Gus Van Horn blog

Marco Arment leads off some perspicacious comments on the phenomenon of "anti-Apple anger" by defining the phenomenon and noting that it is one-sided: I've noticed a very clear trend among tech sites I read: Android fans are unusually quick to fill the comment box with rage on articles that mention anything positive about Apple or its products. The reverse -- Apple fans leaving angry comments on pro-Android articles -- is almost completely absent from the sites I've seen, including sites like The Verge that have many readers in both camps. Arment wonders why this is the case after observing a similar reaction from Microsoft fans to a negative review he wrote of a Microsoft Store. The anger from Microsoft and Android fans at anything pro-Apple usually has undertones of disbelief and frustration, as if to say, "I can't believe I have to say this again. Why don't you get it? What's wrong with you people?" Arment boils down the source of the anger to a couple of things (either or both of which could apply to any individual): (1) an uneasy suspicion that one may have, in fact, made a bad purchasing decision; and (2) a genuine bewilderment on the part of Android/Windows users about the willingness of so many users to put up with Apple's design decisions, which Arment admits eliminate features many people want and are done with "attitude" (i.e., in a way that many find high-handed). Arment adds the following speculation, with which I am inclined to agree: The apparent asymmetry in angry comments is likely because the Apple-fan attitude of aloofness keeps most Apple fans away from dedicated Android and Windows sites and articles, whereas the anti-Apple attitude probably drives many people on that side to try to "rescue" or convince Apple fans that they're blind or idiotic. Let's set aside people who go with the flow, and just buy whatever everyone they know says is good, or are similarly passive about this choice. There are three basic possibilities regarding any one who is fan of a product or a company: (1) He chose his product for good reasons (not all of which will be apparent to everyone); (2) He has made a bad choice and is unaware of it; (3) He is, in fact, some kind of unreachable dolt. As Arment notes, the differing degrees of freedom the two types of platform offer couple with different customer needs to make neither platform better than the other in all cases. This means that someone who rails at the first category of fan will just look like an idiot to that fan. Insulting a fan of the second type will do nothing to motivate him to grasp whatever argument one might have made. Regarding the third type, why bang one's head against a wall? If someone genuinely thinks there is something wrong with a phenomenon like Apple's popularity, frustration is understandable, at least initially. (I think there is something culturally wrong with certain aspects of it, but the problem is hardly limited to what people are willing to take from Apple.) But devoting one's time to venting frustration is counterproductive. One might feel a momentary sense of satisfaction -- but did one really "show 'em"? No. The only really productive course of action is to determine to the best one can what is wrong, the extent to which one can change it, and how much of an effort to effect such a change is really worth it against everything else one values in life. Life is short: Why would anyone waste even a minute or so of it berating someone else over something like the phone he decided to buy. -- CAV Link to Original

It's sitter screening time again. My wife is going to be exceptionally busy over the next couple of weeks, and we need someone to cover for date nights and occasional busy bursts later on, anyway. Part-time daycare is working well for us, but it has its limits. "What, Gus? You haven't taken care of that already?" I can almost hear you asking. My answer: I thought I might have, just before the holidays, but learned otherwise. I just haven't had the time to address the issue until recently. Right before we left Boston, our favorite sitter offered to connect us with a friend here in St. Louis who could sit for us during the moving-in period. This looked like a good way to avoid having to go through the usual screening/hiring process on top of the move: We'd be there anyway, just unpacking boxes, for example, so we wouldn't really be at the mercy of a mediocre sitter, and we'd become acquainted with the sitter and be able to decide where to go from there. The friend, whom I should have called beforehand, turned out to be too busy, but had friends who might be interested in sitting and offered referrals. We used two of these. They were nice enough people, but inexperienced with infants and untrained in infant CPR. We could help with the first ourselves and offered to send each sitter to a CPR course (These take just a few hours.) later on, if we decided to use them after the move was complete. Either would have made a fine sitter in time, but for other factors that gradually became apparent... One needed to learn how to use a calendar and the other took forever to get to email. The first of these tended to forget about other obligations and had to reschedule a couple of times within a month. I wasn't especially bothered by this until I got a call -- after I'd gone to bed -- for a cancellation for an appointment the next day -- so she could study for an exam she knew all semester she would have to take. That one caught me completely flat-footed: Good thing I didn't have a deadline to meet that day. I knew I had to replace her then. The other sitter I might still use occasionally, but since most of my needs are of the short-notice variety and she usually takes a couple of days to reply to my emails, she's not really an option most of the time. I think my usual screening process would have caught the second and would have had a reasonable chance of catching the first. I am not going to beat myself up over having to start over again: Under the circumstances, this seemed a reasonable course of action, but hindsight is showing me that it was really a gamble, and that I lost. I have had to do an entire screening process from scratch anyway. (And I don't have a "go-to" sitter for all practical purposes after being here for several months.) If I had a similar situation again, I'd probably try to make up for whatever I'd normally do being missing (e.g., speaking to more than one reference). Both sitters had problems that became apparent only after time -- but asking the right kinds of questions of references could have caught them and saved me time. In any event, what prompted me to post on this was my recollection of a friend's theory as to why I was so happy with my Boston sitters. He thought I was mainly lucky, drawing as I did from a larger pool of candidates. I am only close to hiring now, but this seems not to be the case. The St. Louis area is just a little over half the size of the Boston area, is more spread out, and -- while Wash U. is a fine school -- having it nearby is not quite the same as being in the Athens of America, with its numerous colleges and high-tech economy. And yet, I am finding once again that I will have to turn down very good candidates and am kicking myself for not just biting the bullet and doing this back in October. Everyone I am talking to is CPR trained and has at least some experience sitting or nanny-ing children of about my daughter's age. On paper, they look as good as my Boston sitters in other ways, too, and the ones I've spoken to sound comparable. I speak to references today, and expect to have a set of three sitters, any one of whom will be more reliable and responsive than the two I'd employed before. That said, I can't help but remark on a few applicants I rejected out of hand. I was about to cast this as advice for people interested in becoming baby sitters, but much of this seems to be the kind of thing that can't even be advice. (That is, if I'm having to say it to someone, that person is probably beyond -- or completely unready for -- the advice.) Instead, I'll cast it as gotchya's for parents who need sitters. Here are red flags from the current pile of summary rejections: If someone advertises as being available on short notice and answers your ad -- more than a day or so to reply to your further inquiry is a red flag. Signing a reply to a customer review "[name] Life Ministries" indicates someone who will be more than you bargain for, and in a very bad way. Someone who is too lazy to use complete sentences may well be too lazy to do other, more important things. When your ad clearly states a set of qualifications and an applicant is missing more than one, you should wonder about how well the person will pay attention to or follow other instructions. Someone who can't or won't answer five or six questions about issues not covered in your ad or their profile demonstrates either a lack of genuine interest in the job or doesn't sufficiently appreciate the concerns of a parent: Uh-oh. I always send out a short list of questions: About half of the initial respondents to my ads weed themselves out for me by not bothering to answer. (I cut-and-paste from a list of things that probably won't be covered, add the applicant's name, and tailor the question list as necessary.) This practice has served me well in the past, and intend to deviate from it far less in the future. -- CAV Link to Original

