Gus Van Horn blog

In the course of researching a possible column, I decided to do a very quick look around for things the EPA regulates, has regulated, or is considering regulating that an ordinary personmight not regard as deserving of federal jail time. Here are a few, from the first two pages of results: collecting rain water on your own property; filling "wetlands" without federal authorization; and back yard barbecues I am leaving out hazardous waste disposal (which better protection of property rights and tort law could cover), refrigerant-related"crimes," a plethora of emissions-related regulations excused by AGW hysteria, and who knows what else. Feel free to add any others you know of in the comments, but please provide substantiating links. -- CAV Link to Original

George Will writes a must-read column against Donald Trump's insulting, xenophobic, and liberty-threatening proposals regarding illegal immigrants. After correctly noting that, "To will an end is to will the means for the end" (as well as a few of Trump's other anti-liberty positions), Will elaborates on some of these proposals: Trump evidently plans to deport almost 10 percent of California's workers and 13 percent of that state's K-12 students. He is, however, at his most Republican when he honors family values: He proposes to deport intact families, including children who are citizens. "We have to keep the families together," he says, "but they have to go." Trump would deport everyone, then "have an expedited way of getting them ["the good ones"; "when somebody is terrific"] back." Big Brother government will identify the "good" and "terrific" from among the wretched refuse of other teeming shores. Will elaborates further on the costs of such policies in more than just monetary terms. Although I think there is a strong case for citizenship reform, I otherwise agreewith most of what Will says. As a bonus, or if you are too pressed for time, I recommend following the link for an accompanying editorial cartoon which I think perfectly sums up the Trump candidacy. -- CAV Link to Original

A "Civil War Stomach Wound" to the Leviathan State? A recent Supreme Court decision is already reverberatingacross a vast swath of law not previously thought to conflict with freedom of speech: Floyd Abrams, the prominent constitutional lawyer, called the decision a blockbuster and welcomed its expansion of First Amendment rights. The ruling, he said, "provides significantly enhanced protection for free speech while requiring a second look at the constitutionality of aspects of federal and state securities laws, the federal Communications Act and many others." The article goes on to speculate that freedom of speech or lots of regulations might "have to give". I am not so optimistic about which that would be in today's intellectual and cultural climate. (HT: The New Clarion) Weekend Reading "[P]art of my job, both in my office and in this column, is to provide perspective, to help people make sure that they're not taking their relationship and what it has to offer for granted." -- Michael Hurd, in "Does Your Relationship Make You Happy?" at The Delaware Wave "Emotional abusers are ultimately weak because they are banking on an irrational viewpoint in order to get their way." -- Michael Hurd, in "Emotional Abuse in a Relationship" at The Delaware Coast Press A Tale of One-and-a-Half Justices Via HBL, I learned of a George Will column comparingSupreme Court Chief "Justice" John Roberts and Justice Don Willett of the Texas Supreme Court: Judges like Chief Justice Roberts consider it virtuous to refuse to closely examine and forthrightly invalidate laws that, like the one Lochner overturned, arise from disreputable motives and have unjust consequences. To such judges, Justice Willett responds: "Judges exist to be judgmental, hence the title." More details, especially regarding the 110-year-old Supreme Court decision the two differ on, can be found in the column, as can a nice closing paragraph. -- CAV Link to Original

1. My two-year old son just about cracks me up any time he is displeased with me these days. He furrows his brow, starts shouting, and, after pointing at me, waves his finger back and forth at me. I try my best to keep a straight face. I call it, "the finger of shame." 2. Remember the outcry a few years ago when Mitt Romney brought up the idea of defunding PBS? Well, apparently Sesame Street is voting with its feet for the idea: [N]ow Sesame Street has decided to wean itself off government subsidies, striking a deal with HBO to breathe new life into the 40-something-year-old program. In fact, HBO plans to produce nearly twice as many episodes and a new spinoff series that will run on its cable channel and its streaming platforms. [format edits] This is despite the fact that we continue throwing about half a billion dollars at PBS each year. So, on top of our pockets being picked to support PBS, the money isn't even being used very effectively. 3. Tenured professor Matt Might, in "HOWTO: Get Tenure," writes clearly and powerfully about how hardship, a commitment to excellence, and love led to an incredible string of successes and, yes, led to his being granted academic tenure. I excerpt the reply to his post from the student whose question -- doubtless prompted by some common, very cynical advice -- he answered: Thank you for answering the question in a non-sanctimonious tone and for not implying that I'm somehow in the wrong for wanting a healthy child. Your success is amazing and seemingly well-deserved, and your answer has given me a new and valuable perspective. I am grateful to you for that. Whatever career goals you might have, today's conventional wisdom is that your choice is to pursue those goals to the near-exclusion of anything else you might care about -- or fail. I thank Matt Might for showing us that this isn't the case. His story and his tribute to his wife are inspirational. 4. From a recent column in which John Stossel praised entrepreneurial "rule breakers:" One of this year's Rule Breaker Award recipients is Alex Esposito, whose Free Ride shuttle service offers exactly that -- free rides in New York State, Florida, San Diego and elsewhere, made possible by the low operating cost of Esposito's little electric buses and by local businesses advertising on the vehicles. I assumed offering free rides would not be a sustainable business, but I guess I just think in conventional terms. Apparently, the opportunity to advertise makes all sorts of neat services profitable -- including TV, of course. Stossel also tells an incredible story about a Brazilian CEO who even did away with a mountain of rules I'm not sure I would have ever touched. -- CAV Link to Original

