Gus Van Horn blog

Editor's Notes: (1) I am back, but the kids are ill and I've taken a possibly time-consuming job for a new client. Blogging may be sporadic for a week. (2) I have a small backlog of comments to moderate. I'll do this when able, probably some time in the next few days. A favorite essayist of mine, Paul Graham, has been wrongly accused of anti-female bigotry. Here is the quote that went viral and got him into trouble, with a word that was deliberately omitted highlighted in red: We can't make these women look at the world through hacker eyes and start Facebook because they haven't been hacking for the past 10 years. [emphasis in original] Graham outlines a sordid ruse in more detail, explaining that the words used in the above quote weren't the only ones involved. In fact, someone fabricated an entire "interview" with him from the transcript of a conversation they had had as part of the "interviewer's" background research on a female tech startup founder. Graham makes some very good points about interviews in general in the process of defending himself: If this had been an actual interview, I would have made more effort to make myself clear, as you have to in an interview. An interview is different from an ordinary conversation. In a conversation you stop explaining as soon as the other person's facial expression shows they understand. In an interview, the audience is the eventual reader. You don't have that real-time feedback, so you have to explain everything completely. Also (as we've seen), if you talk about controversial topics, the audience for an interview will include people who for various reasons want to misinterpret what you say, so you have to be careful not to leave them any room to, whereas in a conversation you can assume good faith and speak as loosely as you would in everyday life. [2] [hyperlink omitted] This I agree with, assuming the context and any explanations are geared towards intelligent and reasonable adults. (The minute one starts trying to address an irrational audience, one has taken on an impossible task.) But I don't agree with the following, which is footnoted within the above: This is particularly true in the age of Twitter, where a single sentence taken out of context can go viral. Now anything you say about a controversial topic has to be unambiguous at the level of individual sentences. [emphasis added] This level of clarity is impossible, given the hierachical nature of concepts, and the fact that most controversial topics involve disagreements about high-level philosophical abstractions. (Should one use a tool like Twitter to disseminate something other than the most easily verifiable facts, one simply has to be ready to elaborate somewhere that allows more room, and be resigned to the fact that, in this day and age, many people go to the web looking for an excuse to become angry about something. This means they will take almost anything on a screen as bait.) The whole essay is worth reading for the thought it provokes on the role of context in communication, but it also raises another issue: When does one defend oneself? Graham has a good reason to to do this, as becomes apparent. But if a writer stopped to answer, as William Faulkner might have put it, every itinerant scoundrel with a Twitter account who impugned him, he'd quickly find he had little time for anything else. When one writes, one has to find the right limits for the amount of explanation he offers or he will never get around to making an original point. When one does so for the general public, one must furthermore value his time more than what scoundrels feel about him. -- CAV Link to Original

There is some interesting polling data out regarding the upcoming holiday: [O]nly a little more than half [of Americans] actually regard the [Christmas] holiday primarily as a religious celebration. More than one-third say it's more a cultural holiday, a new poll from Pew Research's Religion & Public Life Policy found. This calls to mind Leonard Peikoff's classic essay, "Why Christmas Should Be More Commercial", which concludes: America's tragedy is that its intellectual leaders have typically tried to replace happiness with guilt by insisting that the spiritual meaning of Christmas is religion and self-sacrifice for Tiny Tim or his equivalent. But the spiritual must start with recognizing reality. Life requires reason, selfishness, capitalism; that is what Christmas should celebrate -- and really, underneath all the pretense, that is what it does celebrate. It is time to take the Christ out of Christmas, and turn the holiday into a guiltlessly egoistic, pro-reason, this-worldly, commercial celebration. Earlier in the piece, Peikoff reminds us that Christmas actually originated as a celebration of the winter solstice, with Christians reluctantly taking it over when it proved impossible to kill off. Assuming the poll numbers are accurate, they may represent a hopeful cultural trend. My headline would have been different, however: "Half of Americans Have Ceased Injecting Faith into Christmas." -- CAV P.S. My odd desire to be able to read the content of the Washington Times piece led me to save it to Instapaper first, stripping out whatever ad or script was causing my browser to repeatedly move things around. That reminds me further that there is -- finally -- an official Instapaper app for Android devices. It costs only a few bucks, and I have been quite happy with it so far. Link to Original

Although he stops short of explicitly questioning the Pope's altruistic morality, Walter Williams raises quite a few good questions in his recent rebuttal to Pope Francis' recent demonization of capitalism: Capitalism is relatively new in human history. Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. With the rise of capitalism, it became possible to amass great wealth by serving and pleasing your fellow man. Capitalists seek to discover what people want and produce and market it as efficiently as possible as a means to profit. [One example] would be J.D. Rockefeller, whose successful marketing drove kerosene prices down from 58 cents a gallon in 1865 to 7 cents in 1900. ... Here's my question to you: Are people who, by their actions, created unprecedented convenience, longer life expectancy and a more pleasant life for the ordinary person -- and became wealthy in the process -- deserving of all the scorn and ridicule heaped upon them by intellectuals, politicians and now the pope? [link dropped] Capitalism really does provide better for the common man, and Williams makes it clear that there is no factual basis for demonizing it, when considered in that light. One might rightly even come from the read questioning the pontiff's benevolence. But that will not be enough. Unfortunately, one need only consider what the Church did in the face of the Renaissance, when the superiority of reason as a means of knowledge became clear, to predict how the Pope will react to such criticism -- or to see that Williams sold the farm when he conceded that, "capitalism fails miserably when compared with heaven or a utopia". Francis and his apologists will simply say they don't oppose capitalism so much as want to "perfect" it -- with their "guidance", of course. Phrases from my past Catholic education, such as "reason grounded in faith" come to mind. The steps from reminding the "common man" that capitalism is good for him -- and that it is not wrong for him to have something just because someone else somewhere doesn't -- are small, but they should be taken proudly and openly. And one should not cower in the face of a person widely (but wrongly) considered a moral authority in doing so. Our republic did not lose so much freedom all at once, but in many small steps made in the same direction, away from freedom, by people who claimed they only wanted to "improve upon" our system for the sake of others. And these steps were taken under the noses of people who, although they might have realized that they violated the principle that men have rights, often tolerated them because they did not recognize their own moral right to freedom. We do not laugh and say, "Relax! You still have a house!" when someone calls in the exterminator at the sight of a few termites. Nor should we shy from or pooh-pooh a refusal to compromise capitalism (and sacrifice our rights in the process) in the face of the inevitable demands that we accept "just a little" government interference for any reason, let alone in the name of making the real world look closer to what someone else imagines it could be. -- CAV Link to Original