When a leftist preens about tolerance, it's dollars to donuts that there's a bigot deep down inside. If a leftist blathers about "diversity", closer examination will find a conformist, and a most doctrinaire one at that. And, above all, when you hear a leftist whine about bullying, watch out: You can expect to be subjected to that or worse, masquerading as enlightenment. The entrenched leftist administration at Montclair State University recently provided an example when it went after a student who posted a rude remark about a woman's appearance on social media -- after letting someone go Scott free for disrupting a conservative speaker, of course: ... Joseph Aziz, a 26-year-old grad student from Weehawken, was issued an order by the university telling him to keep away from the woman and to refrain from commenting further on the matter. The latter is what we in the journalism business call an "unconstitutional prior restraint." Robert Shibley of the Foundation on Individual Rights in Education calls it that, too. "They simply told him you're not allowed to talk about this on social media and that's a power no American governmental entity has," said Shibley. "President Nixon didn't get away with that in the Pentagon Papers case and that involved national security." When Aziz proceeded to discuss the case on Facebook, he was informed that he would be suspended for a semester. When he appealed, he got a letter from university Vice President Karen Pennington rejecting that appeal and stating, "It is hard to understand how someone your age could truly expect that what you put on the internet is private." Contrast this to the great lengths this institution went through, detailed earlier in the piece, to ensure that the terrorist Billy Ayers got to speak without interruption or intimidation at another campus event. But there is another interesting issue at play here. Suppose Montclair State were not, improperly, a government entity (or run, or heavily regulated by the government). Suppose further that the school had a record of evenhandedly ensuring that guest speakers could finish a sentence when they took the podium. What if Montclair State deemed it appropriate to enforce certain rules of decorum regarding how its students treated one another? Shouldn't it, as a private institution, be free to do so? The fact that the government is involved so heavily would make such a rule a freedom of speech issue even if it were not merely being used to harass a student. So it is that we see that the left is not just abusing government power in its "anti-bullying" crusade-of-the-day. By insisting on government schools, the left endangers both freedom of speech and genuine attempts to encourage students to be civil to one another. -- CAV Link to Original

The New York Times recently ran an article about the power of what the authors call "self-awareness" or "brutal self-assessment", and argue that this is the "missing ingredient" of success. The article provides three similar examples to make its case, such as the following: [Celebrity restauranteur David] Chang could have blamed someone else for his troubles, or worked harder (though available evidence suggests that might not have been possible) or he could have made minor tweaks to the menu. Instead he looked inward and subjected himself to brutal self-assessment. Was the humble noodle bar of his dreams economically viable? Sure, a traditional noodle dish had its charm but wouldn't work as the mainstay of a restaurant if he hoped to pay his bills. Mr. Chang changed course. Rather than worry about what a noodle bar should serve, he and his cooks stalked the produce at the greenmarket for inspiration. Then they went back to the kitchen and cooked as if it was their last meal, crowding the menu with wild combinations of dishes they'd want to eat -- tripe and sweetbreads, headcheese and flavor-packed culinary mashups like a Korean-style burrito. What happened next Mr. Chang still considers "kind of ridiculous" -- the crowds came, rave reviews piled up, awards followed and unimaginable opportunities presented themselves. Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield appear to be on to something, and they have a book on the subject forthcoming. One thing I'd be interested in learning from such a book is the following: Everyone faces major obstacles, but not every success story features such dramatic turnarounds as David Chang's. Might this be because some "superachievers" learn how to introspect more effectively than most early on, whereas others, such as David Chang, took longer to catch on or had to acquire that skill? I would also like to know whether the authors have suggestions as to how to conduct such an assessment. -- CAV Link to Original

Time to Ban Hammers, Mr. President! A man has robbed a bank at hammerpoint in Alaska. I guess that means we need the all-knowing, all-powerful government to invoke the same magical rituals we're gearing up to do with guns so that this never happens again! Weekend Reading "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 ... Not Smart!" at The Delaware Wave "Some people just can't tolerate that they might be wrong." -- Michael Hurd, in "Hypocrisy is Unhealthy!" at The Delaware Coast Press "The only honorable (and practical) choice is for the Congress to pay its invoices, and thereafter to work hard to reduce the magnitude of its futureinvoices." -- Richard Salsman, in "Debt-Ceiling Gimmickry is Unbecoming a Rational Government!" at Forbes My Two Cents Anyone weary of phony showdowns related to the debt ceiling and silliness like proposals to mint trillion dollar coins will find Salsman's piece a breath of fresh air. Berkun on "Notebook Fundamentalism" Scott Berkun does a nice job of torching the idea that you're wasting your time if you're not using the newest, trendiest technology on the job: If I worked with someone who used smoke signals and carrier pigeons but did better work than their fully upgraded neural implanted cyborg peers, I'd make sure they had all the firewood and bird feed they needed. And by the same token, if the cyborgs did better work, I'd offer cyborg implants to the rest of the team to try. It's only after I see what people produce that I'd consider commentary on the means they used. And the tool is just one variable. Most important is how effectively an individual thinks and implements his ideas. A tool can help, but is no substitute for a rational mind or a strong work ethic. --CAV Link to Original

1. Earlier in the week, I noticed my daughter quietly saying strange variants of "da-da", including "da-doo" and "da-dee". That evening, she started calling me "Daddy" instead of "Da-da". Another word, "chocolate" (really meaning something like "candy-chocolate-cookies"), she mispronounces, but in a way that makes it hard to keep a straight face: "Ka-ka!" It's too bad that I have no way to transcribe the almost maniacal way this comes out. I had to take her to the doctor yesterday for an ear infection, and she caused the office staff to start laughing by soliciting "ka-ka" from them. When she's not asking everyone else for the candy that her dad somehow hasn't realized should become the major component of her diet, she asks for "pah-pah" (pacifiers). I allow her at most one, but she prefers at least three: one in the mouth and one in each hand. 2. Heh! A commenter led me to this gem: Tony Robbins ™ helps Dave Barry achieve an Exit State. 3. It was fun to see the tables turned in this parody about, "The State of Windows on the Desktop": I really did not set the bar too high: I just hoped to have a nice user-friendly interface and recover the email I have in Maildir, and maybe watch my video collection on an external hard drive. You know, the usual stuff I do on Linux every day. The punchline for me was, "Friend finally took off, saying he had better things to do than fiddle with an OS he knows very little about." 4. For good and bad, here's an amusing sign of the times: a web site that offers fake Facebook girlfriends for sale. -- CAV Link to Original