Not long ago. I encountered an articleabout Houston Texans running back Arian Foster's decision to join the organization, Openly Secular: He has tossed out sly hints in the past, just enough to give himself wink-and-a-nod deniability, but he recently decided to become a public face of the nonreligious. Moved by the testimonials of celebrity atheists like comedian Bill Maher and magicians Penn and Teller, Foster has joined a national campaign by the nonprofit group Openly Secular, which plans to use his story to increase awareness and acceptance of nonbelievers, especially in sports. The organization initially approached ESPN about Foster's willingness to share his story, but ESPN subsequently dealt directly with Foster... I think Foster's heart is in the right place, but am dubious about most attempts to champion non-belief as such. For starters, what one is against (or at least dubious about) says nothing about why, or what one stands for. To be fair, this is the first time I've ever heard of this organization, and it's certainly possible to, say, make a stand for reason with fellow non-believers absent agreement on many other things. I am also dubious about the common practice of holding sports figures out as role models for children, although I acknowledge that it does occur. That said, I am glad to see Foster and other celebrities speak openly about being nonreligious. Perhaps their efforts will make it a little bit easier for some young people to see that there are others like them. Lord knows, the snapshot of how football teams are run in the South reminds me that there could be a need for such encouragement. -- CAV P.S. A couple of personal notes: (1) The article caused me to realize that I have been an atheist for nearly thirty years. I was an agnostic briefly before that. (2) Foster's account of his father's reaction to being told of his non-belief reminded me of when I first told my father about my incipient doubts about religion. Dad stole my thunder by revealing that he was himself an atheist! Link to Original

George Will notesthe process by which entitlements that cost little (in monetary terms) to most, but pay off like a lottery ticket to a few become entrenched in our federal budget: These clients thrive in obscurity because of the law that governs much of government, the law of dispersed costs and concentrated benefits. Taxpayers do not notice, unless someone like Rauch tells them, the costs of subsidizing whaling museums or mohair, but the subsidies mean much to those who run the museums or produce the mohair. Similarly, consumers do not notice the cost of sugar import quotas added to the sugar they consume, quotas that substantially enrich sugar producers. And so on and on. George is correct, but it is worth noting why this picture is possible in the first place: Most people lack a principledrejection of government theft (e.g., taxationand inflation). Were Americans intolerant of having even a cent lifted from their wallets, such a state of affairs would be impossible. We are far from such a cultural shift today, and Will is correct that such "barnacles" as the mohair subsidy will likely persist for some time. The barnacles may well persist for a time even after things begin to improve. This is because the much bigger fish of the major entitlements and regulation will need frying first. But the changes those will entail will eventually also rid us of the barnacles. Such barnacles are but examples of why such attention-hungry efforts as the "Pork Busters" have always struck me as futile grandstanding. -- CAV Link to Original

A short piece in The Berkeley Journal of Sociology titled, "The Theology of Consensus" considers the historical roots and practical limitations of a group decision-making practice common among left-wing activist groups, such as Occupy Wall Street. Among its conclusions about the latter: In practice, ... the process was fraught with difficulty from the start. At the 1977 Seabrook blockade, where consensus was first employed in a large-scale action setting, the spokescouncil spent nearly all the time before being ordered to leave the site bogged down in lengthy discussions of minor issues. A similar dynamic played out in Occupy Wall Street almost a quarter century later, where the general assembly proved ill-equipped to address the day-to-day needs of the encampment. Though On Conflict and Consensus assured organizers that "Formal Consensus is not inherently time-consuming," experience suggested otherwise. The process favored those with the most time, as meetings tended to drag out for hours; in theory, consensus might include everyone in all deliberations, but in practice, the process greatly favored those who could devote limitless time to the movement -- and made full participation difficult for those with ordinary life commitments outside of their activism. The theological roots of the practice, which is an attempt to gain a woozy "feel" for some divinely-imparted truth, point to another, more fundamental weakness: Emotions are not tools of cognition. Even if this process did notempower cranks and provocateurs, its emotionalist underpinnings make a decision that is actually grounded in reality impossible, and one that seems reasonable a coincidence. -- CAV Link to Original