Headhunter Nick Corcodilos has expressed many contrarian opinions on matters related to career advancement. Not surprisingly, he sometimes ends up fielding interesting questions, such as one by a prospective job applicant who asks how a friend who "doesn't test well" could cheat on a personality screening test. Corcodilos, who does not think such tests are very useful, nevertheless strongly urges this individual not to cheat. There are about five issues of integrity in your question, but all I'll say about this in general is, don't lie, don't cheat, don't fake who you are. Even if you survive the guilt and even if you beat the risks, there's a good chance that the "payoff" might be that you'll "win" a job that's not right for you because you misrepresented yourself. Doesn't your friend understand that this is a big part of employment testing? It can be to her benefit as well as the employer's to do the test honestly. [emphasis changed from original] As if that weren't enough, Corcodilos then goes on to discuss the many ways testing companies have come up with to catch cheating and notes that some testing companies will even flag people they suspect of cheating on future tests, including with other clients. Many employers may adopt irrational standards or cut corners when evaluating candidates, but their failures are neither an excuse nor an incentive to do the same on one's own part. Honesty remains the best policy. In fact it starts with asking oneself whether a company that treats its employees like a collection of numbers is really the place to go -- rather than how to game some arbitrary system. -- CAV Link to Original

The first I've heard about the latest school shooting has been via a round of conservative news sites, which have noted that the shooter is a socialist. That certainly merits mention, given the tendency of our leftist media to label any and all such acts as being motivated by "hate" -- which is code for "our stereotype/psychological projection of being a non-leftist". It's no surprise to me that the gunman is a socialist. However, I must highlight something that I hadn't seen mentioned by the same conservative media. Gunman Karl Pierson is also from a very religious family: Pierson has been described as a dedicated and bright student from a religious family who attends Bible study meetings, leaving those that knew him shocked. "They're just a normal middle-class family, like many of the families around here," neighbour Diane Shea said. Thomas Conrad, who had an economics class with the gunman, described him as a very opinionated Socialist. That cleared up, let me state that I know little else about this person, except that he saw fit to enter a high school, armed, and seek out someone he was known to have a difference with. It is quite possible that this individual is violently mentally ill, like many other similar gunmen. But barring that possibility and assuming that he regards what he did as moral, one must ask why. In other words, one must consider the moral ideals such a person upholds, and whether he can be said to act according to their implications. Much could be said on this score, but that will have to wait for another time. In the meantime, I haven't the time to comb through the news, but I would hardly be surprised to find in this atrocity a kind of an ideological Rorschach test, leftists focusing on Pierson's Bible study and many conservatives on his socialist beliefs. What should be the subject of serious discussion here is whether religion or socialism is fit for training young minds how to think or respect the rights of others to do so. (Among other things, the historical evidence, in the form of bloody theocracies and socialist regimes, suggests otherwise.) Assuming we see this, it might be interesting to ask why socialists and religionists alike will point fingers at each other instead of asking a question like the above. -- CAV Link to Original

Email Introduction Etiquette The best advice is well-reasoned advice, as we see from a short piece on the above subject at 42Floors: The reason you send a fresh email is that you want Mark the Advisor to be able to forward it from his mobile phone without having to delete all the content from your previous conversation. This also gives you a chance to succinctly describe your startup exactly the way you want it to be heard... I enjoyed reading this and will find it quite useful. Weekend Reading "Would it be too much to expect a simple 'you did build that' from a senator put in office by the Tea Party?" -- Yaron Brook and Steve Simpson, in "'You Didn't Build That,' Conservative Style" at Forbes "This distinction between supply-side and demand-side perspectives on the economy proves invaluable in many ways -- especially as it pertains to optimal investment strategies -- but it's also relevant to accurately measuring and interpreting the true, existential status of the latest U.S. expansion (2009-2013)." -- Richard Salsman, in "The U.S. Economy Hits Its Stride -- on the Supply Side" at Forbes "Kids should leave childhood with two things: (1) a sense of being loved, and (2) the ability to think." -- Michael Hurd, in "Four Tips for Good Parenting" at The Delaware Coast Press "The term ['fragile] gives emotions more significance than they merit..." -- Michael Hurd, in "Are You Fragile?" at The Delaware Wave "Expand immigration without citizenship." -- Harry Binswanger, in "Let's Call the Democrats' Bluff on Immigration" at Forbes "It is the increasingly socialized atmosphere of medicine that has created this scenario that puts physicians in a financial stewardship position creating a conflict with their role as an advocate for their patients." -- Amesh Adalja, in "Medicare Has Chained Us Together, Reliant on End-of-Life Government Rationing" at Forbes "To fully defeat [ObamaCare], we should reject the core idea that self-sacrifice is our moral duty." -- Peter Schwartz, in "The Opponents of Obamacare Are Completely Missing the Point" at Forbes My Two Cents I particularly admire the way Binswanger combines an incisive examination of the positions of each of the two major parties with a not-impossible-now first step towards establishing a rational immigration policy. Twenty-Six Emails vs. One Call The cartoon heading the first article linked today is an amusing reminder that new tools are just that. Sometimes, the "old" way of doing things can be quicker, particularly when the best way to use the new tool hasn't been established or made widely known. --CAV Link to Original

