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Gus Van Horn blog

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Everything posted by Gus Van Horn blog

  1. Michael Goodwin of the New York Post asks of our President what it would take for him to call the recent atrocities in San Bernardino "Islamic terrorism": Obama's attempts to obscure the connection to Islam in Wednesday's massacre is leaving a leadership vacuum and fanning America's fears. Soon after the California shootings, but before the facts were known about casualties, the president saddled up his favorite hobby horse. Admitting that "we don't know that much yet," he still knew the solution -- gun control. "The one thing we do know is that we have a pattern of mass shootings that have no parallel anywhere in the world," he told CBS Wednesday afternoon. ... Soon, the identification of the killers as Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, led some of Obama's fellow travelers to abandon him. A California chapter of CAIR, the hard-line Council on American-Islamic Relations, held a news conference where officials condemned the murders and expressed sympathy for victims' families. Their quick action was a tacit confirmation that terrorism was a reasonable explanation for the slaughter of unarmed innocents by Muslims. Otherwise, why speak out so early or at all? No other religious group felt the need to come forward. [links omitted]Such a question could, frankly, be asked of many other politicians (including an opposition party too timid to impeach him long ago), as well as many figures in media and academia. More importantly, Goodwin and others like him would do well to consider why so many deny what even CAIR tacitly admits (and many terrorists openly admit): That so many people find in Islam motivation to commit such atrocities. Most such individuals are plainly not stupid, so the alternatives are that they do not really believe their denials or that they have some reason (ideological or psychological) to evade the facts of reality. Given what our "leadership vacuum" makes possible to such a small enemy, it is worth considering what Ayn Rand had to say about evasion: Thinking is man's only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one's consciousness, the refusal to think -- not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment -- on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict "It is." Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say "It is," you are refusing to say "I am." By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: "Who am I to know?" he is declaring: "Who am I to live?"Goodwin begins a fruitful line of questioning. Why would someone evade such an obvious connection? is but one good place to start. And this line of questioning should not stop with Obama. As guilty as he is, he alone has not made us come to this pass. -- CAV Updates Today: Changed first parenthetical comment. Link to Original
  2. "Macroagression" Fails to Rain on "Microagression" Parade Apparently a St. Louis-area school is going to help its female students understand how "oppressive" living in Western society can be for those who wear hijabs:My university is organizing a "Muslim Challenge." In the course of the event, women will be handed out free hijabs to "get a glimpse of the experience of veiled Muslims."This, as the academic blogger above points out, is just after (and right across the river from) an incident involving a Mizzou faculty member beating his fourteen-year-old daughter for seeing what going without a hijab would be like. I have a strange feeling that the "Muslim Challenge" will fail to replicate the full experience of being female in a Moslem culture (search term: beaten), and not because of liability concerns. Weekend Reading "As paradoxical as it sounds, a surgeon with a 100% positive appendectomy rate is actually a bad surgeon." -- Paul Hsieh, in "Why You Want Your Doctor to Be Wrong (Sometimes)" at Forbes "So long as we use the Fed's IOU as if it were money, then the Fed is in charge of our interest rate." -- Keith Weiner, in " A Free Market in Interest Rates " at SNB & CHF "You're sending him the message that his well-being is connected to your own sense of security, rather than to his happiness." -- Michael Hurd, in "Do You Need 'The Perfect Child?'" at The Delaware Wave "What will not make the impoverished world prosperous -- or free -- is for billionaires to dole out huge sums of conspicuous charity to unfree people while doing absolutely nothing to fight for their freedom." -- Alex Epstein, in "The Truth About Mark Zuckerberg's Letter to His Daughter" at Forbes "Even if you're stuck with a dishonest co-worker or landlord, it doesn't follow that you have to become like them." -- Michael Hurd, in "Honesty: A Useful Tool and Skill, NOT a Duty" at The Delaware Coast Press "This dogmatic indifference to the processes whereby wealth is created and acquired, and the habits and dispositions that have proven conducive to individual prosperity, as opposed to the habits and dispositions that reliably result in poverty, means that advocates of 'social justice' like Piketty are devoted to perpetrating a profound injustice." -- Don Watkins, in "Piketty's Unanswered Question" at CRB "In an effort to combat this misinformation, this paper situates genetic engineering within mankind's long history of food improvement and then highlights how genetic engineering has dramatically improved human life." -- Amanda Maxham, in Executive Summary of "The Gene Revolution" (PDF) at Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property Thank You, Mr. Epstein As someone who values freedom, I must say that Alex Epstein's commentary on Mark Zuckerberg's recent letter to his daughter was a much-needed breath of fresh air. I am sick and tired of seeing the likes of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Mark Zuckerberg obtain cheap praise at the cost of billions and at the greater expense of doing the right thing (which can include simply enjoying the wealth they created). I am glad that someone has finally called them on this issue. Amusing News Reel A recent post on H.P. Lovecraftdrew lots of interesting comments, including one that pointed to a "news reel" that any fan of Lovecraft will find amusing: As I noted previously, "by the time the subtitle, 'Miskatonic Paleontologists Hit Jackpot,' rolled around, I just started laughing." -- CAV Link to Original