Thomas Sowell and John Stossel make kindred points pertaining to the relationship between thought and action. First, in one of his "Random Thoughts" columns, Sowell discusses the harm caused by influential "know-it-alls", as he calls them. He is really talking about people who are unaware of the vast swaths of their own ignorance: When I was growing up, an older member of the family used to say, "What you don't know would make a big book." Now that I am an older member of the family, I would say to anyone, " What you don't know would fill more books than the Encyclopedia Britannica." At least half of our society's troubles come from know-it-alls, in a world where nobody knows even 10 percent of all. [bold added, and minor format edits] Second, Stossel discusses deliberate context-dropping by journalists and "activists" who want attention -- and seek it by leaving out important details which, by requiring thought, would get in the way of stirring up strong emotions: "It's a great way to get attention," says Bjorn Lomborg, statistician and author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, "but it focuses you on the wrong solutions." Instead of doing something that really fights cancer, like quitting smoking, people devote their energy to banning things like GM foods. [bold added, and minor format edits] No surprise there that considering some alleged datum in isolation could be a costly distraction... Both authors make excellent points, but I think that each misses part of the problem. I would ask of each, "How do they -- the know-it-alls and the context-droppers -- get away with it?" Part of the answer is that our government serves in roles well beyond its proper scope of protecting individual rights, interfering in all areas of our life with inappropriate laws. Without being able to influence the political process, such busybodies would harm only themselves and a few suckers here and here. But that doesn't fully explain the disproportionate influence of such people. After all, our political process is still somewhat under the control of voters. The answer lies with them, and that part of the answer is epistemological. How many people are in the habit of asking, of some claim or another, "How do you know that?" And how many will rightly dismiss poppycock out of hand when not given an acceptable answer? Just as people are insufficiently suspicious of government "help", so they are of self-proclaimed authorities and scary pronouncements. The apparent irony here is that the truly rational man, who is aware that his (actual) knowledge is limited and who insists on connecting new information with what he does know, is less fear-driven than a compatriot who wants effortless answers or other handouts. Know-it-alls and scare mongers aren't the whole problem or even, really, the biggest part of the problem. A culture in which there is little appreciation for reason is the problem: It enables such hucksters by providing them with a receptive audience. -- CAV Link to Original

I like the following quote because it uses a common problem to solve itself: One day we'll all realize that feeling uninspired should be inspiration enough. -- Justin David CoxAdam Dachis of Lifehacker expands on this a bit, pointing out that when one reaches this point, it means that there is nowhere to go but up. So why not plug away at something? -- CAV PS: I was tempted to name this post "unspiration", but see that this is a slang term for something completely different. Link to Original

Interesting! I see that Eric Raymond has a similar take on large group awareness training to mine: What makes outfits like this truly dangerous is that they aren't entirely wrong . That is, their theory of how human beings tick (a jigger of Neuro-Linguistic Programing, a dash of cognitive behavior therapy, a few skooches of transactional analysis, and generally a substratum of Zen-by-any-other-name) actually works well enough that if you do the process you are in fact likely to clean up a bunch of the shit in your life. Even Scientology, the biggest and nastiest of the cult groups traveling as "therapy", teaches some useful things - Hubbard's model of the "reactive mind" is pretty shrewd psychology. [bold added] Although Raymond is far more generous than I am about what he includes in the "not wrong" column, he is correct that it is the "bait" by which souls are trapped. (He is also more optimistic than I about the amount of good it can do, even in the short term.) Here is what I said about a similar attempt, years ago, to induct me into a cult: [The teachings are] an unholy mixture of food and poison, the food serving as bait and being offered from the hand of someone a potential customer trusts. The program, like some that advertise honestly, is a mixture of valid psychological techniques (I recognized some from cognitive psychology.) and some very loony and even dangerous ideas from Eastern, modern, and new-age philosophies. There is more to this kind of soul trap than appealing (for a few moments, anyway) to reason. As one might expect of any dishonest huckster with an intuitive grasp of psychology, there are other irrational methods of persuasion at work -- such as peer pressure -- in such settings. Raymond understandably left after twenty minutes. I would have, too, for all the similar warning signs I saw. However, I sat through for longer, anyway, because the problem of this cult was much closer to home for me, and I needed -- or so I thought -- to collect the ammunition of factual information to untrap a few others I cared about. Interestingly, I didn't need even that. Just voicing the suspicion that what we were dealing with was a cult proved to be enough to overcome the problem posed by the fact that someone we trusted had introduced us to it. Sometimes, even naming the obvious can help overcome an untruth. -- CAV Link to Original

I use open source software almost exclusively, and have done so for years without anyone complaining about document quality or having to ask me to re-send something due to incompatibility issues. Nevertheless, I keep an antenna up for any news that there might be problems of that sort. So it was that, for a moment, I mistook the title "13 Things People Hate about Your Open Source Docs" to be about that topic, rather than about common deficiencies in the documentation for open source software projects. The article is quite good, and I wish more OSS developers would read and heed it, but it also has lessons for anyone in the business of educating others or promoting a product or idea. For example: 2. Docs Not Available Online Although I haven't seen any studies on the topic, I'd bet that 90% of documentation lookups are done with Google and a browser over the Internet. Your project's docs have to be online and available. Given that, it's embarrassing that my own project, ack, would neglect having the docs available where most people would look for them. My assumption was based on my own use case, that if I want to know how a command line tool works, I'll check its man page. How was this brought to my attention? Users wrote to me asking questions that were answered in the FAQ, which made me annoyed that they weren't reading my FAQ. Turns out they were looking at the website, but I hadn't posted the FAQ there. It's an easy mistake to make. I'm close to the project and I never actually use the FAQ myself, so I don't notice it missing online. Many problems fall into this trap: Authors not putting themselves in the users' shoes. [minor format edits] The broadly applicable point is in italics. The article goes on to extol screenshots and video demonstrations for a similar reason. Likewise, the author cautions against such things as docs being available only online, authors failing to listen to user input, and, most interestingly, "arrogance and hostility towards the user". The last is more common that you might think, and not just among programmers who'd rather be churning out code than having to explain everything to a layman. Probably the worst possible way to promote something is to default to chalking up ignorance or mistakes to a stupidity or, even more presumptuously, a moral failing on the part of one's audience. As this article clearly shows in multiple ways, the fault can very easily lie with the messenger. Such a messenger won't get shot, but he'll often find that he won't be heard, either. -- CAV Link to Original

Condescending and Wrong New York's Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, speaking in defense of new restrictions on the availability of painkillers from city hospitals, inadvertently raised the best argument against the ban not once, but twice. The ban will substitute judgement of a few government officials regarding how much medicine someone "needs" for that of doctor and patient, at the threat of legal penalties. Bloomberg immediately blunders into admitting that -- surprise! -- (1) government officials are not infallible, and (2) forcing people to live according to their mistakes can have adverse consequences: Number two, supposing it is really true, so you didn't get enough painkillers and you did have to suffer a little bit. The other side of the coin is people are dying and there's nothing perfect … There's nothing that you can possibly do where somebody isn't going to suffer, and it's always the same group [claiming], 'Everybody is heartless.' Come on, this is a very big problem." Translation: "If I have made a mistake and you suffer, tough. Also, you're a wimp if you oppose tyranny so that you might avoid avoidable suffering." And note that, behind this bullying is the cry of, "'You' (meaning Bloomberg) can't help it!" But Bloomberg is nowhere near done insulting the intelligence of his constituents: "We talk about drugs, heroin and crack and marijuana, this is one of the big outbursts-and it's a lot worse around the country than it is here. It's kids and adults getting painkillers and using them for entertainment purposes, or whatever field of purposes, as opposed to what they are designed for," he explained. "If you break a leg, you're going to be in pain, nothing wrong with getting something that reduces the pain. But if you get 20 days worth of pills and you only need them three days, there's 17 days sitting there. Invariably some of the kids are going to find them, or you're going to take them and get you addicted." Now "you" really means "you", and Bloomberg is playing mindreader as he attempts to justify preventative law by telling us we're all addicts waiting to happen. (Has he ever heard of flushing surplus pills down the toilet?) There are numerous good reasons (not all found in the law, believe it or not) not to become a drug addict or to pass out pills to children. Bloomberg is unaware of this or ignores it as he tries to keep you from making your own decisions. Weekend Reading "In a [truly] free market, individuals with pre-existing conditions would likely have several options to choose from." -- Amesh Adalja, in "If Insurance Companies Can't Utilize Pre-Existing Conditions, Then They're Not in the Insurance Business" at Forbes "The rich should not be treated as second-class citizens." -- Richard Salsman, in "The Lopsided Fiscal Cliff Deal: All Tax Hikes, No Spending Restraint" at Forbes "Don't insult your young adult by treating him as a child if he has, in fact, been functioning as a competent member of a college community." -- Michael Hurd, in "Is Your Kid an Adult?" at The Delaware Wave "There will always be people who will try to 'guilt' you." -- Michael Hurd, in "Guilt is not Love" at The Delaware Coast Press My Two Cents As a parent who will sometimes imagine what his daughter will be like as an adult, I appreciate the first of the Michael Hurd columns linked above. My own parents transitioned from treating me like a child to treating me like an adult very smoothly: So it is that I appreciate his outlining the possible pitfalls, so I can better follow their example when the time comes. Heh! I always get a chuckle out of the "unitasker" posts at Unclutterer. This week, Erin Dolan reviews the mis-named "Double Dip Bowl". This is one of those items that when you see it your first thought is, "ingenious!" Then, you pause for a moment and remember you don't own a restaurant that serves guests olives as appetizers. Doland then does what I always do when confronted by such a contraption: try to imagine actually using it. She concludes -- rightly -- that it would make a great dust collector. While we were still living in a matchbox in Boston, I came up with my own nickname for such items: "storage problem". I still use it. --CAV Link to Original