In The New Statesman, author Steven Poole makes a somewhat rambling case against what he calls the "cult of hard work". There is much I disagree with in his essay, but he does make some good observations about what one could also call "'productivity' as a fad" -- or perhaps "toil-worship". Poole begins his case with the following observation: Recently, I saw a man on the Tube wearing a Nike T-shirt with a slogan that read, in its entirety, "I'm doing work". The idea that playing sport or doing exercise needs to be justified by calling it a species of work illustrates the colonisation of everyday life by the devotion to toil: an ideology that argues cunningly in favour of itself in the phrase "work ethic". This egoist has no problem with justifying -- to oneself -- what one does with his time; but I do frown upon the idea of the primary focus being on telling others about it all the time. (Granted, the person described above may or may not be guilty.) Poole argues from a Marxist angle, which strikes me as amusing since Marxism, like the Christianity that gave us the term "work ethic", treats work in some form or fashion, as if it has nothing to do with sustaining human life. The former treats work somewhat as if it is imposed upon poor proletarians by "the bougeoisie", the latter somewhat as if it is a punishment from God. Both also give short shrift (to put it mildly) to the role mental effort plays in productivity. Nevertheless, since most ideologies fail to tie morality to practicality -- or to properly ask what the purpose of morality is -- Poole is able to observe a great deal of prestige-seeking second-handedness (as above) and hypocrisy-cum-rebellion: The paradox of the autodidactic productivity industry of GTD, Lifehacker and the endless reviews of obscure mind-mapping or task-management apps is that it is all too easy to spend one's time researching how to acquire the perfect set of productivity tools and strategies without ever actually settling down to do something. In this way, the obsessive dream of productivity becomes a perfectly effective defence against its own realisation. So, while Poole's Marxist leanings cause him to view work in a dim light, he does make some good observations about the fad. His distaste for the fad also causes him to make a case of sorts for what he calls "loafing". That noted, one would done well to view the need for leisure in the same way that one should view the need for productivity -- in the context of how each promotes one's own life as an individual human being. When one does this, he is better able to judge whether something (work or leisure) really is productive (i.e., promotes his well-being) or is just needless toil or mere indolence. And he will feel justifiable pride either way, and probably not feel the need to spout about what he does to others. Poole ends thus: Perhaps I shouldn't mock. All that time saved every morning by knowing the exact location of the baseball cap you want to wear will surely add up, earning you hours more freedom to hunt and hoard ever more productivity tips, until you are a purely theoretical master at doing nothing of value in the most efficient way imaginable. Whether storing baseball caps in such a way deserves mockery depends on context, but if all it does is provide more time to obsess over becoming better able to brag about the amount of toil one can do, then he should. Productivity, properly understood, is indeed a virtue; pointless toil a vice, no matter how acceptable it may seem to brag about it. --CAV Link to Original

The title of a column by New York Times DealBook editor Andrew Sorkin certainly got my attention on the heels of Nelson Mandela's death: "How Mandela Shifted Views on Freedom of Markets". Recalling that Mandela was a Marxist and knowing that South Africa is hardly Galt's Gulch, I was intrigued. Had the man revered as the father of South Africa actually had a Yeltsinesque "supermarket epiphany", only to be frustrated by other politicians? Not quite: But as the five-day conference of high-level speed-dating wore on [the 1992 World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland --ed], Mr. Mandela soon decided he needed to reconsider his long-held views: "Madiba then had some very interesting meetings with the leaders of the Communist Parties of China and Vietnam," Mr. Mboweni wrote, using Mr. Mandela/s clan name. "They told him frankly as follows: 'We are currently striving to privatize state enterprises and invite private enterprise into our economies. We are Communist Party governments, and you are a leader of a national liberation movement. Why are you talking about nationalization?'" Although the article claims a genuine change of heart on Mandela's part and touts "capitalist" reforms in South Africa, the very name of one of his major policies belies the claim that he embraced capitalism: But for all of Mr. Mandela's embrace of capitalism and free markets, as demonstrated though his policy called GEAR (Growth, Employment and Redistribution), the results raise more questions than answers about its success. [bold added] The article ends with the following gross injustice against capitalism, disguised as an inconclusive verdict on Mandela's legacy: Mr. Mandela may have ended apartheid and years of awful violence, but his dream of creating a country that, as he said, is "a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities” may still remain a dream that capitalism and free markets have yet to solve. As Michael Hurd recently pointed out, "Mandela's biggest enemy was not racism, but collectivism." Racism and communism are each just varieties of collectivism. Mandela, by embracing a mixed economy, did not really try capitalism. I suppose, in that sense, we could say that, "capitalism and free markets have yet to solve" South Africa's troubles: Whatever he thought of them, Mandela never tried them. --CAV Link to Original

