Gus Van Horn blog

Walter Williams administers a column-length corrective to the idea -- perpetuated by leftists -- that the "money in politics" we should do away with is in lobbying and campaign finance. ... Most concerns about money in politics tend to focus on relatively trivial matters such as the costs of running for office and interest-group influence on Congress and the White House. The bedrock problem is the awesome power of Congress. We Americans have asked, demanded and allowed congressmen to ignore their oaths of office and ignore the constitutional limitations imposed on them. The greater the congressional power to give handouts and grant favors and make special privileges the greater the value of being able to influence congressional decision-making. There's no better influence than money. [bold added] Williams is correct: Bribery is ubiquitous because of pervasive, improper government power. However, Williams could have gone even further to identify the "money in politics" the left bemoans as a symptom, rather than the problem. It is easy to see how a contest for loot and favors spirals out of control when everyone is already corrupt, but what about those companies that would rather compete on merit? Ayn Rand once said of such companies: [W]hat could the railroads do, except try to "own whole legislatures," if these legislatures held the power of life or death over them? What could the railroads do, except resort to bribery, if they wished to exist at all? Who was to blame and who was "corrupt"--the businessmen who had to pay "protection money" for the right to remain in business--or the politicians who held the power to sell that right? Even for those who oppose the entitlement state, the power Williams describes -- and correctly calls to eliminate -- has essentially made bribery necessary. -- CAV Link to Original

Some time ago, I commented on political opponents of Barack Obama who carped about him golfing: This complaint is a sleazy attempt to portray the Chief Executive as derelict, and reminds me of other, similar complaints about his competence in that it raises entirely the wrong issue at the expense of failing to take his agenda or policies to task. Indeed, the attacks themselves are incompetent, for they implicitly concede the premise that what Obama wants to accomplish would be just fine, if only it were more ruthlessly and efficiently executed... [link in original, bold added] Indeed, to the degree such an enemy of freedom is distracted from his unremitting attacks, his political opponents should express relief more than outrage. But conservative commentator Walter Hudson, in the course of defending Barack Obama's attending a birthday party soon after the Ferguson shooting (HT: HBL), brings up a deeper problem: It's the spiritual manifestation of the same moral argument we tackle in the political discourse. Someone else needs something - healthcare, a job, housing - and we're expected to provide it. Just as such claims are made on an individual's property, so are they made on an individual's mood. You should care about what I care about. You should be sad, because I'm sad. You should refrain from laughing while I cry. It's entirely legitimate to criticize someone for indulging at the expense of vital responsibilities. To the extent Obama has neglected his job, you can build a case against his vacations. But this idea that he or any person should not enjoy life while others languish in misery proves as immoral as any have-not claim upon the lives of haves. [bold added] This is a profound rebuttal, and shows this latest charge to come from an even more dire level of intellectual bankruptcy than the usual attacks against presidents for taking vacations or playing golf. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. Such attacks against Barack Obama, being for entirely the wrong reasons, betray desperation at best. Barack Obama is a poor president because he advocates and carries out meddling and thievery by the government, which should be protecting us from such things. He explicitly (although wrongly) justifies such injustices on the grounds that we are our brothers' keepers. Agreeing with Barack Obama's rationale for gutting our freedom while whining that he is not working hard enough (at what -- that?) is no way to win a public debate now or elections down the road -- at least if one regards government protection of individual rights as a worthy cause. -- CAV Link to Original

A car salesman, who wishes that "more of my peers would accept the tenets of free enterprise", writes of collusion against Tesla Motors via regulatory capture by car dealers and state legislators: [R]ight before Labor Day weekend, when the Georgia Auto Dealer Association filed a petition with state officials seeking to cancel Tesla's license to sell its cars in the state of Georgia. Tesla's crime? Selling 173 cars directly from a factory-owned store located 25 miles away from Atlanta, the only Tesla retail location in Georgia. The dealers say Tesla can only sell 150 cars a year from the shop under state rules, and therefore should lose its dealer license entirely. "It's just very simple -- we want them to comply with the law the way others are," Bill Morie, president of the Georgia dealers association, told Automotive News. [format edits] What Moore, like a stereotypical shady used car dealer, is hoping nobody will notice, is that the whole idea of someone needing permission from the government to sell cars -- let alone being told how many he can sell -- is wrong. Licensing laws violate the whole purpose of government, which is to protect individual rights, including the right to enter contracts. The above episode, by the way, is just the tip of the iceberg of government corruption that has been victimizing consumers in Georgia and other states for some time, thanks to the "extremely tight relationships with statehouse legislators" that car dealers and others in heavily-regulated occupations enjoy -- and that Steven Lang's timely article demonstrates. Read the whole thing. -- CAV Link to Original

Few activities offer their participants more "opportunities" to receive unwanted (and often presumptuous) advice from complete strangers than parenting. Anyone who, like me, has been on the receiving end of such -- erm -- counsel will find that a writer at McSweeney's has perfectly captured what we're too kind/busy/sleep-deprived/frightened/wise to say in response. The passage below, in particular, reminded me of my "favorite" such incident: Oh nice lady, you are probably right! I should definitely cover his face always so he doesn't get sun on it. If he is exposed to the sun for even one moment, even as I am simply walking from the mechanic to a coffee shop where I have to unexpectedly stop to feed him because my car broke down, he will probably immediately get sun disease or burst into flames. My parallel occurred last winter, when I had to go to a bank a day or so after a snow storm. I parked my car across the street and opened the door to get my then six-month-old son out, only to discover to my annoyance that I'd left his jacket at home. Since it was forty degrees out and the bank was a very short walk across the street, I decided to go anyway. I didn't even make it to the crosswalk before a car arrived from around a corner and stopped. "That's child abuse!" someone bellowed at me from her position of omniscience in the newly-arrived car. This person, who looked like someone I wouldn't have wanted even in the same room with my son, glowered at me for a moment through her window. After I pretended not to hear her, she drove on, to my great relief and somewhat to my surprise. To this day, I wonder what that fool would do if airdropped into Scandanavia some winter, where children are routinely left to nap outside in subfreezing temperatures. -- CAV Link to Original

