Gus Van Horn blog

Psychologist Michael Hurd, a favorite commentator of mine, titles a blog post about soccer with two questions: "Is Soccer Anti-Individualist? Or Just Dull?" His answers appear to be, "'Probably' and 'Yes'". Regulars here will know that I strongly disagree with the good doctor on both counts: My answers are, "'Almost certainly not', and 'Absolutely not'". Hurd does admit to not not knowing much about either soccer or football, so I'll kill off the second, less interesting question now, by referring to my view of baseball, a sport I know little about, but whose merits I came to see: Until the year Rice won the College World Series and I had the opportunity to watch several very good baseball games narrated by a very talented commentator, I had zeroappreciation for all the strategy that goes into that game. I used to see (before switching channels): nine men standing around on a field, scratching themselves and spitting while some guy with a beer belly swung a stick at a ball. Likewise, to the uninitiated, soccer will look like a bunch of people running around on a field kicking a ball for no particular reason. Since Hurd takes an Ann Coulter column as his point of departure, I must tackle a further, factual error that he ends up propagating from among her many errors and evasions: Yes, goals are rare, but they normally can be anything from a team to an individual accomplishment. In addition, Hurd and Coulter to the contrary, goals are the "equivalent of the home run, the touchdown or the slam dunk" they can't appreciate in soccer. In tight games, they can be all of these at once. (Watching such a game is not for the faint-hearted, much less anyone for whom fear is a "dominant attitude".) Having said that, Hurd and, I must admit, Coulter do raise interesting cultural issues that have coincided with the rise of soccer as youth sport, and that pertain to the first question ("Is soccer anti-individualist?"). I think I have partially answered this question already: Consider a winning touchdown, thrown by a scrambling quarterback to a crafty receiver who evades coverage and then sprints through a hole in the opposing team's defense -- a hole created by another team-mate's block. The multiple contributions to this score -- or even good, bone-crunching defensive play that scores zero points for that matter -- are good examples of team efforts with good individual contributions. The fact that several people contributed makes a touchdown (or a goal-line stand) no more anti-individualistic than the multiple passes and thinking-on-the-feet seen in many goals. Too much commentary on soccer is hung up on the quantity of goals (as if, say, 1-0 baseball games are unheard of) and the invisibility of individual contributions -- at least to those who don't understand what is going on.) But Hurd and Coulter raise the following point, which deserves to be addressed: Baseball and basketball present a constant threat of personal disgrace. In hockey, there are three or four fights a game -- and it's not a stroll on beach to be on ice with a puck flying around at 100 miles per hour. After a football game, ambulances carry off the wounded. After a soccer game, every player gets a ribbon and a juice box. [bold added] Really? I have no idea about now, but if such is the case, it hasn't always been that way. I played soccer from junior high until college, back in the eighties, before egalitarianism ruined (or started attacking) youth sports. All the ribbons -- medals and trophies, actually -- went to my brothers, who were both excellent players and whose teams won state championships. We did get drinks -- water, Gatorade, and the like -- at the half and after the game. Playing non-stop for 30-45 minutes (depending on age) will make you need water. Oh, and I encountered only three girls -- all exceptionally good players at a time when the overall skill level in the American game was low -- who were members of boys' teams over the decade I played or refereed. Why? Common sense was more prevalent back then. In soccer, it is legal to bump another player with the shoulder when going after the ball. This alone gives men, who are generally larger and have superior upper body strength, a huge advantage over women. Women have other physical limitations relative to men that make mixed competitive teams beyond perhaps elementary ages a dubious proposition at best. We did play mixed -- for fun with a few other families -- occasionally on Sundays. I don't know how common mixed teams are in youth competitions nowadays, but if Coulter is right, the egalitarians are running up a score. And whatever the merit of injuries, those happen in soccer as well. (Search "As for her assertion that personal humiliation or injury are required to count as sport".) I have a shoulder injury that occasionally acts up to this day. Hurd is right to be alarmed at the idea that everyone in a youth soccer game is getting a ribbon and a juice box. But that's egalitarianism, and not soccer. Hurd closes by saying, "The triumph of soccer as the activity of choice for school-aged children is probably no accident." If so, it's despite the efforts of leftists pushing it just because they see it as non-American and those of obnoxious evangelists who insist on calling it futbol. It's because soccer is fun and people of any size and build can play it, if they apply themselves and learn to think on their feet. -- CAV P.S. Regarding the title: In European soccer league competitions, a team that comes from behind to draw (and thus secures a point in the standings as in hockey), is often said to have "rescued a point". Link to Original

Caroline Glick takes a look at the shifting alliances in the Middle East from an Israeli perspective, particularly in light of Barack Obama's foreign policy: ... Obama's pro-Hamas-, pro-Iran- and pro-Muslim Brotherhood-axis policies, along with his refusal to date to take effective action in Iraq and Syria to obliterate Islamic State, have convinced the US's traditional allies that for the next two-and-a-half years, not only can they not rely on the US, they cannot discount the possibility of the US taking actions that harm them. These traditional allies are Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Glick argues that they are cooperating behind the scenes against the Islamic State and Hamas, and to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions. Glick sees this cooperation lasting until the end of Obama's term -- unless it is rendered impossible by Israel's own left: The Israeli Left sees this new partnership. But it fails to understand its basis or significance. For the Left, all developments lead to the same conclusion: Whatever happens, Israel must strengthen the PLO by strengthening Palestinian Authority Chairman and PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas. Failing to recognize the basis for Israel's emerging strategic partnership, led by Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, the Left is advocating using our new ties with Saudi Arabia and Egypt as a means of strengthening Abbas by organizing a regional peace conference. What they fail to understand is that such a move would destroy the partnership. Israel's strategic cooperation with Egypt and Saudi Arabia owes to their shared interests. It cannot extend beyond them. And they have no shared interests in regard to the PLO. Threatened by the axis of jihad, no Muslim government can be seen publicly with Israelis... Glick speaks with uncertainty about the next administration seeking to "rebuild the US alliance structure in the Middle East". Even if it does, the damage caused by Obama's non-self-interested foreign policy will be hard to repair, for he has made it apparent to the world that we are unreliable at best. -- CAV Link to Original