China's recent devaluation of the yuan has financial analyst Peter Schiff concernedabout our the fate of our fiat currency. Indeed, he sees the move as born of concern that its currency being coupled to the dollar was placing China at an economic disadvantage, and hurting Chinese trade. Indeed, he sees the global dollar rally as a bubble and this move as an indicator of how and why that bubble might burst: ... [W]hen the dollar starts to fall in earnest, China may not be there to catch it. This will also mean that the biggest foreign buyer of Treasury bonds will likely be sitting on its hands when deteriorating U.S. finances force the Treasury to begin issuing trillions of new bonds annually. So when the U.S. needs China's help the most, it will be unwilling to provide it. In the absence of a Chinese backstop that the U.S. has for too long taken for granted, when the dollar resumes its decline, the fall will be much more pronounced. This will also generate significant upward pressure on both U.S. consumer prices and interest rates that was absent five years ago, when Chinese buying provided a huge cushion to the U.S. economy. In fact, data indicates that China is already paring the amount of Treasuries held in reserve. That means a full blown dollar crisis may not have been averted, but merely postponed, with the dire warnings of U.S. hyperinflation potentially coming true after all. [bold added] I have been wondering why we haven't yet experienced much more dramatic inflation due to the Fed's recent orgy of money printing. I hope Schiff is wrong, but feel more like I have been warned. -- CAV Updates Today: Corrected capitalization errors. Link to Original

Drown 'Em All! Don Watkins of the Ayn Rand Institute makes an apt analogy for Bernie Sanders and the inane leftist campaign against "inequality:" Actually, it's even worse than that since the wealthy, by earning or investing their wealth, directly or indirectly improve the lot of the less-well-off. This could be a wrongly-implied obligation on the part of Phelps in such an analogy. "The rich" largely do this, and especially when acting in their own self-interest -- not that this is why they should be left alone, or that it should serve as the purpose of their actions. Weekend Reading "The government harms patients when it prevents doctors from learning truthful information about a possible new benefit of an already legal use of a drug." -- Paul Hsieh, in "http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulhsieh/2015/08/09/free-speech-1-fda-0/'>Free Speech 1, FDA 0" at Forbes "How could anyone think that it's a good idea to negotiate with an openly hostile regime that fuels jihadists and seeks our destruction?" -- Elan Journo, in "[url="http://thefederalist.com/2015/08/10/irans-faux-multiple-personality-disorder/]Iran's Faux Multiple Personality Disorder" at The Federalist "The blame also lies with the environmentalist movement, but it was aided and abetted by a populace lulled into complacence by unrealistic expectations." -- Gus Van Horn, in "Jerry Brown Condescendingly Tells Californians It's Raining" at RealClear Markets "t's important to remember that you should first nurture your sense of self before you donate your time or money to the many causes out there." -- Michael Hurd, in "There's No 'I Love You' Without the 'I'" at The Delaware Wave "If you think about it, who says we're supposed to retire?" -- Michael Hurd, in "Life Requires Purpose All the Way to the End" at The Delaware Coast Press A Note of Thanks I thank reader Steve D. for his helpful comments on two earlier versions of my last column. <a name="4">Our Regulators as (Once-) Frustrated Satirists I used to joke that I was trapped in a satirical novel: Or: Yes, there really is a "National Eagle Repository." -- CAV Link to Original