  3. Ari Armstrong has recently posted on a couple of aspects of the upcoming presidential election, with the first of his posts being about strategic voting in general and the second on Ted Cruz's pandering to theocratic voters, something that has concerned me ever since he chose to announce his candidacy at Liberty University. Both posts are lengthy, but quite worthwhile and I highly recommend them. In the second, Armstrong applies principles from the first. Armstrong has advocated a strategy that he calls "conditional punishment voting" regarding Cruz: [T]here are two types of punishment voting, absolute and conditional. If you're so upset with a candidate that there is no way that candidate could find redemption in your eyes, you might just want to announce a firm punishment vote. But if you still think there's hope for your candidate, you might want to announce conditional punishment. That is, if the candidate shapes up, you will rescind your threat of voting for the opposing candidate. (At this point, that's my position with respect to Cruz.)But punishments like this are worthless (because they won't make sense) without explanations, hence the second post. Among several important reasons Armstrong is concerned about Cruz is his decision to attend a "religious liberties" conference and take the stage with one of its organizers, a pastor known to endorse the execution of homosexuals: Even those who pretend that [Kevin] Swanson did not really mean what he said still are left with the uncomfortable fact that the potential execution of homosexuals was a serious part of the discussion at this conference. The best-case scenario is that attendees seriously discussed whether government officials, in America, should execute homosexuals, and, if so, whether they should do so immediately or at some point in the future. That's the sort of conference that Ted Cruz chose to attend and address as part of his political campaign for the presidency.Armstrong brings up a couple of other examples of pandering that should give any friend of liberty pause. He doesn't even get around to Cruz's proposal to effectively make the judicial branch a third political branch of government. Nor does Armstrong ask why a man -- who correctly identifieda Democrat proposal as effectively lining out the freedom of speech provision of the First Amendment -- is allying himself with those who would line out the establishment clause. But then, perhaps Armstrong doesn't need to. Here's a question for Senator Cruz, provoked by his actions: If by "freedom of speech," you really mean what a a polity of theocrats (who can gut a judiciary that disagrees with them) says it is, how can you really call yourself a supporter of actual freedom of speech? Lining out the establishment clause is just a sneaky way of lining out freedom of speech while posing as a friend in need. -- CAV Link to Original
  4. I don't read much horror, but when I do, it is usually something by H.P. Lovecraft. Accordingly, I was interested in a recent New Republic piece entitled, "H.P. Lovecraft's Philosophy of Horror." What I found fascinating was the quite plausible idea that, perhaps, Lovecraft was reacting to the mistaken idea that rejection of religion implies that the universe is malevolent: Lovecraft's anti-mythology of slimy, inhuman creatures reflected an unresolved struggle within himself. He firmly rejected religious mythologies that accorded humankind a special place in the scheme of things, but he could not accept the implication of his materialism, which is that human life has no cosmic value or meaning. Rejecting any belief in meaning beyond the human world, he also rejected the meanings human beings make for themselves. He had no interest in the lives of most people, and from his early years seems to have believed his own would count for very little. He was left without any sense of significance. So, obeying an all-too-human impulse, he fashioned a make-believe realm of dark forces as a shelter from the deadly light of universal indifference.This is unsurprising, given the philosophical wasteland of his times. But it also suggests to me another unfortunate legacy of religion. Just as many people wrongly believe that there is no reason within reason to be good, many also err in the opinion that only religion can allow for such high emotions as inspiration or reverence. Given the centuries-long stranglehold of this common substitute for philosophy on our civilization, it is hardly surprising that Lovecraft was unable to see a way to the idea of his own life being an end in itself. Religion -- rather than his own life -- had, perhaps, seemed to him the only way to justify or conceptualize the idea of "significance." Not to denigrate his work, but I cannot help but wonder what Lovecraft might have accomplished with all that creativity had he not suffered from such a philosophically (and psychologically) debilitating error. -- CAV Link to Original
  5. In a post about why bloggers should consider writing about little things (that is worth a full read), Shubham Jain starts off by expanding on speculation that Stack Overflow, a programming Q&A site, has contributed to billions of dollars' worth of productivity: Quite rightly so. Imagine, the [number] of people that didn't have to go through (maybe lousy) documentation, and long threads to seek solution for their problems. RTFM, many of programmers would be quick to point out but even the simplest questions, like, "How to read a whole file in python?", [or] "How to kill a process with its name?" must have saved thousands of programmers' time. Thanks to rookies who didn't feel embarrassed in asking them, that even experienced programmers can enjoy fruits of their answers.Amen. I myself have benefited greatly from being able to create time-saving scripts for such things as following news, making certain kinds of edits instantly, and even job hunting ahead of a move, by using sites like this to greatly enhance the value of my limited programming experience. What I really like about this is that it dovetails with my general approach to using computers in my work (search "writing-related"), where my objective is to be able to continually and permanently improve my efficiency any time I see the need. -- CAV Link to Original
  6. Ah! The hazards of blogging "evergreen" topics in advance. The day before yesterday (as of scheduled publication), a story about Apple "destroying" design caught my eye, and I commented on it briefly: A rather lengthy piece arguesthat, since introducing its smart phones and tablets, Apple has been abandoning the design principles that made it great and, in the process, giving the field of design a bad name: Apple is destroying design. Worse, it is revitalizing the old belief that design is only about making things look pretty. No, not so! Design is a way of thinking, of determining people's true, underlying needs, and then delivering products and services that help them. Design combines an understanding of people, technology, society, and business. The production of beautiful objects is only one small component of modern design: Designers today work on such problems as the design of cities, of transportation systems, of health care. Apple is reinforcing the old, discredited idea that the designer's sole job is to make things beautiful, even at the expense of providing the right functions, aiding understandability, and ensuring ease of use. [bold added]I have only skimmed through the longer case, but my impression is that this is true, and it bothers