Editor's Note: I am taking the week off to be with family over the next week. Posting will resume on September 9 at the latest and comment moderation may be delayed more than usual until then. Have a great Labor Day! Exactly How Dangerous Is Ebola? Scott Holleran interviews Amesh Adalja of the Center for Health Security of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center on the subject of the threat to Americans posed by the Ebola virus: Read the whole thing. Weekend Reading "[F]or most people, fear of flying raises issues of control." -- Michael Hurd, in "Let Go and Live" at The Delaware Wave "Notice I'm not saying that you shouldn't control other people. I'm saying that you can't." -- Michael Hurd , in "The Joys and Hazards of a Love Relationship" at The Delaware Coast Press "Is it better for doctors to ask your permission first -- or seek your relatives' forgiveness afterwards?" -- Paul Hsieh, in "UK To Experiment on Cardiac Arrest Patients Without Their Consent" at Forbes My Two Cents The Hsieh article is particularly disturbing, given that some "libertarian paternalists" have already floated the very similar idea of making such things as organ donation "opt-out" in America. The Infernal Midnight of the Cluttered Mind Weird Al Yankovic does a great send-up of mindless jargon. --CAV Link to Original

1. I recently found Crabbie's Ginger Beer to be a perfectcompliment to sitting on the porch with my family on a warm, sunny weekend, even though it is not strictly a beer. Here's an excerpt of a review from the Huffington Post: Crabbie's, the UK's best-selling ginger beer, is finally available in the U.S., and we are quite pleased about it. This ginger beer is fermented, old-school style, and that method is reflected in the flavor -- slightly honeyed and floral, with way more complexity than we expected... [links removed] I do disagree with the reviewers there on one thing: Ignore the serving suggestion printed on the label and just refrigerate it before pouring. 2. Scotland will be voting on independence soon, and this has some people wondering what the flag of the United Kingdom might look like without the cross of St. Andrew -- and then trying a few more interesting alternatives than merely altering the Union Jack. The authors like a design incorporating the Tudor Rose, but I found their red-and-white flag featuring the Cross of St. George, the Red Hand of Ulster, and the Red Dragon of Wales somewhat compelling -- until I then smiled after the Hand caused me to remember an old Monty Python skit. Yeah. Go with the Tudor Rose or, better yet, stick with the Union Jack, anyway. 3. This article, on why "Breaking A 'Pay-It-Forward' Chain ... [is] Good Economics" has solved a minor mystery for me: That's why I had five bucks of the cost of a McDonald's order shaved off -- with no rhyme or reason -- by the driver ahead of me one morning a few weeks ago. And learning about the self-delusive -- and yet sanctimonious -- attitude of the "pay-it-forward" crowd just gave me a chuckle and made that discount even more enjoyable. 4. Quote of the week: My second childhood was kindly delivered to me by my children. This, I suspect, was no coincidence. Children know something that adults have forgotten -- something adults have to forget when they begin playing the great game of growing up and becoming someone. -- Mark Rowlands HT: Vivek Haldar. But do we have to forget it, though? And what is it? I have at least a partial guess as to the answers to each question, thanks to my children and my favorite philosopher. -- CAV Link to Original

In a column arguing against the notion that shows of force by the police exacerbated rioting in Ferguson, Thomas Sowell, notes that, "Any force sufficient to prevent riots from getting out of hand is almost certain to be characterized as 'excessive force' or 'over-reaction' by people with zero experience trying to stop riots." This is a conclusion he reaches after examining historical evidence, such as from the 1960's. For example: Sowell raises a good point -- which he also makes by examining the correlation between armed guards and murder rates (9% for U.S presidents!), and alluding to an absurd, correlation-based conclusion one might draw. "Does anyone seriously believe that leaving presidents unguarded would reduce assassinations?" he asks. This is hardly to say that warnings (such as one from Mark Steyn) against the militarization of our police are unwarranted. Rather, we should be careful to distinguish between incorrect calls for "restraint" when the government should properly wield force (of the retaliatory kind, in defense of individual rights) -- and warnings to the effect that the government is headed down a slippery slope of laying the ground work for ever more intrusive instances of improper, rights-violating initiatory force. Things like the latter were going on long before Ferguson. There is no objective need to equip every police department like a military unit or to treat routine police work like a SWAT raid or an incipient riot. Since I have observed both leftists and conservatives making the mistake of treating both kinds of government action as equivalently desirable or not (although usually in different contexts), let me cite a clarifying quote from Ayn Rand: This distinction, which is at the root of what made American governmentdistinctive at its outset (and must, again, one day), is potentially one of the greatest casualties of the debates ignited by the Ferguson riots. Leftists wrongly condemn the government (properly) quelling a riot as "violence", and yet encourage government looting (an initiation of force, no matter how bloodless) for redistribution. On the other hand, conservatives often seem tone-deaf to such matters as policemen needlessly escalating encounters (e.g., the alleged profanity used initially against Michael Brown I recall from one account) or the police aping the military they rightly admire. Both seem to think that enshrinement in law (e.g., cries against (improperly) "illegal immigration" from the right, or support for entitlements from the left) is some sort of ritual blessing on an action a proper government would not take. Thomas Sowell's and Mark Steyn's respective comments about the police in the wake of the riots might initially strike one as antithetical, but when one considers them in light of the proper role of the government, it becomes apparent that they actually make complimentary points. -- CAV Link to Original

Microsoft Research Mobile explains why practitioners of the "Nigerian scam" persist in claiming from the outset to be from Nigeria -- even though doing so is tantamount to saying, "I am a scammer". I am excepting from an excerpt of an unlinked 2012 article here, so follow the link for more of the argument: ... Since his attack has a low density of victims the Nigerian scammer has an over-riding need to reduce false positives. By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible the scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select, and tilts the true to false positive ratio in his favor. [bold added] While the idea of criminals discussing the finer points of binary classification might be mildly amusing, I am sure that the effectiveness of such a tactic was determined by trial-and-error. Such principles do nevertheless explain the success of this and similar scams. Furthermore, they demonstrate, by way of a negative example, the power of evaluating new propositions by determining whether they integrate with the rest of one's knowledge (and, if so, how). Gullibility indicates a failure, for whatever reason, to do this on a consistent basis. There are two lessons here for those of us interested in cultural activism: (1) What we have to do is hard in the sense that we have to find and satisfy the most demanding audience (i.e., people with the most active minds); and (2) We have it easy in another sense, that we aren't competing for the same audience as the many intellectual hucksters and panderers in our midst today. I have to admit that there have been times that the apparent successes of the latter have dampened my spirits. (In some ways, this reminds me of aspects of the Ayn Rand's Fountainhead charatcer, Dominique Francon.) The example above, strange as it might seem, will help me remember that it is mistaken to become disheartened with such cultural phenomena. -- CAV Link to Original