How Science Should Be Funded Over at Wired is a story about a private effort to fund nutritional studies, headed up by Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories, whose contrarian views on nutrition have made him a best seller. His group, the Nutritional Science Initiative (NuSI) is funding scientists who currently sit on opposite sides of such questions as whether the source of energy (e.g., fats or carbohydrates) present in food is relevant to whether individuals gain weight. Taubes, too, is aware of the risk. As Calabrese puts it, "Gary is advancing a study that may refute a theory he's built his career on. It may blow his theory right out of the water." This is how a real scientist -- and an actual patron of science -- behaves, and it reminds me, favorably, of one science blogger's reaction to the book mentioned above: Gary Taubes is interesting. If he's right, the majority of medical community has been flat wrong about some basic assumptions for a long time. It's sobering to think that might be the case. Even if Taubes is wrong, it's unsettling that he's not obviously wrong, that he can make a plausible argument that some widely held scientific beliefs are upside-down. Assuming this article is accurate and the involved scientists are able to ask and answer the right questions, we may finally know the truth one way or the other. Weekend Reading "The simple fact is that failure happens for a reason, and we possess the power to discover that reason and to become wiser and stronger." -- Michael Hurd, in "See Failure as Opportunity" at The Delaware Wave "Ignore the media and do what makes objective sense to you, today, in your own situation." -- Michael Hurd , in "What Are You Afraid Of?" at The Delaware Coast Press My Two Cents In his second piece, Michael Hurd takes a common reaction to media doom-and-gloom about the economy as his point of departure. His observation that many people panic at bad news, or simply take common advice from the media straight is a reminder: Many, if not most, people do not take the time to integrate new information or advice into the rest of their knowledge. Perhaps most people should, even after assessing their own situations, say, cut back on spending. But anyone who does this just because of what they hear on the news, doesn't really know that this is a proper (or even harmless) course of action for his own situation. Such a person might fool himself into feeling like he is acting responsibly when he is, in fact, flying blind. The Power of Discrimination discrimination ( n) -- an act or instance of ... making a distinction. Matt Honan of Wired demonstrates, by way of a negative result, the folly of not making choices in life, in an amusing article, "I Liked Everything I Saw on Facebook for Two Days. Here's What It Did to Me". He concludes in part, "By liking everything, I turned Facebook into a place where there was nothing I liked." -- CAV Link to Original

1. A woman with a rare genetic disease was both unconvinced by her medical diagnosis and "frustrated by the rampant misinformation" on Internet patient forums -- so she did her own research. In the end, she correctly told her doctors which DNA test to run. In addition to having to familiarize herself with an unfamiliar scientific literature, she also had to face the understandable skepticism of her own physicians: "I'm beyond impressed," says Michael Ackerman, a geneticist at the Mayo Clinic. He specializes in inherited heart disorders like ARVC that can cause sudden death at any time. Such diseases make for people who do their homework, but Ackerman describes most as "Google-and-go" patients who check their diagnosis online or read up about treatment options. Kim had written up her research as a white paper--36 pages of research and analysis. "Kim's the only one who handed me her own thesis," he says. "Of all the 1,000-plus patients I've taken care of, none have done extensive detective work and told physicians which genetic test to order." The article mentions a series of personality traits, like "perseverance and love of isolation" that served Kim Goodsell in good stead as she sought to understand her problem, but underlying her quest was her impressive degree of independence. She would not let a single term she did not understand go unexamined. 2. An American sports fan rebuts one of the more thoughtful anti-soccer editorials I read this World Cup, one by Kareem Adbul-Jabbar. That piece concluded with a prediction to the effect that soccer would "return to its sickbed" after the tournament. But Sheldon Hirsch, who attended his first professional game in nearly four decades, an exhibition after the World Cup, begs to disagree: The enormous crowd of 109,318 opened my eyes and raised doubts about Kareem's critique. The crowd seemed like a rabid NFL gathering, except almost twice as large, perhaps half as inebriated, and more prone to song. Notably, this was not a World Cup or Olympics competition; or Michigan vs. Michigan State; or an MLS championship game. Over 100,000 people attended an exhibition game; clearly, serious soccer fans. I think Hirsch supports his contention that Abdul-Jabbar shot an airball on this topic quite well. 3. Is there anything a smartphone can't help solve? There are now apps, called "Dumbphone" and "IgnoreNoMore", that respectively help (1) users fight compulsive smartphone checking and (2) parents get their kids to call them back. 4. Wow! My old post, "Data Storage Then and Now", may soon be made to look quaint after only a few years: New technology that could store about a terabyte of data in a device the size of a postage stamp is a step closer to manufacture. -- CAV Link to Original

Larry Elder notes a self-defeating trend that has become manifest in the wake of the Ferguson, Missouri, police shooting: While I have not been following this story -- or any other -- very closely, it has been nearly unavoidable since it is local news for me. Some of the belief in the "shot in the back" narrative must surely be blamed on media coverage: This is the first time I have heard about this medical evidence despite an apparently non-stop torrent of such coverage. Most people would call such claims -- when made contrary to evidence or (worse) the need for evidence -- "self-serving". That is clearly not the case, particularly for blacks: As Elder implies, the incessant pursuit of what he calls "The Great White Defendant" is hindering any real examination of the actual difficulties poor blacks face in places like Ferguson, and, therefore, any progress towards a solution. Even assuming the worst of the police officer who shot Michael Brown, it is folly to spend energy on this one case at the clear expense of failing to attack so many other real and bigger problems. -- CAV Link to Original

Thomas Sowell recently wrote a column about leftist attacks against admission standards and testing for college-preparatory schools. Therein, Sowell raises a good question for the quota-pushers, including teachers' unions and those civil rights "leaders" who imagine that "their civil rights include getting into these elite schools, whether they qualify or not": Sowell, who has written extensively on such matters in the past, also includes a nice history lesson for anyone who imagines that it is unusual for some groups to be over- or under-represented in such institutions. -- CAV Link to Original

From a somewhat rambling Mike Steyn column comes word of one of the most ridiculous regulations I have ever heard of: I'm still hopping mad about the US Government's bagpipe crackdown. The international piping scene is basically Scotland, Canada and the north-eastern US. On the Atlantic seaboard, it's a cross-border community. Yet since the end of June the official position of the United States Government is that, if someone from northern New Hampshire competes in a bagpipe championship in Quebec, he cannot take his pipes through any US/Canadian land border crossing. So instead of a pleasant three-hour drive from Montreal back to New Hampshire, he has to fly from Montreal to Boston and then drive all the way back, more than doubling the time and vastly increasing the cost. ... nder the insanity of America's hyper-regulatory tyranny, you now have to register musical instruments with the US Department of Fish & Wildlife. And, even if you do, you still can't drive that instrument over a US/Canadian land border. This reminds me of a thought I had this morning. Many people expect the government to arbitrate everything because they do not think that individuals have any ability to be objective, let alone any reason to do so. (And yet it seems that it never occurs to many of these same people that the government is staffed by "imperfect" humans.) The above is an example of the kind of result this gets -- something completely inane that has the force of law. Most people will be unconcerned, since this involves mere inconvenience to a small number of people who play an oddball instrument, but, in principle, anyone can -- and many often do -- find themselves on the wrong side of ridiculous government rules and facing real consequences. You may realistically laugh at the bagpipers now, only to find yourself facing prison time later. That is where the pro-regulatory, pro-central planning mentality has already gotten us. It's high time to question the wisdom of trusting the government to know what is best. -- CAV Link to Original