me that Google, another tech industry leader, seems to be following Apple's lead. I always find such decisions puzzling, and usually, I have to fight the urge to dismiss the people who make them as idiots. That said, Apple and Google seem to be getting away with their foolishness for now. It is interesting to consider that their success comes in different ways (1) despite such decisions or (2) because of them (due to passivity being common among many members of the buying public). But the topic has caught fire enough for me to see that it is being discussed vigorously. This merits more timely posting on my part: I thus yank it from my "rainy day" post pool and note another commentator's qualifying remarks, among them: Yet Apple's fumbles with the "undo" and "back" features also illustrate a crucial -- and rather obvious -- point that [Bruce] Tognazzini and [Don] Norman scarcely mention: the inevitable constraints of a pocket-sized device. They worked at the company in an era of desktop computers, when keyboards came standard and screen real estate came cheap. Now space is at a premium, posing design challenges they never dreamed of. Drop-down menus and fixed buttons would be nice, sure, but they'd hopelessly clutter a 5-inch screen. Apple has no choice but to hide them. For a designer working in this context, visual simplicity isn't a fetish. It's a prerequisite.This may be true, but imitators, like Google (linked above) or Microsoft (See Windows 8.) would do well to keep in mind why some of these decisions are made. We don't all use "fondle-slabs" for everything or at all times, and it is an offense against good design to impose such limitations on non-users just because the spare interfaces they require seem more elegant. -- CAV Link to Original
  7. Justin Fox of Bloomberg wryly notes that "Retailers Discover That Labor Isn't Just a Cost." This is an observation I have seen others make about employment in general, but I had not considered the full ramifications. Fox does, and for a type of job many might be inclined to think of as short-term: One big set of targets are the scheduling systems that have allowed retailers to ever-more-closely match staffing to customer traffic, but in the process wrought havoc with many workers' lives by making their schedules so unpredictable. Jodi Kantor gave a face to this last year with a compelling New York Times account of the chaotic life of a single-mom Starbucks barista. Kronos supplies Starbucks' scheduling software, and [Charles] DeWitt was quoted in the Times article describing its workings as "like magic." So it was a little surprising to see him on stage last week at O'Reilly Media's Next:Economy conference, nodding pleasantly and occasionally chiming in as a Starbucks barista, a labor activist and a journalist described the horrors inflicted by scheduling software. [format edits]For contrast, Fox considers the "good jobs" strategy of Costco, but notes that this isn't any more universally applicable. This is buttressed by an economics study that showed that a retailer saw its best sales with an optimal mixture of full- and part-time help within a work force. This makes sense: Some workers want jobs for the long haul, and others don't. (And conversely, some jobs need more familiarity with a business than others.) It's good to see that fascination with technology-driven scheduling wizardry is being replaced by a search for a more ... multidimensional ... solution to labor investment. -- CAV Link to Original
  8. Eric Raymond, who recently passed along a report-from-the trenches of left-wing bullying at tech conferences, has commented further on what is at stake: It is clear that djangoconcardiff and the author of the Covenant (self-described transgender feminist Coraline Ada Ehmke) want to replace the "cult of meritocracy" with something else. And equally clear that what they want to replace it with is racial and sexual identity politicsThe full name of this "Covenant" is the "Contributor Code of Conduct," and its advocates are, in the name of "inclusiveness," complaining to lead developers of software projects about rejections of changes made by "persons of color" in much the same way that civil rights "activists" have called for hiring quotas for decades. Raymond correctly notes that these thugs' actions are consistent with their explicit rejection of "meritocracy," and that both are bad for the objective of creating software that is actually useful. I also fully agree with the below sentiment: This isn't about women in tech, or minorities in tech, or gays in tech. The hacker culture's norm about inclusion is clear: anybody who can pull the freight is welcome, and twitching about things like skin color or shape of genitalia or what thing you like to stick into what thing is beyond wrong into silly. This is about whether we will allow "diversity" issues to be used as wedges to fracture our community, degrade the quality of our work... [bold added]Raymond mentions in his post that malfunctioning software can cost lives. This underscores a brief comment I once made to the effect that what "social justice warriors" are after is neither social nor justice. And as for being warriors, the cowardly way they conduct themselves shows that part of term to be wrong as well. -- CAV Link to Original
  9. Roger Simon of PJ Media notesdisturbing similarities between today's campus culture (as epitomized by Mizzou and Yale) and Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution: Some people ridicule these students as "snowflakes" unable to stand up to the slightest discomfiting words or images. But it is far worse than that. These so-called "snowflakes" are the potential shock troops of the aforementioned Red Guard, American style. There is a fine line between the extreme entitlement that demands to be warned before reading Ovid's Metamorphoses (as happened recently at Columbia) and a kind of narcissistic rage acting out against any presumed enemy in its path. How do you think the CR actually happened in China? Yes, the country was significantly poorer, but the psychological evolution was strikingly similar. So think twice if you don't think it could happen here. Who would have thought the president of one of our great public universities would lose his job in part because someone said he saw a swastika written in feces on one of the bathroom walls, which now, suddenly, no one can find and might have been a photograph in the first place, if it ever existed? [bold added] Commentingon this intellectual atmosphere before, I noted how reminiscent faculty reactions have been of Ayn Rand's commentary about the student "protests" of the 1960s. On that score, I see that I am not alone. -- CAV Link to Original