1. I see that I'm not the only one nonplussed by Disney's fetish for royalty. None other than John Stossel notes in his column something that has bugged me, as the parent of an American, for quite some time: We call the men who fought the British "heroes." But we no longer consider the British "villains." We don't even seem to hate monarchs anymore. Disney princesses and royal babies are all the rage. I am not going to make a big deal of this, but it has made me more alert to opportunities to note that we don't have royalty here, such as when we passed a cathedral and my daughter asked whether it was a castle. Part of my answer was something like, "No, Pumpkin. We got rid of kings and queens in America after we had a very bad king a long time ago." 2. Accordingto the Washington Post, reports of the death of the honeybee are greatly exaggerated: [R]ising prices for fruit and nuts hardly constitute the "beepocalypse" that we've all been worried about. [Randal R.] Tucker and [Walter N.] Thurman , the economists, call this a victory for the free market: "Not only was there not a failure of bee-related markets," they conclude in their paper, "but they adapted quickly and effectively to the changes induced by the appearance of Colony Collapse Disorder." We can thank beekeepers for the continued pollination of our crops, and foreign sources for some of our honey. 3. We're moving from a nearly century old house soon. Among other things, I look forward to is, perhaps, having my own closet again. And if that pans out, I'll use this clever idea of occasionally sending some of my clothes to "purgatory." 4. If you need a quick, easy, unobtrusive way to obtain word counts for web documents, let me recommend the Word Count Tool plug-in. -- CAV Updates: Fixed a formatting error. Link to Original

With its many highly-publicized battles to beat back regulations just to sell its cars, Tesla Motors understandably might look like a champion in the fight against the regulatory state -- or at least like a victim. But for anyone who doesn't already know about its reliance on government favors, a recent editorial should dispel any doubts that, in fact, Tesla opposes only those regulations it finds inconvenient: In 2012, President Obama announced a new "Corporate Average Fuel Economy" standard that will require all the cars each automaker sells to get an average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. Given the lead time that automakers need to design and test new cars, they now have only a few years to figure out how to achieve that goal. And since there are only a couple non-plug-in cars on the road that even come close to 54.5 mpg today -- the tiny Toyota Prius C hybrid gets 53 mpg -- the only conceivable way to do so will be to force-feed electric cars onto the market. Which is why the rest of the industry is looking for relief from these CAFE standards when they come up for review in 2017 and why Tesla is now mounting its full-court press to toughen them even further. [bold added, link dropped] I agree with Investor's Business Daily that Tesla's move betrays a lack of confidence, but I would go further. First, the move shows an incredible lack of understanding of principles and precedents. If they succeed, they have no room to complain if some other regulatory decision goes against them down the road. Second, by what right does the President tell anyone how to make cars or which cars to buy? It is outlandish that so many people seem to expect to be told what to do about nearly everything these days. Not so long ago, any such order from a government official would have had him rightly called a tyrant or worse. -- CAV Link to Original

The same crowd that imagines electric cars are paragons of "clean" energy recently waxed enthusiastic about windmills after a blustery Scandinavian day. Denmark, with its burgeoning population of nearly six million, saw its wind farms supply more than enough electricity for its own needs that day: The fact that this is newsworthy at all belies the following assertion by one government official about this incident, "It shows that a world powered 100% by renewable energy is no fantasy." First off, why weren't the wind turbines "operating at full capacity?" Might it be due to the fact that wind is so unpredictable that wind farms have to be overbuilt just to have a chance of being useful? The article mentions that Germany -- which, with over thirteen times Denmark's population -- received part of this surplus. This brings to my mind a recent Alex Epstein piece on German power policies that the U.S. is foolishly set to emulate. In particular, there is a graph of German power production that plots solar and wind separately. Note the great variation from day to day in the amounts from the latter two sources -- a variation which leads Epstein to call them "unreliables". Note also their much smaller average proportions of the total than Denmark's annual 39%. In addition to having lower power needs than Germany, might Denmark, with a greater proportion of windy seashore than Germany, have a proportionally greater peak wind generating capacity? (Land-based turbines can still benefit from proximity to the ocean, so mentioning that the turbines are mostly on land is moot without elaboration.) This article raises quite a few questions about "renewable" energy and the distinct suspicion that its advocates are grasping at straws. Indeed, if it "shows" anything, it's that Epstein is right to call "renewable" energy sources "unreliables". -- CAV P. S. My latest RealClear Markets column, on California's drought, was published yesterday. Link to Original

At the Daily Dot is an important account of how the feds "abused" the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to prosecute an innocent associate of the brothers who perpetrated the Boston Marathon bombings: He was charged, as others have been in similar cases, under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. SOX, as it's known, was a direct response to the corporate abuses of firms like Enron, which destroyed untold accounting records and documentation to avoid culpability for federal crimes. Under the law, people are required to preserve any evidence they knowingly believe could be used in future investigations, even if no such investigation has been launched. (Note my reason for putting "abuse" in scare quotes: I regard government regulation of the financial sector as an abuseof government power in the first place.) The piece goes on to note that this legal trick has many negative implications, such as making possible witnesses to crimes reluctant to come forward, and being unnecessary in the first place. ("[T]here are already precedents for charging people with destruction of evidence or evidence tampering.") Regarding the latter, one could say the same for fraud in relation to the whole of Sarbanes-Oxley. I recommend reading the entire piece. -- CAV Link to Original