Reader Snedcat points me to an interesting, but somewhat rambling article about the "Disease of 'Public Health'" over at Spiked. Perhaps the most interesting is the first paragraph, which provides a laundry list of recent proposals that have been made in Britain the name of public health: ... minimum pricing for alcohol, plain packaging for tobacco, a 20 per cent tax on fizzy drinks, a fat tax, a sugar tax, a fine for not being a member of a gym, graphic warnings on bottles of alcohol, a tax on some foods, subsidies on other foods, a ban on the sale of hot food to children before 5pm, a ban on anyone born after the year 2000 ever buying tobacco, a ban on multi-bag packs of crisps, a ban on packed lunches, a complete ban on alcohol advertising, a ban on electronic cigarettes, a ban on menthol cigarettes, a ban on large servings of fizzy drinks, a ban on parents taking their kids to school by car, and a ban on advertising any product whatsoever to children. The article goes on to raise some interesting methodological and motivational questions about the new breed of scolds behind such proposals. It also draws some historical parallels with religiously-motivated health and behavioral crusades from the past. These are all worthwhile and interesting, and the author even touches on a crucial question usually missing from modern discussions about health policy (i.e., whatever role the government is assumed to have regarding our health): "n an enlightened society the judgement [about whether a given health risk is acceptable] can only be made by the one person who bears all the risk and enjoys all the benefits: the individual." That said, the article wanders, as if in need of a moral and political compass. Morally, it could have stood to take a more fixed gaze at the whole idea of third parties making cost-benefit analyses. (That said, it does challenge the idea by examining how an individual could have different criteria for making a choice than some government official.) Politically, it would have done well to ask of all such measures, the question Ayn Rand asked when governments took money and freedom from individuals: "By what right?" Modern puritans have the power they do because too many people tolerate them making such calls. This tolerance unfortunately extends to the political realm, where government coercion of private individuals is increasingly accepted, rather than regarded with the high degree of suspicion that it deserves. It is this coercion that empowers "the assortment of neurotics and authoritarians that make up the modern ‘public health’ movement" to dictate even to those of us who see them for what they are. --CAV Link to Original

Noting that "black students scoring far below white students on various mental tests has become so familiar that people in different parts of the ideological spectrum have long ago developed their different explanations for why this is so," Thomas Sowell introduces some new data that demands different explanations. The November 9th-15th issue of the distinguished British magazine The Economist reports that, among children who are eligible for free meals in England's schools, black children of immigrants from Africa meet the standards of school tests nearly 60 percent of the time -- as do immigrant children from Bangladesh and Pakistan. Black children of immigrants from the Caribbean meet the standards less than 50 percent of the time. At the bottom, among those children who are all from families with low enough incomes to receive free meals at school, are white English children, who meet the standards 30 percent of the time. [format edits] Considered only in racial terms, the low-income result is the opposite of what recent studies in the United States usually find. Sowell has a good hypothesis regarding the differences seen on each side of the Pond: What low-income whites in England and ghetto blacks in the United States have in common is a generations-long indoctrination in victimhood. The political left in both countries has, for more than half a century, maintained a steady and loud drumbeat of claims that the deck is stacked against those at the bottom. This reminds me somewhat of the underlying thesis in Sowell's Black Rednecks and White Liberals, except that he is considering the role that philosophical ideas -- although he stops short of calling them that -- play in shaping a culture. That consideration is the hallmark of Ayn Rand's cultural commentary, and I think that more such analysis can only accelerate the abandonment of the wrong (and not even wrong) beliefs that are guiding so many of us today onto a path of certain ruin. --CAV Link to Original

A Hard Road for the Creative Writing for Slate, Jessica Olien maintains that most people actually dislike creativity, although they may well appreciate its fruits and grasp that it is good on an intellectual level. While I am not sure I agree with everything she says, I think the following point is particularly insightful: Creative ideas take effort to evaluate and may well cause emotional discomfort among those with less-active thinking habits. Fortunately, as the article points out, many creative people learn to overcome that common limitation in others. Weekend Reading "Rather than dismiss this as new-age silliness or psychobabble, I encourage people to look inward and identify what leads them to feel more or less emotionally safe." -- Michael Hurd, in "Emotional 'Safety'" at The Delaware Wave "As they spout off, they are admitting, albeit implicitly, that they are not able or willing to figure out what's true anyway, so all that matters is that they look like they know what they're talking about." -- Michael Hurd, in "Saying 'No' for No Reason" at The Delaware Coast Press "It may surprise those who damn 'the lust for gold' to hear this but gold, like music and painting, is a spiritual value." -- Harry Binswanger, in "In Praise of Gold. Not a 'Barbarous Relic' but a Spiritual Value" at Forbes "My previous column ... was not meant as an advocacy of a gold standard--not if that means giving government the power to dictate what is and isn't money." -- Harry Binswanger, in "Free Money! Then Free the Rest of the Economy" at Forbes In More Detail In his piece on gold, Harry Binswanger makes his argument that gold has spiritual value by generalizing from comments Ayn Rand made about music and applying her identification of reason as man's means of survival. I'll include his excerpt of Rand on music here. And I'll encourage my readers to head over to Forbes for the rest of the piece (linked above), which is absorbing and inspiring in its advocacy of gold. A Classic, Now Illustrated From a recent announcement by the Ayn Rand Institute: Especially after reading the related Binswanger piece on gold, I look forward to revisiting this classic. --CAV Link to Original

1. Will GMail soon be easy to export? Actually, it already is, because it can be accessed by standard mail protocols. This fact has allowed me to use getmail to back mine up weekly for well over a year. At any rate, Google has announced the gradual rollout of a new feature that will make it easy to export email and calendar data. Interestingly, the announcement also mentions that this new feature will permit easy migration to other email services. If this new feature comes at the expense of GMail no longer behaving like regular email under the hood, I'll take the hints and switch. 2. We took the kids to see Santa yesterday evening. Pumpkin, who was terrified of Kris Kringle last year, had no trouble marching right up to the Big Man and asking for a "kitchen" this year. She was also a big help when we were getting pictures and having trouble getting her baby brother to smile. He usually smiles upon first seeing her, and often laughs at her antics. So when three adults failed to get anything more than a fleeting smile out of the boy, I put her to work. We now have a picture of Santa and our smiling baby boy. 3. Can an elite rugby player hack it in the NFL? The Indianapolis Colts are in the process of finding out: Now the experiment has yielded a very tangible result. [Kenyan-born Daniel] Adongo isn't yet ready to square off against veteran offensive tackles, coming off the edge to chase quarterbacks. Given the rate he's developing, that day probably will come. But for now, special teams are the perfect fit for Adongo. That's the closest thing to performing rugby tasks on the gridiron, with a single ball handler to be tackled and fewer moving parts. His speed will be an asset there, enabling him to cover a lot of ground in short order. The transition makes sense in many respects, but has nonetheless required an impressive amount of hard work on Adongo's part. 4. File this one under comedy and "I'm married, not dead." I ran into an old LA Times blog posting that asked whether Christina Hendricks, who plays Joan on Mad Men is "too plump for primetime". Uhhh ... No. -- CAV Link to Original