  10. Stossel On Trump as Thug I disagree with John Stossel that eminent domain can ever be "wonderful," but he nevertheless does a good job of indicatingthat the tycoon is more Orren Boyle than Hank Reardon:... Trump got New Jersey pols to use [eminent domain] so he'd have a better space for limousines to park. Also, under eminent domain, the state is supposed to pay the property owner "just compensation." But Vera [Coking] had turned down a million-dollar offer. Instead of raising the bid, Trump got politicians to force Vera to sell for even less. Trump would have to pay just $251,000, a fourth what she'd been offered. That made Trump a manipulative bully. So I told him that. "In the old days, developers came in with thugs with clubs. Now you use lawyers!"Trump keeps spouting off that his wealth makes him qualified to be President. More important than money is how someone obtains it. Trump's willingness to abuse government for self-aggrandizement more than negates the size of his wallet as a qualification. Weekend Reading "Exercising our rights over our lives -- from keeping our own money, to bearing children, to choosing suicide -- depends on a moral code of individualism." -- Peter Schwartz, in "The Collectivist Mentality" at The Huffington Post "It's as gratifying to wave at my neighbor as she drives by as it is to NOT feel obligated to repeatedly acknowledge her as we work in our respective yards." -- Michael Hurd, in "Be a First-Class Neighbor" at The Delaware Wave "The falling-rate-driven bull market is a process of conversion of someone's wealth into your income." -- Keith Weiner, in "How Do People Destroy Capital?" at SNB & CHF "By consciously valuing those ideals and upholding them in daily life, then the friends and spouse you choose will be more important to you because they embody your most cherished values." -- Michael Hurd, in "The Psychology of Loyalty" at The Delaware Coast Press In More Detail Peter Schwartz notes the similarity between China's recently-revised One Child policy and other examples of collectivism from both the American left and right. He is right to argue that we should be just as appalled by these policies and ideas as we are by China's. Go Packers! This quiz, "Which NFL Team Are You," calls me a Cheese Head:You are full invested in your team, literally. The Packers are the only franchise where actual fans really do control the destiny of the team. It is the only non-profit, community owned major league professional sports team in the United States. Home of frigid Lambeau Field, this is a team with 2 Super Bowl wins but going back to the old days, the Packers have 13 League championships. Most of any NFL franchise. As much as the team appreciates your buy-in, good luck getting season tickets. The current wait list is approximately 955 years before the newest name on the list received their season tickets.That's not a bad result, as the Packers are indeed one of my favorite teams. -- CAV Link to Original
  11. 1. Yesterday morning, Little Man excitedly said, "C'mon," and tugged at my hand. When I obliged, he lead me to the living room, where I saw that he and his older sister had built their first "fort" together, using moving materials and some storage tubs we'd recently purchased. It has mostly been a penance trying to move in with them underfoot, but it has had its moments. 2. Alan Carver, a sea captain, has invented a simple anti-choking device:... When Carver asked his instructor what the next step would be if the Heimlich failed and he was 100 miles out to sea, the instructor told him frankly that the victim would die. Carver decided that was unacceptable. He researched the subject thoroughly and found that there was absolutely no other solution to choking besides the Heimlich maneuver. So he spent the past five years developing new technology to solve this problem. The Dechoker is a device that essentially sucks an obstruction out of your throat. Christopher Kellogg, president of the company, said it's so easy to use, a child could save the life of an adult, and a person living alone could save his own life by using it on himself. There are a lot of people for whom the Heimlich maneuver is either impossible or dangerous... The device sells for $149. 3. I was aware of, but had never actually used the custom maps functionality of Google Maps. Needing to set up daycare for the kids and confronted with ten choices from my wife's research, I needed some way to weigh convenience of their locations when deciding which to start visiting. So, using this slightly outdated guide, I set up a local map with "pins" for home, our nearest commuter rail station, and the schools. Problem solved. Oh, and it looks like Google has finally solved the problem of limited or spotty connectivity by introducing a way to save maps for offline use. 4. Nick Szabo writesof the hour glass, a very under-rated invention:The sandglass was more portable than a water clock. Since its rate of flow is independent of the depth of the upper reservoir, it was also more accurate. And, important in northern Europe, it didn't freeze in winter.Until I'd read this, I had no idea that this invention was both contemporary with and complementary in function to the mechanical clock. And read more to see how the device helped Europeans explore the rest of the world. -- CAV Link to Original
  12. How's that for a provocative title to post on a mundane topic? Unclutterer reminds me that, on top of having to fix all sorts of post-move annoyances, I need to get on top of preparing for the inevitable sick days that come with autumn and children. Keep a list of telephone numbers on your phone but also in a handy binder or taped to the inside of a kitchen cabinet or on the refrigerator for their pediatrician and the local pharmacy. You'll also want the number for their school's attendance call line and any child care providers. (For adults, it's also good to have your doctor's number and your boss' number in the same location so it's just as simple to retrieve.)Oof! We had to move in a hurry, so I still need to find some of these. Fortunately, I have been taking everything about the move down in an org file, so this will simply serve as a reminder, once I have everything, to print out this part of my "Baltimove" project list. For now, that list is the list, as incomplete and mutable as it is at the moment. And, now that I consider it, I'll add a calendar reminder to check and update the printed lists a couple of times a year. But, back to the post. Both moving and sick days annoy me due to the potential for lots of unplanned, time-eating errands and looking-for-things. Planning ahead is a great way to prevent at least some of these annoyances and get back to business, including the business of relaxing to get well, or helping someone else do so. -- CAV P.S. As of writing, there is a single (but worthwhile) comment on the Unclutterer post, and a link to a list of "10 Sick Kit 'Must Have' Supplies." Both are worth perusal. Link to Original
