Gus Van Horn blog

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 So, using this slightly outdated guide, I set up a local map with "pins" for home, our nearest commuter rail station, and the schools.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

... then the smart money is on Rubio. According to Justin Wolfers of the New York Times, Marco Rubio -- not Donald Trump -- is the front-runner for the GOP nomination. This contention he bases on a survey of political prediction gambling sites: Mr. Bush's fall to No. 2 in the markets represents a sharp shift from earlier this month, when Mike Murphy, the head of Mr. Bush's Right to Rise super PAC, boastedto Bloomberg Politics that "if you look at the prediction markets overseas, which are kind of interesting, because that's the one place real money's involved, we constantly rank number one," adding, "The smart money's figured this out." As Mr. Bush's star has faded, that of Mr. Rubio has brightened. Mr. Rubio, who is set to appear Sunday morning on CNN's State of the Unionpolitical talk show, shares many similarities with Mr. Bush. Both are Florida-based mainstream conservatives who are popular among Hispanics. In some sense, this shift from Mr. Bush to Mr. Rubio is just a rebalancing as to which establishment candidate is expected to win the nomination. [links in original, format edits]I agree that this analysis is likely more accurate than polling data, given that, among other things, the margin of error for polls a year out from the general election is much larger than the margin of victory in the election itself. Speaking of polls, the prediction markets put the current leaders, Trump and Carson, at around one in six and one in twelve odds of winning, respectively. -- CAV Link to Original

Steven Malanga writes about the fiscal crisis in Puerto Rico. If, like me, you vaguely recall seeing the crisis in headlines now and again, your immediate reaction might be, "So what?" That reaction probably would be mistaken, because the President is getting ready to make you care -- by proposing a "rescue" of the island, and shaming Republicans into supporting his plan to end the "humanitarian crisis." Malanga sees Obama's gambit as an opportunity to introduce much-needed reforms to the island, and kick off some long-overdue discussions that have a direct bearing on our own fiscal condition. Along the way, Malanga notes the federal government's role in stunting the island's economy: Earlier this year, in a report commissioned by Puerto Rico's government, three international economists authored a described the territory's woes. While the report scored the territory for its lack of fiscal controls in the face of a struggling economy, the economists also argued that Puerto Rico suffered because it was forced to adhere to federal laws that have "gnawed at growth." The "single most telling statistic in Puerto Rico," they wrote, is that only 40 percent of the working-age population is employed. The biggest obstacle to jobs, the report argued, is that the territory must observe federal minimum-wage law, even though incomes in general are far lower on the island than in U.S. states. A full-time worker in Puerto Rico making minimum wage earns 77 percent of the average wage on the island, compared with just 28 percent in U.S. states. The cost of paying even an unskilled worker is so high that "employers are disinclined to hire." Even more foolishly, welfare benefits on the island -- including food stamps, Medicaid, and subsidies for utility bills -- approach mainland levels. Recipients can garner benefits equal to $1,743 a month, more than the average wage on the island. "The result," the report notes, "is massive underutilization of labor, foregone output, and waning competitiveness." Puerto Rico also suffers from the ill-effects of the union-friendly Jones Act -- a 1920 law that drives up the cost of goods by forcing ships traveling between U.S. ports to be built and manned by Americans. The restrictions have a particularly devastating effect on the cost of transporting goods to and from U.S. island territories or states, such as Puerto Rico and Hawaii. Neighboring islands that aren't U.S. territories pay far less. "Exempting Puerto Rico from the U.S. Jones Act could significantly reduce transport costs and open up new sectors for future growth," the economists' report argues. Other factors impeding Puerto Rico's growth include complex local regulations on banking, an inefficient energy sector that drives up the price of power, and difficulties in registering property, obtaining business permits, and paying taxes. As the economists observe, the territory ranks 47th (out of 189 governments) in the World Bank's ease-of-doing-business index. The United States ranks seventh. [links dropped]Malanga suggests further that the crisis could present the opportunity for Republicans "to start a discussion on municipal debt that the administration and its allies would rather not have." Whatever comes of any proposal to "help" the island, I agree that this would be a good time to consider how that crisis arose and how best to get rid of the laws and regulations that have contributed to it. -- CAV Link to Original