Psychologist Michael Hurd, a favorite commentator of mine, titles a blog post about soccer with two questions: "Is Soccer Anti-Individualist? Or Just Dull?" His answers appear to be, "'Probably' and 'Yes'". Regulars here will know that I strongly disagree with the good doctor on both counts: My answers are, "'Almost certainly not', and 'Absolutely not'". Hurd does admit to not not knowing much about either soccer or football, so I'll kill off the second, less interesting question now, by referring to my view of baseball, a sport I know little about, but whose merits I came to see: Until the year Rice won the College World Series and I had the opportunity to watch several very good baseball games narrated by a very talented commentator, I had zeroappreciation for all the strategy that goes into that game. I used to see (before switching channels): nine men standing around on a field, scratching themselves and spitting while some guy with a beer belly swung a stick at a ball. Likewise, to the uninitiated, soccer will look like a bunch of people running around on a field kicking a ball for no particular reason. Since Hurd takes an Ann Coulter column as his point of departure, I must tackle a further, factual error that he ends up propagating from among her many errors and evasions: Yes, goals are rare, but they normally can be anything from a team to an individual accomplishment. In addition, Hurd and Coulter to the contrary, goals are the "equivalent of the home run, the touchdown or the slam dunk" they can't appreciate in soccer. In tight games, they can be all of these at once. (Watching such a game is not for the faint-hearted, much less anyone for whom fear is a "dominant attitude".) Having said that, Hurd and, I must admit, Coulter do raise interesting cultural issues that have coincided with the rise of soccer as youth sport, and that pertain to the first question ("Is soccer anti-individualist?"). I think I have partially answered this question already: Consider a winning touchdown, thrown by a scrambling quarterback to a crafty receiver who evades coverage and then sprints through a hole in the opposing team's defense -- a hole created by another team-mate's block. The multiple contributions to this score -- or even good, bone-crunching defensive play that scores zero points for that matter -- are good examples of team efforts with good individual contributions. The fact that several people contributed makes a touchdown (or a goal-line stand) no more anti-individualistic than the multiple passes and thinking-on-the-feet seen in many goals. Too much commentary on soccer is hung up on the quantity of goals (as if, say, 1-0 baseball games are unheard of) and the invisibility of individual contributions -- at least to those who don't understand what is going on.) But Hurd and Coulter raise the following point, which deserves to be addressed: Baseball and basketball present a constant threat of personal disgrace. In hockey, there are three or four fights a game -- and it's not a stroll on beach to be on ice with a puck flying around at 100 miles per hour. After a football game, ambulances carry off the wounded. After a soccer game, every player gets a ribbon and a juice box. [bold added] Really? I have no idea about now, but if such is the case, it hasn't always been that way. I played soccer from junior high until college, back in the eighties, before egalitarianism ruined (or started attacking) youth sports. All the ribbons -- medals and trophies, actually -- went to my brothers, who were both excellent players and whose teams won state championships. We did get drinks -- water, Gatorade, and the like -- at the half and after the game. Playing non-stop for 30-45 minutes (depending on age) will make you need water. Oh, and I encountered only three girls -- all exceptionally good players at a time when the overall skill level in the American game was low -- who were members of boys' teams over the decade I played or refereed. Why? Common sense was more prevalent back then. In soccer, it is legal to bump another player with the shoulder when going after the ball. This alone gives men, who are generally larger and have superior upper body strength, a huge advantage over women. Women have other physical limitations relative to men that make mixed competitive teams beyond perhaps elementary ages a dubious proposition at best. We did play mixed -- for fun with a few other families -- occasionally on Sundays. I don't know how common mixed teams are in youth competitions nowadays, but if Coulter is right, the egalitarians are running up a score. And whatever the merit of injuries, those happen in soccer as well. (Search "As for her assertion that personal humiliation or injury are required to count as sport".) I have a shoulder injury that occasionally acts up to this day. Hurd is right to be alarmed at the idea that everyone in a youth soccer game is getting a ribbon and a juice box. But that's egalitarianism, and not soccer. Hurd closes by saying, "The triumph of soccer as the activity of choice for school-aged children is probably no accident." If so, it's despite the efforts of leftists pushing it just because they see it as non-American and those of obnoxious evangelists who insist on calling it futbol. It's because soccer is fun and people of any size and build can play it, if they apply themselves and learn to think on their feet. -- CAV P.S. Regarding the title: In European soccer league competitions, a team that comes from behind to draw (and thus secures a point in the standings as in hockey), is often said to have "rescued a point". Link to Original

Caroline Glick takes a look at the shifting alliances in the Middle East from an Israeli perspective, particularly in light of Barack Obama's foreign policy: ... Obama's pro-Hamas-, pro-Iran- and pro-Muslim Brotherhood-axis policies, along with his refusal to date to take effective action in Iraq and Syria to obliterate Islamic State, have convinced the US's traditional allies that for the next two-and-a-half years, not only can they not rely on the US, they cannot discount the possibility of the US taking actions that harm them. These traditional allies are Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Glick argues that they are cooperating behind the scenes against the Islamic State and Hamas, and to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions. Glick sees this cooperation lasting until the end of Obama's term -- unless it is rendered impossible by Israel's own left: The Israeli Left sees this new partnership. But it fails to understand its basis or significance. For the Left, all developments lead to the same conclusion: Whatever happens, Israel must strengthen the PLO by strengthening Palestinian Authority Chairman and PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas. Failing to recognize the basis for Israel's emerging strategic partnership, led by Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, the Left is advocating using our new ties with Saudi Arabia and Egypt as a means of strengthening Abbas by organizing a regional peace conference. What they fail to understand is that such a move would destroy the partnership. Israel's strategic cooperation with Egypt and Saudi Arabia owes to their shared interests. It cannot extend beyond them. And they have no shared interests in regard to the PLO. Threatened by the axis of jihad, no Muslim government can be seen publicly with Israelis... Glick speaks with uncertainty about the next administration seeking to "rebuild the US alliance structure in the Middle East". Even if it does, the damage caused by Obama's non-self-interested foreign policy will be hard to repair, for he has made it apparent to the world that we are unreliable at best. -- CAV Link to Original