  13. According to open source software guru Eric Raymond, major male figures in open source software, such as Linus Torvalds, are having to walk on eggshells at tech conferences: [I]f you are any kind of open-source leader or senior figure who is male, do not be alone with any female, ever, at a technical conference. Try to avoid even being alone, ever, because there is a chance that a "women in tech" advocacy group is going to try to collect your scalp.Raymond quotes a conversation he had with someone he regards as trustworthy on this score. That conversation included both how these "advocacy" groups intend to collect scalps an implication that should be immediate and obvious to anyone sincerely interested in helping women (or, really, anyone) succeed in a technological field: "[T]he upshot is, I no longer can afford to mentor women who are already in tech." This is all sad and quite foreseeable, given the premises, common in today's culture, that one needn't offer a rational justification for one's beliefs or actions, and that abusing government for personal gain (such as by frivolous lawsuits) is somehow justified if one is a member of any number of groups currently in fashion among the left. There is no reason that the targets of such bullying need remain on the defensive, however, and the way to begin fighting back is to not concede even an inch of moral ground. In this case, a good start that would be to stop referring to such gangs as being "advocates" or "activists": Those are honorable labels that apply to those who make honest attempts at rational persuasion. The presumption that an individual -- simply due to membership in a group -- is predisposed to an illegal act, coupled with an attempt to provoke him into it, and followed up with an accusation, baseless or not, is nothing of the kind. We should call it what it is: bullying and attempted extortion. There is no place in the public debate for force, or the threat of force. Those of us who favor what the abolitionists called "moral suasion" should stop granting what Ayn Rand called the "sanction of the victim" to immoral brutes. -- CAV Link to Original
  14. Via Hacker News, I ran into an article titled "The Personal Organizer we had Before the Newton." Although interesting in its own right, the article reminded me of advice I vaguely recall being from David Allen's Getting Things Done. The advice was something to the effect of using a personal organizing gadget you like and will want to play with. Good idea: That makes keeping track of things fun. So what made me think of this? The below, for one thing: So how much storage did this device have? A whopping 64K! The company touted that as being enough to store 1,400 names, phone numbers, and addresses. The B.O.S.S. could actually sync to both PCs and Macs via a PCLink port. To do so, you had to purchase both a special cable and an application named Laplink from a company called Traveling Software that is still around! [link dropped] Most such devices were far more capable than this when I read GTD years ago, but many required proprietary software and looked to me like they'd be obsolete in a very short time. Thus the reward for taking the trouble to learn to use them would be either (a) obsolescence and the need for a painful migration, (b) vendor lock-in, or (c) some nasty combination of both. It seemed to me that a more general purpose class of device that would be easier to replace and more like/compatible with a desktop would serve my purposes better. Those devices soon indeed came, in the form of Android phones with platform-agnostic software like Todo.txt and Dropbox. Being able to build on my knowledge and customizations over time, rather than having to start all over again every few years -- or having to do everything someone else's way (subject to change or feature bloat at any time) is what I truly find exciting, and that has proved very conducive to improving my own organization and time management. -- CAV P.S. I can't resist noting that I wrote this post on my phone a few months back while waiting an extra half-hour for a friend -- who should have used the map on his phone -- to meet me for lunch. Link to Original
  15. Michelle Malkin outlines at some length a kind of fraud that keeps cropping up from the left, namely the misattribution of crimes to bigotry. (I think she errs in calling them "hate crimes.") She discusses the latest of these, a spree of church burnings in the St. Louis area: [A]gitators did their best to fan the flames over the latest alleged wave of race-based black church burnings in October. On Twitter, social justice activists resurrected the #WhosBurningBlackChurches hashtag. "Black churches are burning again," Oklahoma State University professor Lawrence Ware lamented in Counterpunch. The far left propaganda outfit U.S. Uncut concluded unequivocally: "Racists in Ferguson Burn Down 5 Black Churches in 9 Days." Except, they didn't. Again. Last week, police charged 35-year-old David Lopez Jackson, who is black, with setting two of the fires. "Forensic evidence linked him to the fire on Oct. 18 at Ebenezer Lutheran Church, 1011 Theobald Street," the St. Louis Post-Dispatchreported, and "video of his car near New Life Missionary Baptist Church, 4569 Plover Avenue, links him to the fire there on Oct. 17, police Chief Sam Dotson said." Jackson is a suspect in the other fires and additional charges are pending. [format edits]It is tempting to call the purveyors of such nonsense hypocrites, since this is the same crowd that hawks the notion of "microaggression." That charge is true, but it doesn't go far enough. This practice is obscene. It is a cynical attempt to expropriate past atrocities with real victims, many of whom heroically fought injustice on a scale most of us are lucky enough to be unable to imagine. That is sickening enough on its own, but even more so is the end, ultimately injustice (often in the form of a redistribution of wealth.) But, to top all of that off, many will forgive the fraudsters on the ground that their hearts are supposedly in the right place. A more rational assessment of such behavior is to ask the following question: "If you can't even get facts straight, why should I believe your claims to be on my side or trust any advice you might have to offer me?" Every alleged beneficiary of the left's proposed largesse ought to consider such a question. -- CAV Link to Original
  16. Matt Sissel on His Court Fight Attorneys for Matt Sissel, who is suing to have ObamaCare ruled unconstitutional, have just asked the Supreme Court to hear his case. This is good news, especially because of Sissel's reason for filing the suit: As I have pointed out from the beginning, I served with the Army National Guard in Iraq as a combat medic, eventually receiving the Bronze Star. I mention that experience because it underscores an important point: While I was proud to volunteer for military service, I object to being conscripted, now, into a command-and-control federal health care regime. As free individuals, Americans should not be compelled to buy expensive, one-size-fits-all insurance policies concocted by federal bureaucrats. Lawmakers who can't balance the government's books have no business dictating to the rest of us how to budget and allocate our own money for our own health care needs. [bold added]I thank Mr. Sissel and wish him luck. (HT: We Stand Firm) Weekend Reading "If you feel that you don't like someone after a first meeting and you don't know why, consider that your emotions might be the culprit." -- Michael Hurd, in "What's Your First Impression?" at The Delaware Wave "The growth and maintenance of self-confidence is cumulative and must be ongoing." -- Michael Hurd, in "Yes I Can -- No I Can't" at The Delaware Coast Press The DNC's Self-Parody Someone has gotten a list published at McSweeney's Interent Tendency entitled, "Email Subject Heading From the Democratic National Committee or Text From an Emotionally Immature Friend?." Yeah. That's about right. -- CAV Link to Original