Mike Steyn sees something in the ongoing events of Ferguson, Missouri, that should concern every American: a trend towards the militarization of our police departments. Noting that, "In 2014, when a police cruiser doesn't have a camera, it's a conscious choice", Steyn goes on to note the historical origins of the modern police departments and observes: There is much more from Steyn on both this alarming trend and on the ineptitude of the local authorities, particularly Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson. Steyn leaves us with the following warning: "[O]ne day, unless something changes, we will all be policed like Ferguson." (HT: Steve D.) -- CAV Link to Original

Making Molehills of a Mountain The Unclutterer blog tackles a tiresome task -- keeping papers organized -- with some good advice, including the following: Organizer Janine Adams wrote on her Peace of Mind Organizing Blogabout a women who got through 12 years of accumulated papers by working on them for 15 to 30 minutes a day. It's often easier to tackle a dreaded task if you know you only have to do it for a short period of time. [minor format edits] This is a multi-pronged approach and it could easily be applied to similar chores. The advice about having good tools is also worthwhile. (My wonky shredder comes to mind.) Weekend Reading "Inauthenticity is a game that takes too much work, and ultimately it can be destructive." -- Michael Hurd, in "ASK For What You Want" at The Delaware Wave "There are indeed certain occasions when lling] the truth doesn't matter as much as physical safety or privacy." -- Michael Hurd, in "Kids: The Great Loophole Finders" at The Delaware Coast Press My Two Cents As a parent, I always appreciate it when Michael Hurd covers topics related to raising children, as he does in his second piece above. In this case, I am glad to see that I have been on the right track regarding how I handle questions that are not age-appropriate. Robin Williams, RIP I was saddened by the news that Robin Williams took his own life last week. I'll memorialize him with the benevolent and very funny video above, although I must mention that I enjoyed his more serious acting work even more. I particularly liked his portrayal of Oliver Sacks, a neurologist, in Awakenings, for example. Ironically, I learned of the video only recently due to followers of a certain religion -- take a guess -- being so thin-skinned as to threaten him over it. -- CAV Link to Original

1. Pumpkin has become interested in helping me lately, so I come up with "jobs" for her whenever I can, like holding doors or carrying things from the kitchen to the family room. But she shows good initiative, particularly with my phone, which sometimes falls out of my pocket when I play with the kids. (She's handed it back to me numerous times after that.) My favorite example of her assistance came after I'd taken my phone out out and left it on the coffee table. She tracked me down afterwards and asked, "Did you mean to leave this out?" Yes. That's a direct quote. It does sound like the way an adult would ask it. Little Man has been matching Pumpkin's initiative with an often radiant benevolence. He frequently smiles and really likes the song, "If You're Happy and You Know It". Going between the kitchen and the family room one day, I encountered him walking, smiling, and clapping. Now, if I can just get him to stop trying to put toys into the Diaper Genie... I am very fortunate: There are very few people who easily improve my mood, and two of them are my children. (If that makes me sound like some kind of a grouch, so be it.) 2. John Cook offers high praise for what he calls an "open source dissertation". He's not being secretive, fearing that someone will scoop his results. There have been a few instances of one academic scooping another's research, but these are rare and probably not worth worrying about. Besides, a public GitHub repo is a pretty good way to prove your priority. In terms of having the idea, yes. But ... I haven't looked at this dissertation, but one caveat would be that making something like this public maycause problems getting patent protection down the line, if that is an objective. Other than this, I find the idea of an "open source dissertation" intriguing. 3. Mid-century architecture buff Toby Weiss, calling it "too young to save, too old to matter", has created a good web site memorializing the Northland Shopping Center, a 1950's-era shopping center in Jennings, Missouri, that has long since been demolished and replaced. I, too, would have loved to see this: Saving a shopping center is practically unheard of, but the architectural and historical aspects of Northland made it a special case. I still imagine how cool a multi-story Target inside the Famous-Barr building would have been, how the properly-marketed genuine retro buzz would have made it a truly one-of-a-kind shopping destination, and how trailblazing ... the resurgence of a retail legend would have been... Having driven past the Target at Northland's old location during errands last Friday caused this site, which I encountered long ago, to pop back into memory. As a bonus, re-visiting this site helped me realize that a really odd-looking building I occasionally pass in Clayton was once a Famous-Barr. 4. Football season is upon us -- at least for the kind I usually just call soccer. The English Premier league begins play this Saturday, and I really liked this thorough and entertaining team-by-team preview. Although I am an Arsenal fan, I thought the "Why You Should Watch" fan quote about Newcastle took the cake: Perhaps more than any other Premier League team, Newcastle United have no idea where they'll finish in 2014-15. After 5th and 16th place finishes in the previous two campaigns, they were 6th on Boxing Day last year, then were the worst team in the entire Football League by several measures to finish the season. Where they belong this year is anybody's guess. Alan Pardew has brought in seven players to refresh the squad, and Siem de Jong and Rémy Cabella could be the bargains of the summer. Meanwhile, 18-year-old Rolando Aarons has been a force in every preseason match so far. There's reason for hope for Toon fans -- but of course it could all go very south, very quickly. Newcastle is a bullet train that could go off the rails at any moment. Who doesn't want to watch that? Say what you will of the EPL, but thanks to the time difference between Old Blighty and the States, it is no maker of football widows here. -- CAV Link to Original