How Science Should Be Funded Over at Wired is a story about a private effort to fund nutritional studies, headed up by Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories, whose contrarian views on nutrition have made him a best seller. His group, the Nutritional Science Initiative (NuSI) is funding scientists who currently sit on opposite sides of such questions as whether the source of energy (e.g., fats or carbohydrates) present in food is relevant to whether individuals gain weight. Taubes, too, is aware of the risk. As Calabrese puts it, "Gary is advancing a study that may refute a theory he's built his career on. It may blow his theory right out of the water." This is how a real scientist -- and an actual patron of science -- behaves, and it reminds me, favorably, of one science blogger's reaction to the book mentioned above: Gary Taubes is interesting. If he's right, the majority of medical community has been flat wrong about some basic assumptions for a long time. It's sobering to think that might be the case. Even if Taubes is wrong, it's unsettling that he's not obviously wrong, that he can make a plausible argument that some widely held scientific beliefs are upside-down. Assuming this article is accurate and the involved scientists are able to ask and answer the right questions, we may finally know the truth one way or the other. Weekend Reading "The simple fact is that failure happens for a reason, and we possess the power to discover that reason and to become wiser and stronger." -- Michael Hurd, in "See Failure as Opportunity" at The Delaware Wave "Ignore the media and do what makes objective sense to you, today, in your own situation." -- Michael Hurd , in "What Are You Afraid Of?" at The Delaware Coast Press My Two Cents In his second piece, Michael Hurd takes a common reaction to media doom-and-gloom about the economy as his point of departure. His observation that many people panic at bad news, or simply take common advice from the media straight is a reminder: Many, if not most, people do not take the time to integrate new information or advice into the rest of their knowledge. Perhaps most people should, even after assessing their own situations, say, cut back on spending. But anyone who does this just because of what they hear on the news, doesn't really know that this is a proper (or even harmless) course of action for his own situation. Such a person might fool himself into feeling like he is acting responsibly when he is, in fact, flying blind. The Power of Discrimination discrimination ( n) -- an act or instance of ... making a distinction. Matt Honan of Wired demonstrates, by way of a negative result, the folly of not making choices in life, in an amusing article, "I Liked Everything I Saw on Facebook for Two Days. Here's What It Did to Me". He concludes in part, "By liking everything, I turned Facebook into a place where there was nothing I liked." -- CAV Link to Original

1. A woman with a rare genetic disease was both unconvinced by her medical diagnosis and "frustrated by the rampant misinformation" on Internet patient forums -- so she did her own research. In the end, she correctly told her doctors which DNA test to run. In addition to having to familiarize herself with an unfamiliar scientific literature, she also had to face the understandable skepticism of her own physicians: "I'm beyond impressed," says Michael Ackerman, a geneticist at the Mayo Clinic. He specializes in inherited heart disorders like ARVC that can cause sudden death at any time. Such diseases make for people who do their homework, but Ackerman describes most as "Google-and-go" patients who check their diagnosis online or read up about treatment options. Kim had written up her research as a white paper--36 pages of research and analysis. "Kim's the only one who handed me her own thesis," he says. "Of all the 1,000-plus patients I've taken care of, none have done extensive detective work and told physicians which genetic test to order." The article mentions a series of personality traits, like "perseverance and love of isolation" that served Kim Goodsell in good stead as she sought to understand her problem, but underlying her quest was her impressive degree of independence. She would not let a single term she did not understand go unexamined. 2. An American sports fan rebuts one of the more thoughtful anti-soccer editorials I read this World Cup, one by Kareem Adbul-Jabbar. That piece concluded with a prediction to the effect that soccer would "return to its sickbed" after the tournament. But Sheldon Hirsch, who attended his first professional game in nearly four decades, an exhibition after the World Cup, begs to disagree: The enormous crowd of 109,318 opened my eyes and raised doubts about Kareem's critique. The crowd seemed like a rabid NFL gathering, except almost twice as large, perhaps half as inebriated, and more prone to song. Notably, this was not a World Cup or Olympics competition; or Michigan vs. Michigan State; or an MLS championship game. Over 100,000 people attended an exhibition game; clearly, serious soccer fans. I think Hirsch supports his contention that Abdul-Jabbar shot an airball on this topic quite well. 3. Is there anything a smartphone can't help solve? There are now apps, called "Dumbphone" and "IgnoreNoMore", that respectively help (1) users fight compulsive smartphone checking and (2) parents get their kids to call them back. 4. Wow! My old post, "Data Storage Then and Now", may soon be made to look quaint after only a few years: New technology that could store about a terabyte of data in a device the size of a postage stamp is a step closer to manufacture. -- CAV Link to Original

Larry Elder notes a self-defeating trend that has become manifest in the wake of the Ferguson, Missouri, police shooting: While I have not been following this story -- or any other -- very closely, it has been nearly unavoidable since it is local news for me. Some of the belief in the "shot in the back" narrative must surely be blamed on media coverage: This is the first time I have heard about this medical evidence despite an apparently non-stop torrent of such coverage. Most people would call such claims -- when made contrary to evidence or (worse) the need for evidence -- "self-serving". That is clearly not the case, particularly for blacks: As Elder implies, the incessant pursuit of what he calls "The Great White Defendant" is hindering any real examination of the actual difficulties poor blacks face in places like Ferguson, and, therefore, any progress towards a solution. Even assuming the worst of the police officer who shot Michael Brown, it is folly to spend energy on this one case at the clear expense of failing to attack so many other real and bigger problems. -- CAV Link to Original

Thomas Sowell recently wrote a column about leftist attacks against admission standards and testing for college-preparatory schools. Therein, Sowell raises a good question for the quota-pushers, including teachers' unions and those civil rights "leaders" who imagine that "their civil rights include getting into these elite schools, whether they qualify or not": Sowell, who has written extensively on such matters in the past, also includes a nice history lesson for anyone who imagines that it is unusual for some groups to be over- or under-represented in such institutions. -- CAV Link to Original