  17. 1. If you have very young kids, you may hate entering and leaving daylight savings time as much as I do. When the clock springs forward, you lose sleep. Everyone does. When it goes back, the kids wake up at the same time, so you miss out on the "extra sleep." This year, the timing of our move last Sunday was great: I basically got to skip resetting my clock this time. We woke to Central Standard time Sunday, which was akin to getting an extra hour to get ready to fly -- a huge bonus with kids in tow. And then we flew to Eastern Standard time, which is the same as the Central Daylight Savings Time zone we were used to already. That said, it still feels late in the evening because the sun is setting "sooner" than it had been. 2. Little Man, in the words of a barber who met him just before a haircut, is a "bruiser." He's on the big end of the growth curve, which is amusing since both of us are short. He also carries himself like he's tough. But he seems to have a very benevolent temperament, and loves to toast, as I have mentionedbefore. I encourage this sometimes, by saying, "Cheers, buddy!" I plan to do this long after he has outgrown me, and may even add "little" to it if he ends up being particularly large. 3. Our sitter gave the kids magic wands as going-away gifts on our last day in the Lou, so I taught them to "hex" me by pointing their wands at me. (After they do so, I act wounded and drop to the floor, usually eliciting giggles.) Little Man, the benevolent necromancer, has taken to saying, "Ahkay?" -- his way of asking if I'm okay -- after doing this. 4. Whether this works in humans remains to be seen, but I am glad there may soon be a new weapon in the anti-MRSA arsenal:The drug, a deadly combo of an antibody glued to an antibiotic, specifically seeks and destroys Staphylococcus aureus -- even the difficult-to-kill, drug-resistant variety, methicillin-resistant staph (MRSA). In mice infected with MRSA, the dynamic duo fought off the infection better than the standard antibiotic treatment of vancomycin, researchers report in Nature. If the findings hold true in humans, the new superdrug could vastly improve the success rates of MRSA infection treatments, some of which can fail up to 50 percent of the time.The article goes on to explain the therapeutic approach, as well as why it might not work in humans. (HT: Paul Hsieh) -- CAV Link to Original
  18. Writing at the National Interest blog, Nicolas Loris asks why so many large corporations are so gung-ho about climate change regulations, even though they are both onerous and unpopular. The answer boils down to regulatory capture: Big Business knows that when the deal's going down, you've got to grab a seat at the table to protect your interests. That's especially true when you know the deal will impose job-killing, growth-stunting regulations: sitting at the table, you can make sure they're crafted in a way that will damage your competitors -- domestic and international -- at least as much as they wound you. ... So why are some big companies -- outfits like Walmart, Apple, Google, Costco, Bank of America, Best Buy and Coca-Cola -- lining up in support of the administration's efforts to reach an international agreement to cap and cut greenhouse gas emissions? Several reasons present themselves, none of them good for American households. Because conventional fuels produce the overwhelming majority of power for the world, a treaty forcing cuts in carbon emission will inevitably raise energy prices and the cost of doing business. If an international agreement imposes these restrictions on other countries, businesses will see it as "leveling the playing field." They will also claim that it provides them with certainty. ... Another reason Big Business may support domestic and international climate regulations is that it disproportionately hurts smaller businesses. Climate regulations are one of many problematic policies harming small business growth and entrepreneurship in the United States. Big businesses that have a seat at the table can negotiate for exemptions and exclusions and can more easily manage higher energy bills.Loris correctly interjects that, "The best way to level the playing field and create business certainty is for policymakers to reject climate regulations altogether." That said, I am leery of the general "Big" vs. "Small" (or "main street"), populist-sounding slant of this otherwise excellent post. For starters, large businesses aren't necessarily supporters of improper government meddling -- which isn't in their best interests, anyway. Likewise, there is no proper size for a government, so long as it is appropriate to its mission of protecting individual rights (and that is indeed what that government is doing). Such rhetoric appears to endorse the premise that so many of these short-sighted corporations hold, namely that life is a zero-sum game. If, as Alex Epstein has tirelessly pointed out, there is a moral, egoistic case for fossil fuels, we must be clear about moral questions such as this article raises. Any business supporting such government action is wrong, and not just for harming competitors and customers: It is also wrong in the sense of damaging its long-term interests, appearances to the contrary. -- CAV Link to Original
  19. As someone who sometimes avails himself of the wi-fi in coffee shops or pubs, I found the following conversation, from an articleon the evolution of "third places" to be a rare jewel in the realm of modern business-customer relations: Furstenberg: "I'm sorry, this is not your workspace." Customer: "What do you mean? I just bought a cup of coffee." Furstenberg: "I know, and I'm glad you bought a cup of coffee, and I hope you like the coffee, but other people are waiting for tables." Customer: "It's a public place, isn't it?" Furstenberg: "Well, no, actually, it's not that kind of public place. It's a place where people come to eat and talk, but it's not your workspace." Customer: "You're going to decide how I use the space?" Furstenberg: "Well, yes, actually, I am." [format edits]It often seems today that, as communications technology advances, basic etiquette and economic sense decline. Too many businessmen seem almost apologetic for the fact that they're in it for the money, and that they have to "give back" to their "communities". (And yet no one seems to hold the squatters that populate so many businesses accountable for asking why they aren't themselves running coffee shops.) If, by "community", you mean, "swarm of entitled moochers", it's time to clean up or leave. I'm glad to see that Beard Award nominee Mark Furstenburg has opted for the former. Ironically, by standing up for his rights as a proprietor, he is improving his society -- by providing a timely reminder of what makes it great: Hard work and trade, not handouts of loot. -- CAV Link to Original