<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8839412" name="1"></a><b>1</b>. Here's a <a href="http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/">strange side-effect</a> of <s>the War on Drugs</s> modern Prohibition: <b>Tide laundry detergent as a drug currency</b>.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8839412" name="2"></a><b>2</b>. I love the fact that <b>3D printing has advanced enough</b> that someone has <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%3Ca%20name=%221%22%3E%3C/a%3E%3Cstrong%3E1%3C/strong%3E.%20Here%27s%20a%20%3Ca%20href=%22http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1/%22%3Estrange%20side-effect%3C/a%3E%20of%20%3Cs%3Ethe%20War%20on%20Drugs%3C/s%3E%20modern%20Prohibition:%20%3Cstrong%3ETide%20laundry%20detergent%20as%20a%20drug%20currency%3C/strong%3E.%3Cbr%20/%3E%3Cbr%20/%3E%3Ca%20name=%222%22%3E%3C/a%3E%3Cstrong%3E2%3C/strong%3E.%20He%20who%20is%20ignorant%20of%20history%20is%20doomed%20to%20repeat%20it.%20Bearing%20that%20in%20mind,%20I%20think%20%3Cstrong%3Ememorials%20to%20villains%20can%20be%20valuable%20reminders%3C/strong%3E,%20and%20should%20not%20necessarily%20be%20torn%20down.%20Nevertheless,%20a%20few%20politicians%20in%20Mississippi%20have%20taught%20me%20that%20such%20memorials%20can%20serve%20other%20purposes.%20I%20smiled%20when%20I%20learned%20that%20a%20statue%20of%20the%20segregationist%20%3Ca%20href=%22en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Bilbo%22%3ETheodore%20Bilbo%3C/a%3E%20%3Ca%20href=%22http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/10/south-in-new-disputes-over-heritage/?page=1%22%3Eserves%20as%20a%20coat%20and%20hat%20rack%3C/a%3Ein%20a%20meeting%20room%20of%20the%20state%20capitol.%20%3Cblockquote%3E%22There%27s%20a%20poetic%20irony%20in%20keeping%20him%20in%20that%20committee%20room,%22%20[Robert%20L.]%20Johnson%20said.%20%22The%20person%20who%20would%20be%20most%20upset%20about%20Mississippi%20having%20the%20largest%20delegation%20of%20African-American%20legislators%20in%20the%20country%20has%20to%20sit%20and%20watch%20as%20we%20talk%20about%20policy.%22%3C/blockquote%3E%20I%27d%20smile%20more%20were%20the%20policies%20in%20question%20generally%20%3Cem%3Eless%3C/em%3E%20statist%20than%20those%20of%20the%20New-Dealer.%3Cbr%20/%3E%3Cbr%20/%3E%3Ca%20name=%223%22%3E%3C/a%3E%3Cstrong%3E3%3C/strong%3E.%20It%20is%20interesting%20that%20%3Ca%20href=%22http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/transportation/stories/how-fast-could-you-travel-across-the-us-in-the-1800s%22%3Esuch%20data%3C/a%3E%20were%20kept%20and%20amazing%20to%20contemplate%20how%20much%20travel%20speed%20and%20safety%20have%20improved.%20That%20said,%20do%20take%20a%20look%20at%20%3Cstrong%3Eninteenth%20century%20travel%20time%20across%20the%20United%20States%3C/strong%3E.%3Cbr%20/%3E%3Cbr%20/%3E%3Ca%20name=%224%22%3E%3C/a%3E%3Cstrong%3E4%3C/strong%3E.%20I%27ll%20%3Cstrong%3Eindulge%20my%20inner%20Trekkie%3C/strong%3E%20by%20linking%20to%20a%20%3Ca%20href=%22http://www.technologyreview.com/view/508926/three-habitable-zone-planets-discovered-around-one-red-dwarf/%22%3Estory%3C/a%3E%20about%20a%20recently-discovered%20star%20system%20with%20three%20%22habitable%20zone%22%20planets%20and%20an%20artists%27s%20(admittedly%20unscientific)%20%3Ca%20href=%22http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/a-martian-dream-heres-what-the-red-planet-would-look-like-with-earth-like-oceans-and-life/266791/%22%3Econception%3C/a%3E%20of%20what%20Mars%20might%20look%20like,%20were%20it%20terraformed.%3Cbr%20/%3E%3Cbr%20/%3E--%20CAV">written at length</a> about its weaknesses vis-a-vis manufacturing.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8839412" name="3"></a><b>3</b>. It is <a href="http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/transportation/stories/how-fast-could-you-travel-across-the-us-in-the-1800s">amazing</a> to contemplate how much travel speed and safety have improved over time. Just take a look at those historical maps of <b>Nineteenth Century travel time across the United States</b>. They cover the years 1800, 1830, and 1857. There is also a map for 1930. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8839412" name="4"></a><b>4</b>. I'll <b>indulge my inner Trekkie</b> by linking to a <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/view/508926/three-habitable-zone-planets-discovered-around-one-red-dwarf/">story</a> about a recently-discovered star system with three "habitable zone" planets, and to an artists's (admittedly unscientific) <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/a-martian-dream-heres-what-the-red-planet-would-look-like-with-earth-like-oceans-and-life/266791/">conception</a> of what Mars might look like, were it terraformed.<br /><br />-- CAV Link to Original