For some clear thinking about a common tax "shelter", mosey on over to this article on 401(k) plans by James Altucher. Here's a sample of some thinking unclouded by conventional "wisdom" or the doe-eyed trust in government-as-brain-substitute too many people seem to have these days: Let's look at it conceptually for a second and then I will look at the cons. You are paid money by an employer. You have that money in your hands for five seconds, and then it is whisked away into this account and you can't look at it again for another 20-35 years unless you want to pay a massive penalty. Will you be alive in 30 years? Hopefully! Else you will never see that money again. Ok, that's my first problem with 401k. I like to have total control over money that is called mine. Perhaps I am being overly harsh to call so many people naive. The tax code, designed to "nudge" us into letting the fed make choices for us, is quite complex, and most people, understandably, don't want to waste precious time having to contemplate it. Altucher does a great job of essentializing this particular scheme and asking the right kinds of questions to help his readers realize that perhaps what our tax code encourages us to do isn't necessarily wise. -- CAV Link to Original

The title of a CNN editorial by Orrin Hatch -- "Why Fight Against Obamacare Isn't Over" -- tells only half the story. I'll let the Republican Senator start telling the otherhalf: This exemplifies what's wrong with the Republicans' unprincipled "opposition" to ObamaCare that their motto of "Repeal and Replace" has long foreshadowed. As I said in that previous post, aside from controls (which Hatch seems to like) breeding controls: Had the Republicans grasped this, they would not only see that accepting any part of such a plan would leave us on the slippery slope right back to it. Dictating any aspect of a contract between two individuals sets the precedent for issuing everyone marching orders in the form of contracts-in-name-only. The debate isn't over because the Republicans are on the right side and will fight tooth and nail for the truth: From what I can tell, it isn't over because it hasn't even started. Everyone is on the same side, namely that of the government running everything. -- CAV Link to Original

Over at (apparently, Not-Quite-So) RationalWiki is an unintentionally amusing "explanation" of the presumably fallacious charge that something is a "Gotcha argument". I ran across this while researching the so-called Argumentum ad tl:dr, itself a variant of the "Gish Gallop". In case it has changed since May 17, I quote the entry regarding "Gotcha arguments" in its entirety: A Gotcha argument is a claim that another's argumentation is invalid because it backs an idiot into a corner that cannot be fought out of, usually through use of facts, logic and/or scientific knowledge to crush one's superstitions. Sarah Palin accuses reporters of this -- by name of "gotcha journalism" -- as a way to "cover" her inability to answer simple questions and to make the "liberal media" seem like the bad guys. To avoid such allegations when arguing with neoconservatives, one must avoid any and all use of facts, reason or anything deemed to be "elitist" (e.g., shoes, proper grammar, half a brain, a higher education that didn't take 6 years to complete, ability to answer simple questions, ability to talk, knowledge that the earth isn't flat and is also far older than 6,000 years old, basic understanding of anything outside the US, owning a foreign car). [links and footnote markers omitted] Not to defend Sarah Palin, but observe that she drives the author of this piece (that RationalWiki calls a "stub", to be fair) so batty that he seems to confuse neoconservatives with religious fundamentalists, among other things. He is so beside himself that he seems to forget that he is writing to teach people about rhetoric and the use of logic, taking the truth of his own presumably leftist political opinions for granted. Had the writer not made me laugh, I would have been annoyed. In any case, how likely is someone to find this source reliable when such undisciplined writing appears there? If the author is so easily distracted, and makes such obvious mistakes, why should be trust him on other things? Other articles at RationalWiki seem fine, but it is fair to question someone in large things when he can't be trusted in small ones. Aside from a good laugh, I came away with an unintended, easy-to-remember lesson in rhetoric: Remember why and for whom you write. Psychological distance -- waiting between drafts and before publishing -- can help with this, and prevent one from writing badly, and potentially harming one's own credibility. -- CAV P.S. I occurs to me that the entry was meantto be funny, If so, the humor is so ham-fisted that any laughter remains unintentional. Link to Original