  20. Ohio is about to legalize marijuana in exactly the wrong way, by creating a monopoly: Issue 3, as the proposed amendment is known, is bankrolled by wealthy investors spending nearly $25 million to put it on the ballot and sell it to voters. If it passes, they will have exclusive rights to growing commercial marijuana in Ohio. The proposal has a strange bedfellows coalition of opponents: law enforcement officers worried about crime, doctors worried about children's health, state lawmakers and others who warn that it would enshrine a monopoly in the Ohio Constitution. [bold added]To their credit, many otherwise pro-legalization Ohioans are going to vote against this initiative. That said, much of the opposition is unprincipled, motivated by a vague suspicion of "big business" and popular myths about capitalism. I will take the opportunity this fact affords me to point out that government-granted monopolies are not capitalism, as Ayn Rand once argued: A "coercive monopoly" is a business concern that can set its prices and production policies independent of the market, with immunity from competition, from the law of supply and demand. An economy dominated by such monopolies would be rigid and stagnant. The necessary precondition of a coercive monopoly is closed entry -- the barring of all competing producers from a given field. This can be accomplished only by an act of government intervention, in the form of special regulations, subsidies, or franchises. Without government assistance, it is impossible for a would-be monopolist to set and maintain his prices and production policies independent of the rest of the economy. For if he attempted to set his prices and production at a level that would yield profits to new entrants significantly above those available in other fields, competitors would be sure to invade his industry. [bold added]The coupling of the grant of a monopoly is inconsistent in principle and in practice with the legalization of marijuana since it represents the mere granting of a permissionby the government (that it has no business being in a position to grant), rather than a recognition of having been in the wrong, and a promise to protect the freedom it is supposed to protect. For just one concrete example, consider the threat of very easy regulation, taxation, and even revocation that the monopolist represents here. One grower, already meekly in the lap of the government, has but one neck to lead, throttle, or chop once a government hostile to the freedom to decide what one ingests comes to power. While it is possible that such limited legalization could help erode the ignorance and prejudice that help keep drug laws on the books, the price is too great. That price is that an opportunity to advocate actual freedom might be lost, and with it, the chance to improve many more aspects of our lives by moving our laws generally to support individual rights. If we are again to have a nation of laws, and not men, we must have laws that apply to everyone generally, rather than granting special favors to one faction or another. Advocates of legalized marijuana would do well to join advocates of individual rights, such as myself, in demanding that drug legalization be done on the correct basis. -- CAV Link to Original
  21. At Thinking Directions, Jean Moroney considerscommon problem with direct bearing on persuasive writing, namely "How do you know you need to think about that?" Interestingly, she discusses writer's block, but there's another aspect of the craft for which the question holds relevance. Do you want and need to know the answer? If you already know the answer, you don't need to think about it. If you don't care about the answer, you shouldn't waste time and effort thinking about it.A co-worker who -- before my blogging days -- would spam me with unsolicited political opinions helped me later see the importance of motivating the reader. I rightly found the reading assignments presumptuous, coming as they did from someone who did not know me well or have any reason to think I'd care -- and unprofessional, since they had nothing to do with the only reason for our association, our work. As a blogger, I thought about this once and found myself vaguely wishing I'd not simply deleted the emails; perhaps they could have provided some good material. But I did learn from my reaction: For any hope of persuading someone, one must first raise and satisfactorily answer that question to motivate the thinking process. Many people truly don't see the relevance of one issue or another -- or wrongly think they understand something. Since there is no way to know this about any individual, the proper way to proceed is to help them realize for themselves that they may have thinking to do. -- CAV Link to Original
  22. Not Ayn Rand Although I have been busy moving, a quick check of Randex has made the election of Paul Ryan as the new Speaker of the House inescapable to me: Every leftist and his uncle are calling him "Paul 'Ayn Rand' Ryan," so his name ends up saturating the listings there. If only: [Paul] Ryan, who imagines that such programs as Social Security and Medicaid can be "reformed," ... is no capitalist. (Otherwise, he'd be clear that the best way to "encourage" competition is for the government to stop manipulating the economy altogether, and would speak of phasing out instead of reforming entitlement programs.)The silver lining is that this attempt to smear Ayn Rand can backfire by getting her name out there more. Having more independent-minded people finding out who Rand is and what she actually has to say about politics and (more important, morality), would be a very good thing. Weekend Reading "A paper in the Journal of Political Economy analyzed ten years of data from New York and Pennsylvania (which had a similar system), concluding that the report cards may 'give doctors and hospitals incentives to decline to treat more difficult, severely ill patients.'" -- Paul Hsieh, in "Doctor 'Report Cards' May Be Hazardous to Your Health" at Forbes "The justification for keeping the money you have honestly earned is not that there is some collective benefit, but that you have no moral duty to become a servant to the needs of others." -- Peter Schwartz, in "The Correct Answer to All the Soak-the-Rich Tax Schemes" at RealClear Politics "Based on my experience over the years, I