Entrepreneur Dan Pallotta, drawing on his day-to-day experience as an out-of-the-closet homosexual, writes an inspiring and thought-provoking piece about always insisting on the truth. If you think my use of the term "out-of-the-closet" sounds dated, I suspect he would beg to differ: People have the misconception that a gay person comes out once. It's not true. If you're gay and you're authentic, you're coming out constantly. You're on a business trip, for example. A cab driver asks if you have kids, and you say that you do. Then he asks about your wife. Even though you may be exhausted, you find yourself summoning the energy to have a transformative conversation with a total stranger on whom you are depending to get to the airport and whose reaction you have no way of predicting. It takes a few tablespoons of courage. Every time. But you do it. Because it's who you are, and you've learned long ago not to deny who you are or who your partner is. Because to deny who you are is a betrayal of yourself and the man you love and the children you have together. So you never, ever skirt the issue, no matter how tired or busy you are. You become a Jedi with your truth. Not just the truth, but your truth. While Pallotta's unusual circumstance has made him keenly aware of the need to insist on the truth, he correctly argues that his tireless mission should not be an unusual personal quality: Each of us lives with the reality of products and services that come from companies whose leaders have surrendered their truth about quality and excellence. My parents just bought a flat screen TV from a major manufacturer. The speakers are in the back, pointing away from the viewer, and they can't hear the damned thing. Why is a product like that allowed out the door? Because of a thousand people at a dozen levels remaining silent. ... The new Microsoft Surface tablet reportedly rips at the seam where keyboard cover meets tablet. Was it tested for durability? If not, why not? If it was, why was it allowed to go to market with such a defect? Probably because of the same kind of self-talk that goes on in a gay man's head before he's ready to come out: "Why make a big deal of it? It doesn't really matter." But when he finally comes out, he realizes it was the only thing that mattered, and that coming out transformed his life. Speaking the truth can do the same thing for businesses. This sounds like the very question I raisednot so long ago. Whether the failure on the part of any one individual in such scenarios to raise questions was due to a desire not to rock the boat or, as a commenter to that post put it, to "laziness, apathy, or stupidity", it is disturbing that a lack of insistence on the truth is common enough that there are examples aplenty of such jaw-dropping incompetence. -- CAV Link to Original

Slate has run a puff piece about five examples of so-called libertarian paternalism (i.e., the practice of using insights gained from psychological studies to trick people into behaving the way the gang in charge of a government wants them to) being put into practice around the globe. I found the following passage thought-provoking: In September 2012, the government of Australia's most populous state announced that it would consult with Britain's nudge unit to formulate new policies over a wide variety of areas. As in other places that have adopted behavioralist ideas, the new plan was decried by some commentators as a "toxic import from Britain" and a "threat ... to democratic public life." But the New South Wales government -- like Britain, controlled by the center-right -- is clearly intrigued by the prospect of increasing government revenue and promoting virtuous behavior in citizens without resorting to direct state interventions. "But"? Either a politician (or his party generally) favors individual rights and capitalism or he does not, and his view of the proper role of government will follow from his actual preference. The whole idea that the government should be in the business of promoting behavior of any type (versus protecting individuals from having their rights violated), or should redistribute wealth by any means disqualfies anyone who looks for new ways to implement it from being regarded as pro-capitalist. The only contradiction between the politicians' being of the "right" here and the fact that they are being sneaky about being central planners is this: Too many voters apparently believe them to be pro-capitalist. Their attraction to "nudging" actually makes perfect sense, given what they claim to support (or are happy for people to go on believing they support) and what they actually do. At least when a blatant socialist like Barack Obama hires a "nudger" like Cass Sunstein, there's no similar deception involved. I regard the endorsement or employment of such methods by any politician from "the right" as despicable, and see such a tack as the act of a cowardly statist outing himself. -- CAV Link to Original

Writing for Slate, Deborah Blum recounts the "little-told" story of the Federal government's Prohibition-era alcohol poisoning campaign, which, by some estimates, resulted in the deaths of over ten thousand people. [T]he numbers were not trivial. In 1926, in New York City, 1,200 were sickened by poisonous alcohol; 400 died. The following year, deaths climbed to 700. These numbers were repeated in cities around the country as public-health officials nationwide joined in the angry clamor. Furious anti-Prohibition legislators pushed for a halt in the use of lethal chemistry. "Only one possessing the instincts of a wild beast would desire to kill or make blind the man who takes a drink of liquor, even if he purchased it from one violating the Prohibition statutes," proclaimed Sen. James Reed of Missouri. The instincts of a wild beast -- or, more accurately, moral sensibilities that demand meddlesome enforcement of arbitrary rules, human life and any thought about the proper purpose of moralityor role of government be damned. I was very disappointed to learn that these atrocities started under Calvin Coolidge, whom I had admired. As appalling as that is, there's more to this article than meets the eye, but appreciating it requires one to question the propriety of taxation. Blum notes more than once that bootleg liquor, produced to avoid taxes, often results in poisoning. This is because crooked businessmen get into the act of producing liquor, and their incompetence or negligence frequently results in products containing dangerous impurities. Poisonous alcohol still kills-- 16 people died just this month after drinking lethal booze in Indonesia, where bootleggers make their own brews to avoid steep taxes--but that's due to unscrupulous businessmen rather than government order. I think Blum, like anyone accustomed to the government taxing everything, lets the government off the hook too easily here. Certainly, these deaths were not directly a result of government policies, but these policies did make it possible for such people to be in business at all in the first place. Not only is taxation wrong because it violates property rights, it can also endanger the lives of those who try to avoid it. As James Reed might have put it (but only for the rare individual who is aware of the evil of taxation), "Only one possessing the instincts of a wild beast would desire to present a man who simply wants a drink the following 'choices': robbery or risk of poisoning." The atrocity of taxation is not as dramatic as that of a deliberate poisoning program, but it is no more a proper role of the government. -- CAV Link to Original

The title of this post comes from a question that an anonymous author asked himself during a moment of great clarity. The reason the author asks this of himself becomes painfully apparent within an essay titled, "Why I Quit Being So Accommodating". The essay <a href="http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2012/12/26/1922-why-i-quit-being-so-accommodating/">appeared</a> in 1922 in <i>The American Magazine</i>, and it reminds me of a quote from Scott Berkun that I once <a href="http://gusvanhorn.blogspot.com/2012/05/hiding-and-other-writing-tactics.html">excerpted</a> here: <br /><blockquote>One side effect of having priorities is how often you have to say no. It's one of the smallest words in the English language, yet many people have trouble saying it. The problem is that <b>if you can't say no, you can't have priorities</b>. The universe is a large place, but your priority 1 list should be very small. Therefore, most of what people in the world (or on your team) might think are great ideas will end up not matching the goals of the project. It doesn't mean their ideas are bad; it just means their ideas won't contribute to this particular project. So, a fundamental law of the PM universe is this: if you can't say no, you can't manage a project. [bold added]</blockquote>The essay in question is quite long, but does an excellent job at several instances of concretizing the consequences of not being able to say <i>no</i>. Here is just one example: <br /><blockquote>... Generally speaking, we were a contented family. But always there hung over us the heavy hand of the community's unreasonable demands; and the fear of the advantage that might accrue to the rival drug store down the street if we failed, in any way, to meet the requests that came to us. We did everything for everybody, and were always in debt. Our rival, gruff old "Doc" Meadows, did nothing except to keep a clean store, fill prescriptions accurately, and charge fair prices and insist on prompt payments. Yet he managed to own a house and have all the other comforts that we yearned for but never enjoyed. <br /><br />It was not until long afterward that I understood the whole truth of the matter. <i>People never trust an accommodating man with important things.</i> That may sound harsh and cynical, but check it up in your own experience. If you have a severe illness, for example, you turn to the busiest, most exacting doctor in town. The fact that he is busy and can't be bothered by little things gives you confidence in his ability and judgment.</blockquote>Here, the author is describing his childhood with the great benefit of the hindsight that came from being passed over for promotion by his mentor and greatest benefactor.<br /><br />The rest is similarly interesting and valuable, but the author's analysis ultimately suffers because he tries too hard, arguably to the point of evasion, to find an accommodation between Christian altruism and what ought to be the moral of his story: That one's life is one's own. Thus, the whole thing is interesting reading, and its message about wisely allocating one's time is clear -- but only up to a point.<br /><br />-- CAV Link to Original