Three editorials taken together go very far in making sense of the chaos in Ferguson, Missouri, that has existed since Michael Brown was fatally shot by a police officer. The first offers an explanation of the clearly evident outrage, but without addressing the equally obvious problem of opportunists seizing an opportunity to wreak havoc. The second -- and the most important in my opinion -- does the best job of explaining the chaos facing black leaders genuinely interested in progress. The third illustrates, by way of example, the cultural problem indicated by the second. The authors are, respectively, Leonard Pitts, Jr. of the Miami Herald, Joseph Epstein of the Wall Street Journal, and Jesse Jackson, Sr. Pitts writes that the protests are not just about Michael Brown. Pitts's piece reminds us of a broader historical context and is worth reading, especially for those of us in physical proximity to the events, and who might be wondering if any of this is even about Michael Brown: t is about the bitter sense of siege that lives in African-American men, a sense that it is perpetually open season on us. And that too few people outside of African America really notice, much less care. People who look like you are everyday deprived of health, wealth, freedom, opportunity, education, the benefit of the doubt, the presumption of innocence, life itself -- and when you try to say this, even when you document it with academic studies and buttress it with witness testimony, people don't want to hear it, people dismiss you, deny you, lecture you about white victimhood, chastise you for playing a so-called "race card." There is no disputing that black men are worse off by many measures than almost any other demograpic group, and seeing that on a daily basis can be an enormous psychological burden. However, as Joseph Epstein indicates, there is plenty of room for disagreement as to why so many black men remain poorly-off and feel unable to change things: ... The old dead analyses, the pretty panaceas, are paraded. Yet nothing new is up for discussion. Discussion itself is off the table. Except when Bill Cosby, Thomas Sowell or Shelby Steele and a few others have dared to speak about the pathologies at work--and for doing so, these black figures are castigated. And, much later: The situation today for a civil-rights leader is not so clear, and in many ways more complex. After the victories half a century ago, civil rights may be a misnomer. Economics and politics and above all culture are now at the heart of the problem. Blacks largely, and inexplicably, remain pledged to a political party whose worn-out ideas have done little for them while claiming much. Slipping off the too-comfortable robes of victimhood is essential, as is discouraging everything in ghetto culture that has dead-end marked all over it. The task is enormous, the person likely to bring it off, a modern-day Moses able to lead his people out of the desert, nowhere in sight. Until that person or persons arrives, we can expect more nights like those in Ferguson, with cries of racism, with looters and bottom-feeders turning up, with sadness all round. [link added] While I am not sure a "modern-day Moses" is strictly necessary, I agree with Epstein's assessement of the situation faced by black Americans as transitional. I would go further than Epstein in my assessment of the quality of the "civil rights" establishment: I see them as derelict at best. Jesse Jackson, Sr. offers us a prime example, in the form of an editorial that appeared recently in USA Today: Here's America today: high unemployment and low graduation rates result in guns and drugs in and jobs out; hospitals and public schools closing; gym, art, music and trade skills taken out of our public schools; inadequate investments being made in our infrastructure with roads crumbling, bridges falling down and an outdated public transportation system; a failure to address climate change; denial of capital investment for entrepreneurs; abandoned homes and vacant lots; a lack of youth recreational opportunities; frivolous entertainment, texting and Twitter replacing serious news reporting, reading, writing and arithmetic; a cutback in funding and a denial of equal opportunity in public jobs such as for teachers, policemen and firemen; all of which leads to hopelessness, despair and cynicism. [bold added] Yes. After ironically alluding to the failed War on Poverty, Jesse Jackson calls for more of the same, and, for good measure, takes the death of a young man as a chance to hawk big government solutions to ... global warming, of all things. Not anywhere is there a hint of Jackson considering whether our nation's government has created or worsened any of the real problems faced by the country in general and black men in particular -- or a clue that he might consider a real alternative to trying to solve everything through central planning. It is supremely ironic, given that Jim Crow, a government program for keeping black people down, didn't make black leaders as highly suspicious of intrusive government as the American people were around the time of the Revolution. As Thomas Jefferson might have asked: Might a government big enough to pass loot around also be big enough to sap the pride and initiative -- and the sense that there is opportunity out there for the taking -- from an entire people? Leonard Pitts argues that black men endure heavy psychological pressure from the idea that their options are purposely limited by the society around them. But Joseph Epstein makes it clear, and Jesse Jackson demonstrates, that it is time to stop and question the premise behind those feelings. Opportunities are, in fact, partly limited by vestigial (and vanishing) racism, prejudice, culture, and bad government. How to make the most out of what opportunities are open and how to fight the right battles to become as free as anyone else require what is most sorely missing in this whole sad episode, and many others like it: A rational examination of facts (including one's emotions), with the overall purpose of determining what is best for one's life and how to achieve it. This is not to minimize the incredible burden it must be to go through life seeing poverty and hearing from all corners that the deck is stacked against you -- or the horror of seeing someone much like you killed out of the blue. But self-control and careful thought are, in fact, the way to win anyway. Anyone can take away your freedom or your life, but no one can touch your soul unless you let them. -- CAV Link to Original

If you are a parent you have, by now, heard of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and may have even spent enough time thinking about it to determine for yourself whether this is a real disorder and, if so, whether it really is common or is merely over-diagnosed. But you probably have not yet heard of Slow Cognitive Tempo (SCT), which a leading proponent claims to affect around two million children in the United States: Dr. Allen Frances, who headed the development of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV for the American Psychiatric Association, is not amused and is making no bones about it. "Sluggish Cognitive Tempo is a remarkably silly name for an even sillier proposal," Frances wrote at the Psychology Today website. "Its main characteristics are vaguely described but include some combination daydreaming, lethargy, and slow mental processing. [minor format edits, links removed] Having an imaginitive daughter and remembering my own tendency to daydream as a child, I am none too thrilled to learn that momentum is building behind SCT. Perhaps I should consider placing a wager that some busybody will want to medicate her for it at some point down the road, as a means of financing her higher education. -- CAV Link to Original