have isolated four mistaken assumptions that an adversarial person makes in his or her interactions with others..." -- Michael Hurd, in "The 'Happiness Pie' is a Flawed Concept" at The Delaware Wave "There is no other kind of government intrusion in the market that sets off such a feeding frenzy of self-destructive behavior." -- Keith Weiner, in "What's Different about Monetary Policy?" at SNB & CHF In More Detail At the end of his article, Keith Weiner mentions a series of conferences he is helping organize: I am helping put together a series of Monetary Innovation Conferences. The first two are in DC on Nov 13, and Phoenix on Nov 17. This is not just for the right wing, but for everyone from the unbanked to Wall Street. At the conference, speakers will discuss gold and how innovators are using it to solve real problems for real people.Please follow the link above for registration information. Fly (by Night?) Maids If you need a maid service and are looking online, watch out for a company that apparently is using the database of the past customers of Homejoy -- and ripping off the web site of Handy: Worst still, as I navigated around the site I realized the email link I clicked logged me into "My Account". This screen had my personal information, home address, email, even my credit card number. I was even more bothered when I noticed that my connection wasn't even https. This shady email, my data being moved over, and the amateur look and feel of this site had me really annoyed. [emphasis in original]I bet the first reaction of most people to this is, "There ought to be a law!" My reaction is a bit more along the lines of, "Don't I own my own credentials, and isn't the business I entrust them to legally bound to maintain them in confidence?" If not, why not? This looks like a simple case of theft or criminal negligence to me. -- CAV Link to Original
  23. The Relocation Edition (The following are a few random good things about St. Louis, which we will soon leave, and our destination.) 1. My wife's relocation to the Baltimore-Washington area will make it easier for me to enjoy Yuengling, one of the few lagers I actually like. The first review (as of writing) at Beer Advocate comes pretty close to my evaluation:Rich and caramel-malty, both smooth and easy to drink. This amber lager is infinitely better than all the American adjunct "junk" lagers... Maybe not a completely perfect brew, but one that certainly pleases for the price point.It was a pleasant surprise to find this on offer at our hotel as we house-hunted last week. That said, I'll miss Craft Beer Cellar. 2. Until I lived in Missouri, I had never been favorably impressed by the general courtesy of the drivers anywhere. Merges are a revelation here: People default to "zippering" when freeway lanes are closed. And on numerous occasions, I have found myself getting ready to ask another driver for help when changing lanes on a backed-up city street, only to find the other driver already signaling me to go ahead. On the other hand, I will probably be able to use rail to cut down on road time in our new area. In fact, I did this last week, since we combined house-hunting with a professional conference I wanted to attend. 3. I look forward to living in a much larger, more modern house, but I will miss the ten-minute walk to the Delmar Loop. I particularly enjoyed Cicero's, when I could go there. Our very young kids -- and Mrs. Van Horn's long hours -- greatly limited my ability to explore or socialize, so having lots of bang for the buck nearby was a boon. And Cicero's, being kid-friendly, turned out to be a good place to meet with family and friends. 4. I'll miss taking the kids to the Magic House, probably Pumpkin's favorite place on earth, so far. That said, they seemed to enjoy Port Discovery, and our immediate area seems to have lots of other good things for family trips. -- CAV Link to Original
  24. Nat Hentoff passes along a valuable lesson he once learned from Jazz legend Duke Ellington: ... This was when I was in my teens, working at a Boston radio station where I'd also had a weekly jazz program. Later I was struck at how tired Duke had become while he and his orchestra were playing more than 200 one-nighters a year all over this land. Presumptuously, I told him: "Duke, you don't have to endure this. You've written classics and can retire on your ASCAP income." Duke looked at me as if I'd lost all my marbles and roared: "Retire? To what?"Regarding part of the other subject matter of the piece, I'd respectfully advise applying this admirable reasoning to others, and leave it at that. In light of Ellington's wisdom, the evil of the irresponsible and impossible financial promises of Social Security pales in comparison to the emptying-out of existence it encourages, in the form of the recent invention of "retirement." -- CAV Link to Original
  25. Over at Vox is an articleby Matthew Yglesias whose title sounds like something I can agree with: "Car Dealers Are Awful. It's Time to Kill the Dumb Laws That Keep Them in Business." The article is worthwhile, but ends up making a very common error -- the one, in fact, responsible for the very existence of our meddling regulatory state: What the FTC doesn't have is an actual proposal. But while the federal government can't directly step in and repeal state-level bans on direct auto sales, it can take advantage of the large federal role in transportation finance. A quarterof all transportation funding flows from Washington through various grant programs. Some of that money should be set aside in a "best practices" pool and made available to states that allow for open entry into the car-selling market, while states that refuse to reform will lose out. [link in original, bold added]The author, at first blush, seems to be saying, "There are too many laws: There oughtta be a law!" His diagnosis and solution are both wrong, and it is interesting to consider what is wrong in light of his reasoning. Earlier, Yglesias notes that part of the problem is that, "[C]itizens simply don't pay much attention to state politics, making it even more of a plaything for special interest lobbies." Perhaps "citizens" ought to take some responsibility for what an entity that can point guns at people is doing, particularly since it is doing so to their detriment, rather than protecting their individual rights. This proposal honors a very bad precedent: That the solution to bad laws and regulations is another layer of the same. Furthermore, it is naive to assume, as Yglesias apparently does, that a government big enough to bully one that is pushing everyone around will act benevolently. Even one law that violates individual rights is too many. The solution to the problem is to work towards the day when we can abolish all such laws, and there is no substitute for persuading people to take an interest in the issue and see that such a course is to their benefit. -- CAV Link to Original
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