Regulations vs. Free Speech Regulars here know that I am no fan of regulations, particularly those pertaining to campaign finance. That said, even I was shocked by the latest John Stossel column on the subject:We like to think speech is free, but when government can investigate you for possibly violating countless little rules, and then order you to shut up, it censors without the public even knowing. Campaign finance rules -- and the political incumbents and prosecutor-bullies who manipulate them -- are a major threat to our freedom.If that prospect is too abstract to bother you, then you should definitely read the rest. Weekend Reading "The polite setting of boundaries makes for genuine relationships without make believe." -- Michael Hurd, in "'Dropping By' ... Benevolent or Boundary Violation?" at The Delaware Wave "A sense of loss after making a major change doesn't mean that your choice was wrong; it simply means that your emotions need to catch up to the new reality." -- Michael Hurd, in "Change Means Tradeoff, Not Always Calamity" at The Delaware Coast Press "And now the Wall Street Journal has fingered the awful truth: the world's most vulnerable don't want the system of sacrifice, of plundered wealth, of everyone's enchainment to everyone else." -- Harry Binswanger, in "Socialism Loathes the Poor, Capitalism Loves Them" at RealClear Markets Oh. That's the Same, Too! It seems that the more I hear about the newest, allegedly "different" offerings from Microsoft, the more I remember why I started avoiding them as much as possible two decades ago. Recently, I took a look at an article claiming that Microsoft has made major changes in the past few years, and immediately noticed an odd lack of Linux compatibility in its flagship product, Office. And now, I see that they're ramming an OS upgrade down the throats of their customers.While switching to a new OS, especially Windows 10 is definitely a good move but forcing users to do it on the manufacturers time frame instead of whenever the user wants is a serious imposition and could hurt Microsoft really bad. It was discovered in September that Microsoft was forcefully pushing update to users even though they hadn't yet requested it, but this move takes the cake.This reminds me of a Windows partition I had to have on a netbook so I could use some legacy software and a scanner that can't run on Linux. I had to figure out how to get it to let me tell it when to update, so I wouldn't be stuck with it automatically doing so if I were in a hurry and needed to use Windows for only a short time. -- CAVLink to Original

1. The subway dumped me into the middle of an unfamiliar town with a confusing street layout. I needed to orient my map. Enter my trusty Army Knife for Android, whose included compass immediately saved the day. 2. Not to be confused with David Allen's "Someday/Maybe" list is a suggestionby Jean Moroney for a "Maybe" list for gaining traction when confronted with a daunting task:On the one hand, you do know a lot about the daunting task. And based on what you do know, you will probably find that you can make up a list of "maybe's" -- things that might help you get it done. After you have the list, you can then look through it and see which ones would in fact be worth doing to help you get started.The post elaborates more, noting that this idea combines a couple of other solutions to the problems of overload and uncertainty. 3. I recently sent a linkto the following story to my wife, titled, "Perspective for House Hunting:"This summer, after receiving a job offer in Silicon Valley, I went on Craigslist and began sifting through housing listings: 'verrrrrryyy cheap bedroom ;),' 'great deal on rent!' A single room with a shared bathroom? Two thousand per month on the low-end. A small studio apartment, you ask? If your startup wasn't recently bought for seven figures, forget about it. I perked up after finding a listing for $1,000 per month. Now this could work. Clicking through to the details section however revealed the offer was for a single bunk in a room with eight people, a set-up referred to as a 'hacker house' by an (evil) marketing genius.And, if you're moving to San Francisco? Your reasons for moving will have to provide the perspective: The article is titled, "Rent Is So High in San Francisco That I’m a Software Engineer and I Live in a Van." 4. A woman's ability to smell people with Parkinson's Disease may well advance research about the condition and lead to earlier diagnosis and treatment.Joy [Milne] only linked this odour to Parkinson's after joining the charity Parkinson's UK and meeting people with the same distinct odour. By complete chance she mentioned this to scientists at a talk. They were intrigued. Edinburgh University decided to test her - and she was very accurate.Indeed, Milne detected the odor in a member of a group of people who weren't supposed to have the disease, and he was diagnosed with it a few months later. -- CAV Link to Original

Over the past few years, I have noticed that gluten, a protein present in wheat, has received lots of media attention. As with other food fears, I have mostly ignored the journalists and, as usual, it appears that the media tide is about to turn. Most of the arguments I have heard about gluten have been based on an incomplete understanding of evolution and genetics, as a recent piece in the New York Times does a good job arguing: Wheat was first domesticated in southeastern Anatolia perhaps 11,000 years ago. (An archaeological site in Israel, called Ohalo II, indicates that people have eaten wild grains, like barley and wheat, for much longer -- about 23,000 years.) Is this enough time to adapt? To answer that question, consider how some populations have adapted to milk consumption. We can digest lactose, a sugar in milk, as infants, but many stop producing the enzyme that breaks it down -- called lactase -- in adulthood. For these "lactose intolerant" people, drinking milk can cause bloating and diarrhea. To cope, milk-drinking populations have evolved a trait called "lactase persistence": the lactase gene stays active into adulthood, allowing them to digest milk. Milk-producing animals were first domesticated about the same time as wheat in the Middle East. As the custom of dairying spread, so did lactase persistence. What surprises scientists today, though, is just how recently, and how completely, that trait has spread in some populations. Few Scandinavian hunter-gatherers living 5,400 years ago had lactase persistence genes, for example. Today, most Scandinavians do. Here's the lesson: Adaptation to a new food stuff can occur quickly -- in a few millenniums in this case. So if it happened with milk, why not with wheat? "If eating wheat was so bad for us, it's hard to imagine that populations that ate it would have tolerated it for 10,000 years," Sarah A. Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania who studies lactase persistence, told me.The piece goes on to also examine why genes leading to gluten intolerance are even as common as they are, and summarizes an interesting real-life, Berlin Wall-like "experiment" that suggests these genes offered an evolutionary advantage to humans, at least until more recently. Interestingly, the article suggests that "diseases of civilization" may well occur -- but with environmental changes on a much shorter time scale than the purveyors of that idea that I have seen usually claim. -- CAV Link to Original