There is <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/updates-on-ferguson-shooting/collection_38dae294-b61e-5dbf-8c3c-f6384c6100ba.html#utm_source=stltoday.com&amp;utm_campaign=hot-topics-2&amp;utm_medium=direct">rioting and looting</a> going on mostly north of my neck of the woods, although the barbarism has also <a href="http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/08/massive-brawl-shuts-down-st-louis-galleria-mall-on-lockdown/">engulfed an upscale shopping mall</a>. The major local paper <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/ferguson-area-businesses-cope-with-aftermath-of-weekend-riot/article_4a310ec3-94de-57dd-95f7-4e350f6a6fa2.html">refers</a> to this ongoing travesty as being "in response to" the fatal shooting of a young man by a police officer. I beg to differ with this wording, for it, as an <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/the-platform/editorial-get-it-right-about-the-terrible-wrong-in-ferguson/article_93ee8213-2406-5771-a959-2fcc8c486340.html">editorial</a> in the same paper might put it, is inexcusable. <br /><br />This brutality is only tenuously related to what happened Saturday. Perhaps "excused by" would have been a better turn of phrase. Stealing and vandalism -- victimizing people who had nothing to do with this sad event -- are neither called for nor justified. Indeed they are continuing despite the fact that: (1) the full circumstances of the shooting have yet to be determined; (2) the young man's family <a href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/chi-missouri-police-shooting-protests-20140811,0,1870857.story">has asked for it to end</a> (as have locals); and (3) the man who was shot <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/michael-brown-remembered-as-a-gentle-giant/article_cbafa12e-7305-5fd7-8e0e-3139f472d130.html">was an aspiring businessman</a>. Whatever the level of grief or sense of injustice one might feel for the loss of another, I am sure it would not motivate someone to harm someone very much like the departed.<br /><br />There are numerous calls for "justice" in the wake of this shooting, but neither <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/shooting-an-unarmed-suspect-could-be-justified-according-to-the/article_e9b5412f-2283-512e-8636-0d2bbe958c5c.html">presuming the policeman was wrong</a> nor stooping to brutality should be confused with a call for actual justice. There are many things wrong with our society, but perhaps the worst is the corruption of the concept of <a href="http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/justice.html#order_2">justice</a>, whether well-meaning or deliberate, that has occurred over the last few decades. If we are to have a functioning society at all, we will quickly get up to speed on this virtue and begin practicing it at all times.<br /><br />Now is not the time to mince words about the rioting. Whatever the circumstances of Michael Brown's death, the lawless actions that have followed are completely inexcusable.<br /><br />-- CAV Link to Original

Video of a thuggish rant (transcribed at the next link) by a union boss has gone viral. Said union boss, Michael Mulgrew, who heads a teachers' union in New York City is "defending" the "Common Core" curriculum mandated for government schools by the federal government. I found the following part of psychologist Michael Hurd's analysis particularly worthwhile: Consider the chronic emotional state of someone entrenched in this public school monopoly, particularly as a union official. They're angry, and they're frightened. On some level, some better part of them (if it exists) knows that they haven't earned their status, power or income. They're only garnering it because the government guarantees it by funding and legislation. When people criticize or question them, it reminds them that they haven't really and honestly earned what they've got. While not all public school teachers or even union officials are necessarily like this, the fact remains that they hold their jobs as a protected monopoly. As a system or enterprise of education, they're never going out of business. Year after year, the worse they perform, or the more questionable their practices (as in imposing political views via Common Core), the more money and power they attain. This thuggishnes -- part of the nature of government schools as Hurd explains -- caused me to recall that one of the biggest current fads among such "educators" is, ironically, a crusade against bullying. Out of curiosity, I decided to see what thought, if any, Mulgrew has given to the subject. As it turns out, he has written "Teaching to End Bullying" a short essay (appearing in a book on the "bullying crisis") about his union's efforts in this crusade. Amid an embarrassing amount of self-promotion, I gleaned the following insight, which he seems to have forgotten, assuming he actually wrote it: The kids who are bullies ... don't see the other child as a real person; they see only their own anger and frustration. But once they get to know the other kid and see him or her as a person, they start to empathize. This plainly goes for the adults who are bullies, although many of them have developed enough guile to hide such an attitude from others. I would add that such budding empathy would depend on there being, as Hurd put it, a "better part" in the nature of the bully (more likely in a child than in an adult), not to mention a considerable, sincere effort to walk a mile in the victim's moccasins, as the old saying goes. I don't expect Mulgrew the thug to do this in regard to the parents he is threatening. He will not take even a moment any time soon to consider how or why a parent might become "cold, twisted, [and] sick" come to question the Common Core curricululum. Nor do I expect this person to do the honorable thing. That is, Michael Mulgrew should apologize for threatening the parents of the children he is supposed to be helping -- and resign from his union post and his profession at once. More parents should question the whole notion of government-run schools, which restrict our choices about who will educate our children (and how), not to mention entrenching the likes of Michael Mulgrew. Only massive government coercion could cause so many people to entrust their own children to such a person. Parents will stand up to this -- or see their own children suffer the consequences -- sooner or later. -- CAV Link to Original

This Shouldn't Have Been Necessary In what is mistaken for good news these days, Houston's city council voted by a wide margin to pass an ordinance allowing ride-sharing services, such as Uber and Lyft, to operate legally in their fair city. No one seems to bat an eye at the fact that, even in one of the most capitalistic cities in the country, agreements between consenting adults are treated like a privilege granted by the state, rather than a right to be protected by it. The default condition in a free society is that a legitimate concern needn't get permission to do business. Oh, and there are already strings attached: Council members did pass several amendments that were designed to make the competition more level. Currently, Uber and Lyft do not have a metered fare like a cab, and can change how much they charge based on demand. City leaders voted to allow that for cabs as well. But, it will only apply to cabs hailed through an app, not to cabs people catch on the street or at a hotel. Those cabs will still need to adhere to meter rates. So cabs can't adjust their rates and, presumably, a ride-share operator who wanted to use a meter would be on the wrong side of the law if he did. Such is the business climate in one of America's freer cities. Weekend Reading "By examining the lives of people who experience tragic loss, you can find that the most resilient among them seized the new opportunities that arose." -- Michael Hurd, in "Loss Hurts, But It Can Also be Opportunity" at The Delaware Wave "People who feel that they have too little control over their lives certainly need to address the issue -- but not on the roads of resort towns." -- Michael Hurd, in "Vacation Mindset Syndrome" at The Delaware Coast Press My Two Cents The second teaser quote above would make me more inclined to laugh at impulsive drivers -- if only they weren't so dangerous. If you like steak, ... ... you'll love Argentina, says Maciej Ceglowski, who also offers the following amusing speculation after travelling there: Surely [Juan Díaz de] Solís was wearing one of those crucifixes that shows Jesus actually hanging from the cross. It must have been a simple mistake on the part of the natives, who saw him as a friendly gift from the visitors on the boat, complete with a serving suggestion suspended around his neck. In any case, you will now see crucified lambs and calves in the front window of many a larger parrilla, roasting for hours in front of unfazed diners. Ceglowski, the proprietor of my favorite bookmarking site, is also quite an entertaining writer. If you have some time to kill, stop by his blog, Idle Words, and look around, particularly at his travel entries. --CAV Link to Original