Science Fraud is Down This is, unfortunately, the first I have heard of this watchdog site, which was dedicated to flagging questionable data that had cropped up in scientific publications. I can't vouch for the site, but I can sympathize with the following sentiment, voiced by one of its proprietors: [T]he factual data posted on the site remains intact in the scientific literature, and I remain utterly convinced that posting images from publicly available documents [and] questioning their integrity when there is sufficient evidence to suggest a problem, is in no way grounds for a libel or defamation suit. In short - don't shoot the messenger. If you didn't want your scientific data to be questioned, you shouldn't have published it! It can be a huge dilemma how best to proceed when one encounters error presented as fact, and I haven't seen the site, but... As a general rule of thumb, starting out by accusing someone of the crime of fraud is probably not wise. Weekend Reading "Laws prohibiting or regulating guns across the board represent the evil of preventive law and should be abolished." -- Harry Binswanger, in "With Gun Control, Cost Benefit Analysis is Amoral - Forbes" at Forbes "It is time for us to face another brutal, terrifying truth: Gun-free zones are free fire zones for mass murderers." -- Andrew Bernstein, in "To Protect the Innocent, We Need More Guns in the Hands of Honest People" at Forbes "Do mentally healthy people smile more because they're happier, or does smiling lead to improved mental health?" -- Michael Hurd, in "Smile for Your Own Sake" at The Delaware Coast Press "Think of regret as the psychological equivalent of a tightrope walker, high off the ground, letting himself -- indeed, making himself -- look down in order to deliberately disturb his concentration." -- Michael Hurd, in "The Regret-Filled Mindset" at The Delaware Wave "Avoid ... emotional paralysis by setting goals that you can keep." -- Michael Hurd, in "Tips for Keeping Resolutions" at The Delaware Coast Press "You can't resolve to do something just because it happens to be January 1 - or any date, for that matter. You resolve to do something because you're prepared to follow it through - now; not tomorrow." -- Michael Hurd, in "Fail-Safe Your New Year" at The Delaware Wave "[Christmas is] about celebrating earthly prosperity and happiness." -- Yaron Brook and Don Watkins, in "How the Welfare State Stole Christmas" at Forbes My Two Cents We all have to make choices in life, and we all have even faced crossroads at which we have had ample room to second-guess ourselves. Dare I say that almost everyone has, at some point or another, indulged in regret? If you have any trace of a tendency towards regret, do yourself a favor: Burn Michael Hurd's image of the tightrope walker into your memory to remind yourself of the consequences of partaking of that destructive form of make-believe. Based on my own experience, his is an excellent concretization of what dwelling on "what might have been" can do. Grooks At Futility Closet, Greg Ross has publishedan entertaining post about a type of pithy poem created by the Danish scientist Piet Hein: In all he wrote more 7,000 grooks, which have become a part of Scandinavian culture. "I cannot really say where my activity as a scientist ends and where my activity as a man of letters begins," he said. "Whether I am writing a poem or solving some technical problem, I think the same." I particularly enjoyed two of the grooks quoted in the post. The first of these was a call to resist the German occupation of Denmark that Hein slipped past Nazi censors. The second I'll simply call, "T.T.T.". --CAV Link to Original

1. In the past, I have alluded to dissatisfaction with certain aspects of David Allen's Getting Things Done approach to personal productivity. Recently, I have seen a similar complaint, that "GTD" suffers from a sort of normative agnosticism regarding tasks. I have also seen part of a solution. The Eisenhower Matrix can overcome some of the difficulties, at least if one has at least a somewhat clear sense of priorities: The Matrix ... forces you to carefully consider potential projects. Is it life-sustaining work that will pay the bills or something that might be fun (and devour billable hours)? Alternatively, will this new opportunity or idea rejuvenate your productive, creative self, or lead you down a rabbit hole of avoidance? In other words, you get an answer to the question: "Is this worth doing?" I have just such an overwhelming list to deal with today and plan to put pencil to paper, drawing the matrix before I get started. As Ike once put it, "What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important." This matrix looks to me like it can help address that problem. 2. Canonical has just announcedthe release of its version of Linux for smart phones. It doesn't sound like it's ready enough for me to ditch Android just yet, but I'm happy to hear about this. I see no reason inherent in the hardware why we shouldn't be able to, say, just plug our phone into a larger screen and a keyboard when we need to use a real computer. Or not be able to run a wider range of software than just "apps" designed for smart phones. Or ... I will eagerly keep tabs on this development. 3. In a macabre vein, I enjoyed this list of clues that you might be dealing with a poisoner. As the author points out, poisoners usually fail by a mile to live up to the stereotype of being long-range planners, and they are usually quite easily caught. But then, the very nature of criminality -- a desire for the unearned that blinds the criminal to the consequences of his actions -- makes this failure unsurprising. 4. Everyone knows that the earth's rotation causes toilets to drain in opposite directions in the northern and southern hemispheres, right? Not really. -- CAV Link to Original

I found this petition -- urging Barack Obama to "make the Metric system the standard in the United States instead of the Imperial system" -- amusing at first, not the least because of its misuse of the term "imprecise" to describe the units of measurement Americans customarily use. Precise means, "definitely stated, defined, or fixed". Since most of the American versions of Imperial units have been defined in terms of the Metric System for over a century, I can't help but wonder what benefit would accrue from replacing one imprecise system of measurements with another. On a more serious note, I will grant that our customary system can be cumbersome. Nevertheless, what difference, aside from minor inconvenience (which computers are great at easing, by the way) does it make what units one uses, so long as they have a precise definition? Among Americans used to the "Imperial" system, it is easier to communicate measurements now than it would be if everyone had to start constantly dropping everything to make (truly) cumbersome conversions to and from the Metric system. (Twelve inches to a foot is far easier to use mentally than, say, 2.54 centimeters to the inch.) When Americans and non-Americans have to communicate measures, there is the fact that a conversion step represents a point at which error can creep in, but how would converting really be much more different in practice than translating between languages? Our customary system does not impede progress: Practically all scientists use Metric units in their work. Nor does it slow education: Just how hard is it to recall that there are twelve inches in a foot? And might getting practice multiplying and dividing by numbers other than multiples of ten offer good practice in arithmetic? Advocates of the government forcing everyone to use the Metric system -- a true advocate of the metric system would appeal to individual choice based on reason to gain actual support, rather than large quantities of "converts" at gunpoint -- seem not to be bothered by such things as the costs of converting to the Metric system, such as changing signage, or the intrusion of being required by law to post everything in units of both systems. Nor do they seem bothered by the unnecessary inconvenience to ordinary people of making such a change. Rather than give good reasons to individuals to make the change, they try to force people to do so by attempting to misuse government force. This is disturbing to say the least. As a scientist, I find the metric system useful and I like it for that reason. As a child, I even supported the last national effort to convert. I am older and wiser now: Whatever the merits of the metric system, I'll be damned if I am going to get behind a fascistic effort, such as this, to force it down everyone else's throats. Science and progress require freedom, and this means of making the metric system more widely used is, in this light, far too costly. -- CAV Link to Original