Although I would have loved to see Thomas Sowell ask how there can be anything "fair" about the government confiscating anything from anyone, he raised numerous good points in his recent column, "What Do You Mean 'The Rich' Don't Pay Their 'Fair Share'?:" It is one of the signs of the mindlessness of our times that all sorts of people declare that "the rich" are not paying their "fair share" in taxes, without telling us concretely what they mean by either "the rich" or "fair share." Whether in politics or in the media, words are increasingly used not to convey facts or even allegations of facts, but simply to arouse emotions... What a "fair share" of taxes means in practice is simply "more." No matter how high the tax rate is on people with a given income, you can always raise the tax rate further by saying that they are still not paying their "fair share." [bold added]Sowell then considers just some of the abundant evidence that the amount of loot collected by the government does not necessarily increase when it robs the more productive at a higher rate. In the process, the economist came up with the following memorable quote regarding the projected revenue from such schemes: "A fantasy expressed in numbers is still a fantasy." Sowell notes that this emotional rhetoric wins elections these days. I suspect that it would not have a couple of centuries ago, when people were more generally suspicious of unbridled government power, and would have correctly been alarmed at any proposal to increase its power for nebulous reasons. And, if we once had such a culture, we can, again. -- CAV Link to Original

A member of the Libertarian Party makes the following criticismof the foundering Rand Paul campaign: "Rand's slump in the polls just underscores questions about the efficacy of his whole campaign's strategy: what's the point of trying to inch a party in a more libertarian direction if, in the process, you're tarring the trending libertarian label by association with a diminished GOP brand and its unpopular and un-libertarian positions on social issues and immigration?" said John Vaught LaBeaume, a Libertarian campaign strategist who served as an adviser to Gov. Gary Johnson's 2012 presidential bid.Except that LaBeaume fails to see that a similar argument could apply to the whole idea of the Libertarian Party, his criticism is apt. On that score, Peter Schwartz argued a similar point at length long ago. As an example of why Libertarians can't make a coherent case for liberty, he quoted Murray Rothbard: ... Libertarianism is a coalition of adherents from all manner of philosophic (or nonphilosophic) positions, including emotivism, hedonism, Kantian a priorism, and many others. My own position grounds Libertarianism on a natural rights theory embedded in a wider system of Aristotelian-Lockean natural law and a realist ontology and metaphysics. But although those of us taking that position believe that only it provides a satisfactory groundwork as a basis for individual liberty, this is an argument within the libertarian camp about the proper basis and grounding of Libertarianism rather than about the doctrine itself. [emphasis in original]How can there even be a "camp" with disagreement so fundamental that no two libertarians could even agree as to what liberty is? Having asked that, I now think I understand why LaBeaume fails to see himself in the mirror: It isn't just a matter of "branding" when neither the salesman nor his prospective customer really knows what is being "sold." -- CAV Link to Original

