobs done. And now, without those duties, they are enjoying things such as: time not wasted on long commutes; the ability to use break time to, say, start a load of wash instead of staring out of a window; or being able to work undisturbed by inconsiderate co-workers. This is good news for anyone with the discipline to work productively at home. My fear after the pandemic was that the challenges of using the new technology might kill the momentum: It's easier (or seems easier), for example to monitor people who are physically present than remote workers; and we've all heard about those poor souls who discovered that they were in Zoom meetings all day, and couldn't get any actual work done. The technology around remote work, like any other tool, can be used effectively or not. Evaluating remote work based on just that kind of evidence would be like judging the value of the automobile based on the fact that traffic jams exist, or that sometimes, people get hurt or die in accidents. After seeing that the most valuable employees are voting with their feet, though, I feel cautious optimism that workplace flexibility can survive, continue evolving, and eventually become normal. I think it's about a decade overdue, but I'll take late over never anytime. -- CAVLink to Original

The following interesting identification appears in a Vox story about a ruling against a particularly odious anti-abortion law in Texas:With SB 8, Texas legislators not only passed a restrictive abortion ban but they empowered ordinary Texans to interpret and prosecute the ban. That compounds the risk for physicians who provide abortion care, in some sense, because they don't know the conditions under which they can do so -- or who might bring a $10,000 lawsuit against them for doing their jobs. [bold added]This brings to my mind the following quote by Ayn Rand regarding how truly vile and dangerous such vague laws are:Image by Katie Moum, via Unsplash, license.It is a grave error to suppose that a dictatorship rules a nation by means of strict, rigid laws which are obeyed and enforced with rigorous, military precision. Such a rule would be evil, but almost bearable; men could endure the harshest edicts, provided these edicts were known, specific and stable; it is not the known that breaks men's spirits, but the unpredictable. A dictatorship has to be capricious; it has to rule by means of the unexpected, the incomprehensible, the wantonly irrational; it has to deal not in death, but in sudden death; a state of chronic uncertainty is what men are psychologically unable to bear. [bold added]While we aren't living under a dictatorship, Rand's point stands; and it is interesting to note how Republican officials have responded to attempts by physicians to achieve clarity on what procedures they can perform:"Physicians have been begging for guidance [...] since SB 8 went into effect," Molly Duane, senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told Vox in an interview. "No one from the state has provided any guidance, and in fact the only thing the attorney general's office has done is file their own lawsuit challenging some guidance from Health and Human Services -- the federal department that oversees the practice of medicine -- saying that a federal statute called EMTALA which allows abortion care and any other care in an emergency, that that shouldn't apply in Texas."Observe that, when push comes to shove, if there is a choice between achieving something actually good that they have a reputation for favoring (e.g., law and order), vs. banning abortion, banning abortion wins. The article is too kind to note that Republican lawmakers might have been grandstanding in the good ole days of Roe, when they could pass whatever laws they wanted without having to worry about the unpopular consequences of enforcing them. That might well be true. But look at how they are behaving now, when the opportunity to make their own laws clearer presents itself. -- CAVLink to Original

A Friday Hodgepodge 1. About a year ago, I purchased a more capable laptop and wanted to be able to boot it into Linux or Windows. That was easy enough to achieve, but the last time I set a computer up that way, I wasn't hip to the idea of whole disk encryption -- something a car break-in rectified for me some time after that. Unfortunately, while one would expect to be able to have two operating systems on one computer and have hard drive encryption enabled for each, it is not exactly straightforward. Until this week, that laptop was something of a security issue for me: Now, it isn't, thanks to Mike Kasberg's clear and well-documented procedure for setting up a dual-boot Windows/Ubuntu machine with disk encryption. I finally got to perform that this week and it worked as promised for my newly-secure Windows 11/Ubuntu 22.04 dual-boot laptop. I highly recommend this to anyone else with a similar need. 2. My practice of occasionally blogging my wins leads me to review my positive focus logs from time to time. This is a good idea for reasons I explained at the link, but today, it also helped me remember to re-read a post about business I blogged recently. 3. Ditto for a bunch of things by and about Paul Graham. I found these when I was testing a new Boolean search feature I added to my repository of automatically-generated news links. The same search program -- which I developed after I noticed that Google de-listed my blog -- also helped me pinpoint the post above concerning the time someone broke into my car's glove box. Cliffs of Moher, as seen from O'Brien's Tower. (Image by the author. Copying permitted.)4. Today, I finally got around to seeing whether I had indeed photographed a cave used in a scene from Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, as I has been told at the moment. This was during a road trip to the stunning Cliffs of Moher that we took while visiting Ireland a few weeks ago. I have the wrong cave, as it turns out, but I still like the photograph, which is posted here. -- CAVLink to Original

In deep blue cities across the country, "progressives" have enacted policies that, in the most charitable interpretation, they seem to think will help stamp out any racial iniquities that still plague our law enforcement and criminal justice systems. These measures often include funding cuts to police departments, or non-enforcement of laws against minor crimes, or non-prosecution of many criminal offenses. (I think of the whole as the opposite of the "Broken Windows Theory" of policing in both method and results.) Waves of crime follow. And when ordinary people, including the victims, make the obvious connection between the policies and the outcomes, they are basically called idiots. The latest example comes from Oakland, California, which is experiencing a nasty crime wave after its police department saw an $18 million budget cut and a fifty-man reduction in the size of its force. The NAACP out there is pleading for better police protection, as Jeff Jacoby reports:I didn't know what a "side show" is until this article caused me to become curious. Imagine something like this blocking your route to work for the better part of an hour! (Video from Wikimedia Commons. License.)Now, two years later, amid shocking levels of mayhem and murder, the local NAACP president and the city's foremost Black pastor are pleading with city officials to open their eyes. "African Americans are disproportionately hit the hardest by crime in East Oakland and other parts of the city," they write. They are under no illusions about where the blame lies. It isn't systemic racism or white privilege or out-of-control cops that have made Oakland so unsafe. It is the political assault on common-sense policing -- the replacement of tried-and-true law enforcement practices with an ideology from which even lifelong liberals like former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis have recoiled. "Failed leadership, including the movement to defund the police, our District Attorney's unwillingness to charge and prosecute people who murder and commit life-threatening serious crimes, and the proliferation of anti-police rhetoric have created a heyday for Oakland criminals," the NAACP letter declares. "If there are no consequences for committing crime in Oakland, crime will continue to soar." [bold added]The response to this from one of the leaders of an "activist" group that supports the measures and claims concern for the welfare of these victims?Another critic of the NAACP letter was Cat Brooks, a founder of Oakland's hard-left Anti Police-Terror Project, which seeks, in its words, to "radically transform -- and eventually abolish -- police and policing as we know it." The NAACP chapter president and the bishop, Brooks told the San Francisco Standard, are "completely detached from what's actually happening." [bold added]If anything, Jacoby makes this look polite. The source makes Brooks look even more like a hipster saying Okay, boomer than she already does. I hope that anyone who would consider electing a "progressive" gets wind of this spectacular level of arrogance and condescension. Someone is definitely out of touch here, and I don't think it's the authors of that letter. -- CAVLink to Original