From a somewhat rambling Mike Steyn column comes word of one of the most ridiculous regulations I have ever heard of: I'm still hopping mad about the US Government's bagpipe crackdown. The international piping scene is basically Scotland, Canada and the north-eastern US. On the Atlantic seaboard, it's a cross-border community. Yet since the end of June the official position of the United States Government is that, if someone from northern New Hampshire competes in a bagpipe championship in Quebec, he cannot take his pipes through any US/Canadian land border crossing. So instead of a pleasant three-hour drive from Montreal back to New Hampshire, he has to fly from Montreal to Boston and then drive all the way back, more than doubling the time and vastly increasing the cost. ... nder the insanity of America's hyper-regulatory tyranny, you now have to register musical instruments with the US Department of Fish & Wildlife. And, even if you do, you still can't drive that instrument over a US/Canadian land border. This reminds me of a thought I had this morning. Many people expect the government to arbitrate everything because they do not think that individuals have any ability to be objective, let alone any reason to do so. (And yet it seems that it never occurs to many of these same people that the government is staffed by "imperfect" humans.) The above is an example of the kind of result this gets -- something completely inane that has the force of law. Most people will be unconcerned, since this involves mere inconvenience to a small number of people who play an oddball instrument, but, in principle, anyone can -- and many often do -- find themselves on the wrong side of ridiculous government rules and facing real consequences. You may realistically laugh at the bagpipers now, only to find yourself facing prison time later. That is where the pro-regulatory, pro-central planning mentality has already gotten us. It's high time to question the wisdom of trusting the government to know what is best. -- CAV Link to Original

Mike Steyn sees something in the ongoing events of Ferguson, Missouri, that should concern every American: a trend towards the militarization of our police departments. Noting that, "In 2014, when a police cruiser doesn't have a camera, it's a conscious choice", Steyn goes on to note the historical origins of the modern police departments and observes: There is much more from Steyn on both this alarming trend and on the ineptitude of the local authorities, particularly Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson. Steyn leaves us with the following warning: "[O]ne day, unless something changes, we will all be policed like Ferguson." (HT: Steve D.) -- CAV Link to Original

Making Molehills of a Mountain The Unclutterer blog tackles a tiresome task -- keeping papers organized -- with some good advice, including the following: Organizer Janine Adams wrote on her Peace of Mind Organizing Blogabout a women who got through 12 years of accumulated papers by working on them for 15 to 30 minutes a day. It's often easier to tackle a dreaded task if you know you only have to do it for a short period of time. [minor format edits] This is a multi-pronged approach and it could easily be applied to similar chores. The advice about having good tools is also worthwhile. (My wonky shredder comes to mind.) Weekend Reading "Inauthenticity is a game that takes too much work, and ultimately it can be destructive." -- Michael Hurd, in "ASK For What You Want" at The Delaware Wave "There are indeed certain occasions when lling] the truth doesn't matter as much as physical safety or privacy." -- Michael Hurd, in "Kids: The Great Loophole Finders" at The Delaware Coast Press My Two Cents As a parent, I always appreciate it when Michael Hurd covers topics related to raising children, as he does in his second piece above. In this case, I am glad to see that I have been on the right track regarding how I handle questions that are not age-appropriate. Robin Williams, RIP I was saddened by the news that Robin Williams took his own life last week. I'll memorialize him with the benevolent and very funny video above, although I must mention that I enjoyed his more serious acting work even more. I particularly liked his portrayal of Oliver Sacks, a neurologist, in Awakenings, for example. Ironically, I learned of the video only recently due to followers of a certain religion -- take a guess -- being so thin-skinned as to threaten him over it. -- CAV Link to Original

1. Pumpkin has become interested in helping me lately, so I come up with "jobs" for her whenever I can, like holding doors or carrying things from the kitchen to the family room. But she shows good initiative, particularly with my phone, which sometimes falls out of my pocket when I play with the kids. (She's handed it back to me numerous times after that.) My favorite example of her assistance came after I'd taken my phone out out and left it on the coffee table. She tracked me down afterwards and asked, "Did you mean to leave this out?" Yes. That's a direct quote. It does sound like the way an adult would ask it. Little Man has been matching Pumpkin's initiative with an often radiant benevolence. He frequently smiles and really likes the song, "If You're Happy and You Know It". Going between the kitchen and the family room one day, I encountered him walking, smiling, and clapping. Now, if I can just get him to stop trying to put toys into the Diaper Genie... I am very fortunate: There are very few people who easily improve my mood, and two of them are my children. (If that makes me sound like some kind of a grouch, so be it.) 2. John Cook offers high praise for what he calls an "open source dissertation". He's not being secretive, fearing that someone will scoop his results. There have been a few instances of one academic scooping another's research, but these are rare and probably not worth worrying about. Besides, a public GitHub repo is a pretty good way to prove your priority. In terms of having the idea, yes. But ... I haven't looked at this dissertation, but one caveat would be that making something like this public maycause problems getting patent protection down the line, if that is an objective. Other than this, I find the idea of an "open source dissertation" intriguing. 3. Mid-century architecture buff Toby Weiss, calling it "too young to save, too old to matter", has created a good web site memorializing the Northland Shopping Center, a 1950's-era shopping center in Jennings, Missouri, that has long since been demolished and replaced. I, too, would have loved to see this: Saving a shopping center is practically unheard of, but the architectural and historical aspects of Northland made it a special case. I still imagine how cool a multi-story Target inside the Famous-Barr building would have been, how the properly-marketed genuine retro buzz would have made it a truly one-of-a-kind shopping destination, and how trailblazing ... the resurgence of a retail legend would have been... Having driven past the Target at Northland's old location during errands last Friday caused this site, which I encountered long ago, to pop back into memory. As a bonus, re-visiting this site helped me realize that a really odd-looking building I occasionally pass in Clayton was once a Famous-Barr. 4. Football season is upon us -- at least for the kind I usually just call soccer. The English Premier league begins play this Saturday, and I really liked this thorough and entertaining team-by-team preview. Although I am an Arsenal fan, I thought the "Why You Should Watch" fan quote about Newcastle took the cake: Perhaps more than any other Premier League team, Newcastle United have no idea where they'll finish in 2014-15. After 5th and 16th place finishes in the previous two campaigns, they were 6th on Boxing Day last year, then were the worst team in the entire Football League by several measures to finish the season. Where they belong this year is anybody's guess. Alan Pardew has brought in seven players to refresh the squad, and Siem de Jong and Rémy Cabella could be the bargains of the summer. Meanwhile, 18-year-old Rolando Aarons has been a force in every preseason match so far. There's reason for hope for Toon fans -- but of course it could all go very south, very quickly. Newcastle is a bullet train that could go off the rails at any moment. Who doesn't want to watch that? Say what you will of the EPL, but thanks to the time difference between Old Blighty and the States, it is no maker of football widows here. -- CAV Link to Original