Within a recent discussion of the superior ability of capitalism to improve the general welfare, John Stossel describes an amusing encounter: Today, [bill] Gates spends his time giving money away. He's unusually conscientious about it. He experiments, funding what works and dropping what doesn't. His charity work saves lives. Good for him. But Gates was also unusually skilled at bringing people better software. Had he continued doing that at Microsoft, I bet the company would have been even more productive. And Gates would have done more for the world. I tried that thought experiment on [Ted] Turner, who, in turn, unclipped his microphone and walked off the set. [bold added] Stossel clearly hit a nerve, but I don't see benevolence as a primary explanation for Turner's reaction. At best, I can see self-doubt: Perhaps Turner finds his charity work more fulfilling than other activities, but since he rejects egoism, he can't see this as a valid reason to have moved into the area. Too bad for him. Stossel's piece is informatve, but while it is true that the rising tide of capitalism lifts all boats, this is not why we should fight for it, as Ayn Rand once argued: The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve "the common good." It is true that capitalism does--if that catch-phrase has any meaning--but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man's rational nature, that it protects man's survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice. It is interesting to see that Turner's anti-egoistic drive to "guilt" other wealthy people into parting with vast sums is making him less effective at his professed goal -- and perhaps even unable to derive any selfish enjoyment from his own charitable work. -- CAV Link to Original

Many blue state voters who supported ObamaCare are about to be force-fed their own dog food, according to Dick Morris: In red states, Republican insurance commissioners have generally decided to let insurers and their customers cooperate to waive the cancellations. But the true believers in the blue states who serve as insurance commissioners have largely refused. Thus, the very voters the Democratic Party depends on are the most likely to continue to be forced to cancel the policies they want, despite their wishes and protests. It's hard to think of a more shortsighted policy than to anger your own voters in so heavy-handed a way. Now the arguments about big government and the heavy hand of regulation will no longer be theoretical to Democratic voters. They will be forced to endure the cancellation of their own healthcare plans. [bold added] This may be true, but I am less sanguine than Morris about this being anything but what reader Jim May is fond of calling a "teachable moment". Why? The Democrats have two big advantages still with such voters: (1) They will play "blame the Republicans" to an always-receptive audience; and (2) This will be relatively easy for them to do because they (and this audience), being altruists, think that ObamaCare is the "right" thing to do. The GOP will lose long term unless it stops perseverating on the poor roll-out of a system that can't help but be bad -- because it is designed to forcibly nullify individual judgement throughout the process of caring for one's health. Until one rejects the premise that we are our brothers' keepers, one will not muster the moral courage or the indignant outrage to ask: "By what right does some clueless third party dictate to me out of the blue how and whom I pay for medical care?" The GOP should be doing this already, and should be helping these voters see that, if anything, they are not mad enough bout their policy cancellations. Morris has found an opportunity to score, but the ball won't find the net on its own. -- CAV Link to Original

Often, conservatives realize that something is amiss about the political status quo, but opt for a quick fix, and often one that actually compounds a bad situation. For example, the blog, Fixing California correctly identifies a problem: public sector labor unions misusing members' dues for political lobbying or campaigning. The proposed solution disappoints: The reform, known by the shorthand of "paycheck protection," typically requires unions to have the permission of individual members before their dues are used for anything but collective bargaining. Several major problems immediately leap into my mind about the law. Among these problems are: (1) The Supreme Court has already ruled that at least part of what this proposed new law is supposed to prohibit is illegal; (2) The law seems ripe for being undermined by whatever some court or future legislature might decide falls under the umbrella of "collective bargaining", since public sector unions are ultimately dealing with the same entity, be it by traditional negotiations or political maneuvering; and (3) Why not at least float the idea of repealing the laws that coerce individual employees and governments into having to deal with these unions in the first place? Like various "right to work" laws, this proposal is a misguided attempt to remedy one violation of rights with another. What is really needed is to repeal the rights-violating laws that have caused this mess in the first place, as Ari Armstrong of the TOS Blog made clear some time ago when he commented on Indiana's "right to work" law: The conservative solution ... merely compounds previous violations of freedom of contract with new ones, apparently on the grounds that two wrongs somehow make a right. In [this] view, the bill is good because it "prohibits contracts requiring workers to pay union dues." But why should the government be in the business of setting the terms of employment contracts? Employers should be free to hire whomever they want on whatever terms the parties mutually agree to accept. There is no fundamental difference between the government butting in to prohibit the payment of union dues and the government butting in to dictate how they are spent. Both of these "solutions" violate the right to contract. Rather than joining the "progressive" left in piling layer upon layer of government meddling onto the backs of individual citizens, conservatives should work to remove such layers on the principle that they violate individual rights. -- CAV Link to Original