Stossel on Censorship After warning that a plurality of Americans support censorship in the form of laws against "hate speech," John Stossel provides other evidence that support for freedom of speech in our culture is growing dangerously thin:As long as the leftist mobs don't use law or violence, they're still engaged in free speech. Private employers can impose most any speech rule they choose. The First Amendment applies only to government. But now some government officials are as eager to censor as the leftist mobs. After the owners of Chick-fil-A said they oppose gay marriage, the mayors of Chicago, San Francisco and Boston said Chick-fil-A is "not welcome" in their cities. San Francisco's mayor said, "The closest Chick-fil-A is 40 miles away and I strongly recommend they not try to come any closer." Since mayors may influence permits and zoning, their threats aren't idle. And no new Chick-fil-A outlets have opened in those cities. This is a clear violation of the First Amendment, although the politicians seem oblivious to that.I highly recommend reading the whole thing. Weekend Reading "[B]y acting as if you don't believe in him or trust him to cope with living on his own, you're implying that you don't believe in him, either." -- Michael Hurd, in "Expiration Date for Your (Grown) Kids?" at The Delaware Wave "The fundamental error of gun-control advocates is philosophical: They do not really believe that we have free will." -- Peter Schwartz, in "A Rational Case for Gun Ownership" at RealClear Politics "Lying undermines your relationship with your employer and it imposes burdens on you." -- Michael Hurd, in "Lying's a Full-Time Job" at The Delaware Coast Press "The antics of the pro-warming side of this 'debate' show that the real cause for alarm isn't global warming, but the kind of 'community' they wish to build." -- Gus Van Horn, in "The Climate Change Monster Roars Back" at RealClear Markets "There are at least four common fallacies used to discourage big-picture thinking and breed opposition to fossil fuels." -- Alex Epstein, in "Four Fallacies That Fracktivists Use to Scare You" at Forbes A Word of Thanks I thank reader Steve D. for his comments on earlier versions of the column linked above. In More Detail The Alex Epstein piece linked above is lengthy, but I think it will prove invaluable for anyone engaged in just about any political debate today. This is not just because the fallacies Epstein describes are common, but that he is so thorough in describing and debunking them. (And, in the process of reading, one can easily see how these fallacies can come up elsewhere.) We see this in Epstein's discussion of the "Abuse-Use Fallacy":Any technology can be abused. As we have seen, people are dying right now because of bad practices in the wind turbine production chain. It is irrational to say that because a technology or practice can be abused, it ought not be used. I call this the abuse-use fallacy. It is a blueprint for opposing any technology. For example, [Gaslandwriter/director Josh] Fox could make Carland, which could show car crashes and then blame all of them on "Big Auto." Then he could argue that because car crashes are possible, we don't need cars. In fact, Fox could make a far more alarming movie than Gasland based on supposedly risk-free solar and wind technology. Imagine a scene at a rare-earth mine in a movie called Wasteland.The other three fallacies that Epstein discusses are False Attribution, No Threshold, and the "Artificial" Fallacy. -- CAV Link to Original

1. I have been carrying around Little Man -- his blanket draped over my shoulder -- for over two years, now. But, suddenly, I am not to be trusted with his blanket. "Mine!" He shouts, and yanks it away so he can hold it himself, apparently oblivious to who is holding him. On somewhat related note, I am looking forward to my first night of uninterrupted sleep in over four years during an upcoming trip. I'll fly out ahead of my family's house hunting trip for a professional conference. Thank you, wife and in-laws for the birthday presents! (I have, for a few years, joked about getting a full night's sleep as a gift. Watch me stay awake, wondering how the kids are...) 2. I had heard about a physician performing his own appendectomy in the Antarctic before, but had never read a detailed account. This one even has pictures. The one with the coffee cup in it makes me chuckle. 3. Lord, no, this isn't going to "kill" FedEx, but I do like the idea of Uber Rush: If a restaurant is swamped with delivery orders during the lunch hour, it can sign on to the Uber Rush merchant platform and summon a courier to its doorstep to deliver the orders for it. If a small boutique wants to add same-day delivery for its clothing or books, it can add it as a delivery option (against the slower standard choices). Where Uber becomes most efficient, and most like FedEx or UPS, is in its ability to pick up multiple packages from multiple businesses.The usual Uber app will also allow its users to do such things as have a forgotten rain coat retrieved from one location to another. 4. Computation may solve a common diagnostic problem, inexperience. This obtains, at least, for up to 3,000 genetic disorders: A group of researchers at Oxford University would, though, like to make dysmorphology work better. They want to bring it into the 21st-century world of face-recognition technology, and thus extend its range. Christoffer Nellaker and Andrew Zisserman began from three premises. First, of the 6,000 known developmental disorders, about half express themselves, in part, in the face. Second, most are so rare that a doctor is unlikely to come across any given one of them during his career, so he will have no chance to learn how to recognise them. Third, they are nevertheless, in aggregate, common enough that distinguishing them is important.This diagnostic aid could spare many parents of special needs children the anxiety of not knowing what is wrong with their child, and make them better able to help much more quickly. -- CAVLink to Original

Quick, page Dr. Ioannidis! Yet anotherpiece of over-hyped health advice is being called into question: Sitting down is no worse for you than standing up as long as you take regular exercise, a study has claimed, casting doubt on the health benefits of sit-stand work stations. The research by British academics also challenged advice from the country's National Health Service (NHS) based on other studies stating that "remaining seated for too long is bad for your health, regardless of how much exercise you do".Although I have never been sold on the idea that sitting is deadly, I have long found doing so for long periods extremely uncomfortable. Consequently, I have been glad of all the attention standing desks have gotten over the past few years. I hope to benefit from the fad before it dies down, preferably by obtaining an adjustable desk on the cheap. Actually, now that I think of it, a quick death would possibly even lower my costs as people unloaded their desks. I won't hold my breath, though because such notions die hard. -- CAV Link to Original