Three editorials taken together go very far in making sense of the chaos in Ferguson, Missouri, that has existed since Michael Brown was fatally shot by a police officer. The first offers an explanation of the clearly evident outrage, but without addressing the equally obvious problem of opportunists seizing an opportunity to wreak havoc. The second -- and the most important in my opinion -- does the best job of explaining the chaos facing black leaders genuinely interested in progress. The third illustrates, by way of example, the cultural problem indicated by the second. The authors are, respectively, Leonard Pitts, Jr. of the Miami Herald, Joseph Epstein of the Wall Street Journal, and Jesse Jackson, Sr. Pitts writes that the protests are not just about Michael Brown. Pitts's piece reminds us of a broader historical context and is worth reading, especially for those of us in physical proximity to the events, and who might be wondering if any of this is even about Michael Brown: t is about the bitter sense of siege that lives in African-American men, a sense that it is perpetually open season on us. And that too few people outside of African America really notice, much less care. People who look like you are everyday deprived of health, wealth, freedom, opportunity, education, the benefit of the doubt, the presumption of innocence, life itself -- and when you try to say this, even when you document it with academic studies and buttress it with witness testimony, people don't want to hear it, people dismiss you, deny you, lecture you about white victimhood, chastise you for playing a so-called "race card." There is no disputing that black men are worse off by many measures than almost any other demograpic group, and seeing that on a daily basis can be an enormous psychological burden. However, as Joseph Epstein indicates, there is plenty of room for disagreement as to why so many black men remain poorly-off and feel unable to change things: ... The old dead analyses, the pretty panaceas, are paraded. Yet nothing new is up for discussion. Discussion itself is off the table. Except when Bill Cosby, Thomas Sowell or Shelby Steele and a few others have dared to speak about the pathologies at work--and for doing so, these black figures are castigated. And, much later: The situation today for a civil-rights leader is not so clear, and in many ways more complex. After the victories half a century ago, civil rights may be a misnomer. Economics and politics and above all culture are now at the heart of the problem. Blacks largely, and inexplicably, remain pledged to a political party whose worn-out ideas have done little for them while claiming much. Slipping off the too-comfortable robes of victimhood is essential, as is discouraging everything in ghetto culture that has dead-end marked all over it. The task is enormous, the person likely to bring it off, a modern-day Moses able to lead his people out of the desert, nowhere in sight. Until that person or persons arrives, we can expect more nights like those in Ferguson, with cries of racism, with looters and bottom-feeders turning up, with sadness all round. [link added] While I am not sure a "modern-day Moses" is strictly necessary, I agree with Epstein's assessement of the situation faced by black Americans as transitional. I would go further than Epstein in my assessment of the quality of the "civil rights" establishment: I see them as derelict at best. Jesse Jackson, Sr. offers us a prime example, in the form of an editorial that appeared recently in USA Today: Here's America today: high unemployment and low graduation rates result in guns and drugs in and jobs out; hospitals and public schools closing; gym, art, music and trade skills taken out of our public schools; inadequate investments being made in our infrastructure with roads crumbling, bridges falling down and an outdated public transportation system; a failure to address climate change; denial of capital investment for entrepreneurs; abandoned homes and vacant lots; a lack of youth recreational opportunities; frivolous entertainment, texting and Twitter replacing serious news reporting, reading, writing and arithmetic; a cutback in funding and a denial of equal opportunity in public jobs such as for teachers, policemen and firemen; all of which leads to hopelessness, despair and cynicism. [bold added] Yes. After ironically alluding to the failed War on Poverty, Jesse Jackson calls for more of the same, and, for good measure, takes the death of a young man as a chance to hawk big government solutions to ... global warming, of all things. Not anywhere is there a hint of Jackson considering whether our nation's government has created or worsened any of the real problems faced by the country in general and black men in particular -- or a clue that he might consider a real alternative to trying to solve everything through central planning. It is supremely ironic, given that Jim Crow, a government program for keeping black people down, didn't make black leaders as highly suspicious of intrusive government as the American people were around the time of the Revolution. As Thomas Jefferson might have asked: Might a government big enough to pass loot around also be big enough to sap the pride and initiative -- and the sense that there is opportunity out there for the taking -- from an entire people? Leonard Pitts argues that black men endure heavy psychological pressure from the idea that their options are purposely limited by the society around them. But Joseph Epstein makes it clear, and Jesse Jackson demonstrates, that it is time to stop and question the premise behind those feelings. Opportunities are, in fact, partly limited by vestigial (and vanishing) racism, prejudice, culture, and bad government. How to make the most out of what opportunities are open and how to fight the right battles to become as free as anyone else require what is most sorely missing in this whole sad episode, and many others like it: A rational examination of facts (including one's emotions), with the overall purpose of determining what is best for one's life and how to achieve it. This is not to minimize the incredible burden it must be to go through life seeing poverty and hearing from all corners that the deck is stacked against you -- or the horror of seeing someone much like you killed out of the blue. But self-control and careful thought are, in fact, the way to win anyway. Anyone can take away your freedom or your life, but no one can touch your soul unless you let them. -- CAV Link to Original