David Shribman, calling Gerald Ford "underappreciated", marks an anniversary that is more obscure than it deserves: [This Friday] is the 40th anniversary of the confirmation of Gerald R. Ford as vice president. On the surface there's little reason to mark the ascension of anyone to a position that John Adams, the first man to occupy the vice presidency, described with some accuracy as "the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived." There have been 47 vice presidents and it would be surprising if you could name a quarter of them. Reading the rest of Shribman's column, however, one sees that America got what it needed at the time when Ford assumed the Presidency: an even-keeled, decent man, who only reluctantly accepted power. Shribman reminds me of a few remarks by a contemporary of Ford's who did appreciate what he brought to the table: Ayn Rand, whose fame is enjoying a resurgence during a presidency held by someone very much Ford's opposite. I'll note a couple of her comments here. First, Rand apreciated Gerald Ford's response to the Mayaguez Incident during the Vietnam War: To go from the horrendous to the grotesque, consider the Mayaguez incident. I hasten to say that were it not for the proper and highly moral action taken by President Ford, the consequences of that incident could have been more horrendous than Phnom Penh. That a small band of those same Cambodian savages dared seize an unarmed American ship, was such an affront to America (and to civilization) that the collapse of international law would have followed, if President Ford had not acted as he did. To borrow Senator Goldwater's very appropriate phrase, every "half-assed nation" would have felt free to attack the U.S.--which would have meant world rule by terrorist gangs.We shall never know whether the seizure of the Mayaguez was a deliberate provocation to test what the global communist scum could get away with--or the spontaneous feat of a local gang drunk with power and acting more royalist than their kings. But this does not concern us: in either case, when a foreign country initiates the use of armed force against us, it is our moral obligation to answer by force--as promptly and unequivocally as is necessary to make it clear that the matter is non-negotiable. ("The Lessons of Vietnam", in The Voice of Reason, pp. 144-145) Second, she offered the following general appraisal of Ford ahead of the 1976 elections: In today's political situation, a positive statement about any candidate is valid only at the time it is made, since no one can tell whose policy may change to what or when. Up to the present (and, I hope, in the future), I support the candidacy of President Ford. I disagree with his policies in very many respects, but he deserves great credit for his fight against government spending and for his attempt to cut down on government controls. Obviously, he is an honest man who shows no symptoms of power-lust and no desire to run everyone's life. This is an unusual value in today's politics. [bold added] ("A Last Survey, Part I", The Ayn Rand Letter, vol. IV, no. 2, Dec. 1975) In this age of massive and growing government intrusiveness, it is worth recalling that men like Ford have served relatively recently and might still be out there. We would do well to remember Gerald Ford this week. -- CAV Link to Original

Spying "Sanction of the Victim" in a Word I enjoy stopping by Word Spy from time to time to see what new and interesting words are out there in the popular media, but I got a small jolt from an entry I saw this morning: copyduty -- n. A legal or voluntary obligation assumed by the owner of a work in exchange for having the work protected by copyright. Given the increased cultural currency of my favorite novelist-philosopher, Ayn Rand, I must say that this is an interesting term. The term perfectly exemplifies something she once discussed in a famous speech to the graduating class at West Point: the often-unappreciated cultural influence of philosophers, such as the duty-foisting Immanuel Kant. She also had a more general umbrella term for such practices as "compensating" for ownership, as if it isn't a right, or it isn't earned by the creative act itself: "sanction of the victim". Rand's longtime collaborator, Leonard Peikoff, defines sanction of the victim as, "the willingness of the good to suffer at the hands of the evil, to accept the role of sacrificial victim for the 'sin' of creating values." Weekend Reading "[W]hen Walmart opens a new store, it's not uncommon for as many as 10,000 people to apply for just 300 jobs." -- Doug Altner, in "Why Do 1.4 Million Americans Work at Walmart, With Many More Trying To?" at Forbes "The FDA is waging war against the mind of the individual. The mind is a terrible thing to lay to waste." -- Harry Binswanger, in "FDA Says, 'No Gene Test for You: You Can't Handle the Truth'" at Forbes "People with strong moral standards often get frustrated because they can't distinguish between explanations and excuses." -- Michael Hurd, in "Control and Serenity Don't Mix" at The Delaware Wave "When I say I'm thankful to man, I'm expressing reverence for reason; the one quality that animates human beings to thrive and produce. " -- Michael Hurd, in "Thanksgiving, Rationally Speaking" at The Delaware Coast Press My Two Cents Right around the time I heard about the Binswanger piece, I also heard about one man's reaction to having been told, erroneously, in his DNA test results, that he was doomed to suffer from a rare, debilitating illness. His reaction -- to understand and question the results -- is an excellent example of someone behaving against the FDA's stereotype. (This is not to say that the FDA's meddling would be justified, even if most people did behave the way the FDA assumes we would.) More Professionalism The manager of Arsenal F.C. has brought back the club suit: In a bid to maximise team spirit in his squad, Arsène Wenger recently decided to re-establish the tradition of wearing team suits - proper suits, not tracksuits - to games on match days. Follow the second link for a team shot. It is nice to see, in this era of nihilistic -- and yet snobbish -- pressure to conform to slovenliness, that the players are on board. --CAV Link to Original