Before my holiday break from writing, I made a mental note to the effect that I would be revisiting various aspects of my routine upon my return. With that in the back of my mind, I found Joel Gascoigne's blog post on "Two Important and Often Overlooked Aspects of Creating a Lasting Morning Routine" interesting. In order to be able to write, I shifted to sleeping on a 9:00 p.m to 3:00 a.m. schedule shortly after my daughter arrived a year and a half ago. (Did I mention that she turned eighteen months old on the day the Mayans predicted the world would end? I enjoyed jokingly apologizing to people for "all the confusion" that day.) I have had little trouble sticking to that routine, but will be reconsidering its value for reasons that I'll note shortly. Also, despite my lack of difficulty, I wanted to see whether I could still learn anything from Gascoigne, or come up with any worthwhile additions. Gascoigne's advice boils down to (1) making sure one's evening routine is conducive to getting enough sleep, and (2) waking up at the same early time on weekends, or at least one not so different that it will make waking up early harder to do on Monday. I saw both of these potential pitfalls myself when I started and agree with his advice. Fortunately for me, even on non-writing days, I enjoy solitude enough that it typically entices me more than the temptation to get extra sleep. Gascoigne offers his solution for dealing with late social events, but I don't recall anything about holiday breaks or dealing with other long periods that make it difficult or impossible to maintain such a routine. Usually, it's easy to see these coming, and plan for them. The basic options are to find a way to continue with the routine (or at least wake up less late) or plan the shifts out of and back to the routine to be as painless as possible. I have nothing earth-shattering to offer here, but I do have a couple of personal observations. Regarding the first basic choice, I have observed that, at least with vacations, for example, almost everyone sleeps very late, making five-o'clock almost as good as three in terms of being well-rested and having solitude. Regarding the second choice, I am afraid that all I can offer is what will sound little better than a boast: I just decide to yank myself into the new routine at a certain time, and just do it. Perhaps breaking down how I "just do it" might help a little: I decide when I want to reestablish my regimen, and make sure I am well-rested before the day. This I do by thinking about how tired I stand to be, and retiring earlier in the evening or taking short naps during the day on the day or so beforehand. But Gascoigne properly starts his post by asking, "Why wake up early in the first place?" Under normal circumstances, his answer is mostly sound, and this part of it particularly strikes a chord: Why do it after 8 hours of work? You're going to be exhausted and struggle to be motivated. I advise you to think about what is a higher priority for you - your dream ... or your work for someone else?This is great advice for someone whose morning time lends itself to uninterrupted, distraction-free effort. The quality of my morning time is usually not so good, and is typically interrupted by having to resettle the baby at some erratic time. (For example, this morning, she woke up at 4:05 (See P.S.), before I'd even finished breakfast, and took until 4:45 to go back to sleep.) Worse, I have also found that even just the threat of a distraction harms the quality of the (remaining) time I am gaining by waking up early. I often find that I can blog, but do little else. I will be looking for ways to get more, and better quality time, even if doing so involves experimenting with being a night owl again. -- CAV P.S. I did tweak my schedule after the move to St. Louis: I now go to bed about 9:30 p.m. and wake up at 3:30 a.m. Link to Original

Happy Holidays! It's that time of the year again! Around the holiday season, I take a break from blogging for about a week to recharge. I'm out of here until New Year's Day, or perhaps, the day after. I thank everyone who makes this blog part of their online routine and wish you happy holidays and a happy, prosperous new year. Weekend Reading "Getting rid of air is not the solution for stupid statements, just as getting rid of capitalism and freedom isn't the solution for foolish spending." -- Michael Hurd, in "Be Happy Within Your Means" at The Delaware Coast Press "Acting in one's own interest is healthy and psychologically affirming, and to communicate otherwise is devastating to a relationship. It's like saying: 'Now that you're with me, your needs no longer matter.'" -- Michael Hurd, in "Avoid Holiday Conflict" at The Delaware Wave "Weakening intellectual property laws due to negative policy rhetoric, hyperbolic internet commentary, and extensive lobbying by firms who choose to infringe patents because they don't want to pay the licenses offered to them by patent licensing firms is irresponsible." -- Adam Mossoff, in "Policy Debates on Patents Should Focus on Facts, Not Rhetoric" at Forbes "It's no coincidence that you don't see mass shootings in police stations, yet there would be if guns there were banned and psychotics knew it." -- Richard Salsman, in "Gutting the 2nd Amendment is Not the Way to End Mass Slaughter" at Forbes My Two Cents I like Michael Hurd's point about defending one's right to pursue happiness within relationships. Not only do some people have to remind their partners that it is healthy to do so, but some people also seem to forget to take care of themselves within the context of a relationship. Check Those Locks! Sifting through my collection of possibly blogworthy links, I found a story about a flaw in electronic hotel room locks that burglars had begun exploiting. That news is old news, I hope, but it isn't the whole story. Hotel staff can also forget to reset a hotel room lock to need a key after room maintenance or guest changes. It is a habit of mine to check that any door I exit that is supposed to be locked is, in fact, locked when I leave. This practice might have saved me some grief during a recent hotel stay, when, on the way down to breakfast, I discovered that no key at all was necessary to gain entry into our electronically "locked" room. Oh, and do write down your room number if, upon learning this, you go down in person to the lobby to get this fixed. The average clerk will just ask what room it is, and it is easy to just answer, informing anyone else within earshot of the location of an unlocked room. I didn't think to write my room number down, but I did catch myself before blurting out my room number. In answer, I whispered the room number to the on-duty clerk. (I was relieved and slightly amused to see that she finished our conversation in a whisper.) Safe and happy traveling! --CAV Link to Original

Editor's Note: This one will be short, sweet, and link-free: My daughter has been up sick all night and duty will be calling again soon... Tomorrow's post, already partially written, may be shorter than usual for the same reason. 1. We'd been in Boston, and out of the distribution territory for the Spoetzl Brewery for so long that it didn't even occur to me to look for Shiner Bock at the grocery. I was pleasantly surprised to find that old favorite on the shelves here in St. Louis recently. (Hey, not every beer I enjoy is over-hopped or has a name like "Modus Hoperandi".) 2. At some point, my wife bought the children's book Super Dad for Pumpkin, but it was only after we reached St. Louis that it was readily available to her (read: unburied). She's been bringing it to me to read to her and then sitting on my lap quite a bit over the past couple of days. 3. We have a back porch at our new place and winter won't last forever. I plan to try my hand at some St. Louis style barbecued pork steaks some time this spring. 4. Pumpkin has been laying lots of new words on us lately: apple, man, woman (as "wowo"), and dungeon ("dugadug"). "Dungeon?" you might ask. That's what I have been calling the basement, where the washer and dryer live. Nothing gets past my baby girl, and she likes to go down there with me, so she started asking me to go down there. I might have missed what she meant, but she pointed to the door a couple of times as she said it. -- CAV Link to Original