John Stossel writes a columnon regulation empowering left-wing "activists" that should concern anyone who values our current standard of living: It also turns out that some [National Resources Defense Council] activists now work for the EPA, and although activists aren't supposed to get involved in issues pushed by the agency, they do it anyway. The NRDC's Nancy Stoner became an EPA regulator. Then she wrote her former colleagues, "I am not supposed to set up meetings with NRDC staff," referring to a pledge she signed not to participate in any matters directly involving her former employer. Then she got around these restrictions by qualifying that she could attend such a meeting if "there are enough others in attendance." Stossel details how the EPA stopped a precious metals mine in its tracks despite its being 90 miles away from an area it supposedly "threatened" -- not that the government has any business dictating how someone should develop his own property. Also worthwhile is Stossel's account of the dishonest tactics used to sway public opinion about the proposed mine. I have found too often today that when the media refer to someone as an "activist", that person is not one in the true sense of the term. That is, he is not really concerned with persuading someone else of his point of view. He is typically just a bully with an agenda. Sadly, our leviathan state increasingly makes the opinions of such people equivalent to law, rendering debate irrelevant. This is a trend we must reverse. -- CAV Link to Original

Vaccination: A Victim of Its Own Success? Amesh Adalja considersthe possible role a common mental shortcut might have in the rise of the anti-vaccination movement: I find it hard to fathom that while a glass ingestion is correctly thought of as a clear and present danger to her child, vaccine-preventable illnesses--which kill incalculably more children than glass ingestions ever could--doesn't register the same sense of alarm in this mother. The only explanation I can come up with is a serious threat misperception akin to fearing shark attacks but not drowning in the neighborhood pool--something that has to do with what is known as an availability heuristic coupled with the ability to imagine a horrible outcome. In this example, it is not hard for a mother to imagine her child ingesting glass and having a horrible outcome while it may be harder for her to imagine her child contracting a disease made rare because of the success of vaccines. On top of this, plenty of anti-vaxxers will be happy to help such parents imagine terrible outcomes and that these are "linked" to vaccination. Weekend Reading "Such freedom can be daunting -- but it's far better than having no real choices at all." -- Paul Hsieh, in "In Praise of the Market Economy" at PJ Media "Confidence doesn't mean knowing everything, but it does mean trusting your reasoning." -- Michael Hurd, in "How to Take Criticism Rationally" at The Delaware Wave "Most of the time, you can still like and respect someone with whom you disagree, especially if your relationship with them is worth more to you than winning the argument." -- Michael Hurd, in "The Perils and Positives of 'Agreeing to Disagree" at The Delaware Coast Press "If one person's 'need' does not generate an 'entitlement' in the realm of bodily autonomy, why does it do so in the realm of economics?" -- Paul Hsieh, in "Genuine Charity Requires Freedom" at Forbes "Such burdens trample physician autonomy along with women's individual rights on the road to foisting a religiously derived view of fetal rights onto the entire populace." -- Amesh Adalja, in "Innovation at Risk as States Ban Telemedicine for Medical Abortions" at The Pittsburgh City Paper Saletan on GMOs Writing at Slate, William Saletan takes a look at the debate on genetically modified organisms used in agriculture and finds the following: The USDA's catalog of recently engineered plants shows plenty of worthwhile options. The list includes drought-tolerant corn, virus-resistant plums, non-browning apples, potatoes with fewer natural toxins, and soybeans that produce less saturated fat. A recent global inventory by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization discusses other projects in the pipeline: virus-resistant beans, heat-tolerant sugarcane, salt-tolerant wheat, disease-resistant cassava, high-iron rice, and cotton that requires less nitrogen fertilizer. Skim the news, and you'll find scientists at work on more ambitious ideas: high-calcium carrots, antioxidant tomatoes, nonallergenic nuts, bacteria-resistant oranges, water-conserving wheat, corn and cassava loaded with extra nutrients, and a flaxlike plant that produces the healthy oil formerly available only in fish. That's what genetic engineering can do for health ... The reason it hasn't is that we've been stuck in a stupid, wasteful fight over GMOs. On one side is an army of quacks and pseudo-environmentalists waging a leftist war on science. On the other side are corporate cowards who would rather stick to profitable weed-killing than invest in products that might offend a suspicious public. The only way to end this fight is to educate ourselves and make it clear to everyone -- European governments, trend-setting grocers, fad-hopping restaurant chains, research universities, and biotechnology investors -- that we're ready, as voters and consumers, to embrace nutritious ... food, no matter where it got its genes. We want our GMOs. Now, show us what you can do. [links dropped] This long article is worth reading not just for the information it imparts about GMOs, but also for the snapshot it provides of the thought processes of anti-GMO activists. No amount of scientific rigor in favor of GMOs is enough for them, and yet it's deuces wild when it comes to imagining reasons to frighten the public about them. -- CAV Link to Original