1. If you have too much spare time on your hands, you could while it awayby building your own cell phone: Making the DIY cellphone can be a fairly involved process but it doesn't necessarily require specific electronics expertise. You'll need to order the circuit board and electronics components (about $200 total) and have access to some other electronics tools. There's a good amount of fine hand soldering to be done: about 60 components, mostly surface-mount, which can take from one to five or ten hours, depending on your experience. Programming and, especially, debugging the phone can take a while - again, depending on your experience and how much goes wrong. Making the case requires some plywood and veneer, along with access to a laser cutter (or you can find your own way to enclosure the circuit board). In short, this is a difficult but potentially do-able project. An amusing paradox occurs to me: Such a phone would be perfect for parents of small children, who would mistake one of these for a toy, and prefer to play with a "real" phone instead -- but such people have the least time on their hands. Also: Compare the expense of this bare-bones phone, in time and money, to the price (even if not carrier-subsidized) of an average phone (which will have many more features) and raise a glass to division of labor. 2. As if New Orleans quarterback Drew Brees didn't have a sufficiently well-stocked trophy cabinet-- or the contest isn't already interesting enough: Brees, meanwhile, has led the Saints to consecutive wins against the Cowboys, 49ers and Falcons. He's gaining momentum at just the right time. And the primetime stage against the 10-1 Seahawks provides the perfect forum to make his mark. The MVP is the only significant honor remaining for Brees in his Hall of Fame career. He's been named the Super Bowl MVP, Man of the Year, All-Pro and the Offensive Player of the Year twice. [bold added] I find the fact that he hasn't won this award borderline comical. 3. My favorite soccer manager knows better than I thought how to handle hostile media attacks: "What do you know?" he said. "You must have heard the rumours," shouted the journos. "'If you print anything, I will attack," said Mr Wenger (meaning, "I will sue".) And gradually the mob fell quiet. If any of them had said a word about the nature of the rumours, they would be opening themselves to a libel case which they could never hope to win. What they needed was for Mr Wenger to mention the rumours himself, and then they were safe to print his "denial" complete with innuendo and "no smoke without fire" commentaries. But with Mr Wenger not saying a word they were forced to return to their offices and face very angry editors who had seen a story slip away from them through the use of a very simple ploy. One cannot help but speculate on how much improved news coverage would become if, at every step of the process -- from interviewees, to reporters and editors, and all the way down to the readership -- everyone asked "What do you know?" (Implicit in the question is a corrollary: "How do you know it?") 4. Pssst! If you want to buy perfectly legal, American-manufactured 100W incandescent light bulbs, go here. Of course, this will last until some bureaucrat closes the "commercial grade" loophole. Or, better yet, such hoop-jumping could become a thing of the past with the eventual repeal of the inane law that bans the free sale of Edison bulbs. -- CAV Link to Original

Editor's Note: I wish my readers a happy Thanksgiving: I plan to take tomorrow off. Following the recently-ended year of "negotiations" with Iran, Caroline Glick concludes the following regarding President Obama's foreign policy goals: That is certainly a tempting and understandable conclusion, but it might be giving too much credit to the feckless empty suit to attribute to him enough long-range thought to have overall goals of his own. That said, Glick's kind of analysis can be extended to the President's actions generally and is spot-on in this crucial respect: Actions speak louder than words. Whatever is going on between Obama's ears, it is undeniable that its consistent effect has been to undermine his own country at home and abroad. -- CAV PS: It is most instructive to note, as Glick does, that in over a year of "negotiations" with this state sponsor of terrorism, "the final deal reflects Iran's opening positions." Link to Original

John Stossel relaysa tale of government intrusiveness that should astound -- although it is apparently par for the course today's regulatory state. Here's a sample: The inspectors told Marty[, a magician by trade, on one of ten unannounced visits to his home] that the Animal Welfare Act required him to file paperwork demonstrating that he had "a comprehensive written disaster plan detailing everything I would do with my rabbit in the event of a fire, a flood, a tornado, an ice storm." The federal forms list "common emergencies likely to happen to your facility ... not necessarily limited to: structural fire, electrical outage, disruption in clean water or feed supply, disruption in access to facility (e.g., road closures), intentional attack on the facilities ... earthquake, landslide/mudslide/avalanche ... " Our government should worry a tenth as much for the rights of its citizens as it does for the welfare of captive rabbits. If it did, it would confine itself to acting within its proper scope, which would frequently entail acting (and costing) far less than it does now. -- CAV Link to Original

Victor Davis Hanson, writing about a new nuclear "agreement" with Iran, concludes: There is not a good record, from Philip of Macedon to Hitler to Stalin in the 1940s to Carter and the Soviets in the 1970s to radical Islamists in the 1990s, of expecting authoritarians and thugs to listen to reason, cool their aggression, and appreciate democracies' sober and judicious appeal to logic -- once they sense in the West greater eagerness to announce new, rather than to enforce old, agreements. [bold added] What are the Islamists sensing? An appeaser's de facto investment in failure. Range-of-the-moment pragmatists like Obama, and Bush before him, are concerned only with staying in "power", which means being able to point to something they can call progress, actual ramifications determined by reference to principles and historical precedent be damned. Each failure becomes, to a rogue state and its enabling Western politicians alike, the chance to "hammer out" a new "agreement". I cannot think of a better way to incentivize a refusal to take our country seriously as the agreements eventually go the same way as another misuse of paper by governments: hyperinflated fiat currency. Only time will tell what will happen first: (1) the American people (with whom the buck stops) will notice the worthlessness of all this scrip, or (2) some disaster befalls us. We can start insisting on real value now, or we will regret its absence later. -- CAV Link to Original

Third Term, Anyone? Northrup Buechner warns us, in the piece linked below, that, "If the President persists in rejecting all authority other than his own, the denouement would depend on the side taken by the Armed Forces." Buechner is right that, no matter what happened in such a case, it would be a serious cultural blow and a terrible precedent. Having said that, perhaps the author of an Investors Business Daily article wondering why the President has been firing so many military officers (including nine senior generals over the past year) isn't alarmed enough. Weekend Reading "His epitaph should be: Here lies a man, who, at the dawn of the industrial age, attempted to prove muscles superior to the mind, and paid with life." -- Harry Binswanger, in "John Henry, a Steel-Drivin' Man--and a Luddite" at Forbes "Mr. Obama is moving our government away from its traditional system of checks and balances and toward the one-man-rule that dominates third world countries." -- Northrup Buechner, in "Obama's Disdain for the Constitution Means We Risk Losing Our Republic" at Forbes "[V]isibility cannot become an end in itself by attempting to fake achievement or success." -- Michael Hurd, in "Attention, Please!" at The Delaware Wave "Like most laypeople, many psychotherapists are still confused over the distinction between self-esteem and narcissism." -- Michael Hurd, in "Does a Narcissist Have Self-Esteem?" at The Delawae Coast Press "The only lasting 'fix' is freedom." -- Paul Hsieh, in "The Only Obamacare Fix Is for Obama to Legalize Real Health Insurance" at Forbes My Two Cents In the immediate term, I regard the Buechner piece, which I mentioned earlier in the week, as the most important. I urge you to read it if you have time for nothing else today. But beyond that, the Binswanger piece is also very good and very important in the long term. Do read the Binswanger piece for an outstanding demolition of a leftist symbol. I had vaguely fond memories of that song from my childhood -- but hadn't thought about it in years -- until Binswanger set me straight. This is the kind of writing that can effect very positive cultural change. Web Nostalgia Via Hacker News, here's a list of "Ancient Abandoned Websites That Still Work". Among them is the "oldest continuously running webcam on the interwebs". --CAV Link to Original