Good news, in terms of the short-term political fortunes of the Democratic Party, comes from an article in the New Republic. Said article warns the Democrats that its "white working class problem" can't be solved simply by writing off the South. I think the warning will go unheeded despite the fact that the article supports its contention by re-analyzing the data the Democrats are betting on. Crucial to this re-analysis is a breakdown of the country into "a set of regions that more closely mirrors the basic, underlying sociological and political divisions in the nation" -- rather than just Central-Northeast-West-South. The article concludes: Many Democrats would prefer not to have to face this monumental organization challenge, hoping instead that the existing Obama coalition and demographic changes in America will prove sufficient to elect a president in 2016, hold the Senate, and weaken GOP control over the House of Representatives. But the harsh reality for Democrats is that they cannot achieve all three of these objectives without increasing their support among white working class Americans--and if Democrats keep telling themselves that "the problem is just the South," that support may decrease instead. I'd go further, based on my experiences of growing up in the South and of living in the Northeast for several years. From what I can tell, from encounters with angry leftists (e.g., "Republican people" used as a direct insult (I am not a Republican.)) and from overhearing conversations in public (e.g., "some hick from Texas" as shorthand for "white Southerner"), many Democrats like to imagine that nothing has changed in the South in the past half-century plus, and are quite happy to write off any fair-skinned individual from that part of the country. And, based on my reading of left-wing commentary, I think that most Democrats would also prefer not to question their policies or why they don't appeal to large swaths of "working class whites". It's easy to be smug when one can assume that the whole problem is due to a bunch of easily-marginalized hicks. May the donkey keep its blinders on! Perhaps this will buy more time for cultural change and the emergence of a significant pro-individual rights electoral bloc. I hold out little hope for an improvement from the GOP, but perhaps its short-term profit can stall our headlong march into tyranny. -- CAV Link to Original

In the past, I have, for several reasons, argued against the notion of "states' rights" and the related idea of the separate states as being "laboratories of democracy". In the first of the two links, I pretty much summed up what I think the rights of the states (which can only derive from individual rights) consist of: The only valid application of the notion of states' rights is to permit states to handle relatively unimportant matters as they see fit. This allows, for example, a thinly-populated state like Nebraska to have a unicameral legislature, or a state originally settled by the French, like Louisiana, to base its legal system on Napoleonic Coderather than English Common Law. In neither case are individual rights being violated. That said, the existence of separate state governments has historically had the undeniable side-benefit of sometimes causing our country to be less-than-uniformly tyrannical, as when the "free states" existed during the time of slavery (which our Constitution permitted until it was corrected by amendment). At least there was somewhere to run, within the United States, back then. That said, this accidental protection from mistaken and wrong federal law is quickly eroding, as an interesting article in The Atlantic makes clear. Here's an example, of how the feds ramrod economy-strangling environmental regulations down the throats of states that don't want them: Money isn't the only lever the feds use to increase their influence over state governments. Formally, the federal government can't require states to implement federal regulations. But environmental regulations show how easy it is to get around that constraint. The Clean Air Act allows the states to issue federal permits--but only under federally approved state implementation plans, or SIPs. Those plans must meet a dizzying number of conditions; otherwise, the EPA trumps with a federal implementation plan, or FIP. When EPA comes in with its FIP, it often comes to "crucify" local industries, as former EPA Regional Administrator Al Armendariz boasted at a closed-door meeting early in the Obama administration. The crucifixion takes the form of costly added requirements and endless delays. The federal government basically says to uncooperative states, "Implement our regulations for us, or we'll do it ourselves, and your constituents will be sorry." Predictably, constituents pressure state officials to protect them from the dire prospect of EPA implementing its own regulations, as we saw when Texas at first resisted implementing EPA's new greenhouse gas regulations. The article includes a brief historical survey of the legislative and legal history behind this trend and concludes with this warning: The mounting federal takeover of the states started slowly during the New Deal and has intensified substantially, especially in recent years. That inexorable trend is leading to unsustainable levels of government spending and a regulatory regime that grows more intrusive and oppressive by the day. One solution is paramount: Strengthen the vital but oft-neglected separation of federal and state governments. I agree with the prognosis, but not the diagnosis or the proposed cure. The problem isn't that the states are less sovereign than they ought to be, but that individuals are having their rights violated rather than protected by improper government. Simply making the individual states more idependent will not really solve this more fundmental problem. Fifty tyrannies that plunder their citizens and order them around is no more desirable than one. Merely fighting fighting for greater state-level independence distracts from the real fight for freedom, which entails all levels of government protecting individual rights, rather than violating them. -- CAV Link to Original

Cass Sunstein -- whose book advocating government meddling shares an interesting similarity in its title with an Ayn Rand essay against the same -- has posted a warning to Americans who value rule of law and individual freedom. However, sensing that the cause of freedom is on the ropes, Sunstein casts his information as a prescription, rather than the list of vulnerabilities that it is. Basically, Sunstein wants an autocratic President to "get Washington working", and sees three ways to achieve this: (1) fast action by any recently-elected President; (2) "broad grants of authority", such as George W. Bush obtained after the jihadist atrocities of September 11, 2001 (Curiously, Sunstein is mum on how well the NSA surveillance that started then has been "working".); and (3) "creatively designed laws" that allow the President and Congress to pass the buck to others. Note that all of these remove debate and careful deliberation from the political process -- both at the time of the passage of a law, when disaster might be averted and long after disaster has become apparent or has occurred and a course correction the President might not agree with might be called for. Ayn Rand hit the nail on the head in "Have Gun, Will Nudge", when she showed the following about that the motives of Sunstein and his ilk: Sunstein regards the American public at large as cattle to be prodded, rather than sovereign individuals with rights. It is up to us to push back by seeking to reestablish proper limits on the government in general and the executive branch in particular if we are to live once again as free men. -- CAV Link to Original