If you are a parent you have, by now, heard of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and may have even spent enough time thinking about it to determine for yourself whether this is a real disorder and, if so, whether it really is common or is merely over-diagnosed. But you probably have not yet heard of Slow Cognitive Tempo (SCT), which a leading proponent claims to affect around two million children in the United States: Dr. Allen Frances, who headed the development of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV for the American Psychiatric Association, is not amused and is making no bones about it. "Sluggish Cognitive Tempo is a remarkably silly name for an even sillier proposal," Frances wrote at the Psychology Today website. "Its main characteristics are vaguely described but include some combination daydreaming, lethargy, and slow mental processing. [minor format edits, links removed] Having an imaginitive daughter and remembering my own tendency to daydream as a child, I am none too thrilled to learn that momentum is building behind SCT. Perhaps I should consider placing a wager that some busybody will want to medicate her for it at some point down the road, as a means of financing her higher education. -- CAV Link to Original

There is <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/updates-on-ferguson-shooting/collection_38dae294-b61e-5dbf-8c3c-f6384c6100ba.html#utm_source=stltoday.com&amp;utm_campaign=hot-topics-2&amp;utm_medium=direct">rioting and looting</a> going on mostly north of my neck of the woods, although the barbarism has also <a href="http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/08/massive-brawl-shuts-down-st-louis-galleria-mall-on-lockdown/">engulfed an upscale shopping mall</a>. The major local paper <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/ferguson-area-businesses-cope-with-aftermath-of-weekend-riot/article_4a310ec3-94de-57dd-95f7-4e350f6a6fa2.html">refers</a> to this ongoing travesty as being "in response to" the fatal shooting of a young man by a police officer. I beg to differ with this wording, for it, as an <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/the-platform/editorial-get-it-right-about-the-terrible-wrong-in-ferguson/article_93ee8213-2406-5771-a959-2fcc8c486340.html">editorial</a> in the same paper might put it, is inexcusable. <br /><br />This brutality is only tenuously related to what happened Saturday. Perhaps "excused by" would have been a better turn of phrase. Stealing and vandalism -- victimizing people who had nothing to do with this sad event -- are neither called for nor justified. Indeed they are continuing despite the fact that: (1) the full circumstances of the shooting have yet to be determined; (2) the young man's family <a href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/chi-missouri-police-shooting-protests-20140811,0,1870857.story">has asked for it to end</a> (as have locals); and (3) the man who was shot <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/michael-brown-remembered-as-a-gentle-giant/article_cbafa12e-7305-5fd7-8e0e-3139f472d130.html">was an aspiring businessman</a>. Whatever the level of grief or sense of injustice one might feel for the loss of another, I am sure it would not motivate someone to harm someone very much like the departed.<br /><br />There are numerous calls for "justice" in the wake of this shooting, but neither <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/shooting-an-unarmed-suspect-could-be-justified-according-to-the/article_e9b5412f-2283-512e-8636-0d2bbe958c5c.html">presuming the policeman was wrong</a> nor stooping to brutality should be confused with a call for actual justice. There are many things wrong with our society, but perhaps the worst is the corruption of the concept of <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/justice.html#order_2">justice</a>, whether well-meaning or deliberate, that has occurred over the last few decades. If we are to have a functioning society at all, we will quickly get up to speed on this virtue and begin practicing it at all times.<br /><br />Now is not the time to mince words about the rioting. Whatever the circumstances of Michael Brown's death, the lawless actions that have followed are completely inexcusable.<br /><br />-- CAV Link to Original

Video of a thuggish rant (transcribed at the next link) by a union boss has gone viral. Said union boss, Michael Mulgrew, who heads a teachers' union in New York City is "defending" the "Common Core" curriculum mandated for government schools by the federal government. I found the following part of psychologist Michael Hurd's analysis particularly worthwhile: Consider the chronic emotional state of someone entrenched in this public school monopoly, particularly as a union official. They're angry, and they're frightened. On some level, some better part of them (if it exists) knows that they haven't earned their status, power or income. They're only garnering it because the government guarantees it by funding and legislation. When people criticize or question them, it reminds them that they haven't really and honestly earned what they've got. While not all public school teachers or even union officials are necessarily like this, the fact remains that they hold their jobs as a protected monopoly. As a system or enterprise of education, they're never going out of business. Year after year, the worse they perform, or the more questionable their practices (as in imposing political views via Common Core), the more money and power they attain. This thuggishnes -- part of the nature of government schools as Hurd explains -- caused me to recall that one of the biggest current fads among such "educators" is, ironically, a crusade against bullying. Out of curiosity, I decided to see what thought, if any, Mulgrew has given to the subject. As it turns out, he has written "Teaching to End Bullying" a short essay (appearing in a book on the "bullying crisis") about his union's efforts in this crusade. Amid an embarrassing amount of self-promotion, I gleaned the following insight, which he seems to have forgotten, assuming he actually wrote it: The kids who are bullies ... don't see the other child as a real person; they see only their own anger and frustration. But once they get to know the other kid and see him or her as a person, they start to empathize. This plainly goes for the adults who are bullies, although many of them have developed enough guile to hide such an attitude from others. I would add that such budding empathy would depend on there being, as Hurd put it, a "better part" in the nature of the bully (more likely in a child than in an adult), not to mention a considerable, sincere effort to walk a mile in the victim's moccasins, as the old saying goes. I don't expect Mulgrew the thug to do this in regard to the parents he is threatening. He will not take even a moment any time soon to consider how or why a parent might become "cold, twisted, [and] sick" come to question the Common Core curricululum. Nor do I expect this person to do the honorable thing. That is, Michael Mulgrew should apologize for threatening the parents of the children he is supposed to be helping -- and resign from his union post and his profession at once. More parents should question the whole notion of government-run schools, which restrict our choices about who will educate our children (and how), not to mention entrenching the likes of Michael Mulgrew. Only massive government coercion could cause so many people to entrust their own children to such a person. Parents will stand up to this -- or see their own children suffer the consequences -- sooner or later. -- CAV Link to Original