1. Here's a new word for you: phytonugget -- n. A small filament of gold that collects in the leaf of a tree that grows over a gold deposit. Following links will take you to the story that explains where the word came from, as well as indicating why cheap helium balloons look soon to be a thing of the past. 2. My daughter decided to sit in the barber chair "all by myself" for the first time yesterday during her bang trim. As I paid, she then amused herself by giggling and chasing a young boy that another couple had brought with them. One of the nice things about raising young children is that they often do such a great job of entertaining themselves. That would have been the highlight of an otherwise drab day: I had a cold, as did both kids, and it rained the whole time. I was also feeling a little bad for Pumpkin due to the fact that the baby had needed much more attention than usual all day. But the best of the day came last for me: As we were coming inside from picking Mrs. Van Horn up from work, I was telling her what a good girl Pumpkin had been all day. I was carrying her to the door, and after I said that, she reacted by saying, "You're my friend," and giving me a nice hug. 3. Is there a journalistic analogue to the "Uncanny Valley" when it comes to predicting whether something will "go viral" on the Internet? Annalee Newitz of io9 thinks so, and she calls it the "valley of ambiguity": More than anything, the fear of a smeared reputation is what creates that dip in virality. Sharing a story means that in some sense we stake our reputation on it. That's why sharing a story is not the same thing as enjoying a story, reading a story, or even learning from a story. I know for certain that there are plenty of stories that get read, but not shared. I have seen the statistics on io9's back end. But when we measure a story's success by virality, which is what we must do in the age of social media, the content of our popular culture changes. We measure success by what people aren't afraid to share with their neighbors, rather than what people will read on their own. [bold added] I am not sure I agree that we must measure the success of a story by "viralty" (or at least that that should be the main or only criterion of success, if that's what Newitz means), but I think her analysis is worthwhile. It certainly seems to explain some things I have seen become popular even as I have wondered, "How can anyone buy that?" 4. A young science blogger comments on a photograph of a sunset on Mars: Take a moment to realize that this is the result of a robotic motor vehicle travelling millions of kilometres of space, successfully landing on the surface of another planet and communicating with Earth from there. [link in original] Our age of powerful, hand-held computers and seemingly routine robotic space exploration is something of a victim of its own success: We do need to remind ourselves from time to time of how truly amazig it all is. -- CAV Link to Original

The often insightful Dick Morris blows it big time in a recent Polyanna-esque column touting the de facto demise of ObamaCare. He ends it as follows: So all that will be left are some very good consumer protection insurance reforms requiring coverage of pre-existing conditions and a ban on cancellation or premium hikes in the event of illness. Beyond that, there will be a vestigal administrative superstructure erected to run a massive, national healthcare system in which only 1.5 million people are participating. Like a monument in the desert, it will gather sand and erode over time. Obama's legacy. If only this were all, but no. Even such a result camouflages the very real danger Obama poses to the great legacy of America's founders -- our freedom. Northrup Buechner (who notes that, "ince President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, he has changed it five times") argues this point with startling clarityat Forbes: The most important point is that Mr. Obama does not consider himself bound by the Constitution. He could not have made that more clear. He has drawn a line in the concrete and we cannot ignore it. Those who currently hold political office, and who want to keep our system of government, need to act now. Surely, rejection of the Constitution is grounds for impeachment and charges should be filed. In addition, there are many other actions that Congressmen can and should take--actions that will tell Mr. Obama that we have seen where he is going and we will not let our country go without a fight. Gloating over Barack Obama's apparently losing battle poses the very real threat of losing the war for freedom. -- CAV Link to Original

Thomas Sowell writes about something I am particularly concerned about as a parent: the war on achievement being fought by the left. Although the following is more of an aside within his column, it struck a chord with me: On top of what Sowell points out in the second paragraph, this astounding and deliberate misuse of language manages to righteously commit injustice on many levels at once (evidence, reasoning, or contradictory goals be damned): (1) to deprive individuals of recognition for their achievements, (2) to assert that individuals exist only as parts of groups to which they are members from birth, (3) to assign personal guilt through association, and (most important) (4) to claim justification for the enslavement of some groups by others. On of the most important things a parent must do is encourage one's child to set and achieve goals. Although I was already aware that I'd have to navigate through our "every kid gets a trophy" culture, I have noticed that it is possible (and common) to heap inappropriate praise on children. (This is even on top of accounting for what even very young ones can realistically accomplish.) It is almost impossible, for example, to look at modern children's programming that does not treat individual effort as if it doesn't exist or divorce effort from reward. So I guess that if I help her see though this nonsense or she does so herself, we can look forward to the same battle again, from a slightly different angle, later on. The progression seems to be: empty praise, hooray for the group, pillage groups that have more than your own. Forewarned is forearmed. On a much more positive note, the rest of the Sowell piece brings up an inspirational story you probably haven't heard of yet. Do read the whole thing. -- CAV Link to Original