As a parent, I am both saddened by the recent mass shootings of school children in Newtown, Connecticut, and appalled at how quickly certain politicians and activists have taken the opportunity to whip up anti-gun hysteria. Over the past week, a couple of good rebuttals to this nonsense have come to my attention. (I also see that both articles have been brought up for discussion on HBL.) The articles look at scientific and historical data regarding whether controls over who can purchase guns actually accomplish reductions in the murder rate and the evidence wanting. On that score, I particularly appreciate the following demolition of the gun grabbers' favorite talking point by Thomas Sowell: The few counter-examples [to broader gun ownership being correlated with a lower murder rate] offered by gun control zealots do not stand up under scrutiny. Perhaps their strongest talking point is that Britain has stronger gun control laws than the United States and lower murder rates. But, if you look back through history, you will find that Britain has had a lower murder rate than the United States for more than two centuries-- and, for most of that time, the British had no more stringent gun control laws than the United States. Indeed, neither country had stringent gun control for most of that time. In the middle of the 20th century, you could buy a shotgun in London with no questions asked. New York, which at that time had had the stringent Sullivan Law restricting gun ownership since 1911, still had several times the gun murder rate of London, as well as several times the London murder rate with other weapons. [bold added] As Sowell adds, "Neither guns nor gun control was the reason for the difference in murder rates. People were the difference." And speaking of people, David Kopel, who makes similar points in the Wall Street Journal, also considers a problem that begs for discussion, but which can easily be drowned out amidst the left's current fear-mongering and the necessity of quelling it: A second explanation [for the increase in mass shootings] is the deinstitutionalization of the violently mentally ill. A 2000 New York Times study of 100 rampage murderers found that 47 were mentally ill. In the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry Law (2008), Jason C. Matejkowski and his co-authors reported that 16% of state prisoners who had perpetrated murders were mentally ill. In the mid-1960s, many of the killings would have been prevented because the severely mentally ill would have been confined and cared for in a state institution. But today, while government at most every level has bloated over the past half-century, mental-health treatment has been decimated. According to a study released in July by the Treatment Advocacy Center, the number of state hospital beds in America per capita has plummeted to 1850 levels, or 14.1 beds per 100,000 people. Deinstitutionalization of the violently insane is an issue Clayton Cramer raised in the wake of the Tucson shootings in early 2011. While I am not sure how involved the government should be in treating the dangerously mentally ill, I think that it has a proper role in keeping them from threatening others at will. For starters, as I put it then, "[T]here is no right to menace other people." There is no way to guarantee that such tragedies will never happen again, but two things are clear to me. First, taking guns out of the hands of stable, responsible adults will do nothing to prevent similar things in the future. (Indeed, common sense and hard data suggest that doing so will make mass shootings more likely to occur, and deadlier when they do.) Second, we need to take a serious look at how quickly and easily we are releasing people who pose an objective threat to others. (I understand, based on a brief conversation with a psychiatry professional that it is very easy to differentiate such people from nonviolent mentally ill individuals.) -- CAV Link to Original

Until Rob Parker, ESPN's resident bigot, accused Robert Griffin III, Washington's sensational rookie quarterback, of being a "cornball brother" (i.e., someone who "acts white"), I had not even heard of the man. I'm no fan of the practice of holding athletes out as examples to children of how to lead life, but RGIII, as he is known, sounds like a decent person by all accounts. As USA Today's Deborah Barrington put it, "Griffin III is exactly who my ancestors would want a young black man to be: successful, talented, respectful and rich. Who wouldn't want to hang out with him?" I have been happy to see that lots of commentators, like Barrington, have spoken up to condemn Parker's bigotry. I was about to say "defend Griffin", but it is clear that he is independent enough that he probably doesn't need it. (Still, I see that he has been man enough to acknowledge and thank his supporters.) What is also clear is that the real target of remarks such as Parker's and the kind of "thinking" they exemplify isn't a man who can clearly take care of himself, but black children all across our country who can't yet do the same. It is the real purpose of cowardly remarks like this, of which Parker's are only the most recent example, to make sure they never can. If you don't believe me, read the long litany of black-on-black psychological abuse described by Lee Habeeb of National Review. Such is the corrupt, life-hating state of the main part of the black intelligentsia that anyone who dares to be different (like RGIII) or who raises concerns about it (like Bill Cosby, as Habeeb notes at some length) becomes a target. Oh, and of course, anyone who self-identifies as black (or is generally regarded as black) can come under fire for merely having some white ancestry, as Shaun Powell points out. (It speaks ill of the President that he goes along with this, as exemplified by the example Powell gives of him pandering to a roomful of reporters by deliberately showing up late.) I am happy to see from Barrington's piece that Griffin did not dignify Parker with a direct answer: Parker doesn't deserve one. Nevertheless, the kind of thinking that led to those remarks bears closer examination. Ayn Rand, whose "prophecies" aren't limited to our current slide into an economic depression, nailed Parker's mentality to the wall decades ago: Like every other form of collectivism, racism is a quest for the unearned. It is a quest for automatic knowledge--for an automatic evaluation of men's characters that bypasses the responsibility of exercising rational or moral judgment--and, above all, a quest for an automatic self-esteem (or pseudo-self-esteem). Parker has nothing of value behind his black skin, so he has to ascribe all kinds of magical qualities to it. Parker sees someone who rejects his magical thinking and so he feels threatened, but he never really bothers to ask why. Parker resents Robert Griffin because Robert Griffin is a man, and Parker is afraid that his example might lead to too many kids growing up to become men. Parker sees himself for what he is for a moment and faces a choice: change himself or destroy someone else. We see what Parker tried to do, and it is little different than what any cowardly white supremacist might have wanted. Showing himself to be the kind of animal that sees safety in numbers, Parker tried to get RGIII kicked out of the pack. Further showing himself to be not even sub-human, Parker also tried to snuff out the spirit of any young black man who might see that quarterback as a hero. The real Uncle Tom here is Rob Parker -- and that term, even as it is commonly used, is really too good for him. Parker is trying to do what no Klansman could ever hope to do, which is to get black people to marginalize themselves. I hope the folks at ESPN have the sense, decency, and courage to fire him. -- CAV Link to Original

As a follow-on to yesterday's post regarding the proper attitude one should take regarding the discovery that one is ignorant or mistaken about something, I am glad to be able to provide another (and probably better) positive example of the same. The below vignette comes courtesy of Amanda Maxham, who brings it up as she introduces a post on climate change at Voices for Reason: On what very well may have been my first day of graduate school, sitting in my first class, our professor began by telling us the story of how he had found an error in a physics text book. This was not any old physics text book, mind you; it was Classical Electrodynamics by John David Jackson, a book that by mere mention, instilled fear in even the smartest and bravest of graduate student. In my first day of a course with the deceptively simple title "Magnetohydrodynamics I," my eyes became wide as he described writing a letter to Jackson (THE Jackson!), pointing out this error. Rather than that signifying the abrupt end of our dear professor's career, Jackson allegedly thanked him profusely, corrected the error in the next edition of the text and offered a prize for any future errors that he or anyone else could find. Maxham goes on to note that her professor not only took that lesson to heart, but also passed it on: He offered a prize to any student who found an error in his lecture materials. "[H]e meant to show us how to graciously accept scientific criticism and to remember that no matter what the circumstances and no matter how revered someone may seem to be, truth is always the ultimate goal." [bold added] Like Maxham, I wonder "what the goal really is" when I see anything less than gratitude about a chance to correct or clarify something one has said, on the part of any self-proclaimed messenger of truth. -- CAV Link to Original