A column by Star Parker, a conservative columnist who often praises free markets, caused me to do a search for the term "regulation" on the recently-revamped website of the Ayn Rand Institute. As a result, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that ARI has posted the entirety of Rand's 1960's essay on regulations, "Have Gun, Will Nudge", in which she shows exactly what is wrong with regulation (as opposed to legitimate law). In reference to the Parker column (with which I have many, many issues), I found the following passage particularly relevant: Consider the implications. If the public is not competent to judge television programs and its own entertainment -- how can it be competent to judge political issues? Or economic problems? Or nuclear policies? Or international affairs? And since -- on the above premise -- the answer is that it can't, shouldn't its guardians protect it from those books and newspapers which, in the guardians' judgment, are not consonant with the public interest and would only confuse the poor incompetent that's unable to judge? In her column, Parker lauds Texas for imposing new regulations on abortion clinics. Even if we take her at her word that she sees this as an improvement to patient safety (vice a sneaky way to make abortions harder to obtain), one could just as well substitute "physicians" for "television programs", "welfare" for "entertainment", and "medical procedures" for "books and newspapers" in the above passage. Even if Parker, who opposes abortion, can't see these "regulations" for what they are -- a threat to the freedom to have an abortion in particular and to make medical choices in general -- that's the threat they do, in fact, pose. One cannot advocate economic freedom and improper government "guidelines" at the same time. Parker ends her column by asking, "What, after all, can 'freedom' mean when it does not start with recognizing the sanctity of life?" That's a good question, although I disagree with Parker's premise that embryos constitute human lives. But one also cannot discuss freedom without knowing that it entails an individual's right to act according to his or her best judgement, even when it is wrong, so long as doing so does not violate the rights of others. -- CAV Link to Original

Double Dishonesty from Anti-GMO Activists Amanda Maxham of the Ayn Rand Institute writes a post that deserves to go viral -- unlike a scaremongering graphic some anti-GMO activists posted to the Internet with that intent, only to abruptly remove it: [Although] insulin resistance or "double diabetes" is a real condition that some do develop, this has nothing to do with the technology used to create human insulin as the meme implies... GMO Free USA is not using the term to helpfully educate people about managing and treating diabetes, but to scare people out of taking their medication because of how it is created. This reminds me of a Charles Babbage quote I posted yesterday, except that I am able to "rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke" someone to raise such a proposition. Aside from out-and-out lying, there is also a kind of confusion one can induce in himself when one has decided that reality should conform to one's ideas rather than vice versa. (Perhaps we should call it "reality resistance".) I doubt that, after pulling this image, GMO-Free USA disbanded or even issued a retraction. The only reason the graphic was removed was because it wouldn't take too many questions to discover how mendacious it was. Weekend Reading "If we take this approach to its logical endpoint, 'public health' merely reduces to public policy in general, rendering the term 'public health' nearly meaningless." -- Paul Hsieh, in "No, Gun Violence Is Not a 'Public Health' Issue" at Forbes "The threat of being found out is like an emotional time bomb -- maybe it will go off; maybe it won't." -- Michael Hurd, in "The Folly of Deceit" at The Delaware Coast Press "[W]ith some quiet self-reflection, the needy person can retrain him- or herself to respond differently to situations that spark these anxieties." -- Michael Hurd , in "Why 'Needy' People Cling" at The Delaware Wave "No one ever admits that they want to silence others, so they invoke this magic concept [the 'public interest' -- ed] to do that dirty work for them." -- Steve Simpson, in "Gutting the First Amendment" at The American Spectator "In fact, the labels won't convey any actual information at all - just an intimidating warning that the product contains GMOs." -- Amanda Maxham, in "What GMO Labels Really Tell Us" at Politix In More Detail Paul Hsieh's column could serve as a template to debunk almost any current leftist cause (as well as a few conservative ones). This is because the unstated premise that too often passes as an argument is an intentional attempt to shame anyone who might disagree via a non-sequitur, like, "If you really care about [fill in the issue here (e.g., public health)], you will [support/oppose] [fill in the pet cause here (e.g., gun control)]." In Defense of Clutter An article defending clutter from Life Hacker reminds me of an old post of mine on minimalism, and of a recent episode in which keeping an old computer around saved me money and time. Before recounting that episode, let me bring up an interesting point that people often miss when evaluating notions like minimalism. In his zeal to minimize distractions, the geek's mistake isn't that he consistently applies a principle, but that he misapplies it. To take full advantage of working without distractions, one must first understand when a laser-like focus is called for, and when, say, letting one's mind explore things that strike its fancy is called for. (I don't use it myself, but I have even run across a task management system that attempts to put mental wandering to some use.) So keeping some junk doesn't make one a hoarder any more than it violates an intelligent application of the idea of keeping only what you need around and generally streamlining your life. Here's how keeping something I couldn't readily use around helped me in a pinch: A tiny screw on the very laptop I use for writing on most days had worked its way loose and became lost. Unfortunately, the screw held one of the screen hinges to a couple of the components of the base, meaning that my screen became hard to adjust and unstable. Worse, the hinge threatened to break parts of the base almost every time the screen moved. I knew exactly what the problem was, and called a computer repair shop in hopes of being able to stop by for a quick fix. The representative, apparently unable to comprehend my description of the problem or taking me for a fool, told me I'd have to leave my laptop there for 48 hours for "diagnostics". I demurred and decided to call a few other places -- until I remembered the old laptop, which I'd partially disassembled in the process of determining that a repair was beyond my expertise. I kept it in case I might decide to cannibalize any components later on. Good call: it just happened to have the same kind of screw in its screen hinge. My repair cost went to zero and I didn't even have to spend time looking for a decent repair shop. --CAV Link to Original

1. A web page designer, who had been working with a client in real time, makes an amusing realization after getting his client's okay: This reminds me a little of the old story about how Michelangelo responded to a critic's assertion that the nose on the David was too big. 2. While we're considering new variants on old themes, someone has warned us that key-duplicating apps can be used for break-ins. Also, much of what I said about "bumping" nearly eight years ago still applies. 3. Charles Babbage, who built a mechanical computer in the nineteenth century, was asked twice by members of the British parliament whether his machine would spit out correct answers if given the wrong data. Something about the wording of his reaction makes me smile: "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." 4. The following bit of advice on removing poison ivy is, like the whole piece, both good and amusing. The main poison ivy plant in our back yard is huge: I'll be paying someone else to remove it soon, thank you very much. -- CAV Link to Original

There is an interesting column by Larry Elder out regarding the two recent conflicting federal court rulings on ObamaCare tax credits. I do not know how important to any Supreme Court decision the following information will be, but Elder shows Jonathan Gruber, the architect of the Affordable Care Act, contradicting himself on the matter, and trying to sweep it under the rug. Twice in 2012, Gruber made it clear that the language of the bill excluded from the tax breaks anyone purchasing from a federal exchange: By not setting up an exchange, the politicians of a state are costing state residents hundreds and millions and billions of dollars. ... That is really the ultimate threat, is, will people understand that, gee, if your governor doesn't set up an exchange, you're losing hundreds of millions of dollars of tax credits to be delivered to your citizens. And, a week later: The federal government has been sort of slow in putting out its [health insurance exchange] backstop, I think, partly because they want to sort of squeeze the states to do it. I think what's important to remember politically about this is if you're a state and you don't set up an exchange, that means your citizens don't get their tax credits. But your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So you're essentially saying to your citizens you're going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country. More recently, this is what Gruber -- Add a second "b" and you have a perfect name for a villain in an Ayn Rand novel -- had to say: We can go to the people who wrote it and say did you ever intend this as a poison pill or is it a typo every single one says it's a typo? [ sic] And every single one of them will say this is just a typo. So there is no mystery here. Regarding the contradiction, obvious once he learned that someone noted his earlier remarks, Gruber called those "speak-os". Elder is confident of a Supreme Court ruling against ObamaCare, since, as Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute puts it, "This is not a constitutional challenge to the law. It's not asking any court to strike down the law. It's actually asking them to uphold the law." That might be nice, except that for who we have in charge of enforcing the law and the extremely limited likelihood of Congress exercising the appropriate remedy. -- CAV Link to Original