This Shouldn't Have Been Necessary In what is mistaken for good news these days, Houston's city council voted by a wide margin to pass an ordinance allowing ride-sharing services, such as Uber and Lyft, to operate legally in their fair city. No one seems to bat an eye at the fact that, even in one of the most capitalistic cities in the country, agreements between consenting adults are treated like a privilege granted by the state, rather than a right to be protected by it. The default condition in a free society is that a legitimate concern needn't get permission to do business. Oh, and there are already strings attached: Council members did pass several amendments that were designed to make the competition more level. Currently, Uber and Lyft do not have a metered fare like a cab, and can change how much they charge based on demand. City leaders voted to allow that for cabs as well. But, it will only apply to cabs hailed through an app, not to cabs people catch on the street or at a hotel. Those cabs will still need to adhere to meter rates. So cabs can't adjust their rates and, presumably, a ride-share operator who wanted to use a meter would be on the wrong side of the law if he did. Such is the business climate in one of America's freer cities. Weekend Reading "By examining the lives of people who experience tragic loss, you can find that the most resilient among them seized the new opportunities that arose." -- Michael Hurd, in "Loss Hurts, But It Can Also be Opportunity" at The Delaware Wave "People who feel that they have too little control over their lives certainly need to address the issue -- but not on the roads of resort towns." -- Michael Hurd, in "Vacation Mindset Syndrome" at The Delaware Coast Press My Two Cents The second teaser quote above would make me more inclined to laugh at impulsive drivers -- if only they weren't so dangerous. If you like steak, ... ... you'll love Argentina, says Maciej Ceglowski, who also offers the following amusing speculation after travelling there: Surely [Juan Díaz de] Solís was wearing one of those crucifixes that shows Jesus actually hanging from the cross. It must have been a simple mistake on the part of the natives, who saw him as a friendly gift from the visitors on the boat, complete with a serving suggestion suspended around his neck. In any case, you will now see crucified lambs and calves in the front window of many a larger parrilla, roasting for hours in front of unfazed diners. Ceglowski, the proprietor of my favorite bookmarking site, is also quite an entertaining writer. If you have some time to kill, stop by his blog, Idle Words, and look around, particularly at his travel entries. --CAV Link to Original

Good news, in terms of the short-term political fortunes of the Democratic Party, comes from an article in the New Republic. Said article warns the Democrats that its "white working class problem" can't be solved simply by writing off the South. I think the warning will go unheeded despite the fact that the article supports its contention by re-analyzing the data the Democrats are betting on. Crucial to this re-analysis is a breakdown of the country into "a set of regions that more closely mirrors the basic, underlying sociological and political divisions in the nation" -- rather than just Central-Northeast-West-South. The article concludes: Many Democrats would prefer not to have to face this monumental organization challenge, hoping instead that the existing Obama coalition and demographic changes in America will prove sufficient to elect a president in 2016, hold the Senate, and weaken GOP control over the House of Representatives. But the harsh reality for Democrats is that they cannot achieve all three of these objectives without increasing their support among white working class Americans--and if Democrats keep telling themselves that "the problem is just the South," that support may decrease instead. I'd go further, based on my experiences of growing up in the South and of living in the Northeast for several years. From what I can tell, from encounters with angry leftists (e.g., "Republican people" used as a direct insult (I am not a Republican.)) and from overhearing conversations in public (e.g., "some hick from Texas" as shorthand for "white Southerner"), many Democrats like to imagine that nothing has changed in the South in the past half-century plus, and are quite happy to write off any fair-skinned individual from that part of the country. And, based on my reading of left-wing commentary, I think that most Democrats would also prefer not to question their policies or why they don't appeal to large swaths of "working class whites". It's easy to be smug when one can assume that the whole problem is due to a bunch of easily-marginalized hicks. May the donkey keep its blinders on! Perhaps this will buy more time for cultural change and the emergence of a significant pro-individual rights electoral bloc. I hold out little hope for an improvement from the GOP, but perhaps its short-term profit can stall our headlong march into tyranny. -- CAV Link to Original

In the past, I have, for several reasons, argued against the notion of "states' rights" and the related idea of the separate states as being "laboratories of democracy". In the first of the two links, I pretty much summed up what I think the rights of the states (which can only derive from individual rights) consist of: The only valid application of the notion of states' rights is to permit states to handle relatively unimportant matters as they see fit. This allows, for example, a thinly-populated state like Nebraska to have a unicameral legislature, or a state originally settled by the French, like Louisiana, to base its legal system on Napoleonic Coderather than English Common Law. In neither case are individual rights being violated. That said, the existence of separate state governments has historically had the undeniable side-benefit of sometimes causing our country to be less-than-uniformly tyrannical, as when the "free states" existed during the time of slavery (which our Constitution permitted until it was corrected by amendment). At least there was somewhere to run, within the United States, back then. That said, this accidental protection from mistaken and wrong federal law is quickly eroding, as an interesting article in The Atlantic makes clear. Here's an example, of how the feds ramrod economy-strangling environmental regulations down the throats of states that don't want them: Money isn't the only lever the feds use to increase their influence over state governments. Formally, the federal government can't require states to implement federal regulations. But environmental regulations show how easy it is to get around that constraint. The Clean Air Act allows the states to issue federal permits--but only under federally approved state implementation plans, or SIPs. Those plans must meet a dizzying number of conditions; otherwise, the EPA trumps with a federal implementation plan, or FIP. When EPA comes in with its FIP, it often comes to "crucify" local industries, as former EPA Regional Administrator Al Armendariz boasted at a closed-door meeting early in the Obama administration. The crucifixion takes the form of costly added requirements and endless delays. The federal government basically says to uncooperative states, "Implement our regulations for us, or we'll do it ourselves, and your constituents will be sorry." Predictably, constituents pressure state officials to protect them from the dire prospect of EPA implementing its own regulations, as we saw when Texas at first resisted implementing EPA's new greenhouse gas regulations. The article includes a brief historical survey of the legislative and legal history behind this trend and concludes with this warning: The mounting federal takeover of the states started slowly during the New Deal and has intensified substantially, especially in recent years. That inexorable trend is leading to unsustainable levels of government spending and a regulatory regime that grows more intrusive and oppressive by the day. One solution is paramount: Strengthen the vital but oft-neglected separation of federal and state governments. I agree with the prognosis, but not the diagnosis or the proposed cure. The problem isn't that the states are less sovereign than they ought to be, but that individuals are having their rights violated rather than protected by improper government. Simply making the individual states more idependent will not really solve this more fundmental problem. Fifty tyrannies that plunder their citizens and order them around is no more desirable than one. Merely fighting fighting for greater state-level independence distracts from the real fight for freedom, which entails all levels of government protecting individual rights, rather than violating them. -- CAV Link to Original