1. My four-year-old daughter has been eager to help me with chores lately. A couple of weekends ago, she helped me fold clothes, and she has remained interested in learning how to cook. My son, now two, has amazed me with the number of words he clearly knows the meanings of. His pronunciation is a little behind that, but he is quite good at getting his point across. I would swear he sometimes uses complete sentences, too, although his words run together. A few days ago, he said something that I am pretty sure was, "I want to get that down." It all sounded like one long word, but I knew what he wanted, and couldn't help but smile when he reached up for a refrigerator magnet. A week or so before that, I saw him stumble and asked, "Are you okay?" He replied with a mashed-together sounding, "I'm okay." Little Man has had a strong sense of order for a long time. A couple of recent instances reminded me of how he used to line up his Disney figurines every morning. Wednesday morning, ahead of a car trip, he pointed out that Pumpkin's drink holder was empty. (She told me she didn't want anything after I showed her the drink and asked.) Also, after so many mornings of my holding him to help him sleep and working by the light of an LED lamp, he expects it to be on when I have him downstairs and haven't put my things away. He marches right over and turns it on. 2. Yuck! Unclutterer discusseda pizza cone maker set last week in its amusing "Unitasker Wednesday" series. Even more amusing to me was the title of its next entry: "You Don't Need to Finish Everything You Begin." For their sakes, I hope that's a coincidence! 3. Well, at least this guy's prospective client made it easy to make up his mind: I will put down a $20 deposit. You will submit your work to me by 3PM on these specific dates, and if I am not satisfied with your work by the 30th, I will rescind my deposit and find another designer for my logo. If I want to contact you about this at midnight, you must be available to communicate with me. This is because you only have a week to work on this, as my cousin took a year to create the last logo and I was unsatisfied. We need this now. If I am satisfied with the logo, I will pay you the remaining $20. The first commenter came up with about the right response, I think. 4. Thisis a great list: "Life Lessons From Differential Equations." There is even inspiration to be found in the last: "You can sometimes do what sounds impossible by reframing your problem." [Link to math lesson omitted.] -- CAV Link to Original

A George Will columnon government enforcement of an overprotective new norm of parenting led me to a nightmarish account titled, "The Day I Left My Son in the Car", and recounting the years-long ordeal faced by a mother who made the following perfectly rational decision (And yes, I disagree with her mea culpa to the effect that she made a mistake, however small.): For that decision, and because a creep in the parking lot (who never confronted her) videotaped the whole thing and informed the police, the mother faced criminal charges and had to go to court. I recommend reading the whole surreal account, especially if you are a parent, as a cautionary tale. Two things stand out to me, though, that weren't stressed. First is a dose of sanity about the risk of leaving a child in a car by Lenore Skenazy: All I can add to the list of risks from here and elsewhere is a big one that few seem to explicitly note: That of intrusive government. The mother here ultimately paid with a hundred hours of "community" service in order to avoid a trial and the possible loss of her son. It is not the proper role of the government to empower worry-wart busybodies to make risk assessments on behalf of others. Second, an attitude towards the mother expressed by many of her friends comforted her, but it disturbs me: Who am I to judge? There can be good and bad reasons for saying this. Admitting that one hasn't enough information is a good reason, but an unwillingness to make a decision and stick to it is perhaps the worst. Many people wrongly see this as a virtue, but it is not. Those who won't make a stand pave the way for every little dictator out there with a camera and nothing better to do to make their decisions for them. The fact that we have come so far down the road to totalitarianism suggests to met that too many people either do not know or do not care what is at stake. -- CAV Link to Original

Just days after I got a fat, unexpected check from the IRS (along with an explanation that beggars belief), I happened to run into a news story about the possibility of the IRS harassing people for their beliefs: "Unfortunately, the IRS has not taken sufficient steps to prevent targeting Americans based on their personal beliefs," the GAO [Government Accountability Office] says. Specifically, The GAO found that "control deficiencies" do "increase the risk" that the IRS nonprofit unit "could select organizations for examinations in an unfair manner -- for example, based on an organization's religious, educational, political or other views." No, I'm not being harassed any more than anyone else with income, but my time is being wasted on top of the fact that I am now pretty sure they're coming to loot my bank account a bit more. I was tempted to call this story, "yet another reason this organization should be abolished". Perhaps that's the case, but it really only aggravates the fundamental reason: The whole function of the IRS, legalized theft carried out by the government, is an abuse of government power. -- CAV Link to Original