The title comes from my smart (-aleck?) phone's "correction" of a simple question I was trying to ask my wife, via text. She and her father were to meet up with me and her mother during a family vacation, and they were a half-hour or so away in a car. Smart phones and auto-correct come to mind because this morning, just as I sat down to write, I heard, over her monitor, the distinct sound of my daughter vomiting. Yep. Despite the fact we had ear grommets installed a few months ago, this has all the usual symptoms of an ear infection. She has even spontaneously complained of pain in her right ear. That distinct sound also means I'll be on the phone a lot more than I'd care to be today, setting up a doctor's appointment and probably cancelling a couple of other appointments I'd planned for the day. Some of this will involve texting. Some will involve making entries in calendars and to-do lists. Anything to do with entering text will involve the auto-correct function of my phone, of which it seems I can never be suspicious enough. I am constantly sending supplementary texts like, "'far', not 'fat'" or "'.', not 'n'", after taking a (usually) quick look upon hitting send and seeing that my phone really does treat "fat out" and "n" at the end of a sentence as if they are idiomatic. (I keep a list of the really good ones, but that will have to wait.) Grousing aside, and as an article I recently encountered through Arts and Letters Daily points out, what is truly remarkable is how much auto-correct gets right. Nevertheless, "The Fasinatng ... Frustrating ... Fascinating History of Autocorrect" does have its own amusing moments: So take a break from your busy routine -- as shall I -- and marvel at the technological wizardry behind auto-correct. But never let your guard down! -- CAV Link to Original

Writing against the tide of leftist sentiment for an Israeli cease-fire, Thomas Sowell hits the nail on the head, although he somehow manages to succeed in being generous at the same time: Israel was attacked, not only by vast numbers of rockets but was also invaded -- underground -- by mazes of tunnels. There is something grotesque about people living thousands of miles away, in safety and comfort, loftily second-guessing and trying to micro-manage what the Israelis are doing in a matter of life and death. Such self-indulgences are a danger, not simply to Israel, but to the whole Western world, for it betrays a lack of realism that shows in everything from the current disastrous consequences of our policies in Egypt, Libya and Iraq to future catastrophes from a nuclear-armed Iran. [links dropped, bold added] Sowell continues, likening the calls for a ceasefire to "discussing abstract people in an abstract world". Sowell can be forgiven for making the common mistake of thinking that abstractions (proper ones, anyway) have nothing to do with concrete reality. Perhaps such an error -- or the fact that Sowell is a true gentleman -- explains why he described this as "grotesque" rather than the way I describe it: obscene. The left, which once battled prejudice, now practices fact-free moral condemnation sanctimoniously. (I can't call moral equivalence here by any other name.) The left's treatment of Israel may feel like a parlor game or even a noble cause to many. However, I find both the complete disregard of what the Israelis face and the fact that this disregard has real consequences deeply disturbing. Like the excellent Caroline Glick article I commented on recently, I highly recommend reading this piece in its entirety. -- CAV Link to Original

Some time ago, I linkedto a good piece on the ridiculous "moral panic" back in the 1980's over role-playing games (particularly Dungeons and Dragons). Over the weekend, I ran across an equally good, positive piece on Dungeons and Dragons. Like its author, I enjoyed the game while it was at the peak of its popularity, and I also saw the engrossing game as a much better passtime than most of the alternatives: For much of its existence, D. & D. has attracted ridicule, fear, and threats of censorship from those who don't play or understand the game. It is surrounded by a fog of negative connotations. David M. Ewalt, the author of Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It, writes, "If you're an adult who plays … you're a loser, you're a freak, you live in your parents' basement." The game has been accused of fomenting Communist subversion and of being " a feeding program for occultism and witchcraft." One mother, whose D. & D.-playing son committed suicide, started an organization called Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons (BADD). Though that negative perception is changing, as popular culture and the fantasy milieu become increasingly synonymous, I believe that the benefits of D. & D. are still significantly underappreciated. Though its detractors see the game as a gateway to various forms of delinquency, I would argue that the reverse is true. For countless players, Dungeons & Dragons redirected teen-age miseries and energies that might have been put to more destructive uses. How many depressed and lonely kids turned away from suicide because they found community and escape in role-playing games? How many acts of bullying or vandalism were sublimated into dice-driven combat? How many teen pregnancies were averted because one of the potential partners was too busy looking for treasure in a crypt? (Make all the jokes you want, but some of my fellow-players were jocks who had girlfriends; sometimes the girlfriends played, too.) How many underage D.U.I.s never came to pass because spell tables were being consulted late into the night? (It's hard to play D. & D. drunk; it requires too much concentration and analytical thought.) Just this week, the Times published an article about the game's formative influence on a diverse generation of writers, including Junot Díaz, Sherman Alexie, George R. R. Martin, Sharyn McCrumb, and David Lindsay-Abaire. (To the Times' lineup, I'd add a murderers' row of Ed Park, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Paul La Farge, Colson Whitehead, and Sam Lipsyte.) [format edits] John Michaud goes on to note such benefits as the game getting kids to read who otherwise didn't care to. (I remember my mother noticing how much better my brother became at reading after we'd played a while.) And, speaking for myself, who was shy and very bookish then, the game (and others like it) got me to expand my circle of friends in high school and helped me jump-start my social life when I began college. Would I make the claim, as the author does, that D&D saved my life? No, but it certainly made it more enjoyable, and Michaud has helped me see that it was beneficial for many of the other kids I knew who played it. I recommend reading the whole thing some time before the new New Yorker paywall goes up in three months. And I look forward to dusting off my old rulebooks some time down the road and, like Michaud, introducing my kids to the game. -- CAV Link to Original