Five years on, former senator Phil Gramm provides a needed retrospectiveon Dodd-Frank. His assessment deserves to be read in full, but here is the worst part: ... Dodd-Frank has empowered regulators to set rules on their own, rather than implement requirements set by Congress. This has undermined a vital condition necessary to put money and America back to work -- legal and regulatory certainty. Gramm elaborates that this new power isn't even constrained by past legal precedent: Over the years the Federal Trade Commission and the courts defined what constituted "unfair and deceptive" financial practices. Dodd-Frank added the word "abusive" without defining it. The result: The CFPB [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau] can now ban services and products offered by financial institutions even though they are not unfair or deceptive by long-standing precedent. Regulators in the Dodd-Frank era impose restrictions on financial institutions never contemplated by Congress, and they push international regulations on insurance companies and money-market funds that Congress never authorized. The law's Financial Stability Oversight Council meets in private and is made up exclusively of the sitting president's appointed allies. Dodd-Frank does not say what makes a financial institution systemically important and thus subject to stringent regulation. The council does. Banks so designated have regulators embedded in their executive offices to monitor and advise, eerily reminiscent of the old political officers who were placed in every Soviet factory and military unit. [bold added] It is bad enough that the economic recovery has been hampered by this law, but the specter of non-objective law is much worse -- so much so that Ayn Rand once calledit, "the most effective weapon of human enslavement," since "its victims become its enforcers and enslave themselves." -- CAV Link to Original

Another Perot, the Other Clinton? Scott Holleran notes a serious lack of substance in the Trump candidacy: To this unseriousness, add either a sense of entitlement or malice aforethought. Trump has threatened a third-party run should the Republican establishment not treat him "fairly". "... I know Hillary very well...," he says in another part of the article. Great. Weekend Reading "Rather than relying on objective, rational facts, [people pleasers] place themselves totally at the mercy of others' judgments." -- Michael Hurd, in "'People Pleasing' Backfires On Its Own Terms" at The Delaware Wave "[Y]ou're entirely right to take offense at ... unsolicited advice, no matter the source." -- Michael Hurd, in "How to Give GOOD Advice" at The Delaware Coast Press Thallium in Greens? I have often heard extolled the virtues of leafy, green vegetables, but caution may be warranted, if the work of California scientist Ernie Hubbard is to be believed: Kale, which I fortunately dislike, seems to be a top suspect. -- CAV Link to Original

1. In lieu of one of my occasional beer recommendations, here is a bit about one I definitely intend to try, the soon-to-be-renamed "Submission Ale" by St. Louis's own Alpha Brewery: Yes! It's a beer that pokes fun at Islam (as the brewery has other religions), and no, the name change has nothing to do with cowardice or the social media vitriol directed at the label pictured above. 2. And speaking of Islam, I hearthat a comic book artist has discovered a new technique for rendering Mohammed (pun intended). Decorum forbids speculation about the medium. 3. John Stossel, commenting on the anti-science left: Had the Alpha Brewery not offended so many leftists, they would have had to add, say, a "Silent Spring Bock" to their line. 4. Two quotes, one by a seven-year-old boy on ethics, and another by Ayn Rand on humor, seem apropos at this juncture. First, the boy, commentingon ethicists: And now, the second: To see the connection, observe the tweets in the very first link. -- CAV Link to Original

Thomas Sowell consideringthe methodology of the advocates of such left-wing causes as gun control, summarizes it quite well and asks a devastating question: Most gun control zealots show not the slightest interest in testing empirically their beliefs or assumptions. There have been careful factual studies by various scholars of what happens after gun control laws have been instituted, strengthened or reduced. But those studies are seldom even mentioned by gun control activists. Somehow they just know that gun restrictions reduce gun crime, no matter how many studies show the opposite. How do they know? Because other like-minded people say so -- and say so repeatedly and loudly. A few gun control advocates may cherry-pick examples of countries with stronger gun control laws than ours that have lower murder rates (such as England) -- and omit other countries with stronger gun control laws than ours that have far higher murder rates (such as Mexico, Russia and Brazil). You don't test an assumption or belief by cherry-picking examples. Not if you are serious. And if you are not going to be serious about life and death, when are you going to be serious? [bold added] In the process of asking this question, Sowell comes very close to showing what is wrong with how most people think about political questions. There is plainly an admixture of seeking what one thinks of as good, ignorance, and wishful thinking. Were our culture not so rife with the problem of the moral-practical dichotomy (caused by altruism), people would more often approach political questions with the same ruthless logic they approach the other (often smaller) questions that they do understand and realize affect them personally. -- CAV Link to Original